The Pregnant Pause and other Whedon Trademarks

POSTED BY: manwithpez
UPDATED: Saturday, March 17, 2007 23:54
VIEWED: 14666
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MANWITHPEZ

Friday, April 15, 2005 2:23 PM

Travers: "She is a god..."

Fade to Black

Buffy: "Oh."

Kaylee: "What's so damn important about being proper? It don't mean nothing out here in the black."
Simon: "It means more out here. It's all I have..."

MANWITHPEZ

Friday, April 15, 2005 2:27 PM

Ahhh...Lorne. Far from my least favorite character, he really was, from time to time the one shining ray of hope in that show. Whenever Lorne was depressed, it just meant trouble all around. But, he was the most human of the group, and to essentially have Angel make him more demonlike by performing a very human act(murder), was wrong, wrong, wrong. Lorne kills someone, and becomes less human for it. Some, if not a lot, of his shine is sunffed out by trying to help out his friend Angel. I think Lorne is right to leave and say he's never going to return. And, the only thing I can hope for his character is that he can be happy somewhere away from the rest of the group, because they essentially killed almost everything that was good in him.

Kaylee: "What's so damn important about being proper? It don't mean nothing out here in the black."
Simon: "It means more out here. It's all I have..."

NYWOE

Friday, April 15, 2005 2:40 PM

My favorite quality of Joss's writing is what I like to call the "Trademark Whedon Bait n' Switch n' Switch."

You think you see the way that things are going. Then you think to yourself "wait, I bet that there's going to be this surprise twist!" Only to find out that Joss is 2 steps ahead of you and it twists again in another direction.

It's too early for me to think of any specific examples, but they're all over the place...

I have heard of a place where humans do battle in a ring of Jell-O.
--Teal'c

DIETCOKE

Friday, April 15, 2005 2:41 PM

The element of surpise, when you think the story line is going one way, and then something totally diffent happens. The "Ta-whubba-who" moments!

DIETCOKE

Friday, April 15, 2005 2:47 PM

Good insight on Lorne. I loved that character. I stopped channel surfing one day when he was singing and that's what got me watching the show, then Buffy, and of course, Firefly!

It truely about the story and the dialog. I read the scripts on-line before I ever went out and bought the DVDs.

MANWITHPEZ

Friday, April 15, 2005 2:50 PM

I think a good example of this is Trash...So much had to have taken place offscreen for that story to work, and it all seemed to come together...kinda like a "The Sting" for the Firefly crew.

Not Fade Away in Angel, the last episode pulled another of these bait n switches. With the part of the story concerning Archduke Sabassis, just before the dukeout with Hamilton.

The way Buffy took out Psychovamp in her test without her powers...That was genius, even if it did hinge on some uncharacteristic vampire behavior.

Pretty cool...

Kaylee: "What's so damn important about being proper? It don't mean nothing out here in the black."
Simon: "It means more out here. It's all I have..."

MANWITHPEZ

Friday, June 10, 2005 4:13 PM

Been awhile on this one, huh?

I was thinking, and I think I might have come up with another one...And that's Crushed Redemption...

Whenever an evil(kinda) character turns up in a Whedon show, and then turns good, they might now have much time left in the world. Spike, while being an obvious contradiction to this, did manage to get himself killed (even if he did manage to come back). Dark Willow turns better, goes to England, and comes home...what happens to her...That's right...paralysis and skin chewing! Anya...Well, we know what happened to her.

Over on Angel...Lindsay...Yeah, kinda saw that one comin' though. Darla...I mean, she never really turned good, but for awhile, Connor's soul was doing double duty for her, and her feeling it may be why Connor was even born in the first place. Illyria, a once powerful demon, gets castrated(figuratively), and must live in the human domain, which she hates...then her only companion is taken from her...Makes you wonder what her future was going to be like.

On Firefly, things didn't get to play out, but personally, if I were Jayne, I would have been sleeping with one eye open. Its a Joss Whedon show...we knew all of this cast wasn't going to make it for very long. While Jayne's not a bad guy, he certainly has the potential to be...They all have (Well, Kaylee, but that's neither here nor there...) But, Book, often theorized as a high ranking Alliance official, manages to get himself shot in the fifth episode! Who knows what the future held for the show (Which is why I'm not commenting on the movie...I already know some of the things, but we're talking Firefly...not Serenity here...)

Kaylee: "What's so damn important about being proper? It don't mean nothing out here in the black."
Simon: "It means more out here. It's all I have..."

ODDNESS2HER

Friday, June 10, 2005 5:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by manwithpez:
I think another is having a character that's presented with a problem early in the episode come up with the answer quickly, and then dismiss it. Giles did this in "Once More With Feeling" and, to a certain extent, Mal did it in "Out of Gas"

It doesn't always work so good, but when it does, its truly funny!

Kaylee: "What's so damn important about being proper? It don't mean nothing out here in the black."
Simon: "It means more out here. It's all I have..."

Xander did this several times. Two other examples I can think of are in 'Ted' when he facetiously asks "What kind of a monster is he?!"
and in 'Earshot' when he remarks that he knew that the lunch lady was going to "take everybody out" someday.

SUGARBEAR1

Friday, June 10, 2005 6:30 PM

I agree with so many of these posts that it'd be impossible to know where to start. One thing I noticed (as mentioned above) is not just the humor interspersed with the angst/horror, but the cadence of the speech. And after watching the behind the scenes stuff on both Buffy and Firefly DVDs, the DVD narrations, and the intro to the BDM, it's Joss. Just pure Joss. My husband is a Joss fan - he got me into Buffy, but not a Firefly fan --- yet. We are working on that prior to the true release of the BDM. I pulled a copy of Joss' BDM intro from here and read it to my husband trying to use the pauses and inflections I remembered and so much Joss-ism just came to me. Husband-boy was floored and said he could just hear Joss' voice saying those very words.

BLACKEYEDGIRL

Friday, June 10, 2005 8:27 PM

I was always a fan of the mishearding or mispronunciation thing:
ex: Kakistos, Buffy calls him Taquitos this one cracks me up everytime.

My all time top ten favorite moment though is in The Body, when Anya is trying to understand death, and it so adequetly shows how everyone deals with death differently. Willow can't pick out an outfit, Xander's punching walls, and Anya just doesn't know what to do or how to feel. She doesn't understand why Joyce doesn't just get back in that body. And she laments that Joyce won't brush her hair ever again or drink fruit punch, or whatever, and that no one will tell her why. It was the single most moment that made me understand why death was so hard on people, it's the why of it all. There is no why, it just is.

Illyria has a similar moment on Angel, as actually does Connor, and a similar moment happens when they take Tracey on board (when they think he's dead) and you get to see how everyone deals with it differently.

Also I love how in all of his universes for Joss there is no creature more terrible than a man or woman with nothing to lose (or alternating a raging case of the morals). And I mean that in a good and a bad way.

Oh and that crazy people generally a talkin' more truth than we care to hear. Drusilla was nuttier than a fruit cake, but she was rarely wrong (if you coulf figure out what she was trying to say), much like River.

I just love all 3 and I love Joss's voice. When I first started writing fanfic it was hard to grab it and mimic it but after a while you just get into the groove and it works.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Inara: "Do aliens live among us?"
Kaylee: "Yes. One of them's a doctor."

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