what shey said

doubtful guest | May 15, 12:05 CET

shey, that's all fine and dandy, but I am afraid we will never know to what extent "compromises" have been made and to what extent they affect the viewer. It is not enough to use post-hoc analysis to blame poor ratings on the first 5 episodes and state that "Look, see, compromise= bad program at the start." We will never know. What you see is what there is. And it is certain that in the negotiations that apparently are going on right now, there will be compromise. So: do you want DH to have an S2? If so, you will have to accept whatever compromises Joss agrees to. Or are you saying that you will not watch because Joss made compromises and it is not the show he wants in exactly the way he wants it?

Dana5140 | May 15, 12:52 CET

Dana, I honestly don't see what your post has to do with Shey's most recent post, which does not bring up the first five episodes and emphatically does not make an absolute "compromise=bad program" argument. I believe the phrase used was "too many compromises," which is a relative term. As for current negotiations, we have no real info on what is under discussion -- overall budget? storyline? casting? And "quality," of course, could refer to both "production quality" issues (how much money is available for effects, locations, etc.) or "story quality" issues (how successfully does Joss' presentation of a season two story arc satisfy both his and the other parties' definition of a show worth doing). (I am pretty sure Shey is referring to the second issue, primarily.) Your post pretty inaccurately turns Shey's into a straw man (he is demonstrably not saying what you present him as saying), not to mention commiting the fallacy of the forced choice (the possible outcomes are neither as simple as the either/or you present, nor are they accurate representations of Shey's argument).

That said, I have a great deal of faith that Joss is unlikely to compromise his vision too greatly just for the show to survive -- I believe he is entirely capable both of making good faith changes that might satisfy fox about how the show will play out AND of walking away if he feels that the changes required would too much weaken the integrity of what he feels the show should be about. In that light, I will agree with Shey and add spin to what he says: "Joss, a bunch of us are with you on this: we want the show back, but if bringing it back means gutting too much of what made it an interesting project that so many of us are already deeply impressed by and committed to, we would understand if you decided to just let it end."

doubtful guest | May 15, 14:44 CET

I feel the need to point out the 'if' in my original statement.

See, in spirit I am totally with you on that. It's just that I have always found one of Joss Whedon's unique strengths as an auture to be his ability to encapsulate meaningful artistic statements into works that are commercial enough on the surface to survive. With any other creator in his field I would agree with you without reservation. it's just that since it's Joss we are talking about, I can't help but think he can successfully tweak enough commercial appeal out of the show for it to survive, or else could have started with a premise with the same artistic value but more obvious commercial appeal.
If there is any negative element in the show's premise, it is that it seems so resistent by its very nature to commercial viability without multiple seasons worth of story to get things aligned first, something which is virtually impossible to get in today's competative television market.

Update: added 'seems' to the last paragraph.

[ edited by brinderwalt on 2009-05-15 15:26 ]

brinderwalt | May 15, 15:24 CET

well, I'll disgree, dg. I set no straw man, but was simply using shey's comments to make a point: we don't know what compromises have been made, so it seems unfair to say we would rather have a show in which he does not compromise over one where he does to make it commercially successful, as in: "The "negative" for me would be this: if too many compromises have to be made to make the show commercially successful, I'd rather have only one season of (mostly) untampered with Jossness, than three or four seasons of dumbed-down commercially successful fare."

My "post hoc" comment was designed to address the obvious come-back- people stating quite firmly the show started out poorly at its start because Joss had to compromise his vision. I only note that we see what we see; we don't know what took place before we got to see what we saw. To put it bluntly, I find comments about Joss following his unbounded vision free from all commercial considerations somewhat frustrating, because that is patently impossible. By its nature, putting it on network TV involves such considerations. Heck, putting it anywhere you wish to make money involves such considerations.

