Forgotten Love Declared as the 'Love of a Lifetime'
This is the hardest bit for me to believe.
If it would have been shown as a rescue for an innocent, as some hints try to declare it, I would tend to believe the 'forgotten love'. But the whole environment does not support this interpretation of the separation of the pair in love 15 years back.
Lucas is described as an excellent spy and cannot enact a secret identity which would allow him to meet Maya again or to at least spy on her and try to find out, what she does and how she fares?
No way - I do not believe that !!!
If he can forget her for 15 years, I would say 'Good riddance'.
Why Maya goes along with Lucas / John makes no sense for me, but what makes this totally unbelievable is, that later on she easily believes John being a murderer, because "for the first time he makes sense".
She sets her career and future on a man she has so fundamental doubts about. He for her suddenly makes sense as a murderer, when he never has made sense before?
I do not know how the relationships of the scriptwriters work, but mine normally make sense for me, at least in the interpretation of the moment.
Interpretations can be wrong or change in time, but as Maya formulates her attitude, John for the first time makes sense as he has never before.
Why did she not ask him about the things which did not make sense?
The only question she asks is about his job.
- Here he evidently lies to her or at least evades her question as he as a good spy should towards a not vetted person. -
Is he a good spy or a good liar here?
Some of the questions I would have asked him:
What did you do the last years? - And here I would have expected much more than an evasive answer. I would have expected him to talk for hours and would have guided him on by accounts of my stories of the passed years to make up for the lost time.
What he planned to do in future?
Why he wanted me back in his life? - Because he saw me in a picture is not likely to convince me!
What hurt him? - Because it was quite obvious in his demeanour that he had been hurt.
What the tattoos meant to him? - She sleeps with him and does not even ask the obvious!
After 15 years she does not know him so well any longer that she can rely on sex to cure everything. This is an approach typical for younger people, but a well established doctor after 15 years of separation is too old for such kind of nonsense and simply losing one's head. She should have become more aware of her personal needs in life by now.
At least in the morning after, reality should have kicked in.
Here I do respect the attempt to show her hesitance and her efforts to getting the situation under control by asking John what he does for work. But this is a meager attempt, especially as it is met with an evasive lie.
More unbelievable even is her first question and the reaction to John's comment that he was in prison.
That John (Lucas North) could have been innocent appears to her last.
I would interpret that as - the love is long gone.
Which again leaves me with the question, why does Maya go along with John's scheming and leaves her previous life and job without a notice? How reliable and thoughtful is that of her? Does she really care about her patients? Her behaviour does not imply that. As I mentioned previously in a blog post, her behaviour towards the wounded Vaughan is unbelievable for a doctor. Her leaving her job and patients is equally cruel and unforgivable for me.
Her character is either so crudely drawn, that she appears to be careless, gullible, ungrateful, disloyal and selfish or the scriptwriters really wanted to tell us something with contrasting her to the caring and thoughtful John (Lucas North).
But in general this really makes me pity Lucas / John and leaves me without sympathy for Maya. Especially when Lucas so nicely advises Ruth in episode 9.8 how best to go forward with her feelings for Harry and compliments her on her cleverness, a thing men normally cannot do very well (e.g. compare it to the late home secretary's comment on Ruth's intelligence in Spooks 9.1).
I agree that Maya's character is indeed very "crudely drawn" as you say. She does not behave as I would imagine a doctor would, a woman in love would, or indeed as would even a responsible adult! The whole plot line is just a caricature of a love story, not even vaguely plausible. I had no feelings for her at all, except I was a bit shocked when I realized that Bateman had dumped her dead body out of the car to continue his getaway!! **shakes head**
ReplyDeleteI really have to distance myself from series 9 in order to comment on it because the whole thing makes me so upset and angry!
Excellent points! Sadly, I doubt you'll ever get your questions answered. I'm not sure the writers know. LOL!
ReplyDeleteIf I think about it too long, my intelligence is insulted by what the writers did.
@phylly3
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment and going back to this hard to believe series 9 of "Spooks" with me.
As you, I also was dissappointed of 'Bateman' that he dumped her body. Why did he take her with him before when he already knew she was carrying a tracker and why leave her now? It would not really make any more difference.
@rafrenzy
ReplyDeleteThank you!
You are absolutely right. I also do think that I will not come to a final solution. This was the reason why I wanted to close the chapter with the old year, but I think I am not quite ready for that.
What keeps popping up in my mind is, that I think the scriptwriters had an ulterior motive to draw Maya the way they did.
More and more I think the scriptwriters are the real fans of William Blake and not Lucas North or John Bateman. They in a subtle way might have wanted to show, how fragile our establishment of right and wrong, good and evil in the political sense is. That they did not give clearer hints does not really surprise me, but I think a very strong line of criticism is very heavily built into the storyline of Spook 9.
Here I think our sympathy for Lucas North was something they expected. Their hinted criticism very heavily relies on this viewpoint of interpretation.
I am not sure if after all my posts I see spooks at every corner and now go totally off the route with my interpretation ;o)
Great post. I think Maya's behaviour was very odd, specially leaving everything behind for an ex-lover that just pops up out of the blue 15 years later.
ReplyDeleteIf she was the love of Lucas/John life, why didn't he, as you said CDoart, try to find her or get any news about her, the way he did about *Elizaveta*. I understand, 2 years before scriptwriters didn't know they'll invent Maya but they could've hinted that he had looked for her, to know what she was doing...not a photo of her to be the trigger to do it.
I believed Maya was Bateman's motivation/prize to achieve in the last eps, he made himself (or let Vaughn make him) think she was the only thing he had. So I could understand that after he knew that she 'knew', he keep on with the plan to go away with her and when she died, in his mind he lost her and *all* that he had.
One might expect that he'd surrender and cry her death but as he said to Harry (and I believed him) he just couldn't go back to jail, so he had to finish the thing with the chinese, when it didn't work...we know what happened *sigh*
OML *runs back to denial-land*
@onemorelurker1
ReplyDeleteThank you!
You are completely right. I would have followed your way of establishing a not earlier developed storyline.
The problem why I cannot leave Spooks 9 so easily behind me is, that I think they really did a great job filming it and it is the best filmed series of Spooks so far. On the other hand, I cannot understand what they did with the main characters and especially poor Lucas. Here I also hate myself for calling him 'poor Lucas'. That he is not and it should not be necessary to defend him, but somehow his character is the only one in the show who holds all my sympathies in the end.
Thank you, OML, for leaving 'denial-land' and going the hard route to "Spooks 9" with me!