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Does this make me a Bad Fan?
Confession #1:
I'm approximately 1 gazillion times more excited about Mama Mia! opening today than I am about The Dark Knight, despite the fact that I can see The Dark Knight at no less than 2 IMAX theaters within easy driving distance.
Confession #2:
It appears that I will buy anything David Simon does because, as it turns out, he's my favorite author (for television) ever. I own the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, all 7 seasons plus television movie of Homicide: Life on the Street, the book The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, the HBO series The Corner, and the first 4 seasons of The Wire (with Season 5 on order for immediate shipping when it's available next month).
I am counting down to when Generation Kill will be available on DVD (I don't get HBO) so I can get my hands on it.
In short, you know how people will buy anything Joss Whedon does (even when it's total crap) and call him a genius for it (even though it's a case of the emperor walking around completely starkers)?
This is apparently how I treat productions involving David Simon, Ed Burns, and partners.
How can I put this...long before I let any of David Simon's stuff out of my hands, I will sell both my Angel and Buffy box sets.
The hell with that. I will burn my Angel and Buffy box sets before I give up any of David Simon's stuff.
(Seriously, those of you who kept looking for meaning in the "numbered shirts" of Buffy Season 6 that actually didn't have any meaning beyond, "We found a bunch of these for cheap in thrift shops?" Try The Wire, which actually has twice the meaning and twice the mythic elements of any Angel and Buffy episode without requiring you to fanwank. Best of all? The Wire actually has continuity that puts most book series to shame. No. I'm not kidding.)
I'm approximately 1 gazillion times more excited about Mama Mia! opening today than I am about The Dark Knight, despite the fact that I can see The Dark Knight at no less than 2 IMAX theaters within easy driving distance.
Confession #2:
It appears that I will buy anything David Simon does because, as it turns out, he's my favorite author (for television) ever. I own the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, all 7 seasons plus television movie of Homicide: Life on the Street, the book The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, the HBO series The Corner, and the first 4 seasons of The Wire (with Season 5 on order for immediate shipping when it's available next month).
I am counting down to when Generation Kill will be available on DVD (I don't get HBO) so I can get my hands on it.
In short, you know how people will buy anything Joss Whedon does (even when it's total crap) and call him a genius for it (even though it's a case of the emperor walking around completely starkers)?
This is apparently how I treat productions involving David Simon, Ed Burns, and partners.
How can I put this...long before I let any of David Simon's stuff out of my hands, I will sell both my Angel and Buffy box sets.
The hell with that. I will burn my Angel and Buffy box sets before I give up any of David Simon's stuff.
(Seriously, those of you who kept looking for meaning in the "numbered shirts" of Buffy Season 6 that actually didn't have any meaning beyond, "We found a bunch of these for cheap in thrift shops?" Try The Wire, which actually has twice the meaning and twice the mythic elements of any Angel and Buffy episode without requiring you to fanwank. Best of all? The Wire actually has continuity that puts most book series to shame. No. I'm not kidding.)
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I'm waiting for Season 5 to be shipped to me via Amazon when it comes out August 18.
I pretty much burned through the first four seasons, and then went back and watched all the commentary and special features.
Order of my love (thus far):
1) Season One (D'Angelo explaining chess to Wallace and Bodie will haunt me for a long time)
2) Season Four (I want to draw hearts all around all four of the kids, Bodie's soldier's death)
3) Season Three (Stringer Bell's death actually made me weep...and I was rooting for Omar!)
4) Season Two (While still awesome, I don't think it held together as well as the other seasons.)
I suspect that I'll probably love Season 5 more than most people, in large part because of the Baltimore Sun focus and the slow decline of the American newspaper. That's a storyline that hits home because it started waaaaaay back when I was working for newspapers as a reporter. I pretty much knew that my choices were either face getting laid off once every two to three years, or switch careers. I suspect that's going to *ping* for me in a way that it didn't for most people.
