Has Joss Whedon spread himself too thin? Consider the ratings positions of his 3 TV shows on their most recent showings: Firefly in last place. Angel in last place. Buffy in last place.
If Fox cancels Firefly I will not be surprised. The most recent "Jaynestown" episode was not exactly science fiction. The cast flies to some planet and then they play out some lousy Western story about Jayne Cobb as bad choice to be treated as folk hero. There's a lot of mud and what looks like bamboo sticks. Whedon made a huge mistake on this show. He could have drawn in a large number of science fiction fans if it had been made to be science fiction. Surely that's what the original trailers made it out to be. If he had done convincing science fiction then he still could have explored the whole Western frontier life angle.
As for the higher "John Doe" ratings: "John Doe" really is the more interesting story:
"Firefly": This Friday Fox series was eagerly anticipated, as it came from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon. More mystifying and unintentionally comic than cosmic, it has turned into a sci-fi dud. It ranks in the Nielsen 90s and, worse, often trails the show that follows it, "John Doe," by a couple million viewers. That means Fox viewers are skipping the 8 p. m. hour and then watching at 9 p.m. -- the biggest vote of no confidence there is.
Firefly was moderately well cast. I don't think the casting was the real problem. Morena Baccarin as Inara is beautiful. Mal is probably a sufficiently good-looking man (or so a woman tells me). Jewel Staite could probably have been made into an interesting female engineer whose technical exploits could have pulled them out of classical tight science fiction binds. Many things could still be done with these characters if Whedon and company could just decide to write stories that are real science fiction stories (I'm ready to help!). Why place characters 500 hundred years in the future except to present science fiction? Does Whedon really believe that the future can be that mundane and primitive if humans are travelling routinely between dozens or hundreds of planets? What new thing did he think he was offering us? If he was offering a Western then what was supposed to be interesting about Firefly as compared to past Westerns? This show did not have enough of a purpose behind it to justify it being made. But if it isn't cancelled first it could still be fixed.
To read my own reactions to Firefly click here for a review of the first episode, here for how to fix Firefly as Science Fiction, (which it really ought to be) here for a review of the second "Bushwhacked" episode, and here for the "Our Mrs Reynolds" episode.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer continues to develop in its seventh season. In episode 3 Willow comes back to Sunnydale. But can anyone see her?
In the last episode it became known to the Scoobies: Spike got his soul back. This invites comparisons with Angel. Angel is a more regal figure. But since Angel's on a different television network with his own show its obvious that Angel has to direct his love at Cordelia and bring her back from the higher level of existence where she's bored. Therefore Angel isn't available to play Buffy's true love. So Spike is going to be given another opportunity with Buffy? Oh, I am just not keen on this idea. Spike is not truly heroic. I don't care what he does.
Xander: My mouth saved the world.
Hadn't thought of it that way but its true. At the end of season 6 by telling Willow how much he loved her he broke thru her hatred just before she destroyed the world.
Willow didn't finish the recovery course. So why was it important that she came back early? Probably the Hellmouth problem.
Buffy and Xander are ready to meet Willow at the airport. For reasons that are not immediately clear they somehow miss her at the airport.
A young guy is spray painting grafitti on some concrete. He thinks he hears stuff and stops and looks around. Eventually a voice speaks to him and in quick order some creature is attacking him.
Willow makes her way back to Buffy's place. BTW, does Willow pay rent to stay at Buffy's? Buffy could certainly use the money.
Willow entering Buffy's house: Welcome home me.
So is there a parallel universe? Willow came in to Buffy's house at 10:41. But so did Buffy and gang several minutes later. Also, the people getting off the airplane without and with Willow seemed to be the same people.
Buffy: If Willow flipped out its her bad. We can only be here for so her so much if she's not here (or close to that).
Also, what was the noise in the house both times? Separate identical houses? Or were they hearing each other as separate noises in the same house? That might be it.
Willow is walking toward what's left of the Magic Box. Recall that she had trashed the place at the end of the 6th season while fighting Giles and Buffy when she was given over to the Dark Side of the Force. Out comes Anya hauling out some remains in a box. Anya is none too happy to see Willing. But see her she can and Willow can see Anya too. They have a chat in front of what is left of the Magic Box. After insulting Willow for what she did eventually Anya describes how she's travelling around doing vengence demon work. Anya starts to describe how she made the guy Ronnie into a worm but Willow just wants to know where the gang is at. Anya says Buffy and Xander are both working at the high school. Off Willow goes.
Willow goes to the construction site and finds the body. Then the Xander and Buffy are there. They can't see each other again. Its becoming clear that they are in the same universe but invisible to each other. Do they hear the sound of her walking up the ladder as she's leaving? They are in the same universe but can't see or hear each others' voices. The body is skinned. It looks like what Willow did to Warren. Of course they suspect Willow.
Willow is wandering thru the high school. Spike can see Willow even though he's halfway insane again. Eventually Buffy and Xander come to talk to him. A weird conversation ensues with Spike realising that they are seemingly oblivious to each other.
Spike: Everyone's talking to me and not to each other.
Spike thinks the witch is not really there? Has Spike it figured out?
Spike: You did it once. I heard about it.
Spike is talking to Willow and Buffy/Spike at the same time. So we know Buffy and Willow can't see each other.
Spike: Everyone's talking to me. No one's talking to each other.
Given Spike's mental state its probably more likely in his mind that he's hallucinating either Willow or Buffy. He says things that ought to be a tip-off but of course Buffy is aware of just how much he's talking to demons in his mind or demons under the ground and doesn't connect the dots to realize that Willow is really there.
Willow goes to see Anya. Wilow and Anya are talking and Willow tells Anya about the skinned body at the construction site. Anya of course thinks Willow could have been the killer.
Anya: Was it you?
Willow: No.
Willow similarly wants to know whether Anya did it.
Anya as a vengeance demon has become a lot more interesting. She can't get any satisfaction from doling out the vengeance.
Anya: But its no longer fulfilling and its upsetting.
Willow states how Anya is feeling and its really how Willow is feeling too. There are obvious parallels here. Willow has done things she's ashamed of. Anya is doing things in the present that she takes no satisfaction from and which she appears to be morally troubled about.
Dawn is doing book research for Buffy. Dawn finds a gnarl that eats the skin. He laps up the blood because it is his natural beverage. We in the audience are supposed to be getting the idea that Dawn shows promise that she's going to become a clever detective.
Buffy realizes that Spike can track blood. So they are following the crazy vampire Spike and the blood trail that the demon left. But how can the blood drop off for that long a period of time?
Dawn: Its smellementary.
More suggestions that Dawn is going to become the thinking fighter against demons. Of course, Willow was that way before she ascended to major witchhood. Still, the writers could send Dawn down this road iand it makes sense to do so since so far at least Dawn has no superpowers.
The Buffy gang's use of Spike to track the blood doesn't seem reasonable. The blood wouldn't drip off the Gnarl for such a long time.
Willow and Anya have done a spell with a Sunnydale map and can see where weird demons are in town. The spell caused a fire that burnt Anya's carpet and Anya is not pleased.
Willow is able to find the rock cave from the partially burned map. But there were other burn spots. The choice seems kinda arbitrary.
There's a funny bit when Anya tells Willow that as a punishment for turning Ronnie back into a human she needs to file a flight plan in order to teleport.
So now Willow and the rest of the Scooby Gang are headed for the same cave.
Willow can hear the demon but in the same cave Buffy can't. How can that be? That seems rather too contrived.
Is the creature that cut Dawn the same as the creature that is messing with Willow?
Implausibility Alert: Why would the same magic that makes Buffy's group invisible to Willow and Willow invisible to them also make the Gnarl invisible to Buffys' group? I didn't enjoy this part because it seemed like an arbitrary extension of the invisibility magic in order to make the cave fight more complex. The whole episode built up to this climax and the climax is not satisfying. I'm disappointed.The poison in Dawn's cut paralyzes her. They react by taking Dawn back to Buffy's house. Well, this seems like an awfully long interval.
Anya is asked to come over to Buffy's house and watch over paralyzed Dawn while Buffy and Xander return to the cave. The whole sequence of Anya showing how Dawn's joints can be positioned in various locations and stay there seemed unnecessary and not particularly well done.
But Anya knows about Gnarl and Buffy decides she has to come along after all. Also, Anya mentions that she's been helping Willow and that Willow was headed for the cave.
There's going to be some deeply symbolic message in all this about how Willow subconsciously didn't want to be seen or was too embarassed to be seen or something similar.
Why would Anya go to get help?
Then its decided that Anya should go with them back to the cave. Of course, this means that Anya will be able to tell them that she sees Willow right there in the cave.
While this is happening we see Gnarl taking slices out of Willow's belly and eating them while licking up the blood.
Eventually they all return to the cave.
