hmpf | As she sat staring at videoclips of John Simm

Having 'met' him (I was hyperventilating at the time, Fi was feeding me nicotine - and we were hiding outside the pub as he stalked home - we didn't actually approach him), yes he really *is* that short.

I don't know. He's startlingly handsome in some professional photographs (re:

duckyone's icon) but mostly he's just a person. Even most of the Life on Mars stills I sort of think... well, is he or isn't he?

I think it's more to do with the vitality behind the image, in most cases. Sam Tyler is handsome because of the force that John Simm puts into the character. Not because we inately fancy the actor (or, heaven help us, the character...)

>Having 'met' him (snip)

This is... intriguing. Details? ;-)

>startlingly handsome in some professional photographs

Yeah. Too much so, actually, in some of them. He's beginning to look a bit fake sometimes. Didn't notice that in older pics. Puts me right off, to be honest.

>Not because we inately fancy the actor (or, heaven help us, the character...)

Well, I didn't start out fancying John Simm. I fell for Sam awfully quickly, though, and then, when I found out more about John Simm, realised with some surprise that I found *him* interesting, too. Genuinely interesting, not just interesting as the body of Sam Tyler.

I'm afraid I do really fancy Sam, though. Although I'm fully aware of his somewhat unpleasant personality. Maybe *because* I'm fully aware of his somewhat unpleasant personality (heaven help me, indeed). And I do like John Simm's looks, too, quite genuinely. There's... something about his face that is immensely attractive to me. It's not necessarily what goes for handsomeness in most circles, though.

Well to be fair, if we leave aside Sam's sudden 180 degree turnaround in the last episode, Sam wasn't that unpleasant a character. Sure he was a bit self-absorbed and self-righteous, but on the whole his heart was in the right place and his moral compass was pointing in the right direction.

But yes, I agree with Andy, it's the vitality he puts into characters - and his own vitality in some of those candid-camera celebrity shots. And there are some John Simm characters who are not attractive at all. I couldn't imagine myself lusting after... Elling, for example, or the character Simm played in his episode of Clocking Off.

And the interesting thing from my POV? Simm has a face I find nearly impossible to draw - there's something in the expression which eludes me, and it's frickin' different for every character he plays. The man must be a Tleilaxu Face Dancer or something!

In ep 1, he's driving an SUV, the car of assholes and idiots. 'Nuff said. ;-)

No, he isn't *that* unpleasant, all told, really. But there is enough unpleasantness there; you don't have to look very hard for it. And in the light of 2.08, a lot of the nicer parts of his character become suspect - and in some cases begin to look like writerly oversight, because 2.08 makes so much more sense if you take the SUV-driving side of Sam as the central element of his personality, and if you do that, some of the nicer parts simply don't make much sense anymore.

(For the sake of my fic I still - mostly - write him a bit nicer than I think he really is, though - because for the most part, that was how I saw him while I was watching the series, and my image of him was only reshaped radically by 2.08. I'm kind of attached to the way I saw him before 2.08... *g*)

Which leads to something else I've been pondering for some time now - how much has our perception of Sam been influenced by the ending of 2.08? (And is it quite healthy for me to want to smack Matthew Graham up the side of the head as much as I do? %-) For my own sake I've decided that Sam's actions in 2.08 can only be explained by personality changes brought about by traumatic brain injuries; certainly anyone who jumps off a tall building in order to return to the imaginary land of their dreams has more than a few screws loose.

And this is one of the reasons I am really, really doubtful about the whole Ashes to Ashes project - since Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah obviously thought they'd written a fine and dandy ending to Sam's story, what's to prevent them from writing an equally lame conclusion to Alex Drake's adventures?

Well, Fi and I were firmly of the opinion that he was a self-righteous little prick well before the ending. Which is why we sat screaming at the telly "Jump, you little git!" and "Run, Forrest, Run" (We're not that pleasant either, come to think of it!)

We even had the "Is Sam a psychopath" conversation the night we plotted That's Life... which was well before series two even started.

