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TV series gone awry
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
@junipersky said in TV series gone awry:
If they were made to try to make the character seem flawed, they did a terrible job at it. I felt no sympathy for them because they made no acknowledgement that the actions they took might be even slightly problematic and there was no growth I saw (episode 8).
The women characters seemed mostly sympathetic, which is what kept me watching as deep as I did.
The ‘sicko’ comment is where I drew the line, not with what I know and feel about communities that don’t fit the stereotypical mold.
That’s fair. The only reason I ask is that, while I barely remember much about the show’s specifics, I do recall it having a pretty liberal bent in general (Spader’s closing monologues were amazing, I recall at least that). But it’s quite possible I missed such undertones completely at the time.
Definitely pseudo-progressive in message, deeply problematic in delivery. It’s very much an artifact of its time - which should almost always translate to mean that I liked it, but I acknowledge it has problems.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Pavel I think that makes room for some interesting questions. For example how do y’all feel about shows which were progressive for their time - even revolutionary - yet which had some real dark parts to them, the worst of which being revealed after the fact and behind the curtains?
The example I have in mind is Buffy/Angel. At the time it changed TV as we know it. And although it definitely had some iffy parts (Spike nearly raping Buffy comes to mind) for the most part it showed on screen things that hadn’t been done before. Gay relationships, dealing with parental loss, sleeping with someone who becomes a total creep afterwards, etc.
However… Joss Whedon was by all accounts a really bad excuse for a human being (this pains me to say, btw - I used to be a huge, huge fan).
How much does that paint your reception retroactively?
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
How much does that paint your reception retroactively?
That’s an excellent question. And honestly, I’m not sure. I haven’t had the time or the energy to watch shows I used to love lately. I was never really into Buffy/Angel, but I was into Whedon’s later vehicle, Firefly.
I, generally, don’t consume media with a critical eye. I’ve never not enjoyed a film I went to see in the theatre, for instance, even when it is regarded as a bad one. So honestly, I doubt my view of it would change.
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
How much does that paint your reception retroactively?
It’s complicated. For me, a TV show or movie is enough of a collaborative endeavor that I don’t stress about it. I’m not going to boycott Firefly just because Joss Whedon was a horrible person. I’m not going to never watch the movie 21 again just because it has Kevin Spacey in it.
It might be different if it were more of a solo endeavor, but even then… I don’t think I would throw away my favorite book series if I discovered the author was awful.
I can totally respect someone who decided they couldn’t support that person in any way, shape, or form, though. Sometimes it’s hard to divide art from artist.
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@Faraday said in TV series gone awry:
It might be different if it were more of a solo endeavor, but even then… I don’t think I would throw away my favorite book series if I discovered the author was awful.
Dammit, Ender’s Game.
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
@Pavel I think that makes room for some interesting questions. For example how do y’all feel about shows which were progressive for their time - even revolutionary - yet which had some real dark parts to them, the worst of which being revealed after the fact and behind the curtains?
The example I have in mind is Buffy/Angel. At the time it changed TV as we know it. And although it definitely had some iffy parts (Spike nearly raping Buffy comes to mind) for the most part it showed on screen things that hadn’t been done before. Gay relationships, dealing with parental loss, sleeping with someone who becomes a total creep afterwards, etc.
However… Joss Whedon was by all accounts a really bad excuse for a human being (this pains me to say, btw - I used to be a huge, huge fan).
How much does that paint your reception retroactively?
So I have very vague memories of watching some random, early season episodes of Buffy when it first came out. It started when I was middle school and was not something I watched obsessively at the time, so I definitely missed that whole cultural zeitgeist moment.
I did, however, try to watch it as an adult several years ago, before the Whedon scandal broke, because I was curious if it really was as revolutionary and influential as everyone said…
I couldn’t even make it through half of the first season. Xander absolutely squicked me out pretty much from the first episode and did not improve in the seven or so that I watched before just giving up. It was bad. It was really, really bad how many “rapey ‘Nice Guy’ that I’m supposed to sympathize with even though he’s absolutely gross” vibes he gave off, so while I had twenty years of social change acting to my benefit when making my judgment, I was more than a little surprised by the level of shock and “B-b-b-but feminist!!!” think pieces that came out about the show later. My response was more along the lines of “Did… did y’all watch a different show than I did? It wasn’t subtext. It was right there, and not subtle, but also something that people just thought was totally okay in the '90s. And '00s. And '10s. And… yeah, you know what, Imma just stop there. Misogyny, hurrah!”
