![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
barondaveJust finished flixing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Seven. The last season. Quick review: While it had some of the strongest writing in the series, it was hampered by all the inconsistencies in background, and I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to care very much.
The absolute weak point of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the total disregard for consistency, either with previous vampire/monster legends (which doesn't bother me much) or with itself (which does). And Season 7 was all about the Slayer and the background that created the Slayer and the evil she was destined to fight. G_ds, it was awful.
Let me start off with what I liked about Season 7. Mainly, the earlier episodes. The series became comfortable with itself. Backgrounds were not explained to the audience. Previous events have affected the characters, and we see their reactions and their actions. This works out great. Willow recovers from being Evil, though we as audience forgave her long ago.
The episode where Willow comes back but no one sees her is splendid. One of the odd strengths of the series is the weakness of the characters: They don't communicate by talking to one another. Almost all real connections are made when the characters can't talk ("Hush"), when they change bodies and see how other people react to who they are not, when they're forced to sing, or when they overhear their friends talking when they think they're not around.
Maybe the lack of real communication is why the whole "High School is Hell" thing resonates with so many, and why Buffy is revered by many who desperately want to touch people.
But I digress.
Anya is simultaneously the most unbelievable character, and the most charming. She, like Spike, gets to say things that the human beings won't say. Without her, most of the characters, especially Xander, would still not face their humanity. The original episode that introduced her, a sort of It's A Wonderful Life alternate history without Buffy, starkly painted the inconsistencies of the Buffyverse yet showed why the interaction of the characters is important. Her story arc in the last season is difficult to justify and takes me out of the series' reality, but is very touching. I didn't believe she would be Selfless, but the episode was necessary to bring her back.
Without her, we'd have had to rely on Warren for exposition. *shudder*.
I still haven't absorbed Dawn into the Buffyverse. The most powerful spell ever cast during the series was not by any of the Bad Guys, some of whom are Gods, but the spell by a bunch of monks, who get slaughtered easily, completely changing the past and inserting memories. Ah well. Dawn has one of the better written episodes in the series, when she may be a Potential.
Up to this point, I was enjoying the seventh season. Lighting! Finally, they got a guy who knows how to light a set! The characters were comfortable and the acting didn't get in the way. The dialog wasn't the funny but unnatural Valley Girl speak. Four years out of High School, the main bunch weren't kids anymore, they were adults with real responsibilities. The direction was good, the stories were told well, and the story arc was being developed.
And I succeeded in doing the main thing that saves Buffy: turn off the sound before the closing credits. The theme may work for the opening, but absolutely destroys the mood at the end. Turn it off!
Then... it all comes crashing down.
They cut lots of corners. As Whedon says in the commentary on the final episode, they were saving money for the LotR effects used at the end. As the stories got darker (like they were so light and fluffy before), lights got turned off. Monsters became cheesier. You didn't see the Potentials too often, because they didn't have the money to pay the actresses. Everyone leaves Sunnydale: about time, but far too late to be believable.
I don't mind former characters coming back for one last turn in the final season. I missed Tara (who Whedon really wanted to come back, but couldn't schedule the actress), but could have lived without Drusilla.
Nathan Fillon (Mal in Firefly) was great as a slimy but powerful preacher, but his character made no sense whatsoever. My basic problem with most of the Buffy villains: They're glorified NPCs, run by a dungeon master who is on the side of the player characters. Whedon played too much Magic while ignoring true horror films. The rules are different for tv, I suppose, but not that different. Only the Mayor was really Evil without merely having high stat points.
Some of the background, as we found out in the series, and find out more in this season.
The Slayer is The One In A Generation and yet there are dozens and dozens of "potentials", barely pubescent girls who may become the Slayer but don't have her superpowers... until the Slayer dies. Slayers have a short life, perhaps measured in months, belying the "once in a generation" thing.
The first Slayer, an aboriginal girl, links the Slayers with all the others. How she got trained, or whether there were vampires in Australia, is never shown.
The Council was established to train the Slayers, and do other unspecified stuff. They are really, really, really bad at it.
