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Mar. 31st, 2026 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyMums and I started watching Scarpetta last week and finished it this week.
It's... something?
I started reading the Scarpetta novels around '99, when a friend from irc (hi, wherever you are, Calli) recommended them. I know I didn't start with the first one, as I had to rely on whatever the library had. So I might've started with Black Notice and worked my way through the series, looping back around and going relatively in order after that. I do know that I started with a book that was regarded, at least at the time and for awhile after, as a bit cuckoo bananas for the series, and being pretty sure that I didn't feel that way since it was my entry point.
I passed them to Mums who joined me in reading them, and over the years we'd swap back and forth as one of us would read the newest book and then wait for the other to catch up.
I still think the first nine or so books are solid, but around the time Benton comes back from the dead, there's a shift in the books and after awhile it not only felt like a slog to read them, but felt like the author had grown to hate her characters/her world/her series. She tried multiple times to do other series and I don't think any of them really caught on, but I fully admit that after the Charleston Scarpetta book, I dipped way out. I'd been half out the door by that point (and never really fell for her other series), but it's definitely the worst in the series for me and I might take it personally that the Charleston book of all things is where she just... fucked everything up to the degree that you LONGED for it to be a terrible dream or retconned in any way.
Seriously, CSI taking off after a certain point seems to have put a real bee in Cornwell's bonnet and it showed. Sometimes it just meant the tech felt forced to be newer, fancier, or there were digs at the show (which, y'know, fair) and then it was like well fuck, now I gotta crank everything up to thirteen. Yes, we went well past eleven on the escalation scale.
I eventually went back and read a few, and then the books stopped for awhile, and I didn't feel compelled to pick them up again until I had maybe four to catch up on and Mom had lots of questions so I went back to try and help her make sense of things.
All of this is to say that I have developed Serious Opinions on the series and so has Mums. Some we agree on, some we don't.
I'm not sure if she went into the TV show with higher expectations than I did, as I'm pretty sure she's either caught up on the books or at least one closer than I am... but I tried to go in with relatively low expectations. Which felt weird, given that the cast can act... but I swear to fuck, almost all of them were miscast based on how the characters were described in the books and that did take a bit to get over.
But in the way of these things, my biggest issue with the casting (Jaime Lee Curtis as Kay's sister Dorothy) turned out to manage to best embody their character and even managed the impossible: there were moments I actually felt bad for Dorothy. In the books, she's such a raging narcissist and just so annoying at every turn that there's a reason she's kept to very small doses in the earlier books. Too much Dorothy is not a good thing for anyone.
For the most part, I'm not gonna focus on anyone's looks beyond this: Pete being a big guy is very much a part of who the character was in the books. It's part of why he feels so shitty about himself, it's part of why he acts the way he does, it's very much baked into the DNA of the character. So without that, it fundamentally changes Marino. Book!Marino and Show!Marino have similarities (they will never be accused of being the most sensitive to other's feelings, they both literally follow Kay around) but they are not the same character at their core. Marino ain't pretty and either never was, or was only pretty well before we met him and that ship had long since sailed. Show!Marino? Was always good looking. You can try and scruff him up, but Bobby Cannavale is a good looking dude and so's his kid.
Rosy McEwen, who plays younger!Scarpetta actually comes pretty close to bridging the gap between how I pictured Kay when reading the books and the series casting Nicole Kidman. She manages the Yellowjacket trick of having the younger cast member adopt the older cast member's mannerisms to seamlessly weave the two together even when you remember what the older cast member looked like when they were younger. She does it really well, to the point that if you're not paying attention, there's a moment of "wait, wha...?"
It feels weird to say, but I don't know how I feel about Scarpetta herself in the series. I think younger!Scarpetta works pretty well, but Nicole's Kay feels lost. I know the books claim that Kay's cold and aloof and yet that's not the Scarpetta we had for years. By the time the books go downhill and give us distance from Kay, it's too late to claim she's this ice queen because we know she's not. I'm guessing the tv series is trying to show both sides of that but it's not landing for me. Other people pointed out that Kay can seem cold and distant to those who don't like her, or those who don't know her, but to Lucy, Benton, and I'll even through Marino in there, she's not. She cares so damn much and her love is obvious, both to the reader and to those on the receiving end of that love. I'm going to assume that the show is trying to isolate Kay but... why? You have eight episodes to make this count, and you think spending them pushing your title character away from everyone, including the audience, is the move? There's a reason most shows used to pull that trick in like, S3 or something. You'd already built up your feelings, good or bad, for the character by then, and then it was time to either subvert expectations or take everyone on a journey.
