She's borderline bad. It's "ends justify means" at this point; I'll be very disappointed if there isn't some karmic backlash in season 2 to her casual manipulation of people and systems. (There's very little backlash in S1.)
The fact that the show refuses to directly confront this sort of issue is what leaves it a level behind Buffy. (Still watched all of Season 1 and most of Season 2, though.)
I'm at the point in S2 where her dad makes a big todo about never trusting her again for having used him*. I'm pretty sure that plot point is headed for the oubliette.
Unrelated S2 question: did anyone else think the dialogue and pacing suddenly improved round about Winter Carnival? Did this correspond in the original airings to the end of mid-season reruns, by any chance?
4: I don't want to really promote the discussion of Buffy here, b/c I always end up doing it in relation to VM. But throughout Buffy, from at least S3 on, when others are slighted by Buffy in the service of her work, they are actually hurt. You see it most in Xander.
OTOH, the dad in VM is awesome. And, to be fair, the issue ogged's talking about came up once, through Wallace, in the VM I've seen.
Also wondering whether the title puns follow the episodes, or vice versa. I think they might have brought a character back from plot oblivion just to make a pun, which shows an admirable dedication to puns.
You could argue that Aaron Echols goes free in part because it's not hard to impugn Veronica's character. That's a more practical than moral flavor of comeuppance (and one easily dealt with in the final episode), but it's in the same country.
I think the difference between her mother at the beginning of the last two episodes of S1 and the end of those two episodes, added to the apparent knowledge V has of that difference, requires a lot of backfilling. (I tried not to spoil anything. Feel free to delete if I have.)
Agreed on the mom. **Spoilerish** We aren't really given anything to help us anticipate that she's a drunk, let alone that she'll do what she does before she leaves. That just seems like a stumble, rather than something that requires interpolation. (Not to quibble with you or anything).
goes free in part because it's not hard to impugn Veronica's character
Yeah, that's true. It would have been better to leave the STD out of it, and have the defense lawyere impugn her character with all the deceptions she'd engaged in. That would have been really good, I think.
It's true that Wallace doesn't illustrate the downside of V's methods as often, or as well, as Xander does for B -- although I can think of two examples when he does.
On the other hand, Wallace is getting a lot more action than Xander ever did.
Maybe "interpolation" isnt the right way to frame what I'm talking about. The VM world is not as seemless as those of some other series; characters and events seem to change is a herky-jerky fashion, and there seems to be a fair use deus ex machina plot events.
About pretexting, not VM. The AT&T spokesman from the linked article:
He also argues that the information on a phone record isn't that sensitive: "Remember, we're not talking about financial data here. They can't steal your bank money. It's calling records."
It would be cool, actually, to write a series where the heroine gradually becomes evil over multiple seasons, so that fans are actually arguing whether she's evil or not, & if so, when it "happened," why, etc. (I say "heroine" b/c we're on VM/Buffy.)
If VM is working in the Jeb Bush administration by season 5, I'll start watching.
4, 25:I would contend that there is long character arc in Buffy, that may run as long as all 7 seasons.
Isolation and solipsism, unable to share responsibility, lack of empathy, decreasing self-esteem. The last few episodes of Season 5 might reward very close readings.
I disagree. I think the character arc in Buffy is about growing up. When we leave her in season 7, she's in the midst of the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and is having the problems negotiating how to balance being part of a group, and being considerate of others, with being independent and self-reliant. I always saw seaons 6 and 7 as being very much about a particular aspect of the college years where women struggle with how to balance pleasing other people with learning to please themselves. And even though I know that ending it at season 7 was kind of a hasty decision, and therefore there were problems with how it was done, i also feel that there's something quite suitable in leaving that conflict not entirely resolved.
Seasons six and seven suck; it's hard to evaluate them as part of some larger character movement because they are so bad. My recollection is that Season five suffers from the same problem.
Individual issues were dealt with well, but on the whole, a bad ending to a good series.
27,28:This could get ugly. I do not disagree with much in b's comment, but believe there are additional levels of interpretation. I am in part seeing a Superheroine as well as a woman.
