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hope and vaseline posted:That's a super realistic attitude to expect from a teenager raised in a hell-dimension who just finds himself in another hell-dimension full of betrayal and manipulative entities. Sure, but who wants to see a consistent trauma victim with learned helplessness flounder through their fantasy vampire coming-of-age show that is sort of about finding compromise and doing the right thing as a young person entering into the adult world? "Realistic" isn't really important if it doesn't fit the tone.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:38
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Bicyclops posted:Sure, but who wants to see a consistent trauma victim with learned helplessness flounder through their fantasy vampire coming-of-age show that is sort of about finding compromise and doing the right thing as a young person entering into the adult world? "Realistic" isn't really important if it doesn't fit the tone. Yeah and it ends with his father making a deal with the devil to save him.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:41
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bobkatt013 posted:Did you think Elisabeth Rohm did not work due to her being a lesbian? She isn't, though. You're thinking of her character on Law & Order.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:45
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Apoplexy posted:She isn't, though. You're thinking of her character on Law & Order. It's a joke about her ending line on the show, which many feel came straight out of nowhere.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:46
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I remember that now, yes. I think she ditched out on Angel solely because of L&O, yeah.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:52
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bobkatt013 posted:He did in season 5! His actions did make sense it and he was never written as a likable character in season 3-4. season 5 he doesn't really face consequences he's just mindwiped into a better but different character and even when he gets his memories back he's like ugggh that was hosed up, I'm going to try not to remember any of that. What does Elisabeth Rohm being a lesbian have to do with anything?
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Apr 14, 2015 20:56
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Acne Rain posted:season 5 he doesn't really face consequences he's just mindwiped into a better but different character and even when he gets his memories back he's like ugggh that was hosed up, I'm going to try not to remember any of that. You know besides all his actions in the last episode. That he is grateful for what his father did for him. Its a joke about her awful awful exit from Law and Order.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:59
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Bicyclops posted:It's a joke about her ending line on the show, which many feel came straight out of nowhere. I kinda like how, if you watch that scene, Fred Thompson sort of goes, "... No?" in a tone that suggests she'd ad libbed the line and he was playing along.
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Apr 14, 2015 21:02
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bobkatt013 posted:Its a joke about her awful awful exit from Law and Order. It blows my mind that Rohm is tied for most episodes as the junior ADA.
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Apr 14, 2015 21:27
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I always took Connor as a lesson that some kids go through horrible things that make them incapable of being well-adjusted adults. I think the failings of Connor aren't his, but the people around him that keep thinking they can fix him with love and speeches. It's not that he was intentionally lovely, it's just that he had no real moral compass, and his concept of what a moral compass was was completely wrong. I am also a serious Season 4 apologist. In a show where there's always an apocalypse looming around the corner it's the only season where it really FEELS like the world is ending. All the skin-crawling weirdness that most people see as bad ideas I see as creepy good ideas perhaps executed poorly. People bring up the Connor/Cordelia relationship as being icky like it was supposed to be a romantic thing gone wrong but I like that it's icky and makes you want to heave. It's the end times, people should be loving their surrogate mothers to birth inhuman things. Beloved characters should be corrupted and possessed and we should watch their tormented shells do horrible things to other beloved characters. You can't make an apocalypse without breaking a few eggs.