Implausibility Alert: The trip back to Buffy's house, waiting for Anya to come over, playing with paralyzed Dawn (which seems incredibly cruel and out of character for the new Buffy who is now supposedly heavily bonded with Dawn btw) and then the trip back to the cave amounts to too much time gone by given what Gnarl is supposedly doing to Willow. Gnarl would have gotten much further along eating Willow if they had really taken the amount of time that would be required to make the round trip. Keep in mind that Anya can't teleport any more so there is a delay for her to arrive at Buffy's house as well.The final scene is between Willow and Buffy as Willow sits on the bed trying to mediate to pull energy from the ground to heal herself. Willow explains to Buffy that she inadvertently made herself invisible by thinking about the idea of how she wasn't looking forward to seeing them. This illustrates just how powerful her magic has become and it foretells future difficulties in her attempts to keep it under control.
Willow: Giles said everyhing is part of the earth.
Buffy: Explains why my fingernails get dirty when I don't do anything.
Willow: Its nice to be forgiven. Too bad I need so much of it.
The offer by Buffy to give Willow some of her strength and the final joint meditation is touching.
This episode has a couple of good premises. Willow subconsciously wished herself to be invisible to Buffy and gang. Gnarl was a thoroughly disgusting skin eating demon who happened to leave victim corpses that looked liked what Willow did to Warren. This of course caused the rest of the cast to suspect Willow of the killing. So far so good. It had some good funny lines in it too. Anya's lack of fulfillment as a demon is brought out clearly and nicely. The danger of Willow's only partial control of her incredibly powerful magic is made manifest.
But there were some problems in the structure of this story. Most crucially, the whole sequence of events involved with the trips to the cave needed to be worked out better. See my implausibility alerts above for some of the problems with the cave sequence. I think there was the delay of the trip back from the cave to Buffy's was implausibly too time-consuming given Willow's situation. I also think it was slow and dull.
Another problem I have with the story is the initial set up at the airport where Willow couldn't see or be seen by the Scoobys. Initially there were multiple interpretations possible to explain what happened. Were we meant to immediately realise that invisibility was the explanation for what was going on? Or were we supposed to wonder if, say, Willow had transported to a parallel universe or whether Willow was hallucinating that she was returning to Sunnydale? These things crossed my mind as I watched the episode and I wonder whether the writers wanted me to have the reaction that I had.
The second episode of the fall 2002 seventh season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is entitled "Beneath You".
Okay, I really liked this episode. It was better than the first episode of the season and better than the bulk of the episodes of the last season.
Frankfurt Germany, girl with hair dyed red is being chased at night by another group of hooded guys. This is like the first season episode except in that case the hooded guys were chasing a girl thru Istanbul Turkey.
Red dyed hair girl looks up after being stabbed and says "From beneath you it devours"
Buffy wakes up and tells Dawn she heard the girl say "From beneath you it devours".
Buffy knows there are more girls like this girl who are going to die. So what else does she know? Just that feeling? And just who are these red hooded guys? When will they show up in Sunnydale? And why are they tracking down these particular women to kill? And most importantly, how many episodes will it take before we can find out?
Buffy and Dawn go to school. Buffy meets the principal. She is wondering why he hired her. He says that she is someone the students will be able to relate to. Is he holding back on her? Does he want her around to protect him and the school? Just what does he know? I think it would be cooler if it turned out that he did know about the supernatural forces at the school and if he hired Buffy for her protective abilities. Someone tell this to the show's writers!
Wood: Trust me, you open that door and these students will eat you alive.
Buffy: You heard about Principal Flutie, right?
Buffy: Was it my sparkling personality? Or maybe you enjoyed my work at the Doublemeat Palace?
Buffy then goes looking for Spike in the basement.
Okay, Willow is coming back from Merrie Olde Englande. Looks like Giles is staying in the Olde Countrie. Willow is afraid she will be rejected. Giles tells her she has to go. Yes, her training is not done yet. But there's trouble on the Hellmouth. Of course, this means that Willow is coming back with a huge amount of witch power that she may not be able to control once she starts using it. It could get interesting...
The writers are definitely rifting off of popular culture with the Kevin Bacon 1990 comedy horror classic Tremors (which is DVD or if you prefer here is Tremors on VHS).
Meanwhile. a woman (turns out to be Nancy - have they met her previously?) gets her dog swallowed up by a hole that pops up thru the sidewalk and she almost gets dragged down with the leash.
Along comes Xander just a moment later. Why does Nancy immediately trust him to go back with him to see Buffy?
Buffy's gang are hanging out talking with Nancy She expect them to treat her like she's nuts but she's come to right people for a sincere discussion of the weird.. Then Spike shows up at Buffy's place. No one is happy to see him.
Spike: What you need is help. Fortunately you got me.
When no one else is listening Dawn's threat to Spike is pretty heartfelt. She asks if he sleeps. Then she tells him she'll kill him in his sleep if she does anything that hurts Buffy. The bonding of Dawn and Buffy continues. Its about time, you writer people you.
Later Buffy and Spike are walking along.
Buffy to Spike: Skittish? You tried to rape me, I don't have words.
Spike (now with soul that Buffy is as yet unaware of): All I can say Buffy, I've changed.
Buffy: I believe you..... there's something you are not telling me.
Spike: You are right, there is. ... we're not sharing
He's only not sharing that he has a soul and a conscience and that he's hearing voices in his head. Spirits? Memories? His own conscience torturing himself? Its not clear. The ambiguity may be intentional on the writers' part.
Xander walks Nancy home. There's some romantic chemistry that becomes apparent as they reach Nancy's apartment building. The worm comes after them as they stand in the foyer. They rush up the stairs and get away from it. (note to writers: I would rather see Xander pair up with Nancy than get back with Anya again)
So is this worm thingie hunting Nancy? Nancy tells Xander about Ronnie, her psycho ex-boyfriend she's been trying to get rid of the last few weeks. Ronnie cast a spell to create the worm monster? Its not clear yet.
Xander has an inspiration and asks Nancy if she's made any wishes lately. Ah, its Anya at work. She's turned Ronnie into a Sluggoth Demon.
The Scoobys plus Nancy confront Anya at the Bronze. Anya is unapologetic about what she's done. The conversation takes a weird twist when she recognises that Spike has changed in some profound way. She's about to blurt out that he has a soul but Spike punches her and Spike and Anya both take on their demon forms. They fight, Buffy jumps in and punches Spike, Spike sees this as expression of repressed anger. Nancy is missing and they all go running off after her before the conversation can proceed any further.
Nancy is being chased by Ronnie the burrowing Slugoff Demon into an alley.
Slugoff Demon battles with Buffy in the alleyway: okay where did the rope come from that allowed Buffy to play Tarzan? Come on guys. This is the second thing in this episode (the worm was the first) that was too derivative. But this one is also way too improbable since there is no place for the rope to come from. Supernatural stuff is more plausible than a rope that comes out of nowhere. My guess is the writers wanted the Tarzan scene. But there could have been a metal pipe that could have bent down off from the side of a building and Buffy could have come swinging down with it. Or how about a fire escape that swung down and with Buffy hanging on to it she could have grabbed the Nancy? I think this scene was weak.
Spike spears the Slugoff demon just as Anya lifts her spell and as a result Spike really spears Ronnie the human. Is Ronnie killed or just wounded? Probably the latter. Spike of course suffers at least from guilt and possibly from his chip as he spears Ronnie.
Buffy calls for medical help on her cell phone and then runs after Spike.
Spike ends up in a church and Buffy finds him there.
Spike must have a soul and not a chip. Or maybe he has a soul but still has a chip? Spike must have been temporarily taken over by spirits.
Spike: From beneath you it devours. From beneath. Poor Rocky.
Okay, is that a reference to The Rocky Horror Picture Show? (Rocky Horror VHS) Its pretty funny if it is. Reminds me of how John Crichton in Farscape would go rifting off of various pop culture themes.
Tripping sentences and fragments of sentences from Spike throughout the episode drove home the idea that he'd gone thru the big spiritual getting-a-soul change. For me there was a sense of relief by the end of the episode when Buffy finally figured it out. The writers definitely like to tease the viewers about when the characters will finally find out something the viewers already know.
Okay, are the spirits that Spike killed really in his mind talking to him? You'd think so. But is he hearing them most of the time? One would need to carefully puzzle over all the babblings he has said in order to figure it out. There are probably a lot more hints being dropped than most of us are picking up on.
The show ends with Spike draped over a cross with smoke coming up from the cross.
The writers were so desperate to put Buffy back in an environment that provided good material that they had to stick her all the way back into high school? Apparently so. The fast food job was such a total dud that I hope don't waste any more time showing her behind the counter of the Double Meat Palace.
Was a return to high school the only option? The college setting was available but a big university is a rather large and anonymous place. Plus, its not a place which would have afforded as many ways to work Dawn into the script. Still, the college scene could have been made to work. As it stands, they could still send Buffy back to college part time.
I still do not think this high school setting is a sufficient basis for building new stories for the show. The writers ought to give Buffy a part-time occasional contract job as a body guard or as a courier of valuable goods. Or how about giving her occasional opportunities to do work as a for-hire supernatural detective for upscale clients? The clients could hear thru the grapevine that she can deal with the supernatural realm. Kinda like Angel does in LA. Heck, it would be easy to make this happen. Some kids she went to high school with could recommend her to their rich fathers or to their bosses.