I was never a huge Benton fan in the books, and I think every review of the more recent books has mentioned how I think bringing him back from the dead was a mistake and he's yet to do much of anything to justify that choice beyond seemingly make Kay happy-ish for half a second.
Which means I was hoping Simon Baker would fix that for me. If nothing else, he'd be pretty to look at. And, I mean, he is, although it's jarring every time we see every line on his face and then switch to perfectly smooth Nicole Kidman's face. Like he can age and she cannot. His Southern accent is also only not the worst thing in the world because Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc and Benedict Cumberbatch's absolute atrocity of one in August: Osage County exist. (Yeah, yeah, Benoit grows on you. The other does not.) I fucking hate what the show has done to Benton. Book!Benton wouldn't cheat on Kay or even really give her the thought that he would, though the show could still go with a misdirect on that. He's also not somehow conflating OCD and murderous tendencies? Like he can be cold and calculating but he's not walking around thinking he's a sociopath. Book!Benton is forever making sure that Kay eats something in the morning (failing more often than not), trying to keep her from spinning off her axis as the plots get more and more convoluted, and while he absolutely keeps secrets from her, they both realize that's the name of the game given their respective jobs. Wtf. I will grant them that given who they cast as Benton, it does line up with the more recent Kay books having her swoon over her husband instead of actual character development. So, good casting there.
Lucy's... there? The books became very Lucy focused and I can get wanting to course correct that for the series, but this means that we spend a lot of time dancing around Lucy because of where the show chose to start.
Oh, I guess I should mention that the series starts with a loose adaptation of book 25. BOOK 25.
You've also very likely guessed that this is very much a loosely based kind of deal. But with Lucy, we pick up about where she was in the books: in the aftermath of her wife's death and dealing with it by hiding behind an AI version of said dead wife. In the books, their kid (technically Janet's nephew but Desi is very much treated as their kid and Kay's grandbaby even if she'd be his great aunt) and Janet die off page, in between books and it's done very, very weirdly, though I imagine this can be placed on COVID since that's what was going on in the world when the books were written. I think it's also how Janet and Desi die, actually. But it was also one of the things Mums had questions about when she was trying to get me to read the books.
So Lucy's clinging to her dead wife in a way Janet wouldn't have wanted while everyone else finds it very weird and some try to pretend it's just how Lucy is processing her grief and others are like no, actually this is unhealthy and we should do something about it. I hate that AI Janet is somehow more of the moment NOW than when this book came out, btw. It's one of the areas the show makes work, but since my biggest other memory of book!AIJanet is that she gets hacked... I'm wondering we'll get that.
Book!Lucy goes through it and there are entire arcs where she's an absolute asshole. I want to say even the Lucy fans had moments where they wanted things dialed back, but that might just be the reviews I came across. I like Lucy and she definitely seemed like she was being shoved front and center (which, y'know, fine?) but also became the author avatar and that combo is rarely a good thing.
Show!Lucy is not quite as show-offy but she's also grieving and obviously not anywhere near her full self, so who knows what they'll do with her as she moves out of her grief, or moves through it, I guess.
I can't figure out if the show would be better or worse if I remembered more about the books. As it is, parts stand out in neon for me and parts are obviously changed for the show (Kay's father is shot during a robbery for the show but in the books he wastes away to cancer I believe, which makes more sense as to why Kay goes into the medicine she does.) and some I get distracted trying to figure out if the show is starting off in the neon and then going to change things or if it's going somewhere else entirely.
We get cliffhanger-ed pretty badly, both in Kay's personal life and in the murders she's trying to solve, though technically the murder angle is answered... just not why the fuck anyone would be covering for this guy. To be fair, I don't remember who the killer in the book was, just that my review said that he came out of nowhere and thus if you like solving the mystery along with Kay, it ain't gonna happen and I hate that.
I like parts of it, some I'd probably like more if I could separate the books from the show... and some things, like most of Benton's arc, are just what the actual fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Also, Tron deserves better because I remember liking her in the books but she seems... weird here. Possibly because she's tethered to Benton and not Lucy?
Part of me wants to go and read the two books I'm missing and part of me remembers why I paused again (fuck Carrie) so we'll see. I've got books to read before that.
