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I was posting on TalkCSI last night with Faylinn about COTP, and I was startled at how angry it made me that the focus of the episode was Mac's angst and not Flack's near-death experience. Part of it was simple fangirl disappointment. I love Flack, and when I first heard about the episode, I was so sure that we were finally going to get his backstory-see his parents, any siblings. Maybe Moran would turn up to check on his rookie, make a start on mending the rift that must have formed between them after the events of "The Fall". But instead, it was all about Mac and his angst over a long-dead Marine that he couldn't save.
And that pissed me off. Inordinately so.
Last night, I finally realized why. It wasn't just because Flack got cheated of the possibility of major character development. It was because Mac wrongly appropriated Flack's pain for his own and in so doing grossly devalued it. Flack was the one who'd been blown up, and thus the focus should have been on him. I realize that they needed to catch the bad guy, and they were right to have the CSIs on the trail and not huddled morosely at his bedside, but Flack should have been the focus of their worries, not Mac.
So Danny called to check on his condition once. Wow. That's really returning the favor after Flack spend God knows how long with him and Louie. They could have shown Danny calling incessantly during every free moment, shown him trying to slip away only to be called back.
But no. Danny makes one vague mention of calling, and Stella flutters over Mac's old wound like it's the most heartbreaking sight she's ever seen. When she settles in at the hospital at the end of COTP, one gets the impression, as Faylinn pointed out in her post, that she's staying for Mac, not Flack. Because God knows the excising of Mac's twenty-two-year-old wounds is far more painful and important than the possibility that Flack might die. It makes me gag just writing about it.
Emotional vampirism is one of the cruelest acts folks can perpetrate on one another. I know because I have lived with it all my life. Growing up, no one ever worried about how my disability and how people treated it affected me. It was always about how hard it must be for my mother to be burdened with a crippled child, how awful it was that her dreams had been crushed and her life forever changed. Woe was her.
Nobody cared about what it did to me or even thought to consider that I might be affected. After all, I'd never known anything different. Well, no, I hadn't, but I was astute enough to know that I was different, and that people treated me differently because of it. And I could certainly hear my grandmother tell anyone who would listen how trying it was to have a crippled grandchild.
When I was nine, I went to have adductor-hamstring release surgery. It wasn't discussed; it was just done. It is an exquisitely painful surgery and requires months of casts and rehab just for the possibility of walking a few feet with a walker. It also includes a lifetime of leg splints which prohibit one from closing their legs or rolling over at night.
The pain was excruciating even with dangerous levels of morphine. Did my mother care? No, she was upset that I wasn't walking of my own accord, that the $100,000 surgery had won nothing but a shot at going to the toilet by myself. When I cried or complained about the pain, I was made to feel that I deserved it for being born the way I had been, that I had a moral obligation to endure the pain-not so that my life was improved, but so that I would be more convenient for my mother. Only my mother had the right to cry.
I wore those damn leg splints for six months even though they made my feet and heels hurt. I'd take them off at night, and my mother would scream at me. I would have gone on wearing them forever if I hadn't nearly strangled on my vomit one night because I couldn't roll over. It was never about what CP meant for me, but always about her.
All of that came back while I watched that episode, and I wanted to bludgeon Mac repeatedly for his selfishness. It was loathsome to watch him angst over past failures while Flack was lying in a hospital bed with no support system. Mac's woe overpowered all else and rendered Flack irrelevant, and that's not fair to Flack.
I'm not saying that no one should be affected when a friend or relative goes down. Of course not. What I am saying is that an accident or illness' effect on a victim should be first and foremost in the immediate aftermath of the incident-not how the victim's condition and possible death might reflect poorly on your capacity as superhero. Flack needed support and love, not to be flogged as Mac's personal drama llama and then utterly dismissed.
So, when it comes to COTP, Mac Taylor and the NY writers get a big, fat F.
And that pissed me off. Inordinately so.
Last night, I finally realized why. It wasn't just because Flack got cheated of the possibility of major character development. It was because Mac wrongly appropriated Flack's pain for his own and in so doing grossly devalued it. Flack was the one who'd been blown up, and thus the focus should have been on him. I realize that they needed to catch the bad guy, and they were right to have the CSIs on the trail and not huddled morosely at his bedside, but Flack should have been the focus of their worries, not Mac.
So Danny called to check on his condition once. Wow. That's really returning the favor after Flack spend God knows how long with him and Louie. They could have shown Danny calling incessantly during every free moment, shown him trying to slip away only to be called back.
But no. Danny makes one vague mention of calling, and Stella flutters over Mac's old wound like it's the most heartbreaking sight she's ever seen. When she settles in at the hospital at the end of COTP, one gets the impression, as Faylinn pointed out in her post, that she's staying for Mac, not Flack. Because God knows the excising of Mac's twenty-two-year-old wounds is far more painful and important than the possibility that Flack might die. It makes me gag just writing about it.
Emotional vampirism is one of the cruelest acts folks can perpetrate on one another. I know because I have lived with it all my life. Growing up, no one ever worried about how my disability and how people treated it affected me. It was always about how hard it must be for my mother to be burdened with a crippled child, how awful it was that her dreams had been crushed and her life forever changed. Woe was her.
Nobody cared about what it did to me or even thought to consider that I might be affected. After all, I'd never known anything different. Well, no, I hadn't, but I was astute enough to know that I was different, and that people treated me differently because of it. And I could certainly hear my grandmother tell anyone who would listen how trying it was to have a crippled grandchild.
When I was nine, I went to have adductor-hamstring release surgery. It wasn't discussed; it was just done. It is an exquisitely painful surgery and requires months of casts and rehab just for the possibility of walking a few feet with a walker. It also includes a lifetime of leg splints which prohibit one from closing their legs or rolling over at night.
The pain was excruciating even with dangerous levels of morphine. Did my mother care? No, she was upset that I wasn't walking of my own accord, that the $100,000 surgery had won nothing but a shot at going to the toilet by myself. When I cried or complained about the pain, I was made to feel that I deserved it for being born the way I had been, that I had a moral obligation to endure the pain-not so that my life was improved, but so that I would be more convenient for my mother. Only my mother had the right to cry.
I wore those damn leg splints for six months even though they made my feet and heels hurt. I'd take them off at night, and my mother would scream at me. I would have gone on wearing them forever if I hadn't nearly strangled on my vomit one night because I couldn't roll over. It was never about what CP meant for me, but always about her.
All of that came back while I watched that episode, and I wanted to bludgeon Mac repeatedly for his selfishness. It was loathsome to watch him angst over past failures while Flack was lying in a hospital bed with no support system. Mac's woe overpowered all else and rendered Flack irrelevant, and that's not fair to Flack.
I'm not saying that no one should be affected when a friend or relative goes down. Of course not. What I am saying is that an accident or illness' effect on a victim should be first and foremost in the immediate aftermath of the incident-not how the victim's condition and possible death might reflect poorly on your capacity as superhero. Flack needed support and love, not to be flogged as Mac's personal drama llama and then utterly dismissed.
So, when it comes to COTP, Mac Taylor and the NY writers get a big, fat F.
