Holiday Reading

OK, now I've kind of caught up on things again, so blogging should once more be fast and furious!

While I was away, I also got to read some books:

First up was Noam Chomsky's Understanding Power. He's nuts! He's completely myopic! He wildly overstates his case in every paragraph! Some of his 'facts' are incredibly dubious*! By the time I'd finished the first couple of chapters I was totally prepared to give this book a real bashing, yet somehow by the end he'd kind of won me over. He has some pretty smart, convincing explanations for his apparent prejudice and constant America bashing, and even though I disagree with many of his conclusions, I found the worldview he presented thought provoking and indeed a useful model with which to consider political subjects. My thoughts on it really deserve more space than I have in this multi-book extravaganza post, so they will just have to wait until the next time I read something of his.

* “So in northeast Brazil, for example, which is a rather fertile area with plenty of rich land, just it's all owned by plantations, Brazillian medical researchers now identify the population as a new species with about 40 percent the brain size of human beings, a result of generations of profound malnutrition and neglect[...]” Here's the citation.

I also read Lost in Transmission, by Jonathan Harley, which I really enjoyed. It's an autobiography by the former central Asian correspondent for the ABC (Australia's version of the BBC or TVNZ) and details the years of his life spent living in India and Pakistan, reaching a climax when he reports from the front lines of America's invasion of Afghanistan. Despite it's straightforward prose (obviously written by a news reporter) and modestly direct emotional aspect (obviously written by an Aussie) it captured my attention effortlessly. On one hand there's the political and world events portrayed, which provided a surprisingly relevant counterpoint to Chomsky and in one weird moment of synchronicity, the news (reporting Pakistan's General Musharraf declaring martial law) on TV in front of me. On the other hand there's the personal side of the story, which has numerous aspects and narratives (as any honest autobiography would) and introduced me to the concept of 'teen-creep', the state of living one's life with all the lack of responsibility and maturity of a teenager until your late twenties and beyond. Good thing I don't know anyone like that!

And you'll probably be surprised to learn that I didn't realise for over two months after its release that Buffy Season 8: The Long Way Home had been published. For those not in the know/who don't give a fuck, Joss Whedon has format shifted Buffy from TV to comics and this is the first collected instalment. It's a solid enough effort (certainly miles better than season seven) and Joss takes full advantage of the new medium by upping the epic battles, violence and lesbianism. Yet despite such sound artistic development, it doesn't quite scratch the itch. The dialogue is still great and the plot and characters are developed in a satisfying way, but as with most serialised comic collections the pacing feels terrible. Five months worth of comic issues feel filled with about as much content as a one hour episode of the TV show. Nevertheless I'm still stoked to see Joss continuing the story and I am eagerly looking forward to the continuation of the series and the forthcoming resurrection of Angel.

Lastly I also finished off the recent release Fatal Revenant (make sure you pronounce the title the same way George Costanza says 'prognosis negative'!), the latest instalment of Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant fantasy saga. The series has been a favourite of mine since I was a teenager and I'm still loving it even now. It's been a three year wait since the last book and I eagerly devoured this one (only to find that this has merely replaced one cliffhanger with another that I will no doubt have to wait another three years to read the resolution of) and it cemented Donaldon's place in my list of favourite authors. Fatal Revenant was definitely heavy on exposition and low on action, a flaw I am confident will be remedied in the remaining two books in the series, but even the exposition was still absorbing to read. A little more maturity has allowed me to see past the full on angst fest of the main characters in this series to the beauty of their world that Donaldson has created to contrast it. I really must go back and read the original series again. I'm curious as to what I might get out of it this time...

Thank God We're Hot Chicks With Super Powers

And now, dear readers, it is time for the post I have been dreading having to write for almost a year now.

Buffy Season 7 - Part 2

Joss Whedon, what the fuck were you thinking? Unlike many, I loved Buffy right up until the end of the sixth season, yet even I wept silent tears of grief as I watched season seven. But before we get into that, lets start out by noting the things that were good about the episodes in this DVD collection. Sadly, this will be a short section.

There are a grand total of two decent episodes on these three discs. In 'Lies My Parents Told Me', much of the action is set in one of Spike's flashbacks as he relives the immediate aftermath of becoming a vampire. The writers take their obligatory (for this season) journey into stupidity by wedging in some dopey Oedipal nonsense behind his character, but the flashback is still great for two reasons. One, James Marsters is actually a decent actor (unlike many on this show) and makes the best of the lame material. And two, Drusilla. Specifically the line “You want to bring your mum wif us...?”

The other good episode is 'Storyteller', the obligatory redemption episode for Andrew, one of the villains from the previous season. Once again the writers do their best to ruin it by deciding for no good reason to waste time on a full series exposition for the first half of the episode, but they make up for it with a lot of good humour centred around Andrew's character, who was one of the few characters left in the show with some life left in them by this late stage in the tale. It also ends with the only truly successful redemption scene of Buffy's entire run, with Andrew tearfully admitting to Buffy that he murdered his friend (and tears of remorse being the only thing that can close the portal that the murder/sacrifice opened up. Nice. See Joss and co, you do still know how to do this stuff right! Sometimes.)

