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?

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.

The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters (Part 10)

55: Xena: Joxer (Ted Raimi)
Joxer the Mighty
He's very tidy
Everyone admires him
He's so handsome it's a sin
When you're in jeopardy
Don't call the cavalry
There's a better remedy
(Although he doesn't work for free)
He's every man's trusty,
He's every woman's fantasy,
Plus he's goo-oood company
He's Joxer—I'm Joxer the Mighty!


54: Firefly: Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin)
Every single character on Firefly apart from Book (you are RUBBISH, Shephard Book) was fun to watch up on the small screen. Jayne Cobb is no exception, being a self-serving bastard who is sticking around with the rest of the characters on their tiny little spacecraft only until he gets a better deal somewhere else. He has no regard for any of the others, so long as he ends up with a paycheque at the end of each job they take and somewhere to sleep. And also, guns. He was a big fan of guns. Adam Baldwin took this snide character and gave him no pathos at all, and yet still made the public like him. Jayne had respect for only a few members of the crew, but Baldwin managed to convey this very subtly – so when Joss Whedon eventually made an episode which hinged around this (I’m thinking of the superb scene featuring Mal and Jayne in the airlock, and will say no more of it to anyone who hasn’t seen) it all came spilling out and felt natural instead of forced. That single scene was what propelled Jayne into this list. Adam Baldwin is much more versatile as an actor than he is given credit for.


53: My Name Is Earl: Randy Hickey (Ethan Suplee)
At the time this list was being written, which is something close to two years ago My Name Is Earl was still seen as one of the bigger comedy shows around. Having Jason Lee play the main character helped with this of course, because Jason Lee is an insanely talented person, but the real stars of the show turned out to be the supporting cast. From Jaime Pressly’s white-trash squawking mother to her boyfriend, who is called… Crabman, there is nary a dud in there. Most of all, there is a massive winner in the form of Ethan Suplee’s character, Randy Hickey. Earl’s brother Randy is not smart or particularly agile, and may in fact be the closest thing to Winnie The Pooh ever seen in real-life TV. He is a big bumbling fool, but the sort of bumbling fool that most people would want to hug. There isn’t a bad bone in his body (most of the time) and he just wants things to be silly, because he’s barely developed mentally. It’s encouraging.


52: Will and Grace: Jack Walker (Sean Hayes)
Everyone needs an intensely annoying camp-gay stereotype in their lives. I know that I certainly have one! But for all those people out there who are missing out on their fix of gay-o-rama look no further than Will & Grace. Nobody liked the two main characters – well, maybe Will had his moments, but Grace was infuriating – and the show quickly honed in on the two characters of Jack and Karen. They took over proceedings entirely, with Sean Hayes’ unabashedly madcap character filling every scene he was in with shrieking, enthusiasm, and irritating quips. More often than not he was hateable, but he was insistently watchable. With him on the screen, none of the other cast members could get a look-in. Karen was better, but Jack was undeniably eye-catching.


51: The American Office: Pam (Jenna Fischer)
The Office is a reactive show rather than a show where the characters make things happen for themselves. Due to the nature of the program none of the cast can ever really change their status quo in a memorable way, which you’d think would mean that they’re less interesting. No! Pam the receptionist – called Dawn in the original, remember, and played by Lucy Davis – is a lovely character, and effortlessly adorable. This is mostly due to the talents of Jenna Fischer, who has managed to pitch herself as the girl of any man’s dreams whilst seeming like a real, broken person and not a wish-fulfilment fantasy. When you watch a sitcom and some of the characters exist simply so they can be romantic interest, they are almost always annoying and feel misplaced. Pam from The Office feels like an integral part of the show, and that’s no mean feat.

TV Suggestions

Dollhouse

How much range does Eliza Dushku have as an actress? Everyone who supports Joss Whedon’s new show ‘Dollhouse’ is a little worried about this right now. At the time of writing she has played four roles so far, and two of them appeared to be “Faith: The Vampire Slayer” but with different clothes on. When she dressed as a hostage negotiator it was not as incredibly credible as we hoped it would be, and it could well be that she is the weakest link in terms of acting. At least, this is how the internet currently sees it.