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@Aria Fite me! Buffy was my jam.
Yeah, season 1 wasn’t the best one. But for example The Body was… heart-breaking. I’d never watched anything like it. Whedon was a goddamn genius when he shot it; he didn’t share Buffy anything, no fadeouts, no ‘a few hours later’, not until everything was pretty much over.
Similarly Willow’s handling of Tara’s death was so well done. Tara was a genuinely good person and she died for… nothing. It wasn’t even on purpose. Shit just happened.
It wasn’t a perfect show by any means. In my opinion Angel was better; a lower peak, but far more consistent, and Wesley’s arc is my favorite among any characters on TV ever, including Walt in Breaking Bad.
But it was very well ahead of its time. Without it I don’t think the golden era of television would have been what we now know it to be.
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@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
@Aria Fite me! Buffy was my jam.
Ohh, I don’t judge anyone for liking it. Not at all. I mean, I grew up adoring Grease, which pretty much opens with a song and dance number that should be titled “Date Rape is Fun and Socially Justified, Right Guys?!”
It’s just that after viewing it, I kind of chalked up people’s obsession with it to the same sort of thing – nostalgia for something they watched and love growing up, problematic as it was. It was the shock being expressed at it, and Whedon, having profoundly toxic misogyny baked right in from the start that made me be like, “…Buhhh? I am surprised by your confusion and confused by your surprise. What is happening here?”
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@Aria said in TV series gone awry:
It’s just that after viewing it, I kind of chalked up people’s obsession with it to the same sort of thing – nostalgia for something they watched and love growing up, problematic as it was.
I think it’s a combination of nostalgia and all of us having been 25 years younger back when we watched it, so we didn’t have as many good examples of what feminism looks like. Being conventionally hot while using supernatural tae kwon do to win dominance displays with boys was about the best we were gonna get from mainstream media back then.
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@Aria It’s been forever since I watched it, but if memory serves, Xander does grow past the creeper stage. The problem with telling a story where someone overcomes their flaws and becomes a good person is that they START as a horrible person.
Alternatively I’m misremembering how much he develops into a less, uh… problematic person. I give it 50/50.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst IIRC there was a more involved arc planned out at first but the actor was struggling with addiction, and his character wasn’t as popular as his costars’.
I mean giving him a committed relationship with a girl he cheated on didn’t help his character become sympathetic, nor did they ever try to redeem him.
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@Jennkryst said in TV series gone awry:
The problem with telling a story where someone overcomes their flaws and becomes a good person is that they START as a horrible person.
This is absolutely true. I think that, at least for me, the trick is how a character’s general horribleness is presented, in no small part by the reactions from the rest of the characters in whatever media I’m consuming.
Do the people around them see their behavior poorly or do they treat it as acceptable? Is the horrible person depicted as sympathetic (maybe even funny) because of what they’re doing or is my sympathy being directed towards their target? Does the rest of the context in the scene suggest that I’m supposed to be questioning their actions or amused by them?
The character doesn’t necessarily have to be openly called out, but there being some indication that the creators of the piece recognize this as Not Okay will make me far more inclined to stick it out and see where the story goes than if the general tone is like, “Haha, yeah, this is Bob and he’s a complete piece of shit. Cool story, right?!”I can’t agree or disagree with the rest of your statement because, like I said, I absolutely tapped out after just seven episodes. Maybe Xander does get way better, but what put me off wasn’t just the way he behaved towards Buffy. It was the fact that everyone around him seemed to think it was absolutely fine and in the few cases where they didn’t, it was played for laughs.
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@Aria Yeah I loved Buffy when I watched it but going back and trying to rewatch a few eps I retreated into a misogyny cringe ball and stopped so as not to continue spoiling my perfectly good nostalgia with reality.
