Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Seasons 1-6)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Seasons 1-6) (5/5)

Technically, Star Wars: The Clone Wars is not a part of the Expanded Universe.  When Disney executed their own version of Order 66, unequivocally banning the EU from the canon, they exempted all six theatrical films and The Clone Wars animated series.  But because it serves as neither quite sequel nor prequel, the series still seems like more of an addendum to the prequel films, even if it exceeds them in quality.  So I’m calling Star Wars: The Clone Wars fair game for my series of Star Wars Expanded Universe reviews.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars got off to an ignominious start.  The theatrical film was dumped into theaters at a time when the general public had fatigued on the prequel films.  The film was panned and its box office was a mere pebble next to the boulder sized hauls of the proper films.  It didn’t help that The Clone Wars movie was uneven at best.  The film made a number of mistakes that didn’t bode well for the eventual series, for which it was, in part, serving as an advertisement.  The film had Anakin take on a Padawan of his own, Ahsoka Tano, a strong headed teenager.  The two are charged with recovering Jabba the Hutt’s infant son, Rotta, who is a poorly conceived bundle of “comic relief.”  Among other missteps, the film also includes the character of Ziro, a purple Hutt who not only speaks English (or Basic in the Star Wars Galaxy) but does so in an obvious imitation of Truman Capote for no reason at all.  Although the film boasts some great action (which was true of the prequels as well), it feels undercooked.

The Clone Wars film didn’t accurately represent the complex world that the series would eventually create.  If anything, Star Wars: The Clone Wars demonstrates how rich and rewarding the prequel universe can be.  First and foremost, The Clone Wars managed to both tweak traditional elements of Star Wars while also maintaining the general aesthetics of George Lucas’s creation.  Each episode opens with the usual Star Wars fanfare along with some added arpeggio as the series title withdraws from the screen.  This is followed with a rotating series of aphorisms in the color and typeface of “A long time ago…”.  Each episode begins in media res, and a stilted, slightly campy announcer speaking in the style of 1940s newsreels brings the audience up to speed.  Within the first minute or two, each episode demonstrates that it is exploring the moral power of myth, recreating the thrills of those 30s and 40s serials, and producing stories that are diverse but also clearly a part of Star Wars. 

Although the series would continue to improve over the years, the first season is still largely confident, and the multipart “Malevolence” episodes signal early on that The Clone Wars is interested in more than simply recreating a Saturday morning adventure of the week cartoon.  But if there is a single moment in the first season that showcases the series’s ambition it might be in “Innocents of Ryloth” when two Clone Troopers form a bond with a young refugee Twi’lek orphan.  The episode briefly explores the devastating effect of war and demonstrates what happens when people become trapped between the Republic and the Separatists.  The Ryloth three-parter does not shy away from violence, and it is shot in the cinema verite style of Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan.  (George Lucas also used simulated hand held photography to film some of the large battles in the prequels, a style that was modeled off of World War II footage.  Lucas also showed documentary footage of World War II dogfights to his special effects team when creating the first Death Star run.)  What’s special about this episode isn’t merely that the series isn’t afraid to show violence when necessary (plenty of episodes would probably be rated PG-13), but that it was also willing to grapple with morality and war. 

The Ryloth episodes also expand on perhaps my favorite new element from the prequels: the clones.  In the prequels, the clones were cannon fodder or they were a plot point, but they weren’t actual flesh and blood characters.  The Clone Wars actually imbues the clones with their own personalities, and although they have the same genetic makeup, each clone purposefully attempts to differentiate himself from the others by styling his hair or getting unique tattoos.  The image of nearly identical grunts striving for individuality is more telling, more heartbreaking than you might expect.  There are a number of reoccurring clone characters who have slightly different personalities: Rex, Echo, Fives and Cody all become important characters in the series. And because each clone is genetically identical to the one another, they are quite literally Shakespeare’s “band of brothers.”

