And here’s an email I sent off to Tom Tomorrow about all this:

And that really says everything I want to say… at least for now… on the subject.

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A WHOLE LOTTA POD PEOPLE

I annoyed a few people on a couple of Buffy boards with my commentary on Buffy’s final season , in which I noted that even though the 7th Season wasn’t over yet, I was already willing to call it a complete loss. And it seems very much to me that the 6th and 7th Seasons of Buffy could very easily be looked at as an extended covert effort by Joss Whedon to make the show so completely unwatchable no one would mind it if got cancelled… which would free him up to work on the other brilliant, innovative projects he now deems much worthier of his time and creative energies, like a completely witless, scientifically ignorant space western called Firefly .

Joss has been listed consistently as an Executive Producer on Angel this season, in the closing credit spot that used to go to David Greenwalt. Whether this had made any difference or not to level of consistent quality on Angel is anyone’s guess. Angel has good episodes, and bad episodes. Lately, what I (and fellow fan Hartmut) seem to be noticing the most, however, is the sheer overwhelming number of convenient plot twists that seem to keep showing up during the most recent arc.

Going way back to the now seeingly ancient three parter featuring Faith, I still have to wonder at just how smart it was for her to shoot herself up with a mind altering, mystically powerful euphoriant just before she went into deadly hand to hand combat with Angel. Sure, it worked out… Angel beat her, tried to drink her blood, and got knocked out by the drug she’d deliberately shot herself up with, hoping for exactly that result. But Angel, or rather, Angel’s schizoid sub personality, Angelus, is very unpredictable; he could have just as easily broken Faith’s neck. It all seemed pretty contrived.

Similarly, Dark Cordelia’s capability to play the heroes like an entire woodwinds section often seemed rather difficult to believe. These are people who are kind of used to the whole ‘our friends suddenly go evil and become our enemies’ idea, and yet, none of them seem to have given the slightest thought to the idea that the conveniently returned from Heaven Cordie, who first had amnesia, and then just started acting damned weird, might not be all she seemed. And Connor’s absolute gullibility is simply unacceptable; I know the kid is pussy whipped, but the things Cordie has gotten him to do are simply ridiculous.

But we’re in a whole ‘nother place now, since Jasmine The Queen of Love showed up. And let me give props to Whedon, or whoever came up with the idea… a world threatening, other dimensional monster who is taking over humanity through subtle mind control instead of by being big and huge and unstoppably powerful, is an interesting idea. One can see seeds of it in Glory from Buffy’s 5th season, although there, Glory’s lovely appearance was simply for shock and comedy value… something to differentiate her from all the really ugly monsters Buffy had fought before. With Jasmine it’s a whole different thing: the only power she seems to have is to make people love her unquestionably… and that’s really very chilling. Especially when she uses it to fuse all her followers together into one increasingly communal mind… or simply to have some of them walk up to her willingly and allow her to devour their life force.

Interesting though the overall idea is, I still can’t get around how convenient the writers have been making it for our heroes lately. I grant you, the good guys probably need to have the plot bent in their favor from time to time, given what they’re currently up against. But lately, well… not only are Wesley and Fred unexpectedly Olympic level pistol shots (we’ve never seen either of them so much as hold a gun before), but having Jasmine and Angel conveniently position themselves in such a way that Fred can put a bullet through both their shoulders, infecting Angel with Jasmine’s blood and breaking her mind control spell on him, is flatly ridiculous. (I’ll spare you my tedious and predictable rant on how things that effect living people shouldn’t affect a vampire, although they shouldn’t.)

Worst of all these plot contrivances, though, is the one we’ve seen on the latest episode: while fleeing from Jasmine and her millions of followers through the sewers under L.A., Angel and crew just happen to run across a demon lurking down there who just happens to have in his possession a mystic artifact that just happens to be able to open a portal to a dimension where the high priests know Jasmine’s true name… said true name which just happens to be the only thing Jasmine is really vulnerable to, or that can destroy her power.

