Television Tuesday :: Deadwood and relationships, part four.

Right now I would like to talk not about individual relationships but about leadership styles, namely the differences between Al’s (Ian McShane) and Cy’s (Powers Boothe).  Becuase that affects how they relate to other characters and to the camp.

The instances of smallpox are a good example of this: Cy’s reaction is to send his sick, Andy (Zach Grenier) into the woods to die, then send another man (Joey [Everette Wallin]) to get a cure without telling him that’s what he’s getting and without informing the rest of the camp.  Al’s reaction is to send for Doc (Brad Dourif) and call a meeting of the town’s influential folks.

Both of them are businessmen, but Cy lets his ego gets away from him.  He wants to be the important person.  Al cements himself as the important person by actually doing things.  And Al is not a sterling kind of guy.  He does a lot of terrible things, that’s not up for debate, but he also builds relationships.  His relationships with Dan (W. Earl Brown) and Johnny (Sean Bridgers) have definite notes of problematic and abusive behavior, but there’s also more loyalty there than he has toward others.  The relationships are developed.  It’s not just a vaguely distrustful business arrangement like Cy’s relationships with all of his people, where he doesn’t trust them and they don’t trust him and nobody gets much done.

Another point: Al and Trixie (Paula Malcomson) versus Cy and Joanie (Kim Dickens).  Both relationships are unhealthy, but the nature of the unhealthiness is different.  While Trixie doesn’t trust Al, Al trusts Trixie more than he will admit, treats her more like an equal than he would be willing to admit; Cy tries to be kind to Joanie but not often enough and instead winds up patronizing her and not treating her like an equal.

The two saloon keepers run very parallel, is the point.  And it’s an interesting study in contrasts.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: Deadwood and relationships, part three.

Tonight we’re going to talk about a few different things.

We’re going to talk the effects that Andy Cramed (Zach Grenier) is shown to have on both Joanie (Kim Dickens) and Jane (Robin Weigert).  Joanie’s moral crisis as pertains to Cy (Powers Boothe) gets its start, at least that we see, from watching how Cy deals with Andy.  She’s indignant about Cy’s treatment of the man because of their friendship.  And Jane, Jane comes across Andy by accident in the woods and instead of running stays to tend him, not because she knows him but because… well, it seems the thing to do.  It gives her a chance to further her caregiving instinct.

We’re going to talk about Seth (Timothy Olyphant) and Sol (John Hawkes) and Reverend Smith (Ray McKinnon) and how that friendship starts as a matter of convenience and has its share of contention (mainly arising from Seth and the Reverend’s ideals clashing, from Seth’s wariness of what the Reverend is going on about) but nonetheless seems to ground all of them.  The Reverend gets something out of it because it gives him friends in the camp and therefore, as he says, a tie to it; Seth and Sol get his assistance with their store but also through him become more involved in the camp.

And we’re going to talk about Alma (Molly Parker) and Trixie (Paula Malcomson) and Sofia (Bree Seanna Wall).  Alma winds up with Sofia by a stroke of fate, and while she doesn’t feel she’s fit to care for the child she takes the task on regardless, with Trixie’s eventually requisitioned help; Alma looks after the girl because it’s the right thing to do, and Trixie, though she’s told to give Alma dope, instead comes in and immediately works to get her off dope because it’s the right thing to do.  She doesn’t know Alma prior to that, but she knows what drug addiction can to do a person and she knows that that’s not good.  She doesn’t trust Al’s (Ian McShane) motives (she, who knows Al better than anyone, arguably) and so she works against them in secret.  And they work together to take care of the child and Trixie works to take care of Alma and there’s so much caregiving and it’s so beautiful.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: my (probably not terribly original but necessary) why you should watch Deadwood post

I’ve been seeing a lot of these around tumblr lately, and given that I recently finished that rewatch and then immediately had the emotional effects of another rewatch secondhand via a friend going through it, I decided it would be appropriate to throw my own voice into the mix.  Not that I haven’t said a lot of this before, but I’m putting it all in one place.

So.

