[spoilers] Lucas. Just Lucas.

[Saerwen]

Why have a feature called "The Downfall of Lucas" on the Series 9 dvd at all, when the series whilst ongoing should have shown everything we needed to know with little mysteries here and there. I am still debating whether to buy it or not, I don't like having a carrot dangled in front of me for something which I should have already had knowledge of and to look forward in Series 10.

[Byatil]

(01-02-2011 06:39 PM)BravoNine Wrote:  I can forgive Series 8 because at least then, Lucas's love-sickness with Sarah had a lot of psychological roots underneath it all, the writers were still using a lot of his past and damaged psyche as a basis for his actions, and in that way, it was more believable. And like I said before, his love for Sarah wasn't really her as a person, but what she represented to him, a type of comfort and closeness that he desperately lacks. So from that story-standpoint, it made sense, and it created a more complex character in Lucas.

Whereas Series 9 tossed all that deep, complex, and interesting psychological issues away and created some new bizarre character with Lucas/John that simply did not mesh well together. He turned from a complex character to some one dimensional crazy psycho. It was just stupid.

At least Series 8 didn't have me climbing up walls, at least the Sarah/Lucas relationship had more of a meaningful purpose than John/Maya which had about the spark of a pathetic trash bin fire....:dodgy:

Yeah, his relationship with Sarah made "more sense", but I still feel like it was a bit uncalled for, personally. I thought his relationship with Elizavyeta was the only meaningful, interesting romantic relationship he really had. Sarah was believable to an extent, but having Lucas go through 3 different women in 3 different series just didn't appeal to me, on reflection :/ I think in S8 I would rather have seen Lucas craving that emotional support from one of his colleagues, rather than immediately rushing into a seedy relationship with a CIA liaison officer, which was so obviously bound to end in tears!

I think the Sarah plot would have worked better if the writers had actually explored it on a psychological level a little more. Sarah allowed us to see a side of Lucas which we hadn't previously encountered, but aside from that, I tend to feel their relationship was just as shallow as John and Maya's. As you say, at least S8 had some psychological props to make it believable, but I think it was an easy cliché to take a conventionally good-looking man and basically give him the opportunity to take his clothes off every other episode :P Obviously it formed a fairly integral part of the S8 plot-arc, but it might have been better to have seen the pair engage in a bit of "will they/won't they" (Harry and Ruth, anyone?) rather than a fairly simple "flirt then sex" relationship.

Interestingly (from the 3 series I've fully watched), we never see Jo or Ben engage in any romantic relationships. I believe Jo had a bit of a 'thing' going on with Adam (?) but throughout S7-9, the only people engaged in relationships are Lucas, Ruth, George and Harry. George is killed in order to let Ruth return to the grid/raise questions over Harry's morality, so I think we can conclude he was a plot-device more than anything else. Ruth and Harry obviously maintain a consistent relationship from S5 through to S8&9, whereas Lucas manages to get through 3 women in the same space of time. This does somewhat lead me to believe that Lucas' relationships were largely used as plot-devices. Obviously, in S7 Elizavyeta actually reveals things about Lucas' character, as well as being a 'convenient' link to the Russians. In S8, again, Sarah does reveal some aspects of Lucas' character, but she is 'conveniently' a member of Nightingale who just so happens to be so in love with Lucas that she can't bring herself to kill him and therefore execute her 'evil master-plan'. In S9, any hope of using Maya to develop Lucas' character even slightly is thrown out of the window as she makes no sense within the context of Lucas' life, or indeed, the Spooks universe.
Obviously, all characters are simply devices used to tell a story. However the contrast I'm highlighting is that Harry and Ruth seem to maintain a fairly consistent relationship, whilst the other characters seem to remain single. Lucas' relationships seem to have become more and more superficial, to the point where they just don't make any sense. Sarah was supposed to help tell the S8 plot-arc story, which worked reasonably well. Maya was supposed to tell Lucas' story, which didn't work, because her character made no sense in terms of the overall plot.

Not even sure if this makes any sense or is a valid point in any way, but I've come to the conclusion that I dislike the way Lucas' relationships were treated in general (aside from Elizavyeta) as they generally didn't make a lot of sense.

[HellsBells]

Interesting stuff, as always.
In series 7, I thought of Lucas as a loyal partner to Elizaveta, who thought about her everyday of those 8 years, and possibly devoted to her. I'm not sure how/when they got divorced. But in the following series we see him in very shallow relationships, very unlike other people on the Grid, and believe the writers just saw him as eye-candy. It also become more soap-opera like with the good-looking guy having all the love interest.
In series 7, I had thought the main 'essence' to Lucas's character was his relationship with Harry, but that sort of faded away with the later series. It wasn't even explored sufficiently in series 9.

[Silktie]

I agree with Byatil's analysis on the Lucas/Sarah issue. However, this is not a new development. It has been done to every male lead Spooks has had. Tom had Ellie, then degenerated to the mad doctor and finally the first blonde CIA chick.

Then Adam had his wife Fiona, but after she died we had to suffer through the nanny, Anna the Iranian Ambassador's wife, and finally Ros.

It seems to be rather a trend that the first relationship we see these characters in are usually the one that is most interesting and makes most sense. The Tom/Ellie relationship was used effectively to illustrate how hard it is for a spy to have a relationship with someone outside the service. Adam/Fiona was a quite interesting examination of a couple both working for the Security Services, and Lucas/Elizabeta was used well to illustrate all that Lucas had lost because of his incarceration. The rest of the relationships all seemed rather gratuitous.

