TV MEME: Day 28 – First t.v show obsession

This one is easy. Sailor Moon. You’ll remember from my favourite childhood show post that I spoke passionately about how much this show shaped me as a kid and really laid a foundation of my future interests in shows and characters. Plus how important it was to me to have varied female role models to show me that there’s no one way to be a girl, there’s no one way to be anything. You can be silly and love manga and want to do well in school and be great a sport or you didn’t have to like anything of those things. You could be introverted or stoic and have a deep sense of religion and love music. Or… well you get the point. As a kid and growing girl this show was important to me for those reason and also it told you: your passions and interests are valid. Luckily for me, my passions and interests ended up being: TV! And other media, but wow I loved tv and I loved Sailor Moon and when the States stopped showing the series that’s when my obsession began.

I had to know more. I had to know how things developed so as I looked it and found out it had a manga series… guess what I did. I went to my closes comic book shop and looked for it. When I found out it had other episodes, nay, WHOLE SEASONS, guess what I did… I found out my cousins who were luckily very into Dragonball Z had similar passions in finding out what happened after the Frieza fight on Namek and they found a place in Hialeah that did bootleg subbed VHSs of Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon. GUESS WHAT WE DID THEN?

Oh yeah, I was fully obsessed with Sailor Moon and wanted to be and know and breath live it.

Other than Sailor Moon, but around the same time, I had my other big tv obsession. Now, this was around the time Buffy and the WB were huge and there were a lot of teen shows to pick from and get Obsessed with. Buffy, while I loved it, I never hit that super fannish mark with it. Same with other WB shows at the time… but then came Roswell and I WAS IN LOVE. I loved this show, especially season one, so much. I wanted to know everything about it. I bought the magazines I rewatched episodes as much as I could, which in an age of no DVR or Netflix or streaming, let me tell you, it was not easy. I listened to Dido unironically. I read fic. I did not write it because let’s be honest I would have been terrible — oh yes, fun fact: Sailor Moon is also the first show that I read fic for, too — and I also lived breathed that show. I can still tell you that the song that played during Michael/Maria’s kiss in “Heatwave” was Santana’s song from his album “Supernatural” feat Everlast: Put Your Lights On. (And that they changed it on the DVD because well, music rights.) My obsession ran so deep that the reason I watched Lost was because Emilie de Ravin who played Tess, an incredibly underrated character!, was playing Claire. I watched Grey’s Anatomy because Katherine Heigl played Isobel on the show. I followed Majandra Delfino’s music career. Guys, I went deep. (To this day I’m still a little in love with Majandra, I won’t lie.)

So yeah, Sailor Moon and Roswell, my two first big tv obsessions. They really said and still say a lot about what I love in my media: I’m just really a sci-fi and magical girls. With a heaving dusting of superheroes.

TV MEME: Day 27 – Best Pilot episode

Hmmm, I was waffling between Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Then I remembered about Alias. I did think about Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but I was already into the Buffy train bc I loved the movie. Yeah, I loved it, deal with it. So it wasn’t particularly impacting to me though it did impact me pretty hard.

image credit

Lost and BSG however, remember them viscerally. Interestingly, the Lost pilot wasn’t my first Lost episode but I remember going back to watch it and being like WOAH. It’s opening sequence will always remain one of the most iconic things to have aired on tv and the show keeps that ride going for the whole pilot. It’s easily one of the most exceptional hours of tv. Battlestar was epic. It was also long as hell and I think more of a mini than a pilot and the whole story was complex and set up whole universe to explore in.

Alias, however, did both. The opening scene to Alias isn’t as memorable as Lost’s but it’s still pretty damn cool. Jennifer Garner in the red wig will forever be awesome. It’s also frankly fantastic to watch her transform herself from everyday Sydney to her undercover personas. Jennifer has been underrated for years.  The world it opened up wasn’t as wide and complicated as BSG’s (yet lol), but it set up a very interesting story and it’s told in an incredibly dynamic way. Following Sydney Bristow as she guides us through her complicated life of balancing her spy life and everyday life, and then it all gets flipped turned upside down when she learns her spy life is even more complicated than she first thought and leads down her journey into becoming a double agent.

It’s a genuinely cool and fun to watch pilot. It starts you on an adventure like every good tv show should be.