It seems that some "old men" created The Slayer and established "the rules" about only one at a time. Why they did so, and how they came to have the power to do it, and why didn't they adapt to circumstances and why didn't they establish a headquarters in Sunnydale (or wherever the biggest Hellmouth threat is a the time) is never explored.
It also seems that the men were, without their knowledge, actually given the idea for the Slayer and the power to create them by a secret organization of women. These women bide their time until they get one scene with Buffy and then their last representative dies and the group is never heard from again.
They talk about "weapons" and training, but they don't use them much. The most effective weapon was used by a nascent witch, Willow, telekinetically plunging a pencil into a vamp.
Vampires are stupid. Except Spike, who's smart until he gets a soul, then he's dumb. In general, monsters are stupid. *whew*
The ultimate evil is The First, sort of like The Shadows in B5, but not as scary, without a coherent agenda and incredibly stupid. And they can't touch anything. Geeze. Get an undead life.
People are stupid. In the first seasons of Buffy, I kept raising the question: Why in hell does anyone still live in Sunnydale? Well, finally, in season 7, they all flee. All of them, except our gang. So many leave that the electricity goes out. Nothing is said about plumbing. Electricity is on a grid, so the whole region must have gone someplace safe, like the Australian outback. Of course, even through the electricity is out, the internet still works. Assuming they had batteries for the laptop, they must have a satellite uplink, or something.
Despite The Initiative and despite the massive exodus of 32,900 residents, no one from the US government, the California state government or Amway makes an appearance.
The season hinges on two deus ex machinas.
First, there is a scythe, which has unspecified powers and only grants them to The Slayer. This is used by a lone witch to do a spell more powerful than then the entire Council can generate. Um, no. On the other hand, this asinine plot point does present one of the best best images of the entire series:Gandalf Willow the White.
Second, there is a pendent. Given by Angel, Buffy's vampire lover (still hard to suspend that disbelief) who disappears. (According to the commentary, all of Boreanaz' appearances had to be fitted into about 7 hours of shooting.) Buffy then gives the pendent to Spike, the possibly-reformed-but-sometimes-not killer of Slayers who is a vampire with a soul. Oh, and he's Buffy's lover too. Without knowing exactly what the object does or what it's good for, Spike, the vampire, manages to be wearing it deep underground when he's hit by a shaft of sunlight. This triggers The Evil Destroying Thing and kills Spike, and he's very happy to be so offed because he has a soul. Um, no.
Since they didn't know the entire battle could be won just by sending Spike outside, numerous people die. The entire series, the entire rationale for making Buffy different than other Slayers, is that she has a support group that helps her and finds out information about the villains and objects she finds. They fail her, just as many of them achieve Their True Destiny, or something.
The entire premise of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer is that Buffy is a better Slayer because of her friends. She was right, therefore, to welcome back Willow and keep Spike close. But no one knew just what the scythe or the pendent did, if anything. The scythe's power lay in the Slayer's hand, yet Willow could use it for a spell that might not work. The pendent being in their hands was a complete accident, and finding it's way onto a vampire with a soul who's too stupid to stay out of sunlight is a complete coincidence. In a series where they never relied on luck, the grand finale relied on luck.
So at the end: A huge chunk of California disappears leaving a big hole and life goes on as if nothing happened. Neither the army nor the police nor The Lone Gunmen are at all in evidence. They don't have anything except the shirt on their back. Yet all is good.
Meanwhile, dozens if not thousands of young girls suddenly have superpowers even though The Really Big Bad has been defeated. Whether Willow's spell only affected current Potentials or any potential Potential will be granted superpowers later, we never find out. Without the Council (or a tv series) to tell them what they're supposed to do and why, look for a lot of parents of teens to have a bad time and look for the cowed expression on a lot of middle-school boys.
Hmm... I'm not done ranting, but this has gone on too long.
So I repeat my recommendation: If you have never seen Buffy and want to know what all the fuss is about, watch the DVDs from about the second disk of the second season and go until the end of the third season. If that grabs you, keep going until the musical episode in season 6; perhaps longer, and maybe fill in the first season.
Careful with the commentaries. If you don't like spoilers, always watch both parts of a two-parter before listening to the commentary on the first.