My main issue with the Lucas/Sarah relationship was that it made Lucas look like an idiot. She played him like a banjo, and I always thought of Lucas as more intelligent than that. He kept on defending her long after he was given strong proof that she was bad.

[age1021]

Please bring back Lucas...Don't care if you have to scrape him off the ground.

[WhiteSwan]

(02-02-2011 11:05 PM)age1021 Wrote:  Please bring back Lucas...Don't care if you have to scrape him off the ground.

Oh yes, please! But please bring back the real Lucas, the one from S7 and S8, not that horrible, despicable caricature called John Bateman.

[Byatil]

(02-02-2011 04:17 PM)Silktie Wrote:  My main issue with the Lucas/Sarah relationship was that it made Lucas look like an idiot. She played him like a banjo, and I always thought of Lucas as more intelligent than that. He kept on defending her long after he was given strong proof that she was bad.

Well, yes. Lucas is presented as this brilliantly intelligent man who can supposedly read people as if they're books, yet as soon as he's presented with an attractive woman he's clueless? Perhaps if they had explored the psychological implications of this hamartia further (rather than leaving us to draw our own conclusions... again) it might have been a more successful plotline. As it was, Lucas seemed to move on from Elizavyeta remarkably quickly, and was happy to pretend Sarah was a lovely person right up until the very end. I mean, he was prepared to let her kill him in 7.7. Why did she have such a profound psychological effect on him? Did he like the fact she was (to all intents and purposes) a complete bitch? There's a startling contrast between Elizavyeta and Sarah, which is something interesting that could have been explored further, but was rejected in favour of gratuitous sex scenes

I think we need Spooks to be 20 episodes per series just so that we can sufficiently explore the lives of each character I suppose there's always supposed to be an element of secrecy and deception though, such is the convention of the show!

[Belle]

on the Lucas/Sarah relationship: I disliked her from the moment I saw her, but I think it was a way to show to us how 'messed up' Lucas was in terms of being able to have and hold a human relationship (weither it was romantic or friendship), which I think, he craved for immensly! Remember the constant craving for approval and recognition he wanted from Harry, not only to be trusted again, but to feel, or fool himself into believing, he was still able to have 'normal' human relations.

I do believe that it is possible for someone who has been trough such an ordeal (imprisonment, torture), who then came home to find his heart crushed by the woman he truly loved and who was not being trusted by the same people he almost gave his life for, to behave in the way we saw Lucas behaving.
He was so deprived of human feelings towards him, the moment he saw a sparkle of that (comming from Sarah) he threw himself completely at her mercy, not willing to see her (obvious) faults because that might mean he would loose the humanity he thought he was undergoing.
I think he sort of lost the ability to tell friend from foe if it didn't was directly related to his work,
it was only when Sarah lay in that hospitalbed and stated why she agreed with Nightingale's MO and thus joined them, he saw clearly what she stood for and realised it was exactly what he was fighting against.
I believe he didn't grieve for her as a person when she was murdered but for the knowledgement he lost the only thing that gave him the feeling he was still a human.
In S9, the one with the American hacker, he tells her he doesn't listen to music anymore and, as someone stated (forgot who ), his living spaces are decreasingly personal, so, I think, that all leads me to conclude Lucas was struggeling deeply to feel human again after Rusia, and grabbed every straw he could get his hands on; in this case Sarah.
These are merely my thoughts and I appologise if they come across as incoherent!

I do agree with the statement being made that it was all a bit of a pitty that the psychology of this relationship and the one he had with Elizavyeta was sacrificed to provide us with the eyecandy! They indeed should have made more episodes so we could have had both .

I refuse to think any deeper on the relationship Lucas had with Maya because
a) Maya's character was as hollow as a windpipe
and
b) I still can't, and never will be able, to get my head around the Lucas is actually John arch!

[HellsBells]

(02-02-2011 04:17 PM)Silktie Wrote:  She played him like a banjo,

I love that phrase!!

But maybe Lucas was not the idiot we all think he was. Because in the end Sarah couldn't kill him, she did love him and because of that relationship MI5 did have a lead on Nightingale. Sarah didn't really use her relationship with Lucas for any gain, but Lucas did. In the end Lucas's knowledge of her using President names as alias allowed them to find her. Lucas was also able to interrogate her. I think Lucas decided she could be used as an asset when they found out that she killed Walker.

[Belle]

(03-02-2011 02:37 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  

(02-02-2011 04:17 PM)Silktie Wrote:  She played him like a banjo,

I love that phrase!!

But maybe Lucas was not the idiot we all think he was. Because in the end Sarah couldn't kill him, she did love him and because of that relationship MI5 did have a lead on Nightingale. Sarah didn't really use her relationship with Lucas for any gain, but Lucas did. In the end Lucas's knowledge of her using President names as alias allowed them to find her. Lucas was also able to interrogate her. I think Lucas decided she could be used as an asset when they found out that she killed Walker.

I partly agree with what you say, HellsBells,
I agree he opened his eyes in time to see who/what she stood for and I agree that she probably felt something for him.

But I do think she had a hidden agenda by being with Lucas, maybe it wasn't her intention to begin with, but she agreed with Walker to keep Lucas as close as possible in order to gain info the CIA otherwise wouldn't get their hands on. If she REALLY loved him, wouldn't she have told Lucas about this order she received? And this had nothing to do with Nightingale, (which she had to stay sillent about), since the order came from Walker. And I think that it was quite convienient for her, as a member of Nightingale, that her lover worked for MI5.
I also believe that what Lucas felt for Sarah was more complicated than her just being of good use as an asset.

P.S.: I never thought Lucas to be an idiot played banjo-like by CIA-Sarah