30 Day TV MEME in One DAY - because just do not have the energy for 30 days of it

[shadowkat]

(I swiped this from numerous folks on my flist. And trying to do it for a second time - tried earlier but got stuck on few questions, because I drew a complete blank. It's probably worth noting that I have watched way too much television in my lifetime and have most likely forgotten more tv shows than anyone else out there has actually watched.)


Day 01 - A show that never should have been cancelled :

Firefly - it had potential, ended up with a huge cult following, and a writing team that had established itself as building momentum as it went along. They should have given it at least two seasons before dropping the ax. And yes, it got a movie - but the movie felt tagged on. (Dollhouse - I wasn't that fond of, and don't believe would have been much better if it had gotten several seasons. Unlike Firefly - Fox saved Dollhouse. Having watched both? I think they should have saved Firefly and dumped Dollhouse. Or perhaps I should put it this way - I own Firefly on DVD (Xmas Gift), don't foresee that happening with Dollhouse. But mileage varies.)

Although a real close second might be - Profit and American Gothic.

Day 02 - A show you wish more people were watching :
The Good Wife - the only feminist show on tv and possibly the best legal procedural ever.
Well written. (Although - it is quite popular in the Nielsen ratings...just not on my flist for some bizarre reason.)

Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season):
A tie between The Good Wife and Caprica. Both blew me away.

Day 04 - Your favorite show ever :
Well gosh, BtVS of course - it's the only one outside of M*A*S*H that I've watched over ten times. It's also the only one outside of MASH that I wrote anything substantial on.

Day 05 - A show you hate :
The Bachelor and The Bachelorette - can we say legitimatized prostitution? Yes, we can. (And no I don't watch them - I just see the commericials and people talk about them at work...eww.)

Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show :

"Once More With Feeling" - amongst the few episodes that actually gave everyone in the cast something to do, developed all the characters, and plus - musical and I'm a sucker for musicals.

Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show :

Amends and Where the Wild Things Are (although WTWA at least had a sense of humor).

Day 08 - A show everyone should watch : "The Good Wife" and possibly "BTVS" (although that isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea), so The Good Wife.

Day 09 - Best scene ever : (I got stuck on this one last time because was hunting a scene that was not from BTVS. But the only scene I see when I get to this one is the church sequence at the very end of Beneath You. The whole episode is somewhat uneven -in writing, performance, and direction, some bits embarrassingly bad, but that last sequence is poetry and perfection. It haunts me and I can't watch that episode without rewinding five or six times.

The other scenes that stick in memory may be the Starbuck/Apollo boxing match in BSG - just for the controversial and gutsy dynamic of having a man and woman go at it - and the woman be an equal throughout.

Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving (oh so many) - but I think Vampire Diaries may be the winner this year? I went into it, much the same way I went into Gossip Girl - kicking and screaming, convinced it was a silly teen show a la Twilight, with bad acting and bad writing - as it turned out? I couldn't be more wrong. Another one is Supernatural - which I also went into kicking and screaming - railing at it, yet it won me other with it's consistent writing and acting. MAD MEN is another example - I had decided I hated this show when I saw the pilot, but after my brother and everyone else raved about it - I gave it a second chance - and it is brilliant. Now my whole family watches it. Actually, it is most likely Mad Men - a show I was highly critical about to start, and did not like - yet later changed my mind.

Day 11 - A show that disappointed you : Sigh too many to count. Joan of Arcadia - it started out as brilliant but lost me before the second season aired. Now and Again - ditto. Both shows deserved their early cancellation. But, I think the winner in this category is most likely, Dollhouse - so much potential, yet in reality an uneven mess from start to finish. Whedon went the typical route - and failed to surprise. His characters while deliciously dark, seemed to go nowhere...and the ending peetered out. Perhaps if he'd cast a more emotive and capable actress in the lead role? OR spent less time exploring the well-worn territory of sexual violence and prostitution - which were far more subtly and far better explored in both Buffy and Angel. I don't know. Just that it failed to live up to expectations and in the end disappointed me. It's not a DVD I'll be owning and/or recommending. Leaving a bit of a gap in my Whedon collection.

Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times : Again too many to list. I've watched the entire series of Buffy more than five times. But if I had to list one episode? Probably Beneath You or Once More With Feeling. Also watched the entire series of MASH and most of Seinfield more than five times.

Day 13 - Favorite childhood show :

Ah, hard. From the age of 3-5 - it was Kimba, which few people knew about - until I moved back to the East Coast and then everyone I ran into immediately knew what I was talking about. So it clearly only aired on the east coast and in the 1970s.

From age of 6-9, it was The Monkees - I had a thing for short misunderstood heroes back then - Davey Jones and Kimba. I only got the autograph of Davy Jones though, Kimba doesn't exist although I do own two of the artists works on DVD - Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away.

Day 14 - Favorite male character : Spike. (I've thought about this recently, before I watched Buffy or basically the reason I watched Buffy was Anthony Stewart Head - who played Spikish type roles on stage in Chess and in VR5. I fell in love with Head. In interviews, Marsters stated that he basically copied Head's accent and mannerisms for Spike - he used Head as his template. In real life Head is actually a lot like Spike. And you can tell in interviews with the guy. The same irreverant sense of humor, and the same body movement, swagger. And before I fell for Head in the musical Chess - I was writing a character in a novel that was a lot like Spike. Half poet, half killer, half lover, half predator, half light, half dark...and moves like a dancer on dope. Hell, I've always had a weakness for bad poets and philosophers...with a quick and devilish wit. Spike also had one of the most interesting character arcs that I've seen on TV.)

Day 15 - Favorite female character : Difficult, more so than the above. I'd say Buffy, who I don't identify with at all. She took me outside of myself. Made it possible for me to care for a cheerleader - who up until Buffy - I hated on-screen. She also made it possible for me to like Gellar - who I violently disliked up to that point. The character caught me by surprise - I went into the show expecting to despise her and ended up falling in love with her. Few female characters have done that for me.

Aeryn Sun is another favorite - from Farscape. Although her arc did not end as satisfyingly for me as Buffy's - she became at the end Crichton's woman, not her own. Which is why Buffy stands apart from characters like Emma Peel, Olivia on Fringe, Xenia, Sydney Bristow, et all - she is the only one who did not allow herself to be defined by a man, become his sidekick or his wife or mother. She stood apart and became a leader. Took on a traditional male role and made it her own. She went from a character that I could not identify with to one that I totally did.

I can't think of any other female character on television that comes close to having her brilliant arc. Who was feminine and masculain, who could be a leader yet also feminine and "girly".

Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show : General Hospital (yes, Daytime Soap Operas are my guilty pleasure and I tend to keep to myself - for fear of mocking. Also the fandom is batshit crazy.)

Day 17 - Favorite mini series : Lonesome Dove. It may be the best one acted and written - the first one, not the two sequels that came afterwards. But the fact that it had two sequels says something.

The Thorn Birds - was good, but it was miscast in places and sort of lost me in the middle. Rachel Ward was bit too hard for Meggie, or so I thought at the time. Rich Man Poor Man - I never really saw, and I missed the famous Roots - which changed TV. Lonseome Dove was not groundbreaking, if anything it was the last of the truly great miniseries, with the advent of cable - we've seen less of them.

Day 18 - Favorite title sequence : While Justified is admirable - it borrows heavily from True Blood who did the same thing first - those may be the only shows that still do title sequences. They are few and far between now - due to DVD's. People realized how annoying it is to see a title sequence at the start of every episode on DVD. The only one that doesn't annoy me after five or six viewings of it - and I actually look forward to? Is True Blood - whose title sequence in some respects was even better than some of the season one episodes...kudos. Deliciously dark and textured, with great metaphors regarding sexual depravity and how we judge and view each other.

