On the Leash

Oh, my headphones are so broken... I had a nice pair of Panasonics at work that I'd repaired with tape some months ago after one ear went lopsided, but they've finally given up the ghost. They squeeze one ear, and leave the other out in the breeze. Not fun. I'm reduced to my backup pair with the short cord, which gives me this sort of dog-on-a-tether feeling of being chained to my computer. All that's missing is the dominatrix putting the butt of a riding crop under my chin to hold my head up. Way to make me feel like not being at work...

Anyway, just a short note for the moment - I've a number of thoughts on last night's Angel ep to get down, so there'll be a brief pause of a few hours while I actually do things to get bills paid and collect my musings in between tasks. Meanwhile, here's the first blush of impressions:

Single-shot filler ep, much like the Lorne one, but I loved this for exactly the same reason I loved that one - I like the character. Harmony never fails to tickle me, and in this case, the staff seems to have decided to go with a sort of Legally Blonde with vampire fangs - single, young undead girl trying to make it in the big city. Cute. I also liked the emphasis on the fact that Harmony is not dumb, but that people don't listen to her. And the Kill Bill homage in the lunchroom chopstick faceoff was absolutely priceless. Harmony's certainly come a long way in fighting skill since the Xander slap-fight days.

But the quotable quote one walks away from this one with is definitely Harmony's plantive little whine, "I don't have a soul, you know! I have to try a lot harder!"

Do I Ever Love Feedback

Late lunch, work stuff... still not finished with writeup yet. Darn it! But am I ever loving the postmortem chat we've got goin' on here - I could never quite find the time to keep up with a message board, but I guess this is a close equivalent. All participants trading thoughts on Angel, thanks and welcome!

But in the meantime, I mentioned somewhere in the comments on the last entry that I would shortly provide a Spike-related rant. This may not fascinate everyone, so the sake of those who may not want to plow through my large verbage on the subject, I'm going to use those fun LJ tags to run it off onto its own page. If you're interested... ( text )

Now, for everyone else, I'm going to go off for a moment on some of my issues on the Whedonverse in general. Sorry. Gotta do it. Then onto last night's Angel. I promise.

To be perfectly honest, I've got some issues with Whedon's world these days, because I've detected a number of themes in his worldview which I really, really don't agree with. (Much of this will ultimately be covered in my BtVS S7 analysis, when I finally get it done.) Buffy, originally pitched as a feminist show, had a final take on feminism that I wish was a joke - Whedon's image of "strong women" ultimately wasn't all that far removed from the '70s cliche of bra-burning angry lesbians. Traditionally "feminine" emotional strengths such as love or empathy were discarded for traditionally "male" features such as aggression and brute force. There's no attempt to suggest that a truly balanced person might need both aspects to be truly strong (a theme I'd originally thought S7 had been building towards). Worse, the activation of the world's Slayers in "Chosen" is cast as the final solution not to just the question of the "Chosen One," but the war of the sexes ("One Slayer is born because a bunch of guys that died thousands of years ago made up that rule," as Buffy characterizes the unjust rule of the patriarchy). The assumption seems to be that women and men can never get along, so reversing the power polarity is the only answer. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Further, I've long since gotten tired of the bet-you-didn't-see-that-coming red herring ploy, which Whedon has been way overusing - uh-oh, Spike's gone evil again and is getting his chip out... no, whups, he's getting a soul! Giles is dead... no he's not, he's just acting like a jerk! Spike's gonna lose it because Buffy's kissing Angel... uh, no, he's just gonna go home and sulk. And that's not even getting into absolute dead ends such as Joyce's ghost, From Beneath You It Devours, the spirit of the First Slayer growling, "It's not enough," the Mystical Elf Queen's mysterious babble to Buffy "you already have weapons"... none of it can be trusted anymore, so none of it really matters.

And it's that, more than anything else, that really yanks my chain these days about Whedon and his philosophy - it really seems to be steeped in nihilism, a plaintive cry of "Meaningless! Meaningless!" that I'm so, so sick of. Frankly, you can't actually tell a story about good and evil from the perspective that nothing you do matters. Because at that point, there is no good or evil.

Whoof. It's late. Gotta go now.