Z: The Beginning of Everything

[Small Man Big Horse]

This is a new amazon series based on a novel with the same (terrible) name, I'm only one episode in so far but it's pretty decent stuff. It covers the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of the Great Gatsby writer bloke, from before they met to, well, I don't know, I haven't finished it yet so have no idea if they plan to make it last twenty eight seasons before she snuffs it or if it's all tied up in ten episodes. Ricci's a delight, and you see her breasts in one episode apparently which is horribly exploitative of course but it's too late now so just try not to look at them, whilst your F.Scott Fitgerald fella is suitably charismatic. It's got a mainly light tone as these privileged so and so's go to various dances and exchange witty lines, though given the subject matter I guess it's not going to be bright and frothy all the way through by any means. Either way I'm in for a good few episodes yet, and not only because of the nudity.

[kidsick5000]

Oh... so nothing to do with zombies then.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

I watched Episode 2 today and thought it was a huge drop-off. Sub 'Dawson's Creek' level mediocrity. It's far too conventional considering how complex and interesting its subjects are. Directed with zero flair as well. Looks awfully cheap and cheerful. Will be sticking with it, however, because of a personal fascination with both Fitzgeralds' literary work.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Episode 3 was marginally better. I'm hoping it'll pick up once Scott and Zelda are actually properly together. It needs swift improvement in the characterisation of the leads. Zelda as been rendered as a rather 2-dimensional Bronte-lite heroine who apparently affronts everyone without being complex or interesting in any way and Scott's also a cardboard cut-out. It's conventional and vanilla as fuck at the moment. Both authors' works were gorgeous, energetic, wistful, melancholy, elegiac and psychologically complex. This is unimaginative and dry.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Episode 4 has the nudity at last. 10/10.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Episode 4 has the nudity at last. 10/10.

Your previous comments put me off the show but now I'm back in!

[kidsick5000]

Oh... so nothing to do with zombies then.

Episode 4 has the nudity at last. 10/10.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

I am mainly distracted by the fact that I think the title theme sounds like the Lost Woods theme from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and wonder if it's just an odd coincidence.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Episode 7 is legitimately decent. There's more in the way of interesting characterisation and Zelda starts feeling like an actual, complicated person rather than a standard grounded protagonist. F. Scott Fitzgerald is still a little bit off, however. The series gives no impression as to why he was charismatic or likable and comes down very hard on the idea that he was a total cunt who just bragged all the time and spoiled everything for everyone. Shades of Ifans' Peter Cook there, in capturing only the turmoil without the appealing characteristics that drew people close enough to see the turmoil in the first place.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Just finished the series finale, this was total garbage. I'll be amazed if this gets renewed. Most of the favourable press I've seen for it has a real surface-level appreciation for it, commenting on the period detail and the interesting move of privileging Zelda's perspective over Scott's (which is a worthwhile move, but this series squanders that oppurtunity). Unfortunately, Zelda is not a complex or interesting character and their relationship is reduced to the most simplistic good girl/bad guy dichotomy. Scott Fitzgerald is reduced to a bunch of stock chauvinist gestures, whereas his suffocation of her freedoms should be rendered more implicitly because, well, people are contradictory and he should seem well-intentioned but ultimately corrosive rather than the outrageous pantomime drunk egotist he is in this series.

There a real lack of subtlety in the way that people always express their interior lives outwardly in this, which means that Zelda's constant anguish makes her seem like she could never have been an effervescently inspirational force or a poetic soul at all, because her characterisation makes her seem positively prudish and narrow-minded much of the time. She should be outwardly vivacious with suggestions of an inner melancholy that really manifests itself in private. Unfortunately the writers of this series find it impossible to suggest two things concurrently, so people are always saying exactly how they're feeling. There's also no compelling reason why one would think that Scott and Zelda would fall in love in this. They really appear to despise each other, and there's very little spark between them that gives us a clue of why they would want to weather the bad times. There should have been more precious private moments in which the dysfunctional relationship seems like a heaven for them when they're alone.

This is what happens when people of third-rate intellect write about truly complex and contradictory people. They try and make false binary oppositions, find refuge in conventional psychological assumptions, and reduce people to being flat and dull as a result. To make someone like Zelda Fitzgerald boring takes exceptional incompetence.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Episode 4 has the nudity at last. 10/10.

It has CGI nudity.

Ricci has a lot of tats. Either they covered them with makeup, or the tats were digitally erased afterwards.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Right then.

Episode 4 has the nudity at last. 10/10. 0/10.