Apr. 4th, 2009 09:21 pm
the best show you're probably not watching
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chicafrom3Below the cut find A Newbie's Guide To Kings. If you are on my flist and have not yet gotten hooked on this show, read on. If you are on my flist and are already in love with the show, gawk at the pretty pictures. If you are not on my flist...hi!
Way not-dialup-friendly.
We begin our story in the far-off kingdom of Gilboa
which is a lot like modern-day New York except with an absolute monarchy and divine will and the like. It's a very pretty kingdom. Filled with very pretty people.
Major Characters:
This is our hero, David Shepherd. (Get the symbolic name yet? Don't worry, you will.) He lives on a farm, with his mom, Jessie, and his six older brothers. His dad died in the Unification War, it's very sad, feel bad for him. He's cute andas bland and whitewashed as primetime heroes tend to be a little naive.
People like David. A lot.
This is King Silas Benjamin. As the name suggests, he's the King of Gilboa. He wasn't always, he started out as a footsoldier, worked his way up in the military, and then after winning the Unification War got himself declared absolute monarch. Because it was God's will.
Silas is often endearing, warm, and jovial. He loves his kids (although he seems to prefer Michelle to Jack). He cooks breakfast in the mornings. He stops at ice-cream trucks. He's also a manipulator, has a massive ego, and, oh, yeah, has a second family --
his mistress Helen (who is far too awesome for him), and his illegitimate son, who's very ill.
This is Queen Rose Benjamin, Silas's wife. She is even more manipulative than her husband, possibly because she pretends not to care about politics but is really the power behind everything that happens. She fixates on small details. She's very charming and totally badass. In short: Awesome Personified.
She does things like frame her aide for stealing her cell phone in order to leak stuff to the press that will make her kid look good. More on that later.
This is Prince Jonathan Benjamin, better known as Jack. He's the next in line for the throne, and very aware of it. He has an image as a 'party prince', a womanizer and drinker and partier, which he plays up to the press a lot, but he's actually a very good soldier who has earned the respect of his company.
Jack likes boys. Everyone who knows this little fact is very invested in keeping it a secret. Because you can't be King and gay, apparently. Poor Jack.
This is Joseph. He loves Jack. Jack loves him. They can't be together because Jack's dad sucks. It's very sad.
This is Princess Michelle Benjamin. Princessing is hard work. She's absolutely the least manipulative of her family, although she's not above using people to her own ends. She's trying to push a health care reform on the system, but her dad doesn't want to hear it. At some point in the past she took a vow that has still not been explained but is apparently plot-important.
Michelle likes David. A lot.
This is Thomasina. She's the palace secretary and aide-de-camp to the Royal Family. She pretty much runs everything and knows everything and owns everyone. She's kickass and snarky and gorgeous and competent and just basically WIN on so many levels.
We love her. A lot.
This is Reverend Ephram Samuels. A man of God. A prophet. Ridiculously cool. He used to think Silas was chosen by God to be King, but now he thinks God has withdrawn His favor and put it on David instead.
Other minor but significant characters:
William Cross, the Queen's brother and the money behind the throne. He is somehow responsible for setting up Silas and Rose's marriage (and forcing Silas to give up Helen in order to be king, IDK) and helped Silas become king in the first place. When he doesn't like Silas's policy decisions he threatens to pull the money.
Jessie Shepherd, David's mom. She mostly shows up to complain about the system and prove that not everybody loves King Silas.
Eli Shepherd, one of David's brothers. Died in the recent war with Galt. More on that later. Ridiculously cute, likes video games and beer.
General Linus Abner. The head of Gilboa's military. Doesn't trust David as far as he can throw him.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, the palace guards. They're not really named Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, but they haven't been named onscreen and...you know fandom. Mostly used for comic relief. They're really adorable.
Okay, that's a brief overview of the characters, here's a quick and dirty rundown of the plot so far:
The plot really starts when David and his brother Eli join the Gilboan army to fight in the war against Gath. There's some stuff that happens before it, but it's mostly setting up the worldbuilding and establishing David as Chosen. The important stuff starts during the war.
David and Eli are both decent soldiers. They hear that the Gath have captured a few Gilboan soldiers and are holding them hostage; they're under orders not to do anything about it, because Gilboa does not negotiate for hostages.
David disobeys orders, sneaks into the Gath camp in the middle of the night, and frees the hostages, one of whom is badly wounded. On their way back to the Gilboan camp, they get noticed. David tells the hostages to get to safety and faces down a Goliath tank. Mostly by sheer luck, he manages to destroy it and become a national hero.
