Los Magnificos
Mar. 21st, 2005 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI thought I'd try to do a non-horrible death post for a change and say something fannish.
The reception to my Magnificent 7 vid In a Big Country surprised me a lot, both when it premiered at the con and when I put it up online. It seemed to pique the interest of a lot of people who normally wouldn't give cowboys in love a fightin' chance. Coupled with the fact that Showtime Extreme is currently showing the episodes uncut and unbugged, I think the fandom is poised for a little bit of an uplift. Before, anyone getting into it through word of mouth or fanfic had an awfully hard time getting hold of the 23 hours available (a pilot movie and 21 subsequent episodes, spread over two "seasons" because CBS cancelled it halfway through its first season, but it was brought back by a successful fan campaign, whereupon CBS promptly cancelled it again without airing the final four episodes that TNT, before it became Spike TV, did air with their horrible, horrible station ID bugs and all cut up). When they could get tapes, they were second or third gen, blurry and dark, or people bought the terrible DVDs that someone is selling, where they are compressed, blown up to full screen size, and then crammed on a disc with so many other eps that they are nearly unwatchable. So it's been a difficult fandom to pimp. Hallmark channel showed them a few years ago, but their scheduling was weirdly unreliable, and some eps were drastically cut, often in the slashiest places, or then not touched at all, but they changed schedules without alerting TiVo, so one of the most pivotal eps never repeated.
I'm hopeful that with the Showtime airings making good copies available, people can discover this wonderful series -- and hope they will show up on the torrent sites, if people don't have someone who can record the Showtime eps for them. The ones I've seen so far look stunning -- the show was filmed using natural light, which is very unusual, so the darks often didn't register well previously, but these airings have restored the look of the show quite well, I think. I'm also hearing things I've never been able to hear before. Like a lot of shows on CBS at the time, Mag 7 was made with a very clean-cut, family audience in mind, so there are a number of the usual Western cliches. But the show really veered away from that in many respects to create a more realistic feeling about what things were like, and they got a number of historical details right that I really valued (being someone who really loves to research the old West). I heard a couple people disparage the show at Escapade as being not bad, but not good, but I disagree -- I think it was frequently great, and had some good solid writing from people who knew their characters well (no mean feat for seven main characters and a couple of recurring secondary characters). The final four eps that CBS never aired, in fact, were superb, and were taking the show to a very dark, very adult place that was everything I could have hoped for.
I really enjoyed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
killabeez's posts about essential Highlander episodes, and I got to thinking after someone mentioned again how the vid had got them interested in seeing it, what episodes would I consider mandatory watching to be pimped or to pimp someone into the fandom? I'm a terrible pimp, so I might be choosing the wrong things (I like dark, challenging, gripping stories as opposed to lighter weight or humorous, most often), but this is a listing of what I would show someone if I had limited time. (OTOH, I think watching all 23 hours isn't unfeasible, and would recommend that more, especially in order -- I sent mlyn home with a bag o' tapes and she came back hooked. A marathon can be a lot of fun.) Keep in mind, too, that I'm very, very Chris/Vin-centric, with a lot of love for everyone, but not as much for Buck and JD, though I do think they have their moments.
1. Ghosts of the Confederacy (the pilot movie): This sets up everything you need to know about the universe, and takes off in a similar path to the classic movie, but with a modern new agey spin to it in some ways. The history is a little weird (some of the Seven carry guns that weren't around until the late '70s, but that would mean the former Confederate soldiers have been wandering around in the desert for a lot longer than makes sense), but I loved how it dealt with something few Westerns on TV ever did: the diaspora of people from the south, black and white, who came West out of desperation and anger. There are also echoes of this movie in episodes ranging throughout the series -- continuity, what a concept!
