leesemarie posted a BLOG item
8 days ago
1997. I'm in 5th grade. (Haha, I mean second because I'm not this old. Noooo. In fact, I wasn't even born yet. I was in the womb and was like oh snap, what's all this? We need to check out this show, Ma.) I still think the Power Rangers are cool but am embarrassed to admit it and sneak in my episode viewings when nobody is around. "Men In Black" is my jam. (IT REMAINS SO, MOTHERFUCKERS) I'm channel surfing with my sister on a Saturday afternoon. For whatever reason, we stop on the WB which was still a thing then. I believe at one point one of my more interesting family members referred to it as, "the black people channel", which you know...Shout out to my ignorant as fuck hometown. Stay classy.
I'm hooked into this show about a blonde girl fighting vampires and even at that age I'm thinking, wait...wasn't this a movie? And wasn't it sort of...bad? How is this a thing? Why is it a different girl? What's happening? She's wearing a blue pleather coat (which I thought was just the coolest thing ever and bought one shortly after) and quipping like a motherfucker. (In a way that was nifty at the time but has dated itself and makes you blush a little bit these days. Thankfully, this gets better as the show goes on ) The episode ends on a cliffhanger and I NEED to know what happens. The concluding episode airs the following night.
I'm in. I'm a Buffy fan. I'm a Buffy fan at what was probably too young of an age, as just a year later she'd lose her virginity in one of their more famous, highly-charged emotional episodes and I was only 12 years old.
I'm not gonna go on at length about why I loved the show because there are lots and lots of articles and blogs and tumblr entries from people who explain it in much better ways than I ever could. But I will say that it was formative as fuck.
I bought every magazine I could with Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover. If there was an interview on tv, I'd tape the shit out of it. Yes, TAPE. I bought the season 2 VHS tapes and watched them at least 50 times. I got the comics the first time around (not canon, at that point). I bought the books. I wrote Angel and Buffy fanfiction. Yes. I did. Hell, I even got my Mom into the show.
And actually, you know what? I changed my mind. I will talk a little bit about what the show meant to me. Hey, it's my blog, I get to do what I want.
It was the ultimate escape for me. Every tuesday, you bet your ass I was glued to the tv at 8 pm. While chaos was going on around me, here was this girl who was dealing with her own chaos. (The criticism that Whedon uses metaphors with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer is accurate, but I'd argue works for a show that is about hell in highschool. Literally). I was in a working class household, because in America we don't like to say the word poor, and had an unhealthy family dynamic going on and I could forget about all of that for a while. (If any of you have seen the episode "Ted", it hit a little too close to home for me and was super awkward knowing my mother and stepdad were right downstairs also watching it.) She was strong but made mistakes. She could fight the battles that I couldn't, and really, really wanted to.
Looking back, of course now I can see that those first, sixth, and seventh seasons are pretty weak. The show started out campy as hell, and remained very amusing but managed to up it's game tremendously over the course of three or four years. The dialogue is very typically Joss Whedon, in an ironic-beat-and-somewhat-precious kind of way. It worked at the time. Maybe in a way it doesn't now but more on that later. The plots sometimes left something to be desired but the character work going on in that show truly was unique at the time. Buffy was still on the air when sitcoms ruled and it was incredible to see these long, incredibly well-done character arcs on a network that was largely put down because of it's programming (and sometimes, rightfully so) and budget restraints. I know the creators of the Wire have said Buffy influenced them greatly and I don't know if people are aware of just how much that show changed the tv landscape.
When it went off the air in 2003, I was still cruising Whedonesque every day and bringing up the genius of Joss Whedon to every person that I could. I'm gonna come come across as a hipster here, but mothereffers, one nine nine seven. That's how long I've been with this man. (Been with because we have a personal relationship? Idk)
Angel went off the air a year later and I would strongly recommend it to anybody. It is a weaker show, and of course it would be because while Buffy was in Joss's head for years and generally drawn out, Angel was unexpected and they were flying by the seat of their pants. I would dare say that some of the episodes in the fifth season are better than anything Buffy ever put out, even if BTVS is a stronger show overall. (Conner never happened, ok?) Anywho, Joss actually wasn't that involved with Angel so this is kind of besides the point.
We get Firefly and Serenity during this period as well (people have attributed the decline in quality of those last seasons of buffy to joss being distracted with firefly and i can buy that). I think Firefly was the last really great thing Joss Whedon ever did. The writing was still fresh, the characters were still good, and it wasn't repetitive at that point. Serenity kind of has its problems and is its own thing but I haven't seen it enough times to give a whole lot of thoughts on it.
It was around the time of Dr. Horrible that I started to become a little bit disappointed. I think Dr. Horrible is cute. I do not think it is the fantastic thing everybody makes it out to be. I don't understand why somebody who claims to be a feminist is constantly using the women in refrigerators trope in his works. NPH has charisma coming out of his ass and he usually elevates anything he's in but the whole thing seemed mediocre. Was this really from the same guy who had done Buffy and Firefly?
Dollhouse. Hoo boy. Dollhouse. It's a weird thing to realize you're only watching something simply based on inertia which is what I found when that show actually got renewed for a second season and I decided to stick around. The core of it was somewhat brave, I guess? Because who can predict how an audience will react to a main character who is SERIOUSLY, A BLANK SLATE, WEEK AFTER WEEK. Oh, wait. ANYBODY CAN. Joss's plots have never been his strong point and to create a show that relied on this plot that felt like it was pulled from a bad 70's sci-fi show was just the wrong move. On top of that, Whedon often has a good eye for casting but Eliza Dushku wasn't up to stuff for that role. And neither were a few people actually. It was shocking given how good he was with previous ensembles. There was very very very VERY small character work done every week but it just wasn't enough. And I don't say that as an impatient, lazy viewer, although I certainly can be. But even the tiny amount of character work delivered each episode wasn't good. It was stale. The concepts were stale. The Iraq war episode really made me question where his head was at. It wasn't smart. At all. What. the. fuck. was happening.
Cabin in the Woods? Noooope. I'll grant you that there's about two minutes in that movie that are absolutely insane and fun to watch but you can youtube those two minutes and skip the film. Again it felt like, ok we have seen this before and we've seen it done better.
THE BUFFY COMICS? OH LAWD HELP ME. (I'm aware he's not really involved except for work on a few issues but he's approving it, ffs. And his issues aren't all that great either)
I just haven't felt like he's brought his A game in a long, long time. The dialogue can be overly-precious and cutesy and ironic in a way that isn't current and just feels like, "hey look what i can do with these topsy-turvy phrases" a lot of the time and not actually reflective of what a particular character might actually say or think. He's repeated himself so many times it isn't funny. Yes, I'm aware artists revisit a lot of the same themes in their careers but hopefully they grow and learn and have something new to say, and it just hasn't felt that way to me.
In conclusion.
Butts.
P.S. This blog sucks cause I got hungry halfway through and was like grrarggg
Mood:
Chillin'
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YOU HAD ONE JOB, SAM