The fifth episode of the first season, “Rookies,” focuses almost solely on a handful of Clone Troopers manning a distant outpost, and from here it becomes clear that the series, unlike the films, isn’t interested in just following members of the Jedi Council and the Republic Senate.

 In fact, several of my favorite story arcs focus mostly on the Clone Troopers, including a confrontation between the Clone Troopers and a bigoted Jedi, General Krell as well as a season six arc that takes some of its cues from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and grapples with the notorious Order 66.  Episodes focusing on the clones also try to tease out the paradoxical role of a military grunt.  To be a member of the armed forces, you have surrendered yourself to a purpose much greater than yourself, whether it is the Galactic Republic or the U.S. government, but you have little input into the goals and policies of these overriding institutions.

The series also allows for a further exploration of the Jedi and their place within the galactic conflict.  I’ve always maintained that the prequels included some tremendous ideas that were hindered by poor execution.  One of Lucas’s cleverer conceits was to stage a war where no matter who wins, the galaxy loses.  Palpatine has engineered it so that he is the hidden power behind both the Separatists and the Republic.  In most narratives, and especially in large blockbusters, wars are always divided between the good guys and the bad buys, but here Lucas presents us with what is close to a no win scenario.  It’s made clear in both the show and the films that the Jedi are not warriors.  They’re a monastic order who occasionally must rely on violence, but only if it will prevent some greater evil.  But the Clone Wars series suggests that they have compromised their values by taking on military positions within the Republic.

Expanding on the morally tangled choices made by Jedi only deepens our understanding of Anakin’s fall to the dark side.  In a third season arc, Anakin, Obi-Wan must sneak into a nearly impenetrable Separatist prison known as the Citadel in order to rescue captured Jedi Even Piell and Captain Tarkin.  Fans of the original trilogy know that Tarkin would go on to command the Death Star alongside Darth Vader in A New Hope, and in the Citadel arc there’s an interesting exchange between him and Anakin about the lengths the Jedi should go to in order to win the war.  Tarkin believes that Jedi shouldn’t serve as generals, because their code of ethics gets in the way of victory, a point of view that Anakin, who is seen throughout the show bending the rules, appears sympathetic to.  This scene suggests that Anakin’s turn to the dark side is born out of the corrupting nature of war as much as it is his own personal circumstances.

Perhaps The Clone Wars’ greatest contribution is that it finally got the character of Anakin right.  He’s no longer the petulant teenager that we saw in  Attack of the Clones or the naïve innocent from The Phantom Menace.  Here Anakin is more impulsive and known for working on gut instinct.  A common complaint about the prequels is that there are no rogue characters like Han Solo in this trilogy, but the writers on The Clone Wars realized that Anakin could fill this role.  Because Anakin is allowed to be charming, the audience actually feels a sense of loss and foreboding knowing about his ultimate fate, which is alluded to a few times throughout the series.

The Clone Wars expands on the mythology and world of Star Wars in a number of new and exciting ways—including the introduction of strange force-like beings that are more gods than men—but perhaps the greatest contribution to the Star Wars universe is the character of Ahsoka.  When she was first introduced, most people pegged Ahsoka as the annoying sidekick, but over the course of the series she demonstrates that she’s smart, talented and resourceful.  We are given only a few glimpses into Ahsoka’s past.  We do know that her force sensitivity was first recognized by the Jedi Plo Koon when Ahsoka was a child, but who she is mostly becomes apparently through her actions.  Over the course of the series, she demonstrates some of Anakin’s more impulsive tendencies, and the two are often competitive, sometimes acting more like friends than master and padawan.  Ahsoka also adds a necessary female character into the mostly male dominated world of Star Wars.  While the Star Wars movies aren’t completely devoid of empowered women—in A New Hope Leia ends up playing the role of her own rescuer in her escape from the Death Star—but it’s evident that most of the important characters in the Star Wars films are male.  With this in mind, Ahsoka serves as a sort of gender corrective.