2. One Day Out West: The first episode of the series, this sets up how the Seven became the protectors of the town that fanon has deemed Four Corners. They are returning after their job at the Seminole village in the movie, and get caught up in a land baron's attempt to take over the town. This also sets up the slashiest relationship in the show, between Chris (Michael Biehn) and Vin (Eric Close)-- ("I'm thinking of whiskey, a bed, more whiskey," Chris says to Vin, after Vin has come in to the saloon and said something to him that no one else could say, and they stare at each other across the table in the most provocative way). And if you want to know everything you need to about Chris and Vin, readtrue_enough's marvelous ship manifesto here. What I loved about the series starts here: in most Western universes, there's a sheriff or marshal as the law in a town. Mag 7 addresses the fact that many towns did not have funding for a sheriff and instead relied on vigilance committees. I think this is one of the coolest things about the show.
3. Witness: CBS definitely attempted to force a UST type relationship between Mary Travis (Laurie Holden), who sort of runs the town, and Chris, even though the two really had no chemistry. But in Witness, Mary's son Billy, who has lived with his grandparents in another town because things are still too rough (and her husband was murdered, which traumatized the kid), comes home for a visit, and stirs up a lot of trouble. But in solving the crime, we get to see what makes Chris tick, and we start to really see what happened to him to make him so miserable over the death of his wife and child, and how far he is from recovered.
4. The Collector: Some people would probably choose Manhunt as another standout first season ep, and I had a hard time choosing this one because it has some stuff with Josiah (Ron Perlman) that makes me cringe in horror, but it has some great, great Vin stuff, especially of him interacting with Ezra (Anthony Starke), which I always thought we got too little of. Everyone I've been able to recruit in this fandom fell in love with Ezra, the gambler and con-man, and it's not hard to see why in this ep, because he says the things no one else will say, and he's funny and droll. But it's Vin's relationship with Nettie Wells that jumps off the screen; it's a wonderful portrait of who he is, and how utterly fearless his character is. Nettie was also a wonderful, indelible guest character, and her niece Casey becomes a recurring character after this as a love interest to JD (Andy Kavovit).
5. Nemesis: THE pivotal episode upon which so much of the later series, and the fanfic, has revolved. Chris finally gets a break in the search for his family's killers, and the Seven, along with a hysterically funny guest character in the form of dime novel writer Jock Steele, go in search of the man they think has the answers. Gorgeous backstory for Chris, wonderful humor at times, details about the long-term friendship of Chris and Buck (Dale Midkiff), and super cool Vin the sharpshooter, Ezra the Sharper Image boy with all the cool guns, incidentals. Plus, Michael Biehn getting drunk and howling at the moon, fistfighting, and -- best of all -- canonically crying.
6. The New Law: After the series was cancelled, a fan campaign brought it back. This was the first ep of the second season, and it's a doozy -- a new, British-born sheriff (Peter Firth of Spooks/MI-5), hired by the railroad, comes to town and sets down a series of harsh laws that drive the Seven away to their own devices, and provide ample room for the local land grabbers to kick up trouble and take over the town. Of course, they all get back together when the new sheriff gets his ass kicked and resuce the town, and of course stay on together afterwards.
7. Sins of the Past: Vin, who has a bounty on his head because he was framed for murder in Texas, gets caught by what they think is a Federal Marshal. This one also highlights the intensity of the Chris and Vin relationship, because Chris is totally prepared to go off with Vin, even if it means they both get hanged. It's also an Ezra-centric episode, when his mother comes to town and makes him completely miserable -- at first for humor, and then for pathos.
8. The Trial: Nathan's (Rick Worthy) father, a former slave (played by Alias's Carl Lumbly), is put on trial for the murder of his former overseer, who had repeatedly raped his wife and spurred her subsequent suicide -- none of which Nathan is aware of until it comes out at the trial. Features excellent performances by everyone, especially Ron Perlman and Robert Vaughn, who frequently guests as circuit judge Orin Travis. This ep was willing to tackle a really difficult subject and handled it with a rare dignity, and I admire that they did not take the easy way out. But even amidst all the seriousness, there's brawlin' and fightin'.