Day 19 - Best TV show cast : It's not an easy choice, Buffy was close, but I was not overly fond of Boreanze or Carpenter, so it had to get nixed. Am tempted to go with BSG - but, it is a) over, and b) did have weak points. Caprica? Same deal, it has strengths and weaknesses. So, I'll probably go with The Good Wife - as the best tv show cast right now. It certainly qualifies. There is no actor, not one, that hasn't delivered a pitch perfect performance. Although, Friday Night Light's is a close second with an equally pitch perfect cast.

Day 20 - Favorite kiss : Hmmm, I'd have to go with Tabula Rasa Spike and Buffy kissing sequence - subtle, and perfectly shot. They tried to do the same thing at the end of Lost between two characters - but it wasn't quite as well done. This one worked, because of the mislead, and how the camera with the music slowly twisted around to show us the desperate kissing. Desperate, needy, and forbidden.

Day 21 - Favorite ship : Hmmm. Let's break them down. Aeryn Sun/Crichton was the only one that ended happily - but it ended with Aeryn capitulating to Crichton, so lost some of the delicious friction that made it great. Juliet/Sawyer was most likely the most tragic yet at the end happy - also the two characters remained their own person, equal, neither really capitulating, and both redeemed by their love for each other - which took it a step above. Yet it got little screen time, since they were largely supporting. Starbuck/Apollo in BSG was frustration personified - equals, but better friends than lovers - in a way, I loved them for the same reasons I liked the platonic friendships between Lock/Ben and Spike/Angel. River Song/Doctor Who was also a tragic story that has yet to be told - so the jury is out on that one.
Which leaves me with Buffy and Spike - while ultimately frustrating, it was also in some respects the most interesting - neither character completely capitulates, trust is earned over time, and after it was lost, forgiveness is at the center of it, and the gender roles are twisted inside and out. It was perhaps, like Starbuck and Apollo the most subversive and as a result most controversial.

Day 22 - Favorite series finale : I'm not sure I have one. Newart was by far the funniest, but at the same time I felt it cheapened the other characters and story - was a gimmick. St. Elsewhere's ditto - for doing more or less the same thing. BSG's was a bit too orchestrated for my taste - while I did not hate it, I did not love it either. Lost? Ditto. Buffy - it worked intellectually but not emotionally - I was left hanging in some respects, wanting more.
MASH - felt over-long and bit smuchly. Cheers - was not memorable. Seinfield - unwatchable.
ER - was actually satisfying and enjoyable - that final season was by far amongst its best.
But favorite? Farscape - the movie felt rushed. Angel - I enjoyed it, but again, wanted more story - felt like I was left hanging. So, no, I don't have a favorite finale. TV shows tend to not do good finals - it seems to go against the format. For a television series is really about the journey not the destination. And often the finale when it comes feels tacked on.


Day 23 - Most annoying character : Michael in The Office - I can't watch The Office, particularly the British version - the boss has the exact same mannerisms as an evil serial bullying boss. (Others? Ferkle - his voice made me crazy. Tony Danza in Whose the Boss? Rachel in Friends (yes, in the minority on that one). Andrew in Buffy - drove me nuts in S7.)

Day 24 - Best quote : You listen to me. [Kneels in front of her] I've been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that. I've seen things you couldn't imagine, and done things I prefer you didn't. I don't exactly have a reputation for being a thinker. I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes, a lot of wrong bloody calls. A hundred plus years, and there's only one thing I've ever been sure of: you. [Buffy looks away; he reaches toward her face] Hey, look at me. I'm not asking you for anything. When I say, "I love you," it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman. You're the one, Buffy. May not be the best but it's pretty damn good.

There are others, but that may be my favorite. My other one is from Beneath You - the poetic soliquey by Spike at the end - asking Can We Rest, Buffy, Can we Rest.

I honestly don't remember speeches well - I swiped the above fully quoted one from Petzipellingo.

One of my favorite lines is "if my heart could beat it would break my chest" - cracks me up every time.

Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new): Glee - on Tuesday night and is officially my new happy show. It never fails to entertain in some small way.

Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale : Quantum Leap. Although there are others...such as Twin Peaks, which lost me, and Flashforward - which felt rushed, Dollhouse - also made little sense and felt cobbled together.

Day 27 - Best pilot episode : Battle Star Galatica's 33 minutes - flawless. But okay may not count because of the miniseries. So, perhaps - Twin Peaks? It changed TV forever.

Day 28 - First TV show obsession : Kimba

Day 29 - Current TV show obsession : I don't really have one. Honestly. I can live if any of these shows disappear. The closest? May be...General Hospital - but that's only because it gives me something to discuss with Momster on the phone that has zip to do with health, work, or finding apartments. That and I'm in love with the character of Dante - an under-cover cop who just discovered he was the son of the mobster he's trying to take down. A stress-free topic. We also discuss and analyze The Good Wife, Mad Men, Brothers and Sisters, Grey's Anatomy, and Merlin. But I'm not really obsessed. I don't keep the episodes, don't re-watch.
And you can't buy daytime soaps on DVD, as far as I know - if you could, it would break me.
Plus I get annoyed eventually with the storyline and lose interest, then drift back again.
So no - no obsessions. The only tv show I've been obsessed with in the last 30 years is Buffy.

Prior to that? I had deep flirtations, but nothing that was a true obsession. One fandom for me, I'm afraid. Once that wanes for me...I'll be without.

Day 30 - Saddest character death : At the moment? Juliet on Lost. I was so annoyed. But of characters that died and never returned in any fashion? Drawing a blank at the moment. Okay, have to say Joyce in the Body - that episode makes me cry buckets every time I watch it, no matter what. I'm sure if I thought about it - I could think of someone else. Lost and Buffy had the worst character deaths. They beat out BSG in that department. Angel? I never cared enough about the characters...but Wes' death seemed to be the saddest by far for me. I cared a lot about Wes.

Comments

[probablecylon.livejournal.com]

Since you're in the '70s ballpark, what about the Best Series Finale being "The Mary Tyler Moore" show? Done with real affection & humor & the first time I can recall writers giving the cast & characters a send-off . . .

Most startling character death for me was Joe Coffey in "Hill Street Blues", sudden & sharp, in the day long before spoilers . . .

"Which is why Buffy stands apart from characters like Emma Peel, Olivia on Fringe, Xenia, Sydney Bristow, et all - she is the only one who did not allow herself to be defined by a man, become his sidekick or his wife or mother. She stood apart and became a leader. Took on a traditional male role and made it her own."

Again, MTM was first in a decade of firsts & nearly firsts, and, following her, Nancy Marchand as newspaper publisher Mrs. Pynchon in the forerunner of all the ensemble dramas, "Lou Grant".

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thought about it and while I did watch MTM (mostly in reruns - outside of finale season), I didn't like it that much. Felt much the same way about that series as I did News Radio and WKRP, although enjoyed the latter more. Possibly because Mary was such a whiny character. She was always going to Mr. Grant for advice. Always saying in a high pitched whiny voice - "Mr. Graaant! Whyyyy?" And the show much like WKRP and NEWS RADIO and Lou Grant - was male centric. Women had few roles.

I can't really remember much of Lou Grant - rarely watched it. And MTM is vague in my memory blanks. Both were shows that I'd dip into on occassion, but did not watch each week or even remembered to. Of course this was before the advent of DVDs, and DVRS. But I wouldn't have rented or made time for them now. Did they have their moments? Certainly. There were a few hilarious episodes of MTM. But overall? Unmemorable, obviously, since I forgot it completely until you brought it up and had to work to remember the series or whether I even enjoyed it. Last episode I saw? Over 20 years ago. But this was also true of the Monkees and
Kimba - which I oddly remember vividly.

MTM doesn't feel that interesting to me. Sure it was innovative for it's time - but so were other shows such as Maud, Rhoda, That Girl...and the differences weren't that big.

No, sorry, I stand by Buffy as being the best heroine that I can recall. MTM just grated on my nerves - always needing the advice of her boss, she was in the end more assistant than chief, more side-kick than leader. Buffy on the other hand - outgrew her Lou Grant, and ended up being the boss of him.