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Apr 15, 2015 01:38
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it's WAY out of character for Cordelia My problem is that kids can have problems but no one is raised in a Hell Dimension, there is no realistic way to portray a kid who grew up in a Hell Dimension. Because of that, Conner has no anchors to humanity. No hobbies or music or desire to make friends or anything, no dependency on other humans, he just is a Super Good Fighter who's angry all the time. It's "pitiable" but it gives me no way to connect or way to believe in him. I mean, I could believe in Dawn, who wanted things out of life. I was fine with her whining because I could in fact feel sorry for her, because she was in a situation I could connect with and acted like a person who just wants life to stop being so weird. Conner does nothing, he's a loving shithead. And he never grows as a character or learns anything. And no one who he fucks over comes back for revenge or anything. Maybe it's a brilliant loving idea to make a character who's awful to everyone, never shows any signs of having humanity, has no character arc, constantly whines and cries about poo poo you cannot want him to have, and has a tragic backstory that resembles nothing that can happen in real life to explain it. I say gently caress conner. Hemingway To Go! fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 01:48
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Acne Rain posted:it's WAY out of character for Cordelia They even say that it was not Cordelia as Jasmine was in control of her body and trying to be reborn. The only anchor that Conner had was his hatred for Angel. That is all he was taught and knew.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:13
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God Seasons 3 and 4 of Angel alongside Seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy are going to be a slog. I don't hate any one of them, but I'm not sure how it'll go to have all that poo poo piled on at once. Season 5 of Angel is genuinely worth that road, but goddamn it's going to be slow-going when I can't marathon the shows with my friend and have to go one episode a night for months and months on end.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:28
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Hbomberguy posted:I can see your point there - but I'm talking about to two separate things in those separate paragraphs. The problem with this kind of reading is that, under this philosophy, you can basically never say that any piece of work perpetuates anything negative. You could have a black minstrel show and say that's it's not racist against black people, but actually a story about white people's fear and insecurity in their positions and your reading would be totally valid. And it would be valid. But it would also be irrelevant. The type of reading Whedon's doing and the type of reading you're doing are not trying to even accomplish the same things. Whedon's not trying to engage with their work on an artistic level the same way that you are, he's looking at the social impact it's likely to have. And if that's your aim, then oppositional reading is useless. You say: Hbomberguy posted:You aren't dealing with the work beyond its most superficial aspects, treating them as attempts by a puppet master to make you think a certain way. You're right. But that's not a failure, that's intentional. When reading like this, you want to look at what's going to be the first reading that the most casual reader is going to have. And, more likely than not, that's IS going to be the obvious, superficial reading. With this kind of reading, you're no longer looking for "what does this piece of art say", but instead, "what are people going to hear". Obviously, you can't necessarily know that 100% accurately, but you can still try to figure it out. It would be dishonest to portray it as pure guesswork. Does any of that make any sense at all?
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Apr 15, 2015 04:36
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mind the walrus posted:God Seasons 3 and 4 of Angel alongside Seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy are going to be a slog. I don't hate any one of them, but I'm not sure how it'll go to have all that poo poo piled on at once. Season 5 of Angel is genuinely worth that road, but goddamn it's going to be slow-going when I can't marathon the shows with my friend and have to go one episode a night for months and months on end. That's the only way I've ever watched it, and it put my roommates in agony. At the time, I could only delight in their suffering! Wahahahaha!! 
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Apr 15, 2015 05:26
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Hbomberguy posted:Holy poo poo, dude. Because saying that feminism can take many forms and mean different things is not the equivalent of saying that you can pass any idea whatsoever off as feminism -- at the least, that you'd better have a pretty good rationale for doing so -- and saying that feminism is about specific methods of story analysis being superior to one another seems about as nongermane to me as saying socialism is about strengths and weaknesses of paragraph structure in a business essay. Or, hey, maybe it isn't. Hence my asking, "based on what?" not once but twice. I maintain that getting tied up and twisted about which feminisms are right or wrong — as if social movements were some sort of entrance exam where only the most rightest word-sayers are allowed VIP access — hinders feminist thought far more than it encourages