InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "*peckats*"

Willow (the_willow) wrote,
@ 2008-08-23 22:04:00

Current mood:	mentally tired
Entry tags:	#race issues: fandom, fandom: culture, fandom: is, fannish: activity, meta

Watching The Show In Your Head (Pt 2): When You Can't
This post was actually started sometime last year, but I don't think I ever went through and posted it and on finding it I realize it was a perfect part two of the query and discussion I started here; Watching The Show In Your Head.

I had wanted to write about the tv show Monk. Then I had wanted to write about all the tv shows I'd liked and or dropped and how lately I'd realized that the tv show I liked, was NOT the tv show the executives inevitably decided to push. And so past the 1st season (or the season that caught my eye) - I simply didn't watch tv anymore. At least not on my own, without someone watching with me ie, bugging me and cajoling me to watch with them or keep them company.

Then later on I'd ended up thinking out and talking about the subject with a friend, (I believe it was kdorian). I realized there's so much more with Monk that I'd found disappointing. I found it the waste of a good actor. I found it a waste of a good premise...

I started watching a show about a man who'd been so traumatized by the loss/murder of his wife than his OCD went mega - total overddrive. He wasn't functional. But he was still a brilliant mystery solver. Solving mysteries was a way to make the world right and a way to hone his skills so he could track down the person who'd taken his wife away from him.

I loved that show. Yes it had silly moments and yes sometimes it also made me cringe. But I loved the show. It was about survival and growth and trauma and recovery and yes, I know I can take those themes very personally. But I was so happy with it. I wanted to buy the DVD when it came out. I couldn't wait for where they'd pick up in the next season to move along the arc involving his wife's killer. And where they would go with the friendship he was developing with his assistant's son.

And then I saw the Season 2 trailers. And it was all "Crazy man is afraid of germs. Watch him dodge monkey poop and try to solve crime!".

I was aghast. But the commercial played over and over again. Despite where the last season's arc had ended they were going to play up the disease/ the illness as a JOKE. They were going to play up the mental health issue and the trauma AS A FUCKING JOKE.

What whacky things will freak him out this season!"

Shock became disgust and I never went back. I even changed the channel when previews and ads came on. I still do. There was nothing I could salvage to continue to watch. There was no mental re-writing I could do. The ads made me afraid to go back and watch the first season, for fear I'd suddenly realize how exploitative it had always been.

SGA is another similar show. (To those currently mourning I suggest you skip. I'm not aiming to be particularly reverent).

In Stargate Atlantis, I thought I was going to watch a show about a female commander exploring galactic options for earth in a combination colony and embassy. Maybe it was too much to expect something reminiscent of DS9 or B5. But I hoped.

It was a bit of a shock at the changed actress for the show. Jessica Steen had portrayed a kind of internal intensity and inner life that seemed perfect for the head of a space colony to the stars. Tori Higginson seemed less intense; she seemed more school teacher to the stars than Commander. Maybe I was judging things on some internal Star Trek scale of what makes a good commander. But to me she wasn't it. To this day I'm not sure if that's a factor of personality and interpretation from the actress or if the writers who gave Sheen her dialogue were not the same who gave Higginson hers. There were occasions where with a look, or a shift of body language by Higginson I saw 'the Captain, my Captain' I'd been craving. But without that in every scene of every episode she was in - I wasn't interested. So that left me focusing on the other characters even though Elizabeth Weir as character and concept was what had me excited about a spin off in the first place.

John seemed like an O'Neil clone and I could only take O'Neil in doses, not all the time. A copy-cat O'Neil seemed unbearable. And Aiden was an unknown. So I pinned my hopes on Rodney.

Dear egolicious, fantastic and fabulous Dr. Rodney McKay. I have to admit to sometimes feeling that all the current SGA Rodney lovers are nothing but n00bs because I loved Rodney back when he was elbows and knees and an extremely prickly, egotistical balloon that was forever being popped by Samantha Carter's intuitive leaps.The thought of that character being pulled into a major role reminded me of my love of Miles O'Brien on Star Trek:TNG and how much I adored him getting spotlight in Deep Space 9.