I have no interest in seeing Angel.
The absolute weak point of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the total disregard for consistency, either with previous vampire/monster legends (which doesn't bother me much) or with itself (which does). And Season 7 was all about the Slayer and the background that created the Slayer and the evil she was destined to fight. G_ds, it was awful.
Let me start off with what I liked about Season 7. Mainly, the earlier episodes. The series became comfortable with itself. Backgrounds were not explained to the audience. Previous events have affected the characters, and we see their reactions and their actions. This works out great. Willow recovers from being Evil, though we as audience forgave her long ago.
The episode where Willow comes back but no one sees her is splendid. One of the odd strengths of the series is the weakness of the characters: They don't communicate by talking to one another. Almost all real connections are made when the characters can't talk ("Hush"), when they change bodies and see how other people react to who they are not, when they're forced to sing, or when they overhear their friends talking when they think they're not around.
Maybe the lack of real communication is why the whole "High School is Hell" thing resonates with so many, and why Buffy is revered by many who desperately want to touch people.
But I digress.
Anya is simultaneously the most unbelievable character, and the most charming. She, like Spike, gets to say things that the human beings won't say. Without her, most of the characters, especially Xander, would still not face their humanity. The original episode that introduced her, a sort of It's A Wonderful Life alternate history without Buffy, starkly painted the inconsistencies of the Buffyverse yet showed why the interaction of the characters is important. Her story arc in the last season is difficult to justify and takes me out of the series' reality, but is very touching. I didn't believe she would be Selfless, but the episode was necessary to bring her back.
Without her, we'd have had to rely on Warren for exposition. *shudder*.
I still haven't absorbed Dawn into the Buffyverse. The most powerful spell ever cast during the series was not by any of the Bad Guys, some of whom are Gods, but the spell by a bunch of monks, who get slaughtered easily, completely changing the past and inserting memories. Ah well. Dawn has one of the better written episodes in the series, when she may be a Potential.
Up to this point, I was enjoying the seventh season. Lighting! Finally, they got a guy who knows how to light a set! The characters were comfortable and the acting didn't get in the way. The dialog wasn't the funny but unnatural Valley Girl speak. Four years out of High School, the main bunch weren't kids anymore, they were adults with real responsibilities. The direction was good, the stories were told well, and the story arc was being developed.
And I succeeded in doing the main thing that saves Buffy: turn off the sound before the closing credits. The theme may work for the opening, but absolutely destroys the mood at the end. Turn it off!
Then... it all comes crashing down.
They cut lots of corners. As Whedon says in the commentary on the final episode, they were saving money for the LotR effects used at the end. As the stories got darker (like they were so light and fluffy before), lights got turned off. Monsters became cheesier. You didn't see the Potentials too often, because they didn't have the money to pay the actresses. Everyone leaves Sunnydale: about time, but far too late to be believable.
I don't mind former characters coming back for one last turn in the final season. I missed Tara (who Whedon really wanted to come back, but couldn't schedule the actress), but could have lived without Drusilla.
Nathan Fillon (Mal in Firefly) was great as a slimy but powerful preacher, but his character made no sense whatsoever. My basic problem with most of the Buffy villains: They're glorified NPCs, run by a dungeon master who is on the side of the player characters. Whedon played too much Magic while ignoring true horror films. The rules are different for tv, I suppose, but not that different. Only the Mayor was really Evil without merely having high stat points.
Some of the background, as we found out in the series, and find out more in this season.
The Slayer is The One In A Generation and yet there are dozens and dozens of "potentials", barely pubescent girls who may become the Slayer but don't have her superpowers... until the Slayer dies. Slayers have a short life, perhaps measured in months, belying the "once in a generation" thing.
The first Slayer, an aboriginal girl, links the Slayers with all the others. How she got trained, or whether there were vampires in Australia, is never shown.
The Council was established to train the Slayers, and do other unspecified stuff. They are really, really, really bad at it.
It seems that some "old men" created The Slayer and established "the rules" about only one at a time. Why they did so, and how they came to have the power to do it, and why didn't they adapt to circumstances and why didn't they establish a headquarters in Sunnydale (or wherever the biggest Hellmouth threat is a the time) is never explored.
