[spoilers] Lucas Discussion 2

[binkie]

(07-03-2011 06:05 AM)xRuthx Wrote:  Also, the line from Harry in 9.7 about "Betrayal is a cancer... let it eat your soul... not mine" irritated me so much in the context of Lucas having spent eight years in a Russian prison keeping silent and loyal on MI5 and by extension Harry's behalf. I mean why did you bother getting Lucas out of prison at all if you weren't even going to try to contain the situation and be such a hypocrite instead! I don't know. Maybe it's just me but that bit annoyed me so much.

Definitely not just you. I'm really not sure what the writing was about on this line. I understand the extent to which an element of it is Harry's cry of frustration that, yet again, he feels himself to be a sort of totem-of-virtue in a landscape of compromise and deceit: a perception he knows to be uneven , but one which he is required to maintain for the sake of his own sanity and moral function. Unfortunately, and almost certainly unintentionally, the resulting tone on this occasion is more one of sanctimony. It's a betrayal of Lucas and Harry.

[JHyde]

I don't blame Harry for saying that in the context that was given. Given the Lucas that was in front of him.

I might not be breaking down every little detail, but I am still very angry about the happenings of season 9. When I think about it, which isn't very often, but still.

I do buy that Lucas managed to stay strong and silent in Moscow because of his dastardly dealings earlier on as John Bateman. But mostly I just find it really silly and unlikely and thought it was a cheap ratings ploy. The reveal in episode 7 worked but the finale was just ludicrous.

Unfortunately I just think the show has to move on.

[xRuthx]

(07-03-2011 11:27 AM)JHyde Wrote:  Unfortunately I just think the show has to move on.

Oh I agree. Series ten should be a fresh start. Hopefully with some more thoughtful writers on board.

Even in context that quote still annoys me. It just seemed like a hypocritical thing for Harry to say to Lucas of all people. I understand that he was upset and angry but I still didn't like that quote. Made me want to tell Harry he was a right bastard and punch him in the face

The only redeeming aspect of 9.8 for me was the Ruth/Lucas scenes. They were amazing!

[HellsBells]

In the DVD extra, Andrew Woodhead (Executive Producer) said that Lucas could have made the decision to go and see Harry as soon as Vaughn appeared on the scene and explained to harry what had happened. Do you really think that was an option for Lucas? I really couldn't see Harry being very forgiving when he found out that Lucas had bombed that Embassy and was actually someone else.

[xRuthx]

Harry would have kicked Lucas out into the cold imo knowing that.

There's a new interview with the writer's where they make some comments about Lucas? Should I post that here?

[Saerwen]

If Lucas had any iota of John in his persona being in tortured for such a long length of time would surely have made an appearance whilst held by the Russians they don't pussyfoot around when trying to get you to talk, so it makes me believe that Lucas was never John and there was nothing there to come out, the same way the Russians were trying to get him to spill the beans on sugarhorse but he didn't know anything so couldn't tell them about it no matter how hard they tortured him and you saw the look on Harry's face when Lucas mentioned he the word that no one was supposed to know.
I remember Lucas saying that it was his love of Elizaveta that kept him going through out his imprisonment then for it to change in 9.8 that he suffered all that they threw at him in prison as atonement for what he did in Dakar. A convenient about turn by the writers.
Lucas for me will always have a clean slate. My faith in the writers have been severely dented that the couldn't be bothered following the continuity of such a marvellous program.

[binkie]

(07-03-2011 03:12 PM)Saerwen Wrote:  My faith in the writers have been severely dented that the couldn't be bothered following the continuity of such a marvellous program.

Saerwen, you hit the nail on the head. As Byatil, xRuthx, BravoNine and others have pointed out here (and in other threads), this really is one of the most intractable problems with season 9.