But that also didn't happen. Rodney seemed a caricature of himself and at first I put that down to introducing a whole new audience to where he was and how he came to be, before they began to flesh him out. So I waited and I waited and I waited. And I waited.

And I waited.

What followed was a parade of episodic plot choices and character spotlights that simply made it harder and harder for me to buy what the SGA creators/producers were selling. They weren't going anywhere new and that was a problem for me. I'd been following SGA for years, since highschool in fact. What I needed were new plots, new twists, new aspects to the universe. What they seemed to be giving me was SG1 -The New Cast. The sets were different, and the actors were different but their roles were all the same.

(---- I was actually just waiting for Aiden Ford to be alienized somehow for him and Teyla to combine role functions. Dropping Aiden was the one big surprise SGA actually managed for me. It hadn't yet occurred to me that in order to fulfill their static roles they might hire on a completely new actor/create a new role. But Ronon as a character wasn't a surprise at.all. -----)

They treated the stresses of a lost colony of the stars, facing unknown enemies of unknown strength and powers as just - another day in the life of anyone involved with a Stargate. They made the gate itself boring to me. It took me a little while to understand why and then I realized it was because so much of those season 1 episodes were rehashes from before SG1 began doing the big arcs in earnest. Given SGA's premise, I was expecting allusions to the bigger arc all the time, especially if the behind the scenes production now had the experience to do so.

But no, what I got was one or two ups, a down or two showing floundering to find their feet and then it abruptly became 'When White Folk Colonize Space; They're Always Right.' (There's a reason I stopped watching SG1, there began to be nothing there either, to enable me to watch the show in my head)

--

I started off both of my posts not sure why I mentally re-wrote on the fly and what prompted it, and what differentiated it from privilege. And the few responses I got back seemed to agree that privilege was denying that problems caused the need to re-write, vs just an active imagination.

So if there are other things that interest me(in a given media) then I have something to lose; I've been captivated and I don't want to have to come down from that experience. So in order to make the media palatable to me I have to work around/re-write/re-think the scuzzy parts - that is the problems.

But if the loss is far too big; if the scuzzy parts take over something conceptual I was waiting for, along with taking over too many other parts of the show/book, then there's no point in re-writing, because that'd be basically doing it all over from scratch - not imagining if this or that pitfall had been avoided / could be reinterpreted as something else.

This hints at a continuum for me and reminds me of when zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com wrote a post asking and eventually describing the attributes that make a show fannish. (I can't find said post now, so Zvi if you're reading and you remember what I'm talking about could you drop a line? I think you did tables and it had something to do with less content = more fandom filling)

Even without checking Zvi's post though, I think it's safe to say for me there does seem to be a continuum. If I place Memoirs of a Geisha on one end and SGA on the other, it feels Smallville is an example of a show that started somewhat near the middle and eventually drifted right into SGA's side of the fence and thus I dropped it completely.

(odd aside: I dropped Smallville before I dropped SGA I think. And yet SGA definitely feels like the best marker for the disappointed side of the spectrum. Maybe because the moment they changed Elizabeth I immediately started watching the show in my head, whereas that was something I turned to in Smallville until I couldn't anymore)

When can't I watch the show in my head? When there's not enough to anchor me into the world of the show itself, I guess. When there's not enough to draw me in to be invested and caring if I 'throw out the baby with the bathwater'.

But that phrase makes me think about privilege again and how I have heard that phrase used when I've complained about what a show or series of books or comic etc was lacking. I have been accused of doing that, while harshing someone's buzz about their show because I was letting a little thing upset everything. But the point is, it isn't little to me. Everyone probably has different things that cross the line from needing to Watch The Show In Your Head to being Unable To Watch.

Maybe continuum isn't the best word choice. Scales suddenly seem much better.