The Clone Wars does so much right that it’s easy to forgive some of its flaws.  One problem the series never quite figured out was what to do with Padme.  Obi-Wan and Anakin get to fight massive space battles, but she’s stuck playing the role of the diplomat, which by comparison isn’t nearly exciting.  There are a handful of strong Padme episodes.  In “Heroes on Both Sides,” Padme and Ahsoka attempt to broker a secret peace and stop the war.  The episode showcases Lucas’s ability to use myth and fantasy to interrogate contemporary topics, and in “Heroes on Both Sides” he takes a look at the financial crisis as well as the war on terror.  It’s a smart episode that illustrates that the only way out of impossible situation engineered by Palpatine is to find a non-violent, peaceful reconciliation between the Republic and the Separatists.

But I believe the biggest misstep is the resurrection of a character who should have stayed dead. [Spoilers ahead].  In season three, we are introduced to the character of Savage Opress, a vicious force powered brute given abilities by the Nightsisters, a coven of force sensitive witches.  We later learn that Savage has a brother, Darth Maul who had been chopped in half at the end of The Phantom Menace.  It’s not clear why Maul is still alive, or why the writers thought it was a good idea to bring him back.  Darth Maul was an admittedly cool villain, thanks in large part to Ray Park’s physical performance.  But he was interesting precisely because we knew so little about him.  But we finally get to hear Darth Maul speak at length, and it turns out that he’s kind of whiny.  It doesn’t help that Savage and Maul are responsible for killing a character with deep emotional ties to Obi-Wan, but in a matter that is cheap, unnecessary, and wholly unsatisfying.  There are times when I’m not sure whether I hate the Darth Maul or the Jar Jar Binks episodes more. 

Still, The Clone Wars series is an important part of Star Wars lore that expands the story of the prequels in exciting and complicated ways.  Even when his filmmaking skills weren’t up to snuff, Lucas’s ability to conjure up worlds from his imagination always remained strong.  The prequels might falter more often than they should, but the universe Lucas created with those films is still vibrant, and this is clearly evident in The Clone Wars.  In the series, Lucas managed to take the Manichean divide between light and dark and weave a more complex tale of good people going towards damnation even as they have the best intentions.  And he accomplishes this in a universe interspersed with 1930s serials, space samurai, and World War II tough guys.  

Slate Writer Doesn't Know How Language Works

 On the always contrarian website, Slate.com, Tom Scocca takes aim at those who drop references to the critically adored television show, Mad Men.  His argument is…well, I’m not exactly certain.  He’s angry because people keep on talking about this show, and he hasn’t seen it, and this makes him upset.  At one point towards the end of his article he suggests that using pop culture allusions don’t always fit the topic at hand, which would have been a legitimate argument, but it only comes up once and it is in reference to a journalist making use of the show The Sopranos, not Mad Men.  The title of the article is “Don Draper’s Shocking Secret: He Doesn’t Exist: Why do Mad Men fans and the New York Times mistake the show for reality?,” which suggests that, at its core, his argument is about semiotics, or the study of signs, like language, and what they mean. 

Semiotics first arose from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 20^th century, but it really flourished in the work of French theorists in the decades following World War II.  Perhaps one of the most accessible introductions to the use of semiotics is Roland Barthes’s collection of essays, Mythologies.  In Mythologies, Barthes attempts to uncover the underlying meaning of a whole series of cultural signs.  For him, everyday objects like children’s toys or Greta Garbo’s face are representative of something deeper, hidden underneath the play of surfaces.  In his introduction, Barthes explains his purpose in the following manner:

The starting point of these reflections was usually a feeling of impatience at the sight of the “naturalness” with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history.  In short, in the account given of our contemporary circumstances, I resented seeing Nature and History confused at every turn, and I wanted to track down, in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying, the ideological abuse, which in my view, is hidden there. (11)

 

Barthes seems frustrated that ideas and concepts that are culturally made are being treated as absolutely natural or “true.”  Most of how we view the world is in fact constructed for us, and Barthes is hoping to uncover and tease apart these culturally made ideas.

