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shadowkatRead two things on the net about Buffy and Whedon. I'm not linking to them, because I don't like the posts and don't like either of the people who did them - so do not want to provide either with needless free marketing.
1. Seeing Red - this episode has been talked to death. But, over time I've begun to figure out why it doesn't work for me and why in some respects everything that came after didn't quite work. At first I thought it was because it was a bit of your standard cliche tv tropes which I'd seen done so many times in soapy serials that I was actually able to predict what happened in this episode long before I saw it. But that's not quite it. And I shrugged it off before. No, it's how the writers handled what happened. They did two things in this episode mainly for shock value and to further two characters (who the writers were understandably fascinated by) arcs. Yet, the method they chose to further these characters arcs was...somewhat cliche and easy. Lazy. And it wrote both characters into a corner, along with all the others, and and..was ultimately disappointing. They took the proverbial short-cut and the story suffered in my opinion as a result. (Mileage obviously varies on this point, doesn't it on everything? Honestly I think people will fight over whether the date should be 8/16/12 or 16/8/12. Wait, they do. Never mind.)
The two events I'm talking about - which changed the show and lost a lot of viewers were in no particular order - the death of Tara/Willow's rage and the attempted rape of Buffy/Spike's brooding and taking off. Note in both cases - the emphasis is on Willow and Spike. What happens to Buffy and/or Tara is sort of swiped under a rug. Neither are really examined. The victim isn't important. Most of the focus in the episode is on Warren/Spike and Willow. A show about female empowerment or Buffy - goes elsewhere. It's the first time in the series this happened that I can think of, I may be wrong about that. Also, it occurs to me now, years later, what bugged me...the writers never really deal with rape.
Or attempted rape. What it means to the victim. Never. Nor does Whedon really tackle this in other series - not really. Dollhouse - does to a degree and it may be in this series that he comes closest to looking at the topic from the victim's pov. But even then, it feels almost as if he's making excuses or hunting ways to redeem those who do it? And this has always to a degree grated or bugged me. I find myself questioning it and realizing as I do that perhaps there's something to be said for not over-analyzing television series that are written mainly off-the-cuff. Whedon is admittedly a plotter who makes it up as he goes along or off-the-cuff, much as I write these journal entries. It's what I hate and love about him. (In case you haven't figured it out by now, I have a love/hate relationship with Whedon's storytelling and Whedon. Also, oddly, with Whedon's fandom and they with me, since I keep criticizing their god. I don't worship anything. I question everything, including myself.)
It just feels as if Spike's attack on Buffy was more about Spike than it was about Buffy - which admittedly is true about rape - it is about the rapist. In the same way that Xander's was about Xander - true as well. That's actually realistic. The problem is both are oddly swept under the rug. Spike's less so...
I keep thinking it would have worked better if they had him do anything else or if they constructed it differently. I've read fanfic that actually did construct it better, because obviously I wasn't the only fan who struggled with this.
Also it felt so contrived in some respects, as if the writer's thought, we have to come up with a reason for Spike to seek a soul. We have to motivate him. And in order to develop Spike, to push him off the cliff, we have him brutally attack Buffy - he doesn't rape her, but he does brutally attack her in a way and under circumstances that make it almost impossible for her to fight back. It felt, and still does, lazy, too easy, a short-cut.
And one they hadn't thought out. It felt too much like the Soap Opera trope - hero attempts to rape or rapes heroine, they break up, he finds a way to redeem himself, changes completely because the fact he hurt her tramautizes him, and they get back together. (Too many comic books and soaps have done this. It almost feels like the rape was a good thing - because it made him look at his inner monster and start on the path to redemption! Too often redemption stories do this - they have the character do a horrible thing - kill others or rape or whatever...and then they get to be redeemed. It's like that act causes their journey. And I'm not sure that's the way to go, nor is it realistic. In most cases that's not what happens, even if we wish it were.)
Same with Tara's death, which admittedly had originally been Oz's death. This was plotted out a long time ago. But I'm not sure it works. The misleads, the structure, all of it feels just ever so slightly off. Plus it's a negative trope much like Spike's attempted rape is - in tv. Too many tv shows and films have done this. The couple is happy, they kill off one, the other goes for vengeance. It's almost cliche. Making the couple gay...is even worse, particularly at this time period - when Willow and Tara were amongst the few female gay couples on television. They were ground-breaking. And the way Tara is killed - she's shot in the bedroom...next to the window, near the bed, after they had sex - all these metaphors point to the Dead Lesbian Closet trope. This has, of course, been discussed ad nauseum on the net. And at the time I argued against it - because Whedon would have killed whomever Willow loved to get Dark Willow. My difficulty is he chose the cliche. It would have been far more interesting if Dark Willow occurred earlier and we didn't go down the drug mislead. The death of Tara = Dark Willow is just so...cliche.
