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Re-Watching the Series in 2016
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BusyAsABree
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:35 am    Post subject: Re-Watching the Series in 2016 Reply with quote

So since it has been actual years since I've really consumed this story, there's a lot I've forgotten in terms of characters, major players, etc. As I've seen people discussing it has come back to me -- but I decided to start rewatching the series yesterday. I'm already a few weeks into 2007, after Bree's dad is killed and they're laying low at Jonas's house. It's doing a lot to help me remember key points that are sure to come up again.

Mostly, in retrospect, Daniel was such a "Nice Guy(TM)" during this period -- he was helping Bree but wanted so much attention from her that she wasn't in an emotional or mental place to give in return. I consider it pretty aggravating. Hopefully he's grown out of all that.

Has anyone else started a rewatch to try to catch up & refresh on their info? What do you think may still be at play this many years in the future? How has time & age colored your impression of the story and character interactions?

Obviously Daniel is returning as a key player, and possible Emma as well -- and maybe a rescue mission for Jonas is in the works....
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jamiex112
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 4:01 pm    Post subject: Re: Re-Watching the Series in 2016 Reply with quote

BusyAsABree wrote:
So since it has been actual years since I've really consumed this story, there's a lot I've forgotten in terms of characters, major players, etc. As I've seen people discussing it has come back to me -- but I decided to start rewatching the series yesterday. I'm already a few weeks into 2007, after Bree's dad is killed and they're laying low at Jonas's house. It's doing a lot to help me remember key points that are sure to come up again.

Mostly, in retrospect, Daniel was such a "Nice Guy(TM)" during this period -- he was helping Bree but wanted so much attention from her that she wasn't in an emotional or mental place to give in return. I consider it pretty aggravating. Hopefully he's grown out of all that.

Has anyone else started a rewatch to try to catch up & refresh on their info? What do you think may still be at play this many years in the future? How has time & age colored your impression of the story and character interactions?

Obviously Daniel is returning as a key player, and possible Emma as well -- and maybe a rescue mission for Jonas is in the works....



Oooh I love that you made this post. I posted in videos somewhere some ideas from the resistance, because I rewatched it yesterday. Some questions I had
-what happened with Reed? The very end of the finale shows him ending up at daniel's apartment. Or is he irrelevant?? Did they find anything?
- I think M is Maggie since everyone is pointing towards the medical record being about Jonas. But still unsure
- Daniel said in his live Facebook video that he has continued to do research, but vague about it.
- weird we haven't heard anything else yet since Monday.. I think there is a big clue we might be missing

I'm new at this also so I might be way off 😊
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JustAnotherLonelyGirl.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 8:36 pm    Post subject: Re: Re-Watching the Series in 2016 Reply with quote

BusyAsABree wrote:
So since it has been actual years since I've really consumed this story, there's a lot I've forgotten in terms of characters, major players, etc. As I've seen people discussing it has come back to me -- but I decided to start rewatching the series yesterday. I'm already a few weeks into 2007, after Bree's dad is killed and they're laying low at Jonas's house. It's doing a lot to help me remember key points that are sure to come up again.

Mostly, in retrospect, Daniel was such a "Nice Guy(TM)" during this period -- he was helping Bree but wanted so much attention from her that she wasn't in an emotional or mental place to give in return. I consider it pretty aggravating. Hopefully he's grown out of all that.

Has anyone else started a rewatch to try to catch up & refresh on their info? What do you think may still be at play this many years in the future? How has time & age colored your impression of the story and character interactions?

Obviously Daniel is returning as a key player, and possible Emma as well -- and maybe a rescue mission for Jonas is in the works....


I have started rewatching also. I'm not as far as you. They just ran away and Gemma just explained watchers. I don't have as much time on my hands as I did back in high school. =/

I'll let you know if anything strikes me as relevant. So far, there's been lots of Bree-nods and proving science wrong.
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primaryasset
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 9:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been rewatching, too, and I agree that Daniel's Nice Guy ways are occasionally unbearable in a way they weren't when I was a teenager watching for the first time. I don't think it'll be an issue anymore now, though. I'm pretty sure the last thing on Daniel's mind now that Bree's turned out to be alive is getting into her pants.

