Buffy Season Six thoughts

[jetpack_monkey]

I've been randomly watching S6 eps over the weekend, mostly Trio eps, and... really wondering how in the hell I became so enamored of this show that year. I mean, there's so few episodes here that are really worth noting.

Some stuff that I used to like that I really don't now:

- The interminable tower scene from Bargaining Part 2. Used to make me weep like a little girl. Now? Would like it to end now please.

- Flooded. Slight episode, nothing really accomplished that couldn't have been done (and, really, was done) in Life Serial.

- All the Way. Still amusing in places, but certainly one of Dawn's more annoying hours.

- I never liked Wrecked and I freaking hate it now.

- For some reason, I used to really like Dead Things.

- I never understood why nobody ever seemed to like Sam. Now I don't understand why I never saw why.

- Older and Far Away. Dawn's most annoying hour. And Xander actually asking Willow to perform magick? What the hey?

- Hell's Bells. The last stop on the Xander Character Assassination Express. Also, no Giles, which is pretty inexcusable.

- Seeing Red. Completely misses the point of the whole show.

- Villains through Grave. A - Spike was so getting that chip out. If he wasn't, he was acting grossly out of character. B - They completely failed to earn Evil Willow. Dark Willow, maybe, but not Evil Willow. C - Xander's awfully whiny. I don't care if he saves the world, it's annoying.

Life Serial, OMWF, Tabula Rasa, and Normal Again remain the only four episodes that I really truly like in that season. And I maybe have a soft spot for Gone (which I didn't like so much the first time I saw it).

Comments

[christinekh.livejournal.com]

Hey! Popped in over from powerof3's LJ... we're swapping flists today. :)

Season 6? I don't know how you got hooked on that one. I started watching from the beginning and was already in love by then. But basically, by the time S6 came around, I was in my "refuse to give it up" stage. Not that there weren't moments that I still squeed!

Still... yellow crayons! That was cute. I heart Xander. :)

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

I was just starting college. I was a big fan of horror movies and a big fan of movie musicals, and I heard that this show Buffy (which I'd caught about 12 minutes of over the previous five years) was doing a musical episode. I checked out and watched every episode after that, and started collecting eps of the 'net.

My guess is that I just didn't know that there were better seasons, and it was still a damn sight more intelligent than everything else that was on.

[christinekh.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm huge in the WW fandom, and I hear stuff like that all the time, people who came in during S4 or S5 and were like -- wow! -- compared to those who watched S1 and S2 and knew how awesome it could be.

Not that I hated S6. The musical was wonderful! But I'm not sure I could have gotten addicted on it.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Totally there with you. I don't hate S6. I just have far better reasons to watch S1-S5. I'm still deciding which I like least - S6 or S7. S7 had some positive moments that didn't seem forced, but it had an arc with holes you could drive a Balrog through. And it was, as liz_marcs notes below, All About Spike. I like Spike as a character. I think he's multi-faceted and interesting and I wish I had more opportunities to write him.

But sacrificing the core four for peroxide-loaded drama? Pah.

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

That's funny -- I got started on Buffy with the musical episode, as well. And I agree: the stuff that I liked that season, I don't much like at all anymore.

My best friend made me watch the show, and I never understood why she didn't much like how it was going until I watched Becoming (parts one and two) about a year later. And I was like, "Oh, THAT's why. It used to be so much better!"

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

Yeah. For me, the real love kicked in when I met Oz and Faith for the first time. And high school Xander. Then I was totally sold.

Angel took a little longer for me to angle into, but eventually it rivalled Buffy in the quality television department. At least in my book.

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

I really started to like AtS with the Connor season. There was just somethign with that character that resonated with me a lot. And, as I got more into the fandom for both shows, I started to like AtS just as much as BtVS.

Oz always reminded me a bit of Chris Knight from Real Genius -- a really cool and witty guy who was just a bit too cool and witty to be unscripted.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I agree with you there (except that I never really saw Real Genius), but I was really taken by the stoicism. Usually a quieter character like that is written because they're too masculine to express anything or they're really shy. Or they've taken a vow of silence.

