Favorite Characters: Elinor Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility)

I love every Austen heroine – some more than others, true, but each one in her own way – and for my money, you can’t go wrong with Elinor Dashwood.  What a champ, a young woman who has way more than her fair share in the “stuff to deal with” department and powers through it all (Elinor-related spoilers.)

Like its sister “aptly named after two strong, alliterative personality traits” book, Sense and Sensibility puts the contrast between its lead characters right out in the open.  But this time, rather than being our unlikely potential lovers, they’re the two sisters who form the basis the story.  Marianne is all about her romantic sensibilities and fly-away passions, and really, Mrs. Dashwood’s temperament suggests that Marianne comes by it honestly, and Margaret isn’t far behind.  With the rest of the family stacked so thoroughly on one side of the scales, it’s up to Elinor to provide the sense.

Which she does, in spades, despite a wall of protests.  When her father dies with no choice but to settle his whole estate on her stepbrother, Elinor goes about finding accommodations modest enough to serve her mother, her sisters, and herself in their new reduced circumstances.  When Marianne throws herself wholeheartedly (and I mean wholeheartedly, with the whole of her heart) into love, Elinor is the one who urges decorum and at least tries to advise that Marianne might not want to rush into things so blatantly.

Because her mother and sisters enjoy stuff like eyeing houses they can’t afford and shouting their love from the rooftops, this paints Elinor as the total killjoy, the one who rains on everyone’s parades with her wearisome practicality.  Also, because Marianne is so unrestrained in her feelings, she looks at the more reserved Elinor and sees someone without any feelings at all.  Marianne can’t imagine not putting her every emotion on full and immediate display, and so she wheedles Elinor for being cold (in what is probably the only comparison to be made between Jane Austen and Arrested Development, it’s a little like the other Bluths calling Michael a robot.)

When, in actual fact, Elinor is anything but emotionless.  She feels deeply, and even though you wouldn’t know it to look at her, I dare say Elinor’s feelings oppress her more than Marianne’s, because she pushes them down instead of releasing them.  When she learns about Edward and Lucy’s secret engagement, killing whatever reticent hopes she’d been nursing toward him, it absolutely kills her, and she can’t tell anyone.  Throughout the majority of the book, she’s the textbook image of a stiff upper lip, quietly keeping on as her heart breaks inside her.  And all the while, she has to listen as Lucy not-so-subtly marks her territory with feigned sweetness, and she takes Marianne’s petulant digs about how Elinor just doesn’t understand her and Willoughby because Elinor has no idea what it’s like to feel so much for someone.  When the news of the engagement is finally known to all, it’s such an enormous weight to lift off.  Because, at last, as Marianne presses Elinor and needles her about why she didn’t say anything, Elinor reaches her breaking point and finally lets loose in a glorious, page-long tumble of pent-up emotion that is just stunningly cathartic to read.  That’s my girl.

Doctor Who: Series 3, Episodes 8-9 – “Human Nature” / “The Family of Blood” (2007)

This is Paul Cornell’s other new Who story, after series 1’s exquisite “Father’s Day.”  While I don’t think this two-partner is quite as great as that episode, it’s still beautifully done.  Fine writing is brought to life by top-notch acting, and our heroes are tested in incredible ways (premise spoilers.)

The Tenth Doctor and Martha are being hunted by The Family of Blood, malevolent aliens that survive by stealing the bodies of others – for them, a Time Lord’s body is the key to everything, and they’re relentless in their pursuit.  The only way the Doctor can see out of it is to undergo a radical process that temporarily rewrites both his biology and his memories.  He and Martha go into hiding in a small village in 1913, the Doctor as the slightly-absentminded dreamer John Smith and Martha posing as his maid, getting a job in the school where he works.  To be safe, they have to stay for three months, and as the only one who remembers why they’re there, it’s up to Martha to keep the temporarily-human Doctor safe and watch out for the return of the dangerous Family.

For starters, can we just talk about the Family of Blood?  I love it when Who can take aliens that appear human (in this case because they’re stealing people’s bodies) and still make them seem absolutely, 100% alien.  The Family has that in spades, and it’s all down to the excellent acting; everything about them feels supremely-otherworldly and just wrong, and you can immediately tell that the human minds aren’t in those human bodies anymore.  This story was my introduction to Harry Lloyd (who I’ve since seen in roles as varied as Viserys Targaryon on Game of Thrones and Herbert Pocket in a Great Expectations miniseries,) and it was a great one.  As Son of Mine, he leads the Family with creepy, unnerving precision, so cold and so deadly.  I love it!