I rewatched the Aunt Alex storyline yesterday, though, at which point Jonas and Daniel's teenage shenanigans reach a downright delightful level of ridiculousness, in my opinion. Jonas insisting every other second that Daniel stop hitting on his aunt just had me cracking up.

It's occurred to me that pretty much everyone on this show was (seemingly) straight and cisgender. Would love to see some LGBT characters in the new series, to be honest! Just a lil suggestion in case anyone who can make that happen might be creeping...

Mostly I'm just having a lot of fun rewatching, and it's great for my attention span, too, seeing as the episodes are so short. I can't wait to get to Emma, given the hints that she may be returning, but at the same time, I'm not ready to lose Bree, yet! I'm also eager to see some of the season 2-3 episodes I never actually got around to back in the day. I know I've seen all of season 1 and The Resistance, but there was definitely some content I missed in the middle. (For that matter, I never even started KateModern or n1ckola, or either of the TSIY series. Bring on the ways to avoid doing schoolwork!)

So yeah, a lot of nostalgia, and a lot of cravings for orange slurpees.
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ir3act
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 9:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The thing that strikes me most about the Season 1 videos -- and the Season 2 videos as well, and the first portion of Season 3, although some would disagree -- they feel really genuine to me.

The writing feels incredibly heartfelt; all of Bree's problems and insecurities and fears and struggles feel truthful. Mesh Flinders' approach to putting his troubles and anxieties into Bree and Glenn Rubenstein's similar approach to Jonas really puts a highly personal, distinctive and earnest voice into the series. The characters *feel* real -- as real as any online friend whom I might only know through their vlogs and blogs and IMs and video chats.

I don't really like the Order / myth-arc centric videos too much, except when I do. Which is to say I liked it when the Order was used as a plot device to put the characters in situations that could reveal even more of them and let the writers put more of themselves into the series -- and I disliked it intensely when the writers just made it cluehunts and McGuffins leading to nowhere.
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WriterGirl
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 1:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sadly, I've only ever been able to do one good rewatch of this series, and that was years ago, but I still have tons of LG15 vids in my favorites that I get to watch every once in a while.

I totally agree about Daniel's Nice Guy ways.

primaryasset wrote:
It's occurred to me that pretty much everyone on this show was (seemingly) straight and cisgender. Would love to see some LGBT characters in the new series, to be honest! Just a lil suggestion in case anyone who can make that happen might be creeping...

Yes! I was thinking about this, that I would love more diversity in this series, more LGBT characters and POC. Back in '06-'08 it was pretty easy to get by with a totally white/straight cast and minimal complaints, but I don't see it flying these days.
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milowent
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 12:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

primaryasset wrote:
I've been rewatching, too, and I agree that Daniel's Nice Guy ways are occasionally unbearable in a way they weren't when I was a teenager watching for the first time. I don't think it'll be an issue anymore now, though. I'm pretty sure the last thing on Daniel's mind now that Bree's turned out to be alive is getting into her pants....


as someone who watched the show already at age 30 the first time around, i am intrigued to know what y'all rewatching it 10 years later think of it as you get to or approach that age.

Daniel and Jonas' bro-time mostly made me laugh (daniel in a a sombero, good grief), but all the younger female fans swooning over Jonas made me want to puke. do you still go for Jonas or does Daniel grow on you? Asking for a friend. Smile (just kidding, Yousef.)
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JustAnotherLonelyGirl.
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 8:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

milowent wrote:
primaryasset wrote:
I've been rewatching, too, and I agree that Daniel's Nice Guy ways are occasionally unbearable in a way they weren't when I was a teenager watching for the first time. I don't think it'll be an issue anymore now, though. I'm pretty sure the last thing on Daniel's mind now that Bree's turned out to be alive is getting into her pants....


as someone who watched the show already at age 30 the first time around, i am intrigued to know what y'all rewatching it 10 years later think of it as you get to or approach that age.

Daniel and Jonas' bro-time mostly made me laugh (daniel in a a sombero, good grief), but all the younger female fans swooning over Jonas made me want to puke. do you still go for Jonas or does Daniel grow on you? Asking for a friend. Smile (just kidding, Yousef.)


