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Mar. 17th, 2007 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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jennyo
A supernatural glitch in your DVR occurs. At first you panic, hitting lots of random buttons on your remote control, but then are RELIEVED to discover that no, your entire series recording of Golden Girls has not been deleted! But then, just as things appear to be back to normal, there's a puff of smoke, and a fairy appears! You have apparently freed the TV fairy from a televised hell in which she was made to watch endless reruns of Are You Hot?, and as fairies tend to be when freed, she is very grateful and wants to grant you magic wishes.
Now, the fairy has only TV-related powerz, and so she offers you the chance to go back in time and retroactively CHANGE the history of your favorite TV shows with 3.5 wishes!
You can go back in time and erase from the fabric of TV history THREE individual episodes of any TV show you want! The rest of the series(es) will not be altered. What do you choose?
1) Oh, that's easy, 'Wrecked' from BtVS Season Six. The one with 'just say no to drugs=magic=sex with Spike' - there is a lot wrong with Season Six, as well as much that I love, but that one is actively maddening in a way that even the return of Riley is not, though, now I mention it, that is a tough call. But other episodes have to be deleted and I must not waste even part of a wish.
2) 'Closure' from X-Files Season Six. If there is one thing worse than a mystery that is never solved, it is the dumb solution. Discovering that Mulder's sister Samantha was in fact carried off to a better place by fairies is the point at which I nearly abandoned the show forever, and I would have regretted that.
3) Xena 'Married with Fishsticks'- the dumb mermaid sitcome episode. That is forty minutes of hell that I want never to have happened. Xena was good to me, mostly, even during its Christian phase and the cover versions musical, but that was inexcusable.
You can go back in time and revive ONE unfairly cancelled television show and return it to the annals of TV history!* *CHOOSE WISELY, because if you attempt to revive more than one show, the wish will backfire and you'll instead be treated to a whole bunch of crappy made-for-TV "reunion" movies full of replacement actors.
That is a tough call, because to pick my first choice does rule out other shows that I love dearly. I guess that I use the wish unselfishly and go with 'Twin Peaks' because that was a show that did so much that was awesome and ground-breaking in terms of demonstrating that audiences could be hornswoggled and love it. It had Audrey Horne and the cherry stalks; it had the demon Bob; and it had David Duchovny as Denise. Yes, folks, before Ava Moore and Alexis Meade, there was Agent Denise, and she was disturbingly pretty, given Duchovny's subsequent career. Of course, if 'Twin Peaks' went on, there might not have been an 'X-Files'.
So, as a supplementary, if 'Twin Peaks' would be too great a disturbance in the Force, what to go for? 'Popular' probably, because I always wanted to find out what happened next to Brooke and Sam and Nicole, but then there is the risk that Ryan Murphy might not have had the iron enter into his soul and get to do the far more bitter and twisted show that 'Nip-Tuck' is. (And, by the way, absent the dud bit with the witness protection programme, why do people hate Season Three so much? The Carver plot is a piece of brilliance and entirely fits the whole shadow double structure of the show's other seasons. But I will write my essay later and not here.)
Of course, I could go for the real stamping on a butterfly and changing the world route and opt for 'Rock Follies', a show that aired before many of you were born. The rise and fall of a crappy 70s girl band, with more femslash potential than you could wave a drumstick at, and Stephen Moore as the depressed husband of one of the three. Comedy Gold and interestingly terrible music. On my first trip to the US, I made myself very popular in an NY drag bar by spoiling the other drinkers for several hours with a close account of the second season - in those days, my memory for lines and actions was improved by alcohol rather than otherwise, and they kept the drinks coming, oh yes they did.
To balance out the historical TV viewing schedule, you now have the power to retroactively CANCEL, at any point during the series, any one show! Alternately, you can wield your destructive might and DELETE one whole entire series from ever having been made.
I am tempted to make myself unpopular and say that, good as it was, 'Firefly' needed to be thoroughly baked for two or three more years of thinking and that Joss should have finished what he was working on viz, 'BtVS' and 'Angel' rather than haring off to do something else not especially well. But there are great episodes and great characters and 'Serenity', so I will go with the safe option and cancel 'Alias' before that awful fifth season. In fact, I am almost tempted to take out Season Four, in spite of Nadia, or Season Three, in spite of the girlslash potential. The show I loved was the one with Irina Derevko in it, and her sisters did not really count, even when they were Isabella Rosellini and Sonia Braga. Power does go to the head, I find - bwahaha.
