Character Musings: Will Zimmerman
Mar. 18th, 2011 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityLet me begin by saying that I have been trying to write this meta for more than a month now. I start it, I leave it open on my desktop for a few days, Safari crashes, and I lose it. So I'm trying again.
It's not that I don't like Will. He's fine. He's good at his job and he's nice to people and he's genuine. It's just that for whatever reason, I don't care about him (when he's on his own).
But there is one thing about Will that I do find very interesting, and that's why Helen hired him in the first place. I would love to know the professions of Helen's other seconds over the years, because I imagine they've been varied. Helen is exactly practical enough to hire not only the person she feels is the most competent, but also the person she deems most useful to her personally. And the fact that she hired Will is kind of intriguing.
The first reason we got Will Zimmerman is the most basic: the story-telling reason. Will is the Everyman character, the one through whom we see most of the action in the first season. I think it's kind of funny that's he's a forensic profiler, because for all Sanctuary is a boundary pushing show, Solving Crime With A Twist is the most common thing on TV right now (seriously, it's not even close), and has been for almost a decade.
So Will is absolutely normal from the get go. And I mean that literally, because the other cops he works with apparently don't watch TV. If they did, they'd know that Will is so commonplace that they might as well just wait for him to solve the case and not bother doing any of their own legwork. Will, and his talents, are just so expected, and until he meets Helen, the show is totally unabnormal. In the commentaries, they make it quite clear that this was deliberate, but most of us probably picked it up on our own.
Will is our guide: he takes us from the world we know and leads us into the one we don't.
The second reason we got Will Zimmerman is actually cooler. We got Will Zimmerman because Helen needed someone who was totally normal. Someone The Big Guy would find difficult to trust. Someone Henry would keep secrets from. Someone Ashley (and, to a degree, Kate) would never, ever take seriously. Someone who will yell at her that this is stupid and impossible, even when it clearly isn't, and would they all please sit down and talk about their feelings so that he can understand what's going on.
Helen Magnus is very, very self-aware. It's part of what makes her so cool. And she decided she needed a psychiatrist, so she went and got the most boring, literal, brilliant, lonely shrink she could find (who was also in possession of that certain je ne sais quoi a person needs to work at the Sanctuary; when I say "boring", please keep in mind it's a sliding scale, and the heavy end is weighted down by the likes of Jack the Ripper and Nikola Tesla, not to mention Helen herself), and brought him in to keep her more or less "modern". And "stable". A person who, if the need arises, might be able to control her like she controls everyone else (uh, including him. It's complicated).
We've talked a lot about how Helen is Persephone Descended, in the cool way that modern scholars look at Greek Myth nowadays and see beyond white marble statues and brightly painted temples, and actually see the Female Power. If, however, we go back to the old model for a second, it's Will who plays Persephone: taken against his will down into the underworld by Hades (here played by Helen), and tricked into an eternity of six months per side, never again fully at home in either. It's kind of an awesome take on "everything old is new again".
Which brings me to my final point about my conflicting feelings for Will: if he was actually a female character (instead of just getting all the female tropes), I'd probably be angry with the show for yet again giving me another under-developed female character who only grows in relation to Helen (if Helen was male, it would really suck. If she remained female it might be a little bit cool). But Will is male, and I don't care that we know very little about him. I'm not sure what that says about me as a person, but at the same time, it's not really a surprise.
What it comes down to is that Will fills a place on the show, and he fills it absolutely perfectly. He fills it so perfectly, in fact, that it might actually be to the detriment of his own development. Which is kind of a good sacrifice to make. Do I think he's actually capable of running a Sanctuary? Hell no. But it's only been three years. Declan, our other model, has had at least a decade of practice (with James, no less, who must have been a real pain to work for sometimes). I just think Will needs more time to grow up.
And I think that's it. Because if I keep going, I'll make jokes about how even the Bad Guys don't take Will seriously, and get angry about that "brilliant" piece of archaeological "reasoning" again, and I should just quit while I'm ahead.
It's not that I don't like Will. He's fine. He's good at his job and he's nice to people and he's genuine. It's just that for whatever reason, I don't care about him (when he's on his own).
But there is one thing about Will that I do find very interesting, and that's why Helen hired him in the first place. I would love to know the professions of Helen's other seconds over the years, because I imagine they've been varied. Helen is exactly practical enough to hire not only the person she feels is the most competent, but also the person she deems most useful to her personally. And the fact that she hired Will is kind of intriguing.
The first reason we got Will Zimmerman is the most basic: the story-telling reason. Will is the Everyman character, the one through whom we see most of the action in the first season. I think it's kind of funny that's he's a forensic profiler, because for all Sanctuary is a boundary pushing show, Solving Crime With A Twist is the most common thing on TV right now (seriously, it's not even close), and has been for almost a decade.