In order to keep all of his fans happy, Joss Whedon needs to prove once and for all that Dushku can handle any scenario or personality which her character is imprinted with. He is going to have to get extreme.

So far on the show, her character ‘Echo’ has been used mainly as a prostitute. Which, given the fact that the role is played by Eliza Dushku, is thoroughly understandable. We want to see her given different tasks. If this was a real thing that was possible, would people only ever use her for sex? No! No they wouldn’t. So what Joss should do, what we suggest, is that Echo be hired by someone who is producing an off-Broadway show about the secret life of The Smurfs. She dyes her hair blonde, slaps on blue makeup, and goes in as the lead female role ‘Smurfette’. This will give everyone a chance to re-evaluate her ability as an actress, as when she starts having flashbacks and her memory goes mental on her, she will be trying to convey her emotions whilst dressed as a giant blue cartoon character in the middle of a run-down theatre. If Dushku can handle this role, surely she will be able to handle anything else.

The masses will be happy. Dollhouse will not be cancelled. Everybody wins.

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 Characters (Part 9)

60: Seinfeld: George Constanza (Jason Alexander)
Although not a Jew, no one character has done more to nail down the persona of Jewishness since Woody Allen’s golden years. George was a neurotic guy, selfish and insecure to the point of dementedness, and the word stingy could well have been invented for him. Despite this, he was one of the most loved characters on one of the most loved TV shows ever made, and even today the impact of his character resonates on other shows – Friends, Will & Grace – any show where some of most of the protagonists are self-absorbed has some debt to pay to George Constanza. Based off of Larry David, the character grew in idiocy as the show went on, becoming lazier and better at lying in order to get himself out of the increasingly ridiculous situations he got himself into. He was so stupid and neurotic, it is hard not to give in and simply go along with him. It’s more fun.


59: LOST: James ‘Sawyer’ Ford (Josh Holloway)
There was nothing drastically different about the character of Sawyer. To anyone, he seems to be the typical antihero with a heart of gold, a rough former con-artist who has to make good when he crashes on the island or risk expulsion from the group. What makes him different and therefore noteworthy is that none of the other characters on LOST come anywhere near to matching his level of roughness. Whilst Locke and Sayid are both incredible badasses who shoot, knife, and neck-snap their way around, both of them do it according to a strict moral code. Not so for Sawyer, who is out for himself almost the whole time. That’s what made him so memorable.


58: Coupling: Jeffrey Murdoch (Richard Coyle)
In this superior British variation on ‘Friends’, six friends talk about sex a lot whilst getting into ludicrous scrapes with indecent results! And Jeff was the best character of the lot, narrowly beating out vapid-brained Jane to strike his name into the list. Jeff is absolutely obsessed with sex, and has composed theories and lists for practically every aspect of reproduction that you could imagine. It was in his obsession with sex that the show got most of its milage – whenever he was in the room, you could see that any moment he would explode from the conversation into a series of crude mimes, or break at length to discuss the practical use of ribbed condoms. His best moment came in the form of “the giggle-loop”.




57: Arrested Development: Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman)
In the midst of the insanity that was the Bluth family, Michael Bluth was the most normal-seeming and sensible of the lot. He was hard-working, rode a bicycle to work, and tried to do what was best for his son. Of course, this all proved to be a façade which was revealed to the viewers as Arrested Dvelopment went on. Michael was just as mad as the rest of them: but in his case the madness was his obsession with his family, even though he claimed to hate them. For as much as he denounced them, it became clear that Michael needed to be around his family in order to feel superior to someone, and this superiority complex is what ultimately messes him up and keeps him with the most dysfunctional family ever seen on television.


