[Girl Meets World: Season 1 Discussion]

Auggie is hopeless, and Ava just makes him even worse. But we're stuck with him, and probably both, because I'm convinced Disney has done testing with their younger viewers and the two characters must test well with them. They don't make this show for adults who watched the original, they make it for kids.

 

I think Disney Channel's target audience is tweens and early teens, so viewers between 10 and 14, give or take. So kids, but older kids, most of whom are just counting the days until they are actual teen-agers, and having fantasies about how awesome high school will be. Which is why the lead characters on most DC shows tend to be about 13 to 15 when the shows start, and in high school.

 

After that, I think they hope to pull in adults. That's why I think the adult roles on these shows keep getting bigger and bigger. Not to mention that they have a show where the title character is an adult.

 

I'd actually be shocked if they were all that concerned about their shows appealing to really young kids. They're probably happy if they do, which is why so many of the shows (but not all) do have young kids as side characters. But if that young character really bugged enough of the older viewership, I bet they'd make changes no matter how much 6 and 7 year-olds liked that character.

 

I don't have a huge problem with Auggie. I was going to say "especially when he's acting like an actual kid," but I've actually chuckled a few times when he was acting like a little adult. Other times, it makes me cringe. And the stuff with Ava and him having a "serious relationship" (enough for him to fall to pieces over it at one point) really makes me cringe.

 

And here's something I find interesting. GMW is the only DC show I can think of that's so heavy-handed with trying to have some deep message in every episode. The other shows do that kind of thing on occasion, but it doesn't come across as awkwardly as GMW sometimes does. Which is funny because people who criticize GMW for being so heavy-handed with the messages often seem to think the writers are being forced to do it by DC.

[S01.E20: Girl Meets First Date]

but it's Disney channel so lol no

 

I keep seeing comments like this but, now days, DC loves doing suggestive, wink-wink-nudge-nudge type stuff on their shows. And some of it is way more blatant than the mirroring at the end of this episode.

 

I think DC knows that adults do watch their shows, so they try to put stuff in that will fly over the average 8 year-old's head, but that someone older will catch and get a chuckle out of.

 

I actually wondered if the GMW writers didn't realize they had more freedom than they thought they did because the show is on Disney Channel. But I hope they'd realize it by the time they started working on season 2.

 

As for this episode, meh. It had some good stuff, but most of it left me cold.

 

I agree that the Auggie and Ava stuff is annoying. I don't have a big problem with them as characters. (Well, depending on how they're being written in a given ep.) But this whole thing about them being in a relationship, and being so serious about it at their age, does not work for me. I think I'm supposed to be going, "Aw, how cute." Instead, all I think when it's going on is, "I wish the show would just drop  this and spend the time on something else."

[Unpopular Opinions]

5. I loved S3 Anya. Did she suffer some sort of traumatic head injury between S3 and her reappearance in S4? ;) (To be fair, I enjoyed her more in S4 than I'd remembered as well, but she's quite different!)

 

Actually Anya's descent into wacky cluelessness about anything human happened between Doppelgangland and The Prom. But it is jarring, indeed. One episode she is a crafty manipulator, the next she can't say a convincing lie to save her life and doesn't understand how dating works.

 

I'm actually fine with characters being inconsistent at the start. I figure the writers are feeling things out, and trying to decide where they want to go with the character. So if the character evolves in ways that are different than how they were in their first few episodes, I'm willing to handwave the early stuff.

 

The problem was that, after they decided to go the "clueless about all things human" route with her, they kept introducing things that made her utter cluelessness harder and harder to buy. Like the fact that she was born human, and lived as a human into adulthood (was engaged and everything) before she became a demon. And rather than spending most of her time in some hell dimension, and only popping into this dimension to grant wishes, she actually spent a great deal of time interacting with humans in her 1000 years as a demon, so her total ignorance about how the human world works made no sense.

 

And after living for years as a human, she was still acting clueless about most things, and hadn't picked up even basic stuff like "when I blurt out the details of my sex life in public, people get uncomfortable and give me funny looks, so maybe I shouldn't do that anymore."

 

Still, if I ignored my issues with the character, she did manage to make me laugh a lot of the time.