I know there has, at times, been criticism of a perceived lack of detail in the background of this character. Clearly, there was an extent to which the production agreed, and determined to supply this detail in the form of John. What should have happened, as 9.7 unfolded, was that the reaction of viewers to the increasingly bleak undoing of Lucas should have been an emerging recognition of John. We should have had a lightbulb moment. Our reaction should have been the same as Maya's in 9.8: "It was the first time you made sense." But Maya was talking bobbins, and we did not - for the most part - have that lightbulb momemt. This was largely a result, as you suggest, of inadequate translation of Lucas' context, character logic and rhetorical value. Not to mention the problematic operative logic of Lucas-is-John (which, by the sound of it, has still not been addressed on the season 9 DVD).

I feel some recognition of BravoNine's dispirited response to xRuthx above: I almost don't want to talk about this any more. (Almost!) It is just so wearing to be locked in this seemingly endless cycle of frustration, resignation, and frustration. I want to be able to leave this alone because I want to be able to return to a fuller appreciation of this show, which I still admire and enjoy. But every time I think to myself that I should just accept Lucas-is-John for what it was (a rug-pulling narrative flourish in an ongoing wider narrative of self-deception, self-sacrifice and moral compromise), I find myself incapable of moving past my own awareness of the continuity failures to which the show is apparently oblivious. Worse, where the production acknowledges the existence of these failures - as in the commentary of 9.7 - it seems to feel no responsibility for its lack of investment in resolving them.

It's not that I hated the storyline in itself, because it's not as if I can't see the cleverness in the conceit. But it didn't work for this character because there was more than just a sequence of events to be explored and explained: there was a complex moral and logical construct also. This is what was neglected in the creation of Lucas-is-John, and this, I suspect, is why the misery is so keen and so persistent for those of us who cannot just shrug and move on to the next thing. The re-drafting of the character's attitude towards his time in prison as punishment-for-another-crime is absolutely the foundation of the problem encountered by the show in executing this storyline. This was not just a temporal event, like buying milk or driving to work, it was an existential experience: a long moment in a process of becoming and being. Season 9 tries to deal with the existential element by means of the crowbar that is "because [I deserved] it". But this does nothing to address the responses and reactions we saw in seasons 7/8, and is entirely inadequate as an explanation of either moral perseverance or intellectual survival and rehabilitation.

Spooks created a complex character, with a background that was rich with potential. And then it took fright at this complexity, and reduced the character to little more than a piece of thread linking a sequence of events. The paradox is that in rendering the convoluted and complicated explanation of Lucas-is-John, the show rather simplified the material it already had in the form of Lucas-is-Lucas.

[DogSoSmall]

I think Harry's line about betrayal is brilliant and completely apposite. He is saying it as he hands Lucas back his gun, don't forget. I have alway thought that he is saying to Lucas that he is going to trust him to stick to his word and do the right thing and bring Vaughn in, and that if Lucas chooses to betray his trust it will be on Lucas's conscience, not Harry's.

Harry has been betrayed before by members of his team - by Tessa, Tom, Beth, Connie - to name but a few. He could easily go down the route of ceasing to trust anyone. If he allowed the betrayals to eat away at his soul, he would not be able to continue functioning. He has to be able to trust that his team are as loyal as he is himself so that they can work as a single unit. He is a brilliant leader, as by showing his team that he trusts them implicitly he encourages them to live up to his expectations. If they don't, and they betray him, he knows that it will be them that suffers the consequences in their soul. And that shows some wisdom on Harry's part as that is of course what happens - Lucas cannot cope with the choices he has made and he kills himself. Harry has trusted him and believed him and tried to persuade him to come back and however much he may torture himself that he should have done more, his aim has never been to deliberately betray a member of his team.

[BoHenley]

That's a brilliant summary, Binkie. Thanks.

[binkie]

(07-03-2011 07:42 PM)DogSoSmall Wrote:  He has to be able to trust that his team are as loyal as he is himself so that they can work as a single unit. He is a brilliant leader, as by showing his team that he trusts them implicitly he encourages them to live up to his expectations.

This is a well-observed, well-made point. I fully confess, my own irritation with the high-handedness factor prevented me from seeing the equally valid interpretation which you have so insightfully expressed. I'm still in an unforgiving mood on this storyline generally (I don't know if you can tell ), but at least now I can be incrementally less annoyed at Harry!