TV MEME: Day 24 – Best quote

I gotta say it, both of my top choices for this came from the Buffyverse, which just shows that you can dislike the creator of a thing and still enjoy the thing.

“The hardest thing in the world is to live in it.” Buffy Summers. I love this quote because it’s incredibly true. The world is not kind, it can be good, but generally it’s hard and it’s can be a battle to make it through the day but the point of it is that is life. Living is making it through the day even when the world around you sucks. I just know when I first heard Buffy say this to Dawn it struck me how complicated and simple the fact of it.

The other one, which I think, compliments it is from it’s sister show: Angel. “If nothing we do matters then all that matters is what we do.” It’s slightly nihilistic, but also it’s I find it very poignant, because it, like the one above is very true to life. If there is no such thing as heaven or the afterlife. If this world is all we get then it matters what we do during our time in it. It matters. Not because you’ll get a good afterlife because of your actions, but because you’ll live a good, maybe worthy, life. Or maybe you won’t even notice it, but your actions will matter to someone else, will change someone’s life for the better. Because your choices matter, your actions matter, and that matters in the scheme of things.

The world is a hard place to live, but what we do matters if nothing else does. I think that’s a pretty good life lesson from the Buffy verse. I won’t hold their creator against them for it.

 

TV MEME: Day 23 – Most annoying character

Rodney McKay. I– everything that’s terrible about cishet white males and how writers use a character to play out there own asshole nerd power fantasies are condensed into Rodney. Once, a long long time ago, I was fine with Rodney then as SGA went on and on I couldn’t help but get more annoyed by him and how obviously the writer and TPTB were favouring him and building in him up to the detriment of the other characters and story.

Anyway. He doesn’t deserve any more of my time.

TV MEME: Day 22 – Favorite series finale

I feel I always give double answers to these questions, but, well I don’t really care, but also it’s because my thought process starts outs answering the question but I gotta give y’all context (all I dunno, ten of you, I’m rounding up) of how I got there. Also I’m always at war with the objective vs subjective part of me, because I know what my answers for both are. I could just be objective or I could be subjective, and I think I should just be subjective for all of these, but hey, this is my silly blog. I do what I want.

So I was really thinking about this for a couple days because it’s a pretty epic question. Series finale. Favourite. These are the things that can define a show. My first thought was the Lost finale. It was so iconic. I woke up at 5am UK time to catch it with the rest of the world because television did something they never have done before for a show, as far as I know, and aired it at the same time worldwide.

I had an off/on relationship with the show on the whole for various reasons, but the finale will always stand out to me. I know it’s an incredibly polarising finale, most finales are, but I personally loved it. I think it did the show right. It gave the characters the ending they deserved whether you agreed with them or not. Lost was always about the characters and the mystery that surrounded them, the connections that defined them, so that it ended highlighting all the connections they had built on the Island while keeping part of the mystery going in its own way was okay with me.

I’ll never forget what it felt like to Juliet and Sawyer meet at the vending machine (my heart swelled), how it felt to watch Vincent lie down next to Jack (tears fell), to watch Desmond and Penny live happily ever after (pure joy!), watch Ben talk to Hurley about it was still not his time to join them inside (bittersweet understanding). In the end for all the mystery of what the Island was (weird, magical, and real) or wasn’t (not purgatory!) and what Sideways verse was (a limbo of sorts), the point was: they were places that made it so these people could meet each other and define each other’s lives by the experiences they all shared. It was an incredibly emotional finale. I’m telling you, TEARS WERE SHED. And in many ways it is a favourite, but it’s not The Favourite.

My favourite finale is the Ugly Betty one. It’s a beautifully done finale in a completely different way than the Lost one was done. Like Lost’s it allowed the show truly end on its own terms and highlight the theme of the show: how the world around Betty viewed her.

Ugly Betty was never about the fact Betty was ugly. It was about how because she didn’t conform to what was expected of her the world view her as ugly, or more to the point, unappealing, but that didn’t matter to her and she never wavered from who she was. IN a show with “ugly” in the title you expect a story about a character finding their inner beauty and it eventually transforming into outer beauty. Not here. Betty never got a “makeover” like you expected. She became a little more put together, yes, styled her hair a bit better, got new glasses, go her braces off, and in sum grew up a bit. None of these were big changes or were they framed as big changes on the show. They happened organically as they do in life.

