Neuropolis: Animation, Film, Stuff

I just finished season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It amazes me how much of this show I didn’t appreciate when I was sixteen. It’s sooooo good.

I think Joss Whedon’s problem is marketable premises. Ten years ago, you never would have convinced anyone who wasn’t a regular viewer or a fifteen-year-old girl to watch this show. Today, Buffy and Angel are regarded critically as some of the best stuff ever on TV and even a decade later, it’s not hard to see why. These shows were doing season arcs, character development, long-spanning mysteries, and grand plans before The Sopranos or Lost or any of the big favorite serial shows were a glimmer in anyone’s eye. I know Buffy’s hardly the first but it came along years after this kind of television storytelling fell out of favor and I don’t think we’d have the shows we do now without it.

But go back to me, fifteen years old. I was watching the show. Mostly digging it, though the subtext blew right past me. I was in love with cheesy horror, still am, and Buffy filled the hole The X Files left. But… would I admit to it? Saying you liked Buffy, you might as well have said you liked My Little Pony for all the difference it made to anyone not watching. This was back in the early high school years, before I figured out how little such a thing actually mattered but, what can I tell you, I was dumb.

Joss, man, you’ve really got the writing thing down. No doubt. I can’t wait for Dollhouse. But for the sake of keeping a show on the air, you might want to look into crime scene investigation or boring teenagers falling in love somewhere in California. And hell, it doesn’t have to be all bad. Lost hits you with the most insipid idea for a show ever, people stuck on an island, but it’s the best thing going right now. Basically, what I’m getting at is what I’m always getting at: People are afraid of new and interesting things. You have to trick them into liking something good.