It also seems that the men were, without their knowledge, actually given the idea for the Slayer and the power to create them by a secret organization of women. These women bide their time until they get one scene with Buffy and then their last representative dies and the group is never heard from again.
They talk about "weapons" and training, but they don't use them much. The most effective weapon was used by a nascent witch, Willow, telekinetically plunging a pencil into a vamp.
Vampires are stupid. Except Spike, who's smart until he gets a soul, then he's dumb. In general, monsters are stupid. *whew*
The ultimate evil is The First, sort of like The Shadows in B5, but not as scary, without a coherent agenda and incredibly stupid. And they can't touch anything. Geeze. Get an undead life.
People are stupid. In the first seasons of Buffy, I kept raising the question: Why in hell does anyone still live in Sunnydale? Well, finally, in season 7, they all flee. All of them, except our gang. So many leave that the electricity goes out. Nothing is said about plumbing. Electricity is on a grid, so the whole region must have gone someplace safe, like the Australian outback. Of course, even through the electricity is out, the internet still works. Assuming they had batteries for the laptop, they must have a satellite uplink, or something.
Despite The Initiative and despite the massive exodus of 32,900 residents, no one from the US government, the California state government or Amway makes an appearance.
The season hinges on two deus ex machinas.
First, there is a scythe, which has unspecified powers and only grants them to The Slayer. This is used by a lone witch to do a spell more powerful than then the entire Council can generate. Um, no. On the other hand, this asinine plot point does present one of the best best images of the entire series:
Second, there is a pendent. Given by Angel, Buffy's vampire lover (still hard to suspend that disbelief) who disappears. (According to the commentary, all of Boreanaz' appearances had to be fitted into about 7 hours of shooting.) Buffy then gives the pendent to Spike, the possibly-reformed-but-sometimes-not killer of Slayers who is a vampire with a soul. Oh, and he's Buffy's lover too. Without knowing exactly what the object does or what it's good for, Spike, the vampire, manages to be wearing it deep underground when he's hit by a shaft of sunlight. This triggers The Evil Destroying Thing and kills Spike, and he's very happy to be so offed because he has a soul. Um, no.
Since they didn't know the entire battle could be won just by sending Spike outside, numerous people die. The entire series, the entire rationale for making Buffy different than other Slayers, is that she has a support group that helps her and finds out information about the villains and objects she finds. They fail her, just as many of them achieve Their True Destiny, or something.
The entire premise of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer is that Buffy is a better Slayer because of her friends. She was right, therefore, to welcome back Willow and keep Spike close. But no one knew just what the scythe or the pendent did, if anything. The scythe's power lay in the Slayer's hand, yet Willow could use it for a spell that might not work. The pendent being in their hands was a complete accident, and finding it's way onto a vampire with a soul who's too stupid to stay out of sunlight is a complete coincidence. In a series where they never relied on luck, the grand finale relied on luck.
So at the end: A huge chunk of California disappears leaving a big hole and life goes on as if nothing happened. Neither the army nor the police nor The Lone Gunmen are at all in evidence. They don't have anything except the shirt on their back. Yet all is good.
Meanwhile, dozens if not thousands of young girls suddenly have superpowers even though The Really Big Bad has been defeated. Whether Willow's spell only affected current Potentials or any potential Potential will be granted superpowers later, we never find out. Without the Council (or a tv series) to tell them what they're supposed to do and why, look for a lot of parents of teens to have a bad time and look for the cowed expression on a lot of middle-school boys.
Hmm... I'm not done ranting, but this has gone on too long.
So I repeat my recommendation: If you have never seen Buffy and want to know what all the fuss is about, watch the DVDs from about the second disk of the second season and go until the end of the third season. If that grabs you, keep going until the musical episode in season 6; perhaps longer, and maybe fill in the first season.
Careful with the commentaries. If you don't like spoilers, always watch both parts of a two-parter before listening to the commentary on the first.
