Some people see that this blog is called “Everything Is Amazing” and get confused, because so much of it is intense criticism and downright hating. Well, a part of that is that I genuinely do think that the world is amazing, and it would be foolish to besmirch it by ignoring the bad things within it¹. But one of the more persistent threads in the negative remarks on this blog is that fandom is shitty.

Drew McWeeny wrote an excellent piece today, after a long increasingly aggressive twitter argument with Harry Knowles, head of Ain’t It Cool News, describing why we can’t simply throw all the blame on the studios for the increasingly derivative and lazy film marketplace we find ourselves in. One of the problems, he notes, is that targeting a nerd audience doesn’t seem to work.

There is a fine line between serving an audience and shamelessly pandering to them, and when the studios decide to go whole-hog and pander without hesitation, and the result is box-office failure after box-office failure, the message seems clear: chasing the fanboys isn’t working. They are unreliable, they are ungrateful, and they aren’t turning out for the “sure things” that have been greenlit specifically for them.

This is one of the reasons I find myself unable to visit Ain’t It Cool News anymore. As much as I like nerd-focused films, it seems like they’re never good enough for the online bastions of nerdery. The problem of course being that there is no such thing as ‘nerd-focused films’ because every nerd has their own idiosyncratic and extreme stance on what should happen to their film. Nerds, like too much of society today, are too self-centred to realize or appreciate the amazing things that happen on their behalf².

When a Captain America movie comes out, they trash it because his helmet doesn’t have wings, or when a Thor movie comes out they trash it because one of the characters is played by a Black man. They ignore the quality of the film, the writing, the directing, the performances, in order to feed their pointless minutiae-driven rants.

There’s no real solution to this. There’s a chance we’ll hit some critical mass and nerds will grow up a little bit and the world of film and television will be able to get back to creating good television regardless of nerd-based fan-service, works that can broaden the minds of all viewers not just satisfy the narrow expectations of the “fans.”

---

Footnotes

1. Another perspective here is that it’s amazing how bad some things are. [↩]
2. That doesn’t mean that things can’t improve; they undoubtedly can in almost every aspect of life, but that doesn’t mean things are bad. [↩]

A huge chunk of television lives on the will-they-won’t-they romance, and most shows never consummate that relationship, keeping the romantic tension omnipresent but never too explicit.

A recent addition to this group of series is Doctor Who. Two of the last three companions have had romantic feelings toward The Doctor¹ and the most recent companion, Amy Pond, has continued the trend with gusto. Which is where the angry fans get involved.

Many² fans are angry that every companion since Russell T Davies rebooted the show has been a potential paramour; I think it’s probably less than ideal if every companion is like this, but at the same time I’m much more interested in how it works for each individual case and I think the way they’ve handled Amy Pond’s infatuation with The Doctor has so far been pitch perfect.

But going a step farther, I think the new dynamic that has been established since the show returned is a more realistic one. A brilliant, intelligent man brings you around through time on fantastic adventures; do you expect anyone to not fall in love with the guy?

---

Footnotes

1. Some people claim that even Donna Noble had romantic tension with The Doctor; maybe I just hate Donna Noble too much to see that. [↩]
2. I know that’s a weasel word, and I’m not linking to any specific critiques, but I don’t feel like looking them up; they’re out there. [↩]

Ever since Family Guy was brought back from cancellation, fans of Futurama have help out hope for a similar revival, especially given the clear advantage in quality the latter has over the former, and while the four direct-to-DVD movies released over the last few years have been more than welcome, that weekly injection of awesome was sorely lacking. Well, lack no more!

Futurama has been renewed for 26 episodes to begin airing around a year from now, and all the voice actors are coming back (presumably along with the writers) to revive the animated show that mixed childish humour and deep and profound musings almost as well as Pixar does in their big screen adventures. I’ll be watching. You should too.

I should be writing my weekly Dollhouse review/recap right now, but the current hysteria over Chuck and its possible cancellation is what tends to preoccupy my televisual thoughts nowadays. I should say this immediately: both Chuck and Dollhouse are deserving of renewal. I’m more heavily invested in Chuck because there have been more episodes and more emotional connections made, but they’re both excellent shows. The key difference between the two is that the fan base of Chuck has galvanized and mobilized, while the fans of Dollhouse do little more than bemoan its impending doom in scattershot fora.

I remember two years ago, when Jericho was a show was less than stellar ratings that looked “on the bubble” just as Chuck is now; there were rumblings that it might not be renewed, but nobody was ardently fighting for its renewal. Not until the season ended with a spectacular climax and CBS announced that the show would not be returning for a second season did the fan base explode with fury and begin sending tonnes (literally) of peanuts to CBS to demand a new season of Jericho.

Miraculously, it worked. No write-in campaign that I know of had been successful in reviving a show since Star Trek in the 60′s, but the dedication of the fans astounded the executives and so they made an abrupt about-face and gave Jericho a second season. Of seven freaking episodes.

In the case of Jericho, the network execs were essentially telling the writers to finish off whatever they had planned. They kept up the pretense of a possible third season, even having the writers create two alternate endings, but everyone could see the writing on the wall. Some might argue that this is the best you can get, but I think what’s happened with Chuck is a sign of the future of fandom.

Chuck has never been more than “on the bubble,” and even in this impoverished state, most experts have been quietly optimistic about its possibilities. But we’ve learned not to take “good enough” for granted. Jericho had higher ratings than Chuck, and it still got cancelled. The fans have learned their lesson, and they will fight for the shows they love, even before the fight has begun. Preemptive war is the tactic du jour in our world now. And one has to hope it will result in greater gains than the Jericho campaigns.

The fans of other shows haven’t learned their lesson yet, or they’ve been conditioned for failure. In fact, most of the ardent supporters of Dollhouse in the early days were the ones virtually promising that it would be cancelled.

At this point, Chuck seems likely to be renewed, but its relative success — whether or not it gets a crappy timeslot, or a truncated run, or substantial network support, etc. — will be the litmus test for this new form of fandom. Bringing the fight to the network before the network knows there’s a fight is a potent tactic. If it works, that is.

There will come a time, shortly after Lost has aired its final episode, when on the torrent sites will come an edited collection of Lost: one where every scene is played out in exact chronological order. And on that day, Christopher Nolan will shit his pants. And fans of Lost will rejoice. That is, until the inevitable chronological canon disputes arise…