Category Archives: Television

Buffy’s Broken World Building

 

The feature film Buffy the Vampire Slayer made little impression upon the world and vanished with little notice but the television series that followed became a cultural sensation skyrocketing its show runner Joss Whedon into celebrated creator status that only recently crashed back to Earth with scandal and controversy.

Running for seven seasons, the first five being well made with the final two in my opinion suffering from turnover in the writing that’s that severely damaged the integrity of the series the series followed the trial and adventures of Buffy Summer the titular Slayer a young woman mystically selected to protect the world from demon, supernatural threats, chiefly vampires.

In the pilot episode Buffy’s watcher Giles explains that contrary to legend the world did not start out as a paradise but rather was thoroughly infested with demons who were eventually dimensionally expelled with the Slayer now the appointed guardian of the barrier between the demon dimension and our own. A clear and unambiguous refuting of Christian cosmology. (One that Whedon in the audio commentary for the episode said he expected to initiate a flood of letters and complaints that somehow never arrived.) Dismissing Christian cosmology for your won is perfectly acceptable world building and, in many cases, a preferrable one but it left the series with an unanswerable question.

Why do crosses repel vampires?

It is not because there is any actual truth behind the symbol, Gile’s ‘actual’ history dispels that possibility. It also cannot be because the user has actual faith that powers the repulsion as when it became necessary to mystically revoke a vampire invitation to Willow’s home a required element was a cross on the wall and not a symbol from Willow’s Jewish faith.

This also raises the question about historical vampires from before the common era. In pre-Christian Rome or other parts of antiquity there were slayers and vampires did the cross repel them even before the advent of Christianity?

I know that these may seem like pedantic and pointless questions. After all it was just a TV series and used as the basis for much of its mythology concepts incorporated into vampire lore from a struggling Irish stage manager and a century of horror films, but it is exactly these sort of the backstory question that bedevil my mind. I would invite you if you were writing vampire stories to ask these sorts of questions and think deeper on the why of your mythology and not simply copy and paste from a century of cinema.

 

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Star Trek the Noir

 

I recently re-watched the Original Series episode The Conscience of the King in which Kirk must discover if the leader of a traveling actor troop is in reality a mass murderer who has escape justice.

As indicated by the title taken from Hamlet the scrip has numerous references to the Bard and his works but on this viewing I was taken by just how much the episode leaned into the conventions of film noir.

The story’s spine is a mystery with Kirk playing the role of the detective, searching for clues amongst a forest of lies and deception. He is enamored by a mysterious beauty who ultimately proves to be quite lethal a near perfect femme fatale. The obvious answer to the mystery turns out to be only near correct with a final act twist that reveals a darker and more tragic answer to the series of murders.

In addition to the thematic and plot elements that line up so perfectly with noir that series, though still displaying the bright television set selling colors, Finnerman the director of photography still manages to utilize shadow through the episode giving it a darker image befitting the story.

In my opinion there is no doubt that Star Trek’s The Conscience of the King is film noir.

 

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Reconnecting: The Wire

 

A number of years ago my friend Brian popped over for a weekend of gaming and afterwards pulled out some DVDs he had brought along and thus was my introduction to HBO’s Cops and Druggies drama The Wire.

Set in Baltimore in 2002, when the series aired, The Wireparticularly the first season focused on a special police unit established to investigate and charge a local drug lord. What set The Wire apart from so many other crime and police shows was its intense dedication of depicting the reality of crime and policing on the streets of Baltimore. It is a police show where the police officers never engage in gun battles with the bad guys and are more often screwed over by departmental politics than and clever criminal conniving. Equally the drug dealers, from the teens on the corner to the masterminds are fully realized three dimensional characters removed from a simplistic portrayal of either being all good or all bad with the same humanity shown to the addicts trapped in their wretched lives. The Wire showed us people trapped in system not of their own making and which curtailed their choices and both police and criminals made choices that were both good and bad. After the first season the focus drifted a bit and while always interesting that lack of clear intent did seem to diminish the series.