Psh... For the record, I preferred Daniel at 16 and still do now. Wink
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ir3act
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 10:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't have any issue with Daniel pining for Bree and partially befriending her in the hope of romance. It's a really interesting and hardly uncommon character flaw among young men and I enjoyed seeing Daniel both work past it (like when he accepted that Jonas and Bree were in love and let Jonas help him out of his alcoholism) or when he shrieked at Jonas about his relationship with Bree after Bree (presumably) died.

I also don't see why young girls fawning after Jonas is an issue to a viewer who doesn't relate to Jonas on that level. Why should we be evaluating anyone's enjoyment of the material? I confess, in my younger days on this forum, I would go ballistic at viewers who enjoyed Order-centric videos because I preferred the slice of life stories. Looking back, I feel foolish -- why should I be upset that somebody enjoys something their way on their terms?

Looking back at the series -- I do think it's the slice of life stuff and the characterization that's at the heart of the show. The Proving Science Wrong videos. Bree relating her experience at a party. Jonas' unnerved reaction to the Alex/Daniel romance. And the Order is a really great plot device for putting the characters in crazy situations that are designed not to illuminate the Order, but rather to illuminate the characters. The homeless videos, the bunker, Bree mistaking Jonas for a plant, Jonas' fury at her lack of faith, etc..Emma sobbing to Jonas, "Never lie to me again" still hits me.

The issue, I think, is that over time, LG15 began to massively overreact to having lost Jessica Lee Rose by focusing on the Order in order to justify the LG15 title. Season 3 starts out really well with videos like Gina making a bench and Jonas flipping out over Emma's departure. The Elizabeth Avery plot is marvellously compelling.

But then Elizabeth's corpse is found and she's demonized as a villain when dead -- a bafflingly counterintuitive choice. Why reveal a new villain after their death when they're no longer a threat? Then came the overuse of cluehunts and Order-related McGuffins where the plots were focused on acquiring some object or information that would presumably reveal something about the Order. But the vague nature of the information matched with the prominence of the Order began to create massive plot and continuity problems.

Why doesn't the Order just kill our heroes? The Order has infiltrated every level of American society. Law enforcement, politics, institutions, corporate empires -- why don't they just have their private armies blow up the motel or the house or whatever? Season 1 suggested that there was some necessity for Bree to submit to the Ceremony of her own free will; this was wholly discarded in Season 2 with Emma and Gina's imprisonment.

LG15, in focusing on the Order as the reason for the series, got locked into a series of circular and pointless cluehunts which reached its ultimate nadir in THE RESISTANCE, a series devoted entirely to pointless cluehunts.

Furthermore, the Order's henchmen were proving to be incompetent and ineffectual; they were always easily escaped, the actors playing the Shadows and Watchers were not convincing physical threats. The show's limited resources couldn't present the Order visually; at one point, an Elder appears onscreen and he looks like he's wearing a rejected STAR WARS Halloween costume.

Earlier videos had carefully sidestepped this by playing up the psychological aspects of the Order, especially with a brainwashed Daniel and the use of Gemma as a plant. This skillful writing seemed to vanish with Season 3 where the creators attempted to raise the stakes by killing Gina off. But they way they presented it, it actually made the Order seem more incompetent: they killed what to them was an asset: a trait positive girl, and it simply reiterated the question: if they have a private army of snipers and soldiers, why don't they just kill the characters?

It also made the creators look incompetent in that Gina's death was so muddled and unclear that the fans misread it as a falsehood inevitably to be overturned. The clumsy storytelling would also be present in both series finales or LG15 and THE RESISTANCE, where Sarah was nonsensically revealed to be a villain -- something that made no sense when she'd had thousands of opportunities to betray the team, been played as sobbing over Bree's death and shattered over Gina's.

Ultimately, the writers, by Season 3, seemed to be scripting the series without thinking past a few videos at a time -- which made it impossible to do continuity-based, mythology oriented storytelling. LG15 went from being a story about characters growing up to becoming a complex and often impenetrable myth-arc series with a mythology that was as impenetrable to the writers as it was to the viewers. It was really sad to see.