56: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
The universal truth for television would be that the main character is never the most interesting. It’s the reason why Will & Grace was fundamentally about the pairing of Jack & Karen instead of the characters of the title, and why nobody cares much about Peter from Heroes (that and the rather poor writing, of course). Buffy is mostly the same; a boring know-it-all who thinks she is far better than she really is, but has – as one character memorably put it to her – an inferiority complex about her superiority complex. She is the slayer, and vitally powerful, but it’s only thanks to her friends that she remains alive for the course of the show. Why is she in the list, then? Because she’s one of the first strong female leads in Television, and that should always be recognised. Buffy changed a lot of people’s minds about how television should be made, and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s title character was a strong part of that.

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.

Heroes: How To Fix It

What an awful show ‘Heroes’ has become. It started two years ago, at a time when Lost had, ahem, lost the way and was floundering about with barely any scenes featuring Locke, Sayid or Desmond at all. As Lost was going nowhere quickly, people jumped on Heroes because it was fun, moved quickly, and answered the questions that were asked of it with an impressive regularity. No four-toed statues there!

But as time has gone on, Lost has become absolutely awesome and Heroes has experienced perhaps the fastest slide into awfulness that has ever been seen on television. The characters no longer make any sense, the ongoing plots are bizarre and only work because the writers say so – and oh yeah, the writers. They seem to have no idea about what continuity is and they thought Nathan Petrelli (arguably their best character, and played by Adrian Pasdar – who is easily the best actor on the show) should be turned into a Christian. They shot him at the start of this year, y’know, and then had him be healed by a character with healing powers. Oh, but then the healing guy turned out to only exist in Nathan’s head, and wasn’t actually around. So, uh… who healed Nathan? That’s just one example of the many, many continuity errors which the writers bathe in weekly.

It’s easy to criticise Heroes. In fact, I’ll do so once more if you don’t mind – why do they kill off the characters played by decent actors? Healing cheerleader Claire can’t seem to ever get killed off, but so far this season they kill off the guy who played ‘Sark’ on Alias AND Veronica Mars? That’s not entertainment! But here I go again, complaining about the show without offering any ideas of my own to help fix it.

Well, actually I can fix it. In five steps. Want to know how I’d do it? Of course you do! Here we go:

Step 1: Kill off all the overpowered heroes, such as Sylar and Arthur Petrelli, and Claire. There’s no suspense if half the cast are immortal. Kill them off!

Step 2: Bring in a new hero, played by Nathan Fillion. Nathan Fillion’s power on the show will be that he is awesome, and he’ll carry a gun around at all times.

Step 3: Fire the rest of the cast. They are getting in Nathan Fillion’s way and stealing valuable airtime that should be devoted to Nathan Fillion.

Step 4: This show has poor writers. You know who is a good writer? Joss Whedon! Hire him to be the new show-runner of the programme. If you have to bribe him with the promise that he can have a musical episode once every season, so be it.

Step 5: Give Nathan Fillion a spaceship to fly around in, and hire a new cast of brilliance character-actors who can live on the spaceship with Nathan Fillion. I suggest Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Gina Torres and Summer Glau to be among the new cast-members.

You see? In five simple steps, we have taken the show, reworked it significantly, and come out the other side with something fantastic and entertaining for all. Who wouldn’t want to watch this show, where Nathan Fillion has a gun and flies around on a spaceship with his friends?


NBC Executives: I know you probably feel bad about the concept of stealing ideas from your favourite blog, but seriously – just do it. I won’t even mind.

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.

