Buffy TVS jumped the shark at the end of Season 5?

[thewayne]

I don't think so.

http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=entertainment_home&articleID=2314389&lid=e3

I didn't start as a Buffy/Joss fan, I quickly became one. We have a mostly complete run of Buffy on DVD, I think a complete run of Angel (we might be missing one season), and both Firefly and Serenity, and I now pick up an RSS feed of Whedon's blog on my LJ flist. I think Joss is an excellent creative source, I definitely do not think Buffy ever jumped the shark. Perhaps an argument could have been made that Angel jumped if it had gone beyond its final season, but we'll never know as that is a totally hypothetical situation.

True story -- Joss went to the same university that Russet went to, but they were not in the same class, much less the same degree program. I think Jonathan Frakes was the other celeb who went to her uni at about the same time.

Comments

beg to differ

[paulmc.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching after Season 5 myself.

I haven't read the article, so I don't know what didn't work for the writer, but when Spike started falling in love with Buffy, I felt that the whole thing had devolved into soap opera with everyone wanting to sleep with everyone, rather than the solid drama it had built during its first five seasons.

I have many friends who urged me to keep watching, but I just lost interest.

Re: beg to differ

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The Buffy/Spike thing started before the final season, but there were allusions to her dark side before that point. I thought the final season was pretty cool, but I'm not really remembering the 6th.

I'm intrigued by the comic series. I don't know if Joss is writing it, but apparently they're keeping season references. I'm going to have to check it out when I'm in Phoenix late this month, I'll swing by my comic dealer and see what's up.

[maegwin-of-hern.livejournal.com]

Joss Whedon has an LJ blog? Link, please!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

He doesn't have a blog here, there is an RSS feed from his blog that is syndicated here though.

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/whedonesque/profile

[nausicaa1.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed all seven seasons of Buffy. It got a little underwhelming in early season 6 but season 7 was excellent. I just finished Angel season 3 and it feels like it could be better but I'm willing to stick it out. I'd still rather watch mediocre Whedon than just about anything else on television right now.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Excellent point, mediocre Whedon is definitely better than most TV. I found, overall, that Angel tended to drag more than Buffy, Boreanz is great for being broody/moody, but sometimes he just took it too far.

But the last season of Angel was great.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I'm wanting to run an RPG where the players are monster hunters working for Wolfram & Hart under the administration of Angel & Co. I don't know if I'll ever get to run it, but I think it could've been a lot of fun.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The keys to becoming a good RPG player is (a) increasing willing suspension of disbelief and getting in to the moment and (b) acting. Chew up the scenery, making the part your own. It doesn't have to be rabid-LARPer scene chewing, it just has to be fun.

Something that I find amusing and true is that I notice that people who've done a lot of RPG play frequently have better social/public skills when they want to use them. I've BS'd my way through so many games and RPG-situations that I'm a pretty good extemporaneous speaker and actually enjoyed my public speaking class, even though I don't really enjoy public speaking.

Playing RPGs, particularly contemporary-setting games, is a great way to explore and learn about things that you'd normally never learn about. For example, wearing white in many Asian countries is the color of mourning. I wouldn't have learned that (at least at the time, 15+ years ago) except I wanted to run a Vietnamese woman who was a child during the War, so I did a lot of encyclopedia research developing her background.

The problem with RPGs is that they can take over your life, not unlike some fandoms and fannish pursuits.