Dollhouse

[Chilli]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Well .. witty in the sense that people ALWAYS have the perfect comeback when someone is insulted, it certainly is. I didn't mean the pop culture references when saying that it isn't believable to me, just that .. in real life, people when insulted usually are taken aback, and know the perfect response .. five minutes later. In the Buffyverse and on Firefly, people always have the perfect comeback ready.

 

[vacantlook]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Well .. witty in the sense that people ALWAYS have the perfect comeback when someone is insulted, it certainly is. I didn't mean the pop culture references when saying that it isn't believable to me, just that .. in real life, people when insulted usually are taken aback, and know the perfect response .. five minutes later. In the Buffyverse and on Firefly, people always have the perfect comeback ready.

Willow: "Yeah, well so's your face!"

That's one instance in which a Buffy character does not have the "perfect response"; it was completely non sequitor and prompted Buffy, I think it was, to go "Huh?" I just wish I could remember which episode that was from.

 

[Recoil]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Well to be honest, to say that all characters in those shows always have perfect comebacks and say them all the time when insulted is QUITE a stretch. Once in a while, yea. But it doesn't happen every single time, thats just not accurate.

 

[KoshFan]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

I don't find it annoying. However, I don't find it in any way believable.

On Joss shows, everyone is as witty as GKE, or more so. That just isn't believable, fun as it may be.

Maybe you're just always surrounded by insufficiently quick-witted people. I've certainly had loads of conversations that actually go well above Whedon dialogue. When we start bringing in the tri-lingual puns, for instance.

I understand that, but I felt that it hurt the atmosphere and the tone of that episode, and realistically there was no way to help the theme of season 4 of Buffy. From the get go that season was a mess and is only saved by the stand alone non-Initiative episodes.

Easily granted. Season 4 had its real troubles.

It is just really really over-hyped by Whedon fans IMO.

Which is in part why Joss wrote "Hush" to begin with.

I just tend to tune most Whedon fans out because their fan-boyishness is really really annoying. Sorry Koshfan, but yes, you fall into that group to me. When you make comments like "Whedon is my Master" that is exactly the type of thing I'm talking about. Aside from that, you are an OK guy though.

Well, you do know that it's at least partly tongue-in-cheek, yes? I've got plenty of masters and mistresses; Joss isn't one of them. (I'd listen to his advice 'cause he seems pretty smart, but I'm not his slave. I'm only a slave to certain women.*) He is, however, an excellent writer, and I aspire to be about a third as good as he is some day, so I spend a lot of time watching/reading his stuff in hopes it wears off.

I will admit, however, that because I've watched/read/studied his creations so much, I often feel that I've noticed something which less attentive (read: less obsessed) people might have overlooked, especially when they're criticizing his stuff. This can get annoying for other people for a whole boatload of reasons: they actually did notice and just didn't care, for instance. Also I've been a know-it-all smart-aleck for a long time now, and while I'm trying to get better I occasionally forget. Just be glad I didn't start posting here when I was in school. Great Maker, I was insufferable!



* This is also tongue-in-cheek. Mostly.

 

[Garovorkin]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Are you kidding Whedon writes great dialogue. thats half the fun of his shows, the off the wall witty banter and humor, all his shows have it. Tongue in cheek most definitely.

 

[Markas]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

When we start bringing in the tri-lingual puns, for instance.

Okay, I really need an example of this, now.

 

[Chilli]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Okay, I really need an example of this, now.

I was involved in a tri-lingual pun in a septo-lingual discussion last night, including at least one language hardly anyone here has ever heard of. My penis is bigger than KF's!

On a more serious note, though, I'm not saying people never say witty, funny or smart stuff in real life. Obviously they do. However, I have yet to meet too many people that are always so good and quick with it, and that will also constantly take the most brilliant puns and jokes completely dead-pan, as everyone always does in the Buffyverse, and on Firefly. People say the darndest things, and noone pulls a muscle. Which makes sense, as it's more funny like that. But it's not realistic.

 

[KoshFan]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

(Buffy does, at one point, laugh at her own joke. I think it's in the finale, though. Giles will occasionally smile at their witticisms.)

I can't give you an example of the trilingual puns my friends come up with because they were usually in languages I didn't understand. Some of my buddies are classically educated -- as in Latin and Greek. I'm not.

 

[darth_librarian]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Wow, I kicked off a storm. Am very much with Recoil on this, have issues re-watching a lot of Buffy as I find the perky dialogue grating. Ditto with his comic work (and I read a lot of comics), although the X-Men he did was worth it for Cassidy's art.

I'll not begrudge him talent, imagination, great concepts, great characters and a ton of humor and imagination though. He is a supreme talent in many respects.

 

[KoshFan]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

You see, this I just don't understand at all. You can't watch his stuff again because the dialogue is too... good?

I'm not doing a fanboy defense, here, I just can't comprehend how that kind of an objection runs.

 

[darth_librarian]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Its good, in that is quick, sharp and witty. All the time. To me, it becomes unrealistic, smug, cliquey and a bit all knowing... If you were surrounded by people like that all the time, it would be a pain in the bum.

I guess its the same reason my fiancee can't watch some comedy like Alan Partridge and The Office, because she finds the characters iritating and egotistical. I love those shows because of their depictions of annoying middle aged men.

I can't watch Joss's shows too much (in fact, i gave up on Angel and Buffy because of this) as I find the humor displayed in the dialogue to be just too clever, unrealistically so. Ok, I know its about vampires and stuff but the realism argument has to come in somewhere. What you find amusing, I find annoying, although I can appreciate the fact that technically its great humor, I just find it personally irritating.

