Heartstopper

Yeah Kit carried season 2 acting wise. Found myself cringing way more than I realised at season 1.
I watch too much soap. I’m fairly immune do bad acting and so it didn’t impact me as much. Still. It’s clear that Kit is a very talented actor.
 
I really don't understand all these criticisms of the acting in Season 2 (especially compared with that of Season 1)---and Joe Locke's in particular. I teach drama, and I had no problems at all with his performance. Playing an introverted person who struggles to express his inner turmoil is no easy feat, and I feel it's a more difficult role to play than, say, the sunnier, less complicated Nick, but there was never a moment in this season when I didn't believe in his character. Perhaps those here who are criticising Joe's acting could give us some examples of scenes in which they feel he doesn't deliver?

My only issue (in both seasons) as far as acting goes is with Yasmin Finney's performance. At times, I find her a bit flat in her delivery of lines, and I also feel that she doesn't often convey with her face much of what her character is supposedly thinking or feeling. She tends to have the one inscrutable (Mona Lisa-like) expression. This makes her character difficult to read (at least for me), and therefore harder to relate to.
 

Mvnl

Staff member
I didn't really have any scenes where I cringed at bad acting this time around (even with rewatching season 1 I was largely okay, the worst parts were just clumsy dialogue ('Why are we like this?!?')) apart from Tao's 'shock' to opening the door to Elle shirtless. That got slapstick goofy in a way that just didn't quite fit.
It was a bit odd how with the final scene Charlie did all the telling yet it's Nick's emotions that got me, but I'm not sure if that's due to Joe's (deliberately disconnected?) acting or just because wanting someone like Nick was my main emotion watching
 
It was a bit odd how with the final scene Charlie did all the telling yet it's Nick's emotions that got me, but I'm not sure if that's due to Joe's (deliberately disconnected?) acting or just because wanting someone like Nick was my main emotion watching

Maybe @Damon Vincenti may give us his professional opinion on S2 finale, but I think Joe was in character (or Alice/director told him to act that way)… if Charlie would have reacted as Nick, we would have had a tear-fest, we would have drowned in tears and the scene would have been unbearable. I”m not saying Charlie doesn’t show/have emotions in that scene, he just shows them not in a Nick way.
have we ever watched Charlie crying? I’m thinking about it, but I can’t recall one single scene
 
Maybe @Damon Vincenti may give us his professional opinion on S2 finale, but I think Joe was in character (or Alice/director told him to act that way)… if Charlie would have reacted as Nick, we would have had a tear-fest, we would have drowned in tears and the scene would have been unbearable. I”m not saying Charlie doesn’t show/have emotions in that scene, he just shows them not in a Nick way.
have we ever watched Charlie crying? I’m thinking about it, but I can’t recall one single scene
For me, there are just so many great things about this scene, and I plan to show it to my students this semester.

Some of the things I love about it:

1) The use of a hand-held camera. This heightens the unsettled emotions of the characters. For example, when it cuts from the close-up of Charlie's "Everything's fine now" to a medium shot of Nick's worried response---"Is everything OK?"---the camera is particularly unsteady on Nick, emphasizing how anxious he is.

I also think it was clever to frame Nick here in medium shot, and not centered, as it underlines his feeling of being left out of Charlie's inner battles.

2) When Nick then jumps off the bed and comes face to face with Charlie, the sudden change to close-ups of both boys really heightens the intimacy of the scene.

3) The cutting back and forth between Nick and Charlie is brilliant! Nick is mostly reacting here, and in a sense he's acting as a surrogate for us, as we too are hearing Charlie's heartbreaking revelations for the first time. In other words, his tears become our tears, and I think that's why so many viewers have been bowled over by Kit's acting here. And it is wonderful, but the combination of the tight close-ups, editing (cutting back to him at the perfect moments) and the unsteady hand-held camera all add to the incredible intimacy of the moment as well. It's so well directed, as it makes us feel that we are privy to a very special private moment.

4) Joe's performance is equally good here. No tears---and that would be too much, I feel, to have them both crying---and the halting way he reveals the things that Charlie has bottled up inside him. We can really feel the tension in him as he reveals each thing, as well as the sense that he still hasn't told Nick everything.

Anyway, these are just some of the things that I love about this perfectly written/acted/directed/filmed/edited gem of a scene!
 
He/Him
I think they'll probably want to drag it out a bit. The episode being titled "Love" is probably akin to Season 2 opening with an episode called "Out." I'm sure there will be more build up than it happening right off the bat.
 
There are so many things that have to happen... B4 and B5 and the 2 novellas [let's give B6 the whole S4]! If you consider that you only have 8 episodes of 30 mins, it looks very hard to put everything in.
 
There are so many things that have to happen... B4 and B5 and the 2 novellas [let's give B6 the whole S4]! If you consider that you only have 8 episodes of 30 mins, it looks very hard to put everything in.
I don't think the episodes necessarily have to be just 30 minutes in each case. Look at episode 8 in Season 2, for example---it's 36 minutes. In fact, Season 2 is a good 40 minutes longer, I think, than Season 1. So I'm hoping for some flexibility in Season 3 when an episode needs to be longer to do its story justice.
 

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