"The End of Mutant Enemy" - A Work In Progress

[BBOvenGuy]

Creative freedom is all well and good - but when writers try to sell their work to the public they become subject to the basic rules of business. Their work becomes a product to be bought and sold, and if you want to succeed you've got to take what your customer wants into account.



Imagine if tomorrow morning the CEO of McDonald's woke up and decided to take hamburgers and french fries off the McDonald's menu and replace them with liver and lima beans. He's certainly free to do so, but do you really think McDonald's will stay at the top of the fast food world if he does? Imagine that happened, and when business fell off the CEO of McDonald's blamed the customers for not appreciating his culinary vision. "I need to give you want you need, not what you want," he might say. "Liver and lima beans are good for you. It's your fault for not appreciating them."



Of course this scenario is ridiculous - but it's exactly what Joss has done and expects us to buy into. Of course he's free to tell whatever story he wants to tell - but the audience is under no obligation to watch. If Joss wants to succeed - just like anyone else in business who wants to succeed - he has to place his own freedom behind what his customers want to one degree or another.

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

[DianaBouvier99]

Hi again,

Quote:

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If you think I'm ranting, you should read the David Gerrold original. My comments about Buffy are tame and diplomatic compared to his comments about Star Trek. But I see your point. That's why this is a work in progress

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This is just my opinion, but one of the reasons I feel your essays are so powerful is that while they express a lot of emotion you have never come across as angry.



I'm sorry I couldn't give you rubber stamp of approval on your work in progress, as a serious writer I sure you would rather an honest opinion even if its a negative comment. I will try to make the time to put any future comments in a private email like I normally do.

[BBOvenGuy]

Oh no, I'm not offended at all. I was just surprised.



By all means, continue to comment here. This thing still has a long way to go before it's going to be the way I want it, and feedback of all kinds will be necessary to get it there.

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

[Blue Pariah]

Can I suggest an example of hardening? At first glance its not something major, but I do think it perfectly illuminates the type of thinking you get in this situation.



CELLPHONES



Don't laugh! I know that none of the Scoobies having a cell was one of the biggest complaints with fans on the Net. Considering how often they would be useful, it was getting hard to suspend belief enough that none of the Scoobies would carry them.



So this season, the Scoobies finally get cells. And what happens? It seems that in almost every episode that one of the gang would need their phone, they forget it. Buffy has forgotten hers so often that it has become a running gag.



So after caving into fan's demands and giving the Scoobies cells, why aren't they written as using them?



I think this all goes back to one of ME's favourite plot elements, lack of information. The knowledge that comes too late. The just missed warning. The call for help that can't go out. The minor misunderstanding. Things that come up again and again. Also thing that would be too easily overcome if cells would actually be used. So they aren't.



Now, there are many stories that could be told with the Scoobies using their cellphones. But they would have to be different kinds of stories. And at this stage, how likely is that?

I take to shade and I play in the shadows
I watch my back and I play it cool
"Blue Pariah" by BRJ

[BBOvenGuy]

Thanks, BP. I'll see if I can fit that in. David Gerrold made a similar point about the transporter in Star Trek. They established this device as an easy way to get Kirk & co. out of a jam, so then every plot had to come up with a way to prevent Kirk from signalling the Enterprise so they could beam him out.



Didn't Angel do something similar with cellphones for a while? Whatever happened there?



I think rather than continue with "Erosion" as Installment #3, what I'm going to do is work it in with the stuff I've already done. That will give me an entire first large section dealing with format and formula in general. Then I can move on to the Joss vision thing after that.

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

Edited by: BBOvenGuy  at: 3/6/03 7:35:19 pm

[feena191]

It's reading really great Bob



Angel Investigations do use mobile phones a bit, more than in Buffy I think. I think it was a bit of a running joke for a while that Angel didn't like them & kept forgetting to leave his switched on. There's a scene in Warzone (Season One) that always made me chuckle

Quote:

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From City of Angel site:

Angel punches at the side boards in hopes of busting out of the meal locker but metal mesh is behind them. Suddenly the door opens as Cordy and Wesley have found him and suggest next time that he use his cell phone. "I'm the boss here, I say when we use the cell phone. People are gonna die and . . . I have to go."

