Buffy vs. The Librarians · 2:23am Aug 16th, 2017
I've been watching a show that began in 2014, The Librarians. Six people work for The Library, an ancient institution that protects the world from magic by keeping it secret and locking it away.
The basic premise--that magic is too dangerous to be used for good--is an obvious allegory for anti-scientism, which would ordinarily be enough for me to hate it. But the show is endearingly historically accurate; nearly every monster-of-the-week is taken from history, whether factual or mythological. And it's heroes are mainly geeks! It's got, like, four Twilights. Or two Twilights, one Giles, and one Doctor.
I really want to love this show, yet it's not popping for me. I compared it to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to try to figure out why Buffy gripped me and made me always eager for the next show, while Librarians doesn't. I only considered the Buffy characters Buffy, Giles, Spike, Xander, and Willow, because those were the main characters I cared about most.
I've thought of a couple of reasons so far.
Personal Problems
Each character in each show has one or more major personal problems.
Buffy
Giles has seen too much. He's convinced it's only a matter of time--more likely months than years--before Buffy dies under his watch. He has a strong sense of duty but little sense of hope. His anxiety is triggered by Buffy.
Buffy has been given a burden and responsibility she didn't want. She resents being the Slayer. Her anxiety is triggered by Giles.
Spike loves Buffy, but is repulsive to her because of his evil nature. His anxiety is triggered by Buffy.
Xander is an ordinary or below-average Joe on a team of superheroes. He loves Buffy but knows he isn't sexy enough to attract her. His anxiety is triggered by Buffy and by being useless in the face of the monster-of-the-week.
Willow's major problem before Season 6 was insecurity or low self-esteem, and being in love with Xander while he was in love with Buffy. Her anxiety was triggered by Xander and probably by stress, though I don't remember now.
Each character's personal insecurity is triggered by the other characters or by the threats they face so regularly. Just keeping these characters in the same room generates subtle but constant tension. Even without any cliffhanger at the end of an episode, I wanted to see the next episode to see what would happen to each of the inter-character background plotlines.
The Librarians
Colonel Eve Baird has some sort of parent issues that aren't clear yet. They're triggered by Christmas.
Jacob Stone has father issues and acceptance issues. He kept his self-education secret because he thinks the people in his hometown don't approve of eggheads, and his dad is an asshole who's furious at him for leaving the family business. His anxiety is triggered by his hometown and by his father.
Ezekiel Jones doesn't have any major personal problem yet.
Cassandra Cillian has a brain tumor which is going to kill her someday. It gives her headaches when she thinks too hard. She feels that the team does not respect or trust her, although this is resolved in season one. She also has issues with her parents, who pushed her very hard to achieve academically rather than to have friends. These appear, however, only for about one minute in one episode.
Jenkins has father issues which remain mysterious for the first two seasons. They are triggered by a recurring villain character.
Flynn Carsen, the Librarian, has no personal problem that I'm aware of.
None of these characters other than Jenkins have a major personal problem that is triggered by any of the other characters. In fact, their triggers are things that are very specific, and either far away or seldom seen. These characters, therefore, do not automatically generate tension; they are designed around personal problems that seem to have been introduced after the pilot, and that are difficult to make use of.
Humor
Both shows are fantasy action stories with a Scooby crew, some drama, and some humor. The kind of humor used, though, is different.
Buffy used character-based humor. Giles was funny as an Englishman a bit lost in valley-girl California. He often makes snide comments implying Buffy is too young and inexperienced. Xander used self-deprecating humor that highlighted his problem: he was an ordinary Joe on a crew of super-humans, with no special talents at all, and indeed some doubt as to whether he was even a basically competent human being. Buffy used sarcastic humor, a metaphorical weapon to match her combat-oriented style and to defend herself from emotions. Spike used cynical and cruel humor. Willow used humor accidentally, dropping pearls of weirdness from the Willow Zone (vulnerable, hopeful, impractical) which highlighted her separation from most humans.
Buffy's humor is built on a foundation of pain. Each character produces humor in a way that emphasizes that character's key personal problem. It's often gallows humor, a brave keeping up of spirits as they approach the apocalypse.
