The Meechum thing almost made me stop watching completely. Sometimes I feel like this show adds in random things for shock value. I'm not American; I don't notice if they fudge the politics. However, there are some things that I can't help but notice. What was up with the Chinese guy's introduction? Why was he tied up and doing weird things with weird people? More importantly, what does this tell us about his character and why are you showing us this? Will there be a scandal? Is he a control freak? What? Nothing?
i think it was supposed to characterize him a bit.
it was plainly supposed to tell you a couple things right off the bat:
"this guy is rich"
"this guy is into weird sex"
"this guy is probably very dangerous"
none of that seemed to really pan out, though, but during the scenes you saw him, i felt those things still, so i wasn't sure what would happen next with that guy. It was probably a bit of misdirection -- you never put anything in that you don't want to be seen. They had some sort of intention behind it, otherwise it wouldn't have been filmed.
I feel like the Meechum thing was like that. I read an interesting comment somewhere a while back that compared it to a vampire initiation. I kind of liked that explanation but it didn't explain why he was being initiated. It just seemed so random. I know a lot of people point to all of those Meechum scenes prior but those did NOT foreshadow what was to come. I actually thought that Meechum was going to become a trusted friend that he could speak to (like the ribs guy was). Anyone who "expected" the Meechum threesome and claims to have "seen it coming", is either lying or sees the world through a very dirty lens.
there's definitely no way to see it coming, but i did think they were setting up something between Meechum and Claire the last couple episodes before they did the nasty -- the fact that Frank got in on the action at the same time was the real shocker -- to me, anyway. It might have had a shock value to it, but when you look back, you don't see Frank or Claire having sex except with other people. The same still holds true here, they had sex, but only "with" someone else as well.
There may be more to that, but it looks like they give up sex entirely to get to their end goals, and that's supposed to imply they are very serious about what they hope to (and did) attain.
they bothered showing Rachel/Lisa having sex and it was probably gratuitous just by itself, since it didn't really serve much extra plot telling to see them actually naked and fucking -- so they could have easily put something in with Frank/Claire having sex somewhere this season (i can't remember if they even had sex in the first season either).
The Kate Mara thing was interesting as at the end of the first season I was a bit eh? when he didn't kill her. But it made for a much better season opener had a lot more power as well. As the audience had settled into things being a certain way. And then bam.
yeah, i was definitely shocked. i was totally not expecting it. i was in disbelief during the duration of the next episode.
. They kind of neutered him toward the end of this season, though, so I guess they were setting that up in a way.
