Future Interruptus: Firefly

Until he went tentpole Hollywood by getting hired to direct mammoth-budget cartoons like The Avengers, Joss Whedon was my favorite media creator. Decades ago I had my three favorite film directors, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick and Peter Weir and that was it. I knew where to go for narrative brilliance. But then everything changed: cinema got less interesting as it turned more and more to weird little dysfunctional independents and two dimensional blockbusters. And surprisingly, television, with Homicide: Life on the Street, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, True Blood, Rome, Game of Thrones and a host of others, actually got to be interesting. Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel were for a long time my favorite tv series. I even presented a couple of scholarly papers on them at a conference at the University of Huddersfield in the UK several years ago.

It was at that conference that I first heard about his canceled science fiction series, Firefly, so when I got back home I ordered the dvds. Wow, what a great, great show. In my books it, along with the motion picture sequel, Serenity, is pretty much the best science fiction ever filmed. Great cast of characters, great fusion of the western and sf genres, great stories, great writing, great humor and most of all, it was really original. Plus, no aliens with funny noses, no spaceships going whoosh in vacuum, and a fascinatingly plausible future with a lot of people swearing in Mandarin! Joss even wrote the theme song:

Firefly had some of the scariest bad guys ever, the Reavers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXjUl5usKI

And that little description of what will happen if the Reavers board the ship has to be some of the scariest dialogue ever. But Firefly was also one of the funniest series as well. This collection of favorite quotes gives you a taste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch3X5WrhwGM

Given Joss Whedon's standard Hollywood liberalism, the libertarian slant of Firefly was odd, but refreshing. As an example of Whedon's brilliant dark humor, I offer the torture scene from "War Stories" in which Mal and Wash are tied to a steel frame and tortured with electricity. Funniest torture scene ever (starts around 22:00 in this clip):

But the brilliance of the complex creative vision was compromised by the idiocy of the Fox executives in charge (may they contract many painful and wasting diseases) and not only did they refuse to air the carefully constructed pilot episode, insisting that Whedon come up with a replacement script over the weekend, but they did not show the episodes in order. As a final insult, they canceled the show halfway through the first and only season. What remains, thirteen episodes, is a bleeding torso of what might have been a spectacular series. In those thirteen episodes there are many hints at future developments. For example, it is obvious in the pilot that Inara Serra, the Companion or "geisha," and Shepherd Book know one another from before, but how and where is never revealed in the episodes we have. Fan outrage and dvd sales led Universal to fund a movie sequel, Serenity, but it was not well-attended so that ended the franchise. What a pity! In Serenity we see another libertarian theme plausibly explored: in the future government will seek ways, through the mass administration of drugs, to make the populace more amenable. I won't say what happens, but it does not end well. You might think this is pure fantasy, but at a cocktail party in Montreal many years ago I met two guys who were actually working on something similar. After I grasped what they were getting at I said: "Well, if you are coming to administer something like that to me, bring lots of guys with lots of guns." They literally backed away slowly!

Firefly would, had it been allowed to have a few seasons, have been by far my favorite sf tv show. But the enjoyment is always compromised a bit by the lost possibilities...

Oh, and Firefly also has great music! Go watch it. Now. At the moment, the double-length pilot episode seems to be on YouTube, so you can start there:

I'll be in my bunk.

An Anniversary

This is the 20th anniversary of the debut of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which, in contrast to so many other television shows, actually stands up pretty well. The Spectator has a couple of essays devoted to the show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer transformed pop culture and Buffy the Vampire Slayer made me the man I am.

Joss Whedon’s generation-defining TV hit debuted 20 years ago tonight. Its anniversary is being marked by the fans who adored it and the critics whose cool detachment it drove a stake through. It is fourteen years since Sunnydale collapsed into the Hellmouth and Buffy left the airwaves after seven seasons. But far from turning to dust, this unlikeliest of cultural landmarks has enjoyed an afterlife through graphic novels, fan fiction, merchandise, conventions and the long-running chatter about a Hollywood adaptation, a rumour that has proved harder to kill than the show’s durable lead. (She died twice.)

