TV meta -- hooks and game changers
Bit of random meta, mostly because I feel like rambling about stuff I love to take my mind off stuff that stresses me out.
So, again, on a bit of a Buffyverse kick at the moment, and I was thinking about trying to come up with a list of my top ten episodes or something, which made me think about what I'd consider my top episodes of any show I love, which made me think about what episodes define my favorite shows. And I realized that for me, at least, what makes me fannish about a show -- as opposed to "oh, yeah, that one's fun" -- tends to boil down to two specific types of episodes: the Hook, and the Game Changer. I need to encounter both of these episodes to want to dive into a fandom.
You all know what I mean. First, there's the Hook: that episode that really sells you on the show. Its placement can vary, but usually -- if you're watching the series in order, anyway -- it probably needs to fall somewhere in the first season, or you'll give up watching. (Alternately, it's that random episode you stumble across somewhere in the middle of the run of the show that drags you in without your actually knowing anything else about the show at all but holy jebus that was awesome, where can I find more?) It's the episode where a new show finds its footing, starts to figure out what it's really going to be about. It's the character moment that just NAILS it, or the plotline that really speaks to you personally, or just a really friggin' cool shot that makes your breath catch and you think, hey, this is nifty. And you never forget that moment.
Then there's the Game Changer. Episodic television is generally formulaic by nature, and I'm not saying that in a bad way. It has to be. That's what keeps its viewers coming back, week after week after week. We know what to expect, we know the characters, we know the types of story we're going to be told, and we're familiar enough with it to know we'll probably enjoy it. Totally cool. And most decently successful shows ride that wave all the way through the end. But the really good ones, the ones that develop obsessive crazy awesome fans, are the ones that test their own limits, push the edges of the formula, blow it all wide open -- if only for a story arc or two. The Game Changer is that episode. The one that dramatically raises or outright changes the stakes for the characters, the one whose repercussions ripple throughout the rest of the series, the one from which you can never go back. Sometimes it comes right in the first season. Sometimes it takes years before it happens. But oh, man, do we ever sit up and take notice when it does.
There are plenty of other episode archetypes, if I really wanted to sit around and come up with a few more catchy and overly simplistic labels for them. But the Hook and the Game Changer are the two episodes in any given show that will always, always, always turn up in any "best of" episode list I could ever think up. Any given TV show could have any number of Game Changers, depending on how you classify them; there are certainly degrees. For example, in Buffy, I'd consider "Passion" the first huge Game Changer -- we're shown the full extent of Angelus's evil for the first time, and our first major recurring character is killed, brutally, onscreen. But you could also argue that the "Surprise"/"Innocence" two-parter is the Game Changer, for giving us Angelus in the first place, or "School Hard", where Spike casually and deliberately kills the Anointed One, subverting all the expectations set by the first season's arc; or to a lesser extent, go back to "Prophecy Girl", where Buffy actually confronts the fact that she is going to die, which changes her personal stakes for the rest of the series (though I think that's more a logical continuation of the first season's overall story arc than a change, exactly). So, yeah, to a certain extent, the Game Changer is subjective; the Hook even more so, because that's very personal to each individual fan. But you've got to have both to really become fannish about a show. This is why I gave up on Supernatural -- I'm sure there are plenty of Game Changers over its run (and could probably list a few by sheer fannish osmosis), but I never got my Hook episode, so while I've certainly been entertained by the episodes I've watched, I never could get into it properly. My big frustration with Merlin is that while I certainly got my Hook (for me, "The Beginning of the End" -- Merlin's darker side and the Mordred reveal, oh my stars and garters), there has never been a proper Game Changer, and it started pissing me off so much it drained all my enjoyment out of the show. (While certainly there were episodes that had major repercussions, the basic status quo of Merlin's secret and Arthur and Merlin's twisted sort of friendship have never, ever changed, so even as other circumstances changed drastically, I feel like the show itself remained utterly static.)
So now I'm going to ramble on a bit about my favorite TV shows. You've been warned.
Since I started pondering all this through Buffy...