(Do you get the symbolism yet?? Do you?? ...I never claimed the show was subtle.)
David makes it back to his camp, the hostages are taken care of, and King Silas shows up on a helicopter to rush to the wounded soldier, crying, "Is he all right?" and so forth. And David realizes he just saved the Crown Prince.
Yea, national hero!
So David gets whisked away to Shiloh, the capital city, and gets shined up and shown off to the press and called a hero a lot. He also gets to hang out with the royal family. Jack is vaguely resentful of him ("I know, I get taken hostage and almost get killed and they're throwing you a party, mysteries of the palace"), Michelle is infatuated, Rose is vaguely distrustful but thinks he's harmless and stupid, Silas thinks he's the Best Thing Ever, and Samuels watches quietly. If David looks like a dork in some of those pictures it's only because he totally is.
Because of all this, David gets promoted to captain and gets a cushy post as military liason to the press. Jack is pissed off because that should have been his job.
David holds a press conference and is very awkward, but he defends Jack's actions in the field and tries to push Michelle's health care reform, which is adorable. Then he finds out his old unit (including his brother Eli, remember him?) is being attacked. Then Gath offers a truce. Yeah, it all pretty much happens like that.
Jack is even more pissed off when he finds out he's being transferred to an intelligence job in the city and promoted to major -- he sees it as his dad saying, yep, Jack can't handle being out in the field.
This is one of my favorite scenes ever so I'm gonna recap it IN DETAIL.
Jack tells his dad that if he's going to be king, if he's going to stand up and tell the "butterfly story" about being chosen to lead, then he has to be a war hero who's been in charge of his unit. He asks if it's his "party prince" image. He says that shouldn't matter, because it's just a front, it's not who he really is. He says he's a good soldier, and his men trusted him, and he needs to be able to prove that he's worthy of that.
Silas tells Jack that he wishes Jack was a party prince. What he wouldn't give for a son who goes through women like Kleenex. Instead he's got a son who has no interest in women.
"What you do at night, with your boys, after your show of skirt-chasing...it's a disgrace." And "I wouldn't care if you were the second son, but if you want to be King, you cannot be as God made you." Really painful stuff.
Silas leaves. Jack struggles against tears and shock.
It's very painful to watch. Also very powerful. Jack's my favorite so far, can you tell?
William insists that Gilboa needs the war, financially speaking, and pressures Silas to reject the truce. Which he does. David is pissed. Silas doesn't care. Samuels informs Silas that he's lost God's favor. Silas doesn't care.
David goes back up to the front to see Eli, who's dying. Eli's dying words are "Be brave now". David goes into meltdown and walks onto the front lines with his brother's bloody bedsheets, screaming that if the Gath need blood they can have Eli's, or they can have his, but this is it, this has to stop now. And it looks like they're gonna shoot him down, but then a Gath soldier comes out and talks to him and they work out a truce.
It's really an incredibly powerful scene, I didn't do it very much justice.
Silas pretends this was his plan all along and tells William to go screw himself. William decides to pull all the gold out of the royal treasury in revenge and we find out that he's converted Jack to his side in making-Silas-look-bad.
(Also, because I promised to talk about, a subplot of the first episode was Rose trying to find her missing cellphone. At the end, Thomasina turns up in front of the press with it and a red bra and says she found them in the backseat of Jack's car. Rose frames her aide for it, and lets the press run with the story to make Jack look like a womanizer. Because then they won't suspect that he likes boys. You get it.)
David decides to stay in the city. Michelle likes that. In the garden, David gets crowned by monarch butterflies, signifying that he's been chosen by God as the new king. It's actually really cheesy looking, but the pissed-off expression on Silas's face totally makes it.
That's all in the pilot, by the way.
In the next episode, there's a lot of drama with David getting prophetic dreams and trying to help negotiate the truce with Gath 'cause they keep looking for excuses to break it. Jack gets pissy about being left out of the truce and, both to irritate his dad and to help William out by getting news of the bankrupt treasury into the press, takes his unit out shopping. Yes, shopping. He buys them lots of things and hooks them up with pretty salesladies. Then shows off to the press when the saleslady reluctantly tells him that his card's been declined. It's really cute and really creepy at the same time. Silas goes and talks to the former king of a kingdom that he conquered and blackmails him into giving up where his former gold is hidden. The treasury is thus restocked and William's plot is thwarted for the moment. David considers leaving Shiloh, but in the end elects to stay. An assassination attempt on David's life is thwarted by...pigeons. He's chosen by God so you can't just kill him off. You get it, right? (Seriously, not a subtle show for the most part.)
