hmpf

You know, I still haven't made up my mind about whether he's good-looking or not. And that after a year and a half or so of fancying him.

I know he's *attractive*, in some hard to define way. But, good-looking? I don't know. I just don't know.

The journalist who called him "ugly-handsome", ages ago, was wrong, though. He's not ugly. Just kind of... utterly "normal" looking, sort of. Sometimes. Unspectacular, unremarkable.

And then something happens, now and then, and he turns... "startlingly attractive", I think some other journalist put it. And yeah, it is startling. Kind of mind-boggling, really.

*boggles*

I'm also amused by how he seems to be always the short one. Is he really that short, or do they just always team him up with giants?

Yikes, I'm looking at celebrity pics. What's wrong with me? *g*

Current Mood: amused

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

m31andy.livejournal.com

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?

From:

darthfi.livejournal.com

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".

From:

m31andy.livejournal.com

*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...)

From:

darthfi.livejournal.com

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

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

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

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

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*)

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

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.)

From:

m31andy.livejournal.com

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.

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

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

From:

m31andy.livejournal.com

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*)

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

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

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

(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.)

From:

m31andy.livejournal.com

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.

From:

neuralclone.livejournal.com

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...

From:

hmpf.livejournal.com

>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!