[ On Sitting Down To Watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer Once Again ]
I'm going to rattle on at length today. You have been warned.
Inspired in large part by the imminent DVD release of the hugely enjoyable Serenity,
my spare moments over the last few weeks have been passed re-watching the first
two-and-a-bit series of Joss Whedon's above-mentioned breakout meisterwork. I've
probably not seen these episodes since they were shown on BBC2 oooooh, aaaaaaaaaaages
ago, when it was the only thing on TV other than the better-when-Deyton-was-on-but-still-enduringly-excellent
Have I Got
News For You that I'd make time to watch week-in, week-out.
Yes, appointment-to-view television is a rare beast in the Blue Man's life. Appointment-to-miss
TV, that's way more common. I've Not Worked In The Last Two Years, Get Me On The
Telly and all the other fad-of-the-microsecond "reality" media-will-eat-itself
train wrecks. Anything on any terrestrial channel before six in the evening. Home
fucking makeover shows. Everything written by Ben
Elton since Blackadder Goes Forth.
(Seriously, what the FUCK happened there? Blackadder II is give-or-take the greatest
comedy series ever made. Blackadder The Third has its moments. Goes Forth is pretty
bloody good. From that moment on his output has fluctuated in quality between awful
and heinous.
Not even Gazza went from genius to punchline that quickly and completely.)
((Alright, alright. I'll grant you he had one
good standup video and one-and-a-half
good novels post-Blackadder. But that really is just a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted
downward trajectory. And any good karma he might have built up with Stark is utterly
cancelled out by Popcorn - not so much a novel as a tract, presenting in a fully
balanced way the arguments for and for the notion that Hollywood movies are too
violent, whilst all the while carefully constructing a parody of Natural Born Killers
that clearly and comprehensively drove home the point that the novel’s author had
never seen the fucking film in his life.))
(((Aaaaaaand breathe...)))
Anyway, I'd not been expecting much from Buffy,
only really tuning in because I had a friend who was mad-crazy about the
original film, which I'd seen but not been all that impressed by. But I saw
the first show, found it cleverer, funnier and sharper than the movie, was intrigued
enough to make sure I saw the second show and the rest is pretty much history. I
stopped watching roundabout the time bloody Sky bought the rights and it moved to
a strict rota of five-minutes-of-Buffage, five-minutes-of-commercials. How Americans
manage to put up with that shit I'll never know - there's not been a TV series ever
made that I'd be willing to sit through more than three ad-breaks in an hour in
order to watch. Put it this way - if Sky One were showing People From Loan Company
Adverts Getting The Kicking They So Richly Deserve live from the Royal Albert Hall
MC'd by Eddie Izzard, with music by a re-formed Pulp and a half-hour special feature
on the fucktard permagrinning Bob Mills lookalike out of the Picture "I really
like those people from Picture. You can actually have a grown-up conversation!"
Finance ad being slowly impaled on a 1/100 scale replica of the Space Needle that
had been liberally rubbed with lemon juice, I'd STILL probably wait for the DVD.
What was I talking about? Oh, yes. Buffy. As I was saying, it’s entirely possible
that my near-entirely positive response to it was a result of pretty low expectations.
So how does it stand up stripped of the shock of the new and regarded with a relatively
fresh pair of eyes?
Well for a kickoff, I'd forgotten just how ropy-looking and ragged round the edges
the first series was. It looks as if the vampire makeup was still in the process
of being perfected, in much the same way that the Narn and Minbari seem a bit off
if you ('re enough of a nerd to) go back and watch the first series of Babylon
5 again. More glaringly, the fight scenes lack - if you'll please forgive me
- a bit of punch. They don't seem to be as slick and pacy as they'd later become,
and even to someone like me who doesn't pay much attention to minutiae as a rule
(shut up), some of the cuts between actors and their doubles were jarring enough
to break my suspension of disbelief.
Of course, I caught an episode of The
A-Team this evening which reminded me what a dodgy cut to a stunt double really
looks like, but still.
Other annoyances... well, who for the love of God thought it was a good idea to
make Angel Irish? And then to illustrate this point via flashbacks? David Boreanaz
is a nice-looking lad who gives great brood but accents really, really aren’t his
thing. Then there’s Drusilla’s Dick
van Dyke effort – no, no, no, good God no. James Marsters, on the other hand,
actually has a pretty good London accent, although I really wish that Tony Head
had taken him aside at some stage and explained how anyone south of Leeds pronounces
the word “poof”
(for the record, it should sound like “woof”, not “roof”).