If a show starts off balanced with things that interest me and no, or little problems then I can watch it. As things go wrong, as problems begin, in order for me to keep watching, then I need to watch the show in my head. But as the problems pile up things become very lopsided and when I think of it in terms of weight, then suddenly I need energy to deal with that weight.

I guess I feel like there probably needs to be respect for the fact that when you can't watch anymore, it means there's too much weighed on the side of dislike and disappointment. And those weights can be aspects of racism, sexism, classcism, national isolationism or just not enough plot (ala, in some Urban Fantasy novels - being unable to read the book you're reading in your head vs the actual text).

*ponders*

I doubt there'll be a part three, I'm currently tired of thinking and typing.

But I think I'm going to pay more attention to when someone tells me they can't even watch the show in their heads anymore and I hope those who know me will pay attention to me when I say the same thing.

Hmm, best thing about doing the opposite was in realizing that the very act of Watching The Show In My Head, means that I'm working around problems I see; whether or not I'm conscious of what I'm doing, whether or not the discomfort is momentary or even lucid.

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metal_dog5
2008-08-24 11:44 pm UTC (link)

Both of your posts on this have been very interesting.

But no, what I got was one or two ups, a down or two showing floundering to find their feet and then it abruptly became 'When White Folk Colonize Space; They're Always Right.

This statement resonates with me the most. The one reason I stopped watching SGA, and I haven't ever bothered to watch it again intentionally, was the attitude of the Earth team and the way they stomped all over any other culture's beliefs and customs without a hint of remorse. I can pinpoint the very moment too: when Teyla's people wanted to perform death rites for her seemingly imminent death and Weir said no, we don't do that.

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the_willow
2008-08-25 04:25 pm UTC (link)

Thank you for the kind words.

I don't have a particular episode with SGA, I don't think, that turned me off. But your example definitely sums up the feeling I got that made me unable to watch the show in any form.

I've also been unable to read the fic, because so often the fic follows canon (blindly) in how they treat other cultures and peoples.

I do remember thinking when the SGA crew met the Gennai(sp?) that the main reason for distrust and aggravation between them was because the Gennai proved itself a population that wouldn't hail the heavily American SGA project as Masters and Saviors. And also because the Gennai represented possible competition.

Oh!

I think I do know when I couldn't even be bothered to watch with my roommate (at the time) any more. It was Michael. Not only did it seem like a bad idea to me but I didn't see the point in lying.

After all, what were they gonna do if they wanted to use this plan on an entire race? Dump them all on a planet somewhere with machinery that (could break) would somehow make it rain antidote?

They had Teyla as living proof of Wraith genes surviving throughout generations. They had the original creature they'd found and the experience of watching it drain Sheppard. So it felt as if, they had information to share, and an ambassador to share it with. And that above all they KNEW that the Wraith were a species that was trying to survive in a galaxy where there was only one viable food source for them.

Blah, sorry. Didn't mean to go on like that. But if I do have to pick a moment, I'd say it was then I realized that SGA would NEVER tell the story / be the show I wanted or needed.

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pandorasblog
2008-08-26 09:03 am UTC (link)

Wow, that's the same thing that happened to me with Monk! I used to watch the repeats every afternoon and I really enjoyed it because this was someone who was dealing with the world in a different way, but his friends understood him and helped him along, and he was REALLY good at what he did. It made me happy.

Then I talked about it with the bf and he explained to me that the show wasn't what I'd thought at all; that it was using Monk's OCD purely as Teh Funny and exploiting that. And after that it just got too cringey to watch.

I've also become aware lately that I may be watching House for different reasons to other people. Well, okay, I fancy Hugh Laurie and I like the humour for the most part, but there's thematic stuff in there which is very compelling to me; an undercurrent of honest about life and death which has nothing to do with the patient of the week. And I get frustrated that I can't articulate this. I don't even know if other people notice it, though I suspect that they do (chronically ill or disabled people in particular).

