Neva overthinks superhero cartoons...
Jan. 3rd, 2014 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nevanna…not for the first time, and probably not for the last. So, one of the XME episodes that I re-watched recently was "Shadow Dance," which has long been among my favorites.
I still enjoy it tremendously. Lance and Kitty are very cute, Scott is an enormous dork and has the dance moves to prove it, and the "monsters invade a high school event" plot just as wonderfully silly here as it was on Buffy.
We also meet Kurt's non-mutant love interest, Amanda. When a friend of mine watched this episode for the first time a couple of months ago, they suggested that she was only attracted to him because of his unusual appearance. (Actual wording redacted because it refers to a culture about which I know very little.) Whether or not it was a joke, and almost despite myself, I can kind of see where that comment came from. We do find out that Amanda was interested in Kurt before she found out what he really looked like, but it wasn't until afterward that she actively pursued him and encouraged him not to hide his appearance from her, despite his understandable reservations.
I like Amanda, and I remember finding their romance very sweet, and with all the show's talk about whether humans can accept mutants, I think that it really benefited from including a sympathetic human character in a relationship with one of the X-Men (that was more than just love triangle fodder). It was a smart and important move on the part of the creative team, who, I think, had the very worthy goal of giving Kurt a supportive girlfriend who accepted his true self and encouraged him to do the same. However, they may have gone overboard in emphasizing this, to the point where her behavior could be viewed as fetishistic, at least in that episode. (Amanda's later appearances are not as fresh in my memory, and are one of the many reasons why I'm very much looking forward to watching Season 3 again.)
Then again, "sincere in its intentions but sometimes over-the-top in the execution" is a pretty good description of this show as a whole.
I still enjoy it tremendously. Lance and Kitty are very cute, Scott is an enormous dork and has the dance moves to prove it, and the "monsters invade a high school event" plot just as wonderfully silly here as it was on Buffy.
We also meet Kurt's non-mutant love interest, Amanda. When a friend of mine watched this episode for the first time a couple of months ago, they suggested that she was only attracted to him because of his unusual appearance. (Actual wording redacted because it refers to a culture about which I know very little.) Whether or not it was a joke, and almost despite myself, I can kind of see where that comment came from. We do find out that Amanda was interested in Kurt before she found out what he really looked like, but it wasn't until afterward that she actively pursued him and encouraged him not to hide his appearance from her, despite his understandable reservations.
I like Amanda, and I remember finding their romance very sweet, and with all the show's talk about whether humans can accept mutants, I think that it really benefited from including a sympathetic human character in a relationship with one of the X-Men (that was more than just love triangle fodder). It was a smart and important move on the part of the creative team, who, I think, had the very worthy goal of giving Kurt a supportive girlfriend who accepted his true self and encouraged him to do the same. However, they may have gone overboard in emphasizing this, to the point where her behavior could be viewed as fetishistic, at least in that episode. (Amanda's later appearances are not as fresh in my memory, and are one of the many reasons why I'm very much looking forward to watching Season 3 again.)
Then again, "sincere in its intentions but sometimes over-the-top in the execution" is a pretty good description of this show as a whole.