I only discovered the show after it was in re-runs. One day, by accident, I watched one of the early episodes from season six, when Buffy is actually dead and has been temporarily replaced by a robot (played, of course, by the actress who plays Buffy, Sarah Michelle Gellar). For some reason, probably the humor, I got the urge to watch more and finally ended up buying everything Joss Whedon ever did including Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly and even Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. What a remarkable congeries of creative genius! Of course nowadays his soul has been trapped in an urn by the implacable forces of Hollywood blockbuster commercialism...

But Buffy (and Angel) still stand out because of their brilliant originality, not because of their feminism or social justice or whatever. One of the remarkable aspects is the lack of moral relativism, though the moral ambiguities develop in interesting ways. There is always a price to be paid for evil. Angel has one of the most gripping finales ever with the remaining characters faced with an impossible battle they cannot win, but must fight anyway. Angel's last lines are "personally, I kinda wanna slay the dragon, let's go to work." Fade to black.

Out of many remarkable Buffy episodes, I think my favorites include the homage to Hollywood musicals, "Once More With Feeling" and "Hush" where the characters, for most of the episode, lose the ability to speak. One of the few clips available on YouTube is this one, from season five:

The context would help--for example, this scene plays better if you know just how truly insufferable Quentin and the Watcher's Council had been over the previous seasons--but I think it still comes across well. This is a writer's show: it's not about the special effects or the cinematography or all of the other things that distract us from the usual bad writing on television. It's about the writing and how brilliantly we can be fooled as to where the story is going. Whedon was a master at playing the varying conventions of drama, horror, action and comedy against one another and changing the mood in an instant.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

A very careful reader of this blog may have noticed that the work of Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse is a secret pleasure of mine. One of the many things that attracts me to his work is the outstanding use he makes of music. He is a great fan of the musical genre and did one episode of Buffy (season six, episode seven) as a musical in which different numbers were an homage to the musical form. This episode, titled "Once More With Feeling", has consistently been one of the most popular. It is not only well-integrated with the story-arc, it is actually a crucial step in revealing all those things that the characters don't want to talk about, but seem compelled to sing about. The problem with it has always been that the actors are not trained singers and dancers. The brilliant plot device to account for this is that a demon has been summoned to town and everyone is forced to sing and dance by him. Great idea. The demon is played by guest star Hinton Battle, a seasoned professional who has won three Tony awards, all for roles in musicals. But despite this, the performances are rather awkward. A couple of cast members are pretty good singers, but others are not. The greatest weight falls on Sarah Michelle Gellar who is neither a singer nor a dancer, but had to learn for this one episode. The singing pretty much works, but her dancing is weak. It is a treat when Hinton Battle comes on as the demon Sweet and shows us how it's done:

Unfortunately, this is no longer the golden age of the musical and even professionals now don't have quite the pizzazz of their predecessors. If you go back and watch a musical from the golden age, such as Singing in the Rain with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, you will see a level of dancing that will take your breath away. Here is a still from that film:

And here is the number itself:

Yes, Cyd Charisse does have the best legs ever--and she was in the Ballets russe at age 13. Gene Kelly does one number entirely in a downpour and he and Donald O'Connor do a huge number in one shot that makes you wonder how they could possibly have remembered the long, long sequence of intricate moves that they perform in unison. After watching them, even Hinton Battle, good as he is, looks a bit like an amateur and the dancing of the regular cast members is just feeble.

But I come to praise Joss Whedon, not to bury him! So let me get on to my real topic: the extraordinary internet-released family home movie called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I call it a "family home movie" because it was the creation of Joss Whedon, two of his brothers, Jed and Zack, and Jed's wife, actress Maurissa Tancharoen. This was released--only on the internet--in July 2008 and made a big splash due to Joss's extensive fan base. The moment it hit the web, it was getting 1000 hits per second and crashing the server. It was a big hit, but act three puzzled and confused many viewers. I think that the whole thing is a work of genius and one of the few really original dramatic ideas I have seen in a long, long time.