I have no interest in seeing Angel.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 07:49 pm (UTC)By this time, the fundamental premise of the Buffyverse has changed, for a second time: we are now in a universe like that of Marvel or DC superhero comics, where supervillains openly roam the landscape, and civilians exist only to suffer collateral damage. The government et al are as useless as the government et al in all such stories. You note the problem of infrastructure: what most annoyed me was when Principal Wood fires Buffy, telling her to concentrate on the slaying, when the whole point of her taking the counselor job in the first place had been a desperate need for an income. A vague reference to feeding everybody by looting grocery stores in the deserted town doesn't cut it. (Also, this dumps the theme dating back to season 1 of Buffy trying to balance her slaying with her life.)
But the biggest problem for me was not the subcreation, though that was bad enough - for a magically powerful scythe, it sure looked like something right off the shelf from Home Depot - but the characters being untrue to themselves. I no longer believed in them. Evil Willow and her successor Repentant Evil Willow; Clueless Anya (though she was funny) and her successor Noble Anya; and, more than anyone else, Team Player Faith, seemed jerked around by the Remorseless Authorial Thumb, and not driven by any inner compulsion of the characters. Only Xander seemed genuinely to have grown as an integral character.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 07:52 pm (UTC)One extremely tiresome feature of later Buffy becomes completely endemic in Angel. This is the tendency of fights to consist of the protagonists picking each other up and throwing them across the room, interspersed with intervals of the villain picking up the hero by the neck while snarling a lot.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 08:38 pm (UTC)If you watch the earlier stuff, you'll see things that foreshadow plot points that are coming - the dream where Buffy again stabs Faith in the gut leaves cues about things that Joss didn't do for two more seasons, for example.
Lastly, suspension of disbelief is a choice. If you just want to tear things down - well, go watch JUST season 1 of Babylon 5. That will give you lots of material to work with.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 08:57 pm (UTC)Season 7 has more issues than previous seasons with character consistency, and it's not the strongest, but it's got some of the best supporting character work so far. Caleb, Spike, Anya and Faith are as good as I've seen in TV writing. I think it was you that told me that Season 7 is where Spike and Anya prove themselves to be the most reasonable and clever characters, everyone else is completely clueless. I think that assessment was pretty spot on.
Angel has some good episodes and good story arcs, and I wouldn't say that you should discount it right away. It doesn't get the first string writers from the Whedonverse, but it's still better than average television by a long shot. In the Whedonverse, Angel definitely ended up with the lion's share of the acting talent.
There is a reason that David Boreanaz got offered the 2005 Batman role first.
Playing the next in a franchise that last left our hero facing The Gov. of CA probably didn't look as appealing as it might have in retrospect, but you know what they say about hindsight.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 09:18 pm (UTC)Dave's critical comments about season 7 are very reasonable from this perspective, and are largely the sorts of comments that I think caused season 8 to be written.
That said, your comment about suspension of disbelief being a choice is dead on. I was able to suspect my disbelief for many of the things that Dave complains about, but like him, I was not able to suspect my disbelief for all of them.
When compared to the other seasons, 6 and 7 were very different and in the minds of some, they were lacking. I'm glad that we have a season 8 and that the story is continuing, but I think that you must admit that it's becoming something very different.
(And about season 1 of B5... hell yes. That was so bad that I stopped watching, and only saw the later seasons after a friend literally forced them on me.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 09:55 pm (UTC)I also think, if you're going to criticize something, learn it pretty well first. :-) I'm sorry, if that makes me a snob. I don't mean to be. I just think that art critique, much like literary critique, should have a solid basis in something other than, 'well, I didn't like this very much, and haven't looked at all the material'.