it, but that certainly doesn't mean every line of thought is above reproach, especially when it seems predicated on decrying another line of thought. Hbomberguy posted:Good criticism is not simply explaining why it is good or bad, but unpacking it in order to understand its essence - this is why I am approaching Whedon's claim not simply as something that is either right or wrong, but indicative of his wider approach when it comes to interpreting and writing film. People think and say things for a reason and it is that reasoning that is worth unpacking. Of course it hardly matters what the creator's agenda is if the audience reads something completely different from the result, and there lies the "two" aspect of the "two-way street." I certainly doubt that the goal of the Jurassic World scene -- that of its creators -- was to irritate a bunch of people with its depiction of gender dynamics and to make everyone think that they can't write women worth a drat...so, anyone who did have that reaction to the scene has already disengaged from the intent of the creator. You believe that analyzing the techniques of the artist, the tools of the storyteller, the narrative setup, the authorial choices behind the characterizations we see, and so forth...are all ways of being constrained to their design instead of our own, but the opposite is true. It is learning to see the man behind the curtain, the mechanism within the device, the strings of the puppeteer...and either being engaged by the way they're attempting to make me react the way they want, or finding fault with it. And in doing so, by being cognizant of the fact that the art you experience has hands behind it that chose different pieces to assemble the art in very specific ways, you can guess at conclusions like "the two-minute narrative favors the man's story against the woman's story" or "the Narrative itself has set up a no-win situation for the female character" and that these are problems that came to be outside the neutral confines of story analysis. That these are recurring, persistent issues with the creation of the story. How can you make a superior product by working with defective tools on deficient materials, after all? And perhaps these conclusions I draw are flawed. It's all a matter of analysis and interpretation. But if they are flawed, having awareness of the creative process can at least lead to a better basis of determining these flaws, of communicating these flaws, than adhering stubbornly to the faux-absolutist ideal that "Everything is subjective, every reaction is valid as long as it's your own reaction" because that is certainly not a flaw-free approach either. You're either complicit in the puppetry or a victim of the puppetry, but never doubt that it's a puppet show. "Do you like the work I have provided to you?" "No I don't, and here's why." From your perspective, this doesn't mean that the scene in question has "failed," because its one and only job was to illicit any response, and that's true. It is also, as XboxPants points out, virtually meaningless as a social standard because it disregards the prevalence of zeitgeist and throws creator accountability out the window...for worse and for better. "This scene isn't sexist because the man and woman are characters" is not a useful standard, and it is not useful to hold Whedon or anyone else up to that standard.
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Apr 15, 2015 08:52
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Another issue with Connor is that "Connor the whiny teenager" doesn't make an awful lot of sense as a character concept. He has undergone a life of violence, fear, and abuse, and his reaction to this is largely to mope and complain. As has been mentioned, a lifetime in a hell dimension isn't something we the viewers can easily relate to, but had it been played more as, say, an analogy for a life of abuse and had Connor been characterised accordingly, I think he would have been a much more compelling and affecting character. We have hints of this - everything post-Jasmine's death is great, his initial reaction to Sunny and the drug dealers has good moments - but his trauma is mostly dismissed; or, worse, played for humour. There's a moment where Connor recollects fondly that Holtz once tied him to a tree and hid from him for three days as part of a training exercise, and Angel is justifiably horrified. This is mostly played for laughs. It shouldn't be - this should be the crux of Connor's character: a boy raised in such horrific conditions that he cannot adjust to society. The immediate comparisons to Connor might be feral children, or those raised in deep neglect and/or poverty. He had Holtz, sure, but Holtz was abusive and they must have lived in viciously bleak conditions. Connor shouldn't be sulking; he should be barely functional. Connor vs Dawn is pretty interesting in this regard. I personally like Dawn a lot and the scene in which she confronts her family about if she's the Key is one of her best moments. She's been cutting herself (with a kitchen knife - a terrible choice of implement for self-harm, but entirely appropriate for Dawn's immaturity and mental state), she confronts her family with shock and anger that soon turns to confusion, and then she breaks down sobbing in her mother's arms. Trachtenberg acts that scene perfectly. Dawn is a relatively normal teenager (or so she believes) and she has a normal teenager's reaction to horrific, unthinkable information. She sulks and has tantrums and skips school because she is a well-adjusted teenager, and that's how teens react to sudden awful circumstances. And eventually she grows out of it, because she has a