Fat Elvis 007

Taking to the Doctor thread.

In the thread for the Season 9 trailer, truther said: Clara is a horrible human being, but so is the twelfth Doctor. In fact, if there was a consistent theme last season it was that it was the Doctor's influence that made her a horrible human being. So I'm suprised he doesn't get as much flak for the show's problems as she does. Capaldi is fine for the role but he's written as a disrespectful jerk most of the time. His relationship with Clara is toxic and hateful."Kill the Moon" was the worst episode for both characters (and my personal Worst Episode Ever). The Doctor withholding crucial info from Clara to get her to "make a choice" was stupid and cruel. Rational adults do not behave that way. Leaving someone to make a terrible moral choice without giving them all the facts is wrong. They are supposed to be a team. He betrayed her. Then again Eleven was disrespectful toward Clara too but that was also mostly ignored. Even he would have never done this, though. Clara ignoring the people's vote (which was her idea) so that she could save a giant alien fetus that could have eaten the earth or destroyed it just by hatching was stupid and cruel. It made no sense. No rational adult would ever make that decision. It was the wrong decision; the narrative only tried to make it the right one by withholding information that no rational viewer would have ever guessed could be possible. She wasn't right because she weighed the options or figured anything out, like most companions would (and like she has done before). She was right just because. Her outburst to the Doctor in that episode was understandable, but then she immediately starts traveling with him again and continues to make awful choices. In the tree episode she tells the Doctor not to save the children because they'll miss their parents(!), and not to save her because she doesn't want to be the last of her kind. It was at this point that I began to wonder if the show was being written by sociopaths who have only seen flash cards of human emotions. So yes, Clara is awful. Some of that I think was definitely intentional--you couldn't accidentally write an arc like this, it's obvious she was supposed to parallel the Doctor and be corrupted by the time she spent with him. Some of it I think was supposed to be way more sympathetic than it ended up being. I wanted to like Clara and I genuinely found her more interesting this season even if often what made her interesting was what also made her such a terrible companion. If we get a new companion I'll be happy, but that still leaves the Doctor. How will he treat his next one? To me just getting rid of Clara doesn't solve the problem because it was the Doctor who caused Clara's problems in the first place. He was openly disrespectful and condescending to her from the beginning of the season, and he's like that to mostly everyone. She retaliated by telling him to shut up and/or threatening to hit him in nearly every episode. I thought people were exaggerating when I read so many complaining about that but having finally caught up on Netflix (minus the Christmas special) it really is almost every episode! I want a new Doctor AND a new companion who won't have such an adversarial relationship. But mostly? I want a new show runner. It's possible this dark arc could have been done well, even if the very idea bums me out, but it wasn't.

Truther: Taking to the Clara thread.

This definitely adds fuel to my theory that Season 4 will open with Allison in prison. Her storyline this season cribbed so much from "Weeds," it only makes sense that her storyline next season would crib from "Orange is the New Black." I know many have rolled their eyes over how derivative Allison's storyline has felt this year, and how much we would prefer to see her more connected with the group instead of isolated...but come on. Don't you want to see Allison in an orange jumpsuit? ;)

I have to concur with those who are praising the show for its diversity, especially among the ladies. This has turned into a surprisingly female-driven show. Skye, Simmons, Bobbie, May, Raina, and Xiaying are all completely different and complicated characters who drive the plot, and they all seemed to get more development than any of the guys this season. The gender and racial diversity on this show is definitely one thing the movie division, as well as DC's TV division, could learn from. I feel like Joss Whedon has had a pretty steady progression of adding more racial diversity in each show he's created, although I suspect the multiple Asian women in the cast can safely all be credited to Maurissa Tancharoen. I've always interpreted her song on the Dr. Horrible commentary trackk as a direct criticism of Whedon himself, since his last effort was Firefly, a show set in an Asian-influenced future in which there were no actual Asian people. Fast forward to Dollhouse, and all of a sudden there are multiple Asians in the cast. Hard to see that as a coincidence. As for Dichen Lachman, I think, like Eliza Dushku, she is very good at one or two things. She can play the cool, detached badass but she also does casual and fun-loving really well. "Belonging" was the best episode of Dollhouse and while a lot of that is down the writing, Lachman is still the star of that episode and I didn't see anyone criticizing her acting in discussions of it. I also think she seems more natural when she uses her real Australian accent. Still, I did think her acting as Xiaying fell really flat more often than not. It seemed to me that this character was maybe just a bit too complex and didn't really fit Lachman's acting style. She also had to give a lot of awkward exposition which is hard to sell without coming off as wooden. I thought she did a good job in the scene where she revealed to Skye that she was her mother, though.