I fully think people have a right to watch what they want, and bitch about what they want. I'm not saying he doesn't have the right to do that. I'm saying that I hold a different opinion, that's all, and that my opinion is based on a different view of the material than he's allowing himself to have. Your millage may vary. :-)
Season 8 *IS* very different - For one, it's told in a different medium, one where a TV script would be boring as hell for the readers. For another, it's also a natural extension of the effect of entropy on the lives of the characters, and the world they live in. They experience the consequences of things done in Season 7, just as Season 7 shows the characters experiencing the consequences of their actions in Season 6. This is why things are headed toward (I suspect) a big 'correction' in much the same way that markets correct in the real world, or that tectonic plates shift, and reach new equilibrium when circumstances change them. As someone who used to live in Los Angeles for many years, I can tell you, sometimes that isn't a lot of fun. Just like real life, Joss's writing reflects the fact that _change_ is almost always painful. For example, in season 7 when Buffy HAS grown up, and IS taking responsibility, but Rupert disagrees with one of her choices (I.E. Spike) he gets a rude awakening when he assumes that nothing has changed, and that he knows better. Xander has a life changing event that there is (it would seem) no coming back from, it alters him forever. Ditto Anya, in a far more obvious and less subtle way.
Anya, in fact illustrates rather well my main complaint about Joss Whedon in fact, which is that he's in love with dramatic death. His shows are about death a lot of the time, in theme and setting, and he loves to kill main characters off. He does it so often, and sometimes so ham-handedly, that by the end of Angel, it's become stale and expected. You aren't asking yourself IF anyone is going to die, but rather, how, and how many. This is ONE area where I think his writing is consistently poor. It isn't the only one, but I think it is the most obvious. I would have not been the slightest bit shocked if _everyone_ had bought it at the end of Angel, and after some of David Boreanaz's public comments after cancellation, I wish his character had been.
[[Split into two posts, because LJ doesn't like it being 4491 characters long, grrr.]]
Part II
Date: 2008-12-18 09:55 pm (UTC)I'm a writer. When I see someone criticize someone's work, my first reaction, fair or not, is to ask, "What have you done?" People find it so easy to tear down other people's work, even if is excellent work. It's particularly galling when that critique is, for lack of a better term, lazy. Far harder to make something as good, or better, no? Far too easy to just say, "Yeah, that sucks. Next!"
Lastly, I want to say that I don't mean any of this as a personal attack or criticism of Dave Romm. That is not my intent. I think he's a cool guy. Even if I did TOTALLY confuse him with Dr. Demento. Many of the things I am talking about here, are general reactions I see in the public _all the damn time_ and may or may not be present in his review of Season 7. Again - Your Millage May Vary.
And yes, Season 1 of B5 was painful, but the ground work it laid was very important. I'm amazed that JMS could hold all of that - all 5 seasons - in his HEAD from day one! Man, I wish I could do that.
P.S. Dude, love your screen name - if you're into Guppies at all, check out a site I run for other fishheads - http://www.guppylog.com/ :-) It's all about keeping Poecilia reticulata species fish, like Guppies and Endler's Livebearers.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 10:35 pm (UTC)Maybe the lack of real communication is why the whole "High School is Hell" thing resonates with so many, and why Buffy is revered by many who desperately want to touch people.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 11:13 pm (UTC)I didn't like HS either, and have my war stories, but it wasn't quite the life-changing hell hole that it was for some.
Well, what makes High School so bad for most (I can say from a distance) is a combination of raging hormones, a desperate attempt by well-meaning adults to tell kids with raging hormones what to do, the need to cram a bunch of stuff into your brain, and the fact that most of what you need to learn in school isn't taught in the classroom. Mostly, HS (and adolescence in general) is an attempt to figure out your Place In The World, which means figuring out other people's PITW and your relationship to them.
And no one talks about it. If they do, the focus is narrow: Football team, Geeks, Pretty Girls.
I'm exaggerating -- many kids figure out at least part of it -- but not by that much. And we introspective intelligent types tend to be on the bottom of the social ladder. Largely because we don't know how to talk the language of these strangers with motivations we don't understand.
So when real friends Buffy, Willow and Xander start actually communicating and saving the world, this is a big deal. Not just for the world (though saving it is good), but for themselves. Metaphorically and really. Buffy and co. not only grow up together, they bind together. The outsiders are still pariahs among kids who could be vampires at any moment, but they have friends, adult acceptance (with Giles) and a degree of self-confidence.
That's pretty powerful.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 11:33 pm (UTC)I didn't take your reply as a personal attack; don't worry. And I'm amused that you mistook me for Dr. Demento: We wear different hats.