• Deadwood is the show that spoiled me for all other Westerns.  I hadn’t been particularly fond of the genre growing up, because my dad turned on things like Lonesome Dove and Tombstone one too many times, and I couldn’t tell any of them apart because they were all just a bunch of cowboys having intermittent gunfights; nowadays it’s slightly easier for me to distinguish all of those things because I can recognize a few of the actors and there are certain scenes and lines that I know well on accident.  Aside from my parents insisting that Deadwood was really, really interesting though, I think one of the reasons I agreed to watch it in the first place was that I’d played a dance hall girl in Oklahoma! in junior high and had subsequently developed an irrational fondness for fictional prostitutes of that era; Deadwood, I was told, would give me 1800s prostitutes, and interesting ones at that.  It would also give me other interesting women, and I believe my first watchthrough of Deadwood coincides directly with my brain’s conscious insistence that if there are not interesting women in something, the odds I’ll like it are almost nil (this is, of course, why I wasn’t particularly interested in the Westerns I grew up being subjected to; I’m sure some of the women in them would be interesting if I sat down and really paid attention, but they were not nearly involved enough in the plot for my baby misandrist self).  And this is also why it’s spoiled me for all other Westerns: for one, most of them do not seem to have enough interesting, well-developed women with their own plotlines and narrative agency.  For another, Deadwood is a show where I care a lot about a lot of the guys, and that’s notably rare for me as well; I can usually pick one or two I enjoy, but on Deadwood the percentage is significantly higher.  Because they’re well-rounded.  All of the characters are brilliantly nuanced, and that, that is what really spoiled me for other Westerns.  There are types here, but they are not easily reduced.
• Deadwood is the show that spoiled me for any story that has characters that are prostitutes in it.  On a specific Westerns-related note, I just find a lot of the glossy, brightly-colored and fringed dance hall girls in most Westerns unrealistic after the reality of Deadwood; on an overall storytelling note, it’s just fascinating to me that when you meet Trixie (Paula Malcomson) and Joanie (Kim Dickens) they are both beholden to their employers Al (Ian McShane) and Cy (Powers Boothe) yet by the end they have found happiness in lives more of their own design and in relationships of their own choosing.  Trixie and Joanie run parallel for a good deal of the series (they detach from their employers, who they both had a sexually fraught history with; they strike out in business ventures of their own; they find themselves in other ventures and other relationships) and yes, they both began as prostitutes, they both have histories of abuse and hardship, but — though other characters often continue to define them as respectively “the whore” and “the madam” — they are not narratively bound by these roles.  (I was having a discussion with the friend who’d just rewatched recently about the scene where Trixie signs her name “Trixie the whore” and the possible meta connotations of that moment as relate to the concept that names grant characters agency inherently.  Trixie has not been in a position to have agency through her life, and she has been defined as such, but with that scene she shows a sense of “this is the box the world has put me in, but if I declare it then it can’t hurt me as much” a little bit?)  They are not necessarily given full agency within their lives, but they are given agency within the story.  Which is more than I can say for most fictional prostitutes that I am thinking of off the top of my head.  The fact that both of them end the series with at least the promise of being in positive relationships (Trixie with Sol [John Hawkes], Joanie with Jane [Robin Weigert]) is something magical, too, not because they need to be in relationships to be fulfilled but because they have both found something that makes them happy and it hasn’t been ripped away from them.
• Deadwood is the show that spoiled me for all fictional things with female/female romantic relationships in them.  I didn’t realize this until recently, but it’s very true.  When talking to that same friend, she expressed some worry about how many feelings she was having about Jane and Joanie, because usually that doesn’t end well, and I thought about it for a second and decided it wouldn’t be a spoiler if I just told her that she actually didn’t need to worry.  I don’t think any of this is in enough detail to be spoilery, really, and it’s still worth experiencing even if you know it’s going to happen.  There are successful lesbian relationships in fiction, but especially after last year’s rash of invisible femslash, both this friend and I are naturally wary of the various narrative ways to undo a female/female connection (the dead lesbian/bi girl/etc., the evil/traitorous/manipulative lesbian/bi girl/etc., the “just kidding” lesbian/bi girl/etc.).  Jane and Joanie, two characters with no small amount of emotional damage, who are set in a period piece in a world that is misogynistic (at least in-story; the narrative itself is blessedly not), who have not had successful or healthy romantic relationships in the past, who are not even necessarily well-prepared to have a successful or healthy romantic relationship now (Jane, especially, isn’t used to anything even resembling this, it seems), actually get to finish the series (at least unspokenly) together and without any of the stereotypical dramas between them.  Theirs is one of the stories ending with hope.  When I first watched Deadwood I hadn’t been partaking of media analytically for too long, so I hadn’t developed my wariness regarding fictional femslash, but now that I have, I can look back on this show and realize that it is rather special and wonderful.
• Deadwood is the show that spoiled me for stories about platonic allegiances, friendships, and found families.  All of the characters have strong relationships of many kinds with each other, and though the romances too are well-drawn and special in their ways, it’s the other relationships that are rarer in the scope of fiction overall and wonderfully refreshing.  I talked about Alma (Molly Parker) and her relationships with Trixie, Ellsworth (Jim Beaver), and Sofia (Bree Seanna Wall) in my Alma essay (and I will once again highlight the importance of both the female friendship sometimes laced with antagonism but overall productive in nature and the adoption-positive happenstance of the little foundling girl); there’s Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) and his relationships with Jane, Joanie, and Seth (Timothy Olyphant); there’s the variety of ways in which Cochran (Brad Dourif) relates to Al, to Trixie and the other prostitutes too, to Alma, to Jewel (Geri Jewell); there’s Richardson (Ralph Richeson) befriending Aunt Lou (Cleo King); there’s the best friends/business partners/voices of needed reason pair of Seth and Sol; there’s the Al-Dan (W. Earl Brown)-Johnny (Sean Bridgers)-Silas (Titus Welliver) mess of a team but damned if they’ll get all sappy about being friends, oh, and Wu (Keone Young) too; there’s Merrick (Jeffrey Jones) and Blazanov (Pasha D. Lychnikoff) and their odd little friendship; there are any number of relationships, all of which are nuanced and so vastly superior to so much else I see that I hold them up in comparison and disappoint myself even without thinking about it.