Plus, any time I get to watch Clark Johnson on my TV screen is always a good time. :-)
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I'm glad you mentioned the chess scene, because it was that scene that first really pulled me in to the show and convinced me that this was going to be much more than a typical cop show. It was brilliant, and you're right that it's haunting, especially considering that all three people from that conversation ended up dead.
As soon as the season 5 DVDs come out, I'm going to rewatch the whole series from beginning to end. I think there's a lot of foreshadowing of certain characters' fates that happens really early on, and I'm going to see if I can pick it out.
Just an amazing show all around. If I could pick one show to put in a time capsule to survive the apocalypse, this would be the one.
(Oh, quick question - what were you talking about when you mentioned "numbered shirts" in Buffy season 6? I hadn't heard about that.)
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I think I remember it because it was a truly WtF introduction.
Anyway, this started on "The Stakehouse," which once upon a time was THE Yahoo Group you joined if you wanted to discuss in-depth about episodes, foreshadowing, etc. You know...it was supposed to be a SRS DISCUSSION.
[In reality, it was a bunch of frippery and Spike worship, which was fine. However, if you were a fan of Angel or *shudder* Xander, you found your welcome less than welcome very quickly...]
Anyway, at some point during the early part Season 6, all of the characters started wearing these numbered T-shirts. Now, I remembered they had been a minor fashion trend something like the year before among the college hipster set, so I didn't think much about seeing them.
After two or three weeks of these numbered T-shirts showing up randomly on the characters, The Stakehouse explodes. Clearly there is Something Deep Going On Here. Whedon Has a Plan. The T-shirts are Important Foreshadowing. (Somehow, Xander's T-shirt numbers invariably meant that he was the one who was going to either go evil or be the Big Scooby Death in Season 6...funny how that works hunh?)
This speculation soon spreads out of The Stakehouse and hits the Bronze Beta, the Cross & Stake, TWoP and all the other big "Buffy Discussion Boards" of the day. Everyone is in agreement: The numbered T-shirts Mean Something Very Big.
Since I was new to online Buffy fandom, I was (to my deep embarrassment) willing to believe it was possible since I hadn't given much thought to Buffy beyond "fun, escapist show that's a deeper than a lot of other genre shows where I really, really enjoy the characters and the monsters." This was a whooooole new way of thinking about it, and it was a fun ride.
Then one of the costumers tries to break the bubble: The reason why so many of the characters were wearing number T-shirts in Season 6 was because the local thrift store (which you'll be shocked to know was used to costume the characters on a regular basis < /sarcasm >) was having a sale on them, so they bought the shirts in bulk.
This statement was backed up by Whedon and the rest of production.
So, in short the deeper meaning of the number T-shirts of Season 6 was that they were on sale and the costumers liked them so they bought them in bulk. And did we mention? SALE!
Speculation suddenly turns to wank. The news that the T-shirts have No Deeper Meaning is a LIE LIE LIE LIE! Production is lying to the fans to cover up the deeper meaning because they don't want the fanbase to figure out that big-bang-boom ending too soon (big-bang-boom ending including, of course, Xander going evil or being the Big Scooby Death), so they're LYING damn it! LYING I TELL YOU!
Meanwhile, I'm all, "Ummmmm, why the hell would anyone lie to their fanbase and say that there is no code when there is, in fact, a code?" (<----Note: I asked this before I found out that Mutant Enemy wasn't above lying to its own actors, let alone the fanbase.)
This was the reaction: SHUN THE UNBELIEVER! THERE IS A CODE IN THOSE T-SHIRTS! THEY'RE LYING TO KEEP IT SURPRISE!
Aaaaaaand that's about when I canceled my membership to The Stakehouse....
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I'm glad I missed that little episode. I have enough reasons to dislike Buffy fandom as it is.
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Do you want to know the worst part about it?
At some point all that batshit would get to you. Then you'd find yourself doing the online equivalent of a "primal scream" in a forum.
I wasn't exactly wanking away, but eeeevery once in awhile someone would start wank and I'd find myself getting sucked into it.