[The Buffy Characters We Can't Stand]

I used to detest Riley back in the day when I was a rabid (and I mean, r-a-b-i-d) BA and later BS shipper. But now, he's just so damn blah that I can't bring myself to get worked up about him.

 

Whenever someone mentions how boring Riley was, I remember that I didn't find Angel all that interesting on BtVS. There were interesting things about him. (He had the "different from the rest of the vampires/ghosts/trolls/whatever" thing and the "was once really evil" thing going for him, and those are pretty popular tropes.) And he made a good "accessory" to the B/A, forbidden-ish love story. (Another popular trope.) But Angel himself as a character didn't do much for me. In fact, I almost didn't watch Angel: The Series because I didn't think I could get into a show with a lead I found so uninteresting. (Luckily I gave the show a shot, and found him more interesting in the first ep of AtS I saw than I had throughout most of BtVS.) 

 

One of Riley's problem is that he didn't have much epic, romanticized, larger-than-life stuff going for him. He was just a regular guy with regular issues. Well, relatively speaking. Still, while he wasn't the most exciting character ever, I liked him well enough. 

 

Speaking of Buffy, I went through cycles with her. Sometimes I really liked and admired her character. Sometimes she got on my nerves. And, by the end of the show, she definitely qualified as a character I couldn't stand. But I can still like her in older eps, especially if I try not to remember the last two seasons.

[Sarah's Sober Second Thought Series: Uncoupled]

and the biggest problem with the Trio was the only reason they did any damage because the Scoobies were too busy fighting with each other to focus on them. [snip] The Trio should never have presented a real threat and the show had to write problem after problem, incompetence after incompetence for the Scoobies to get them to.

 

That was kind of the whole point of the Trio. We weren't supposed to see them as a real threat, or actually take them seriously most of the time. And we were supposed to see that the Scoobies being so distracted by their personal issues was a big reason the Trio was able to run wild for so long. So, on that score, the writers succeeded in doing what they were trying to do. The problem was that it just didn't work for me. 

[Sarah's Sober Second Thought Series: Uncoupled]

"OMWF" really lands in a heap for some people, doesn't it? My SIL loves musicals, is in a barbershop group, and haaaaated "OMWF," so much that she quit the show at that point in her marathon and never went back to it. Her complaint was that it was excessively self-regarding, which is to your point, @Andy, and I don't disagree (and didn't back in 2001).

 

I love musicals too, and I think that's part of the reason OMWF left me so completely underwhelmed. Because I've seen some great musicals. (Repeatedly, in many cases.) And I couldn't help thinking of them when watching OMWF. Which wasn't good for the episode.

 

At the same time, I did kind of admire that everyone gave it a shot, and the actors really seemed to be trying. That just wasn't enough to really make me like the episode.

[Sarah's Sober Second Thought Series: With Heavy Hearts]

Wellllll okay, but given what Buffy is/does (slays vampires/the undead to protect humans), and how closely the act of feeding is allied with sex, here and elsewhere, this is a distinction without a meaningful difference.

 

There is in my mind. I get, on an intellectual level, how it's a metaphor for cheating, and can even see how the writers tried to play that up. But my gut just doesn't see it as the same. So I just can't see what Riley did as cheating. 

 

I can appreciate a good metaphor (although I think this one was a tad clunky). But, as often as not, I just don't see the metaphor as the actual thing it's a metaphor of. If that makes sense.

[Sarah's Sober Second Thought Series: With Heavy Hearts]

Finally, ugh, Xander in Into the Woods. The show's seeming backing of his speech will never fail to tick me off.

"Buffy should take romantic advice from a guy who stopped being in puppy-love with her all of ten minutes ago and run after a dude who basically cheated on her because Cheaty McGraw loves her and Slayers can't be choosers"

This exactly. Like what the hell, Xander?

 

Have to say, I agreed with him too. But that might be because I took what he said a totally different way. I didn't think he was saying, "All things considered, you're lucky the guy even fell in love with you," or anything like that. The gist I got from what he said was that if Buffy thought she would actually be fine with Riley being gone, then let him go. But if she thought she might actually want to work things out with Riley, it wouldn't matter if he was already gone. (And was going to be totally beyond reach.) Basically, Xander thought that, once her anger cooled, Buffy would be miserable that Riley was gone. Which was a totally logical thing to think, and he had every right to step in and try to prevent his friend from being miserable. 

