tv shows – Tabula Rasa

Buffy #1 On Spike and “good” vampires

I start the new year with a TV post because this is a blog about writing, and Whedon is one of my favourite writers. Let me just say that this is based on years of Buffy reruns and I haven’t read the graphic novels. I think some stories don’t need sequels and this is one of those. If what I’ve said gets wholly cancelled out in “Angel: After the Fall” or something, I’m perfectly fine being left in the dark about it. There are spoilers for those who haven’t seen the show (in which case, make it your new year’s resolution: watching Buffy. Seriously.)

Once, in the hopes of getting my sister to watch the epicness that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I retold her the story of Angel, the vampire who was put under a curse and given his soul back, and his “moment of true happiness” with the slayer that took it away unleashing the terror that was Angelus. Angel has a particular charm about him, being Buffy’s first true love and a classic symbol for redemption, even Giles eventually likes him. Angel’s soul-loss story forms the most effectively narrated Buffy (two-part) episode – Surprise and Innocence, which aired way back in January, 1998. And yet, I’ve always rooted for Spike.

It is the romance of his character that makes him particularly delectable, hidden as it is under all the badassery and platinum-blonde screw-all British-ness. Also, Spike’s story is new, so different from your regular ‘good’ vampire. William is harmless as a human, an aspiring poet with mommy issues, bullied by his peers, rejected by his love, he runs into Drusilla, an insane vampire who bites and turns him. Enter: William the Bloody, also known as Spike for killing his victims with railroad spikes. Spike is unusually passionate which, as a vampire, makes him an especially ruthless killer. However, William’s vulnerability remains in the demon. He loves, or he likely remembers love and empathy more than most vampires.

Around season 5, a long winding chain of incidents leaves him in Sunnydale, in contact with Buffy, with a chip in his head that keeps him from attacking humans. Buffy, who has recently been resurrected into a world she no longer believes she fits in, starts a love-hate relationship with the vampire, the only one who knows what it is like to be undead, and back from the grave. When Spike falls for the slayer, becomes addicted to her more like, Buffy states that the vampire is incapable of loving anything but pain. More to prove a point than anything else, Spike goes through terrible hardships to earn back his soul. And when he does, he is the harmless William again, with memories of the evil he’s done. He goes insane. And he does fall in love with Buffy, now faced with the full and terrible understanding that she could never love him back.

Buffy does care for him. But does she love Spike like she loves Angel? I doubt it. She identifies herself with Spike who has always been a misfit. An evil vampire who could love and a powerless vampire with a chip and then, a vampire who cursed himself with a soul – unlike Angel who had it done to him. She understands his misery, empathizes with it. She meets Angel when he is brooding and repentant, but over the immediate shock of what he is and has done, whereas with Spike she is with him at the point when he is hit by his guilt. Knowing what it means to be a vampire and knowing what he must now live with, she understands that she needs to not be the slayer, for once, for him. She pities him for what happened to him, what he did to himself but over the course of the season, does come to respect him for what he attempts to make of it. Buffy forgives Spike because his strength in dealing with all the crap of first the chip, then the soul and the insanity, then the first evil influencing him overwhelms her.

And through her fondness for Spike, we begin to believe, as does Angel, that she is in love. Which is when we get that moment, that dizzying-ly beautiful scene at the end, before Spike goes down with Sunnydale High when Buffy tells him she loves him, and he replies, “No, you don’t, but thanks for saying it,” and their eyes burn into each-others and the world shatters in our hearts. Because, we know he’s right. Spike is pathetic, till the very end. He is a vampire who is not a glorified monster, not a Stephanie Meyer or an Anne Rice anti-hero, but a creature you actually feel sorry for. Because he was a good human who had a bad thing happen to him. He isn’t about how cool or sexy it is to be an outcast but, especially towards the end, brings out the real dilemma of those who don’t belong. Throughout Buffy we are shown how necessary it is to have connections, and Spike understands it the best. He tells Buffy once that the reason she has survived so long is that she is surrounded by people who know and protect her secret. And in Touched, he becomes the best of those and her greatest comfort. Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesn’t celebrate loneliness unlike most popular vampire series, and Spike perfectly illustrates that. His story reinforces what Buffy is all about – slayer: good, vampire: bad, and makes him the most surprising and complex character on the show.

Top Ten Favourite Completed TV Shows

For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, the topic is favourite stories that are not books. There’s no point, I think, in including shows that are still ongoing, because you never how they’ll turn out (and my favourite movies are too many to list.) So this is a list of TV series that I diligently watched and loved till the end.

