I never did see the musical episode of Buffy.

[conuly]

So I found it online and watched it, and then continued to watch the series from there. Along the way, I've realized something. Two somethings, anyway.

1. I actually don't like season 7. Each individual episode is fine, I just don't like it all together.

2. My sister attended high school with SMG. Which, of course, is to be expected when you attend LaGuardia, but it's still pretty nifty.

This is random, because I have little else to post today. I don't know, nothing interesting is happening lately that I want to talk about.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I love the musical episode - when my housemate Morchal' and I worked at the robotics shop, we'd play the sound-track to that a lot, and sing along; Nothing To Tell was #1 on our hit parade.

Not so much into the rest of Buffy though - meh, what can I say; it's a TV show; even on DVD with all the damn commercials removed, it still moves at the deadly-dull, slog-it-out pace of TV shows: 10 minutes of plot stretched into a full episode by means of artificial 'suspense'. The Buffy cast are absolutely unconvincing as 'teenagers'; the show's whole premise is about as believable as Gilligan's Island.

I was particularly annoyed with the way that they portrayed not just 'witchcraft', but specifically Wicca, as the same-old hackneyed nose-wiggling wand-waving (with, of course, the obligatory trope about this Leading To Evil And Damnation If You're Not Careful.) Admittedly, Christianity doesn't fare much better in the series, but people don't assume on that basis that real Christianity is all about demons and vampires. But meh, it's a TV show; what can one expect.

"If ya read TV Tropes, ya don't have to watch TV."

[conuly]

the show's whole premise is about as believable as Gilligan's Island.

Well, if you're looking for believable you've pretty much wiped out just about all of TV and film, as well as most of print.

"If ya read TV Tropes, ya don't have to watch TV."

True. But that's going to waste even *more* of your life!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well, perhaps not 'believable', but at least 'plausible in context'. The book Robinson Crusoe isn't really believable, and The Swiss Family Robinson is even less so, but one can suspend disbelief with only a minor effort of will. With Gilligan's Island that's not possible even in childhood; it's all too ridiculous.

Gilligan's Island was funny, though - or at least I found it funny when I was in grade school. Buffy had its occasional funny moments, but mostly it seemed to be a lot of pseudo-teenage angst and drama, 'Emo Times at Hellmouth High'.

I did like Giles, Spike and Anya, who seemed to have genuine, original characters at times, rather than just stereotypical TV Tropes characteristics. And I did appreciate Willow and Tara's sweet witchy romance; even though it ended so tragically. I thought it was great to have a lesbian relationship in a show that wasn't about Lesbian Relationships, y'know; just naturally occurring in the context of ordinary life, or what passes for it in Sunnydale.

LOL, nah, TV Tropes is a pretty big site, but it's not that big. If it was a real book, instead of a link-overloaded web-site where it takes twice as long to turn a page as it does to read one, it would only make one moderate-sized paperback, and I can get through the average paperback in less time than it takes to watch an average movie.

Not that TV Tropes would be worth reading all the way through, even if it was a book - it's cute, but it's all too much of the same thing, like reading a guidebook of Antarctic crustaceans or something (supposing that Antarctic crustaceans were not one's own field of study.) Actually, I think my interest would probably last longer with the arthropods, especially if there were pictures.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Uh, so you started with Once More with Feeling and only watched from there on? Why would you do that?

Most people I know try to mostly pretend that season 6 and 7 of Buffy don't exist, except that season 6 had a few good episodes, such as Once More with Feeling, which is a whole lot better if you understand all of the backstory.

Seasons 3 and 5 I think are the best seasons, personally. But season 4 has a reasonable density of good episodes. It's just dragged down by an overall story arch that's dull, whereas seasons 3 and 5 have reasonable overall story archs with decent levels of individual quality per episode.

[conuly]

Uh, so you started with Once More with Feeling and only watched from there on? Why would you do that?

Re-watched, that is.

And because I started by catching up the episode I *knew* I'd never seen, and then moving on from there. I'm now re-rewatching from the beginning. I never saw the first season, really.

Also, story arc.

[darkpoole.livejournal.com]

I pretty much hated season seven. And I didn't like most of the individual episodes in it either. Not a big fan of season six, either.

But I loved the musical. Still one of my more favorite hours of TV ever.

[conuly]

Lots of people don't like the later seasons, only the earlier seasons. And lots of people don't like the earlier seasons, only the later ones.