kevin k watches "buffy the vampire slayer" and no one talks about episodes he hasn't seen yet

as per request. relevant discussion starts here or especially here for when shit starts getting real for me

ok so i just finished "the prom" (s3e20). said it a million times before but UGHHHHHHHH joyce! bothers me so much that buffy and angel resign to her vision of buffy's fate - i get that it in some ways might be the best thing for buffy to do, and that they may have eventually arrived at the decision independently, but why can't buffy decide for herself? of course this'll probably all play out in a way i approve of but especially like for a show that for the most part is so pro-feminist, that bugged me.

"the prom" was another one of those movie-of-the-weekers but was better than most of those: xander is still my least favorite character by a long shot but i kinda loved him for a split second when cordi finds out that he's paid for the prom dress she wants (btw cordi as a character gets better every freaking episode - i thought i hated her season 1 and now she's like 3rd best!). and though it was like the corniest shit ever i thought the thing where the class gave buffy that umbrella (!?) was adorable, got to me a little. i thought for sure cordi and xander would dance but lol wesley got there first, hate that british btw.

that episode makes me sob and sob, btw

"Class Protector"!!!!!!!!!

ha kev I had been wondering what you thought of WESLEY WYNDHAM-PRYCE.

world's greatest name imo

more like WEASLEY

k3v (first of all, I'm glad you made this thread), please keep in mind your opinions about some of these most-hated characters. I guarantee your mind will change about some of them, perhaps even radically so. There is one you have mentioned thus far whose arc is maybe my favorite in the Buffyverse.

oh i know i'm totally expecting that and hoping for it - like i said i've done a complete 180 on cordi. willow i was just lukewarm on in season 1 and i love her now

I need to give this another shot one of these days.

ditto

Kevin what did you think of "Earshot"??

The bit in "The Prom" where Buffy is crying on the bed with Willow saying "I feel like I can't breathe" made me ;_; for days.

movie-of-the-weekers

btw the m in motw stood for monster of the week.

Kev- what's yr thoughts on Oz? Are you able to not associate him with Seth Green being fucking annoying post-Buffy?

I'm never going to be obsessed with Buffy the way I am with Doctor Who and Torchwood. I recognize that it's good and I enjoy it when I watch it, but it never makes a lasting impression with me (aside from one specific instance).

Firefly, OTOH, is totally my shit.

this was a rad show. k3v you are in for many enjoyable hours.

that episode makes me sob and sob, btw

Oh, me too. Even if I hear the Sundays version of Wild Horses, it will remind me of this episode and I will tear up.

i know! i don't even like Angel, really, but still.

I like making fun of Angel more than I genuinely like Angel, but it's still very affecting.

I like making fun of Angel more than I genuinely like Angel, but it's still very affecting.

― ô_o (Nicole), Thursday, 11 February 2010 16:35 (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think writers of the Angel show felt this way as well after a while.

david boreanaz was not meant to mope, is the thing.

dude what he is such a good moper!

He was meant to BROOD.

He was meant to BROOD while other people JOKED about his BROOODINESS. And, yes, this is a train that I'm glad the Angel writers hitched themselves to.

guys, sometimes i watch this bones show (shut up) where boreanaz is basically playing himself afaict and he's all smiley and jokey and dim and it just suits him better! i enjoy his acting a lot more when he's angelus, but still.

tbf i haven't seen much of Angel, i do think it's funny when other characters mock him, but you should not put a charisma void at the center of a show imo

a charisma carpenter on the other hand

guys, sometimes i watch this bones show (shut up) where boreanaz is basically playing himself afaict and he's all smiley and jokey and dim and it just suits him better! i enjoy his acting a lot more when he's angelus, but still.

― horseshoe, Friday, 12 February 2010 17:11 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is what he is for half of angel!

i don't believe u; fine, i'll watch it some day

can i just admit that "the good vampire" is not a supercompelling character to me

also isn't there an ep in the third season (i believe you've seen it by now, kev) where Angel's all lecturing Buffy about how she shouldn't play games with him and it's like THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T DATE SIXTEEN YEAR OLDS YOU SIMP ugh

sorry this is a terrible way to behave. i still find the season 2 betrayal stuff really affecting, but he's no sarah michelle gellar is all i'm saying

i dunno i always found smg to be the single #1 least interesting thing about Buffy ymmv

:(

WHAAAAAAAT

lol that was in re: rogermexico

HAVE YOU SEEN GRADUATION DAY PT 1 YET AND IF YOU HAVE, WHY YOU ARE YOU NOT GOING MENTAL AT HOW UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME IT IS?

i have seen it :o

i saw it the same night i started this thread, but didn't want to start talking about it at the time because i wanted to stretch this thread out more! plus i wanted to watch again. mindblowing, yes

willow and oz did it! there were a couple of great gags in this episode, one was after oz said "everything feels different" (a perfect line for the situation) and willow gets the phone call and says they have to go to the school...everything's the same. the other one was the four page spread of the demon in giles' reference book, lol.

anyway HOLY SHIT! faith's death is super complex for me - on one hand i guess the show made an effort to try to make me dislike her w/ her cold-blooded killing of that professor, that made me squirm a little. but then all the times when she made me like her at the end! her relationship with the mayor is actually really interesting - his paternal affection for her is both creepy and kind of affecting, and the look on his face when he hears that she's in trouble was really something. i don't know if i can really accept that this is the end of her, i feel cheated in a way - don't tell me if she ends up living tho, lol.

another great sequence was the one where buffy had to tell her mom to skip town so she could fight the mayor. totally deliberate mirror to last season's finale, i think, where joyce wouldn't accept buffy being a slayer and buffy ended up running away after defeating angel. the season 2 one was definitely more of a tear-jerker - it was a much tenser situation, though - but this is great for showing how joyce has opened up to buffy and accepted who she is. score one for her. plus as a reformed film geek i loved that long take in the beginning

after THE BATTLE AT FAITH'S the best part of the episode to me was buffy telling wesley off. i try not to get too heavy-handed with the feminist readings of the show and all, but i've always admired buffy's position as essentially a soldier who ostensibly answers to her watcher, be it giles or wesley; BUT, anyone who knows buffy knows of her pretty total autonomy - this includes giles and us in the audience too. wesley couldn't get with that, and buffy telling him to fuck off was really cathartic

faith - mayor::buffy - giles

non?

yeah, iv noticed that long shots in the opening scenes are a big thing for whedon

faith - mayor::buffy - giles

non?

― 80085 (a hoy hoy), Friday, February 12, 2010 5:00 PM (Yesterday)

hmmm i can see that, and it could explain why she crossed over - she felt she wasn't getting recognition/whatever from giles & co, but the mayor really seemed to like her. but she decided to work for him before the two actually had a relationship, so idk. can't remember if faith mentions anything about her father to the mayor near the end of graduation pt. 1, but i'd imagine she at least on some maybe subconscious level wanted a father figure?

btw

wesley: "this is mutiny"
buffy: "i like to think of it as...graduation"

<3

faith - mayor::buffy - giles

Faith's previous watcher only a failure in staying alive.

Considering the job description, pretty big failure! And being impersonated probably didn't help Faith's... confidence in the system.

Kev- what's yr thoughts on Oz? Are you able to not associate him with Seth Green being fucking annoying post-Buffy?

― 80085 (a hoy hoy), Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:58 AM (4 days ago)

i really love oz tbh, but he's kinda one-sided? besides the lolwerewolf thing he's just like an awesome dude, doesn't look like a motherfucker with some dark secrets or anything. glad he and will are getting more screen time lately because i love the two of them together

btw i have watched the finale! but i wanna watch again before posting about it. and my mom hinted today that she sent me season 4 in the mail, sweet

yay your mom!

oz is the best btw

yay your mom!

― horseshoe, Monday, 15 February 2010 05:35 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

How did the finale make you feel, kevin?

well damn!

the finale was objectively epic, satisfying in some ways and kinda difficult in others. loved the hospital scenes, pretty much killed it as far as faith-mayor and faith/mayor/buffy/angel relationships go - the mayor was a pretty great character actually, too bad he didn't have as much face time as spike did in season 2. the part where angel tells everyone how he was cured was really complex, i really didn't know whether to side with angel (buffy made him do it!) or xander, though his reliably annoying joke made it a little easier. i guess that's sort of the point - angel's absoultely invauable when he's "normal", but idk if he can ever be 100% trusted, whether he can help it or not. still feel like i was cheated out of cathartic closure to that whole situation though. i sobbed a little the first time i watched the "silent in-the-distance farewell" but it kinda didn't do anything for me the second time (compare this to the end of season 2, where i basically can't help but cry for the entire episode).

loool @ the whole cordi-wesley ending - what a useless character, i hope he never comes back. loved when cordi staked that vamp in the battle though, her face was perfect! also thought it was great that snyder got killed (i think?), it was pretty hard to take him seriously. the whole battle was pretty epic and getting all the students involved was cool - thought it was hilarious when wilkins ascended and the parents just ran for it w/out worrying about their kids. screw olds!

still have a bunch of questions obviously, but i guess that's what the point of a season-ending cliffhanger is. curious to see what's gonna go down with faith and angel, assuming they'll both come back. where the hell are spike and dru, really surprised they didn't make an appearance at all, though once i started really liking faith and the mayor as villains it didn't matter quite as much.

it was a little cheesy but loved oz's line at the end "we survived...[chatter about yeah we kicked the mayor's ass (willow said 'ass' btw!)]...no, high school"

there's one statement in there that I'm dying to say a little more about, but I'm-a stay strong for this thread

there are like five statements in there but i'll just comment on one: are you going to watch Angel?

<3 it when all the kids suddenly pull out a fuck load of weapons and percy and co are w/ angel, ready to beat the shit out of the vamps.

heh, you jumped on the same thing I was thinking about... won't spoil though

Yeah, kev. Season 4 was the point when Angel started, so that's where Angel will be, for the most part. But he'll be back.

also, wesley is married to willow IRL

Also, Wesley is not a real Britisher. And neither is Spike. But Giles is. And Xander is actually Chinese.

and stutters

Also, Wesley is not a real Britisher

But the weird thing is that when he used his real accent on Dollhouse it sounded like a very fake American accent.

Totally! Same with seeing Spike on some random Sci-Fi Channel movie... it's just so weird after seeing dozens and dozens of hours of those guys with the Brit accents.

Wesley on himym was terrific, especially with that fake American American accent.

Is Dollhouse still going? Is it worth watching or

series 1 has been on british tv recently (dvds are cheap on amazon). and series 2 (and the entire thing, was cancelled prematurely) finished recently on us tv. it was... ok. firefly was better if you've not seen that.

Yeah, Firefly is better, but Dollhouse really started to pick up after the first several, obviously network-dictated episodes. Easily the least of the Whedon series, but considering the whole thing is only 26 episodes I say go for it.

updates iirc

taking a buffy break atm, want to get through the wire and finish season 4 of GG. v much looking forward to buffy s4 - i'll get around to it in a few weeks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_studies

season 4 peni-finale was kind of nice! it's been months since i watched the episode before that so i'm kind of put of the swing of things but basically i hope riley and buffy break up soon i'm not sure how much more can be squeezed out of this relationship drama-wise. doesnt really touch season 2 or 3 second to last episodes but i can dig it, esp considering this season kinda dragged for me. i'm assuming the finale will be v silly

1 year passes! holy shit

season 3 gets me both nostalgic for the grandeur & flawlessness of the whole season as well as managing to reinvigorate a fondness for high-school i seriously never had. so when season 4 rolls around it, life real life, sucks from it's combination of aimlessness and consciouness of an entire future ahead and begs a lot of condolences for a lot of inevitability (the episode in which riley & buffy can't stop having sex is one of the biggest wtf's of anything's whedon has every written. and just riley's character in general = bore, bore, bore)

holy fuck i rly need my own personal editor

Whedon didn't write Where The Wild Things Are. It was written by the absolutely random Tracey Forbes

Kev what did you think about

1) Giles getting drunk?
2) Buffy GOES MATRIX?
3) The cheese guy?
4) Xander's fantasies?
5) There being a cowboy in Death of a Salesman?

"I showed up on time, so I got to be cowboy guy." is my favorite Riley moment (if it counts).