I get the sense that in the first two seasons, LG15 was blessed to find writers who would put themselves into the characters. But Mesh Flinders and Glenn Rubenstein left. The writers who succeeded them sought to extend what had been previously created -- but they seemed to completely misidentify the critical elements, choosing the Order instead of the characters -- and creatively, the Order was a dead end of empty ominous foreshadowing, building to nothing with no actual secrets to be revealed. The Order only had value in terms of putting the characters in crazy situations that slice of life writing couldn't offer.

Of course, that is just my take. Very Happy
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primaryasset
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 10:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ir3act wrote:
I also don't see why young girls fawning after Jonas is an issue to a viewer who doesn't relate to Jonas on that level. Why should we be evaluating anyone's enjoyment of the material? I confess, in my younger days on this forum, I would go ballistic at viewers who enjoyed Order-centric videos because I preferred the slice of life stories. Looking back, I feel foolish -- why should I be upset that somebody enjoys something their way on their terms?


This is a really great point. I have this one friend who ran a popular fan Twitter account for a certain show, and hung out with a lot of other fans like myself, but just never cared about shipping the way the majority of the other fans in our immediate group of friends did. But we all respected each other's ways of enjoying our fave show and were able to discuss plot points and sometimes disagree but still, ultimately, enjoy it together. As long as everyone's being respectful and having a good time, it's all good.

Your post also reminded me of a Tumblr post I read recently about how a lot of TV writers don't get how much viewers care about characters, specifically, and how that sometimes results in story decisions that wind up alienating those viewers, like character deaths played for cheap shocks. To be fair, a lot of shows lose what made them so easy to get invested in during their early seasons as they progress, so LG15 would hardly be the first. (I can't really speak to those feelings, since I was a new fan during The Resistance, but I'll see how I feel as I continue rewatching from the beginning.) In any case, a revival is a chance for a fresh start, a near-clean slate, and they clearly understand how invested longtime fans are in seeing what's become of our old favourite characters, so hopefully that'll help steer things in a satisfying direction.
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ir3act
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2016 11:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was a fond viewer of SMALLVILLE, but it used to piss me off at how the Clark/Lex shippers would pair up two characters who were presented as brothers. I was caustic and rude to those shippers -- and I really regret that. These days, I'm a fan of SHERLOCK and SUPERNATURAL, both of whom have very prominent slash-ships. I don't subscribe to Johnlock and Destiel, but those fans' enjoyment doesn't diminish my own. We're ultimately connecting to the same thing: the characters.

With LG15, I do think that the show initially reflected the viewers' love for the characters that you describe but then lost it -- again, as you describe. Fans are pretty divided on where LG15's creators stopped loving its characters and just saw them as actors to cram into video after video to extend the EQAL brand, get hired for other web shows and abandon LG15 in a bottomless pit of abandoned plots.

Bree, Daniel and Jonas kidnapping Julia and vlogging while a screaming girl bound to a chair sat behind them seemed to be a major point of contention. For some fans, Bree's death was the tipping point; Glenn Rubenstein says his review of the viewing figures gave him the impression viewers didn't protest or voice their discontent -- they just stopped watching.

Another breaking point was the LG15/KATE MODERN crossover where the LG15 cast abandoned a KATE MODERN character on the side of the road to die.

For me, I would say I lost faith in the show after Gina died. Gina's character was still a work in progress; the actress was amazing; her presence as a connection to Bree gave the series a certain renewed hope -- and she was written out abruptly and in an extremely confusing video that made it unclear if she was dead or just unconscious. When the show presented that as Gina's death, I stopped enjoying the show although I was in too deep to stop watching.

Another moment that really rubbed me the wrong way in the LG15 finale -- aside from the general pointlessness of the plot -- was when Jennie and Spencer see each other and hug, joyfully reuniting -- except the characters had never met before. This seemed unbelievably careless to me.

All this stands in stark contrast to LG15's best material: Jonas and Daniel throwing beer bottle caps into a coffee pot. Jonas and Bree playing in the snow. The swimming hole. Jonas mourning Bree. Jonas flipping out on his friends and then everyone hating him and Jonas wandering out into the snow alone. Daniel reacting to Mallory's affair by calling Sarah and then being terrified of her when he realizes how dehumanizing that is. Spencer staying with Mallory to help her recover from the Season 1 finale. Gina giving Emma the money to reunite with her parents and incurring Jonas' wrath.

