Daniel Daronda

I am writing this late at night because I'm distressed and must get this out. So I've been watching tv shows on netflix after Tommy goes to bed and boredom plus wanting a fairly short series led me to randomly give Daniel Daronda a try. Now, I have not read the book so I don't know if things are different there. I was only ever mildly interested in this story, but was never disinterested enough to stop watching. But the last episode just really surprised me. As if there were two writes and up till this point one of them had won and written the story his way, but towards the end grew tired and let the second one get his way a few times. And it's upsetting.

Not all of my recent netflix watches have been bad. I thoroughly enjoyed Vampire Diaries season 4. hehe, Ian Somerhalder... teehee... And I very much enjoyed "Wives and Daughters", I even cried happy tears at the end. Once Upon a Time is another I watched, but it deserves it's own post, and at another time as I have a lot to say about it. Also watched Merlin, which was good but cut short, I hear, because of disagreements between writes and actors or something? Either way the ending was rushed and felt out of place and unreal.

The rest of this post will have spoilers for Daniel Daronda.

So throughout the whole thing Daniel and Gwen are this close to being madly in love with each other. The almost kisses that they dare not ever actually have because if they do it could threaten to tear them from existence and throw them into their own world of love and passion from whence there'd be no return. But then at the end he looks at her like "Wow, she is such a broken woman, I don't want to fix all that" at the same time he's promising to help her and be "faithful" to her. She even tells him that if she left her husband she'd need someone, would he be that someone. And he says yes. What else are we supposed to take that for but that he's agreeing to marry her if she left her husband? And then he randomly decides that "Oh, I found out my birth mother is a jew therefore I must marry a jew." Like his adoptive father says, "Is this some perverse reaction to what you learned from your mother" or however he worded it. I thought Mirah was kind of boring, plain, and I really wasn't sure where that part of the story was heading. I thought he viewed Mirah as a sort of crush, but that he loved Gwen. And then at the end he basically tells Gwen "Sorry, I lied, haha, have fun living out your life of desolation, try to put a smile on, will ya?" I mean, I am glad Gwen gets the chance to heal from her horrid marriage. (which, btw, I foresaw her killing her husband pretty early on) But she should have been healing by being with Daniel. She looked to him with such desperation. She is strong, though, so at the end I got the feeling that just living with her family again was enough, but she should have had more. Daniels abandonment of her probably means she will never remarry or love again. To me, Gwen is the main character of this show. At times I had to actually remind myself, the title of the show is Daniel. Not Gwen. And if the story was not going to end with Gwen and Daniel WHY was she such a big character? If he was going to wind up with Mirah why maker her a minor, sort of irritating, side character? Why did the plot description on netflix say "Daniel's life changes forever when he meets Gwen". What does that indicate if not a romance?

I also don't understand why Daniel went out east. "To learn more about my people", he says. Well, he already has a community of them at hand, and he has that history book he picked up that he could read. He was brought up as an English gentleman and could easily get into politics or law or some such. Wouldn't his position in British politics be where he could do the most good for "his people"? Not traipsing about the middle east? Since he so badly wants to "be a leader" and help them out of their plight.

And maybe the book is different. I'll never know cause I don't think it's worth the money. Maybe if the library has it I'll check it out. But I'm not interested right now, and I don't think I will be for a while.