I've decided to start using this blog again, because I have some thoughts on films (and TV shows) that I want to share. That's also why I've renamed the blog. I think most of my posts are going to be random disjointed thoughts or ideas rather than outright reviews, though I probably will throw in some of those as well.
Both Chloe and Clickbait are limited series', which I love. That's a series which tells one story then ends, rather than being a longer running thing that needs to keep coming up with new ideas. Honestly, I think a lot of stories are just much stronger being told that way. For a counter example, look at How I Met Your Mother. They locked into a specific ending early on and refused to deviate, even as the show itself grew and changed. In a limited series, that would be fine. You retain tight control over the plot, you can build towards that ending. In a long-running series, though, you need to keep coming up with new episodes and plot points and character arcs, which meant HIMYM ended up somewhere very different to where it actually needed to be for their ending to work. A really nice in-between option is anthology series', like Cruel Summer, and The Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor, where you tell different stories each season, so you get the benefits of telling one single story from start to end and also the benefits of making multiple seasons with the same team and really getting into a solid groove.
The other thing Clickbait and Chloe have in common is that they are both thrillers in which social media plays a key role. That leads me to my first rant, about the idea that TV shows should have an opinion on social media. I've seen this idea in reviews for Clickbait and Chloe. Why do these shows need to come down on the side of "social media is good!" or "social media is bad!"? It feels like we've reached the point where social media is a fact of life, like kitchen knives. Dramas which involve someone being stabbed aren't criticised for not making a clear statement about whether knives are ultimately bad or not.
Both shows introduced a key character whose motives are unclear, which is common in thrillers. What Chloe did, which was very interesting, was to make that character the main character, and have her motivation not be the obvious mystery of the show.
Spoilers for Chloe Below.
The main character is Becky, and our first impression of her is that she's a con artist/stalker. The show makes it seem like she's obsessed with a random woman, Chloe, (via Instragram) and that she takes the opportunity to lie her way into Chloe's friend group after she dies. We see Becky calmly lying about her identity and manipulating people, and we even have a few hints that she knows more about Chloe than she let on. It feels like the book The Perfect Girlfriend, where we follow the villain rather than the hero. But then, as the series go on, we learn that Becky was actually Chloe's childhood friend, which is why Chloe called her before she died. Becky's trying to find out how Chloe died, partly from loyalty to her friend, partly from fascination with her world and her desire to be invited in.
In reviews and on TV tropes, I've seen people discuss "what's wrong" with Becky. Is she a psychopath, a sociopath, what? My take is she's neither. Fundamentally, I think she is Sasha, she's a woman who can fit into this world, who can be calm and confident. She could have legitimately had the career she claimed to have and to be friends with these people (if they weren't all terrible). She didn't because of her self-esteem issues, because her mother is abusive and has spent her whole life tearing her down, and because her best friend rejected her for no apparent reason in their teens. She doesn't believe she can be Sasha because she's Becky, and Becky is worthless. It's only when she tells herself that she's lying, that she gives herself another name, that she can blossom, that she lets herself be the woman she could have been. I think the only reason people assume she must be a sociopath or a psychopath is because the series' introduces her as the villain and people get stuck on that idea even as they learn more about her.
Spoilers for Clickbait Below.
This doesn't have anything to do with Chloe, I've abandoned comparing them now. This is just a thing I wanted to talk about.
For me, the weakest plot point in Clickbait is how the characters got so hung up on whether the mistress had actually met the husband or not. Even if she hadn't, that didn't prove that he wasn't having an affair with the other girl. Conversely, even if she had, that didn't prove he did have an affair with the other girl. It was really illogical and annoying how stuck on this the characters got. It just didn't make sense. Sure, if he never met the fiancé, that's a tiny bit of evidence that maybe he never met the other girl, but why not just focus on finding out whether he ever met the other girl in the first place? Go straight after the thing you wanted to prove, rather than something that can't give you that answer.
It might have been more interesting if he genuinely had an affair with the mistress and then his weird stalker was inspired by that to fake an affair with the other girl.
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