Thoughts on Buffy Season 5

Cafe Society
1

Just a note: I count myself lucky that I didn’t start watching Buffy until I borrowed the DVDs of Season 1 last Christmas. I’ve been slowly working my way through the series, and it looks like I’ll manage to see season 6 shortly before season 7 is released (in November?).

So, last Friday I received a check from the new job. After setting up bank accounts and buying groceries, my next purchase was season 5 (I own seasons 1-3, having found them at a used book store over the six months before I moved. I’ve seen season 4, and I wasn’t highly impressed with it. Since I hadn’t seen this one, I went with it rather than picking up 4.) Anyway, it was a combination birthday/new job/moving present for myself.

Anway, whether it was because these episodes were all new to me or just because I liked them, I really enjoyed season 5 - but if I’d been watching them new, I don’t know if I would have. The delay in the explanation of Dawn would have really irritated me.

My favorite shows of the season were Fool For Love and The Body. Least favorites: The Replacement, Into the Woods and I Was Made to Love You.

I was incredibly happy to see Riley go away - he irritated me all through season 4, so having him leave in season 5 was a pleasant bonus. Engagement of Anya and Xander? Eh…if I hadn’t found Anya so incredibly irritating in season 5, it might have been a nice concept. But she was just ridiculous - I never saw why Giles didn’t slap her a number of times. And everyone else should have slapped her too.

Dawn/Ben: Irritating, but not anywhere near as bad as Adam of season 4.

Joyce’s death: Knew it was coming, but I was in no way expecting the harshness of The Body. I think I just watched that episode and didn’t move the whole time.

Buffy’s death: I knew it was going to happen, because I read spoilers, but I sort of expected her body to be gone, not for them to show it.

I don’t know what to expect from season 6 as far as quality (I’ve read enough of the spoilers to have an idea of major plot lines), but I’m going to buy it before too long and have another Buffy-filled weekend.

2

But, that was the end of the show. Buffy died, why would they want to film more seasons of inferior material when they had gone out on the most powerful ending possible.

Nope, no more seasons were filmed, BtVS ended after Season 5. That was it.

3

Once More With Feeling is far from inferior.

4

The hatred of season six (and to a lesser extent, seven) I have seen on the Internet is a little extreme, IMHO. Season six, esp., seems better when watched in quick succession.

There are a lot of really good moments in season six, not just the musical. And even season seven had moments.

In other words, be not discouraged.

Daphne

5

I think Buffy got better every season, no exceptions.

But Season 5 has some of my favorite moments, including The Body.

4 was my least favorite too. 1 was less sophisticated than what came later, but at least it was funnier, and the people were newer, or something. 4 had a pretty high lame factor, Riley especially. Though I’d do him in a second and a half.

And I too am not an unqualified Anya fan. If she’d been in my circle of friends, she’d’ve walked around with slap marks on her face ALL the time.

6

The problem with 4 was that it was so uneven. There were great individual episodes (Wild at Heart, Hush, Restless) but the story arc was LAME! Adam was not a compelling villian at all. They shouldn’t have killed off Maggie Walsh so quickly - she had just started to become interesting.

And Riley was dull. Cull, but dull.

7

Eek. Cute, obviously.

8

Well, I think the remaining seasons are utterly putrid. Season 6 is one of the worst seasons of anything I’ve ever seen; it has almost no redeeming qualities and I am so not on board the “it’s still better than 90% of television” train, because it wasn’t. Season seven is also truly, truly awful television for the most part, but I don’t actively hate it as much as six. Seven actually started out somewhat decently, I thought.

I like season 5 overall, although it has the same problem as season 4 does for me - too many episodes that are utterly forgettable (although nothing quite as bad as, say, The I in Team or Doomed from season 4) and an extraordinarily weak big bad (s5 is worse in this respect; they shove Glory down our throats in far too many episodes). I also hate what they did to Riley, who I liked a lot (Vampire whores?) and, well, I think I’ll have to start a pit thread some day on how much I hate Spike in every episode of Buffy after Becoming pt. 2.

That said, there’s a lot I like about the season. I think the Dawn/Buffy interaction is good, as well as the Buffy/Joyce stuff that had been largely missing from s4. I like that Buffy and Giles start training again and that Giles gets the fuck out of his apartment and becomes somewhat useful again. I like Willow and Tara’s relationship, which is nice, because I hate Xanya. Plus, Harmony has minions!

Along with the usual episodes people tend to name, I think Buffy vs. Dracula is really fun, and I like Family and Triangle a lot, too (although the latter is tainted by the fact that I fucking hate Anya for most of s5 and Willow was being a huge bitch).

9

I think that one of the problems with becoming more than just a casual fan of any show is that, after a certain point, a lot of people become the stereotypical fan and automatically parrot the party line, so to speak. Some people, somewhere, really hated Buffy’s UPN seasons and over time, that became the norm and now it’s transformed into this ridiculous “Lalalala, S6 and S7 are teh suxxor except for ‘Once More With Feeling’ which is teh roxxor and teh best episode of any show EVAR” thing you run into so often.