It's a difficult one to call. For the simple reason that the whole show is *his* fantasy Sam comes across as more self-absorbed than he probably is. But there are enough clues from his interactions with the characters in his fantasy (and real-life characters) to show that he is arrogant (he was conducting a romantic relationship with a direct subordinate and didn't see anything wrong with that), patronising (the whole Joni thing - white knight indeed), sexist (some of his conversations with Annie made me *cringe* - at least the rest of CID were sexist in a overt way) with a severe superiority complex (never mind his arguments with Gene over the difference in policing, asking Annie to *stay* the night before he betrayed them all... Ooooh, I'd've slapped him there and then.)

Is that enough for you?

But that's what makes the show so great - the lead character isn't a nice little hero.

I know people who really can't understand how I can loathe some characters as people, so to speak, yet they're my favourite characters on a show.

Sam Tyler can be summed up as "you wouldn't want to work with him in a million years".

*nods*

And it's that imperfection that makes the character of Sam Tyler more interesting. Two dimensional characters are so boring!

(And yes, I do still fancy him. No idea why...)

I bet if you worked with him, you'd have stabbed him with a pen within a week.

Oh wait, no, that's why *I* fancy him. *g*

I've never really loathed him (though in the first few scenes, where he's still completely his stuck-up 2006 personality, with the suit and the not listening and the SUV, I did come close). As soon as he started being engagingly lost, though, I started liking him, and by the time he was hugging the TV I couldn't help but love him. But then, I suspect I have a high tolerance for certain kinds of unpleasantness in males... (which probably means I should continue to avoid dating. Can only end in disaster. *g*)

mostly on TRA when I could still show my face there ;-) - though not so much because of his self-absorption etc., but because of the whole elaborate fantasy world thing, and the role he gave himself in his world, and some of the recurring 'themes'. His character flaws aren't the markings of a psychopath, really, IMO. They are faults that you'll find in plenty of people, not least myself. I think this may be why I'm willing to forgive Sam a lot of his unpleasantness even while fully aware that it's there: he's unpleasant and socially dysfunctional in ways that are not at all unlike my own, and I have to believe in his 'fixability' for my own sake. (Yes, I'm arrogant, self-centred, I can be patronising, etc. I'm probably not sexist, though. Or maybe I am, actually - women do annoy me, often. *g*)

The way I've always seen Sam, he's not a very nice person, and yeah, some of his interactions, especially with Annie, do make you cringe - but there are reasons he is that way. He's mostly *trying* to be a nice guy, he just doesn't manage, quite - too many hangups. But the fact that he's even trying counts for something. He isn't totally oblivious of other people.

(And we don't know if Sam really didn't see any problems with the Maya relationship. For all we know that may have been part of why the relationship soured. After all, Sam is fairly devoted to propriety at his job. Also... yes, it's problematic, but love sometimes is, and I'm not sure this kind of thing can be easily suppressed. I suppose he could have had her transferred to another unit or something, though... Anyway - I don't see that as a major character flaw, but rather as a somewhat problematic thing that just tends to happen in human life.)

Well, no. His character flaws aren't that of a psychopath, but they don't preclude the diagnosis. It'd be very easy to stretch them a little and come up with someone very convincing. (and, as that's what I do as a writer, I'm still working on a *proper* psycho!Sam fic...)

I'd like to think that, at least subconsciously, the inappropriateness of the relationship was a major factor in the relationship going bad. And you're right that it happens sometimes. But I guarantee he'd come down on any of his DIs like a tonne of bricks if he found out they were conducting a comparable relationship. Maya is a direct subordinate and therefore he has to have some belief of superior morals to even enter into the relationship without finding an alternative. Furthermore, the conversation he has when he pulls her off the case. Not professional at all. In any way, shape or form.

I just don't take him for a canonical psychopath, is all.

Everyone has character flaws. It's what makes us human. So I'm not saying that Sam isn't a perfectly functioning male and yes, his trying does redeem him slightly. Just as trying to be a nice guy redeems us all.

It's just that I hate the way that some folk can think him perfect.

(Oh, and the fact that, once again, MG can't see anything wrong in anything. His happy ending, his perfect copper.... *shudders*)

MG scares me, sometimes. Whenever I think about 2.08, in fact.

(procrastinating - should be bibliographising!)

>Well, Fi and I were firmly of the opinion that he was a self-righteous little prick well before the ending. Which is why we sat screaming at the telly "Jump, you little git!"