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Feena

-x-

Edited by: feena191  at: 3/7/03 1:55:04 am

[gspiggott]

At the risk of letting loose my inner fascist I do think you should address the censorship issue.When all those glowing articles about the WB's success appeared in the fall they all talked about how the network wanted to appeal to young people especially young women ,and tried to mold their shows accordingly.Seventh Heaven, Charmed, Buffy all did that and the WB built audience loyalty because of it.If censorship limited some of what they were willing to let JW depict, the show was better for it. When Hollywood instituted a production code in 1932 because the content of some films was considered risque filmmakers had to find another way to get their point across.The result was the screwball comedy. The great director Ernst Lubitsch used to ask his screenwriter,"How do we do that without doing that?"Hence the famously light Lubitsch touch.

Compare Angelus's torture of Giles which is unseen to the Gnarl's torture of Willow.It's likely that the budget of Buffy didn't allow for much at that time and that the censors weren't willing to show much , and it involves the viewer's imagination more. By season seven and the gnarl they were spending money on prosthetic flesh that could be ripped off of Willow's stomach. Artistic freedom is simply an excuse for shock value.

As for Willow and Tara the first scene in Family where they're five feet away from each other tells you more about how adult their relationship is than planting NSSK on Willow's lap. More is less in this case. Giving JW the freedom to show what he wants on Firebug and Buffy means indulging gore, misogyny and the threat of sexual violence.Not an improvement IMHO.

[justastraightdog]

"the network wanted to appeal to young people especially young women ,and tried to mold their shows accordingly"



This has nothing to do with censorship. They tried to appeal to a certain group of customers and had to set some limitations therefore. It's the same for a chef in a vegetarian restaurant. If the owner hinders him from spicing up a soup with some meatballs, he can hardly complain about it or call it censorship. But the main difference is, that if he wants to work with meat again, he simply has to go to another restaurant.



That's why the production code from 1932 was censorship. And while it may have had some positive consequencies for a few genres, it was almost deadly for others.

_______________________________
Though here at journey's end I lie in darkness buried deep, beyond all towers strong and high, beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun and Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell.

[jixer]

Hello Kittens-



JASD makes my points here. Don't forget where Tara would have ended up under the old code's 'screwball' comedy result- "The story ends happily with the perky witch and her down to earth carpenter waving goodbye to their friends as the werewolf and shy witch sail off on their honeymoon." I'm trying NOT to picture the other possible ending with Tara and Xander as the side kick couple.



BtVS S1-5 were on the young women oriented WB, S6 and 7 on the teen boys UPN. Beyond JW coming home to his spiritual home UPN was used to canned, badly acted violence from it's mainstay of wrestling and formula bound "scifi" shows like Star Trek's spin offs. WB made people work at getting their network's brand correct and is making a bit of a profit. UPN seems to aping the worst of it's consumer base and is on the verge of undergoing a "hearing regarding disciplinary custody" between it's parents Viacom and Fox. JW and Buffy are a part of UPN's failure to mature into a real network.





If any of the ramblings above are helpful any Kitten may use them EXCEPT as weapons of mass destruction.



Jixer

[gspiggott]

Wow, I said all that pretty badly. Jasd you're right on the first count, and the production code did harm dramas and gangster movies. I was just trying to point out an instance where writers used a restriction in their favor.Jixer I have to disagree with you. In the classic formula Willow would have ended up with Tara because of their chemistry and they're so obviously meant to be together. Xander would have been played by Ralph Bellamy or Don Ameche.That's one way that things have improved.Like I said somewhere else W/T plays like a classic romance until they bring in the guns.

[sleepy]

Quote:

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I think this all goes back to one of ME's favourite plot elements, lack of information. The knowledge that comes too late. The just missed warning. The call for help that can't go out. The minor misunderstanding. Things that come up again and again. Also thing that would be too easily overcome if cells would actually be used. So they aren't.

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The 3's company school of writing, with drama, the situation drama. Nothing say's innovation like taking a long running, well loved, and ultimately optimistic character based story and replacing it with the most simplistic and limiting format available, then shoehorning Shakespeare wannabe tragedy and Seinfield indifference into it.

I don't think that the limitations set on by wb should be characterized as censorship. Any limitation they may have set on him only filled a gap in his own abilities that his recent period of "freedom" has shown. I believe they were his writing partner, holding him to his format, and helping him to stay focus on his audience. It's something (that through either some sort of distraction or just laziness) he seems to have a great deal of trouble doing on his own.