 

And I'm not sure Xander once having feelings for Buffy meant he was somehow disqualified to talk to her that night. Maybe if he'd been trying to stop Buffy from going after Riley, you could question his motives. But, since he was doing the opposite, I think he had every right to say what he felt needed saying.

 

As for Riley being a cheater, he really wasn't. The vamp 'ho thing might have been a metaphor for cheating. But a metaphor for cheating isn't cheating.

[Xander]

- Xander embodied too many of the so-called Nice Guy™ qualities for my liking.

 

To me, a guy isn't a Nice Guy (or even kind of a Nice Guy) unless they share the Nice Guy's main motivation, which is that they just want to "get the girl" (in whatever way they define that) and don't actually care about her beyond that.

 

This isn't something I ever applied to Xander. There's no doubt in my mind that he cared about Buffy as a friend and a person, and always would even if she never returned his romantic feelings. There was a time when he would've been thrilled if she had romantic feelings for him, but that wasn't the only reason he was in her life, or tried to be there for her they way he did. (Including encouraging her to try to work things out with another guy because he thought she'd be miserable if she didn't.) 

 

As for Xander having Nice Guy traits, a lot of those traits are just being human. (It's pretty human to get upset if someone you have feelings for has feelings for someone else.) The difference is that, with most people (and in Xander's case) someone you really like liking someone else just hurts, and people don't always react to that kind of pain in the best way. With an actual Nice Guy, he's thinking, "I've been pretending to be her friend, acting like I actually care about her, and doing all of this stuff for her, but she's all into someone else, which means all of my hard work has been for nothing."

 

Which, like I said, was never where I thought Xander's head was at. So I just can't think of him as a Nice Guy, or even Nice Guyish.  

[Unpopular Opinions]

- I was far more interested in the gang’s story once they left high school. Not saying the latter seasons were always as well-handled and executed, I just don’t find the problems of middle/upper-middle class white kids in California all that meaningful.

 

And, to me, the writers totally didn't know what to do with the gang after they left high school, which was a big problem. I can like a story set anywhere if it's interesting enough. I can be interested in a story set almost anywhere depending on how it's written. And I could've been interested in some of the "life stuff" the writers gave the gang after graduation if it had been handled better. A lot of it just wasn't, so it mostly fell flat.

 

- Xander embodied too many of the so-called Nice Guy™ qualities for my liking.

 

Responding in the Xander thread.

[S01.E18: Girl Meets Master Plan]

I also don't think Sabrina is significantly better than Rowan. Rowan can do the dramatic just as well. 

 

Rowan herself isn't horrendous, but it's all kind of broadly acted wide-eyed emotional spurting, with no shading. 

 

I've actually been noticing how subtle Rowan plays Riley sometimes. She'll react to some things with just a shift in expression, or a prolonged look, or a slight change in posture, that tells you what she's thinking about something another character did or said.

 

So while I agree that she acts very broad a lot of the time right now, I can see Riley becoming more subtle and low key as the show goes on.

[S01.E18: Girl Meets Master Plan]

I don't see any chemistry between Maya and Lucas...

 

Chemistry is fascinating. It's so different based on who is seeing it.

 

Chemistry is definitely subjective because I don't see massive amounts of romantic chemistry between Maya and Lucas either. They do have chemistry, but chemistry doesn't necessarily mean two characters should hook up. It can just mean they play off of each other well, which is all I get from Maya and Lucas.

 

On the other hand, Riley and Lucas have made me go awwww on several occasions. But I don't necessarily see them as some major romance either.

 

They script her being playfully antagonistic with Lucas, and because she actually does emote an older presence (her smaller physical size doesn't change the fact that she FEELS older), it comes off as flirtation.

 

I've had relationships like that with people that were always (and always going to be) totally platonic. So seeing that sort of relationship between characters doesn't automatically make me think romance.

 

As for who looks too old for whom, I suck at judging people's ages. A lot. I think it's because I've known (and seen on screen) so many people who looked either a lot younger or a lot older than they really were that it's sort of thrown off my ability to judge.