By the end she was still as optimistic as ever, determined as ever, still wore mismatched clothes albeit a bit better styled, was unwaveringly kind and supportive, still made “unappealing” choices, but she preserved. She didn’t compromise her morals and eventually people respected her. She changed the way people thought of her not herself for them. The world around her was ugly, the irony she worked for a fashion company should not be dismissed, and it projected itself on her because she was very unlike them. What they viewed as “ugly/unappealing” she viewed as lovely, good, and beautiful. So when the end credits role and the usual “Ugly Betty” becomes “Betty” is a beautiful moment because it’s showcasing how she’s changed the world around her. Betty dismantled the misconceptions about her because of how she dressed and acted and the epithet people described her by is no longer valid. She’s not a description. She’s a person, she always was, the world around her just needed to catch up and drop it’s concept of what was beautiful or not. Betty’s whole journey and the show’s journey was about driving that home. Because the show loved Betty and it wanted you to look at the word ugly and not see it.

and the Lost finale in case anyone wants to cry (I teared up already):

TV MEME: Day 21 – Favorite ship

I know, I know, I’ve been slacking. I had a couple good weeks when I managed to get posts out fairly timely, and now I’m like… shit, I forgot the meme. Which my bad, my schedule is terrible. Anyway, I was thinking about this and to be honest, my answer is John/Aeryn from Farscape. I kinda didn’t want to say them, because they were the answer to my best kiss day, but like, the facts are facts. They are one of the best, if not the best, written ship I’ve had the chance to watch on tv. They meet in an impossible and improbably situation, they go through a lot of crap, they have to learn to each other, about each other, and all this is done with the central knowledge that they are incredibly attracted to each other from almost their first scene and really care about each other. Both of them go through incredibly journeys, always inverted journeys, because while they both grow, learn, suffer, and persevere, John’s journey is incredibly emotionally and mentally taxing. He becomes a more cynical man, still open and loving, but he carries his struggles with him and they become a part of him, while Aeryn’s growth and changes unshackle her from her life before. Her struggles define her in a different way than they do John. There’s a reason why she’s called the “radiant” Aeryn Sun.

Together, they go through so much, and their connection only grows. They have honesty one of the best, complex, and essentially romantic stories I’ve seen on tv. But they had the best kiss day, so I wanted to with my second favorite ship, which I think would Desmond/Penny or Juliet/Sawyer from Lost. I could write a bit on either, but I think I just told you why John/Aeryn actually are my favourite ship. 😉

TV MEME: Day 18 – Favorite title sequence

Ooh, a fun one. I think I have to with Lost‘s. LMAO, I’m joking and if you don’t get why that’s funny I’m gonna link you to Lost‘s title sequence.

God, I did love the show, but it also really began the trend of only having a “title sequence” that was just a title card of the name that lasted well into the 2010s. Before that shows had very cheesy or fun or cool or all three title sequences. Before the early 2000s and Lost‘s influence show’s title sequences were defined by alt rock and fun music in the title sequences with character/actors credits like Fullhouse, Charmed, Friends, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to name some classics. Some songs became forever titled to the title sequences of the shows they were used for like Dawson’s Creek, Roswell and Smallville. Shows on cable like HBO and Showtime would sometimes would have short, more artsy title sequences that more like metaphors or quick representations of the show’s like Sex and The City and Six Feet Under. After Lost a lot of network tv cut title sequences for minimal title cards. One I remember that minimised itself was Grey’s Anatomy’s title sequence that changed from this to just the title card you see.

So the way shows depict their title sequences can change for several reasons like trends and show growth — Supernatural’s title sequence has evolved over the years in that it’s still just a title card but they’ve added and changed the effects behind the show’s title to fit the theme of the season, Jane the Virgin has changed it’s title card from having Jane the Virgin over a freeze framed clip of Jane doing sometime to, well, it’s still a freeze frame of Jane doing something but now that she’s SPOILERS no longer a virgin they’ve got into the habit of striking out the “virgin” part of the title card and filling it with her emotional theme in the episode. That kind of fourth wall breaking works for JTV because the show consistently breaks the fourth wall.

This fun mini history of title sequences aside, let’s get to the question and I had a think about it, because there are some classic title sequences I will never forget, most of them mentioned above actually, because they’ve become iconic. Other’s I thought about because they are beautiful (Game of Throne‘s, Marco Polo‘s, Black Sails‘, True Blood‘s) and I’m a sucker for aesthetics.