When Angel first started he would try not to make both of his shows to dark on the same night, and while that probably isn't the best way to go about it, he did at least consider his audience's reaction for something other than maximum amount of damage to be inflicted, I really miss that guy. That guy had his master plan too, the snuff fantasy et all, but he say what worked(what reached his audience) and he altered , or at least delayed his dream accordingly. But then he lost his partner, and went back to fulfilling his own dreams. At least one of them was great(the musical) but most of them (like firefly:up) were not. Without his old partner telling him up front it wouldn't fly he was shocked when his audience didn't "get it", simple dismissed anyone who didn't "get it". He's in desperately need of a reality check, someone to sit him down and tell him to get over it (and himself) and errrr....

if I go any further I may have to move to the rant thread

[dekalog]

except for with censorship W/T couldn't have been anymore than friends



you can even see where the production company was forced to edit because of censorship - in primeival where Tara goes into sit beside Willow then we have a LONG shot of a computer screen and then come back to Tara moving away from Willow her arm trailing behind as it was probably on Willow's shoulder - the classic look of someone deciding what can and cannot be seen



I think you are right about shock value but I don't think it's because of a lack of censorship, but rather a lack of caring and interest and ulimately effort to do anything better in the last couple of years when he was obviously charmed with his pet Firefly. He just wanted to get across those last cool ideas in his head thenhe didn't really care what happened on Buffy. Besides as many other's have pointed out the writer's have dug themselves into a hole - limiting themselves severely and pretty much destroying their show in the process.



Sorry about the mini rant - advocating censorship as good just scares me - maybe a hold over to my bitterness that I was made to wait a whole year before I got to see the wonderful french film 'fat girls' because of the Ontario Film Review and what they felt was appropriate or not.



Also wanted to add that you're essays are always really good Bob, and this one shows alot of promise - I just worry that it will take years to cover everything - I mean SOOOO much went wrong.

Edited by: dekalog at: 3/8/03 6:25:02 am

[feena191]

Quote:

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I just worry that it will take years to cover everything

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I think it'll be less of an essay, & more of a book



Feena

-x-

[The Angry Lion]

as sum1 who wrote a letter of complaint to WB for the treatment of the W/T relationship Im more then a little concerned by the nearly pro-censorship arguments of sum. I think your shifting sum of the blame from Joss on to UPN where there blame, while not non-existent, is very minor. To be honest in my opinion the difference between Buffy WB and Buffy UPN is neglible, there was plenty of violence, and violence against women in s 1-5, Jenny Calendar stands out in my mind, Cordelias near mutilation, the whole Faith thing. The major difference was that WB suppressed the W/T relationship, so that are first kiss didnt come till The Body!

Now season 6 sucked for so many reasons but the Willow Tara interaction was superior to previous in a number of ways. Joss had power, he had similiar power on WB, he abused that power, he could have done it on WB, in fact Im positive he could have killed Tara and made Willow evil on WB, he may just have done it with a bit more constraint, cold comfort to kittens. WB was no Golden Age, or Halycon period, it had its problems too, and one of those was their timidity in portraying a same sex relationship.

'Tara has a talented tongue!' said Willow

[Sheridan]

In theory the S6 interaction was superior but the underlying truth was that it was simply served up so that the coup de grace would hurt all the more when it was delivered. The problem is not UPN per se but Joss' underlying vision of how the relationship would end. Once he was granted unlimited creative colntrol we were on the road to disaster. If a network refuse to allow a particular plotline because they think it it's terrible and will hurt the show is that censorship or common sense?

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[sam7777]

I'll bet that UPN wishes that they has intervened before Buffy hit below 2.5 in the national ratings with the 2.3 rating for "The Killer in Me". has show an inability to draw even a consistent core audience. Buffy core audience went from 2.7 then 2.6 then 2.3 then 2.4 then 2.3 leaving us wondering how low it can go. Joss has shown an inability to grow an audience in any of his shows the past 2 years be it Angel, Buffy or Firefly. He seems alot like Orson Welles who was a genius but also self-destructive. Joss is driving his franchise into the ground intended or not.

