2011 Reading #80: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 by Joss Whedon et al.

[snurri]

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
71. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown.
72. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin.
73. Red by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner.
74. Richard Stark's Parker Book One: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke.
75. Plastic Man: On the Lam! by Kyle Baker.
76. Old Men In

Comments

[readingthedark]

I'm speculating wildly to the point of making stuff up, but I think what we're seeing is Joss feeling like he was born to do this (third generation Hollywood writer) and he's not into putting up with other peoples' stuff

[snurri]

Your speculation has the ring of smartness about it; I think you're right on a lot of points, particularly your last two paragraphs. I still think Dollhouse was not as well-conceived in terms of the gender/sexuality stuff as it needed to be, but clearly Fox was uncomfortable with the concept in a lot of ways--and yet, somehow, not the part where the women in the show were basically being prostituted without their knowledge.

I liked Fray, too, and I thought that the reconciliation of that universe with the end-of-Buffy status quo in Season 8 was interesting, if flawed. As to the last two seasons of the show, I liked that it was dark and squicky, but I thought they completely forgot how to do the season-long arcs, so that it felt like there were no bones underlying the whole thing. But we may just disagree on that.

[readingthedark]

You know, we pretty much agree on the last two seasons' Buffy arcs too. I have a very high threshold for Monster of the Week episodes as long as they feel snappy.(And, natch, dark and squicky is my primary mailing address

[snurri]

I managed to get through the first season of Dollhouse, but it made me feel really damn gross. (And Dushku was a bad choice to build a show around; I liked the way she grew into the role of Faith, but she's not really that strong an actress.)

I've never watched the second season and possibly I never will.

[infinitehotel]

My main issue with the Buffy comics was it seemed like a backwards step; the main appeal of the show was it was one of the first to really capture the comic book format on television. The limitations were part of the fun but they also kept the characters equal to the FX in the story. Bringing them into comics removed all those limits and the characters seemed kind of dull and secondary as a result. I read a couple of issues and lost interest.

[snurri]

That's a really good point; that was part of the appeal of the show, and they weren't as good at translating it back.

[readingthedark]

Yes, good point. I only read a few of the comics, but the hour-long banter getting boiled down to sixteen pages or so worth of bubbled quips seemed to force them into trying to replace characterization with FX.