This is the show to me. The cast of LG15 do not need to be seen as the leaders of the Resistance or the first trait positive male in history or the first disciple of the movement against the Order. They need to be seen as our friends.


Last edited by ir3act on Sat Jun 25, 2016 2:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ir3act
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2016 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rewatching the videos has me wondering: what were the points of decision where a different choice from the Creators could have led to a better outcome for the series?

Regardless of where we stand on LG15, the general consensus is that something went wrong in the series and its 2008 endpoint -- the cliffhanger of THE RESISTANCE -- was deeply unsatisfactory and left the characters and the fans in a lousy place.

THE LAST, while receiving near-universal acclaim, was a spin-off without the core characters and therefore a distraction from the problem as opposed to a solution. OUTBREAK was an unintelligible disaster and has been soundly rejected by the 2016 LG15 administration, mirroring the rejection from the fans in 2010. So, looking back at the past, where were points where LG15 chose A when it might have chosen B?

Leaving Bree's Bedroom
Fans will point to the teen fugitive plotline as a massive shift that led to where the series ended (or didn't end), and it's a pretty fair point. LG15 had established its format: vlogs in bedrooms. Every series establishes a format that it can create enough variations to sustain multiple installments. CSI has a crime of the week; THE FLASH and ARROW have supervillains, THE PRACTICE has a court case, DAWSON'S CREEK has a class assignment, SUPERNATURAL has a monster. LG15 has a teenaged dilemma and a character narrating it to the audience.

So, maybe LG15 should have accepted that was its format rather than finding its own premise limiting, because trying to break out of the limitations broke the series as well. If the creators found vlogs in bedrooms so much of a problem, why were they doing the series to begin with?

If anything, they probably should have found ways to keep and expand the format: vlogs edited into documentary style via Daniel's filmmaking skills. Leaving Bree's bedroom was inevitable, but maybe they chose the wrong destination.

Perhaps, rather than sending Bree and Daniel on the run from the Order, maybe Mesh Flinders and Miles Beckett should have sent Bree and Daniel out on documentary assignments for school and getting into the habit of filming everything and not just their project footage. The documentary/self-journaling format could have allowed Mesh to continue inserting his own life and psychological issues into Bree while keeping the world around her plausible, grounded and genuine. It would have given Miles more marketing and media options for product placement, additional characters, etc.. And Bree's bedroom could have remained the home base of the series.

The Dead End of The X-Files
While not knowing this for certain, I get the sense that THE X-FILES was a major influence on LG15 and the creators took the view that the key to extending LG15's lifespan was a conspiracy-minded myth-arc of ominous mysteries composed of arcane clues so vaguely unspecific that the writers wouldn't ever have to commit to any specific answers or prepare any clear revelations.

Assuming that to be the case (and it is just a theory), they may have been better off using a different example -- the mockumentary format that films like THIS IS THE SPINAL TAP and shows like THE OFFICE refined and honed, but infusing it with the personal intimacy of LG15 -- because in LG15, the subjects and the filmmaker are the same parties. The Hymn of One should have, at best, been Bree's fictional religion and an occasional source of conflict rather than the equivalent of the alien invasion conspiracy of THE X-FILES -- which also proved to be nothing but ominous foreshadowing building to nothing much.

The Death of LonelyGirl15
But we passed that point and we hit the teen fugitive format. It's hard to say if this format led to Bree's death or if it was due to LG15's relationship wtih Jessica Lee Rose, but killing the title character of your series really shouldn't be the first choice and is certainly never the best one.

KATE MODERN also killed off its title character, a move that seems uncomfortably suggestive of LG15's inability to have positive professional relationships with its leading ladies.

Glenn Rubenstein, who may have been talking crap for all I know, was extremely critical of LG15 losing Bree. He remarked that LG15's producers offered Jessica Lee Rose a pitiful amount of the series' profits despite massive sponsorship deals and that offering your title character's performer a tiny pittance of the earnings is a great way to alienate your star.

He said that the LG15 producers were also trying to prevent Jessica from working on any jobs besides LG15 despite LG15 offering her the smallest earnings and next to nothing of its profits -- whereas Rubenstein, in contrast, would eagerly rework REDEARTH88 to suit his actress' schedule and would do anything to make his performer a big star in other projects and see that benefit R88 as well.

