Came via a torchwood_house rec, and I have to comment about how good this is. Pretty much all you said here was exactly or something similar to how I felt or viewed CoE and aspects of earlier TW. I just don't have the talent and/or patience to write as articulately as you do.
I remember watching it the first time through and after getting over the initial emotional response of "WTF?!" and epic sadness at Ianto dying and Jack ultimately deciding to bugger off, I saw that as much as it hurt to see Ianto die and learn in pretty stark detail what kind of person Jack used to be, as much as it made me sad, it rang completely true. And while it doesn't make me happy, I can't not respect the story because of that. CoE felt, after some refection, to really be a concentrated dose of what TW is really about. As you said toward the top, they dealt with many of the issues presented in CoE in earlier TW eps.--life is all there is so make the most of it, life is full of shit choices and sometimes there is no "good" choice, only shitty and shittier choices, you ultimately need to own up to your choices because, you know, consequences are a bitch--but because they told the story over 5 episodes instead of 13, it was straight to business, no faffing about please.
So yeah, I don't know if that makes much sense--I swear, it did in my head!--but I want to thank you for putting the time and effort into this and sharing it with the LJ community because it's thoughtful examinations of canon and dramatic story telling techniques like this that make this fandom a nice place to hang out.
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I remember watching it the first time through and after getting over the initial emotional response of "WTF?!" and epic sadness at Ianto dying and Jack ultimately deciding to bugger off, I saw that as much as it hurt to see Ianto die and learn in pretty stark detail what kind of person Jack used to be, as much as it made me sad, it rang completely true. And while it doesn't make me happy, I can't not respect the story because of that. CoE felt, after some refection, to really be a concentrated dose of what TW is really about. As you said toward the top, they dealt with many of the issues presented in CoE in earlier TW eps.--life is all there is so make the most of it, life is full of shit choices and sometimes there is no "good" choice, only shitty and shittier choices, you ultimately need to own up to your choices because, you know, consequences are a bitch--but because they told the story over 5 episodes instead of 13, it was straight to business, no faffing about please.
So yeah, I don't know if that makes much sense--I swear, it did in my head!--but I want to thank you for putting the time and effort into this and sharing it with the LJ community because it's thoughtful examinations of canon and dramatic story telling techniques like this that make this fandom a nice place to hang out.