It's... something?
I started reading the Scarpetta novels around '99, when a friend from irc (hi, wherever you are, Calli) recommended them. I know I didn't start with the first one, as I had to rely on whatever the library had. So I might've started with Black Notice and worked my way through the series, looping back around and going relatively in order after that. I do know that I started with a book that was regarded, at least at the time and for awhile after, as a bit cuckoo bananas for the series, and being pretty sure that I didn't feel that way since it was my entry point.
I passed them to Mums who joined me in reading them, and over the years we'd swap back and forth as one of us would read the newest book and then wait for the other to catch up.
I still think the first nine or so books are solid, but around the time Benton comes back from the dead, there's a shift in the books and after awhile it not only felt like a slog to read them, but felt like the author had grown to hate her characters/her world/her series. She tried multiple times to do other series and I don't think any of them really caught on, but I fully admit that after the Charleston Scarpetta book, I dipped way out. I'd been half out the door by that point (and never really fell for her other series), but it's definitely the worst in the series for me and I might take it personally that the Charleston book of all things is where she just... fucked everything up to the degree that you LONGED for it to be a terrible dream or retconned in any way.
Seriously, CSI taking off after a certain point seems to have put a real bee in Cornwell's bonnet and it showed. Sometimes it just meant the tech felt forced to be newer, fancier, or there were digs at the show (which, y'know, fair) and then it was like well fuck, now I gotta crank everything up to thirteen. Yes, we went well past eleven on the escalation scale.
I eventually went back and read a few, and then the books stopped for awhile, and I didn't feel compelled to pick them up again until I had maybe four to catch up on and Mom had lots of questions so I went back to try and help her make sense of things.
All of this is to say that I have developed Serious Opinions on the series and so has Mums. Some we agree on, some we don't.
I'm not sure if she went into the TV show with higher expectations than I did, as I'm pretty sure she's either caught up on the books or at least one closer than I am... but I tried to go in with relatively low expectations. Which felt weird, given that the cast can act... but I swear to fuck, almost all of them were miscast based on how the characters were described in the books and that did take a bit to get over.
But in the way of these things, my biggest issue with the casting (Jaime Lee Curtis as Kay's sister Dorothy) turned out to manage to best embody their character and even managed the impossible: there were moments I actually felt bad for Dorothy. In the books, she's such a raging narcissist and just so annoying at every turn that there's a reason she's kept to very small doses in the earlier books. Too much Dorothy is not a good thing for anyone.
For the most part, I'm not gonna focus on anyone's looks beyond this: Pete being a big guy is very much a part of who the character was in the books. It's part of why he feels so shitty about himself, it's part of why he acts the way he does, it's very much baked into the DNA of the character. So without that, it fundamentally changes Marino. Book!Marino and Show!Marino have similarities (they will never be accused of being the most sensitive to other's feelings, they both literally follow Kay around) but they are not the same character at their core. Marino ain't pretty and either never was, or was only pretty well before we met him and that ship had long since sailed. Show!Marino? Was always good looking. You can try and scruff him up, but Bobby Cannavale is a good looking dude and so's his kid.
Rosy McEwen, who plays younger!Scarpetta actually comes pretty close to bridging the gap between how I pictured Kay when reading the books and the series casting Nicole Kidman. She manages the Yellowjacket trick of having the younger cast member adopt the older cast member's mannerisms to seamlessly weave the two together even when you remember what the older cast member looked like when they were younger. She does it really well, to the point that if you're not paying attention, there's a moment of "wait, wha...?"
It feels weird to say, but I don't know how I feel about Scarpetta herself in the series. I think younger!Scarpetta works pretty well, but Nicole's Kay feels lost. I know the books claim that Kay's cold and aloof and yet that's not the Scarpetta we had for years. By the time the books go downhill and give us distance from Kay, it's too late to claim she's this ice queen because we know she's not. I'm guessing the tv series is trying to show both sides of that but it's not landing for me. Other people pointed out that Kay can seem cold and distant to those who don't like her, or those who don't know her, but to Lucy, Benton, and I'll even through Marino in there, she's not. She cares so damn much and her love is obvious, both to the reader and to those on the receiving end of that love. I'm going to assume that the show is trying to isolate Kay but... why? You have eight episodes to make this count, and you think spending them pushing your title character away from everyone, including the audience, is the move? There's a reason most shows used to pull that trick in like, S3 or something. You'd already built up your feelings, good or bad, for the character by then, and then it was time to either subvert expectations or take everyone on a journey.