I guess this list is also “why watching Deadwood will ruin you for partaking of any other story, ever,” but there you have it.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: a Deadwood MBTI

(Surprise, I come closest to Joanie.  There are surprisingly few who typed out as introverts in this bunch.)

This isn’t quite as speculative as the Dollhouse minor characters chart, because all of these characters have significantly more screen time.  Deadwood has so many damn characters, all of whom are well-written, but here are nine of the main-ish ones just because.  Descriptions, as before, derived from typelogic.com and my analysis.  I really, really enjoy doing this.

Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe)
ENFP.  “They want to both help and to be liked and admired by other people, on both an individual and a humanitarian level… For some ENFPs, relationships can be seriously tested by their short attention spans and emotional needs. They are easily intrigued and distracted by new friends and acquaintances, forgetting their older and more familiar emotional ties for long stretches at a time. And the less mature ENFP may need to feel they’re the constant center of attention, to confirm their image of themselves as a wonderful and fascinating person.”  The ENFP description is wholly one of a probably nicer person than Cy, but just like how there are sometimes assholes in Gryffindor and nice people in Slytherin, Cy represents the bitchier ENFP.  He has a severe need for approval, improvement, and attention.

Alma Garret Ellsworth (Molly Parker)
INTP.  “INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to almost anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves… In seasons of low energy level, or moments of single-minded concentration, the INTP is aloof and detached in a way that might even offend more relational or extraverted individuals… Feeling tends to be all or none. When present, the INTP’s concern for others is intense, albeit naive. In a crisis, this feeling judgement is often silenced by the emergence of Thinking, who rushes in to avert chaos and destruction. In the absence of a clear principle, however, INTPs have been known to defer judgement and to allow decisions about interpersonal matters to be left hanging lest someone be offended or somehow injured.”  I have this feeling that, were she raised in a different time and society, Alma would have the possibility to be a different kind of person, type-wise.  Particularly with “defer[ing] judgement” and things like that.  But Alma is a badass, basically, a badass of the quiet sort, and that will always show through.

Al Swearengen (Ian McShane)
ESTP. “Activities involving great power, speed, thrill and risk are attractive to the ESTP. Chronic stifling of these impulses makes the ESTP feel ‘dead inside.’  Gamesmanship is the calling card of the ESTP. Persons of this type have a natural drive to best the competition. Some of the most successful salespersons are ESTPs. P.T. Barnum (“Never give a sucker an even break”) illustrates the unscrupulous contingent of this type… Some ESTPs are keenly discriminating; only those elements of singular quality and experience will suffice. Others revel in earthiness. If baseness can elicit shock from more squeamish observers, so much the better.”  This is dictionary-definition Al: “gamesmanship” is what he does.  While Cy strives for attention and renown, Al acquires those things by doing naturally what others have to work to do and still can’t accomplish as well.