[Dear, God, I remembered this one time I made a joke on TwOP — some throw-away line about James Marsters chewing the scenery "like that ham always does" but beyond that I can't even remember what I said or why it pissed people off. Right after that several dozen Spike fans invaded a general Buffy message board where I was "known" to hang out. They created almost 100 sock puppet accounts and and started flooding the board with messages about how they were going to track me down in RL and kick my ass or turn my ass in to the police for making felony threats against Marsters, as well as endless thread after endless thread of how much I sucked, and fake descriptions of my drug-addled and sexually fueled exploits with animals...no shit! That was the fall out from a throw-away line because I made a joke about how I wasn't all that impressed with Marster's acting. *boggles* In the end, the board owner had to shut down all new account creation, set the board to private, and then force all new people who wanted to join to go through a moderation process to prevent another invasion. It was nuts.]
The thing that kind of gets me is that online Buffy (well, Whedon) fandom is still just as crazy, but it's crazy in a completely different way. Rather than the crazy being about 'ships or characters, it's more centered on the Cult-of-Joss itself and cuts across several fandoms.
That's why when I see some good ol' fashioned "Xander-hate wank" (like on the Darkhorse Boards right this very second) it almost gives me a warm fuzzy because it's so...quaint.
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I'm sorry you had to go through all that, though. I'm sure it couldn't have been fun.
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I really shouldn't have gotten swept up into that, I know...*blushes*
Still, this past May was the tenth anniversary of the airing of Becoming Part II, the conclusion of Season Two, and oh yes, Xander's Lie (TM somebody over at TWOP). One of the muddled messages of the UPN years was supposedly about how Good People May Do Bad Things But They're Still Good People, Nothing is Unforgivable, and Redemption! Is! For! Everybody! (Just ask Spike, Willow, Andrew, Anya, etc.). And yet Ten. Years. Later. people are still seething with rage about "Kick his ass." Still waiting for Joss to have Xander "punished" for it. Still insisting that The Lie, or any of the countless things Xander said or did that people hate him for, is the sum total of Xander as a character and everything else counts for nothing.
Maybe Joss *should* have Xander turn evil, try to destroy the world, or try to kill/attack Buffy, because apparently those things can be forgiven by the audience.
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Then again, WarEmblem seems convinced that Spike and Dawn had a "special relationship" that spanned the last 3 seasons (Ummmmm, no. Everyone commented at the time how Spike dropped Dawn like a hot potato as soon as he got Buffy), so I suspect his/her point of view is slightly Spike-centric.
Although I really love the part where WarEmblem would've had more respect if he was a Shaggy-style stoner. That made me go, "Whut?" Heeee!
No, really, it's pretty funny. WarEmblem seems hell-bent and determined to convince people that Xander is a Very Bad Person Who Deserves Badness Because Clearly He Wouldn't Be Fighting Evil If He Wasn't Crushing On Buffy and everyone else point out in-text reasons why WarEmblem is kinda wrong.
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And since WarEmblem declared that he/she is convinced that Buffy was actually in love with Spike in Season Six, and that was the real reason why she was so conflicted about having sex with him, in spite of all the canon evidence to the contrary, I'm pretty sure we know which corner of the internet WarEmblem hung out in.
As for the comments about Xander only being there because he still crushes on Buffy, I find it to be an example of the many double standards applied to Xander as a character. Angel and Spike are both shown to be pettily and pathetically still unable to get over Buffy, and it's hailed as Twu Wuv and swoonworthy. Yet despite five seasons of solid evidence that Xander did get over his crush on Buffy, the Xander bashers just looooove to drag out the chestnut that he has always been crushing/in lust with her (note that it's never that he was "in love" with her, 'cause that would somehow make it "all right") and turn it into "proof" that he's just an unprincipled, unthinking scumbag who only wants to get inside Buffy's pants. *eyeroll*
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That's probably the only reason why I ended up in those places to begin with.
Certainly by the beginning of S7 I rarely ventured onto the "big Buffy boards," primarily I just didn't find them all that much fun.