The Ten Most Ill-Advised TV Couples, Part 2

3: "Spuffy" – Spike and Buffy, Buffy The Vampire Slayer


The worry about setting up Spike and Buffy in season six of the show was that it would surely have tired out both characters. Spike at this point was completely neutered as a villain, a vampire who couldn’t hurt anyone and who was mostly played for laughs instead of shocks, and Buffy was… well, she was almost always one of the weakest links in her own show. We’re not interested in any of the thoughts that the two characters shouldn’t be put together, because obviously it should never have happened. It’s the aftermath we find most interesting, easily. By putting Buffy with Spike, we effectively lost the ability to see new characters on the show. Once these two came together, it made the show far too interconnected and stopped any new characters (hello, Kennedy) from seeming like credible additions to the cast. It felt like from now on, we were never going to get anything new that last, because the show was intent on mixing it up with all the characters it had left. Even now, as the ‘show’ changes format and becomes a comic-book, we’re looking at a possible romance forming between Buffy’s friend Xander and her sister Dawn because NO. NEW. CHARACTERS. ALLOWED. As soon as Buffy and Spike made out, the show lost it’s fizz, and it fell apart slowly. A such, a lot of fans pretend the show ended back in series 5, two series before it truly closed, simply to keep out the poor stories that came at the end of the show. The moral would seem to be that kissing the undead is bad. (And how did they even have sex, anyway? Doesn’t a vampire have no blood flow? Wouldn’t sleeping with what is essentially a corpse be freakin’ cold? Why won’t you answer the questions that matter, Joss Whedon?)



4: "Drose" – The Doctor and Rose, Dr Who


Something we are seeing with stunning regularity on Doctor Who is that no women seem able to resist The Doctor. He’s had what, four assistants, and of them only one (the best one, Donna) hasn’t fallen for him. None of them fell for him more then Rose, played with an increasing stalkerish desperation by Billie Piper. The show never really put the two of them together as a couple, although it was obvious for everyone watching that the two of them fancied each other, especially once Christopher Ecclestone died and David Tennant turned up. At that point the pairing seemed like an inevitability. In a rare wise move, Russell T Davies decided at this point to send Rose to a parallel universe she could never return from, and we all breathed a sign of relief because at this point she was incredibly irritating and her presence meant David Tennant couldn’t do that wacky eye thing he does as often. And the British public demand Tennant eyes. We thought we were safe.

Until, that is, Rose broke down the walls of her world with the express purpose of seeing the Doctor again. She broke down the boundaries of reality! That’s mad. The Doctor by this point had seen the error of his ways thanks to the general awesome that was Donna, and he managed to return his disturbed stalker to her parallel world, sealing her back in with a clone of himself to make sure she never bothered him, or us, again. So hopefully that will be the last of that.

The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters Of All Time (Part 5)

80: Friends: Ross Gellar (David Schwimmer)
The second of the three entrants from Friends (and you already know who the final one is, don’t you?) is a perhaps controversial entry into this list because it means we won’t see Joey or Phoebe or Monica or any of the other characters cropping up. Why choose Ross over the others? Well, it was because of the six characters, Ross was the only one who remained believable. Granted, we all know in real life Rachel would never have gone for him, but that aside Ross kept his character throughout the infinite series of Friends aired, without dipping into caricature. A big dork, Ross could always raise a smile with his endless obsessions, and fascination with the dullest of things. And he was funny, too! Often the butt of the joke, Ross could nevertheless hold his own and hit back when ripped by his friends. And the sight of him playing keyboard is funny, even now.


79: Alias: Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner)
She of the many wigs and costumes, which thankfully always somehow managed to show off Jennifer’s fabulous legs, for which we thank the costume department. Sydney started off the show as a female spy working as a double agent in a devious agency run by the evil Arvin Sloane (and we mean, EVIL). She was tormented endlessly by the writers, who killed off his fiancé in the first episode and then made things go downhill for her, because obviously she hasn’t suffered enough! Her best friend was killed, her love interest and CIA handler Michael was seemingly killed several times, and she herself was close to death on more than one occasion. Yet she always pulled through, and was the ultimate in girl power! Well, until series 4, when the show dipped dramatically in quality. But we’ll always have those first three seasons…


78: Angel: Spike (James Marsters)
Shock! Spike is wayyyyy down on the list! How can this be? Well, in a chart that doesn’t have room for Fred or Cordelia, really Spike can think himself lucky to be here at all. Killed off at the end of Buffy’s TV run, he was unceremoniously (and accidentally) resurrected by Angel during the first episode of the next season as a ghost, who was hilariously bound to follow Angel wherever he went, which naturally caused friction between the two vampires, who had hated each other for a very long time. He eventually got form back, and joined the team, somewhat reluctantly. He undermined Angel at every turn, with his caustic comments hitting home often, causing great verbal exchanges between the two. When we last saw Spike he was still alive, but facing down an army of demons. Did he survive to fight another day? You’ll have to read the comics to find out.