I must admit I don't quite get the thought process (or rather, the emotional process) behind this. So... you two don't believe in redemption? I wanted him *not* to jump, not because I thought he was such a nice guy, but *because* jumping would confirm once and for all that he wasn't a nice guy, and that there was no hope for him. It seems I always want to fix, improve characters like Sam. I don't want to see them crash and burn, I want to see them redeemed. Makes for a more satisfying story, IMO. Does it really give you satisfaction to see them crash and burn?

(I've always found cautionary tales frustrating and kind of boring.)

Well, it's not that I don't believe in redemption. I do. In TV-land, though, it does seem to come from the moral high ground. Which is a little galling.

Redemption would've been satisfying to me. Sam learning a great emotional truth. But it was obvious it wasn't going to be. Life on Mars may have looked liked high art and been acted like high art, but in the main it wasn't written as such. It was, in the end, Pop TV. So the best I could hope for was vindication that Sam really was as much of a jerk that I thought he was.

Obviously there was a hell of a lot that disatisfied me about everything. But at that moment, when he jumped, I did smile.

Yeah, I know. I'm not a nice person.

Hmmm.... but I'd say the whole point of this particular type of story is that the protagonist is redeemed - in fact there seems to be an entire fantasy sub-genre devoted to this from Dickens' A Christmas Carol onwards. (Sorry if that sounds a bit wordy and pretentious, but it's a difficult idea to express.) The not-very-nice (or as John Simm put it, "a bit of a dick") protagonist has some kind of supernatural experience which teaches him the error of his ways. Hollywood (not exactly a bastion of High Art) has done it numerous times over the years. For example, a few of my favourites:

Pleasantville - Dorky boy protagonist learns that life is more complex and interesting than old 50s TV shows; slutty girl protagonist learns that reading can be more satisfying than sex.

Groundhog Day - Nasty Phil the Weatherman is forced to live the same day over until he gets it right and becomes Nice Phil the Weatherman.

Big - Little boy learns that growing up isn't all it's cracked up to be, and there aren't any shortcuts to adulthood.

And yes, I liked all these movies. %-}

Apart from enjoying this particular genre, Sam was the character I identified with - unlike most people who were "Squee! Gene!" It probably has something to do with me being another intorvert who shares some of his character flaws. And I thought - I really thought - that they were setting Sam up to learn from his experiences (what else was all that stuff about feelings and gut instincts?) Instead Matthew Graham let me down badly, and in the process tainted everything which went before. I probably wouldn't be putting it too harshly to say it poisoned something which I'd rather enjoyed before...

>It probably has something to do with me being another intorvert who shares some of his character flaws.

Haha, yes. We should form a club. With Sam as honorary president.

And yeah, I thought everything pointed towards some form of learning/redemptive experience, too. Guess that's what I get for believing too much in conventional storytelling patterns!

Some literary conventions exist for a reason. %-} And unless you are a genius, you really, really shouldn't flout them.

>And this is one of the reasons I am really, really doubtful about the whole Ashes to Ashes project - since Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah obviously thought they'd written a fine and dandy ending to Sam's story, what's to prevent them from writing an equally lame conclusion to Alex Drake's adventures?

Not to mention that Alex Drake's adventures sound immensely lame from the beginning! Like lifted directly from the pit of voles... Seriously, who ever thought that repeating essentially the same thing, only this time with a young female in Sam's place, would be a good idea? I'll never understand that, I'm afraid.

Because the premise went from: "Oh, folk really like this. They like the nostalgia and the chases and the bitching. Let's do it again. But in the eighties. With big hair."

Which is a fine premise, if that's what you were watching for.

Then, of course, they ruined it. "Oh, something even better. We'll send a *woman* back and then we can add sexual tension. That always pulls in the public!"

Of course, as AJ and MG have written for soaps in the past (with very high ratings) they fail to realise that the people who watch this kind of drama is not likely to appreciate the soap style.

Sigh.

I get the feeling it may have been more like: "Ooooh, we really like Gene Hunt. We really, REALLY like Gene Hunt. We like him so much we'd almost like to go to bed with him... or at least have a character go to bed with him. But we can't have Sam go to bed with him, can we? ... Wait a minute!"

;-)

*giggle*

Yeah, that sounds about right...

LMFAO.

Win.