In the end I didn’t know which side I was going to fall on, but I kept coming back to one I just think is not only wonderfully made, has iconic music to it, and is actually surprisingly informative of what will happen in the episode (the locations change depending on where we will be visiting).

my runner ups:

TV MEME: Day 16 – Your guilty pleasure show

I don’t believe in this question. Nothing I watch is a guilty pleasure because I have no longer any sense of shame about my tv choices. I mean, sometimes I am shamed about shows I’ve watched that have let me down, but that’s disappointment. Other than that, I’ve owned everything terrible or great show I’ve watched. It makes me a well rounded tv watcher. Or someone with a very low bar.

I will say, that if anyone does want a great show that might slot it into this category, for you, I’d say watch Lucifer. It is super duper fun, the characters are interesting and enjoyable to watch. It’s not an overly complicated show to follow as it is a cop procedural with a couple supernatural elements, so it’s structure is easily to keep up with. Tom Ellis is incredibly charming as Lucifer, maybe the character pop of the screen, Lauren German plays the usually portrayed straight laced cop with a sense of fun and irony. The rest of the supporting cast elevate themselves and their characters so much, anchoring them to the story and the found family dynamic that the show builds up. It also has one of the best kid characters on tv at the moment. Trixie Decker is a gem of a child.

All in all, if you want a show that is a pleasure to watch go to Lucifer. Feel no guilt over it, though, the Lord of Hell wouldn’t want you to.

Here are some trailers:

TV MEME: Day 15 – Favorite female character

OH I LOVE THIS QUESTION, because now I can talk about my favest gal, Vala Mal Doran (Stargate SG-1). She was only in my life for about 26 episodes and a couple movies, but I loved her so much. She also, unlike Clark, came into my life way later. In my 20s later.

I think before Vala my favourite female character would have been Minako or Maria DeLuca. Personally, I always leaned to having more favourite female characters than male ones. If I had to make a list of all my favourite female vs. male characters, the female’s side would be way longer. I could have easily gone with a several formative female characters here that have defined my tv life: Usagi Tsukino (Sailor Moon), Minako Aino (Sailor Moon), Cordelia Chase (BTVS/Angel), Buffy Summers (BTVS), Maria Deluca (Roswell), Aeryn Sun (Farscape), Juliet Burke (Lost), Lois Lane (Lois & Clark/Smallville/JLU), Betty Suarez (Ugly Betty), and many others, but when it comes to this question Vala is the first one that always pops into my mind.

It happened one night. Probably. It happened during a Stargate SG-1 rewatch I decided to, because I had been watching Stargate Atlantis, as you do. I started from season one and made my way through the show casually for seven seasons. Then. Vala!

Vala literally crashed into the show and my life in season 8, so well into a very established show with very establish character and stole my heart. She was only meant to have an one episode guest role, but when the show did a little restructuring in season 9, they clearly saw the magic that I saw and brought her back. Not for long, because of Claudia Black’s real life pregnancy, they later wrote into the show and her character arc, but she was then made a main character in season 10 until the end of the show and the following two movies.

The thing with Stargate SG-1 is that it was not a great show. It was very much of its time and it writing was never as nuanced and intricate as it could have been, even with all the complexities it gave their characters. So all in all it was a fair standard scifi procedural. And did you see that magic word? Scifi? Oh yeah, no wonder I already liked it. Plus, I actually really love the original movie it’s based on: Stargate (1996). The premise of the movie and show is cliche and simple: aliens built the pyramid but they were also evil parasites called Goa’uld. This is important to know, because Vala used to be host to a Goa’uld.

A big plot point of the show is saving the galaxy from these aliens overlord and freeing hosts from the Goa’uld. Vala was “saved”, but not by our heros. As we meet her in a quick one episode that was never meant to be expanded, we know that her extraction happened a while ago by aliens, and it was as much a traumatising experience as the take over of her body by the Goa’uld. Thats’ the thing with Stargate. It made it characters go through some shit but it very rarely followed up on the ramifications of what they go through. Vala was very much the same. She went through hell and back, saved herself for the most part, and came out of the other side a bit broken, a bit disillusioned, but still ultimately bright, fun, witty, and a survivor.