77: Blackadder: Queen Elizabeth I (Miranda Richardson)
“Queenie”, as she was always called, was not the glorious leader we knew from the history books, Blackadder showed us, but in actual fact a spoilt child who delighted in chopping off people’s heads for no real reason. She took childish delight in her “favourites”, who included Walter Raleigh, and Blackadder spent the series attempting to win her favour so she would marry him. Aided by her two advisors Melchett (a gloriously grovelling Stephen Fry) and her nurse… Nursie, she was a voice of insanity in the series, going way OTT whenever she wanted to, with her tantrums aimed at anyone who annoyed her. She was a brilliant character, hilariously silly and pointless, and it’s a shame we never got more of her.


76: Heroes: Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka)
One of the most recent TV shows to grip America has been Heroes, and of all the characters Hiro is almost certainly the most loved. As the only cast member to embrace his powers from the start, his enthusiasm in his quest to save the world was endearing, and his relationship with best friend Ando was touching. Yet Hiro wasn’t a slacker, he was always faithful in his quest, and throughout the series had several of the best moments (the storyline where he tries to save the waitress who liked him from dying was the most heartbreaking thing). His ability to flash forward meant that he was the hero with the most knowledge of the chain of events that would lead to the ‘exploding man’ which would destroy New York, and it was impossible not to root for him as he tried to stop it from happening.

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.

The 100 Greatest TV Characters Of All Time (Part 3)

90: Ally McBeal: John Fish (Peter McNicol)
David E. Kelley has a genius for creating loveable eccentrics, and John Fish, who owned the law firm the heroine worked for was certainly one of those. He was also a prime example of the slow reveal: first Fish was a mental; then we learned that he was obsessive compulsive and had a fascination with his toilet; then we found out that he had a secret room behind the bathroom stalls; then we found out, right at the end, that he had been in love with Ally the whole time, only he knew it would never have worked. Talk about slow burn! It was his eccentric habits that made him a highlight of each episode. Ever the voice of reason, he’d seek the resolve any situation in his own idiosyncratic way, the joy was that more often than not he’d succeed.


89: Diagnosis Murder: Mark Sloan (Dick Van Dyke)
Mark Sloan has a strong following, in part due to the fact he’s portrayed by the legend that is Dick Van Dyke. On paper his character is very simple – he’s a doctor who helps solve mysteries in his spare time via a combination of deductive reasoning and helpful plot contrivances. Although nothing special, the fact that it’s Dick playing him means that the role instantly becomes an extension of the actor playing it. He completely takes over the role, and is as likeable and good natured as he is charming and funny. And that’s all that needs to be said.


88: Men Behaving Badly: Tony Smart (Neil Morrissey)
Some people just can’t help but say the wrong thing, and innocent but sex-obsessed Tony was a classic example of this. Spending most of his time in the pub or on the sofa, his childlike obsession with Kylie or some other woman – most likely his dreamgirl Debs – would start off nice but gradually wind up in a dirty, dirty place nobody could have expected. Clinically dim, it was the fact he clearly didn’t have a bad bone in his body that made him so likeable, and when Debs finally gave in to his persistent proposals a nation of beer-drinking lads cheered.


87: Firefly: River Tam (Summer Glau)
There is no absence of mentals in this list, although perhaps none are quite as disturbed as young River Tam. Abducted by sinister government figures, her brother Simon rescued her, and they took off across space as fugitives. However, it was soon clear that River was a very different girl to how she used to. She was prone to wandering the ship, scaring the fellow crewmates with her off-kilter conversations, and she later managed to shoot three people without even looking up at them. Sadly, the cancellation of the series meant we never got to see a full explanation of River’s problems on television, although the subsequent film filled in a lot of the gaps. It’s a shame, because it would have been fascinating to find out more about her past.