The writers also ought to bring in some interesting supernatural characters who are not evil. I really like the Skip character that pops up occasionally on Angel. This sense of the supernatural realm as having regular working guys doing security or messenger jobs can be made to be pretty funny.
The seventh season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer begins with an episode called "Lessons". At the end of the sixth season Willow almost destroyed the world in a mad witch rage. Xander talked her out of it by an appeal that melted thru her hatred. Just as the final episode ended Buffy finally pulled out of her post-resurrection funk and decided that life was worth living. In the final scenes Buffy developed a deeper bond with Dawn. It was clear that the relationship between the sisters was going to grow closer in the seventh season.
I'd like to step back a moment and briefly reiterate my view that in the last couple of seasons Buffy The Vampire Slayer developed progressively greater weaknesses in the structure of the show. Buffy was no longer even in college, had been dead in heaven for a few months, had come back from the dead severely disappointed to be alive again, engaged in a pointless relationship with a vampire, worked in a fast food joint which provided little material for interesting story lines, and lived a depressing life. The seventh season needed a big change in direction if the show was to regain its vitality.
There's one opening sequence of a girl running thru the streets of Istanbul being chased by hooded guys. The girl ends up getting killed (probably) by some hooded guys. This of course must be presaging some future event. Does she come back as a monster? Are the hooded guys coming to Sunnydale?
Then we cut to a bonding experience of Buffy training Dawn in a cemetery. How to train your kid sister? Hang out next to a brand new grave site and wait for a new vampire who is just clawing his way out of the grave. The attitude that Buffy projects definitely gives the impression that Buffy is feeling more upbeat, confident and purposeful than she has been for quite a while. This scene signals that Buffy is going to be treating Dawn as an apprentice and that Buffy's over her despondency about being alive once again. It is a great opening scene.
Buffy: Its about power. Who's got it. Who knows how to use it.
Buffy: So who's go the power Dawn?
Dawn: Well, I have the stake.
Buffy: "The stake is not the power"
Buffy: "Who's got the power?"
Dawn: "He does."
Then after the fight:
Buffy: Its real. Its the only lesson Dawn. Its always real.
Giles in Westbury England and on horseback even. With Willow even.
Next Willow is in a meditative pose. Did Willow make the flower bloom? Yes, looks like Willow has permanently absorbed a large amount of magical power. She caused a Uruguayan flower to bloom. She's channeling the forces of Mother Earth in a big way.
Willow: "I've killed people Giles"
Giles: "I've not forgotten"
Miss Harkness (possibly a member of a coven of witches) is teaching Willow.
Dawn is starting first day of classes at the rebuilt Sunnydale High School. Xander is in charge of the construction project on its grounds for the part that is not yet finished. Buffy is going along on the first day of classes to check out the place to see if there are any signs of supernatural activity.
Dawn goes to class. Mr Lonegrin is Dawn's first teacher.
After the students all go to their first classes. Buffy is wandering the halls.
Portent Warning: Lots of ghosts in the high school come out and start haunting Buffy. Ghosts of students and demons past.Buffy rushes into Dawn's class to rescue Dawn but she's in no immediate danger. After Buffy leaves a ghost tries to attack Dawn in class. Of course only Dawn sees it. So Dawn is seeing the ghosts too. Dawn goes to the lavatory and finds a girl in a toilet stall. This girl is named Kit and is also seeing ghosts. Plus. the floors can open up and swallow people (okay, they just get dropped down into the high school basement). Down go Dawn and Kit into the basement.
There are 3 ghosts in the basement who are after Dawn and Kit. They try to get away and run into a high school boy named Carlos who was already down there trying to get out.
Anya is having coffee with her fellow vengeance demon friend Halfred. Halfred tells Anya she's not making the grade. The vengeance demons are doing an intervention on Anya since she has fallen from being the hardest core vengeance demon to being the softest one. When requested to turn a husband into a frog she turned him into a frenchman. This episode has some witty moments.
Portent Warning: The Anya-Halfred conversation turns to the subject that something bad is coming up from below.
The new principal is surprised to find that Buffy is still at the school. He knows some stuff about Buffy but isn't being real forthcoming about what he knows.
How can he not know that there are supernatural events at the school or that Buffy was at the center of those events when she was in high school? Was her file always kept sanitized by the old principal of all the supernatural stuff?
Portent Warning: Meanwhile Willow back in Ye Olde Englande is deeply in touch with the whole planet. She feels the Hellmouth and thinks it is going to open. Portents of bad things coming show up on three threads of this episode.
Buffy, having talked to Dawn and Xander via cell phone, goes thru the hole in the floor of the lavatory and gets into a tussle with the 3 ghosts. Finally she gets thru to a door and she's hoping Dawn is behind it. But instead there's Spikey boy, back from his trials in Africa.
My reaction so far: Buffy's the most interesting character. Talk of having a TV show centered around Dawn seems premature. Also, it is interesting that Dawn is a freshman. Wasn't she older than that in some previous episode? There is a big advantage of making Dawn a freshman though: it gives the writers 4 whole years of Dawn being in high school. High school is the natural milieu for the Buffy world.
Spike is going thru some sort of ordeal in his mind. At the end of the last season it seemed from a line the monster dude said as he put his hand on Spike's chest that he gave Spike his soul back. So Spike is probably going thru major guilt trips ala Angel.
Buffy fights the ghost people. They appear to be people who died in the high school while Buffy was a student there. She gave a good ground upward kick that sent a guy flying. That was well staged. So why do they resent her? It seems unfair to expect her to be able to protect everyone.
Buffy comes across Spike in a basement room. He's talking to voices in his head. He has scratches on his chest. One is supposed to guess that he tried to claw his heart out either because his emotional pain over loving her, guilt at trying to rape her, guilt at what he did to others, or something else drove him to try. Its not clear, It may become clear in some later episode.
Important clue from Spike: Manifest spirits raised by a talisman to seek vengeance.
Buffy goes looking for Dawn. More fighting ensues.
Dawn, Kit, and Carlos are in desperate straits. Dawn shows that she's learned something from being the Slayer's sister when she improvises a weapon. This buys some time for Buffy to arrive.
Aside: I'm waiting for Dawn to demonstrate some superhuman powers as a result of her being The Key. But my guess is that Dawn is going to go thru many other kinds of growth before getting any superpowers of her own.
Things are looking pretty grim as Buffy battles the manifest spirits in the basement of the high school. Finally Xander makes it into the girl's lavatory and destroys the talisman in the nick of time. The manifest spirits go poof.
The Principal watches Buffy talking to Dawn, Kit, and Carlos and sees them hug her. He's suddenly inspired to offer her a part time job as a counselor for troubled kids. So now Buffy will always be around in the high school ready to grab new story premises as they arise right there on the Hellmouth. I'm also guessing that Xander's construction project at the school will take months to finish so that he can be around too.
A person is talking to Spike in the basement. That person morphs: Warren, Glory, Adam, the Mayor, Drusilla, the super force vampire guy (the Master?).
Did they all morph into Buffy where she said "Its about power"? Were all those people there? Surely Buffy couldn't have been there. She was the one non-evil person in the morphing sequence. Was Spike just hallucinating? Was he seeing real figures that are going to come back and are the writers, by inserting Buffy in the sequence, just being inconsistent?
We can expect that Spike will hear the voices of his previous victims. But also he appears to be channeling messages from the dark forces that are coming up to the high school. Are these evil figures all going to make a comeback?
Aside: I gotta say that I never was impressed by Warren as an evil guy. But perhaps that was the point. Some humans can seem perfectly normal but underneath they can be cruel self-absorbed narcissists who gradually work their way up to being willing to commit thoroughly heinous acts. Still, Warren is a dull and uninteresting character.
Buffy returns to high school. I'm sure that this will make it a lot easier for the writers to come up with new plots. Plus, it provides a way to give Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) a bigger role. We see all sorts of hints in this episode that Dawn's character is going to grow. Dawn already has made two friends who may become members of her own Junior Scooby Gang. The high school also provides a way to have lots of fairly young people around. This is great for attracting a young viewing audience.
Still, putting Buffy in high school is not by itself going to make Buffy The Vampire Slayer once again into a great show. Buffy has grown a lot over the years and high school storylines by themselves will be too confining. The show needs some outside factor that will make it more interesting. It needs a character that is as interesting as Angel was. It looks like Spike might become Buffy's love interest again. I think that would be a mistake. There's room here to bring in some other male role that is unrelated to the high school. He should be an unusual supernatural being that is not evil and who has some heroic characteristics. How about a Greek God's son? Or how about some being that comes from a parallel universe and gets trapped in this one? He could have a mix of abilities that are quite unlike anything else we've seen so far.
I have a similar concern about Spike's experience watching the morphing series of beings: the writers might draw too much on old characters. If all these characters come back then its like no battle is ever won. I understand that the war against evil is supposed to be portrayed as never really being won. But at least the individual battles that make up that war ought to be portrayed as getting resolved one way or another.
