I like Quark, but every time he said 'Hew-mons' I wanted to tear his ears off. It bothered me to no end. Apparently Ferengi UT's aren't all they're cracked up to be. To be fair, though, 'pallie' bothered me too.
I too am not a big fan of Vic. In fact, I consider His Way to be one of my most disliked DS9 episodes. It may have something to do with the fact that I have never liked musicals/singing in any non-musical show. To me, it just seems like an enormous time killer rather than advancing whatever plot there might be. Personality wise, I'm not fond of this Rat-pack vibe either. I'd hate to be called "pally", and I am against characters who seem to be "all-knowing" like he's some kind of oracle. I will give him some credit though, I'd rather listen to all his songs than listen to those mutants singing "Do-Remi" or whatever it is. Now that makes me cringe even thinking about it.
Normally I'd agree with you, but with all the time spent on Vic, it felt like the DS9 writers were trying to come up with their own version of the EMH. I like Vic, but at a certain point he became overkill. Same here, though admittedly imo the best Vic episode was logically a holosuite-heavy episode with the heist. My biggest relief there? For once we had a holodeck/suite episode that didn't threaten the crew or the show. No malfunctions. If the heroes lost, they'd feel bad but nothing crucial, they were simply unwinding.
Oh, and what about Nerys singing "Fever" at Vic's ? http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fever+ds9&aq=0
I didn't mind Vic, and some of those episodes featuring the character were excellent. Sisko singing "The Best is Yet to Come" was pretty weird though.
I watched that episode the other day. I was getting annoyed with all the singing right up until I realised Kira was going to sing. *swoon* I also liked how Vic referenced having to get rid of Holokira's Russian accent.
I was fine with Kira singing, I just didn't need to hear Vic singing (even though he was okay). Someone said upthread that at first the singing was a novelty, but then it was like the writers couldn't be bothered to write more dialogue/another scene so they just threw a song in. It was overkill. I also didn't like Vic in the finale singing like he had known these people for years and been there in the beginning. He was only introduced towards the end of season 6, it's not like he was part of the foundation of the show.
I can sympathize with both points of view to an extent because I disliked Vic at first but have grown to appreciate the character over time, largely for the in-universe musical element he brings to the show. A musical score is one thing, and of course standard for the genre, but music being produced by the characters in the world is a dimension that is often lacking from these types of shows. It's complicated, of course, since inventing a musical style that would be appropriate is not easy. Vic is basically a way of bypassing that problem. I don't especially care for the musical style Ira Behr chose, but I love the concept, and it adds to the deliberate breaking down of suspension of disbelief that is a big part of the later seasons of DS9. It's fun that Visitor and Brooks get to drop character and sing. I also like that the DS9 crew's final gathering is basically an out-of-character cast and crew party in a lounge. LoL! In a sense I would compare Vic's lounge to the final scene of Far Beyond the Stars: which is the fiction, which is reality? For the characters on DS9, Vic's lounge is the fiction, a holosuite fantasy on their very real space station. For us of course, Vic's is closer to reality, and the space station is the fantasy. A story within a story within a story. DS9 got a lot of things right and, oddly enough, I think the holodeck is one of them, with Vic being a prime example. He's "real" in the sense that he has an impact on the other characters, who of course are only "real" in quotation marks as well. Vic is just a hologram, but then the whole thing is fiction anyway, so the same can be said of everyone else on the station. The holodeck works well as a way of thinking about fiction, and how it relates to reality (or fantasy to reality, as in TNG's Hollow Pursuits, or DS9's lighter Our Man Bashir). Fictional characters are real in the way Vic is real, but of course they are not real in the standard sense. This is more interesting than discussions of "holographic rights" or whatever. "He's real to me," as somebody says in Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang (or words to that effect), so these fictional characters get together to basically save Vic's show from cancelation. Again, LoL! It's too bad DS9 doesn't end with a final shot of Benny Russell at his typewriter, as the writers at one point had envisioned. For me that final shot is essentially there anyway. In here, in my mind
*boggles* i can't even believe what i'm reading here. how the fuck can anyone like this character? he's horribly written, has a ridiculous personality, litters the show with terrible.fucking.music and absolutely cringe-worthy lines, he somehow makes the regular cast act like complete fools whenever he's around... the list goes on and on. seriously, wtf are you clowns thinking? it's people like you who keep characters such as lwaxana, vash, nagus, alexander, bareil, etc. from not being laughed off the first draft of every script they infect. how can so many trek fans have such bad taste? ┌П┐(•_•)┌П┐ you people are the WORST.
Wow. Now I don't like Vic but there was no reason to be that nasty. People are entitled to their opinions you know.
I liked Vic, and I thought the atmosphere of his program and the music it offered was a perfect counterpoint to the Dominion War arc.
I didnt mind Vic, but maybe thats because I was braced for the worst. I was on these forums before I got to his entry to DS9, and I remember a lot of comments about 'Vic Fontaine' mania, so I got the impression that he was going to be in like every episode. I thought he was okay, although Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang ties with The Sword of Kahless for my least liked DS9 episode. I also dont think we needed to hear him sing entire songs.