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Guest LadyBlack

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I think I prefer * Set you free will work*  and the time grows near :clapping:

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Ok...now that we have beaten the issue of Catherine sufficiently into the ground...lets face it, she was a proud warrior, fighting a battle she was destined to lose....

Bletch anyone??

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Guest arcanamundi
I remember reading in an interview or an article that at the very beginning of season 2 someone had thrown out the idea of, if not an actual affair, a mutual Frank/Lara attraction. But they decided against it; I remember Kristen quoted as saying something like the viewers wouldn’t want it, and something like there were so many affairs on TV they wanted to be different in that they weren’t doing one. Not only that but it would fly in the face of the home and (nuclear) family as a place of sanctity, for Frank if for few others on the show (even though it happened to be breaking down at the time).

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Great post, nidim (if I may I call you that) Very thoughtful. I'd very much like to hear your thoughts on Lara, perhaps in a new thread. Didn't you ever get the feeling at certain moments that Lara was attracted to Frank? Clearly he wasn't interested in intimacy with her, though surely her attraction did not go unnoticed by him, even as focused as he was on whatever problem was at hand. I think both actors played the natural tendency of their characters.

I'm glad they didn't develop these two into a couple, for the dramatic reasons you give. But would an affair have been unviable? Probably, if the writers were to remain true to their dramatic instincts and the story arcs they'd launched. Lara's 'thing' appeared to be loneliness as an outcome of her situation. Would she have come off overly needy, which would only turn Frank right off?

We've got a trained forensic psychologist among our ranks; I'd love to know his thoughts on Lara. And yours. Should I start a new thread?

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Oh good, I'd hoped I wasn't too hard on Catherine; apparently not. (Though I have been before... not here)

As for Catherine "wanting more time", it was apparent at that particular time that she was talking ONLY of Frank killing the PM...more light was shed in a later episode, (cant remember right now which one) where she said "We've been here a year, and we haven't exactly been racking up the Kodiak moments".

Good point- it's been far too long since I've sat down and watched them in order (one more month!). But even solely in regards to the PM, I personally find it understandable that she'd need time after having been through her ordeal. Don't get me wrong - I get angry with her every time I watch that scene where they're sort of packing and avoiding the talking they desperately need to do, and I do think she/the writers could've handled it better, but I probably would've been more worried/annoyed if the writers written very little/no reaction to it. I mean, everything else aside, her husband just killed a man in front of her. It's raw and it's shocking to watch, and it's what makes MM great television. I'm glad they're unlike so many TV dramas that bring up something huge about a character and the next week it's barely mentioned if at all. (...That's a roundabout way of saying they're good with continuity.)

I don't know if I'd call her a warrior, fourhorsemen, but I would agree that she's fighting something/for something, just something outside the main 'battle' of the show (on which it'd've been nice to get her take on, IMHO).

But I'm all up for a discussion of

Bletch
(not sure how much I'd have to say, but I'm sure something would strike me).

As for the article I read, arcanamundi, the first bit was what I remember her saying in it, the line that beings 'Not only that' was my continuation of the idea.

Should I start a new thread?

But of course. I know I have opinions/questions about Lara (more thought out than my Catherine thoughts, which I just came up with sitting here); hope nobody minds. :oneeyedwinK

nidim

Ok, I have to admit it took me a second to get that. (It's also 2 in the morning.) It works, though I usually 'go by' (read: sign stuff) nothing. Either way.

And wait, who is the forensic psychologist among us? I have a feeling this may be tiwwa trivia I should but don't know because of spastic visiting patterns...

- nothing, who should really get to bed, and who is sorry about the crazy italics last post. they should be better now.

p.s. i love the gehenna pics. i think this guy is really neat: :gehenna:

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Guest LadyBlack

I don't know, I go away for a couple of days..... :bigsmile:

Some really interesting stuff here, I enjoyed reading it. If people want to move on, that's fine, I won't be able to talk about Bletch too much because it is so obvious I need to see season one again. Season two is filling in some gaps, but I must get season one.

I did like the thought that we only see Catherine in terms of Frank and his work, and that she was moved away from him to develop her character more. That works for me. Maybe that's why the "Sound of Snow" ending is so poignant - I can actually grieve for Catherine, rather than grieving she's dead because that makes Frank sad.

