Still Working Through My Issues

[annundriel]

This started out originally as a comment, but then it grew and grew and I realized I could get some other things I'd been thinking about out of my head with it. So now it's a post all on its own.

It's not as clear as I'd like it to be in some places, but my head is all fuzzy so I'm not going to worry about it too much.

I buried my head in the sand a lot when it came to CoE promotion because I didn't want to be spoiled, but I saw and heard enough to know what the creators were saying we'd get. Specifically that the relationship between Jack and Ianto would be developed, would evolve. That the characters themselves would move forward.

It really shouldn't have surprised me at this point to receive something completely different.

I feel like they kept doing that, kept saying the show was one thing when I kept seeing something completely different. Like they thought they were really pushing the envelope when it came to sex and relationships (and sexual relationships), but really I just saw the same ideas being presented over and over. And then when they do stumble on something that you don't see a lot of on TV, they can't seem to handle it in the nuanced way they've been developing it - accidentally, I want to say, because Lord knows I've stopped thinking they're that clever - and fall back on titillating situations and cliches.

I've been e-mailing olivelavonne about this a fair bit (bless her, because she hasn't even seen CoE yet) and talking with sdrohc_ratiug, reading lots of fanficiton I stayed away from in the past because I could never seem to find anything good, and rewatching bits and pieces from the previous seasons that really worked for me and remind me what I saw in the show to begin with. What has all of this done for me? Well, it's helped me stop crying ridiculously. It's also helped me realize what exactly about season two was off for me and how that carried into CoE.

I've come to realize that what I wanted out of season two was more of the Jack we see in that office, asking Ianto first how he is and then on a date. He's cautious and tentative, but still recognizably Jack. Ianto's response matters to him. We get a hint of this Jack again in "To the Last Man." (And I love him and Ianto together in "Fragments." I want just scenes and scenes of them bantering and working together.) Other than that, though? Unless I am forgetting something, that Jack mostly disappears. To be replaced by the Jack that's fascinated by Gwen Cooper. And, please, somebody tell me what it is about her that makes her so interesting that Jack's drawn to her like that when he's got Ianto, whose layers we were only starting to get to see. In all of Jack's existence, he's really never met someone like Gwen before? Is it her ability to balance real life and Torchwood? What is it?

I just don't think she's special enough to warrent that kind of attention. But then I'm a Ianto fan as well as a Jack/Ianto fan and I know that's my bias. Same argument could be turned against me. Personal preference and all that.

Anyway, that kind of got slightly off-topic.

So instead, let's play If I Were In Charge. If I were in charge, that newly tentative Jack wouldn't have disappeared. That's a whole new aspect of the character to explore: a Jack who's spent a year that never happened being tortured and killed over and over, wondering about the people left behind. A Jack who now knows that he can't be fixed and that he'll always lose the ones he loves, even if it's to natural causes and old age.

And instead of the scenes where you wonder what the hell Jack thinks he's doing (or whole episodes, see "Meat), you'd get character development and the chance to witness two characters - two men - struggling to figure out who they are and what they mean to each other. Doesn't mean you can't get the innuendo and the Jack we're all familiar with, the one with the radical tales and the flirting and the sex in public places. It just means that there's more to him than that.

That's what I wanted to see. Jack coming back from a life-changing experience and reacting to that change. Maybe come to some realizations. Or something similar. I wanted something deeper and more meaningful on screen than the titillating situations and cliches.

I mean, I did love what we got in season two. But I also disliked Jack a lot, which was strange. Not the whole time, but enough.

And that Jack, the Jack that didn't seem to want to acknowledge the possibility of something deeper and more meaningful than fun and sex, he's the one that showed up in CoE. I mean, there was Jack asking Ianto out on a date, worried about the answer, and now here's Jack ignoring Ianto's attempts to figure out what they are and what they have together.

And I just don't know what that means. To me, it just doesn't mesh. It's not even just those two instances, but those are the ones that are sticking in my head.

Of course, none of that is even touching where they took Ianto in the miniseries. Something for another day.

I think part of the problem is that there are things going on between the scenes that we're shown that could explain behavior (like what happened between the end of season two and the beginning of the mini to put Jack and Ianto in the mindsets they were in). But I also think that's lazy on the part of the people in charge. I want to know why characters change like that, I don't just want to be confronted with the change.

I'm going to stop that there, because I could probably go on and on. But I'm tired of thinking.