Forget that they are lesbians, if it had been OZ it would have been cliche and predictable.
The idea of turning Willow dark in s5 - after Glory tortured Tara..or maybe after she brought back Buffy, and show her getting darker and darker as the season progresses might have worked better? I don't know. But the writing choices in Seeing Red are unfortunately lame ones. They hurt the show. And are examples of how the series is flawed and will never quite hit the quality benchmarks of other series.
I had similar issues with Angel and the curse - which also wrote the character and series into a corner that it never quite got out of. But it at least felt new, not old hat or repetitive.
What do you think? Think I'm nuts? Or on the mark? Or a little bit of both? ;-)
2.Top 10 episodes from all Whedon series...I didn't agree with the list I read which was (The trial (Angel), Out of Gas (Firefly), The Message (Firefly), You're Welcome (Angel),
Fool for Love (Buffy), The Wish (Buffy), Hush (Buffy), Smile Time (Angel), Lullaby (Angel),
The Body (Buffy) - this guy liked Angel better than I did (most guys do) and Firefly for that matter.)
1. The Body (although I admittedly can't re-watch it without sobbing uncontrollably)
2. Once More with Feeling (weirdly enough the fact that Xander accidentally summoned the demon never bothered me, he's done that before, and why would it have been addressed? The show wasn't that moralistic. And it is the best musical done as a tv episode that I've seen for a series that is not meant to be a musical, plus it was a sort of parody/homage to musicals.)
3. Hush- Buffy
4. Home - Angel
5. Smile Time - Angel
6. Fool for Love - Buffy
7. Objects in Space - Firefly (it's actually one of two episodes from that series I remember)
8. Dopplegangland - Buffy
9. Serenity - Firefly
10. Destiny - Angel
Honorable mentions - Man on the Street - Dollhouse, and Spy in the House of Love - Dollhouse, Becoming 1 &2 Buffy, Lullaby and Darla - Angel, Beneath You and Lies My Parents Told Me - Buffy.
What are yours??
1. Seeing Red - this episode has been talked to death. But, over time I've begun to figure out why it doesn't work for me and why in some respects everything that came after didn't quite work. At first I thought it was because it was a bit of your standard cliche tv tropes which I'd seen done so many times in soapy serials that I was actually able to predict what happened in this episode long before I saw it. But that's not quite it. And I shrugged it off before. No, it's how the writers handled what happened. They did two things in this episode mainly for shock value and to further two characters (who the writers were understandably fascinated by) arcs. Yet, the method they chose to further these characters arcs was...somewhat cliche and easy. Lazy. And it wrote both characters into a corner, along with all the others, and and..was ultimately disappointing. They took the proverbial short-cut and the story suffered in my opinion as a result. (Mileage obviously varies on this point, doesn't it on everything? Honestly I think people will fight over whether the date should be 8/16/12 or 16/8/12. Wait, they do. Never mind.)
The two events I'm talking about - which changed the show and lost a lot of viewers were in no particular order - the death of Tara/Willow's rage and the attempted rape of Buffy/Spike's brooding and taking off. Note in both cases - the emphasis is on Willow and Spike. What happens to Buffy and/or Tara is sort of swiped under a rug. Neither are really examined. The victim isn't important. Most of the focus in the episode is on Warren/Spike and Willow. A show about female empowerment or Buffy - goes elsewhere. It's the first time in the series this happened that I can think of, I may be wrong about that. Also, it occurs to me now, years later, what bugged me...the writers never really deal with rape.
Or attempted rape. What it means to the victim. Never. Nor does Whedon really tackle this in other series - not really. Dollhouse - does to a degree and it may be in this series that he comes closest to looking at the topic from the victim's pov. But even then, it feels almost as if he's making excuses or hunting ways to redeem those who do it? And this has always to a degree grated or bugged me. I find myself questioning it and realizing as I do that perhaps there's something to be said for not over-analyzing television series that are written mainly off-the-cuff. Whedon is admittedly a plotter who makes it up as he goes along or off-the-cuff, much as I write these journal entries. It's what I hate and love about him. (In case you haven't figured it out by now, I have a love/hate relationship with Whedon's storytelling and Whedon. Also, oddly, with Whedon's fandom and they with me, since I keep criticizing their god. I don't worship anything. I question everything, including myself.)
It just feels as if Spike's attack on Buffy was more about Spike than it was about Buffy - which admittedly is true about rape - it is about the rapist. In the same way that Xander's was about Xander - true as well. That's actually realistic. The problem is both are oddly swept under the rug. Spike's less so...
I keep thinking it would have worked better if they had him do anything else or if they constructed it differently. I've read fanfic that actually did construct it better, because obviously I wasn't the only fan who struggled with this.