I don't knwo if you want to move to anotehr thread, I'm not sure where to ask a couple of random questions :-

Season two, 19:19. The bit where the kidnapper moves in on the bus driver. I took it he did something very violent with those clippers - a finger maybe? But I thought it was also done with a purpose in mind, i.e. he'd then send the finger to the cops. Not that that would make any sense in light of his motives for the kidnapping in the first place. So was he just injuring the bus driver to subdue him? I thought the guy was pretty much subdued anyway, they didn't have to do anything so majorly violent, particularly in front of the children. It seemed like a horrible scene just to have a horrible scene.

Jose Chung - If I ever say I want Frank to cheer up a bit, I'll look at Rocky (Rocky? Right?) and say, "Be depressed Frank. Very depressed". I have to say, I am enjoying the humour - oh sorry, "I'm not depressed. Just quiet".

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Hello again

I'm being really greedy here, and starting two new topics! Me being a newbie too!

I am currently watching season two at the present moment, I have some tapes from season one, but not the whole series, so maybe someone can help me out here.

From what I remember, Catherine and Frank have this unspoken agreement (well, actually, it became pretty much spoken since obviously the viewers had to know about it too) with regards to Frank's work.  It was all, "I know what you do, but I don't want to know" from Catherine, and to some extent, I can understand that.  I just don't understand though why they got married in the first place.  Presumably Frank told Catherine about his gift.  Is it something he can switch on and off?  Does he only receive images around cases for the FBI?  Surely they will come on him regardless (Jordan's appear to, I know her gift is stronger than Frank's, but Frank must try to proect her from his FBI work as much as possible and still she has them)?  It seems the best course of action, therefore, for him to work for the FBI, or in some capacity where his gift is at least going to be of assistance to people.  In that case, if Catherine can't deal with Frank's work, why is she with him?  Having been with him for.....well, at least a year, there must have been so many times when she blundered into his cellar to find him working on his police photos etc. and still at no point do either of them appear to have said, "This isn't really working, either the police work goes or Catherine goes".

Don't get me wrong, I loved their relationship, I was so upset (I bought the "Millennium" crossover, so I jumped from season one to season three in one abyss-yawning gap in one go) when suddenly she was dead and they'd been split up  before that anyway.  I don't know how much more I can take of Season two, with the whole "Daddy's living somewhere else, Jordan" story line and I found myself getting quite annoyed with Catherine, with the way she behaved when Frank rescued her.  Having thought about it more, she's probably justified, but how did we get here in the first place?

Does anyone else think that things might have been better if she and Frank had never got together?  Maybe if he'd married an Emma Hollis type person?  Mind you, look what happened with her..... 

Must just re-iterate, I thought Megan Gallagher was brilliant.  One of the best moments, Catherine and Frank's scene in "Sound of Snow". Beautiful!

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that is one thing i really enjoyed about the show, the relatioship btwn catherine and frank seemed very realistic, if someone were in that line of work, paired with franks gift..or curse, just relating to one another on a daily basis would be difficult, believe me, im in law enforcement going on 12 years now, separating that job from my wonderful wife and son takes willpower and a very understanding wife, to see the worst in people on a daily basis, its almost impossible not to began to look at the world in a different way, its solely a self defense mechanism, but then to see my 10 month old son crawling up the hallway with a 1 tooth grin all over his face, those emotions you work so hard to control come flooding back on a daily basis, its a fine line, i thought frank always did a great job trying to treat catherine and jordan with love while trying to protect them from might be around the next corner or in the next room..this is who we are..

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I've largely not been a Catherine fan, but I do believe she has great qualities and adds a lot to the show (I know no one is arguing this, I'm just saying...) Her character changes with good reason over her two seasons, but it is also changed with less good reason, IMHO.

I agree that Catherine's reaction to 'being saved' from the Polaroid Man was extreme, but so were the circumstances around her needing to be rescued from PM. Yes, Frank's reaction was also extreme, as a member of the law force, and as someone, as pointed out earlier, Catherine couldn't imagine committing murder. Yes, he's been a gun-carrying law enforcement official for damn near as long as she's been alive (go find the MM timeline), and probably shot at/shot at a body or two in his career (I seem to remember him shooting in the Thin White Line flashbacks, but I could easily be mistaken). But she wasn't present at the other occasions, and Frank was acting as a cop. In TBATE, his intentions were different (obviously). He was trying to kill someone with his bare hands - not just subdue the PM or render him unconscious. It's very shocking even to watch; I can't even imagine what it'd be like, to be abducted, to think your daughter dead, and be tormented by a man who'd stalked you for years and about whom you'd never known – then have your husband, whom you’d probably been silently invoking the whole time, break in and kill the man three feet from you. There may be a bit of the whole wanting someone dead but not wanting kill the person thing going on. I think Frank sort of failed Catherine's expectations of him – not that I can say what she wanted, but that she didn’t like what she got.

