Joss Whedeon, getting more canceled by the day

[IlyaP]

Just now, Mr Gordo said:

I'm saying the man must have been one hell of a monster to have terrorized so many people into silence.

Power structures and the fear of repercussions from people who are more powerful can make people shut up about a lot of nasty things. 

[Werthead]

Everyone's waiting to see if Alyson Hannigan and/or Alexis Denisof have anything to say, which would be fairly damning (they were both quite tight with Joss, at least at one point).

[Kalbear]

Also I'd say that if you like Firefly, Buffy is SIGNIFICANTLY better in virtually every way. Better characters, better season plots, more interesting villains (at least S2 and S3), and often better comedy. 

It doesn't have as much ogling of women though. Firefly and Dollhouse definitely increased the objectification quite a bit. So if that's your metric, Buffy will probably disappoint a bit.

[polishgenius]

8 hours ago, Vaughn said:

While we're reviewing the WhedonEU, the way Katic was booted off of 'Castle' was disgraceful although it's unclear how culpable Fillion was.

It does seem to have been all about money. Yeah, there was all the talk of the pair clashing, but even if that were true it doesn't necessarily equate to abuse (which doesn't mean abuse definitely didn't happen, but I don't think so far there was any indication of it even from the people reporting the dislike). People are allowed to not get on without it being abuse.

[Martell Spy]

Fans of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' now face a reckoning after Charisma Carpenter accused Joss Whedon of abusive behavior on the set of his shows.

https://collider.com/joss-whedon-charisma-carpenter-allegations-buffy-fans-reaction/

Quote

 

So right now, there is an entire community of fans out there genuinely struggling with what's being revealed about the past. The power of Ray Fisher's determination for accountability comes into full relief here — it's one thing to call out abusive behavior on the set of one film, but Buffy and its sister shows were in our homes every week, a fandom institution.

To be honest, the degree to which you're shocked by what's being said about Joss Whedon right now depends on how much attention you've been paying lately. In recent years, Whedon's image as a feminist has begun to crumble as stories come out and facts pile up, from alleged on-set adultery to when he says the quiet part loud in his work. In fact, while at the time Buffy and Whedon's other heroines were considered symbols of hope for young women yearning for tales of strong yet relatable female heroes, countless words have been written since analyzing those tales, poking at their supposed good intentions.

 

 

[Lord Varys]

For what it's worth, I really like Buffy and Angel, but I'm not sure those a shows you have to bother with today. They are twenty years old, the effects are very much dated, and there is just better stuff out there.

I think it makes sense to try it if you like a synthesis between coming of age and monster stories, but if that's not your thing there is no reason to try. And of course you might also try if you are interested historically in shows that shaped a particular genre.

And regardless how Whedon himself behaved - the show definitely worked very well in making women more visible on TV, normalizing homosexual relationships, etc. That doesn't go away because the guy sucks as person.

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, Karlbear said:

Also I'd say that if you like Firefly, Buffy is SIGNIFICANTLY better in virtually every way. Better characters, better season plots, more interesting villains (at least S2 and S3), and often better comedy. 

It doesn't have as much ogling of women though. Firefly and Dollhouse definitely increased the objectification quite a bit. So if that's your metric, Buffy will probably disappoint a bit.

Yeah, Firefly is disproportionately lauded despite being flawed: it uses Chinese cultural ideas and dialogue, but has no Chinese or Asian characters almost at all, Inara is treated like absolute dogshit by Mal in a way that's preposterous (she would have left after the first week) and the show is bizarrely reluctant to actually spell out why the Independents rebelled against the Alliance. Given how much it's riffing on the American Civil War, I know there's fan theories that we may have found out that the Independents were actually defending institutionalised slavery (class-based, not race-based) or some other heinous crime at some point and the Alliance would not have turned out to be "as bad" as they first seemed (despite the whole genetically-engineered superweapons and ruthless blue-handed operatives things), but I think that's giving the writers way more credit than they deserve.

The show is praised so much because it had a pretty high hit rate (12 of the 14 episodes are good to excellent, and even the two rough ones have some great lines) and it's pretty quotable. But thematically it's a mess and it doesn't seem to know what it's trying to say. There isn't much depth to it. It's superficial but very enjoyable on that level, and it didn't last long enough to go completely to shit (as it was threatening to do in the second season, based on Whedon and Minear's ideas that have come out over the years).

I do find it odd that Firefly has this unimpeachable reputation when Battlestar Galactica wiped the floor with it in the same timeframe. BSG had the whole "shitty ending" thing to overcome, but that's a reasonable issue when you have 75 episodes versus just 14.

Quote

For what it's worth, I really like Buffy and Angel, but I'm not sure those a shows you have to bother with today. They are twenty years old, the effects are very much dated, and there is just better stuff out there.

I don't think anything has come close to nailing Buffy's tone of combining romance, horror, high school drama, supernatural fantasy and occasional gritty realism, though. Some shows have done as well or maybe even better in one or the other of those fields, but no show in the same area since has landed quite so squarely on executing all of those elements simultaneously, and certainly none have come remotely close to producing an episode as harrowing and powerful as The Body.

[Poobah]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I do find it odd that Firefly has this unimpeachable reputation when Battlestar Galactica wiped the floor with it in the same timeframe. BSG had the whole "shitty ending" thing to overcome, but that's a reasonable issue when you have 75 episodes versus just 14.

The thing about Firefly is that because it was cancelled it exists in the imaginations of fans as what it had the potential to be and thus it will always be better than what it actually was or would have become if it continued.

