quit while you're ahead

while i was clearing out my rss feeds on google reader this weekend, i came across a post from...well...sometime in the past two weeks? it had been awhile since i cleared everything! anyway, a post from sf signal asking about which series you would like to see end if you could. the original post is talking about books, but i'm not a real diehard fan of any currently going series, so i broadened it a bit.

i did take the liberty of adducing a few book series that i am just tired of seeing about the place -- i don't even have to mention the sparkly vampire thing, do i? good. i didn't think so.

but there're also laurell k. hamilton's anita blake books. i read the first one, guilty pleasures, back in the day when it first came out and loved it. i loved the series right through the third book, gave up because it was too gory for me at the time, came back years later, caught up, got through the gore -- and stubbed my toe on all the damned sex. jeeze -- i'm all for a little light romping about, but god. the books stopped being urban fantasy awhile ago and started being soft-core porn.

george r. r. martin's books i vaguely resent because a) i've never been able to get into them; b) i hear there's a tv mini-series version coming with lots and lots and lots of actors i love in it and i wish they were all doing something i could get more enthusiastic about; and c) my ex thought they were just awesome. so that's just a constellation of things i don't necessarily appreciate.

i rather wish dennis mckiernan would stop writing mithgar books. i'm not quite sure why i feel this -- i still enjoy reading them -- but they don't feel like he's paying as much attention as he used to. despite the fact that, in the most recent one, he brought back my favorite character -- aravan -- and favorite location -- aravan's ship, the eroean -- i'm still not sold on the more recent novels. the earlier ones? i'll recommend those heartily to anyone in need of an epic fantasy fix. i remember reading journey of the fox rider and the dragonstone with my mouth hanging open i was so into it.

and there are a couple of series -- trilogies, really -- that i rather wish had ended at stand-alones. caroline stevermer and patricia wrede's cecilia and kate novels might have been better if they'd stopped at the enchanted chocolate pot; and i'm really afraid that steve cash's meq series isn't going to be much improved by a third or even a fourth entry in the series. but i could be wrong.

as far as other media go -- there are series i got so frustrated with that i gave up, notably buffy the vampire slayer. by the middle of season 6, i really disliked buffy so much that the rest of the scooby crew no longer made it worthwhile to watch the show. i stopped with "gone," just before "doublemeat palace" which had, sadly, been spoilered for me by the blurb on the back of the dvd set! with the prospect of "doublemeat" looming before me, it hardly seemed worthwhile to put up with buffy's bad attitude in the distant hope that spike would come to his senses and suck her dry and not in a fun way. i'm not sure i wish that whedon had stopped before season 6 -- i've been told by those hardier than i who have gone on and finished the series that it really is worth it and i do intend to finish it...one of these days.

i think we could probably all live without another fast & furious movie -- much as i love three out of the existing four! (the one in tokyo is just --- bizarre. it's almost not even fun it's so weird -- i mean, what's with the chick who looks more like michael jackson the more you watch the movie? just watch the initial car "race," enjoy the kid rock song -- then find something else to do would be my advice. if you want a lucas black movie, watch friday night lights -- that has garrett hedlund, too!)

much as i love the underworld franchise as a series which keeps kate beckinsale in latex, vampires toothy, and lots of guns about the place, there are days when i wish they had stopped at a stand-alone. and do i even need to mention the existence of the two sequels to the matrix? the original brilliant stand-alone movie -- ruined by its sequels.

i never finished farscape -- after season 3's two-parter,  "self inflicted wounds," i just couldn't go on.

it wasn't that i didn't love the show; i did. and it wasn't that i wasn't into the plot or the characters any more; i was.

it was more that after going through most of a pack of tissues on that two-parter -- and all the dreadful occurrences of the prior episodes in that season: what was it? kick d'argo month? -- i was a tad bit drained as far as the crew of moya went. like buffy, i fully intend to go back and finish the series someday; how could i ever totally abandon a series with a villain as truly spine-chilling as dear darling old scorpy? (and what makes it even better is that wayne pygram was grand moff tarkin in revenge of the sith -- yeah, yeah, yeah, i know we only saw him for about 25 seconds and he had one line but who cares?!)

but, really, the topper of "series that i can't stand to finish right at the minute" (which is kind of what the end of this post has turned into) has to be torchwood.

i watched "day one" of the "children of earth" mini-season and stuck right there.

i know what happens. i know it's horrible. i know awful things happen to at least one of my favorite characters. and i'm in full wuss-out fangirl mode -- somewhere in the back of my mind i am convinced that if i just hold out on watching "children of earth" for long enough, the bbc will come to its senses and renew the show for a fourth, proper season.

it won't happen. and someday, i will gather together sufficient tissues and chocolate and i will finish "children of earth" -- but not this week.