From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #87 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, March 6 2007 Volume 16 : Number 087 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Britney Spears is a mammal [Rex ] Frippermendations? [Rex ] Re: 8-track memories ["Gene Hopstetter Jr." ] Hoffs/Sweet ["John Irvine" ] Robyn makes another list... [Rex ] Re: not quite done yet ["vivien lyon" ] The Top 10 Corporate Moments In Rock ["Stacked Crooked" ] Re: Robyn makes another list... [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: Robyn makes another list... [Rex ] Re: not quite done yet [Capuchin ] Re: 8-track memories [Tom Clark ] Re: VU Acetate MP3s [Tom Clark ] Re: not quite done yet [Rex ] Re: not quite done yet [Capuchin ] Re: not quite done yet [Capuchin ] Re: Reap [2fs ] Re: not quite done yet [Rex ] Re: Hoffs/Sweet [2fs ] Re: Frippermendations? [2fs ] Re: The Top 10 Corporate Moments In Rock [2fs ] Re: Robyn makes another list... [2fs ] Re: not quite done yet [Rex ] Re: Frippermendations? [Rex ] Re: not quite done yet [2fs ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 10:38:42 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Britney Spears is a mammal On 3/6/07, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > > http://seanbonner.com/realultimatebritney/ Right up there with Jay Farrar. Don't let them form a team up together! - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 11:19:18 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Frippermendations? So, while not ready to make the leap into trying to like King Crimson, it seems I've been accruing and auditioning more and more Fripp solo projects and collaborations. But I've realized I'm doing it pretty willy-nilly... can y'all recommend the best, or most representative stuff? I'll already have some of it, but I'd still appreciate some pointers about what's the good stuff and why. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:19:42 -0600 From: "Gene Hopstetter Jr." Subject: Re: 8-track memories > From: michaeljbachman@comcast.net > After that I bought a used 1976 Datsun 280Z, no 8-track in it though. My 1976 Datsun 280Z did have the stock 8-track player, and I'd love taking highway road trips with a pile of tapes. ELO was a particular favorite. My 1971 and 1973 240Zs did not have the 8-track player, so I put Sony cassette decks in them. Before I totalled them. My current Datsun, a 1977 280Z coupe, has an Alpine CD player. I've been looking for a stock 8-track player for it for years, but they're hard to come by now. They were manufactured by Clarion. Actually, a friend of mine has one of the players, but he won't sell it to me -- it's gonna go in his 1975 Fairlady. I can't hear what comes out of the CD player and 6x9s in my 280Z, though. With a fully balanced and relieved .20 over motor, with cat- free 2.5" exhaust, turbo muffler, ceramic coated headers, big-throat throttle, high-compression head, street cam, and lowered sports suspension, it's a bit loud. I'd rather scare riceboys with my motor noise than my trunk o' funk anyway, and it's a lovely straight-six symphony when it's opened up on the interstate. ObWheedonPost: I just bought the entire run of Firefly on DVD for $18 from Target. Sweet. I Netflixed it originally, but now I can watch Kaylee whenever I want [to feel tingly all over] now: . Boosh! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 14:21:07 -0500 From: "John Irvine" Subject: Hoffs/Sweet "I just picked up a copy of Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs' _Under the Covers Vol. 1_ - haven't had a chance to listen to it yet (although I've heard a couple of tracks), but - good god is Susanna Hoffs hot. I mean, that sounds obvious - but frankly, the '80s pictures of her are so covered in '80s-ness that it's hard to even see what she looked like. But damn - it's hard to believe the woman's in her late 40s..." I'd like to hear that too - saw them on Letterman (?) recently and they rocked. She is absolutely teh hawt, but Mr Sweet - um looks like he ate Robert Quine. - -John http://www.thejennifers.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 11:49:47 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Robyn makes another list... ...along with John Cale, and two New Order songs (counting the one by Smashing Pumpkins)... http://www.avclub.com/content/node/59295 - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 11:49:23 -0800 From: "vivien lyon" Subject: Re: not quite done yet On 3/6/07, Christopher Gross wrote: > > A quick word about Battlestar Galactica: I don't find the characters at > all bland or unbelievable, but if they don't interest you then they don't > interest you. It's not something that can be proven or disproven. The > individual episode scripts are a mixed bag, with some great ones and some > clunkers, but I don't think there are as *many* clunkers as the average TV > show. Same goes for the multi-episode plot arcs. But I