Joss was no doubt aware of the weaknesses of "Once More With Feeling" even though in dramatic terms it worked well. So in this new attempt at a musical, he avoids the problems by avoiding dancing (because he is still hiring actors mainly for their acting) and by selecting some pretty good singers. He also keeps to a small cast of only three main characters.

The viewer is set up for light, feverish, very hip comedy both by Joss's reputation (third-generation Hollywood sit-com writer) and by the opening. Every time I hear him say "smells like cumin" I just laugh. The songs are tuneful and well-written. One of the great gifts that music gives to drama is the ability to have three different vocal lines sung simultaneously and yet still be understandable. Music organizes speech rhythmically. Joss has a nicely done trio in the second part of act 1: "A Man's Gotta Do". The trio starts around 5:20:

Act 2 turns darker as Dr. Horrible discovers that pursuing his avowed ambition, to join the Evil League of Evil, may involve compromising his concealed (and more genuine) ambition: to meet, talk to and possibly date his dream girl, Penny. Act 2 begins with a duet between them, "My Eyes", in which each expresses the opposite to the other. The act continues with Billy's dream crushed by Captain Hammer. The patter song "Brand New Day" (very like Gilbert and Sullivan) in which Dr. Horrible resolves to really be evil, instead of just posturing to be so, ends the act.

Act 3 is where things get very strange. So far, as many, many modern dramas do, this one has followed the basic structure of Athenian New Comedy. There is a young couple, who want to be together. They are blocked by an older man, a 'senex iratus', who tries to thwart the young couple. The ending sees him vanquished and the young lovers happily married (or, in modern times, a surrogate of such). This basic structure permeates many modern dramas, even those not considered 'comedies'. Even James Bond gets the girl at the end. But what Whedon is up to here is fooling us into thinking he is doing comedy, when actually he is doing anti-comedy, sometimes known as tragedy. In the first part, we see Dr. Horrible on the verge of triumph:

But it goes horribly wrong from there on.

There are so many things here that make me think of Greek tragedy. Wikipedia tells us "the word τραγῳδία (tragoidia), from which the word "tragedy" is derived, is a portmanteau of two Greek words: τράγος (tragos) or "goat" and ᾠδή (ode) meaning "song", from ἀείδειν (aeidein), "to sing". Here we have no goat, but Bad Horse with his terrifying death whinny. The thing about Joss Whedon is that his most comic is very, very near to his most tragic. He says the most serious things in the most jocular manner. In both this and "Once More With Feeling" a bright, cheerful beginning leads to a dark, sad ending. The tragedy is that the real ambition, to be with the girl, has been wiped out by pursuing the false ambition: be evil and rule the world. And Billy ends up unable to "feel ... a thing". In my books, this is a serious drama and one of the most original I've seen in a very long time. Plus, I like the songs.

Giselle and Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon seems to me to be one of the most creative people in television. Responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly--the best science fiction ever--he has also shown a real talent for music not only in writing a respectable episode of Buffy in musical form ("Once More With Feeling"), but also in the handling of music generally. The bands that appear in various episodes of Buffy are often interesting in their own right and sometimes the music gets involved in the story. The episode "Conversations with Dead People" opens with a performance at the Bronze that turns into the soundtrack. But one of the most interesting uses of music is in the Angel episode "Waiting in the Wings" from season three. The episode is a homage to the ballet by Adolphe Adam and others. When Angel announces that, instead of buying tickets to a popular band that Gunn was looking forward to hearing, he has instead bought ones to the ballet Giselle, Gunn is horrified. What I find interesting is that over the course of the episode Gunn comes to love the ballet and starts a relationship with Fred. This is a pretty interesting transformation.