Lastly, they don't fuck up the season finale. It's nothing out of the ordinary, and is very predictable (best summed up by Television Without Pity's recap: “Anya dies. Spike dies. Buffy lives”), but at least it was competently executed, defying fandoms collective low expectations at the time it aired.

But argh... the badness! After six years of cheesy but consistent character and thematic development, it all goes out the window here. I never understood what the deal with Buffy's constant speechifying and the climactic scene where she is abandoned by all her friends was all about. Is she supposed to be in the right or in the wrong? My interpretation is that every character involved is an idiot. Buffy for refusing to admit her error in leading her young charges into a slaughter, and then proposing to do it again, and all the rest for casting their friend, leader and saviour out on the street when she's the only person likely to save them from the impending apocalypse.

The case for the prosecution may also list a general lack of unforced humour, haphazard plotting and worse than usual acting (curiously enough, Sarah Michelle Gellar does better than usual in this department. I suspect the sense of maturity that Buffy gives off in this season, like she's looking at the big picture and seeing further than the others comes from Gellar phoning it in because it's her last season, she's sick of this shit and she just doesn't give a fuck). The nadir of the series comes in the penultimate episode when Buffy faces off against Caleb, an evil Catholic priest imbued with the power of a god. He also happens to be misogyny incarnate, and to their credit the writers don't overdo this. They set up a very nice climactic battle in which Buffy (feminism incarnate), has a chance to kick his arse. But then what happens? Buffy gets knocked on her back, is about to be penetrated killed by an axe, when Angel busts in and saves the day with a strong manly punch to the jaw, looking for all the world like a leading man from a 1930s movie. Sure, Buffy still gets to deliver the killing blow, but what the fuck?! The moral of the story is that the strongest woman in the world still always needs to be saved by a man? I'm certain that the writers (in this case Douglas Petrie and Jane Espenson) didn't intend that interpretation but Jesus... for fucks sake... don't you people ever think about these things before you write them down in a screenplay?!

The DVD extras are nothing super interesting, just the usual self congratulatory stuff. In the past Joss Whedon has been surprisingly open about admitting the flaws of his creations, but there's no hint here that he's even vaguely aware that people might not have been as happy with this effort as they were with earlier ones. There's also a curious collection of scenes from the wrap party, in which they interview every major actor and behind the scenes person from the show, with one notable exception (hint: it's the person the show is named after).

But lets not dwell too much on the fact that its last season was shit. As no doubt you have all realised by now, I honestly believe that Buffy was the best thing to ever be shown on TV, ever. I will acknowledge that it often vacillated erratically between nonsensical cartoon goofiness and overwrought melodrama, that a lot of the acting was pretty terrible and that for every well thought out, subtly drawn allegory there were two episodes where the conceit was bashed over the head of the viewer with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. Despite all that, it was one of the wittiest shows of all time, and although the serious side of the show didn't always work as well, it more than made up for it with its limitless charm and constantly inventive originality.

Most importantly, it deserves respect for introducing complex and long running plots into the land of television, paving the way for Lost, Heroes, the new Doctor Who and the rest of the current crop of smart(er) TV, and most of all for being one of only a few pop culture phenomena to promote a 'girl power' message which was genuinely feminist, and not just chauvinism dressed up in a funny hat and glasses (did you hear the Spice Girls are doing a comeback tour?)

Lastly, a spot of good news. Early reports have it that the new Buffy comic series (season eight) is not too bad. I won't be getting it until it comes out as a collection but I'm very much looking forward to it. More good news. Angel is being resurrected in comic book form too!

Preaching to the Guy Who Ate the Choir

Angel Season 4 Part 2

My Angel rewatch has finally come to an end with season four (I did season five a couple of years back), even though it took me a whole year to get through this last collection.

As was the case with earlier seasons the plot was very well done. The writers tied up all of the numerous loose ends hanging around from three years of back story (leaving it to the final season to resolve the character arcs) and did it in an effective and elegant way. Yes, they did cheat a little (toward the end it is revealed that almost everything that has happened to the characters since Angel began was part of a plan by the Big Bad), but surprisingly enough it still all makes sense. I will also admit that the 'everyone loses their memory of all the bad stuff that's happened to them' twist at the end would be a horrifying cop out if I didn't know they were going to reverse it partway through the next season. Watching this show again now it seems that, with their long running, intertwined plots, Angel and Buffy were the forerunners to today's rash of 'smart' TV shows with elaborate plots, such as Lost and 24.

On the other hand I was not so impressed with the handling of the characters this time around. I don't believe that, at conception, any of them were intended to be taken this seriously, and putting them through their angsty, melodramatic paces never feels right. At the same time I don't think that the grim, miserable situations that the characters find themselves in are ever given the depth they require. Over the course of season three and four Angel's son Connor essentially becomes a damaged psychopath without conscience or anything to live for, finally becoming a servant of evil and when that doesn't work out trying to kill himself and take a building full of innocents (including his step mother slash ex-girlfriend) with him (evoking unpleasant parallels with the Virginia Tech massacre). This is a pretty disturbing and even frightening scenario so you'd expect Angel's final confrontation with his son to generate some decent dramatic heat, but in the season finale Angel does little more than put on his same old sad eyed 'suffering' face. However we may take comfort in the fact that they at least get a pretty cool fight scene.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this season wasn't funny enough. I watch these shows for the lulz dammit.