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Hook: 2x03, "School Hard"
It's super weird that it took until season two for my Hook episode, because on any other show, I probably would've just given up outright before then. But Buffy was consistently clever and interesting enough -- and POPULAR enough -- that I kept rolling along. Also I had two very long bus trips and had just realized I could watch Netflix on my iPhone, which pulled me through the majority of season one. And then. AND THEN. Oh, my god, nothing could have prepared me for how fucking awesome "School Hard" was. From pretty much the instant Spike rolled into Sunnydale for the first time, I was hooked. And Drusilla, oh my beautiful mad queen, giving us a pair of villains who genuinely seemed to be enjoying themselves, and that's all it took. All of the elements I was already enjoying about BtVS -- the banter, the Scoobies, the Whedon-ness of it all -- got ramped up to eleven; we got hints at Angel's backstory that suddenly made him like a billion times more interesting; JOYCE with an AXE; and the fight between Buffy and Spike just fucking sizzled. (I swear I wasn't even considering shipping them yet.) SO GOOD. Sold.
The Game Changer: 2x17, "Passion"
Already mentioned this, but wow wow OW. This is where Angelus as the Big Bad really hit home. Jesus fucking Christ, there is no going back from this one. (I feel like, with BtVS, we kind of have an embarrassing wealth of Game Changers, because Joss is awesome like that. This was just the first of many.)
Special Mention: Angel
The Hook AND the Game Changer: 1x09, "Hero"
AtS has the advantage of springboarding off of Buffy, though of course it's a very different show. And in the ninth fucking episode, it proves that NO ONE IS SAFE. A main character -- as in, IN THE MAIN CREDITS -- is killed off for real in episode nine. Jesus fucking Christ. Not that we ever thought Joss was fucking around, but he is NOT FUCKING AROUND here.
Firefly had too short of a run to do this properly -- I feel like we never had a chance to establish the rules of the universe enough to give them a proper Game Changer. Dollhouse, I'd call "Man on the Street" as most people's Hook -- if you got hooked at all, which I did, but I know this is the least popular show in the Whedonverse -- and "Epitaph One" the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS Game Changer.
And while we're in the world of 1990s television with Buffy, allow me to jump back to my very first fandom...
The X-Files
The Hook(s): 4x04, "Unruhe" (special mention: 1x03, "Squeeze")
So I did not originally watch the X-Files in proper chronological order, because I was all of eight years old when it started airing. My mom, though, got pretty into it, and I would catch bits and pieces of episodes here and there. In season four, I started getting REALLY interested, and she finally allowed me to stay up past my bedtime on Sunday nights so that I could watch it with her all the way through. (I guess she got tired of having to recount the entirety of every episode in detail on the way to school on Monday mornings.) I know I started watching late in season four, but since it was ALL new to me, I would devour reruns on other channels or on off-weeks. "Unruhe" was the one that SOLD me. I was fucking eleven, guys, clearly I was a very disturbed child, but I was all about the h/c at that point and I loved loved loved Scully getting kidnapped, kicking ass as best she could, and having Mulder rescue/comfort her at the end. Later, when I got a hold of episode box sets and summer reruns and discovered the internet fandom, I tried to piece together the show more or less chronologically, and I've always been super impressed by "Squeeze". It was the first Monster of the Week episode, and it was creepy and clever and had fantastic character moments -- if I hadn't known, I would have assumed it aired much later in the first season, because it's so rare that a show finds itself so fucking quickly. There are a lot of stinkers in season 1, but Eugene Victor Tooms still creeps me the fuck out.
The Game Changer: 2x05/06, "Duane Barry"/"Ascension"
Scully gets abducted. Scully gets abducted. This changed EVERYTHING -- every major mytharc for the rest of the nine-year run of the show is somehow tied in to Scully's abduction. What originated as a desperate ploy on the writers' end to cover up Gillian Anderson's pregnancy turned into the single most important event in the entire show. It gave Scully a vastly more personal stake in the X-Files, it grounded (and unhinged) Mulder's quest in a very immediate sense, it forged a deeper bond between the characters. This is like the fucking definition of a Game Changer episode. Also, Duane Barry, guys. Good god, what an excellent, creepy, strangely sympathetic character.