LIFE AND DEATH! You can now bring ONE character back from the dead... and, to restore the balance, you must also kill off a character! They don't have to be from the same fandom.
This too is a tough call, but only because it is hard for me to say whether I am more irritated by the loss of Cordelia or the loss of Lilah from 'Angel'. Two great women characters, sacrificed to the network's demands for more Spike (not, let us be clear, that I mind Spike in S5 of 'Angel' one little bit.) It has, in the end, to be Cordelia, my fanfic muse, simply because there are so many things in S5 where her presence would have made for Comedy Gold - can I say, Cordelia and Puppet Angel, Cordelia and Illyria?
It would be cheating to sacrifice PC Reg Hollis or Ken Barlow,(notoriously dull UK soap characters you don't know about, USians), and predictable to kill Riley. I spent some minutes contemplating the heroic death of Xander at an early stage in Season Seven, torn to pieces by the Ubervamp and actually getting to do something interesting in a season that felt like Nick Brendon was waiting to get out of jail. In the end, though, it has to be the very annoying Harper from 'Andromeda', because I hate him. And if the fairy throws in Dylan and the priest, I won't complain. I wish, I really wish, that that show had been about its women characters and not all that tiresome boy angst - I might have watched it for them...
Bonus tradeoff: you can delete a single scene, relationship pairing or plot arc from any series that gave you hives... AND you can plug in any one [scene, pairing, plot arc] that you never got to see!
Another tough call - the Quadrangle of Doom is a strong contender, of course, as are various things mentioned above. In terms of sheer 'hide my eyes' potential, though, it would be the self-sacrificing love of the irritating Marcus for the glorious Ivanova; wimpy man pesters strong dyke is never an attractive plot line.
Well, of course, I am spoiled for choice as to the trade/off. Buffy/Faith; Chiana/Jool; Julia/Ava; Wesley/Giles (and that almost got to be semi-canon if we can trust the commentaries). In the interests of sanity, though, I have to decree that it is the plotline in which someone explains to Mal and the rest of the Serenity crew how the whole Civil War aftermath/Wild West thing in 'Firefly' is a meme implanted in the inhabitants of the Outer Planets by the Alliance in order to keep them dumb and poor - it would have been so easy for Joss Whedon to have fixed that nonsense, and he never ever did.
jennyoA supernatural glitch in your DVR occurs. At first you panic, hitting lots of random buttons on your remote control, but then are RELIEVED to discover that no, your entire series recording of Golden Girls has not been deleted! But then, just as things appear to be back to normal, there's a puff of smoke, and a fairy appears! You have apparently freed the TV fairy from a televised hell in which she was made to watch endless reruns of Are You Hot?, and as fairies tend to be when freed, she is very grateful and wants to grant you magic wishes.
Now, the fairy has only TV-related powerz, and so she offers you the chance to go back in time and retroactively CHANGE the history of your favorite TV shows with 3.5 wishes!
You can go back in time and erase from the fabric of TV history THREE individual episodes of any TV show you want! The rest of the series(es) will not be altered. What do you choose?
1) Oh, that's easy, 'Wrecked' from BtVS Season Six. The one with 'just say no to drugs=magic=sex with Spike' - there is a lot wrong with Season Six, as well as much that I love, but that one is actively maddening in a way that even the return of Riley is not, though, now I mention it, that is a tough call. But other episodes have to be deleted and I must not waste even part of a wish.
2) 'Closure' from X-Files Season Six. If there is one thing worse than a mystery that is never solved, it is the dumb solution. Discovering that Mulder's sister Samantha was in fact carried off to a better place by fairies is the point at which I nearly abandoned the show forever, and I would have regretted that.
3) Xena 'Married with Fishsticks'- the dumb mermaid sitcome episode. That is forty minutes of hell that I want never to have happened. Xena was good to me, mostly, even during its Christian phase and the cover versions musical, but that was inexcusable.
You can go back in time and revive ONE unfairly cancelled television show and return it to the annals of TV history!* *CHOOSE WISELY, because if you attempt to revive more than one show, the wish will backfire and you'll instead be treated to a whole bunch of crappy made-for-TV "reunion" movies full of replacement actors.