I'd like to either see Coulson show some actual character growth, or just become the side character who gives exposition and orders. Instead he's always inhabited this weird middle ground where he has top billing and main character status, but he's a completely static character. He has storylines, but no real arcs, if that makes sense. Tahiti was a wash, his alien writing arc at the beginning of this season was actually well done, but Theta Protocol ended up being a big wet nothing. I actually liked the Real SHIELD storyline but out of all the characters, Phil somehow ended up the one changing the least from it, which just makes no sense on a narrative level. Did he learn anything from it? Did it make him want to change anything about his style of leadership? Did he even really suffer enough? If he's our protagonist the answers to all of those questions should be yes, and yet I don't feel like any of that happened.

Random questions I asked myself during this finale: --What kind of Appalachian stripper name is "White Gold?" --Do the characters care even less about Ben's death than I do? --Is Victoria Grayson really just gonna Tom Sawyer her own funeral without even a hint of a disguise? --Like, where are your big sunglasses? --What alternate names did they come up with for Courtney Love's assassin? "Pearl Necklace?" "Crystal Meth?" --Oh, NOW you have your big sunglasses, Victoria? Did you decide to put them on AFTER you got back inside your hotel room? --"Daisy Chains?" --Is it really that easy to escape a maximum security prison? --"Black Gums?" --Is Emily gonna FIGHT Courtney Love? --"Courtney Love?": --Why would they make one of the best scenes of the finale, and Charlotte's best scene ever, an ambiguous possible dream sequence? --Emily was cool and all in this episode, but why didn't she fight anyone? I like to watch her fight. Snark aside, this was a surprisingly good finale, way better than I thought possible after this trainwreck of a season. Then again, this show has always been good at endings, its the interminable middle that always feels like the writers have no fucking clue how to fill time in between revenging. This season has felt LONG. I feel like Margot and Louise have been on this show for a cumulative seventeen seasons, and I can barely remember a time when David wasn't alive.

I don't understand the MCU's treatment of Sharon Carter at all. Why didn't "The Winter Soldier" mention her connection to Peggy? Only the audience who knows the comics knows they are related, there was no clue to that anywhere in the film. Was a scene cut? And why hasn't Agents of SHIELD used her at all? She's on the same network and "Revenge" can't keep her that busy, she's barely even been the focus this season.

As much as I like Susan Ross, this show will never allow someone as good and uncorrupted as her to become president.

I've always hated Botox's Eye (can't remember the actual name right now, and can't be arsed to look it up) as a stupid plot device that was in no way consistent with the plot before or after, but I don't think I ever realized how truly appalling it was as a physical prop until that still photo in the review. Good lord.

The attitude towards America citizens on this show is truly disgusting. Everyone including the so called white hats are constantly going on about how us poor plebes are just sheep who can't handle the truth about those in power, and it's up to the powerful to protect us from the truth. Olivia's speech about justice was probably the first time I've seen that narrative challenged in any way, but she and David were so self-congratulatory about it that even that didn't work. I've never seen a show where the fandom wanted so many characters to just die off. And it's completely justified.

We've seen vampires rise from headstone-affixed graves since Season 1, despite the fact that we know vampires are supposed to rise the same night they are killed. It seems odd to complain about headstone issues at this point. Though it's true that plot holes become more noticeable when the show isn't good enough in other areas to sustain our attention. I have a big problem with Buffy trying to kill Anya, especially after last season when she was vehement that Willow must! Not! Kill! Warren! The explanation we're given is that it's OK to kill demons but not humans, but at this point the definition of "demon" has been so thoroughly abused that there is virtually no moral basis to this. There is no difference in personality, conscience, or outlook between Human Anya or Demon Anya. She is written as the exact same person, only with powers. She feels remorse as a demon which should be impossible. In the first few seasons--hell, even this season when it comes to Spike's storyline--we are told that the human soul is what allows beings to feel remorse and what gives them moral worth. It's ok to kill vampires and demons because they lack this. But now we have good demons and neutral demons and remorseful demons. How is this possible? Would it be OK to kill, say, Lorne? "Angel" says no and seems to argue that it's just because he is harmless, but never explains why if he has the potential to be that way others don't as well. Both shows still have their main characters drawing a bright line between killing even the most evil of humans and killing demons, but the reasoning for that line just doesn't make sense anymore. Say what you will about Spike's storyline, I felt that it was always clear that as an unsouled vampire he did not have the same moral worth or potential for goodness as the humans in the cast. Even though he did good things it was always for a selfish motive. Plus the chip could be looked at as a behavioral conditioning tool--he adapted, but he didn't gain a true conscience until he gained his soul.