lifetime of emotional support behind her. Connor behaves similarly to Dawn. He is snippy and passive-aggressive (and just plain aggressive) and grouchy, just like most teenagers. But he shouldn't be, because he hasn't had that upbringing. He's not a normal teenager, he's the survivor of a lifetime of horror and abuse. Connor would have worked much better as a character had he been written with that in mind. E.g. there's a scene in Deep Down, 4.01, where Connor is hanging out in his room, playing a video game, and Fred brings him a snack. Fred is the overpatient mother-figure, Connor grudgingly accepts the food. This is 8 months-ish after his return from the hell dimension so it's understandable that he'd be more adjusted, but not this well-adjusted. We should have had a Connor who sleeps in the cupboard because he's spent his whole life expecting he could be attacked in his sleep and he can't sleep in the open. We should have Connor hoarding food under the bed because he's used to being on the brink of starvation. Connor should act like someone who spent his entire life in an inhospitable hellscape with only a single abusive lunatic for company. He should be (and very occasionally is) a character so traumatised that he can't function in the real world. As an audience it's difficult to engage with the idea of "grew up in a hell dimension" and it seems the writers couldn't manage it either. Connor's upbringing is abstract, ill-defined, and bears very little relation to his behaviour. When the writers do bother to bear in mind Connor's back-story, he works as a character. Like in 4.22, when he encounters a confused man who is adjusting to being free from Jasmine's spell and who is struggling to remember his family. Connor tries to help him, then loses it and beats him instead. That's a Connor who grew up in a hell dimension, who only knows violence, who can't relate to other human beings. His utter unsalvageability is affecting. Connor who vomits because he saw a family murdered is affecting. But Connor the eternally put-out teenager is neither compelling nor sensical. It's a shame, because there are glimmers of a genuinely great character in Connor, but the writing fails in such fundamental ways. Connor is great for the moments in which he is characterised in accordance with his upbringing, but sadly those moments are far too rare.
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Apr 15, 2015 10:31
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Bolingbroke posted:It's a shame, because there are glimmers of a genuinely great character in Connor, but the writing fails in such fundamental ways. Connor is great for the moments in which he is characterised in accordance with his upbringing, but sadly those moments are far too rare. This is a great read on the character. The concept of Connor always sounded fascinating, but definitely they chose an utterly incoherent way to explore it. Realistically, Connor would pretty much be a deadlier version of some Russian orphanage baby. You're totally right that he's essentially Dawn instead: a whiny, entitled brat who responds with tantrums to the unfairness of the world. But fairness and entitlement imply expectations for something better, and Connor's problem would be that he expects nothing but violence. How could he expect more? He just learned "more" existed. I guess it'd be a tough sell, though, to have Angel's son be a totally non-communicative psychopath...I can't even think of an analogous character that does this. One of the Unsullied? If you were raised in a Mad Max Hell dimension where any semblance of normative morality didn't exist, you'd probably wind up as an amoral serial killer who gave zero fucks about how anyone else felt.
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Apr 15, 2015 11:57
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XboxPants posted:The problem with this kind of reading is that, under this philosophy, you can basically never say that any piece of work perpetuates anything negative. You could have a black minstrel show and say that's it's not racist against black people, but actually a story about white people's fear and insecurity in their positions and your reading would be totally valid. Your point is salient and well-written, but I do centrally disagree - in your description, Whedon's reading appears to be triumphing some monolithic idea of 'what people will think' over the fact that lots of people will see lots of different things - I am a person too, you know, and I didn't see what he saw. And again, it's dodging the duty of developing your own reading - in your example, Whedon is no longer making up his own mind, but instead trying to divine what his imaginary general audience 'will think'. Even if he turns out to be 100% accurate to the real audience (which he isn't because I am in the real audience!), this is A: Straight up Groupthink (but, worse, the group is entirely invented in the person's mind) and B: An admission that not even Whedon's reading of the film is Whedon's reading of the film. I think Whedon should read the film. As if he was in the audience. BrianWilly posted:You're either complicit in the puppetry or a victim of the puppetry, but never doubt that it's a puppet show. I'd respond to the rest of the post but it's mostly predicated on the idea that art is trying to control your mind - which is wrong - so why bother?
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Apr 15, 2015 15:00
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BrianWilly posted:You're either complicit in the puppetry or a victim of the puppetry, but never doubt that it's a puppet show. So you are a wee little puppet man?