On the other hand, I disagree with much of what you've written here. I don't regard the comics as "canon". Whedon certainly didn't as of the commentary on the last disk. If there's more of the story to tell, fine. But Buffy can be judged by what was presented as Buffy.
After two series and a movie, I think I understand a bit about Joss Whedon's writing style. He's excellent at living in the moment, writing small scenes that say so much more. He's very good at writing short story arcs, such as a season of tv. And he's not very good at writing large story arcs, such as tapping into the centuries old Vampyr legend and being consistent over seven years.
Whedon says (in the commentary of the finale) that his biggest regret was not writing having more humorous Willow stuff. I quite agree. The finale feels like a two-parter scrunched together. But them's the breaks. In the show, Willow is very powerful. Regardless of what they found out later, what Buffy and Willow know at the time was only that the scythe worked for Slayers. They didn't know the extent or limitations of its powers, and we never did find out.
I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them. I've been known to believe seven impossible things before breakfast. And all such suspension is personal, to be sure. But if you want me to buy into the universe you've created, you've got to do a better job that Whedon. If you do, great. I'm explaining why it didn't work for me.
And while we're on the subject: I liked season one of B5. Some of the shows, anyway. They were still feeling their way around, and the storylines don't pay off for a season or two, but I found the universe consistent (for a tv show) and the characters believable, given the set-up.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 11:39 pm (UTC)In addition to Xander, I think Dawn grew up a bit. And Giles, too, though he lost yet another job.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-18 11:42 pm (UTC)Whedon has said the comic is cannon. He's also said, after the commentary for S7 was taped that there was more he wanted to do, and the comic was a way to do it. I agree with you though that season 1 through 7 should stand on their own. Hey, it's like anything else - beauty is in the eye of the beholder. :-)
Willow is my favorite character from the show, and I for one would love to have seen a show centered around her character, without the slayers in the background. In fact, I really didn't care for SMG in the roll of Buffy, though I loved the rest of the cast. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 12:09 am (UTC)But I am deeply, deeply embarrassed by the line of defense of Season 7 being offered to you here. Hand-waving to wish away serious writing problems.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 12:10 am (UTC)That is damning with faint praise if ever there was.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 12:32 am (UTC)Willow is my favorite character, too, though I'm with
Hmm... you're right, I don't have a picture of Dr. D and me in the same shot, except in longshot. We photographers aren't well represented, though you could search other people's Marscon 2004 galleries. You'll have to make due with Dr. Demento and Richard Biggs (http://www.romm.org/Marscon04pics/49.html) followed by Baron Dave and Richard Biggs (http://www.romm.org/Marscon04pics/50.html) taken an hour or so later.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 12:41 am (UTC)I think that all of the best television programs have some weak spots, Angel is no different, for that matter - Buffy is no different. There's still some damn entertaining stuff in there.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 01:05 am (UTC)What I've found is that Joss Whedon excels at the fine personal details of life. This makes his characters, for the most part, live and breathe, and I think that's where the appeal and fan loyalty comes from. Individual episodes and plotlines may be marred, but the overall characters are terrific - reacting in believable ways to their situations and growing over the series.
My favorite episode so far is Joyce's funeral in season 5. Honestly, I think it's the best study of grief I've ever seen in a tv show. And the best part of that was Anya's speech - where she shows just how CONFUSING death and grieving can be. Wonderful, emotionally raw writing. I'll overlook any number of budget problems or cheap special effects for moments like that.
You really do need to watch Angel to grasp some of the storytelling aspects that bothered you. For example, the events that lead to Faith's reformation aren't Buffy episodes - they're Angel episodes. One of the best Angel arcs (and Buffyverse arcs) was the Angel/Faith/Wesley story. Angel's determination to bring Faith to atonement and redemption for murder isn't just about Faith... it's about Angel, and his own ongoing atonement. And he has to do it while maintaining with Wesley, who has more reason to hate Faith than anyone (in the Angel story arc, Faith literally tortures him).