That is a tough call, because to pick my first choice does rule out other shows that I love dearly. I guess that I use the wish unselfishly and go with 'Twin Peaks' because that was a show that did so much that was awesome and ground-breaking in terms of demonstrating that audiences could be hornswoggled and love it. It had Audrey Horne and the cherry stalks; it had the demon Bob; and it had David Duchovny as Denise. Yes, folks, before Ava Moore and Alexis Meade, there was Agent Denise, and she was disturbingly pretty, given Duchovny's subsequent career. Of course, if 'Twin Peaks' went on, there might not have been an 'X-Files'.
So, as a supplementary, if 'Twin Peaks' would be too great a disturbance in the Force, what to go for? 'Popular' probably, because I always wanted to find out what happened next to Brooke and Sam and Nicole, but then there is the risk that Ryan Murphy might not have had the iron enter into his soul and get to do the far more bitter and twisted show that 'Nip-Tuck' is. (And, by the way, absent the dud bit with the witness protection programme, why do people hate Season Three so much? The Carver plot is a piece of brilliance and entirely fits the whole shadow double structure of the show's other seasons. But I will write my essay later and not here.)
Of course, I could go for the real stamping on a butterfly and changing the world route and opt for 'Rock Follies', a show that aired before many of you were born. The rise and fall of a crappy 70s girl band, with more femslash potential than you could wave a drumstick at, and Stephen Moore as the depressed husband of one of the three. Comedy Gold and interestingly terrible music. On my first trip to the US, I made myself very popular in an NY drag bar by spoiling the other drinkers for several hours with a close account of the second season - in those days, my memory for lines and actions was improved by alcohol rather than otherwise, and they kept the drinks coming, oh yes they did.
To balance out the historical TV viewing schedule, you now have the power to retroactively CANCEL, at any point during the series, any one show! Alternately, you can wield your destructive might and DELETE one whole entire series from ever having been made.
I am tempted to make myself unpopular and say that, good as it was, 'Firefly' needed to be thoroughly baked for two or three more years of thinking and that Joss should have finished what he was working on viz, 'BtVS' and 'Angel' rather than haring off to do something else not especially well. But there are great episodes and great characters and 'Serenity', so I will go with the safe option and cancel 'Alias' before that awful fifth season. In fact, I am almost tempted to take out Season Four, in spite of Nadia, or Season Three, in spite of the girlslash potential. The show I loved was the one with Irina Derevko in it, and her sisters did not really count, even when they were Isabella Rosellini and Sonia Braga. Power does go to the head, I find - bwahaha.
LIFE AND DEATH! You can now bring ONE character back from the dead... and, to restore the balance, you must also kill off a character! They don't have to be from the same fandom.
This too is a tough call, but only because it is hard for me to say whether I am more irritated by the loss of Cordelia or the loss of Lilah from 'Angel'. Two great women characters, sacrificed to the network's demands for more Spike (not, let us be clear, that I mind Spike in S5 of 'Angel' one little bit.) It has, in the end, to be Cordelia, my fanfic muse, simply because there are so many things in S5 where her presence would have made for Comedy Gold - can I say, Cordelia and Puppet Angel, Cordelia and Illyria?
It would be cheating to sacrifice PC Reg Hollis or Ken Barlow,(notoriously dull UK soap characters you don't know about, USians), and predictable to kill Riley. I spent some minutes contemplating the heroic death of Xander at an early stage in Season Seven, torn to pieces by the Ubervamp and actually getting to do something interesting in a season that felt like Nick Brendon was waiting to get out of jail. In the end, though, it has to be the very annoying Harper from 'Andromeda', because I hate him. And if the fairy throws in Dylan and the priest, I won't complain. I wish, I really wish, that that show had been about its women characters and not all that tiresome boy angst - I might have watched it for them...
Bonus tradeoff: you can delete a single scene, relationship pairing or plot arc from any series that gave you hives... AND you can plug in any one [scene, pairing, plot arc] that you never got to see!
Another tough call - the Quadrangle of Doom is a strong contender, of course, as are various things mentioned above. In terms of sheer 'hide my eyes' potential, though, it would be the self-sacrificing love of the irritating Marcus for the glorious Ivanova; wimpy man pesters strong dyke is never an attractive plot line.