 

I do think Maya acts a lot more mature than Riley, but I still see them as basically the same age.

[S01.E18: Girl Meets Master Plan]

*Riley was intolerable. Her interfering in other people's lives comes across as annoying instead of funny or endearing. The actress can't sell it.

 

Riley just doesn't bother me, and whenever someone else talks about how they can't stand her for some thing she did in an episode (well, the ones I've seen), I'm always surprised. And I think the actress playing her is doing a good job of it. So I guess it's a "different strokes" thing.

 

*The whole scheme set-up. It didn't ad anything. It was just wasted screentime to get Farkle and Lucas in the episode.

 

I found that amusing, so another "different strokes" kind of thing.

 

* The confrontation between Shawn and Cory/Topanga. While good, I can't help but feel that being on the Disney Channel neutered this scene some.

 

Considering what I've seen on other DC shows, I doubt that was the case here. I just think that, even with the seriousness going on, they were going with a more humorous tone with the whole, "Shawn doesn't think Cory and Topanga are doing anything, but they really are," thing.

[The Buffy Characters We Can't Stand]

I think because the show just seemed to me to be much more simplistic - it seemed to be about how Angel somehow could miraculously Save people and everyone who went over (Cordelia, Faith, Wesley, Darla) somehow had their flaws removed through being in Angel's presence.

 

I have to disagree. For one, it's interesting to see someone call Angel more simplistic because I always thought it was the opposite. Things felt more cut-and-dried on BtVS, and more complicated and gray on Angel.

 

And I think all of the characters you named remained flawed. However, they did change, and so their flaws changed. And maybe the flaws Angel explored were more subtle and harder to pin down than the flaws that got highlighted on BtVS. For example, Wesley lost most of the overt, almost cartoonish flaws he had on BtVS. However, equally big, but more realistic, flaws were brought to the surface on Angel. Like how he was always trying to prove himself, and show that he could be tough and make the "hard decisions," a flaw that bit him (and lots of other people) in the ass more than once.

[S01.E12: Girl Meets The Forgotten]

It definitely was. Especially early on. Although one thing I worry about this show is that while Cory and Shawn got to grow up, I doubt that we will get to see Riley and Maya really grow up the same way, if the other Disney sitcoms (that I only notice in a peripheral sort of way) are any indication - they all seem to try to just regurgitate the same story for as many episodes as they can get. 

 

It depends on what show you're talking about. On Good Luck Charlie, the kids definitely grew and changed over time. And on Dog With a Blog, the characters (and their relationships with each other) have grown and changed since the show started.

 

Actually, I think DC's newer shows make more of an effort with stuff like this than their older shows did.

[S01.E17: Girl Meets Game Night]

I think you really hit the nail on the coffin. In boy meets world cory had no idea what the world was about and was learning from the people around him. Hence the title of the show. But Riley arleady knowing everything doesn't fit with the premise of the last show and current show mission to show a girl growning and learning in this day of age when she knows everything and acts like a grown up.

 

Actually, I don't think Riley knows everything. I think Riley thinks she knows everything. In fact, the point of a lot of the episodes I've seen is that Riley goes into a situation thinking she knows the deal only to be thrown when she realizes she doesn't. Or thinking she can fix or control things (like Maya's relationship with her mother) only to realize she can't.

 

So I think the show is going for a "she thinks she knows but she doesn't" type thing. Whether they are selling that as well as they could is another story.

[The Buffy Characters We Can't Stand]

I just couldn't see him as anything other than someone who was sweet and well-intentioned but at the same time limited and narrow-minded,

 

I think Riley was the opposite of limited. I guess he was limited in terms of being a normal human (especially after he lost the power boost). But, as humans go, he had a lot going for him in terms of being intelligent, extremely capable, in top shape physically, and not a bad looking guy to boot.

 

As for him being narrow-minded, I don't really see that either.

 

The only characters I really couldn't stand were Darla & Drusilla, and I think it had more to do with the actresses rather than the characters.  I can't stand Julie Benz with that lispy, whispery baby voice (I couldn't watch Dexter because of her), and I understand Dry was supposed to be insane, but IMO Juliet Landau overacted to the point of insanity.