That all said, I don't think Joss Whedon really knows how to end a series. He runs out of time and tries to do something big and dramatic, but his heart isn't in the conclusion. Hence the storytelling sins of the Buffy finale, and even worse sins of the Angel finale. But it's a tv series, not a novel! I'm not going to judge the entire work by how satisfying the finale was, particularly when, in the case of the Buffyverse, it's much more about the road than the destination. And I'll add that I feel great pity for tv writers who really DO have closure in mind - they have to work around the whims of the executives. See the trainwreck of B5's last two seasons for that! Heck, even the very idea of a series-length story arc is a fairly new one, and I don't think tv production has fully adjusted yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 01:36 am (UTC)The whole "High School is Hell" never really resonnated with me. What fascinated me about Buffy was how "Life is Hell" . . . and Seasons 4-7 did a great job in conveying that message for me.
See the trainwreck of B5's last two seasons for that!
What . . . in . . . the . . . hell????
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 01:38 am (UTC)You really were not paying attention to Season 7 . . . were you? Spike and Anya proved to be the most reasonable and clever characters? Where did you get that from?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 02:11 am (UTC)You really were not paying attention to Season 7 . . . were you?
Do I know you? Maybe we met and I wasn't paying attention.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 04:59 am (UTC)I respectfully disagree most strongly. A big part of the series - all along - is that a whole bunch of weird, scary stuff happens all the time and most people go on about their lives in a happy state of obliviousness.
There is some explanation for the indifference of legal authorities in the Angel episodes that aired at the time.
Nathan Fillon (Mal in Firefly) was great as a slimy but powerful preacher, but his character made no sense whatsoever. My basic problem with most of the Buffy villains: They're glorified NPCs, run by a dungeon master who is on the side of the player characters. Whedon played too much Magic while ignoring true horror films. The rules are different for tv, I suppose, but not that different. Only the Mayor was really Evil without merely having high stat points.
Caleb was not slimy and he was not duplicitous - he was a pure and complete minion, not an NPC. He was a human, capable of more than a demon. His fealty and subservience made him powerful. Caleb was meant to contrast the heroes fighting for identity and direction.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 05:04 am (UTC)I'm pretty confident with my opinion there. Spike and Anya serve a function as exposition characters, but that is not their primary purpose. Everyone else is flying by the seat of their pants, Spike and Anya both have a solid hold on how big the bad is.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-19 03:05 pm (UTC)And people just don't act like that. Generally, it's the exact opposite: People will ignore dangers like smoking but the minute some small girl gets hit by a car then everyone is up in arms about stop signs and extra police. Gangs of vampires and bad guys taking over the PTA didn't rouse the town, but the creeping evil of the First did. No, it doesn't work. Even if the series sets this up as reality -- which takes me out of the show -- then why did they run in S7 just because some HS kids were getting rowdy? Not just a few people leaving, the whole town left forever, leaving everything behind, to the extent that the electricity went off. That makes no sense, internally.
Caleb never did anything smart, except talk and let Buffy react. He took his orders from the First, and the First didn't do anything smart, like guard he scythe well. By "NPC" I mean that Caleb had high Strength points and fought like he had high Hit points. It all looked like a D&D battle, not a Good vs. Evil knockdown. Xena ended better.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-20 04:39 am (UTC)There is a constant need for people to be oblivious for the Buffy universe to work. Monsters invade, Vampires eat the neighbors, and everything is pretty much back to normal after this bit of impeding doom. People do not really notice that anything has really changed, they just thought it was a skin condition or something.
There seems to be an underlying assumption that people don't like to believe terrible things, so they don't. I can totally buy that, and though it might be slightly exaggerated in the Buffy universe, it's real enough.
The hellmouth opening was, as Clem said, different. Everyone seemed to sense that this wasn't any ordinary apocalypse. Something big enough to swallow up an entire city counts as out of the ordinary in the universe.
As for the scary preacher man, Caleb was no smarter than any of the other characters and the show wasn't called "Marie Curie the Vampire Slayer" or "Elanor Roosevelt the Vampire Slayer."
For example, when Caleb rolled into town, he sent a message to Buffy that only said "I have something of yours."
Buffy said "It might be one of the potentials," Giles said "It might be a stapler," Caleb said that Buffy would show up because "woman's sin is curiosity" and Buffy fell for it.