Joss and biological parents. (There shall be spoilers for everything, I suspect).

POSTED BY: AgentRouka
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 3, 2007 14:30
VIEWED: 6822
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OPTIMUS1998

Sunday, June 17, 2007 10:55 PM

well i do seem to remember from a biography of joss, that he grew up in NY with his mom, and his dad(and his dad) was a TV writer in LA.

so my vote is with daddy issues...

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Nothing like filming a major motion picture to make you feel better about your show being cancelled.
- Nathan Fillion
REDEMPTION!
- Adam Baldwin
Well played Clerks...
- Leonardo Leonardo(Clerks Cartoon)

REGINAROADIE

Monday, June 18, 2007 12:43 AM

Yeah, Joss so obviously has daddy issues. It's this, the blanket existentialism and the sometimes preachy feminism that, in my mind anyways, keeps Joss from being a truly great writer. Yes he can create fully functioning worlds, populate them with vibrant characters, tell great stories in new ways and all with a sense of humor. But making the parents more demonic than the demons you have your good guys fight is just lazy psychological purging. It's tantamount to pop starlets whining about their daddies on their latest albums.

I second the statement about Cordelia's folks. Never saw them, so we don't know anything about them. All we know was that Dad didn't pay taxes so she's no longer rich.

And in regards to the elder Tams, maybe the early cancellation of the series helped preserve them in mystery. Because if the show did continue, and Joss brought them back, then he would have ruined them by making them the standard bad parents like he's done before. He wouldn't have them as complex as say Noah Bennett on HEROES. But now that we've only seen them in three scenes in one ep, theres enough ambiguity for the fans to create their own interpretations.

As per families in other series, I guess it depends on your own personal background and familial life that shapes wheter you're inclined to shows about families. If you're from a split home and had a group of friends that's more of a family, then you'd be inclined more towards Joss' shows than your average sci-fi geek. But if you have a strong familial background, where you still have regular contact with your family and there is definite love between all of them no matter how fucked up they are, then you'd be more inclined towards shows that focus on families.

Like I would rate SIX FFET UNDER way above anything Joss has done because Alan Ball knows that no matter how fucked up a family is and how narcissistic the individual members can be at times, there still is a bond between them that even in death cannot be broken. Just listen to Nate's monologue at the funeral in the pilot episode and you know that even if he wasn't on the best terms with Nathanial Sr., he still loved him. "You can put make-up on him and prop him up in the slumber room, but the fact of the matter remains that the only father we're ever going to have, is gone. And that's sucks. But it's a goddamn fact of life...Well I intend to honor the old bastard by show the world how fucked up and shitty I feel that he's dead. GODDAMN IT!!!" Joss would go into anaphalactic shock if her were to ever write anything akin to that.

And I guess another reason I'm more into shows like HEROES and DOCTOR WHO is that even though these characters are on incredible journeys, they still have a family to lean on for support. Even with Claire's healing power, she would not have surivved the first season without Mr. Bennett and at the very end her real father Nathan stepping up to do what's right. And Rose checking in on her family once in a while over the first two years and actually going back in time to try to save her father made the show all the more powerful.

Episodes like "Company Man", "Father's Day" and the character of Keith Mars would never have existed if Joss was in charge. There's no way he could have written them, is all I'm gonna say.

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"And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? Each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame."

Loudon Wainwright III - "Strange Weirdos" off the "Knocked Up" soundtrack

REGINAROADIE

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 5:05 AM

bump because this is too good a thread to die

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"And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? Each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame."

Loudon Wainwright III - "Strange Weirdos" off the "Knocked Up" soundtrack

KAYNA

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 6:05 AM

These comment about Joss having daddy issues may be true but I don't think it really matters. I love his shows for what they are just I love some of the other shows that have been mentioned here (and I liked Pretender) for being what they are. I like a little variety in my viewing and you get that from different folks making the shows. AS to the fact that he come back to these issues regularly, it's not like he's the only writer that does that. What's the saying? "Write what you know"? Many writers have recuring themes that are influenced by thier personal histories. Stephen King, off the top of my head. Alchoholics and writers show up in most of his stories. And more recently, people being hit by cars. These are all things he knows and they are all great things to mine stories out of.