But regardless of what happened to the PM, I'd find it very difficult for anyone to question Catherine's wanting "some time" after having just been through the ordeal I'm too lazy to type again. Granted, it'd probably have been "some time" with Frank if he hadn't been the one to kill PM, but he was. She needed time not only to process this event, however. We know little of Catherine's beliefs on the nature of the universe except she's a Catholic of some sort and doesn't like Frank trying/pretending to protect her and Jordan from 'the real world'. But  Frank's 'real world' barging into their houses, hanging an old friend on a peg in the basement and leaving a 'sorry for barging in' kidney in their fridge is something I'm sure she's still dealing with at this point in the series.

I think she was underdeveloped in season 1. While we get glimpses of her as a professional and a person, she's mainly a mother and a wife who serves as a grounding point and touchstone. There's nothing wrong with those roles, or following only those roles. But the majority of her scenes are those supporting Frank, or at least interacting with him. We know she’s a real person; he certainly knows it. But most of the definitions we have for her are in relation to Frank . This assessment is, of course, in light of her development in s2. It was the disentanglement from Frank that allowed the writers to explore her more, but also broadened Frank and Jordan. (I’m thinking of Monster, Luminary, Siren, O/R…) We don’t always like what we get, and apparently, they didn’t always like what they wrote.  But the two seasons’ Catherines really stand at odds, if not in episodic moments, than especially in overall season-long action.

I think her actions in Luminary are at the same time encouraging and discouraging. She's finally making a grand effort to understand just what the hell Frank is talking about (and granted, I probably would be rather puzzled and maybe a bit annoyed). She's got all the books laid out on the floor, comparing names and dates and whatnot, but as a viewer, I can't help but think that while she's going about it as best she knows, she's going about it the wrong way. This is further pointed out when Jordan takes one look at the pictures and can identify in a moment, "That's daddy." It's made even more ironic because Catherine is the one who sent Frank to Alaska in the first place.

Unfortunately, I don't think Catherine could've ever understood 'the gift' entirely - Frank's or Jordan's. It's an ability, maybe somewhat genetic, and Catherine doesn't have it. That doesn't mean she can't be supportive; indeed, she'd maybe be better at being supportive of someone like Frank than someone like Lara would (more on that later). But that's also one of the reasons Catherine reacts so offhandedly to Frank in season 2. I don't remember the earliest manifestations of Jordan's vision/s (besides the dreams) but I do remember one of the earliest is in the Dove/TBATE arc, when Jordan saw angels in the corner, "but now they're gone." Catherine has to come to the understanding they're inevitable. As far as we know, she's (and indeed maybe even Frank, besides his mother) had never met another person with the 'gift' - so her only reference point for the phenomenon is that her husband sees things unlike normal people, and he had a mental breakdown as a direct result of it. No parent wants anything like that for their child. And because it was during her abduction that Jordan saw angels, who were gone when Catherine returned, I could completely see someone even as normally composed and rational as Catherine (largely) is – I could see her blame herself.

I'm not all that well versed in the whole battle over when the visions started and who was the impetus (i.e. were they s1 recent or s2 life-long), but bringing Lara in as an alternative to Frank was an interesting idea. Frank, and I can't remember where, says he manipulated his vision to see evil; Lara sees something as an indication of evil. So it's not all that cheery, but it's a better 'option' for Jordan. However, we get very little Catherine and Lara interaction, and what we do have is awkward and in passing, up until Anamnesis (sp), by which point Catherine's already formed an opinion of Lara. (And not a great one.) (I always find it very telling Frank doesn’t introduce Lara to Catherine – which is understandable, but that the camera follows her and leaves the Blacks.)