There's also the fact that it's the only show I can think of that portrays a disabled person as a sex object AND avoids making him the sweet put-upon hero because he has a bad leg AND gives him flippancy and repartee and a take-no-shit attitude, and lets him say all the stuff most people are afraid to say.

But then I have this disturbing footnote in my thoughts that goes, "Hey, wait a minute: isn't it still just perpetuating the very damaging stereotype about disabled people being bitter and twisted that I've fought when it occurs in journalism? And would such a show ever have been conceived with the one difference being that the lead was female? Traits accepted in men as humourous are often frowned on or reviled in women. Would a disabled woman doctor have that wounded-tiger sexiness that is a part of House's appeal?

And then there's those small moments that nevertheless lodge in my mind where House will make some crack to Foreman about Foreman's race, where I really can't decide whether that's a commentary on the power-games House plays with his underlings, or whether it's just the scripter going, "Hey, we have this show that's SUPER-non-PC! Let's make a black crack and show how daring we are!"

I don't know enough about whether other American shows would have that kind of 'banter' (one-sided, boss-to-underling, therefore involving various privilege dynamics) to judge this easily. I also haven't seen enough of the show in sequence to know whether Foreman ever does something about it, or whether, if he doesn't, that in itself is a deliberate attempt at realism or political comment (ie, that black people in high-powered professions are expected to put up with a certain level of racism to fit in).

Above all, I don't know what the scripter wants my reaction to be. Is the premise that the audience is meant to laugh at any comment House makes because he has the fool's prerogative to make fun of any target?

Dear lord, this must be as long as a blog. If it's too long, just tell me and I'll delete here and re-post.

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the_willow
2008-08-26 11:19 am UTC (link)

I can't speak to HOUSE as I don't watch it. I've seen maybe three episodes total. But it was grating on me. I felt like the abrasive, disabled doctor was something I could watch for two hours as a movie. But past that - nuh uh.

Though speaking of disabled, disgruntled female leads - ER had that for a short while. I suppose she was one of the many leads the camera would pan around to. She was head of ER, needed a cane and was a biting, sarcastic disciplinarian who made sure the ER got funding etc. Then they kind of squished her into being the administrative side of the ER because she was a real tiger for getting funding. Then they spun out this lesbian angle of her discovering herself and feeling conflicted dating and being really lonely.

I think it was watching them completely fumble the lesbian storyline that finally clued me in that as much as I wanted this character to be a successful lesbian; this new angle was simply another angle they'd thrown onto the character because they couldn't figure out what to do with her.

And when that hit me, it doubled my disappointment in the show and I stopped watching. I'm horrid with names so someone coming along may think that if I don't even know her name then how could I have been a fan. (I swear I remember Xena and Buffy's names cause they were in the title). But she had short red-hair and she walked with a crutch, not a cane (bad leg) and she'd been there since the beginning and it was wonderful seeing her deal with blood and guts and trauma and threatening to and actually hitting people with her crutch for trying to treat her as fragile.

It took a long time for me to realize they didn't know what to do with her and I'm not so sure that bitter, hard driven, disabled woman was as innovating as it seems to you - especially not when they squeezes lonely career lesbian in there.

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pandorasblog
2008-08-26 12:23 pm UTC (link)

With hindsight you're right - from what I remember (I think that what I saw of ER was maybe four or five years from the middle of its run), Kerry Weaver was indeed not just your typical Hard-Bitten Disabled Character, but also your classic Lonely Female Authority Figure. I remember quite liking her but I got the feeling that as a viewer one wasn't really meant to - at least, not at certain times. Like, if she was busting the chops of the more warm and thus intentionally sympathetic characters...

