You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #11

He Killed Lindsay…!


Who Was He?

Lindsay Surname was a bizarrely long-running character on the show Angel, appearing in the first episode and sporadically returning every few months or so. Whilst a major character for seasons one and two, he vanished for large chunks of time afterwards and only reappeared a few times. Come the final season, however, Lindsay once again became a recurring character, appearing as one of the midway villains before being banished to Hell. Which, that happens quite often in Joss Whedon shows, so there was nothing to suggest that this wouldn’t be the end of the Cowboy Lawyer. Then, as a last-minute surprise, Lindsay returned and was recruited to help the heroes defeat the final villains. His morality switched one last time, and he became a hero for a while.


How Did He Die?

Well, then he got shot. After dispatching his allocated group of villains, he turned round to the one last happy character on the show – Lorne – and decided he was finally going to choose a side, and that side was going to be ‘good’. So then Lorne shot him, mortally wounding the guy and leaving him there to die in the room with all the other villains. Before dying, Lindsay expressed severe surprise that he was being killed by a “flunky” instead of Angel himself, and couldn’t believe that his existence didn’t factor into Angel’s plans whatsoever. Instead of being an important character in Angel’s life-story, Lindsay realised that he would get nothing more than a short footnote in the back of one of the indexes, and would soon be forgotten about entirely.

Lindsay is the first character we’re featuring in this list who was for the most part a villain, and he’s getting this honour for a very specific reason. Read on, fine fellows!


Why Did He Die?

Lindsay’s death occurred in the same episode as Wesley’s death – he was the last major character to die in the series proper. Although, we hear that some strange things have been happening in the comic series, but that’s not important because the comics haven’t been great and we don’t approve of 'canon' jumping across creative mediums. So it wasn’t to make the series finale more dramatic, because we’ve already got the death of a character who the audiences had been familiar with for about five-six years.

Instead, Lindsay’s death came about because Joss Whedon’s vision had become increasingly bleak by this point in time. Sarah Michelle Gellar, his muse for Buffy, had decided to stop doing the show in order to star in a series of unexceptional horror films; while his other show Firefly had just been cancelled after a season full of behind-the-scenes editorialising by idiot executives. Angel was cancelled despite a rise in viewing figures, and Joss was left with no television shows where once he had three simultaneously. In short, Joss’ creativity had been snuffed out for the time being, and he was blocked from doing anything. As a result the final season of Angel became darker and darker as it went along, which made for great television but also meant that the show had no more room for the ideas of lightness, or darkness.

There’s a line in season 4 of Buffy which says something along the lines of “there is no black or white. Only shades of grey.” That became true for much of Joss’ work, and many characters – even Buffy – stopped being a force for good but instead became part of a morally ambiguous universe where anyone can be snuffed out at any moment. Do you start to see the comparison we’re making? The characters represent Joss’ creativity. So as Joss can be stopped by the executives, so the characters can be stopped by Joss. Lindsay’s death did not affect Lindsay – he got a good final line, but it was an afterthought more than anything. The importance of his death was how it affected Lorne. Lorne, the sole remaining positive character after Fred was killed off, had the burden of handling most of the show’s humour for the final few episodes, but instead of being funny for the sake of making people happy, he started to make jokes to mask his own despair.

The act of killing someone – something Lorne had never done before – was shocking, because it marked the final breakdown of one of the most popular characters. In turn, it allowed Joss to showcase his world-view to the audience one last time. There was no black in his show. But then, by the end, there was no white. Even the most wholesome character could be corrupted, and Lorne’s defeat was the most painful moment of the episode. Lindsay’s death did more to help the villains than anything he did while he was alive.


Joss, You Monster! Rating: 9. We’re sorry you lost your shows, Joss! But you could always try to make a film?

Why I Don't Believe In Mermaids Anymore

Mermaids are poorly conceived. The top half of these mythological creatures is human, but they choose to live underwater. While this makes sense when you take into account their fishy lower quarters, mermaids do not have gills. They have a human top half, presumably including a working pair of lungs and the capacity to take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. At no point is there the capacity to breathe underwater. Animals which don't need air generally have gills instead, a system which allows them to filter through water for molecules they can process and keep them breathing. Mermaids, on the other half, hang out on rocks and then go home to their underwater lairs. It has never been explained how they can do this without drowning.

If we accept that mermaids can live underwater, let's look at their choice of homeland. They live in giant castles on the sea bed. While the principle of anchoring your home to the ground is academically proven to be the best way to make sure your home doesn't fall off something, that only applies to homes above sea-level. On 'land', there is a force called gravity which pushes downwards. The ground is constantly being kept in place by this force, so therefore a house built on the ground will not wobble around. There are no such guarantees for houses underwater. The sea bed is made of sand, and the weakened gravity that comes from not being above land means there is nothing to hold your house in place. Have you, dear reader, heard of the phenomenon known as "waves"? It basically refers to how water moves around because of the gravitational pull of things like the Moon on our planet. This water movement would knock down any floating house you can build. Despite your house being built on what initially appeared to be solid ground, things would soon prove dangerous as the tides not only push your house but also make the sea bed ripple and buckle.

So we have established that mermaids cannot breathe underwater, nor build lasting homes there. What else do mermaids need to do in order to exist? Oh yes, EAT THINGS. The proportions of a mermaid make them half human and half fish, so they can eat as much food as a person can and excrete as much food as a fish can. Which is to say, eat a lot of food and then get rid of barely any of it. So any mermaids who are not drowning or being crushed in their own houses are imploding due to an improper digestive system. This would obviously look gross, because they'd explode and then their bits would float about in the same place, until some sharks came past and ate them.

Mermaids would need to be fast. The underwater has reduced gravity - this has already been established. How would they hunt unless they used nets? Trident-throwing is impossible underwater. Have you ever attempted it? They don't move anywhere. So mermaids would have to do all their hunting by chasing fish into nets, liek sheepdogs herding sheep into a pen. Their diets would also contain a heightened level of omega 3, which is good for people in doses but lethal in high amounts. So we have mermaids drowning, being crushed, exploding and vomiting up their organs. Which, again, would be gross underwater.

And that's without even considering the threats of sharks, poisoned fish, or ghost-pirates. Mermaids, if they did ever live on our planet, would have died out within a day of existence. And that's why I don't believe in them anymore. They all died.

Seven Great Places To Hide The Body

So you've made a bit of a mistake. The whore who was in the middle of dumping you suddenly tripped into mid-calibre seven bullets and got them stuck in her upper-right temple, and now her head is scattered across the floor of your breakfast room. Don't panic, man! Recently-released statistics reveal that over 46% of men will at one point have to deal with the trauma of accidentally killing that cheating bitch you thought was ready to settle down and move to the country. So you're not alone!

Wilftonville empathises with your plight. It's not easy to witness slut-brain spatter over the freshly-wallpapered apartment you just moved into and haven't paid off the final rent on. While we can only advise that you pour salt onto any patches of carpet which are soaked in claret, and dap with a wet cloth, we can offer much more advice when it comes to dumping the body. Why should your life have to end because you ended the life of that hooker? Jail is for criminals, not victims of emotional abuse, after all! Here are ten options for where you could smuggle the body, and expect it to never be seen again.


1. Uganda

If you've ever been to Uganda, then 1: I am amazed you made it out alive and 2: you'll have noticed that it is currently a barren landscape filled with the corpses of the poor. If you have a private plane, then it's simplicity itself to pack up the body in a roll of carpet and fly across to the other continent. Nobody will notice the one extra body, lying spreadeagled in a dusty pit of bones and scorch marks.