Avatar: the Last Airbender
The Hook: 1x13, "The Blue Spirit"
I was already enjoying AtLA, okay, it's not like it took me thirteen episodes to get into it. But the reveal of Zuko as the Blue Spirit kind of blew my mind, and made me see the primary antagonist in an entirely different light. I feel like this is where the show really started to step up its game and become AWESOME.
The Game Changer: 2x20, "The Crossroads of Destiny"
Okay. I think there are plenty of important episodes well before this, and individual characters certainly get their own individual Game Changers earlier on. (Zuko, I am looking at you.) But this is where the stakes were upped for the ENTIRE SERIES, and oh, god, Zuko's gradual evolution from antagonist to tentative good guy was completely subverted, and Aang was nearly killed, and suddenly the Gaang is on the run again but ten thousand times worse off than before. This is where the kid's show grew the fuck up, and everything changed.
Doctor Who
The Hook: 1x09/10, "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances"
Captain Jack Harkness, ladies and gentlemen. For all that his character became bogged down under the weight of carrying his own series and, of course, his manpain, he was a breath of fresh air into the New Who franchise. Plus, a fucking awesometastic story from Steven Moffat, the creepiest fucking "villains" ever ("Are you my mummy?"), and EVERYBODY LIVES. I was definitely enjoying Who already, for all its cheese and camp, but this is what sold me. And it's how I try to hook other people into the show now, too.
The Game Changer: 1x13, "Parting of the Ways"
All season finales have to up the stakes, and they always tend to be some of the best episodes of any given show. And, sure, we know from Old Who that the Doctor periodically dies and regenerates. That's his shtick. But for those of us coming in to New Who for the first time, this episode changed everything. The Doctor sent Rose away? And Rose is the Bad Wolf? And she controls all of time and space? And he's FUCKING DYING OH MY GOD WHAT, and they left Jack behind, and oh holy mother of god that's David Tennant. What. WHAT?! (Dude, I had been spoiled for all of this, and it still packed a hell of a punch.)
Torchwood
The Hook: 1x08, "They Keep Killing Suzie"
I did not think Torchwood was a very good show at all in season one. This was the first episode that started changing my mind, and convinced me to stick with it. And not just because of the stopwatch conversation, I swear.
The Game Changer: 2x01, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"
I will probably never know what exactly changed between series one and two, but from the very beginning -- chasing a blowfish in a sports car -- the show fucking SPARKLED. The production values were higher, the writing was MILES better, the cast all just CLICKED. And Jack came back from his sojourn with the Doctor with brand new baggage but also a huge load OFF his shoulders, which changed the dynamics of the characters for the rest of the series. And also John Hart, because clearly the introduction of James Marsters into any show automatically makes me love it 10x more.
The West Wing
The Hook: 1x01, "Pilot"
Guys, I have never been hooked on a show so fast. It had me from the President of the United States riding his bike into a tree -- I'm sorry, coming to a sudden arboreal stop. Done and done.
The Game Changer: 1x22, "What Kind of Day Has It Been"
Gunshots at Rosslyn. This goes beyond your average cliffhanger; the repercussions of the assassination attempt -- and JOSH JOSH JOSH OH GOD -- echo throughout the rest of the administration.
While we're on Sorkin...
Sports Night
The Hook: 1x07, "Dear Louise"
While I hate the framing device of this episode -- I HATE VOICEOVER NARRATION OKAY, this will never not annoy me -- Natalie's war against Dan's hiccups is one of the funniest sight gags in television. I could not breathe for how hard I was laughing.
The Game Changer: 1x16, "Sally"
"You're wearing my shirt." Holy. fucking. shit. (This is not a huge Game Changer by the standards of most shows, but for a frothy two-season sitcom whose drama revolved around the relationships between the characters rather than any real overarching plot arcs, it packed a punch, and had pretty major ramifications for the characters.)
Stopping there because it's late and I'm sleepy, but I could do this for a bunch of other shows. (And ETA, realized I really had to add Avatar in here.) What are your Hooks & Game Changers for your big fannish loves? Is there another type of episode that you need to get involved in a fandom, or is it all about the characters and the individual episodes don't matter at all, or something else entirely? I like reading people's meta about these sorts of things. :)
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.
