shadowkat | (no subject)

Alright..taking a bit of time out to admit the latest Mark Watches post amused me.

Highlights:

*BUFFY’S DREAM. WHAT THE FUCK. Oh my god, Faith, I miss you. How is this show going to deal with you? I thought you were dead for sure, and now you’re here, and you’re in a coma, and I just feel bad for you. Why do I have a feeling this dream sequence has some other importance I’m not seeing?

Me: You have no idea. Fan literally rewound that dream five or six times to figure out the clues for the next two seasons - which are all interwoven in that dream. The coming of Dawn, Joyce's death, and finally Buffy's death to save the world.

And if you think the dream sequence in S3 is trippy, just wait until Restless in S4.

Also Dude, seriously, is Fuck your favorite word? It makes your posts difficult to read at work.

Angel: SHUT THE FUCK UP. I am so irritated by you and your constant need for melodrama. First, you don’t want Buffy around. Then you want to help her. Then you don’t want to live. And now you won’t stick around to say goodbye because it’ll be “too painful.” Maybe it’s so painful because you won’t make up your goddamn mind. Can you even imagine the pain you are causing Buffy with this whole back-and-forth routine? No? SO STOP IT.

If Angel's lurking indecisiveness where Buffy is concerned bugs him in Graduation Day, just wait for Pangs and I Will Always Remember You - which are what killed that ship dead for me. For more or less the same reason's Mark is echoing above.

Oh, of course Angel is going to Brood in the fog and smoke before disappearing. Angel was never truly worried about saying goodbye. He just needed to brood one last time.

LOL! Actually, not for the last time. And... Well he never actually does need to say goodbye, because he just keeps popping up, once a season. I think the only season he didn't pop up was S6 - no wait, he did, just off stage. B/A relationship otherwise known as "do I stay or do I go, I can't make up my mind!!!"

Almost makes me want to re-watch the series again.

I think my Buffy poll is finally done. I'll close it Friday night. With 75 participants, S3 is still not much of a favorite, only 11 people list it as a favorite and only 6 as their favorite of all the seasons. S5 is still ahead by a wide margin, with S6 a few lags behind, and S7/S3 tied for third place, S4 is in fourth,
S2 is in fifth and S1 dead last. Apparently the majority of my flist or whomever took the poll prefers the latter seasons to the earlier ones. I'm guessing they are mostly Spike fans like myself...because let's face it he's not in the earlier seasons. If you are a Spike fan, you probably won't rank 1-3 as your overall favorite or 1st. The people who tend to put S3 first - I've noticed - aren't Spike fans, but Faith or Xander fans. Poor souls. You really got gypped. Faith hardly has much of an arc.
Angel/David Boreanze fans, I don't feel sorry for, they got an entire series featuring their hero. Plus Bones. Frigging lucky people. While us Spike/James Marsters fans, got barely anything in comparison. I really need to stop becoming enamored of quirky character actors.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I know taste and personality is very subjective, but I preferred the earlier seasons of BTVS, which had more modular episodes & plots. S5, particularly the back half, was very Arc heavy. Which, clearly, didn't work for me as well as it did others.

Not that I rewatch a lot of BtVS anymore (when I watch older shows, I'm now more into watching shows I didn't watch the first time around) but it makes it harder for me to rewatch many of the latter season episodes.

Which, suggests I'm more of a fan of procedural than arc heavy style. Kind of odd, I guess. I don't assess the shows I currently watch based on re-watchability (which is something procedurals do better with) and yet that's how I find myself judging seasons as a whole.

It is very subjective in that way. The people who preferred the first three seasons on my flist, I've found generally speaking (there are always exceptions) tend to like the episodic style better (not necessarily procedural) - with things being more neatly wrapped up at the end of each episode and the end of the season.
Definitive beginning, middle and end. And the only seasons that had that definitive feel to them were 1-3 - probably due to David Greenwalt's influence. Greenwalt is more of an episodic television writer, Whedon more serial.

My brother and I discussed this recently and we both realized that we didn't really like the modular plot or episodic style or anthology series. We liked arcs...where the story builds from episode to episode and the series is more like a "novel" for television. Both of us fell in love with Hill Street Blues, BSG, Lost, The Wire, Buffy and Angel and Friday Night Lights. Neither of us had much patience for The X-Files (although we watched it intermittently), Bones, CSI, NCSI, or the others. In fact, I almost didn't watch The Good Wife - because it felt like a legal procedural. But my father loves the episodic format.

I also remember having long discussions with cjl about this back in 2002-2004, he LOVED season 3 - best season, and HATED season 5. LOL!
We'd argue for hours. He gave me S5 as a gift, because someone gave it to him and he didn't want it. But he, like you, preferred the more episodic style, and the earlier seasons worked better..he also loved S4. S5-7 - he had major problems with for much the same reasons (well that and he was a die-hard Xander fan.)

Yeah. One of the issues, for me, is that I do want discrete events from each episode. And one of the problems with the "arc" segments of S5 & S7 (less so S6) is that many episodes felt like wheel spinning in service of the arc. An early season "anthology" episode might not be strong, but as long as something happens I'll be okay. A weak "arc" episode will feel like "wheel spinning" to me, and I find that far more frustrating.

"The Good Wife" - as an example - has excelled along both tracks. Something relatively interesting is happening in each episode and episodes are also building larger plots. And gets good use out of whichever characters it happens to feature from the ensemble. It's an ideal - a show that demonstrates you don't have to trade off anthology vs. arc but can excel at both.

For me, if a show is going to lack on either dimension - I'll trade the big story for something interesting/challenging/fun now.

And one of the problems with the "arc" segments of S5 & S7 (less so S6) is that many episodes felt like wheel spinning in service of the arc.

This is very true. I had similar issues with both seasons. It was almost as if the writers were thinking, oh, now we have to add something about this or that to further our arc.

Whedon isn't a very good plotter. I had similar issues with Dollhouse and Firefly.

"The Good Wife" - as an example - has excelled along both tracks. Something relatively interesting is happening in each episode and episodes are also building larger plots. And gets good use out of whichever characters it happens to feature from the ensemble. It's an ideal - a show that demonstrates you don't have to trade off anthology vs. arc but can excel at both.

Very true. It handles both well, often using the anthology to strengthen the arc. That's key. Star Trek the Next Generation did that rather well at times. It's amongst the few anthology series that I liked. Doctor Who is another one.

I require something to happen characterwise in each episode, some furthering of their arc, some change in their makeup, something...The anthology/episodic series that lose me are the ones where I feel like the characters are just treading in place. They don't get to evolve or change, their relationship doesn't really change, and they are put in fake jeopardy to boost ratings at the end of each season, but at the beginning of the next season - they are perfectly fine and it's as if nothing happened.

I admittedly have stopped re-watching programs that I've already seen too, no time. Now I only watch programs haven't seen - I have a stack...S4 of Fringe, S1 of House of Lies, S5 of Dexter, S1 of Homeland...too much tv and too little time. ;-)

Truth is I watched Buffy too many times...I know it too well, can't really rewatch it...anymore.