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2. Gilmore Girls

3. The Wire

4. Friends

5. ER

6. The Tudors

7. Fringe

8. 30 Rock

9. Charmed

10. Firefly (not exactly completed, was it?)

Did you watch these? Which are your favourite TV shows, ongoing and completed?

(Update: I just read the comments; I’d always assumed few people loved Buffy, because no one I know really does – but I’m so glad to be proven wrong.)

“Aren’t we hooked on phonics?” – Top Ten Tuesday, Gilmore Girls and Books

I originally wrote this post two years ago. I have reposted it here, because it kind of almost fits the theme for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted at The Broke and the Bookish: Top Ten Books If You Like a TV show / movie / play, etc.
These are books you should read if you like Gilmore Girls, but not because they’re like Gilmore Girls. These are books referenced on the TV show. If you’ve seen it you know how literature-centric anything Rory does is. And the kind of books, movies and songs they like says a lot about the characters. So – if you loved Rory and Lorelai like I did, you’d want to read on:

Gilmore Girls is undoubtedly the most bookish TV show I have
ever come across. While the eccentric towns-people, the best-friend Mom and the
regular small-town shindigs never fail to irritate me, I do love the witty,
pop-culture-laden dialogue and the coffee love.

Rory Gilmore has an admirable amount of books stacked on her bookshelf and is
always seen with a book in her hand. Dean liked watching Rory read and Jess and
Rory bonded largely over books. There are, naturally, many Rory Gilmore Reading
Challenges and Book Clubs out there. In fact, WB had released a list
of Rory Gilmore’s reads. I only discovered them very recently.

But I have, over time, read a lot of books and authors
because my favourite characters (mostly Jess and Rory) from Gilmore Girls
mentioned reading and liking them:

1. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust – Lorelai borrows
this from Max Medina (Ah, Max, and his very English-Professor-ey bookshelf) Proust was a huge but definitely rewarding read.

2. Post Office by Charles Bukowski – Paris
and Jess argued over this one. According to Paris, it’s a typical guy response
to worship Kerouac and Bukowski, but never try anyone like Jane Austen. And then Jess says that he has read Jane Austen and that she would have liked
Bukowski.

3. On the Road by Jack Kerouac – Kerouac is
mentioned a lot throughout the series. According to Rory, the Beats expose you
to a world you wouldn’t have otherwise known; that’s what great writing is
about. This book was good, though somewhat pretentious, but I preferred Bukowski’s style to Kerouac’s.

4. Please Kill Me – The Uncensored Oral History of
the Punk Movement by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain – The book
is just (and you wouldn’t find this word in my usual vocabulary) insane. It’s
the history of punk music written through and by people who actually lived it.
Jess recommends this to Rory.

5. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy – I chose
reading this book over War and Peace, of which my sister has a copy also,
because it is one of Rory’s favourite books. Dean thinks it’s impossible that
every name in the book ends with “sky”, and Rory convinces him to
read it, because Tolstoy apparently wrote it for the masses, so you don’t have
to be very literary to get it. I did love the book, but I disagree.

6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain –
This is another of Rory’s favourites; though I don’t remember where this is
mentioned. I do remember that Rory made Lorelai celebrate Rory’s twelfth
birthday in a Mark Twain museum!

7. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens – I’d read an abridged version a long time ago, but I re-read it when I watched that Gilmore Girls episode where Rory calls Jess “Dodger” for stealing her book (Howl.) Incidentally, I also read Terry Pratchett’s Dodger, which I adored, by the way.

8. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut – This is
the book that Jess is reading when he enters a class late, and is supposed to
be writing a test. He borrows a pencil from Lane, tilts the book and starts
writing (notes, probably) in the margin.

9. Howl and other Poems by Allen Ginsberg –
This is the first book of poetry I have ever dared and managed to read; and
only because, Jess is supposed to have read it “about forty times”,
which automatically means it’s good.

10. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – I
read Ernest Hemingway basically because of the time Rory promises to give
“the painful Ernest Hemingway a try” if Jess finishes reading The
Fountainhead. Jess also tells Rory, “Ernest only has lovely things to say
about you.”

Some of the authors mentioned or featured on the show that I still want to read are John Steinbeck, Tom Woolfe, Hunter Thompson and Alexander Pushkin.

(“Aren’t we hooked on phonics?” is what Jess comments when he first sees Rory’s overflowing bookshelf!)

As you can probably see, Gilmore Girls has influenced a lot
of my reading. Actually, it has also influenced a lot of my music and movie
tastes. Do you like the show or any of the books I have mentioned? And would
you recommend any other bookish television show or movie?