Yeah, I suppose you could explain it with brain injuries. But I don't want to. I want Sam to be fixable, dammit! *g*

This is... intriguing. Details? ;-)

Well, that's the highly embarrassing part. It was a TRA gathering to meet up with

space_oddity_75. The pub was opposite the Trafalgar where Elling was showing (as she and others were at the performance) and we were highly drunk when the cast came in.

For drunk people we were well-behaved (and didn't approach him), but he must've known...

I kind of know the feeling. I once embarrassed myself in front of Peter Wingfield.

I've seen him on stage, and he's short for a man, but many actors are. Re: attractiveness, what boggles me is that it really depends on the role for me, and now I've watched him in four. The stage one, in which he's a repressed Norwegian oddball, Cal the journalist in "State of Play", Sam of course, and the Master in Dr. Who. All very different parts, and I found him fascinating in each, but the Master was the only time where a minute after he showed up I rubbed my eyes and thought "how did I miss so far he can be incredibly sexy?"

(Also: after two full seasons of LoM, I still don't see Sam/Gene as a pairing, but again, it only took a minute of Doctor/Master interaction and I completely bought them as same.)

Why do I have to be so poor? *mourns*

Yay! Someone else who doesn't see Sam/Gene! <3 ;-)

I haven't seen that season of DW yet (nor the one before that), but from the clips and images I've seen I'd say that that is exactly the kind of sexiness that absolutely does not work for me. I'm odd, I guess. I can *see* the sexiness - it's blatant, really - but something about it puts me off. (Part of it is the suit, I confess. Hate suits, always have hated them. They are a ridiculous piece of clothing, as are ties. They make people look like made out of plastic, or wood, or whatever. Stiff and artificial and not alive.)

Sam, on the other hand (and Danny Kavanagh from the Lakes, too, to a lesser extent) is total sex to me, and has been nearly from the beginning. And with pics of John Simm, it's similar. The more recent ones, which play up the sex factor, don't 'work' for me. The ones where he looks like 'just a guy', to quote another favourite sort-of-Brit, do. Especially older ones, from a time in his life where he didn't go for designer clothes yet.

I think I'm not too fond of people who are too aware of their sex appeal - or rather, who are visibly aware of their sex appeal and consciously play it up. God (or Freud?) knows what that says about me...

Hi, btw. I'm so scared of catching up with your LJ... I think you're probably the most prolific 'journalist' ;-) on my flist... if it's taken me a week to catch up with

amonitrate's 280 entries, how many months will it take me to catch up with you?! *g*

For what it's worth, I saw him walk past the pub while I was waiting for Elling to start. Didn't recognise him for a second, but was immediately drawn to the unidentified man - my impression then (a few seconds pre-OMGsqueeeee) was a good-looking man by any standards, taller than I would have expected John Simm to be, and (this is the thing that you get even when you don't know who you're looking at) stunningly charismatic. And that kind of charisma just makes someone attractive, whatever their facial features.

I agree.

As for good-looking, I'm still not convinced. He has a way of looking like a random potato farmer occasionally - his profile is downright ridiculous sometimes. Which, don't get me wrong, totally endears him to me all the more, but just isn't in the job description for conventionally attractive guys. *g*

Then again, what *is* "conventionally attractive"? Does that even exist? Who defines it - Hollywood? I know that I don't find any (or nearly any) of the people who regularly make it onto 'hot guys' lists attractive. I like my faces with a bit more character.

Etc. *g*

(JS's gorgeous by any standard when he smiles or grins, though. Totally transforms him.)

Mmm. That's my difficulty with the whole 'attractiveness' issue. The most conventionally accepted attractive men tend to leave me cold, because there's nothing to look at once you've got over the immediate 'wow he's gorgeous' moment. For an actor, versatility of expression has to be seen as an asset, which is part of JS's strength. His attractiveness changes depending on the role he's playing, and even at different times within each role. So you can gaze at him forever, because you'll see new nuances every time.

(Also, attractiveness is deeply subjective. Which is just as well, for the continuation of the species!)

Yes. Basically, when I'm talking about attractiveness, there are two entirely different values of "attractiveness". There's every individual's idea of what is attractive, and then there's the kind of common-sensical, conventional idea of "attractive". I had a conversation with

dashan about that, a while ago, regarding - mostly - if I remember correctly, John Barrowman, who I find... very much the opposite of attractive, yet who is clearly attractive by common standards.