Can't really comment that much on Lou Grant - since I don't remember it at all. And I've managed to forget most of Hill Street Blues. Odd which tv shows I remember and which I don't. I vividly remember Homicide Life on the Streets, but barely recall Hill Street at all.

[probablecylon.livejournal.com]

The MTM show was extremely different, both from the earlier "That Girl", in which Marlo Thomas was just kooky & adorable, and its own spinoff "Rhoda", in which the title character was constantly searching for Mr. Right.

As this article http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=marytylermo points out, Mary Richards was not only unattached, having departed from the man she was living with, but she wasn't at all concerned in the show about finding "the right one", but dated freely & spent the night with some of her dates -- these were all completely new developments. And far from being dependent on Mr. Grant's advice, did seek it but also freely contradicted or disputed him -- and he often yielded. There was no diminishment to "sidekick" status in the least.

By contrast, Buffy IS always concerned with her relationships, with her loveability. And Buffy doesn't gain power over and against Giles -- Giles is first removed by the Council as her Watcher, and replaced with Wesley, and Buffy colludes with Giles, relying on him even more, and Giles has no status at all till Buffy asks him, at the start of S5, to be her Watcher AGAIN, to help her train & discover more about herself. And when she returns from death, she begs him not to abandon her; and then, as her life and those of her friends spiral out of control in his absence, it requires his return in order to undo the dark magic which has taken hold of Willow. The only struggle against him occurs in S7, and then it's only because she's finding a different anchoring that she does so.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Title sequences that I never get tired of watching even when I'm watching bulk DVDs: The Prisoner and the Aeon Flux talkie episode credit sequence, which was heavily indebted to the former.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Aeon Flux and The Prisoner had cool credits...although admittedly the only thing I really remember from Aeon Flux is the fly detaching itself from her eyelash. (I watched it live on MTV - was the best thing on MTV besides the music videos and occasional airing of a musical.)

Another one is MASH - but that's because I love the theme song. Favorite theme music from TV show? Hands down M*A*S*H.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Day 05 - A show you hate :
The Bachelor and The Bachelorette - can we say legitimatized prostitution? Yes, we can.

This. I find this show and its ilk to be repulsive.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Yes. We had a speaker at church a while ago, which I missed, from Women & Media Association - who'd written a lot on the topic of how women are depicted in media. Her lecture was on how reality tv series such as the Bachelor etc - had cheapened how women are viewed and dating expectations - objectifying women, and re-enforcing a negative pattern of behavior. So true. It's impossible to go on a date - without a guy expecting sex. And if you don't give out? Something is wrong. As a result, a lot of us go on group meetups - where we can meet people in a safe group atmosphere without the expectation and without the whole you have to look like this or you aren't appealing.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad to hear you're watching Dexter! Are you all caught up or waiting for the most recent season still?

And somewhere (not here, on another thread?) you mentioned you enjoyed Ironman2, which made me very happy... and even happier to know that you stayed through the credits for the little teaser scene at the end (so much fun)!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Nope. Haven't seen S4 or the one with John Lithgow yet - can't until netflix gets it. (Although TV Guide and EW spoiled me on the two big deaths, but I still don't know how they died exactly, just who did it.) Dexter doesn't come out on DVD until later this summer - so can't get caught up until that happens - and it is available via netflix, since don't have
Showtime or HBO.

Yep, mentioned the Iron Man bit on Five Things Before Bed post.
It was enjoyable - more so than the first one in my opinion. CW, G and I all enjoyed it. Although I had to explain the teaser at the end to the people I saw it with - they were clueless. ;-)

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

Do you remember The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd ?

Starring the great Blair Brown, earlier co-starring in the film Altered States and most recently with a recurring role in Fringe.

BTW, I must respectfully dispute your assessment of Emma Peel, in that she was never Steed's sidekick, she was always his partner. (At least in the B&W episodes, the color ones coincided with the series moving towards the silly as opposed to the tongue-in-cheek and darkly whimsical.)