Oh, and while I think about it - Xander, a character I recall quite liking first
time out, comes across at the second time of asking sounding disturbingly like Chandler
"could I BE any more annoying?" Bing from (nnnng) Friends. To the series'
credit, though, by the start of the second season people are telling Xander to shut
the hell up at roughly the times you'd be telling him to shut the hell up. This
is part of an overarching problem with a lot of Joss Whedon’s work – sometimes there’s
a feeling that his dialogue is just a bit too slick, that he’s a bit too willing
to go for the cheap laugh over character development, that there’s too much surface
and not enough substance. I could easily understand the general glibness on display
being annoying enough to some people to turn them off Buffy The Vampire Slayer altogether.
Which is a shame.
See, I’ve spent the last four paragraphs making a shopping list of the areas where
the series falls down. What I haven’t mentioned yet are the things it does well.
If I can digress for just a moment - the single most annoying, overused, over-fucking-rated
pseudo-compliment adjective of the current five minutes is, without question, “dark”.
Everyone seems to be falling over themselves to be darker-than-thou just at the
moment, and I don’t get it. “Dark” is just a description, it’s not a fucking recommendation
in and of itself, alright? Jiminy Cricket. I’m sick of seeing things described as
“dark comedies”, because almost every single time that translates to “so busy being
pointlessly nasty it’s got no time to be funny”. I’m sick of hearing developers
saying “well, the sequel to our game is going to be a lot darker than the original”
and fucking up perfectly charming little gameworlds (Prince
Of Persia, Jak And Daxter) in the process. I’m sick of having films like Revenge
Of The Sith or the latest Harry fucking Potter recommended to me on the grounds
that they’re better than the earlier, undeniably pish offerings in their series
because they’re “darker”. Yes, RotS IS darker than Send In The Clones, yes, the
main character offs a bunch of children, but that makes exactly what difference
to the fact that Lucas still can’t write dialogue worth a toss?
Alright, maybe if I could choose the children.
Buffy works because it isn’t dark just for the sake of being dark. It’s dark to
develop character (the whole “Angel loses his soul” arc), it’s dark to heighten
horror (“The Pack”), it’s dark to emphasise the level of threat that Buffy et. al.
are fighting against (the same reason Doctor Who always used to have such a high
body count) and it’s dark in order to be funny.
Comedy-horror’s a tough beast to take on, see. In theory, the two elements should
compliment each other, the contrast heightening the viewer’s response to both. In
practice, it takes such skill in scriptwriting, directing and performance to avoid
one half of the equation overwhelming the other, that the last time I can remember
anyone getting it completely right was American Werewolf In London. While Buffy’s
not quite to that gold-standard, it almost always produces one laugh-out-loud moment
a show while being more consistently frightening than any TV series since the first
season of The X-Files or the much-underrated, creepy-as-fuck American
Gothic.
Throw in Joss Whedon’s delightful ability to avoid cliché and the wonderful,
memorable rogue’s gallery of archvillains that the series’s been blessed with and
you have what was at the time the best sci-fi / fantasy TV show since, well. Definitely
since Tom Baker-era Dr. Who, possibly since ever.
“At the time, Blue Man?” you ask. Yup. There’ve been not one but two new series
that have debuted since Buffy that have wrested its crown away.
When Angel first
started showing, it was the consensus around my circle of friends that it was “a
darker (nnng) version of Buffy.”
It wasn’t. Re-watching has helped remind me that Buffy really was plenty dark.
Angel is a grown-up version of Buffy, Buffy minus that series’ most annoying
aspect – the persistent immaturity of its characters and general “Vampire
Hunter 90210” vibe. It’s got a harder edge than its progenitor, with even its
lighter-hearted episodes often carrying a vicious sting in the tail (the most obvious
example being “Sense & Sensitivity” from the first season, which having spent
fifteen minutes making you laugh at a peace-and-love hippy version of Angel then
turns sharply about in its final scene and kicks you right in the teeth).
And then there’s the daddy of them all. Firefly
is pure distilled Whedon. Absolutely everything that’s made the series he’s been
involved with worth watching, concentrated strong enough to make your eyes water.
It’s got Buffy’s group dynamic and despicable-yet-layered villains, Angel’s edginess
and maturity (vide Mal’s negotiation skills with the crimelord’s henchmen at the
end of “The Train Job”) and, most of all, it’s the most entertaining, interesting
group of characters since Babylon 5 flying around the most entertaining, interesting
universe since… well, Babylon 5.
I loved the Western/Chinese/Imperial feel of the setting. I loved the
Ridley Scott-esque tramp-steamer nature of the ship. I loved Wash and Zoë
and the most adult relationship in the history of science fiction, I loved that
there were no sound effects in space and that ships moved with convincing mass,
I loved… well, almost everything, as it happens. Which is, of course, why it was
cancelled half a season in. Jiminy fucking Cricket.