So Will is absolutely normal from the get go. And I mean that literally, because the other cops he works with apparently don't watch TV. If they did, they'd know that Will is so commonplace that they might as well just wait for him to solve the case and not bother doing any of their own legwork. Will, and his talents, are just so expected, and until he meets Helen, the show is totally unabnormal. In the commentaries, they make it quite clear that this was deliberate, but most of us probably picked it up on our own.
Will is our guide: he takes us from the world we know and leads us into the one we don't.
The second reason we got Will Zimmerman is actually cooler. We got Will Zimmerman because Helen needed someone who was totally normal. Someone The Big Guy would find difficult to trust. Someone Henry would keep secrets from. Someone Ashley (and, to a degree, Kate) would never, ever take seriously. Someone who will yell at her that this is stupid and impossible, even when it clearly isn't, and would they all please sit down and talk about their feelings so that he can understand what's going on.
Helen Magnus is very, very self-aware. It's part of what makes her so cool. And she decided she needed a psychiatrist, so she went and got the most boring, literal, brilliant, lonely shrink she could find (who was also in possession of that certain je ne sais quoi a person needs to work at the Sanctuary; when I say "boring", please keep in mind it's a sliding scale, and the heavy end is weighted down by the likes of Jack the Ripper and Nikola Tesla, not to mention Helen herself), and brought him in to keep her more or less "modern". And "stable". A person who, if the need arises, might be able to control her like she controls everyone else (uh, including him. It's complicated).
We've talked a lot about how Helen is Persephone Descended, in the cool way that modern scholars look at Greek Myth nowadays and see beyond white marble statues and brightly painted temples, and actually see the Female Power. If, however, we go back to the old model for a second, it's Will who plays Persephone: taken against his will down into the underworld by Hades (here played by Helen), and tricked into an eternity of six months per side, never again fully at home in either. It's kind of an awesome take on "everything old is new again".
Which brings me to my final point about my conflicting feelings for Will: if he was actually a female character (instead of just getting all the female tropes), I'd probably be angry with the show for yet again giving me another under-developed female character who only grows in relation to Helen (if Helen was male, it would really suck. If she remained female it might be a little bit cool). But Will is male, and I don't care that we know very little about him. I'm not sure what that says about me as a person, but at the same time, it's not really a surprise.
What it comes down to is that Will fills a place on the show, and he fills it absolutely perfectly. He fills it so perfectly, in fact, that it might actually be to the detriment of his own development. Which is kind of a good sacrifice to make. Do I think he's actually capable of running a Sanctuary? Hell no. But it's only been three years. Declan, our other model, has had at least a decade of practice (with James, no less, who must have been a real pain to work for sometimes). I just think Will needs more time to grow up.
And I think that's it. Because if I keep going, I'll make jokes about how even the Bad Guys don't take Will seriously, and get angry about that "brilliant" piece of archaeological "reasoning" again, and I should just quit while I'm ahead.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 03:40 pm (UTC)*nods* He's just not nice to Tesla, which I think isn't completely fair as he barely knows the guy.
At TV Tropes, Will is listed under Chickification and what's written for him is hilarious.
Will is under-developped as a character, which may be why I find him boring.
Where did we learn how long Declan worked for James?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 03:42 pm (UTC)Yes, in an effort to be "nice", I left out all the stuff I read at TVTropes. ;)
Where did we learn how long Declan worked for James?
Fanfiction? yeah, I made it up. I would say his familiarity with Helen speaks to having some amount of comfort with James, though, and that can't have been easy to get.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 03:51 pm (UTC)And Will does have a point about Tesla having a hidden agenda. Just thinking of a recent example, he did have a hidden agenda in Trail of Blood, lying to everyone including Magnus about why he was really down there. Now I'm not saying Tesla doesn't come through when it counts, because he does. For every time he's been a huge pain in the ass, he's also been a big help to Magnus. She can count on him to get the job done but on the flip side she never knows what kind of trouble he's going to get into with his own little experiments and quests. (This is part of what makes him interesting as a character, since he's really not on anyone's side but his own. I do like Tesla, even if Will doesn't!) If I were Will, and I didn't know Tesla any better than he does, I wouldn't really trust him either.
I do like how Tesla and Will seem to be getting along a little better lately, especially that scene where they were drinking in Will's office and talking about Henry's infection and all that. They'll never be BFFs, but they can put the snark aside to get stuff done.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 04:05 pm (UTC)Not necessarily. But it seems out of character from him to me. For instance, Kate's hostility towards Tesla doesn't.