In the most recent episode, Jack takes David and a couple of David's old soldier buddies out for a night on the town. He claims it's because he wants to be friends with the golden boy but it's mostly because he wants to make David look bad. He hooks David up with sleazy girls and gets the press on it and then leaks the photos. Jack also briefly meets up with his boyfriend, Joseph, and unceremoniously ends things. ("If I didn't call you, there's a reason. Take a hint.") He tries really hard to sound heartless about it, but as soon as Joseph is gone he breaks down and winds up picking a fight and daring people to hit him and just completely losing control. Later, the girl Jack set David up with tells him that she couldn't seduce David because he's too in love with Michelle. "He's in love and he can't let go. He's not like you at all." Jack totally flips out at her and throws all the girls out of his apartment, clearly in a lot of emotional pain. Michelle, meanwhile, is hooking up with a guy named Paul in order to try and get financial support for her health care reform idea, then gets pissed when she finds out her mother set her up in an attempt to get her to let go of David. Rose is busy with the Royal Ballet. Silas is busy with his illegitimate family, as the son is very ill -- he thinks he's being punished by God, and when Samuels tells him that God demands a sacrifice, Silas ends up killing a deer and then giving up contact with the mistress and son. (This is a very Old Testament God we're dealing with.) It's incredibly powerful and incredibly creepy: "Is this what You need? Something beautiful has to die for You to be happy?" But the kid gets better.
RANDOM NOTES AND PICSPAMS:
I did mention that he's my favorite so far, right?
The symbolism in this show is...it's not subtle. At all. Subtlety, what's that. It's just the right level of cheese for me.
Lookit all the pretty.
Resources:
Watch the show on Hulu, NBC.com, or iTunes.
LJ Comms:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
kings_tv
kings_graphics
kings_fic
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
david_michelle
jackxdavid
kingsnewsletter
Also, TWoP is recapping it!
Screencaps bymarishna.
Way not-dialup-friendly.
We begin our story in the far-off kingdom of Gilboa
which is a lot like modern-day New York except with an absolute monarchy and divine will and the like. It's a very pretty kingdom. Filled with very pretty people.
Major Characters:
This is our hero, David Shepherd. (Get the symbolic name yet? Don't worry, you will.) He lives on a farm, with his mom, Jessie, and his six older brothers. His dad died in the Unification War, it's very sad, feel bad for him. He's cute and
People like David. A lot.
This is King Silas Benjamin. As the name suggests, he's the King of Gilboa. He wasn't always, he started out as a footsoldier, worked his way up in the military, and then after winning the Unification War got himself declared absolute monarch. Because it was God's will.
Silas is often endearing, warm, and jovial. He loves his kids (although he seems to prefer Michelle to Jack). He cooks breakfast in the mornings. He stops at ice-cream trucks. He's also a manipulator, has a massive ego, and, oh, yeah, has a second family --
his mistress Helen (who is far too awesome for him), and his illegitimate son, who's very ill.
This is Queen Rose Benjamin, Silas's wife. She is even more manipulative than her husband, possibly because she pretends not to care about politics but is really the power behind everything that happens. She fixates on small details. She's very charming and totally badass. In short: Awesome Personified.
She does things like frame her aide for stealing her cell phone in order to leak stuff to the press that will make her kid look good. More on that later.
This is Prince Jonathan Benjamin, better known as Jack. He's the next in line for the throne, and very aware of it. He has an image as a 'party prince', a womanizer and drinker and partier, which he plays up to the press a lot, but he's actually a very good soldier who has earned the respect of his company.
Jack likes boys. Everyone who knows this little fact is very invested in keeping it a secret. Because you can't be King and gay, apparently. Poor Jack.
This is Joseph. He loves Jack. Jack loves him. They can't be together because Jack's dad sucks. It's very sad.
This is Princess Michelle Benjamin. Princessing is hard work. She's absolutely the least manipulative of her family, although she's not above using people to her own ends. She's trying to push a health care reform on the system, but her dad doesn't want to hear it. At some point in the past she took a vow that has still not been explained but is apparently plot-important.
Michelle likes David. A lot.