Sol Star (John Hawkes)
ENTJ. “The ENTJ requires little encouragement to make a plan… This ability may be expressed as salesmanship, story-telling facility or stand-up comedy. In combination with the natural propensity for filibuster, our hero can make it very difficult for the customer to decline… ENTJs are decisive. They see what needs to be done, and frequently assign roles to their fellows… The light and heat generated by Thinking at the helm can be impressive; perhaps even overwhelming.”  I was on the fence about whether Sol should type out E or I for a while, really, but what it ultimately comes down to is that he’s an E who is capable of and comfortable with I behavior when the situation calls for it; he does have a certain 1800s-almost-nerdy charisma to him that’s pretty distinctively E, though.

Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens)
INFJ.  “Beneath the quiet exterior, INFJs hold deep convictions about the weightier matters of life… INFJs are champions of the oppressed and downtrodden. They often are found in the wake of an emergency, rescuing those who are in acute distress. INFJs may fantasize about getting revenge on those who victimize the defenseless. The concept of ‘poetic justice’ is appealing to the INFJ… Extraverted feeling, the auxiliary deciding function, expresses a range of emotion and opinions of, for and about people. INFJs, like many other FJ types, find themselves caught between the desire to express their wealth of feelings and moral conclusions about the actions and attitudes of others, and the awareness of the consequences of unbridled candor. Some vent the attending emotions in private, to trusted allies. Such confidants are chosen with care, for INFJs are well aware of the treachery that can reside in the hearts of mortals.”  Basically, Joanie is a champion, and I am proud to have typed out matching her.  She is an I who is capable of behaving like an E when the situation calls for it, but even if she’s pretending she’s such a true soul.

Trixie (Paula Malcomson)
ENTP.  “ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they can become petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they regard as challenges, and tackle with determination.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this… Some appear deceptively offhand with their nearest and dearest; others are so demonstrative that they succeed in shocking co-workers who’ve only seen their professional side.”  Trixie is a champion, too.  Trixie is a definite E, though she has her I moments; she’s more comfortable relating to and dealing with other people than herself, though not necessarily because of insecurities.  It’s simply what she’s used to.

Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie)
ESTJ.  “They seek out like-minded companions in clubs, civic groups, churches and other service organizations. The need for belonging is woven into the fiber of SJs… Service, the tangible expression of responsibility, is another key focus for ESTJs. They love to provide and to receive good service. The ESTJ merchant who provides dependable service has done much to enhance her self image… The ESTJ is outspoken, a person of principles, which are readily expressed. The ESTJ is not afraid to stand up for what she believes is right even in the face of overwhelming odds. ESTJs are able to make the tough calls.”  One of the reasons why Charlie and Seth make such a great working pair is that the STJ is all the same, but Charlie’s E balances Seth’s I out really well.  His friendship with Joanie works because his EST balances her INF; his rapport with Jane works because his TJ balances her FP.  He balances everyone out in ways that he needs to.

Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant)
ISTJ.  “ISTJs are often called inspectors. They have a keen sense of right and wrong, especially in their area of interest and/or responsibility… ISTJs are easily frustrated by the inconsistencies of others, especially when the second parties don’t keep their commitments. But they usually keep their feelings to themselves unless they are asked. And when asked, they don’t mince words. Truth wins out over tact… Si is oriented toward the world of forms, essences, generics. Time is such a form, a quantifiable essense of exactitude, the standard to which external events are held. For both of the IS_J types, the sense of propriety comes from the clear definition of these internal forms… Only in times of great distress is the Introverted Feeling expressed (as I witnessed in my dad when a neighbor’s son was killed in a hunting accident). Otherwise, feeling is inferred, or expressed nonverbally, through eye contact, or an encouraging smile.”  ISTJ is the most rulesy of the types, I feel, and though Seth occasionally tends toward something else, he makes a point of catching himself before it gets too out of hand.