I think what bothers me with Will's attitude towards Tesla is that Magnus isn't, in general, terribly bothered by Tesla's antics. She just takes it in stride, and the way Will was talking against Tesla in ToB especially reflects a lack of trust in Helen IMO. Because, yes, Nikola did have a hidden agenda, but he also really needed help too. Again, by comparison, Kate doesn't understand how Helen can still has feelings for John but she just takes in stride and doesn't argue about it with Helen. Kate doesn't usually trust people but she's decided to trust Helen and trusts her all the way. For all of Will's loyalty towards Helen, I feel that in season 3, he's questionned her too much.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 04:24 pm (UTC)But Will's loyalty to her isn't the yes-man kind of loyalty. I don't think Helen really needs an unquestioning yes-man , and if she did she wouldn't have chosen Will. I don't think she'd respect someone who never questioned her. He backs her up when she needs it, but he also questions her when he thinks she needs to be questioned. He's been established as a skeptic from the beginning; he doesn't necessarily believe what's presented at face value. Sometimes this skepticism means that he supports Magnus unquestioningly, like in Veritas--even when presented with video proof that Magnus shot the Big Guy, he knew something was still fishy and he kept digging until the truth came out. Sometimes this skepticism means that he questions her--and she has been wrong, though it's very rare; see Eulogy, when her emotion over Ashley got the better of her common sense. He may feel that her fondness for Tesla and their long established friendship may blind her a little bit to the reaches of Tesla's ambition. She hasn't necessarily been wrong about him yet, but that doesn't mean she won't be.
My take on it is that the Magnus-Will dynamic is the opposite of the stereotypical older, stoic, expert man + young female protege. Magnus is very brilliant, strong, and accomplished, but she keeps a lot to herself, particularly emotionally (not that I can blame her, with a life like hers). She doesn't get too attached anymore, because she outlives everyone she cares about, something she touches on with Will in Requiem. She keeps her feelings to herself, particularly, and has difficulty admitting when she needs the support of a friend (Next Tuesday, when she makes up all these elaborate stories about why Will can't go to the conference when what she really needs is for him to be there because she doesn't want to deal with Ashley's birthday alone). Will, on the other hand, pretty much wears his heart on his sleeve and doesn't really hide anything. And he's pretty much picked up on, by now, that Magnus keeps a lot back. I think he sees her as more human and less infallible than other people do--it doesn't mean he doesn't trust her, it just means that he can see what might be one of her few weaknesses. I think Magnus knows he can see it, which is one of the reasons she keeps him around, and one of the reasons they work well together.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-19 06:42 pm (UTC)Um...thank you for keeping it civil. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 05:21 pm (UTC)Or maybe not.
But anyway, these reasons make perfect sense. Unlike this comment. *g*
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 11:26 pm (UTC)I think one thing that is often forgotten about Will is that he is someone Magnus can trust absolutely (I think the only other person Magnus can trust to this degree is the Big Guy--and James, before he died). I believe people often forget about Veritas, and the way he believed in her innocence when no one else did and how hard he fought for her. Maybe that makes him not as exciting as a bad boy character, but that's just how he is.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 11:30 pm (UTC)That's kind of where I was implying Helen's absolute trust of him. She's set him up, in many ways, but the trust is still there. And Veritas is an excellent example of it (so, for the record, is Requiem, though in the other direction, of course.)
I don't think he's used enough; I think he's set up to be intelligent and resourceful and then doesn't get a chance to be that very often.
And that is exactly what causes me to feel bad about how I don't love him...because if he was a girl, I'd be annoyed. But he's not...so I just fangirl Helen and Ashley and Kate and move on with my life. I've got blinders, I'll admit it, I just also like to think I'm open minded.
Thank you for commenting! I wanted to be sure when I wrote this that I wasn't character bashing or questioning anyone's judgement (except Helen's, of course, that is actually encouraged).
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 11:49 pm (UTC)I have a very knee-jerk reaction to some of fandom's reaction to Will; posts like this one make me want to comment and have fannish discussion (so thank you!) but there's so much "hurr durr Will's so stupid" out there that it makes me angry, because I don't think people give him a chance. But sometimes there's no reason why we do or don't like a character. I never liked Ashley and could never really pinpoint why, and I've only recently (Bank Job!) warmed up to Kate.
It's kind of the Hufflepuff Syndrome, I guess. That discussion that went around about how Sanctuary characters would be sorted in the Harry Potterverse? Will's the epitome of Hufflepuff, and those qualities are often overlooked in favor of characters that are brave, brilliant, or cunning, because those qualities are more entertaining to write about or watch. Loyalty/devotion isn't necessarily an exciting quality, but it's a very necessary one. I think Helen needs loyal people very much, since she has so many people itching to stab her in the back (Wexford and his type)--though Will's kind of loyalty doesn't mean he won't call her out on BS if necessary.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 11:54 pm (UTC)(Aside: part of the reason I don't love Will is because I have weird issues with the actor. I don't react well to nudity, for starters, or near nudity. It's a thing that I have, for reasons I won't get into, but I'm trying to be better than that and work through it.)
I do think Will is brilliant and good at his job, which I hope I made clear in my post, but sometimes I feel like his character is so, well, meta (like...if I wanted to watch a profiler struggle with monsters, I would still be watching Criminal Minds). It's what I said about the sacrifice: he's doing his job SO WELL that sometimes I shrug him off entirely.