This is Thomasina. She's the palace secretary and aide-de-camp to the Royal Family. She pretty much runs everything and knows everything and owns everyone. She's kickass and snarky and gorgeous and competent and just basically WIN on so many levels.
We love her. A lot.
This is Reverend Ephram Samuels. A man of God. A prophet. Ridiculously cool. He used to think Silas was chosen by God to be King, but now he thinks God has withdrawn His favor and put it on David instead.
Other minor but significant characters:
William Cross, the Queen's brother and the money behind the throne. He is somehow responsible for setting up Silas and Rose's marriage (and forcing Silas to give up Helen in order to be king, IDK) and helped Silas become king in the first place. When he doesn't like Silas's policy decisions he threatens to pull the money.
Jessie Shepherd, David's mom. She mostly shows up to complain about the system and prove that not everybody loves King Silas.
Eli Shepherd, one of David's brothers. Died in the recent war with Galt. More on that later. Ridiculously cute, likes video games and beer.
General Linus Abner. The head of Gilboa's military. Doesn't trust David as far as he can throw him.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, the palace guards. They're not really named Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, but they haven't been named onscreen and...you know fandom. Mostly used for comic relief. They're really adorable.
Okay, that's a brief overview of the characters, here's a quick and dirty rundown of the plot so far:
The plot really starts when David and his brother Eli join the Gilboan army to fight in the war against Gath. There's some stuff that happens before it, but it's mostly setting up the worldbuilding and establishing David as Chosen. The important stuff starts during the war.
David and Eli are both decent soldiers. They hear that the Gath have captured a few Gilboan soldiers and are holding them hostage; they're under orders not to do anything about it, because Gilboa does not negotiate for hostages.
David disobeys orders, sneaks into the Gath camp in the middle of the night, and frees the hostages, one of whom is badly wounded. On their way back to the Gilboan camp, they get noticed. David tells the hostages to get to safety and faces down a Goliath tank. Mostly by sheer luck, he manages to destroy it and become a national hero.
(Do you get the symbolism yet?? Do you?? ...I never claimed the show was subtle.)
David makes it back to his camp, the hostages are taken care of, and King Silas shows up on a helicopter to rush to the wounded soldier, crying, "Is he all right?" and so forth. And David realizes he just saved the Crown Prince.
Yea, national hero!
So David gets whisked away to Shiloh, the capital city, and gets shined up and shown off to the press and called a hero a lot. He also gets to hang out with the royal family. Jack is vaguely resentful of him ("I know, I get taken hostage and almost get killed and they're throwing you a party, mysteries of the palace"), Michelle is infatuated, Rose is vaguely distrustful but thinks he's harmless and stupid, Silas thinks he's the Best Thing Ever, and Samuels watches quietly. If David looks like a dork in some of those pictures it's only because he totally is.
Because of all this, David gets promoted to captain and gets a cushy post as military liason to the press. Jack is pissed off because that should have been his job.
David holds a press conference and is very awkward, but he defends Jack's actions in the field and tries to push Michelle's health care reform, which is adorable. Then he finds out his old unit (including his brother Eli, remember him?) is being attacked. Then Gath offers a truce. Yeah, it all pretty much happens like that.
Jack is even more pissed off when he finds out he's being transferred to an intelligence job in the city and promoted to major -- he sees it as his dad saying, yep, Jack can't handle being out in the field.
This is one of my favorite scenes ever so I'm gonna recap it IN DETAIL.
Jack tells his dad that if he's going to be king, if he's going to stand up and tell the "butterfly story" about being chosen to lead, then he has to be a war hero who's been in charge of his unit. He asks if it's his "party prince" image. He says that shouldn't matter, because it's just a front, it's not who he really is. He says he's a good soldier, and his men trusted him, and he needs to be able to prove that he's worthy of that.
Silas tells Jack that he wishes Jack was a party prince. What he wouldn't give for a son who goes through women like Kleenex. Instead he's got a son who has no interest in women.
"What you do at night, with your boys, after your show of skirt-chasing...it's a disgrace." And "I wouldn't care if you were the second son, but if you want to be King, you cannot be as God made you." Really painful stuff.
Silas leaves. Jack struggles against tears and shock.
It's very painful to watch. Also very powerful. Jack's my favorite so far, can you tell?
William insists that Gilboa needs the war, financially speaking, and pressures Silas to reject the truce. Which he does. David is pissed. Silas doesn't care. Samuels informs Silas that he's lost God's favor. Silas doesn't care.
