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Buffy Staked Again By Emmys
jonerik writes "Despite six witty, intelligent seasons, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' has never been able to catch a break from the folks at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences who vote on the annual Emmy Awards, with the show's nine nominations to date (with no wins) being mostly in technical categories. And, according to this piece from E! Online, when the ballots for this year's Emmy nominations were sent out in early June, this season's musical tour de force, 'Once More With Feeling,' was inexplicably left out of list of shows eligible for the Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series catefory. The academy has attempted to correct its error by sending out postcards to Emmy voters informing them that they can, in fact, vote for the episode, but the fix is probably too little, too late. According to awards-show expert Tom O'Neil, 'It entailed such extraordinary effort that it was unlikely the voters would do it even if they loved the episode. So it definitely curses its chances.' If you missed it the first time around, 'Once More With Feeling' will be re-run tomorrow evening at 8pm eastern time on UPN."
Vampires aren't real, and even if they were, it wouldn't be news for nerds, but news for goths. And last I checked, this is slashdot, not slashgoth (down, not across). :)
... Jason Alexander (George Costanza on Seinfeld) has always been ignored too. If one deserves an emmy, it's him.
Nothing intelligent in this forum.
Please waste you mod points elsewhere.
News for nerds, my ass. Taco is still recovering from
the bassist for the Who dying.
Dare I say, you're a moron? Buffy isn't even on WB! It moved to UPN last year. Did you actually read the article? Notice the "UPN" at the end.
Uh, no. I got the point which, for those who didn't watch, was: Friends and family are what matters most.
While that's quaint and all, it's not why I watch Buffy. I don't watch a show about girls who kill daemons (heh) for the "very special episodes" I watch it for the ass-kicking, super-slam spectacular, damnit!
Ok everyone, if you dont want to see bullshit news like this one turn it off in your prefrences.
What, you think LAW&ORDER is the best writing? Grow up!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the most popular show in my crowd - I'm 30ish, my friends are generally Masters grades in the arts... they're not a kind audience. Think about it, the Simpsons get Emmys right?
I love Buffy. The past season was masterful. Joss Whedon has really accomplished something special, just as the cast and crew have. Truly epic story telling. Into the hell-mouth with those Emmy jerks! This old Hollywood snobbery about Sci-Fi and Fantasy fiction has gotta go! It's the 21st Century people! Put the half-calf' down and wise up! This is great stuff... on TV!
Ok, I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but when you compare "Once More With Feeling" to other musicals in it's genre (comedy/horror) you have Little Shop of Horrors and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There must be others, but that's what I can think of. I love both of those, but OMWF just blew me away. The episode stands on its own (I know, since I wasn't a Buffy fan when I first saw it), and it only gets more engrosing as you become more familliar with the series (e.g. I just loved the "bunnies" bit from Anya, but it got even funnier when I saw the previous holloween episode).
:-)
If you're a fan of the series and have friends who have held out, I strongly suggest that you tie them to their chairs for this showing (even though it's cut-down), but then if you're a fan you probably knew that
It's too bad that this episode kicked off (with a couple of set-up episodes) the least appealing season so far. I'm looking forward to next season though. I just hope Firefly and Angel don't take too much out of the creative team....
Or, said another way:
Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
If you have not seen the show, do yourself a favor and *ahem* acquire the music. Hearing the cast sing is alone worth the download (Well, maybe not Alyson Hannigan, but...).
The reason that this is news is not because we're all big fanboys and think Buffy should win an award -- that is not up to us -- the reason this is news is because the musical episode of Buffy, Once More, With Feeling, was not even available as an option on the ballot. How are they supposed to get a fair chance if voters have to go to extra measures to support it? If this happened to your precious X-Files, everyone would be singing a completely different tune. Whether you are a fan of the show or not is not the issue at stake (see me pun).
Maybe everyone should try reading the entire story before automatically dismissing it as an outcry from pouting fanboys. (But oh yes, there will be those too)
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
It was more than that though. It was about life being worth living and not just something you suffer through. At the start of the season, Buffy hated being alive, and at the end, she loved it. I don't see the problem with giving characters some actual depth. I want more than "Buffy kicks ass, Willow is smart, and Xander is sensitive."
Why do Buffy fans act like this show is God's gift to television?
South Park has had witty, intelligent seasons, too, if that's the yardstick by which Emmy-worthy shows are to be judged.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'll start with a technicality first. Buffy rarely kills vampires any more, it's all ghouls and zombies and the like.
/.ers hated when hollywood got the geek image wrong, yet you buy this stereotype? I don't expect a tv show to be as realistic as the sugar in coffee, but we've gotta draw a line somewhere.
You're saying this inherently makes it a bad show? It was established in the first episode that vampires weren't all that Buffy would be fighting. They don't even call her a Vampire Slayer anymore, it's down to just Slayer. That you are using this as the opening to your argument makes the rest of it really weak.
Second, the acting is absolutely terrible. I can't remember his name, but the tall guy with the shifty mouth that's friends with buffy needs serious acting lessons. He's from the Ben Affleck squint-squirm-mumble and act-threw-your-teeth school of acting. Then, you've got Sara Michelle Gellar, who just sticks out her chest instead of getting into character, and her magical friend Willow who says every line with the same delivery, no matter if it's comical or dramatic it's always the same. Third, the writing is not good. Now, this is a tender subject because of the huge creative control from the creator and his love of the show, but his ego is just getting in the way.
