IMO, you can make it make sense, without that much trouble, but there are leaps that you have to make that aren't pointed or nodded to in the text. This is where I normally start my "give us a line, one line, that's all I want" speech. Anyway, this year looks like it's getting back on track, from my perspective.

Umm...Buffy....yeah....there were things from Buffy that I wish they'd mentioned when relevant things were happe...yeah, not gonna work.

BTW, does anyone no where I might find screencaps from last night's Alias? (I'm talking about that Sark-Simon scene.)

IMO, you can make it make sense, without that much trouble, but there are leaps that you have to make that aren't pointed or nodded to in the text.

That's the thing: I didn't have to make it make sense. It already *made* sense to me.

From Season 5 BtVS on, I had to make it make sense to make sense of it, and I had to make a lot of S3 AtS make sense to make sense of it, but the majority of S4? It hit my pattern recognition circuits hard.

Really? That's so weird. Not that you're weird, Plei, except in the good way. Just that people's (and I feel safe saying smart people's, given other discussions of this I've seen on this board) sense-making buttons are so different. I shall have to go back into the archives. Sometime when I don't have shitloads of work to do.

I hear you on a lot of late Buffy, though. I was more thinking 2/3.

Buffy was continuity porn. Angel's soft core. Alias is a friggin children's book.

If this keeps going down the line Smallville would be a Raffi sing along tape, and Mutant X would be a mobile hanging over a baby's crib.

but the majority of S4? It hit my pattern recognition circuits hard.

Yeah? Not me. I found myself at the end of the season feeling like I had to leap over huge plot-holes of illogic to get to the end. The whole "Jasmine planned it" not-technically-a-retcon bugged me. It didn't satisfy my questions about how two vampires conceived, or what exactly happened to Connor at the end, or what was going on with Cordy's ascension. It just didn't make sense to me and the explanations seemed utterly hollow.

And it all starts right away with Cordy magically re-appearing without her memory in Slouching Toward Bethlehem.

The whole "Jasmine planned it" not-technically-a-retcon bugged me.... It just didn't make sense to me and the explanations seemed utterly hollow.

Preach, Manservant, preach! Whatever the reasons for the screwiness & failings of the Connor storyline -- bad idea from the outset (IMO), difficulties w/ the cast (CC's fall from favor), poor execution of the arc, distractions from Buffy ending/Firefly starting/WB dicking around w/ Angel, [insert your favorite scapegoat here] -- don't give us a half-assed "oh yeah, we had it all planned from the beginning" spiel that prompts one of two reactions: a) you're lying or b) if all that was planned maybe you'd like to reconsider & say you made it up as you went along so we can give up attempts to shoehorn it into a logical framework.

There were a bunch of different show-runners last season too, weren't there?

(Or am I mis-remembering?)

Even if it was all planned from the beginning, it still doesn't make sense. I needed to feel the impact of the agency, and of the motivations of the individual steps (still not sure on why we lost the sun).

Planned all along? I'd have been fine with it if THE PLAN HAD MADE SENSE.