So in nerd culture there are certain people who are considered to be Geek Gods and beyond reproach. These include JK Rowling, John Green, and Joss Whedon. Mr. Whedon is a director and screenwriter who has created such tv shows as Firefly, Dollhouse, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. And I have a bit of a problem with him, or at least the perception of him as being flawless and a genius.
Let me be clear, before I go on, that I do consider myself a Whedon fan. I do enjoy most of everything he's ever done. However, I find some problems with his work. I shall focus on primarily Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it being his longest running and best known work.
Buffy suffers from a key flaw: It is totally Monster of The Week. By that I mean, every episode has the main character facing up against a monster and that's what the episode is based around. I cannot recall an episode in which there is no monster. To me it gets a little monotonous. What I care about, why I watch the show, is the characters and their relationships. But often the relationships take a back seat to the giant(and often awesome) fight scenes. Which leads me into another problem I have: the fight scenes.
Now I love me a good fight scene, don't get me wrong, but here's the thing about Buffy....The title character is a vampire slayer. Crazy I know, but part of her slaying awesomeness is that she can ram a stick through a vampire's chest and kill it. So, the natural thing to do when you see a vampire and you can do that is to take out the stake right off and take that vamp down. But instead, every single time, she beats the dude up and then stakes him. This seems unnecessarily time consuming and strenuous and takes me out of the show.
One other problem I have, and this goes most to Whedon then any of the others, is some of the plot solutions are just flat out silly. For example: In the first three seasons Buffy has a vampire love interest named Angel(keep in mind that this is eight years before Twilight) and in the end of Season 3 he leaves to star in a spinoff series. Whedon(I assume him, being the showrunner) decided to bring in another vampire, the awesomely fantastic Spike. A great decision, one that made the show way better. But the way it was done was so.......I don't know, Bad. It was just bad. Spike had appeared before in the series as a villain but they wanted to make a semi-hero and thus needed a reason for him to stop randomly killing people. So, in the episode where he comes back, a secret government organization plants a chip in his brain that makes it impossible for him to hurt people. That is just simply lazy writing and, again, pulled me out of the show.
So that is my rant for the day.
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8 comments:
**raises hand** Not actually mad.
I agree with all of that, actually. It just doesn't bother me as much as it bothers you. The best parts about Buffy are indeed the characters, and sometimes they get nudged out of the spotlight for a bit, but...oh well. They'll come back soon enough.
I'm first and foremost a Wheadon fan from Dr. Horrible. That was genius, and I will argue the point to no end, but Buffy? Sure.
You can argue Buffy, but touch Firefly or Dr Horrible and I will hunt you down.
Kidding. Anyways, you do make pretty valid points, but I feel it gets less monster of the week after the first few seasons. How many have you seen? A lot of shows like that do that, actually. I think liking the monster of the week kinda shows is just a personal preference. A lot of times they do shows like that so that someone can drop in halfway through a season without seeing anything else and catch up pretty easy. Buffy also, kinda invented story arcs, so its got more than MOTW stuff.
I agree also with the above poster about it being about the characters.
ok so I also became a Whedon fan through Dr. Horrible so I shall leave that alone.
But Buffy did not invent story arcs at all. Story Arcs in Television were used in I Love Lucy and then, later, the most complex arc of all time, except for probably Lost and maybe Twin Peaks, was Babylon Five, which aired three years prior Buffy beginning. Also the Practice aired at the same time as Buffy and also had arcs. The X Files and Star Trek Deep Space Nine also had arcs. So Buffy did not invent story arcs, and my JMS Fanboy is becoming enraged at the mere suggestion, because JMS is perfect.
Having spent the three hour drive to the beach in a cozy bubble of Pop Culture Happy Hour, I need to call you out on mooching.
Twin Peaks, Lost, and the X-Files all having been mentioned within 30 seconds of each other in the context of arcs.
Now the question is...are you pleased that I know that, or annoyed? :)
so I had actually forgotten that they talked about arcs. I found out about the x Files from the wikipedia page for story arcs, and it is very common knowledge that Lost was complex. I did remember Twin Peaks from that discussion, but I had heard about it before.
@Notverycharming actually what Buffy semi-invented was the Big Bad. However, that sort of plays more into Monster of the Week, it's just that there it's the same monster. I like shows in which the writers are willing to have episodes in which nothing happens or the heroes lose big. Like there is an episode of the West Wing set on a plane in which people try to change things, fail and suffer a huge setback. There are episodes of the Practice in which the heroes lose cases. I think Whedon made the stakes(no pun intended) so high in each episode that the heroes had to win. Every episode is THE WORLD COULD END UNLESS YOU STOP IT!!!! so of course the hero has to stop it, but that cheapens the victory. I never once think during a Buffy episode that she might lose, but with a show like the Practice every time there is a legitimate chance that the client might be found guilty. So, not being sure of how it will end, I watch more intently and care more. It's hard to sympathize with Buffy, for me at least. She's got two awesome friends, a couple boys who want to go out with her at all times, she's going to a decent college, has people who want to help her, and she has awesome 'powers'. Why does she whine all the time? Pull yourself together girl and have some fun. Buffy could take some tips from Faith, in my opinion.
And then Faith, I was very unhappy with how they treated her. I think that her actions in the end of Season 3 were very out of character. It would have been more interesting if she hadn't turned on Buffy, if she had remained loyal but Buffy had cast her out.
Somehow I expected I'd be wrong in that...dang it. Lost, yeah. Lost is bizarre.
I actually just started watching Season 4 of Buffy last night, and I really wasn't thinking about this post at all, but episode 1 did annoy me in that they killed the vampires in the end. I wanted them to fail and have to attempt to fight them over a couple of episodes. And then they didn't. And then I realized that's exactly what you were talking about here. And then I was annoyed to agree.
Can you rant about something political?
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