So, again, on a bit of a Buffyverse kick at the moment, and I was thinking about trying to come up with a list of my top ten episodes or something, which made me think about what I'd consider my top episodes of any show I love, which made me think about what episodes define my favorite shows. And I realized that for me, at least, what makes me fannish about a show -- as opposed to "oh, yeah, that one's fun" -- tends to boil down to two specific types of episodes: the Hook, and the Game Changer. I need to encounter both of these episodes to want to dive into a fandom.
You all know what I mean. First, there's the Hook: that episode that really sells you on the show. Its placement can vary, but usually -- if you're watching the series in order, anyway -- it probably needs to fall somewhere in the first season, or you'll give up watching. (Alternately, it's that random episode you stumble across somewhere in the middle of the run of the show that drags you in without your actually knowing anything else about the show at all but holy jebus that was awesome, where can I find more?) It's the episode where a new show finds its footing, starts to figure out what it's really going to be about. It's the character moment that just NAILS it, or the plotline that really speaks to you personally, or just a really friggin' cool shot that makes your breath catch and you think, hey, this is nifty. And you never forget that moment.
Then there's the Game Changer. Episodic television is generally formulaic by nature, and I'm not saying that in a bad way. It has to be. That's what keeps its viewers coming back, week after week after week. We know what to expect, we know the characters, we know the types of story we're going to be told, and we're familiar enough with it to know we'll probably enjoy it. Totally cool. And most decently successful shows ride that wave all the way through the end. But the really good ones, the ones that develop obsessive crazy awesome fans, are the ones that test their own limits, push the edges of the formula, blow it all wide open -- if only for a story arc or two. The Game Changer is that episode. The one that dramatically raises or outright changes the stakes for the characters, the one whose repercussions ripple throughout the rest of the series, the one from which you can never go back. Sometimes it comes right in the first season. Sometimes it takes years before it happens. But oh, man, do we ever sit up and take notice when it does.
There are plenty of other episode archetypes, if I really wanted to sit around and come up with a few more catchy and overly simplistic labels for them. But the Hook and the Game Changer are the two episodes in any given show that will always, always, always turn up in any "best of" episode list I could ever think up. Any given TV show could have any number of Game Changers, depending on how you classify them; there are certainly degrees. For example, in Buffy, I'd consider "Passion" the first huge Game Changer -- we're shown the full extent of Angelus's evil for the first time, and our first major recurring character is killed, brutally, onscreen. But you could also argue that the "Surprise"/"Innocence" two-parter is the Game Changer, for giving us Angelus in the first place, or "School Hard", where Spike casually and deliberately kills the Anointed One, subverting all the expectations set by the first season's arc; or to a lesser extent, go back to "Prophecy Girl", where Buffy actually confronts the fact that she is going to die, which changes her personal stakes for the rest of the series (though I think that's more a logical continuation of the first season's overall story arc than a change, exactly). So, yeah, to a certain extent, the Game Changer is subjective; the Hook even more so, because that's very personal to each individual fan. But you've got to have both to really become fannish about a show. This is why I gave up on Supernatural -- I'm sure there are plenty of Game Changers over its run (and could probably list a few by sheer fannish osmosis), but I never got my Hook episode, so while I've certainly been entertained by the episodes I've watched, I never could get into it properly. My big frustration with Merlin is that while I certainly got my Hook (for me, "The Beginning of the End" -- Merlin's darker side and the Mordred reveal, oh my stars and garters), there has never been a proper Game Changer, and it started pissing me off so much it drained all my enjoyment out of the show. (While certainly there were episodes that had major repercussions, the basic status quo of Merlin's secret and Arthur and Merlin's twisted sort of friendship have never, ever changed, so even as other circumstances changed drastically, I feel like the show itself remained utterly static.)
So now I'm going to ramble on a bit about my favorite TV shows. You've been warned.
Since I started pondering all this through Buffy...
