![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhysianaSo I just finished rewatching all of Lost Girl on Netflix, including the final season and a quarter I missed when it originally aired due to weird DVR mishaps, and while I enjoyed the show for itself again on this run through, I couldn't help but also keep up a running comparison to Teen Wolf in my mind. I hadn't watched any TW at all when I was first watching Lost Girl, but having specifically looked up the start dates for both shows when I was writing my meta piece about TW's weird tonal shift in S5, I was primed to be hyperaware of points of comparison this time.
As I mentioned in that other post, on the surface the two shows premises have a lot in common: A protagonist who wants nothing to do with the supernatural/fae world gets thrown into it anyway due to circumstances beyond their control (Scott being bitten; Bo's fae powers showing up during puberty). They each have a devoted human best friend/sidekick who seems more interested in figuring out the rules of magical society. Both are offered a choice between a "good" side and a "bad" side, Bo more overtly than Scott, in that she's supposed to declare herself officially either Light or Dark fae, but Scott is also set up for a choice between the Hales and the Argents (werewolves vs. hunters) that actually manages to have just enough ambiguity in it to confuse a teenage boy, since Derek is a dick to him and Allison is clearly an angel. Both declare themselves neutral (Bo in a more active manner than Scott).
How Lost Girl Did It Better:
Character-Driven Writing. This, I think, is the main thing that sets Lost Girl above Teen Wolf as an overall show. LG managed to take itself less seriously while addressing more serious issues and remain coherent across all 5 seasons even in the face of character deaths and new, weird plot arcs, all by keeping its focus on character development. Every new, weird thing they ever introduced was to serve the narrative of Bo's character development (or the development of one of the other core members of her found family, but only after they had established themselves as keenly important to Bo herself.) Compare this to TW, where the plot and the characters frequently had to take screeching 90-degree turns to bend around some interesting worldbuilding point the writing team had come up with that week and wanted to show off. While new fae with previously unheard-of abilities were introduced on LG all the time, they always managed to give the impression this was because the fae world was larger and more complex than Bo knew. (Ie, the entire point of having a new and clueless POV character.) On TW, every new were-creature, witch, or magical herb felt like it had come into existence all of five minutes before, and no one, neither Scott nor any of the supposedly more supernaturally-experienced characters, knew anything about it. (Or, if the writers deigned to give Deaton half an exposition, we got a watered-down "as you know, Bob" version, with bonus mystical obfuscation.) By keeping the focus on Bo and her friends, the worldbuilding of LG actually comes across as far more coherent, even when it was given second (or third) priority. There was never any chance viewers of LG would forget who the main character was supposed to be, and that focus on her and her relationships also allowed them to create a solid ensemble core cast the viewers cared about just as much. For her, not in spite of her.
Grappling with Morality. This one is actually pretty related to the character-driven writing. What made Bo such a compelling focus for her show was not just that she'd been dumped into the middle of the fae world without a clue, but that she actively had to deal with issues of morality constantly due to defiantly declaring herself neutral. Even though most of her friends were Light fae and it would have been easy for her to just rest there, Light in all but name, Dark fae that she had been forced to recognize as real people and not just simplistic monsters constantly challenged her on that point, causing her to question the supposed rules of both sides. As she questioned, she drew other characters into doing so as well, most notably Vex, who starts out as the most caricatured version of a Dark fae and ends up one of her strongest allies. Initially this seems to be mostly down to her nature as a succubus, but the idea that all fae must declare themselves for Light or Dark when their powers manifest proves to have very little do with what kind of fae they are, a point underlined in the final season when Dyson's son* also refuses to choose.
On TW, by contrast, we get the set-up for a moral dilemma and declaration of neutrality from Scott, in that he's positioned directly between the Hales and Argents, now permanently a werewolf, but an unwilling one. However, what they really succeeded in doing was making the Hales and Argents really interesting, (particularly Derek and Chris, who were both betrayed by Gerard and Kate and suffered for it,) while making Scott seem fairly shallow, as all of his decisions in the matter seemed driven by which side seemed more likely to get him a date with Allison. We got a few passing lines of dialogue that could have hinted at something deeper, but no actual follow-up in character action. The first season comes the closest to giving Scott some actual depth in his belief that killing Peter will turn him human again, but by the start of S2, we're given to believe he's basically adjusted to being a werewolf now, except where it suits the writers that he be resentful at either Derek or Stiles at having his chance for a cure snatched away. All the actual moral dilemma he must have wrestled with while formulating the plan to deal with Gerard happens entirely off-camera in favor of the writers getting to "shock" the audience with a "twist ending." Sure, we were shocked, but it didn't do anything to further the development of Scott as a character, except to make him seem a lot more morally gray than they probably intended and also separate him from his supposed supporting ensemble of close friends.