Two weeks ago, I queued up the first episode intending simply to watch a few minutes before heading off the sleep. Instead, I was sucked into the intense personal drama and now I am watching an episode a night. I shall likely drop this re-watch once the season ends but it is good to see that quality acting, production, and writing remain irresistible nearly twenty years after its creation.

The Wire streams on HBOMax and HBO.

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Fixing Zemo’s Retcon

 

 

Recently in the Disney+ MCU show The Falcon and The Winter Solider the villain from Captain America: Civil War, Helmut Zemo, returned as a reoccurring character.

Civil War presented Zemo as secret police/security officer from the fictional nation of Sokovia that had been devastated by the event of Avengers: Age of Ultron and seeking revenge upon the Avengers for the death of his wife and family.

TFaTWS returned Zemo closer to his comic book version letting the audience know that he was wealthy, an aristocrat and held the title of Baron.

Many people have felt that this directly contradicts the earlier presentation of Zemo breaking the MCU’s continuity.

This is an easy fix to make both Zemo’s seamlessly into one coherent character.

Zemo as a young man met and fell hopelessly in love with a woman a low social standing. His tradition  bound aristocratic family refused to accept a person of ‘low birth’ into their arms and Zemo walked away from his wealth, his privileges, and his family to be with his love. Starting a family of his own and building his own life and losing all that in the Avengers’ war on Ultron. Grief and revenge drove him to the event of Civil War and after cooling his heels in prison and basking the publicly fractured Avengers he reunited with his family and the Bucky brought him into the current crisis.

You may now use this as your ‘head canon.’

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A Most Disappointing Continuation

 

This contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season 2.

 

Last week I posted about how I dislike cliffhangers prompted by the season one cliffhanger from The Umbrella Academy, a series that I had very much enjoyed and found a non-ending frustrating.

I watched the season two opener and my reaction transformed from frustration to irritation. Season 1 centered on two major plot threads, an end of the world apocalypse in seven days and the secret behind Vanya’s lack of superpowers. They resolve when her powers induced the end of the world with the moon’s destruction but all of our central characters, including Vanya, escape into the past to continue their quest to save the world from the apocalypse they failed to prevent. Okay, the story’s not over and we continue this fight, right?

Wrong.

The characters are scattered from 1960 through 1963 Dallas, with 1963 being the time of an all-out Soviet invasion and nuclear war. Five, the character who brought scattered them through time, is informed that they had to stop this nuclear war and they have just ten days to do it and he’s plopped down in Dallas with that ten-day countdown. Oh, and Vanya’s forgotten who she is and what she can do.

So, the story has not resolved in any manner the central plot from season one but has recycled the plot into a ‘new’ apocalypse with another very limited window to prevent it and no actionable information and it has reset Vanya back to her starting position.

What the fuck kind of story telling is this?

I ant complete stories, not cheats and handwaving like a bad roleplay game adventure that suddenly changed gamemasters. Finish one story before starting another and when you do start another crib something other than the plot you failed to complete.

 

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I Dislike Cliffhangers

I Dislike Cliffhangers

 

Recently, that is over the last few weeks, a friend and I started watching the Netflix Original Series, The Umbrella Academy,a series about a set of people all born on the same day, collected/adopted by a wealthy mysterious eccentric mand and turned into a crime fighting superpowered group before internal dissention ripped them apart. Now, as adults the enhanced individuals must reunite, overcome their personal and interpersonal issues, solve the enigmatic death of the adopted father and oh save the world from an apocalypse coming in just seven days.

*Some spoilers ahead*

Overall, I have really enjoyed the show. The production values at top shelf, the performances perfectly walk that line between realistic believable characters and comic book excess, and the plotting moves along at a snappy pace while still taking time to explore who each of these characters really is. All in all, well worth the time to watch.

But.

Season one ends on a cliffhanger and I truly despise that.

