Whedon for the defense

[selenak]

This morning I woke up to reason #111143 to love Joss Whedon. Apparantly, following the news Marti Noxon became one of the executive producers of Grey's Anatomy, there was the usual round of Marti bashing. (My own take on Marti Noxon and what she brought to BTVS was one of the first things I wrote on lj, so this is something of a red button to me.)

To which our Mr. Whedon has now replied. Quoth he:

How sick am I of Noxon-bashing? Enough to break my rule of silence, certainly. I've had so many people rag on her for aspects of the show I developed, or praise me for things she came up with. She's been a vital part of everything people love about Buffy since she overhauled the halloween script in season two. She's as good a story-breaker as I've ever worked with. And she's a leader.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, Vmars. You are uninformed and rude. That's mine.

Comments

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad he said something, because I'm kind of tired of the fandom praising Joss for everything that was good about the show/s and trying to find someone else to be scapegoat for the bad stuff.

Marti bashing is just lazy, really.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed!

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

I'm really curious about those "Halloween" overhauls now. (Also, having just rewatched "Buffy vs. Dracula", and previously S4 of Buffy, I'd say she kicked Joss's ass in terms of season opener there, because "The Freshman" has a whole lot of stupid.)

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

...and I didn't mean to bash Joss when you're posting about how you love Joss.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I didn't take it as such, and agree that his season openers are generally far from his strongest episodes. (As opposed to the experimentals and the finales.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Buffy versus Dracula is one of my favourites and probably my favourite BTVS season opener of them all (that, or Bargaining - it depends on the mood I'm in), and I never understood why it has a bad rep.

Halloween overhauls: me too. I want details!

[astridv.livejournal.com]

I'm glad he posted that. I'm so sick of the constant, inexplicable Noxon bashing. It's about as annoying as the Joss bashing that's going on on some CC boards.

But wow, he doesn't mince his words, does he. ;)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Not on this occasion, that's for sure.

CC - Charisma Carpenter?

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Yup. He's not that popular in the Charisma corner. The bashing drove me away from the Stranger Things board, at one time my favourite hang-out. They merrily bashed the show as well, which annoyed me even more and threatened to harsh my mellow.

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

And he responded rudely back to Joss! What an ass...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Quite. Ah well. At least he was the occasion for a memorable statement...

[spikewriter]

It's gotten to the "give it a rest' point -- we didn't like what she did, but if the people over at Grey's didn't thik she could do the job, do you think they would have hired her?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I liked (most of) what she did, immensely (see relevant post), but yes, Grey's is a succesfully running show, and one assumes they check the record of anyone they hire in such a responsible position to see whether or not their works fits with what they want to have...

[spikewriter]

There is much that MN did that was good -- though she's definitely one of the people I needed to avoid listening to when she discussed the show herself because she could say some things that set my teeth on edge at times. I think she needs a strong hand -- and it is quite possible she's being brought in as part of the ramp up for the spin-off that's coming for next season. Whether she stays on the original show or goes to Grey's 2.0 remains to be seen.

From what I've seen of Grey's (I don't watch on a regular basis), I think her style will mesh very well with the type of storylines they want to tell.

Despite the bashing by fans, most of the people who came out of Joss' writing room are very well considered in the industry and they've gone on to write for some of the major hits currently on. What some people don't seem to realize is that the fannish perspective doesn't necessarily connect with other perspectives.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

That was definitely awesome!

Marti-bashing is so tired and stupid. There are certain members of fandom who act like she came to their homes and repeatedly ran over their pets. I think she's a great addition to Grey's - a show I greatly enjoy even though it lacks depth, something I'm sure Marti will provide.

[wemblee.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

The misogyny that bubbles up so often during Marti-bashing is astounding.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Marti definitely gets blamed for a lot of Joss things. I mean both of them have issues in their writing, but Joss deserves a lot of the flak that Marti gets and she deserves a lot of the praise that he gets.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

"Halloween" overhauls, hmm? That's interesting, because Halloween is one of my all-time favorite episodes. And yet, I found most of MN's eps pretty execrable, and I know it wasn't pre-judgment on my part because I didn't even pay attention to who wrote what episode on my first viewing of BtVS. The only really good episode I thought she wrote was "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered."

In a way, that makes sense--both "B, B, B" and "Halloween" involve characters having their basic personalities magically altered and whacky hijinks ensuing. Except that Halloween has a sharper, subtler edge, which I would attribute to the other writer that MN was helping (JW? I forget).

I do agree that this Perfect!Joss and Ruinous!Marti dichotomy is inaccurate. And good on Joss for shooting it down. Aside from what Joss himself posted, there's the fact that he was the guy ultimately responsible for whatever showed up onscreen--if Marti was at fault, Joss was equally at fault for not stepping in and fixing it.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

You didn't like The Wish? Or Consequences? Or New Moon Rising? Or Forever? (To name but a few of MN's eps I love.

I do agree that this Perfect!Joss and Ruinous!Marti dichotomy is inaccurate. And good on Joss for shooting it down. Aside from what Joss himself posted, there's the fact that he was the guy ultimately responsible for whatever showed up onscreen--if Marti was at fault, Joss was equally at fault for not stepping in and fixing it.

Absolutely. He was the show runner, he signed it, thus the bucket stops with him for any flaws the audience sees. And I think that's how he sees it as well.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I liked The Wish and it's one of my favorite eps to re-watch, but I think it has one weakness that prevents me from classifying it as a really good episode--namely, that no character in the main 'verse found out about the worst that had happened in the Wish-verse (except Anya, who it didn't emotionally affect). So basically it was like reading an AU fanfic--interesting but inconsequential to the main story. Yes, they found out about the Willow-vamp a few eps later, but what did that do? It gave them some interesting and disturbing insight on the lack of a bright line between vamps and humans, and foreshadowed Willow's bisexuality, but they didn't find out anything that was specifically heartbreaking about the Wish-verse--like Oz staking Willow, or Buffy staking Xander, or Cordelia's death. They didn't actually need to write The Wish to have a vamp-version of Willow show up from some other dimension.

As for Consequences, my problem with this is that I think Faith's descent into evil is poorly written and is saved only by Eliza Dushku's acting. I think ME allowed their visceral feelings about the taking of human life (and, I suspect, their middle-class biases) to interfere with their portrayal of how a damaged, reckless and insecure teenaged girl would react if she accidentally killed someone. And that's why this portrayal was emotionally unrealistic in the extreme. I can buy it if I watch it without thinking about it, thanks to ED, but the minute I try to analyze it I realize it makes no sense. I don't know how much of this to blame on Noxon, since I think Joss didn't have the slightest clue where he was going with Faith either.

And yeah, Forever was a good episode. I forgot about it because I wasn't satisfied with the overall S5 arc. But as an individual episode, Forever was good.

And this comment has gotten way too long. Sorry!