Paying attention to characters and the sometimes subjective nature of morality also, shockingly, allows morally gray characters to have cohesive character arcs and motivations. I didn't start out a Peter Hale fan, but I binged all of TW S4 right before a 12-hour international flight, and it gave me too much time to think about all the ways changing his motivations from season to season just breaks the entire show, right back to the pilot episode. During this LG rewatch, I was struck by just how much Bo's S3 Dark fae boyfriend was Peter Hale, but allowed to be coherent, and it made me mad about it all over again.
Show, Don't Tell. On that note, Bo and Scott's friends. Scott and Stiles, we're told, have been friends since early childhood. Bo and Kenzi, on the other hand, meet during the first episode. Scott and Stiles seem like best friends in the pilot, but then eventually start to read more like people who have been friends for so long now, they don't know how to stop. There's a lot of surface worry and a few individual touching moments of bro-hugging scattered throughout the seasons that get overshadowed by missed phone calls for dramatic effect. Bo and Kenzi, on the other hand, take turns saving one another over and over again. When one of them is in trouble, the other one notices, even when no one else does. (Prime parallel example: When Kenzi is taken and replaced by an evil kitsune, Bo is the only one who notices and insists on going to save Kenzi, even when everyone else insists nothing is wrong. Who notices Stiles has been possessed? Stiles. Kenzi's kidnapping was for to further develop her relationship with Bo. Stiles' possession was to introduce yet another horror element to the show and give Dylan O'Brien a chance to exercise his acting chops, the latter of which I could at least appreciate.) Furthermore, by actually having to show character and relationship development, characters' actions are also forced to have lasting impact. None of this getting over having murdered a bunch of people with a hand-wavey "I got better."
Character Deaths Matter. A surprising number of important characters on LG actually die, but it felt like fewer than on TW, mostly because those deaths were allowed to matter. Every character who died got a funeral. The impact of their deaths was felt by everyone, and continued to come up. Deaths actually influenced future character decisions. No one was killed for dramatic effect, only to not actually have an effect more than five minutes later. (Am I still mad Hale died, presumably because the actor needed to leave the show? Yes. But I was mollified by how much it affected Kenzi, plus the way the following season opened with two solid episodes dealing with the continuing aftermath, and then Kenzi leaving the show still attached to his storyline.) On TW, not only did none of the killed-off characters (or even just moved-away characters) get proper send-offs, they barely ever got acknowledged again, whereas villains whose deaths had been the climax of a previous season were constantly brought back as a "shocking surprise!" that stopped being remotely surprising after the third time they'd done it.
The Logical Passage of Time. How in the hell did TW manage to make a 6-season, nearly 7-year show run only cover 2.5 years of in-show time? In part, I think LG was always set up to be a better show, just because it wasn't set in a high school and could therefore admit that a season of the show could correspond to a year of actual time. Honestly, if you're writing a show set in high school, you either need to have a solid plan of how to transition the characters into college, put them into a portal fantasy setting and do away with the problem entirely, or say from the outset that the show is limited to only three seasons because that's the plot arc and then end it. I was just so happy for all the TW actors when the show came to an end, because they're in their mid-20s to early 30s now. Release them from this nightmare! (Side pet peeve: The writers of TW had zero idea of how high schools work. They were always so, so disinterested in writing a show about teenagers, and they needed to admit it.)
Bisexuals (and lesbians) on Parade! Yes, TW had LGBT representation... in the background. LG stuck it right up front, in the form of the title character, her boyfriend, her girlfriend, her girlfriend's girlfriend, and varying levels of openness and poly negotiations. If anything, the straight relationships were the ones being relegated. Sure, in the first season or so this is "justified" by Bo being a succubus, but by the introduction of Tamsin, there's much more of an air of "why would a functionally immortal being bother being straight?" And no need for crack ships on this show; just about every character kissed every other character of a viable orientation.
Embrace the Tropes. As I mentioned earlier, LG wasn't afraid to be joyfully ridiculous. The TW fandom has provided me with many, many joyously tropey fics, but LG as a show gave us canonical body-swapping and multiple undercover assignments, including "pretending to be married." (Also, every time Kenzi was given the opportunity to go undercover and did it in an impeccable outfit and absolutely zero background research, buoyed only by her faith in her own ability to bullshit, was a joy and a delight. I'm so happy they found a way to work that into the final season, when the actress had half-left the cast.)
