What is a hero?

Here is a post at Newicue listing the author's top 10 Whedonverse heroes. It certainly has sparked a lot of controversy. Part of it stems from the fact that different people have different definitions of the word "hero."

This is the list of Newicue's top 10 Whedonverse heroes:

Runner Up: Andrew

10. Spike

9. Wash

8. River

7. Giles

6. Jayne

5. Angel

4. Mal

3. Anya

2. Illyria

1. Wes

Right away, you can see the controversy. There's No Buffy (or Willow, Xander, Faith). On a list of Whedonverse Heroes. My other gripe is that Newicue left off Zoe, who with Mal, are the Big Damn Heroes.

If you define Hero as a person who fights the hardest for the side of good, then Buffy certainly belongs on the list.

However, there are many definitions of hero. In Serenity the movie, Mal and Zoe define a hero as someone who gets other people killed. Well, that's certainly not the case with some of the people on this list. Certainly Wash didn't get anyone killed, at least not directly. I suppose as part of the Serenity crew he got Book killed as well as the others who gave them sanctuary.

Newicue certainly has a list of great characters, but I think more of protagonists rather than heroes.

Because of the pushback they got, Newicue is doing a poll on the readers' favorite heroes. And of villains.

My definition of hero is someone who fights hard for the side of good. My favorite heroes are the ones who do it despite their own shortcomings (okay who doesn't have flaws?) and despite the odds of them succeeding. I'm also including characters who grew and changed in interesting ways. I guess in some ways, my criteria is similar as the criteria used by Newicue.

So here's my list by order of shows:

1. Buffy

2. Willow

3. Xander

4. Faith

5. Wes

6. Cordelia

7. Mal

8. Zoe

9. River

10. Simon

11. Adelle

12. Topher

My favorite all round characters, though not necessarily heroes, would include

1. Dawn

2. Wash

3. Sierra

4. November

5. Fred

6. Connor

7. Jayne

8. Spike

9. Lindsey -- but that may just be because I think Christian Kane is hot. Loving him on Leverage.

10. Drucilla

East Coast Snowcopalypse

There's a huge snow storm hitting the Eastern Seaboard of the USA. My friends in DC are posting about how they're stuck in their apts. If I was stuck inside this is what I would be doing:

1. Watching back episodes of Dollhouse season 2. It's getting really good. I missed eps: Meet Jane Doe, a Love Supreme, and The Attic. This morning I watched "Stop Loss" about Victor.
2. Continue watching Angel the Series. Jasmine, as played by Gina Torres, is about to show up.
3. Knit on either the Noro Furisode Log Cabin afghan or the Easy Top Down Raglan Cardigan I just started this morning.

That should keep me occupied for, oh, the next month or so.

However, I am not stuck at home but rather at the office in Atlanta, just south of the snowcopalypse. I'll be out of the office for a week, but deadlines still loom. I've also taken home the plants in my office. They deserve a vacation in my sunny apt too, instead of sitting alone in my darkened office while I'm gone.

Cordelia and Connor

Spent the morning at home since I'm working until 10pm tonight, I'm going into the office late.


So, I watched up to the point where Cordelia's come back from being on a higher plane (what did she do there? I hope at some point we find out.) but doesn't remember who she is. Connor's the only one talking straight to her, including the part where he tried to kill her. Then she goes to live with Connor who falls in love with her. Well why wouldn't he? She's the only one who wants to spend time with him, other than his father Angel; he's alone in this world; they have to share the bed because there's only one; he's 18; she's a great person and she's gorgeous.



After much hijinks, including forgetfulness spells*, she remembers she loves Angel. They declare their love for each other, but know they can't have it (um, why not?) and she leaves to go live with Connor again.

In the most recent episode, Cordelia (while possessed) finally gets it on with Connor.

I like this couple. They're both blunt and straight to the point. The show's made it clear that he's 18, so he's legal and Cordelia's not that much older than him. And even if he is, we are now living in the age of the cougar. And poor Connor, it's about time he gets a little happiness. Plus he's so cute. Vincent Kartheiser looks totally different (and cleaner) as Pete Campbell on Mad Men, which I don't watch, even tho it's got YoSaffBridge too.


