This episode was so tonally out of step with everything that came before it, that the message is kinda weakened. I understand wanting to make an episode with a contemporary relevant message, which is fine, but you have to include the other writers who were making an actual story because QL2022 has been a lot of things but it hasn't been nearly as cringe at this. For an episode that scolds the parents for "keeping their daughter locked up" who "just want to be a normal girl playing with her friends" this episode really focuses on making every aspect of her exceptional. I mean I get it. It's a rough time right now, so maybe they felt it was necessary.
Every 10 minutes it felt like the screenplay had the words "And then everyone clapped". The overly inspirational uninspired music choices, the focused closeups on "lesson moments". It reads like after school special rather than a story about inclusion. This may not be my genre of choice but if they do another episode on this issue I hope they can focus on integrating it into a more cohesive narrative where people aren't talking in memes (ain't nobody got time for that) and metaphors are more metaphorical than literal. They already have a trans character I think and they are fine. That character is one of my favorites in the show. They did an episode about drag queens and that was fine even if I thought it was a little silly it worked within the world that was built.
I think the episode would have been better if it had focused on a singular aspect of the issue and then IMPLIED the rest. For instance if the episode has been about getting her on the team and playable and then implied stuff like being allowed in the locker room, it wouldn't have felt like it was trying to do every story at once. Personally I think the concept of misgendering a body is so complicated (because gender is a social construction but a dead body does have a sex which is a biological presentation and that suggests there's a whole realm of realistic possibility for that happened beyond that obvious "They hate her because she's not like other girls" narrative the episode was going for) that it might have been more effective to just trim that bit and the whole mystery about what happened when she ran away. It didn't feel like it added anything other than just hiding things from the audience for another gut punch reveal that wasn't that gut punchy. It's like an episode about a black women who has to overcome people assuming she's poor and shrill and being sexually available just because she dated a white guy all at once. And then the one black guy called her a hoe to show off to his white friends and the her uncle abused her. It's not completely untrue to reality. There are women who deal with all that but the narrative can't support that many threads. Not even when you delay the overarching narrative to focus on this episode. Something's gotta give and in this case it was the verisimilitude.
Whatever. It's fine. it's one dip in episode quality and it's not a big deal. Next time they'll be better probably. It reminds me of the BLM episode of The Rookie where they had the IA chief literally slam his fist at how frustrated he was at the idea of even the appearance of corruption. A moment so laughable I still chuckle because in real life IA aren't cop hunters. They're cop shields. When the police "investigate themselves and find nothing" that's IA at work. But it values the police if IA is always seen as antagonistic to regular police because then people IRL are more trusting of IA.
No rating. My rating would be on the lower end but not for the reasons most of the lower ends are gonna be using.
Edit: Rather soon after this episode aired (relatively) there's been a case where a trans person died and apparently law enforcement are using the legal name to identify them rather than the name they choose. I haven't looked into it but it appears to be an issue with limitations within how the law allowed names to be changed. I only mention it because while it seems tangentially related to a minor point I was making. There's a strong distinction that in this episode the police found a body and couldn't identify it and labeled it according to the sex they could identify where as in this specific IRL story a body was found and identified and they choose to identify it based on what their papers said rather than how the individual identified according to information they should have had available. Hopefully the nuance of those two concepts conveys why I stand by my assessment that the episode would have been better without that storybeat as implemented in the final episode.
Review by wolfkinBlockedParent2023-02-08T05:10:24Z— updated 2023-04-17T03:50:12Z
This episode was so tonally out of step with everything that came before it, that the message is kinda weakened. I understand wanting to make an episode with a contemporary relevant message, which is fine, but you have to include the other writers who were making an actual story because QL2022 has been a lot of things but it hasn't been nearly as cringe at this. For an episode that scolds the parents for "keeping their daughter locked up" who "just want to be a normal girl playing with her friends" this episode really focuses on making every aspect of her exceptional. I mean I get it. It's a rough time right now, so maybe they felt it was necessary.
Every 10 minutes it felt like the screenplay had the words "And then everyone clapped". The overly inspirational uninspired music choices, the focused closeups on "lesson moments". It reads like after school special rather than a story about inclusion. This may not be my genre of choice but if they do another episode on this issue I hope they can focus on integrating it into a more cohesive narrative where people aren't talking in memes (ain't nobody got time for that) and metaphors are more metaphorical than literal. They already have a trans character I think and they are fine. That character is one of my favorites in the show. They did an episode about drag queens and that was fine even if I thought it was a little silly it worked within the world that was built.
I think the episode would have been better if it had focused on a singular aspect of the issue and then IMPLIED the rest. For instance if the episode has been about getting her on the team and playable and then implied stuff like being allowed in the locker room, it wouldn't have felt like it was trying to do every story at once. Personally I think the concept of misgendering a body is so complicated (because gender is a social construction but a dead body does have a sex which is a biological presentation and that suggests there's a whole realm of realistic possibility for that happened beyond that obvious "They hate her because she's not like other girls" narrative the episode was going for) that it might have been more effective to just trim that bit and the whole mystery about what happened when she ran away. It didn't feel like it added anything other than just hiding things from the audience for another gut punch reveal that wasn't that gut punchy. It's like an episode about a black women who has to overcome people assuming she's poor and shrill and being sexually available just because she dated a white guy all at once. And then the one black guy called her a hoe to show off to his white friends and the her uncle abused her. It's not completely untrue to reality. There are women who deal with all that but the narrative can't support that many threads. Not even when you delay the overarching narrative to focus on this episode. Something's gotta give and in this case it was the verisimilitude.
Whatever. It's fine. it's one dip in episode quality and it's not a big deal. Next time they'll be better probably. It reminds me of the BLM episode of The Rookie where they had the IA chief literally slam his fist at how frustrated he was at the idea of even the appearance of corruption. A moment so laughable I still chuckle because in real life IA aren't cop hunters. They're cop shields. When the police "investigate themselves and find nothing" that's IA at work. But it values the police if IA is always seen as antagonistic to regular police because then people IRL are more trusting of IA.
No rating. My rating would be on the lower end but not for the reasons most of the lower ends are gonna be using.
Edit: Rather soon after this episode aired (relatively) there's been a case where a trans person died and apparently law enforcement are using the legal name to identify them rather than the name they choose. I haven't looked into it but it appears to be an issue with limitations within how the law allowed names to be changed. I only mention it because while it seems tangentially related to a minor point I was making. There's a strong distinction that in this episode the police found a body and couldn't identify it and labeled it according to the sex they could identify where as in this specific IRL story a body was found and identified and they choose to identify it based on what their papers said rather than how the individual identified according to information they should have had available. Hopefully the nuance of those two concepts conveys why I stand by my assessment that the episode would have been better without that storybeat as implemented in the final episode.