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Op: You're fighting a war you've already lost.
Mal: Yeah, well I'm known for that.

WTE

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 6:40 AM

I think it's pretty unfair to assume Joss has daddy issues, especially since everything I've seen him say about his father has been thoroughly and inarguably positive. Sure, he's not going to break down mid-interview and admit he felt abandoned or whatever, but it seems if he had issues with his father he wouldn't go out of his way on occasion to compliment him. I'm referring specifically to a time when an interviewer asked about the influence of his mother on his work, and Joss, after explaining his mother's influence, went on to describe his dad as downright magnanimous. I just don't see him doing that if he had issues with the guy.

Frankly, I think it's just a matter of families not really fitting in with his sort of work. With Buffy, the focus of the show is on the scoobies. It's about their relationships, and if all of sudden we have to shoehorn into the series Cordelia's parents, and Willow's parents, and Oz's parents, and Giles's parents, and Faith's parents (though that could be interesting...), and so on, we're losing character development from our headliners just to make the statement that not all families are bad. It's unnecessary; we know all families aren't bad. This isn't something I need a show to go out of its way to demonstrate. Yes, a program about a healthy family can be interesting, but if a show's focus isn't on the biological family, the subject shouldn't be forced in there to cover the, "But families are okay!" ground.

As for Angel and Firefly, all I can really say is that the characters in these shows are adults. Parents aren't going to play as large a role in the lives of adults, in particular adults with fairly busy lives or--in the case of Firefly--lives that require being unreachable for long, long periods of time. Joss's introduction for Safe in the companion had one of my favorite descriptions of a person ever: "...and then, over the course of a series of flashbacks, to have him realize, as he has always sort of known, that his father is genial because everything is going his way. When the chips are down, he's nobody, and Simon has always been the only person there to look after his sister." The reason I liked it is irrelevant (it was because this was the most realistic personality for a minor, secondary character I'd ever read). I think what it really shows us is, yes, his father's not a great guy, but he's not a great guy because by showing his faults, we see Simon's strengths. One character's weaknesses inform another's virtues.

That's not to say it wouldn't be nice to see Joss explore a healthy nuclear family, given his talent for character development and so on. But none of his shows would have allowed for that sort of exploration without seeming forced and lame. So, I have to come up on the side of, "It'd be nice, but I can understand why not." ...heh, that's not a very strong position at all.

Sorry for the essay.

EDIT: The interview to which I referred is here: http://movies.ign.com/articles/425/425492p1.html .

I had another, even more complimentary quote in my head, but this will serve my purposes fine (especially relevant material is bolded):

IGN FILMFORCE: In the past, you've described yourself as a bit of a TV snob, as a child.

JOSS WHEDON: That's true.

IGNFF: Was that a reaction against your family's legacy, or just the environment you were in?

WHEDON: It was more the environment I was in. When my parents divorced, I lived with my mother. My mother had been with a TV writer for 30 years, with a comedy writer, and although my parents were good friends after they divorced and got along, she wasn't exactly watching either sitcoms or football after my father left. She really was more into the Masterpiece Theater of it, and I kind of just followed in her footsteps – except for the part where she watched the news, which I didn't. It was depressing. It was really my mother's influence... a lot of stuff I do trace back to her. I also thought that, quite frankly, I loved when my father was working on The Electric Company when I you

KAYNA

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 3:47 PM

Nice post WTE. See I don't actually know much about Joss's life outside of TV. I didn't know all that about his mother and father. Very nice defence of Joss. Very informative.

As to whether or not he has daddy issues, I still don't think it's all that important. I love his shows regardless.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Op: You're fighting a war you've already lost.
Mal: Yeah, well I'm known for that.

INDIGOSTARBLASTER

Monday, June 25, 2007 8:41 PM

Hmm. Generally, it seems to me that happy relationships, while they are being happy, just don't make for gripping storytelling.

