When Fandoms Divide...

[cj2017]

Fed up with the TSCC haters? Me too.

When Fandoms Divide…
 

 

I’ve been a fan of something for as long as I can remember: Dr Who (when I was young enough not to notice the cardboard sets), Northern Exposure (still love it), A Country Practice (you’ll never have heard of it), Midnight Caller (sorry), James Cameron movies (post Piranha 2, pre-Titanic)… It seems to be ingrained in my geeky little soul: fall hard, fall utterly. 

In the early years, I was always a fan in isolation. Watching on my own, collecting, writing, and trying and failing to find other people who shared the same love. Then came The X-Files and the internet. I was at university and the ‘net was new. I had already become hooked on Mulder, Scully and their respective quests, and suddenly there were newsgroups and websites and other fans. There were other people who knew episode titles, and directors, and could randomly quote from 1X14 without having to go back and rewatch it. I spent hours and hours online, ran a fanzine, devoured fan fiction, made many friends, married one of them and lived happily ever after. The fandom was a community and it felt like home. As the show ran on, and the fandom grew exponentially, predictable splits appeared. There were those who preferred Mulder to Scully, and those who thought Mulder was a toe-rag who wasn’t worthy of the little red-head’s devotion. Mulder got paired off with Skinner, or Krycek, and occasionally with both simultaneously. The Mythology was lauded by some and despaired of by most. Attempts to create rifts between the lead characters within the show were systematically debunked, treated as hokum and tolerated with good humour, until Chris Carter behaved himself again. When the show needed it the most, during those first shaky Friday nights, the fans were there; talking it up, creating momentum and more importantly creating a buzz that reached beyond the internet into wider publicity. The X-Files lived or died based on its internet fandom and it didn’t just survive its Friday night death-slot, it burst out of it and became a massive hit.

So why is it going so wrong for TSCC?

               TSCC is the first show I’ve truly geeked-out on since The X-Files. I’ve had dalliances in between: Farscape (stupidly fell in love after the fact, when it was already cancelled), Buffy, Xena and Alias, but nothing like this. Not to the extent of sleepless, adrenaline-filled nights following great episodes, chatting on forums for hours, writing and posting fan fic, watching most of Lena Headey’s movies (including The Contractor and The Cave) and of course the obsessive worrying about the ratings and demographics and Live +7 numbers. I love this show; it’s occupying an unhealthy amount of my time and I’m relishing every minute. There is, however, something that’s eating away at me, and it’s there screaming constantly at the Official Blog, at the Wiki, and occasionally but in much politer terms at The Sarah Connor Society: the fandom is completely and utterly divided. And when we rate 3 million live viewers, we’re not a large enough entity to be tearing ourselves apart. This show, this one that we all love, we’re going to kill it if we’re not careful.

               The split seems to fall into two factions. Those who appreciate the show for what it is, who value Sarah as a lead character, but who are perfectly capable of enjoying episodes focusing on other plotlines or characters (such as Allison from Palmdale or Self Made Man, both Cameron-centric). And on the other side are those who don’t rate (and occasionally announce they won’t even watch) an episode unless Cameron/John are front and centre, or shit is being blown up, or ideally both at the same time. The decision to open the Back 9 with the continuation of a three episode Sarah-arc fanned the flames, then added a bit of gasoline and poked it with a stick for good measure. Two of the best episodes the show has ever produced (The Good Wound and Some Must Watch…) received some of the most vitriolic criticism from the J/C fans, who slammed them for being slow, for being boring, for not having Cameron shooting enough shit out of stuff. For just not having enough Cameron.

And herein lies the crux.

TSCC is a show with a leading actress (Headey) and a leading face (Glau). Glau was always going to bring in her established fanboys/girls, so, while Headey was acting her heart out in The Good Wound, Fox were advertising the episode and the new timeslot with that Grindhouse trailer featuring Glau, guns and nothing but Glau with guns. People tuning in on the back of that advert were, understandably, a little perturbed by an episode focusing on Sarah’s struggle to get a bullet out of her leg, whilst holding conversations with her deceased love. Glau, meanwhile, got a couple of scenes and so few lines you could count them on one hand. Two weeks later, Some Must Watch… aired, and – with the Official Blog taking a pre-emptively defensive position - the shit really hit the fan. If ever there was an episode that delineated the split in the fandom, this was the one. Personally, the episode left me reeling, choked with the sudden twist away from what I had imagined was its reality, and utterly drawn in by Headey’s performance and the layers upon layers that the writers had managed to fit into 43 minutes. This was as good as the show had ever been. Many thought likewise. Just as many disagreed, and did so with vehemence: “Thanks for killing this show”, “I don’t understand why an established main character like Sarah Connor needs to have her mental problems explored”, “ Are you trying to get the show canceled? Less drama, more robots.”* The Wiki was so negative that a thread for fans who actually enjoyed the episode was opened, because they were tired of being drawn into discussions wherein being right meant being able to shout the loudest. One week later, and Cameron and John shared the focus in Ourselves Alone, and it’s all sweetness and light again on the boards. The damage, however, may already have been done.

I don’t have a solution, but there’s definitely a problem. Fox have to assume some of the blame for their marketing decisions, which have consistently given fans false expectations of the show, and consequently left them feeling bitter and deceived when those expectations are not met. Instead of marketing TSCC as an intelligently written drama (albeit with a SF-bent), featuring some of the strongest writing for female characters currently on television, they threw Glau’s face onto everything and hoped that would be enough. The show is worth more than that; it’s better than that. At no point should the production team be apologizing for steering the show away from the image created by its merchandising. They should be standing up, telling people “yes, we wrote that, we’re proud of it, and y’know what, if we get the opportunity we’re probably going to do it again.” As fans, we aren’t supposed to be uncritical or unthinking. We aren’t supposed to sit back and blindly adore everything that our chosen show gives us (Desert Cantos on anyone’s favourites list? Thought not.) But so much rampant negativity and divisiveness breeds more of the same, and - with five weeks to go to until the show ends its run – it might be time we all started cheering for the home team and appreciating exactly what we’ve got, before it’s too late.

 

*quotes lifted verbatim from the Official Blog following the airing of Some Must Watch…

Comments

[cj2017.livejournal.com]

The fans are using every means they know to make themselves heard when at the same time Nielsen is stagnant and the fanbases are typically a LOT bigger then they can predict because they're behind the tech of the times. It makes the whiners look like that much more representative a group.

I think that's what bothered me the most at the time. The people slamming all the Sarah eps on the Blog were shouting so loudly that they appeared to represent everyone watching. I think I jerked my knee a bit hard in response because it's obvious that they only shout for a very small number of the overall audience (an audience who tune in consistently no matter who or what the focus of the ep is.)

If the show does come back, I have faith that the writers involved will have the integrity not to lose/betray what made us fall in love with the show in the first place. I have irrational (or not so irrational, they meddled in S2 to a significant extent) fears that Fox might have other ideas...

One thing that is lovely about the show's writers (from my very Sarah-centric POV!), they do seem to get a kick out of writing for Sarah...