do have a problem > with the overall story arc of the show: I just don't think the writers > know where they're going. I'm plagued by the fear that the fleet will > just keep wandering around as they're doing now, meeting and overcoming > various problems while the essential situation remains static. Hopefully > I'm wrong. At any rate, that fear certainly isn't enough to ruin the show > for me. I have a hard time believing that *anyone* could find the characters bland or unbelievable. If their motivations are sometimes murky, that just seems realistically complex to me. But that's neither here nor there, as you say. I just wanted to pipe in and say that I share your concern about the series potentially getting lost (or Lost). I had *very* high hopes that the writers had an overall goal when they started, and about five or so episodes ago, I lost that hope. For the most part. I still haven't seen the two most recent eps, so maybe there's new evidence of a grander plan that I'm currently unaware of. V. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:57:30 -0800 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: The Top 10 Corporate Moments In Rock . ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 12:02:53 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Robyn makes another list... Rex wrote: > ...along with John Cale, and two New Order songs (counting the one > by Smashing Pumpkins)... > > http://www.avclub.com/content/node/59295 Someone once told me that "1963" was actually about how Bernard Sumner's father abandoned him and his mother in favor of his "new" family, but I don't know if that's actually true or not. He's not half as bad a lyricist as people say he is (though he's rarely a deep lyricist). "I believe in the marketplace of ideas even if the other guy doesn't have any." -- Keith Olbermann "So this is what it's come to, these millions of years of evolution, warfare, community-building, women dying in childbirth with hope because their children might achieve more: a video on the Internet of a cat watching a video of a cat on the Internet." -- "Sylvar" . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 13:39:59 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Robyn makes another list... On 3/6/07, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > > > Someone once told me that "1963" was actually about how Bernard > Sumner's father abandoned him and his mother in favor of his "new" > family, but I don't know if that's actually true or not. He's not > half as bad a lyricist as people say he is (though he's rarely a deep > lyricist). Somewhere between economy, luck, and downplayed intelligence, a lot of what he writes that seems like it shouldn't work actually does. Some of it doesn't, but the mystery of why the good stuff succeeds makes it that much cooler. All of Billy Corgan's lyrics blow, though! - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 15:01:50 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: not quite done yet On Tue, 6 Mar 2007, Christopher Gross wrote: > Or maybe you could balance the troika out with a more humorous episode? > Doppelgangland would lost on viewers who don't already know Willow, but > maybe Earshot or Something Blue would work. Earshot is a humorous episode? I mean, it has some moments of humor, but I don't think of it as one of the funny ones. In fact, I love the complexity and depth of earshot more than many, many others. (And I love Jonathan, so...) The way this event forces her to become sympathetic and turns a very typical teen show Special Episode into something more universally compassionate floors me every time. However, I've recently become quite opposed to indoctrinating people with Once More With Feeling or The Body. I think they give away too much of too many of the left-field plot twists that were so much fun on first viewing. I think Earshot, Hush, and Lover's Walk are still fair game, though. I might add The Replacement as the "humous episode" so that we have a balance of high school/non high school episodes. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 15:13:02 -0800 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: 8-track memories On Mar 6, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Gene Hopstetter Jr. wrote: > My current Datsun, a 1977 280Z coupe, has an Alpine CD player. I've > been looking for a stock 8-track player for it for years, but > they're hard to come by now. They were manufactured by Clarion. What, no turntable in the glovebox? - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 15:09:03 -0800 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: VU Acetate MP3s On Mar 5, 2007, at 3:12 PM, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/01/velvet_undergro.html Grab the whole thing here: http://s11.quicksharing.com/v/3451937/Velvet_Underground.zip.html Somebody needs to get that out to Lawrence Berkeley Labs so it can be sampled with their optical