Joss and his slow beginnings
Feb. 28th, 2009 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maggie2So I made a point of watching Dollhouse last night, having forgotten last week and having to catch it on the web. Like the first episode, this one was labor to watch. As in, if it were anything but a Joss show, I'd not have bothered. That's not to say that I think it lacks promise. There's lots that is intriguing. But huge stretches of last night just seemed like the ordinary TV you only watch when you are babysitting and bored out of your mind. (My days of doing that are some distance in the past, but I still remember them well). It doesn't spark interesting thoughts in me, and there's nothing about it that makes me want to dive in and find interesting thoughts to think about it.
I'm not planning on giving it up, though. And no, it's not because I'm going to squint and turn my head sideways and convince myself that it's great because all Jossian things are great. It's because if I hadn't had a friend I really respected swearing to me on a stack of Bibles that it was worth slogging through 1.5 seasons of Buffy to get to the good stuff, I'd have stopped with BtVS after episode 4. Because season 1 of Buffy, for me? Pure labor. The metaphors seemed obvious. The characters too obviously crafted to appeal in certain ways. And I'm not all about the girl power so that wasn't a motivating factor. And much as I've come to love Buffy, season one is still mostly labor. It's even not a great source of interesting meta because the show was obviously still finding its ways and some things really did get shifted around -- so, for example, Darla isn't hardly Darla, and there's no point in doing meta to try to pretend that she is. Not that you can't find good stuff in season one. But if that's all there ever was of BtVS, well, it weren't much to write home about.
Has Joss *ever* done a good first season? Joss's greatness, judging by his one unadulterated success, is unfolding a story across a long period of time, in a way that shifts expectations and undermines assumptions, and develops characters who are nearly as messy and complicated as in real life. Joss's particular talent, the one I care about, is that he knows what to do with a very big canvass. And because it's such a big canvass, the first chapter in his story is small potatoes, because it's really just stage-setting for the big drama to come. Firefly was much better than the first season of Buffy, but I couldn't get invested in it because it had already been cancelled by the time I watched on DVD, and it was really too painful to see all that set-up knowing we were never going to get to the pay-off. (And Serenity seemed to me to be what you'd get if you tried to breathlessly tell seasons 2-7 of Buffy in two hours).
Of course, all the tea leaves suggest that Dollhouse is going to get axed at the knees as well. And even if it survives, the fact that Joss used his big canvass very well once, doesn't mean that his second big canvass project will be great as well. But it would be nice if it turned out to be.
Oh, yes, about the comics -- I think they really are meant to be a new chapter rather than a simple continuation. So there's the same demand for patience while the story sets up. I think that having labelled it as season 8, Joss owes us more connection to BtVS than we've gotten so far. But I also think he's starting to pay off the slow intro, so this is sort of like sliding into mid-season two of Buffy, where it became clear tha there was more potential there than you might have guessed at the start. But it'll still be a while before I can decide whether Joss really is a one hit wonder, or a guy with a well of talent for big canvass story telling.
I'm not planning on giving it up, though. And no, it's not because I'm going to squint and turn my head sideways and convince myself that it's great because all Jossian things are great. It's because if I hadn't had a friend I really respected swearing to me on a stack of Bibles that it was worth slogging through 1.5 seasons of Buffy to get to the good stuff, I'd have stopped with BtVS after episode 4. Because season 1 of Buffy, for me? Pure labor. The metaphors seemed obvious. The characters too obviously crafted to appeal in certain ways. And I'm not all about the girl power so that wasn't a motivating factor. And much as I've come to love Buffy, season one is still mostly labor. It's even not a great source of interesting meta because the show was obviously still finding its ways and some things really did get shifted around -- so, for example, Darla isn't hardly Darla, and there's no point in doing meta to try to pretend that she is. Not that you can't find good stuff in season one. But if that's all there ever was of BtVS, well, it weren't much to write home about.
Has Joss *ever* done a good first season? Joss's greatness, judging by his one unadulterated success, is unfolding a story across a long period of time, in a way that shifts expectations and undermines assumptions, and develops characters who are nearly as messy and complicated as in real life. Joss's particular talent, the one I care about, is that he knows what to do with a very big canvass. And because it's such a big canvass, the first chapter in his story is small potatoes, because it's really just stage-setting for the big drama to come. Firefly was much better than the first season of Buffy, but I couldn't get invested in it because it had already been cancelled by the time I watched on DVD, and it was really too painful to see all that set-up knowing we were never going to get to the pay-off. (And Serenity seemed to me to be what you'd get if you tried to breathlessly tell seasons 2-7 of Buffy in two hours).
Of course, all the tea leaves suggest that Dollhouse is going to get axed at the knees as well. And even if it survives, the fact that Joss used his big canvass very well once, doesn't mean that his second big canvass project will be great as well. But it would be nice if it turned out to be.
Oh, yes, about the comics -- I think they really are meant to be a new chapter rather than a simple continuation. So there's the same demand for patience while the story sets up. I think that having labelled it as season 8, Joss owes us more connection to BtVS than we've gotten so far. But I also think he's starting to pay off the slow intro, so this is sort of like sliding into mid-season two of Buffy, where it became clear tha there was more potential there than you might have guessed at the start. But it'll still be a while before I can decide whether Joss really is a one hit wonder, or a guy with a well of talent for big canvass story telling.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-28 10:35 pm (UTC)Has Joss *ever* done a good first season?
I would say that Angel season 1 is pretty good. It's certainly not on par with some of the later seasons, but compared to Buffy season 1 and Firefly, it feels like a work of brilliance. Maybe because Joss already had a decent mythology and character backstory to build on.
The thing is, even if Buffy season 1 isn't brilliance on its own, you can see the potential there. The witty dialogue, the interest in exploring the deeper meaning (even if the metaphors were too on-the-nose at first), the beginnings of character development. I don't see as much of that in Dollhouse, which is why I'm watching with a more skeptical eye, but for now, there's enough to hold my interest.
The one thing that still gets me, though, is Eliza Dushku's acting. Three episodes in, I'm still not convinced she can pull it off.
But it'll still be a while before I can decide whether Joss really is a one hit wonder, or a guy with a well of talent for big canvass story telling.
I'll be honest, I think Joss gets a lot more credit for being a genius than he actually is. Buffy and Angel were incredible, yes, but they're also both incredibly flawed. I don't like Firefly at all, so I'm far from the "Joss can do no wrong" crowd. The season 8 comics feel like strike 2, and if Dollhouse doesn't step up, I'll be ready to call Joss out.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-28 11:56 pm (UTC)For me, even with the promises of my friend, I distinctly remember being underwhelmed with the first four episodes of Buffy. And the fourth one was actively and appallingly bad. Witty dialogue it had. But I took my sweet time about ordering the second disc from Netflix.
Buffy and Angel are both flawed. But like I said, they have this brilliance with the big canvass that I've never seen before, and I'll put up with a fair amount on account of that. Season 8 won't be strike two for me until we get to the end. There's enough there so far that I can still hope. And since I want that big canvass pay-off, I'm not going to let go until I'm really sure that it's not coming.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-01 01:21 am (UTC)