* As soon as I watched the episode Spin the Bottle where a memory spell goes wrong and the Angel Investigations team, including Wesley, forgets everything since they were teenagers. As they introduce themselves to each other, they all act as if they are teens. Cordelia's Queen C again, Fred's got a heavy accent as she says she's in school in San Antone. Gunn's all toughness and bravado. Angel calls himself Liam and makes references to being Irish. It was quite funny to see isolated, bitter, bad-ass Wesley revert to the uptight buffoon he was when he first arrived to Sunnydale fresh from the Watcher's Council.

I thought of the other times Whedon used this theme:

Band Candy from Buffy Season Three, where the adults eat the candy to fundraise for band, and revert to their teenage selves. This is where Giles as Ripper and Joyce hook up.
Tabula Rasa from Buffy Season Six where the Scooby Gang gets their memories wiped, but the emotional connections are still there.
Echoes from Dollhouse where a psychotropic drug makes all the non-Dolls act a little loopy. This is the episode where Topher wears no pants and Adelle jumps on a trampoline and says she finds lentils incomprehensible. This is where we see the emotional connection between Adelle and Topher begin. It's not a romantic relationship, but more a mother-son dynamic that really shows in Epithaph One.

Heck, you could say all of Dollhouse is a play on this theme. When memories are taken away, what do you have left? Emotions and personalities still come through.

While watching all these hours of Angel (um at least 4 episodes this morning, with much fastforwarding through the fight scenes), I sewed the back of the Sunrise Circle Jacket to the sleeves.

Enver Gjokaj is amazing

Just watched "the Public Eye" and "the Left Hand" episodes 2.5 and 2.6 of Dollhouse. Great episodes. Recaps elsewhere so I won't repeat it. Quick comments:

1. Enver Gjokaj who plays Victor is amazing. In The Left Hand, Victor gets imprinted as Topher so there are 2 Tophers working on the case. Gjokaj does a spot on imitation of Topher. In previous episodes he does a great job playing Kiki the airhead student, Terry the serial kidnapper, and Dominic the former head of security. Gjokaj should have quite the career after Dollhouse.

2. The 2 episodes are just packed with action, revelations about the reach of Rossum Corp and the mythology of the Dollhouses.

3. We get Summer Glau! Her character Bennett and Topher together were so cute.

4. We get 2 Tophers, which was fun.

5. Maurissa Tanchareon shows up.

6. Alexis Denisof does a great job as Daniel Perrin. I just finished Angel season 3 where he plays Wesley. Gotta say, I'm liking Wesley more and more as he gets more bad ass. While we're on the subject of Angel Season 3, I gotta say, what is up with that ending? Cordelia ascends to a higher plane? What? And Holtz played a deep, deep game. Looking forward to seeing how Season 4 starts.

All in all, I agree with other reviewers that these 2 episodes were very good and I look forward to the next episode and the series ending on a high note.

Ebb and flow of marathon TV watching

Spent the weekend watching Angel the Series from Season Two episode 16 "Epiphany" where Angel sleeps with Darla but doesn't lose his soul to Season Three episode 4 "Carpe Noctem" where Angel's body is taken over by an old man.

That's 11 episodes of about 45 minutes each. All this while carving on my pottery.

I also read the liner notes from the DVD box set. Basically Joss Whedon says that they spun off Angel, but didn't really have an over arching theme like Buffy did. So they made it about anything and everything.

In this marathon watching, I liked Cordelia more and more. The pain from the visions are getting worse, and leaving physical marks on her, yet she's not willing to give them up. They give her a purpose and she wants to help the people in those visions. She's afraid that if she gives up the visions then her friends at Angel Investigations won't want her around. That a long way from the shallow vain girl at Sunnydale High School.

The side trip to Pylea was cute if a little cheesy. Fred's the precursor to River, the smartie who's a little scrambled in the brain pan. Cordelia's made princess, which she enjoys, of course, being restored a bit to her Queen C status of her Sunnydale days. And the Groosalug turns out to be quite the hunk and they fall in love. Still, in the end she gives it up to go back to our dimension.

In various episodes, people's loyalties are tested: Gunn between his old gang and his new gang; Angel fires Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn, goes dark but not all the way to Angelus, then comes back; Harmony comes to LA; Cordelia's tests have been discussed above; and even Lindsey makes a choice and leaves LA and Wolfram and Hart.

However, Lilah's still got a rival, Gavin Park, played by the gorgeous Daniel Dae Kim.