86: Footballer’s Wives: Tanya Turner (Zoe Lucker)
Tanya Turner was a secondary character who quickly became a monster. Very suddenly the show was taken over by Ms Turner, who went from husband to husband and hopped from bed to bed and illegal drug to illegal drug, causing havoc and wrecking countless lives as she went. Sadly, we never found out the fate of Tanya as the show was cancelled, but for three seasons she was Queen Bitch. She ruled the rest of the WAGs, with her twitching eyes and quivering cigarette, and anyone who tried to get in her way would inevitably be destroyed. It’s a shame there aren’t more characters like Tanya out there, but at the same time - it’s a bit of a relief.

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.

Doctor Horrible's Shameless Plug

How To Talk To…. A Comic Book Fan (Part 2)

There are moments in life that are sent to try us. When you go on a trip to the seaside and it starts raining, or when you try and tape a TV show and realise you’ve accidentally recorded ITV instead. But how about when you start talking to someone, only to find out that they have an obscure fascination of some kind which completely passes you by? In our occasional series here at Illicitly Eating Flowers, we’ll try to help you bluff your way through such conversations, with your sanity still intact.

The Different Comics: Marvel

The Marvel Universe is based more around teams than the DC Universe is, because there are so many characters running around together. Marvel own the X-Men, and Spiderman, and the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four, as their four main titles, and all of them are simple enough to follow in a conversation, if you know where to go. The important thing when talking to a fan of Marvel comics is to mention how much you hate “retcons”. A retcon is when a writer in, say, 2002, revisits a story from 1975 or something and changes the reason why it happened, or the ending, which means that characters come back to life or die or turn evil. This happens a lot in Marvel, and is in fact the only thing you need to mention if someone tells you they like Spiderman. See, Spiderman has just undergone a story called “One More Day” which wiped out the past 20 years of comic-book continuity, thus rendering all the stories told about him over the past 20 years void. It’s the most talked-about thing in Marvel at the moment, and by saying “I don’t care about Spiderman because of OMD (one more day), which ruined the series” you can skip having to talk about him altogether. There are other comics though:

The Fantastic 4 – The Fantastic 4 are made up of Mr Fantastic Reed Richards, who can stretch his skin into any shape he wants; his wife Susan, who can turn invisible; her brother Johnny who can burst into flames at will and fly around; and Ben Grimm, Reed’s best friend, whose skin has been turned into rock. They were all affected by gamma radiation during an experiment gone wrong, thus giving them super-powers. Their main enemy is Doctor Doom, and their stories tend to ignore the general Marvel Universe in favour of deliberately complicated and paradoxical stories about different dimensions and time travel and space.

The X-Men is the group with Wolverine in it. Founded by Charles Xavier, the X-Men run a school where mutants can gather to learn about controlling their abilities. The X-Men themselves are a military team who protect mutant rights around the globe, as they are thought of as a lesser species. The X-men are currently split up due to a massive event that happened last December, but all you need to say here is that your favourite comic is either ‘X-Factor’ or whatever Mike Carey is currently writing. Your favourite X-Man must NOT be Wolverine; he appears in at least five different books monthly and is oversaturated to the point of ridiculousness. Cyclops should be your character of choice, or Jean Grey (who is currently dead, but very much beloved by fans)

The New Avengers/The Mighty Avengers are also where you will find Wolverine. These two groups of superheroes are made up of pretty much every other famous Marvel character, including Iron Man, Captain America (although he has recently been killed), and Spiderman – who has his own book on the side. The two groups are on opposing sides of the law; the Mighty Avengers are a legal team, the New Avengers are an underground team made up of heroes who don’t want to work with the law (Wolverine, Spidey, and several lesser-known characters are in this group).