"And even though I know that ending it at season 7 was kind of a hasty decision"
I think the theme of the final episode S7 was in Whedon's mind at the start of the show:distributed power, surrendered willingly.
Tim is just wrong. Season 5 may have been the best Season. Season 6 has much going for it, including bad guys who are fully human. Buffy let Willow take that fall.
Buffy is so isolated, so self involved, and so mission centered in season seven that it is hard to see it as simply learning to balance self and other the way most young adults do. She totally flips out and only comes back when her troops rebel.
I think the arc more reflects the dynamics of social movements and political causes than simple growing up.
Sorry to derail the thread, but I have to protest: it's not called pretexting. The term has suddenly sprung to life in the wake of the HP weirdness, but it's incorrect. This type of thing has been called "social engineering" for a very long time in hacker and security professional circles. I have no idea what journalist came up with the term "pretexting", but odds seem good that he or she is pretty dumb.
Another vote for 29's claim of Season 5 supremacy.
I'm not familiar with it being done on television, which would be deeelightful, but comic book writer Warren Ellis's run on Stormwatch and The Authority was something of an experiment in how much yeee-haw fascism he could get fans to enjoy if the characters' motives were largely pure and they kicked serious ass. (The answer was apparently "a lot".)
33. Another example would be Paul Verhoeven's movie of Starship Troopers. It was marketed as a straight action movie, and as far as I can tell received as one by most of its audience.
This type of thing has been called "social engineering" for a very long time
Yeah, of course I've heard that, you non-blogging chump. Turns out "pretexting" has been around a lot longer than I expected. (can't get into nexis right now for some reason, so it might go back even further than that).
Hmm. So it seems like we might have two different disciplines crashing into one another with different terminology for the same thing. But you've got to admit the geek version sounds much cooler.
I was about to agree with SCMT on the suckiness of Season 5, but a quick read through the episode list leaves me with generally positive memories. Except that "Spiral" and "Weight of the World," episodes which were perhaps the most important of all to get the tone right for the season as a whole, are disasters.
Totally OT, but this makes me doubt Slate is worth reading anymore:
"One of the liberal Chicago Boyz, Stev[/]en Den Be[/]ste, views 9/11 not as a uniter, but as a divider: "9/11 didn't bring us together. It's true that in the immediate aftermath of the event that we all felt sadness and rage. But not about the same things. … Some of us were anguished because we feared that there might be further and more devastating terrorist attacks against us. Others were anguished because they feared that this might inspire an entirely new round of bloody military aggression by America against innocent people around the world." " Slate
Although actually I was in the same town JP was in on 9/11. But I didn't wake up until like noon, and it took me quite some time to figure out what the hell had happened since the tv had switched over to local news and was talking about the border to Canada being closed and the ferries not running.
Didn't read any of the comments so far but I started watching VMars on the plane over here and am about 6 episodes in and am loving it. The funny thing is that I had watched one episode before and didn't care for it and just saw it (it was the one with the student council election and pirate points) and it was my least favorite so far. So I really did just pick the worst episode to try it out. Glad I gave it another shot from the beginning.
I'm going to have to vote the school fair [S2] as the worst episode. (The clue is in the glitter?!?) That was my first, unfortunate, VM experience; it was only once I ran out of TiVoed shows that I came back and saw the light.
She's borderline bad. It's "ends justify means" at this point; I'll be very disappointed if there isn't some karmic backlash in season 2 to her casual manipulation of people and systems. (There's very little backlash in S1.)
Posted by Hamilton Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:44 PM
Season 2 is over. No real backlash.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:45 PM
The fact that the show refuses to directly confront this sort of issue is what leaves it a level behind Buffy. (Still watched all of Season 1 and most of Season 2, though.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:46 PM
when did buffy start to confront these issues? faith?
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:49 PM
I'm at the point in S2 where her dad makes a big todo about never trusting her again for having used him*. I'm pretty sure that plot point is headed for the oubliette.
*Not a spoiler.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:50 PM
Yup, that moment gave every impression of being grave, and the issue never came up again.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:51 PM
I'm going to have to watch this show, aren't I?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:52 PM
Unrelated S2 question: did anyone else think the dialogue and pacing suddenly improved round about Winter Carnival? Did this correspond in the original airings to the end of mid-season reruns, by any chance?