Also it felt so contrived in some respects, as if the writer's thought, we have to come up with a reason for Spike to seek a soul. We have to motivate him. And in order to develop Spike, to push him off the cliff, we have him brutally attack Buffy - he doesn't rape her, but he does brutally attack her in a way and under circumstances that make it almost impossible for her to fight back. It felt, and still does, lazy, too easy, a short-cut.
And one they hadn't thought out. It felt too much like the Soap Opera trope - hero attempts to rape or rapes heroine, they break up, he finds a way to redeem himself, changes completely because the fact he hurt her tramautizes him, and they get back together. (Too many comic books and soaps have done this. It almost feels like the rape was a good thing - because it made him look at his inner monster and start on the path to redemption! Too often redemption stories do this - they have the character do a horrible thing - kill others or rape or whatever...and then they get to be redeemed. It's like that act causes their journey. And I'm not sure that's the way to go, nor is it realistic. In most cases that's not what happens, even if we wish it were.)
Same with Tara's death, which admittedly had originally been Oz's death. This was plotted out a long time ago. But I'm not sure it works. The misleads, the structure, all of it feels just ever so slightly off. Plus it's a negative trope much like Spike's attempted rape is - in tv. Too many tv shows and films have done this. The couple is happy, they kill off one, the other goes for vengeance. It's almost cliche. Making the couple gay...is even worse, particularly at this time period - when Willow and Tara were amongst the few female gay couples on television. They were ground-breaking. And the way Tara is killed - she's shot in the bedroom...next to the window, near the bed, after they had sex - all these metaphors point to the Dead Lesbian Closet trope. This has, of course, been discussed ad nauseum on the net. And at the time I argued against it - because Whedon would have killed whomever Willow loved to get Dark Willow. My difficulty is he chose the cliche. It would have been far more interesting if Dark Willow occurred earlier and we didn't go down the drug mislead. The death of Tara = Dark Willow is just so...cliche.
Forget that they are lesbians, if it had been OZ it would have been cliche and predictable.
The idea of turning Willow dark in s5 - after Glory tortured Tara..or maybe after she brought back Buffy, and show her getting darker and darker as the season progresses might have worked better? I don't know. But the writing choices in Seeing Red are unfortunately lame ones. They hurt the show. And are examples of how the series is flawed and will never quite hit the quality benchmarks of other series.
I had similar issues with Angel and the curse - which also wrote the character and series into a corner that it never quite got out of. But it at least felt new, not old hat or repetitive.
What do you think? Think I'm nuts? Or on the mark? Or a little bit of both? ;-)
2.Top 10 episodes from all Whedon series...I didn't agree with the list I read which was (The trial (Angel), Out of Gas (Firefly), The Message (Firefly), You're Welcome (Angel),
Fool for Love (Buffy), The Wish (Buffy), Hush (Buffy), Smile Time (Angel), Lullaby (Angel),
The Body (Buffy) - this guy liked Angel better than I did (most guys do) and Firefly for that matter.)
1. The Body (although I admittedly can't re-watch it without sobbing uncontrollably)
2. Once More with Feeling (weirdly enough the fact that Xander accidentally summoned the demon never bothered me, he's done that before, and why would it have been addressed? The show wasn't that moralistic. And it is the best musical done as a tv episode that I've seen for a series that is not meant to be a musical, plus it was a sort of parody/homage to musicals.)
3. Hush- Buffy
4. Home - Angel
5. Smile Time - Angel
6. Fool for Love - Buffy
7. Objects in Space - Firefly (it's actually one of two episodes from that series I remember)
8. Dopplegangland - Buffy
9. Serenity - Firefly
10. Destiny - Angel
Honorable mentions - Man on the Street - Dollhouse, and Spy in the House of Love - Dollhouse, Becoming 1 &2 Buffy, Lullaby and Darla - Angel, Beneath You and Lies My Parents Told Me - Buffy.
What are yours??
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Re: top 10 list
Date: 2012-08-17 10:33 pm (UTC)As for the gypsies? No, still doesn't work. Staking Angel would have been the best revenge. No chance to redeem himself. No chance for forgiveness. Done. That's what people seeking vengeance do - they torture the sucker then kill them.
Granted Whedon's definition of vegeance was somewhat more advanced and complicated.
Re: top 10 list
Date: 2012-08-17 10:37 pm (UTC)But if we assume that Angel's suffering with his soul also makes Angelus suffer, and if we consider such suffering a true form of torment, then the curse is at least logical. Maybe not persuasive, but logical.
Re: top 10 list
Date: 2012-08-17 10:45 pm (UTC)So if we assume the gypsies knew this, which is a big assumption and may be granting the gypsies a lot more credit than they deserve, than yes - it's logical. But not emotional. So dlgood's argument oddly falls flat.
He argues that vengeance is emotional. Someone who is reacting emotional isn't going to think it through this far or come up with this intricate a scheme, only a detached writer would.