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.

The pre-buzz on Dollhouse stressed how it would be like Phil Dick, Vonnegut, and Ballard (including naming a character after Ballard). By the time the show aired, I think Joss was bored because they took his morbid and dark dystopia away from him.

He also seems to have walked away from the Buffy show (some but not fully, still approving plotlines and seeing everyone once a week) for those last two seasons (which I happen to like plenty, Marti Noxon for the win). I think the comics was a money and love of comics thing where he would've preferred to do Fray (which is quite nice, imho) and he was involved with the beginning of the Season 8 comics and then lured back to chasing Hollywood.

There's no way he wants to still be known for either Buffy or Firefly. It's like how Sara Gilbert has to want to cry when people try to talk to her about Darlene Connor (even if she was the first moody young woman to utter Whedon lines). All he wants is to do something that blows peoples' doors off so they won't go on and on about old projects.

Simply, Whedon strikes me as someone who's best when he's allowed to do whatever he wants, yet also someone who's not into playing the game. (Though I think those same characteristics are why people are usually reluctant to give him as much money as he wants.)

[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.)

(I should also confess that the "yay, human trafficking" angle of Dollhouse made it near-unwatchable for me. I only saw three or maybe four episodes total and I really liked one and the other two or three were bad enough to prevent me from sticking with the show. I presume the original conceptualization had to have been coming at those issues differently. I found the series that aired too flawed to bother watching, but my sense was that something quite impressive was supposed to be in there somewhere--though I also fear that the idea of Eliza being someone else every week was never going to be that successful. If your lead is different every week, a show falls into that anthology format (like Twilight Zone or its clones) more quickly than many expect. All Monster of the Week all the time is rough when most of your cast can't remember anything.)

My running joke was that she should just be imprinted as a vampire slayer named Faith and the show would be saved.

(Oh, and I seem to be infected with parentheses. Don't worry. It's common.)

[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.

[readingthedark]

I've never seen any of season two either. Maybe Scott Bakula would've been better in the role.

[snurri]

HA!