Calamity Jane Cannary (Robin Weigert)
ESFP. “ESFPs love people, excitement, telling stories and having fun. The spontaneous, impulsive nature of this type is almost always entertaining… Some of the most colorful storytellers are ESFPs. Their down-to-earth, often homespun wit reflects a mischievous benevolence… Feeling, which tends to decision-making in the interest of individual beings, is auxiliary to sensing. As with all introverted functions, feeling for ESFPs has a surreal, cryptic, quintessential nature. It is more often implied than verbally expressed, more apparent in countenance and deed rather than word or creed. Feeling takes care that playful pokes and pranks do no harm to the victim.”  Jane is a perfect example of how sometimes, the types cannot be avoided.  There is nothing about Jane that isn’t completely true, because she can’t help herself.  She just says everything and does everything she thinks to say or do, whether or not it’s inappropriate, improper, illogical, or what.  She just does.  And she is fabulous for it.

–your fangirl heroine.

Monster Monday :: 11 brief and highly cracky imaginings of fictional characters as vampires.

If, you know, we’re doing a lot of drugs and inventing the most messed-up crossover fiction of all time or something.  AKA, this list is essentially terrible fanfiction, and I know that.   But it stems from that AU meme that was floating around tumblr ages ago, and thoughts I had then, and when I have these offhand thoughts, they sometimes become lists, and… well.  As always, I’m just imagining them along the lines of Buffy or True Blood vampires, because that’s what I know best, but I’m not trying to insert them into those canons, just in the style of, and I do apologize again for the ridiculous.  I just think that we’re possibly overdue for some crack.  Or… something.

11. Basically anyone from Game of Thrones
I’m imagining this like a fantasy realm True Blood, essentially.  The same sorts of King/Queen powerplays and all that, and still a lot of bloody decapitation and stuff.  I don’t know if it would actually be that different of a story.  The various gruesome killings would just be different in nature.  Cersei (Lena Headey) and Jaime (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau) could have an even more messed-up dynamic.  Dany (Emilia Clarke) would be from a non-vampire family and marry into vampirism.  And get really good at it, in her way, because she is a badass.  Sansa (Sophie Turner) could do some things that would be awesome, even if I don’t know what they would be.  Yes.

10. …or anyone from Boardwalk Empire
Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) resists letting Nucky (Steve Buscemi) turn her for a while, but then she gives in.  Every gangster is always a vampire.  They deal in blood instead of liquor.  Or they deal in liquor anyway and laugh at all the humans.  Again, sort of like True Blood.

OH MY GOSH I don’t know how it happened that I typed this entire post out, and all of it disappeared but the first two number points, and I’m just now realizing this.  Formatting, what.  Embarrassment, quick fixing.  Apologizing for this ridiculous, but not nearly as much as in draft one.  So.

9. …or anyone from Deadwood
Not everyone, but a lot of them.  Al (Ian McShane) and Cy (Powers Boothe) would be vampire pimps.  Jane (Robin Weigert) would be human, but Joanie (Kim Dickens) would be a vampire, so it would be awkward in that “Joanie is kind of an old-timey whore lady!Angel sometimes” way.  Sol (John Hawkes) would be human, but Trixie (Paula Malcomson) would be a vampire, so it would be awkward in that “Trixie could totally be an old-timey whore lady!Spike sometimes” way.  Seth (Timothy Olyphant) could be the neighborhood werewolf.

8, 7. Betty and Don Draper (January Jones and Jon Hamm, Mad Men)
Don would be sired in the war or something, and he would sire Betty out of loneliness.  Theirs would be a relationship of awkward, but they’d think it would work, and their vampire-marriage would go on a while before crash-landing.  It would be like canon, but without children and with vampirism.

6. Babydoll (Emily Browning, Sucker Punch)
And then the High Roller would ACTUALLY BE DON DRAPER, and would go to the brothel (this is ignoring the first level of reality altogether) and while he and Baby were having their consensual deleted scene sex, he’d consensually turn her.  And then she’d contemplate getting revenge on everyone who’d wronged her, but she’d eventually decide just to spend a while protecting Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) from things that go bump in the night.  At a distance.  Going from lady!Spike to lady!Angel.

5, 4. Envy Adams and Gideon Graves (Brie Larson and Jason Schwartzman, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World)
It would be like that terrible movie Suck, except instead of all being vampires, the members of the Clash at Demonhead would all be different supernatural things.  Envy would let Gideon sire her.  Todd (Brandon Routh) would just be his crazed vegan self.  Lynette the drummer (Tennessee Thomas) would be a werewolf or something.  They would try to be famous and hip.  Gideon would want to sire Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), though, and that would not go over well with her.