However -- according to Greg Goodfried, LG15 was never profitable to the producers outside of acting as a portfolio item to get subsequent contracts that paid and Rubenstein never made any R88 videos outside the original run, so it's hard to say if Rubenstein's ideals could actually be put into practice.

Regardless, losing Jessica Lee Rose and Bree was clearly a tipping point. It would have been best to keep Bree and continue the way Season 2 did where the everyday life material and the fugitives from the Order material was balanced effectively and one would fuel the other. It would've been great for Bree to have been there when Jonas found his family and if she'd had a relationship with Emma and had to shepherd a new person into the fugitive lifestyle.

That said, I personally feel that Bree's death was handled beautifully and effectively. The supporting cast were so well-defined and well-written that they could carry the show and Bree's loss made her the absent center. Bree's death, while obviously not ideal for the series, was presented in a fashion that underlined her meaning and importance.

A Mix of Everyday Life and Myth-Arc
And I do think Seasons 1 - 2 and the first portion of Season 3 did a solid job with the increased presence of the Order. The Order was a plot device to move the characters into situations that slice of life writing couldn't have offered and the emphasis was very much on the characters. Season 2 did a great job of creating complex relationships between any pairing of characters: Daniel/Jonas, Jonas/Emma, Emma/Daniel, Emma/Sarah, Daniel/Sarah, Sarah/Jonas and Season 3 did a nice job of creating new dynamics between Daniel/Gina, Jennie/Jonas, Gina/Sarah -- until characterization abruptly took a backseat.

Season 2, at least for me, had hit upon a winning formula: everyday life that would occasionally be broken apart due to the Order. The team would settle into a new home, experience the trials of growing up and finding their place in the world, get attacked by the Order, go on the run, settle again -- and while it was repetitive, there were enough variations and interesting dilemmas to reveal more and more about the characters each time. Season 3 started with a tangible sense of victory; Emma poisoning her blood to kill an Order and rescuing Bree's sister, Gina, and saving a part of Bree -- it felt like a win compared to the down note of Season 1's ending.

Season 3
With Season 3, however, Mesh Flinders left the show right when it needed him most. Season 2's formula of everyday life broken up by the Order was played out. Season 3 repeated the formula but with the Order's intrusions becoming the near-entirety of the series, a fatal and terminally tedious choice as the vagueness and poor visual depiction of the Order made it impossible to ignore how silly and unconvincing the and their agents were.

For me, this is the turning point where LG15 and THE RESISTANCE refused to make a necessary turn and drove straight into a brick wall. The creators needed to move LG15 to the next step of its journey, whatever that might be, but they instead decided to run in place, repeating the same tricks of the previous season to diminishing returns. Someone gets captured, they escape, rinse and repeat.

The victory of Season 2's finale felt empty when the team failed to make any further progress on the Order especially when the Order was clearly ineffectual -- and efforts to give the Order some teeth by killing Gina off only put the series into a depressive state of negativity where lightheartedness and fun now felt alien to the show.

So, it would seem that after the team scored their Season 2 triumph, LG15 should have created a new approach to the series rather than repeat the Season 2 playbook in an unbalanced and witless fashion. What to do?

Just my opinion: it was probably time to start planning (a) the downfall of the Order and (b) life after the Order. The Hymn of One had served its purpose as much as it could at this point; stretching out the game would only make the villains seem weak and the heroes seem ineffectual. Season 3 should have defeated the Order. Various means for this existed: exposing the Order globally, debunking the Order's power and reach to be falsehoods, crippling the Order financially, ending the supply of trait positive girls by distributing the antidote, etc.. The Order probably should have been taken out at the halfway point of the season.

Season 2 had proven that the with the vlog format, epilogues to a massive story could be just as fascinating as the preceding arc. Season 3's second half could have returned to the slice of life approach of seeing Gina, Sarah, Daniel, Jonas and Jennie adjust to reintegrating back into normal society, perhaps apart, perhaps together. The characters' issues and struggles were sufficiently fascinating that they'd outgrown the need for the Order to provide challenge and conflict.

At the same time, the Order could have gradually recovered over this resting period or a new villain could be created from their ashes and remnants. I can understand the anxiety that ending the Order could end the show, but artificially extending a format that had exhausted every variation would only bring about the end anyway.