9. Achilles: This was one of the final four eps that never aired on CBS, and it was a very dark and true episode that I really love (and features a young John Hawkes -- Sol from Deadwood -- uttering the immortal line, "What kind of a man shoots someone in the butt?"). During a bank robbery committed by the twin brother of a black man who rode with abolitionist John Brown, JD accidentally shoots an innocent bystander and is haunted by his action. Achilles, the leader of the former abolitionists, takes advantage of the situation to wreak his own havoc and revenge. They touch on a number of serious issues here -- the random violence of the West, the Civil War and its legacy, abolition and its legacy, and Achilles's gang are very similar to Quantrill's Raiders, some seriously nasty real-life guys. The only thing that mars this is the appearance of the World's Worst Poetry -- Mary's newspaper has a poetry contest, and Vin creates a poem even though he can't read or write (written, in real life, by Buck's actor), and I still haven't heard the whole thing because it makes me cringe in horror, as does the subsequent poem he writes for Mary, which is the most painful thing ever filmed. Eric and Laurie should have got Emmy awards just for keeping straight faces.
10. Penance: Another of the unaired four (how funny that they're all on my list!), this one is cool because it deals with something they wouldn't really understand back then -- a serial killer. Ezra's reactions are fascinating (enough so that I could build a story around them!), and everyone, even his friends, suspect Josiah because he won't fess up to what he's been doing, and he has a rage inside him that scares everyone. It's filmed weirdly, too, to add to the tension, with fans kicking up dust storms, the wind putting everyone on edge, and the camera is constantly tilting in Dutch angles to create a freaky mood.
11. Obsession: The next to last episode, but in my opinion, the best. Everyone in the group gets a lot to do here (I adore Josiah and his golf game, Nathan getting his doctor geek on, Buck finally figuring out what it really means to see the beauty in a woman, and so on), but it's Chris's story when he hooks up with a woman he used to be lovers with, who hires the Seven to protect her property from an outside threat. Little do we know that she is going to turn out to have a very interesting, deadly past... features mostly nekkid Michael Biehn, too, and one can't argue with that. Rich, spooky, tense, and exciting, this is one I never tire of watching.
12. Serpents: When a paid assassin is found dead in the hotel, the $10,000 he had in a satchel causes some serious trouble with the town, and some of the Seven. It's especially problematic because the territorial governor of Arizona is in town, trying to drum up support for the anti-statehood contingent. I love that they dealt with what was often a seriously big problem among territories in the West -- whether it was better to become a state, or remain a self-governing territory (little known fact -- people in the West often referred to the places east of the Mississippi as "the United States" because they felt so separate from what happened back east), and they handled it within the larger context of a murder mystery. It's hard to believe, too, that it's the final episode, because it ended in such a rich place, and so much could have been done with that darker, grimmer world they were entering in those final eps.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Showtime airs them all, and doesn't just peter out halfway through. Because that second season is a corker (I didn't even include the wonderful Love and Honor, and Lady Killers), and I would hate to think that people won't have good copies of this wonderful series.
The reception to my Magnificent 7 vid In a Big Country surprised me a lot, both when it premiered at the con and when I put it up online. It seemed to pique the interest of a lot of people who normally wouldn't give cowboys in love a fightin' chance. Coupled with the fact that Showtime Extreme is currently showing the episodes uncut and unbugged, I think the fandom is poised for a little bit of an uplift. Before, anyone getting into it through word of mouth or fanfic had an awfully hard time getting hold of the 23 hours available (a pilot movie and 21 subsequent episodes, spread over two "seasons" because CBS cancelled it halfway through its first season, but it was brought back by a successful fan campaign, whereupon CBS promptly cancelled it again without airing the final four episodes that TNT, before it became Spike TV, did air with their horrible, horrible station ID bugs and all cut up). When they could get tapes, they were second or third gen, blurry and dark, or people bought the terrible DVDs that someone is selling, where they are compressed, blown up to full screen size, and then crammed on a disc with so many other eps that they are nearly unwatchable. So it's been a difficult fandom to pimp. Hallmark channel showed them a few years ago, but their scheduling was weirdly unreliable, and some eps were drastically cut, often in the slashiest places, or then not touched at all, but they changed schedules without alerting TiVo, so one of the most pivotal eps never repeated.
