Jason Mittell recently blogged about the best American TV of the past decade and three of Whedon's shows. As he's a noted TV scholar on television's narrative complexity, he's been interested in Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In that post, he talks about his affection for the early seasons (2&3), although they are out of bounds for his purpose, having aired in the 1990s. I wrote this blog post talking about why season six matters:
Having taught a seminar on Buffy the Vampire Slayer since 2004, I've found that TEACHING season six--the baroque season--has been an incredibly enriching experience.
Watching it in broadcast was like going in for your weekly emotional beating. I've rarely had a less pleasant but still valid TV experience (outside of Dollhouse and SVU). The importance of the ritual Xander episode was never made more clear than when Hell's Bells was aired.
I think the fact that it was the first TV year after 9/11 made it that much more horrifying. The rest of the dial seemed obsessed with peddling revenge or inevitable triumphs over adversity. There was a grand moral courage in having the climax be one of the triumph of passive resistance and unconditional love over grief-stricken rage. Not many shows that year dared have people fall apart in the aftermath of traumatic death (Buffy, Joyce)... and have characters take so long to pick themselves back up. It took incredible guts for a program to challenge escapism itself through the Trio. The idea that redemption is hard and unending? Also valuable, although that theme had been in place for some time.
And, finally, the musical... in which the series tackles the central question which creators of the long form must grapple: how do I deal with the omnipresent possibility of creative exhaustion? In some sense, that question--vital to its philosophy of existentialism--lingers over the entire season in a manner that it's so important for students to face. The fact that the two season-ending controversies deal with the rights and responsibilities of authors and audiences magnifies this issue.
And we discuss all of this towards the end of the semester as students write their final papers for publication makes its final episodes a grand culminating experience in the classroom.
As Mittell no doubt knows with The Wire, a TV show changes not simply in its shift from broadcast to DVD or from viewing to subject of scholarship, but also from it being the subject of written scholarship to the subject of a long-form discussion between students and a teacher and a text. It's in that last context that season six is underrated.
Watching it in broadcast was like going in for your weekly emotional beating. I've rarely had a less pleasant but still valid TV experience (outside of Dollhouse and SVU). The importance of the ritual Xander episode was never made more clear than when Hell's Bells was aired.
I think the fact that it was the first TV year after 9/11 made it that much more horrifying. The rest of the dial seemed obsessed with peddling revenge or inevitable triumphs over adversity. There was a grand moral courage in having the climax be one of the triumph of passive resistance and unconditional love over grief-stricken rage. Not many shows that year dared have people fall apart in the aftermath of traumatic death (Buffy, Joyce)... and have characters take so long to pick themselves back up. It took incredible guts for a program to challenge escapism itself through the Trio. The idea that redemption is hard and unending? Also valuable, although that theme had been in place for some time.
And, finally, the musical... in which the series tackles the central question which creators of the long form must grapple: how do I deal with the omnipresent possibility of creative exhaustion? In some sense, that question--vital to its philosophy of existentialism--lingers over the entire season in a manner that it's so important for students to face. The fact that the two season-ending controversies deal with the rights and responsibilities of authors and audiences magnifies this issue.
And we discuss all of this towards the end of the semester as students write their final papers for publication makes its final episodes a grand culminating experience in the classroom.
As Mittell no doubt knows with The Wire, a TV show changes not simply in its shift from broadcast to DVD or from viewing to subject of scholarship, but also from it being the subject of written scholarship to the subject of a long-form discussion between students and a teacher and a text. It's in that last context that season six is underrated.
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