Buffy

it all just sucks

i was a huge fan of every whedon show, esp buffy - for a while i even lurked on the messageboard they reference in the vulture piece

now it’s like i can’t even rewatch an old episode of buffy without thinking of him & all of his bullshit. i dont always struggle separating art from artist but so much of him & his voice is in these shows that it’s almost impossible to even revisit them anymore

and to be clear i’m not saying this in an “oh poor me” way - it’s more just, i’m fucking mad that he has ruined my enjoyment of these shows that i genuinely loved. and that i never knew he was actively ruining them the whole time

I had a class with the professor they mention in the article who started Whedon Studies. He wrote a book about Bukowski!

now it’s like i can’t even rewatch an old episode of buffy without thinking of him & all of his bullshit. i dont always struggle separating art from artist but so much of him & his voice is in these shows that it’s almost impossible to even revisit them anymore

I can see that and it sucks indeed. I have less trouble with it myself as there were so many other people involved in the end products, especially the cast who also separate the art from the artist: see, for example, this which happened very recently. Several cast members -including Charisma Carpenter- fondly talking about the show and their characters.

Has managed to avoid the Whedon-stink more than Firefly for me, put it on today and skipped S1 still just pure fun.

SMG’s memorable smackdown of Whedon makes me retroactively like her performance a bit more

Realise I’ve never seen the second season - jumped on at S3 and never bothered with the first two

second season probably has the best overall season arc, and by far the best spike scenes, but the episode-to-episode execution was the best in season 3

you should def watch season 2, is what i'm saying, but maybe start with the episode called "school hard"

Booo the first episode of season 2 is great, don’t miss it. Also I recommend Welcome To The Hellmouth, The Harvest, Angel, The Puppet Show and Prophecy Girl from Season 1, all quality TV.