Band of sisters
Jan. 22nd, 2003 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSpoilers for Buffy episode 1/21, Potential -- beware!
I have a lot of mixed feelings about Buffy last night. One the one hand there were some beautiful things in it, some lovely funny touches from the hand of Rebecca Rand Kirshner, who wrote one of my all-time favorite episodes, Tabula Rasa, and who also wrote Help. But on the other, there was still the same tedious running in place feeling I had last time.
One of my main objections is General Summers. I find her boring, uninteresting, and grating. The ceaseless talking, the explaining, the Miss Thistlebottom quality of her instructionals, just isn’t the character of Buffy, to me. What attracted me to Buffy from the beginning was her learning process, her growing. And I realize that can’t last forever, but on the other hand, being a teacher just isn’t interesting. We as the audience know all the stuff that she’s unendingly explaining for the SITs, and so we have to sit there listening to her yammer on about what they have to do and know and be when we’ve been on that journey with her already, and it’s very old hat for us. It’s not unlike exposition plonked down in the middle of dialog in an explain-it-all-for-you manner — it feels stiff, boring, useless, and amateurish. I’d like to see them quicken the pace, and the truth is... I simply don’t care about any of these girls. At all. The closest I’ve come to caring about them is last night’s newbie, Amanda, who must be the longest girl ever on television. Her body is long, hair is long and lank, face is long and sad, even the way she talks is long and sad! But I was at least engaged by her, mostly because of her interactions with Dawn.
It’s such a startling thing to find Dawn so appealing this year. Since we’ve been sort of led on this goose chase of believing Dawn would be the next slayer, last night’s hah-hah-fooled-you trick was kind of dull (you could see it coming a mile away) and irritating, but I did enjoy Dawn’s back and forth reactions — a little fear, a little excitement at thinking she’s special, a lot of terror when confronted with what she doesn’t know and can’t do, and a lot of maturity when she handed that stick to Amanda.
And I simply can’t say enough about the ending. The Xan man is back. I’ve missed that Xander, the one who does see inside people, the one who cares. I always loved his tender friendship with Dawn when she first appeared in S5, and her subsequent crush on him and how annoyed he was when she got a crush on Spike. But it was mostly his speech to her about not being special, about watching the others develop in their powers, that touched me the most, and how much he does understand exactly what she’s going through — and that she is now mature enough to know that someone can understand her. What an incredible change over last year. No more get out get out get OUT.
I’m nonplussed about this line of slayers thing. They’ve clearly established that the line has gone on, through Kendra and then to Faith, and that it’s Faith’s death that will establish the next slayer. Why are they not addressing this? Why are they muddying the waters? Which leads to my other muddy question, what the hell is it with Spike’s chip? Do they just randomly bring it out and tuck it away when they need to, regardless of sense? I realize he didn’t have intent to harm last night, not really, but he was in full game face, and causing some pain to one of the SITs, yet nothing happened. You’d think even a tiny wince or something, but no. (And yeah, I know a bit about the upcoming spoilers, but still...) Inconsistency bothers me, a lot. It also felt a bit like they were making excuses for the ubervamp and the lameness of the FE, but I’ll begrudge them that this time.
At least Clem was back, yay! I missed him awfully. I like the fact that these potential slayers are learning that not all demons are cut and dried black and white evil vs. good, that with Clem and Anya and Spike around, they can see the complexity of the world Buffy inhabits. Especially when it leads to a sequence like Buffy and Spike in the cemetery and the “making out with them” line. It made my Spuffy heart happy, pathetic beast that I am.
But I feel like it’s time to move on. They’ve spent a lot of time now on General Summers, and I’d like to see some more forward momentum here — although I realize they’re probably saving it all for sweeps. Dawn has, it seems now, a more definite, clearer place in this fight, and people are settling into their roles and finding out where they fit. Now it’s time to move on.
Spoilers for The Shield
I really, really liked The Shield when it premiered last year, and evangelized it to everyone I knew, but only a few people got into it with me. This year, I’m finding a reversal of that feeling — I’m retreating from it, and I’m not sure how much longer I can continue to watch even while my friends do.