But back to Scocca’s article.  While it is difficult to fully determine what he is trying to say, at least part of his argument hinges on the fact that there are “true” signs and there are “false” signs.  Scocca seems upset because characters like Don Draper don’t exist.  He writes, “He [Don Drapper] is a pattern of lit-up dots moving in front of your eyes for one hour, on Sundays, during the season run of the Mad Men program, which mercifully ends this weekend.”  (Part of Scocca’s apoplexy arises from the fact that a lot of people talk about this show, and he doesn’t like it, except that he admits that he hasn’t watched it, which means that no one has strapped him into a Clockwork Orange like contraption and forced the show on him).  Obviously, Don Drapper isn’t a real person.  Instead, he is a signifier for a whole host of social and cultural issues: capitalism, the generation gap, existential malaise, masculine constructs, etc.  But Scocca doesn’t seem to understand one thing: everything that he writes is also a sign.  When Scocca writes about the 1960s, they do not just immediately manifest themselves before us.  Like the television show Mad Men, he is using a series of signs (in this instance, words) to stand in for the decade in question.  In other words, Tom Scocca’s argument doesn’t exist.  Everything he writes is a pattern of lit-up dots on our computer screen.  (In fact, we might ask Scocca what he thinks of other terms that come from fiction, like quixotic or Kafkaesque). 

But Scocca appears to believe one set of signifiers is greater than another.  He seems to think there is some “true” 1960s out there that we can grasp in our hands.  One signifier is tangible and the other signifier is not.  He writes, “In the collision between the actual and the simulacrum, the simulacrum is winning.”  But everything he just wrote and quoted is in fact a simulacrum.  Like I stated, Mad Men is also a signifier for a whole number of things, most often the culture of the 1960s. But a "history" of that time is also just a signifier. If you open a historical reading of the 1960s, you don't open the book and enter into the thing itself. You read an interpretation of that era, which, funny enough, is exactly what Mad Men is.

You might argue that Scocca is concerned with the accuracy of Mad Men’s interpretation of the world—that there is a good deal of evidence about the decade that we can latch onto in order to determine cultural mores, dress, music, etc.  But this doesn’t seem to be the case.  There will always be competing versions of the 1960s.  Even well educated historians will differ on how best to interpret that decade.  A sign, after all, may be read in multiple ways.  Besides, perceived “accuracy” never enters into Scocca’s argument.  Let’s take the quote he uses about the turtle neck, taken from a New York Times article:

Francesca Granata, an assistant professor of art and design history at Parsons the New School for Design, traced the garment's high-fashion roots to the '60s, when, she said, ''Pierre Cardin and YSL reinvented the men's suit with a turtleneck instead of a buttoned shirt and a scarf instead of a tie.'' (Think more Paul Kinsey than Don Draper.)

In the above excerpt, the academic being questioned suggests that the turtle neck symbolized the changing cultural mores and generation gap of the 1960s. The author then uses Mad Men as a point of reference, a show that happens to use clothing to symbolize the changing cultural mores and generation gap of the 1960s. It is unclear why it is okay to rely on the language of the "expert" and not the television show, especially since they seem to be saying the exact same thing. One means of signifying the 60s is more "true" (the academic's words) where the other means of signifying the 60s is "false" (the images on a television show), even when signifiers are coming to the same conclusion.  For Scocca, any sort of fictional art is a false signifier, even when it happens to be accurately representing the world.  Scocca is falling into the old trap that Barthes observed about fifty years ago.  He thinks that there is a natural world he has access to that is not built by an interpretation of various signs.

