I Just Now Saw: Battlestar Galactica
Welcome to I Just Now Saw, a new column in which I attempt to conduct conversations about television shows you watched ten years ago and I just now saw, in their entirety, for the first time.
So, Battlestar Galactica. The final frontier. The sci-fi franchise y’all have been begging me to watch for years, and which I attempted to watch a few times before finally investing in it, at which point I became pretty hooked and watched it constantly for months, until I’d completed all four seasons. During that first watch I abided by my self-imposed media blackout (refusing to read anything about the show until I was done watching it). Then I read a few things, and then I went back and watched the whole series all over again so that I could write this, and now HERE WE ARE.
Before we begin — SPOILER ALERT FOR EVERYTHING. If you’ve yet to watch the show and plan to, I strongly encourage you not to read this, because some secrets (like the identities of the Final Five) are worth waiting for!
8. Starbuck Feelings
Here’s the thing about Starbuck: she’s a lesbian. Kara Thrace is a lesbian. I mean, she’s not a lesbian, but I think there’s a thing we see in a person — in a real person too, like it’s a thing I think we’ll see in Kristen Stewart and Ellen Page when they get older, that we saw in Jodie Foster — this toughness, this hardness. It’s not just toughness, but whatever the word is for this, it would be in the same general linguistic web as “toughness.” And I think it’s a toughness that is uniquely appealing to women, and attractive to women, and it’s got nothing to do with gender presentation, femininity or masculinity, although it shows up almost universally amongst “hard femmes.” This whole theory is essentialist, sure, but damn this quality makes a really fucking sexy lesbian. You know what else Starbuck is? She’s toppy. She’s fucking toppy, even when she’s not being a top. As a feminist, I appreciate that she meets men eye-to-eye and I like how she does heterosexuality, but as a queer I just want her to dyke out. Regardless, I wasn’t that into Starbuck after the first season, because…
7. Number Eight Feelings
Hey-o Sharon / Boomer / Athena! So many Number 8s, so little time. Remember when the Sharons didn’t all know about each other yet? When she was still brand new and didn’t know her spine was on fire. But meanwhile all these other eights did know. The Sixes seemed intellectually torn between humans and cylons, whereas the Eights seemed more emotionally torn, and therefore less consistent or predictable. In turns I was so mad at them (especially when Boomer was sleeping with John), but my heart-strings and sweatpants-strings got tugged again and again.
6. It’s Raining Men
There are SO MANY DUDES IN THIS SHOW. So many male faces. Here’s the thing about grown men: they’re not really all that interesting to look at. I mean it’s variations on a theme. Show me a bunch of middle-aged men and I will show you to the door so I can walk out that door, walk into a dimly lit room with a bed in it, lie down, and take a nice long nap.
But it wasn’t just that the male:female ratio on this show is criminal, it’s that the men on this show SUCK. However, I watched Battlestar twice all the way though, and my feelings about Gaius Baltar changed dramatically on the second run. Knowing the whole arc enabled me to finally see how fucking hilarious he is, in his megalomania, and to comprehend the source of his vulnerability and the insecurity that laces all his sociopathic self-preservation. But the first time through, his scenes were nails on a chalkboard and at first I hated Caprica Six by association.
Men from Battlestar who I hated a lot, in order of how much I hated them:
- Colonel Tigh
- Al from Quantam Leap
- Gaius Baltar (the first time I watched it)
- Blonde Cylon guy who could’ve been in Trainspotting
- Dark-haired Cylon guy who looks kinda like Keivn Spacey
Also, why were these douchebags always bedding hot chicks, like (as aforementioned) John with Boomer and Tigh with Number Six? Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH TIGH AND NUMBER SIX?
Don’t worry he’ll be better in about two minutes
5. High-Impact Television
These people are basically Vampire Slayers. They get thrown around and are subjected to explosions and electrical wires exploding and getting punched in the face and they just persevere. I mean seriously if I fell really hard on the deck of a ship when we got hit by a Cylon Raider, I would be in severe pain for days. These people leap out of the way when an explosion rocks the entire hall and kills three people and they’re in ship-shape like two minutes later. Was anybody else disturbed by this.
4. Does BSG Have a Race Problem?
There’s some weird shit going on in this show w/r/t race, because in a way the entire story is an allegory for racism — the human race vs. the Cylon race. Post-9/11 xenophobia as well as issues of prejudice, discrimination, classism and arbitrary divisions between people based on country-of-origin are arguably the show’s fundamental struggle. Furthermore, race as it’s defined in contemporary American society is never mentioned on the show, but how could it be when our words for different racial groups are so tied to countries and continents that don’t exist in BSG? That all being said — in my opinion, when you’ve got an opportunity to create a brand new world, why not make it as racially diverse as possible?
