Classic Film: for the discussion of great cinema

It does feel weird to look back and see that H2O: Just Add Water was influential to modern mermaid media. Not as much as Splash, of course, but a decent amount. Do not cite the deep magic to me etc., I was there when the show premiered and a gajillion (I exaggerate) people told me about it and although I did check it out then, I only followed along into a third of the first season. TV shows were very different in 2008, and by then I'd lost interest (or outgrown) these kinds of stories.

Now, however, it is a delight! I paced myself through watching the whole first season, and despite only being ~25 mins per episode, 26 episodes a season is an embarrassment of riches. So much content! So many little stories where the girls are Put In Different Situations, and thanks to the past near-two-decades of media trends, I do love it when characters are Put In Different Situations instead of it being One Long Situation Where the Major Catharsis Only Happens At the End of the Season! The theme song is also so great, I've been letting it play out every time and eventually started singing along, both for the opening and longer ending.



The first few episodes have the girls getting used to their powers (I love that Cleo is the one who decides to not let it limit her options), but then it settles into a status quo and although the quality is uneven, a lot of the episodes are SO much fun, and I haven't laughed that hard for a while as I did for the Siren Effect episode, when Cleo gains siren powers and enchants all the boys in the neighbourhood into being idiots. Then there's The Big Chill where Emma straight up almost accidentally MURDERS the popular girl with her freeze powers, and that's not an euphemism, but the show took care to talk around the stakes instead of using words like "corpse", "kill" or "dead", which was so, SO funny. A+, 'tis delightful, only capable when everyone's committed to the light-hearted tone and are decent comic actors. You really appreciate good comic acting after you've watched so much bad comic acting.

So much so that my stomach dropped at the last few episodes of the season when the tension ramped up as the girls' secret is about to be uncovered. I don't need that! I just want bite-sized fun romps! And unfortunately I accidentally read an overview of season 2 and I have never enjoyed the trope where a TV show introduces an interloper who has the abilities/skills of the main characters but are "better" at it, but hopefully the execution is better than it sounds. A team of three evil mermaids to rival the main trio WOULD have been fun, though, since that's more equal opportunity competitiveness instead of usurpation.

Random observation: the first season came out in 2008, and Lewis uses the word "googling". I think that was more a sign of his nerdery than normalized lingo, but interesting in terms of looking at the show as a time capsule.

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The energy of season one as a whole is so charming and fluffy, so I might take a break and continue into season 2 later.

We're having a rainy Chinese New Year this time, which is quite unusual, though I vaguely remember we've had that before recently. Maybe the stereotype of a super hot CNY is no longer as typical?

I'm 95 episodes into 189, which means that I'm at the halfway mark! Kambal Sirena and Mutya both finished their entire runs with less than 95 epiosdes, but Aryana is still going. I can see why, because even with the parts that are repetitive and slow, there's more story to go, and the characters are nowhere near the catharsis you'd expect for certain kinds of family and relationship tropes.

I haven't mentioned it before, but while Aryana is still within that particular teleserye weight class, I do like that they make the effort to foreshadow, by introducing characters or plot points multiple episodes before they become relevant, instead of throwing a new soap opera plot turn the main characters' way out of nowhere. Well, the show still does that, but there's also clearly some planning and forward-thinking involved. Eg. We are given teasing glimpses of Adrian and Stella's ex a few episodes before we're told who they are and they enter the main stories.

There's also thoughtfulness in a particular editing trick the show loves, by intercutting between two emotionally or thematically mirroring scenes in order to make a point, eg. they will intercut between a scene of Aryana arguing with with her mother about their family, with a scene of Megan arguing with her father about their family. There's deliberation in the pacing and storylines that they've put together, and that's neat.

Speaking of Stella's ex, I was wrong when I assumed that Stella was cheating on Victor! (Because of the show's teasing of a mysterious man who's been calling Stella.) Instead this guy is Stella's ex who is blackmailing her, and is possibly Megan's biological father. I kinda like this storyline even if it does feel inorganic compared to other storylines, in that it feels like the show had to add ONE telenovela conflict into Megan's family that had nothing to do with Aryana, and perhaps as part of an argument that Stella is a bad partner to Victor.

The tropes say that Ofelia has to be reunited with Victor, but the show hasn't done the work for it yet, and I was actually enjoying that while Aryana and Ofelia were saw-trapped by Aryana's situation on Love Triangle Island, which was happening at the same time when Ofelia had an ulcer that needed immediate surgery, which made Everyone in that storyline go bonkers.... far far away Megan, Stella and Victor were having the most loving family time they've EVER had since the show started. Victor made it up for his Aryana-insane behaviour to Megan in a realistic way, and everyone was legit happy! They're a happy family! Which is fun and makes it genuinely upsetting to think about how this happiness is going to be ruined when Aryana comes back into the picture. (Which is also why I think they added the Stella's ex storyline, so it's not all Aryana's fault.) I think it would be fun if the two families become friends and Ofelia gets a new love interest, but my guess is they're not gonna do that.

Also Aryana's third love interest has shown up, following the Love Triangle Island blowup that had Aryana shutting down both Marlon and Hubert (though it was more Marlon's fault than Hubert's, ugh). Considering the youtube comments mentioning him before, I wasn't expecting the show to take almost half its runtime to bring the new guy in. Adrian is a surly little sadboy, who's traumatized over his mother's drowning death, and so far I don't care for him because a surly boy who is surly to everyone just isn't fun. May that change soon. I think Marlon's reaction to Adrian will be hilarious.