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.
