It’s interesting how much of an impact Joss Whedon has had on Hollywood at large. Although he has never won an award for his writing - due mostly to the genre-driven nature of his programs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly - his work continues to serve as a model for others.
It’s not just that Whedon’s “season-long story arc” structures, a form he didn’t necessarily invent but certainly popularized, have been adopted by many other shows. It’s more than that. Some are now even lifting his storytelling rhythms and making them their own.
Two examples from this TV season come to mind.
Scrubs, the NBC comedy currently in its sixth season, recently did a musical episode. While not quite as polished at Whedon’s “Once More… With Feeling,” episode, doing a musical episode of a normally non-musical show is an idea Whedon innovated on Buffy.
Then there’s Smallville, currently in its sixth season on the new CW network after spending the first five season on the now-defunct WB network. A couple episodes ago, Smallville had Clark attacked by a creature only to take up in a world in which he’s been in an insane asylum for the past several years and all his adventures as a superpowered fellow from another world are supposed to be part of his delusion. That’s direct plot-theft, taken from Whedon’s “Normal Again” episode of Buffy.
Ironically, both Scrubs and Smallville are in their sixth seasons, and stole ideas out of Buffy’s sixth season. Coincidence? I think not. On Smallville, the parallels run even deeper, since they chose to kill off Johnathon Kent, Clark’s father, in a February episode of Smallville’s fifth season; Buffy fans will recall that Whedon had Buffy’s mom die suddenly, too… in a February episode of Buffy’s fifth season.
It’s not plagerism, precisely. But there certainly are a lot of Whedon disciples in Hollywood these days. Maybe these tributes should at least, out of decency, put up a Mutant Enemy address plaque at the end of these “tribute” episodes.