The other reason I find a problem with relying so much on old dead characters is that its a sign of a failure of imagination. Surely new and interesting characters can be created. Let us tune in and watch new manifestations of evil and more generally other manifestations of the supernatural. Human mythology is full of figures that could be brought to life in Sunnydale using any number of pretexts. I'd bring out some Greek mythological figures if I was writing a Buffy episode.
On the bright side, there was plenty of snappy funny dialog. Some example lines that were good:
Willow: Is there anything you don’t know everything about?
Giles: Synchronized swimming. Complete mystery to me.
Dawn on the phone to Buffy while she's in danger in the basement:
Dawn: And, Buffy? Isn’t this reception amazing? I’m in the frickin’ basement!
Buffy to Xander explaining the events of the day:
Buffy: I think I may have destroyed Dawn’s social life in all of about thirty seconds but apart from that, no.
At the official Buffy The Vampire Slayer UPN web site go can go here to read their description of the first episode of the 7th season entitled "Lessons".
Here's my rather critical review of the third episode of Firefly. Note that I actually enjoyed the episode in spite of what I see as weaknesses in the story line.
Okay, this time I can excuse the implausibility of 19th century cowboy low tech planets which trade with interplanetary space travellers of the same species. What makes me suddenly more willing to accept the show's glaring shortcomings? How about a good story with a premise based on cunning, deception, and hidden motives. It isn't just "Mrs Reynolds" who turns out to have hidden motives - so does Inara with her designs on the Captain. But Mrs Reynolds' hidden motives were the real drivers of this story. Her motives were effectively hidden from us long enough that when she finally moved to implement her dastardly plan it was a surprise that made for a good shift in the direction of the story line.
The show starts out with the Firefly crew on some planet on a crude river raft boat (like something from the 19th century West) apparently getting held up by a band of robbers. In the shoot-out the robbers all eat lead and the good guys (and gals) come out unharmed. Turns out Mal and company were hired by the local settlers to deal with this robbing gang. Mal and a few of his crew are war veterans and skilled with guns. Still, it seems an odd job for interplanetary traders.
With the robbers all dispatched from this mortal life there is a celebration that night with people dancing around at a country hoe down. An attractive young woman in a country dress comes up and gives Mal something to drink and then drags him out on the dance floor. It all seems innocent, fun, and wholesome.
Cut to the next day and the crew is accepting supplies from the locals in return for services rendered. They have to get underway quick because the Alliance might come looking for them (or at least for some Firefly).
They take off from the planet. Mal is looking at the cargo and out pops the woman he had danced with the night before. She proclaims her wifely devotion to Mal. Zoe comes over and hears the explanation for why this woman Saffron is a stowaway and Zoe summons everyone from the crew to introduce Mal's bride (hence the title "Our Mrs Reynolds").
Mal's reaction to finding out he has a bride is excessively rude and his callous insensitivity is displayed to the whole crew. Okay, I get that Mal really doesn't want a bride. I get that he's a rough cut kind of guy. But at some point in the dialog after he'd already been sufficiently insensitive he received a rather stern admonishment from Inara and that should have been sufficient to get him to shift gears a bit. It wouldn't have hurt him to handle the poor young farm girl more gently. I would even say more pointedly that it would have been in character for him to do so.
Was Whedon trying to emphasise that Mal is not a paragon of moral virtue? Did he see that he could do this by showing Mal being callous? Well, a character can be morally flawed without being unnecessarily insensitive. Mal's reaction seemed out of character to me. Was the point that he's not fully mature? But he's mature so much of the time. Is the point supposed to be that he's romantically immature but mature in other ways? It didn't see that way if that is what was the point they were trying to get across.
One can't portray characters as morally flawed by just having them be rude, insensitive and selfish every now and then. If one wants to demonstrate that characters are unsure of their own moral beliefs then the characters should be shown shifting back and forth on some issue as they change their minds back and forth about whether they think they should use ethical beliefs to make some decision.
Book (the reverend played by Ron Glass) cites the law of the planet they came from and how what Mal did the night before in accepting a drink and dancing with Saffron really did wed them.
Saffron claims she was given to Mal to help pay for what the Firefly crew did for her people. I find this implausible. It would have worked better if something that happened on the planet would have set them up to believe the country folk of that planet really would have done such a thing. Though when she describes the paucity of decent male alternatives mates on the planet her argument does come to seem more plausible.
Inara's hidden motive: When Inara learned of this betrothal the look on Inara's face was priceless. There were hints in the first two episodes that she might have feelings for Mal. It became clear at that moment that she did. So did she choose to come on the ship because of these feelings? Or did the feelings for him develop after she came on board?
Mal tries to be more gentle and understanding toward Saffron. Events lead Mal and Saffron to the ship's galley. Saffron is a great cook. Zoe and Wash show up and Zoe is not about to cook for Wash. Zoe is not domestic. This is made clear. She's a warrior. The relationship between Wash and Zoe is based on something else and as the episode progresses we get hints about that but nothing clear beyond some mutually recognized compatibility and attraction.
Meanwhile, Jayne the tough and truly insensitive mercenary wants to buy Saffron from Mal and offers his gun Vera in exchange. This reinforces the view of Jayne as a fairly amoral, selfish, ruthless mercenary.
Mal enters his cabin in order to go to bed. But there is Saffron ready to strip naked to get Mal to bring his lips to hers. Of course this scene is the sort of thing that will bring the viewers back for the next week. But her lips contained a knock-out drug and so his weakening of will and eventual succumbing to her charms nearly gets the whole crew killed (as well as disappointing Inara about Mal's character).
Zoe's husband the pilot demonstrates his love and devotion to Zoe when he turns down Mrs Reynolds' advances. She then proceeds to knock him out, wire up the control panel to set the Firefly on some course, and then to take off toward one of the scout craft. But she runs into Inara. She tries to come on to Inara and Inara, a trained courtesan who can read people, figures she is being played. Mrs Reynolds has to knock her out and then takes off in the scout.
Inara runs to Mal's cabin and kisses his unconscious body when she discovers he's alive. This demonstrates for all of us huddled around campfires watching at home that, yes indeed, she has a special place in her heart for Mal. So in future episodes lets watch for those camera shots of her face at key moments and perhaps little slip-ups she has to cover for. The mystery then becomes whether the writers decide to keep Mal in the dark about this devotion indefinitely. I figure they may let Book figure it out and say something to her about how her secret is safe with him. That'd be a touching moment and would set us up for all sorts of meaningful exchanges of secret glances in later situations and Book could even cover for her as well.
From the standpoint of character development this episode is a success. Inara's feelings for Mal are brought out for the viewers to see and her astute ability to read others is emphasised. Jayne's mercenary incompassionate nature is reinforced. Wash demonstrates a romantic loyalty to his wife Zoe. The ability of Mal, Zoe, and Jayne to rally and use their warrior skills are demonstrated in the opening sequence and in the approach to the pirate spaceship-catcher machine. I'm less certain about what less we are supposed to learn about Mal in this episode.
First Problem: The false reason for Saffron being a stowaway (ie that she was married to Mal as part of a payment for services rendered) should have been built up to be more convincing. There were ways to do this. One way would have been to have given the country folk of the planet where the episode started some sort of custom that the Firefly crew would have learned about while on the planet that pertained to how they pay their debts (or honored agreements or treated honored guests or dealt with traders). Maybe there'd be some mention of how it was customary for them to always deliver more on their side of a deal than they promised (which might have been what attracted Firefly to the planet in the first place - the planet's people had an excellent reputation in trade deals of delivering beyond customer expectations). Or the planet's customs could have involved some sort of ritual gift exchange with symbolic gifts that get exchanged that have more than one meaning. The idea here is that Saffron could have learned about the customs of this planet and could have seen that the customs would have served her well by providing her with a more convincing story every time she was found stowed away on a spaceship that came to trade on the planet. In fact, the reuse of the planet by Saffron for this purpose could even have been used at the end as a motive for the Firefly crew to know to go right back to that planet to find her again (yes the Alliance ship was out looking for a Firefly but it might have passed thru already by the time they went back for her).
Second Problem: Why did Mrs Reynolds need to drug Mal? If her intent was to take over the ship and change its course all she really needed to do was to knock out Wash. If Mal was coming to his cabin to go to sleep anyway then once he was asleep she could have gone up to the main control room to deal with Wash (the pilot). It was really only the pilot she needed to knock out. She left other people on the ship in a conscious state. So obviously there was no need to knock out everyone in order to accomplish her goal.
Of course her trying to seduce the captain makes for sexy television and a test of Mal's character. It also set up the part where Inara, after seeing thru Saffron, then goes and finds Mal knocked out and so Inara could demonstrate her feelings for Mal, her jealousy, and her need to suppress her expression of both those feelings. There was inner turmoil that only the viewing audience was privy to. Therefore I can certainly understand Whedon's motives for structuring it the way he did. The emotional dynamics were well developed. But I think the mechanics of how the motives and the feelings were made to come out needed more work. The story line should have developed in a way that would have made Saffron's attempt at seduction more necessary.