Idk, this is probably getting less and less coherent, but I've been thinking about these comparisons for weeks now, so I figured they were worth trying to write out. Other amusing/infuriating parallels on both shows: the aforementioned kitsune thing, the use of memory wiping magic and ghost trains, the use of the triskele as a clue symbol, the introduction of a mini-me of the main character in the final episode (way less infuriatingly done on LG than TW, but still.)
*Dyson's son was, imo, the weakest plotline in the final season. He didn't really add enough to the show to justify his addition, but he also didn't really take away from it, so he gets a solid "whatever" from me.
As I mentioned in that other post, on the surface the two shows premises have a lot in common: A protagonist who wants nothing to do with the supernatural/fae world gets thrown into it anyway due to circumstances beyond their control (Scott being bitten; Bo's fae powers showing up during puberty). They each have a devoted human best friend/sidekick who seems more interested in figuring out the rules of magical society. Both are offered a choice between a "good" side and a "bad" side, Bo more overtly than Scott, in that she's supposed to declare herself officially either Light or Dark fae, but Scott is also set up for a choice between the Hales and the Argents (werewolves vs. hunters) that actually manages to have just enough ambiguity in it to confuse a teenage boy, since Derek is a dick to him and Allison is clearly an angel. Both declare themselves neutral (Bo in a more active manner than Scott).
How Lost Girl Did It Better:
Character-Driven Writing. This, I think, is the main thing that sets Lost Girl above Teen Wolf as an overall show. LG managed to take itself less seriously while addressing more serious issues and remain coherent across all 5 seasons even in the face of character deaths and new, weird plot arcs, all by keeping its focus on character development. Every new, weird thing they ever introduced was to serve the narrative of Bo's character development (or the development of one of the other core members of her found family, but only after they had established themselves as keenly important to Bo herself.) Compare this to TW, where the plot and the characters frequently had to take screeching 90-degree turns to bend around some interesting worldbuilding point the writing team had come up with that week and wanted to show off. While new fae with previously unheard-of abilities were introduced on LG all the time, they always managed to give the impression this was because the fae world was larger and more complex than Bo knew. (Ie, the entire point of having a new and clueless POV character.) On TW, every new were-creature, witch, or magical herb felt like it had come into existence all of five minutes before, and no one, neither Scott nor any of the supposedly more supernaturally-experienced characters, knew anything about it. (Or, if the writers deigned to give Deaton half an exposition, we got a watered-down "as you know, Bob" version, with bonus mystical obfuscation.) By keeping the focus on Bo and her friends, the worldbuilding of LG actually comes across as far more coherent, even when it was given second (or third) priority. There was never any chance viewers of LG would forget who the main character was supposed to be, and that focus on her and her relationships also allowed them to create a solid ensemble core cast the viewers cared about just as much. For her, not in spite of her.
Grappling with Morality. This one is actually pretty related to the character-driven writing. What made Bo such a compelling focus for her show was not just that she'd been dumped into the middle of the fae world without a clue, but that she actively had to deal with issues of morality constantly due to defiantly declaring herself neutral. Even though most of her friends were Light fae and it would have been easy for her to just rest there, Light in all but name, Dark fae that she had been forced to recognize as real people and not just simplistic monsters constantly challenged her on that point, causing her to question the supposed rules of both sides. As she questioned, she drew other characters into doing so as well, most notably Vex, who starts out as the most caricatured version of a Dark fae and ends up one of her strongest allies. Initially this seems to be mostly down to her nature as a succubus, but the idea that all fae must declare themselves for Light or Dark when their powers manifest proves to have very little do with what kind of fae they are, a point underlined in the final season when Dyson's son* also refuses to choose.