So, anyway. What was this meant to be about? Oh, right. Is Buffy The Vampire Slayer
as good the second time around?
No. ‘Fraid not. Its flaws are more obvious, and having been exposed to not one but
two series that do the same thing but better it’s no longer got that “I’ve never
seen anything like this in my life” glow that it had on initial exposure. That being
said, it’s still great. It’s not perfect, and it certainly won’t change your life,
but so long as you can accept its shortcomings Buffy remains tremendously entertaining.
Hurrah!
-
It's time for a Random Top 5 List (no.1 in an occasional series)! Today, in honour
of the life-stealing Civilization 4, we proudly present...
The Top 5 Most Addictive Turn-Based Computer Games
5 - Championship Manager 99-00 (PC) (Wright, Babayaro, Ferrara, Southgate, Gallas,
Craig, Ferguson (captain), Marinelli, Hartson, Montella – yep, seven years on, I
can still remember the starting XI of my 03-04 quadruple-winning Chelsea team) 4
- Space Rangers 2 (PC) (Mad as a bag of spiders) 3 - Shining Force 3
(Sega Mega Drive) (“If anything happens, it doesn’t matter. He’s old and would
have died anyway.”) 2 - Medieval: Total War (PC) (Knights in armour
and courtesans, maids in waiting with blood on their hands) 1 - Civilization
2 (PlayStation) (I lost two solid weeks of a school summer holiday to this bastard.
The first game I ever played to illicit the “blimey, it’s getting light outside!”
phenomenon)
All you need is a group of chums, a ready supply of the liquor of your choice, and
any episode from the first four seasons of everyone's favourite gradually-getting-sillier
Nazi-cops-verses-eeeeeevil-towelheads drama series, 24.
The rules are straightforward - you drink each time the action on-screen tallies
up with the list below. Last person with a functioning liver wins. Recommended for
2-6 players, ages 8 and up... what's that? How long will it take to play? Well...
Somebody asks how long something will take.
The answer comes back, "about fifteen minutes".
Or someone asks how long before something happens.
And is told "within the hour."
A member of a CTU backup team whose name hasn't been mentioned gets killed.
A terrorist gets killed by his own boss.
A suspect who's CTU's only lead in their current investigation gets killed.
If a terrorist suspect who's CTU's only lead in their current investigation
gets killed by his own boss, drink double.
Jack Bauer says "there's no time!" in an exasperated voice.
Or "that's too long!"
Or "I need it now!"
Or "what are you talking about?"
Something bad happens that Jack Bauer just fails to prevent, and looks stunned
as we cut away to an ad break. After the break, Jack is still standing with the
exact same expression, apparently having just stood there like a bloody lemon
for three or four minutes doing absolutely nothing.
If he then immediately leaps into action, berating all and sundry for not realising
how little time there is, for taking too long, for not giving him stuff he needs
now and/or for not properly explaining what they're talking about, drink triple.
Someone in CTU asks someone else to "open a socket."
Or transfer something to a terminal.
Or uses the word "bandwidth".
Somebody gets kidnapped.
Somebody makes arcane but cooly military-looking hand-signals to their partner
while sneaking into a terrorist base.
A pretty woman turns out to be a ruthless terrorist.
Jack asks for something to be sent to his screen.
Someone says "I'm putting you on speakerphone."
Everyone at CTU is told that something is their only priority.
CTU foils a terrorist threat but then discover it was just a cover for an even
bigger threat.
Despite obviously having a supply of armour and automatic weapons on-hand, despite
being surrounded by people who're sensibly wearing helmets and carrying the biggest
guns they can lay hands on, Jack leads a raid equipped with only a bulletproof
vest and a pistol.
CTU gets infiltrated by someone working for a terrorist.
A member of CTU's staff is escorted to a holding cell by burly security
guards.
The head of CTU is replaced by somebody else. Honestly, between the fact that
security ensigns on the starship Enterprise had a longer life-expectancy than
your average CTU field op, the constant threat of being dragged off to a cell
and having seven shades kicked out of you by your own colleagues, and that even
if you DO somehow last long enough to get promoted you're likely to be relieved
of your duties after being in the job for less than ten hours, it's a wonder the
place ever manages to recruit anybody at all.
Jack disobeys orders.
Or tortures somebody for information.
Or has a warrant put out for his arrest.
If he disobeys orders, tortures someone for information and has a warrant
put out for his arrest as a result, just go ahead and finish the fucking bottle.
I live on the second-worst council estate in Watford.
A quick story.