 

Darla was one of several characters I ended up liking more on Angel than on BtVS.

 

The problem with Dru was that she was such a caricature. Her job was to come in, act crazy beyond belief, then leave again. That was it. It was hard to think of her as an actual character because, most of the time, she really wasn't one. She was just there, acting crazy.

[Unpopular Opinions]

rush to Angel's defense without a thought for anything but protecting the big fathead.

 

I don't have a problem with Faith protecting a defenseless Angel, because she couldn't actually let Connor kill him. But it still could've lead to something. Of all the people on either show, Faith was the perfect one to understand someone being that screwed up, and the badness that could come out of that. But all she did was put him in his place a couple of times (and I was talking about the first time earlier as seeming kind of pointless), and that was it.

 

I hate, hate, HATED Faith on Buffy,but somehow I enjoyed her appearances on the first season of Angel. 

 

Speaking of which, I enjoyed Spike more on Angel than I did on Buffy. And Angel himself, for that matter :) (Unpopularly enough, the first and last seasons of Angel are by far my favorites!)

 

I felt that way about a lot of the characters. Even Willow came across better in one episode in season 4 of Angel than she did in most of season 7 of BtVS.

 

Like a few other people here, I always loved Buffy---even long after I stopped loving most other aspects of the show. That's not to say I think she was a flawless saint who could do no wrong or even that I was always on her side whenever a conflict arose, but I never stopped liking and even semi-admiring her.

 

I really liked and admired Buffy in earlier seasons but, by the end of the show, she seemed like a burnt out shell of her former self to me, and it was hard to find much to admire about her. Now I've seen characters go through jackass periods where I wanted to smack them for one thing or another, but I was still a fan of the character. But something about the way BtVS did it with Buffy just didn't work.

[Unpopular Opinions]

(my favourite Faith moment ever is when she kicked the crap out of Connor).

 

I'm the opposite, because that was the only time I didn't like Faith. You would think, with her long history of stubborn wilfulness, not to mention occasional bouts of homicidal behavior, that she would be sympathetic to Connor, who was more fucked-up than she could have ever dreamed of being.

 

The moment didn't make me hate Faith, but it did seem kind of pointless. It would be different if it had lead to something, like Faith seeing herself in Connor and then trying to help him. But, as it was, it was just, "Faith puts Connor in his place. And..."

 

I guess it was satisfying to people who just liked seeing Connor put in his place, no matter who did it or why. (And I've felt that way about enough characters to get that.) But, to me, it just seemed like an empty moment that didn't really mean anything.

[Unpopular Opinions]

In my opinion both Connor and Dawn were bad ideas with bad execution to boot.

 

I'm actually fine with something on a show not totally making sense as long as I enjoy the story that comes out of it. For example, Angel's curse made no sense. In any way. But some good story came out of it, so I'm willing to handwave how little sense the curse made.

 

I can think of a lot of stories on a lot of shows that I liked even though some aspect of them made no sense or were just poorly done.

 

As for Connor and Dawn, I don't think they were bad ideas. Mostly because I've come across plenty of stories that sounded kind of stupid before I saw/read them, and a lot of them turned out to be pretty good. So I'm all for writers trying things that are kind of out there, even if they don't totally work.

 

My problems with Dawn weren't about some stuff not making sense. They're about how the character was written a lot of the time, and how the writers didn't seem to really know what to do with her after a while.

[Unpopular Opinions]

I have always liked Dawn and never understood the intense hate directed at her. I felt like she really brought something new to the table - this sense of family and the wonderful sisterly bond between her and Buffy.

 

I enjoyed their humorous sisterly moments. But when they had more serious ones, based on the bond sisters develop over the years, my brain would again remind me that Dawn hadn't actually been around that long, so a lot of their bond was based on stuff that never happened. Then I'd remind myself that, even if their memories weren't real, their feelings were. But, thanks to this mental debate, I wasn't "in the scene" anymore.

 

But, somehow I could buy the humorous stuff, like Buffy being the over-protective big sister, or Dawn being the bratty little sister.

[Smallville Anonymous: Our Smallville Support Group]

It did a great deal of things right I think..it should be given its due instead of remembered for its faults.