2. A Wheelie Bin

If you've seen any comedy-crime caper, you'll likely have witnessed a scene in which the protagonist has to throw a body off a bridge, so it lands perfectly onto a passing rubbish-barge sailing underneath. That is a nightmare of timing and precision, so it's far more convenient to simply take the body and stuff it into one of your recycling bins. Although the Government likes to make a song-and-dance about their commitment to the environment, binmen sure as hell don't check the bins to make sure all the papers and glass have been filtered seperately. In this scenario, you'll be relying on this inherent laziness to conceal the body. Nobody should look to see if there is a bloody arm hanging out the top of the bin (although you should attempt to hide this), and you'll be scot-free by the mid-afternoon.


3. Loch Ness

There is a monster living in Loch Ness. There's a relatively small lake and a giant monster. And nobody has managed to take anything other than a small fuzzy photo of it. Even if the monster doesn't eat the body for sustinence or kicks, it's a safe bet that the public won't find the body in that lake.


4. In the Middle of Your Lounge, During a Dinner Party

Dinner parties are an opportunity to show off your rare talent for subversive humour. Any guest heading to a dinner party are expecting a barrage of personality from the moment they come through the door to their final hesitant handshakes after midnight. What a superb chance to show your the new centrepiece of your household - an identical replica of your partner, albeit a replica which has had it's brains forcibly ejected via tiny metal shells. Nobody will think twice about the prop, which looks so lifelike and yet couldn't possibly be. No, of course not, there's no way that you'd be so bold as to kill your partner and then leave her body lying out in the open where everyone could see her.

Reverse psychology plays an important part in this scheme.


5. The Chinese Embassy

It will be difficult to make your way into the Chinese Embassy, which by all accounts has an alarm system on the windows and no other form of security. If you do trip the alarm, agents with guns will arrive within a tensely-plotted minute, so you'll have to be careful. For the most part, however, the poor lighting will keep you safe and hidden. If possible, recruit an internally-tortured MI5 agent who may well have had a former life as a foreign terrorist.


6. A Cannon Inside A Magical Painting of a Water-Spider

You can angle one of the cannons in Wet Dry World so Mario bounces off the invisible border around the edge of the level, hits the ground, and slides back into the cannon. This creates an endless loop of cannon-based Mario corpse shooting. Apply this principle to your deceased ex, and watch as hilarity ensues!


7. Inside Chris Langham's Career

We don't mean to be rude. But nobody would ever find it here.

You Monster! Why Joss Kills.... Kill #10

He Killed Off Wesley Wyndam-Price!


Who Was He?

When Joss killed off Doyle halfway through the first series of Angel, it was a genuinely shocking moment which caught almost everyone off-guard. To have Wesley turn up the episode afterwards, then, was perhaps not the most subtle turn of events – but that’s what happened. Wesley first appeared on Buffy, as a stuffy man appointed to be Buffy’s new mentor by the Council who watch over slayers. He was pompous and full of himself, but towards the end he showed a little bit of initiative by joining in the last battle of season 3. After that he vanished, ultimately popping up to be Doyle’s replacement on Angel, about a year later on.

It’s well-established that Wesley had the most organic and developed character-arc of any Whedon character so far created. Over five seasons of Angel he went from the two-dimensional coward who first appeared on Buffy and developed into a proper character, before then undergoing a further change as his life fell apart and he became all dark and brooding-like. He was fun, then he was admirable, then he was fascinating, and then he descended into sitting around a lot and grumbling in low-pitched tones about the meaning of life (but we’ll ignore that part of the series). He pined over Fred, who as we’ve previously explored, was cruelly killed by Whedon because he wants you to cry; and it was only a few episodes before she was killed off that they were actually paired off with each other, after three seasons of pining. This left Wesley with a little bit of a death-wish.


How Did He Die?

In the final fight of Angel the TV Series, each of the main characters was sent to fight one of the members of a demonic group called ‘ The Black Thorn’, who have essentially been their main opponents since the very start of the show. Each member of the team has their own little fight scene, and most of them come out of it victorious – apart from Wesley, that is, whose battle against a weirdo demonic sorcerer ends with him being stabbed in the chest.


Why Did He Die?

While Wesley is dying, the demon Illyria (who is living inside Fred’s body, remember – boy, it’s not easy keeping up with all of this, is it?) arrives and comforts him. He asks her to assume Fred’s form and comfort him, which she does, before he passes away in relative peace, on the floor. The demon sorcerer, assuming that Illyria is just a helpless girlfriend, invites her to take a free swing at him: she does, and smashes her demonic fist through his face.

It’s a moment of victory, and it wouldn’t have been gained unless Wesley hadn’t died. It’s tough to accept this, because he was a great character, but his death makes a lot of sense in context. He is, realistically, the character most likely to die – he has no powers, isn’t a demon or anything like that, and he’s up against a much stronger opponent. Joss Whedon also knew that this would be the end of the series, and his main theme for the show had always been that you never stop fighting. Angel, right at the end of the show, needed to be about the theme of continuation. Killing off Wesley, the most human character left on the show, resets Angel’s status and leaves him without any of his original allies. After five years, his work has saved many people, but it’s killed off most of the people he’s ever known. It continues his fight, and leaves him an ever-more-tragic figure.

Killing off Wesley also ramps up the action for the rest of the episode. We’ll get to this when we reach Serenity, but Joss Whedon has always been acutely aware of the best ways to increase tension in his work. Killing off characters is one of them, because it shows that anyone could realistically be killed off at any point in his work. If there’s anything we’ve learned from this rundown of cruel, cruel murder – it’s that Joss Whedon knows how to work an audience. Wesley’s death completed the story for his character, and Whedon himself says that his death scene was “one of my favorite moments that we shot... If you're going to go out, go out hard”.


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
5. It was a sad death, and a somewhat rushed death, but in the context of the episode it really did have to happen

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #9

He killed Winifred Burkle!


Who Was She?

Oh shut up. You know who she was. Everyone knows about Fred. She was lovely and a mainstay of ‘Angel’ ever since the end of the second series. A scientist who had post-traumatic shock, she eventually overcame it to become a friendly person whom all the male cast seemed to have a crush on at some point in time, because she was really quite lovely. She was given a laboratory in the fifth season, and was lovely.


How Did She Die?

Fred was working in her shiny new laboratory when a coffin was brought in for her to investigate. When she touched it some dust flew up into the air, which slowly poisoned her. She burnt up from the inside and her soul was destroyed forever, so she didn’t get to go to Heaven either. And then her body became the host for an ancient demon who never left it. This happened approximately a week after she finally started dating a character who had been in love with her for the past three seasons. It turned out that the coffin had been sent to her by a co-worker who was in love with her. He turned out to also worship the ancient demon (called Illyria) and so when it came to picking a body for Illyria to take over he thought “I know! Fred should be this body!” So she was killed slowly and died in the arms of her new boyfriend because a co-worker had a crush on her and was mental and then her insides all melted as her skin became rock solid and her soul was eradicated and the shell of her body was used to house Illyria, a demon.

Did nobody hug you when you were a child, Joss?


Why Did She Die?

• “I got really pissed off with the show when they did that. It was cruel!”
• “I was heartbroken when she died!”
• “When Fred died I cried.”
• “Why didn’t they kill Gunn? He was so much more annoying!”