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Hook: 2x03, "School Hard"
It's super weird that it took until season two for my Hook episode, because on any other show, I probably would've just given up outright before then. But Buffy was consistently clever and interesting enough -- and POPULAR enough -- that I kept rolling along. Also I had two very long bus trips and had just realized I could watch Netflix on my iPhone, which pulled me through the majority of season one. And then. AND THEN. Oh, my god, nothing could have prepared me for how fucking awesome "School Hard" was. From pretty much the instant Spike rolled into Sunnydale for the first time, I was hooked. And Drusilla, oh my beautiful mad queen, giving us a pair of villains who genuinely seemed to be enjoying themselves, and that's all it took. All of the elements I was already enjoying about BtVS -- the banter, the Scoobies, the Whedon-ness of it all -- got ramped up to eleven; we got hints at Angel's backstory that suddenly made him like a billion times more interesting; JOYCE with an AXE; and the fight between Buffy and Spike just fucking sizzled. (I swear I wasn't even considering shipping them yet.) SO GOOD. Sold.
The Game Changer: 2x17, "Passion"
Already mentioned this, but wow wow OW. This is where Angelus as the Big Bad really hit home. Jesus fucking Christ, there is no going back from this one. (I feel like, with BtVS, we kind of have an embarrassing wealth of Game Changers, because Joss is awesome like that. This was just the first of many.)
Special Mention: Angel
The Hook AND the Game Changer: 1x09, "Hero"
AtS has the advantage of springboarding off of Buffy, though of course it's a very different show. And in the ninth fucking episode, it proves that NO ONE IS SAFE. A main character -- as in, IN THE MAIN CREDITS -- is killed off for real in episode nine. Jesus fucking Christ. Not that we ever thought Joss was fucking around, but he is NOT FUCKING AROUND here.
Firefly had too short of a run to do this properly -- I feel like we never had a chance to establish the rules of the universe enough to give them a proper Game Changer. Dollhouse, I'd call "Man on the Street" as most people's Hook -- if you got hooked at all, which I did, but I know this is the least popular show in the Whedonverse -- and "Epitaph One" the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS Game Changer.
And while we're in the world of 1990s television with Buffy, allow me to jump back to my very first fandom...
The X-Files
The Hook(s): 4x04, "Unruhe" (special mention: 1x03, "Squeeze")
So I did not originally watch the X-Files in proper chronological order, because I was all of eight years old when it started airing. My mom, though, got pretty into it, and I would catch bits and pieces of episodes here and there. In season four, I started getting REALLY interested, and she finally allowed me to stay up past my bedtime on Sunday nights so that I could watch it with her all the way through. (I guess she got tired of having to recount the entirety of every episode in detail on the way to school on Monday mornings.) I know I started watching late in season four, but since it was ALL new to me, I would devour reruns on other channels or on off-weeks. "Unruhe" was the one that SOLD me. I was fucking eleven, guys, clearly I was a very disturbed child, but I was all about the h/c at that point and I loved loved loved Scully getting kidnapped, kicking ass as best she could, and having Mulder rescue/comfort her at the end. Later, when I got a hold of episode box sets and summer reruns and discovered the internet fandom, I tried to piece together the show more or less chronologically, and I've always been super impressed by "Squeeze". It was the first Monster of the Week episode, and it was creepy and clever and had fantastic character moments -- if I hadn't known, I would have assumed it aired much later in the first season, because it's so rare that a show finds itself so fucking quickly. There are a lot of stinkers in season 1, but Eugene Victor Tooms still creeps me the fuck out.
The Game Changer: 2x05/06, "Duane Barry"/"Ascension"
Scully gets abducted. Scully gets abducted. This changed EVERYTHING -- every major mytharc for the rest of the nine-year run of the show is somehow tied in to Scully's abduction. What originated as a desperate ploy on the writers' end to cover up Gillian Anderson's pregnancy turned into the single most important event in the entire show. It gave Scully a vastly more personal stake in the X-Files, it grounded (and unhinged) Mulder's quest in a very immediate sense, it forged a deeper bond between the characters. This is like the fucking definition of a Game Changer episode. Also, Duane Barry, guys. Good god, what an excellent, creepy, strangely sympathetic character.