The Riley and Buffy sex episode does have the saving grace of Giles singing "Behind Blue Eyes."

sooo i'm about to watch 'the body'

Getcher hankies at the ready.

i cried the entire episode :{{{

oh man Anya's speech

that episode is just

i have never gotten over it

(commentary track on that is also very enlightening. makes it obvious how much joss puts into these things (am thinking about the camera choices))

Haven't heard it in years but I remember liking his obsession with concentrating on the physicality of it (Buffy adjusting her mother's skirt/the sloppy wrestling match with the vampire etc).

oh man kev wanna hug?

AHHHH

HOW DOES SEASON 5 JUST END LIKE THAT

i know, right? i like season 6 but it would have been an amazing/heartbreaking series finale.

yeah i love season 6 like a bad ex gf, but i would have been happy with it ending the way 5 did.

lolz.

Kev what did you think about

1) Giles getting drunk?
2) Buffy GOES MATRIX?
3) The cheese guy?
4) Xander's fantasies?
5) There being a cowboy in Death of a Salesman?

― popular gay automobile (a hoy hoy), Sunday, April 10, 2011 1:11 AM (3 months ago)

i literally do not remember any of this! season 4 sucked imo

season 5 was great though! i'm about to take a 5 hour drive, i want to guys to talk about season 5 while i'm gone

Listen, "The Body", Anya's speech...I was holding it together and feeling just kinda in shock/numb until she said that stuff and suddenly I was keening, I couldn't keep the sounds in anymore. And rocking, there was rocking in place, too.

season 5 is a gem

that finale, i watched it in college with my friends at my place and had a total meltdown. it was embarrassing!

saint buffy

she saved the world
a lot

i think all of my contributions to this thread have been, "i cried!"

oh i cried like a baby too. i think i started when spike gets pushed over and stopped about 3 weeks later.

also kev they happen within the last 3 episodes! its p much the best part of s4, other than 3rd Best Episode Of Buffy And Thus Any TV 'Hush'

true story--

only ep of this show that ever made me cry was when buffy didn't make it to riley in time

and i hated riley

^^^got misty-eyed then too and i also hated riley

is this a boy thing? that episode infuriates me.

Xander's speech, tearful running, and a helicopter.

xander's speech is the single most infuriating moment of this show to me

i guess the end of the episode is okay because riley's finally gone

i dont remember that, again riley = dean though.

watched the body today just because. haven't seen any buffy in years but i have seen every episode of it and some of them several times. just for some catharsis. i have been down a lot lately about some p abstract things it was nice to kindof abstractly connect w/ like the *idea* of someone else's misery. i guess that's a pretty crappy thing to say but afterwards i bought an icecream and went to the park and read my book. the part where she says "you're not supposed to move the body" and she sort of connects with the idea of death itself is really shattering. there's all this stuff about the impenetrability of death and how senseless it is and its all kindof shocking in buffyland where death is necessarily made unreal all the time (vampires exploding into dust etc) to have this cold body that won't wake up. like anya crying about how she won't brush her hair again and that final shot of dawn reaching out to see if the body is cold. and yeah physical things, buffy adjusting the skirt when later joyce's clothes will be cut off anyway, xander punching the wall and realising that he still bleeds.

there's all this stuff about the impenetrability of death and how senseless it is and its all kindof shocking in buffyland where death is necessarily made unreal all the time

otm! and yeah, buffy adjusting joyce's skirt just kills me.

i dont remember that, again riley = dean though.

yessssss

does that make angel jess? keep in mind i'm only i think 4 seasons through GG too

spike was a fuckin hero this season

the buffy/joyce/dawn relationship(s) worked so well - in the special features whedon says that buffy's 'love interest' for s5 would be her family, which makes perfect sense in retrospect

Spike as Logan, Angel as Jess and Riley as Dean all otm. Man these shows were similar.

that's all crazy talk btw

spike is a little logan echolls from vmars, for sure

i mean for buffy/rory. angel/jess is the rebellion, dean/riley is the dull easy life, spike/logan is the self-loathing cry fo help

jane espenson went on after buffy ended to write for the gilmore girls, i guess, but i don't think of them as very similar shows.

xp i guess this is just me being bratty because buffy is so much better.

xander's speech is the single most infuriating moment of this show to me

― horseshoe, Sunday, July 10, 2011 6:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

tell me abt this

that might have been an overstatement, but i...don't agree with Xander's take on Riley. to me Riley's the guy who can't handle that Buffy is a superhero because it makes him feel emasculated so he's weird and passive-agressive about it and eventually ends up thrillseeking as a way of coping and i just hate that in that moment the show seems to turn it all around on buffy and how she's emotionally withdrawn or whatever. also Riley as a "once-in-a-lifetime-guy" is hilarious, like just make out with him already, Xander, and leave Buffy out of it.

i think nabisco disagreed with me about this in some other Buffy thread and he's probably right tbh but that speech always reads to me as Xander calling Buffy a castrating bitch and her kind of taking it and i hate it.

that's interesting to me--i always sort of saw that whole arc as buffy's experiment in being normal while also being a superheroine, that riley--despite his insecurities--was the closest she would ever get to what she claimed to want, and that it proved that the demands of Buffyness (unavailability etc) were too much for the normal life she was after. she did what she had to do, and the otherwise-right-guy-for-her couldn't deal with what that meant, and it fell apart, as it had to.

i mean that's a fine reading but the speech Xander gives is still shitty and the episode seems to play it like he's right and it's like, come on writers, just admit you wrote a really boring character.

Riley is a douche but Buffy is kind of shit to him in that season. Writers sort of blew an opportunity not making him seem like a better choice for her.

the speech Xander gives is still shitty and the episode seems to play it like he's right

that's the point i'm makin though: i think xander's right in that riley is her only shot at normality, he is the only "right guy" she'll ever be able to have.

...how is he right? seriously i don't get what's so great about him.

Buffy is kind of shit to him in that season

this might be true. i don't remember their relationship in that much detail. my take is that she had started kind of blowing him off because he's boring. she should have broken up with him, i guess.

not really sure what we mean by "normal" here--not a demon/superhero? it's true that in the real world, i'm fine with saying buffy can never have a successful relationship because she's a superhero and it's a genre constraint, but in the world of the show one of her best friends telling her that there's only one guy who she'll ever be able to have a good relationship with, and she should stay with him even if he's been frequenting a vampire whorehouse, is kind of horrible imo.

i guess xander only says that stuff because he's overidentified with riley because he has issues being a dude who is friends with buffy and having no superpowers of his own, which would mean that the show isn't necessarily endorsing his pov, but it really feels like it in that episode.

She always forgets about Riley, he expects her to take run Dawn everywhere and never pays him much attention, doesn't call when Joyce goes into the hospital etc...

Riley was never great, and they kind of rewrote their relationship after the 4th season, but the general gist I always got was that Riley being the 'normal' one was closer to the idea of compromising (an often-destructive) passion and excitement for something that's healthy and stable. It also had a lot to do with Buffy's never-ending arc into lonely-being-better-than-everyone syndrome. The thing is, I never bought that she was actually missing out with Riley, and that's mostly because he was pretty shit until he started getting suck-jobs (he had a great scene with Spike in the leaving episode, I think).

If I'm really honest what I liked about it (or at least what was kind of affecting) was less the substance of Xander's speech but the way in which he said it. Poor Xander was always the loser but it was nice to see him finally get to step up and contribute, especially in regards to giving personal advice to a friend (One thing I rarely bought was that Buffy was actually friends with any of these people, at least after the first 3 seasons).

also it's about Xander projecting his own issues onto the situation, and then running to Anya and telling her how much in love with her he is.

after season 3 they seem like they're having problems staying friends in a pretty realistic way, tbh. it's true that it's harder in seasons 4-7 to give Xander things to do, even though he kind of becomes the zenmaster in season 7. too bad that season blows.

There are realistic breakdowns and obvious larger problems that aren't out of the question, but it's just the interaction. Buffy (SMG's acting, really) makes it seem that spending fun nights in/out with Willow et al is a chore that she's just too good/important for.

seriously i don't get what's so great about him.

― horseshoe, Monday, July 11, 2011 5:28 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

there's nothing great about him! that's the point! he's boring! compromise! "acceptable!"

they would have made a reasonable meeting-each-other's-needs drinking-decaf-at-6-pm demon fighting pair of grayhairs, no more and no less. you can't say that about anybody else she ever spends time with in this show.

okay but that's not what Xander says! seriously i rewatched the scene before i answered your first question just to make sure i still felt the same. he's like, "this guy hung the moon and is one in a million too bad you're a cold bitch who can't love!"

what i'm saying is that xander's right that R is her only shot at domestic bliss, and that said shot is torpedoed by her unavailability--i hate that the speech blames her for his Big Metaphor Addiction that randomly appears, sure, but as a piece of the larger arc i think he's otm.

it's torpedoed by riley sucking (lol)

she doesn't have a shot at domestic bliss; she's a superhero

we don't need to continue this btw; i just like posting about buffy!

haha likewise

she doesn't have a shot at domestic bliss; she's a superhero

― horseshoe, Monday, July 11, 2011 5:51 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

right, this is why the helicopter flies away

XANDER'S WRONG AND A JERK

ok

u win

the helicopter flies away because riley wants to feel good about himself again or whatever

xxp haha

i would like to clarify again that i really hate riley

i get what you're saying, i do think in that episode the writers were trying to wrap the relationship up in a "she pushed away the only man who ever truly loved her" arc that you might see in a particularly punishing romantic comedy right before the heroine chases after the hero in the airport and declares her love, but they didn't really earn that storyline because the hero in question is riley finn.

i don't really even know if we disagree

i feel like that speech has a lot of Xander's personal issues tied up in it; Riley's the only one of her boyfriends he ever liked or accepted, and he doesn't want to see Buffy give up on dating someone kind of like him. There's also the thing where you never really see Xander treating Anya in the worshipful way he believes Riley treats Buffy.

I dunno, it's a weird speech, and I'm never really sure how much the audience is supposed to take it at face value. I do kind of hate the whole "run to him" thing though.

also yeah, Riley was boring and had stupid issues.

yeah you're certainly right about that, both Gukbe and i mentioned it; it's what makes me think maybe i'm wrong and the show doesn't agree with Xander. i just wish Buffy instead of becoming convinced had rolled her eyes or something.

xp

me, now that we are done talking abt riley finn:

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkj18gMPvk1qa5ff2o1_500.png

ha yeah i wouldn't have called that as the season 5 episode to set off a lot of talk in this thread

i do think in that episode the writers were trying to wrap the relationship up in a "she pushed away the only man who ever truly loved her" arc but they didn't really earn that storyline because the hero in question is riley finn.

― horseshoe, Monday, July 11, 2011 6:03 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

booming post imo

xpost yeah i missed Gukbe's post on that.

i'm curious what kevin thought of Restless, i think it's one of the best things whedon ever did. totally self-indulgent, but it never becomes incoherent or weird for its own sake. Xander's dream in particular, there's such a sense of tragedy and horror that gradually develops, along with those incredibly brightly lit outdoor scenes.

he did say he didn't remember the cheese man, and if you didn't remember the cheese man imo u have no memory of that ep

1. Gilmore Girls and Buffy shared about 5 writers!

2. Yeah to me that speech has much more to do with Xander giving in than Buffy or Riley. He's finally got a proper job, home, non-super girlfriend, a place in the group (officially the heart but also essential guy who rebuilds after their messes both figurative and) and he's... I dunno, I lost my train of thought. Xander is still a jerk in the way it's said though and Riley sucks.

3. I got s7 on dvd yesterday and watched the commentary on the last episode. I think the cookie dough thing totally ties in here. Running to the helicopter doesn't mean a normal life, it doesn't mean settling with Riley Finn, it meant not giving up an option. And as a superhero, with limited options as it is, that isn't a ridiculous notion. Buffy has never been one for keeping to one fella, making angel jealous twice, spending more time with angel than... Whatshisname in s3 and something s7 that can't be said in this thread.

4. The friends situation is only really kept together because willow lives with buff and Anya works with giles, right? Only between the longest friendship, Xander and willow does it seem natural all the way through. Giles even thinks of leaving in the Dracula episode in part because of it. Which is surprisingly real for tv friends. I always hated that false 'friends never grow apart after high school' tv trope. Maybe they should just start shows younger and have college age separation as the end.
4.

horseshoe otm

i mean that's a fine reading but the speech Xander gives is still shitty and the episode seems to play it like he's right and it's like, come on writers, just admit you wrote a really boring character.