These are a small sample of the many people Joss Whedon made into enemies on that night he killed of Winifred Burkle. The many people who will, if provoked, rummage through their potting shed for a weapon which they can use as they charge to his house and demand he take back all the pain that’s been caused over the years. The emotional pain. The pain of loss and grief which humankind was only ever meant to feel when someone close to them dies or runs away with their roommate John to Bristol and I never get to hear form her again, you heartless bitch.

Why did Joss Whedon kill off Fred? And why did he do it in such a horrific way? We know that it wasn’t anything to do with actress Amy Acker, because when Illyria rose up out of Fred’s body Acker played this new role with brilliant relish. She stayed with the show until the last episode that they filmed, but was now bright blue and a lot angrier. Unlike in the past, when Joss has killed off an character because of something happening behind the scenes Fred’s death didn’t come about because of anything the actress did with the character. Heck, the character herself had only just started on a potential new storyline as she’d been paired up with another one of the cast, and the public had waited years to see this develop. Things were finally starting to happen.

Joss Whedon has a mantra, which rings true for a lot of his work: “it’s not what the audience want, it’s what the audience needs.” He won’t tell a story with a happy ending because he believes that this will lead to his plots growing stale. Instead, his cast must deal with disaster after disaster ruining their lives time and time again, until eventually they die. There’s no guarantee when they’ll die either: but no character in a Joss Whedon production can ever expect to be happy for more than a week (other than the character of ‘Spike’ for some reason, whom Joss promoted rapidly for no apparent reason because he was pretty awful). As a result of his mantra, it made perfect sense for him to kill off Fred as soon as she had finally reached a position where she could finally be happy. Because nobody should ever be happy! Once a character is happy they have completed their story and are no longer needed. Some writers would write happy characters out so they can sail into the sunset: Whedon kills them.

There was no setup for this, really. He didn’t foreshadow the incident particularly, so when Fred died it took viewers completely by surprised. She became ill at the start of the episode, and over the next forty minutes she died. The effect this had on the overall story is negligible, although it definitely affected the characterisation of the major cast. Fred’s death changed the characters a little (it destroyed the progress of Wesley, for example, who quickly went from brilliant to endlessly mopey as the final few episodes went on), and it finally gave Gunn something to do. But this could all have been done without killing off Fred. Death is a cheap motivator, but it’s one which almost always works on TV. And for as long as Whedon is able to create unpredictability on his shows through murdering members of the cast as random points, he’ll do it.

Acker’s character on Dollhouse looks to be similarly doomed, although time will tell on that. Perhaps he just likes writing death scenes for her?


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
10. You’re going to Hell, Whedon.

Changing M. Night Shyamalan's Twists

M. Night Shyamalan is a busy man. When he isn’t releasing a stream of films which always feature a twist ending of some sorts, he’s… wait. No. That’s all he does. And Wilftonville isn’t really fond of any of these twists either. It’s all very well and good having them, but at least have ones which are interesting and will entertain people. Over the next few months we’re going to review the endings of each of his films in turn, to see what twists he should have incorporated into the scripts. As such, expect spoilers.


The Sixth Sense:

In The Sixth Sense Bruce Willis plays a doctor whose newest patient, a small boy, can see ghosts. Rather than drown the child for being a witch, Bruce investigates further and then realises he is a ghost and the whole thing is a wind-up. The kid can only see him in the first place because he’s one of the ghosts he’s come to help the kid stop seeing! This is played for farce, and eventually the boy introduces Bruce to a lovely young woman (played by Jennifer Garner) and they fall in love. As Bruce is dead, he has to convince the woman to kill herself by whispering in her ear so she thinks she’s crazy. Evrentually she takes an electric drill to her brain, and she and Bruce live happy ever after. In the ever after.

That’s well boring. Here’s how we think the film should end.


Haley Joel Osment: I can see dead people.

Bruce Willis: I know. Even though it’s impossible, I accept the fact that you can see dead people. Frankly, I find it creepy.

J-JO: Do you want to know my secret?

BW: The seeing dead people thing isn’t your secret?

J-LO: Don’t you wonder how I’m able to see dead people?

BW: I assumed you had spent lengthy periods of time around radiation.

J-LO: No, Bruce. I can see dead people because I am a Werewolf.

BW: Oh.

J-LO: Yeah.

BW: Well that explains everything to my satisfaction. I’m going to go solve my marriage problems now.

J-LO: Alright. See you later, Bruce!

BW: You alright, kid! You alright. Yippee-Ki-Yay, Mother Flipper.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #8

He Killed Off Cordelia Chase!

Who Was She?

When Whedon created a spin-off of his most famous show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, he transferred a few characters over there in order to make sure that his fans would follow the new show. Angel thusly featured both the eponymous vampire and the sarcastic cheerleader Cordelia in the main roles. As he went on, he later added several other Buffy characters into the mix in order to intermingle continuity and raise the profile of both shows. Cordelia turned up in Los Angeles as an aspiring actress who quickly realises that almost nobody ever makes it big in the city. Lost, she is saved by Angel from a vampire attack and promptly joins him in the fight against the forces of darkness. Although she prefers it when she’s paid to do so.

Cordelia was probably the most fun character, because she was rude to everyone equally, regardless of their capability to kill her. There was a cool thing they had where every few episodes she would be downtrodden and sad because of how bad her life got, only for her to then spring forth and have a great time where everything went right for her. On last count this happened roughly 628 times. Eventually, however, the show decided to try something new, so she went mental and slept with Angel’s son and killed off the best character on the show, Lilah. It was an unsettling time.


How Did She Die?

Once she’d gone mad and started doing strange things (killing people, talking to herself, Connor) she then gave birth to a full-grown woman called Jasmine, who enslaved the World. And then she fell into a coma and didn’t wake up for the rest of the fourth season. She returned in the final season, in the episode “You’re Welcome”, and helped Angel regain his sense of purpose. Together the duo saved the world from a threat, and she passed on to him a vision of the future – so he could change it, and make it positive.

And with that, she vanished, and it was revealed that she’d been dead all along, having died in hospital before the episode had started. It was very emotional, and anyone who didn’t cry was dead inside.

DEAD. INSIDE.


Why Did She Die?

Charisma Carpenter was sacked, and reprised her role one last time to give closure to the character before she vanished forever. It was none of the few times we’ve been able to see the backstage workings of any of Whedon’s shows, and it paints the man in a good light. Let me rephrase – it puts him in a good light, if you appreciate a sense of honesty. He fired Charisma Carpenter not because of any scandal that involved her (and the LOST writers may wish to learn from this) but because he simply could not think of any way to use her character anymore.

That takes quite some guys, considering that Cordelia appeared in the first three seasons of Buffy, and then four solid seasons of Angel. That’s quite the resume there, and yet Joss’ reason was true. Most recently Cordelia had gone through her little character arc of the shows and come out as a well-rounded character. Joss has no time for well-rounded characters, so he had her go through all that pregnancy madness, get possessed, and sleep with Angel’s son. It was madness. So whilst it’s nice to see that Joss can tell when a character has gotten worn out and should be taken off the show roster, it’s also a little sad that he refuses to have well-rounded characters stick around. Once characters get happy, they must die. It is something which we will discuss further next month – have you been paying attention to the chronology? If so, then you’ll have realised by now just how traumatic next month is going to be.


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
7. It was properly upsetting, but the death itself was handled very well.