 

I think the show did some good things. But they did a whole lot more that was disappointing, badly handled, anti-climactic, or in some other way unsatisfying.

 

Okay, they created a great Lex. Like I've said elsewhere, SV's Lex Luthor set the bar for me, and most other Lex's can't come close. But SV even tried to mess up Lex in later seasons.

 

So I while I acknowledge that SV did some good things, I also think that, overall, it was a mess of a show that didn't leave much of a legacy.

 

Compare that to, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By the time it was over, I thought BtVS had gotten pretty bad. But when it was great it was great, and I still consider it one of the best shows of it's type ever made.

 

SV was never great. It was kind of good sometimes, and they had some great moments. And I think it had the potential to be an awesome show. But it never really was.

[Unpopular Opinions]

2. I liked Dawn and Connor and I don't understand why everyone hates them so much.

 

I didn't hate either of them, but I did like Connor more as a character.

 

I think the writers were trying way too hard to make me like Dawn. It was like, "Isn't she so adorable, and such a spaz, but in a cute way. And, look, everyone else loves her so much. Heck, even Spike likes her."

 

With Connor, it was more like they just presented him to us, and we could feel however we wanted to feel about him. I do think they tried to show why he was the way he was. But it didn't feel like they were trying to give him the woobie treatment to make me love him. It was more like, "There are definite reasons why he's a little psycho. But you're still going to want to smack him a lot of the time."

 

Plus, with Dawn, I sometimes had a hard time with the suspension of disbelief thing. Like, when she was grieving for Joyce, a part of me would be thinking, "Technically, she only knew the woman a few months, and Dawn's emotions are based on fake memories of things that never happened," which would throw me right out of the scene. Then I'd have to remind myself (again) that, whatever the circumstances, Dawn's emotions were real to her. But, by then, I'd already been thrown out of things too much to feel the emotional impact the scene was supposed to.

 

I know everyone loves Vamp Willow

 

I didn't love Vamp Willow. I didn't despise her or anything, but I didn't think she was all that awesome. She was kind of entertaining, and it was interesting seeing a version of Willow that was so different from the one we knew. But I never found myself wishing she would show up in another episode or anything. And I found the other characters' reactions to her more interesting than Vamp Willow herself. 

[S01.E16: Girl Meets Home For the Holidays]

I was kinda suprise to hear boyfriend jokes on disney channel.

 

Disney Channel shows aren't nearly as innocent as some people might think, and haven't been for a while. If anything, the network's writers seem to like to see what they can slip in. Like this line from Suite Life on Deck:

 

"Paris is full of men. And I plan on shaking my bon bons at each and every one of them."

 

And they weren't talking about chocolates, but about exactly what it sounds like.

 

On a recent Jessie, we learn the wacky neighbor likes coming up with excuses for the doorman to carry her up the stairs fireman style. Because she likes the view. And he mentions still having bruises from last time.

 

And on Liv & Maddie, the brother recently hit on his mom. Well, she had her back to him and, from behind, he just thought she was a "hot girl." He doesn't realize she's his mom until he delivers his pickup line and she turns around. And they are both traumatized. 

 

I've actually been wondering if, because of the network, the GMW writers didn't know they could be pushing things more than they have. But that they'd eventually realize they could, and that would show in season 2.

[Relationship Thread: Dysfunction Junction]

Agree to disagee but I'm just going by what Damon flat out admitted. He killed and turned Bonnie's Mom into a vampire even though he won the coin toss and Stefan was the one who was supposed to do it. He didn't let him because he said Stefan was tettering on the edge after his last Ripper binge and as he said "I'm better at being the bad guy." Maybe that's not always Damon's motivation (probably not) but it has been at least once.

 

I was disagreeing with the idea that being "the bad one" so Stefan could claim the title of "good one" had been the driving motivation behind Damon doing bad stuff for all of these decades. Not whether or not that was the reason for one bad thing he did.

 

I'd even argue that, in that situation, it wasn't Damon being the "bad one" so Stefan could maintain his "good one" image. It was Damon doing something he knew he'd be more okay with than Stefan. In other words, he said to himself, "If I do this it won't bother me much, but it would drive Stefan crazy." So he did it instead. Which does say something about his mindset.