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@Aria said in TV series gone awry:
@Jennkryst said in TV series gone awry:
This is absolutely true. I think that, at least for me, the trick is how a character’s general horribleness is presented, in no small part by the reactions from the rest of the characters in whatever media I’m consuming.Do the people around them see their behavior poorly or do they treat it as acceptable? Is the horrible person depicted as sympathetic (maybe even funny) because of what they’re doing or is my sympathy being directed towards their target? Does the rest of the context in the scene suggest that I’m supposed to be questioning their actions or amused by them?
What about series like Mad Men where people around the protagonists (including the protagonists themselves) are just… flawed, each in a different way? Some are products of their times and misogynists or homophobic etc, others are driven by trauma in their pasts, or they are ambitious and self-serving, they have blinders on, etc.
Sometimes there’s no catharsis in bodies of work like this, either. That’s the drama in the characters’ arc; they could become better people, they have it in them, they are so close to getting it… but they fail.
Which is to say - not all shows (or books, MU*, etc) are meant for everyone to enjoy. There’s nothing wrong with watching something like this and going ‘this ain’t for me’.
Unless it’s Buffy, in which case you’re wrong, obv.
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@Snackness said in TV series gone awry:
(ETA: Except Sansa, she stuck the landing)
I’d say that even Sansa got done kind of dirty.
From S1 E1, it’s obvious that she needs to wake up from her fairytale mindset and realize that she’s not in your daddy’s fantasy storytime, this is serious business where we don’t shy away from showing how the middle ages really were (ie, “this has rape”) but in the early seasons she was still able to influence people with her skills as a canny observer of human nature and a compassionate person who prays with the women during the siege of King’s Landing while the Queen sits in the corner and gets drunk.
By the later seasons, it turns out that the lesson she needed to learn was how to be a Girlboss Bitch who watches without emotion as she feeds people to their own dogs, but gets completely played by Littlefinger until she just remembers that she has an omniscient godkid in her house that she can use to check on things. And then she spends the start of S8 being jealous and catty toward the pretty lady who’s dropped everything to come to save her home from the ancient evil.
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@Selira said in TV series gone awry:
True Blood was terrible from the start, but at the beginning, it seemed to have a real awareness of how cheesy it was and lean into that. I made it five seasons, but after that, it felt like it had gone so far into character flanderization and needing more ridiculous things that I was done.
Basically with the death of the one character at the start of the last season, just left a foul taste in my mouth.
I’m okay with cheesy dumb vampire stories, but apparently I have my limit.
ETA: All that said, “I LOVE YOU JASON STACKHOUSE” is perhaps my favorite moment in the whole series.
True Blood was ridiculous from start to finish, and I loved every second of it.
I never expected it to be great. It was always a corny, kitschy mess.
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@Faraday said in TV series gone awry:
It might be different if it were more of a solo endeavor, but even then… I don’t think I would throw away my favorite book series if I discovered the author was awful.
I have two used copies of Ender’s Game, one specifically as a lending copy so that I can give it to folks that I recommend the book to. I’ve given zero money to Card since learning what a shit he is, and I won’t encourage others to spend money – but I will encourage them to read the book that had such a huge impact on me as a teen.
@Arkandel said in TV series gone awry:
What about series like Mad Men
I just couldn’t get into Mad Men. Like, I didn’t like any of the characters, or like to hate them, enough to keep watching.
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@Faraday said in TV series gone awry:
It might be different if it were more of a solo endeavor, but even then… I don’t think I would throw away my favorite book series if I discovered the author was awful.
To touch on this for a moment and to do a little moralising perhaps, I believe it’s perfectly okay to still like and enjoy the work of a person who has revealed themselves to be horrid. So long as one does so privately. This is especially true when the sole creator is still around and producing work.
Enjoy what you had, don’t support their future work, and don’t partake in the online ‘community’ around their work - if their horridness is bad enough to give you pause, it’s probably going to be a hell of a ride following them on Twitter, for instance.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
I don’t know how to feel about either the fact Amazon is putting The Rings of Power cover art on Lord of the Rings novels or about the petition to stop them from doing that.
Tolkien’s work is basically sacred to me but this has got me stuck somewhere between ‘meh, who cares’ and ‘someone must burn for this’.
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@Arkandel Could not care less. I can barely tell what is on the cover besides something fantasy-ish. People have too much free time on their hands. Why anyone feels like they are entitled to make demands like this is beyond me.
If you’re gonna try to make demands of Amazon, at least make it something of substance for them to ignore.