Here is the transcript for the scene where Gunn learns the horrible truth:

Gunn, entering the lobby: "Morning friends and neighbors. Ooh, are those the tickets? You got 'em?"
Angel: "Well, I got to the ticket place and..."
Gunn: "I'm paying you back. This one's on me."
Fred: "Morning."
Gunn: "Mahta Hari is the tightest band in LA. You guys are gonna be trippin' out."
Angel: "The only thing is..."
Gunn puts a hand on Angel's shoulder: "Look, I said I'm good for it, man. Don't have to worry about dippin' in the Connor college fund. (Takes the tickets from Angel) The time I saw the Mahta Hari at the Troubadour they where the (reads tickets) "Blinnikov World Ballet Tour. What's going on?"
Angel: "I was trying to tell you. I got to the ticket place and boom! Tonight only!"
Gunn: "But - you got ballet on my Mahta Hari tickets."
Angel: "This is the Blinnikov World Ballet Corps."
Cordy: "He's been saying that like it has meaning."
Angel: "This is one of the premier companies in the world. And they're doing Giselle! It's their signature piece."
Gunn: "This is all like some horrible dream."
Wes: "I think I've heard of them. Very ahead of their time."
Angel: "Oh, yeah. Yeah. I saw their production of Giselle in eighteen-ninety. I cried like a baby. And I was evil!"
Fred: "I-I think it sounds exciting!"
Wes: "Yes."
Gunn: "No. No! This is not Mahta Hari. This is tutus, and guys with their big-ass packages jumping up and down. This is just... (To Angel) I will never trust you again. The trust is gone."
Cordy: "Oh, get over it. Do we get dressed up?"
Angel: "Of course."
Cordy: "I'm in."
Angel: "Guys, seeing real ballet live it's... (sighs) it's like another world. Gunn, these guys are tight, and you're gonna be trippin' out."
Gunn: "Don't be usin' my own phrases when we lost the trust."
Cordy: "Come on, guys. Working day, cases to solve."
Gunn: "Okay. But I'm not still paying, right. Because this is... (Looks at the tickets) this is... It's like a nightmare."

The nightmare is having to listen to ballet when you expecting something else--perhaps something like Coolio, whose song "Gangster Paradise" was used in an episode centering on Gunn's back-story. Here it is:

Here, for comparison, is Giselle:

What you should do now is find the Angel episode and watch it all the way through. For copyright reasons it is not available from YouTube. I'll wait....

Back? Ok, I just want to look at how Gunn is won over and how his character is transformed by the music in this episode. The character of Charles Gunn is introduced in episode 20 of season one of Angel and adds diversity to the cast. He is a black man from a South-Central war zone of Los Angeles. Though a fighter for the good, he is deeply cynical about white people and the institutions of society. As the series unfolds, Gunn realizes that his truest loyalties are with Angel Investigations. In the current episode, "Waiting in the Wings", Gunn's movement from street thug to the powerful figure he becomes in season five is hastened and calibrated by two things: his social movement and the beginning of his relationship with Fred. The social movement comes in two stages. At the beginning of the show he is the street-smart rap-loving character, condemned to see the nightmare of ballet. But a kind of magic is cast, first of all, with costume. Everyone has to dress up, meaning that we see Charles Gunn in a tuxedo and, as Fred says, "my god, you're so pretty!" To which Gunn replies, smiling, "you know, there's not a lot of people could say that to me and live." This is a dual indicator of Gunn's social mobility: on the one hand, he is now in highly formal dress, and on the other, he references how he would have answered a remark like Fred's--but will no longer. This is the necessary transition to the next stage which is that, at the ballet, he loves it from the first notes. In season five, Gunn acquires, as a kind of bonus to his encyclopedic legal knowledge, the ability to sing Gilbert and Sullivan. This is another of Joss Whedon's jokes that contains a grain of truth.


Certain kinds of music are transformative: the development of an appreciation for, for example, ballet, can open out your character and give you access to different levels in society. A very old-fashioned view, of course, but not necessarily wrong.