The Shift to The Resistance
I suppose the next and final turning point available to us was the changeover from LONELYGIRL15 to LG15: THE RESISTANCE. At the time, I championed the idea of ending the current LG15 series and starting a new one given how convoluted and repetitive LG15 had become. My feeling was that THE RESISTANCE should feature an original new character unacquainted with the Order and the myth-arc who would encounter the LG15 characters.

While the LG15 characters could continue posting videos, the spine of the new series should have been the original character's videos and this character's ignorance of the Order could keep continuity manageable and maintain a grounded, entry-level situation that would maintain the focus on characters instead of an overcomplex mythology.

But instead, THE RESISTANCE was simply a reiteration of the Season 2 format of escape/capture but with the everyday life elements removed almost entirely from the series. At this point, everything that made LG15 special at the start had been systematically muted or mutilated.

Bree was gone. The relatable characterization was gone. The emphasis on these characters as online friends was gone. The slice of life stories were gone. It was all gone.

Once LG15 hit this point, there was probably nothing to be done but end in a convoluted and nonsensical cliffhanger and go into a hibernation for eight years. I guess they could have tried again with a follow-up to THE RESISTANCE that created an entry-level storyline, but after Season 3 and THE RESISTANCE, the fans had largely turned on the series at its remaining creators whose interest in LG15 had clearly waned as more lucrative contracts were now coming.

A Strange Irony
It's a somewhat overused platitude that any idiot can make things overcomplicated and that true genius is in making things simple. EQAL paid for THE RESISTANCE's first season out of their own pocket to draw in sponsorship for a follow-up, but the economic crisis prevented sponsors from turning up. LG15 was too expensive to keep going.

It's a strangely ironic situation as the original format had been vlogs in bedrooms with 1 - 2 actors talking to the camera. Jessica Lee Rose said each video took usually took an hour to film and that they'd been done at a rate of one a week.

It's astonishing to think that such a simple, low-budget format became so bloated financially and creatively that it became impossible to fund, impossible to write and impossible to produce.

Which has me wondering: if they'd stuck to the simple vlogs in bedrooms, could they have kept Jessica in the series while letting her do films and TV to earn a living and bring a fanbase to the vlogs? Who knows. Hindsight is always 20/20.

We seem to be at another turning point now with LG15: ANCHOR COVE. I'll be eager to see what choices creators Powell and Rapp make.
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JustAnotherLonelyGirl.
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2016 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting thoughts, ir3act.

I have to say I agree with most of your points. The "Leaving Bree's Bedroom" was okay with me -- not doing so would have made the characters look kind of naive, thinking they could just stay put. As it was, I always found it silly that no one ever thought to leave California... But with a budget and the actors and creators' lives to consider, I was willing to overlook it.

For me, the loss of Bree was probably the biggest misstep of the series. I am rewatching and just saw the episodes where Bree meets Tachyon and then goes to train with her. I liked this direction. I would have loved to see Bree become the female "Buffy" of the show. I don't know if you watched Buffy, but the show maintained a great balance between character-driven plots and the fact that they had to fight vampires and/or various other supernatural monsters on a near daily basis. Buffy also managed to go to college for a little while, which I think would've been a cool thing to do with LG15. At the beginning, Daniel talked about his bitterness that he couldn't go to class and learn to be a film maker. At one point, he mentioned "Unless I turn these into some kind of documentary" ... makes me wonder why the heck he never did that! Nothing like a movie with a pretty damsel in distress to raise awareness.. I'm guessing because he knew what we now know -- the Order is still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

If Bree is being shown as a brainwashed member of the Order now, it would be awesome if they went the "Buffy" route by either (A) revealing her to be a double agent, or (B) used Emma as their kick-ass heroine, as she seems to have continued the fight with Daniel all this time.
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ir3act
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2016 8:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I love BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL. Creatpr Joss Whedon also wrote the film IN YOUR EYES, a movie that really touches on a lot of LONELYGIRL15-esque themes of loneliness, isolation, finding your role in the world and relating closely to people through indirect and distant means.

I wonder which subforum is the right place to post movie recommendations that are reminiscent of LG15?

