tv meme

[rivendellrose]

TV meme, gacked from hoperomantic:

The story: A supernatural glitch in your DVR occurs. At first you panic, hitting lots of random buttons on your remote control, but then are RELIEVED to discover that no, your entire series recording of Golden Girls has not been deleted! But then, just as things appear to be back to normal, there's a puff of smoke, and a fairy appears! You have apparently freed the TV fairy from a televised hell in which she was made to watch endless reruns of Are You Hot?, and as fairies tend to be when freed, she is very grateful and wants to grant you magic wishes.

Now, the fairy has only TV-related powerz, and so she offers you the chance to go back in time and retroactively CHANGE the history of your favorite TV shows with 3.5 wishes!



You can go back in time and erase from the fabric of TV history THREE individual episodes of any TV show you want! The rest of the series(es) will not be altered. What do you choose?

1. I'm gonna have to agree with hoperomantic on the subject of the X-Files episode "Home." Because ewww. That was the only episode that ever made me get up and actually turn off the show, I was so disgusted and horrified.

2. And also on the subject of "TKO" of Babylon 5. Because that episode almost made me quit watching the show.

3. Aaaaand... how about the godawful "I defeat the demon by standing in a corner and ignoring it" episode of Highlander. I can't think of anything else that totally deserves to die but wouldn't leave plot-holes if it disappeared.

You can go back in time and revive ONE unfairly cancelled television show and return it to the annals of TV history!* *CHOOSE WISELY, because if you attempt to revive more than one show, the wish will backfire and you'll instead be treated to a whole bunch of crappy made-for-TV "reunion" movies full of replacement actors.

Please. Firefly, of course!

To balance out the historical TV viewing schedule, you now have the power to retroactively CANCEL, at any point during the series, any one show! Alternately, you can wield your destructive might and DELETE one whole entire series from ever having been made.

o_O A whole show? Really? That's tempting, but... honestly? I'd like to just stop the X-Files right before Mulder left. Chris Carter was just being a dumbass when he kept going without one of the two main characters.

LIFE AND DEATH! You can now bring ONE character back from the dead... and, to restore the balance, you must also kill off a character! They don't have to be from the same fandom.

Ooo. So many choices... Okay. Since this is TV and not movies, I'm gonna have to skip Wash (because he never really died, see, because the movie was all a bad dream that Mal had off some really awful food when the crew accidentally let River do the cooking) and... umm... I know this is just me being a dumb fangirl, but I really really really liked Jenny Calendar. So I'm gonna bring her back. As for the death... I'm having some trouble with this one. How about Byron? Can it be retroactive? Like... "Hey, I know where we can all go! We could go to Babylon--" *dies* Yeah.

Bonus tradeoff: you can delete a single scene, relationship pairing or plot arc from any series that gave you hives... AND you can plug in any one [scene, pairing, plot arc] that you never got to see!

Ohgod. I know there must be dozens, but my brain is a total blank. I'll come back to this one later, I guess... I really ought to be writing, but I got derailed by this meme, and by spider solitaire.

Comments

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you with respect to TKO. Even though I liked the rabbi, the whole Mutai thing? What the hell? Oh, Season 1, with your insanity.

Still (IMHO) better than No Compromises, though. ;)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

The rabbi was very cute, and I liked that whole arc of the episode... I kind of forget that it was attached to the rest, honestly. Maybe you're right that "No Compromise" would be the best choice. That whole episode sucked, if I'm remembering correctly.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

No Compromises is my least. Favorite. Episode. Ever. Even moreso than Infection.

I think it's the combination of Byron's unhelpfulness, the Cute Dying Kid cliche, and JMS attempting to make Lochley competent by fiat instead of actually giving her competent things to do. There are cute bits with Sheridan and G'Kar, but the bumbling of all our supposed heroes, and... augh.

I might just be a little bitter because I had to watch it a zillion times to write the B5/Pirates crossover. ;)

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

My other thought is that because most of the Season 1 episodes were doing a lot of worldbuilding, the various plots in each one didn't have much to do with one another. (With notable exceptions.) So in TKO you had the fight, you had the rabbi, and I think there may have even been something else going on in the background. Infection had the alien death armor, but also the interactions between Stephen and his mentor and that reporter. So I find it hard to hate the entirety of any Season 1 episode because there's usually something about it to like.

I have a hard time rewatching Grail, though. ;)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

You make a very good point - even in the worst of the S1 episodes, there's something important that will turn up later, or something interesting that really brings the characters into focus. That's the thing about Babylon 5 - sometimes I feel so embarrassed by large portions of it, and then suddenly it'll hit me with something wonderful and I'm in love all over again. Very mixed feelings, but the love is always there.