_____________________

I see dead lesbian cliches

Edited by: sam7777  at: 3/10/03 11:55:07 am

[gspiggott]

JJ Abrams wanted to do a rape plotline on Felicity , and the WB said no.If UPN had nixed that balcony Spuffy sex scene at the Bronze, or the beating Buffy gave Spike in Dead Things would that have been such a cultural loss? Say compared to the burning of the library at Alexandria?As for Orson Welles Pauline Kael thought that Welles got too much credit for the film and co writer Joe Manckiewicz didn't get enough. Joe went on to a long and brilliant career (A letter to 3 wives, All About Eve)while Orson claimed he started,"at the top and worked his way down ever since." However Welles couldn't match JW for megalomania and spitefulness.

[BBOvenGuy]

Okay, time for the next installment.



I went back over everything from the very beginning, but I didn't change much up to the point where Installment #2 ended - that is to say, up through the part about Willow's magic addiction. I threw out Installment #2a almost entirely. The essay now picks up from Willow's addiction and continues this way:

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David Gerrold describes the second of his two processes, “Erosion,” this way:



“Erosion in a TV series is the wearing down of the original concept, the destruction of it piece by piece as various elements chip and crack it away: carelessness in production, lack of pride in what one is doing, network restrictions, writer apathy, front-office feuds, and so on.”



It’s easy to see how this process has affected Buffy. Many fans blame the decline in Season 6 to the fact that Joss Whedon was busy developing his space western series Firefly much of the time, leaving Marti Noxon and other subordinates in charge. Fans and reviewers alike have commented on the decline in script quality and production values of Season 7. A typical comment came from Ain’t-It-Cool News’s Hercules the Strong after seeing “Potential:”



“There’s a whole ‘nothing special retread’ vibe at play here ... right now the writers seem to be stretching maybe an hour’s worth of solid plot over three episodes.”



Another example is a comment from Leoff’s wildfeed summary of “Showtime:”



The ubervamp bashes into the door, trying to break it down, as Willow starts chanting "Sapeia, Sepia..." "Deflector Shields... Deflector Shields up!" says Andrew as the door suddenly bursts open (and may I just interject here that you really don't have to look hard at all to see the black wire/rope connected to the door that pulls it open. Very, very badly done).



Alyson Hannigan and others have remarked that there’s been a sense of “senioritis” on the Buffy set this year, as everyone has come to feel that the show has run its course. All of these are typical signs of Erosion.



But there are forms of Hardening of the Arteries and Erosion that aren’t as overt but are far more serious. The individual characters can simultaneously erode and harden until they become locked in a set pattern of responses and actions. It’s easy to look back at Season 6 of Buffy and see this process happening all over the place. Buffy would start an episode being depressed about life and would then have some sort of realization that would get her to the end of the episode - but by the start of the next episode, she would be depressed about life again. Willow moped around being depressed about her magic addiction. Dawn was good for little other than whining and shouting “Get out! Get out! Get out!” Anya was there for sex jokes and money jokes, and Xander was there to worry about growing up.



The more the characters are worn down, the easier and more likely it becomes that they’ll be pulled completely out of their original context. David Gerrold cites the following example from Star Trek:



“For instance, in ‘The Enterprise Incident,’ Mr. Spock plays a love scene with a Romulan female. In the first draft of this, Spock never touches her - his most tender line is, ‘I admire your mind.’ The Romulan woman, understanding the Vulcan mind, understands this as the compliment that Spock intended. By the time the scene was rewritten, however, it was no different from anyone else’s love scenes. And all of the charm of Spock’s Vulcan attitudes was lost.”



In the case of Buffy, the basic premise of the series makes the problem worse. Joss Whedon and the Mutant Enemy writers have constantly emphasized the point that Buffy is a show that is primarily about emotions - but when the characters have been solidified and worn down to the point where they only have a few set patterns of behavior, there aren’t enough emotions left to work with. The writers must therefore create artificial emotions and impose them on the characters instead.



Again, it’s easy to look at Season 6 and see this process in action. Sarah Michelle Gellar described how she felt about it in her March 7 Entertainment Weekly interview:



“It wasn’t who Buffy was, or why people loved her. You don’t want to see that dark heroine; you don’t want to see her punishing herself. You want to see her killing vampires and making quips. It didn’t feel like the character that I loved.”



