Huge Disappointment, Big Mistake: The Bren/Shal Fiasco (by a B/S Shipper)
~Slidershal
Let me start this off by saying that I am probably the biggest, most enthusiastic, hard-core Bren/Shal shipper in Mutant X fandom. I wanted them together ever since that almost-kiss in ‘A Breed Apart’. For two years, I have waited, pining away for that moment when it would finally happen. What I got at the end of season three, after waiting for so long, was a huge disappointment and the biggest mistake I think I have ever seen made with two characters on a series. Ever.
I should have known there was trouble on the horizon when I read an interview with Mutant X’s executive producer, Peter Mohan, in the June 2004 issue of Sci-Fi Magazine. In the interview, Mohan said, “What becomes even more interesting, character-wise, is we start to develop some of the relationships. We develop Shalimar and Brennan’s, where they actually, by the final episode, have sex.” After the initial rush of excitement, I heard warning bells in my head. Love wasn’t mentioned. Okay, I thought, they’re keeping that part of it hush-hush. No big deal. The weeks go by, and I’m not seeing any progression with Bren and Shal at all, with the exception of a few snippets in ‘The Prophecy’ of the usual subtext, beefed up a bit to foreshadow the event Mohan said was coming. Okay, so they’re saving it all for the last episode. Fine. I can deal. But, I wondered, won’t that rush things a bit? Mohan wouldn’t let that big of a mistake be made, would he?
When I finally sat down to watch ‘The Assault’ I was already worried. The minutes tick by while I’m watching the episode, and nothing’s happening. No buildup for Bren and Shal at all. Not even the usual flickerings of love and tenderness that I am used to seeing between them, just very suggestive flirting at the pool hall. Uh-oh. Cut to “the big scene”. Bren and Shal have their first kiss, and I’m thinking that maybe there is hope after all. No joy. When the scene was over I felt...disappointed. And not just because it was short. Everything about their ‘love scene’ was wrong, primarily the fact that there was no love in it. After the kiss it went on a downhill slide straight into meaningless sex, and I couldn’t believe what I had just seen, or rather, not seen. No emotion, no meaning, no ‘I love you.’ And those were the things that I had been waiting for. Talk about your big mistakes – it doesn’t get any bigger than that.
I wouldn’t say that the encounter meant nothing to the characters, and that’s the problem. The way the scene was written, and the way it played out, was a direct contradiction to everything I had ever seen between the characters, and a direct contradiction to what they should have shared. I was especially upset that it seemed to go completely against Shalimar’s nature. Last time I checked, she didn’t go around having sex with hot guys just because she thought she was going to die. What I wanted, what I’ve always wanted, was for them to make love, not have a quickie in ‘Mason’s office’. Brennan and Shalimar deserved better than that. They deserved a proper love scene, and the proper buildup over the course of the final episodes to back it up. What they got was too rushed, too unrealistic, and too meaningless.
In that same Sci-Fi Magazine interview, Peter Mohan followed his statement that Bren and Shal would indeed “have sex” with, “[its something] the ‘Shippers are going to hopefully appreciate.” What in the world was he thinking!? Did he honestly think that people who wanted to see Brennan and Shalimar in love were going to buy that? I didn’t appreciate it at all. I didn’t want them to just go and have sex. That was never what I wanted, and quite frankly I feel insulted that the writers thought ‘Shippers would appreciate that loveless act. I’m even more insulted by how bad it made my favorite characters look.
I believe that there is love between Brennan and Shalimar, but whatever that scene in ‘The Assault’ was, it wasn’t love, and it was a horrible disservice to the characters. A lot is going to have to be done to justify that mistake. I can only hope that there was a plan for future episodes to explain/sort out what happened, but somehow I think that is expecting too much. Like I said...huge disappointment, big mistake. Brennan and Shalimar deserved better.
Sources:
·TV In Focus, Kathie Huddelston, Sci-Fi Magazine June 2004
·My personal posts on the Feral Sisterhood and PureMX message boards
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