{"id":720,"date":"2002-10-25T12:22:17","date_gmt":"2002-10-25T12:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/wp\/?p=720"},"modified":"2002-10-25T12:22:17","modified_gmt":"2002-10-25T12:22:17","slug":"just-another-reminder-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2002\/10\/just-another-reminder-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Just another reminder thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>If you haven&#8217;t yet sampled Fox&#8217;s gonzo space Western, Firefly, its creator, Joss Whedon, would like to make one small request: Please do&#8230; and preferably tonight at 8 pm\/ET. <i>&#8220;This week definitely matters [to the series&#8217; future],&#8221;<\/i> the celebrated writer-director-producer tells TV Guide Online. <i>&#8220;[Network prez] Sandy Grushow said to me before we ever started that this [show] is going to be a slow grow, and [the World Series] is going to hurt us, which it has. Fox has a lot of shows that are underperforming because of this weird season.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;So,&#8221;<\/i> he continues, <i>&#8220;I&#8217;m not like, &#8216;My future is assured!&#8217; But it&#8217;s also not like the death knell chiming.&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Far from it. In fact, Fox just commissioned three additional scripts from Whedon, the mastermind behind UPN&#8217;s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its WB spinoff, Angel. However, Firefly has yet to get a full-season pickup. <i>&#8220;[The script order from the net] is a vote of confidence, and it&#8217;s a way of not making a decision,&#8221;<\/i> Whedon theorizes. <i>&#8220;The next few weeks will be important, and this week I&#8217;m particularly stressing because I think it&#8217;s such a good entrance into the world [of Firefly]. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m all hyped about it.<\/i><br \/>\n<i>&#8220;It has a number of flashbacks to how the crew got together,&#8221;<\/i> he continues, <i>&#8220;so it&#8217;s a really good way to learn how it all began. For somebody meeting the characters for the first time, it&#8217;s a real insight into who they are. There&#8217;s not all this [plot] information to process, which is a problem because the pilot was never shown. People are like, &#8216;Um, what&#8217;s going on?&#8217; The idea was never to confuse people.&#8221;<\/i><br \/>\nJust so Whedon doesn&#8217;t add to viewers&#8217; consternation, he quickly notes that the backtracking scenes are not highlights from the debut that Fox shot down. <i>&#8220;These flashbacks are to before the pilot,&#8221;<\/i> he clarifies. <i>&#8220;The pilot was the story of how this crew picked up a few wayward stragglers; [this installment] flashes back to how [the original gang] first found the ship itself, what the ship is and what it means to Mal, because [the ship] really is the 10th character on the show.&#8221;<\/i><br \/>\nNow that that matter has been cleared up, Whedon hopes that viewers will be able to sit back, relax and enjoy the show&#8230; for years to come, ideally. For the moment, though, he sighs, <i>&#8220;Everything is kind of in flux.&#8221;<\/i> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I dig this show.  I want it to prosper.  I&#8217;m also really annoyed that Fox is forcing Whedon to air certain kinds of episodes, where &#8220;force&#8221; implies a passive aggresive action:<br \/>\n(a) They rearranged the air-dates on the episodes so that the &#8216;easy to view&#8217; episodes are all at the beginning.<br \/>\n(b) By not airing the pilot, they&#8217;ve force Whedon to write &#8216;easier&#8217; scripts to understand, since virtually no one&#8217;s seen the pilot.<br \/>\nThis means (to me) that the show comes off as less story-oriented, less connected, and much more episodic than the stuff Whedon normally does, which is really a shame, since it&#8217;s not playing to the strengths of his writing staff.  They can write fantastic one-offs, but the truly best episodes are those that tie into the major storylines &#8212; which they aren&#8217;t able to WRITE right now.<br \/>\nGargh.  Tune it.  I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;ll regret it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t yet sampled Fox&#8217;s gonzo space Western, Firefly, its creator, Joss Whedon, would like to make one small request: Please do&#8230; and preferably tonight at 8 pm\/ET. &#8220;This week definitely matters [to the series&#8217; future],&#8221; the celebrated writer-director-producer tells TV Guide Online. &#8220;[Network prez] Sandy Grushow said to me before we ever started &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2002\/10\/just-another-reminder-thing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Just another reminder thing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geeky-fanboy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}