Why Lindsay REALLY Must Go (Pt. 2)

You have no idea how happy I am. This place has been a morgue lately, so I really just came online to do a brief mod-like drive-by and then ... BINGO! Sweet little discussion here. Anna being reduced to a recurring character would be the best move ever. I'm not sending flowers until the character is actually killed off and the suckitude ceases once and for all, but any minimization of fan suffering is a beautiful thing.

 

HURRAY!HURRAY!HURRAY! Throws confetti in the air Please, please,please, please, please let this be so. I have everything crossed, my lucky leprechaun on a string and my 3 leaf clover. I was beginning to give up on Season 4 making up for some of Season 2 and Season 3 (we all know which parts!!!)
BTW I volunteer to emancipate (think that's the correct word!) Danny's bits from L's lair. Anyone else care to join me, should be a bit easier now, and you never know there might be a substantial reward :lol:

 

:lol: Erm, I assume you are talking about any items of clothing he may have left at Lindsay's place rather than what (my filthy mind) first thought you meant by this statement. :devil: :lol:

Potential reduced screentime for Lindsay? I'll believe it when I see it (or hopefully not see it in this instance).

 

I don’t like Lindsay. The writing for the character was bad and Anna’s acting is worse. So the less screen time she gets the better.

Unfortunately less screen time will not save us from the crappy D/L storyline. I hate what this storyline did to the character of Danny Messer. They transformed him into a love-sick doormat to fit into this chemistry free relationship.

So dropping Anna to recurring status and hopefully reducing her screen time would be a step in the right direction but it would definitely be better to just kill her off.

I mean there are so many possibilities to get rid of her. They could bring Daniel Katums back. She could simply die in a car accident. She could fall from a skyscraper (there are lots in NY, aren’t there?). It mustn’t really be realistic. Hell, she could be abducted by aliens. I wouldn’t care as long as she would be gone for good.

I'm sorry if this doesn’t make any sense. I knew what I wanted to say but my crappy English doesn’t want to cooperate.

 

Simply put: When you have a stellar regular and recurring cast like they have on CSI: NY, the weakest link is going to be buried in each and every scene they’re in. Anna Belknap is a succubus to every scene she’s in. The awkwardness of being ‘the new girl’ should have worn off after her third episode, but it was still present in her scenes last season. She just made scenes ‘weird’.

It’s too long to pick apart each scene to say where she went wrong, but the one that stands out in my mind is her lame delivery of the line “But, she killed him,” to Stella in the first episode of the season People With Money. It was whiney and childish. It still grates on my mind to this day. It set the tone for what to expect this past season and she lived up to it.

The bottom line is that TPTB ruined a character that could have been salvaged by good acting. They bought her in as an investigator who specialized in blood splatter. Never have they asked Lindsay for her expertise on the matter. Clearly, it became the ‘Crusade to Get Danny Laid’ and character development took the back seat. If anything, I’d say that putting all of Lindsay’s developmental scenes with Carmine Giovinazzo was much to Anna’s detriment. The backhand side of D/L is that she just gets overshadowed by Carmine and it really shows.

It’s not intended to be a shot at Anna Belknap’s acting skill, but her inability to portray Lindsay Monroe as an essential member of the team is glaring. If you got rid of her, people will still tune in. That’s how important she is to the show.. to me anyways.

 

There is no way I'm going to allow my hopes to get up. If you're let down it's a long way to fall with a painful landing.

Just for the heck of it I decided to see what the Lindsay Fans are saying and most of them are sure it was a typo. Considering how often Lindsay appears in the spoilers I have a sickening feeling that they're right.

And LivingEnd makes a good point: Even if the demotion *is* true it still won't save us from D/L Hell.

Maybe I'll skip this season and stick with my Season One DVDs. I'll check Top41's episode reviews to see if anything big happends(like Lindsay falling on a working chainsaw.What? I want to make sure that the character stays dead) Or Danny getting back on the promotion grid, or Hawkes getting some lovin'.

 

Disclaimer: The following is my opinion. Take it or leave it, but it's mine and it won't hurt you--really, truly, honestly.

Alrighty. You know, I've been thinking about Lindsay (and by extension, Anna) recently, especially with the snafu about this 'mistake' in the casting list. So I thought about why I don't like the character, actress or, naturally, Danny/Lindsay as a pairing, since that always comes along with Lindsay as part of the package deal. This is essentially a re-hash of things I've said over time, so I apologize for that. But maybe newer members of the board have things to add.