Oh yeah, and bonus points for the scarecrows – creepy as all get out!

It’s really neat to see David Tennant playing an entirely different character.  Because even though Mr. Smith is a construct, a fake human with implanted memories who has tiny bits of the Doctor bleeding into his dreams, he is altogether different.  Obviously, it’s an acting challenge for Tennant, with shades of Dollhouse, and it’s interesting from a character standpoint too.  The Doctor has given over to being this other person in order to keep his body out of the Family’s hands, and to do so, he loses all control over the situation.  He can’t stop Mr. Smith from doing things the Doctor would never do, and he also has no part in Mr. Smith being able to try his hand at the sort of life that the Doctor could never have (thanks to the school nurse, played by Jessica Hynes in a very different role than Daisy from Spaced!)

Okay, you remember that part in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when Dumbledore tells Harry, “Once again I must ask too much of you”?  That’s basically Martha’s whole season in a nutshell, and it’s especially true here.  In this story, Martha is tasked with a) babysitting the human Doctor, b) keeping an eye out for sinister aliens that want to steal the Doctor’s body and most definitely kill everyone, and c) maintaining their cover story while stuck working as a maid in a racist prep school in 1913.  So much is placed on her shoulders with virtually no preparation, but even when she doesn’t know what to do, she keeps fighting and clawing her way forward, determined to save them all by sheer force of will.  Martha is a wonder and a stone-cold badass in this story – I love her so much, and my biggest gripe with series 3 is the fact that the Doctor never deserves her or seems to really get how awesome she truly is.

News Satire Roundup: September 24th-September 26th

Tuesday, September 24 – Hard-hitting opening with Greta Thunberg’s UN General Assembly speech, followed by a couple lighter bits (a Philadelphia man saving kids from a burning building and Lenny Kravitz setting up an email for news on his missing sunglasses.) But of course, the major story was the whistleblower complaint and the House opening an impeachment inquiry. Once again, we got commentary on Trump’s habit of a) claiming zero wrongdoing while b) shadily withholding evidence and c) simultaneous admitting out loud to doing exactly what he was accused of. Ronny was super relatable, admitting that he doesn’t have it in him to hope that “this will finally be the one” to topple Trump. He recapped a few greatest hits from this merry-go-round. The guest, California governor Gavin Newsome, talked California’s position as living proof that climate consciousness and economic growth can go hand in hand.

Wednesday, September 25 – We started with Boris Johnson’s warnings of a robot revolution, juxtaposed with a Boston Dynamics robot doing gymnastics. I loved Trevor’s point that we worry robots will hurt us in ways that humans already hurt each other, as well as his optimism that, rather than destroy us all, some robots may just want to dance. After a bit on exploding dry shampoo, it was back to the impeachment inquiry. Great observation that Trump’s confident transparency about his wrongdoings makes people question their own reality, and I loved the comparison with The Sopranos, which showed that extortionists don’t need to actually say, “This is a quid pro quo.” Roy covered the lackluster Republican debate from Trump’s primary challengers, featuring a lot of nothing until one of them warned Roy how easily he could slit Roy’s throat (what even…?) Nick Cannon was the guest, promoting his new talk show.

Thursday, September 26 – Great jokes about a smuggled coffin at the Met being returned to Egypt, with Trevor wondering how you “forge” ownership documents of a 2,000-year-old gold coffin. Next was an iPhone that survived a drop from a plane (and yet Trevor’s can’t survive falling to the bathroom floor!) and Japan Airlines indicating babies’ locations on their seat maps. The latest on the impeachment inquiry was the release of the full whistleblower complaint. Sad but true point about how it stands to be more damning than the Mueller report because, being only 9 pages long, people will actually read it. I could’ve done without Desi’s desk piece on how Trump was “wasting” his impeachment by getting taken down over such a seemingly-unimpressive offense – it didn’t go much of anywhere for me. The guest was The Good Place’s Jameela Jamil, teasing the final season and talking about her crusade against the diet industry.