To clarify: Zachary Ty Bryan and hooded secret societies were both part of Veronica Mars, but they were not one and the same. :) "Help" is my favorite episode of the season, and one of only two or three genuinely good episodes in S7. It's slow, but it makes up for it with a really compelling story of the week. It's great to see the gang focus on helping someone outside their inner circle again. I've ranted before about how overrated I find "Selfless." It's a very entertaining episode in and of itself, it just doesn't fit anything we know about Anya or vengeance demons up until this point. Why did NO ONE remember that you can reverse a wish by destroying the vengeance demon's amulet? You can't convince me that Anya never told them how she lost her powers in the two plus years she was with Xander. And even then, no one even bothers to do any research before debating the merits of killing Anya. Also, does she have a soul when she is a demon or not? Gee, it's a good thing the writers weren't simultaneously doing a big storyline about a newly ensouled demon, otherwise people might ask these types of questions!

Statsgirl: "The Dr. Who comment -- I wonder if that line was put in because EBR is a Dr. Who fan herself. A year of so ago an interviewer asked cast members if they were on a desert island, what they would most like to have washed up on shore and EBR said "the TARDIS"." Are you sure that's right? Because this sounds exactly like a scene from Agents of SHIELD Season 1, and it was Jemma Simmons who said this. I actually buy Quentin's obsessiveness here. It doesn't make rational sense, but it's not supposed to. The one thing that bothered me was Roy posing as the Arrow at the end. I did like the way that was foreshadowed with Roy saying he felt relieved when he thought he was about to be arrested, but I don't see how that plan is going to work this time.

Preach.I too hope for a cast reshuffling. The writers clearly have nowhere to take Huck and Quinn, giving that they've done nothing this season but repeat the same disturbing patterns of behavior. Get some new blood for OPA. Jump ahead a few years and have Amelie as president with Fitz as first husband. If they must continue Olitz, at least give Olivia a more viable second choice than another abusive murderer. Kill Jake and Papa Pope and never speak of them or B6-13 again.

At this point Quinn reminds me of no one so much as Gretchen from "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." She is completely brainwashed. Huck is not your "family," girl. He is your abuser. You are a victim of Stockholme syndrome.

Justcris, your list is my list, although I'm nowhere near as much of a Spike fan.

"Hell's Bell" is the best episode of Season 6 and the worst episode of Season 6, depending on the scene. The Scooby moments are wonderful, with the Willow/Xander and Buffy/Xander friendships getting more sweet moments than they have in at least a season. Even Anya has some sweet moments. The "haha, wacky demons!" stuff at the wedding is terrible. Why is Anya inviting current murderers to her wedding? Why is everyone OK with this? And then the whole future plot and Xander leaving Anya at the altar, not because of her unrepentant murders, but because of his insecurities, is terrible.

I actually love the musical and re-watch it frequently. It is, IMO, the one bright spot of Season 6. Tabular Rasa is pretty good too, other than the character assassination of Willow at the beginning. It's one thing for her to try another memory erasure spell--I buy that--but it's another thing that she smiles giddily while doing so. That hurt.

Great point about the Scoobies' social status or lack thereof, Kel. You're right about having no one to compare the Scoobies too--once they left high school, the gang just had no social lives outside of each other. The first three seasons were full of so many recurring characters, and it helped Sunnydale feel like...well, not a real place, because it was such a weirdly inconsistent place, but it gave the series a sense of environment and community. We had a sense of how outsiders viewed the Scoobies and what their lives might be like without each other, which helped us appreciate their relationships more, and gave their lives stakes beyond just life and death, which can come to feel very rote on a show like this. And those stakes were always treated as important on this show--we never wondered whether Buffy would survive, but we did sometimes wonder whether or not she would be recognized for her sacrifices, or if she would be able to live a normal life. In Season 4 there was at least an attempt to continue to ground the show in something approaching a relatable world, and Buffy, Xander and Willow continued to meet new people and have struggles related to their social lives. They still struggled to "fit in" and find their places in the world. After that, though? Nada. The world is supposed to get bigger after high school, but for Buffy and co., their worlds got smaller and more insular. We rarely see recurring characters, apart from holdovers like Jonathan and Amy (who are both basically victims of character assassination, IMO), but there is no sense of community anymore, no sense of where any of these people fit into their larger world. Aside from Xander, none of them really work. We don't know what Willow is studying or what her goals are outside of magic. The show gains a sort of claustrophobic feeling because everything revolves around the main characters and their problems, which start to feel increasingly petty. Dawn apparently has no friends other than her sister's friends, and the few times we do see people she hangs out with, they are sinfully boring. I can see why it was hard for the show to grapple with life after high school, especially since they pretty much gave up on college, but it would have been nice to at least see them try.

