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Dec. 20th, 2002 07:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyWatch Firefly tonight, okay? Just do it.
This whole crisis--and the anxiety I'm feeling about not getting the rest of the story--is reminding me powerfully of Twin Peaks, which is the only TV show I've ever loved as much as I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I adore Firefly, but I don't love it that much. At least not yet.) I watched every single episode of Twin Peaks, developed an absolutely archetypal schoolgirl crush on Kyle Maclachlan, speculated endlessly about what was going on and Who Killed Laura Palmer ... you get the idea.
And then there's the finale. That last scene is still, bar none, the most viscerally upsetting piece of fiction I've ever seen on television. It's a terrible, tremendous stroke of genius; even now, more than ten years later, my memory of that final moment is vivid: I can still see it, despite the fact that I have not rewatched Twin Peaks since it ended: Cooper slamming his head forward into the mirror with that defeated, hopeless, empty look on his face, and the blood, and Bob in the mirror, laughing.
Scarred for life, as Cordelia says.
And it makes me want to tear my hair out in great handfuls that we are never going to get the chance to see that story recuperated, that we are stuck, forever and ever, with that ending, just as much as the characters I loved so much. Oh, I delude myself, I say, Lynch could pick it back up any time; Cooper could spend any necessary number of years in a mental institution, and the story could start again, but I know it's not going to happen. The story is over; it ends in that moment of desolation and evil and despair. There is no amelioration, no comfort.
Now, yes, true, it ends that way partly because David Lynch was pissed off (for which I don't blame him), and deliberately made this the nastiest ending he could. But it also ends that way because the network suits cancelled the show before its narrative arc was ready to end.
I know Joss Whedon wouldn't pull a horrible stunt like that and end Firefly's story with such a dramatic denial of closure, but, still, the story isn't over. Not nearly.
And that's why I'm saying, watch Firefly. Because it deserves a chance to find out where it's going.
This whole crisis--and the anxiety I'm feeling about not getting the rest of the story--is reminding me powerfully of Twin Peaks, which is the only TV show I've ever loved as much as I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I adore Firefly, but I don't love it that much. At least not yet.) I watched every single episode of Twin Peaks, developed an absolutely archetypal schoolgirl crush on Kyle Maclachlan, speculated endlessly about what was going on and Who Killed Laura Palmer ... you get the idea.
And then there's the finale. That last scene is still, bar none, the most viscerally upsetting piece of fiction I've ever seen on television. It's a terrible, tremendous stroke of genius; even now, more than ten years later, my memory of that final moment is vivid: I can still see it, despite the fact that I have not rewatched Twin Peaks since it ended: Cooper slamming his head forward into the mirror with that defeated, hopeless, empty look on his face, and the blood, and Bob in the mirror, laughing.
Scarred for life, as Cordelia says.
And it makes me want to tear my hair out in great handfuls that we are never going to get the chance to see that story recuperated, that we are stuck, forever and ever, with that ending, just as much as the characters I loved so much. Oh, I delude myself, I say, Lynch could pick it back up any time; Cooper could spend any necessary number of years in a mental institution, and the story could start again, but I know it's not going to happen. The story is over; it ends in that moment of desolation and evil and despair. There is no amelioration, no comfort.
Now, yes, true, it ends that way partly because David Lynch was pissed off (for which I don't blame him), and deliberately made this the nastiest ending he could. But it also ends that way because the network suits cancelled the show before its narrative arc was ready to end.
I know Joss Whedon wouldn't pull a horrible stunt like that and end Firefly's story with such a dramatic denial of closure, but, still, the story isn't over. Not nearly.
And that's why I'm saying, watch Firefly. Because it deserves a chance to find out where it's going.