Of course, as someone who is interested in fictional narratives, I have pony in this race.  It is an old discussion that goes back at least as far as the novel itself.  People seem to think that just because something is a fictional retelling, then it can never tell us something “true” about the world.  Just this year, the Pulitzer Prize awarded no prize for narrative fiction, despite having some well regarded books in the running.  Many have argued that this is a result of a culture that denies that fictional stories can tell us something true about the world.  But while the form is certainly different, the same arguments that take place out in the “real” world also occur in the fictional universe created by authors.  When Charles Dickens wrote about work houses and orphanages, he did so after learning about these places through his own experiences and through newspapers (which happen to be made up of a series of signs).  He then made arguments about the dehumanizing effects of these places, but he did so through characters, dialogue and narrative.  

The true difference between fiction and non-fiction texts is that fictional texts take work.  In order to uncover what a novel is trying to say, you must first engage with it, determine what argument lies underneath its entanglement of metaphors.  A non-fiction text, by contrast, is didactic.  It comes right out and tells you what it wants you to know.  This can be useful, but it can also be problematic.  A work of non-fiction is always trying to convince us that it is absolutely “real,” when it is always an interpretation of the world.  Besides, the difficulty inherent in the novel is also why it is useful.  In a world where information is presented to us in small bites, there’s something to be said for the exercise of deciphering a text and engaging with its argument.  The world is a complicated place, and fiction never lets us forget how much of a tangled mess we live in. 

Kabletown Takes Over Hulu

            Just the other day the New York Post reported that the online streaming website Hulu is now considering restricting access to its cache of streamable episodes to only those who already have a cable subscription.  On some level this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Over the past year or so, Hulu has quietly restricted access to several of its shows.  Episodes that you could once watch the day after airing can now only be accessed a good week or so after they hit the airwaves or cable box.  Hulu also introduced the idea of Hulu Plus, a service for more devoted fans of television and movies that would grant access to a backlog of older shows and a good number of films.  Neither one of these moves was unreasonable.  It makes sense that Hulu would want to make people wait for their favorite TV shows in exchange for the convenience of watching them whenever you wanted.  And given time, Hulu Plus might have turned into a viable alternative to Netflix.  But both events signaled that Hulu was looking for more ways to increase revenue from its website.

            But you could tell that Hulu’s corporate backers were getting a little antsy about potential customers “cutting the chord.” More and more people preferred waiting a week or so for the shows they loved instead of shelling out nearly a hundred dollars a month for a handful of decent TV shows.  For a long time cable companies had convinced people to subscribe to nearly a hundred choices at ridiculous rates when most people only watched four of five channels.  For years consumers have been demanding an a la carte model where they could choose a limited number of channels for a reduced rate, but it wasn’t offered because cable companies have near monopolies in many cities.  But the internet changed all that.  Now you could get anything you wanted, legally or illegally.  At first, like the record companies, the entertainment industry freaked out about piracy.  But eventually they came around, and decided that they if they couldn’t police the internet, then at the very least they could corral viewers to legal websites where they could make some money off of ad revenue.  Those waiting for an a la carte way to watch television could now do so.  If you subscribe to Netflix and wait a little bit for your more recent TV shows, or watched the basic channels using an antenna, then you could pretty much watch whatever you wanted and do so legally.  Only the most impatient viewer could complain. 

            So what went wrong?  Viewers got what they wanted all along and the media companies made a little bit of money.  What’s the problem with this arrangement?  And why would Fox, NBC, CBS, and ABC want to limit access to shows online that people can already get for free through the airwaves?  If anything, websites like Hulu give these companies a leg up on their cable competitors.  The answer comes when you look at who owns stake in Hulu.  One company, Comcast, also owns NBC.  In other words, they both produce television content and provide a means of delivering that content to people’s homes, and the most profitable means of doing both is by selling expensive cable subscriptions.  In fact, it might make more sense for NBC, one of the lowest rated of the major networks, to continue to offer free streaming services online in order to get the upper hand on their competition.  Of course, this analysis changes when you consider that Comcast is more concerned with the bottom line of its entire company rather than NBC alone. 