On TW, by contrast, we get the set-up for a moral dilemma and declaration of neutrality from Scott, in that he's positioned directly between the Hales and Argents, now permanently a werewolf, but an unwilling one. However, what they really succeeded in doing was making the Hales and Argents really interesting, (particularly Derek and Chris, who were both betrayed by Gerard and Kate and suffered for it,) while making Scott seem fairly shallow, as all of his decisions in the matter seemed driven by which side seemed more likely to get him a date with Allison. We got a few passing lines of dialogue that could have hinted at something deeper, but no actual follow-up in character action. The first season comes the closest to giving Scott some actual depth in his belief that killing Peter will turn him human again, but by the start of S2, we're given to believe he's basically adjusted to being a werewolf now, except where it suits the writers that he be resentful at either Derek or Stiles at having his chance for a cure snatched away. All the actual moral dilemma he must have wrestled with while formulating the plan to deal with Gerard happens entirely off-camera in favor of the writers getting to "shock" the audience with a "twist ending." Sure, we were shocked, but it didn't do anything to further the development of Scott as a character, except to make him seem a lot more morally gray than they probably intended and also separate him from his supposed supporting ensemble of close friends.
Paying attention to characters and the sometimes subjective nature of morality also, shockingly, allows morally gray characters to have cohesive character arcs and motivations. I didn't start out a Peter Hale fan, but I binged all of TW S4 right before a 12-hour international flight, and it gave me too much time to think about all the ways changing his motivations from season to season just breaks the entire show, right back to the pilot episode. During this LG rewatch, I was struck by just how much Bo's S3 Dark fae boyfriend was Peter Hale, but allowed to be coherent, and it made me mad about it all over again.
Show, Don't Tell. On that note, Bo and Scott's friends. Scott and Stiles, we're told, have been friends since early childhood. Bo and Kenzi, on the other hand, meet during the first episode. Scott and Stiles seem like best friends in the pilot, but then eventually start to read more like people who have been friends for so long now, they don't know how to stop. There's a lot of surface worry and a few individual touching moments of bro-hugging scattered throughout the seasons that get overshadowed by missed phone calls for dramatic effect. Bo and Kenzi, on the other hand, take turns saving one another over and over again. When one of them is in trouble, the other one notices, even when no one else does. (Prime parallel example: When Kenzi is taken and replaced by an evil kitsune, Bo is the only one who notices and insists on going to save Kenzi, even when everyone else insists nothing is wrong. Who notices Stiles has been possessed? Stiles. Kenzi's kidnapping was for to further develop her relationship with Bo. Stiles' possession was to introduce yet another horror element to the show and give Dylan O'Brien a chance to exercise his acting chops, the latter of which I could at least appreciate.) Furthermore, by actually having to show character and relationship development, characters' actions are also forced to have lasting impact. None of this getting over having murdered a bunch of people with a hand-wavey "I got better."
Character Deaths Matter. A surprising number of important characters on LG actually die, but it felt like fewer than on TW, mostly because those deaths were allowed to matter. Every character who died got a funeral. The impact of their deaths was felt by everyone, and continued to come up. Deaths actually influenced future character decisions. No one was killed for dramatic effect, only to not actually have an effect more than five minutes later. (Am I still mad Hale died, presumably because the actor needed to leave the show? Yes. But I was mollified by how much it affected Kenzi, plus the way the following season opened with two solid episodes dealing with the continuing aftermath, and then Kenzi leaving the show still attached to his storyline.) On TW, not only did none of the killed-off characters (or even just moved-away characters) get proper send-offs, they barely ever got acknowledged again, whereas villains whose deaths had been the climax of a previous season were constantly brought back as a "shocking surprise!" that stopped being remotely surprising after the third time they'd done it.
The Logical Passage of Time. How in the hell did TW manage to make a 6-season, nearly 7-year show run only cover 2.5 years of in-show time? In part, I think LG was always set up to be a better show, just because it wasn't set in a high school and could therefore admit that a season of the show could correspond to a year of actual time. Honestly, if you're writing a show set in high school, you either need to have a solid plan of how to transition the characters into college, put them into a portal fantasy setting and do away with the problem entirely, or say from the outset that the show is limited to only three seasons because that's the plot arc and then end it. I was just so happy for all the TW actors when the show came to an end, because they're in their mid-20s to early 30s now. Release them from this nightmare! (Side pet peeve: The writers of TW had zero idea of how high schools work. They were always so, so disinterested in writing a show about teenagers, and they needed to admit it.)
Bisexuals (and lesbians) on Parade! Yes, TW had LGBT representation... in the background. LG stuck it right up front, in the form of the title character, her boyfriend, her girlfriend, her girlfriend's girlfriend, and varying levels of openness and poly negotiations. If anything, the straight relationships were the ones being relegated. Sure, in the first season or so this is "justified" by Bo being a succubus, but by the introduction of Tamsin, there's much more of an air of "why would a functionally immortal being bother being straight?" And no need for crack ships on this show; just about every character kissed every other character of a viable orientation.