[Ran]

BSG came a year later (for the minseries; two years later for the TV show)

BSG was grimdark and fairly dour, a sharp contrast to Firefly. It's kind of comparing apples to oranges, but an unimpeachable apple doesn't mean there's not an unimpeachable orange, right? It's also worth recalling that Firefly stood out in a very moribund network landscape -- it was the most innovative new show any of the major networks were airing that season, an ensemble SF-western when things like another iteration of CSI and clones of same were what was hot. It was cable where the real action was, generally, with The Wire, The Shield, and Monk being the most notable other new launches that year.

 

 

[IlyaP]

52 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I do find it odd that Firefly has this unimpeachable reputation when Battlestar Galactica wiped the floor with it in the same timeframe. BSG had the whole "shitty ending" thing to overcome, but that's a reasonable issue when you have 75 episodes versus just 14.

For whatever it's worth, the movie, Serenity, provides a better sense of closure and conclusion than BSG managed. But then, as I understand it, there was some kind of long-term story plan/endgame with Firefly's story, unlike BSG, which, as far as I know, went on a season-by-season basis. Which made Serenity work, at least for me. BSG...not so much. 

[Heartofice]

39 minutes ago, Poobah said:

The thing about Firefly is that because it was cancelled it exists in the imaginations of fans as what it had the potential to be and thus it will always be better than what it actually was or would have become if it continued.

This is it really, it's one of those cases where the hype train went overboard long after the actual train had come to a stop. It getting cancelled created a reputation for the show as being the biggest example of a show lost too soon.

I liked Firefly, and funnily enough I remember that I downloaded the first episode and the first episode of BSG on the same day, and watched both one after another. BSG made Firefly look so lightweight in comparison though and I didn't go back to it till I'd done two seasons of BSG.

Its one of those shows where it has some great writing, combined with some very good casting. Outside of that I don't think there was all that much there to work with. The whole universe felt paper thin really, maybe something that could have been expanded on later on, but I never got a sense of a big story I was excited to find out more about. The Expanse did a much better job of that.

So I never really cried too much that the show didn't get extended.

[Ran]

19 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

For whatever it's worth, the movie, Serenity, provides a better sense of closure and conclusion than BSG managed. But then, as I understand it, there was some kind of long-term story plan/endgame with Firefly's story, unlike BSG, which, as far as I know, went on a season-by-season basis. Which made Serenity work, at least for me. BSG...not so much. 

Yeah, I recall it being said that Serenity basically covered (in highly compressed form) the arc Whedon and Minear had had in mind.

There were some great plans that were revealed for S2, IMO, and some not so great, though obviously one never knows what they would have actually gone with. I recall reading that there were notions of an episode with a traveling theatrical company (that would have brought in some Buffy and Angel alums, including -- IIRC -- Marsters), and something about the inhabitants of a doomed planet trying to steal Serenity followed by a debate of risking all their lives to save them only for Mal to make the decision to take off without them because of the cold, hard truth that the chances it would work were terrible. I also would have expected to learn more about Book's past, and of course the Hands of Blue.

[Aemon Stark]

I remember watching the first aired episode of Firefly (not the pilot, thank you Fox! ), and finding it enjoyable but I never did get around to watching the rest until the DVDs a few years later. It's decent enough, but the world building is thin, underwritten, and the point about Chinese slang and an entirely non-Asian cast pretty much says it all. I also only enjoyed Serenity in the moment, as the last act doesn't really work (especially the whole "explanation" for why the Alliance is evil), but it was the first major role that I saw Chiwetel Ejiofor in, so that's pretty cool. He was pretty great as the "Operative", underwritten role though it was. 

It's been many years since I watched Buffy or Angel (which I never finished watching properly). Can't say I've felt very compelled to revisit them, though some elements of Angel are more in keeping with my sensibilities now. I certainly watch (or rewatch) lots of older TV, but they feel too dated in my mind to go back to. Recent revelations don't make me any more inclined...

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

and some not so great

The Inara plot

[polishgenius]

34 minutes ago, Mr Gordo said:

I dunno if Shield counts. Do we count Shield?

 

For a second I thought you meant he was somehow involved in The Shield and was like WHAT


No, AoS isn't one of his shows. He set it up, but not only did he not showrun but when it turned out that nepotism meant two people who didn't know how to make a show were making a show they didn't get Joss in to help his brother (coz he was making Ultron), they got Jeffrey Bell.

Admittedly he also hadn't showrun before so it was a weird choice (old mate of Whedon, more nepotism!) but at least he'd been involved.

[Ran]

9 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Admittedly he also hadn't showrun before so it was a weird choice

Not true. He was the showrunner on Angel for its last two seasons.

[polishgenius]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Not true. He was the showrunner on Angel for its last two seasons.

Oh my bad.

That makes more sense then. Dunno why I thought that.

[polishgenius]

7 minutes ago, Mr Gordo said:

And I've never heard anything about them not knowing how to make a show.

Interview with Bell here in which he states it outright.

[BigFatCoward]

Other than the noncey stuff, is his (or Kubrick as discussed up thread) behavior really any worse (not acceptable) than a significant number of professional sport team coaches? I'm thinking about Alex Ferguson's etc and his famous 'hair dryer' treatment etc. Beckham got a boot kicked in his face causing a scar iirc etc. So many head coaches in so many sports are notorious for their behavior. 

Does the fact that sport is 'live' with no reshoots etc slightly excuse this? 

I assume everyone accepts that emergency services/military etc have slighty different rules about what constitutes 'abuse' in a live/critical situation.

[Annara Snow]

On 2/10/2021 at 7:36 PM, Vaughn said:

Seeing as another credible, damning account of terrible behavior has emerged, this time from Charisma Carpenter, maybe it's time for Joss to team up with Johnny Depp and Kevin Spacey and just lean into the villainy.

 

One of these does not belong with the others. Or did you mean Amber Heard?