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Film School Rejects Discuss How Impossible it is to Recommend Buffy to Friends
So true. I know, I've tried. And gave up finally. The problem is that show like most tv series is a mixed bag. It is highly serialized, yet also monster of the week - high school vibe. Definitely aimed at teens. And focused on teen romance. The protagonist is a teenage girl not an adult. Plus, it has cheesy special effects and monsters. Not to mention vampires.
You have to get past the premise. Once you do - it is quite brilliant in places. The series changed how people wrote tv shows. It played with camera angles. It created the meta-narrative, something Whedon specializes in and focuses on when he's left to his own devices and notpandering answering to demonic network and comic book executives.
But actually, come to think of it? I have similar problems with Breaking Bad, The Wire,
Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, Farscape, Lost, Mad Men, Scandal, The Good Wife, and Battlestar Galatica.
* Breaking Bad has a premise that turns off 90% of the people I know, heck it turned me off - a chemistry teacher is diagnosed with 4th Stage Lung Cancer and decides to manufacture meth with his drug-dealing ex-student, much chaos ensues. It's violent, with extremely nasty characters. The lead characters really aren't redeemable. Pure anti-hero. But it is also, possibly, the best written television series that I've ever seen. (Why are the violent series with the nasty characters often the best written? What's up with that?)
*Once Upon A Time is so unevenly written that it requires a little patience and well, it has a weird narrative structure that does turn off a lot of people. Including various television critics. But it has to have some of the strongest and most complex female characters I've seen on tv, with an intriguing subversion of male/female damsel trope. In OUAT the men are often the damsels.
*Then there's The Good Wife - which looks like a run-of-the-mill legal procedural when you first tackle it, but is definitely not. Actually it lost the procedural fans early in its run. Now it's so serialized you would be a bit lost. The focus is on politics - in business, marriage, government, the justice system, and between genders. It also has the most interesting and complex female characters that I've seen.
Game of Thrones is an exceedingly violent and grim medieval fantasy epic falling more within the category of dark fantasy, with it's wights (zombies), and dragons. Characters are tortured on screen. One was castrated. Beloved characters - brutally slayed. Yet, it has to be amongst the most smartly written series on, not to mention the best cast - everyone is compelling and the characterization is complex.
Farscape besides being hard to find, has puppets. Puppets are hard to sell for some reason. I can't claim to understand why since that attracted me to the series - I love puppets. But it turns a lot of people off. Also the series seems a bit on the cheesy side and it is for the first 10 episodes. You have to get past those first 10-15 episodes. It's an adult series about an astronaut who finds himself in another galaxy. Dream come true, right? Wrong. The series is at times a brilliant allegory on what warfare and violence does to people, and how violence rarely leads to peace.
The Wire while brilliant - is slow to start and plods a bit in the first season. Also it's subject matter - drug-dealing and cops, not everyone's cup of tea. But once you get past that - the series is a brilliant and reality based satire on the bureaucracy of local government and the system. Created by a former journalist and a former cop/public school teacher - it brilliantly and subtly satirizes the petty bureaucracies and politics of a major city.
Most of these shows premiered on cable channels and were not on Broadcast television so flew under the radar. But mainly they are hard to recommend because, well I don't know about anyone else, but my friends television tastes often vary greatly from mine.
In other news? I'm feeling better. Lost 15 pounds. Back to the weight I was in August of 2012, more or less. Hip is improving. I think. And I have an excellent Physical Therapist.
Also slowly making head-way on Ready Player One - which appears to be a critique of the internet and social media obsession. The description of David Egger's new novel "The Circle" reminds me a little of Ready Player On, except potentially better written?
So true. I know, I've tried. And gave up finally. The problem is that show like most tv series is a mixed bag. It is highly serialized, yet also monster of the week - high school vibe. Definitely aimed at teens. And focused on teen romance. The protagonist is a teenage girl not an adult. Plus, it has cheesy special effects and monsters. Not to mention vampires.
You have to get past the premise. Once you do - it is quite brilliant in places. The series changed how people wrote tv shows. It played with camera angles. It created the meta-narrative, something Whedon specializes in and focuses on when he's left to his own devices and not
But actually, come to think of it? I have similar problems with Breaking Bad, The Wire,
Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, Farscape, Lost, Mad Men, Scandal, The Good Wife, and Battlestar Galatica.
* Breaking Bad has a premise that turns off 90% of the people I know, heck it turned me off - a chemistry teacher is diagnosed with 4th Stage Lung Cancer and decides to manufacture meth with his drug-dealing ex-student, much chaos ensues. It's violent, with extremely nasty characters. The lead characters really aren't redeemable. Pure anti-hero. But it is also, possibly, the best written television series that I've ever seen. (Why are the violent series with the nasty characters often the best written? What's up with that?)
*Once Upon A Time is so unevenly written that it requires a little patience and well, it has a weird narrative structure that does turn off a lot of people. Including various television critics. But it has to have some of the strongest and most complex female characters I've seen on tv, with an intriguing subversion of male/female damsel trope. In OUAT the men are often the damsels.
*Then there's The Good Wife - which looks like a run-of-the-mill legal procedural when you first tackle it, but is definitely not. Actually it lost the procedural fans early in its run. Now it's so serialized you would be a bit lost. The focus is on politics - in business, marriage, government, the justice system, and between genders. It also has the most interesting and complex female characters that I've seen.
Game of Thrones is an exceedingly violent and grim medieval fantasy epic falling more within the category of dark fantasy, with it's wights (zombies), and dragons. Characters are tortured on screen. One was castrated. Beloved characters - brutally slayed. Yet, it has to be amongst the most smartly written series on, not to mention the best cast - everyone is compelling and the characterization is complex.
Farscape besides being hard to find, has puppets. Puppets are hard to sell for some reason. I can't claim to understand why since that attracted me to the series - I love puppets. But it turns a lot of people off. Also the series seems a bit on the cheesy side and it is for the first 10 episodes. You have to get past those first 10-15 episodes. It's an adult series about an astronaut who finds himself in another galaxy. Dream come true, right? Wrong. The series is at times a brilliant allegory on what warfare and violence does to people, and how violence rarely leads to peace.
The Wire while brilliant - is slow to start and plods a bit in the first season. Also it's subject matter - drug-dealing and cops, not everyone's cup of tea. But once you get past that - the series is a brilliant and reality based satire on the bureaucracy of local government and the system. Created by a former journalist and a former cop/public school teacher - it brilliantly and subtly satirizes the petty bureaucracies and politics of a major city.
Most of these shows premiered on cable channels and were not on Broadcast television so flew under the radar. But mainly they are hard to recommend because, well I don't know about anyone else, but my friends television tastes often vary greatly from mine.
In other news? I'm feeling better. Lost 15 pounds. Back to the weight I was in August of 2012, more or less. Hip is improving. I think. And I have an excellent Physical Therapist.
Also slowly making head-way on Ready Player One - which appears to be a critique of the internet and social media obsession. The description of David Egger's new novel "The Circle" reminds me a little of Ready Player On, except potentially better written?