The Nightmare of Black Island by Mike Tucker

“Lewis Carroll. He was an odd one. Real name was Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson. Completely denied having anything to do with the Alice books.
Daft as a brush. You’d have liked him! Loved inventing words. Ever read Jabberwocky?
Loads of good words in there. “Tulgy”, “whiffling”, “galumphing”. And “burbled”. How come “burbled” gets to be in the Oxford English Dictionary but “tulgy” doesn’t? Hm?'”

My first Doctor Who novel. Late, I know. But the idea of books based on TV series has always made me uncomfortable. The annoying Buffy Season 8* did nothing to help; but if I write about that, I’ll probably burst into angry flames. These, though, are highly addictive, I have since read two more, the third arrives any day now!

Summary: On a lonely stretch of Welsh coastline, a fisherman is
killed by a hideous creature from beneath the waves. When the Doctor and Rose
arrive, they discover a village where the children are plagued by nightmares,
and the nights are ruled by monsters. The villagers suspect that ancient
industrialist Nathanial Morton is to blame, but the Doctor has suspicions of
his own. Who are the ancient figures that sleep in the old priory? What are the
monsters that prowl the woods after sunset? What is the light that glows in the
disused lighthouse on Black Island? As the children’s nightmares get worse, the
Doctor and Rose discover an alien plot to resurrect an ancient evil…

My thoughts: Mike Tucker has captured the voice of Rose and the Tenth Doctor perfectly nicely, giving them just those sort of quirky Doctor Who moments we love. The prose, though, is oversimplified: filled with page-long descriptions and little character depth. Since we already know the characters, and the imagery is very apt and vivid, that style of writing works in his favour. Where there is little plot movement, the spooky atmosphere keeps you engaged. The children, the nightmares, the creepy man in the wheelchair, the angry Ms. Peyne: the book has all the elements of horror. The ending is a bit unsurprising and sensationalized; but it also just somehow works. The whole book reads like an hour long episode, and it’s easy to ignore that little predictability. I suppose these books would make great reads for someone whose default state isn’t in a book. If you love the Tenth Doctor like I do, and have a hard time getting involved in books, read this. The Nightmare of Black Island is quick, funny, original and exciting.

I’d been too busy this month to read anything other than that one book I read weeks ago. What with little time and lots of work, this was just the guilty-pleasure-YA break I needed.

*Another Buffy connection: There is an audio version of this read by Anthony Stewart Head, but I’m not the biggest fan of audiobooks, and his voice still says Giles, and that just wouldn’t have seemed right.

Let’s assume I read this for the 2014 Science Fiction Experience. The other books I’ve read for this event are Time and Again by Jack Finney, and three dystopian short stories by E.M. Forster, Jack London and Kurt Vonnegut. Sadly, I only just found Timescape by Gregory Benford, and I doubt I could finish reading it in a day!

“One word, made up: Douchepocalypse.”

Lately, what with having fractured my hand (isn’t it cool how I can type, but I can’t write or do any other important work?), I have had pretty much nothing to do. Naturally, I sit at home, glued to the computer, all day.

Now, if you are as crazy about How I Met Your Mother as I am, you have probably recognized the title as a dialogue from the episode Robots vs. Wrestlers. Yep, that’s what Barney Stinson says about a party full of ‘stuffy, pretentious snoots’. There are two things that totally crack me up in that episode: first, the part where Marshall says that William Defoe sounds like a frog talking to a parrot(it totally does!); and second, how totally excited Ted is about meeting the editor of the New York Times crossword. That’s what I was watching today, when I realized that I’ve never ever tried solving a crossword puzzle!

A few months back, one of my best friends wrote a totally inspiring blog post on how she loves solving rubik’s cubes. I’ve never tried solving one; and I don’t think I’ll be able to, either. I was obsessed, though, with playing all sorts of word games a few years back. My sister and I used to literally spend hours solving word jumbles together. I remember one time we were playing Word Challenge on Facebook; and by the time we were ready to stop, my hands had turned into claws and her eyes were hurting! So, quite confident about it; I decided to try solving a crossword today, you know, just to see if I could.

I wasn’t quite pleased with myself, though, when after a few minutes, the only two things I had managed to “solve” were: ”Four letters, Red Planet” and ”___, humbug”! Even after some time, it just got worse: I only got two more words, one of which was a name. As you can imagine, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I suck at solving crosswords. A lot. Maybe it’ll take lot more time and practice for me to get to the point where I can solve an entire crossword, or understand what Ted says about the whole lyric baritone thing.

At least I know I still have a long way to go before I reach that level of ultimate douchiness. That’s definitely a relief!