That Guy Just Turned Into a Puppet!
Exploring a little-used trope, for better or worse.
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Exploring a little-used trope, for better or worse.
Read Full Article
That Guy Just Turned Into a Puppet!
- Thread starter Elizabeth Grunewald
- Start date
That same Stargate episode ended with a really great quotation by Isaac Asimov that was prefaced by "Science fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition," and I think the same can be said about stories with well crafted and performed puppets. The Muppets in particular have had some particularly poignant moments. I would like to see more shows able to work in episodes with puppets.
I agree, well written analysis, and I don't know how you manage without 30 Rock - best comedy on the air now, IMO.Halceon said:
That is a bizarre thing to examine, but I appreciate the thought you put into it.
This is a lot of the reason that I've never been able to take a Joss Whedon show seriously. Angel, Firefly, and Buffy can never decide if they're a screwball comedy or a deadly serious genre-fiction melodrama. They make for fun distractions and decent entertainment, but when you have an episode where the main character is turned into a puppet, or everyone in town starts randomly performing a musical, or your show about space pirates turns into a western complete with southern accents and whorehouses - I just can't take it seriously and tend to lose interest in the overall scope of the series. Joss Whedon's severely limited attention span means that I run out of patience for his shows pretty quickly.
Serenity is a seriously great movie though.
This is a lot of the reason that I've never been able to take a Joss Whedon show seriously. Angel, Firefly, and Buffy can never decide if they're a screwball comedy or a deadly serious genre-fiction melodrama. They make for fun distractions and decent entertainment, but when you have an episode where the main character is turned into a puppet, or everyone in town starts randomly performing a musical, or your show about space pirates turns into a western complete with southern accents and whorehouses - I just can't take it seriously and tend to lose interest in the overall scope of the series. Joss Whedon's severely limited attention span means that I run out of patience for his shows pretty quickly.
Serenity is a seriously great movie though.
I like Whedon's ADHD when it comes to his programming, it keeps you on your toes. Too many shows churn out the same basic story week after week - theres a corpse, lets figure out who made it in a serious of interesting yet familiar ways.
Anywho, you've just convinced my to start watching Angel Mcbeal again! I honestly stopped watching after the first season, but only because I got distracted by something shiny. It happens.
Anywho, you've just convinced my to start watching Angel Mcbeal again! I honestly stopped watching after the first season, but only because I got distracted by something shiny. It happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-CG6gCrPYM
Arnold Rimmer.
He will never be mistaken for Yule Brynner.
From the excellent Red Dwarf.
Arnold Rimmer.
He will never be mistaken for Yule Brynner.
From the excellent Red Dwarf.
when I was wtaching smile time on tv ages ago I remember being dissapointed with puppet angel for the first few minutes (I usually hate this sort of tropes), but minutes later it grew on me. With the spike scene being the crowning moment. I still regard that episode as my favorite comedic one.
buffy and even more so angel, never took themselves 100% seriously, while never doing anything too sarcastic.
this episode is a good example, yes its funny angel is a pupppet, but it never stopped being as vilanous as any other enemy. it never went corny or cheesy.
throughout both series, even characters with "Comic Relief" printed on their foreheads still had some degree of depth, developement and growth as characters.
this episode is a good example, yes its funny angel is a pupppet, but it never stopped being as vilanous as any other enemy. it never went corny or cheesy.
throughout both series, even characters with "Comic Relief" printed on their foreheads still had some degree of depth, developement and growth as characters.
I'm not sure that turning into a puppet is considered a trope. A trope is a something that has been done to an excess turning it into a cliche'. By calling it a "little-used (although I do love the pun) trope" creates an oxymoron. In order to be a trope, it has to be done with frequency. Each one of your examples use puppets to portray different tropes (self parody, a character in their "own world", a character metamorphosing into something completely different) but the puppets themselves aren't the trope.