Oz seemed like a realistic approach to the subject in that some people just don't talk unless they feel it absolutely necessary. He was a lot goofier in his early appearances, and became more of a Zen guy in Season Three as a regular.

I like the Oz who mocks monkeypants.

I understand Connor. I don't like Connor, but I get him. He was just too screwed up all of the time. There was no real light at the end of the tunnel for him, and everytime a glimmer did appear, he did something to shut it off again. It really grated on me.

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

I liked Oz, don't get me wrong. I just thought that he was a bit too cool and idealized as a character.

I have a weakness for tragically hopeless characters. I like AtS's ending for the same reason I liked Connor.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

*nod* Yeah. You did get the impression that Oz is the character Joss wished he was in high school.

The ending of Not Fade Away was brilliant and totally in keeping with Angel, the character and the series. Very Wild Bunch-y, which makes sense, since Angel pretty much lifted his rousing "are you with me?" speech from Peckinpah's movie.

[hjcallipygian.livejournal.com]

Alas, that is a film with which I am not familiar.

I know, I know. Bad nerd.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

Nah. I'm used to mentioning films and being met with blank stares. I have an unusual perspective on film for a person my age, since my mother basically raised me on Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Boris Karloff. My dad had to sneak me out to the theater so I could see modern movies.

The Wild Bunch and The Searchers are two of Joss's favorite films, incidentally. I really need to watch more Westerns. When done correctly, it can be a more transcendent genre than horror (which, I suspect, is the reason Joss picked it for Firefly).

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

And may I add that whiny!Xander is totally and completely out of character going by the previous five seasons and the following season? It's the only episode where Xander freakin' whines! Grrrrrrrrr.

I actually don't think "Hell's Bells" was character assassination if you watched the prvious five seasons (in fact, I'd almost say that it was *in* character for Xander to run like hell the moment he realized that *he* could turn into his father), but in some quarters of fandom, there are people who think that Xander walking out of the wedding was *worse* than even Willow going evil or Spike attempting to rape Buffy.

As for Dawn? Heh. The character always annoyed me to no end. If she died at the end of S5, I would've actually liked her character. The fact is, I think Dawn stuck around loooooong after her sell-by date. I truly wished she was one of the characters axed in S7. [I still think the great untold story is Buffy failing: she decides its not worth trading one life for the world, nearly gets the world destroyed as a result, and yet still fails to protect the life--cue S6 going forward in pretty much the same format, only Dawn-free.]

And yeah, S6 the pacing sucked, the same episode was being filmed over and over and over again a few times. It's like an audience participation version of Life Serial.

Seeing Red...goddamn it! There should've been an attempted vamping! I could've at least bought the attempt to re-Spuffy in S7 if Spike attacked her as a vampire. An attempted rape? Let's just say I found the the re-Spuffy focus in S7 nothing short of offensive.

Plus, need I add: From that point forward it became ALL ABOUT SPIKE! Even the ME writers have since coped to the fact that "Seeing Red" had zero to do with Buffy and was all about sending Spike on "his journey." Ergo, that's why Buffy's POV on what happened in Seeing Red was never, ever addressed. GrRrRrRrRr.

Agree 100% on Villans. Total. The funny thing is, JM was told to play the scene as if Spike wanted his chip out and that he'd been monkey-pawed. So JM was shocked when the writers started explaining post-S6 that Spike wanted to get his soul out all along. *rolls eyes*

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should have said that the character assassination express started with Hell's Bells. While he probably was acting in character (and hey, being a guy who's still not on the ball about the whole commitment thing, I sympathize), after that it became all about what Xander did wrong. Never mind that it was Anya who ended the relationship itself and became a vengeance demon who tried to wreak her wrath on him (played for laughs).

Relationships end, and it's not always pretty. But it's almost never just the fault of one of them (except where there's abuse, in which case I'm all about the finger pointin'). Nobody asks Xander about the false visions. Nobody cares. They let him take the brunt of him and he accepts it.

It's probably part of the reason he was so backgrounded in S7. The larger part of the guilt and blame rested on him, but he couldn't exactly be redeemed since it wasn't exactly deserved. So you stick him in the background, have him crack wise on cue, give him his wacky slapstick episode, a few rousing speeches, and a poke in the eye...

I'm not bitter.