I think the writers definitely admitted Riley was terrible, and then used that to make him interesting by having him realize he was boring and useless and get all depressed about it -- I always liked that.

Which I'd say accounts for a lot of Xander's shitty speech, because through those seasons he's doing loads of the exact same "oh no I am useless and pathetic" stuff, and thus seems to (a) sympathize with Riley and (b) be like "oh shit Riley is notably less useless and pathetic than me, so if HE'S hopeless here..."

I'd say basically there's just a gender reversal there, in terms of the powerful main character and the somewhat neglected / underserved / taken-for-granted girlfriend -- and that gender reversal is why Xander's speech is over-the-top and shitty, because he is a dude and god forbid a dude take that role -- but the underlying point that neglected / underserved / taken-for-granted significant others will take off unless you give them a reason not to is basically sound, right? If this were the traditional gender organization we would probably just have a mild regretful "I guess I wasn't entirely there for her (but this is totally normal drama and in no way remotely makes me a dislikable or bad person)" kind of arrangement.

Which between Xander getting all Cap'n Save-a-Commando and Buffy's original disdain/paternalism toward Riley is close to where it balances out? Except that the show is ever more in love with punishing Buffy at that point, so it leans a tad toward making it her fault. (Haha and then bringing married-Riley straight to the burger joint for an underline...)

I don't get to say this enough anymore so I'll cherish it: nabisco otm

hi! also, i guess you're right and i remember you saying that thing about riley realizing he's boring making him more interesting, but the gender reversal doesn't entirely work because you can't imagine a woman being like, i feel worthless because my boyfriend is physically stronger than me. that's basically why i find riley so unsympathetic and why xander's identification with him bugs. i think buffy paid plenty of attention to riley in season 4, though it's true i guess that she's more neglectful in season 5 and she probably should have broken up with him long before he had a chance to run away.

xp

Riley was a genetically modified soldier, the gender role could be reversed- even if it would be harder to pull off. Kinda like superman dating catwoman

yeah but reversing gender is not an equal reversal of roles. i think it's appropriate to point out that the men being sidelined here by the extraordinary situation of buffy's strength power and importance is not the same as talking about women who are sidelined by forces that venerate men of power/importance. its interesting to think about the watcher's council where there's this historical taming and harnessing of the slayer's strength by this gross paternalistic institution. like i think that buffyverse is kindof pretty aware of the complicated relations of gender and power that slayerdom is caught up in so this feels like a kindof dishonest moment really like it has more to do with the writer's weird obsession with pillorying buffy in this season iirc idk its been while though, i guess all i really want to say is *it's complicated*

Riley was a genetically modified soldier, the gender role could be reversed- even if it would be harder to pull off. Kinda like superman dating catwoman

i don't understand this comment! plenty of time is devoted to the fact that even though he's a soldier, Riley isn't *supernatural* like Buffy; it takes him longer to recover from wounds, she's stronger, she's a loooooot smarter (sorry i hate him). he feels inadequate because he's not living up to the "masculine" role in the relationship--it doesn't work if you reverse it. also this is why he sucks, it's like what do you even like about Buffy if you don't like the fact that she's the best.

i guess plax already said that. plax otm.

(sorry i hate him)

lol

idk if i would hate riley as mucn if my sister didn't hate him so much (she hated a lot of characters tho: tara and dawn especially) but yeah i am not a fan. at all. i also hated xander who my sister liked because he was "funny"

xander is such a problem. nicky brendon is so hilarious and lovable but especially in the early seasons it seemed like joss put all his self-loathing on xander so it was really hard to like him with all his bruised male ego bullshit. i do think he's hilarious, though.

xander and anya as a couple are painfully realistic to me, though; i think a lot of their relationship stuff gives xander something worthwhile to do on the show.

i kindof want my sisters to post on this thread since i probably watched about 90% of the episodes with them (lol my older sister was in thailand when series seven ended and i was in charge of taping the last like four episodes for her but i fucked it up and ended up taping over the second last one by accident and she *waited* until the whole series was repeated on sky to watch the finale because she is a completist and insane and this is obviously pre-high quality streaming)

i want your sisters to post on this thread!

my sisters got me into this show btw i was all lol this show is called buffy the vampire slayer and they were like, you're wrong! sisters otm.

oh sorry riley is only a gm soldier up until 5.4 out of my mind iirc

anya is maybe my favourite character btw and yeah the way he kindof puts up with her is horribly realistic i guess

hahaha my sisters are both pretty scary girls though!

anya is like

i dunno

a challenge for me

anya is like

i dunno

hot

hoos, you know, she's like that for me, too! i'm glad you feel that way, because she's objectively such a great character but it took a long time for me to rise above my base-level irritation with her. The Body helped. she and xander together are so believable, like these are both deeply flawed people in a realistic relationship where affections sometimes seem unequal and the whole thing seems uncertain...i want to say more about that but i can't talk about season 6!

you can't imagine a woman being like, i feel worthless because my boyfriend is physically stronger than me

They set Riley up as something closer to a guy who's been laid off and now feels worthless and Deprived of His Purpose as a Man -- like really literally, w/r/t the Initiative -- and then it turns out his wife's "career" is 10x beyond what he thought was so important about himself. So yeah, there is something really specifically male about this! But yeah, this is what I mean about Xander's speech being maybe sorta realistically shitty, in that he's particularly sensitive and indignant about the guy feeling sidelined.

But there's another side of it that applies regardless of gender, which is just about expecting anyone to play the "supporting character" in a relationship (the average male character is never ever called on this, but Buffy seemed really fascinated with it for a couple seasons, as another one of those meta things where the way TV shows work comes somewhat into question) -- you can imagine less-indignant and argumentative advice coming from, say, Willow that expresses that side of things.

Also yes Xander is totally Riley's sad Renfield, obv.

But there's another side of it that applies regardless of gender, which is just about expecting anyone to play the "supporting character" in a relationship (the average male character is never ever called on this, but Buffy seemed really fascinated with it for a couple seasons, as another one of those meta things where the way TV shows work comes somewhat into question) -- you can imagine less-indignant and argumentative advice coming from, say, Willow that expresses that side of things.

yes, true. if i abstract their relationship away from riley as a person (they never should have gotten together in the first place! he's not even cute!) i can agree with this.

btw i have a very naively worshipful attitude toward buffy as a character, in case it isn't already clear

You know, the part of it that's more interesting to me is Buffy's high and strict expectations for people, like her reaction to Riley with the vampires -- she holds herself to such a strict standard that she has zero sympathy for anyone else's bullshit or problems. (At least until the next season.)

xpost Haha I think she was so scarred by Parker (and sex with Angel) that she had to find someone really safe and bland, like the star of a soap opera about potatoes

Buffy's high and strict expectations for people

yeah this is established very early. i was recently rewatching season 1 and the episode where she finds out Angel is a vampire is an extended exploration of this. it's less of a good look as she gets older, for sure.

Haha I think she was so scarred by Parker (and sex with Angel)

i know, poor girl. if only that nice guy who liked her in season 3 hadn't so clearly been gay.

xander and anya as a couple are painfully realistic to me, though

I always thought there was a little too much male wish-fulfillment going on with her incessant sexual appetite, but I suppose Anya's myriad complications made the challenges of that relationship more plausible.

i guess i meant xander's commitment issues and anya's insecurites.

It gets more tenable as she gets older, though, if only because the show is constantly martyring her -- toward the end, nobody has any standing to complain to her about anything. You'd be like "god, my roommate is making my life hell" and she'd be like "that's interesting -- as for me,

Oh wait, I had a really funny list there of every terrible thing that happens to Buffy, but then I realized we're probably not spoiling things here, are we.

Anyway it was funny because a lot of the worst things happen twice.

yes they joke about that!

yeah ppl remember we are only up to the end of s5 herre, and there is another buffy thread

<3 anya, fuiud

im all about anya but the "spacey chick" is an archetype i am usually into

i think it is her perpetual "i don't understand you humans"ness that annoys me

That's one of her most appealing features imo.

that's p much all there is?

that and bunnies

what do they need such good eyesight for anyway?

i love anya so much, especially her obsession with money. like when the buffybot is trying to think of something personal to say to anya, and she asks "how is your money?" and anya is so pleased.

isn't the point of anya that her weird misapprehension of "mortals" is supposed to be a kind of naked ape rephrasing of human quirkiness or something, idk i think they use it in a fairly novel way even if it is a fairly worn out "you earthlings" spec-fic trope

sure sure, i just get annoyed by it

i love anya so much, especially her obsession with money. like when the buffybot is trying to think of something personal to say to anya, and she asks "how is your money?" and anya is so pleased.

― layers of layers of dough and butter (reddening), Monday, July 11, 2011 5:11 PM (1 hour ago)

yessssssss this was one of the funniest anya moments. also (earlier) when she, xander, and dawn are playing life and she becomes annoyed at all the money and children she is accumulating. xander explains to her that this is the point of the game, she is winning; anya is excited and asks "can i trade the children in for more money?"

I've always wondered if that aspect of Anya was at all inspired by Emma Caulfield being the kind of libertarian/right-winger who gets really excited about Ron Paul.

nooooo

anyway i'm seeing nabisco's side of this debate on xander's speech and the larger relationship between buffy and riley - maybe it's because i'm a guy i tended to sympathize & identify with riley's angst even if i disliked him deep down and knew he and buffy were not right for each other. his feelings of inadequacy, while imo very real and legitimate stemmed not only from his possibly tired view of gender roles but also from his deep and genuine admiration for buffy and his desire to help her, something he increasingly realized he would never be able to do. i have to rewatch the xander speech to know how i feel about that in particular but those are my conflicted thoughts on riley basically

my how i got into buffy story: my little brother and i took season 1 on a plane ride/trip overseas a little over a year ago - we both liked it but proceeded at our own paces; he's obsessed and has now watched all of buffy and angel and is now rewatching buffy to the point of nearly lapping me. he's also in high school and has much more free time

We should pick this discussion up later on: there are some storylines in the future that are really relevant. One last thing I'd say, though, about sympathy, is that they did some great setting-up with that conversation where Riley's all resigned and stoic and tells Xander that Buffy doesn't really need him -- Xander's whole shitty righteousness thing makes sense when you figure he's been sitting on that info for a long time, and probably seeing everything through that lens.

If they had made Riley less bland and potatoish from the beginning, would they have gotten more or less drama out of that transition from "special chosen-one superheroic demon hunter" to "oh wait shit actually that's my girlfriend and I am just a useless n00b?"

i think riley tells xander that buffy doesn't love him which seems like a thing he should have brought up with buffy first; that's part of what i meant when i called riley passive-aggressive.

that's totally unfair of me i guess, but it's not even like riley and xander are friends at that point, it's such a weird bomb to drop.

riley was the beginning of weird sex scenes as well wasn't he?

this show is never not weird about sex tbf

but yeah, the buffy and riley can't stop having sex episode is basically torture

you're right actually. and im kindof surprised when i think about it how moralistic in tone, the implications of buffy losing her virginity were. like that scene where she has to tell giles.

i was always weirded the slow motion bangin scene

personally i always felt like buffy wore far too much clothing but ymmv

btw my little brother has just informed me that we do not own season 6 of buffy! will fix this tomorrow

kinda bummed right now

don't worry, double meat will be double sweet

lol

cuppa tea, cuppa tea, almost got shagged, cuppa tea

!!!

whaaat

so buffy was actually in heavan and not hell? more than anything else i wish i had seen this season before i wrote that essay on paradise lost

heavan lol

OMG ISN'T IT HEARTRENDING ALSO WHY DID EVERYONE ASSUME SHE WAS IN HELL SHE'S A FUCKING SAINT

sorry

i'm just excited that you got season six

the metaphysics of this show don't really cohere tbh, whedon's no milton

Season Six was her season in Hell.

I was all "ugh TV" when Buffy was on until I got a really hot French teacher at my first year at university. She was crowing on about Buffy, so I decided to watch an ep. The first one I watched was the one where it was revealed that her friends had ripped her from hell. I was impressed.

They assume she is in hell because Dawn opened up the portal to Glory's hell dimension and Buffy jumped and died into it to stops it.