Angel was never as good as Buffy at it's best, but it was still well worth watching. The first season was certainly very goofy and rough around the edges, but had genuine charm. Later on it lost that charm but was still quite worthwhile for the story. The best season was undoubtedly the last one, in which they ditched a lot of the gloomy emotional baggage from the earlier seasons and reinstated the fun and humour that had gradually been lost over the years. And in the end, this is the lesson we learn from Angel the television show: a TV show about a crime fighting vampire doesn't really need a whole lot of drama and seriousness.

Season Five
Season Four Part 1
Season Three Part 2
Season Three Part 1
Season Two Part 2
Season Two Part 1

My Food Is Problematic

Firefly

I sure took my time getting to it but I have finally been a good obsessive fanboy and bought Firefly on DVD. In brief Firefly is a sci-fi TV show by Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy (and Angel). The show is broadly in the mould of similar shows like Star Trek; every week the characters fly their space ship somewhere new and find something interesting yet dangerous. The attributes that set this show apart are the setting (in which the outer reaches of human colonised space are very much like the American wild west of old, right down to the deserts, outlaws and train robberies), and of course Joss' distinctive writing style.

This was the third TV show that Joss helmed and he does a confident and assured job of introducing the characters, setting the scene for future story arcs and hinting at the backstories of the people and places involved. Sadly this is pretty much all he got to do as after only fourteen episodes the show was shitcanned by those notorious idiots at Fox. Fortunately the movie Serenity was made to finish up the story and resolve the most immediate loose ends of the plot, but it's a pity that the series itself never got to do much more than show it's potential.

It's just as well that the episodes that did get made are nothing short of great. The setting is very well thought out, and while unfortunately Joss never got to show and explain a lot of what was going on what we do see is pretty cool. The series' strong points are really exactly the things that were good about Buffy and Angel, done by Joss with the years of experience working on those programmes behind him and none of the overwrought emotional baggage that the other shows had accumulated. The humour is as brilliant as you'd expect, but unlike Buffy Firefly works well as a drama too. A lot of this can be attributed to vastly superior acting, which gives it a genuine emotional side that Buffy never really achieved, but I think savvier, less cheesy writing played a part too.

The characters are also one of the reasons this show is so great. Our major protagonist Mel (the spaceship's captain) is a wisecracking but haunted hero in the mould of Angel, but he's far more interesting than Angel ever was because (a) he's played by an actor who can act rings around David Boreanz, and (b) because his backstory is far more down to earth and relatable than 'I'm a 400 year old vampire who's killed thousands of people for pleasure'. At the other end of the spectrum we have River, a damaged young girl who provides loads of humour (in a similar vein to Delirium in Sandman), but who also evokes genuine sadness and pity with her pathetic brokenness. It's a shame we never got to see most of these characters make their way to their originally intended fates, but at least in the movie we get to see River's somewhat predictable, but still way cool, transformation into, well, Buffy...

Doing Your Mom And Trying To Kill Your Dad… There Should Be A Play.

Angel Season 4 Part 1

Yes I am still watching these, although at a very, very slow rate.

Angel was always a much darker show than Buffy but in its fourth season it became truly grim and the humour, while still present, started to become somewhat out of place. As in earlier seasons the plot is quite well done on the larger scale. The main storyline, in which L.A. is menaced by a seemingly invincible Satan-like demon is nicely intertwined with the dangling plot threads from the end of season 3, namely the arrival of Angel's teenage son, Cordelia's mysterious disappearance and Wesley's involvement with the show's perennial bad guys, the law firm Wolfram and Hart.

The grimness of the season is in part due to the hopeless nature of the heroes' battle against the big bad, who despite Angel and Co's best efforts persists in doing unpleasant bad guy type things such as blocking out the sun, making the sky rain fire and your standard general slaughter, but mostly the sad, depressing mood comes as the constant messing around with the main character's relationships done in the last season bears fruit, leaving the heroes mistrustful and resentful of one another. Lots of nice angsty character development ensues.

The highlight of the first half of the season comes at the end, when the heroes, out of desperation, are manipulated into transforming Angel into his evil alter ego Angelus. This cheerful, maverick psychopath is a smart addition to an already tense scenario and revives what was starting to become somewhat of a miserable, depressing plot arc. It's disappointing that we didn't see more of Angelus during the show's run because he's a great character. While I understand that the writers didn't want to overuse him, I think there still should have been more of him (other than in this season he only shows up in one episode in season one, and in flashbacks in season two), as his evil deeds are the basis for the whole backstory behind the show.

Despite the writer's numerous missteps this show continued to be worth watching, it's just a pity that the same could not be said for its parent.

P.S. Even though I'm a bit late with this news some of you may be interested to know that season eight of Buffy is in the works, as a comic series.