These things are true: Edward James Olmos, who plays Commanding Officer William Adama, is Latino. The two actors who play his children, Jamie Bamber and Tobis Mehler, are not. (Olmos’ actual son, Bodie, plays “Hot Dog.”) Kandyse McClure, who plays Dualla — a character made relevant primarily due to her relationships with high-ranking white men, and who eventually kills herself — is a light-skinned black woman. Sharon is played by Korean-Canadian actress Grace Park and Tory is played by Indian-Canadian actress Rekha Sharma. Colin Lawrence, who had a small role as “Skulls,” is black. Tahmoh Penikett, who plays Helo, is multiracial, as his mother is First Nations. So there is some racial diversity in the cast, but especially because race as we conceive of it is never talked about, I did wish that there could have been more visually apparent racial diversity.
Regardless — although casting was allegedly color-blind, I think the show could’ve benefited from a non-white-passing person of color playing Sam, Lee, Billy, Doc, Tyrol, President Roslyn or any of the pilots (e.g., Racetrack, Hardball, Narcho). Why not, you know?
Admittedly, it was Bulldog’s episode that sort of thrust the specific issue of lack-of-black-people (and lack of dark-skinned black people specifically) in my face — he’s sacrificed by Adama, and then he returns to Galactica after spending three years IN A CAGE on a Cylon ship, only to attempt to kill Adama, at which point an old white guy beats him dead with a pipe.
Then we have Simon, who’s first introduced as the guy who kidnaps and enables the rape of a white woman (Starbuck), and later is seen near-death being lead onto the ship in chains with a restraint around his neck in order to be ruthlessly interrogated. Aside from Dee, the only black women on the show are the Geminon representative who wants to outlaw abortion and the personal priestess/oracle to Laura Roslin. Like, come on.
NOW KISS
3. We’re Here, Where are the Queers, Get Used to It?
Seriously, it’s the motherfucking future. I know sci-fi has a strange track record in this department, each franchise alternately presenting us with ahead-of-its-time homosexual possibilities (see: Lost Girl, Buffy) and retrograde heterosexuality (see: Star Trek) eons into the future. But the only lesbian in four seasons of Battlestar was Cain, who appeared for two episodes and who I hated even more than I hated most of the men on this show. Although many of the Cylon ladies are presented as being interested in sexual liaisons with both men and women, their romantic interests seem strictly male-oriented.
Gaeda is queer though, right? Everybody hated him, but I didn’t hate him as much as everyone else did. I thought it was brave what he did on New Caprica.
you and me both, baby
2. This Show Is Smarter Than Me
See, I didn’t even hate the ending, because I didn’t really realize that the ending didn’t resolve everything, because I’d only barely been keeping up with The Shit That Needed To Get Resolved.
I was so confused by the end that I was not even bothered that the end was also confusing.
I figured that I was just missing something, as I’d been all along.
I think writing this “I Just Now Saw” has taken forever because I feel like I’ll be taken less seriously as a television writer if I don’t have any deep thoughts about Battlestar. But then I realized that I could write about it, episode by episode, it’s just hard to write about the entire series all at once.
And to be honest, so much of it remains unclear.
Yet… I still loved it? And the story felt so huge, even if I couldn’t draw a map of it, I knew I was looking at something vast and ambitious and that’s the best kind of feeling you can have when you watch a story unfold before your very eyes.
But back before I educated myself, I had the following commoner opinions about the ending: I liked that Helo and Boomer got to raise their child in a place with air and grass, and that Starbuck and Lee had a final moment, and that Gaius said “I know how to farm” and started crying. I’m sentimental every 15 or so days.
1. But It Is Not Smarter Than Jacob Clifton
But you know who does have a shit-ton to say about Battlestar and who made my head explode with his Television Without Pity recaps, particularly those of the last several episodes of the series? Jacob Fucking Clifton, duh. His recaps are what all recaps dream of being; it’s a re-telling so good it begs the obnoxious question I’m often asked, which is why are you using your talents talking about this show instead of writing one/something else? But whatever, let’s just be grateful, eh? That he wrote so beautifully of this masterpiece epic of a show to begin with, that it has been done justice.
I Just Now Saw: Breaking Bad
UPDATE: Comment thread is now officially open to anybody who wants to discuss the finale. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop scrolling after the 32nd comment.
Welcome to “I Just Now Saw,” a new column in which I attempt to conduct conversations about television shows you watched ten years ago and I just now saw, in their entirety, for the first time. Today I will be discussing what was sold to me as one of the best shows ever of all time, Breaking Bad, which has its finale on AMC Sunday. I try to be a smart human when I write about television, but I don’t think I connected with this show strongly enough to present any unique insights, so I come to you today as a fellow television viewer, not as a Professional Television Writer. I am merely a layman with eyeballs.
I gave Breaking Bad a shot for the first time maybe two years ago. I watched the first three or four episodes on Netflix but didn’t get into it. It was painful to watch, almost. Walter White’s volatile insecurity and nerve-wrackingly clumsy forays into high-level betrayal were more disquieting and uncomfortable than entertaining. These people — everything about the way they interact and treat each other is heartbreaking. But I gave Breaking Bad another shot this summer because it felt like Required Reading. I dove back in a few episodes deep into Season One, and got into it pretty quickly with peak engagement circa Seasons Two and Three, watching the whole series on Netflix up until the final episodes premiered a few weeks back. With the finale around the corner, it felt like NOW IS THE TIME to talk about this show if I’m ever gonna talk about this show.