Dana5140 | May 15, 16:16 CET

Dana, I (along with anyone who has even briefly browsed discussions of the show) am aware of the whole "early episodes" issue and the question of who, if anyone, it is fair to blame for their possible failure to achieve the level that at least some of us think was reached in the later half of the season. However, you addressed your post to Shey, and this was not an issue he mentioned in his post. Further, I (along with probably almost anyone who has dedicated much time to Whedon fandom) am aware of the interesting skill (or skillful interest?) Joss has in finding commercial ways to play out the stories and questions that fascinate him. However, Shey did not make an either/or issue of compromise or declare any such naive belief that there are no commercial or other realities to creating the sort of stories Joss does. You (erroneously, and now repeatedly) cast his post in this "unbounded vision free from all commercial considerations", language. To state that it is possible to go too far with compromises and destroy a show is not to prove oneself either naive to real world considerations or inflexible.

Here, at the end of the series, by most people's judgement, including most critics, it is clear that, for whatever complex web of reasons (including, as Joss has noted, good input from Fox), the show improved in the second half. I'm under the impression that even most of the people who are still not sold on it acknowledge it made some improvement. OK, so where does this leave us. Clearly, there is a group of some size of people, myself included, who, while they might quibble with certain things, feel that the show has "found its voice." There is at least one other big group of people that think it has not, for reasons that seem to mostly cluster either around the ability to identify with characters or around the remaining moral/ethical ooky-ness of the concept and how that affects their estimation of the characters or events. They are entitled, of course, to that view.

For those of us in the first group, the threat is NOT that there will be some notes or new brainstorming about possible directions to take the show, but that massive retooling would likely destroy what seems unique to us about this show (and, as I've already said, I think Joss is pretty damn trustworthy with eyeballing this sort of thing).

I can see three main reasons why different writers might bring up the "Heck, putting it anywhere you wish to make money involves such considerations" line, and want to address them, without claiming to know which, if any, motivate you:

(1) because the writer think we are naive to this truth. To this writer I say "thank you for your concern, but we get it!"

(2) because the writer is one of those strange people like we see commenting on TV by the numbers who truly seem to believe that there is no difference between commercial viability and other artistic goals in a series, and that a show that has bad ratings thus DESERVES (yes, I've seen it phrased that way a bunch) to fail. To that writer I say "Stay the hell away from my children, you sick pervert!"

(3) because the writer truly believes that their own aesthetic concerns (such as "identifiablity," etc) about the show are, at least in this case, so much in line with the "commercial considerations" that might be hindering the ratings that addressing the latter will likely address the former, thus improving both the show's aesthetic and and commercial success. To that writer, I say, "I believe your opinion to be sincere and valid, but I disagree with you in this instance, so I can only hope that what you hope for does not come to pass."

doubtful guest | May 15, 19:03 CET

"They are entitled, of course, to that view." This translates into, but they are wrong, I do not agree with them and reject what they are saying. C'est le vie. I see no point in defending Joss Whedon against each and every criticism anyone might make. He's not perfect, and I don't need to be either in offering my comments. It is more productive to deal with the substance than to continueally read into my comments and position them somewhere else in order to reject them. Peace out on this'n.

Dana5140 | May 15, 19:12 CET

I agree that reading too much into comments can be a bad thing. I think it's what I was arguing when I started this exchange. I hereby offer you my sincere expression that I do assume good intentions on your part, including, expressly, the belief in your openness and intention to discuss/debate in good faith. That said, in some discussions, there are points where, for whatever reason, communication and understanding is simply not happening between two parties, and the debate continues simply so that the failure to respond by one side will not be seen as conceding a belief still strongly held. In the interest of civility, I will acknowledge things have reached that point between the two of us, so, without any snark or sarcasm in my voice, will say that I will no longer attempt to respond to any of your postings on the site from this point on. Peace out.

doubtful guest | May 15, 21:57 CET

doubtful guest, your take on what I was saying is right on the money. So I guess, "what you said about what I said". :)

BTW, I'm a "she". ;)

Shey | May 19, 13:28 CET