reader: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-7/p27.html - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 15:16:11 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: not quite done yet On 3/6/07, vivien lyon wrote: > > I just wanted to pipe in and say that I share your concern about the > series > potentially getting lost (or Lost). I had *very* high hopes that the > writers > had an overall goal when they started, and about five or so episodes ago, > I > lost that hope. And there's the source of my hesitation to take any new continuity-oriented show to heart after the twin... erm, peaks of disappointment that were Twin Peaks and The X-Files. Is there any really good example of a show like this that really, truly started with its entire arc plotted out in advance in any kind of meainingful way? It seems like Babylon 5 was kind of done that way, but a lot of its "prophecies" and planned arcs got kind of waylaid by minor IRL roadblocks such as more than one lead actor quitting and the show getting cancelled a time or two, most of which was semi-effectively if a little transparently retconned. But after a whole bunch of shows collapsing under their own mythologies, I though show runners were putting more forethought into this stuff these days... no? - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 15:29:52 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: not quite done yet On Tue, 6 Mar 2007, vivien lyon wrote: > I have a hard time believing that *anyone* could find the characters > bland or unbelievable. If their motivations are sometimes murky, that > just seems realistically complex to me. But that's neither here nor > there, as you say. My problem is that they don't seem like real people, complex or simple, of any sort. Their priorities aren't reflected in their choices and behavior and the consequences of those choices have no discernable impact on their character. Essentially, the characters range from mildly sociopathic to genuinely insane. And these are the ones charged with saving humanity? Why the fuck would they? Did YOU get something out of Starbuck fucking Baltar? They had no connection really before or after (sharing almost no screen time except at a poker table) and if it was just a random, drunken hook-up that they are both kind of prone to having, then why show us at all? I don't feel like anyone came out of the experience any different and I don't think it illustrated anything about the characters that we didn't already know. So what's the point? Is it just to fulfill some fanfanfantasy about different characters having sex? It's possible to make nods to the slash community without losing your own goals for your characters. I could give examples, but won't. Of course, I feel like they have no trouble doing that on Battlestar Galactica because they don't really have goals for their characters. > I just wanted to pipe in and say that I share your concern about the > series potentially getting lost (or Lost). I had *very* high hopes that > the writers had an overall goal when they started, and about five or so > episodes ago, I lost that hope. For the most part. After the first couple of episodes of season 2, I realized they weren't going to give us any kind of long-term development. There is no plan. They took the cinematic style of this new breed of television series (invented by The Sopranos?), but none of the narrative sensibility. The characters do not appear to change or grow. What drives these characters? For the most part, I see nothing but survival as the motivation with no higher goal which immediately regresses into expedience and pragmatism. That's no kind of ethical basis and isn't at all interesting to watch. And yet still the pragmatist is frustrated by the ignorance and irresponsibility of the characters who continue to ignore obvious alcoholism, emotional and psychological instability, rank incompetence, and contempt for the very humanity they are attempting to save. In the end, the message seems to be that the people in power are crazy and we still should follow them because we need big guns to protect us. It just makes no sense. I watched all of the first two seasons and I don't really give a crap about any of the characters except possibly the (former?) President, whom they don't seem to have the guts to actually kill, and a former interest in Boomer who had a really interesting character while she was still coming to terms with her nature and purpose but was undermined by the show's basic lack of creative direction. Logos goes out the window when you don't have a goal. There is no ethos except pragmatism and expedience (which is meaningless as an ethos and which they still violate for the sake of ill-conceived drama). And the only source of pathos I have been able to extract from anyone who feels anything about the show's main characters has been sex appeal. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 15:41:08 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: not quite done yet On Tue, 6 Mar 2007, Rex wrote: > And there's the source of my hesitation to take any new > continuity-oriented show to heart after the twin... erm, peaks of > disappointment that were Twin Peaks and The X-Files. I wouldn't call Battlestar Galactica "continuity-oriented". But I just wrote a long thing about that. > Is there any really good example of a show like this that really, truly > started with its entire arc plotted out in advance in any kind of > meainingful way? Of course I'm going to make arguments for Buffy. I think seasons three, four, and five were very carefully planned from the start. There are tiny comments and dream sequences which foreshadow everything right down to the beautiful finale of The Gift. Characters use exactly the same words to describe completely different things years apart in order to draw connections for the observant viewer. In one of my very favorite turns (that I will not reveal because I consider it a major spoiler even though its somewhat common knowledge), they even manage to use a very old television trope that is always the hallmark of writers who have lost all of their ideas as a plot device that is foreshadowed over a year before and referenced more than once before it happens. All of this stuff could be long-term vision or it could be just very clever writers that look back at their own work and create "revisionist foreshadowing" by giving meaning to things that were, in the past, meaningless. The wonderful part is that it is so well-executed that no audience could ever tell the difference. So it may as well have been planned from day one. > It seems like Babylon 5 was kind of done that way, but a lot of its > "prophecies" and planned arcs got kind of waylaid by minor IRL > roadblocks such as more than one lead actor quitting and the show > getting cancelled a time or two, most of which was semi-effectively if a > little transparently retconned. But after a whole bunch of shows > collapsing under their own mythologies, I though show runners were > putting more forethought into this stuff these days... no? I think the lesson that production companies learned from Babylon 5 (which I've still never seen and have no interest in seeing) is that auteurs are difficult people and long story arcs are just going to get messed up by sales problems. Hell, look what Fox did to Firefly. I think the cable productions are able to do more because the show is actually the product they are selling. In commercial television, of course, you are the product. The viewers are sold to the advertisers. The content of the show has to be just good enough to draw in people... and drawing in more gullible people is better than drawing in more discerning people because the advertising is more effective on the gullible. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:08:11 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Reap On 3/6/07, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > > The dearth of guys named Scooter in whatever prison he goes to.... So, you're announcing the death of a dearth? - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 16:10:04 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: not quite done yet On 3/6/07, Capuchin wrote: > > Essentially, the characters range from mildly sociopathic to > genuinely insane. And these are the ones charged with saving humanity? > Why the fuck would they? [...] > What drives these characters? For the most part, I see nothing but > survival as the motivation with no higher goal which immediately regresses > into expedience and pragmatism. That's no kind of ethical basis and isn't > at all interesting to watch. And yet still the pragmatist is frustrated > by the ignorance and irresponsibility of the characters who continue to > ignore obvious alcoholism, emotional and psychological instability, rank > incompetence, and contempt for the very humanity they are attempting to > save. In the end, the message seems to be that the people in power are > crazy and we still should follow them because we need big guns to protect > us. It just makes no sense. But that sounds incredibly realistic. Not necessarily uplifting, but accurate. - -REx ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:13:14 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Hoffs/Sweet On 3/6/07, John Irvine wrote: > > "I just picked up a copy of Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs' _Under the > Covers > Vol. 1_ - haven't had a chance to listen to it yet (although I've heard a > couple of tracks), but - good god is Susanna Hoffs hot. I mean, that > sounds > obvious - but frankly, the '80s pictures of her are so covered in > '80s-ness > that it's hard to even see what she looked like. But damn - it's hard to > believe the woman's in her late 40s..." > > I'd like to hear that too - saw them on Letterman (?) recently and > they rocked. She is absolutely teh hawt, but Mr Sweet - um looks like > he ate Robert Quine. It's sort of amusing - if I didn't know either artist, and someone had said that Susanna is Matthew's daughter, based on the photographic evidence I'd believe it. I'd also want to see a pic of her mom - since the hypothetical Susanna-as-daughter-of-Matthew got her looks not from him*. (This is hypothetical, folks - actual pictures of Susanna Hoffs' actual mother are neither required nor requested at this point.) * Okay, I suppose in his younger years, MS was kinda cute. But yeah, he hasn't exactly stepped up to the plate in the keeping-the-looks department. