Wading in the Velvet Sea

I?d love to blame it on the war, and the search for weapons of mass destruction, and the masked freaked show carnival that was ?Mr. Personality?. But really, it speaks more to the short-term pop-culture memory loss we as a society have in general. We?re all a bit like Dory, the attention-addled fish in ?Finding Nemo?. We?re intensely interested by every little thing that comes along, and as soon as it goes out of sight, or something new pops up, it?s just as quickly gone from our collective conscious.

Ask Ricky Martin. Who? Yea, exactly. He won the Millenium Award for ?Best Timing Ever? with ?Vida Loca?. Not one year later, he couldn?t sell a damn record to save his life. He went from shakin? his bon bon to selling Bon Bons at the local Loews Cineplex. If No Doubt has kept doing the ska thing, they?d be playing state fairs. They, however, sensed the cultural shift, went with the flow, and now Gwen still graces us with her incredibly supple?voice. Ess. Voices. Great, curvy voices. Yea.

Anyways...

Napster may be seen as a scourge, but it tapped into the disposable tastes of pop fans in a way that no other medium has done. Apple was smart to follow their model and, when making it legal and downloadable, packaging their downloads in the form of singles as well as albums. People want the one song they hear on the radio, they want to listen to it for a bit, and then clear it out of the hard drive of their mind (or computer) to literally make room for another one. One million downloads in one week from 3% of the computing population? Cheap, easy, disposable. Just like the Spice Girls. Marriage made in heaven.

How does this relate to why I don't miss ?Buffy?? In the broad sense, the evolution of TV on DVD has made it much harder to miss our favorite shows. They?re at our fingertips, and even better than we may have seen them in the first place. I prefer Season 2 pumping out of my surround sound much more than watching grainy reruns on FX during dinner. I have 15 DVds of "Buffy" goodness ready to go whenever I want.

There?s another element at work, as well?.the anticipation throughout the season, at least for me, blinded any critical faculty I possibly could have had towards the show. How else to explain why I rearranged my weekly schedule only to, largely, trash and snark my way through my reviews? Well, partly they were snarks of love, based on reading waaaay too much Television Without Pity.

To spend hours per week devoted to a show bespeaks a level of adulation in and of itself. But by and by, the show couldn?t live up to the expectations of the fans, and, I imagine, the writers themselves. No way a UPN show can set up a battle with the essence of EVIL and have it come out satisfactorily. Especially if His Whippedness, Spike, ends up saving the day. Ugh. There?s a message. ?Completely lose your manhood and die in the process, right about then she?ll come around.? Pardon me while I band blunt objects against my forehead.

Music often gets forced down our throats by the radio; ?Buffy? fans have really no one but themselves to blame for being inundated with the show by the end. In both cases, fans need a time to recover from the onslaught. Maybe that?s what I?m doing now. After all, Buffy Season 4 on DVD is just around the corner. A little time off could do me some good.

Now, if you?ll excuse me, I?m off to sample some Stefani vocal work.