The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters Of All Time (Part 8)

65: The Mighty Boosh: Howard Moon (Julian Barrett)
The funniest straight man in comedy today, Howard is as pretentious and up-himself as they come. Always the butt of the jokes made by his friend Vince Noir (Noel Fielding), Howard is completely repressed. He is vain and shallow, but tries to make himself out to be someone special, which leads to intensely awkward situations. He also tends to get kidnapped a lot, forcing Vince to go out and rescue him.


64: Prison Break: Theodore Bagwell (Robert Knepper)
Not many characters have been as consistently evil as Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell, a sick, twisted murderer with the ability to survive almost anything. During the first series he cropped up as a villain whom the main characters had to get past to escape the prison of the show, but… they didn’t. He got out with them, and then went on a killing spree. Knepper here managed to create a character everyone would hate, a man who is charming to the people he needs to charm, but vicious and without mercy once he has what he needs. It’s an astonishing performance, and it made every scene with his character riveting – far more so than any of the other characters.


63: Kenan and Kel: Kel Kimble (Kel Mitchell)
Nobody liked Kenan, because he was so uptight and had a terrible voice that took all the comedy out of everything. Much more interesting was Kel, a kid obsessed with orange soda. In fact, perhaps the only reason I even remember this character and put him in the list is because of his love for orange soda. I don’t even know him that well – he was a slacker, or something, the bad influence on Kenan who annoyed everyone else (especially Kenan’s apoplectic dad). I don’t have much else to say; this was perhaps a bad choice for the list but hey – it’s my list.


62: Angel: Wesley Wyndham-Price (Alexis Denisof)
We got to see an incredibly story-arc for Wesley, as his character started off as an inexperience, smug idiot on another show (Buffy), then moved across to the spin-off and grew into a distraught veteran who saw most of his friends die, had his throat slit, and had to watch the woman he loved die and resurrect as a demon. Yeah, it was not easy for Wesley, but he did he best to make it through, depressed though he was. His character began as comic relief and ended as the person everyone most wanted to have a happy ending. On a show filled with incredible, fascinating characters, Wesley was one of the strongest and most interesting of all. He betrayed, was betrayed, came back, shot and stabbed his way through life, and made it through to the series finale before being anticlimactically killed off. Just what he’d have wanted.


61: Dad’s Army: Frank Pike (Ian Lavender)
In a TV show about a group of people who are too old to go to war, it helps to have some youth to balance out the ranks of pensioners who must make up the majority of your cast. With Dad’s Army, a fabulous example of character-based comedy where just about every character could have a claim to enter this list, Frank Pike was that character, played with clueless aplomb by Ian Lavender. Pike was a mother’s boy through-and-through, who never took off his scarf and who was always the butt of the joke. For the more experienced members of the Home Guard, Pike was someone to be looked after, because he was so young and silly, and Pike was consistently annoyed by this – but cos he was so young and silly, he had to accept that they were almost always right about him. He also provided the country with a great new rhyme about Hitler, for which we must eternally thank the writers of the show.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #7

He Killed Off Anya!

Who Was She?

Anya was the hottest of all the girls on Buffy. Seriously! Now, let’s not get bogged down in a long diatribe about which of the girls on the show was the most attractive, but it’s commonly known that Buffy was not the one everyone fancied most. No, because Buffy was pretty up herself, and she couldn’t pronounce the phrase “ok” without doing this weird tic thing with her throat, and also – she suffered from main character syndrome. The main character in any show is rarely the most interesting one (for an exception to this rule, watch Dexter), and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s increasing distinterest in the role is quite a large reason for why the show went downhill after a few seasons. Many would claim that Willow was the most attractive girl, because she had a sexy nerd vibe going on and became a lesbian as the series progressed. I can see this, and I accept that Alyson Hannigan is a fine, fine lady. And then there are the people who proclaim victory for Cordelia, which is another good choice. But Anya was the one who was hottest.

Anya was the girl who ended up with Xander, who was the guy all the boys were supposed to empathise with. She was pretty and silly and didn’t mind the idea of sleeping with the emotional man-child that was Xander Harris. She was pretty well perfect, and on top of everything else? She recognised the importance of financial security. There’s nothing hotter than a woman with a sense of economics. But hey – let’s not be drooling fanboys here. We’ve got more important things to talk about. Anya was the girlfriend to the main male character for the majority of the show, and was comic relief most of the time (which made her scenes of drama – like her heartbreaking monologue in ‘The Body’ all the more upsetting). She was an ex-vengeance demon, also, but… well, you can’t have everything.


How Did She Die?

Anya made it to the final fight, in the last episode, but was chopped in half by a demon who attacked her from behind. Her death scene lasted all of a second, before the cameras left her and focused on the rest of the cast instead. It was irritating.


Why Did She Die?

Of course, this is what Joss wanted. Joss still wasn’t famous for being a murderer (he arguably has only become famous for this since his movie ‘Serenity’), but was still plain old multimillionaire TV Writer and Creator Joss Whedon. Buffy was his most famous TV show, and it was about to end, so he put all his attention onto making the finale the most perfect wrap-up of seven years’ work that he could. We had Buffy and her friends, as well as several returning appearances from important characters such as Faith and Angel. We had a massive fight between good and evil, and everything ended with the town the show had been set in getting sucked into Hell. We were expecting big stuff, and we certainly got it! But on top of all the violence, Joss Whedon managed to kill off/severely main quite a few of the characters. Spike exploded into dust (yay); Principal Wood got stabbed, as did Buffy; and a few of the potentials slayers also died – but nobody cared about any of them so it didn’t matter any.

Anya was the only big death of the episode, and the reason why Joss killed her seems simple. I’m not going to suggest something funny here – I’m going to tell you the legitimate reason why I think that Joss Whedon killed her off.

It’s because she was critical of Buffy.

That’s nothing new – during the seventh series much of the plot revolved around the idea that Buffy was an awful, awful leader. But most of the characters who criticised her did so without seeming like human beings. When the rest of her friends all turned against her, it made no sense at all. When Faith took over control of the team, it didn’t seem logical. Giles got in a few good words against our blonde heroine, but he was mostly ignored. Spike shouted at her, but at this point Spike had become a neutered, horrific character who was a black mark in the history of the show. Anya was the only main character to coherently attack Buffy, and that’s why Joss killed her. For all his talk about female equality, he seems awfully eager to have his female leads be morally perfect – you can see this with Cordelia Chase from Angel, or River Tam from Firefly, and you’ll probably see it with Echo in Dollhouse. None of his women seem to have any flaws, and if they do have flaws then they tend to conveniently erase themselves at some point so the women can be tops. Anya didn’t realise this.

There had to be one character who died so that the rest could all seem more fallible, so it could feel more believable that anyone will die. But by picking Anya instead of one of the more likely fall-guys (there were five or six untrained characters in this last fight, and none of them took a hit) Joss showed off his lack of interest in a broken female lead. Buffy was right, Anya was wrong, and before y’know it there’s a sword cutting Emma Caulfield in half. Is any of this making sense?

There was, as well, the fact that Emma Caulfield had stated that she didn’t want to appear in any spin-offs or continuations of the show after series 7. So that might have had something to do with it too.


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
9. This was quite an awful and unloving death for a character we'd known for over four years.

Ten Reasons You Shouldn’t Have Sex With A Vampire

1:Vampires are dead. You are having sex with a corpse. This is illegal in most countries.

2: Vampires have super-strength. If you have sex with one, they will probably shatter your pelvis (among other things)

3: Vampires can’t get you pregnant.

4: Vampires have no blood circulation, so they won’t be able to… perform… certain tasks.

5: Vampires have no body heat. Having sex with one would be freezing.

