Last night marks 10 years since "Seeing Red" aired. I had meant to make a complex detailed post about it, but I found it was still too unpleasant to write about.
Right now, on the news, there is a lot of "Joss love" and people hailing him the king of geeks since Avengers came out. But its worth remembering that 10 years ago they were saying the same thing. He had 3 shows on the air, and so what if some people were uptight about some dead lez. He was Joss Whedon and killing was part of his game dammit!..
Ten years ago his hardcore fans imagined that what would follow was success after success, who would remember Tara in that wave of creativity to come?!.
What followed was a long long exile for him. Two shows gone and the third with changes demanded by the network and then cancelled. Then a failed movie, several stalled projects, and another failed show. His one real hit was on you tube "Dr Horrible", and he worked in comics.
He still gets asked about Tara in interviews and now he makes the sounds of regret.


When I saw Avengers with my son this last weekend, and I was happy to see he was back to form. He seemed to realize that pretentious plots and "shocking" killings got him nowhere.

I like to think he learned a lot from the time in the wilderness. I saw him describe himself in 2005 as "Forgotten" at Wizards World.
He threw away more than our love ten years ago, he threw a way the best part of his Talent. He could kill people, but he couldn't make us love them (or him) anymore.

Here he is in 2007 musing that maybe he was wrong at 46 minutes in. Just for a moment, he seems to know what he lost when he describes his "plan" to bring back Tara.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ8vIpIp ... re=related

I wish him well, but when I see the gushing I remember what happened last time.

[“I realised, just the other day, that I have this terrible reputation for killing people not just because I killed Tara, but because I was such a dick about it,” he laughs. “[Adding her to the credits] was just mean. Tara may be dead, but she haunts me still, because now all anybody ever talks about is the fact I kill characters off, and I think, ‘I do other things as well!’” Joss Whedon in the Sunday times last week..