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:15:10 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Frippermendations? On 3/6/07, Rex wrote: > > So, while not ready to make the leap into trying to like King Crimson, it > seems I've been accruing and auditioning more and more Fripp solo projects > and collaborations. But I've realized I'm doing it pretty willy-nilly... > can y'all recommend the best, or most representative stuff? I'll already > have some of it, but I'd still appreciate some pointers about what's the > good stuff and why. I don't think Fripp's solo stuff is really him at his best. But if you're looking for a more song-oriented Fripp, _Exposure_ is a good start. (Pretend you don't recognize who's singing on half the tracks.) And is that first League of Gentlemen album in print? Kind of amusing to hear Frippiness crossed with vintage new-wave-y jitteriness...although I haven't listened to that in years. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:24:07 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: The Top 10 Corporate Moments In Rock On 3/6/07, Stacked Crooked wrote: > > http://www.earvolution.com/2007/03/top-10-corporate-moments-in-rock.asp> Not that anyone actually cares - but the mythology of the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" is so damned absurd. As it happens (and as may surprise people who know I'm not at all a football (American) fan), Rose and I were actually at a Super Bowl party that day, and saw the infamous episode live and in real-time on one of her cow-orkers' large-screen TV. No one thought much of it - more like, oh, looks like her top flapped off for a millisecond. Even on that big screen, it was barely noticeable - I think it was about a medium c/u, and lasted about 1/10 of a second. Everyone went on with their eating, drinking, and (in our case) ignoring the game (and halftime show). It was quite surprising to me to read the brouhaha the next day - you'd think she'd stripped naked, bounced her boobs directly into the TV camera, and performed illicit acts upon the game ball. If it weren't for some right-place-right-time photographer, and the Drudge Report's publication of the resulting photo, no one would have a clue what Janet Jackson's right breast looked like. (Okay, well not "no one" - but no one not intimately acquainted with Ms. Jackson.) That repercussions of that non-event are still detectable *today* however many years later - in the way networks get extremely freaked out about the possibility of anything "indecent" accidentally getting aired (ads for _Norbit_ inexplicably exempted) - is yet another item in the ongoing proof that most Americans are batshit insane about sex and the body. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:29:21 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Robyn makes another list... On 3/6/07, Rex wrote: > > ...along with John Cale, and two New Order songs (counting the one by > Smashing Pumpkins)... > > http://www.avclub.com/content/node/59295 Actually, if you've ever heard it, there's a song by Milwaukee-based band Sometime Sweet Susan (whose record was - just barely - nationally distributed at the time) whose bass part is nearly identical to that Smushing Pampkins track. Somehow, though, their song sounds less like a NO ripoff... PS: to Onion scribe: WWI ended in 1919 (the signing of the Treaty of Versailles) - not 1921. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 16:41:35 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: not quite done yet On 3/6/07, Capuchin wrote: > > > All of this stuff could be long-term vision or it could be just very > clever writers that look back at their own work and create "revisionist > foreshadowing" by giving meaning to things that were, in the past, > meaningless. The wonderful part is that it is so well-executed that no > audience could ever tell the difference. So it may as well have been > planned from day one. I thought it unlikely in the case of BUFFY because I recall-- or at least STR-- at least two times when nobody was even sure if the show, or the star, would return for the next season. I can believe that somewhere there in the middle, when a good head of narrative steam had built up and everything was at peak performance, there was a relatively long-term gameplan, but by the same token, the point where a show