In a February 28 interview with Kristin from E! Online, Alyson Hannigan expressed similar feelings about the decision to give Willow a new girlfriend in Season 7:



“I was a little concerned because the death of Tara was so much. I had a conversation with Marti (Noxon) about, ‘I know you're developing the new relationship but I don't want it to be like “Oh, so I had this little problem and I'm over it” and there was never a Tara and I don't have a dead girlfriend.’ I am worried about protecting that it was a huge part of Willow.”



Just as with the example from Star Trek, it seems like relationships provide the most opportunity for characters to be solidified, eroded, or both at the same time. Consider, for example, the relationship between Buffy and Spike.



In Season 5, Spike’s obsession with Buffy made a sort of sense. Personally, I always thought it was a subconscious sublimation of his former desire to kill her - if he couldn’t conquer her through combat, he would do it through sex instead - but the show ended up casting him in a more romantic/heroic light, and it worked well enough. But once Buffy and Spike got together in Season 6, everything changed. It was as if the Mutant Enemy writers suddenly remembered that Spike was supposed to be evil. With Buffy already locked into a depressed and dysfunctional state, the combination created a cycle of mutual abuse that left both characters scarred. Among other things, it produced the episode that Sarah Michelle Gellar identified as her least favorite for Entertainment Weekly:



“I had trouble with the one (in the sixth season) where Buffy had sex with Spike on the balcony while watching their friends. I really thought that was out of character. And I didn’t like what it stood for. That was the moment that I had the most problems with.”



As the season progressed, Spike crossed one line after another, from being able to fight Buffy to trying to cover up a death for her to running dangerous magical contraband through Sunnydale, and yet Buffy refused to do anything about it. In fact, she kept going back to him - and then taking her turn beating on him. It went on, episode after episode, confusing many viewers and turning many more away, finally culminating in an attempted rape where we saw Buffy - normally strong enough to kill a half dozen vampires in a matter of minutes - crying helplessly on her bathroom floor.



When characters solidify into set responses, and when they erode or have artificial feelings and motivations forced upon them, the result is always a further erosion of the audience. The regular characters of a TV series are like friends who pay the audience a weekly visit - or even a daily visit, thanks to VCRs and syndicated reruns. When the characters degenerate and start acting differently, the impact on the viewers is similar to what would happen if friends of the viewers suddenly started acting differently. If it happens once or twice, that can be excused. If it happens more often, the viewers start to wonder if something might be wrong with their friends. If it happens too often for too long, the viewers usually start looking for other friends who are more reliable.

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Better?

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

Edited by: BBOvenGuy  at: 3/10/03 11:52:18 pm

[Sheridan]

I like it Bob. It's good for a show to have its characters do surprising things but you have to make it credible. ME seem to simply have decided what they were going to do and ignored character and context, as you highlight so well with Buffy/Spike.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[sam7777]

Wow Bob! You really captire what was OOC for the character in 6th season and how repetitive the so-called darkness was. The only problem I see for some of the quotes like the AH one is that folks will counter with the rest of the quote where Alyson says she shouldn't have wooried. We know that's just her being a pro but tohers will point to it as her supporting the new storyline. I think Alyson't turning down of the spin off and wanting to do something else besides Willow speaks volumes to how she felt about what happened to her character in season 6 and 7. Willow has become fully relaized by the end of season 5 and ME simply broke the character down without giving us a dramatic pay off. Willow is still DMW with none of her magic issues resolved and the show is almost ove. I don't mid that people do stupid or evil things but it is annoying when they learn something one ep and they forget it the next as they did with Buffy 6th season. The UPN run of Buffy will be remembered in the same light at season's 8 and 9 of X-Files: 2 seasons too far.

_____________________

I see dead lesbian cliches

[BBOvenGuy]

Yeah, I thought pretty hard about the Aly quote because of the way she threw in the politically correct response at the end. I may just cut the quote entirely and visit the issue later. That'll keep the focus on SMG and Buffy/Spike through this section, too.

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

Edited by: BBOvenGuy  at: 3/11/03 11:07:28 am

[gspiggott]

This version is more persuasive. Did you find this book before or after Buffy imploded because you certainly put it to good use.

[BBOvenGuy]

Oh no, I've had this book since I was a kid. David Gerrold is the guy who wrote the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" when he was a 22-year-old grad student at USC. He was my inspiration for trying to write for You Can't Do That On Television when I was only 19. I wrote to him when he was involved with getting Star Trek: TNG off the ground and was delighted to find out that he liked my show.