Indeed, check out some of the DVD covers, and note who's in the foreground for most of them.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_12?url=search-alias%3Ddvd&field-keywords=the+avengers+tv+series&sprefix=the+avengers

I find much of this highly amusing in light of the fact that the showrunners were highly concerned that the newly-hired (and nearly unknown) Diana Rigg would be able to keep up with (the veteran actor, and far more well-known) Patrick Macnee.

Ya think?

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

7. Ha. Wow, Amends is SO HATED. It's interesting to me.

And I totally share your love for Starbuck/Apollo and Buffy/Spike :)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Really? The one I ganked hated Inca Mummy Girl. Didn't know anyone else disliked Amends, thought I was in the minority on that one? (Most of my flist seems to like it...or so I thought.)

I don't necessarily "hate" it. I just consider it the weakest and least enjoyable of the series. Very smulchy, little humor, and doesn't quite fit with the thematic structure or mythos. When you do a re-watch, it sticks out like a sore thumb. You can tell that they were doing a pilot for the Angel series in the middle of Buffy - but thank god, the Angel series didn't go entirely in that direction - or I probably wouldn't have watched it. Amends was gaggingly cliche.
They did the same thing more or less with Lies My Parents Told Me and Sleeper - but far better and with a lot more ambiguity and a lot less syrup.

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

Huh. From what I've gleaned, Amends is actually quite widely disliked, particularly if you're not a B/A fan.
LMPTM and Sleeper are probably more watchable because Buffy and Spike are also allergic to syrup *nod*

I really do not get the hate for Inca Mummy Girl though. I just don't see how that episode is somehow 'worse' than Bad Eggs or Reptile Boy or Go Fish.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I didn't get it either - I found Inca Mummy Girl rather charming upon re-watch. It does a good job of hitting on Xander, Buffy, and Willow's issues as well as tackling a general theme about envy.

Bad Eggs - while horrible in places (the Buffy/Angel scenes are unwatchable, and the egg plot line is beyond creepy and bad) It is a funny episode. I laughed my head off when Cordelia takes out Xander. And
Giles/Joyce as zombies are actually quite amusing. Plus Xander hard boiling his egg. And the Gorch brothers - -LOL! I loved the Gorch brothers.

Reptile Boy - the plot was silly and cheesy, but the Cordy/Buffy bits were good, and Xander competing with Angel was actually interesting.

Go Fish also was amusing in places. I found it entertaining.

Amends? The only episode that I found difficult to rewatch last year. It's eye-rollingly cliche. And lacks Whedon's trademark wit. It's not that Whedon can't do straight drama - Beneath You and The Body are brilliant, but I honestly think he ran into a brick wall creatively on Amends - he should have let Greenwalt do it, it was after all Greenwalt's idea.

[ever-neutral.livejournal.com]

the Buffy/Angel scenes are unwatchable, and the egg plot line is beyond creepy and bad

Pretty much this.

But I agree. There's usually *something* to like in even the worst Buffy episodes. (Cordy's speech to what she thinks is fish!Xander in Go Fish is hilarious and endearing.)

I actually enjoy Amends, but I agree that it seems to be lacking in wit. The B/A scene where Angel wants to kill himself is particularly OTT. I don't know if it's necessarily a badly-written episode so much as that Boreanaz can't pull off a lot of the heavy stuff in it. Overall, Gellar and Marsters seemed to make a much better dramatic team.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Yay meme-age!

1. Oh I miss Firefly terribly. I was just talking about it with my girlfriend today. I was a fan of Dollhouse and thought that it did many things well, but you're right that the show didn't quite work. I'm still planning on revisiting it on DVD.

4. I am a huge fan of M*A*S*H (and Buffy obviously). Have you posted your writings anywhere? There are no tags on your lj...perhaps you keep your M*A*S*H fandom separate ;) ?

