yulan

For me, everyone was so much easier to deal with prior to S5. When the show took new direction that season, they really lost me as a fan.

That would make sense. But damn, it was the worst way to deal with insecurities, and something that was never really pointed out. I guess, because we were not supposed to perceive it as arrogance, but self-confidence of a person who must be right.

I mean, he had a lot of reasons to be insecure. Somebody once called him "a short guy with the Napoleon complex"


Uf. I always have a problem to see material from earlier seasons in the light of later, because there is a lot of rewriting and new directions, and I don't have a feeling such developments/retroactive clarifications were initially planned/written into material from previous seasons, but were just added afterwards. If they had been planted into earlier seasons, fine, but a lot of was just an afterthought, and not a continuous, carefully planned writing. But anyway, when it comes to Kelly, I don't see much difference between S1 and S2, so S1 does not seem to me different in the light of S2. I agree that the whole trajectory did not reach the fruition in S1, otherwise I would have not mentioned she had issues to work on. But I am not sure the trajectory ever reached higher point than that, honestly. Maybe a bit in S2 (but then again, she was in a period of sexual abstinence) and S4 (except that a lot of stuff surrounding her sexual past was confusing for me, at best).

I am not sure I see Halloween as a vehicle to propel Kelly's self-loathing. She took a lot of blame for sexual assault on herself, but I think Brenda, Donna, Dylan and Steve did a good job persuading and explaining to her (and audience) why it was not. They especially emphasized an importance of saying "no". I guess that is why her experience with Ross Weber was never called a date rape (at least I think it was not), not even in later seasons when Kelly was completely victimized - it was never mentioned that she said no or did not really want to sleep with him. But I don't want to venture there at the moment. I guess that Halloween episode was supposed to be a big milestone for Kelly, showing us that she "learned something" - not just how to say no, but in general not to throw herself at men, because she kept rejecting them a whole episode, and Brenda told her she was proud of her for that. It was a counterpoint to Summer Storm.

Aha, I did not see it that way. I mean, she said she could never know whether the guys liked her for herself or because she would be easy to have sex with. But it seemed to me at that point that she knew that she deserved better (unlike in S3, "I'm just a stupid blonde bitch" period). That's why she also fought a whole S2 to get a decent date, if not a relationship. She was aware how people perceived her - maybe she even exaggerated it a bit - but when she told that story to Andrea again, it seemed to me that she pointed out at Weber as the main culprit for her reputation, not herself. That was a nice change. It was a warning to Andrea to carefully choose a moment and person for her first time, and a lot of shame for what her first time turned out to be like, but she did not meekly accept that also. She struggled for better - better reputation, better guy, better feeling about herself.

I think Steve's role in developing healthier attitude toward sex and relationship is quite underrated, but then again, we did not see their relationship, so it is hard to say. But it seems to me, given how long they were in a relationship, that she got confidence somebody might perceive her as more than one night stand. And if not before, she definitely enjoyed sex with him.

Yeah, there was a lot of moralization going on. They sort of gave up on it with Andrea, but that was when the characters entered college. I did not care about it first time I watched, but I rewatched her first time recently and I was like - wow, this is well done. She picked a guy she liked and who liked her, they were not deeply in love, so what. It was all fine. No big reminiscences and reflections. Finally.