is at its strongest on all fronts is usually the last time someone starts to contemplate an endgame. I tend to think that the middle years of X-Files were pretty tightly constructed as well... the thing just became unfininishable due to ego, contract disputes, ego, weak network support for the creator's other projects (ego), mounting budgets, ego, a dry well of stand-alone concepts, and ego. The same thing happened to Alias, among others, and I thought that some of that was generally in the air with Buffy, too, although I understand it was thought to generally finish up more respectably than those other shows. Now, I have no doubt that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was/is fine television indeed, but I have a hard time believing it was *that* much better than everything else on TV at the time or since. I saw a few episodes and fragments of others, and I never fell off my chair screaming "Holy shit get them a PULITZER PRIZE NOW and cease all television production now, for this shall never be equalled." Babylon 5 wasn't the best television ever, maybe, but it was pretty good; it sounds like your chief issue with it, Jeme, is similar to my issue with Buffy: it deals in tropes that don't float your particular boat (its depiction of alien cultures, as I recall), so you have no interest in whatever else it might have had to offer. Likewise me with good-lookin' high school kids and how rough they have it, expressed allegorically through menacing demons or otherwise. - -Rex, who will withdraw from the TV discussion now seeing as how he don't watch none nohow: "I don't watch TV, but I play like I do in real life, and get paid for it." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 16:45:27 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Frippermendations? > I don't think Fripp's solo stuff is really him at his best. But if you're > looking for a more song-oriented Fripp, _Exposure_ is a good start. > (Pretend > you don't recognize who's singing on half the tracks.) > > And is that first League of Gentlemen album in print? Kind of amusing to > hear Frippiness crossed with vintage new-wave-y jitteriness...although I > haven't listened to that in years. Hee. Have both of those and and an Eno collaboration (plus the tons of examples of Fripp on other people records I've accrued over the past two decades). Song-orientedness is not important to me here... just less Crimson-y sounding, at least at first blush. Experimental is all good. Thanks! Rex ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:49:03 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: not quite done yet On 3/6/07, Capuchin wrote: > > On Tue, 6 Mar 2007, Rex wrote: > > > Is there any really good example of a show like this that really, truly > > started with its entire arc plotted out in advance in any kind of > > meainingful way? > > Of course I'm going to make arguments for Buffy. I think seasons three, > four, and five were very carefully planned from the start. There are tiny > comments and dream sequences which foreshadow everything right down to the > beautiful finale of The Gift. Characters use exactly the same words to > describe completely different things years apart in order to draw > connections for the observant viewer. Yep. Consider Willow's character arc - and the way her nascent realization of her lesbianism was actually hinted at a long time before *she* knew it (in that episode with the un-Buffy'd Bizarro-World wherein she became a vamp): she says, "plus, I think I was kinda gay" or words to that effect, and marvels at how different vampire her is, when Angel says something like, "well..." At the time, it was a throwaway - but when you re-see the episode, it kidna clicks right into place. Also: I cannot remember her name (have you noticed I'm lame at details), but there's one character who shows up in a minor role in one ep of Buffy, shows up a few eps later, then shows up in Angel - and despite the triviality of her earlier roles, is given a coherent character arc that makes the role she plays in that Angel episode or two (she runs a homeless shelter or something like that) more resonant than if you didn't know the character at all. Actually (and Cap alludes to this in his reservations about using certain episodes as non-fan bait), one problem with the shows is that in some respects they're *so* dependent upon character that much of their impact evaporates - or is even turned to confusion - if you haven't watched the series from the start. But that's a weakness I'll accept: especially given DVD reissues and downloads, if you're curious about a series, you can watch the whole thing. Nobody expects chapters of novels to stand alone; a TV serial is (can be, when it's well done) far closer to a visualization of a novel than a movie is (which is really better approached along the lines of a short story). - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #87 *******************************