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	PS the_willow 2008-08-26 11:21 am UTC (link)
	Speaking of watching the show in your head vs no longer being able to. I think the more the show tried to flesh out the character I liked - the less I was able to invent my own backstory that enriched her offscreen life. Therefore the less I was able to 'watch the story in my head' since they kept refuting it. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: PS pandorasblog 2008-08-26 12:24 pm UTC (link)
	Right, and for a long time her offscreen life was more peripheral than most, so there were a lot of places to go for the fannish viewer... (Reply to this) (Parent)

arby
2008-08-26 09:46 pm UTC (link)

Both of these posts are excellent and thought-provoking *memories*

I know exactly what you mean and I've totally had that problem before - with Monk and also Veronica Mars - I wanted to watch the show about a smart, strong girl dealing with incredibly dark and fucked-up situations. Season 1 was more or less "my show". In Season 2 it became a completely different show about a girl who has romantic angst but no real conflict on any deep level. I wish I'd quit watching then, but I managed to fake it by fixating on the shipping and stupid crap to distract myself. That's how I deal with SGA and Smallville - and Supernatural, to a large extent - when the show lets me down by not living up to its potential, I console myself by saying, "But look, Rodney and John [Sam and Dean] really love each other!" or "Atlantis is so pretty" (or "Tom Welling is so pretty"). It's like I have to turn off my brain to keep watching. And that makes me sad.

Even Buffy let me down after Season 5. And don't even get me started on the X-Files.

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arby
2008-08-26 09:51 pm UTC (link)

You seem incredibly cool, so I friended you. Also I love

writers_whinge - what a great idea!! I'm always whinging about my writing, and it got to the point where I'm embarrassed to post my whinging on LJ because everyone else is so chipper! They finish stories left and right! I can hardly read my flist at all in November because the NaNo word counts make me want to go completely postal.

Bitterness, it's what's for breakfast!

deleted and reposted to fix borked lj-code

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	the_willow 2008-08-27 01:37 am UTC (link)
	Memories? Re: Veronica Mars - I never figured out what happened to the show I had been watching; Nancy Drew In California. It just suddenly became 90210 and I figured that I'd just made up the first season in my head. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	arby 2008-08-28 08:34 pm UTC (link)
	re: memories - Oh, sorry - that just means I added the entries to my memories. VM - Yeah, that was the biggest tragedy of what the show became, because it had been so great in S1. I think RT just ran out of ideas, frankly. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

the_willow
2008-08-28 10:01 pm UTC (link)

Ahh ok. I thought the * was for emphasis instead of for an action. I think since I flipped over from LJ I so rarely use the memory function I forgot it existed.

Re: Buffy - The thing that made if difficult for me to continue to watch the show I wanted to watch was actually in S6. I'd been watchign a show where Willow who'd always had problems about instant gratification/being seen as special/wanting to be powerful - was becoming addicted to using magic for easy solutions. Then I got told she was addicted to the power of magic itself.

I was very WTF.

The second intrusion into the show I was watching (And I think Buffy was unusual in that most fans automatically watched the show in their head - to get the most enjoyment, not necessarily to compensate for things missing) was the Spike/Buffy story-line. I was watching a show where Spike suddenly understood what it was Angel had seen in Buffy and was desperate to connect to that (because understanding Angel, meant beginning to understand damnation and the need for redemption and connection to the living) and Buffy being in a numb place that Spike understood and it was two cripples leading each other. And then suddenly I was forcibly introduced to a show about a once upon a time heroine harshly using and abusing someone who was crippled - toying and teasing him and then blaming him for not knowing when the game playing had stopped.

IE: I'm one of those people who gets pissed that folk go on and on about Spike almost raping Buffy in 'Seeing Red' (as opposed to him not knowing they still weren't playing 'ignore what I say') and yet they don't find it just as omgwtf that Buffy raped Spike when she was invisible.

Man, I forgot how much words and feelings I have about that until I start talking about it.

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arby
2008-08-28 10:26 pm UTC (link)

Yeah - I am totally with you on the Willow storyline in S6. What frustrated the hell out of me about Buffy S6 was that they DID have the potential for some brilliant storytelling there - a Dark!Willow done right could have been amazing. Likewise Buffy and Spike - it wasn't all in your head - in the beginning I do think it was as you say, two people in a very bad place mentally and emotionally who were meeting in the only way they could. I found that a compelling story, despite the often ham-handed writing. It was later that it got misunderstood and misinterpreted into Bad Spike, Rape Buffy, No ~~Cookie~~ Soul.