Modern television seems to have become infected with the season cliffhanger from the cultural event that was ‘Who Shot JR?’ on Dallas back in the 80s and the disease has spread wide and far particularly into genre shows and with the advent of long-form storytelling it metastasized.

I have no issues with dangling out plot threads to be picked up and following seasons. That’s pure addictive junk food and should be encouraged but promising a resolution to a central story and at the last moment yanking it back like Lucy with the football is simply cruel, capricious, and crappy. If I have invested ten hours of my time, or my life, watching your art then at the end I want you freakin’ art to be complete.

Again, this is not a rant against the concept of series or a plea to return to the artificiality of solely episodic story telling. Pratchett’s Discworld novels are one of my beloved reads and each book builds upon the previous in its storyline, but each book is also whole and complete. When I finish one, I have been told a tale that has a beginning middle and an end.

An End.

Aye, there’s the rub. I have a strong opinion that the ending of a story is where the purpose and reason for the story exists. It is why we experienced the story to have that moment of catharsis or epiphany or loss that gives the tale its meaning and its power a cliffhanger robs the audience/reader of that promise and that release.

 

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Nordic Noir: The Bridge After Season One

 

My sweetie and I have completed watching Season One of The Bridge a Swedish/Danish co-production television series about a mastermind criminal operating in both countries.

I first posted about this series a month ago before we completed watching the season and I can now give a more complete opinion on the show.

The bottom line is I liked it.

What started out as a lot of unconnected threads all wove together into a single plot that was an impressive example of large-scale writing. The nuanced nature of the plotting would have been impossible in a feature film making this story only suitable for a novel or television.

The acting is all very good. Most of the actors were unknown to me except for Kim Bodina as the Danish detective Martin Rohde who played a major character in the fantastic series Killing Eve but for the most part Sofia Helin as Swedish sleuth Saga Noren carries the series.

While the words Autism or ‘On the Spectrum’ are never mentioned in season one it is quite clear that the writers, producers, directors, and actor Sofia Helin deliberately portrayed Saga as a person on the autism spectrum. Importantly that never made the characters divergent neurological nature a center of focus or some sort of superpower that allowed her to see things that others did not, which is so often the case for characters of the type in mystery fiction, but rather allowed her difference to simply exist as part of the constellation of character traits that defined her. Her co-workers and her partner Martin are very aware that Saga is different, but it is never used as an overly dramatic point of conflict or praise it is simply who she is. She is neither childlike nor a savant but allowed to be a complete adult female character.

Anytime you are dealing with a mastermind criminal character you are departing from a reality that matches our world. Moriarty doesn’t exist and if you go into The Bridge suspending disbelief for that sort of fiction it is an entertaining, dramatic, and emotional ride with a very satisfying conclusion.

Sadly The Bridge still is not available to stream in the US we are able to watch it because I have a region free Blu-ray player and my sweetie-wife bought the UK Blu-rays.

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WandaVision’s Warts

 

The Disney +’s initial excursion into Marvel Cinematic Universe based television has completed its first foray with the series finale of WandaVision the complicated and comedic continuation of the storylines for Wanda Maximoff and Vision beyond Infinity War and Endgame.

The series has garnered praise, fandom, and even a hit song and you can count me amongst its fans but the piece is also not without its flaws and missteps. So, with no restraint on spoilers let me illuminate some of the show not quite on target aspects.

Spoiler Region Ahead

To begin, the entire first episode is superfluous. A person could tune into episode two and not have missed anything at all critical to understand the arc of the series. While some have praised the comedic writing of that first episode it did not work for me so it has three strikes against it, 1) it is unnecessary 2) it is not funny, and 3) it has no stakes. Taking place in effectively a dream the problems presented in that initial episode have no weight. Before someone pops up and says that at that point, we didn’t know thew nature of the Hex or even its existence we didknow that Vision was dead and that Wanda is not a character from a 50s sit-com so the audience is already aware of the unreality of the events they are only unaware of the cause. It is dream storyline and those are very difficult to create with any sense of stakes, danger, or loss.