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Apr 15, 2015 15:04
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Xealot posted:If you were raised in a Mad Max Hell dimension where any semblance of normative morality didn't exist, you'd probably wind up as an amoral serial killer who gave zero fucks about how anyone else felt. This is the fundamental problem with Connor as a concept and why he was doomed to not work. He could work as a character, but in an early 00s show that often leans on monsters-of-the-week it's extremely hard to slot that character into any existing dynamic without making him unbelievably passive or have him wreck poo poo like a bull in a china shop and pull focus in every story he's in for the first six months. It could work, and they did a form of it that did kind-of work with Illyria, but they really shot themselves in the leg with him.
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Apr 15, 2015 15:07
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mind the walrus posted:...they did a form of it that did kind-of work with Illyria, but they really shot themselves in the leg with [Connor]. That's a great point. Illyria works really well as a character. I guess you could argue that Fred was a human element who "poisoned" Illyria with some level of accessible emotion, but that's not even a necessary aspect; the character's vulnerability came from her confusion over the totally unfamiliar world she now inhabits. Which...yeah, is equally true of Connor. You'd think Connor would be weirded out by how sometimes monsters *aren't* trying to murder him. That's actually more than enough to inform a character arc.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:08
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It helps a lot more that Illryia was a primordial god who had a much wider understanding over the possibilities of existence right out of the gate, while Connor was--as has been said--essentially a feral child whose only rearing came through abusive brainwashing techniques. Xealot posted:You'd think Connor would be weirded out by how sometimes monsters *aren't* trying to murder him. That's actually more than enough to inform a character arc. It'd work really well if Connor was like, put down in a basement cell or something and he acted as a C-to-B plot for like 5-10 episodes regarding his re-integration before busting out and causing hell in an A-plot before ultimately hitting a breakthrough followed by his integration into the regular plot dynamics with associated baggage, but for some reason the Angel writers couldn't or wouldn't do that--if nothing else having a show that is ostensibly about stand-alone episodes wherein the protagonist keeps his estranged son in a cage is a hard sell even if it is clearly part of a longer arc.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:17
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The worst part about Connor was the pre-Quor'Toth continual use of crying baby audio to convey "Hey wow, baby here now, new baby everybody! Don't forget the new baby" The miracle child should have been a little less colicky.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:29
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mind the walrus posted:It'd work really well if Connor was like, put down in a basement cell or something and he acted as a C-to-B plot for like 5-10 episodes regarding his re-integration before busting out and causing hell in an A-plot before ultimately hitting a breakthrough followed by his integration into the regular plot dynamics with associated baggage, but for some reason the Angel writers couldn't or wouldn't do that--if nothing else having a show that is ostensibly about stand-alone episodes wherein the protagonist keeps his estranged son in a cage is a hard sell even if it is clearly part of a longer arc. I think you forget that season 4 had maybe three stand alone episodes in the entire season. It was super serialized. bobkatt013 fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 19:59
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It was super-serialized for the time but it was still produced back in a magic age when syndication for genre shows was still a thing and by far the most lucrative possibility for such a production. Even a quick review of the Season 2 episode list shows a lot of episodes that function perfectly fine on their own and are made of serial plots meaty enough to stand as their own chapters for the most part. Connor's arc.... really doesn't to my eyes unless you shove him in a corner and mark his progress over time, which is a concept far more familiar to us in 2015 than it was back in 2002-3.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:11
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mind the walrus posted:It was super-serialized for the time but it was still produced back in a magic age when syndication for genre shows was still a thing and by far the most lucrative possibility for such a production. Even a quick review of the Season 2 episode list shows a lot of episodes that function perfectly fine on their own and are made of serial plots meaty enough to stand as their own chapters for the most part. Connor's arc.... really doesn't to my eyes unless you shove him in a corner and mark his progress over time, which is a concept far more familiar to us in 2015 than it was back in 2002-3. I just mean season 4 took place in the space on a week or two and each episode led into the next. bobkatt013 fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 20:13
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That is a very valid point. I don't mean to sound defensive/dismissive. That said I think we can both agree that Season 4 really is the oddest season out of Buffy/Angel for a variety of reasons, the pacing and timeline definitely being one of them.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:14
