2001-10-30 - 3:55 p.m.
Too much TV-related thought

(Warning to readers: A large volume of today's entry is TV-related, so if you don't care about A:tS and B:tVS, go ahead and skip it. Although -- I do, eventually, get to real-world thoughts, somewhere in the middle).

I've been reading the reactions at the MBTV forums to recent episodes of "Angel" and "Buffy", and shaking my head in disbelief. So many people are hating the turns these shows have taken lately. Granted, I'm fairly new to the phenomenon, but I've certainly wasted no time getting caught up on show history, and I still don't see what the problem is.

A lot of the venom is directed at the "social theme" of one episode or another, or the level of realism, or a character's chosen lines, and most of the ep-haters keep coming back to, "I can't believe the writer/producer/whatever chose to do this, it's in very bad taste", etc., etc.

Well, of course there are some glitches. No show is perfect. But beyond that, hello? It's not like every word spoken or action taken is from the writer's pen to your eyes and ears. It's also meant to be filtered through the character's persona.

If Cordelia makes a speech about bitches standing up against violent men, do you really think she's saying "all women who stand up to men are bitches", or could she possibly be trying to motivate Lilah to stop feeling sorry for herself for getting beat up by Gavin at Billy's behest, and Do Something? Both women, after all, are proud to bear the Bitch title, giving Cordelia reason to use this approach if others weren't working.

If Lilah refers to the demonic virus as making "primordial mysogyny" surface in men, is it necessarily implying that all men, since the beginning of time, are at heart anti-female? Or is Lilah's choice of the term "primordial" influenced in part by her own attitudes, which are not very male-friendly (from what I've seen)?

If Wesley is under the influence of that demonic virus, and making all kinds of evil cold-blooded anti-woman threats and speeches, do you really think the show is trying to give real-world mysogynistic men more ammunition, or are we just getting a window into the murky depths of Wesley's upbringing? We know Wesley's father was abusive; we also know that the virus, while filling all men with rage and violence towards women, manifests itself differently in every victim. It makes sense that it would bring out in Wesley what he (probably) most fears becoming. Which also explains how much emotional pain he was in at the end.

Okay, that part of the rant was all about the latest Angel episode, "Billy", which I absolutely loved. It was creepy, disturbing, beautifully shot, and true to character. The artist in me was exclaiming in awe quite often, especially in the hotel scenes, and the Wes/Fred conversation at the close.

As far as Buffy goes ... well, grrr. Where do I start? I've seen all kinds of venom directed at Spike, Xander, and Giles as they have been recently portrayed, to pick a few, and I have difficulty understanding these attitudes.

Of course Spike is not the joyous evil being in S6 that he was in S2; characters aren't meant to be 2D. They change. Soulless Spike may be, but he is making the journey from black to grey nonetheless, and I have a feeling Joss&Co. aren't finished with him yet. Remember, Joss has said that he treats this show as one extremely long saga. He has several of the themes planned out for years, and you probably haven't seen a lot of the important bits yet to put it all into perspective. If you're confused about where Spike stands just now, well, maybe that's because Buffy is, too.

Xander is doing his best to succeed in the working man's world and in his romance with Anya, while still staying supportive of his high-school friends, which is a difficult task for any twenty-something in any town, much less Sunnydale. And it's not like the less pleasant elements of his personality haven't been highlighted in past episodes. Add to the mix his unpleasant upbringing, which might influence his problems regarding marriage. So he makes mistakes sometimes. He's still a very caring young man, and we haven't seen the last of him yet, either.

And Giles ... Poor Giles. He'd just managed to adjust to the death of a young woman he had invested five years of his life in, and started settling into a new life, back in his home country, when everything was thrown into confusion again. If I were him I'd be "bewildered", too. Why blame him in advance for his foreshadowed return to England? He already gave the Magic Box to Anya, sold his apartment in Sunnydale, leased a flat in Bath, and presumably got a new occupation from the Watcher's Council. His only anchor now in Sunnydale is Buffy. That's a lot to overcome, right there. Also, what if the Council doesn't assign him as Buffy's Watcher again? Also, what exactly *has* Giles told the Council, given their tendency to interfere and the dark nature of the spell that brought Buffy back? Don't forget, too, that he's rapidly approaching 50 years of age. These are a lot of extenuating circumstances, and not the only ones. It doesn't mean that he loves Buffy (or the other Scoobies) any less.

Anyway. That's quite a bit of ranting already, and I haven't even scratched the surface, or touched what's being said about the other characters. Given time and space, I could go on for hours. I think I'll stop there for now, though, especially since it's just TV shows, for crying out loud. Also, because I am not God, and I've probably pissed off enough disagreeing people as it is, and I should deflate my I-am-right attitude before it makes impact with anybody else's. *grin*

I don't feel it's unusual of me to be strongly affected, though. I identify rather strongly with a lot of the characters, especially the ones with deep-rooted problems. Of course they're not always consistent in their actions, and they mess up, and they say hurtful things, and they do stupid things, in between saving the world. That's normal. That's life, IMHO. (All except for the saving the world part, I mean. *grin*)

When I started forming a solid friendship circle in my sophomore and junior years of college, one thing we noticed after awhile was that we were all, in some fundamental way, broken. I've had problems of my own, and seen far worse in the lives of freinds and family. Some seriously traumatic events. There are things that can never be completely gotten over, and they vary from person to person. Mostly, among the people I've encountered, those who judge have either never been broken themselves, or have never come to terms with their own brokenness. Neither of which really applied to us. So I guess it's no surprise that we all resonated enough on some level to draw together, or that we had such problems staying together in later years, when the various rough edges started grinding against each other.

I learned a lot of things in that circle of friends.

• I learned that two people can both be equally right, while also being in complete disagreement.
• I learned that you don't have to mold your life to someone else's in order to be happy.
• I learned that loyalty is more important than who kissed whom behind whose back.
• I learned that you don't have to excel at everything to gain respect; and failing to measure up now and again isn't the end of the world, or any reason to write somebody off.
• I learned that whether you believe in nature or nurture, you're just plain cursed by your upbringing, and expecting somebody to easily transcend that is unrealistic.

Of course I don't always act according to what I've learned; I'm still growing, just like everybody else. But I try. I really do try.

Given all of this, I find the broken characters very easy to identify with. You find them aplenty in novels and some categories of movies, but they're seldom seen on TV, and when they are there, they're usually not well portrayed. Ergo, my fascination with the Buffyverse. And my irritation with the folks who carp, "Why didn't X shut his/her mouth, or say "Y", or do Z, instead of..." Please. It might be a stretch for you, but try looking at it from a peek-inside-their-world viewpont. Suddenly, most of it will make perfect sense.

Of course, it might just be my vivid imagination, and my affinity for picking up character essences. Maybe I just find it easier to immerse in their universe than most people do. Maybe I have a future in writing scripts, myself. (Hooray for sarcasm). At any rate, I can almost guarantee that for any incident in either show that fans pick apart, I can find a decent Buffyverse explanation or expansion for.

OK, you can make like my brother and tell me to shut up with the comments already. *grin* I do this every time we watch any movie, or relatively interesting show: I always spend the next hour or so wondering about various things that happened and making comments and questions and explanations to myeslf. Azash is always shushing me, or saying, "How should I know?" And I always say, "Well, you don't, but I just can't help wondering! Maybe you thought of something I haven't!"

I promise I won't do another dissection like this again for awhile, though!