Top 8 Feelings About Breaking Bad
WARNING: THIS ENTIRE POST IS A SPOILER
1. So This Show Is Amazing and Stuff But…
hey is that the ice cream truck?
Although I’m aware the internet is jam-packed with intricate, compelling and elevated discourse around the show, I can’t create any of that writing myself nor am I too interested in reading what others have to say (which is crazy ’cause I love reading about television). I’ve had a hard time coming up with the standard I Just Now Saw eight feelings about it!
Why is that? It’s a gripping and complicated and well-told story, so I’m anxious for the finale. I watched it obsessively. I like it. The acting is outstanding. It’s clearly superb television, in all the quantifiable ways and the objective ways, too. Every episode could be its own movie. It’s gorgeous, visually.
a very special episode of “road rules”
Is it because I don’t care about these people? I care about Jesse Pinkman, a lot, and caring for Jesse probably kept me engaged more often than any other reaction I had to the show. I care about Jesse because underneath the not-a-pussy posturing is a little boy desperate to be loved, and very few Breaking Bad characters on this show display that kind of vulnerability.
Still though, I’m hardened against all Breaking Bad‘s characters because I don’t trust the show to keep the good people alive — or good. That’s the idea though, right? Breaking bad. The only person who hasn’t broken bad is Walt Junior/Flynn, and I think we know somehow that he will be safe no matter what happens, because the show has promised us that, in its own way. They’ve done that by making Walt Junior our guy on the inside, the pure innocent we can trust to evade corruption even when everybody else has bought in — and to call out pussies and bullshit where he sees it.
everybody likes it. chicken for the people. i rest my case.
There was no romantic storyline, either, besides Jesse’s brief relationships (but Jane was an enabler and Andrea never really got fleshed out), which may contribute to my ambivalence. But I was also impressed by how this show managed to keep us on the edge of our seats without a romantic storyline and without sex, either, usually. Of course, the marriage was at the center of everything, for better and for worse, but that particular relationship story wasn’t about romance, really. It was about the heart but it wasn’t about romance.
so you’re absolutely positive we can cancel home delivery and just keep our new york times digital subscription? you’re sure about this, sykler?
But maybe it’s more obvious than whether or not the show’s characters have resonated emotionally or a lack of romance: there’s just not much I relate to in this story, and I’m one of those viewers who needs that to truly love a show. It’s created its own fishbowl, independent of the wider world — politics, pop culture, all of it. So it doesn’t connect to the larger universe I also live in, it just connects to itself, and “itself” doesn’t have anything that reminds me of, well, me. The only feeling a Breaking Bad character felt that I related to was Walt’s frustration when he felt his authority or obvious devotion wasn’t being respected, or his frustration when he was forced to take orders from somebody else. But those frustrations are some of my most unflattering feelings ever and hardly ones I wanna relive in primetime. (Besides, ultimately, when I say Everything that I do, I do it to protect this family, I understand what the word “family” means, and believe in it. Walt doesn’t, not anymore.) On top of that, the show is so masterfully constructed that there’s little to critique for its own sake in a casual context. One either digs into this show and writes a thesis on it, or one perhaps has little to say.
fuck you gus i don’t need a fancy orange raincoat, the rain needs a fancy orange coat to protect itself from me
Oh wait, there was one other feeling I totally related to:
http://youtu.be/Bz3OiERPdg0
ROLLING JOINTS IS HARD.
2. I Heard it On The Wire
here just take it it’s too heavy to carry around in my bag all day
When Jesse killed Gale, it was like when Bodie killed Wallace in The Wire, except not as sad because Breaking Bad never lets you love anybody as much as you loved Wallace. (Then you go see Fruitvale and let that actor break your heart all over again.) That was the moment when I had to take a step back and try not to care too much about anybody anymore. It was hard to stay emotionless while watching The Wire, though, because you got to see people be soft sometimes, too, and vulnerable, but there wasn’t as much softness in Breaking Bad. Just Jesse.
The other Wire parallel was, obviously, the criminal lawyers. On that tip, I’ll take Saul Goodman over Maury Levy any day, and I really hope that spin-off happens. Saul was the much-needed comic relief, and a surprisingly consistent and compassionate guy too.
3. It’s Raining Men
I feel like this’ll be a theme for the next two shows I’m gonna talk about, too. Two major female characters in the whole show. Just two women! SO MANY MEN AND JUST TWO WOMEN. Mostly white men, too, at the forefront — aside from Hank’s partner, all the major men of color on the show are hardened criminals. Here’s the thing about diversity: it’s actually more interesting than a lack thereof. It’s basically the easiest way to make a situation interesting, is to make it more diverse. But that just isn’t this show, is it? For starters, it already is interesting so it probably doesn’t need my advice in that area. But moreso than that: the point of the show is men. Meth & Men. And the women who end up dead or alone or in trouble because of these men.