Incidentally (and to give this a little more board-relevance), I've recently discovered that David is gay. I don't know whether he just came out recently or I simply hadn't been paying attention. Anyway, some of his recent books have featured gay and bisexual characters, and his novel Jumping Off the Planet won the Spectrum Award.

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

Edited by: BBOvenGuy  at: 3/11/03 5:34:13 pm

[ech1969]

Sheridan, what you said was mostly accurate about B/S, but the truth was worse then that. Each writer took their own sometimes very different ideas and opinions about B/S and pulled the characters and the relationship in their own way in each different episode. So, there was no over all ME direction to the story. The Willow addiction arc was the same damn thing, Marti wrote magic as being addictive and not what they were setting up earlier in the year that it was a problem with power, and then Joss later reconned magic into not being addictive. It is all kind of funny.



In fact I remember Marti saying something to the effect in a interview last year that she could do things with B/S that would normally horrify her with a normal relationship, but because they are two ultra strong and violent superbeings they can get away with it. All I have to say it that Marti doesn't know what the hell she is talking about, Buffy didn't look to me like a super strong and violent being in SR. She looked like a weak little girl and a rape victim, not even an attempted rape victim. It sort of reminds me of Marti taking about Willow being raped by Rack, I was wondering where the **** she got that from, and that it occured to me that hmmm, she has be be obsessed with rape or something. Though, do I think I know what was going through her head twisted as that sounds, she probably thought that with B/S because these are two strong and violent metaphorical beings that she could have them do things that the audinence would be horrifed at in a normal relationship like beating in your lover's face in a alley to B/S and it wouldn't be a big deal. But, where she dropped the ball was eliminating the metaphorical badness from the relationship; i.e. having Buffy actually using Spike for sex and having Buffy almost raped and not a metaphor for rape like an attempted vamping. To tell the truth I wasn't bothered nearly as much by the balcony scene as I was by most of the B/S cr*p at least that showed the inner turmoil in Buffy that the writers were going for. But, if ME had any brains whatsoever they would have done it by say having Spike biting her and slowly sucking on her blood and hell they could have still tried to make it erotic, and it wouldn't have disgusted a large number of viewers nor would it have pissed off the star of the f***ing show. Well, ME dug their own grave. Well, that is more then I wanted to say about B/S.



And, I don't even want to start talking about how screwed up what Marti did with Willow really was, I could go on for pages. Suffice it to say that Marti has issues, and Joss was a idiot that added to the rope that he hung himself with by leaving her in charge. I am so sad for Jossey boy... boo ho he screwed his own damn self.



I really do think alot of this stuff and the internal fights that went on will come out a year or two after the show is over and ME has broken apart completely.



And BBOvenGuy I love you essay, you are doing a great job, keep it coming.

Edited by: ech1969 at: 3/11/03 5:49:31 pm

[DianaBouvier99]

Quote:

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It’s easy to look back at Season 6 of Buffy and see this process happening all over the place.

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I would change this sentence to "It’s easy to look back at Season 6 of Buffy and see this process beginning.



"Happening all over the place" seems to much like slang.

Quote:

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In fact, she kept going back to him - and then taking her turn beating on him

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While beating "on him" was exactly what she was doing I would change it to:



In fact, she kept going back to him - and then she took her turn beating him



Over all I really liked this part; I loved your examples and how you integrated them into your argument.

[BBOvenGuy]

Thanks for the info, bzengo. Since I'm only an honorary lesbian, I don't always get the memos.



David has been a regular at the LA Science Fiction convention for as long as I've been going to it. His annual AIDS Project LA auction has become a major tradition.

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

[Hair Annoyed]

BBOvenGuy, first let me thank you for putting into words what I have been stumbling and mumbling about for over a year as I try to explain to friends why Buffy went bad. I'm really looking forward to the final draft.



What you refer to as solidification and wearing down of characters I have always thought of as the "getting to know you" phase. The series premiere and the first few episodes of the first season are when the audience gets its first impressions of the characters (and the show in general). Then, if they like what they see, they come back for more. If they really like what they see, they become infatuated with the characters. Everything each character does is new and interesting. Then the viewers see the characters in a variety of situations and, by the end of a few seasons, come to anticipate the actions and reactions and even to pass judgement on whether they like a particular character or not.