I blame the decline of the show post S5 on Joss's absence (and to some extent Marti's poor showrunning), frankly. Any individual eps where Joss had direct involvement showed that he could still pull something powerful out of the crap he'd been left with, but the rest of them Just. Didn't. Get it. Much as I enjoyed Angel (and Firefly), I was very bitter that Buffy had been abandoned and allowed to be turned into this dreck.

The thing that got me about Spike's rape attempt was how, for the sake of a cheap and unearned plot twist, it undermined the entire message of the show, which is (to me, IMHO) You Can Fight Back, Even If You're a Girl. It rendered Buffy helpless and weak, which over and over again had previously been shown she was not, she refused to be made into a victim, no matter who tried to beat her. Hell, even Angelus couldn't get to her ("What do I have left? Me") - you're seriously telling me Spike can rape her? I was insulted by it.

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blktauna
2008-08-27 05:41 pm UTC (link)

Was like me with CSI. It was interesting until the whole push to make Sara the centre and to push this relationship with Gil that had been actively denied by everyone in the previous canon (and that frankly was squicky and didn't work at all for me). Maybe if I liked the character I'd have been yay, but I loathe the character and her increasing whinginess and mary sueness killed the show for me.

I will continue to watch the ones before season 5 though.

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	the_willow 2008-08-28 02:08 am UTC (link)
	I'm not sure if we're discussing the same thing. You seem to be saying that you enjoyed CSI until things happened with Sara. Which means you didn't have a need to watch the show in your head and said show didn't stop working when Sara was pushed. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

blktauna
2008-08-28 07:47 am UTC (link)

Ah I wasn't clear.

I did enjoy it as long as I could peacebly ignore her, but in my head it's Jim/Gil all the time and the more they pushed Sarah into the picture the more I had to try and work around until the writers had so changed the show from the great ensemble case file show where there was just a bit of outside relationship that you could infer what you liked to the Sara soap opera where it all became about her and her drama and it was no longer worth the effort to work around what the writers were doing in my head.

I no longer watch, come to think of it, but I do remember certain things fondly. It didn't ruin the whole show for me, like your Monk example, I can sometimes enjoy an old ep, but I don't seek it out anymore. As you put it, there's not enough to anchor me in the show any longer.

The difference between us is that my scales tip faster than yours do with the irritants so I'm not as invested when I drop a show for that rason. My head watching involves more the relationships I enjoy seeing and the characters I like.

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via meta_roundup

dropsofviolet
2008-08-28 12:02 pm UTC (link)

I love watching Monk, but not as something serious-- I slipped in somewhat about the time that Natalie became his assistant, but the episodes that deal with Trudy are the best. They recently did one exploring the what-if Monk tried to kill the man who killed his wife, to the point where everyone thought that he had, and the psychology in that was exquisitely interesting. Since I didn't start with Season 1 I've never seen the show the way you have (but now I want to watch it).

Coming from an anime/western cartoons perspective, I've seen this sort of thing happen with shonen series a lot-- Bleach is a series I can't keep up with anymore partly because I thought it was a show about Ichigo and having one foot in the spirit world and one in the real world, when it turns out the show is about a load of different people I can't find any interest in. And though I'm not in cartoon fandom very seriously, I've seen this happen to the cartoons I watch. People always want another season, but they should have stopped The Fairly OddParents after two or three. Now it's all stupid fart jokes and stupidity jokes.

I guess I took a lot of words to say nothing, but basically I'd like to say this is a very clever post and gave me a lot of food for thought.