5. Pretty much.

6. I go back and forth on what ep I think is "the best," but "Once More, With Feeling" is the episode I have rewatched the most and expect to revisit, more so than any other episodes. This is probably true of television, period.

7. I have a soft spot for WTWTA, because I really enjoy the Xander/Anya parts, and the Spike bits. And Giles singing. Amends I have issues with, but I wouldn't put it near the bottom. (I read your response about it above--I'm not sure I disagree.)

9. I've always found the episode very jerky, but I'm not sure which bits you'd say are embarrassingly bad. (The fact that it was completely unclear to me after that episode whether Spike's chip was working or not is not a good sign.) Certainly the church scene is one of the best scenes in BtVS.

The boxing match totally worked for me. (That's a bit of a love-it-or-hate it episode, I've been told.)

10. I really like Mad Men.

11. Dollhouse: yes. Sigh.

12. Oddly, all of the above, though there may be a few episodes I haven't rewatched that often of BtVS. (M*A*S*H I've probably seen "only" three or four times a pop though.)

13. I had never heard of Kimba, but I've watched some Monkees. Only a few, though; I've heard their songs more often than watching any episodes.

14. This reminds me how much the Spike/Giles compare/contrast, inverted mirror stuff going on throughout the series (and especially in A New Man, Tabula Rasa, LMPTM...) is so fun.

15. Yes. Buffy.

OK gotta run. Will comment more later (with equal bits of insight as well I'm sure ;)....).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

4. I am a huge fan of M*A*S*H (and Buffy obviously). Have you posted your writings anywhere? There are no tags on your lj...perhaps you keep your M*A*S*H fandom separate ;) ?

Oh, it's not online anywhere. I wrote a paper on the black comedy in M*A*S*H for a college course way back in the 1980s.

Kimba - well, you've probably heard of the Disney version, aka, The Lion King? Disney based the Lion King on the 1970s Japanese anime series Kimba. The only difference was Kimba was a white lion cub, it was non-violent, we didn't see him grow up - he stayed a cub in the series,
and it was more imaginative. Outside of that more or less the same plot.

14. This reminds me how much the Spike/Giles compare/contrast, inverted mirror stuff going on throughout the series (and especially in A New Man, Tabula Rasa, LMPTM...) is so fun.

I think Whedon deliberately paired each of Buffy's love interests with either an absent or present father figure she was struggling to relate to.

In S1-4 - Hank Summers role is oddly contrasted with Angel. Angel is more present, when Hank disappears. He's less present when Hank is there.
She first meets Angel, after her parents divorce and separation. Like Angel - he is cryptic, not dependable, and comes in and out. Also like Hank, he has secrets. Hank takes her to the ice capades. Angel takes her ice skating. Also physically - same build. Big. And Angelus' speech to her in Innocence is eerily similar to Hank's speech in Nightmares. Plus - in S4 - when she visits Angel - she's en route to see Hank. When Angel removes her memory of her stay with him, all she recalls is her stay with her father. When Joyce dies - Angel shows up, not Hank. In S8 comics - Twilight felt like Hank or the disapproving father role - and when I saw Dollhouse - I knew I was right, but that it wasn't Hank - it was either Giles or...Angel. I didn't think Whedon would do Angel, for a lot of reasons - partly because if you consider the context, ew. But the truth is - I think that was always the underlying context of B/A. The parallels, once you know what you are looking at - are blatantly obvious. Angel =Hank. Joyce notably is the one who tells Angel to go away.

Move to Giles/Spike - same deal. Note - exactly when Buffy decides to sleep with Spike? After Giles leaves. Spike also slowly takes Giles' place in Buffy's life. In Dead Things - they go so far as to echo the same positions Giles and Buffy had in Welcome to the Hellmouth on the balcony. Spike comes up behind her, just like Giles did. She's watching people dance, just like she did in that episode. And he whispers in her ear, same as Giles did. But here - Spike's a vampire and he takes her from behind. Earlier - Giles tells Buffy he can't tell her anything to help her fight vampires - so she goes to Spike who gives her a lesson on it. In S7 - Buffy is literally using Spike's phrasing when she is teaching Dawn - borrowing from Spike and Giles. And in Xander's dream he puts Spike and Giles together...side by side.