I’ve never considered myself a pussy about violence or gore. In fact, I’m interested in screen violence when it’s well-explored, and people have often commented about my vids that they know it’s one of mine (or mine and J’s) if it’s got blood and violence in it; some people have told me that some of my stories made them queasy. And what I liked best about Shield last year was that it totally tweaked the conventions of cable TV, with its inane bleeping of “curse” words like ass or goddamn, by piling on the swearing and the graphic, graphic violence and sexual situations. The hot boy/boy kiss between Julian and his lover was one of the high points of cable for me, with a — finally! — reasonably frank and sexy depiction of gay men getting together. So I was all rah-rah Shield, and happy for Michael Chiklis for his awards and the show’s awards, after its intense and fascinating first season.
Only now, it seems, they’re trying so hard to shock they’ve lost sight of the storyline. At this point, Vic isn’t someone you can care about despite his behavior. Last year even though he was despicable, he was also mesmerizing and you could often sympathize with him; this year he’s just becoming annoying, he’s lost his dimensions. And they’ve taken Dutch back a step too far; after all he went through last year, I find it hard to believe he’d fall for that affectless, clearly lying woman last night and then be so shocked by his mistake. I can’t tell what Aceveda is anymore.
But most of all, I’m disturbed by the gore and the violence. I couldn’t even watch much of the first ep with the necklacing stuff. Between last week’s stove-element burning and beating and this week’s sexual torture/mutilation/beating sequences and Shane’s attempt to rape that woman to elicit information, I’m not sure I want to watch anymore. Yes, I know why Shane did it, but I also think that if she hadn’t broken, he would have raped her, because he’s an utter slime. It seems like they’re beating us over the head with how groundbreaking and violent and edgy they are, and have lost sight of the characters and what they mean to the edginess of the story. Danny and Julian seem to barely exist at all, even when they’re on screen! Last night left me feeling run over and miserable. There was nothing redeeming about it, and worse, nothing interesting. If they keep going for bigger and more horrific shock value over story, I’m not sure I can stick with it.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about Buffy last night. One the one hand there were some beautiful things in it, some lovely funny touches from the hand of Rebecca Rand Kirshner, who wrote one of my all-time favorite episodes, Tabula Rasa, and who also wrote Help. But on the other, there was still the same tedious running in place feeling I had last time.
One of my main objections is General Summers. I find her boring, uninteresting, and grating. The ceaseless talking, the explaining, the Miss Thistlebottom quality of her instructionals, just isn’t the character of Buffy, to me. What attracted me to Buffy from the beginning was her learning process, her growing. And I realize that can’t last forever, but on the other hand, being a teacher just isn’t interesting. We as the audience know all the stuff that she’s unendingly explaining for the SITs, and so we have to sit there listening to her yammer on about what they have to do and know and be when we’ve been on that journey with her already, and it’s very old hat for us. It’s not unlike exposition plonked down in the middle of dialog in an explain-it-all-for-you manner — it feels stiff, boring, useless, and amateurish. I’d like to see them quicken the pace, and the truth is... I simply don’t care about any of these girls. At all. The closest I’ve come to caring about them is last night’s newbie, Amanda, who must be the longest girl ever on television. Her body is long, hair is long and lank, face is long and sad, even the way she talks is long and sad! But I was at least engaged by her, mostly because of her interactions with Dawn.
It’s such a startling thing to find Dawn so appealing this year. Since we’ve been sort of led on this goose chase of believing Dawn would be the next slayer, last night’s hah-hah-fooled-you trick was kind of dull (you could see it coming a mile away) and irritating, but I did enjoy Dawn’s back and forth reactions — a little fear, a little excitement at thinking she’s special, a lot of terror when confronted with what she doesn’t know and can’t do, and a lot of maturity when she handed that stick to Amanda.
And I simply can’t say enough about the ending. The Xan man is back. I’ve missed that Xander, the one who does see inside people, the one who cares. I always loved his tender friendship with Dawn when she first appeared in S5, and her subsequent crush on him and how annoyed he was when she got a crush on Spike. But it was mostly his speech to her about not being special, about watching the others develop in their powers, that touched me the most, and how much he does understand exactly what she’s going through — and that she is now mature enough to know that someone can understand her. What an incredible change over last year. No more get out get out get OUT.