Third Problem: Why did Saffron leave alive the two people she knocked out? If "Mrs Reynolds" knew the whole crew was going to die as a result of the hijacking then why leave alive the ones that she knocked out? They could wake up and try to regain control of the ship. This of course is exactly what they did. It made more sense for Saffron to just take over the main control room and knock out/kill Wash. Alternatively, it made sense to effectively go for a bigger grand slam of trying to incapacitate more of the crew in order to reduce the odds that the crew would be able to regain control of the ship.
Fourth Problem: Why was getting control of the Firefly (or at least sending it off course) so hard? The idea that a single control panel could be jury-rigged in some hard-to-reverse way seems implausible. Plus, they could have gotten manual control of side thrusters or disabled the engines. Okay, maybe it already had enough momentum - but it was aiming very small destination and in order to get it to hit dead on it would have needed to do minor course adjustments in the final phase of approach. It also would likely have needed to decelerate.
Fifth Problem: Then there is a lesser but (at least in my mind) real problem. How is it that Saffron is doing all these spaceship hijackings? If she's doing this multiple times then is she always doing it from the same planet? If so, then were those locals aware that she was doing it? If not, then did the locals see her as a stranger? This is something that can be left to the viewers' imaginations. So I see it as a lesser problem.
Note that 4 out of the 5 problems I see here involve the plausibility of Saffron's cover story and actions. Had these been handled better this episode would have come across much more forcefully.
At the very end I'm wondering what happened to Mrs Reynolds. The Firefly crew tracked her down to a cabin on a planet since the scout ship she'd left on didn't have the range to go to too many planets (to make this plausible we can imagine that the scout ship had a transponder that allowed them to find her by visiting each of the nearby planets).
Mal came into the cabin and after a verbal exchange and a bit of fighting Mal knocked her out. So then what? Surely she's responsible for a lot of deaths. Did he leave her alive? Take her somewhere to be locked up? He made it sound like he wasn't going to kill her. So what happened to her?
If you want my overall take on the show then skip to the end.
The show opens with the voice of a guide named Alfred Pennyworth (played by Ian Abercrombie). He starts talking about Batman and we all just instantly know that he must be the Alfred that worked as the Butler of Stately Wayne Manor. Oh cool. I always liked Alfred.
Next we meet Helena Kyle as her younger self. Dad was Batman. Mom was Catwoman. Okay, this throws a whole new light on supposedly straightlaced Batman. He had an illegitimate child that he initially didn't even know about? He's left town and never bothers to reach out to her? Or he never tries to see her because she holds him indirectly responsible for her mom's death? Or his money is tainted in her eyes for some other reason?
Joker or his henchman kills Helena Kyle's mom Catwoman. If The Joker was defeated the how is it he was still around to kill people? We find out the answer much later in the episode: he temporarily escaped from police custody. But if so, how did the police capture him again? He was The Joker after all. I wonder if the answer was already in some comic book story. Probably.
Barbara Gordon (played by Dina Meyer) was Batgirl and was another Batman protege. Joker shot her too. But she was just paralyzed in the legs.
Dinah Lance (as her teenage self in the present played by pretty blonde Rachel Skarsten) was no more than a child living far from Gotham. But she saw the shootings of Batgirl and Catwoman in her dreams. Her mother told her these were just dreams. But Dinah knew her visions would become her future.
The city is called New Gotham, not just Gotham? What's that about?
Dinah's riding on a bus. She's running to New Gotham. She wants to find the people from her dreams.
Barbara is in a wheelchair. She is working as a teacher. Barbara gets a Delphi Alert on her pager. Later in the episode she refers to herself as Oracle. Okay, Oracle of Delphi. This is the comic book style of deep and cultured story telling.
Helena Kyle (aka the Huntress - played as an adult by Ashley Scott) is talking to a shrink woman (we later learn she's Dr. Harleen Quinzel - played by Mia Sara). She reveals that Bruce Wayne is her father. For someone who has some serious secrets to hide I think Helena is being too forthcoming with this shrink woman. She's talking to the shrink as part of court sentence for something she did? Sounds like it.
Just as Dinah arrives in NG she sees a guy sitting on a bus stop bench and then he suddenly gets up and runs in front of a passing vehicle. Was the other guy on the bench involved in getting him to do thing? Dinah goes up and holds his hand. She sees into his mind where he's about to be engulfed and eaten by rats. He says something about the word "phoenix".
Implausibility Alert: Why is there still an accident scene when the sun has gone down? How long would it take emergency workers to remove a dead body or a live one to take it to the hospital?
McNally as skeptical cop and Reese as believer cop. Okay, since it worked for Dana Scully and Fox Mulder why not reuse a winning formula?
Helena works as a bar tender. She's not happy with the low pay and low recognition of fighting the bad guys anonymously. Barbara OTOH is at the bar trying to tell her it is worthwhile.
Who sent Barbara the Delphi Alert? Must have been Alfred Pennyworth.
Dinah runs into the nice guy from her bus ride into NG. But he's not nice in NG at night. He tries to rape her. Then, oh coincidence, Helena shows up to pummel him good. She gets cat eyes when she fights.
Bad guy: Who the hell are you?
Helena: I'm the huntress and you're the prey.
Helena doesn't wear an effective disguise when she fights. This seems like a mistake. More on that later.
Helena touches Dinah. Dinah of course absorbs enough about Helena to know how to track her back to her lair (or cat house).
Then we watch Helena/Huntress demonstrate her building climbing and building hopping abilities - lest anyone get the impression that she's just a good street fighter.
There's a basic post-mission debriefing. Then the important stuff:
Barbara: What's this obsession with food?
Helena: You try fighting the forces of evil when your blood sugar is low.
Does she ever eat a guy after fighting him to the death?
Time for Dinah to show up and start the threesome story in earnest. Dinah of course knows where to find them. Dinah sets off the intruder alarm. They knock Dinah out when she comes into their building suite.
Various things get said. Then:
Dinah: And sometimes when I dream things they come true.
Superhuman? Nah, that is too overused. This show opts for Metahuman. Hey, I like it. Helena is a metahuman and so is Dinah but not Barbara. Barbara wants to keep Dinah. Helena thinks that's a bad idea. Barbara recalls how Helena once came to her and Barbara kept her and look at how well that turned out!
Alfred Pennyweather wakes Dinah up with clothes and breakfast. Civilization and refined living intrudes.
Why isn't Helena going to accept any Wayne money? She resents her father for not protecting her mother from The Joker?
Why would Helena reveal to the psychiatrist that her father Bruce Wayne had a violent hobby? Or why mention Barbara?
Was the other guy on the bus stop chair a metahuman?
Phoenix is a development company that the dead guys are linked to. Bought all the old dock land cheap to rebuild. Or get access to the infrastructure of NG. Water, sewer, etc. 2 or 4 owners of Phoenix are dead.
Is the 3rd guy already dead? Time to go pay him a visit in his penthouse apartment. Only one slice pizza eaten in his place. Helicopter flying outside. The guy has already hung himself. But not really.
In comes Detective Reece from the street scene where Dinah saw the second Phoenix guy die. So Reece also must have made the connection between the partners.
Helena's having an interesting talk with Reece and lets him know she's on his side. Then she frees herself from his handcuffs and flies out the window. Reece now knows for sure that the weirdness is for real. He's a confirmed believer.
4th Phoenix partner is Ketterley. Helena and Barbara argue about whether Dinah should be allowed to do field work.
Dinah: Let me go to the damned dock yards.
Implausibility Alert: Barbara can watch Dinah thru a holographic image. 3D view of where Dinah is cool. But why would Dinah's returning image be total 360 view? Glasses would be forward looking only. So why the green cone?
Helena sets off an alarm outside Ketterley's home.
Ketterley knows Helena from her childhood apparently. Why isn't he already totally freaked about the 3 partners dead?
So we get suspicious of Ketterley. Something's not right here. Is Helena being drugged?
Switch to Dinah down at dockyards where the Phoenix partnership was going to be doing something.
But Dinah is in voice contact with Barbara/Oracle with Barbara saying things about "Before I was Oracle".
Flashback on Batman, Catgirl, Joker. Joker got away from police for only a few hours. But how was he able to do that and then get captured again? Hardly the most important question and shows can't take the time to explain everything.
Barbara: I think the Joker wanted to drive the Batman mad. And maybe he did.
We learn that Batman was so traumatized by the Joker attacks against his friends that threw in the crime fighting towel and left New Gotham.
Dinah: Barbara, someone's been here.
Barbara: You know what is underneath those dockyards? Its history.
Ketterley is the bad guy.
Ketterley: Its time to tell me Helena. What are you afraid of?
Did he drug her with the coffee to get her in a frame of mind to tell him her greatest fear? Or does the drug allow him to tell her that her greatest is true or that it is happening to her?
Killing the other partners as a way to get their money without their control of the dockyards project? But how would that work? After all, they each would have estates and someone would inherit the other shares. Hey, this is cartoon television. We don't need to sweat the details.