Just the same way that when Angel was stabbed into Acethla (sp?)... the big dumb rock's mouth he went to the hell that was opened in it. Many different dimensions, incl. one without shrimp. And one where everything is shrimp.

/whedonverse

i know, but the comparison with angel is exactly why it seems like buffy's friends shouldn't be so certain she's in the same kind of place he was...they're not in the same moral position. again, it's not like that stuff really completely makes sense on the show.

but he didn't go to hell because of his bad shit done as angelus - he went because he was sucked into achethlas hell dimension. good goes to heaven, bad to hell had nothing to do with it.

So they thought her spirit had gone through Glory's portal to Glory's hell, like Angel in Achathla's, but all she did was make the key (blood) stop running by dying. She dies the normal way, not by falling through the portal and then goes to heaven.

okay fine, but willow's certainty about everything in the first couple episodes of season six is still annoying

well yes. marti noxon grfrr.

tbf it's established Willow has become fairly "misguided" by this point.

I actually liked some aspects of that storyline despite having misgivings about Season 6 as a whole. Shame the payoff at the end was such a letdown.

why has tim f been so quiet?

anyway maaan how can they not show buffy and angel meeting up between the 4th & 5th episodes, feel like that would be ~deep~. maybe i'll understand later

buffy and angel were on different networks at that point, no more crossovers.

They couldn't do crossovers that season. Willow crossed over in s7 to fix Angel and pick up Faith.

whoa slow down big guy

well, there was a crossover, it was just on an episode of angel instead of an episode of buffy.

it is, btw, essential for the buffy-and-angel storyline, but totally not part of the buffy storyline, so you could come back to it if you had to.

i'm going to watch angel after i finish buffy i'm pretty sure

you should be watching them interlaced at this point, for the real proper crossovers

also ban Grisso/McCain

my little brother tells me the same thing

about watching the two in real time that is

you're behind already though

also eff that the first season of angel is brutal and would take you a million years to get through

yeah that's what i've heard - my goal is to finish buffy before school starts again

yeah just watching the actual crossovery eps would do tbh

my bad...

(xpost) and other recommended good eps from p much every year until the last

I'd disagree w/that, lots of 2nd season is good, and 3rd season starts owning about 2/3 or the way through, 4th season has lots of ridiculous shit but is highly entertaining, 5th season overrated.

1st season tho, some awful stuff in that. Pilot, crossovers, maybe the last two, and I think that exorcism one was pretty good. Also the bit in the beginning of totally shit episode "She" where Angel dances for 10 seconds.

5th season is very good

I think I did a list of Angel episodes to watch in s1 on the other thread. (I also did every other episode of Angel and Buffy, lol, but having recently rewatched S4 and S5 of Angel, I'd most probably want to change those two lists.)

Kevin I only just realised you'd revived this thread!

NB. nabisco's "riley's character expresses the writers' despair at making a crappy character" line is one of my all-time favourite ILX thought bubbles.

you're right actually. and im kindof surprised when i think about it how moralistic in tone, the implications of buffy losing her virginity were. like that scene where she has to tell giles.

this was amazing though. Makes me cry forever level amazing.

anyway maaan how can they not show buffy and angel meeting up between the 4th & 5th episodes, feel like that would be ~deep~. maybe i'll understand later

Leaving aside the pragmatic realworld reasons it kinda made sense to me that they wouldn't show the above fear it would be like staring straight at the sun. What doesn't make sense is that (from memory) it had no bearing on buffy's character really.

If they could have shown Angel I think they actually would have done it so that the two didn't gel so much for whatever reason, rather than connecting on a shared afterlife vibez level. Like maybe Angel would get really lectury about responsibility and Buffy would be irritated and say something nasty about how the diff was she had nothing to spend a lifetime atoning for, and then they both would have been in a huff, then kind of half-apologised and then gone their separate ways.

skyficcing

I like to think that everyone who watched 'When She Was Bad' went out and bought Viva La Woman immediately.

ha. that's one of my favorite episodes.

I love Cordelia so much in 'Killed By Death'. So many great moments!

Cordelia on phone: "It's called Derkinderslot."
Buffy: "Who is this?"

Been making my through this show lately, having never really watched it at the time. Have to say I'm pretty impressed, at its high-points it's fantastic television really.

And yeah, Killed By Death is a great episode.

I love Cordelia so much in 'Killed By Death'. So many great moments!

― Tim F, Saturday, February 25, 2012 2:53 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass."

Watching S3 at the moment - love that Scott offers to take Buffy to a Buster Keaton festival, & briefly got excited that Giles/Joyce were listening to the Rotary Connection in Band Candy, before discovering that "Tales of Brave Ulysses" was also performed by Cream.

K3v, any further w/the show?

i have no time :(

maybe after next week, when i finally have a week off

before discovering that "Tales of Brave Ulysses" was also performed by Cream.

. . .

Any suggestions for similar shows on a 'if you like this then you'll probably like that' tip? Thanks in advance.
(Have already made a start on Angel - mainly so I could keep getting my fix of Cordy at first, but yeah it's shaping up to be a good show, albeit maybe not quite in the same league as Buffy).

Firefly for the Whedon trifecta.

Veronica Mars and Daria for whip smart awesome teenagers.

a lot of the storylines in the later-but-not-last seasons of angel are kind of awful, tho i won't say why if you've just started. but there are still bits there and then the last season is pretty awesome (illyria!).

100% cosign on veronica mars.

veronica mars is the non-whedon show that seems most influenced by buffy

Whedon even cameos on it

does he!

i was in the hospital last weekend and i had trouble sleeping cuz of killed by death

he plays a car rental guy iirc xpost

Willow and Cordy are in it too.

^^ Cheers a h h
I vaguely remember watching a couple of eps of Veronica Mars when it was first on - clearly it didn't make much impression on me, but I guess it's worth giving it another shot.
Firely is the one that only ran for one series yeah? Will give it a try & then report back.

one series and one proper film for proper cinemas (as opposed to a made-for-tv turd).

I neat thing about the Firefly show and Serenity movie is how well they work for fans and neophytes alike. Like, fans of the show will like the movie, to see how things end up. Folks introduced through the movie will likely be intrigued enough to go back and see how they go there. Seemed like a concerted effort was made to successfully appeal to the base and general public alike.

one of the new sarah palin movies was written by...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/arts/television/game-change-on-hbo-with-julianne-moore-as-sarah-palin.html

jonathan.

Yeah, he wrote Recount a few years ago. He's been hired to adapt the new Dan Brown book.

ha, real life and this thread always seems to coincide. i just bought season 2 on a whim (originally intended only to have season 3, my favorite; but forked out for season 5 later on and with 2 recently added i feel like i've been suckered into wanting to buy all of them).

any news on when these might come to blu-ray?

I'm not sure how they're going to handle that. Only seasons 4-7 were shot for HD, and I think Whedon still only intended it to be 4:3, though in the UK they already have the widescreen versions.

that "already" = "the dvds were made incorrectly the first time around"

angel is shot for widescreen iirc

OK so I'm 5 episodes into Veronica Mars and yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot and can def see the connections with Buffy. It's maybe not quite as instantly ultra-engaging as Buffy but I'm starting to think that's a tough level to match anyway so no worries. Good work folks.

according to vulture.com facebook feed, buffy came up to top 2 finals w/ breaking bad as "the greatest television show ever". breaking bad fans then glommed, en masse, to the voting and got 61% of the vote, deriding buffy as "a show about vampires versus real shit" and "breaking bad: why is this even a poll?"

true stuff

a host of whineys

Really didn't like Veronica Mars. It's like a Buffy where you want to punch everyone.

I tried so hard to watch Veronica and couldn't do it. Josh otm.

S06 E19 - "seeing red"

tara and willow back together! couldn't have come at a better time, given the turmoil with buffy/spike and xander/anya.

the anya scene/scenes are great, classic anya. part of me suspects joss wrote/helped with a lot of that dialog. i've probably said this before but emma caulfield's timing has improved so much over the course of this show - i wonder if that was an intentional thing on the part of the directors or if she just improved/got more comfortable.

xander's continued inability to understand buffy's problems, or that buffy's issues are HER issues, is very frustrating and tempers my increased enjoyment of his character (hated him season 1, pretty much love him now). he's incredibly selfish, and it's just weird to me that this keeps coming up.

otoh, spike. his attempted rape of buffy was difficult to watch for a couple reasons: other than the obvious - and this may be just lol-male privilege - i really had a hard time buying that he'd do such a thing. contrary to pretty much every other character (cf xander), i've actually empathized with spike when buffy neglects him. he seems to 'get' her situation and genuinely seems to love her - having him (re-)turn heel like this seemed to me kind of a copout by the writers. i thought he deserved better tbh.

and jesus, warren shooting buffy and tara? wtf?

lol seeing red

spike attempting to rape buffy is a big problem in terms of ongoing buffy characterization stuff. if they were committed to having him do it (i don't think it's necessarily implausible) they needed to not make some decisions they go on to make in season 7. but i don't want to spoil that stuff.

and jesus, warren shooting buffy and tara? wtf?

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Friday, June 1, 2012 12:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure what you mean by that? it also seems pretty plausible, given who warren is.

i guess, to be more precise, it's not that i find spike as rapist plausible, it's that the show's characterization of spike is inconsistent/incoherent. the writers want it both ways with him and i feel like they get kind of imprisoned in the metaphysics of the show's mythology, which is not the show's strong suit to begin with. i just don't think the ambiguity about whether spike is good or evil is that interesting, and then when he tries to rape buffy, it's like, okay, that question's settled, i guess. but at that point the show is so reliant on him as a charismatic lead that they can't let him go.

this thread getting bumped makes me ridiculously happy, by the way; i'm glad you're still watching, kevin!

it's all Marti Noxon's fault.jpg

oh, was she responsible for the attempted rape episode? that makes sense actually; i remember listening to her director's commentary on the oz-cheats-on-willow episode in season 4 and her being like, "DO YOU SEE? it's a metaphor, because men are wolves and just need to have sex with every women they see!!!" and i was like o_O what happened to my beautiful feminist show???

but she also wrote the prom episode, which i love.

but yes, she seems kind of feeble.

she always goes all weird romantic/bodice-rippy with her storylines. like some of her episodes are good but by then, if memory serves, she was pretty much almost show-runner by then and shit just got out of hand.
not that she's solely to blame for all of the craziness, but I def put the spike/buffy rape on her shoulders.

yeah, that was her. iirc even some writers on the show spoke up about it being out of place and character. (I pretend it didn't happen in my own personal Buffy continuity.)

i mean honestly i sorta thought the spike-rape was in character insofar as he was someone we already understood as sorta "inherently evil" whose "inherent evil" had been tamped down by affection for people, and i took the rape scene, uncomfortable as it was, as kinda a resurgence of that old evil brought about by his human (if you will) affection for b. like, rape is evil, and the evil dude was angry and sexually frustrated, so the evil dude tried to rape her.

maybe this is too simple. idk.

Yeah, I'm not sure it makes sense to say that the rape was "out of character" - really the problem was that beforehand Spike still being a demon but also being in love with Buffy was handled somewhat inconsistently, with such a heavy implied emphasis on the notion that his demonism was effectively a social construction (effectively: a domesticated Spike couldn't help but become more human and less vamp-like over time). From a theoretical/metaphysical standpoint the rape scene was very much in character: this is precisely how an unsouled but relatively-powerless and in-love vampire would behave I think.

yeah exactly

is that the one where he and anya kinda hook up to fuck w/ xander? its been so long since i watched s6. i kinda remember spike (and everybody tbrr) already being on full kilter of sexual frustration & emotion because of that and then you add in buffy telling him its really over and him being evil still even if they've kinda forgotten that w/ the dawn stuff and boom, oh shit yeah he's totally capable of being rapey.

personally i thought it was one of the few things well handled in the second half of s6. that and the 'buffy is crazy' ep.

I felt like Series 6 of this, even though it still had some amazing episodes (the musical one is prob my all-time btw), was where the show started to go off the rails a little. For me Series 5 was bleak in a good way, a really well-handled and convincing way, but Series 6 was bleak in a bad way, sort of like 'let's throw pile after pile of shit at these characters just to keep it interesting', it was almost like cheating y'know? (Also have more specific problems with the overall series plots but don't want to spoiler it for Kev). That said, I was invested enough in the show that I felt compelled to watch right through anyway.

