Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

My first class went okay today (covering the syllabus and trying to get a sense of where the students are coming from -- mostly artists and musicians this semester, by the looks of it, so "yay!"), though I talked too fast, as usual when I'm nervous. Next Monday's class will go better, since I'll be able to get started on the meat of the course, rather than just cutting it up or trying to 'sell the sizzle, not the steak', or whatever it is we professors do during that first class period.

But my thoughts keep straying off of 'Introductory Biblical Studies'-type stuff and into the territory of slashy T.V. relationships. What can I say? I'm a weak woman.

By way of background information, I need to confess that after years of ignoring my sister's recommendations to watch Highlander, I've finally started to get hooked on the show this summer, now that Spike TV is showing two hours of it every morning.

(A bit off topic, but I'm getting a big kick out of Spike TV's whole "TV for MEN!" thing. With a morning line-up that consists of two hours of Highlander followed by MacGyver and Seven Days and a lunchtime showing of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- a veritable smorgasbord of sensitive beefcake! -- I have to wonder sometimes, is this TV that's supposed to appeal to straight guys? Or maybe it's just an Irish Spring thing: "Manly, yes, but I like it too!")

[thoughts on recent Nip/Tuck episodes and a couple of season 5 episodes of Highlander follow]

Besides giving my sister a wonderful sense of "Green Eggs and Ham" superiority ("I told you over and over that you would like it if you tried it!"), my newfound interest in Highlander also serves the useful purpose of giving me a reason to get my still-overly-tired-and-unambitious-in-the-morning butt out of bed some time before 8 AM, so I can put in the tape for the day's allotment of Adrian Paul and Peter Wingfield, et al (I deliberately DON'T set the tape up the night before, in order to keep that sense of urgency in the morning). I started watching sometime in season 4, and now they're starting over with season 1, again.

So, anyway (making a long story longer -- as if there was any need!), I was telling my sister how P.O.'d I was at Spike TV having skipped over the second part of the "Four Horsemen" story (pre-empted for a day-long Joe Schmo marathon, of all the useless waste-of-time idiocies!), and how I'd been taping all the remaining episodes of season 5 and 6, because I didn't want to see them out of order, without knowing how that Methos-Cassandra-Duncan-Kronos thing worked out. She happily told me that she had both the first and second parts of that story on tape, still, and would mail it to me a.s.a.p. (she loves being able to 'rescue' her big sister, I suspect). All of this is simply to explain how I came to be watching those 5th season episodes yesterday, while Spike TV was showing the last episode of season 6 and first episode of season 1 yesterday morning.

Naturally, as soon as I'd watched both parts all the way through, I had to go back and watch the key parts over again ('cause, you know, evil horseman Methos = hot, hotter, hottest).

So, I was re-watching the crucial scenes from the second episode, "Revelation 6:8", in which Methos was recalling (for Duncan's benefit) what ELSE he'd done to wrong Cassandra (letting Kronos take her from him without demur, saying that after all that had happened she mattered no more to him than any of their other captives), and I was struck by the realization that Kronos was jealous NOT of Methos' exclusive access to Cassandra as sexual object, but rather of Cassandra getting in the way of HIS (Kronos') exclusive relationship with Methos.

Kronos took Cassandra from Methos, not because he desired Cassandra particularly, but because he couldn't stand Methos choosing to spend time with Cassandra rather than with HIM. Kronos pretty clearly had a sublimated sexual obsession with Methos -- insisting that Methos is his other half, that their minds think alike, and that Methos must always choose Kronos over any other person or loyalty. (I haven't looked, yet, but I would bet that THAT pairing has been slashed extensively in "Highlander" fanfics.)

Following up on that little Kronos-Methos "revelation" (get it? Four Horsemen, Apocalypse, Revelation? I'm glad I crack myself up, at least) earlier in the day, I was struck by the same sort of dynamic present in Nip/Tuck this week and last (though I ran out of tape and didn't get to see the last twenty minutes of last week's episode, and I missed it again on all the repeats).

It seemed pretty clear from various clues (not the least of which is that Sean McNamara has
apparently decided to work things out with Christian Troy in their medical "marriage", but is adamant about throwing out his wife Julia and punishing her over and over again) that what's REALLY eating Sean is that Julia got between him and Christian -- that Christian had secretly had a 'thing' for Julia all those years, while Sean had thought that HE was the only important, enduring relationship in Christian's life and the only reason why Christian was involved in his family. And, for all I know, Christian may have fallen in love with Julia in the first place as a surrogate way of screwing Sean, of becoming physically as well as emotionally and psychologically intimate with Sean.

Anyway, I wonder if I could apply the same "hermeneutic" to the Biblical stories of David and Saul and David and Jonathan? Hmmm . . .