Barbara and Helena decide that Helena must be in trouble. Before we know it they are at Ketterley's coming into the room while Ketterley tries to get Helena to stab herself.
Implausibility Alert: Why have Helena stab herself at Ketterley's place if Ketterley is trying to avoid anything that ties him directly to the murders? I realize that Ketterley's in a bit of a rush. But couldn't he have drugged her, taken her elsewhere, broken her will, and then gotten her to kill herself in public somewhere? Of course, having the climax come at the bad guy's house provides a way for Barbara and Dinah to know where to find Ketterley.Helena is about to kill herself. So Dinah does a Vulcan mind meld (oh wait, wrong show) and enters the nightmare of Helena's mind to try to talk her out of her suicide. Dinah decides to bring Barbara into the dream for help. Then we have the fight dream scene between Barbara/Batgirl (in the dream realm not paralyzed from the waist down) and Ketterley. Dream Batgirl kills dream Ketterley. Ketterley is left fried out in the brain because his dream self (which is part of him in some mystical way) died in Helena's dream realm.
Aside: FOB means Freight On Board.
Implausibility Alert: What evidence was available to implicate Ketterley? How could an explanation have been constructed to explain to the police what happened?The shrink woman from the early scene with Helena is the lady psychiatry Dr Harleen Quinzel. She's getting Ketterley delivered to her at an insane asylum. Okay, is Dr Quinzel a bad girl? I am thinking so. Well, it doesn't even take a whole minute to get the confirmation that, yes, Dr. Quinzel is possessed by the dark side of the force. After she's left alone with Ketterley she kicks him to the ground and says (among other evil nasty things):
Dr. Quinzel: "Just goes to show. Never send a businessman to do a psychopath's job.
Now we are back in the high clock works.
Barbara Gordon/ex-Batgirl/Oracle: You know, if it wasn't for her neither of us would be alive.
Helena/Huntress: Yeah, I know.
The Characters All Clearly Defined: The three major lady protagonists have clear roles. Enough of their histories were painted to understand some of their motivations and abilities. Alfred's character was defined back in Batman and he's still Alfred. There are the two police detectives. Detective Jesse Reese is the believer (following in the steps of Fox Mulder from X-Files and Detective Kate Lockley from Angel, and assorted other detectives who were alone in their believers in supernatural and otherworldly actions happening all around them). Detective Reese now knows enough to confirm his beliefs that there are beings around that are not regular humans. Detective McNally is the skeptical detective who thinks Reece's imagination is out of control. Finally, we have met our first recurring evil character: psychopathic psychiatrist Dr Harleen Quinzel.
Helena/Huntress Isn't Clearly the Leader: The problem with Helena as action hero is that she's not clearly the leader. By contrast, Buffy is leader of the Scooby gang (the Watchers were never really all that assertive or capable of leadership). Also, on the Angel show Angel has always ended up leading whatever group forms around him. But in Birds Of Prey we don't have an action hero as leader in this show because Barbara is the adult supervisor and her history gives her an elevated status. Helena's lack of leadership qualities seems like a mistake and one which could be fixed with a careful choice of events to drive the plot development.
Dinah is a Useful Character: Dinah's ability to see what people are thinking when she touches them will allow the protagonists find out about all sorts of people in danger and also to discover that some people are up to no good. If Dinah has a superhero special name I haven't noticed it yet. Dinah's just psychic and doesn't appear to have super strength. So that leaves the bulk of the fighting action to Helena. But since she's a pretty young blonde she'll attract young male viewers.
Barbara Gordon As Mature Adult Voice Of Reason: Barbara Gordon's role appears to be to provide mature adult leadership to Dinah and Helena. Her greater age and experience provides less room for personal development. Also, Barbara's being in a wheelchair prevents her from being a full superhero (this limitation was sidestepped in the first episode when she fought Ketterley in the dream realm).
The characters are all drawn with a fast one dimensional paintbrush in the first episode. So far they appear to be fairly lacking in subtlety. Helena/Huntress comes across as the emotionally wildest of the three main protagonists. Maybe Dinah could develop emotionally because she's fairly young and can be expected to grow and find confidence in her powers. Also, Dinah's ability to see into minds ought to allow her to undergo a much more rapid transformation in understanding of the human condition.
Helena/Huntress Doesn't Wear A Real Mask: The advantage of the absence of an effective mask is that a pretty face can be more clearly shown in more scenes. The disadvantage is that we can't have the effect of her playing a public figure and a disguised dashing mystery figure (which would be especially great when she meets guys that she likes when she's playing metahuman and then they don't recognize her the next day).
Quinzel and Helena/Huntress: Okay, one of them will figure out who the other one is eventually. My guess is that Quinzel will figure out Helena first. But if Helena ever introduces Quinzel to Dinah and Dinah shakes her hand then Dinah will figure it out. That would make for a great plot twist if done at the right moment (eg right before an elaborate plot of Quinzel's is about to kill Helena).
Maybe. I wasn't really all that impressed with the first episode. We met the main protagonists, a couple of cops who will no doubt reappear in supporting roles, and our first couple of evil opponents. One evil opponent died but the other one looks set to play a recurring role as a psychopathic enemy. Is any of this interesting? Not particularly.
What are the problems with the show? Well, its supposed to be in the Batman universe but it lacks some of the elements that made Batman entertaining. Batman was a campy parody of a cartoon. Batman had ZZZZooockkk! PPPoowww! Baaammm! fights. It had Police Commissioner Gordon, Chief O'Hara and the Mayor for Batman and Robin (as their real identities and as their secret identities) to interact with. So it had that connection to power. By contrast, so far its leading characters have only a rather low level connection to real legitimate power (a lowly police detective that Huntress reveals a bit of her purpose to).
Since Batman was a prominent society figure the Batman show was provided with a social context where all sorts of characters could be introduced. Analogously, the high school setting of Buffy The Vampire Slayer provided a setting for many characters to enter the story line. In fact, in Buffy's case the show became so limited by Buffy's post-college era that she had to be sent back to high school as a guidance counselor in order to provide a context for new story lines and new characters. Birds Of Prey seems to lack a wider context. Helena and Barbara do have jobs from which story lines could be started. But it might make more sense to put Dinah into a place where she shakes lots of hands and therefore flashes on what is in the minds of all the people she comes into contact with.
Birds Of Prey attempts to be more serious than Batman. There is little in the way of conscious overt parody. The evil seems more malicious and the evil characters are in no way funny. The first evil figure we met was a corrupt businessman who was killing his partners by getting into their minds and driving them mad with their greatest fear. On one hand the supernatural element with mental fears could have come out of an Angel or Buffy or even Charmed plot. On the other hand Ketterley was the stereotypical corrupt businessman of Hollywood lore and his ambitions too mundane. This sort of theme has been explored to utter boredom by countless shows and movies. While obviously some people like that sort of thing I'd personally rather watch Buffy prevent evil doers from opening the Hellmouth to bring about the apocalypse.
Now, Birds Of Prey doesn't have to be a cartoon parody to be successful. I'm not arguing that just because Batman was parody that Birds Of Prey should be parody as well. Birds Of Prey could succeed on other terms. What I am arguing is that Birds Of Prey has not yet demonstrated that it possesses all the elements needed for a successful show.
Some suggestions for the Birds Of Prey producers and writers:
- A more cutting smart ass humour would work for Helena. It would make the hero seem more efficacious and sharp and would also allow a show to be funny without being cartoon parody. It'd do a lot to lift the show above a cartoon image.
- Dinah's ability to see into minds ought to put her on the fast track to emotional development. She ought to be shown to feel the emotional experience of the people whose minds she connects with. She should feel the fear of a victim or hatred, anger, jealousy, or other emotions of the bad guys. The emotions should come in incomplete pieces that all of them then have to puzzle out the meaning of. This can work to make an episode into an emotional mystery if done properly. Their initial analysis for the motive for a particular feeling could turn out to be wrong and the real reason ought to come out as an intellectually and emotionally satisfying revelation in the very nick of time.
- Barbara needs to find a way to be more than the woman sitting in the high tower. Sitting there watching holographic images she becomes too much like Burgess Meredith in that 1960s (or early 1970s?) TV show involving field agents who have satellite communications back to their controllers (Tony Franciosa was one of the actors and I forget the name of the show).
- Create a better setting for the show. The main characters need better social contexts for discovering bad doings that are afoot.
You can find The New York Times review of Birds Of Prey here.
Just saw a new SNL show and Sarah Michelle Gellar was the guest star. Well, this was a lousy show. The Christina Aguilera video parody was a good idea and could have been funny but it wasn't. The sexual harassment seminar was totally not funny. The segment on the police officers in the high school lecturing the kids in a class about sex and drugs was so not funny that it was pathetic. Sarah's opening monologue with the obligatory vampires in the audience was dull. The Weekend Update wasn't particularly funny. The jokes about American attitudes toward a war against Saddam were almost funny. The skit where Saddam sent his look-alikes out to get shot at could have been funny but it wasn't. When Saddam started sending his look-alikes out to get shot at something could have happened. They could have sent a look-alike to the window and had him get shot. They could have sent the look-alike up to the roof and had him get shot (background gun sound) and then shown a dummy's body falling down to the terrace behind them. Or something else could have been done in the skit to give it some dramatic humour. But they didn't. The skit with Tracy Morgan and Lorne Michaels trying to convince Sarah and Faith Hill to mud wrestle was dull and uninspiring. If there was something funny in the whole show I do not know what it was.