Xander, the first character you refer to, is one of the most real and honest characters on TV. He doesn't act like any other character on TV. Neither do any of my friends act like any characters on TV. Or my parents. Or my parents friends. Think about it next time you watch a television show. Do people really talk like that? Do they deliver snappy dialogue? Do they get serious all of a sudden and say something important with gusto? I highly doubt it.
As for Sarah Michelle Gellar.... well this past season hasn't been a good one for her, I'll admit. The entire show seemed very blah, except for a very few episodes. Sarah was attempting to play someone who had given up on life, and in my opinion she just didn't do it. The mood of the show conveyed it more than she did. But in previous seasons her acting was excellent. She is very capable of relying on her acting ability instead of her breasts, and it has shown through time and again.
As for Willow. I think that's the actress. Watch her in American Pie or anything else she's done. That's the way she delivers all her lines. She made a breakthrough in the season finale and did something different, and it was the best acting job I've ever seen her (the actress) do.
Third, the writing is not good. Now, this is a tender subject because of the huge creative control from the creator and his love of the show, but his ego is just getting in the way. The snappy one liners after a vampire skewing were campy at first, but every character vomiting at least 6-7 of those things every episode for half a decade? Give me a break.
That's part of a comedy show. Ever watch Simpsons, another favorite around Slashdot?
As for the writing itself...there are ups and downs. Most of the time the writing is average, but occasionally it is superb. How many e you watched? If it's just a few here and there, you're not doing the show justice. Buffy isn't written a show at a time, it's written a SEASON at a time, with the expectation being that you will watch them all, and mostly in order. This creates a completely different effect, and I could see where the writing would be called into question as such.
This isn't a fourth since it's still about creative control. The movie was better.
I don't even feel the need to reply to this.
Fourth, what's with the geek patrol villians? I thought
Most fans of the show believe that the geeks were the worst thing to happen to it. You have to look at it from Joss' perspective, though. The season before, Buffy defeated a god. Where do you go from there?
This season was all about growing up and fighting inner demons. The people who didn't get this probably understood during the final 4 episodes when one of the inner demons almost literally came out. The geeks were there to act as a catalyst for the final episodes, as well as add a bit of comic relief in an otherwise depressing season.
I really have to wonder how much of a chance these people have given Buffy. I used to think it was the dumbest show on TV, based solely on the premise and having seen one episode. When Buffy died, it made big news on a lot of sites and with several of my friends who were fans of the show. Then FX started rerunning it, and I gave it a shot. I came in around the second season and was hooked. The dialogue is witty (although sometimes predictable). I fell in love with the characters after about three episodes, and began to really care about what happens to them. That's the mark of good characterization. The plots are often contrived, but they're hilarious.
You really have to watch several consecutive episodes of Buffy to "get" it. The show is meant to be viewed as a whole, not as individual episodes. My bet is that most people who immediately discount it have seen fewer than three episodes, and probably didn't come to the show with an open mind.
When shows have episodes that totally depart from the usual 'reality' of the show, it's destined for disaster.
The Simpsons encountered this with the 'Behind The Laughter' episode. Every prank the Simpsons pulled up to that point was within a defined reality of The Simpsons being a 'real' cartoon family. That episode f*cked it all up.
And the same with this 'musical' episode. Buffy fights vampires, she doesn't dance and sing with them! I'm all for fantasy and adventure, but when you pull a set of characters from a show and make them do what the characters WOULD NOT EVER DO FOR 'REAL' then you've ballsed the whole thing up.
Ah well, at least Buffy has now 'jumped the shark'.
mogorific carpentry experiments
That might help the chances. The only people I've known that seriously watched the show were guys that had trouble getting dates. I'm not trying to be mean and my small sample hardly is conclusive but it seems the same reasoning that the generates disbelief over linux desktop numbers is being used here.
"incapable of being explained, interpreted, or accounted for"
Sounds okay to me.
"You really have to watch several consecutive episodes of Buffy to 'get' it. The show is meant to be viewed as a whole, not as individual episodes. My bet is that most people who immediately discount it have seen fewer than three episodes, and probably didn't come to the show with an open mind."
Ah, the "Babylon 5" excuse. It's not just a string of episode like that Star Trek crap, it's a _whole_. It's a _story arc_. Watch a whole seaons or couple of seasons of the show and you'll begin to appreciate J. Michael's Straczynski's grand plan.
Whatever. For all of JMS's design, "Babylon 5" still was badly written (especially when it came to comedy), horribly acted (with the exception of some of the supporting roles), and built up to one of the worst dramatic climaxes I've ever seen in a movie or TV show.
All of which says nothing about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", of course, but I was just trying to explain that I'm no longer impressed by the "you can't see just one episode" argument. Either the writing is good--good on the small scale, good on the level of individual conversations and characterizations--or it's not. Either the acting is good, or it's not. No amount of long range planning will make a poorly written and poorly acted TV show good.
hyacinthus.
It's news because there was a ballot foul-up.