I don’t think of relating to a character being a definitively gendered experience, but in this case, I think gender is crucial in my failure to relate and The Majority’s overwhelming ability to relate: so much of the focus is Walter White proving to the world that he is a man. Online fandom seems wrapped up in celebrating the triumph of a middle-aged nerdy empathetic white guy transforming into a badass heartless borderline-sociopathic criminal, but I can’t imagine a worse fate for a man whose initial “flaws” are characteristics more commonly associated with femaleness than becoming a grizzled megalomanic.
Which brings me to…
4. I Fucking Hate Walter White
via Séamus Gallagher
When he said Jesse, it had to be done, there was no other way, about killing the eight guys in jail, I wanted to scream at the television: “YEAH THERE WAS. TAKE YOUR OWN FALL FOR YOUR OWN FUCKING SELF, ASSHAT.”
But I always have a tough time with television characters who keep doing mean, stupid or unnecessarily difficult or wasteful things in the service of pride or ego, and that was Walter’s M.O. throughout. I stopped liking him when he insisted on paying for his own cancer treatment by making meth when his friend was offering to cover the whole thing — a friend who, mind you, was only rich because of an idea Walter had. Still, I wanted to like him, wanted to root for him, and sometimes did. I thought his scientific solutions were badass and I loved his genius plots to get out of everything, ever. Like everybody, I got goosebumps over I’m not in danger, I am the danger. There were moments when Walt was trying to be good just enough for me to root for him. But also: Walt missed the birth of his child. Then Combo got killed and Walt said, “which one was he?” Then Walt watched Jane die. Then he poisoned Brock. And so on. And so on.
But apparently Heisenberg is like this cult hero that men on the internet love, which is pretty neat.
art print by Spencer Rizk via society 6
5. You Look Like Somebody That I Used To Know
You guys! Landry. Why they always gotta make that boy kill people.
Jesse Plemons // Landy in Friday Night Lights // Todd in Breaking Bad
Oh hey Cat, Lt. Sam Murray wouldn’t be very impressed with your new line of work. Frankie, on the other hand…
Laura Fraser // Cat in Lip Service // Lydia in Breaking Bad
Don’t trust the B— in apartment 325 either, eh? Also, this girl was in Veronica Mars. Suddenly she’s just all up in everything. I never even saw Don’t Trust the B– in Apartment 23, but it was advertised so aggressively that I felt like I did.
Krysten Ritter // Gia Goodman in Veronica Mar // Chloe in Don’t Trust The B // Jane in Breaking Bad
Hey Susan! How’s Ben doing these days, have you spoken to Ross lately, what’s the deal.
Jessica Hecht as Susan in Friends // Gretchen in Breaking Bad
6. I Don’t Understand Why People Think Skyler Is a Hypocritical Harpy
oh fuck this diaper needs to be changed asap
According to the internet, Skyler’s a pretty unpopular lady. Anna Gunn, the actress who plays Skyler, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times about the hate she gets:
A typical online post complained that Skyler was a “shrieking, hypocritical harpy” and didn’t “deserve the great life she has.”
“I have never hated a TV-show character as much as I hate her,” one poster wrote. The consensus among the haters was clear: Skyler was a ball-and-chain, a drag, a shrew, an “annoying bitch wife.”
When Walt first revealed the riches he’d amassed, I remember wishing she’d just take the money and deal with it in exchange for his actual honesty, which maybe would’ve been easier to procure if she’d not asked for a divorce, among other things. But Walt started it by not taking the opportunity she gave him in early Season Two to come clean. Regardless, Walt is an asshole to her most of the time, and treats her like she’s stupid, which she isn’t, but also he kinda treats everybody like they’re stupid. I liked that Skyler didn’t bend over for Walt, that she insisted on having a say in how the money was laundered and how information was distributed, and I hated Walt for pushing back.
But also: who can judge her for anything she did, ever, throughout this entire show? (Well, besides saying they should kill Jesse, which I obviously hated.) One of the scariest things you learn as you get older is that sometimes situations present themselves to you that have no solution and no right answer. It’s not like the math you learned or the books you analyzed in high school, where if you think hard enough, the correct path will reveal itself to you. Sometimes life is just rocks and hard places, over and over and over again, until everything blows up in your face and you have to learn how to make your hard place as comfortable as possible, because you’re not getting off any time soon.
7. My Ten Favorite “Breaking Bad” Moments
huh, yerba mate isn’t half bad
1. Jesse having the most awkward dinner ever with Walt and Skyler.
2. Walt’s speech at the high school assembly. He may be Heisenberg somewhere out there in the desert, but high school gymnasiums are a new kind of brutal: Walt’s got agenda-driven, well-meaning but ultimately not-that-tuned-in adults behind him, and in front of him are bleachers jam-packed with teenagers, a.k.a., world’s most judgmental human beings. Walt’s fundamental inability to connect with human beings emotionally is vivid, here, is bright and vivid and sad as hell.
