Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #95 Considers Joss Whedon’s The Nevers

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an dis­cuss the HBO Max show out Vic­to­ri­an-era super-pow­ered fem­i­nine out­casts, helmed and now aban­doned by the cre­ator of Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er, Fire­fly, etc. It’s jam packed with steam­punk gad­gets, fisticuffs, social injus­tice, and far too many char­ac­ters and plot threads to keep track of. Giv­en that the sea­son was reduced to a half sea­son in light of the pan­dem­ic, does it still work? Does know­ing the com­plaints about Joss Whe­don affect our con­sump­tion of the show? Is this a faux fem­i­nism where women must under­go tor­ture to gain strength?

Here are a few arti­cles we con­sid­ered:

• “The Nev­ers Is an Unim­pres­sive Mon­u­ment to Joss Whedon’s Obses­sions” by Kathryn VanAren­donk
• “Review: The Nev­ers Makes Abrupt Turn in Dis­ori­ent­ing Mid­sea­son Finale” by Jen­nifer Oul­lette
• “‘The Nev­ers’ Can’t Escape Joss Whedon’s Shad­ow, for Bet­ter or (Most­ly) Worse” by Ali­son Her­man
• “A Com­plete Time­line of Every Joss Whe­don Con­tro­ver­sy” by Gabrielle Sanchez
• “A Guide to the Grow­ing Con­tro­ver­sy Over Joss Whedon’s Avengers and Marvel’s Gen­der Prob­lem” by Emi­ly Van­Der­W­erff
• “‘The Nev­ers’ Star Lau­ra Don­nel­ly Was ‘Gut­ted’ by Joss Whedon’s Exit: ‘I Had a Won­der­ful Expe­ri­ence Work­ing With Him’” by Jen­nifer Maas

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.