jackcomics

OK, so there was this web thing by Joss Whedon that I linked to last week.

And, sure enough, he did it again. I loved this thing. The characters are charming, the jokes are funny, the songs are good. And the ending...well, the ending was like finishing off a perfect dessert -- pick your absolutely favorite dessert -- and the very last bite covers your tongue with gritty, bitter dirt and a wad of pet hair.

Not that it's a BAD ending. Not at all. It's a Whedonesque ending. It takes the themes of the piece and wraps them up, drives home the symbolism, shakes up the audience by undermining their expectations of traditional movie/TV storytelling, etc. He's really good at all of these things.

But here's my problem: he puts imperatives of STORY over imperatives of CHARACTER.
Now, lots of people tell stories this way. But the Whedon Curse is that he's so supernaturally good at creating characters that I care about, when he makes them dance at the end of his story-imperative strings, I suffer. Rest assured, I'm well aware that this is my problem, and not Joss Whedon's.

In this case, the cleverly crafted ending felt startlingly abrupt, more like a punch-line (with an emphasis on the punch) than a resolution. The STORY is over, but the CHARACTER needs more for us (you know, us, the viewers) to arrive at a satisfying ending. I'm not saying, "don't kill characters," or, "don't make bad things happen," not at all.

But a story that runs rough-shod over its characters says that their creator doesn't care about them.
And I'm afraid that's not a creator I want to spend much more time with, no matter how good he is at what he does.