Please, start the series over and refilm it, only this time have Danny Strong playing Xander.
No, I mean it. Go. Start over and refilm.
P.S. I wouldn’t be heart-broken if you replaced Sarah Michelle Geller with someone else, too. For instance, it would be nice if I didn’t watch the entirety of Who Are You? unable to get rid of the thought of how unfortunate it is that Eliza Dushku is a better actress than the main character.
Frustrated, horrified, frightened, dismayed, disgusted, appalled....
No worries, Dianne. We're all frustrated with the current situation. (Or I am, anyway.)
I apologize for my last comment. Trump's election is the fault of Trump voters and no one else (well, Putin,…
And thank you everyone who decided that Biden wasn't pure enough for you and stayed home: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/incoming-trump-team-is-asking-white-house-national-security-council-civil-servants-about-their-loyalty Incompetent NSC means…
_Railsea_ by China Mieville has ampersands as part of the story-- both text and symbolism. A genuinely weird surrealist novel.
That’s funny, because I’ve always thought of “Who Are You?” as proof that although Sarah Michelle Geller is not a great actress, she is significantly better than Eliza Dushku. I do agree with you about the Danny Strong as Xander idea. It was always hard to buy Nicholas Brendan as a total dork. I
It took me a very long time to really warm to Sarah Gellar as Buffy, but once I had watched all 7 series and finally truly got what the whole thing was about, she made perfect sense in the role. And I have to disagree that she’s not a good actor (“actress”?!? c’mon guys): I find it hard to imagine anyone doing better in The Body, for example.
I also have to disagree with changing Nicholas Brendan. I agree there that he may not be technically that great as an actor, but, again, he makes sense for the character, especially as Xander develops in the later series.
And anyway, Danny Strong was such a brilliant Jonathan, who could replace him?
I’ve often had the same thought.
The only way the Xander character — a verbally capable, fairly sensitive, muscular, handsome, very conventionally “masculine” character who is nonetheless widely understood in his school to be a geek and a loser — can make any sense at all is when we consider that he’s seemingly the only person from a poor family in the entire town.
But somehow the way Xander’s class was played out in Buffy rarely made that interpretation make sense — at least, not to me. I went to a high school in a wealthy white town, and class definitely made a difference. I can’t put my finger on it, but Xander doesn’t ring true to me as being a social reject for class reasons, just as he doesn’t ring true to me as a geek.
You all must have gone to really different schools to me. I went to school with a lot of guys who were not all that far off Xander as played by Nicholas Brendan. And I think you’re exaggerating the extent to which Xander was a “loser”. It’s not as if there are only 2 strata in school society, and many of those people the jocks and Cordelia types sneer at are actually somewhere in the middle. A lot of the cliquey types rarely even bother that much with the ones who are truly on the bottom rung.
I think the class thing is crucial. When I was in school, there were many people who were actually what could be considered conventionally good-looking, but because they came from working-class families, the It crowd definitely looked down on them and let them know it. The lack of social position made their physical appearance totally irrelevant. To say that someone can’t possibly be believable as someone who’d get shit from the school cliques just because they’re good-looking is (sorry, not trying to fight, but it has to be said) naive. I’m sure a lot of people who are considered reasonably attractive can tell us about being bullied and otherwise shat on in school.
Anyway, if we’re going to go this way, then virtually none of the characters could really look like the actors. Alyson Hannigan is way too conventially pretty to be a computer nerd that doesn’t get any male attention. Danny Strong is, realistically, also way too cute to be the social pariah that is Jonathan. Even Tony Head is too pretty to be the sort of character we’re supposed to accept that he is.
Xander, as exists in the series (up to season 4), is a total asshole.
Xander — if he were played by Strong — would be a role differently interpreted; he’d be a nebbish.
IMO, not only would it be more aesthetically pleasing (here I’m not talking about looks) but it would also make the dialogue make more sense. (Often, as interpreted by the guy who’s doing it, Xander’s dialogue just sounds awkward.)
I think having a person who can really ACT in a role makes a lot, lot, lot of difference. Look at Lost, with its amazingly crappy character development, and the way that one or two of the characters manage to endow some of that flat dialogue with the illusion of dimension. In contrast, a weak actor — like the guy who plays Jack or the woman who plays Kate — shows up with their performance how bad the dialogue really is.
When the dialogue is rough, the guy who plays Xander is a poor enough actor to highlight that. Ideally, the actor in that role (and in the others) would be good enough that even when the dialogue is poor, it doesn’t seem to be. I think Strong is that kind of actor for roles like Xander.
I know Whedon’s dialogue is celebrated, but it often doesn’t feel natural. (Also, a lot of the episodes aren’t written by him, and then the dialogue can be really rough, IMO.) It takes a certain ability to interpret that very clever dialogue and highlight how clever it is and also make it feel as if it’s natural to the character and the moment. Oz was *really* good at it. Xander, IMO, is very poor at it.
I think the forced nature of Xander’s dialogue was completely in character. Xander puts on a show and constantly tries to impress people with his humor. It doesn’t sound natural because it isn’t natural, and IMO, that was part of the point. That’s why Nick Brendon’s acting didn’t bother me, because the character of Xander himself doesn’t even buy what he’s saying; he is putting on a show. I agree he can be an asshole at times. I often can’t stand him. But to me that just made him more of a “real person.” I know a million slightly nerdy, slightly pervy guys like that. They don’t always say the right things and they often let their baser emotions take over, but in the end they are still good friends. I’m not saying that to say that Xander’s more nasty and sexist behavior is OK, but it is understandable. I just wish Joss would stop falling back on those kind of traits for characters like Wash and now Topher. I can only hope Topher is supposed to be mostly unlikeable, but I can’t really tell because he is so Xander-ish.
