For a lot of people, season 8 is lacking something essential. And all of this discussion is just trying to identify and explain what that "something" is.
Hrrmm. For some reason I don't think we'll be able to come up with a universal answer for that. I'm sure there are many different"somethings", just as fans of the show seemed to enjoy it on many different levels. You used that great, juicy word "polysemic" and that's a bingo: multiple meanings and contradictory signifiers slathered on top of one another are going to produce different "somethings" in our heads.
For me, the comic left me flat fairly quickly, but I think for different reasons than some other fans had. For instance, one thing that took me out of it right away was their clusmy handling of "The Girl In Question." I smelled a cop-out right away. Even if they decided that they just HAD to go that route, there were far Jossier ways to go about it (The Buffybot, for instance, would have allowed an opportunity to capture the funny, kitschy aspects of the show while paying homage to the source material).
Skimming over the formation of this new Multi-Slayer reality in general also felt hamhanded to me. The 7th season of the show offered plenty of juicy unresolved "pinches" hanging, and after the first few issues I sensed that they were content to just leave them hanging permanently and start from scratch. In other words seemed like the "Season 8" thing was more a brand name for a reboot. Which, okay, but I couldn't get into it. For me the show was about the winding journeys of its various characters, and the comics seemed like they abrubtly stopped the car, picked a new destination, and made a hard left turn.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
carisma_sensei
no subject
Date: Jul. 14th, 2010 04:27 pm (UTC)Hrrmm. For some reason I don't think we'll be able to come up with a universal answer for that. I'm sure there are many different"somethings", just as fans of the show seemed to enjoy it on many different levels. You used that great, juicy word "polysemic" and that's a bingo: multiple meanings and contradictory signifiers slathered on top of one another are going to produce different "somethings" in our heads.
For me, the comic left me flat fairly quickly, but I think for different reasons than some other fans had. For instance, one thing that took me out of it right away was their clusmy handling of "The Girl In Question." I smelled a cop-out right away. Even if they decided that they just HAD to go that route, there were far Jossier ways to go about it (The Buffybot, for instance, would have allowed an opportunity to capture the funny, kitschy aspects of the show while paying homage to the source material).
Skimming over the formation of this new Multi-Slayer reality in general also felt hamhanded to me. The 7th season of the show offered plenty of juicy unresolved "pinches" hanging, and after the first few issues I sensed that they were content to just leave them hanging permanently and start from scratch. In other words seemed like the "Season 8" thing was more a brand name for a reboot. Which, okay, but I couldn't get into it. For me the show was about the winding journeys of its various characters, and the comics seemed like they abrubtly stopped the car, picked a new destination, and made a hard left turn.