Which is the season with Glory and the revelation of what Dawn is? That should have been the final season.

that was 5, and yeah i think horseshoe or tim or someone said that too

Yeah, I'm not sure it makes sense to say that the rape was "out of character" - really the problem was that beforehand Spike still being a demon but also being in love with Buffy was handled somewhat inconsistently, with such a heavy implied emphasis on the notion that his demonism was effectively a social construction (effectively: a domesticated Spike couldn't help but become more human and less vamp-like over time). From a theoretical/metaphysical standpoint the rape scene was very much in character: this is precisely how an unsouled but relatively-powerless and in-love vampire would behave I think.

― Tim F, Friday, June 1, 2012 4:32 AM (6 hours ago)

yeah i suppose this is true, i guess our feelings as viewers (or at least mine) were complicated by the fact that the writers clearly wanted us to identify with spike, given his (genuine!) relationship with buffy, his affection for dawn, etc. and then they kind of ripped that away. this is basically what xander says, either to spike directly or buffy i can't remember - that we have to understand that beneath spike's veneer of humanity, he's still evil and not to be trusted. even buffy i suppose never trusted him completely

but even still, his humanity was so believable - even spike believed it. that's what makes his sudden heel turn feel 'unearned' i guess, or at least what makes it so hard to stomach

I agree. The potential for Spike to 'go bad' just stopped being on the cards after a while, or at least that's what they led you to believe. But if you want us to believe that he's still flick of a switch bad, then you can't just drop that turd in the punchbowl and be like 'woo! friction!'. It was a cheap, and badly thought-out way to remind us of Spike's duality.

I mean, they successfully achieved portraying that kind of duality with the Angel/Angelus trope, but that was ongoing, and it was established very early on in his character.

They let 'good'/human Spike become a fixture for far too long. It felt like a rug pull, it felt like a cheap grab for 'friction' and it still really annoys me.

yeah that's the way i felt :(

the handling of spike was just frustrating to me because the "inherent evil" of the vampires was the last vestige of the cartoony shallowness of the material the show was drawing from, and with spike they acted like they were going to deconstruct it the way they deconstructed everything else, and then they didn't because it was too hard.

even with angel/angelus they didn't -- that arc was metaphorically interesting cuzboys but when it came to the show's metaphysics it was just, this guy has a soul so he's good now whoops he doesn't so he's bad. spike from s5 on feints like there's gonna be More To It Than That.

that is, feints like the show's finally gonna talk about wtf it means by "soul".

I think they got too caught up in developing Spike's character beyond the confines of the vampire/demon/w/e ...and I think they went so far out with that it that it rang false when they tried to circle back to it.

like it's nice to explore him as a human with feelings and what not and whatif he was human but they were using all these ghosts in the machine to do that like with the chip and stuff it just, I dunno it felt like they were going to trip themselves up with all of that eventually because the writers seemed to want him to be a character that he never truly was

ugh idk if that even makes sense

Yeah I think that is the broader issue. By opening the issue up to begin with but without working out where they wanted to go with it, the writers set themselves up to fuck it up. Strictly speaking the show should have been deconstructing everything except its metaphysics-of-monsters.

dlh otm

i think whedon really has no aptitude for that kind of thing

even by season 3 i would roll my eyes when someone mentioned a soul, so by season 6 it was like are you kidding me with this

i don't even think it is too hard; it's just not where whedon's strengths as a world-imaginer lie.

i don't mean to dimestore psychoanalyze/write fan fiction about joss whedon but this tendency in buffy (to be dumb about metaphysics) always made me assume he had had some kind of religious upbringing he rebelled against and thus developed an aversion to thinking deeply about things like souls and good and evil and supernatural beings. or maybe was really skeptical that such categories were legitimate categories at all, but then why did he keep going back to the trope of the good vampire??? at any rate, i feel like he was forced due to the nature of the show to return again and again to stuff like this and he never did it well cf. the first evil, especially in season 7. (sorry kev)

well i've finished season 6 - am heading out for the night but feel free to keep the awesome posts coming

btw, iirc joss didn't have much of a hand in the second half of season 6?

Noxon was pretty much showrunner for seasons 6 and 7, he was nowhere near as hands on with those 2 seasons as he was 1-5 (plus he was running around doing Angel and Firefly)

not that I'm trying to be all Joss apologist, and you're totally right about the soul stuff sort of being clunky.

i think he was still steering the ship, even if at that point he was spending more time on angel. and he plants the seeds for the first evil in season 2 (in a really boring episode) so i still blame him for the general mythology stuff. also as dlh says, all the angel soul stuff is dumb. i actually would have been more invested in the spike version if it had been at all coherent because at some point at least, spike was a really charismatic member of the cast and i find his relationship with buffy more interesting than angel's.

Strictly speaking the show should have been deconstructing everything except its metaphysics-of-monsters.

i think this is true but the thing about the "soul" stuff was that it wasn't just mechanical worldbuilding (like, say, "buffy has super strength"; i don't need the show to explain what it Means that buffy has super strength; obv it should just set the rules and get on with the story) (although actually ha if i remember right there is plenty of exploration of/contrast between buffy's physical strength and other kinds of strength, some of which buffy has, some of which other people have, blah blah). it had huge thematic moral implications that the show acted like it was gonna explore and then didn't, really, probably because like VG says they didn't have a plan when they brought the subject up.

or maybe was really skeptical that such categories were legitimate categories at all, but then why did he keep going back to the trope of the good vampire???

yeah this.

always made me assume he had had some kind of religious upbringing he rebelled against

don't know for sure, but he's a third-generation TV writer, so I think it pretty unlikely. He is now pretty outspoken about being irreligious. Plus in the commentary to the last ep of Firefly he goes on and on about existentialism.

Angel the series fucked with the "trope of the good vampire" pretty thoroughly

it's not a compelling trope to begin with

yeah, maybe he's just a doctrinaire atheist, but at any rate he seems to lack some kind of grounding/interest in the kind of tradition that would make for a rich metaphysics for the show. again, it would have been nice if buffy just dispensed with that stuff altogether.

Agreeing mostly with what dlh and horeshoe are saying here. I feel like the show actually 'cheated' with its own mythology/metaphysics quite often, but within the flow of individual episodes and plot arcs you tended to go along with it (or at least I did), it was only looking back on it is a whole that it seemed fairly dumb and inconsistent in that regard.
Anyway, now that Kev has finished the season I can say that I didn't like the whole 'Dark Willow' plotline and how it was handled (kind of expecting I'm not the only one here?).

yeah I hated the Dark Willow stuff

drugs r baaaaad mkay

the first time i watched season 6 i hated the dark willow stuff, but since i've watched it mumble times at this point, i have decided it's a powerful/inevitable storyline imperfectly executed. willow's character is headed in that direction from season 1 episode 1--i think her character arc is the most consistent, in some ways. all the heavyhanded parallels to drugs are unfortunate, though kind of understandable. also i don't really think alyson hannigan pulls off the dark willow stuff, which is part of the problem. but i do find the general outline of that plotline really moving--gifted, insecure person turns the thing she loves/is exceptional at into something horrible and has to give it up. where she's left in season 7 is also moving imo. but yes, some bad execution along the way, for sure.

ps i kind of hate willow; i gather this is an unpopular opinion

no...no not at all

;_;

i am a jerk!

I hate Dawn

I don't know if that's unpopular or not but my bullshit detector could not abide a appearing from out of nowhere

*a sister

My sense of Spike's "role" in season 6 was that he was in effect the mirror-image of "the good guys" - just as Buffy and (esp) Willow become more morally dubious (or "morally dubious"), Spike represents the idea that what previously had been depicted as "evil" in the show was not necessarily that far away from what had been depicted as "good".

This particular arc had been gathering momentum since the beginning of season 2 - which uncoincidentally starts with "When She Was Bad" - through not just the Angel/Angelus division (which from an ethical perspective is less interesting for "oh hey he's good / WHOOPS he's bad!" than w/r/t the question of whether Angelus should be redeemed or killed), but also through Faith (and the Mayor's genunine-seeming affection for her), The Institute (however hamfistedly), Anya, Riley etc. Obviously the "bad guys" in season 6 are a big part of this as well.

I think that where the writers wanted to take season 6 overall - and given the above, perhaps the series in general - was to a point of saying "look, there are no guarantees of (what is) good and evil in fact, but you have to fight and hope that you're on the right side, you have to draw your line in the sand somewhere even while knowing that it is just sand you're drawing in/with."

So structurally the season needed this kind of build-to-crescendo of good/evil becoming indistinguishable, followed by some sort of re(in)statement that, even if this the case, the process of distinction remains crucial.

I agree the Spike/Buffy scene starts this process crudely, although not absurdly: attempted-rape is actually a depressingly "common" kind of abuse-of-another that I don't think equates to "absolute inherent evil" in the way the show would mean the latter (c.f. Angelus' relationship with Buffy).

Maybe the scene ought to have been somewhat closer to the Buffy/Faith "Bad Girls" (and etc.) scenes where we have two characters reacting to the same situation in different ways, and realising by that, not that they are fundamentally different creatures, but that they want to be different creatures. Perhaps the writers ought to have tried to come up with a construct whereby Buffy realised that even though Spike cared for her and she for him, she couldn't accept his fundamental lack of regard for all creatures for whom he didn't personally care.

OTOH that would make the whole thing much more self-empowered (season 3 / season 5) than Buffy was actually in a position to pull off prior to the very end of the season, and so would have clashed with her arc, whereas resistance of rape is at about the level of basic-survival that she is operating on by this point in the story.

you are not a jerk, horseshoe. you just hold some challenging opinions that make me love you all the more :D

willow's character is headed in that direction from season 1 episode 1

i thought this was impressive too, plus how early (i think in like s4?) they first start doing the "hey that's a pretty strong spell willow!" stuff.

yeah that all seems right, Tim! like i said, i don't really have a problem with the fact that Spike tries to rape Buffy, and this: resistance of rape is at about the level of basic-survival that she is operating on by this point in the story is super otm--that's what season 6 is all about for Buffy. but without spoiling anything, it's in season 7 that i feel like the writers really start to indulge in some incoherent bullshit with Spike.

Agreed. They totally blew their chance with him there.

ps i kind of hate willow; i gather this is an unpopular opinion

Haha noooooo.
xp That's a very interesting defence of the Willow storyline, but it just doesn't gel with my experience of watching it. Possibly the problem is AH's performance as you say.

Wondering how on earth it took me so long to watch and become an OTT fanboy of this show.

i mean, i think willow is a very strong and plausible character.

he seems to lack some kind of grounding/interest in the kind of tradition that would make for a rich metaphysics for the show. again, it would have been nice if buffy just dispensed with that stuff altogether

yeah, I think that's otm. As flawed as it is, Dollhouse seems more like where Whedon's head really is in terms of personality/embodiment versus a "soul."

Also agree that the groundwork for Willow is laid very early on. but imo season 6 makes all kinds of sense on paper but is a humorless chore to watch.

i kind of love season 6 because everything is just so unrelentingly bleak all the time, but maybe that is the same thing as a humorless chore. 5 is the last season that feels really whole and perfect to me, but 6 has come to mean a lot to me. it's the "adult life" season.

^I get what you're saying, but the bleakness of S6 felt forced at times to me, like a race to the bottom, 'how can we make their lives even bleaker?'. Felt the stuff surrounding Xander/Anya's wedding was a 'good' kind of bleakness in that series though.

xp
it's the "adult life" argument that makes sense to me when I hear it but doesn't wash when I actually watch the show. I actually really like reading people's arguments for season 6 and respect the whole "the big bad = growing up" angle, but ultimately I think I can only really love the show when it's funny and season 6 doesn't even have dark humor (or it does but it lacks the effortlessness of the series' wit up til then).

jane espenson claimed in a season 3 episode commentary that all the show's funny lines emanated from joss at some level, even if some other writer's name was on the credits, so maybe it was his relative absence during season 6 that killed the humor.

i feel weird commenting on the thread because I saw 5-6-7 when they aired and only recently doubled back and watched 1-2 and most of 3, but haven't seen 4 yet.

generally, I think 6 is unrelentingly bleak in a logical way for the characters, but noxon's execution tends to be too heavy-handed for my taste a lot of the time, and that turns it into a humourless chore, but i still like a lot of the ideas that the show tries to engage with in s6.

s7 (without spoiling anything) is more like the last few episodes and series finale of BSG, where all of the pieces I want to see are there but put together in a totally illogical and haphazard manner, to the point where i actively question if the writers and i are watching/understanding the same show.

going to start rewatching season 6 and report back to this thread every time i laugh

In fairness I think there were some very funny episodes in S6 - the one with Buffy trying to get jobs, the fast food one, the one where Buffy is invisible, the one with Dawn on Halloween (or was that S7?, my memory is hazy).

horseshoe your endlessly valiant defense of s6 is one of my favorite things abt this thread

aw i always think of myself as defending it for you by proxy!

you could say life itself is a humorless chore, amirite?

