Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 7

[aadler]

 
Continuing the meme/challenge begun and tracked here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 7

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc.), and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

As I did last year, I think I’ll go for three different examples and categories.

First. I’ve noted in the past that the use of Sarah McLachlan’s “Full of Grace” at the end of the Buffy Season 2, episode 22 “Becoming”, was just about the best mating of song to content that I’ve ever seen. I stand by that statement, but a respectable second place goes to the use of Kim Richey’s “A Place Called Home” in the Angel Season 5, Episode 16 “Shells”. That one is heartbreaking just to remember. And it wasn’t the song, either; that was also used in the Alias Season 2, Episode 6 “Salvation”, and it just wasn’t as good there … not only because I’d seen it already, but because — though that one was certainly effective — the matching of song to subject simply didn’t suit as well.

Second. The most effective use of language I’ve ever seen, anywhere, came in 1973. I was reading “A Taste for Death”, the fourth of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise books. (The first one I’d ever read, and in many ways still my favorite. Most of the first books had several of the same elements, always done well: the ingenious caper, the impossible duel, the impossible escape, and the apocalyptic battle at the end. ATFD skipped the apocalyptic battle, but there were two impossible escapes and two impossible duels, and they were all humdingers.) Anyway, toward the end, Willie Garvin is faced with an enemy he can’t beat, knows he can’t beat, he’s accepted his own death because at least Modesty will survive … and then she double-crosses him, makes her presence known so that she’ll die too unless he wins a fight he can’t win … and the next line, the next paragraph, shows how his entire existence just shifted, in seconds, to something completely different:

          So.

Just like that. Three characters — S. o. period. — and everything is different. Forty-some years later, I still love it.

Third. Actors are people, and people die, and sometimes actors die at inconvenient times. In 1984, Jon-Erik Hexum died from an accident on the set of Cover Up. The series continued without him … but in the first new episode filmed after his death (Antony Hamilton was brought in to play a new person fulfilling the same role) the death of Hexum’s character was acknowledged at the end, followed by a voice-over by Richard Anderson of a memorium written by show creator Glen A. Larson:

They say when a star dies, its light continues to shine
across the universe for millennia.
Jon-Erik Hexum died in October of this year,
but his light will continue to
brighten our lives forever … and ever.

This was the classiest in-show recognition of an actor’s death that I’d ever seen, and I don’t know if it’s ever been topped.

And, okay, I have to go for one more.

Fourth. Anybody who reads my LJ knows I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I mean, I seriously love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I won’t try to claim it’s the best show television ever had, but it was up there, and it grabbled me in a way few ever did, and inspired me like none other anywhere. So, in seven seasons — 144 episodes — of vampires, demons, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, golems, parasites, shapeshifters, extradimensional invaders, gods and monsters, what was the single most frightening moment of Buffy?

It was a second and a half of a shadow moving past a curtain, in the Season 5, Episode 17 “Forever”, the badly-resurrected Joyce Summers come to knock on the door of her bereaved daughters’ home.

Some things work because they’re a surprise, or because it’s a novel new technique or twist. That one works because it was perfectly done. Every time I see it, I get the same chill and the same dread. So, okay, the gimmick itself was taken from “The Monkey’s Paw” … but the execution, here, was just utterly, unsurpassably, fantastic.

***

My favorite canon moments. These are them.

Comments

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

Very thought-provoking list of canon elements here. I like your discussion.


Gabrielle

[spikedluv]

Buffy had some great music! One of my favorites was 'Goodbye to You' in the BtVS ep Tabula Rasa.

[snogged.livejournal.com]

I agree that BtVS was very good at using music to elevate a scene.

[akamine_chan]

I was just a teenager, but I remember when Jon-Erik Hexum died, and how shocking it was. Years later, so many of us felt a horrible sense of deja vu when Brandon Lee died on set. So much potential in both young men, lost to us so young.

[pronker]

Hexum died and it was a loss. That's a lovely memorial.

I am with you in the shadow moving across being terribly frightening! One picture worth 1000 words, etc., and TV can do this so very well and intimately.

[aadler]

Thank you. All of these are things I’ve discussed with my kids (particularly sroni) in the past, so I had little trouble bringing them to mind when the situation called for it.

[aadler]

That was a good one. Of course, there were a lot of good ones, I just picked out what I saw as the best. (Other nice examples are Cibo Matto’s “Sugar Water” during Buffy’s ‘sexy dance’ with Xander in “When She Was Bad”, and “Wild Horses” for her dance with Angel at “the Prom”.)

[aadler]

Indeed. (See my reply to spikedluv.)

[aadler]

Yes, both incidents highlighted just how important the propmaster’s job is. (In Hexum’s case, it was a matter of Make sure to protect the actors from their own ignorance. Their ignorance isn’t their fault, I’m the one who can’t afford to be ignorant on this, but they still need to be protected. In Lee’s … well, that truly was a freak accident, but any such after that — because a propmaster hadn’t properly cleared the barrel of a weapon — would have been criminal negligence.)

Life isn’t safe. In fact, the mortality rate is 100%. Doesn’t mean we don’t put it off for as long as we can, and hope everyone else can do the same.

[aadler]

In this case, though, it was one image being worth 10,000 images from the same source. It was that image, at that time, under those circumstances, that packed the greatest punch.

As far as great canon, I probably could have tossed in the ending of Newhart, where he woke up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette (his wife from the Bob Newhart Show). One of the reasons that worked so well was that I recognized the bedroom (and doubtless so did millions of other people) simply because we’d seen it so many times, albeit a couple of decades previously. I knew before I knew, just from the sheer artistry, and that’s an unforgettable moment.

[pronker]

Newhart and his associates did things right. The show's characters Larry, Darryl, and Darryl were my faves.