I didn't dislike Lindsay initially. I loved "Medical Investigation" and was excited to see an actress from that show on NY. Truth be told, when I looked her up, I couldn't remember for the life of me who she was (and when I did remember who she was, I recalled not liking the character on "MI" very much--or even knowing her purpose for a while, actually), but anyway…

I'm sure I was gung-ho for her in the beginning, and I don't think I had any particular bias against the idea of her and Danny flirting with each other. I might have even been into it. It's as time wore on that I started to dislike her.

No, I'm not jealous of Lindsay getting to be with Danny (and by extension, Carmine). I think my comments about wishing to see Danny hook up with Angell, Maka, Nixon Suicide--even Aiden--should show that I'm not against giving Danny some female nookie. Not all of my opinions are dictated by my preferred ship (namely, Danny/Flack). I can enjoy something that will never happen because I simply enjoy it. I can joke about it happening, but I am not stupid--this is CBS, and at this moment in time, it just ain't in the stars. Fay is a big girl, she understands this. I promise.

Ultimately, the idea that I would base my dislike for a character on her getting laid by a certain other character or for being a cock-block for my ship of choice is, to put things mildly, really f*cking ridiculous. I have another pet pairing that will never see the light of day, and my initial response upon hearing that one member of said ship might have a romantic interest on the show was not "ohmigawd, I must hate her!"--to quote one of my posts from the spoiler thread: "She really can be [cute with (name)], I hope they cast someone great for her. If they're going to be in a relationship, I hope they have good on-screen chemistry. But, of course, I hope they don't make all of (name)'s scenes about her or never develop her beyond the relationship with him. I suppose that time will tell..."

Clearly, I can survive when my ships are made more difficult by canon (never impossible--nothing is impossible with fiction). So my dislike for Lindsay is not due to my dislike for Danny in a relationship with her. I can separate character from actor--the actor is unattainable and the character is fictional. Pervy comments on message boards aside, I can separate fantasy from reality. And if all I wanted was to fantasize about a fictional character or the unattainable actor that played him, the obvious choice is to pretend I'm Lindsay. *shrug* End of story.

It's not D/L, although I think that's a ball of crap that's not doing anything unique or spectacular with the characters involved. It's Lindsay. Lindsay is not D/L, she is an individual character. The character has been shoddily developed, and I've found very little to make me warm up to her. If, after nearly two years, I can't like her, I'm not confident that I ever will. Sad to say, but true nonetheless. Even with the character that's been written, I might be able to like her (or even be very fond of her) if the acting made up for it. Fact is, it doesn't.

Now, that's not to say Anna is the worst actress ever--heaven knows I've seen some people on soap operas that I don't want touching CSI:NY with a ten-foot pole. However, I'm baffled at the concept that she'd be the best one that tried out for the role. I've seen guest stars on the show that were so damn good! And then there are examples like Sid or Adam that start out as 'maybe' characters and end up being definite 'yes' characters because the writing and the acting just mesh to make work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no actress--but I'm also not getting paid to be one on a major television network. Anna might be a 'professional', but so are the soap opera actors I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Food for thought.

The snafu with the cast list for the fourth season premiere may have been a typo, but for me personally, I don't think the switch was a mistake.

[/long-ass post]

 

Wow, great post Faylinn. You sum it up pretty well and I agree with most of it.

Here is my problem. I don’t like Lindsay as an individual character for the reasons you gave. The writing for her was as inconsistent over the last two seasons as it could be. It is as if she has a split personality or something. And Anna’s acting is just not good enough to make up for the writing. However I guess I could ignore that. I could probably deal with her or just mute the TV and look somewhere else whenever she is on screen. But she is also part of D/L. And the most annoying thing for me is that they sacrificed Danny’s character to give her development.

 

I also agree, Faylinn. And, I’ve seen your posts and others’ posts so eloquently stating the same thing—Lindsay Must Go!