I remember reading in an interview or an article that at the very beginning of season 2 someone had thrown out the idea of, if not an actual affair, a mutual Frank/Lara attraction. But they decided against it; I remember Kristen quoted as saying something like the viewers wouldn’t want it, and something like there were so many affairs on TV they wanted to be different in that they weren’t doing one. Not only that but it would fly in the face of the home and (nuclear) family as a place of sanctity, for Frank if for few others on the show (even though it happened to be breaking down at the time).  I came onto this show in reruns and it was a little while before I discovered the extensive web community it has, so I’d have to admit that I’d thought about a Frank and Lara relationship. I don’t know how much I thought about it, b/c I seem to remember seeing the eps out of order. But having seen them all several times again, and thinking about it, a Frank and Lara affair doesn’t seem very viable for several reasons I won’t go into because this is about Catherine.

In short (har har) I do realize her character changed over the course of s2 in her reasoning and reactions to Frank, Jordan, family, the gift, etc. I find her criticism of Frank unnecessarily harsh (in MOCT, “I know that things are changing for us.  Time's running out.  Frank, I want you to be happy.  But Jordan is my first priority: her safety and her well-being.  And I won't let anything jeopardize that.”) as though somewhere along the line she realized/decided it may come down to a choice between the two… And while I enjoy her character development (if not necessarily her character) it definitely seems to me that M&W (&whomever) sacrificed a consistent Catherine for Frank/story/plot development whenever they wanted to. I believe a lot of her can be figured out, but it may not be easy, because she’s not the focus of the show, and it may not be pretty, because she can seem, and sometimes is, an impediment to Frank.  (I don’t recall her exact reasoning, but I do remember Megan Gallagher gave her full support to the death of Catherine.) :headhurts:

-nothing, hoping this makes a bit of sense, and who happens to think the parent/offspring relationships are some of the most intriguing on the show.

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i see your point but to be honest if i had just saved my wife from a knife wielding stalker who planned on killing both of us, my first thought would not be that she was going to leave me....i mean what was he supposed to do, let the cops arrest the guy then wait for him to get back out of jail, i dont think the guy was a going to be rehabilitated in prison, frank did the smart thing and took him out.,

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i see your point but to be honest if i had just saved my wife from a knife wielding stalker who planned on killing both of us, my first thought would not be that she was going to leave me....i mean what was he supposed to do, let the cops arrest the guy then wait for him to get back out of jail, i dont think the guy was a going to be rehabilitated in prison, frank did the smart thing and took him out.,

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The point is not that Frank killed this scum bag.. its HOW he killed him. Not as professionally trained FBI agent [execution style] he hacked him up like sushi... showing clearly that he had gone temporarily insane. As a woman with a child I would want to know that he was back in control [ and could maintain it ] and that would take time and space to be able to trust the fact that he was. :ouro:

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Guest LadyBlack
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that is one thing i really enjoyed about the show, the relatioship btwn catherine and frank seemed very realistic, if someone were in that line of work, paired with franks gift..or curse, just relating to one another on a daily basis would be difficult, believe me, im in law enforcement going on 12 years now, separating that job from my wonderful wife and son takes willpower and a very understanding wife, to see the worst in people on a daily basis, its almost impossible not to began to look at the world in a different way, its solely a self defense mechanism, but then to see my 10 month old son crawling up the hallway with a 1 tooth grin all over his face, those emotions you work so hard to control come flooding back on a daily basis, its a fine line, i thought frank always did a great job trying to treat catherine and jordan with love while trying to protect them from might be around the next corner or in the next room..this is who we are..

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Oh yes, I see what you mean, in which case it seems like Catherine should never have even entered Frank's basement - that's the scene I really remember, when she goes down there to find him, knowing that he is most likely working on horrific photographs that are going to upset her. Maybe I just felt the scene wasn't played right - not written right, maybe, because I don't think Megan is a bad actress. It seemed like she was saying Frank shouldn't be doing that in the house, and then we'd move to well, maybe Frank shouldn't be doing it at all - I know, it's like she was trying to control what he was doing by her disapproval, that's how it came across. Nag, nag, nag, and yes, Frank bent over backwards to protect her and Jordan without her having to understand at all.

Good luck in your job!

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Guest arcanamundi
And wait, who is the forensic psychologist among us? I have a feeling this may be tiwwa trivia I should but don't know because of spastic visiting patterns...

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Have you found your way over to the Heart of Darkness forum yet? That's where our resident forensic psychologist led a fascinating discussion on Catherine and Frank and the German poet Rilke.

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Have you found your way over to the Heart of Darkness forum yet?  That's where our resident forensic psychologist led a fascinating discussion on Catherine and Frank and the German poet Rilke.

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We could go deep on this one over at that forum if all would like. I have much more in my head.

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