Surely the SNL writers are capable of better than this. Do they realise just how bad it was?
Update: Christina Aguilera agrees that the SNL piece by Sarah Michelle Gellar (bless her Buffy the Vampire Slayer heart) could have been better done:
The exaggerated juiciness of all this hasn't escaped Saturday Night Live, which recently satirized the video's hard-sell sexuality. It also played up the worst public image of Aguilera. As portrayed by actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, she's a vain and trashy tyrant who keeps yelling at the director of the clip, "It's not skanky enough!!"
Aguilera says she was amused by the piece, but adds: "They could have done a better job with it."
In the same article in the Edmonton Journal Ms. Aguilera makes a heartfelt plea on behalf of oppressed and misunderstood blondes:
"It's funny how society places such strict standards upon young blond females," says the singer who fits just that description.
"We're supposed to play the clean-cut view the public wants of us. But I am not your little cookie-cutter virgin."
Ms. Aguilera has special reason to feel oppressed as new musicians who are not as blonde (or blonde at all) come along and attract attention. Avril Lavigne is acceptable for parents of young children and doesn't doesn't find a need to act like a skanky bitch (someone tell her to please Let Go). Brunettes Michelle Branch (or see here) and Vanessa Carlton (or see here) also don't need to do extreme exhibitionism in order to sell their music.
But hey, this essay is about what a tragedy it is that the lovely and talented Sarah Michelle Gellar went on such a terribly written SNL episode. The problems was that "It's not funny enough!".
My overall comment on the story: I'd prefer see some detective story that didn't involve showing just the upper or lower half of a dead body that had been hacked in half. Hey, maybe that's just me. Maybe lots of other people love this sort of thing. Maybe it boosts ratings. I don't know. Still, since I don't expect every episode to show these kinds of visuals I watched it for the story in spite of gruesomeness.
Right after this episode I watched Monk prove that the widow killed her rich husband right after an S.F. earthquake. I gotta say that the absense of hacked up body pieces and the way Monk slipped into gibberish made it a more pleasant experience than the John Doe episode. Still, the John Doe episode was worth watching in spite of the visuals.
Starting from the start: Why's Doe seeing a psychotherapist? Does she not know that he can't remember his past? She's asking him questions about his past. She's asking so many questions that she must know he can't remember. Okay, he's hypnotized. She does know about the amnesia. We learn that his past memory (if he even should have past memory - if he hasn't been cloned perhaps) doesn't work any better when he's hypnotized.
Shrink: "How do you know so much about psychotherapy?"
Doe: "I know so much about everything but me."
The comment he made about women being turned off by his weird mark on his skin doesn't ring true. A rich good looking guy is going to be a babe magnet, weird skin mark or not. Besides, he could afford to have it removed.
Why would Xanax be appropriate? Its not like Doe seems to be suffering serious anxiety. Upset about his past? Yes, but he's handling it fairly well all things considered.
But why this way? A bum wakes up and there is the lower half of a body in a dress lying next to him. Oh great.
A guy's blood was found on the victim (or what it on a knife nearby?). But the guy who matches the DNA is named Dan and he was in the lock-up of a mental hospital when the victim was killed. How?
Possibilities: He has a twin. His blood was taken from him to confuse the investigation. Dan cut himself with a knife and that knife was taken to kill the victim.
The Indian-looking girl in the Police Dept obviously has a crush on him and this seems totally appropriate. Her brains make her his type. Will he ever notice? Will the girl just show up in every episode pining for him with meaningful looks that noone else notices?
Repressed memories? Oh, come on. Why would John Doe need to ask the Dr Jansen what methods he uses? Doe ought to know already.
19.8% of twins are left-handed vs 9% for non-twins? Get out of here. Is that true?
Okay, adopted babies: would the social services agency have saved the records somewhere.
The twins are Daniel and Chistopher (nee Beauregard).
Chris is dead Polly tells them. Polly seems weird.
Doe figures out that Polly is Chris after a sex change. Well, Polly is as nutty as Dan. It must be genetic.
The dating service bar set-up done by Karen. Okay, why not? Still, seems like a rush to be trying to address his romantic needs so quickly. He has weird conversations with the 5 minute dates. He can't talk about his past.
Implausibility Alert: "Where did you grow up?" "Twin Falls Idaho." The girl he was having the 5 minute interview with also was from there. The odds are too slim for this.
John Doe: I have no personality.
But he does have a personality. Personality does not depend on having a past.
The mental hospital has this doctor who does stuff with dredging up memories to treat emotional problems. Doe finally admits his condition to the Doctor.
Doe: "I have retrograde amnesia"
Doctor offers him a trip into a sensory deprivation chamber. Well, I did that a few times. I don't see how that will make memories come back.
Implausibility Alert: Problem with the sensory deprivation chamber: Doe is shown laying way too deep in the
water. Normally the water is so high in salinity that a person doesn't sink that far into it. I think that is partly for safety to reduce the risk of drowning.
Implausibility Alert: Why would it be impossible to get yourself our of an isolation tank? Seems for safety reasons that wouldn't be done.
Implausibility Alert: Also, how could a camera film you in the isolation tank with light on? The idea of an isolation tank is that the person in it receives very few sensations?
Why did Dr Matthew Jansen leave Doe in the isolation tank and then split? Doe was in there for 2 hours. Why did he take Doe's tape? Is he doing something related to a Doe memory that Doe shouted out?
The two victims worked for a social services department and made the decisions that split up twins for adoption. We learn there was a third panel member who made the decisions who must be in danger.
Miss North works for Dr Jansen: She part of the plot? Odd look when Doe told her the third potential victim is in the Southeast Basin of some park area. Plus, what about her hand? The fingernail is missing? The same seemed be the the case with Dan. The hands flashed by so quickly that it was hard to catch that.
Doe puts it all together: Miss North is the mother of the separated twins and she's in a murderous rage about how they were split up for adoption. She and the twins share a genetic defect of their hands for fingernails. So Doe could connect the dots. Well, okay. What if they hadn't shared this defect? This seems too contrived.
Miss North must have given her two sons the genes that make them crazy. She's crazy and so are they both.
Implausibility Alert: How could Miss North know which tent out in the middle of nowhere would contain the guy she wanted to kill?
The buying of the paraglider was very cool. Doe's tracking Miss North's fleeing SUV with the hang glider.
Jansen is part of the plot that is watching Doe. That's my hunch.
Doe: "I have this amnesia thing. "
Brunette in bar: "Well, every experience is a new experience then"
Then we cut to Jansen being buried by a couple of white guys in white shirts and ties (so much for my hunch). They get in an SUV with the older white lady from the end of the last episode in the South Asian country. So Jansen was killed and the tape of Doe's isolation chamber experience is in their hands.
Why was there a DNA blood match with mental patient Dan? His mother's DNA would not have been a perfect match with Dan's DNA. After all, she gave only half her DNA to him and his father (whoever he was) gave the other half. The construction of this episode seems sloppy. Or did the mother take a blood sample to put at the crime scene to throw off the police? But why? It would make more sense to use a totally different person's blood as a way to throw off an investigation. The woman worked with a doctor. She probably had access to blood supplies to pull it off.
Episode 2 is called "Bushwhacked". They find an abandoned ship. When they hook their ship onto it we see some sort of tubing reach out from the abandoned ship to entwine with the Firefly. They board and at first think the crew must have bailed. But then they find the crew all dead. They are sorting out this mystery when a mad crewman is found and subdued. Then the Alliance shows up as they are trying to leave. They have to deal with the Alliance's search for River and Simon along with an accusation that they had something to do with what happened on the abandoned ship. You can find an episode synopsis here.
I'm going to limit my comments to a few facets of the episode and of the larger context of the show's universe.
Of course we haven't even seen a Reaver band yet. But we see the consequences of a Reaver attack on the ship that the Serenity crew board. We haven't even been given a clear clue about what why the Reavers go around boarding ships. After all, Mal's group was able to find useful stuff to take from the abandoned ship. Do the Reavers hunt down ships just for the pleasure of killing their crews?
Reavers are some sort of scary barbarian hunter-killer humans. But they have to be capable of spaceflight in order to go raiding ships in space well away from any planet. That means they'd need some rational faculties. They apparently travel around killing in groups. So they have to at least able to cooperate with each other.
But what can be so powerful about them that makes them such dangerous killers? They are, at least as far as we've learned, just humans. Regular humans who aren't mad kilers ought to be able to fight just as well - perhaps even better since I don't see why insanity would be an asset for fighting in spaceships.