That’s why I loved Vala so much. She was a survivor. She didn’t think of herself as one, however. Or as hero, which is what she ultimately became. Her path to heroism was a difficult one because she didn’t see that in herself, others didn’t see that in her, but Vala always fought for her free will and later the free will of others. She knew what it meant to live without free will, what it meant to live as a slave to another whims, and when push came to shove she fought. And kept fighting.

Now, as I mentioned before, Vala didn’t start as a hero. She started off a fun antagonist turned ally for our team. She was a bit of a Han Solo, but she had nobody on her side like Han did with Chewy. Being a space pirate is hard especially when alone. Her growth into becoming part of this the team and her own person, was so wonderful for me to watch, because what’s interesting to see of Vala’s growth beside her survivalism is the growth of her softness. Vala unlike a lot of the characters in the show doesn’t grow and become harder, and more cynical, but softer. Part of that is because she finds a place she can call home and stop living a life on the run, part of that is because she finds a family.

She’s a character I hold close to my heart and I love very much. She may not have had the most subtle character arc, but it was still a pretty good one, made better by Claudia Black’s acting. She was superb in the role, giving Vala more depth than I feel was on the page for her.

However, if you want Claudia Black perform an amazing character arc watch her as Aeryn Sun in Farscape. Aeryn Sun’s character arc and narrative development is honestly one of the most fantastic things written and performed out there. I could have easily done this post on Aeryn, but I love Vala just that little bit more. Since Vala I’ve loved many other female characters, of course, but something about her will always keep her as my favourite.

TV MEME: Day 14 – Favorite male character

I’m going with a classic here. Clark Kent.

I love Clark Kent/Superman. If you haven’t picked up on it yet I’m a comic book fan. I won’t say I have the greatest history with comics. I didn’t read them as a kid much and a lot of my comix learning came from tv shows, hence the meme, but I also grew up at the height of comic book cartoons. However, Superman: The Animated Series aired with less frequency on my tv  provider than Batman: The Animated Series. My television introduction to Clark Kent was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. It brought Clark Kent into my life the way the Reeve’s movies didn’t. It made him part of my weekly world, and I fell in love with the character. Then I started to watch Justice League: Unlimited and did a lot more visual learning. Soon after Smallville came on my screen.

Clark Kent was everywhere! 😀

He is such a great hero and more importantly a good person. Yes, he helps people because he has the ability and power to do so without getting hurt, but the thing is he’d do it anyway. When Clark loses his powers for whatever reasons he’s always still tries. He respects the people he’s saving, he believes in them. He even tries to believe in his enemies until he can’t. Lois & Clark dealt a lot more with the earthly villains and struggles Clark would have to go through, partly because I don’t think the show had the budget to commit to the more galactic issues Clark, especially as Superman, would have to deal with.  Justice League Unlimited and Smallville put some of those factors more into play for his character. Because Clark is an alien. Earth isn’t his birth place, but he makes it his home. As a kid who had just moved from the only home she knew to another brand new place it was a comforting thing to watch with Clark.

I just loved seeing a male character like Clark Kent on my tv. He was heroic, and kind, respectful, gentle, and powerful as all hell. A lot of media at the time, and even now, likes to lean to the hard boiled hero. A hero with hidden or little gentleness to him. Clark didn’t hide his kindness or gentleness, it was a core part of his character, and a great part of why it made him such a good hero and just a great person to watch. On top that, because he’s so powerful, his enemies, namely Lex Luthor, believe that it’s because of that god like power would corrupt and should be used to gain more power. Clark’s narrative actively fights against this. That’s why I find episodes where he’s on Red K or alternate universes where we see the Justice League go bad, or or evil!Superman be a thing, are so important, because they showcase how easy it would be for Clark to take power.  (Although interestingly, evil and Red K Clark/Superman is always interestingly respectful about somethings. Consent being one, innocent people being the other. He’s never outright cruel, from what I remember, though a bit totalitarian. )

Clark, like Usagi (Sailor Moon), like Aang (Avatar: The Last Airbender) is a main character and hero that believes in the good of the world and the ability of humanity to rise up and be better than they are. It’s a hopeful and optimistic approach that’s for sure, but it’s one I always loved seeing.

Anyway, better, smarter people than me have written great meta about Clark Kent and Superman. This feels a bit of cheat summarised version of all those things. But Clark Kent, the best of the best!