A few years ago, the Blue family car was a knackered maroon Vauxhall P.O.S. hatchback
which would normally get you where you wanted to go, provided you a) weren't especially
bothered about arriving on a different date to the one you'd ideally targeted, or
b) you didn't encounter heavy traffic on the way because, like a shark, the car
needed to be going forward constantly to keep air moving and cool the engine and
prevent it from exploding.
I don't think sharks explode if they stop moving, but you get the point.
Anyway, one chilly autumn evening I headed out of the house for the five minute
trot to a friend's place for our group's biweekly gaming session to find that the
car had caught fire. An electrical problem, which we'd known about but didn't have
the cash to fix had caused a short somewhere in the workings and, well, whoof. The
spectacle had already attracted a small crowd. As luck would have it, there were
no other cars parked close, so nothing else was in danger of going up, but if there's
one thing guaranteed to bring people out it's a bit of random destruction.
There was nothing that could be done, so we all stood there and watched the car
burn. And as we did, one woman turned to her friend and said something that I've
always remembered.
"Welcome to Boundary Way."
It wasn't so much the words themselves as the way they were spoken. The barely-repressed
delight in her voice. Not at my family's misfortune, not because something bad had
happened to us in particular, just because something bad had happened. Something
that on the face of it was nasty and senseless and violent, something that you saw
on the news happening in New York or LA, something that for a moment made her feel
like an extra in a movie and gave her the chance to act accordingly.
Ugh.
"And the stupid things you do because you think that poor is cool..."
So. To make things clear. This isn't an grab for credibility or an exercise in inverted-snobbery.
I'm making no claim to be hard or hardened. For the record, I grew up in nice comfortable
lower-middle-class luxury in a nice mock-Tudor semi-detached, went to a nice grammar
school, picked up eleven very nice GCSEs and three-and-a-half not-quite-so-nice
A-Levels, etcetera and so on.
Even if I were inclined to try buffing up my bad-lad credentials, the second-worst
council estate in a Home Counties suburban commuter town isn't exactly Compton or
Moss Side or the slums of Calcutta. There are plenty of ways out of Boundary Way
that don't involve boxing, basketball or a casket. Turn left onto Horseshoe Lane
and carry on past the Leisure Centre, for one.
No complaint. No boast. Just a statement of fact. I live on the second-worst council
estate in Watford.
What Boundary Way lacks in random shootings, rioting and squalor, it does its best
to make up for in sheer
ugliness. Row upon row of squat, pokey terraced houses each identical to the
next form claustrophobic
rat-runs that narrow into the distance, features recurring like the backdrop
of a Scooby Doo chase scene or one of those nightmares in which you're being pursued
by something you can't quite see but you know is mostly comprised of rusty knives
and ichor. Grey
and brown
are the dominant colours, giving the place a washed-out pre-Perestroika Warsaw Pact
feel that's reinforced by the fact that everything seems to be slowly crumbling
- potholes in the road, rotting fences, dark damp-stains creeping down from gutters,
subsidence cracks between the houses which beg to be used as a metaphor for the
estate coming apart at the seams.
Which unfortunately for those of us with an interest in glib summings-up (summing-ups?),
it isn't really.
See, the place is nobody's idea of a powder-keg. It's not especially rough, there's
no lingering undercurrent of violence beyond the fact that you wouldn't want your
kids out alone after dark - which to be honest, is a default pretty much for everyone,
everywhere. Yeah, it has its share of teenage dickheads who cluster like groupies
about the swingsets and the estate's couldn't-possibly-be-this-shitty-by-accident
general
store, but no more than there are, say, outside every branch of McDonald's in
the country. Being rough or violent would need the energy and enthusiasm that this
estate seems expressly designed to leech from its inmates. Which is why it's not
the worst council estate in Watford. The paths are near-obsessively well-groomed,
as neat and litter-free as a gulag's. In an hour's walk around the houses I saw
exactly two pieces of graffiti that weren't drawn in chalk, while the only
bright colour was the occasional laughably be-spoilered berkmobile.
No, Boundary Way's not dangerous. It's just a shithole.
Happened across a new Rimmel ad last night - nice to see Kate Moss working again
after that whole ludicrous, jaw-droppingly hypocritical Gasp!-Fashion-Model-Takes-Cocaine-Shun-Her-Shun-Her-SHUN-HER
malarkey of a couple of months back.
That being said - the ad in question was for yet another of these silly mascara
products designed to make your face look as if it's being attacked by a couple of
deranged tarantulas that seem to be en vogue at the moment, and contained the tagline:
"The more you put on, the sexier you are!"
Yes. Yes, I find that IS the general rule of thumb where mascara is concerned. Which
is why Robert
Smith, Ronald McDonald and Chi-Chi the panda are all such sexy beasts.
Are people getting stupider, or are ad agencies getting more desperate? I can't
make up my mind. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