I'm liking this marathon watching and may try to do it with Lost, Battlestar Galactica, or Heroes. I've been reading reviews and recaps of those shows on Television without Pity or just other places. One of the benefits of marathon watching is that there's not a week in between each episode for me to wonder what's going on, how will it be resolved, or to nitpick because the next episode is immediately available and I get the answers soon enough. Plus the amount of info and details in the sheer volume of episodes pushes out the dumber details and what I'm left with is the overall arc of the story and character development.

I read the recap of this week's episode of Heroes on IO9 which was very snarky and read the comments too. The recap was pretty negative and some of the commenters said that it was excessively negative, as if the recapper was looking for things to complain about and not also discuss the good parts.

I think the general trend towards snarkiness makes it harder for shows because there are people out there who do write negative (and funny) reviews that can drown out the better reviews. In marathon viewings, the ups and downs of a show even out.

That's what I did with FlashForward. I went about 3 weeks without watching, then watched 3 episodes in a row on Hulu.

Gunn and Tam, Lindsey and Eliot, Wolfram & Hart and Rossum Corp.

I've been watching Angel and Leverage. Kind of fun seeing Christian Kane as the morally ambiguous bad guy lawyer Lindsey McDonald on Angel and then as the morally ambiguous good guy Eliot Spencer on Leverage.

Just finished watching the episodes War Zone which introduces Charles and Alonna Gunn, and Blind Date which showed Lindsey's crisis of conscience.

As watched Charles and Alonna, I thought about Simon and River Tam from Firefly. The Gunns are orphans, Charles always watching out for Alonna. When Alonna is turned into a vampire, she's happy to have strength and clarity of purpose without the guilt. She offers to turn Charles too, saying that he's always taken care of her, now she can take care of him. Alas, he ends up killing her.

In Firefly, Simon's sole purpose on the show is to take care of River, after she's been messed up by the Allliance. In Serenity the movie, in the climatic battle against the Reavers, River says to Simon, "You've been taking care of me my whole life. Now it's my turn." Then she kills the Reavers and saves the crew.

I'm beginning to like Angel the series more. If I find a good deal, I may buy the series, but as it is, I think I'll keep borrowing from the library. So far, I'm still really liking Cordelia and Wesley's really growing as a character and not a buffoon anymore.

I like the whole Wolfram & Hart angle, which uses legal and magical power. Lindsey had a crisis of conscience regarding the assassination of the three blind seer children, and tries to get out of W&H. But at the end of that episode, goes back and is made a junior partner. Are we to think that he may try to change W&H from the inside? Makes me think of this fanfic Sleeper that I thought was pretty good.

Is Wolfram & Hart the precursor to the Dollhouse/Rossum corp?

And Faith is back! She's now in jail, on her own road to redemption.

Lastly, I like Whedon's play on the theme of heart. In War Zone, when the vamps say they're going to take out the heart of Gunn's crew, I thought they meant Charles, who's in charge (sorry for the bad pun!), but they meant to take Alonna, who is Charles' heart.

And to begin and end with Leverage, my favorite character is Hardison. Not a big surprise since he's the sweet, smart, funny, sassy one who doesn't lead with his fist but rather his brains/skills. Rather like Wash :)

Feminism and domestic violence in Angel

Just watched the Angel episode "She" which made me think about Tara's demon family theme in Buffy.

On Buffy, Tara's family believed that women in their family became demons when they turned 20 or so, and thus should be kept at home. In "She" there's a dimension where the women have ridges on their back that glows red when they're aroused. So to control the women, the men yank out the ridges in the women's back and then the women are passive slaves.

Now I'm watching the episode after that which is "I've got you under my skin" where a family of 4 seems really afraid of the father. The story goes that someone in the family is possessed by a demon and that's why they're afraid of him. Wesley says that a father doesn't need to be possessed by a demon for people to be afraid of him. This episode gives some back story about Wesley and more for Wesley to do. I'm liking him more.

Interestingly, it's the son that's possessed and the father is now much friendlier. Turns out the boy is a bad seed and the demon was trapped inside the boy. Nice twist.

sick leave

taking a sick day. I think it's just a cold, not the H1N1 flu or anything. Th. e worst thing is the sore throat.

Watching discs 3 and 4 of Angel season three. Buffy's stopped by, Doyle's died and Wesley's showed up. But no Faith yet.

Still not a huge fan of Angel the character but I'm liking the series better the more I see of it. I'm really liking Cordelia. She's just getting better and better. Not sure about Wesley. I guess he's the comic relief, but I like Xander better.