6: Vampires will never age. You will get older and older, until they get bored of you and dump you.

7: Vampires aren’t real.

8: Vampires sleep in coffins. Coffins get cramped if more than one person occupies them at a time.

9: Vampires are pale. They probably glow in the dark. Ew!

10: Vampires are f***ing EVIL.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #6

He Killed Off Jonathan!

Who Was He?

Jonathan was a semi-recurring character, a student who shared classes with Buffy between series 1-3. Jonathan was portrayed as the stereotypical sort of class outcast who nobody wanted anything to do with. Even Buffy, herself somewhat of an outcast due to her hobby of killing members of the undead, didn’t hang out with him at all. Instead, Jonathan was the recurrent butt of the jokes made by bullies, and wasn’t given any sort of proper role in the show for three seasons apart from as a recognisable member of the school population. In series 3, that changed when he got two episodes in which he played important roles. First, Buffy found him with a gun, and thought he meant to kill the bullies who plagued his life – only to find out he really only planned to kill himself. It was poignant, and afterwards we got this exchange between Buffy and her mentor, Giles.

BUFFY: Well, it's nice to be able to help someone in a non-slaying capacity. Except, he's starting to get that look, you know, like he's gonna ask me to Prom.
GILES :Well, it would probably be good for his self-esteem, if you...
BUFFY: Oh come on! What am I, Saint Buffy? He's like three feet tall!

Always compassionate, that one. Then later, Jonathan gave her an award at the end of her final year on behalf of the school, “Class Protector”, which was another nice moment. Jonathan vanished for a while, before returning for one episode in series 4 where he cast a spell to make the whole world love him – that didn’t end too well – and eventually formed a misguided, sad trio with two other people who attempted to be like super villains in series 6. That also, didn’t end too well. Jonathan then vanished for a while.


How Did He Die?

Jonathan came back with some intention of helping to save the World by finding a magical pentagram which he planned to show to Buffy. She would then see this pentagram, realise that Jonathan was a hero after all, and accept him as one of the team. Instead, his friend Andrew stabbed him in the side with a knife, and Jonathan’s dying body bled all over the aforementioned magical pentagram and activated it. Oops.


Why Did He Die?

From a practical viewpoint, Jonathan died so that Andrew could be integrated into the main cast and start the long road to becoming a heroic character. Andrew was a weak sort of character when he stabbed his only friend, and was manipulated into doing it by the Incarnate Essence Of Evil (of course), so when he killed Jonathan it technically wasn’t a completely evil deed. Although it was. Look, we’re on a bit of shaky ground here, because the show at this point was ruled by the side-characters. Buffy, Xander, Willow had all lost their credibility as voices of reason during season 6 when they shouted and acted irrationally all the time, which meant that when Buffy condemned Andrew for killing Jonathan it didn’t really ring true. So really, the viewer had to decide what they made of it.

Someone had to die in order for the magic pentagram of doom to work, and although the show at this point had introduced a series of ‘potential’ slayers to the cast, any of whom could have been killed off, Joss doesn’t like to work that way. He likes to cause pain. Jonathan, despite his turn as a villain for a while, was a fan-favourite character and doubtless had his name scrabbled on Joss’ little book of likable characters. Joss has this book filled with nice characters that the fans like for one reason: to kill them off. There is nothing the guy likes more than to kill off the characters that everyone likes – and this became more and more prevalent as the years have gone by. So, when faced with a portal that needed blood, and no way of getting that blood from his main cast or supporting cast, Joss turned to his little book and jabbed at a random page. Jonathan. Thus, his character returned so that he could be killed. That’s just how it works.


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
7. Killing off Jonathan was a mean move, but we got the super ‘Storyteller’ episode later on because of Andrew’s actions in this episode.

You're Smoking?

A new anti-smoking campaign was introduced this week by English officials who are just sick and tired of seeing all those beds in hospitals go to all the whiny little cancer-sufferers. You might know that in times past the Government forced cigarette companies to put messages on every pack of fags that would put people off smoking. Things like “smoking gives you cancer”. It’s true, but the campaign hasn’t really been all that effective, and in many cases the realisation that smoking causes cancer bummed out smokers so much they needed another cigarette to calm their shattered nerves. Not anymore. The Government, in a show of their wise wisdom which comes from many many years of being morally corrupt, have started putting photos on cigarette packs that show lungs that belonged to smokers. Naturally, these lungs are black and nasty-lookin’, because for some reason cigarette companies put tar in their product (how was that ever going to help your cause, cigarette companies?). The idea, believe politicians, is that these photos will turn people off smoking.

Maybe it will. Yet what comes next? The Government has so far, gone through a pattern:

1: Slogans offering scientific facts
2: Slogans that exaggerate things in order to scare smokers.

1: Pictures offering scientific facts.
2: ?

Looking at that quickstep guide, can you guess what’s going to come next? I can’t hear what you might be saying, by the time you read this everything I’ve written is from the past, and thus I cannot hear it because to me you are from the future. Just an existential thought for you, there. The next logical step is to take pictures which are completely out of context and try to attach them to smoking.


Of course, there’s no way that you can ever stop all smokers from smoking. People are always going to do it. As it stands, smokers have to go outside whenever they want to smoke (something which is much more daunting for Brits than for people who live in the rest of the world, admittedly), they have to see pictures of dead lungs and stuff whenever they buy a pack of cigarettes, they have a lot for weight against them. Eventually the Government is going to decide that the current over-the-top photos of explosions being causes by smokers aren’t enough. They need something MOAR:

This is going to happen, believe me.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

2
The Undertaker

As any wrestling fan of merit (thus I lay down the gauntlet to you, oh commenters) will attest to: nobody is better than The Undertaker. He’s one of the most respected guys in the industry, both amongst fans and the other wrestlers themselves. He’s made his fair share of mistakes – the months and months he spent as “the American badass” springs to mind, where his character became a dull biker with sunglasses and a bandana to boot – but for the most part it’s hard to say that the guy has put a foot wrong. He’s been wrestling with the WWF since 1990, and as such has been on the books for longer than almost every other wrestler currently going. And during this time, he’s made a name for himself as possibly one of the most charismatic and astonishing athletes that’ve ever entered the ring.

The Undertaker has a great variety of mvoes which he’s made his own, from his one-handed chokeslam, to the tombstone piledriver, to a move where he walks on the ropes of the ring and bounces off them to deliver a smashing chop to his opponent’s shoulder. He can lift his giant foot to head height in order to hit another competitor, and uses a flying lariat (where he flips round in the air) with sometimes regularity. He also uses a variety of submissions, giving him the ability to win a match through all three of the usual routes – pin, submission, and TKO. He also has a pin where he rearranges the downed wrestler so they look like they’re sat in a coffin. Because you see, The Undertaker’s gimmick is that he is a supernatural sort of entity, a sinister ‘apparition’ who not only wins matches, but claims the soul of his opponent as he does so. It’s.. a little silly, in fairness, but it’s played with a spine-tingling nerve. Whenever he appears the crowd go mad – there is only one wrestler who has ever got a crowd more excited, and he wins this list – and it’s because of the way his gimmick is handled.