The progression of the sit-coms through the decades is unmotivated.

With each episode of WandaVision the sit-com dreamworld advances to mirror the stylistic nature of the next decade of television. While many of the homages to classic periods of tv were spot on in tone and look that changes themselves were unmotivated. The character’s watching from outside the Hex commented and questioned this aspect establishing it as a plot mystery that is never explained or resolved. While Wanda as a child adored American sit-coms of many decades it is never detailed why her own never fixed into a particular mode.

Wanda’s abuse of the people of Westview is dismissed far too lightly.

In the resolution of plot, it is revealed that unlike her assumptions that the residents of Westview have happy contented lives in her fantasy world they are actually in perpetual pain and their dreams are infused with Wanda’s nightmares. Wanda’s idyllic world had been a literal hell for everyone around her. It is true that Wanda never intended for that, Wanda never intended for any of it the creation of the Hex and its television inspired reality was a product of her unchained chaotic magic and overwhelming grief but when Wanda does release the spell, restoring the town while once again killing her love Vision the story’s emphasis is on Wanda’s loss and ‘sacrifice’ without and hint that Wanda feels any actual guilt over the agony she has forced others to endure for weeks. This was dismissed too glibly, and it undercuts the grief that series so well explored.

Much of these issues that I had could have been resolved at the script stage. I think an interesting possible approach would to have had each decade of sit-com fail Wanda’s escapism in some manner, double points if it fails in a manner that inherent to the nature of the programing and values of the time it was reflecting so that the decades changes as Wanda keeps, without being aware of it, running from her pain. Doing this in episode one would have set up the underpinnings of the entire series and kept that pilot from being essentially pointless.

Now, with all that said, I am still a fan of the series and have enjoyed watching it multiple times.

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Television Thoughts: Resident Alien

 

Confession: We do not have cable television in our home and have not had it for close to eight years. Everything my sweetie-wife and I watch is either streamed or on disc so when a new show premiers on a cable channel we either have to wait for its arrival on a streaming service or if it’s something we have high expectation of enjoying buying an entire season to stream. Which is what we did for SyFy Channel’s original series Resident Alien.

Resident Alien adapted from a comic book series by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse stars Alan Tudyk as an alien who has come to Earth on a deadly mission but due to a mishap and crash has assumed the identity of Doctor Harry Vanderspeigle in the small, isolated community Patience Colorado and finds himself embroiled in murder investigations, family dramas, romantic entanglements, and the mission of a young boy to expose the truth of alien presence. The show is a mixture of comedy and drama with the balance clearly tilted towards the comedic as Patience is populated with an assortment of quirky, broadly sketched, farcical characters that live with one foot in realistic human emotions and the other firmly planted in broad comedy.

Tudyk is one of our best working comedic actors with a career that stretched from A Knights Tales, thru firefly/Serenity up to and past Rouge One: A Star Wars Story. He brings a real charm and sense of timing that carries the comedy off quite well and his choices in his performance particularly when we can compare it against his performance as the human version of the character are unique.

Mixing drama and comedy doesn’t work for everyone but in my opinion, it’s flying high here in Resident Alien.

Resident Alien airs on Syfy on Wednesday nights and is available to purchase from a number of platforms.

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Pedestals Are for Things Not People

 

With the flood of new support for Charisma Carpenter and Ray Fisher as they recount abusive and toxic environments on sets under the control of Joss Whedon it is important to remember that any artistic creator no matter how beloved their work are fallible flawed messy human beings not statuary icons of platonic virtue.

One can adore an artist’s work such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, or Chinatown and still recognized and condemn the creator for their actions or unjust philosophies.

It is equally justifiable to refuse to engage with their art if the offense is beyond a pale you can accept. That is a line that each person must determine for themselves.

Wherever you draw your personal line of embargo it is important long before that moment before the horrible revelations come to light that you do not place these people on the pedestals of adoration, that is where the art belongs, but always remind yourself that no matter the touching nature of their creations they people and that  good art can come from bad people.

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