3. Saul’s A-Team pays Ted Benecke a visit to make him sign the check to the IRS. COMEDY!
look, i’m sorry, i just find ‘blurred lines’ to be a really catchy tune, but if you want me to keep it down man, i’ll keep it down okay
4. The full video of Gale doing karaoke.
5. Gus taking out the entire cartel with that poison. This reminded me of how every time Buffy would face off a bunch of vampires at once I’d freak out because there’s just one Buffy and SO MANY VAMPIRES, but she would always win, you know? Except that Buffy is amazing and Gus is a psychopath, but whatever. BREAKING BAD!
6. Gus Fring walks out of the room in the nursing home and adjusts his tie with half his face blown off. That’s some movie magic right there.
7. “I am the one who knocks” / “I am not in danger, I am the danger.” Duh.
and you are the one who says “who’s there” and then i’m the one who says “orange” and you say “orange who?” and then i say “orange you glad i didn’t say banana?”
8. Pretty much every Saul Goodman scene.
9. The Star Trek script.
10. Walt Hugs Jesse.
8. My Fantasy Ending
via mike mitchell
I’m a sucker for a happy ending, but I know we’re not gonna get one here. I mean, does anybody else just want Walt to take Jesse in as his surrogate son for real and for everybody to become good people again and maybe Jesse and Walt Jr. and Skyler go on a shopping spree at the mall and then buy an island and live in a tree fort? Just me? Pancakes for everybody!
Alright people, your turn: how do you feel about Breaking Bad? What do you think is gonna happen in the finale? Isn’t it annoying that every show on television doesn’t have a lesbian in it?
I Just Now Saw: Lost Girl
Welcome to “I Just Now Saw,” a new column in which I attempt to conduct conversations about television shows you watched ten years ago and I just now saw, in their entirety, for the first time. Today I’m gonna talk about Lost Girl, which’s the only show on my list for this series that’s actually still on the air!
1. Overall Feelings
Y’all have been bugging me to watch Lost Girl for a while now because of its bisexual lead character, Bo, and so a few weeks back after finishing Battlestar Galactica, I dove in. I ate it in about a month, finishing the second-to-last episode online about half an hour before the finale aired on SyFy, which was the first episode I saw as it aired on television! (Syfy uses different opening credits than Netflix, sidenote.) Obviously I totally hated the finale, even though I hadn’t followed any of the magical mystery storylines in Season Three with enough consciousness to care about whether or not those loose ends were tied up. It’s just that I will smash my face into a rock if Bo and Dyson become a thing again. “I offered her my wolf.” Oh, shove it.
I’ve read absolutely nothing about Lost Girl anywhere, except for a review of the first episode of the third season on AV Club to see if they said anything about the fact that it was the most transphobic thing I’ve seen on television in quite some time. (They didn’t.) (I was personally appalled that a show with such a passionate queer following actually launched its third season with a classic “deceptive transsexual” storyline. I mean honestly the entire episode was profoundly stupid, like Sucker Punch or something, but just when you thought it couldn’t get one ounce stupider… it did!)
Obviously it reminded me immediately of Buffy, particularly because it has the same structure of each episode being its own procedural of sorts and the entire season dedicated to one Big Bad, and then the Kenzie/Willow parallel (especially if Kenzie gets powers next season) and, perhaps, even a Tam-Tam/Faith parallel? A Giles/Trick parallel? I could go on.
I liked that the show was really dark and sexy and I liked the aesthetic. Is it a “good show”? I’m not sure. It’s a pretty good show, though.
2. Yay Bisexual Representation!
This is, hands down the best depiction of bisexuality I’ve ever seen on television, in that it was completely a non-issue. We’re completely spared the standard coming out narrative and nobody has any problem with Bo’s bisexuality or her relationships. Her feelings for women are never seen as “less than” her relationships with men. Her sexual orientation was actually seen, more or less, as the norm, rather than the exception. I think this is part of why queers are so drawn to sci-fi narratives; because we can make our own worlds there, worlds without compulsory heterosexuality or traditional gender roles. It actually seemed like all the fae were bisexual. It was a magical world where nobody assumes anything about your sexual orientation just from looking at you. Girls kissed other girls so often that I stopped even noticing it!
3. Doccubus Processing Fees Were Through The Roof
As a queer lady, I think all women on television should date and fuck other women, exclusively. Yup. Every single female character on television would be a better character, in my opinion, if they were gay. I will root for the girl-on-girl hookup over the girl-on-boy hookup any day of the week.
Thus I rooted enthusiastically for Lauren and Bo… until they got together and suddenly the relationship was transformed from the sexually electrifying and emotionally complex coupling we’d fallen for and replaced by the standard media depiction of lesbian relationships as tedious, passionless and high on emotional processing. They got off to a good start — those early-season sex scenes, for example — but as Season Three prodded on I was repeatedly frustrated by how intensely it seemed the show wanted us to favor Bo and Dyson! I was having serious Marissa/Alex/Ryan flashbacks. Even Kenzie was on Team Dyson, and I always figured Kenzie was on my team implicitly. As it so often goes with bisexual women in television, her lingering affection for a male ex is repeatedly referenced, as is her BFF’s preference of that male suitor over the female one. While I appreciated that gender was never addressed as a factor in who Bo would favor, it was still an unfortunate trope for this show to entertain. I felt like I could sense the writers favoring Dyson and that pissed me off.