I'm hopeful that with the Showtime airings making good copies available, people can discover this wonderful series -- and hope they will show up on the torrent sites, if people don't have someone who can record the Showtime eps for them. The ones I've seen so far look stunning -- the show was filmed using natural light, which is very unusual, so the darks often didn't register well previously, but these airings have restored the look of the show quite well, I think. I'm also hearing things I've never been able to hear before. Like a lot of shows on CBS at the time, Mag 7 was made with a very clean-cut, family audience in mind, so there are a number of the usual Western cliches. But the show really veered away from that in many respects to create a more realistic feeling about what things were like, and they got a number of historical details right that I really valued (being someone who really loves to research the old West). I heard a couple people disparage the show at Escapade as being not bad, but not good, but I disagree -- I think it was frequently great, and had some good solid writing from people who knew their characters well (no mean feat for seven main characters and a couple of recurring secondary characters). The final four eps that CBS never aired, in fact, were superb, and were taking the show to a very dark, very adult place that was everything I could have hoped for.
I really enjoyed
killabeez's posts about essential Highlander episodes, and I got to thinking after someone mentioned again how the vid had got them interested in seeing it, what episodes would I consider mandatory watching to be pimped or to pimp someone into the fandom? I'm a terrible pimp, so I might be choosing the wrong things (I like dark, challenging, gripping stories as opposed to lighter weight or humorous, most often), but this is a listing of what I would show someone if I had limited time. (OTOH, I think watching all 23 hours isn't unfeasible, and would recommend that more, especially in order -- I sent mlyn home with a bag o' tapes and she came back hooked. A marathon can be a lot of fun.) Keep in mind, too, that I'm very, very Chris/Vin-centric, with a lot of love for everyone, but not as much for Buck and JD, though I do think they have their moments. 1. Ghosts of the Confederacy (the pilot movie): This sets up everything you need to know about the universe, and takes off in a similar path to the classic movie, but with a modern new agey spin to it in some ways. The history is a little weird (some of the Seven carry guns that weren't around until the late '70s, but that would mean the former Confederate soldiers have been wandering around in the desert for a lot longer than makes sense), but I loved how it dealt with something few Westerns on TV ever did: the diaspora of people from the south, black and white, who came West out of desperation and anger. There are also echoes of this movie in episodes ranging throughout the series -- continuity, what a concept!
2. One Day Out West: The first episode of the series, this sets up how the Seven became the protectors of the town that fanon has deemed Four Corners. They are returning after their job at the Seminole village in the movie, and get caught up in a land baron's attempt to take over the town. This also sets up the slashiest relationship in the show, between Chris (Michael Biehn) and Vin (Eric Close)-- ("I'm thinking of whiskey, a bed, more whiskey," Chris says to Vin, after Vin has come in to the saloon and said something to him that no one else could say, and they stare at each other across the table in the most provocative way). And if you want to know everything you need to about Chris and Vin, read
true_enough's marvelous ship manifesto here. What I loved about the series starts here: in most Western universes, there's a sheriff or marshal as the law in a town. Mag 7 addresses the fact that many towns did not have funding for a sheriff and instead relied on vigilance committees. I think this is one of the coolest things about the show.3. Witness: CBS definitely attempted to force a UST type relationship between Mary Travis (Laurie Holden), who sort of runs the town, and Chris, even though the two really had no chemistry. But in Witness, Mary's son Billy, who has lived with his grandparents in another town because things are still too rough (and her husband was murdered, which traumatized the kid), comes home for a visit, and stirs up a lot of trouble. But in solving the crime, we get to see what makes Chris tick, and we start to really see what happened to him to make him so miserable over the death of his wife and child, and how far he is from recovered.
4. The Collector: Some people would probably choose Manhunt as another standout first season ep, and I had a hard time choosing this one because it has some stuff with Josiah (Ron Perlman) that makes me cringe in horror, but it has some great, great Vin stuff, especially of him interacting with Ezra (Anthony Starke), which I always thought we got too little of. Everyone I've been able to recruit in this fandom fell in love with Ezra, the gambler and con-man, and it's not hard to see why in this ep, because he says the things no one else will say, and he's funny and droll. But it's Vin's relationship with Nettie Wells that jumps off the screen; it's a wonderful portrait of who he is, and how utterly fearless his character is. Nettie was also a wonderful, indelible guest character, and her niece Casey becomes a recurring character after this as a love interest to JD (Andy Kavovit).