I'm of the opinion that Seeing Red was nothing but misogyny dressed up as feminism. And not very well, either. "He has to try to rape her to be redeemed!" This isn't General Hospital, people (thankfully).

I contend that Dawn could be a really interested character if they would have just rewatched Season 1 and taken notes on how they used to write characters who were around that age. She was in permanent 13-year-old land, and you could almost see Michelle Trachtenberg's embarassment. The character became a little more tolerable in S7, though.

[skipp-of-ark.livejournal.com]

First off, when Liz gets pissed? Run. :)

Second, I was recently reminded of the poll that UPN supposedly ran in-between seasons Sux and Sux More (or 6 and 7) whose results were that Spike was the most popular character on the show, Willow the second most popular, Buffy a distant third, and both Xander and Dawn were running neck and neck for dead last. Some (but not all) Spike fen rush to this poll as justification for making the show All. About. Spike. and for the sidelining of the less popular characters. Strangely enough, the title of the show had *Buffy's* name in it, not Spike's. Yet for all of Joss's oft-repeated "I give the viewers what they need not what they want" bullshit, it seems he relied very much on what he thought the audience wanted and didn't want. (As I've said elsewhere, the beginnings of Xander's marginalization had their seeds planted in Season Three, which was right after Season Two and the hostile reaction to The Lie.)

Third, not only was Seeing Red and the attempted rape of Buffy only about Spike and his pwecious journery *spits*, but it's also arguably when Buffy's story stopped being about Buffy Herself and became windows to Joss's favorite themes: Female Empowerment, Forgiveness & Redemption, and The Burdens of Being Special. Where these themes had in earlier seasons been far more successfully woven into Buffy's personal story, they became Large Themes that were illuminated only by what Joss has claimed was his attempt to parallel Bush's handling of the war against terror through Buffy's efforts to lead the Potentials. Five and three-fourths seasons of examining Buffy's personal journey only to be sidelined to the journey of Joss's favorite Shiney Blonde Toy and morphed into a hamhanded attempt at political criticism? No wonder Sarah Michelle Gellar seemd to have given up.

And lastly, given the soap operatic approach of "Rape leads to redemption" *vomits*, the attitude of "man leaves woman at altar for whatever reason = unforgivable bastard" is, unfortuanately, not very hard to make. They both draw from the same wellspring.

[jetpack-monkey.livejournal.com]

I'd have to dig, but I'm almost sure Joss denied the General Buffy storyline being political commentary. You know, "he planned it well in advance" of Iraq and all. And really, I believe that S7 was planned. Joss knew what he was doing in Chosen and he told everybody else to figure out a way to get there. Oh, and more Spike. Because abs = happy.

Although I'm not fond of the marginalization of Xander, I'm less fond of what they did with Willow in S6 and S7. Almost wish they had marginalized her. Season 6 - "I'm an addict! Now I'm mopey because I'm on the wagon! I'm evil! Now I'm not!" Season 7 - "I'm mopey cuz I have power and I inexplicably turn dark when I use it, which really makes no sense. So I'm going to be a complete load except when I hop over to Angel and actually start resembling Willow for a brief, shining moment."

Joss was very open about dropping the metaphor and going for the text in S6 and S7. If the show had reached a point where metaphor just wasn't doing it anymore, it needed to end. It's a show built a metaphor and storytelling. When those elements start disappearing in the big suck-vac of "bored now," it's a sign that you've overdone it. Sometimes I'm convinced Joss let the show run an extra two seasons so he could do OMWF, Evil Willow, Souled Spike, and Chosen, and that he didn't give a damn about what else happened. It's not hard to believe that, of the regulars in those seasons, Joss had the best relationships with Marsters and Hannigan.

Still, when Xander did have moments, they tended to be pretty good ones. I still believe that his speech to Dawn in Potential was written (or heavily rewritten) by Joss, because it smacks of his theory of "earned sentiment." The Xander/Anya scenes in late S7 were kind of touching when they didn't focus on "Xander did bad. Xander bad." I didn't like how he was Andrew's straight man much of the time (and what kind of skewed universe do we live in when Xander's the straight man?), but it was nice to be reminded that he is a dorkus maximus at heart.