The WB has said that it won’t make a decision on whether or not Angel is getting a fifth season until May… presumably the end of May, when they see how the show does in the sweeps. Odds are they’ll decide to bring it back… losing Buffy was a big punch in the nuts for the network, and they’re already losing Dawson’s Creek this year, as well. On the other hand, new shows have worked really well for the WB over the past two years, and Angel is just about getting to the point where, if it stays around much longer, the cast is going to want big raises. Add into that the fact that Whedon seems to have lost his Midas touch, and who knows? Perhaps the sun is finally setting for the vampire with a soul… or rising, as may be.

Me, I'm just about in a place where I care as little about whether Angel comes back as I do about Buffy. I personally think the ‘jump the shark’ moment came at the end of the previous season. Once Connor was born, whisked off to a hell dimension where time conveniently runs much faster than on Earth-Buffy, and then returned to the series as a much more melodramatically intriguing teenager within a few episodes, I started wondering exactly where that smell was coming from whenever Angel was on the air. Oh, the odor was faint at first, and there were several good episodes this season where the reek seemed to fade into the background. But the plotting just keeps getting sloppier. Characterizations mutate and shift at the apparent whim of the writers. Secondary characters come and go for no apparent purpose… I’m always happy when ElectroGirl is hanging around because she’s just so easy on the eyes, but, honestly, is there a point? Two or three of the regulars on the series only seem to be there because, well, they’re regulars on the series, and the writers can rarely think of much of anything for them to do. Story arcs seem to stall out and start up again, dodder along for a while, meander over here and then over there, and then resume in their original direction without warning. And most fun of all for a continuity nut like me, nobody in Sunnydale seems to pay much attention to the sun going out over Los Angeles, or a weird mystical woman taking control of the entire state of California. Hey, they’ve got different shows, but Buffy and Angel still live on the same planet, within a hundred miles of each other, right? When the sun goes out over Los Angeles, and you just happen to have an army of somewhat trained potential Slayers living in your house, why not get on a goddam bus and go do some good?

This all brings me back to something I heard Jane Espenson say on a commentary track on one of my Angel DVDs. She was gushing about how wonderful the shows' fans are; how not only do we spot little inconsistencies in the continuity (which Espenson seemed to think was annoying of us... like so many professional writers and creators, she simply seems to regard continuity as being essentially pointless and anyone who cares about it as being a foolish obsessive), but we so want the characters and their world to seem ‘real’ that we’ll make up our own explanations.

It always aggravates the crap out of me when writers seem to regard ‘making up our own explanations’ as somehow being the responsibility of the fans. Consistent continuity keeps the world real, which helps make the characters more real, which makes your fiction resonate better with you’re audience, which makes you more money. It is your job as a writer and a creator on an ongoing fantasy series loved by millions to not make stupid mistakes. It’s not our job to explain them away.

As a writer myself, and someone who longs to someday be in the position of Joss Whedon or Jane Espenson, I also think it’s the writer/creator’s job to write their characters well. To not throw one overly contrived situation after another at us, week after week. To give us, in short, a reason to believe.

If I listen long enough to you… I’ll find a way to believe that it’s all true…

I don’t know about listening, but I’m getting awfully tired of watching this crap. Whedon and his crew can do better than this. Although that’s getting harder and harder to remember, these days.

Like it? Hate it? Hit me with your best shot.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I’m not a likable guy. I’m not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It’s simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don’t like my opinions or my blog, don’t read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I’m not going to say that this time around, because I’ve realized that what this is basically saying is, ‘if you don’t like what I have to say, tough, I don’t want to hear it, don’t even bother to tell me, just go away’.

And that’s actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country… for a little while longer, anyway… and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I’m not sure that’s a right when you’re doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don’t feel like reading… and I’m really quick with the delete key… as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don’t like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance… these things are only worth my time and attention if they’re entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough with, style, and/or panache to amuse me… try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

Like it? Hate it? Hit me with your best shot.