I’m nonplussed about this line of slayers thing. They’ve clearly established that the line has gone on, through Kendra and then to Faith, and that it’s Faith’s death that will establish the next slayer. Why are they not addressing this? Why are they muddying the waters? Which leads to my other muddy question, what the hell is it with Spike’s chip? Do they just randomly bring it out and tuck it away when they need to, regardless of sense? I realize he didn’t have intent to harm last night, not really, but he was in full game face, and causing some pain to one of the SITs, yet nothing happened. You’d think even a tiny wince or something, but no. (And yeah, I know a bit about the upcoming spoilers, but still...) Inconsistency bothers me, a lot. It also felt a bit like they were making excuses for the ubervamp and the lameness of the FE, but I’ll begrudge them that this time.
At least Clem was back, yay! I missed him awfully. I like the fact that these potential slayers are learning that not all demons are cut and dried black and white evil vs. good, that with Clem and Anya and Spike around, they can see the complexity of the world Buffy inhabits. Especially when it leads to a sequence like Buffy and Spike in the cemetery and the “making out with them” line. It made my Spuffy heart happy, pathetic beast that I am.
But I feel like it’s time to move on. They’ve spent a lot of time now on General Summers, and I’d like to see some more forward momentum here — although I realize they’re probably saving it all for sweeps. Dawn has, it seems now, a more definite, clearer place in this fight, and people are settling into their roles and finding out where they fit. Now it’s time to move on.
Spoilers for The Shield
I really, really liked The Shield when it premiered last year, and evangelized it to everyone I knew, but only a few people got into it with me. This year, I’m finding a reversal of that feeling — I’m retreating from it, and I’m not sure how much longer I can continue to watch even while my friends do.
I’ve never considered myself a pussy about violence or gore. In fact, I’m interested in screen violence when it’s well-explored, and people have often commented about my vids that they know it’s one of mine (or mine and J’s) if it’s got blood and violence in it; some people have told me that some of my stories made them queasy. And what I liked best about Shield last year was that it totally tweaked the conventions of cable TV, with its inane bleeping of “curse” words like ass or goddamn, by piling on the swearing and the graphic, graphic violence and sexual situations. The hot boy/boy kiss between Julian and his lover was one of the high points of cable for me, with a — finally! — reasonably frank and sexy depiction of gay men getting together. So I was all rah-rah Shield, and happy for Michael Chiklis for his awards and the show’s awards, after its intense and fascinating first season.
Only now, it seems, they’re trying so hard to shock they’ve lost sight of the storyline. At this point, Vic isn’t someone you can care about despite his behavior. Last year even though he was despicable, he was also mesmerizing and you could often sympathize with him; this year he’s just becoming annoying, he’s lost his dimensions. And they’ve taken Dutch back a step too far; after all he went through last year, I find it hard to believe he’d fall for that affectless, clearly lying woman last night and then be so shocked by his mistake. I can’t tell what Aceveda is anymore.
But most of all, I’m disturbed by the gore and the violence. I couldn’t even watch much of the first ep with the necklacing stuff. Between last week’s stove-element burning and beating and this week’s sexual torture/mutilation/beating sequences and Shane’s attempt to rape that woman to elicit information, I’m not sure I want to watch anymore. Yes, I know why Shane did it, but I also think that if she hadn’t broken, he would have raped her, because he’s an utter slime. It seems like they’re beating us over the head with how groundbreaking and violent and edgy they are, and have lost sight of the characters and what they mean to the edginess of the story. Danny and Julian seem to barely exist at all, even when they’re on screen! Last night left me feeling run over and miserable. There was nothing redeeming about it, and worse, nothing interesting. If they keep going for bigger and more horrific shock value over story, I’m not sure I can stick with it.
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The Shield
Date: 2003-01-22 12:28 pm (UTC)Re: The Shield
Date: 2003-01-22 12:39 pm (UTC)It's really, really rare when I recoil from something because of its graphic quality or its violence, but so far I've recoiled every week! I'm done recoiling, I have no coil left in me. ;-) I do love Claudette, though -- and I still want to see what's going on with Julian and that woman he asked out. I'm like, 'you're gay, you nimrod!' and I'd like to see what he's coping with in that regard.
Less burnnings and mutilations and sexual torture, and more internal torture and emotional trauma, I say!
Re: The Shield
Date: 2003-01-22 12:53 pm (UTC)As for the recoiling, yeah. When I look back at all my morning-after commentaries on the episodes so far, they all say something like "OH, God!" or "Yikes!" or "That was HARSH!" I thought I was completely inured to television violence, but I guess I'm not totally warped yet. *g*