Librarians uses situational humor, showing the characters being aware of and then accepting the new weirdness they are thrust into every week. Ezekiel Jones has Rainbow Dash-like ridiculous brashness, and Jenkins has Giles-like snark, but it doesn't use humor much for character development or to pick at ongoing inter-character conflicts.
Librarians also has some absurdist humor, such as the scene at the end of Season 2 Episode 4, "The Cost of Education", in which Jones' new pet gargoyle dies in a way that is supposed to be funny, and Jones' perception of this as tragic is also supposed to be funny. This never works. You can't add farcical humor to a serious drama.
Conclusion
This is a simplistic analysis that ignores so many other things that Buffy did right--the music, the casting and acting, the character arcs, the extensive planning ahead, Whedon's daring and his willingness to kick the audience in the gut. But it seems to me that a great part of the show's success is due to always focusing on the characters. Buffy designed characters that would trigger each other's insecurities without even trying, and had them act in ways that highlighted those insecurities.
Librarians settles for competently producing the basics that you read about in Syd Field's Screenplay--plot, characters, setting, and sometimes theme. That common wisdom was developed in writing plays, novels, and screenplays, which are equivalent to one multi-part TV show. Designing a show that can run for several years, with characters that were designed before the second year's scripts were outlined, and keep suggesting new episodes and maintaining tension, is a new skill which we don't yet understand. But I think it starts with the characters.
Spike's change from evil to good in Buffy took 6 years, which is usually the right way to do that sort of thing, versus the 1 minute heel-turn in a typical MLP villain conversion. But in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, the Grinch's conversion also took less than one minute. Why did such a fast a character conversion work for the Grinch, but not (I claim) for Babs Seed, Diamond Tiara, or Starlight Glimmer? I'll give my thoughts on that in a later blog post. I suppose I should hold it until Christmas.
I miss buffy.
There is always "Read or Die" the anime if you want another librarian hero story. Their paper powers are interesting.
Buffy was pretty damn good.
The Librarian movie was a decent B-movie. If I'd written and directed it, I'd be pretty proud of it. But Buffy is the kind of thing you remember, the kind of thing that influences you.
Buffy also gave us the musical episode of an otherwise-normal show. One of my favorite tropes in any show.
Buffy also gave us Angel. The character and the show.
I am working on a story inspired by one of the Buffy arcs. Not a crossover, just sort of inspired by a concept. I'm still pretty fuzzy on it.
Mmmmm... Angel.
I think I saw this movie.
One thing to remember: If you can make a good story out of the coffee pot breaking and needing to be replaced, you have a good crew and can make a good story out of *anything*
Ive seen the movies.
They where decent.
Never got around to the actual series.
Buffy was good. Angel wasnt to bad either.
This sounds quite a bit like Warehouse 13. Or Friday the 13th: The Series.
It's similar if not directly connected to Warehouse 13. I never finished watching the last episode of the Librarians series one. I should get around to that,I guess. But you're right, the structural elements of The Librarians just doesn't have the solid foundations of the Buffy TV series characters.
4636391
That seems... actually really accurate. If someone told me that was a Seinfeld episode, I would believe them.
My absolute favorite Buffy episode
Although it could be mostly because I could perfectly match that demons' voice.
I'll be interested:
In reading your thoughts on Starlight Glimmer. My own impression is that her conversion isn't finished yet though I expect it will be by the end of Season 7.
Mike
I wish I had watched Buffy when it was airing. I tried to watch it a couple of years back, and it felt way too dated.
4636587
I definitely agree it feels dated.
I was never a big fan of Buffy or Angel, although my wife is of both. I appreciate what Whedon was trying to do with it, and as Bad Horse noted, the character dynamics were often very good; but there were a few things I found to be serious flaws with it that put me off a bit.
