Wednesday just wants to sleep for a week

[shadowkat]

I'm tired and sleep deprived, and it's catching up to me. Through no fault of my own - I keep waking up at 1 or 2 AM in the morning and can't fall back asleep - due to digestive issues. I also had the A/C on low, because of the radiators, which I can't seem to get turned off. The down-side of living in a 77 unit apartment complex, where some areas are freezing and some are warm.

Almost done with Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - my difficulty with it is the writing style doesn't work for me. Too many changes in points of view, not helped by the fact that they are all in first person and sound the same, and it's about three to four paragraphs into each before I figure out which one I'm actually in. This would be easier to follow, if I weren't sleep deprived, doing what it is that I do for a living, and reading it via the kindle in snatches on subway rides. If it weren't for all those doctor appointments - I'd not have gotten to the 94% mark.

Finished rewatching "This Year's Girl" and "Who Are You" - Faith Episodes on Buffy S4 Rewatch. Who Are You is the better episode - partly because Gellar is a better actress than Dusku. And manages to play Faith without any extraneous mannerisms. And partly because there's no Mayor, not a lot of Adam, and the focus is where it should be on the Faith/Buffy relationship.

I realized recently why I dislike the S3 Faith/Mayor arc so much? I was reminded of why again in This Year's Girl (the first part of the arc where Faith wakes up) - Before Faith wakes up, she has a series of dreams about Buffy - dreams about a cozy picnic with the Mayor and having Buffy attacking her and slicing through her fantasy. Ugh. They changed a uber-feminist who could care less about guys, and was more into Buffy and Joyce dynamic, into a poor whiny murderous waif with Daddy Issues, and a bit too heavy on the phallic snake metaphor. (Although it is a joke here.) And? Whedon did the exact same thing to Dusku's character in Dollhouse. The exact same thing - took a feminist character and turned her into a male play thing, with Daddy Issues. Not helped, if you know Dusku's backstory and why she left acting. (If you don't know? Trust me on this? You really don't want to.)

There are things that save the episodes. But my attention wandered more during these two episodes than previous ones. In part, because the Buffy/Riley romance doesn't work and is kind of boring? Actually Faith sleeping with Riley in Buffy's body, and Riley not noticing anything - and actually telling her that he loves her (it's the first time he does) - doesn't help. Nor does Adam. He's more annoying than I'd remembered. Walsh was the better villain and her absence is felt. The writers don't appear to know what to do with him? He's like a creepy Frankenstein character by way of a motivational speaker cult for vampires. What saves the episodes are the Faith/Buffy dynamic, Spike, Willow, Xander and Giles. And all the foreshadowing of later seasons - clarifying that Whedon did have a plan as to where he was headed - which I hadn't noticed before.

The best episodes in S4 are actually the ones without Adam in them?


Off to bed.

Comments

[slaymesoftly]

Interesting assessment of the season. What was the foreshadowing? I'm sure I remembered some at one time, but drawing a blank now. I can remember things that made me realize there may have been a plan all along, but dammed if I remember what they were.

[mefisto]

Most obviously (sic), the expiration date on the credit card (05/01), which foreshadows Buffy's death.

[slaymesoftly]

Ah, that one I didn't notice!

[shadowkat]

And Joyce's - it's Joyce's credit card?

[shadowkat]

Outside of the credit card - which to be honest, I didn't notice this round or any round that I've watched it? (possibly because it's Joyce's credit card not Buffy's?) In Faith's dream sequence: 1) Faith and Buffy are making up Dawn's room, and Buffy tells Faith she'd stay but she has a lot to do...and Faith says, yes, lots to do before Little Sis comes (foretelling the arrival of Dawn) 2) Faith dreams that she falls in the grave and Buffy leaps in after her, and Faith crawls out (foreshadowing Buffy's death and Faith being the only one, also Buffy crawling out of her grave).

Also the bed they are making up is the same one in the Buffy/Faith dream sequence in S3, where Joyce appears and disappears lying dead on the bed in a blink.

And the Buffy/Spike relationship, along with Willow/Tara - are picked up on by Faith in Buffy's skin. Willow has her first "orgasmic" experience on screen with Tara doing the magic (magic as sex), and Faith picks up on Spike's attraction to and obsession with Buffy, and plays with it. (It's an obvious chemistry test - and the actors spark big time. Rewatching it - it's kind of obvious they'll dump Riley eventually and go the Spike/Buffy route, although Buffy as Faith sizzles more with Riley than Buffy as Buffy, which indicates, nice guy, nice girl is kind of boring and there's not enough internal conflict in that romance, some external,yes, but it's not a big enough deal to work).

[slaymesoftly]

I never noticed the credit card, TBH. I do remember Faith telling Buffy she was making room for Little Sis. Don't recall the falling into a grave thing. And so much of Spike's reactions to Buffy (beginning in s. 2 when it was theoretically James's idea to play an attraction) are there to see all along, that it doesn't seem unobvious to me for it to come to fruition some day. It just took Buffy longer to get there!

[shadowkat]

Who are You - is when Joss Whedon woke up to it, more or less? I think the writers weren't really that much aware of it or didn't see the potential. Whedon plays with it in Who are You for the first time. (Marsters and Gellar played with it - long before Whedon picked up on it. Both are actors and know how to play up chemistry. Gellar came from soaps, Marsters from theater - and well that's what you do, play up the "acting" chemistry. Also an actor can often play a line or scene differently than the writer or director may intend, and television is done very fast. Also Whedon and his writers often weren't on set or directing every scene? Marsters states that he rarely saw Whedon and was rarely directed by him.)

Marsters has stated that they didn't know what to do with Spike - and didn't talk to him much about the character or give him motivation. So Marsters, being a typical actor, at one point asked, and said to Whedon - "well, I'm guessing Spike is hanging about Sunnydale because he's fallen for Buffy, but of course she'd never go for him." And the writers went -"ohhh, wait a minute, didn't think of that - that's kind of interesting, let's play with it. We can do all sorts of interesting things with that." Honestly, I don't know why they didn't? It was kind of obvious to anyone watching the show - which is most likely why they didn't pick up on it? They weren't "watching" - they were "writing it" - and it was multiple writers and directors. I sincerely doubt that the creators were aware of what appeared on screen half the time.

[slaymesoftly]

I suspect a lot of plot devices and general arcs for all the characters were as much a result of unexpected chemistry between characters (Buffy and Spike, for instance), the actors own decisions about how to play scenes, and just plain old serendipity and coincidence. I tend not to give Joss credit for much long-term planning.

[shadowkat]

Whedon did have some long-term planning - he knew for example that he was going to kill Buffy off in S5. And the Willow going dark bit was plotted ahead of time.

Whether it's good long-range plotting? I don't know.

He had a tendency to see the beginning and end, but wasn't always clear how to get from point A to point D. And he didn't want to be boring or predictable, so often fell into the trap of comic book/soap opera plotting, which usually tries to get from point A to point D by way of Point X. Sometimes that works, but it's really hard to pull off well.