La_Guera said:
Dear DL fans,
For some time now, I have heard you countering well-founded objections to D/L with this pearl of wisdom: "Majority rules, and the majority of fans like D/L."
Statistics, if you please. I want to see your polling data to support this claim. Did CBS mayhap conduct a phone poll? An online poll? Did they Fedex questionnaires to viewers? On what are you basing this assumption? Your personal beliefs and preferences don't count as unassailable facts.
I suspect that the casual viewing public is indifferent to D/L, and if the sliding ratings from the latter half of S3 are any indication, they're growing indifferent to the rest of the show as well. It is only in the online fen that shipping preferences matter a whit, and those seem to be evenly split between D/L and anti-D/L, with a minute segment decrying pairings at all. So where is this majority of which you speak?
Further, allow me to disabuse you of the notion of majority rule. It doesn't, and it hasn't for a very long time, and never mind what your underpaid civics teacher told you. The U.S. has been in the hands of oligarchical lobbyists since the Industrial Revolution, and TV is ruled by producers, who, like any fanboys, support their favorite ponies and pet projects in the face of overwhelming dislike. In short, D/L's unrelenting progress moves forward because someone responsible for the show has a raging, indecent hardon for it, and your voice matters as much as that of the naysayers, which is to say not at all. D/L will continue as long as the producers squee over it, or until the rating plunge is too precipitous to ignore. By which time it will be too late for the show, of course. Most of the dedicated fanbase that have been with the show since S1 are already drifting to other fandoms.
So, by all means, enjoy the canonization of your ship, but don't think for one minute that you had anything to do with it. You didn't, and the instant TPTB get bored or the pairing becomes a ratings albatross because viewers can't stomach spineless Danny Messer, they'll reverse course so fast they'll leave Nielsen boxes smoldering in their wake.
La_Guera, you know this isn't the place for this. We're here to discuss the show, not fans of the show. Let's not try to bring hostility to the forum when there's no need for it. A lot of people love this place because it allows both praise and criticism of the show, and it's a place where people can freely express both without being made to feel bad about what they like/dislike. Please, let's keep it that way. That goes for everyone here. Thank you.
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Back to the spoilers...
I love the idea of Flack having to arrest his own girlfriend! That would be a hell of a twist in the episode, if she turned out to somehow be behind it all. With all the bad/bored rich people committing crimes on the CSI shows, I wouldn't be totally surprised if this turned out to be the case...