3. YoSaffBridge (Christina Hendricks, Firefly)
Three reasons: psychopaths make the best vampires, she would be amazing with the gift of thrall, and this.  Because…

2, 1. Alpha and Whiskey (Alan Tudyk and Amy Acker, Dollhouse)
Which is here.  Alpha/Whiskey is this twisted, terrible-for-all-involved, sadistic doom kind of ship, but I think it could work in a weird-ass vampire context where out of desperation, Alpha printed Crystal back into Whiskey (with a few modifications, probably) and then sired her.  They could go on crazy adventures.  They could team up with vampire YoSaffBridge and be like a vampiric Joker+Harley+Ivy team, but minus the obvious abuses and the Harley/Ivy undertones.  It could be demented and bloody and kind of neat.

So yes.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 5 (sometimes groups of) television adults I want to see as adolescents/younger adults.

‘Cause flashback time is the best time, yep.  I will go ahead and write their (real life actors) in parentheses, but just assume they’d be played in younger by younger people.

5. Every single character who counts on Boardwalk Empire
I want some family drama between baby Nucky (Steve Buscemi) and Eli (Shea Wigham).  I want the effed up adventures of Gillian (Gretchen Mol) the baby whore (and by that token, really baby Jimmy [Michael Pitt]).  I even want teenage Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) in Ireland.  I want to see the rise to initial situation, and I want to see it be awesome.  Because the only thing that’s more exciting than period drama is even more in a period drama.

4. Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams, Dollhouse)
For the same reasons, really.  She says to Roger!Victor (Enver Gjokaj) in 1×09, “A Spy in the House of Love,” that she used to “head a division that grew replacement organs out of stem cells.”  Now, that makes me all hilariously crossovery Repo-y giddy, of course, but it also makes me really curious.  Adelle is clearly a brilliant woman.  She’s not the computer genius Topher (Fran Kranz) is, but you have to be pretty damn smart to work with stem cell stuff, right?  (The fact that I just described it as “stem cell stuff” kind of proves why I could never be someone who does that.)  I’m intensely intrigued by the path from that to the cool, sophisticated head of the LA house.  I want to know everything, from why it is she’s in LA to what sort of personal life she had to why she’s made the choices she has that have led her to where she is.  She’s a fascinating woman, period.

3. Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens, Deadwood)
Now, Joanie’s pre-Deadwood life is discussed vaguely, yes.  Sold into prostitution by a bastard-ass father, working with Cy (Powers Boothe) for years.  I want to know more, though.  I want to know about her relationship with Maddie (Alice Krige), I want to know whatever happened to her sisters, I want to know when it was she realized she was a lesbian and if she had a lot of recreational lesbian experiences and how she balanced that with her work and Cy.  Also, I want to see more pretty Western whore corset dresses.

2. Like… every single character on Sons of Anarchy, too
They’ve laid out the whole Clay (Ron Perlman)/Gemma (Katey Sagal)/John/Maureen (Paula Malcomson) shape pretty well, and they’ve discussed John and Piney’s (William Lucking) hopes for everything, and they’ve said these things, but I want to see these things.  I want some legitimate flashbacks, not just snapshots and narration.  I want the parallels that would inevitably draw.

1. Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
We all know about Giles’ “Ripper” days, from various discussions and from 3×06, “Band Candy.”  But I want to see them.  I want to see punkass magic rebel Ripper and punkass magic rebel baby Ethan (Robin Sachs) and all sorts of other punkass magic rebels running around London, wreaking havoc.  Like that ridiculous flashback in True Blood 4×02, “You Smell Like Dinner,” where punkass rebel Bill (Stephen Moyer) is hanging out in London and affecting a ridiculous accent and whatnot, except for better, because they’re actually British, and they’re not vampires, just punkass rebels, and how many times can I say punkass (magic) rebel, I wonder?  I bet Ripper had some crazy affairs.  I bet the conflict between his punkass magic rebel ways and his Watcher destiny would be awesome to watch him angst about.  And Spike (James Marsters) and Dru (Juliet Landau) could be there in the corner, unbeknownst to Ripper; cameo-ed, popping up, and wreaking havoc.  Such beauty.  (Also, seven.)

–your fangirl heroine.