As it was written in the AV Club before they gave up on Lost Girl, “It’s difficult not to get annoyed when every single conversation Bo and Lauren have is dripping with unasked questions and they can’t have a normal conversation without the weight of a relationship barging into the room.”
4. When Did Bo Become Such a Bitch?
As Season Three advanced towards its confusing end, I felt like my brain was on a spin cycle. Suddenly Bo, who I thought was all about caring for other people, was being exceptionally selfish — perhaps best exemplified by the episode in which she misses Lauren’s science award ceremony. That particular plot — the overworked partner lies about his/her actual activities and misses a significant event in which their partner expects their attendance! — is done all. the. time. I hate it. It even happened in an episode of Breaking Bad I saw two days ago, where a character missed his wife giving birth to facilitate a drug deal. I hate it. I hate that plot! So from the moment Lauren announced that she’d won the award (about which Bo was totally uninterested and a complete cunt), I knew how this shit was gonna go down and I spent the episode in the fetal position, whimpering “no” over and over again softly into my bed.
5. OMG Bo’s Rack
Bo’s rack was practically it’s own character. I admit at times I was sort of confused by this, like is there any mission she participates in where maybe a wonderbra isn’t the best choice? It would seem that answer is “no.” Okay then!
6. She Blinded Me With Science
One of the many things that made Lost Girl different than Buffy was that it was way less geeky. Like I said in the Buffy post, the fact that Buffy was an outsider wasn’t enough to make me connect to her because she wasn’t really geeky in other ways — she hated school and books and computers and all of it. Bo is the same way, of course, and actually so are most of the characters in Lost Girl. Except Lauren! Lauren was the nerdiest coolest science person of all time, and everything about her rang true.
7. The Acting…
I really liked Trick’s character and position in the story, but was I the only one who felt like his acting was consistently sub-par to the point of being comically bad? I felt like every one of his lines sounded like a terrible actor in community theater being like “Hey guys! Look at that over there! I think it’s a grizzly bear!” Ditto for The Morrigan.
8. Kenzi BFF 4Ever Always
I love love love shows which emphasize the importance of female friendship over everything else in the whole entire world! I love how when Kenzi and Bo referred to each other as “best friends,” they spoke with the expectation that the Best Friend Relationship would be privileged like any other official intimacy, like lovers or family.
I’m sure there are shit-tons of Kenzi/Bo shippers out there in the sea, but were I to ship a ship on this show besides Doccubus, it would be this one:
just saying
9. I Liked Vex
I was so excited about Vex, who in my mind is the lovechild of Spike and Andrew from Buffy. He provided some welcome and clever comic relief and when he left the gang near the start of Season Three I was super sad about it.
10. OMG Emma from Degrassi
!!!!!
I Just Now Saw: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Welcome to “I Just Now Saw,” a new column in which I attempt to conduct conversations about television shows you watched ten years ago and I just now saw, in their entirety, for the first time. I’ve got a serious backlog of shows I’ve recently seen that I wanna talk to you about but today I will begin with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the seminal lesbian feminist classic.
I think one of the primarily disarming feelings of watching a show all the way through, many years after it aired, is that you have to completely avoid reading anything about the show because you don’t wanna accidentally bite down on a spoiler. Buffy was particularly challenging in this regard — whereas I could read old Battlestar recaps knowing that the recapper knew as much as I did, Buffy was popular in the pre-internet-ubiquity age which means online recaps of Buffy were generally written a few years after the show stopped airing, meaning its authors had usually already seen the entire series before setting out to recap it. Therefore I was worried they might spoil a thing for me. You can’t read anything about it until you’re completely done watching it, at which point I just didn’t know where to even begin.
There’s just SO MUCH BUFFY that attempting to discuss seven seasons of 22 episodes each all in one post is nearly impossible, so I’ve just decided to focus on some of my largest feelings.
Top Ten Feelings I Have About Buffy The Vampire Slayer
1. It Was A Slow Starter
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It’s not uncommon, of course, for a supposedly excellent television program to take some time to grow on me — The Wire and Battlestar Galactica, for example, took six or seven episodes to really suck me in (and then never let me go). But Buffy took a lot longer than that. It took three seasons, actually. I’d resisted researching the answer to the question “when do the lesbian parts start,” because my belief that the lesbian parts could begin at any moment was the only force driving me to continue watching episode after episode, especially every episode in which Drusilla had any lines. If I wanted to see what it looks like to have unusual teeth and talk like a melting cake, I’d take a bunch of Valium and look in the mirror, you know?
That being said, I’m not confident Buffy ever captured my entire attention at first, and by that I mean I was probs doing other things while watching, which likely contributed to my disenchantment. There was a monster of some kind, they killed it, then the episode was over. Everybody was dressed really bad and the special effects were almost comically terrible. None of the ongoing storylines snagged me — Angel seemed kinda broody and dumb, so I didn’t care about that, and Xander was obnoxious and Willow was talking in a weird baby voice all the time and I just kinda wanted to get a beer with Giles, and I don’t even drink beer. And maybe neither does Giles.
