“Buffy” and “Drive”
April 24th, 2007
G’day again! Well, what was going to be a regular rambling has turned into nearly 5 months of silence! I’ll see if I can do better next time!
The other night I finally managed to finish “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” Woo hoo! It’s probably taken me nearly a year to get through them all. I had a couple of months break earlier this year because I was getting bored with it. I guess I must have been watching it too much. But a couple of weeks ago I started getting into it again. Season 5 was the highlight for me. The sudden and mysterious appearance of Dawn was simply fantastic television. The fact that she was just there and everyone was treating her as if she had always been there was a stroke of genius! I was thinking to myself, “Hang on! Did I miss something? How can they do this?” Eventually, a few episodes in Buffy’s mother has a flash that something isn’t right and then Buffy starts to figure it out. Great stuff!
And then, of course, Buffy’s mother dies. This would have been a shock for me except for the fact that I happened to catch a documentary on TV about Buffy while I was watching Season 4 that went through season by season talking about the highlights. It happened to mention that Buffy’s mum dies and even though I wasn’t sure what season it was going to happen in I knew it was coming. 
Even though I knew what was going to happen I still found the episodes surrounding the death very powerful and moving. They way Buffy gets home to find her mother dead on the sofa was terrifying! She wasn’t killed by vampires or demons. Any of us could come home one day and find a loved one dead!
And finally, Buffy dies at the end of Season 5. I knew she wasn’t dead forever because there were two more seasons to go but I was curious as to how they would bring her back.
Anyway, things went downhill after that. Season 6, apart from the highlight of “Once More With Feeling” was a pretty dull time and I think that’s why I started to get bored. I got sick and tired of “Sad Buffy” and wanted “Happy Buffy” to come back. The geeky arch nemesises were amusing but I would have preferred that they stuck with technology for their evildoing rather than resorting to magic and demon summoning. The death of Tara was a bit of a surprise but, once again, I happened to be reading a web page talking about a dedication to someone that appeared at the end of an earlier episode and it was mentioned that this person died around the time they were filming Tara’s death scenes and that it was all sad and poignant. So I ended up with a few episodes where I knew Tara was gonna die. Somehow I always manage to spoil it for myself. 
Evil Willow was cool! I wanted to see more of that!
Season 7 was even more doom and gloom. It held my interest but even though I only finished watching it a couple of days ago I can’t really pick out any highlights. The main thing I noticed was how much better the writing is when Joss Whedon is writing than any of the other writers. I don’t think he wrote much in Season 7 but he did write the final episode and I noticed right from the start how packed with jokes, one liners and details the dialog was. Everything that everyone said had meaning and subtext.
So, while I enjoyed watching Buffy and might even call myself a fan I don’t think I’m as rabid as some people get about Buffy. It was a good show but I don’t think I’d watch it again.
I’m still watching Angel. Just about to start Season 5. I’ll save Angel for another Ramble.
Finally, just a quick mention of a show I’ve just discovered. I was on tv.com looking to see when Heroes was supposed to be starting again (yay! It’s back!) and I saw a photo of Nathan Fillion. Nathan, of Firefly, Serenity and Buffy fame, is starring in a new show called “Drive.” It’s kinda like a sinister “The Amazing Race” where people compete in a highly illegal and secret road race across America. As the show progresses we’re finding out that each competitor has different reasons for being in the race but winning seems to be a life or death situation for most while others are just in it for the 32 million dollar prize money. Along with Nathan Fillion there is some brief (so far) appearances by Amy Acker (Fred from Angel) and Nathan’s kidnapped wife and New Zealander Melanie Lynskey (who first appeared in Peter Jackson’s “Heavenly Creatures”) as a naive mother who seems quite out of her depth.
“Drive” is an interesting show. Only four episodes have been broadcast so far. It’s co-created by Tim Minear (also of Angel and Firefly fame). I’m hoping that it they actually have a detailed plan for the show and that it doesn’t devolve into a rambling, confusing, “let’s ignore continuity so we can do this cool thing”, pea soup that things like Lost and X Files became. It’s got my attention but now it needs to start giving me some answers to the questions it’s raised so I don’t throw my hands up is frustration. Who is running the race? Why do they do it? Why are the other competitors racing? Tim, take a look at Heroes if you need to see how to plan and trickle feed a long running story arc to the fans. By all means, dangle the carrot in front of us . . . but let us nibble it every now and then.
And now, it’s back to your regularly scheduled programming. Thanks for watching!
April 29th, 2007 at 5:31 am
I read an interview with Heroes creator Tim Kring not too long ago where he gave the impression he doesn’t actually have much of a long term arc planned out. Which isn’t really a major problem given the premise of the show - they can write themselves out of virtually any situation just by creating a character with a new power… Anyway, I personally think Lost is doing a better job of convincing me they know what they’re doing