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:54 PM
Huh, I don't watch with that level of discrimination.
Awesome cross-casting: the evil lawyer from The Wire is the good-hearted business teacher in VM.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:58 PM
4: I don't want to really promote the discussion of Buffy here, b/c I always end up doing it in relation to VM. But throughout Buffy, from at least S3 on, when others are slighted by Buffy in the service of her work, they are actually hurt. You see it most in Xander.
OTOH, the dad in VM is awesome. And, to be fair, the issue ogged's talking about came up once, through Wallace, in the VM I've seen.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:59 PM
Also wondering whether the title puns follow the episodes, or vice versa. I think they might have brought a character back from plot oblivion just to make a pun, which shows an admirable dedication to puns.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:00 PM
Who? Which pun?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:08 PM
8: Didn't notice a change, sb. Relatedly, VM seems to requires a lot of plot interpolation.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:08 PM
Like what?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:11 PM
Who? Which pun?
Responded in email.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:11 PM
Spoiler city:
You could argue that Aaron Echols goes free in part because it's not hard to impugn Veronica's character. That's a more practical than moral flavor of comeuppance (and one easily dealt with in the final episode), but it's in the same country.
Posted by Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:14 PM
I think the difference between her mother at the beginning of the last two episodes of S1 and the end of those two episodes, added to the apparent knowledge V has of that difference, requires a lot of backfilling. (I tried not to spoil anything. Feel free to delete if I have.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:14 PM
Agreed on the mom. **Spoilerish** We aren't really given anything to help us anticipate that she's a drunk, let alone that she'll do what she does before she leaves. That just seems like a stumble, rather than something that requires interpolation. (Not to quibble with you or anything).
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:17 PM
goes free in part because it's not hard to impugn Veronica's character
Yeah, that's true. It would have been better to leave the STD out of it, and have the defense lawyere impugn her character with all the deceptions she'd engaged in. That would have been really good, I think.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:19 PM
Ack, I am spoiled by careless skimming. Farewell.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:23 PM
Shit, my bad.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:25 PM
It's true that Wallace doesn't illustrate the downside of V's methods as often, or as well, as Xander does for B -- although I can think of two examples when he does.
On the other hand, Wallace is getting a lot more action than Xander ever did.
15: The one about the Steinbeck novel?
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:26 PM
Maybe "interpolation" isnt the right way to frame what I'm talking about. The VM world is not as seemless as those of some other series; characters and events seem to change is a herky-jerky fashion, and there seems to be a fair use deus ex machina plot events.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:28 PM
About pretexting, not VM. The AT&T spokesman from the linked article:
He also argues that the information on a phone record isn't that sensitive: "Remember, we're not talking about financial data here. They can't steal your bank money. It's calling records."
I hope he sent a picture to Ja/son For/tuny.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:35 PM
It would be cool, actually, to write a series where the heroine gradually becomes evil over multiple seasons, so that fans are actually arguing whether she's evil or not, & if so, when it "happened," why, etc. (I say "heroine" b/c we're on VM/Buffy.)
If VM is working in the Jeb Bush administration by season 5, I'll start watching.
Posted by Anderson | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 6:11 PM
4, 25:I would contend that there is long character arc in Buffy, that may run as long as all 7 seasons.
Isolation and solipsism, unable to share responsibility, lack of empathy, decreasing self-esteem. The last few episodes of Season 5 might reward very close readings.
I have made an argument very close to "evil."
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 6:25 PM
I disagree. I think the character arc in Buffy is about growing up. When we leave her in season 7, she's in the midst of the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and is having the problems negotiating how to balance being part of a group, and being considerate of others, with being independent and self-reliant. I always saw seaons 6 and 7 as being very much about a particular aspect of the college years where women struggle with how to balance pleasing other people with learning to please themselves. And even though I know that ending it at season 7 was kind of a hasty decision, and therefore there were problems with how it was done, i also feel that there's something quite suitable in leaving that conflict not entirely resolved.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 6:36 PM
Seasons six and seven suck; it's hard to evaluate them as part of some larger character movement because they are so bad. My recollection is that Season five suffers from the same problem.
