You know, (to echo the post above), I’ve heard this so many times and it kinda grates me. “Everything bad that happened in the Buffyverse was Noxon’s fault!”
Bzzt. Wrong answer. It’s his production company, and if he can’t control the output of he’s empolyees, then he’s still to blame.
As a BtVS and Ats fan, I clearly see the flaws of the later seasons. The WB pulled the plug and UPN picked up Buffy. Everyone was happy, because it meant yet another year, helping with the car payments and the mortgages. UPN wanted a 2nd season - hooray, we still have jobs. If we look at the IMDb entries of the actors of BtVS, we see that most of them aren’t all that hot on the job market. Even the star of the show, SMG, is working kinda crappy projects (Scooby- Doo Two?). The show kept going after the story was told. The end of S.5 was perfect for the franchise.
As for Ats, I really, really liked S.4, so maybe I’m biased, but I thought the final shot of 4.22 was a perfect ending for that franchise. The fifth season, were the WB wanted more stand alones episodes, “because the audience won’t stand for long story arcs”, have been disproved by Desperate Housewives and Lost. To paraphrase Field of Dreams: “If you tell the story - they will follow.”
Let’s face it - cheerleaders who hunt vampires and green-skinned, red-horned karaoke demons will never have a mass appeal to bring in the 20M+ sized ratings. So no matter if you do tell a compelling story, there’s a limited amount of people who will suspend their disbeliefs to follow that story to places like Pylea.
There were good episodes in Angel and Buffy at the end, but the story wasn’t there anymore, and story is what counts. To keep going when there’s nothing more to say, is just gonna wear down the interest.
But Wheadon kept going, because it paid the bills when he was working on his new pet project, Firefly. I can’t blame him. I’d’ve done the same. And had Firefly been a success, he’d be forgiven. But it wasn’t.
So Fox is to blame? Remember, Fox was co-producing both BtVS and Ats and making money from them. Why would they sabotage Firefly? They had poured a couple of million into the production, and even if they never expected a #1 show, they must have expected to show a return from the investment.
Some un-named suit get’s the blame from the fan-boys. The suit didn’t understand Firefly and decided to show the eps out of order. “Woe us. If only they had been given the chance, we’d have maybe four or five years of Firefly goodness to splurge on. Shame on you Fox. Shame.”
Is JW really guiltless here? Why couldn’t he get the top brass to show the episodes in order?. I dunno. I just don’t think it’s as clear cut as the fan boys would like you to think.
JW is a gifted storyteller and a master of making interesting charaters, with just a few sketches. He likes taking cliches of tv and movies and turning them upside down, just for the hell of it. Had he been a poster on this board, many would have labeled him “troll”, because he likes to do things just to provoke and push the envelope (WRT storytelling and what he can get away with). He wasn’t pushing a GBLT eagenda when he decided to film the first lesbian kiss of broadcast tv, he was just rattling the cage. The fan reaction when he killed of Tara and his response shows that he really didn’t know that he was riding on the tigers back.
For the uninitiated:
Joss Wheadon is one of few auteurs in American television. Chris Carter, J. Michael Straczynski, Gene Roddenberry, Glen A. Larson, Aaron Spelling, Rod Serling and David E. Kelley are others. You might want to note that the majority of these names worked with Sci-fi.
OK, your recommendation worked before. Added Firefly. Thanks! BTW, it must be popular:
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