            But how did we get to this place?  For many it might seem (and, arguably, should seem) strange that a large corporate conglomerate is allowed to both serve as the creator of content and manage how that content gets into the homes of its customers.  If these companies were split, then it might create healthy competition.  Thanks to the internet, NBC could provide an alternative source for their content, and Comcast would have to court its customers with better options and prices in order to keep them from canceling their cable subscription.  In the end, the consumer would win.  There was a lot of controversy surrounding the FCC’s approval of the Comcast/NBC merger.  Perhaps the most damning aspect of that deal occurred several months after the FCC approved the melding of these two corporate giants.  A member of the FCC who had voted to approve the deal, Meredith Baker, received a cushy job at Comcast, the same company she was supposed to be policing.  While this may not have been illegal (although, arguably it should be), it sure as hell was unethical and showcases ways in which the line between the American government and the corporate world have been blurred.  Here is what California Democrat, Maxine Waters had to say about Baker’s free ride:

Baker’s move to Comcast, Waters said, “further confirms my suspicion that the [FCC]’s merger review — in cooperation with the Department of Justice — was overly politicized and rammed through in blatant disregard for the agencies’ responsibility to the American people. In addition to the Obama administration’s appointment of [the head of] NBC Universal’s former parent company, General Electric’s CEO Jeff Immelt, to his new economic panel the same week the Comcast-NBC merger was approved, Commissioner Baker’s resignation and frequent criticisms against the FCC’s review process underscores the pressure and influence the combining companies exerted over federal regulators. At every juncture, Comcast and NBC Universal set the terms of the merger’s approval as they co-opted civil rights organizations with philanthropic donations and pressured the administration to grant the approval in exchange for ‘innovation, investment, and job creation.’”

Waters’s words seem downright prophetic now.

            But perhaps one of the best critiques of this deal was its constant skewering on the NBC produced show 30 Rock.  Even as the deal between Comcast and NBC was going through in the real world, in 30 Rock’s heightened reality there was a corporate merger between NBC andKabletown, a corporation from Philadelphia that looked a lot like another corporation from Philadelphia, Comcast.  Eerily enough, Kabletown took over NBC on 30 Rock on the exact same day that Comcast took over NBC in our universe.  In the episode “It’s Never Too Late for Now,” Jack Doneghy, the head of NBC, must negotiate with Kabletown over licensing fees, that is, how much it will cost for the cable company to broadcast their product.  Liz Lemon, the ostensible heroine whose stance for what’s right almost always ends up getting bowled over by the corporation she works for, quizzically asks, “But aren’t NBC and Kabletown the same company now? That seems like a pretty big conflict of interest. Why would the government even allow that merger?”  To which, Jack replies, “It’s okay. Don’t worry. You just keep watching Bridalplasty.”  What I’m trying to say here is, haven’t we all just been watching Bridalplasty all this time?  Haven’t we?

Blergh.

The Office - "Prince Family Paper"

The Office – “Prince Family Paper” (4.5/5)

What do you do when the TV show you based on a two season British comedy continues into its fifth season? That’s the question that must be troubling the writers of The Office. The central conceit of the British Office was a look into the life sucking world of the mid-level corporate world, and while this same theme continued in the American version, some time in season four the show’s interests detoured, like Michael’s GPS directed drive into the lake, towards the soap opera lives of the characters. Sure, I liked the “will they or won’t they” storyline between Jim and Pam, and Andy’s cuckolding at the hands of Angela and Dwight was particularly entertaining, but the show has also veered dangerously close to making it look like selling paper might be a fun job.

If the show did in fact jump the proverbial shark, it may have occurred in the episode, “Job Fair,” when Jim, Andy, and Kevin go golfing with a potential client and Jim, through pluck and determination, lands himself a big sales commission. Hey, I’m watching this show so I can laugh at the soul crushing everyday minutia of corporate America, not to watch Horatio Alger climb his way to a comfortable life of sitting in the big chair chomping cigars and, to amuse himself now and then, using a factory worker as a foot rest. Even worst than Jim’s pluck, was Pam’s contrived decision to leave graphic design school early so she could return to her once hated job as secretary. What happened to the satire of season two, like when Dwight delivers a speech by Mussolini to rousing applause? What happened to those times when we watched this show because of its keen observations on post-collegiate middle class life as well as race, gender and sexual orientation in politically correct America?