First, Whedon relied far too much on pop-culture reference humour, which IMO is a very large part of why it feels so dated now. I know I missed a lot of it because I wasn't terribly obsessed with the sort of pop-culture it was referencing at the time. Not enough of the humour came from the situations or character dynamics to compensate for that and keep a consistent tone, it just felt uneven. By contract, Firefly's almost complete lack of pop culture references meant that the humour was based much more on the characters and the situation, and was more consistent and effective.
Second, the way he kills characters. Now, I love the fact that Whedon is willing to kill off main ensemble characters, and kill of popular characters. But the way he does it too often feels cheap, like he's going for the gut punch for it's own sake, to show how edgy he is, without it necessarily making good enough narrative sense, and for someone who generally avoids playing tropes straight, in this he seems to. Tara's death was a motivator for Willow; but unfortunately, that's a badly overworked trope. It smacked too much of Stuffed Into The Fridge and Bury Your Gays.
A good contrast is Firefly. Comparing the two deaths, Shepherd Bood and Wash, one works narratively, one doesn't. Book's death made narrative sense, it highlighted the growing threat, and provided the story an effective opportunity to spark Mal's change of heart without feeling like a cheap Stuffed Into The Fridge plot convenience. It was built up well and handled well. Wash's death felt like Whedon decided that the climax was getting too heroic and happy, that the movie wasn't dark and edgy enough, and went for the cheap gut punch. It served no useful narrative purpose beyond "even though the Big Damn Heroes are obviously going to save the day and instigate real change for the better, life is still shit and you better not forget that". Dragon Lord Torch up there shouting "BE SAD!" Wash's death didn't change anything, it didn't spark any sort of character development or serve as a plot point, it didn't have any real significant impact on the story at all.
Third, a lot of Buffy made little or no sense, or was badly handled. Buffy dying the first time was baldly overworked symbolism, but was an effective narrative device that affected the character for the rest of the series. The second time was just gratuitous and pointless. The Dawn arc felt badly contrived and poorly implemented. Now, I'm a fan of the "in media res" device if it's done well. I use it myself. But this was not done well. It didn't start in the middle of the character arc and work backwards through hints and flashbacks, it started in the middle and seemed to forget about the backstory until it slapped you in the face with it. And the entire arc simply didn't make sense to me. It felt like half an idea that Whedon hadn't bothered to properly develop before slapping it on. And the entire Initiative arc felt cartoonish and goofy, even by comparison to a show that already leaned in that direction.
Dude I thought that was Buffy vs. The Libertarians.
I'd pay to see that, though.
I saw the premise and pilot and was enthralled.
Then i saw the first episode and I thought wow this is garbage what the fuck happened.
Turns out? Australian screenwriters.
I hate my country.
I was going to ask if The Librarians was based on Charlie Stross' Library Files series until my brain caught up with me and I remembered it's the Laundry Files.
I guess "The Launderers" would have had a rather different implication.
Anyway, yeah. Enjoyed the heck out of Buffy despite watching it at much older than its coming-of-age target audience age, and the observation on character tension is a pretty huge point in its favor. (Though I do disagree with your point about not being able to mix humor and character drama: that was pretty much Buffy's entire formula.)
4636349
Ditto. And Angel as well, even if both kind of lost their way in later seasons.
I haven't watched the Librarians, but that's because I was under the impression it was loosely based on the Librarian movies which... Like you, I wanted to like but I couldn't get invested in for much the same set of reasons you're giving here.
4637451
I think it's more that some kinds of humor don't mix well with character drama.
Feeling amused someone is upset their pet died pretty much requires you not to be invested in their emotional well-being at all.
4636859
To be fair, Tara didn't die until Season 6, which was when Buffy was pretty much on it's last legs and I don't think Whedon was really invested anymore. He had Angel and Firefly going at that time. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd bet it was meant to end at 5 and then someone got slapped with a roll of money. The second death was probably meant to end the series. But then it just kept going. Now, I liked the musical episode, I admit, but that's pretty much it for Season Six.
4636859
Both of the Firefly (technically Serenity, I guess) deaths were in large part because the actors wouldn't be available for the sequel films that Whedon wanted to make (but didn't get to). I guess he managed to integrate one of those into the narrative better, though.