The Undertaker’s character plays things seriously. Despite the silliness of having a “buried alive” or “inferno” match, the fact that The Undertaker is the man involved elevates the whole thing and makes it seem, dare we say, more probable? The toll bell that announces his arrival, the smoke and darkness, it all seems really over-the-top until Undertaker himself appears. And now he’s regained this persona, after giving it up after ten years to become a rubbish motorbiker, he’s become an even more riveting persona than ever before. He’s been in some of the most memorable matches of all time – the casket match was brought about in part because of him, as well as the buried alive/inferno matches. But he can also take part in ladder matches, and the Hell In A Cell (perhaps the most infamous event in WWF history, aside from the TLC match) was made for him. It’s no surprise, considering all that The Undertaker has going for him, that he’s won Royal Rumbles and currently holds an unbeaten record at Wrestlemania of 16 matches won in a row. That’s sixteen years of wrestling. And he’s still going, and still in fantastic condition.

He also has his wife’s name tattooed across his neck, which is scary as anything.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #5

He Killed Off Lilah Morgan!

Who Was She?

We’ve moved onto Angel now, Whedon’s spinoff from Buffy about the eponymous vampire setting up shop in LA. For three seasons it was a dark and fascinating show about redemption, and then for one season it was a depressing show about darkness and people being miserable. Lilah, as a lawyer for the evil demonic law firm “Wolfram and Hart”, was a permanent thorn in the side of the heroes, always throwing litigation in their faces or providing representation for their adversaries – when they weren’t busy trying to turn Angel evil, that is, or attempting to kill off varying members of the team. Lilah was one of two important characters connected to the firm, with the other being the reckless Lindsay, who was actually a dude. Lilah was one of those harsh, cold businesswomen who was obviously terrified on the inside of the world she was stuck in. She tried to make best, but we saw her completely soften as the show went on, so that by series 4 (easily the weakest series the show ever had) she was a meek foil for the other characters to mess around with. She was great fun while she was strong, though.


How Did She Die?

In series 4 a lot of odd character turns happened which didn’t reflect the characters we knew and loved. The chief of these was when Cordelia got possessed by evil and betrayed the entire team for almost half a season, in a storyline which holds the record for having the most rubbish elements any Joss Whedon story has ever had, all in one. Basically, Lilah was with the heroes in a hotel while Angel had been turned evil (it is SO complicated to explain this), and Cordelia bumped into her. Lilah was surprised and was all “oh, hey Cordelia”, and then Cordy stabbed her in the neck with a two-pronged knife, so it looked like she’d been killed by a vampire bite. She died of blood loss.


Why Did She Die?

This is one of the most pointless deaths Joss Whedon ever brought us. Lilah dies so that Angel gets blamed for killing her, but there is barely any recrimination for this. Wesley spends an episode trying to decide if he should lop the head off her corpse in case she comes back to life as a vamp – he does in the end, incidentally – but apart from that there was nothing else going on here. This death could have gone to anyone, and was in no way worthy of the diva fabulousness of Lilah. She was a bitchy queen, but her death signalled the end of all female characters in the show. First was Lilah, then Cordy, then Fred… this was the death which sparked it all off. And you know why Lilah died? It’s because of this diva fabulousness. It’s called “Dazzler Syndrome”, after the X-Men character with a startlingly massive fanbase. When a character is so fabulously bitchy and tremendous in every way, it weighs down. There is only so much you can do before she takes over the show, and you have to put her down, fast, before she becomes the sole reason anyone is interested in the show/comic. Dazzler got sent to another dimension: Lilah got killed. It’s all part of a longer-term plan, you see.


Joss, You Monster! Rating:
3. It was crap, but at least she got the fabulous exit she deserved in the last episode of series 4. Too little too late, really.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #4

In light of 'certain' events, it feels like the right time to bring back our long-time feature, which tries to find out just why Joss Whedon loves killing so much. So, without further ado, here is kill #4:


He killed off Tara Maclay!

Who Was She?

She was the girlfriend of Buffy’s best friend Willow, and was a kind of shy girl who started out rubbish but became less and less rubbish as the show went on. By the time we reached the murky and bleak sixth season, she had become one of the better characters left on the show. We’d known this character for two seasons now, and were used to her being a reliable part of Buffy’s gang.

How Did She Die?

She was killed by an impossible bullet fired off by the (until now) consistently useless and annoying Warren, who was trying at the time to get to Buffy. The impossible bullet was fired while Tara was stood on the second floor of Buffy’s house, and Warren was outside with Buffy, shooting at her. His first shots hit Buffy, and as he ran off he fired more shots into the air for no reason. Tara just so happened to be stood by the window at this time, and one of the slugs went straight through her chest, in blatant disregard to everything you were ever taught about angles at school.

Why Did She Die?

But she was on the credits sequence! Joss put her on the title sequence for the first time, so she had a slot with all of the other regular cast members, and then killed her off in the very same episode that she first got given recognition. Do you know what that is? Mean. It meant that we could then have a season finale where Willow got mad and tried to kill first Warren (which was perfectly valid, really), and then his friends (slightly less fair of her). It also meant we got to see what Alyson Hannigan looked like with black hair and glowy veins. But that’s not the real reason he killed her off. The real reason is that Joss Whedon hates all women. Ha! You may not realise this, because the press gives him this reputation as an equal-rights campaigner who likes to give women strong roles. But nobody ever mentions how much he likes to kill off his female leads. You see, what Joss Whedon is doing here is building up the women just to knock them down, because secretly he doesn’t understand why women were ever allowed out of the kitchen in the first place. That is why Tara died. If she’d stuck to knitting and never tried to do anything, then she’d still be alive.

Joss, You Monster! Rating:
6. Upsetting, but we got over it quicker than Willow did.

The Five Best Ways To Kill Mario

The Best Ways To Kill Mario

Mario is one of the quintessential heroes of the modern age. Alongside a hedgehog, an elf, a bear/bird combo and... uh, Rayman, the plucky Italian plumber is one of the ‘elite’ computer game characters, someone who is utterly untouchable as far as heroics go. He fights giant dinosaurs and saves Princesses, and he doesn’t even need a shotgun to do it! (take that, Bob Peck in Jurassic Park!) Many people, if pressed to choose their most beloved computer-game hero, would go for Mario, making him not only powerful, but popular too.

But what about when he gets a little too powerful and popular?

Well obviously, we have to kill him off before he starts developing an ego, and in Super Mario 64 there are many, many ways to do this. You can drop him in lava, electrocute him, make him fall off a cliff because a penguin pushed him – the possibilities, if not endless, are at least varied and highly entertaining. Because we know you people don’t have time to get out your N64 though, we thought we’d list out five favourite ways of killing off the red-hatted Italian for you. We’re so good to you.


5. Squashed
I don’t know how many levels this can be done on, but if you go to Tick Tock Clock, there are these platforms that float up into the air and then drop down, and you’re meant to climb onto them to reach new levels. Don’t do this though, kids. Instead, wait until they lift off the ground and deftly manoeuvre Mario underneath, and then cackle malevolently as the block proceeds to squash the feller. Interestingly, sometimes his body vanishes when this happens, which suggests that when this happens he is squashed completely flat and sticks onto the underside of the platform as it takes off again. In any case, there isn’t any blood, rendering the realism of the game sketchy at best.

4. Drowned
There are many, many situations where you can drown Mario like a rat in this game. Which one you like the most is up to you, although I have a particular fondness for the aquarium bonus level, because there is no air in the room at all. The whole building is just one watery death-trap, thus rending the death of the plumber inevitable. There is literally nowhere he can escape to! By killing him in this room, you also learn a valuable lesson about curiously walking into ill-lit areas to see what are in them – because all you’ll find is certain death, kiddies. In fact, even when you win the area and pick up the star, that in now way automatically brings Mario out of the room. Every time you win that level, he presumably dies! Damn, Nintendo, but that's dark.

