C. L. Norman

I finished rewatching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series and it got me to thinking of love triangles and what works for me and what doesn’t.

Buffy by the end of the series is in a love triangle with Angel and Spike. Both are vampires with souls and both love her. And let’s face it, both are good looking. So why is it that folks vote for Buffy to choose one over the other?

Personally, I think Spike is who she should end with. The reason why is the same reason I am glad Joey ended up with Pacey on Dawson’s Creek and why I was frustrated with Felicity choosing Ben over Noel on Felicity.

Angel and Buffy was the dream relationship. The first crush. The first love. The hazy, rose-colored, slow-music playing relationship. Don’t get me wrong. I fully believe that Buffy and Angel loved each other and they had a nice run, but they changed and grew up over the next few years and their love was more of a reflex after that happened. It wasn’t real anymore.

Spike and Buffy started as enemies but they grew and changed together. They worked at their relationship or tried to avoid working at it. Their feelings for each other grew from enmity to allies to friendship and finally to love. After all that effort and growth, they should be together.

At least for a while, the whole unaging thing on the part of Spike will get to be a problem eventually. But that is a whole other topic for discussion.

A new vampire love triangle is on TV. This one is on Vampire Diaries between Elaina, Stefan, and Damon. I’ve read the books and despite a love triangle being advertised on the back cover, I never thought that there was any danger of a triangle forming. Elaina was never in any danger of loving Damon and so no triangle. In the tv show that possibility is already there. My daughter is an avid fan and I like it but the triangle possibility is starting to draw me in. I want to see what happens next.

Of course all of this may be me justifying the girl ending up with the ‘bad boy.’ I am a sucker for the bad boy, they are more fun.

What is your favorite love triangle? Which ones worked for you and which ones had you yelling at the book/TV/screen “No!”?

        

Monday nights put my DVR to work, overtime. Heroes, Lie To Me, and Castle are three of my favorite shows and I get cranky if I can’t watch them in a reasonable amount of time.

Heroes

I haven’t managed to watch Monday night’s episode of this but I will be as soon as I get home from work tonight. I am an avid fan of Sylar (who isn’t?) and the Sylar that is in Matt Parkman’s head has me creeped out. Is he really there? at least in part? Or is Matt hallucinating and going crazy? Did Sylar figure out how Matt’s power works during the process of making Sylar into Nathan?

Speaking of which, the whole Sylar is Nathan thing was bound to fail almost immediately and why Angela, who gets flashes of the future, couldn’t figure that out, I have no idea. It is an interesting premise but Sylar had too many powers that would reveal the truth for it to work properly.

HRG needs to get back to work. It was fun trying to guess what he was up to, who he was working for, who he was protecting. If there is a true rogue in the group, I would nominate HRG. He always seemed ahead of all these super powered folks around him. Is it possible his power is to outthink the people who he is surrounded by? His motives are always mysterious or not easily believed. I want to see him in action again.

Lie To Me

I am a new fan of this show. I watched about 4 to 5 of last season’s episodes and now I am hooked. As a lover of liars and thieves in fiction, it is a natural leap to adore deception experts. And of course I also am an avid fan of whodunnits, so this show is firmly in my sights.

The Lightman character has a wonderfully complex personality. He is able to detect lies and hidden truths from the littlest clues. He is also able to lie freely and easily as needed with very little time for planning. At least it appears that way. The lies he tells help him get to the truth, like a crowbar to pry open a rusty door to see what is on the other side. I love to watch it.

Monday night’s episode also added that he is willing to remotely spy on his office to keep control of it. He can’t let it go for even a week of fun in the sun with his daughter. Also he seems the most genuine when he is interacting with his daughter. His temper appear, the games disappear and he is just a dad worrying about his kid. It is wonderful to see.