For people to assume that a person is jealous of Lindsay is plain out absurd. Actually, it’s borderline insulting. Lindsay is a fictional character after all. Lindsay doesn’t have to be involved in any kind of romance on the show for people to not like her. The character wasn’t well written and when they tried to amend it by writing a story just for her, the actress failed to deliver. I was prepared to give Lindsay another chance- Anna just had a baby and was fired up to blow everyone out the water with a great performance in Sleight of Hand. What I got was so bad it was almost laughable. :lol:

I’m going to go back and say that pairing Lindsay up with Danny was a mistake, not for any ‘ship’ or Danny’s 'mature' development. Still can't figure out why maturity is based on the introduction of another person in your love life, but if some D/L shippers say so... It was a disservice to Anna Belknap because had she not been paired with the most popular actor on the show, she could have hid under the radar with her sub-par acting and no one would have noticed.

And yes, I'd take Adam Ross over Lindsay Monroe any day of the week because AJ Buckley rocks! And he can act too.

 

Fantastic post, Fay! I hate when D/L lovers think people who dislike Lindsay base their feelings on D/L. I think all mature Danny fans would truly enjoy watching him get with the right person of either sex (yes, we do accept that he's hetero). It's not about that. Praying for Lindsay's departure from the show has nothing to do with D/L. In fact, if Lindsay tragically fell onto the subway track one morning on her way to work, we'd *still* be stuck with D/L in the sense that we'd have to watch Danny moan his loss for the next five seasons. BUT we would be free of the character and that's what it's really about. The character is unlikeable and the acting does nothing to turn that around.

Linday MUST go. Not in any relation to D/L. On her own individual merits, or lack thereof.

 

I have to disagree. I think Anna's subpar acting goes beyond D/L. It would have been noticed as soon as the storyline required her to show any sort of emotion. Unfortunately the D/L pairing just means that there are more opportunities for her inadequacies to be noticed and for us to be subjected to them. Whilst, as Fay has mentioned, Anna isn't the worst actress to ever grace our screens, in my opinion the only suitable role for her on a show such as CSI:NY would be as a (very) occassional lab tech or some such role that would require little more than the occassional line of dialogue.

AJ Buckley. Proof that, even in a small role, if you are good enough you will be rewarded. In terms of screentime there could be a lot said for swapping AJ and Anna's over. He's a man that lights up the screen.

 

Most of my arguments why Lindsay should be erased from this serie has been said here before, so I won't repeat them. Just like to add that Lindsay could have been a good character if there had been something stable in her. I understood what it was a bipolar unmade character the moment I saw two episodes with her. You can't really made her be sweet in a chapter, angsty in another, angry in another, undecided in other, and still make her take all different personalities in the rainbow. I'm not talking about her status in the moment, I'm talking about the PERSONALITY. Like anybody real, a character should have one, maybe made with three diferents united in a combination, but just one. She changed it depending the needs.

Part of this mistake wasn't exactly from script, Anna has lots of blame in this. When you're an actress you gotta examine your characer so you can do it, you gotta point all the possibles mistakes (let's remember there are dozens of scripters for all season). She didn't even bother.

Danny passed through a lot, mostly in the fisrt season, where the character wasn't exactly defined, and Carmine made him a believable character. He was stressed in an episode, nervous in other, happy in other, broken in other, but it was still Danny. We have a different Lindsay for every episode she was in.

Also there is the relationship with Danny. Apart from being the only thing she's been reduced, is the only thing keeping her in the serie.

Like almos everybody here, I've gave her a second chance, just to see if she really changed. I finished second season hating her; Flack was leaning in a bed, almost dead, and she was smiling outside (you just needed to act like you were worried, Anna), and at the end of the third season I could stand her (if you're with him, and he's been really bad beaten, forget for a damn moment your guilt and console him instead making him to console you). For this season I've decided, cast or regular, I won't have any expectation in her.

 

That wasn't so bad... it's not like Lindsay should care about Don. Guess she'll never really be part of "the _ that's what we do _ we take care of each other _ family". What really blew my mind was that she smiled at Danny in RSRD. ( hospital scene, Mac, Don & Lindsay ) Mac & Don, serious, she smiling. Gary & Eddie, as always, on the same wave. She could have at least imitated. Maybe she wanted to cheer him up... but really, the man's brother is half dead & u smile at him. Felt wrong, out of tune. And the brilliant question.. You okay? Danny's comeback was priceless : I've had better days, to tell you the truth. ( Thank God Mac send her back to the lab, & asked Don to stay with Danny.. ) Maybe she tried to show her compassion & I didn't get it...