The main issues with Marvel are that there are so many different characters who have some kind of importance to the Universe they live in. DC comics focus generally around their big five people, whereas Marvel… well they tend to tell lots of big stories with as many people as they can. Another issue is that Marvel is currently in the midst of a big event called “Secret Invasion”, where many of their characters have been taken over by evil shape-shifters, thus rendering it the worst possible time for you to get drawn into a conversation about Marvel Comics. If the conversation does take this route, then quickly derail proceedings by mentioning your respect for one of the following writers:

Ed Brubaker – he writes Captain America and Daredevil, two of the most acclaimed comics at Marvel at the moment. Captain America especially is hailed as the best comic you can buy anywhere, currently. Brubaker killed off Captain America, who is a massive character in the States (of course), and has just introduced a new one. Brubaker is the first name you should drop into the conversation, followed by endless words of praise.

Chris Claremont – who is responsible for the X-Men, more or less. He took over X-Men after they got to issue 70 or so and ran with it for hundreds of issues. This guy is the God of X-Men, and is responsible for classic stories such as “The Dark Phoenix Saga” and “Days of Future Past”. Nowadays he’s been pushed to the side and writes stories which mainly seem to concentrate on filling in the gaps on the X-Men, but in his ‘glory days’ nobody was more important.

Joss Whedon – loved and hated in equal measure by Marvel fans, because his stories for the Astonishing X-Men (the most famous team – Cyclops, Wolverine, etc) and Runaways (about a group of kids who, uh, run away from home. Incidentally, he took over this title from Brian K. Vaughan, who is as loved by Marvel as he is by DC) are fantastic, but take ages to arrive. So mention how much you enjoy Joss Whedon’s stories, but point out that he takes so long to get each one out that it’s hardly worth it anymore. This will get you kudos.

All three are keeping out of Secret Invasion, thus rendering them unconfusing… well, considering. If you really want the conversation to end quickly, however, then tell the other person that your favourite writer is Chuck Austen. He’s possibly one of the most hated writers for Marvel of all time, and you’re guaranteed to disgust the Marvel fanboy just by mentioning him. That’s Marvel sorted, then: tomorrow we look at independents. And yes, the primer is going to involve bearded wizards from Northampton.

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)

You Monster! Why Joss Whedon Kills.... Kill #2

He Killed Off Allen Francis Doyle!

Who Was He?

He was your buddy, an Irish rogue with a fondness for drink and women. You see? Some stereotypes are valid. He worked alongside Angel and Cordelia during the first series of the vampire’s self-named show, aiding and winding up the others with his…distinct sense of humour. What we all wanted, though, was for him to finally work up the courage to ask Cordelia out on a date and stop dithering around all the time. This is the one trait he doesn’t seem to share with the Irish – whereas any other Irishman can go out and get any girl he wants on the basis of his nationality (seriously, it’s like a super-power they have or something), Doyle never did too well with the girls. Well, there was his ex-wife, but when she remarried her new husband tried to eat Doyle’s brains, which probably didn’t help his confidence levels.

How Did He Die?

Doyle died as a frickin’ hero, y’all! A shady organisation got hold of a weapon of some kind that could do bad things to people, and the only way of stopping it meant killing yourself in the process. Angel, always a sucker for a dramatic death scene, jumped at the chance to die again, but Doyle punched him out and took the heroic death for himself. Angel’s probably still pissed about it now.

Why Did He Die?

There is no reason for why Doyle died except that Joss Whedon likes to mess with us. It’s hard to invoke the JOSS WANT CRUSH HAPPYNESS rule, because Doyle and Cordelia never got into a relationship, but the threat came from a monster who is barely remembered, in general. So why would you kill off one of the three main characters, especially the one who everyone liked most? Because Joss Whedon doesn’t like you. You annoy him. You sit there, a can of beer in your hand, and you criticise his space westerns? You don’t go to see his movies? Well then, don’t expect him to let your favourite characters live, you jerks! You make him sick. These things happened after Doyle got killed, but I honestly can’t think of any other reason except for that Joss has a time machine and went to see how his future works out, only to realise that his next two fantastic pieces of drama went down in flames – quite frankly, you brought Doyle’s death on yourselves.

Joss, You Monster! Rating:

8. This one still smarts.