This one felt like a small misstep, pretty much for the reasons you cite. Tao friend breaking up with Charlie and Charlie almost breaking up with Nick with the two fights felt like the show veering into melodrama in a way that it has avoided up until now. Maybe it points to a somewhat bigger problem with the pacing of the show: Once Charlie and Nick are together the obvious next step is for Nick to come out, and everything that delays that needs to justify its existence in the narrative. The previous three episodes have handled the slow play pretty well, but this one as the darkness before the dawn felt artificial.
I'm kind of changing my mind about the casting. These actors are fine for the roles as written (mostly - I still think Joe Stockton looks too old, older that Kit Connor anyway). But the script makes them sound and act more like old 16-17s than young 15-16s. Just aging up the characters on paper would have relieved a lot of that dissonance.
Also, where's Isaac? String? String? Where the fuck is Isaac?
They can't age them up because Nick can't be graduating—he needs to be Year 10, so Nick can be Year 11, since if they were in the same year then Nick would have known him, and thus not felt at a distance from his struggles. As you came to realize, the roles are written older, but the age thing is definitely a dynamic here.
And you get to what I wondered: whether someone who doesn't know exactly how the story ends would read the melodrama differently. For me, I knew where this was going, and so I could kind of connect the dots on what this tension was achieving. But I do think that creating such a clear climax in the conflict of it all kind of betrays the spirit of the piece just that bit too much, even if I ultimately feel the finale understands how to resolve it and transition into the denouement.
Maybe the age difference comes into play more later, but I don't see it making a huge difference here. Like I say my only experience with the books is a few images people posted on a discussion group and a general description as "meek gay guy gets huge jock boyfriend". I have never liked how a lot of m/m fiction trades on explicit power dynamics, and so making that manifest in the physical sizes of the characters was a big red flag for me, and the fact that the show tones it down a lot helped me see it as something I would like. This is all to say that I see the age difference as kind of part of the same thing and I'm happy to see it deemphasized.
Modulo all that, my reaction to ages of the characters comes down to two different things: One, just as a media consumer I am picky about how characters' voices match their descriptions, so when a "14 year old" looks and talks like a mature 16 year old it bugs me. Second, I taught middle school for 20 years and those are the ages I am most sympathetic to. I want to see more queer media that portrays 12-14 year olds who look and act like 12-14 years olds who are out and happy. It's fine that Heartstopper is not that, but I wish it wasn't kind of pretending it is.
This one felt like a small misstep, pretty much for the reasons you cite. Tao friend breaking up with Charlie and Charlie almost breaking up with Nick with the two fights felt like the show veering into melodrama in a way that it has avoided up until now. Maybe it points to a somewhat bigger problem with the pacing of the show: Once Charlie and Nick are together the obvious next step is for Nick to come out, and everything that delays that needs to justify its existence in the narrative. The previous three episodes have handled the slow play pretty well, but this one as the darkness before the dawn felt artificial.
I'm kind of changing my mind about the casting. These actors are fine for the roles as written (mostly - I still think Joe Stockton looks too old, older that Kit Connor anyway). But the script makes them sound and act more like old 16-17s than young 15-16s. Just aging up the characters on paper would have relieved a lot of that dissonance.
Also, where's Isaac? String? String? Where the fuck is Isaac?
They can't age them up because Nick can't be graduating—he needs to be Year 10, so Nick can be Year 11, since if they were in the same year then Nick would have known him, and thus not felt at a distance from his struggles. As you came to realize, the roles are written older, but the age thing is definitely a dynamic here.
And you get to what I wondered: whether someone who doesn't know exactly how the story ends would read the melodrama differently. For me, I knew where this was going, and so I could kind of connect the dots on what this tension was achieving. But I do think that creating such a clear climax in the conflict of it all kind of betrays the spirit of the piece just that bit too much, even if I ultimately feel the finale understands how to resolve it and transition into the denouement.
Maybe the age difference comes into play more later, but I don't see it making a huge difference here. Like I say my only experience with the books is a few images people posted on a discussion group and a general description as "meek gay guy gets huge jock boyfriend". I have never liked how a lot of m/m fiction trades on explicit power dynamics, and so making that manifest in the physical sizes of the characters was a big red flag for me, and the fact that the show tones it down a lot helped me see it as something I would like. This is all to say that I see the age difference as kind of part of the same thing and I'm happy to see it deemphasized.
Modulo all that, my reaction to ages of the characters comes down to two different things: One, just as a media consumer I am picky about how characters' voices match their descriptions, so when a "14 year old" looks and talks like a mature 16 year old it bugs me. Second, I taught middle school for 20 years and those are the ages I am most sympathetic to. I want to see more queer media that portrays 12-14 year olds who look and act like 12-14 years olds who are out and happy. It's fine that Heartstopper is not that, but I wish it wasn't kind of pretending it is.