5. Nemesis: THE pivotal episode upon which so much of the later series, and the fanfic, has revolved. Chris finally gets a break in the search for his family's killers, and the Seven, along with a hysterically funny guest character in the form of dime novel writer Jock Steele, go in search of the man they think has the answers. Gorgeous backstory for Chris, wonderful humor at times, details about the long-term friendship of Chris and Buck (Dale Midkiff), and super cool Vin the sharpshooter, Ezra the Sharper Image boy with all the cool guns, incidentals. Plus, Michael Biehn getting drunk and howling at the moon, fistfighting, and -- best of all -- canonically crying.
6. The New Law: After the series was cancelled, a fan campaign brought it back. This was the first ep of the second season, and it's a doozy -- a new, British-born sheriff (Peter Firth of Spooks/MI-5), hired by the railroad, comes to town and sets down a series of harsh laws that drive the Seven away to their own devices, and provide ample room for the local land grabbers to kick up trouble and take over the town. Of course, they all get back together when the new sheriff gets his ass kicked and resuce the town, and of course stay on together afterwards.
7. Sins of the Past: Vin, who has a bounty on his head because he was framed for murder in Texas, gets caught by what they think is a Federal Marshal. This one also highlights the intensity of the Chris and Vin relationship, because Chris is totally prepared to go off with Vin, even if it means they both get hanged. It's also an Ezra-centric episode, when his mother comes to town and makes him completely miserable -- at first for humor, and then for pathos.
8. The Trial: Nathan's (Rick Worthy) father, a former slave (played by Alias's Carl Lumbly), is put on trial for the murder of his former overseer, who had repeatedly raped his wife and spurred her subsequent suicide -- none of which Nathan is aware of until it comes out at the trial. Features excellent performances by everyone, especially Ron Perlman and Robert Vaughn, who frequently guests as circuit judge Orin Travis. This ep was willing to tackle a really difficult subject and handled it with a rare dignity, and I admire that they did not take the easy way out. But even amidst all the seriousness, there's brawlin' and fightin'.
9. Achilles: This was one of the final four eps that never aired on CBS, and it was a very dark and true episode that I really love (and features a young John Hawkes -- Sol from Deadwood -- uttering the immortal line, "What kind of a man shoots someone in the butt?"). During a bank robbery committed by the twin brother of a black man who rode with abolitionist John Brown, JD accidentally shoots an innocent bystander and is haunted by his action. Achilles, the leader of the former abolitionists, takes advantage of the situation to wreak his own havoc and revenge. They touch on a number of serious issues here -- the random violence of the West, the Civil War and its legacy, abolition and its legacy, and Achilles's gang are very similar to Quantrill's Raiders, some seriously nasty real-life guys. The only thing that mars this is the appearance of the World's Worst Poetry -- Mary's newspaper has a poetry contest, and Vin creates a poem even though he can't read or write (written, in real life, by Buck's actor), and I still haven't heard the whole thing because it makes me cringe in horror, as does the subsequent poem he writes for Mary, which is the most painful thing ever filmed. Eric and Laurie should have got Emmy awards just for keeping straight faces.
10. Penance: Another of the unaired four (how funny that they're all on my list!), this one is cool because it deals with something they wouldn't really understand back then -- a serial killer. Ezra's reactions are fascinating (enough so that I could build a story around them!), and everyone, even his friends, suspect Josiah because he won't fess up to what he's been doing, and he has a rage inside him that scares everyone. It's filmed weirdly, too, to add to the tension, with fans kicking up dust storms, the wind putting everyone on edge, and the camera is constantly tilting in Dutch angles to create a freaky mood.
11. Obsession: The next to last episode, but in my opinion, the best. Everyone in the group gets a lot to do here (I adore Josiah and his golf game, Nathan getting his doctor geek on, Buck finally figuring out what it really means to see the beauty in a woman, and so on), but it's Chris's story when he hooks up with a woman he used to be lovers with, who hires the Seven to protect her property from an outside threat. Little do we know that she is going to turn out to have a very interesting, deadly past... features mostly nekkid Michael Biehn, too, and one can't argue with that. Rich, spooky, tense, and exciting, this is one I never tire of watching.