I was never a huge Benton fan in the books, and I think every review of the more recent books has mentioned how I think bringing him back from the dead was a mistake and he's yet to do much of anything to justify that choice beyond seemingly make Kay happy-ish for half a second.
Which means I was hoping Simon Baker would fix that for me. If nothing else, he'd be pretty to look at. And, I mean, he is, although it's jarring every time we see every line on his face and then switch to perfectly smooth Nicole Kidman's face. Like he can age and she cannot. His Southern accent is also only not the worst thing in the world because Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc and Benedict Cumberbatch's absolute atrocity of one in August: Osage County exist. (Yeah, yeah, Benoit grows on you. The other does not.) I fucking hate what the show has done to Benton. Book!Benton wouldn't cheat on Kay or even really give her the thought that he would, though the show could still go with a misdirect on that. He's also not somehow conflating OCD and murderous tendencies? Like he can be cold and calculating but he's not walking around thinking he's a sociopath. Book!Benton is forever making sure that Kay eats something in the morning (failing more often than not), trying to keep her from spinning off her axis as the plots get more and more convoluted, and while he absolutely keeps secrets from her, they both realize that's the name of the game given their respective jobs. Wtf. I will grant them that given who they cast as Benton, it does line up with the more recent Kay books having her swoon over her husband instead of actual character development. So, good casting there.
Lucy's... there? The books became very Lucy focused and I can get wanting to course correct that for the series, but this means that we spend a lot of time dancing around Lucy because of where the show chose to start.
Oh, I guess I should mention that the series starts with a loose adaptation of book 25. BOOK 25.
You've also very likely guessed that this is very much a loosely based kind of deal. But with Lucy, we pick up about where she was in the books: in the aftermath of her wife's death and dealing with it by hiding behind an AI version of said dead wife. In the books, their kid (technically Janet's nephew but Desi is very much treated as their kid and Kay's grandbaby even if she'd be his great aunt) and Janet die off page, in between books and it's done very, very weirdly, though I imagine this can be placed on COVID since that's what was going on in the world when the books were written. I think it's also how Janet and Desi die, actually. But it was also one of the things Mums had questions about when she was trying to get me to read the books.
So Lucy's clinging to her dead wife in a way Janet wouldn't have wanted while everyone else finds it very weird and some try to pretend it's just how Lucy is processing her grief and others are like no, actually this is unhealthy and we should do something about it. I hate that AI Janet is somehow more of the moment NOW than when this book came out, btw. It's one of the areas the show makes work, but since my biggest other memory of book!AIJanet is that she gets hacked... I'm wondering we'll get that.
Book!Lucy goes through it and there are entire arcs where she's an absolute asshole. I want to say even the Lucy fans had moments where they wanted things dialed back, but that might just be the reviews I came across. I like Lucy and she definitely seemed like she was being shoved front and center (which, y'know, fine?) but also became the author avatar and that combo is rarely a good thing.
Show!Lucy is not quite as show-offy but she's also grieving and obviously not anywhere near her full self, so who knows what they'll do with her as she moves out of her grief, or moves through it, I guess.
I can't figure out if the show would be better or worse if I remembered more about the books. As it is, parts stand out in neon for me and parts are obviously changed for the show (Kay's father is shot during a robbery for the show but in the books he wastes away to cancer I believe, which makes more sense as to why Kay goes into the medicine she does.) and some I get distracted trying to figure out if the show is starting off in the neon and then going to change things or if it's going somewhere else entirely.
We get cliffhanger-ed pretty badly, both in Kay's personal life and in the murders she's trying to solve, though technically the murder angle is answered... just not why the fuck anyone would be covering for this guy. To be fair, I don't remember who the killer in the book was, just that my review said that he came out of nowhere and thus if you like solving the mystery along with Kay, it ain't gonna happen and I hate that.
I like parts of it, some I'd probably like more if I could separate the books from the show... and some things, like most of Benton's arc, are just what the actual fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Also, Tron deserves better because I remember liking her in the books but she seems... weird here. Possibly because she's tethered to Benton and not Lucy?
Part of me wants to go and read the two books I'm missing and part of me remembers why I paused again (fuck Carrie) so we'll see. I've got books to read before that.