Embrace the Tropes. As I mentioned earlier, LG wasn't afraid to be joyfully ridiculous. The TW fandom has provided me with many, many joyously tropey fics, but LG as a show gave us canonical body-swapping and multiple undercover assignments, including "pretending to be married." (Also, every time Kenzi was given the opportunity to go undercover and did it in an impeccable outfit and absolutely zero background research, buoyed only by her faith in her own ability to bullshit, was a joy and a delight. I'm so happy they found a way to work that into the final season, when the actress had half-left the cast.)
Idk, this is probably getting less and less coherent, but I've been thinking about these comparisons for weeks now, so I figured they were worth trying to write out. Other amusing/infuriating parallels on both shows: the aforementioned kitsune thing, the use of memory wiping magic and ghost trains, the use of the triskele as a clue symbol, the introduction of a mini-me of the main character in the final episode (way less infuriatingly done on LG than TW, but still.)
*Dyson's son was, imo, the weakest plotline in the final season. He didn't really add enough to the show to justify his addition, but he also didn't really take away from it, so he gets a solid "whatever" from me.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 11:55 am (UTC)Yeeaaahh. I have friends like that in real life, who I'm friends with by virtue of the fact that I've just KNOWN them a really long time, but don't actually have much in common with them any more-- and actually, if I let myself think about it, don't really like them that much. Could definitely see things going that way for Scott and Stiles, and I actually don't think it's a bad bit of characterization/relationship development IF IT WAS INTENTIONAL. The thing is, I don't believe for a second it was.
Also:
"Compare this to TW, where the plot and the characters frequently had to take screeching 90-degree turns to bend around some interesting worldbuilding point the writing team had come up with that week and wanted to show off."
The apex of this for me (out of the seasons I watched) was Scott as True Alpha. That plot device was so terrible. It came out of left field with no foreshadowing, no forethought. I honestly think that at the end of season 2 they hinted at the alpha pack-- realized they had written themselves into a corner and then came up with the concept on the fly.
It's a stupid concept. It *might* have worked had it been more skillfully handled, but it wasn't. It was the epitome of telling rather than showing, we were being instructed as to how we had to interpret Scott and his actions and that's why it failed (and materially damaged the characters popularity -- which is a shame, because I liked Scott a lot in those early seasons)
Will have to try and watch Lost Girl at some point, it sounds like it's fun :D
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 04:28 pm (UTC)Yeah, the True Alpha thing was so... what even? Why do this? S3 was definitely where they broke the continuity of all their own show lore and just started introducing more villains and CGI in the hopes the confusion would cover the fact none of it made sense. Plus I think some of the True Alpha thing grew out of them realizing Stiles and Derek had become the focuses of fan interest and they wanted to bring focus back to Scott by making him Special. In true TW fashion, though, they could only imagine how to do that by slapping a superficial label on him and going "SEE? He's great! Infallible! The most moral! LIKE HIM!" instead of, you know, doing anything with his character.
I think part of it was TW really wasn't being written by people who understood how audiences watch TV now. They were clearly writing for week-to-week live viewership that (hopefully) wouldn't remember too many details from the week before. What they got, though, were devoted binge watchers who were willing to comb each episode apart for continuity clues and character moments, and who proved to be, in the end, better at story consumption and analysis than the writers. I don't necessarily think the idea of weekly individual episodes is finished, but I do think successful shows now have to be written with A LOT more continuity in mind, because there are fewer and fewer people who are actually going to watch one episode at a time. (Lost Girl, incidentally, stands up quite well to this kind of watching. And it's definitely more fun!)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 06:58 pm (UTC)You have to have set the boundaries for your universe going in, know who your characters are and where you want to take them. I gotta say, where show writers and runners are doing that, it's resulting in some truly great shows. The Good Place, for example, is a show where they've clearly really REALLY thought about where they want things to go, and what the rules of the universe are and what the character arcs are gonna be.
Jeff Davis seems to have been very good at character creation, but once he set it up, he doesn't seemed to have had any idea what to do with them. And as for the internal rules and logic of the TW universe-- it's all over the bloody place.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 07:35 pm (UTC)And my immediate thought was, "The writers of TW clearly never even thought of even the concept of those questions, let alone attempted to answer any of them when writing individual episodes." So yeah, clearly you can still write episodic TV while keeping the overall narrative in mind, even without forcing the show to become one long arc, like, say, BSG, which I felt got quickly bogged down and thus I stopped watching.