Avatar: the Last Airbender
The Hook: 1x13, "The Blue Spirit"
I was already enjoying AtLA, okay, it's not like it took me thirteen episodes to get into it. But the reveal of Zuko as the Blue Spirit kind of blew my mind, and made me see the primary antagonist in an entirely different light. I feel like this is where the show really started to step up its game and become AWESOME.
The Game Changer: 2x20, "The Crossroads of Destiny"
Okay. I think there are plenty of important episodes well before this, and individual characters certainly get their own individual Game Changers earlier on. (Zuko, I am looking at you.) But this is where the stakes were upped for the ENTIRE SERIES, and oh, god, Zuko's gradual evolution from antagonist to tentative good guy was completely subverted, and Aang was nearly killed, and suddenly the Gaang is on the run again but ten thousand times worse off than before. This is where the kid's show grew the fuck up, and everything changed.
Doctor Who
The Hook: 1x09/10, "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances"
Captain Jack Harkness, ladies and gentlemen. For all that his character became bogged down under the weight of carrying his own series and, of course, his manpain, he was a breath of fresh air into the New Who franchise. Plus, a fucking awesometastic story from Steven Moffat, the creepiest fucking "villains" ever ("Are you my mummy?"), and EVERYBODY LIVES. I was definitely enjoying Who already, for all its cheese and camp, but this is what sold me. And it's how I try to hook other people into the show now, too.
The Game Changer: 1x13, "Parting of the Ways"
All season finales have to up the stakes, and they always tend to be some of the best episodes of any given show. And, sure, we know from Old Who that the Doctor periodically dies and regenerates. That's his shtick. But for those of us coming in to New Who for the first time, this episode changed everything. The Doctor sent Rose away? And Rose is the Bad Wolf? And she controls all of time and space? And he's FUCKING DYING OH MY GOD WHAT, and they left Jack behind, and oh holy mother of god that's David Tennant. What. WHAT?! (Dude, I had been spoiled for all of this, and it still packed a hell of a punch.)
Torchwood
The Hook: 1x08, "They Keep Killing Suzie"
I did not think Torchwood was a very good show at all in season one. This was the first episode that started changing my mind, and convinced me to stick with it. And not just because of the stopwatch conversation, I swear.
The Game Changer: 2x01, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"
I will probably never know what exactly changed between series one and two, but from the very beginning -- chasing a blowfish in a sports car -- the show fucking SPARKLED. The production values were higher, the writing was MILES better, the cast all just CLICKED. And Jack came back from his sojourn with the Doctor with brand new baggage but also a huge load OFF his shoulders, which changed the dynamics of the characters for the rest of the series. And also John Hart, because clearly the introduction of James Marsters into any show automatically makes me love it 10x more.
The West Wing
The Hook: 1x01, "Pilot"
Guys, I have never been hooked on a show so fast. It had me from the President of the United States riding his bike into a tree -- I'm sorry, coming to a sudden arboreal stop. Done and done.
The Game Changer: 1x22, "What Kind of Day Has It Been"
Gunshots at Rosslyn. This goes beyond your average cliffhanger; the repercussions of the assassination attempt -- and JOSH JOSH JOSH OH GOD -- echo throughout the rest of the administration.
While we're on Sorkin...
Sports Night
The Hook: 1x07, "Dear Louise"
While I hate the framing device of this episode -- I HATE VOICEOVER NARRATION OKAY, this will never not annoy me -- Natalie's war against Dan's hiccups is one of the funniest sight gags in television. I could not breathe for how hard I was laughing.
The Game Changer: 1x16, "Sally"
"You're wearing my shirt." Holy. fucking. shit. (This is not a huge Game Changer by the standards of most shows, but for a frothy two-season sitcom whose drama revolved around the relationships between the characters rather than any real overarching plot arcs, it packed a punch, and had pretty major ramifications for the characters.)
Stopping there because it's late and I'm sleepy, but I could do this for a bunch of other shows. (And ETA, realized I really had to add Avatar in here.) What are your Hooks & Game Changers for your big fannish loves? Is there another type of episode that you need to get involved in a fandom, or is it all about the characters and the individual episodes don't matter at all, or something else entirely? I like reading people's meta about these sorts of things. :)
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.