5'10" isn't short. At least, it's taller than my dad and I've never thought of him as short. Height is relative ;)

I, er, I often call him beautiful, but he's not really conventionally handsome. He has a striking face, in certain contexts - the grin, the eyes, that ability to have ten different emotions playing at one time. But... mmm. I confess I'm fairly sure I've said that neither he nor Phil are particularly good looking.

Mostly when his face is in motion, really. Pictures don't do him justice.

Okay... so you'd say it's the "tall co-stars" explanation. Hmm... but two people who've seen him say he's short...

I would have to know what 5'10'' is in m and cm to settle this for myself once and for all, I guess. But I'm too lazy to look it up. *g*

Some pictures do. There are a couple I could stare at for hours.

177.80 cm :p

But you kind of have to see several different ones to get the full appeal.

But, yeah. Any pic in which he smiles or grins pretty much does it for me. *g*

Well... that's a bit shorter than my dad, and my dad's a different generation, of course (born in 1944) - younger men tend to be taller. So, yeah, that would be below average for a guy of John Simm's generation, I think - but not dramatically so. So it seems to be a combination of *relative* shortness and tall co-stars. *g*

I'm always amused by that scene in 1.01 where Sam stumbles along the street, totally confused, bumping into people - and nearly all the people are women, and nearly all of them are taller than him. And him wearing cuban heels, too! *g*

He can't be 5'10". Seriously. He's wee-er than Fi for definite. I'd put him more at 5'8", perhaps?

(Still much taller than me, I'm afraid - I'm well wee.)

in cuban heels? *g*

I'm just under 5'8", and I think he would be around that size because he appears to be the same height relative to 6'1" Phil as I am to my 6'1" brother. *G* If that isn't too convuluted to you all....

Okay then, John's been lying again. Hah.

I mean, I sort of know, but I'd be hard pressed to put an exact number to it. Could be 1.65m, could be 1.67m.

>I confess I'm fairly sure I've said that neither he nor Phil are particularly good looking.

See above for my 'potato farmer' statement. The same could be said about Philip Glenister, only more so. *g*

(The icon would read somewhat like this: "Handsome? Not really. Sexy as hell? Ohhhhh YES!")

This all reminds me of a reaction a couple of my friends had when watching LoM after a steady diet of American TV: "Wow! The people in this look like people!" *g*

Only more so? Surely you jest? Phil's smoking hot. Heh. (The thing is, I'm not being sarcastic, I mean it. I just --- mmmm. Hahahaha.)

I just said he looked even more like a potato farmer than John Simm does. I didn't say anything about the sexiness value of potato farmers.

;-P

As she sat staring at videoclips of John Simm

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Details?!

Re: Details?!

Not that unpleasant a character?

Re: Not that unpleasant a character?

Re: Not that unpleasant a character?

Re: Not that unpleasant a character?

Re: Not that unpleasant a character?

Re: Not that unpleasant a character?

Because he angsts prettily?

Hi. :-)

Well, I've had the "is Sam a psychopath" conversation, too -

The "Sam a psychopath" conversation is just too fun *not* to have!

Oh, sure. Perfectly fine for fic.

Oh, and don't forget....

Re: Oh, and don't forget....

Going over this thread another time...

Re: Going over this thread another time...

Re: Going over this thread another time...

Re: Going over this thread another time...

Re: Going over this thread another time...

Re: Not that unpleasant a character?

Re: Not that unpleasant a character?

Are you sure that was the process?

Re: Are you sure that was the process?

Yes *that* was the process.

Personality changes

Re: Details?!

Heeeh.

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Dammit, am I the last person in the fandom who hasn't seen Elling?

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Yeah, charisma is where it's at,

Re: Yeah, charisma is where it's at,

Attractiveness.

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Striking, yes.

Re: Striking, yes.

True.

177.80

Re: Striking, yes.

Maybe he's 5'10''...

Re: Are you sure that was the process?

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Maybe he's like me and honestly doesn't know his exact height.

We need an icon or something.

Re: We need an icon or something.

I didn't say he wasn't hot!

The "Sam a psychopath" conversation is just too fun not to have!

Yes that was the process.