And I have a hard time with Grail, too. Even if it does have one of my favorite-ever Ivanova lines. ;)

[kakodaimon.livejournal.com]

Yes on TKO. What happened in "Home"? I'm so curious now. Was that the "Mulder gets crucified" episode?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Mulder gets...? Whoa, I must've blocked my memory of that episode or something, I don't recall it at all. o_O No, "Home" is the one with the really creepy in-bred family someplace in... Arkansas or something? The one with the mom whose limbs were all gone and who they kept under the bed... I don't really remember much, I panicked pretty damned quick and turned it off. Scary episode.

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

Ooo. So many choices... Okay. Since this is TV and not movies, I'm gonna have to skip Wash (because he never really died, see, because the movie was all a bad dream that Mal had off some really awful food when the crew accidentally let River do the cooking) and... umm... I know this is just me being a dumb fangirl, but I really really really liked Jenny Calendar.

Amen -- on both Wash and on that crazy movie that clearly was a nightmare that Mal had. (Fulfilling his fantasies that he stuck it to the Alliance and that he didn't have to worry about any more crew marital "complications")

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

(Fulfilling his fantasies that he stuck it to the Alliance and that he didn't have to worry about any more crew marital "complications")

Exactly! It's not like Mal would ever want to hurt Zoe that way, exactly, but I could see him thinking it'd all be easier without the complications... and he certainly has that hero complex and a vendetta against the Alliance. I like the whole thing a lot better when it's read as Mal's terrible bad dream. ;)

[lokapala.livejournal.com]

how about the godawful "I defeat the demon by standing in a corner and ignoring it" episode of Highlander

Not to provoke a rant, but why you find it godawful? Because of it's plot arc (the why not remove any other Arhiman-related episodes), or because of it's content? What's so wrong with - Armageddon, was it? - in particular?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

"Armageddon" sounds about right. And really, my problem with it was entirely about the conclusion. We spend all this time building up a huge arc of how powerful and dangerous Ahriman is, and then there's this surrealist, weird scene with a midget and a rubber ball (I'm sure that was supposed to have some symbolic significance, but it's lost on me at this point, if I ever knew), and Duncan defeats it by... turning his back. Big build-up. Teeeeeeensy conclusion. And, if I remember correctly, that whole endeavor was a big part of what sent Duncan into his season-long sulk of wearing white and refusing to fight anybody and generally being (IMHO) dumb, irritating, and more broody than usual.

On one hand, I applaud the attempt to provide alternatives to violence as the answer to everything. And I can certainly see that what happened to Richie would give Duncan a lot of issues regarding battle, and potentially give him cause to reconsider his way of life. In the end, though, I thought the whole thing was handled in a really foolish way, and that it was pretty obvious by that point in the series that the writers were reaching the ends of their ropes. It might be a little arbitrary, but I felt like the show really... what's that term? Jumped the shark, I think it is, at that point.

[lokapala.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see.
But not really, because my reaction to Armageddon, or its conclusion, to be specific, was the opposite.
I was irritated by the whole Arhiman thing from the start, but if the first story, at the end of S5, was still explainable as Duncan imploding (a long overdue implosion, if you ask me) with some side effects similar to the Dark Quickening, S6 says that yes, Arhiman is definitely real and a demon, and Duncan is a prophecised Chosen One, and waitaminute, what show am I watching, Highlander or BtVS? So when it all went back inside Duncan's head and we were treated to a nice metaphoric inner duel with a beautiful kata, I was happy and somewhat mollified =)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Totally with you on the reaction to Ahriman and the Chosen One deal and all of that. So I guess we just had a backwards reaction to the ending to finish it all off. To be fair, I was biased by my friends who were showing the series to me, who'd already seen Armageddon and hated it passionately... so I probably never gave it a fair chance. ;)

[mahala.livejournal.com]

Oy...gotta agree on everything, and I didn't even watch Highlander.

'Cept I think I might be able to make it through TKO with less squick than Grey 17 is Missing...but only slightly.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Hmm, good point about Grey 17... Gods, that episode was soooo boring.

[jfrog78.livejournal.com]

I only didn't like the grey 17 part. But the other part of that episode was great. Markus defending ranger one with awesome lines. That was great!

Also I like home. I lived in a town like that when I saw that one. It made me go lock the doors every night after that.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That's true - the Marcus bit of that episode was pretty cool. Although I'd have been happier if we'd gotten to see some of Delenn's kickass side, rather than just her being defended by her boys. ;)

Eep. *Shivers* If I lived in a town like that, I'd probably just never sleep. Ever. Eaugh.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

I am SOO with you on the episode of Home.
I still get the creepies when I think about it. I have your Theo food by the way, so whenever you want to get together, let me know. I hope your days off were fun.