David goes back up to the front to see Eli, who's dying. Eli's dying words are "Be brave now". David goes into meltdown and walks onto the front lines with his brother's bloody bedsheets, screaming that if the Gath need blood they can have Eli's, or they can have his, but this is it, this has to stop now. And it looks like they're gonna shoot him down, but then a Gath soldier comes out and talks to him and they work out a truce.
It's really an incredibly powerful scene, I didn't do it very much justice.
Silas pretends this was his plan all along and tells William to go screw himself. William decides to pull all the gold out of the royal treasury in revenge and we find out that he's converted Jack to his side in making-Silas-look-bad.
(Also, because I promised to talk about, a subplot of the first episode was Rose trying to find her missing cellphone. At the end, Thomasina turns up in front of the press with it and a red bra and says she found them in the backseat of Jack's car. Rose frames her aide for it, and lets the press run with the story to make Jack look like a womanizer. Because then they won't suspect that he likes boys. You get it.)
David decides to stay in the city. Michelle likes that. In the garden, David gets crowned by monarch butterflies, signifying that he's been chosen by God as the new king. It's actually really cheesy looking, but the pissed-off expression on Silas's face totally makes it.
That's all in the pilot, by the way.
In the next episode, there's a lot of drama with David getting prophetic dreams and trying to help negotiate the truce with Gath 'cause they keep looking for excuses to break it. Jack gets pissy about being left out of the truce and, both to irritate his dad and to help William out by getting news of the bankrupt treasury into the press, takes his unit out shopping. Yes, shopping. He buys them lots of things and hooks them up with pretty salesladies. Then shows off to the press when the saleslady reluctantly tells him that his card's been declined. It's really cute and really creepy at the same time. Silas goes and talks to the former king of a kingdom that he conquered and blackmails him into giving up where his former gold is hidden. The treasury is thus restocked and William's plot is thwarted for the moment. David considers leaving Shiloh, but in the end elects to stay. An assassination attempt on David's life is thwarted by...pigeons. He's chosen by God so you can't just kill him off. You get it, right? (Seriously, not a subtle show for the most part.)
In the most recent episode, Jack takes David and a couple of David's old soldier buddies out for a night on the town. He claims it's because he wants to be friends with the golden boy but it's mostly because he wants to make David look bad. He hooks David up with sleazy girls and gets the press on it and then leaks the photos. Jack also briefly meets up with his boyfriend, Joseph, and unceremoniously ends things. ("If I didn't call you, there's a reason. Take a hint.") He tries really hard to sound heartless about it, but as soon as Joseph is gone he breaks down and winds up picking a fight and daring people to hit him and just completely losing control. Later, the girl Jack set David up with tells him that she couldn't seduce David because he's too in love with Michelle. "He's in love and he can't let go. He's not like you at all." Jack totally flips out at her and throws all the girls out of his apartment, clearly in a lot of emotional pain. Michelle, meanwhile, is hooking up with a guy named Paul in order to try and get financial support for her health care reform idea, then gets pissed when she finds out her mother set her up in an attempt to get her to let go of David. Rose is busy with the Royal Ballet. Silas is busy with his illegitimate family, as the son is very ill -- he thinks he's being punished by God, and when Samuels tells him that God demands a sacrifice, Silas ends up killing a deer and then giving up contact with the mistress and son. (This is a very Old Testament God we're dealing with.) It's incredibly powerful and incredibly creepy: "Is this what You need? Something beautiful has to die for You to be happy?" But the kid gets better.
RANDOM NOTES AND PICSPAMS:
I did mention that he's my favorite so far, right?
The symbolism in this show is...it's not subtle. At all. Subtlety, what's that. It's just the right level of cheese for me.
Lookit all the pretty.
Resources:
Watch the show on Hulu, NBC.com, or iTunes.
LJ Comms:
kings_tvkings_graphicskings_ficdavid_michellejackxdavidkingsnewsletterAlso, TWoP is recapping it!
Screencaps by
marishna.Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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I loved it! It's so amazingly pretty and JACK IS MY FAVOURITE TOO. LOL.
(Don't forget
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(I totally meant to put that in! *headdesk* Edited it in, because it's a great resource. <3)
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This = ♥
Totally memming and pimping to like everyone.
Brilliant XD
Jack's totally my favourite as well!
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Glad you liked. XD
Jack's so awesome! I love him so much, it's ridiculous. ♥
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but really, the Queen !!!!!!!!!!
she beats everything and everyone!
even David and Reverend Samuels!
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+MEMS.
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