Reliving the good times

I'm on a Joss Whedon kick again - I'm almost done season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I'll follow that up with Firefly, Dollhouse, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.  And if I happen to get Angel or appropriate gift cards at Christmas, I'll add that one to the lineup, too.

There's just something about these series that touch me.  Even in the early, cheesy episodes of Buffy, when they were still finding their way, the characters were easy to identify with.  I can see so much of me in young Willow, it's a little disconcerting.  But I can see parts of myself in Buffy, too.

And I've never watched a series that can make me cry so much.  Sure, I'm a crier.  My instinctive reaction to any strong emotion is to cry, whether it's sadness, happiness, anger, frustration... And Whedon's stuff can make me react.  It's strong, emotional stuff.

Tonight, I'm watching the episode "I Only Have Eyes for You," and Buffy's emotional turmoil, with the whole Angel-turning-evil-thanks-to-sex thing, reflected in the teacher-student relationship... wow... it just breaks my heart.  And I love it.  I think this is one of my favourite episodes.

Does anyone out there have strong feelings for or against the Whedon-verse?  Or a favourite episode?

I love Buffy.

Let me just say, you guys are awesome, blogglings!  Thanks for the well-wishes in the comments and via text.  I'm still sniffling, and my eyes are a bit itchy, but now that I've got my allergy drops, things are better.

Last night, I finished watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer again.  I think this is the fourth or fifth time I've watched the whole series through, and it made me cry again.  I think that's the mark of a good story - even though I knew how it ended, even though there was no element of surprise, even though I knew who would live and who would die - I had an emotional reaction to it.  I connected with the characters.  I could identify with their flaws, and I admired their strengths.  Joss Whedon's world, the Buffyverse, was filled out.  It wasn't just a random town with a bunch of demons thrown in.  Buffy wasn't just some girl with superpowers.  Spike wasn't just a blood-sucking fiend.  Every character, even one like Anya, who was supposed to be almost one-dimensional because she was an ex-demon who didn't understand humans, every one of them was real to me.  The writers on the show were consistent and true to the characters.  If they hadn't been... I don't think I would have cried.  Again.

My favourite part, though?  I loved how the end of the series felt like the end of the series, but not the end of the characters lives.  Granted, I now know that Joss went on to create a series of graphic novels that continue the story, but still, I didn't get the feeling that, once the show ended, the gang would go and rent an apartment in LA and sit around doing nothing.

And speaking of the Buffy graphic novels... I'm so disappointed that I can't read them!  I tried.  I picked one up at Barnes & Noble, and I tried, but my brain just doesn't like graphic novels.  I feel all ADD, and I can't follow the flow, and it is incredibly disappointing!

But not as disappointing as hearing that there's talk of a new Buffy movie, and that Joss Whedon won't be involved.  Seriously???  I'm a hard-core fan (you may have figured that out on your own...), but if Joss isn't involved, I won't be watching the movie.

Tonight, there is no photo of the blanket in progress, partly because my camera is running low on battery and I can't find the power cord, and partly because, well, it looks the same, just longer.  But here are the stats:

Section A: 10/10 rows complete
Section B: 86/90 rows complete
Section C: 0/111 rows complete
Section D: 0/90 rows complete
Section E: 0/10 rows complete
Balls of yarn used up: 3
Total length: 13.25 inches
Percentage complete: 30%

And tomorrow, I think I'll head to the yarn store to get some professional advice on how to do the different colours...

New Roles Confuse Me

This weekend, I started watching the second season of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse on DVD.  You may not know this, but I'm a HUGE fan of Joss and almost everything he does.

I started to get into Buffy the Vampire Slayer a couple of seasons in - I didn't start watching it until Season 4, when the gang had already graduated high school.  It didn't take long for me to fall in love with the show once I started.  I'm currently in the middle of Season 4 again - this is probably the fourth or fifth time I've watched the whole series through.  The earlier seasons are, well, early.  The characters are younger, and they grate on me a little more, but they all grew and developed.  I love to watch how they change as the series goes on.  That's probably my favourite thing about Joss's shows - the characters are never stagnant.  Even the ones that you don't expect to ever change.  I like to call it "studying characterization" when I sit down and watch hours of Buffy at a time...

I watched some of Angel, but I didn't get into it the same way that I got into Buffy.  That's probably because I just didn't like Angel all that much.  Cordelia irritated me.  And then they had a show together.  But I did watch it occasionally.  There's an episode from the first season, when, through the powers of the blood of some weird demon, Angel gets to be human again.  He and Buffy reunite, but because he's human, he can't help her anymore, and he feels guilty that she's risking herself to protect him.  In the end, he gives up his humanity to be able to protect himself so she can live without worrying about him.  That's a really brief, really crappy summary, but that episode makes me bawl every time I watch it.

Somehow, I missed Firefly when it was on television, and I've been kicking myself since the moment I discovered it.  I LOVE this series!  I love it even more than I loved Buffy!  Again, it's the characterization that gets me.  They're all so different, but they do have a lot in common.  I love that I can see parts of myself in almost all of the characters.  I'm not sure I have much Jayne in me... but I do have a hat like his!  I borrowed the series from a friend about three years ago, then went out and bought my own copy as soon as I finished watching hers.  In the past three years, I've probably watched the whole series fifteen times.  I've only watched Serenity, the follow-up movie, once.  I felt the need to watch it to finish off the series, but, well, I'm attached to these characters, and I don't like the way things went down in the movie.  Don't get me wrong - the movie was cool, and well-written, and totally in keeping with the characters.  It just, well, it's got a finality to it that I don't really want with this series.  I want to keep imagining Mal flying across the universe and getting himself into and out of trouble, with the whole crew tagging along and being clever.

You can't talk about Joss and leave out Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog!  I'm a theatre geek, and I love anything musical.  The Buffy musical episode was awesome, but this!  THIS!!  I love it!  I watched it when it came out online, I downloaded it from iTunes as soon as it was available, and I bought the DVD shortly after it was released.  I have the whole thing memorized, and I will randomly belt out, well, any of the songs!

As I said at the beginning of this post, I've been watching Season 2 of Dollhouse.  I like it.  Almost as much as Firefly.  There's something about the science of the show that is just, well, a combination of cool and creepy.  And I swear, I know a guy who's an awful lot like Topher.  Plus, any girl that can kick as much ass as Echo is just awesome.  What's messing with me, though, is that in the last episode I watched, Wesley and Faith were talking.  Except it wasn't Wesley and Faith, it was Senator Perrin and Echo/Caroline/Brie.

There's something about Joss that seems to inspire faithfulness in his actors.  There's a video clip of Nathan Fillion on the Dr. Horrible DVD where he tells the story of Joss trying to ask him to be in the show.  Nathan said "Yes" before Joss even finished asking.

So Captain Reynolds is also Captain Hammer.  Faith is Echo.  Wesley is Perrin (and lost his British accent!).  Wash is Alpha.  Fred/Illyria is Dr. Saunders.  River is... I actually haven't watched far enough to find out her name, but she's in Dollhouse, too.

I love that Joss is apparently so awesome to work with that everyone who has worked with him wants to do it again.  It just messes with my head sometimes.  Especially when Wesley's not British anymore...