This seems like exactly the same process as happens when you meet new people in real life. You make the same analogy when you say "The regular characters of a TV series are like friends who pay the audience a weekly visit." And, as you say, this is why OOC actions always feel so very wrong. But I don't think that set responses feel wrong or even that they are necessarily boring. Good friends you keep around forever. Successful comedies rarely have their characters grow or change, and when they do that is usually a sign of trouble. It's really not suprising then that most of the really long running shows are all comedies. Look at Cheers and its spin-off Frasier. Kelsey Grammer has been playing that one character for what? a couple of decades? How is that possible? By maintaining character continuity and by being damned funny! The only drama I can think of that is as long running as most successful comedies is Law & Order, and I believe that that is mainly due to the fact that their format doesn't allow the audience to get to know the characters except in a rather superficial way so that no deep emotional attachments form. You either like the format or you don't.



What SMG said about the humor being missing from season sux struck me as the ultimate reason season sux did indeed suck. If Buffy is a dramady, then the moment they decided to persue the drama almost exclusive of any comedy was the moment that Buffy was doomed. Big drama needs big events like Tara's death, Spuffy attempted rape, and Willow's murdering spree just to name a few of the biggest. In this context the nerds were simply pathetic annoying boys instead of the humorous loser/slacker types they were probably supposed to be. Less drama and more comedy would have meant doing away with some of the Big Drama Events. Even if they had kept Tara's death and DMW and just gottte rid of all the ugly Spuffy, they would probably have lost me (and alot of other Kittens) but they wouldn't have lost so many viewers.



I guess what I'm saying is that I feel that humor was one of the essential elements of the original concept that got chipped away last year. And since the star of the show mentions it, I think it would be good to use it as one of your examples.

[darkmagicwillow]

Surrounding the issue of character erosion, both contributing to it and being contributed to by it, is the problem of the dilution of the character base, starting with season 4's big changeover as Angel was spun off. The W/B/X friendship never recovered from the double blow of the character changeover and the loss of the high school setting. They'd integrated the new characters except Riley by s5, but introducing Dawn re-created the problem. In s7 they seem to think that diluting the character base is the solution instead of one of its causes of their problems, even as they have some characters who they don't know what to do with, while core characters give up their roles to new characters for no apparent reason (Dawn taking Willow's research role, Andrew taking Xander's comedic relief role.)

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

[Sheridan]

Quote:

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Sheridan, what you said was mostly accurate about B/S, but the truth was worse then that. Each writer took their own sometimes very different ideas and opinions about B/S and pulled the characters and the relationship in their own way in each different episode.

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Actually ech I've posted about that lack of direction before. Everythime a writer had a bright idea they were allowed to run with it regardless of how those individual stories might interact. Thus we had Buffy decide she wanted to be in the world three different times and the wild swings in B/S, not to mention the feeling that there were oong stretches where the story arc was just plain forgotten or non-existent. There were a number of episodes that featured the nerds where they could easily have been written out without any impact on the plot; 'Normal Again' is the classic example. They only appear in the first few minutes and Buffy could just as easily have encountered that demon on patrol.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[BBOvenGuy]

Hair Annoyed, you're right about comedic characters being able to go for years without changing. The thing is, in comedy you have something called shtick, where the frequent repetition of the same pattern becomes a joke in and of itself. We used that on You Can't Do That On Television all the time.



The trouble with Buffy goes back to its "elements of conceptualization." Joss Whedon declared that Buffy wasn't going to be a comedy show. It was going to be a drama - and not just any drama, but a drama about emotions. And as you pointed out, that meant at some point the humor was going to go away - and the viewers went with it.



Thanks for pointing that out, because I hadn't really expressed that issue in quite this way before, and now I can.



By the way, there have been a fair share of long-running dramas on the air. The longest-running series I know of was Doctor Who, which ran on the BBC for 26 years and continues in books and audio adventures to this day. However, just like Law & Order, the format allowed for frequent cast changes, which kept any one character from getting too worn down.



The longest-running series on America TV was Gunsmoke, which ran for 20 years. There were some characters - three, I think - who remained with the show for the entire run, although I've read that in the show's later seasons it had really become more of an anthology series, with the bulk of the drama being carried by guest stars. Bonanza ran a long time as well - 15 years, I think - with a cast that I think was fairly consistent.

"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up." - Ursula K. LeGuin

Edited by: BBOvenGuy  at: 3/12/03 11:49:49 am