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I also think the super-clever humor is one of the show’s strongest points, and you tend to “get it” more when you’ve already fallen for all the characters and for the concept in general. I think I’d like Seasons One and Two a lot better now than I did at the time because it would be more hilarious.
2. Buffy Wasn’t My Bestie
I think part of my late-start problem is that it took me eighteen lightyears to wrap my head around the idea of Sarah Michelle Geller playing a feminist heroine. I’m not in the “feminist heroines can’t look like Barbie Dolls and if they do it’s not progressive” camp because, hello, it’s television, have you met Veronica Mars or any other female heroine on any show ever, but this was a radically new context in which to see SMG. I’d never found her particularly inspiring as an actress, she was just that girl who dated the equally coma-inducing Freddy Prinze Jr and starred in all the 90’s movies I hated JUST KIDDING I LOVED THEM ESPECIALLY SHE’S ALL THAT AND CRUEL INTENTIONS. [But I loved them in a way dissimilar to how I expected to love Buffy, obviously.]
sarah michelle gellar with jennifer love hewitt on the set of “i know what you did last summer”
So what was it, then, that separated me from really connecting with Buffy Summers? She’s an outsider and a strong woman and I love both of those things. This is my best guess: she’s not a dork. She may be an outsider, but she’s not a nerd or an intellectual or, at least at first, much of a deep thinker in general. She doesn’t read books, understand computers, like school or get good grades. So it was Willow, then, who served as my ambassador to the show, at least at first (I think every show has one or more “ambassador,” your anchor, the person you can identify with or feels honest to you, like Alice on The L Word and Hurley on Lost and Jim on The Office). Willow was the nerd. She was so nerdy that she learned her way into powerful witchdom!
But then shit got dark, y’all! (more on this in a minute) Shit got super dark in later seasons and as Buffy became a Woman, she became a Woman I related to.
Oddly, I also felt closer to her in later seasons because of what she said and felt about the responsibility that comes with leading a group of (mostly female) humans in a united cause and being the Decider.
Faith: “I’m looking at you, and everything you have, and I don’t know, I’m jealous. Then there I am. Everybody’s looking to me, trusting me to lead them and I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life.”
Buffy: “Yeah?”
Faith: “And that’s you, every day, isn’t it?”
Buffy: “I love my friends. I’m very grateful for them. But that’s the price of being Slayer.”
3. Everything Looks So Familiar
At least half the cast of Buffy consists of actors I strongly associate with their other work. It took me a long time to get over the fact that Xander was dating Susan Keats from 90210. I had no idea this show was so chock-full of humans I know in radically different contexts.
Oz // Kenny Fisher from “Can’t Hardly Wait.” // Seth Green
Anya // Susan Keats from Beverly Hills 90210 // Emma Caulfield
Susan was Brandon Walsh’s harpy feminist girlfriend from the newspaper who was probably really awesome and I’d totally love her now in a Miranda-from-SATC-way, but when I was thirteen I could only see her as an obstacle between Brandon Walsh and his true love Kelly Taylor. Also because Susan was a wet blanket.
Cordelia // Rebecca, the manipulative bitchmom from The Lying Game. // Charisma Carpenter
Dawn // Harriet the motherfucking spy. // Michelle Trachtenberg
Faith // Missy Pantone from Bring It On // Eliza Dushku
Xander // Kevin Lynch from Criminal Minds // Nicholas Brendon
Willow // Band Camp Girl from American Pie // Allyson Hannigan
Buffy // Evil bitch from Cruel Intentions // Sarah Michelle Geller
4. Tara and Willow Are So Gay
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Aw, the 90’s! When it was such a huge deal for a lesbian couple to exist in the first place that having them act sexual towards one another would’ve been downright scandalous. But just like how Lucy and Ricardo’s separate beds strike present-day audiences as hopelessly antiquated and foolishly prudish, Willow & Tara’s tender sexless affections seemed a bit quaint at first. Plus they were always dressed in those long flowy skirts they sell at bougie boutiques by the waterfront in Berkeley which summoned memories of the pandering sexless lesbian image of the 1990’s. They didn’t kiss for the first eighteen episodes of their relationship! But still, it was groundbreaking shit and became the longest-running lesbian relationship on network television at the time.
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I knew only one thing about their relationship going into it: that Tara would die. But I didn’t know about the tender and funny “coming out” scene with Buffy, or about all the funny gay jokes that would ensue or about what a good singer Amber Benson is. (JK I already knew that last one because prior to my marathon, I’d seen Once More With Feeling at Intern X’s apartment in like 2010 and we were all so stoned I couldn’t tell the difference between television and real life.)
Also I liked Kennedy as Willow’s partner too? Which I guess is also an unpopular opinion.