Individual issues were dealt with well, but on the whole, a bad ending to a good series.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 6:46 PM
27,28:This could get ugly. I do not disagree with much in b's comment, but believe there are additional levels of interpretation. I am in part seeing a Superheroine as well as a woman.
"And even though I know that ending it at season 7 was kind of a hasty decision"
I think the theme of the final episode S7 was in Whedon's mind at the start of the show:distributed power, surrendered willingly.
Tim is just wrong. Season 5 may have been the best Season. Season 6 has much going for it, including bad guys who are fully human. Buffy let Willow take that fall.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:04 PM
Buffy is so isolated, so self involved, and so mission centered in season seven that it is hard to see it as simply learning to balance self and other the way most young adults do. She totally flips out and only comes back when her troops rebel.
I think the arc more reflects the dynamics of social movements and political causes than simple growing up.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 8:39 PM
Sorry to derail the thread, but I have to protest: it's not called pretexting. The term has suddenly sprung to life in the wake of the HP weirdness, but it's incorrect. This type of thing has been called "social engineering" for a very long time in hacker and security professional circles. I have no idea what journalist came up with the term "pretexting", but odds seem good that he or she is pretty dumb.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 9:07 PM
31: There's an even older word for it: "lying."
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 9:20 PM
Another vote for 29's claim of Season 5 supremacy.
I'm not familiar with it being done on television, which would be deeelightful, but comic book writer Warren Ellis's run on Stormwatch and The Authority was something of an experiment in how much yeee-haw fascism he could get fans to enjoy if the characters' motives were largely pure and they kicked serious ass. (The answer was apparently "a lot".)
Posted by Steve | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 9:26 PM
33. Another example would be Paul Verhoeven's movie of Starship Troopers. It was marketed as a straight action movie, and as far as I can tell received as one by most of its audience.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 9:30 PM
This type of thing has been called "social engineering" for a very long time
Yeah, of course I've heard that, you non-blogging chump. Turns out "pretexting" has been around a lot longer than I expected. (can't get into nexis right now for some reason, so it might go back even further than that).
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 9:36 PM
Hmm. So it seems like we might have two different disciplines crashing into one another with different terminology for the same thing. But you've got to admit the geek version sounds much cooler.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 10:31 PM
True that, tom, but then I'm on Cregzlst, social engineering ur n00dz.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 10:40 PM
I was about to agree with SCMT on the suckiness of Season 5, but a quick read through the episode list leaves me with generally positive memories. Except that "Spiral" and "Weight of the World," episodes which were perhaps the most important of all to get the tone right for the season as a whole, are disasters.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:02 PM
Totally OT, but this makes me doubt Slate is worth reading anymore:
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:03 PM
That article also doesn't seem to realize that B's name is not John Patrick and that she's not (yet) a West Coaster.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:24 PM
Although actually I was in the same town JP was in on 9/11. But I didn't wake up until like noon, and it took me quite some time to figure out what the hell had happened since the tv had switched over to local news and was talking about the border to Canada being closed and the ferries not running.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:42 PM
Didn't read any of the comments so far but I started watching VMars on the plane over here and am about 6 episodes in and am loving it. The funny thing is that I had watched one episode before and didn't care for it and just saw it (it was the one with the student council election and pirate points) and it was my least favorite so far. So I really did just pick the worst episode to try it out. Glad I gave it another shot from the beginning.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 4:28 AM
I'm going to have to vote the school fair [S2] as the worst episode. (The clue is in the glitter?!?) That was my first, unfortunate, VM experience; it was only once I ran out of TiVoed shows that I came back and saw the light.
Posted by FTB | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 6:57 AM
"The more I watched the show, the more bothered I was that she was acting pretty damn callously."
Don't ever watch The Rockford Files. Or read a private eye novel. Or think of being an investigator.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 09-14-06 5:41 PM
There go my plans to read a private eye novel and become a private eye.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-14-06 5:44 PM