That and fanboys. I went to the UK Serenity press screening. I could not move for fanboys.

 

[hypatia]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

"Grating" doesn't sound like good to me. And I think I know what they are getting at, at least in general: it's like having an perpetually, over-cheerful collegue who is always kind of trying to force-feed smilie faces on everyone all day long. You can say 'I don't begrudge her her internal happiness' and yet admit that her attitude is very grating sometimes.

Perpetual perky can get very old after a time. Perhaps his dialoge could use more balance in it, from some people's perspective.

 

[hypatia]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

That and fanboys. I went to the UK Serenity press screening. I could not move for fanboys.

I hear/heard this a lot in regards to Star Trek, a long time ago. Since I loved the shows (The Original series and The Next Generation, at that point in time) I didn't usually have a problem with the Star Trek "fanboys" or "fanfreaks". At first. But in time, some of the most persistent of them really got on my nerves, as well. Enough to almost ruin a convention for me.

 

[Alluveal]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

I think the ones who annoyed me the most were people who knew you weren't into the show like they were, yet continued to have a one-sided conversation where they went on and on about the metaphorical elements and political parallels in a show that you simply aren't willing to go into that much depth over. They seem to lack the "common sense factor" and the "empathy factor" where you actually look at the person you are talking to and realize they're bored as heck while you go on and on about something they just aren't invested in.

Maybe they think it makes them look smart. It just means they get an "avoidance" ticket from me because they lack interpersonal skills and the ability to read when people aren't on the same page--even when it's obvious to everyone else.

 

[Chilli]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Fanboys have prevented me from ever reading Lord of the Rings, till today. I simply cannot read it, as everytime I start reading it, people who hit me with "wow, you've never read Lord of the Rings??" just piss me off so damned much.

Will try again this summer on the transsiberian railway. Hopefully will be safe there.

 

[KoshFan]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Well, quite frankly, all dialogue in movies and on TV is unrealistic, so why not have it be amusingly unrealistic? If you watched a show with truly realistic dialogue, you'd turn it off because of the horrible acting and atrocious writing!

 

[hypatia]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Fanboys have prevented me from ever reading Lord of the Rings, till today. I simply cannot read it, as everytime I start reading it, people who hit me with "wow, you've never read Lord of the Rings??" just piss me off so damned much.

Will try again this summer on the transsiberian railway. Hopefully will be safe there.

Oh, that's bad. It's like having someone comment on the contents of your grocery basket. I had that happen to me a few times in life, and I always go away wondering, what were they trying to accomplish with that? Trying to establish a sense of superiority because I'm buying 20 cans of tuna on sale at Walmart or something?

And I often enjoy topics that everyone around me is :wtf: about. Indeed, you learn to watch your listeners before you give the 10 second version or the 10 minute version of your thoughts. Otherwise you notice you're looking at the back of heads a lot when you enter a room.

As to unrealistic dialoge in films/tv shows, again I think you may be missing the point, KF. For some unknown reason, some unrealistically smooth dialoge goes by me unnoticed, or appreciated, while another grates my nerves. Like the author is trying to hard to sound clever. It's all just a matter of taste, not a commentary on those who enjoy what is grating to me. For me at least, it's just a sense of style. Writing, like comedy, is a hard art: you've got to achieve the effect without appearing to want to achieve the effect. I honestly don't know how they do it, sometimes. It's not easy to do, by a long shot. And, of course, you'll never please everyone. That's one of the reasons I hate hearing of movies being changed because of one test audience. Think of the genius that's been lost because of one ill-fated group of disgruntled people.

 

[Recoil]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

because I'm buying 20 cans of tuna on sale at Walmart or something?

Dude, you buy 20 cans of tuna on sale at Walmart? WTF?!?

/kidding

 

[hypatia]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Really low sodium tuna is expensive.

 

[Alluveal]

Re: New Joss Whedon show

Fanboys have prevented me from ever reading Lord of the Rings, till today. I simply cannot read it, as everytime I start reading it, people who hit me with "wow, you've never read Lord of the Rings??" just piss me off so damned much.

I just read it for the first time about a year ago (for a class on Tolkien.) It was FULL of fanboys and girls who have already read it, but the teacher owned their butts on all things Tolkien and taught it from so many different points of view and so forth. It shut them up pretty quick almost immediately which made the rest of the semester uber-nice.

Well, quite frankly, all dialogue in movies and on TV is unrealistic

What is real-life doesn't always translate to the page. That's why we see almost no "internal monologue/stream of consciousness" type books. It's "real to thought form" but it sucks big arse to read because it makes no sense and it simply does not go over well in book form. I will say that dialogue has been simplified to almost a formulaic type thing on mainstream television. People all wait for their turn to talk. They argue in linear fashion. They think that way too (or seem to,) and they rarely say, "umm, uhh" or stutter or overuse phrases like "ya know."

But, if I honestly had to sit through characters saying "uhh" or "uummm" or "ya know" every 10 seconds, I'd probably stab myself in the eye a few times with a hot poker. It would annoy the frack out of me. For me, story trumps all and I'll be distracted as all get-out if I'm forced to sit and watch a movie-length program where everyone speaks exactly as they do in the real world. I think I would forget about story and just focus on their annoying habits. I see that as interesting characterization, but damaging to a storyline that you want to keep rolling.