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mind the walrus posted:That is a very valid point. I don't mean to sound defensive/dismissive. That said I think we can both agree that Season 4 really is the oddest season out of Buffy/Angel for a variety of reasons, the pacing and timeline definitely being one of them. I also assume they did not want to stick Connor in a cage when they had plans to place Angel there that season.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:16
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Possibly, but the alternative didn't really pay off as we've discussed over the last several pages.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:18
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mind the walrus posted:Possibly, but the alternative didn't really pay off as we've discussed over the last several pages. Yep and we know that it was all the writing that caused the problem with Connor, as we know he can be a really good actor as seen in Mad Men.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:23
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I do think the actor was a bit miscast. Vincent Kartheiser is indeed a really really good actor and when given decent material he delivered as Connor (especially in his last several episodes), but part of his talent is in coming across as an unlikable small guy, and I never for a second bought him as Angel and Darla's kid. Even assuming he'd be malnourished in a Hell Dimension growing up I'd picture someone a lot scruffier with a natural burliness.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:32
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mind the walrus posted:Connor's arc.... really doesn't to my eyes unless you shove him in a corner and mark his progress over time, which is a concept far more familiar to us in 2015 than it was back in 2002-3. I think Alias was probably the only big genre show at the time that had that sort of "every episode leads into the next" style of serialisation, wasn't it?
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Apr 15, 2015 20:47
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I honestly don't know, although I'm pretty sure the BSG remake which came around right as Angel was ending was the next really big genre show to do heavy serialization.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:51
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mind the walrus posted:I honestly don't know, although I'm pretty sure the BSG remake which came around right as Angel was ending was the next really big genre show to do heavy serialization. Lost.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:53
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Huh for some reason I remember LOST being way later, but yeah looking up imdb they both came out the same year. LOST was definitely way bigger though, yeah.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:09
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You could almost argue that it isn't a genre show (and in fact, most people would say it isn't), but I definitely think of it as one. It's also the show that started the nonsequential storytelling as a rule thing. You can see bits of that in late Buffy and Angel when they try to create parallel stories between Angelus and Angel.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:17
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Bicyclops posted:Lost. mind the walrus posted:Huh for some reason I remember LOST being way later, but yeah looking up imdb they both came out the same year. LOST was definitely way bigger though, yeah. Alias is what J. J. Abrams did before he did Lost, though, and I don't think you can say it wasn't serialised. In fact, wasn't there a season seven episode where a vampire takes out a Potential who's an obvious Sydney Bristow stand-in in an Alias-style nightclub, because apparently there was some press about how she'd replaced Buffy as the number-one female action hero on TV? Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 21:26
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Hbomberguy posted:The best way to protect people from bad ideas is to make them capable of practicing critique of ideology, rather than simply triumphing one over the other. This isn't my worldview, but it's a totally reasonable one that you express well. I thought you were a cynical "nothing means anything" type, but you're even more idealistic than I am.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:33
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mind the walrus posted:That is a very valid point. I don't mean to sound defensive/dismissive. That said I think we can both agree that Season 4 really is the oddest season out of Buffy/Angel for a variety of reasons, the pacing and timeline definitely being one of them. I just re-watched it (and the entire show). It's got a breathtaking storyline (just consider where the season begins and where it ends and what happened along the way), but some execution failed. Charisma Carpenter's real life pregnancy played a huge part in this, sadly, but also behind the scenes turmoil at Mutant Enemy - Buffy was ending, Firefly was beginning/cancelled, and Angel was on the ropes as usual. Given that, I think season 4 is all the more incredible. And to hell with anyone who says "Eww Connor and Cordelia was icky!" That was the point. It's a horror show, and that was a move intended to invoke the creepy. I wonder in retrospect how this season would have gone if Carpenter never got pregnant. Since the overall storyline was planned for seasons, I assume Cordelia would be the big bad and develop thrall powers, which would have been really interesting.
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Apr 26, 2015 04:20
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