5. Oh, Spike
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So I have this weird affection for bad-bois-turned-good-for-love. Like if an asshole does one tiny redeeming thing, I develop a panic that if he’s not rewarded for said redeeming action, that he’ll never do anything good again or believe in the good of mankind. (I have similar emotional reactions to every tiny thing Obama does for gay people, as you may have noticed.) Besides, Spike seemed more interesting than Angel, who reminds me of a loaf of bread, or Riley, who reminds me of meatloaf. I’d rather make out with a cardboard box. Or a cardboard box cutter. Or Finn Hudson. I don’t know what it is about men, they just have a habit of reminding me of carbohydrates and razorblades.
Spike, though! Young Spike in his glasses, reading love poems that nobody but his mother wants to hear! Evil Spike with the trench coat flapping in the wind with the fury of a thousand outsiders trying too hard to look cool! Spike with his heart, looking after Dawn, playing teacher’s assistant for the new class of slayers!
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Prior to watching Buffy, I’d heard of and about Angel but never heard of Spike, so I assumed my affection for Spuffy was about as unpopular as my affection for Shenny (DON’T HATE), but after I’d watched the series I asked Laneia and she said everybody liked Spike! Silly me.
Remember when Spike went and visited Buffy at her job at the fast food restaurant? That was so cute. It’s always special when you’re trapped in a low-paying job which requires you to wear a profoundly stupid uniform and then your real friends from the real world come visit and catch you in all your uniformed scripted corporately-compliant glory.
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[Yes, I cannot fit “Seeing Red” into my consciousness, cannot really know what to do with that. Because no. Just no. It failed on so many levels. If you’re going to use an attempted rape scene in your show, especially in a show about empowering women, you follow through or you don’t, and they didn’t, although Buffy Wiki says the writers stood by the decision, claiming “that moment was necessary to set up a powerful motivation for Spike’s quest to gain a soul.” But I don’t think so. Plus as metaphors go, that’s a weak one with no legitimate parallel in real life. I’ve read a lot of analyses of this since watching it which has lead me to conclude that there are so many angles from which this scene (and episode) fails that I can’t do it justice in this one paragraph, or even in many paragraphs quite yet. ]
6. Shit Got Dark
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When shit got dark, that’s when I started relating, that’s when I fell in love with the show, and not just Season Six but how it made her stronger, I think, in Season Seven. It made her ready to lead. Sometimes being in charge is a way of keeping yourself healthy, you know? Those weren’t the seasons everybody else liked, were they? Those weren’t the seasons everybody liked. But that’s when Buffy became a thing to me. When she was depressed. When she missed death, when she wished she could be a part of death again. When she slipped into Spike’s lair and let him push her hard because she just needed to feel something, anything, just anything besides the tedium of being alive.
All day you do things you’re supposed to do — things you need to do, things you’re obligated or expected to do by others — because that’s just what there is to do. You don’t want to do anything so you can only do the things you need to do. But here is a thing you both want to do and do not need to do. So what do you do. You do it.
I get that.
7. I Love Andrew
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I think Andrew was my Anya. He was one of my favorite parts of the show. I also loved how he was gay but it wasn’t a thing, it was just funny. Gay guys always steal the show from the gay girls but he didn’t.
[I was hoping that Vex would be my New Andrew on Lost Girl, but I’ll talk about that more in I Just Now Saw: Lost Girl.]
8. I Didn’t Hate Dawn
THE SHIPPER IS IN THE HOUSE (via scooby gang)
There are many ways in which the traditional viewing experience differs from the marathon-viewing experience. Dawn’s storyline, I think, is a perfect example of this. When Dawn appeared out of the great blue nothing at Season Five’s start, I honestly thought I’d just missed something in the previous Season which would explain her presence, but six hours later I knew the truth about what she was doing there. If I’d had to wait six weeks to know what the hell she was doing up in Buffy’s situation, maybe I would’ve hated her like everybody did — but I didn’t. She was a 13-year-old girl, you know? There were episodes in later seasons where she annoyed the living fuck out of me, though.
9. Buffy Isn’t Bad at Relationships!
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Why were Buffy and her pals so obsessed with the idea that Buffy can’t “make it work” with guys and all of her relationships are disasters? Um, she had two boyfriends before Spike. Angel, and then Riley. Like all relationships that end — a.k.a., every single relationship you’re ever in except for the one you’re in when you die — their relationships didn’t work.
10. What Makes Buffy Special
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I think a lot of it is that they use ALL THE TROPES! But in a really exciting, fresh, fun way. Like almost the entire thing is potentially meta. There’s an attention to detail that manifests itself in really surprising ways, and fails in really surprising ways at times, too, you know? I think it did fail, from time to time, but only because it was so ambitious in the first place.
But of course, also the lady-thing! I basically cried through the entire finale, and not because I was sad — I’d sort of prepared myself for everybody dying and was pleased that not EVERYBODY died any anyhow, the show was over so who cares who’s dead or not— but when all the potential slayers become slayers? I’m moved to tears by this epic exhibition of raw Girl Power, especially when all fifteen girls are suddenly infused with the power and confidence to kick 100 asses apiece. It was beautiful.