Am I the only feminist on earth who can’t see any reason why Whedon is a feminist icon? (Not to mention a good writer – the stilted dialogue, it hurts me.) I mean really, especially with Dollhouse, it seems like a classic case of confirmation bias – people see feminist intent because that’s what they’re expecting to see, and then come up with tortured explanations to explain away all the blatantly non-feminist elements.
Cassandra — I’ve been told that Buffy does some cool feminist pyrotechnics in the later seasons.
I don’t know. There’s feminist stuff. The male characters are as likely to show up in chains as the female. Stuff like that.
And Whedon seems to speak well on the topic, and to have it in mind, which I as a writer do appreciate.
But no, I have basically no idea why its seen as So Amazingly Spectacularly World-Movingly feminist. And while I’m enjoying it well enough this time around, mostly by trying not to take it as anything too aesthetically serious, I don’t understand why it’s seen as Amazingly Spectacularly Good either.
I’m re-watching Dead Like Me at the moment, and it’s Amazingly Spectacularly Good. It doesn’t have a lot of overt feminist messaging, but there’s something in the construction of a disaffected female anti-hero that’s gender-bending, we have plenty of Bechdel passing, and fully-rounded female characters who get a lot of focus and screen-time.
But — on the other hand — there’s a fiction writer I enjoy who’s quite popular right now, who periodically some other writer will come up to me and say “I don’t get what the deal is with [X.] He’s not that good.” And I’ll reply Yeah, he isn’t, particularly when evaluated as a writer, but he’s an amazing storyteller. He’s exceptionally talented at grabbing and keeping the reader’s attention. And that’s a pretty cool skill.
Mandolin – Yeah, I totally agree that any given writer doesn’t have to be high art in order to be a good read. I mean I grew up on Stephen King and still love his books even as I acknowledge their many flaws (well, apart from The Stand, that was pretty awful).
The thing about Buffy is, for me, it doesn’t read as feminist so much as just sort of riding on the coattails of the 90s girl power trend. Part of this is that I just found it kind of boring and so didn’t watch enough to have seen whatever episodes might have dealt with more specific feminist themes, but what I did see had sort of a girl power gloss on it but didn’t seem particularly radical. Certainly not enough so to justify crowning Whedon as the patron saint of feminist TV. It just seemed more like good trashy TV fun if you’re into that kind of thing, with a heroine who was a little less wimpy than is usual on TV.
I dunno, it just seems kind of pathetic to consider someone hugely feminist on such flimsy grounds. It feels like being grateful for even the smallest scraps being thrown our way. But otoh, there aren’t many scraps to be had.
I just always had trouble believing in Xander as the outcast geek that he was supposed to be, just because the actor playing the role looks just like the typical guy who you’d see at the top of the social ladder… and the character just isn’t socially inept enough to make up for that appearance. I mean yeah, Xander is full of awkward, pathetic, self-depricating humour… but that just didnt’ seem to be enough to make him into the loser he was supposed to be.
I was always disappointed they didn’t use Danny Strong’s character more. Especially when he (spoiler) *wasn’t* the one who survived Willow (yeah, I know that’s not technically true, I read the comic).
And Gellar was brilliant as Buffy. Again, the only flaw I saw was that Gellar seemed to physically *shrink* over the course of the series. By Season 6 she is nothing but skin and bone… which works nicely with the season’s theme, but I was always distracted by two thoughts
1) Is Gellar okay?
2) Okay, so Buffy’s the Slayer, and apparently the greatest one ever… but I still simply can’t see that teeny little body having the muscle to do any of that stuff.
And as for Hannigan, she’s just awkward enough to pull off the “outcast nerd despite being beautiful”. My problem was just how much they crammed into her character. The super-genius-computer-geek-witch-lesbian thing just seemed to be too many hyphens. That and, as much as I love how they handled her romantic life, it seemed kinda clichee that the one character who turns out to be gay is the witch.
I love most of Whedon’s work, but that doesn’t mean I accord him “feminist icon” status. And I’ll always defend Gellar as Buffy, and Buffy as Buffy. The characters of Buffy and Faith had some fantastic scenes throughout the series. As far as Gellar/Buffy “shrinking” – yeah, there are both real world and fictional implications. But in terms of Buffy, I always remember what Miss Callendar said to Giles when she found out Buffy was the Slayer: “But she’s so tiny!” And how enjoyable it was to see Buffy in her college girl halter top, amid the Initiative tough guys, all collarbones and elbows, and to see her as the only one among them who could have a chance against the enemy. (I have to assume that Gellar is a competent adult, and that her physique is under her control. Nothing I’ve read has ever indicated otherwise.) Oh, gosh, I love the Buffyverse.
I love to imagine putting Strong as Xander — it so completely changes the role that it’s fun to imagine how the dynamics would shift overall. fascinating.
on the other hand, if Buffy is really to have any connection to the high-status, cheerleading, fashion-conscious self that she had in the movie, then there’s a limit to how far down the social ladder she can really be expected to reach in her new school. that is, she might hang with geeks, but only with high-functioning, off-beatly stylish, unusually cute geeks. (compare with the real social misfit geeks of, say, Freaks and Geeks.) we can believe that she’s been forced to have more depth than the Cordelias of Sunnydale, but not that she would hang with people completely unappreciative of all the things she has always focused on.
so, from those angles, Strong, at least as he played Jonathan, wouldn’t have worked. of course, maybe he’d have found an intriguing third way (geeky but normalish like Willow) to take the role; the world will never know.