The teens in the Buffyverse were way more emancipated than I was as a teen, of course, but even for me, if I think back on my teenage years, I think about my life at high school, with my friends, and the occasional fight or conflict I had with my parents. I don't think about the almost unbroken line of pleasant family dinners I had through all those years, which means those moments wouldn't make it into a drama about my teenage years, either. It just makes sense to me that the Buffy episodes would only have the occasional glimpse of conflict with a Scooby parent, and not show the fact that Buffy went to visit her dad in LA for a really nice weekend every month, or whatever (up until he had an affair with his secretary and disappeared off the face of the earth, anyway).

As for Firefly, I agree with the post-ers that pointed out these are adults in a peripatetic line of work, unlikely to interact much with their parents or to mention them that often. And in any case, the only hint we had of possibly negative relationships were with Mal -- who indicated that he was raised by his mother, but not that he had a bad father in any way -- and the Tams (which is kind of necessary to the plot, since they wouldn't have had to run away at all if they had had parents able and willing to help them). Kaylee worked for her father before joining Serenity and mentioned him without rancor; Jayne quoted his father ("My daddy always said...") without any hint of animosity.

Just as an aside, I'm not sure we can classify the Tams as bad parents quite yet. Simon obviously feels let down by them, but we can't know what kind of strong-arm tactics the Alliance might have used on them, or what ideals they might have thought they were adhering to in making the decisions they did. I'm hoping that we'll get to know more about them, one way or another, however the series continues itself.

Love the 'Verse,

Indigo S.

DEL

Tuesday, July 3, 2007 12:21 PM

I for one LOVE the sense of family created between all the characters in FF.Shown especially when they sit down to dinner together, that time.

It seems stronger that they aren't related (obvious exception Simon and River u it's their interaction with each other that shows jst how strong a sense of family there is with the otehrs) and are so different but life throws then together and they stick.

KHELEKOREYAVIEL

Tuesday, July 3, 2007 1:33 PM

I don't know if you guys have ever tried to write fantasy, but I'm guessing not. One of the oldest and most-used stories in the book: the orphan. Parents and fantasy don't mix. Parents get in the way. I mean, honestly, what good parent in their right mind would let Buffy do what she does? Or any of the other characters mentioned for that matter?

Parents get in the way. It's as simple as that. Look at Harry Potter. His parents are dead. He and his friends go to a boarding school where there are no parents around. Ever. Hermione Granger's parents are hardly ever seen at all. Come on. Would they really want her chasing evil mass murderers? I think not. Luke Skywalker was an orphan. The Pevensie children from Chronicles of Narnia went to a fantasy world and left their parents far behind.

Bottom line: It's not just a Joss thing. Everyone does it. And I do mean everyone. If you want to write a fantasy about kids or really anyone else, you have to get the parents out of the way. All Joss is guilty of is not having enough imagination in getting them out of the way.

Parents can say no, and that makes them a problem.

Oh, and an aside: Families are made, not born. Keep that in mind.

"I don't care what you believe. Just believe it."--Shepherd Derrial Book

"Intelligence doesn't determine what you do so much as how effectively you do it."--Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan

KHELEKOREYAVIEL

Tuesday, July 3, 2007 2:30 PM

Also:

I don't think you can really compare Firefly to Dawson's Creek or any of the other "normal" TV shows. It is sci fi, which makes it an entirely different genre. Different concept, different characters, different situations. They're written in completely different ways. Dawson's Creek doesn't even apply. I doubt the kids on that show would last an hour on Serenity, and Mal probably wouldn't do so well in their place.

Comparing two shows that have absolutely nothing in common doesn't even remotely make sense. There's nothing to compare.

I will admit that since the Firefly characters are adults, their parents wouldn't really have much of a role in the first place.

But obviously: Kaylee's parents (or her Daddy) gave her permission to be aboard Serenity. Jayne's mother cares about him--she knitted him a cute little hat. The Tam parents are clueless.

Other than that, besides Mal, parents aren't really mentioned at all.

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