It was a bit of a relief, then, when this week’s episode of The Office, “Prince Family Paper,” harkened back to those days when it was possible to laugh while realizing these characters’ day to day lives had existential crises hidden in every meaningless paper transaction. Michael is assigned to investigate a small paper supply company set up in a blind spot where Dunder-Mifflin has no offices. The plan is to either buy out the company or run it out of business and thus take over the territory. The plan is for Michael to pose as a potential client while Dwight poses as a potential hire so both can scope out the operation. The company turns out to be a small family owned business in the post-war American tradition (of course, in this case the war happens to be Vietnam—when Mr. Prince tells Michael he started the company after returning from Vietnam, Michael replies that he’s heard it’s very nice over there). The Princes extend one generosity after another, from a cup of coco to fixing Michael’s broken car. Their penultimate act is to hand Michael a list of their clients as references for the quality of their service. What he first sees as merely the case of a “big shark eating a smaller shark” becomes a moral conundrum, and Michael is reluctant to hand over the client list to his bosses in New York. Dwight, of course, tries to convince him otherwise.

The episode is a wonderful juxtaposition of the instinctual workings of contemporary corporate America against what was once seen as not only the ideal workplace but as the expected relationship between employer and employee. That is, family—metaphorically speaking if nothing else. The episode spoke to the amorality of corporations, a welcome message in an era where someone who makes minimum wage is, in part, paying for multi-billion dollar executive bonuses at a time when those very same companies are losing money. But, it also speaks to a much older principle of comedy: tragedy and comedy are the closest of genres. After all, who can laugh at someone else when a smile is already spread across his face?

A Buffy Who Can Give You Paper Cuts?

The internets, that wonderful dumping ground for all things obscure or obscene. Well, thrash around in that unseemly dumping grounds long enough and you just might find a hidden gem. That's what happened recently when the supposedly long rumored four minute pilot for Buffy: The Animated Series surfaced on the web. View below for the same witty banter of the regular TV show but with a much brighter color scheme:



The most surprising thing about this little snippet is not only that it's pretty damn good, but that no station wanted to pick it up. I'm a big fan of animation but I just don't find myself watching anything animated these days. In the States animation is geared towards the younger crowd with only a few companies like Pixar managing to appeal to both kids and adults, and ever since the Dini/Timm DC Universe - beginning with Batman: The Animated Series and ending with Justice League Unlimited - went off the air, television has been a wasteland for cartoons that are capable of appealing across generations. If this pilot is any indication, a Buffy cartoon might have been capable of bridging the gap between both older and younger fans of violence against the undead.

There are several problems the animated series might have run into. The television show had some pretty heavy themes, and I would imagine a certain population might be upset if their kids became interested in the live action TV show where Willow's crush on Xander transforms into girl on girl kissing. And then there's the violence. Sure, they're undead vampires but you're still sticking a steak into their hearts and watching them explode.

Of course there are also plenty of missed opportunities. In one of the myriad pop culture references the show shot at its audience, the central characters often referred to themselves as the "Scooby gang." Well, what if, like The New Scooby Doo Movies, Buffy: The Animated Series had weekly guest voices who would stumble into Sunnydale and become embroiled in the latest mystery. The "Scooby gang" could wind up meeting the actual Scooby gang. I for one would be excited for the inevitable Don Knotts cameo. Sure, he may have died recently, but wouldn't that make it perfect to bring him onto the show as a zombie? So many missed opportunities. Oh well, you know what they say: "The best laid plans of mice and men / are often fucked over by incompetent studio executives who wouldn't know a great show if it slapped their momma."