3. Flown Into A Building
This is probably only possible on two levels, being the mini-area where Mario is granted the wing-cap and the outside of the castle, once you’ve completed the game. In both cases, you should knock Mario down to very low health before flying him directly into one of the big buildings. His bonce will bounce off the building and he’ll fall downwards, either landing in the courtyard and promptly collapsing, or falling into an infinite sky. In both cases, the fun comes from the dozy “mmmph!” noise Mazza makes when he crunches into the building, as you can audibly hear his nose crumble upon impact. For more fun, give him a long build-up of flying fun before splatting him against the side.

2. Eaten
On the Tiny-Huge Island (I don’t think that is the actual name of the level, but I can’t remember everything, can I?) there is a giant fish floating around one of the levels for no reason. Whilst all the fish on the tiny part of the island are, indeed, tiny, only one of them is actually inflated in size when you go to huge island, which must mean it ate all the others. This fish also wears a pair of outlandish sunglasses, despite having no ears, which is undeniably amazing. Anyway, if you swim Mario out to where this fish lives, then instead of it leaving the guy alone to enjoy a peaceful swim in his dungarees, it will instead eat Mario whole. Even though Mario is proportionally as big as the fish, the thing will swallow him whole and risk simultaneous organ failure just so the plumber dies. Clearly, this biker-fish is the greatest thing ever.

1. Swallowed In Quicksand
Easily the best way to kill Mario, take him to Shifting Sand Land and enter the pyramid, which is inexplicably filled with metal structures and electric monsters which I can’t imagine are ever actually found in Egyptian structures. Those people were clever, but not that clever, dude! Anyway, jump over the barrier and stand in the sandy floor, and you’ll notice Mario very slowly get sucked downwards. Mario himself realises what’s happening quite slowly, until he gets up to his chest and starts trying to wade out. There’s no way to survive though, not when we have control of his body functions – sit back and crack open a cool beer as you watch him vanish before your eyes, sticking out one hand in the air in silent salute before the ground claims him back. You can do this in a number of different poses too, and I recommend experimenting with the different positions you can suffocate him in.
In all seriousness though: don’t stand in quicksand, children.

Some Fab New Areas That Hell Has Just Revamped

The last time IEF went to go visit Hell for a while, there were nine different circles going on with all different people in them, having not fun times with fire and ice and snakes and boiling lava and stuff all putting them in pain. It isn’t the best place to go visit, but we were commissioned to take the piss out of the sinners, and a paycheque’s a paycheck, folks. Who are we to turn money down? We got asked to return last year for a bit, and were offered an even bigger cheque this time round. Y’know why? Because they’ve done some refurbishment since we were last there, and they’ve added a whole new set of circles to go on top of the nine that are already there. Limbo’s been got rid of, and so Circle 1 is now home to a group of punishments which are known as “the kinda harsh tortures”. They established nine more groups of people that they thought needed to get some torture done to them, and they now live in the first circle of Hell. Here they are.


Sat in a room with no natural light source, the people who turn the light on when they enter a room even when the light doesn’t need to be on are forced to read aloud novels by James Joyce, straining their eyes terribly in the process. Once they finish each book, they are sent into the room of enlightenment, where they must stare unblinking at a fluorescent light for a period of time decided by their guards.

A set of low-rent flats house many sinners, who must live out their lives from their room whilst hell-demons and devils have noisy sex in the room next to them, the werewolf above their room jumps around every night making wolf-noises, and vampires listen to their goth-metal music really loudly in the room below them. For these are the bad neighbours, who made earth a hell for the people who lives next to them, and they will pay for their inconsiderateness.

The people who dress up their pets and children as if they were adults live nearby, where their punishment is to eternally try to clothe a sabre-toothed tiger whilst it is still alive. Whenever they attempt to dress the animal up in clothes, it will maul at them and rip them to pieces, only for them to be reincarnated at the end of each day to try and fail again.

In the lake of pity, a giant fish slaps the vegetarians who for some reason think that it’s okay to eat fish repeatedly, in the face, with his tail tearing their skin off with the sandpaper-like scales that adorn its body. However, whenever the fish tires, pigs and cows and sheep will come and sooth the wounds of these sinners, even though they are pretty hypocritical.

In punishment for their haste, the motorcyclists who don’t follow the laws of driving have to walk forevermore down the wrong way of a motorway, heading to Hull. As they go many of the cars will clip them or run over their feet. Whenever they get close to their final destination a car will pull out and drive onto the hard shoulder illegally, skip some traffic lights, overtake a car they shouldn’t, and hit the motorcyclists, sending them flying back to the beginning, where they must start the journey again.

In the supermarket of hell (Tesco), many women will have to wait in line for the check-out for years on end without being allowed to put down their heavy shopping baskets, thus causing their arms enormous pain. When they do get past the checkout, their bags will break and they will have to go through the whole process again. This is the punishment of the women who get to the end of a checkout without having already got out their cards and money ready to pay for their shipping who then start looking through their handbags for them and waste everyone else’s time.

Although unused as of yet, there is a small amphitheatre built in this circle of hell which will soon house all of the dull singer/songwriters who thought that by making boring music they can appeal to the mass market of teenage girls who fancy them, where they will have to listen to each other perform in concert.

The final area of this new revamp of the first circle of hell is for fat people. This place has no connection to those who are glutinous, instead serving as a giant fitness centre where fat people will have to train incessantly whilst a tray of tantalising cakes sits nearby. Whenever they stop their cardio workout to head towards the cakes, the cakes will morph into ferocious elephants that will grab the fat people and use them as a bowling ball down an alleyway of fire, before they hit the pins made of pure electricity. Then they have to get back to work before boxercise starts. It turns out, you see, that nobody likes fat people.

So those are the new additions to hell, which shows no sign of losing any of the horrific charm which has kept it the only place for sinners to go when they die. They promise to add even more areas soon, and I’ve been told to come back and see them ‘up close’ in 62 years, which seems awfully precise, actually, now I think about it…

Family Films Which Will Warp Your Child

To celebrate the child in all of us, let’s have a look back at some classic family films, and why they are in fact dangerous and will turn your children into terrifying perils to society. Hurray for liberal ideals taking over the past and ruining your childhood! Hurray for them!


1: Back To The Future

The adventures of Marty McFly were chronicled in what could honestly be called the best movie trilogy of all time. There are no missteps here, no poor third film to drag down the others (see: Spiderman) and the films wrap up perfectly by the time film III is over. The acting is fun and the plots are entertaining, while the jokes work and there are people flying around on hoverboards. This is a film for the ages, and kids are bound to love it – did I mention the hoverboards?

Features: Incest, Rape, Jaywalking

Ah, yes. There are several points in the first film where Marty almost has sex with his mother before he is even born, blowing up the corpse of Freud as he spins in his grave in the process. And yes, we’ll admit this, there is a ‘minor’ rape scene when Biff forces himself on Marty’s mum in a car. She gets rescued, luckily, but not without a few bruises. And finally, Marty breaks the Green Cross Code repeatedly through all of the films, first by skateboarding haphazardly round the town square whilst Biff tries to kill him, and then repeats the same act (on a hoverboard, natch) in film two, narrowly avoiding other cars both times. This can’t set a good message for the children.