S6 has the scene where demons play poker with kittens. That shit is hilarious.

you could say life itself is a humorless chore, amirite?

― horseshoe, Saturday, June 2, 2012 1:25 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

kitten poker, the jobs episode, the musical (not funny-ha-ha necessarily but funny-omg), i mean it is bleak but it's leavened. sometimes the nerds are funny altho a lot of their stuff is broad cliche.

I'm a big stan for the musical

Having almost-obsessively listened to the soundtrack for years I'm now impressed that they actually managed to plant season/future plot-points in the songs and have it sort of movie the story along, as well as being a standalone episode.

Also my favorite thing ever is the weird flat way SMG sings "I TOUCH THE FIIIRE AND FREEEEEZES MEEEEEEE"

*movie = move

aw, you guys, the moment where giles returns at the beginning of season six because willow has told him they brought buffy back to life!

giles: you're--
buffy: a miracle
giles: yes. but then, i always thought so.

sniff!

i think all of my contributions to this thread have been, "i cried!"

― horseshoe, Sunday, July 10, 2011 12:28 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WHEN DO WE GET THE RIPPER SHOW

DAMN YOU WHEDON

^^^^

waaaaay back, but yeah i want to agree that the soul stuff was really clunky in Buffy (god especially season 7) but Angel the series' handling of it was a good mission for the show

can't talk about season 6 and humor without mentioning CLEM! clem is a riot

haha <3 clem

i thought this was impressive too, plus how early (i think in like s4?) they first start doing the "hey that's a pretty strong spell willow!" stuff.

― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Saturday, 2 June 2012 00:35 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gonna have to go out but when i come back i want to add to the debate. but for now i'll mention willow's first spell is a crazy dangerous big one! restoring angel! in a hospital bed at the end of s2 this stuff starts.

the magic stuff starts in season 2 but the dark willow cocktail of insecurity mixed with brilliance and arrogance and resentment starts, literally, in the first episode. she's a fully realized character and the seeds of what happens in season 6 are planted immediately.

the way the scooby gang views her, kind of patronizingly, as this sweet brilliant cipher always gets on my nerves in the early season. the first time vampire willow appears, and they all think real willow is dead and they're mourning, and giles is like, "she was truly the best of all of us" i'm like, are you paying attention??? chick is a loose cannon.

i was p excited about vamp willow cause i was like 'hey they're finally unrepressing all that repressed shit'

also cause goth willow was kinda my bag

They actually tip Willow's orientation very early, too. Maybe even season one - when was vampire Willow, that may have been it - but definitely by two.

that was later than one i think. Wasn't that anya's doing..kinda. So season 3?

Oh no I'm getting mixed up, that was the 2nd vamp willow.

Actually were both vamp willow's season3?

the magic stuff starts in season 2 but the dark willow cocktail of insecurity mixed with brilliance and arrogance and resentment starts, literally, in the first episode. she's a fully realized character and the seeds of what happens in season 6 are planted immediately.
Agree with this. I guess all I'd say is that imo AH was much more convincing at portraying Willow at this earlier stage - the mixed emotions and insecurity, the simmering resentment that occasionally tipped over into acting out/taking risks - than when it came to the stage of the character being someone who is out of control and has fully given in to their worst or most dangerous aspects.

yeah she really doesn't have the range for the bad willow part of season 6.

i think both vamp willows were season 3, including that awesome episode that basically ends in everyone's death and alternate-universe-Buffy is all butch.

Vamp Willow turns up in S3 in an Anya-world for 'The Wish' and then thanks to an Anya-Willow spell gone awry, in the scoobies world for Doppelgangland (written by Joss).

The problem with s6 is that Joss had so little involvement. He only wrote 1 episode! And it was a p big one with songs that could have easily took his focus off the show as a whole. And he was doing Firefly and Angel too. And pitching Ripper to the BBC. Marti Noxon might have been a decent writer but she just wasn't anywhere as good a showrunner. Bar four or five ideas, it isn't funny at all*. This is a huge drop-off, considering some of the most heartbreaking or fucked up moments in Buffy were done with hilarious dialogue. Even ideas with good potential fell on their face - the one where they all lose their memory is rubbish for joeks.

However, the biggest problem is the pacing of unrelentless misery. No-one ever gets a break. She comes back from the dead to... a flooded house. She feels disconnected from her friends so... Dawn acts like a horrible teenager all year, Xander is a dick to his fiance, Willow becomes a drug addict and then tries to kill her... Giles comes back only to treat her kinda shitty and then leave again and the only person she can confide in gets shot in the head. She can't get a job because people are fucking with her and then she does and gets attacked by a penis headed pensioner and then gets shit because of her job from Dawn and co. Constant domestic problems like social services. The guy she's fucking and she thinks understands what she's going through tries to rape her. Jeez, it just fucking goes on and on and on. Season 6 was fucking exhausting.

It could have been the futile adult life series with a lot less of that. It also desperately needed some sort of blow-off that there never was. Buffy ends the season feeling relatively good because... she and Dawn kill a couple vamps in a cave or something and her best friend needs to be sent to rehab and her job still sucks and Anya has disappeared etc.? We all have shitty enough lives outside of the tv show, give us something if you are going to take us on your own personal journey of life's shittiness. There isn't a big bad but Buffy doesn't even beat up her bullies.

*Tara's orgasm song, Clem kitten poker and the day the magic shop has a sale and dawn has to ask about shivver me timbers...

Before/After firefly had finished and somewhere Noxon wasn't writing for, they did the vampire-good-evil-soul-whatever-deconstruction thing p damn well. Go back and watch Angel s2 and then the last ten episodes of it. Of course S5 of Angel is 2 years ahead of where kev is, so I won't get into it.

I always thought Whedon-shows did v well deconstructing what morality meant for characters. Sure it could have gone further but fuck, I honestly believe that without Buffy you wouldn't be able to have something like Breaking Bad on tv right now. (You have to remember that shit like Charmed and Dawsons Creek was on at the time - Buffy seemed revolutionary compared just for straying at all from the line of 'this character is good yay and this character is bad boo'). In retrospect, yes, it could have done much more.

It seemed like the first tv show where characters evolved into having a view point and then went with their convictions from that pov. Even those with starting points (for example the watchers council thinks this or he is a vampire so he must be bad etc.) drift naturally with age and experience. No-one is technically good or bad. I think the only long term character arc whose character doesn't really change his pov is Gunn... and his starts with him having to kill his vampire sister, the most traumatic introduction of anyone involved. So compared, it does seem a copout to have all the talk of souls - everyone should know better than one thing means good one thing means bad. But it also ties into why Spike does it. Fuck with a guy emotionally and he'll likely act like a prick, fuck with a guy emotionally and then continue to point fingers saying he is a psychopath murderer who you can't trust, has no morals and has lost any trace of dignity in any quarters he could cling to...

I always thought Whedon-shows did v well deconstructing what morality meant for characters.

more specifically, i thought the, "this is the nature of vampires, this is the nature of demons, this is the nature of the universe, this is the nature of hell, this is the nature of heaven" and especially "this is the nature of the soul" aspects of the show were underthought and kind of hastily thrown together on Buffy. this doesn't necessarily mean the morality was superficial; Tim did a nice job of summarizing the nuanced take on morality that season 6 represents, for example. it seems more like necessarily using vampires and using concepts of heaven and hell required Buffy to delve into such matters to some extent, even though again, it's not where whedon's interest/aptitude lay.

i take your point about season 6 laying on the suffering a little thick, but i am a glutton for that kind of punishment, i guess. life is like that sometimes.

the fact that angel as a show springs entirely from angel's inner conflict as a "good" vampire is the thing that makes me lose interest in it every time, so i'll take your word for it on the angel front.

buffy is my favorite show of all time; in critiquing it i'm never suggesting it's not still better than everything else!

Fuck with a guy emotionally and he'll likely act like a prick, fuck with a guy emotionally and then continue to point fingers saying he is a psychopath murderer who you can't trust, has no morals and has lost any trace of dignity in any quarters he could cling to...

this works for me

horseshoe otm re willow, hoos' bag otm re goth willow

or to put my dead horse point about the metaphysics of the show more positively, where the heart of the show's use of its supernatural mythology seems to be is in metaphor. using being a slayer as a metaphor for being gay and closeted ("i've tried to march in the slayer pride parade!") or having sex with your boyfriend turning him evil as a deeply problematic metaphor for the pain of sexual relationships as experienced by young women or having a giant snake attack your school on graduation day as a metaphor for leaving youthful things behind and asserting your own authority over adults' in your life as an emblem of growing up. like, the show was never invested in vampires qua vampires, which works out fine for me because who cares about vampires? except sometimes it seemed to be, and as the seasons go on, it entangles itself further and further in an incoherent and frankly kind of shallow mythology, inasmuch as stuff like the first evil and gods and goddesses, etc, start entering the scene.

more specifically, i thought the, "this is the nature of vampires, this is the nature of demons, this is the nature of the universe, this is the nature of hell, this is the nature of heaven" and especially "this is the nature of the soul" aspects of the show were underthought and kind of hastily thrown together on Buffy. this doesn't necessarily mean the morality was superficial; Tim did a nice job of summarizing the nuanced take on morality that season 6 represents, for example. it seems more like necessarily using vampires and using concepts of heaven and hell required Buffy to delve into such matters to some extent, even though again, it's not where whedon's interest/aptitude lay.

i think i've always given it a free pass for this. [maybe if i re-watched it all (and after this discussion caused me to watch the last two eps of angel, i'm tempted), i'd think differently.] specifically because it would be really fucking hard to switch between monster of the week and de-construction of evil. mary shelley only had to write one story, you know?

'fear itself', 'once more with feeling' and other kinda joke episodes may have done this better than whenever they actually tried to tackle the issue. what did they all go batshit crazy over? a 3 inch demon?

yeah... just watch Angel. that entire series from start to finish is about the nature of evil, modern vs. ancient, inner corruption, redemption, etc. etc.

However, the biggest problem is the pacing of unrelentless misery. No-one ever gets a break. She comes back from the dead to... a flooded house. She feels disconnected from her friends so... Dawn acts like a horrible teenager all year, Xander is a dick to his fiance, Willow becomes a drug addict and then tries to kill her... Giles comes back only to treat her kinda shitty and then leave again and the only person she can confide in gets shot in the head. She can't get a job because people are fucking with her and then she does and gets attacked by a penis headed pensioner and then gets shit because of her job from Dawn and co. Constant domestic problems like social services. The guy she's fucking and she thinks understands what she's going through tries to rape her. Jeez, it just fucking goes on and on and on. Season 6 was fucking exhausting.

It could have been the futile adult life series with a lot less of that. It also desperately needed some sort of blow-off that there never was. Buffy ends the season feeling relatively good because... she and Dawn kill a couple vamps in a cave or something and her best friend needs to be sent to rehab and her job still sucks and Anya has disappeared etc.? We all have shitty enough lives outside of the tv show, give us something if you are going to take us on your own personal journey of life's shittiness. There isn't a big bad but Buffy doesn't even beat up her bullies.

OTM and kind of what I meant by flinging shit at the characters. I think the part of the problem is that there's a kind of having-it-both-ways going on where on the one hand in this season we are meant to understand the characters' problems as originating in their own immaturity and personal hang-ups - which fits with the 'futile adult life/the big bad = growing up' interpretation we've been laying out - and on the other we're also shown many of the problems being caused by external events beyond their control (sometimes relating to the magical/mythology elements of the show). So at times you almost feel you should be judging and holding the characters responsible for things outside of their control.
(OTOH I have no objection to the 'but life is like this' response to the season).