Castle

I have to admit it. There is one singular reason I chose to watch this show in the beginning and that reason is named Nathan Fillion. I have adored watching him on the screen since he was Joey in One Life to Live, as the Preacher in Buffy, as Mal in Serenity/Firefly, and others. The approach he has to most roles make me wonder if he isn’t a rogue in life as he is on screen. He has an energy and a twinkle to his eye that makes me think he is putting one over on every person watching him. He is fun to watch and so I was predisposed to like Castle from the beginning.

Castle is also a whodunnit so I am hooked. It has a lot of sparkling banter between Castle and Beckett that reminds me of Moonlighting with David and Maddy. Banter that just proves that these two characters are attracted to each other but aren’t ready to pursue it, which is always fun.

The crimes they solve are complicated and figuring out who committed the crime before it is revealed is fun, and usually I am wrong. Which is ok because when the answer is revealed I realize why I was wrong and I vow that the next time I will get the answer right.

What do you like to watch on Monday night?

        

1. Having your characters keep secrets should never work out like they want it to.  When they finally reveal or are forced to reveal their Big Secret, unexpected and unwanted results should follow.
2. Killing off your characters doesn’t have to be permanent. But if they are brought back, don’t gloss over how they got back. Have a rock solid explanation or leave them dead.
3. Setting up complex family relationships can really increase the drama or stretch the reader/viewer’s imagination too far. Everyone related means everyone has a stake in the outcome when one of your characters is in trouble. Everyone related shouldn’t be the entire population of a town including that stranger that just moved in last week and is Grandma’s long lost love child.
4. Death bed confessions should only be made by the truly dying. Putting your main character in a hospital bed and then having everyone gather around for a chat is boring and predictable. Use these kinds of scenes very sparingly.
5. Having brothers or comrades-in-arms in love with the same woman creates tension. Having that woman sleeping around with both brothers creates a slut.
6. Lack of research cannot be disguised by a lot of action.
7. Two people repetitively talking about their secrets or problems for hours at a time is boring. Throwing a third person into the room who doesn’t know what is going on or is the object of the problem creates delicious tension.
8. Everyone, no matter how awful their lives are, has time for a holiday or a moment with the family.
9. Bad boy characters are especially appealing to the feminine audience. Keeping their motives a mystery and their looks to-die-for is always a crowd pleaser.
10. Ending on a cliffhanger is a good thing. Everyone comes back for more. Ending on the same cliffhanger over and over is not.

        

So I discovered Supernatural finally. Just a few days ago when my computer went down I ordered an episode on my iPhone and immediately started kicking myself for not watching it earlier. I had good reasons at the time. Like I had enough shows I was following, another show in the same time slot, worried that picking it up after season one would just leave me dazed and confused. None of those reasons are sounding good enough now.

The two brothers in this show are fun and interesting to watch. I look at them and I just want to tear their characters apart and look at them again from the inside out, analyzing everything about them that makes them so much more than the everyday monster hunters.

Dean is the resident rogue of the show. He has the quips and the smart alecky attitude and Jensen Ackles has always appeared to have a bit of the imp in him in every role I have seen him in and it makes him one of my favorites. Sam though is the rebel. Dean listens to no one but his dad and Sam listens to everyone but his dad (keeping in mind I am only half way through season one at the time of this entry). Sam is the rebel or the black sheep of the family and it is neat to see as he would be considered the “good” son from those outside the family group.

This show would be interesting enough watching two ordinary folks fighting the unusual in a semi-ordinary world. But the two characters here have been crafted so wonderfully that I enjoyed learning more about them than about the world they live in. They have all these built in conflicts or layers that make them wonderfully rich, like a triple layer chocolate cherry cake. A person can just dig in and enjoy.

First, they are brothers. Brothers and sisters for that matter have very different kinds of relationships. There is sibling rivalry and sibling protection and love. Second, one witnessed and remembers his mother’s death and the other does not. One stayed home and was the dutiful son and learned all his dad had to teach him while the other left to experience a different kind of life. All of these layers are introduced in the first 15 minutes of the first episode.

If I can learn to create even half of these subtle layers and shadings in my characters I will count myself lucky.

What do you think of these characters?