2: The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy

Peter Jackson’s trilogy is another which could contend for the greatest film trio in history. It’s aimed mainly at geeks, but children love it too, as they watch Frodo attempt to make his way to Mt Doom (why would anyone name it that?) to destroy a ring. Meanwhile, Ian McKellan watches on and shouts from time to time, wondering what else he has to do before they’ll give him a role in one of the Harry Potter films. It’s a rip-roaring swashbuckler, guaranteed to keep the kids on the edge of their seats.

Features: Depression, Multiple-Personality Disorder, Animal Cruelty

Good point. And don’t forget how they kill off most of the heroes at one point or another. The depression comes from Frodo and the other hobbits, who get seriously bleak as the films go on, before getting happy again, before then becoming really depressed again. Seriously, half the endings to the film (there are many endings to this film, one after another) are all about hobbit depression. And if you want your kid to see all about how multiple-personality disorder affects people, show them this film for an entirely sympathetic view to the plight of sufferers. They’ll learn that anyone who has this has a good side and an evil side, who talk to each other in mirrors (see also: Heroes). The number of animals who die for no reason in the films is pretty staggering as well – in the final film, count how many of the elephants get killed. Harsh, dude.


3: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

A fun film which combines the real world with the world of Disney characters! Roger Rabbit is a hilarious romp for everyone, featuring cute cartoon characters fighting to save their town from the evil villain, all seen through the eyes of grumpy private detective Bob Hoskins. Physical comedy combines with slapstick to give the whole family a treat every Boxing Day, the only day of the year anyone will ever show this film on TV.

Features: Alcoholism, Bestiality, Cartoon Porn.

I forgot about that. This film is a lot grittier than you remember it, people. Bob Hoskins has fallen into alcoholism after his brother was killed (by a falling grand piano – oh, the bitter genius!) and drinks heavily throughout the film. When he’s not drinking himself drunk every third scene, he’s being attacked by smoking weasels (no seriously, they have cigars) or getting pissed off with Roger, himself the most annoying cartoon character of all time, almost certainly. It’s all good, because we know in the end it’ll sort itself out – but what about when Jessica Rabbit shows up? Do you really want your kids to see her, and realise that not only are we meant to fancy this animated character, but that within the context of the film she has sex with Roger Rabbit? Who is, lest you don’t get it, a rabbit? I thought not.


4: Finding Nemo

A cutsey computer animated film from Pixar which explores the lush surroundings of the sea as Nemo’s bedraggled dad tries to find his son, who has gone missing, aided by a gormless fish, some pelicans, and a stoned turtle. They sure do have crazy minds, those writers. The adventure gets really exciting once some sharks come onto the scene, as the search for Nemo starts to become pretty darned intense. Featuring fun and colourful ideas at every turn, what family wouldn’t enjoy sitting down for a while to watch this film?

Features: Death, Parental Neglect, Talking To Strangers

Maybe a family who don’t want to bring up these points into conversation. At the start of the film Nemo’s mum gets eaten – well depressing, by the way – so he is raised by his dad, who is overly protective, right up until the time when he neglects his son and the kid wanders off on his own, gets captured, has all manner of wacky adventures. If this isn’t a bad enough experience to foist on your children, watch in horror as Nemo merrily talks to every single damned thing he meets, and imagine what this is going to mean the next time a drug dealer offers your child some sweeties. It’s not going to end well, is it?


5: Mary Poppins

The biggest family classic of all. Mary Poppins is THE film for any family who want to pass a rainy afternoon, offering lessons in how to make cleaning your room fun (hint: have a magic room that dances for you) or drinking your medicine. That actually may not be too good for your kids if they get their hands on your medicine cabinet, now I think about it. But regardless, this film features pure celluloid joy, with the family learning how to be happier people from Ms Poppins herself, and they dance and sing together and everything’s a jolly ‘oliday for them.

Features: An LSD Trip, Murder

Oh dear. Halfway through, the gang jump into a street painting and magically turn up in a fantasy world filled with singing geese and penguin waiters offering them drinks… If that’s not a sign of LSD intake, then I don’t know what is. When your children ask you “how comes they got inside the painting, dad?” just remember that your answer should not at any point refer to the fact that the street sweeper has probably drugged them so they won’t notice while he molests them (Now THAT is unwarranted slander). Mr Banks gets fired from his job at the bank, so he tells his boss a joke. The boss then laughs so hard that he has a massive heart attack and dies – that’s murder. But the film glosses over this, as Mr Banks gets his job back afterwards and everything ends happily. Except for the bank manager’s family, of course.

Some Other People Who Helped Kill Diana

I have pity for Mohammed Al Fayed. His son was killed, for God’s sake! That’s an awful thing for anyone to have to go through. Having said that though, his continual insistence that only a major government conspiracy could be responsible for the death of his son is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. At the Diana Trial this week (yeah, they’re having another one) he accused the Royal Family, MI5, MI6, the media, and every Judge who has ever disagreed with Him (seriously) of being in on the conspiracy. But that is merely the tip of the iceberg. Illicitly Eating Flowers stealthily got into the courtroom on the day of his testimony, and there were many other people he blamed who the papers didn’t have space to mention. Here then are just a few of the other people who were responsible for the death of Princess Diana:


The Medical Profession
France
All Landmine Victims
Nicholas Cage
Private Eye Magazine
All Car Manufacturers
People Who Don’t Shop At Harrods
The General Public
Every Football Team in England Except Fulham FC
Everyone Who Isn’t Called Mohammed Al Fayed.

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #3

He Killed Off Joyce Summers!

Who Was She?

She was Buffy’s mummy! She was there for Buffy all through the first four seasons, sometimes giving her advice and quite often a stern perplexed look of “quoi”? (See, in my mind, I always thought that Joyce thinks in French) Joyce provided a rock for Buffy, always being there to give some nurturing advice/occasionally get kidnapped. There was this one time that she denounced Buffy to the rest of the town… but there was magic involved, it was all complicated and whatever, let’s not dwell on it. Basically, she was the nicest person and she helped Buffy to keep going, even when she was in crisis. And then she died. On the sofa. She came back, admittedly, just in time to creep the hell out of everyone in that episode which didn’t have Xander. But at this point she was, admittedly, an illusion created by The First Evil.

How Did She Die?

Aneurism, yo! She got some kind of tumour in her head towards the start of season 5, and then she got cured from it. And then she died from a complication. It was one of the only deaths that happened where magical spirits were not involved at any point, and Buffy got to walk in to her home and find her dead mother lying on the sofa, eyed wide open. Damn, Joss.

Why Did She Die?

Things were getting too happy – Buffy wasn’t upset about anything, Xander and Willow were both in happy relationships (not with each other, natch) and Giles was… off doing whatever Giles did best, I suppose. Obviously, someone needed to die. As Buffy didn’t have a boyfriend at this moment in time, Joss was forced to turn to her family. Dad had been missing for some time, her little sister was part of the ongoing storyline, so Joyce was the only option he had left. And besides, what’s more cruel than to almost kill off a character, then pretend she’s fine, and THEN kill her off? Genius. So Buffy’s mum died, and this sparked off possibly one of the finest hours of dramatic television, as we saw all the main characters try to deal with this unexpected death. For once, you could justify the death of Joyce, because the character was completely rounded off in the episodes afterwards. This was dealt with properly, paying full attention to her and what she meant to everyone, and you have to respect a writer who can stop his show for something like this. And at least she died after having sex with Anthony Head. If only all women could be so lucky.

Joss, You Monster! Rating:
4. It was shocking and cruel, yes, but Joss justified it in the end, which is more than he ever did with Wesley. (Grrr)