Re: the other side of what we've been talking about - I expect we'd all agree that one thing the show does really well is presenting and analysing moral dilemmas (usually in quite a detailed and subtle way). I suppose it's more the underpinning that the show's fictional world and its 'rules' give to those dilemmas that sometimes seems unsatisfying.

haha btw i refuse to accept that buffy the character has any immaturity/personal hangups/flaws whatsoever. okay maybe not really, but still, a lot of what she has to deal with in season 6 is not at all under her control, in the same way that many/most of the forces in your life are ones you can't control. that's what makes it the adult life season for me, not that she's somehow to blame for things.

willow, though, is absolutely to blame. fucking willow.

if i remember correctly a lot of the conflict of season 6 comes from Buffy not discussing her experience coming back from the dead and feeling disconnected fom humanity, thus everyone around not understanding why she's so depressed... ?

yes, true, she cuts herself off from her friends, tries to deal with everything by herself. also she is overreliant on giles to fix everything. giles leaving, by the way, really is too cruel for me. i think they just did it because anthony stewart head wanted to be back in england with his family, right? it's horrible that he leaves, though.

also she doesn't really treat spike very well. he, of course, leaves a lot to be desired in that arena as well.

lots of xposts

This is a huge drop-off, considering some of the most heartbreaking or fucked up moments in Buffy were done with hilarious dialogue

^this is more what I had in mind by saying s6 isn't funny. Not that there aren't funny moments (and, very unfairly, I admit I kind of think of the musical as existing somewhat outside of the season), but that when I think of the wit of the first 5 seasons, it's a constant at the level of dialogue and its relative loss felt like the characters themselves had all, across-the-board changed.

the fact that angel as a show springs entirely from angel's inner conflict as a "good" vampire is the thing that makes me lose interest in it every time

this isn't really true! even during the weakish first season. as Nhex said it's about how to be good in a not-good world, and in an adult way that's much better handled than Buffy. One problem for me w/season 6 is that I don't think it really represents "adult life" all that well. As just one example, Angel addresses modern working life much more effectively. Seriously if you really like Buffy you owe yourself giving Angel a chance. It's not perfect and it tends to hit fewer heights but also fewer lows. Being a Whedon fan but not seeing Angel seasons 3 and 5 is a shame. Lots of good opportunities for crying too :)

as i get older i'm kinda coming around to angel ~possibly~ being the better show. it never had a Hush or The Gift type high though.

Yeah 'tends to hit fewer heights but also few lows' sums up pretty well how Angel compares to Buffy for me. Although saying that, I wasn't mad about the final series of Angel and that's the one a lot of people think is best, right?

(The actual ending was great though).

I really like it but the final season might get slightly overrated due to ending the series so well, something so few American shows are capable of. Also, it has "Smile Time."

agree with you, 5 is a bit overrated, also because the back half is WAAAAY stronger the first half. though personally i liked the epic miserable glory of season 4 the best

I'm not sure if Angel has fewer lows (well, maybe for the sheer fact that it had two less seasons) since it did have a lot of crap episodes in seasons 1 and 2 scattered, just like Buffy did. Elizabeth Rohm! But as said, there are definitely things Angel did better than Buffy that made it a very worthwhile series, especially regarding the main cast conflicts and giving every character some crazy series-long arcs. It's harder to get over the first season hump tho.

BTW if you guys saw the Fox series Profit, the main creator of that series, David Greenwalt, was one of the major people behind Angel as well - you can see it in all the literalized corporate evil settings (I think they even used some of the same sets, or copied them - Sadly, they never put Adrian Pasdar on the show) - and that show was waaay ahead in using a completely unrepentant psychopath lead character in 1996. It made a lot of sense he was on board Angel from the beginning - i'm betting he was a good complement to Whedon's views

yeah, Holtz is in Profit too!
Elizabeth Rohm lol. it's weird how casting is both one of Whedon's greatest strengths (seeing Boreanaz's potential, for ex) and weaknesses.

oh yeah, i forgot Keith Zerbaksdbasdka was in both, that guy rules

I really want to go back and rewatch Angel again, if only for baby Vincent Kartheiser lols, now that he's a big Mad Men star.

i hated the glory arc tbh, imo she was tiresome as fuck as a villain

yeah i didn't like glory

frankly i don't like Dawn much either

Ugh, Dawn.

imaginary sister. ptooey.

i don't really like dawn but i don't say much about her just to be contrarian

Dawn is p much the best thing in s7, along with *spoiler*.

But yeah in s6 and much of s5 she is the worst bratty teen in a way that is so frustrating for a show that has written the best teenage characters whether it be for an episode or for season long arcs.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m98nlsFpXF1r3gb6ao1_500.jpg

What is that

looks like an underage SMG in her bra

remembering she was 23 when she started playing a 16 y/o buffy, i'm sure she wasn't too young there

yeah, i cant make heads or tails of it.

so i've been watching buffy for the last few months and reading this thread as i go. i've made it through the end of season 6 (which was brutal in a good way) and i have to say i'm a pretty disappointed that the discussion peters out around there, it was really fun reading everyone's (spoiler-free) thoughts along the way. but more than anything i'm disturbed that there are people that don't like willow, like, for real, wtf. to me horseshoe will now forever be the person on ilx who hates willow.

someone mentioned anya's dialogue in 'the body', and that was really great, but for me the most crushing moment is when willow can't find anything to wear and asks herself why everything she owns is stupid and childish, my heart literally broke. the other great moment in that episode is when buffy walks into the other room while her mother's body is in the living room and as she pukes on the oriental rug wind chimes are ringing through the window, the long quiet stillness of that scene is incredible.

i find it really strange how little time is spent on the interaction that needed to take place between buffy and willow when willow found out that she pulled buffy out of heaven instead of hell (revealed to her at the end of the musical episode.) it seemed like one of the most important character relationship centered plot points of the season and it really bothered me that it was just sort of passed over. pretty cruel of buffy to reveal it to everyone the way she did knowing that willow bore the brunt of the responsibility and then iirc they never really get past that in any meaningful way.

dark willow was bad ass (despite the seriously annoying heavy handedness of the magic = drugs bs) and i'm so glad that they didn't have buffy literally defeat her or something stupid like that. even though it was obvious that xander would be the one to stop dark willow it happened pretty much exactly the way it needed to and it felt really right. the corniness of the xander-willow scene was mitigated by having xander comment on it as he did it, which is so typical of the show, and weirdly kind of reminds me of certain ironic corniness-mitigation techniques used by dfw.

i'm bummed to be going into the supposedly lackluster 7th season now b/c i feel more attached to the characters than ever at this point and i don't want it to end on a bad note.

my heart literally broke.

rip karl

didn't buffy accidentally reveal it in song?

aside from that i agree with everything you said, S6 is great and willow's crisis in The Body has always been my favorite. and 7 isn't as bad as everyone says, it has some very high points. and it's still the same show, not that far off from the rest of it. and i feel like the loudest 7 haters are also the loudest 6 haters so you might be fine. kennedy's the worst part and i still barely remember her.

Yeah I think people most hate season 7 if they feel that the show should have just ended with season 5?

i find it really strange how little time is spent on the interaction that needed to take place between buffy and willow when willow found out that she pulled buffy out of heaven instead of hell (revealed to her at the end of the musical episode.) it seemed like one of the most important character relationship centered plot points of the season and it really bothered me that it was just sort of passed over. pretty cruel of buffy to reveal it to everyone the way she did knowing that willow bore the brunt of the responsibility and then iirc they never really get past that in any meaningful way.

This was kinda the theme of season 6 though? That these people are locked into these notions of who they are supposed to be now, and can't really talk about what's actually going on.

I also feel there's a latent theme throughout the show from about season 4 onwards whereby buffy never really forgives willow for having her own life (the same issues don't arise with xander b/c buffy doesn't really think of him as independent agent - when he acts like he is, she typically treats him with outraged contempt).

yeah, i guess that's what made the musical episode so cathartic. still, it always frustrates me when tv uses the lack of communication between characters trope to propel drama that i feel should be resolved, that might just be my own issue, though.

yeah it's true season 6 is the series that felt like it was written by robert jordan

(which makes season 7 the season that felt like it was written by brandon sanderson)

i really like the magic=drugs thing because it happens so gradually and is seeded as far back as season 5 if not even sometime in season 4 ("that's a really strong spell willow!") and is therefore so heartbreaking to watch develop because like, this is what willow is good at and the source of her happiness and self-affirmation and coolness and it turns out to be completely toxic and she has to learn how to be the person it's made her without it. everyone is like ugh it's such a heavyhanded and corny metaphor and like um have you seen this show.

tara dying on the other hand: i don't mind her dying even though i adored her but the circumstances of her death are so arbitrary it's really dramatically discordant. altho i guess welcome to death right. especially when there are angry boys with guns. still there is something vaguely cheap about it and i can see why everyone blew up.

the episode in 6 that really really really hits me really hard, harder than the body, is the gimmicky one where buffy contracts a disease that convinces her that her entire slayer-life is a hallucination she's having while in a mental hospital and that all the sources of love and support in her life are actually lies keeping her from healthiness and normal fulfillment and that she must therefore Be Strong and free herself from everyone who loves her by killing them. idk if it's meant this way but to me it's a really literal depression/suicide metaphor and i can hardly watch it.

i bought the box of this for cheap the other day. like, the really big box. it's really pretty.

it's the perversion of buffy's own strength, so that her own will+courage is actually trying to destroy her, that gets me.

and if it is a suicide metaphor i think the characterization of suicide as the murder of all your friends instead of yourself is heavy otm.

have just remembered/verified that upthread more than one person points out to me that the willow that seems pretty dangerous! stuff starts almost literally immediately. so.

xp it's seeded as far back as S1! her whole arc makes sense and follows a pretty realistic teen addiction path (except with, you know, magic)

xp

I feel like the trouble with the magic=drugs plotline was that it was progressing nicely along this path where Willow was using magic more and more as a crutch and an easy solution to her problems, but you could see how it was still useful to her and her friends, and they could ignore her reliance on it b/c they depended on it too. And then all of a sudden there was this cliched addiction shit with sketchy dealers and neglecting childen and the magic was ACTUALLY GETTING HER HIGH. So the metaphor just seemed really forced in a way they normally don't on this show, I mean it's not like people will ignore their friend's heroin habit because that heroin habit has saved their asses on several occasions.

they mostly didn't recognize any reliance issues until they did, at which point they stopped ignoring it. heroin addictions can be hidden too. also i don't think any of them knew magic was "addictive" in the first place.

i guess if i'm being honest with myself part of the reason the heavy-handedness of the magic=drugs thing bothered me in particular is b/c i just didn't want that to happen to willow, lol. it felt like the writers were punishing willow for being unworthy of the power that they gave her after they used it to revive the main character who was necessary for the show to continue.

'normal again' was seriously disturbing, the whole mental breakdown and believing your life is a sham thing echoed literal nightmares that i have had, but i can't say that i found it moving in a way that i would compare to 'the body'.

yeah that's fair -- i don't mind the GETTING HIGH stuff because it's as much a power-thing as a sensual-experience thing, altho i suppose brutalization by power is also a cliche; but the sketchy-dealers stuff is unnecessary yes. her friends making uneasy allowances for it is not what happens with heroin but then it's not heroin it's magic and it is actually very useful, and besides (xp) they're all very serious and strict about it once they realize what's going on. honestly i think it's hard for me not to respond to any addiction drama that's halfway unstupid; i even like when they need a spell to get out of the exterminating angel party trap anya's vengeance demon buddy has put them all in at dawn's unconscious behest and willow reveals her like emergency stash of magic materials and it's literally a bunch of shake in a ziploc. i feel like that bit more than anything else is prob a divider between people who can put up w this metaphor all the way and people who throw up their hands.

and if it is a suicide metaphor i think the characterization of suicide as the murder of all your friends instead of yourself is heavy otm.