The thing that I think LG15 should have learned from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and its season-long arcs: they would only be a season long and the next season would start a new arc with a new villain. Each season had a beginning, middle and end. BUFFY wasn't just spinning its wheels indefinitely.

With that in mind, I imagine that Season 2's finale should have defeated the Order significantly if not permanently. The simplest route: establish that the Order banks the trait positive supply, have Emma, Gina and Dr. Calvin Hart use the trick of poisoning Emma's blood on the Order's blood bank, effectively taking out every Elder.

Season 3 could then do the post-Order stories, but if a new villain were needed -- well, I did like Austin McConnell's idea (if not his execution) where the Order's religious and occult divisions were taken down but their scientific divisions came to the forefront through SHENtek.

So maybe Season 3, if it really required an antagonist, would have the team fighting a different branch of the Order now that the top leaders had been killed: perhaps the Hymn of One recruitment branch would wage a new war through social media; perhaps the military division would put their services up for sale and Jonas and his limitless bank account would have to buy them; perhaps the PR branch would venture into filmmaking and Daniel would have to go in undercover, etc..

One thought I've had about the Order that should maybe go into a different thread later on -- I think maybe, given how inconsistent the Order was throughout the series, maybe the writers should have made the Order a chameleonic, shifting entity that periodically redesigns itself.

So for Season 1, it was Scientology with henchmen. In Season 2, the militaristic aspects of the Order came to the forefront. Maybe Season 3 should have turned the Hymn of One into a political movement with Salinas only for the team to put a stop to it. Then Season 4 could have the Hymn of One reinvent itself as a health program called Lifesblood Labs (like Dr. Oz). Season 5 could present the Order as an evil version of Apple or Google.

The thought of a chameleonic Order is probably for another thread, but I definitely agree that BUFFY would have been a good role model for certain aspects of LG15.
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JustAnotherLonelyGirl.
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2016 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ir3act wrote:
I love BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL. Creatpr Joss Whedon also wrote the film IN YOUR EYES, a movie that really touches on a lot of LONELYGIRL15-esque themes of loneliness, isolation, finding your role in the world and relating closely to people through indirect and distant means.

I wonder which subforum is the right place to post movie recommendations that are reminiscent of LG15?

The thing that I think LG15 should have learned from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and its season-long arcs: they would only be a season long and the next season would start a new arc with a new villain. Each season had a beginning, middle and end. BUFFY wasn't just spinning its wheels indefinitely.

With that in mind, I imagine that Season 2's finale should have defeated the Order significantly if not permanently. The simplest route: establish that the Order banks the trait positive supply, have Emma, Gina and Dr. Calvin Hart use the trick of poisoning Emma's blood on the Order's blood bank, effectively taking out every Elder.

Season 3 could then do the post-Order stories, but if a new villain were needed -- well, I did like Austin McConnell's idea (if not his execution) where the Order's religious and occult divisions were taken down but their scientific divisions came to the forefront through SHENtek.

So maybe Season 3, if it really required an antagonist, would have the team fighting a different branch of the Order now that the top leaders had been killed: perhaps the Hymn of One recruitment branch would wage a new war through social media; perhaps the military division would put their services up for sale and Jonas and his limitless bank account would have to buy them; perhaps the PR branch would venture into filmmaking and Daniel would have to go in undercover, etc..

One thought I've had about the Order that should maybe go into a different thread later on -- I think maybe, given how inconsistent the Order was throughout the series, maybe the writers should have made the Order a chameleonic, shifting entity that periodically redesigns itself.

So for Season 1, it was Scientology with henchmen. In Season 2, the militaristic aspects of the Order came to the forefront. Maybe Season 3 should have turned the Hymn of One into a political movement with Salinas only for the team to put a stop to it. Then Season 4 could have the Hymn of One reinvent itself as a health program called Lifesblood Labs (like Dr. Oz). Season 5 could present the Order as an evil version of Apple or Google.

The thought of a chameleonic Order is probably for another thread, but I definitely agree that BUFFY would have been a good role model for certain aspects of LG15.


Very good point. I agree that Buffy was satisfying because they always won - every season. (Except arguably that first Dawn season... but Buffy rallied!) It's important that the heroes of the story appear competent and, well, heroic. I would have loved to see Bree as an ass-kicking heroine, or Emma. =)
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