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the_willow
2008-08-28 09:24 pm UTC (link)

Speaking of BLEACH, I've recently realize I don't give two rats tails about the filler eps. I'm currently watching the subtitled versions as they're released by translating fans. I too was hit hard when I started watching BLEACH at how it paralleled in the beginning, bits of B:TVS and other such shows with the one foot each in two worlds and how does one cope.

Luckily I've also been able to love the show as it seemed to become The Journey of Ichigo to Become Something No Other Shinigami Has Become Before - and that involves a lot of fighting of everybody and leveling up.

I've been berating myself at this sudden lack of interest but as I thought about my essays AND as I read your comment I realized that the fillers have absolutely nothing I want to see. I'm still too caught up in the plot from where the fillers broke into. I'm wondering about all sorts of things and thus just don't care. The filler is not the story I signed on to see.

This also explains why I just stopped watching The 4400. I wanted to watch a show about how the world dealt with an amazing phenomenon. I didn't really want Yet Another Mutant Conspiracy Show. And the more that show, showed up, the less interested I got. But I'd never realized that I walked away because I could no longer find the show I wanted to see in what was being provided.

Which leans me back (in this very long comment:) to BLEACH again and other anime and understanding what you mean. I've found it very refreshing that Anime Series tend to stop somewhere between 13 episodes and 30. I don't seem to have as much chance of losing the show I originally wanted to see.

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dropsofviolet
2008-08-29 08:33 am UTC (link)

Ugh, I stopped The 4400 for the same reason. And I love love love The Dead Zone, but I can't watch any of the episodes that deal with the actual plot of the book (which I enjoyed reading after I first watched the show), because it becomes Psychic Uncovers Big Government Conspiracy Show instead of Psychic Touches Stuff to Solve Crimes Show, which is the version I enjoy.

I do agree that anime goes off-track much less (with of course some exceptions, some anime just jumps the shark entirely, like Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles).

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das_dingsi
2008-08-30 11:30 am UTC (link)

Ugh, I stopped The 4400 for the same reason.

Commenting to say that this makes us three... and I thought I was the only one. *g* When I first saw the trailers, and watched the pilot, I admit what I got drawn to was actually the Superhero formula: a take on What will people do with great and superhuman power, how will they cope, how will it change them and the world around them? That's what I saw in it, and I love those kind of stories, because they tell us so much about ourselves while still delivering the action/escapism.

And, well, then the conspiracies and assassinations and the like set in. And I completely lost interest. I think that, to be honest, I didn't even want to know how they got their powers, because the "origin story" is actually the least important aspect of superhero myth. He got bitten by a spider! She stepped into some weird rays of sorts! They disappeared and then reappeared with special powers! Right. Now let's get to the interesting stuff.

On a similar note, I loved X-Files for its "Monster of the Week" appeal, and then later it turned into "Alien / Government Conspiracy of the Season", which failed to interest me for the reason mentioned above and because I'm not interested in aliens (unless they speak Tenctonese / hunt humans for sport / Sigourney Weaver's in it). I also loved Supernatural, but was unhappy when the weekly horror episodes slowly changed into Endless Demonic War Mytharc. That's not what I signed up for.

Uh, that got kinda long. Sorry.

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	dropsofviolet 2008-08-30 11:25 pm UTC (link)
	No worries, always fun to geek about TV with someone. ^_^ You're not the only one, lol! (Reply to this) (Parent)

the_willow
2008-10-31 06:23 pm UTC (link)

Rereading this right now, I'm pinged to how often shows/books/series/comics etc will start with a 'They Got Superpowers In This Really Weird Way - What Will They Do Now?' and end up with 'Government Conspiracy To PWN The Mutants'. It happened in the 4400 and it happened with Marvel's New Universal (the old 80's version and the new reboot of the universe).

The reboot (New Universe) made me cry, because I was so excited to get another chance at looking into a universe I remembered from when I was small - and then at the end of the intro run it was 'And now they'll all be victims of yet another government conspiracy'.

And I found myself thinking "But that's why I stopped watching HEROES!!"

*hugs*

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