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July 18, 2007

Farscape and the Importance of the "Fuck Yeah!" Moment

So, as I normally do, I realized something about how I feel by trying to explain it for the 40th time. So I thought I'd over-explain here.

I've been watching Farscape with Brer. It's fine, but it's not really grabbing me. One of the reasons is because it never has any "Fuck Yeah!" moments. Early on, the show was episodic. Every episode was just a new little adventure and nothing really changed afterwards. I liked that show. But then it changed to a character and plot-driven show with occasional episodic episodes. That show pissed me off at first, because it became that way incredibly terribly. I started getting used to it, but it's never caught me as a show like that because there are no "Fuck Yeah!" moments. There are no victories.
In an episodic show of this sort, every episode is just "let's have a wacky adventure and escape from X or find X" and nothing really matters. The heroes escape, or find X and it's not what they thought, and then everything is back to how it was before, and they go out in search of adventure next episode. However, when you're trying to have character development and plot, having most of your season be episodes like that does not fufill. It starts to feel like your characters never accomplish anything. They never win. Not even little tiny wins. They always just barely manage to escape. I cannot remember a moment in this show where I was happy to see the crew of Moya win. This is because they never do win. They just manage to escape, and may or may not be worse off from what happened. The show never makes what they do feel significant in the overall plot. It doesn't try to.
Here is an example. In a recent episode I watched, D'Argo got news that his son was about to be sold into slavery. The show made D'Argo get angry by this news. "Why didn't you tell me this earlier!" he yells. This turns this news into a bad thing. However, D'Argo's motivation is finding his son. He had no idea where he was, or even if he was still alive, until that moment. The should could have completely framed this moment as a victory. A hopeful moment. Sure, his son is about to be a slave, but WE KNOW WHERE HE IS. The crew can find him now. D'Argo is a million times better off than he was before. But it doesn't frame it that way. It's just another peril. It's not a small victory, like it could have been.
Every potential small victory is framed like this in the show. I'm sure this is a decision on the part of the people making it, to try to make it a show that is depressing and realistic or something. But as a viewer, it's not satisfying to see them fail over and over and over again, and for their only "wins" to get them back to the shitty position they started from.

The show, I'm pretty sure, tries to lighten this sort of thing with most of Crichton's dialogue, but I just don't like it. It's not funny because he's, 80% of the time, being an ass to his fellow crewmembers. At the point of the series I am at, he's been on Moya for at least a year, if not more. Him continuing to use pop-culture analogies to explain things to his crewmates is nothing but assholish. He KNOWS they won't understand them and he'll have to explain them a second time. Why he does this during emergency situations is completely beyond me. Now, when he's talking to himself, working out things for himself, mumbling to himself, this is perfectly understandable. He's trying to keep himself calm. That's cool. I could find that entertaining. But he does it when interacting with people. It just seems pointless and frustrating for everyone involved. I don't know why he does it.

Anyway, there is some Farscape thoughts. It's Pizza Hut Lunch Buffet time.

Posted by poetfox at July 18, 2007 11:12 AM

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