As much as I loathe Spuffy and MagicCrack, I don't think they would be quite as ill regarded had they not taken place at the exact same time. Remember when the writers knew how to balance the heartbreak with the joy? Oz and Willow have that wonderful moment in "Surprise" when everything else is going to hell, and that relationship as well as Xordelia (Cander?) continued to grow throughout the season. In Season 6, everyone descends into the gloom. One of the most common pieces of praise the show always got was its ability to balance the darkness with levity and real warmth, but that was mostly gone this season. Not that there wasn't humor, it's just that most of it (the Trio, Doublemeat Phallus, Clem, Buffy laughing at Spike's jokes about killing her friends) didn't work for me.

I personally found Riley's behavior worse than cheating. Cheating is horrible, but most people can understand it on a primal level. Letting vampires feed on you is a few degrees more messed up and horrifying, IMO, and I never felt it was in character. The other self-destructive behavior, like going after vampires alone, I understood, but this was a bridge too far. And I have to agree with damngoodcoffee that the show seemed to want us not only to see Xander's speech as persuasive to us, not just Buffy, they also repeatedly framed the breakup as being at least half Buffy's fault, which I've never been able to stomach. Being a little emotionally distant while your mother is dying and your sister isn't real =\= letting vampires suck your blood and then giving your girlfriend an ultimatum. Riley bears 99% of the blame for how things ended.

At the end of the day we accept the plot holes as long as the story is one we want to watch. I don't really question why the Watchers didn't kill Faith in her coma, or at least have her moved to England, because I loved Faith's redemption arc. But Buffy's money woes just weren't fun to watch, so fans aren't as forgiving. This is rarely pointed out, but this is a show wherein vampires frequently rise from their graves even though it is explicitly shown multiple times that they rise the same night as they are killed. So...consistency of world building was never really this show's strong suit.

Is anyone reading the Season 10 comics? After the horribleness of both Seasons 8 and 9 I never thought the series could woo me back in, but I saw an issue on the stands featuring Ghost Anya and felt compelled to see what was going on. I had stopped reading regularly very shortly into S8, and every time I heard something new or picked up a stray issue I was extremely unimpressed. That said, Season 10 has been a breath of fresh air. There are still some gripes I have, such as everything revolving around magic, but overall it feels like the writers have regained some focus and are at least trying to return to what made Buffy great in the first place. Even though the storyline is about the gang being responsible for rewriting the rules of magic, the writers have managed to keep the stories grounded in the characters' relationships and have even given them a semblance of normal lives again. The Scoobies feel much more human and close than they have in a very long time. Even the Giles as a kid storyline has had its bright spots, and feels less like a gimmick than the similar "Giant Dawn" storyline of S8, though I hope they re-age him soon. And Xander/Dawn hasn't felt as squicky as I had feared. If there is one character I feel the writers still aren't getting right, though, it's Willow. She is still defined primarily by her magic and is always wearing awful hippie clothes and saying things like "Oh my Goddess," which I believe she only said twice on the show. I hate that they are trying to make that her catchphrase. I was intrigued when they said she was getting some kind of software job (has Willow ever really worked a day in her life?) but the comics haven't really done anything with that. Still, I've bought digital copies of every issue this season which I never felt I would do. The comics are funny and usually have at least one poignant character moment per issue. A huge improvement over the last two seasons.

Well, "The Body" only takes place over the course of a few hours; it makes sense to me that there is no supernatural threat in the episode until the very end in the hospital. Also, Spike is mercifully absent from that episode. You might be talking about the next episode, in which if I recall the supernatural threat is caused by Dawn, but that's no that uncommon either. A lot of episodes have no supernatural threat until the Scoobies inadvertently summon one.