But how could a group of humans turn into what they supposedly are? Deep space wouldn't do that. If totally brutal cut-throat gangs were roaming around in space killing people that would be believeable by itself. But the message of the show is that the Reavers were driven mad by the vastness of space by some effect of being so far away from civilization. The exact reason seems vague. But being mad isn't the same as being a psychopath.
But it gets worse. Why would a guy was presumably normal who witnessed a Reaver attack then become one? Most people who witness their families and villages become butchered do not become stark raving mad killers. If Reavers are just those rare one in a million nut jobs I can begin to understand what they are supposed to be. But a normal person (which I assume the surviving settler was) who witnesses a brutal attack doesn't become the one in a million madman.
This show attempts to portray real humans. For many characters it does. But Reavers do not fit any real human category. The concept needs work. Are they psychopaths in bands? Were they once normal people who were driven mad? By what?
Mal's sending Simon and River out in spacesuits to hang onto the outer hull of the Firefly while it was being searched was quite the clever idea. It was the neatest ploy in the episode.
Before that we see River hearing dialog by other crewmembers suggesting that Mal might turn in River and Simon to the Alliance. What did River think of these conversations? Did she think it was possible? Or could she read Mal's mind and sense what he was really about? Will River ever behave in a paranoid way that is unwarranted? Or will the writers subtly show her making wise decisions using her psychic powers while not really drawing attention to herself from the rest of the crew? How rapidly will River develop?
Is the Alliance miltary supposed to be part of a malevolent dicatatorship? Are the officers free to be arbirtrary and cruel in their treatment of people on outer planets? Does the Alliance government see itself as a benevolent keeper of order?
What I wonder is just how well the writers have worked this out. Should we think of this militarty as imperial in character ruling over subject colonies? If so, is it imperial in the sense that the British were or more like the Oriental despotism of the Ottoman Empire? What empire is the Alliance supposed to be modelled after?
At the end of the previous glorious Andromeda season our intrepid intergalactic civilization rebuilders had just destroyed a vortex or opening between universes which was disgorging some incredibly powerful and numerous bad guys in bad looking and extremly hard to destroy spaceships. In a desperate last ditch attempt to save the Andromeda universe from being conquered the Maru with Beka and Tyr in control had delivered the attack bomb that sealed the vortex. The Maru broke off just in time to avoid loss of the crew - or did it?
Okay, back comes the Maru on fire and on automatic pilot. Tyr and Beka are not on-board but there doesn't appear to be a hole in the hull.
There is a new saying that Dylan says at the start of episodes: blah "Future is" blah "My crew and I fight to make it safe". Didn't get the whole thing. But the line definitely needs some work.
Implausibiliity Alert: How can the database playback from the Maru show a view of the Maru that would be filmed from a distance away from the Maru?
Dylan has the Maru's recent video record of its flight deck played back. What's with the kitty showing up in the Maru database playback? Why were Beka and Tyr appearing and disappearing on the Maru's main deck?
Now we play dimensional tunnel peek-a-boo games trying to find and open the tunnel because maybe Beka and Tyr are inside it. Ooops, almost killed by intense gravity. Dylan managed to shoot Harper's tunnel opening control board with a force lance to turn it off. Then Dylan went out in the Maru and tried to find the tunnel.
I guess this tunnel is supposed to be a lot smaller than the previous opening that they closed in order to stop the bad guys. Otherwise one would expect bad guy ships to come pouring thru it.
Suddenly Beka and Tyr are back on the Andromeda. Where'd they come from? How'd they just come to be strutting onto the main deck? They are not acting normal.
The Andromeda is stuck in the dimensional tunnel. Okay, the tunnel pulses. Down pulse you go forward. Up pulse with full thrusters on you stay even.
Why is it that ships always have to shut down life support to maintian their position against some really powerful force? Seems like main deck life support would use such a small fraction of total energy that it wouldn't be necessary.
Is Beka coming on to Trance?
Beka grabbed control of the Andromeda when Dylan told her they were gradually breaking free of the tunnel. Was Beka trying to make the ship fall back into the tunnel? Or was she desperate to get away from it? Did she not know what she was doing? Dylan manages to break free.
Walks in to see Dylan. Beka has a kitten she says she found in her quarters. Will this kitten show up in other episodes? Or is it part of the mirage?
Beka is coming on to Dylan. She wants it all to stop. What to stop? An alien has got to be in control of her body. Ditto for Tyr. Are these spies trying to infiltrate? Or did their souls get stuck in this universe when the big portal was collapsed and they grabbed control of the bodies in order to use thgem to get home?
Ooops, the Andromeda is spinning. One of the slipstream motors opened up?
Implausibiliity Alert: Why would it a ship's slipstream motors open up when it was put into maintenance mode? Why would its engines come on in maintenance mode in a maintenance dock? Disinfectant is fake. But why would disinfectant automatically be sprayed into the ship in maintenance mode? A ship that complex wouldn't have a single maintenance mode that caused so many things to happen.
They are fighting a mirage on the Andromeda. Really? Doesn't seem like a mirage. They look at the Maru playback again. I do not understand the bit about Rommie seeing what she was trained to see and what they figured out from watching the Maru playback.
The energy rays from the dimensional tunnel have wavelength patterns that match Tyr and Beka's brainwave activities? This is a bit far-fetched. Why not just plant control pods in their brains?
Tyr knocks out Rommie. He's paralyzed here and somehow she now has to take his orders.
Tyr: "I left my fear in the dimensional tunnel". Yeah, well, some people left their hearts in San Francisco.
Is that where we are going? Is San Francisco on the other side of the tunnel?
Why was Trance willing to go Maru cruising with Beka? And what was the point of Beka's outing? It never became clear. Was she trying to go back into the tunnel by herself?
Beka: "Sh, lets have some fun with Dylan." (or did Tyr say that?)
Trance: "Beka, of all the people on the ship I'm the last one you shold be messing with."
Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that Trance is not really restrained. She can break free. She's the real superhuman among them.
Revesrse the powers of the jaws? (jaws? pet TV peeve: dialog ought to be made perfectly clear) Cut off the rays?
Dylan fights Tyr. Tyr phases in and out. So its not just that his mind is under control from these aliens. How are they sending beams that let him phase in and out?
Super strong Trance shows that she can make magic dust come from her mouth to dissolve whatever Beka used to tie Trance to the railing. Trance takes control of the Maru after showing Beka who is boss. Trance tells Beka of a future where they travel together on some mission and Beka gradually gets various parts of her body blown off her and replaced by cyborg pieces. First of all, what the heck is that all about? Secondly, hey, that's weird.
Harper flips on the disrupter field. Suddenly Tyr knows who he is and so does Beka.
Tyr: The all-embracing light and then darkness and more darkness. And then I'm old and talk and strong.
Dylan: Tyr, you didn't lay a finger on our friendship. not a scratch.
Dylan: What happened to you Tyr?
Tyr: I don't know.
So the aliens grabbed Tyr and Beka off the Maru to use them for some purpose? To destroy the Andromeda? Or were they just trying to get home? By the end of the episode not only was it not clear it also wasn't obvious whether the writers meant it to be clear.
This seems like a sloppy episode that is hard to follow. Were they fighting mirages? It doesn't seem like it. It seems more like Beka and Tyr were under alien control and that they also gained the ability to phase shift and appear and disappear. I never could figure out what the Maru playback video record was supposed to mean. Ya got me.
Cruising around on the web I stumbled across an interesting interpretation of Buffy The Vampire Slayer written by a person who appears to be a Christian. The essay finds plenty of Christian symbolism in the series:
The story of the origin of Buffy's world has been seen as a denial of the traditional biblical narrative in Genesis.
In one program, Giles explains: "This world is older than any of you know, and contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin in a paradise. For untold eons, demons walked the earth, made it their home, their hell. In time, they lost their purchase on this reality, and the way was made for mortal animals. For man. What remains of the Old Ones are vestiges: certain magicks, certain creatures..."
In fact, this tale is pretty close to the Fundamentalist Scofield Reference Bible exegesis explaining, from passages in Ezekial 28 and Isaiah 13, that Lucifer walked on earth as his rightful domain before Adam and Eve were created. Yikes! Is Whedon actually a Fundamentalist?
Gregory Erikson, in his essay in Fighting the Forces called Sometimes you Need a Story: American Christianity, Vampires and Buffy, maintains that Buffy and the Scooby Gang reflect the postmodern American attitude toward religion that falls between faith and disbelief. Breakpoint columnist Roberto Rivera agrees, saying Whedon's characters acknowledge that there are "consequences" to their actions, but never draw a clear-cut moral line to say why.
I've often wondered how much of the symbolic parallels are intentional. One really doesn't need to know anything Christianity to undestand much of what is in the show. For instance, the idea of one person sacrificing their life for another seems like something some humans would choose to do anyway. Still, themes of self-sacrifice, heaven, hell, redemption, good and evil permeate every episode. Does this represent the exploration of Christian cultural beliefs by unbelievers brought up in a society that is still influenced by Christianity? Are the writers acknowledging the value of such concepts as good and evil?
The reference to Fighting the Forces is to the book Fighting The Forces: What's At Stake In Buffy The Vampire Slayer?