― a permanent mental health break (difficult listening hour), Thursday, January 31, 2013 3:05 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ugh, wow, this definitely gets at why i find it so disturbing. also reminds me of a terrible drug experience...

and yeah it came out of nowhere but as i said, it still made a lot of sense for willow and i think it made sense within the universe as it was built. magic practice by humans is always treated as alternative, risque, etc. magic was willow's passageway to tara and discovering new parts of herself -- i don't want to say "experimenting" but magic allowed her to explore the post-cat-sweater era of her life and it started to become her biggest identifying characteristic seasons prior. it had already been the ticket to her self-worth.

many xps

how exactly are willow's impending magic-dependence issues seeded back in S1? i'm not remembering that

xps: it's not nearly as ostentatiously well-made an episode as the body, of course; it's pitched and shot like just another Creepy Metaphor That Befalls Buffy. i just find it rly rly conceptually disturbing yeah.

and the stuff where all of her friends (or at least willow i don't remember who all exactly is let in on this one) know what's wrong, like they've looked it up in books and everything and explained to buffy that it is just a poison that is fucking with her perception, and she is telling them that she believes them but she doesn't, and they think everything is gonna be fine while she starts sabotaging their attempts to cure her.

i have trouble taking "normal again" seriously because it just felt like some annoying screenwriting BS that a very young writer would have a lot of fun with (ambiguous endings! exciting! pointless!) but maybe i'm not giving it a fair shake.

karl: i'm not talking about specific magic-related seeds or any specific seeds even, i'm talking about her character in general following a realistic arc from S1 -- i look at her and see the type of tenth grader who could easily be revealed as having an addictive personality in the future. part of me thinks it was all planned (i doubt it tho). if i were to rewatch i could probably point to more specific things but i don't feel like watching S1 when i just started veronica mars.

oh okay, i read someone else saying the same thing so i thought there was something specific i was missing. i can definitely see how it happened gradually, but i never would've drawn the line back to S1.

yeah i just have a hard time with the super on-the-nose stuff. For me, the previous episodes worked on an emotional level in that you were watching someone fuck up her life with something that made her special and was now the main element of her personality. And then it takes this hard left turn into literally making magic a drug, rather than something you can possibly get addicted to, and it loses me.

xp the end of the second season has Willow doing a certain amount of damage to herself with a powerful spell that her friends are concerned about.

but it's not really followed up on in a big way

aw i don't really hate Willow. she's the character on the show i think i resemble most, so i kind of hate her in that way, but she's certainly a triumph of characterization. i can't hero-worship her the way i do Buffy, is all.

dlh otm about Normal Again. this show is really good at that perversion of a person's strength thing, which is endlessly upsetting/moving.

you guys i think i might be watching felicity

there is a storyline about a used dorm room refrigerator program, it's unbelievable

how the hell has hannigan been on how I met your mother for longer than she was on buffy?

How I Met Your Mother was inspired by Carter Bays' and Craig Thomas' idea to "write about our friends and the stupid stuff we did in New York." The two drew from their friendship in creating the characters. Ted is based loosely on Bays, and Marshall and Lily are based loosely on Thomas and his wife. Thomas' wife Rebecca was initially reluctant to have a character based on her, but agreed if they could get Alyson Hannigan to play her.

Never bluff Craig Thomas appears to be the lesson.

how exactly are willow's impending magic-dependence issues seeded back in S1? i'm not remembering that

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Thursday, January 31, 2013 8:26 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'Ghost In The Machine', as well as being a terrible episode, kinda presaged that Willow would quite happily fall into self-destructive anti-social behaviour if it validated her sense of self-worth.

That would be a terrible title for an episode, but considering that the actual title is "I, Robot... You, Jane" it's actually an improvement!

Is that the malcolm/Moloch one?

lol how have I convinced myself that is what it was called?

Was there some other tv show that used that name for a similarly awful episode?

It appears to be the first-thing-to-hand for a lot of people! Bones possibly the obvious one?

Oh no wait I remember that X-Files episode.

it was the x-files one, and little wonder:

"The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Ghost in the Machine" earned a Nielsen household rating of 5.9, being watched by 5.6 million households in its initial broadcast, and received mixed reviews from critics.
The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Mulder is asked by his old partner from the Behavioral Analysis Unit to aid an investigation into a murder at a software company. Soon, he and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) uncover a malevolent artificial intelligence which has started killing to protect itself."

All I remember from this Buffy ep is Buffy's "Xander! You get me started!" and the tagline of all 3 of them being doomed to terrible relationships.

Don't you remember the hilariously misanthropic and maladjusted computer science kids talking about being jacked in?

Ha Ha, no, but I lied, I also remember Ms Calender/Giles interplay. Something about smelly books.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5towpEe6R1qkbybho1_1280.jpg

Excellent.

(rest of thread restricted to those who always have kept their ILX refreshing below 100/day)

Ha Ha, no, but I lied, I also remember Ms Calender/Giles interplay. Something about smelly books.

Love that speech! "Knowledge should be smelly". I fell for the series there & knew I would be stuck in front of it every single week.

Dialogue in the first few seasons was so amazingly good. I know it was easier when the storylines were more teen angsty and kept relatively light--I just rewatched all of S7 last fall and everyone's delivery seemed wooden and arbitrary except Anya's! I never realized before that she was prob the best actress on the whole show.

Would be embarrassed if a higher power could tot up the number of times I've said "the subtext is rapidly becoming...well, text" irl with a totally straight face.

Anya snarfing down popcorn and twirling her finger in the air to let Giles know he's put the slides the wrong way into the projector as he tries to explain 'The Gentlemen' is one of my favourite little moments in the show.

Another is Xander and others digging up graves during the episode where some students have been apparently constructing girls

Willow: Are we hoping to find a body, or no body?
Xander: Call me an optimist, but I'm hopin' to find a fortune in gold doubloons.

i'm halfway through s6 and should have a better month coming up in terms of workload, so i think i'm gonna finish this! i see you all have ignored the thread title >:|

the line i remember from I ROBOT YOU JANE is "he doesn't type like someone with a hairy back"

omg sorry kev! i paused last night to think about it but i thought you were all the way through s6 and i didn't open the whole thread to check cuz yknow that would have been responsible.

well that's just great, now we need a whole new thread and kev has to get a mindwipe and well this just a mess

:)

my bad, the thread had been dormant for so long i assumed kev had already finished, sorry kev

i'm halfway through s6 and should have a better month coming up in terms of workload, so i think i'm gonna finish this! i see you all have ignored the thread title >:|

― manti 乒乓 (k3vin k.), Thursday, January 31, 2013 9:39 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well i've finished season 6 - am heading out for the night but feel free to keep the awesome posts coming

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Friday, June 1, 2012 6:59 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah ha! i'm not a jerk! :D

we may need to initiate trial proceedings

the plot thickens! dun dun DUN

http://www.authentichistory.com/1961-1974/6-nixon/3-watergate/timeline/19730600_John_Dean_Testifies_Before_Senate_Committee.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/nixon01600_zpsbbab5581.jpg

haha!

DOWN. AND TO THE LEFT.
DOWN. AND TO THE LEFT.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2009/09/kevin-costner-jfk.jpg

ha i guess i finished it! it's been so long. i saw tim say "season 7" and was sure i hadn't started that yet and was like lalalalala

i'm not actually mad obv and i'm gonna start s7 asap

ah yes reading the s6 recap i distinctly remember bawling at the end when willow gives up and collapses into...is it xander? suuuper moody season, i can't remember going back and forth between "this kinda sucks" and "this is amazing" like i did with this season. the Buffy/spike relationship i recall being particularly vexing

well well well

:)

but yeah s6 was way emo

can't remember *going back and forth*

Yeah I think we've all just been making vague references to s 7 so as to not spoil plot lines. Watch it kev! I want final episode reax.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-robin-sachs-of-buffy-the-vampire-slayer,92070/

aw RIP ethan

I was watching Doppelgangland through The Prom again over the last few days. A really flawless run of episode (obv. Graduation Parts 1 and 2 are as well but I haven't got to them yet) - consistently funny/dark/rousing/thoughtful, with the consistent theme of "what is the difference between good and bad" explored in a more subtle* way than often was the case later on in the show.

* Not "subtle" in the ordinary sense - Good Willow vs Bad Willow, or Faith vs Buffy, or the implied contrast of Giles vs the Mayor are pretty heavy-handed oppositions - but they're so successfully submerged within the universe of the show that they never feel like they're trying to make a point.

Earshot in particular is such a perfect episode, it delivers right up until the final frame.

Timely revival—I watched Buffy as it aired, but lost track of it after season five. I've begun watching it again, thanks to its appearance on Netflix. I had been warned by obsessed friends that season six was bad, but I am actually quite enjoying it, or at least, more than all that Initiative nonsense. I like it for the same reasons they dislike it: the bleakness and 'mundane' situations. I've always liked when the show tilts more toward horror than superhero. (That said, 'loan shark who is actually a shark' is one of the lowest points of the show for me.)

Though, as always, what keeps me from completely loving the show is that I often admire the ideas it presents but don't care for the execution. As much I like the idea of Buffy having to 'make it' in real world/be an adult wrt getting a job and worrying about bills, it struck me as odd that the show never explained why the Watchers Council would provide for Giles but not the Slayer, their most valuable asset and sole reason for existence, if for no other reason that flipping burgers distracts her from her mission—which they clearly care about, considering that was their reason for being displeased with Buffy having companions. That also crops up every time the 'Buffy faces jail' scenario crops up: surely the Council would pull strings to prevent the world's one true champion from serving time for anything less than mass murder or killing the president?

man, you know what you do NOT wanna do, is read the buffy wiki

Though, as always, what keeps me from completely loving the show is that I often admire the ideas it presents but don't care for the execution. As much I like the idea of Buffy having to 'make it' in real world/be an adult wrt getting a job and worrying about bills, it struck me as odd that the show never explained why the Watchers Council would provide for Giles but not the Slayer, their most valuable asset and sole reason for existence, if for no other reason that flipping burgers distracts her from her mission—which they clearly care about, considering that was their reason for being displeased with Buffy having companions. That also crops up every time the 'Buffy faces jail' scenario crops up: surely the Council would pull strings to prevent the world's one true champion from serving time for anything less than mass murder or killing the president?

― blatherskite, Friday, February 8, 2013 6:30 AM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

minds blown over herre

the watchers council is ridiculous, but i never think about them in episodes they aren't in - it's also not too realistic that they morph from weak Old Guard patriarchs to hard-ass commandos when they show up on Angel.

the real question is, where do they get their funding?

Doesn't Buffy choose to have nothing to do with the Watcher's Council at some point? Also, I thought the Watcher's Council was destroyed at some point. Or was that season 7?

>:(

i assumed the council saw buffy as expendable because in a sense she was - when the slayer dies a new one takes her place.

Yeah also there are some story parts that make it clear that the orig watchers really didn't care about the original woman they forced to be a Slayer.

And that dynamic is kind of still in play, the Council cares about itself and its research/records/scholarship but the individual slayers are not a priority.

It only struck me when she re-joins the Council on the condition that Giles gets reinstated with back pay—perhaps she should have put a word in for herself!

I figured she was just relying on Faith's "See > Want > Take" philosophy, but quietly.

Chaos has befallen your thread, K3vin. No-one cares about the rules :(

I've been reading the thread as slowly as you've been watching Buffy, and decided a couple of months ago to re-watch everything. Watched the last 3 episodes of season 7 last night. But I won't talk about them yet, cos them's the rules. Hope you find time to power through the final series soon!

i'm over halfway through s7 now, it definitely has its ups and downs.

I've just reached 'Storyteller'—I think Andrew might be one of my favorite characters on television.

"Becoming Pt 2".

;_; forever and then ;_; some more.

I haven't watched that one in a long time, but I have cried every time I've seen it.

i fell so fucking in love with that sarah mclachlan song

Tim F otm

;_;

i'm done with s7 now, btw. i thought it was the weakest season but i still enjoyed it a lot, the end was pretty good, i particularly enjoyed willow's part in it.

http://img2-2.timeinc.net/people/i/2014/news/141103/nicolas-brendan-2-435.jpg

oh, xander.

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/styles/tout_image_612x380/public/i/2015/10/01/nicholas-brendon.jpg?itok=iMDhVTjm

At this point maybe his twin brother should just kill him and take over his life, get shit back on track.

A demon attempts to divide Buffy into two, but accidentally gets Xander instead, splitting him into two Xanders — one with his strongest qualities and one with his weakest. Lame Xander thinks Suave Xander is a demon who's stolen his face, and is hurt when he sees that the "demon" lives his life better than he does. Meanwhile, Xander gets a new apartment, Anya is confronted with her own mortality, and Riley realizes that Buffy doesn't return the love he has for her.