Well, of course, I am spoiled for choice as to the trade/off. Buffy/Faith; Chiana/Jool; Julia/Ava; Wesley/Giles (and that almost got to be semi-canon if we can trust the commentaries). In the interests of sanity, though, I have to decree that it is the plotline in which someone explains to Mal and the rest of the Serenity crew how the whole Civil War aftermath/Wild West thing in 'Firefly' is a meme implanted in the inhabitants of the Outer Planets by the Alliance in order to keep them dumb and poor - it would have been so easy for Joss Whedon to have fixed that nonsense, and he never ever did.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 12:38 am (UTC)I mean .. Charlotte, Rula and Julie (and the welsh bint in season two). Bring back the Little Ladies!
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 02:47 am (UTC)I was also thinking that the entire Woody/Jordan plot line from Crossing Jordan could go. Or they could have cancelled the show fourth season. Solving the whole hideious problem.
If forced to choose: Cancell X-Files season 7. Season 8 & 9 could exist. Just as a totally different show, with a total different name, It wasn't bad,. but it would have been vastly better as two seasons of a show labelled something else.
And Marcus. Oh Marcus. You whined and annoyed me. And it would have been aweful even if, for a second, I actually thought susan was a fan of boys.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 01:10 pm (UTC)I wish Popular had been cancelled after season one, then picked up by a cable station, then lasted for years and years and years.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 01:31 pm (UTC)Delete:
1: Angel S5, The Girl In Question. Funny-ish, but totally wrong for everything that came before and after it.
2: Doctor Who 10th doctor: New Earth - totally derivative and a rotten start to the series.
3: Star Trek original series S3: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield - because it's appallingly bad, the worst episode of a fairly shaky season.
Revive:
Has to be Firefly, I think. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the problems came from the knowledge that it was doomed.
Cancel:
Big Brother, in its entirity - preferably by the public hating it so much that nobody ever makes anything like it again. Come on, why settle for any lesser evil?
LIFE AND DEATH!:
Bring back Cordelia Chase (Angel) but kill Andrew Wells (Buffy). Sacrificing Andrew to raise Cordy works for me...
Bonus tradeoff:
Take Willow/Kennedy (Buffy) and plug in Willow/Faith.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-18 10:14 pm (UTC)Very interesting meme and answers. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 06:38 am (UTC)Re: Lilah, here's why I'm not even tempted though I love the character: it would have resulted in a year long Lilah/Wes/Fred triangle. No. Says she, burned of triangles and quadrangles.
As for Cordelia, since I think the problem with Cordelia - or rather, the writing for her - goes back all the way to season 2, I don't think resurrecting her would have worked rather than result in more problematic writing. Besides, if Cordy had woken up from her coma for a season as opposed to an episode, they would have had to let her deal with what she had done and what had happened to her, which would definitely not have fitted with the supposed "lighter" tone of s5.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 05:31 pm (UTC)And while I entirely take your point about the bad writing of Cordelia in the second half of AtS S3, I would actually have been interested to see her cope with the angst of what was done by the thing that lived in her body for a while. I suspect that part of the point would have been that she wouldbe angry and done some interesting reversions to bitch queen as a result. It would also give her some insight into Angel and his guilt that would have made their relationship interesting.
One day I will write this...
no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 04:41 pm (UTC)The Carver plot in Nip/Tuck was brilliant and fascinating and tense and wonderful... until the conclusion, when it all turned into something so grand-guignol-esque that I was left going "wait, what?"
Although, that said, that moment when Kit says "He can't have raped me because he has no penis!" did have me going "huh?!" It felt like something that the writers had pulled out of their asses rather than a logical progression.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 05:36 pm (UTC)The Carver=Quentin+Kit, (evil siblings united in birth defects and anger at world that made them have lots of surgery to pass) does feel a little as if they either thought of it at a very late stage or as if they got so involved with other matters that they needed to rush it. On the other hand, it does leave us with that wonderful final vision of the two of them on the hunt in Malaga...I'm inclined to just love it for what it is.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 08:25 pm (UTC)I always felt Inara sort of knew ... something!
I came to see what you thought of the Buffy "season 8" comic last night and was up past midnight thoroughly enjoying the fascinating wishes that your grateful (and powerful) tv fairy might grant. I replied but Livejournal thought it might be spam and wouldn't let me post, so Xander/Andrew and/or Willow/Anya will have to wait for another time - along with my cuts, revivals and impassioned defence of agents Doggett and Reyes.
Also, I'm thrilled that season two of Twin Peaks is going to be available at last - will it be as wonderful and frightening as I remember?
Stephen