12. Serpents: When a paid assassin is found dead in the hotel, the $10,000 he had in a satchel causes some serious trouble with the town, and some of the Seven. It's especially problematic because the territorial governor of Arizona is in town, trying to drum up support for the anti-statehood contingent. I love that they dealt with what was often a seriously big problem among territories in the West -- whether it was better to become a state, or remain a self-governing territory (little known fact -- people in the West often referred to the places east of the Mississippi as "the United States" because they felt so separate from what happened back east), and they handled it within the larger context of a murder mystery. It's hard to believe, too, that it's the final episode, because it ended in such a rich place, and so much could have been done with that darker, grimmer world they were entering in those final eps.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Showtime airs them all, and doesn't just peter out halfway through. Because that second season is a corker (I didn't even include the wonderful Love and Honor, and Lady Killers), and I would hate to think that people won't have good copies of this wonderful series.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-03-21 10:37 pm (UTC)Thank you for the post! We don't get Showtime Extreme, but, hopefully, I'll be able to see the series again someday :)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-21 11:54 pm (UTC)V
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 01:39 am (UTC)I am head over heels in love with Vin, but I can't bear the poetry scenes. Glad to hear that I'm in such good company!
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 01:46 am (UTC)When I first saw the entire series it was on 3rd (4th?) generation vhs tapes with barely audible sound - and I was happy to have that. Watching it again on Showtime is almost like seeing it for the first time. It's so great to hear Chris use a soft voice to flirt or threaten and no white noise in the background.
This also sets up the slashiest relationship in the show, between Chris (Michael Biehn) and Vin (Eric Close)-- ("I'm thinking of whiskey, a bed, more whiskey," Chris says to Vin, after Vin has come in to the saloon and said something to him that no one else could say, and they stare at each other across the table in the most provocative way).
I sometimes think that if Chris had left out "bed" I might have been able to ignore the slashiness but then I watch the scene and, my god, his voice along with all of the eye-fucking just makes it impossible - for which I am very grateful.
I hope you don't mind me adding that Love and Honor contains two of my favorite Chris moments. The first one is when Buck is learning how to use a sword in Josiah's church and Chris starts to enter but is unable to go any further than the doorway. You can see him trying but he just can't. Watching it I got the feeling that he believes in God as much as Josiah but fears Him more than loves Him. It's very powerful and it all happens in the background. I also loved seeing a rare happy Chris at the end when he is saying goodbye to Raphael. A happy Chris obviously can't hold still because he is hip-shot this way and hip-shot that way to the point where it almost looks like he's dancing. Just a beautiful thing...
Lovely squee-worthy post. And thanks for the nod. Much appreciated
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 05:20 pm (UTC)If it was my personal list, Wagon Train would definitely be at the top -- there may be a woman running around with Vin, but that thing is so All About the Chris and Vin. Sigh.
I love that Chris never enters the church. Especially considering how important churchgoing was back then, it's a hugely telling thing about him.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 02:20 am (UTC)I'd love to see that one day! I made my own list of favourite moments yesterday and it got a little out of hand. I think the episodes I'd find hardest to do without are the pilot, Safecracker and Wagon Train, plus the Chris/Vin parts of Sins of the Past and Obsession.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 06:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 03:42 pm (UTC)Got "Nemesis" on Sunday! Hallelujah! Such a small thing to make me so happy. :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 10:22 am (UTC)Sadly though, not in the US so no lovely Showtime for me. *g*
You know, it doesn't take much to get hooked on this show...I mean, the fanfic is good, the boys are pretty and you know what, in the absence of anything better I'm actually fond of my 3rd generation tapes. ;)
Thanks gwyn...enjoyed this enormously.
di
Late to the party, but better late than never!
Date: 2008-03-05 03:45 pm (UTC)I've completely tumbled head over heels (and I'm totally not going to admit how many times I've played In A Big Country from the Escapade DVD on infinite loop).
Thank you so, so much for providing the glorious impetus to enter this world.