Giles =Spike.

Riley was also a Hank clone, very straight and into military, and authority, like Angel.

Wood, on the other hand, who she dates briefly, is a Giles clone, a Watcher, but younger.

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That's interesting about Kimba. I might look into that.

Re: Spike & Giles & authority figures: I agree with all this. Spike certainly mirrors Angel as well as Giles, and there are many huge ways in which Spike and Buffy's story hits the same beats as Buffy and Angel's, but from a completely different perspective. Spike may have had a healing effect partly because he could resolve both Buffy's Angel and Giles issues?

Xander also mirrors Giles--in S8 especially, he takes the watcher role very explicitly ("and I still have my watcher," she says in LWH), and this matches up with Xander's statement in Restless that he had been into being a watcher. They react in somewhat similar ways to Angel in S2/3, Spike in 5/6 (though they diverge in 7, when Xander is more accepting of Spike), and are similarly blind to Buffy's depression in S6. (Then again, so was Willow.)

The Welcome to the Hellmouth/Dead Things parallel is really amazing.

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19. It is interesting, the choice to spin off Boreanaz and Carpenter together--it was done, I think, wholly based on the characters they play, and for a while it worked. Certainly Boreanaz got much better in his own show, and Carpenter did okay until S3/4. Thank heavens they got Denisof in there when they did, anyway....

Who would you say is the weak link in BSG? Grace Park didn't differentiate between Boomer and Athena performances enough, perhaps (though she was good doing Boomer's confusion in S1). Bamber had a difficult (potentially boring) role and mostly did a good job with it.

20. On Lost, are you thinking Sawyer/Juliet? I guess there are a half-dozen ships to take from that episode....

Anyway, yes, TR--that entire montage is amazing. And I like the way the doomed-ness of Spuffy is so assumed, so default to Buffy, that the montage of pain and sadness ends with this.

21. With Sawyer/Juliet the show skipped the (arguably) important part, their three years of building a life that Jack, Kate et al. would bumble into and destroy. But major chemistry props; it was in season five where, besides Ben, Sawyer and Juliet were probably my favourite characters. I like your other picks. And yes, definitely Spuffy--I'm not sure if I really have a favourite ship, but they would be on the list if I did.

22. Cheers--I would say the last minute or so of the show was memorable, where the gang is huddled in the bar, and the phone rings, and each of the characters identifies it as, possibly, their connection from outside the bar (Norm's wife, Cliff's mom, Carla's kids, etc.). They decide not to answer it, because it's late, and Sam kicks everyone out. Someone moves down the steps toward the entrance, just in silhouette, and Sam calls out, "Sorry, we're closed," and the person walks away. Was it Diane? Rebecca perhaps? Someone else? Doesn't matter--the show is over. I think the episode itself was Sam & Diane-ness, and not that memorable to me, but the ending was killer.

24. I like both Offices, but obviously I don't have the same triggers--obviously the point of the shows is how annoying the boss is, and cringe-worthy comedy is not for everyone.

25. Of the two, I think I prefer the Beneath You quote--more mysterious, more (to me) layers, more raw power. But the (relative) simplicity of the Touched speech is important too; the story I guess of season seven is getting the two characters from Beneath You to Touched.

26. I'd seen about three episodes of Quantum Leap on a marathon, one day, one of which was the series finale. I liked the finale--with no ability to evaluate how well it fit into the tone of the show. I've heard that is a big problem people have with it--the show is much lighter and more upbeat about Sam's situation. This might be wrong.

30. From Angel, I cared a lot about Darla and so her death impressed me--and I still really like Lullaby in spite of the "mother kills herself to avoid even the possibility of not loving her child" real world implications. Wes' death hits me the hardest there.

I agree with Joyce on Buffy, though. BtVS knew how to do a character death, I think.

Sorry for the long delay to reply! :)