It happens with so many other shows too and is almost always directed towards later incarnations of the original. Look at Star Trek, for example. While Enterprise and Voyager aren’t the best quality, they’re hardly as vile as the hardcore fans try to make them out to be nor is The Original Series some perfect example of sci-fi.

Star Wars is another example. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are not that much more cheesy than A New Hope, Empire, or Jedi but tell that to an SW fan and they’ll likely try to impale you on a lightsabre.

Then, of course, there’s The Simpsons and how horrible its been since season nine. To listen to its detractors here on the board, you would think that Matt Groening is a murderer and a rapist.

These things just take on a life of their own and it’s best to just ignore them and judge for yourself.
Aesiron, who was introduced to and became a member of BtVS fandom after watching Season Six in reruns.

10

Or it could be that the things Aesiron mentions really suck and that’s why people hate them.

But I’m sure the “they’re all mindless fan zombies” line makes some people sleep better at night.

11

I really, really hate this argument. I’ve heard it before, and it almost always triggers The Rage. However, I’ll try not to Hulk out on you, Aesiron, because you mentioned me in one of the “Name your favorite Doper threads.”

I’m easy that way.

Anyway, I’ve had people use that argument on me quite a bit, and what gets up my nose about is that when you say something like that, you’re saying you know what goes on in my mind better than I do. I really, really hate the last two Star Wars movies. I can explain why in detail. I have charts and graphs to back up what I’m saying. But whenever the subject comes up, there’s always at least one person who just dismisses all that out of hand by accusing me, in effect, of not liking it just to be popular.

This annoys me. It carries an implication that I’m either dishonest or deluded. Worse, it violates what is, to me, the fundamental rule of having a civilized debate about art: it is a comment about the person with whom you disagree, not about the work over which you are disagreeing. Although not nearly as severe, it is of a kind with calling someone stupid for not liking a particular work of art. If you’re going to have a polite conversation, the bare requirement for that is to take the other person at their word: if they say they don’t like Art X for Reason Y, accept that Reason Y is really the reason they dislike Art X. Unless you’ve got intimate, personal knowledge of the other person, it’s not your place to say what’s “really” going on in their heads.

Anyway, sorry for the lecture. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

12

Oh, hey, look at that! There’s an OP to this thread, too! Imagine that!

I started watching Buffy with season five. I’d seen… two, maybe three episodes before that. I know I’d seen “Band Candy” all the way through prior, and I’d caught the very end of the season two finale before. And technically, I saw the final episode from season four before season five, but that was the week right before season five started, and for the longest time, I thought it was the season premiere. But season five is the season that got me hooked. It was the first show, ever, that I scheduled my life around to make sure I didn’t miss an episode. I loved it, and on the strength of that season, I bought all the Buffy VHS sets they had, because none of the DVDs hadn’t been released here yet.

And I don’t think I’m going to bother buying season five on DVD. I’ve got one through three already: keep meaning to buy season four, but I never have the money when I think to get it, and when I have the money, I never think to get it. It’s not that I dislike the season, it’s just that whenever I watch it, the whole thing just feels tired. There’re some good episodes, some great gags, the season arc is okay - better than four’s, at the very least. But it doesn’t feel new, or interesting, somehow. Not like the first four seasons. It’s still good TV, it’s just not Joss good. And it’s not “own it for the rest of your life” good. It was my first exposure to Buffy, but after I went back and filled in the gaps, it just didn’t measure up at all.

Season four, on the other hand, is in many ways my favorite season. It’s got the weakest arc since season one, but it has so many great stand alone episodes. “Hush,” ironically enough, goes without saying, but also “Fear, Itself,” “Beer Bad” (you heard me, you bastards: “Beer Bad” is one of the best stand alone Buffy episodes ever), “Pangs,” “Something Blue,” the Faith two-parter, “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Superstar” and “Restless.” I also loved the idea for the season arc, but I thought it was poorly handled. Adam was a great idea, but he wasn’t written very well. He was introduced too late in the game to really develope a personality that could be really hatable (like Angel) or really likable (like the Mayor). And they made a huge mistake in killing Maggie Walsh when they did: they spent half the season building up the tension between her and Buffy, and then when it reaches it’s peak, they just cut the legs out from underneath it. It doesn’t go anywhere, and is totally unsatisfying. Dammit, one of Buffy’s teachers is plotting to kill her! You don’t have a set up like that and not have at least one episode where they have to pretend to make nice with each other in the classroom! It also undercut Riley’s character: there was never any real doubt that he’d think Buffy killed Professor Walsh, but if they’d both been alive at the same time, giving him conflicting information, they could have really done something interesting with his character. For a change.

As for seasons six and seven… well, the less said, the better. I hope they release “Once More with Feeling” on a stand alone DVD, because as good as that episode was, I’m not paying fifty bucks for it. And there really isn’t anything else in the last two seasons that I feel compelled to ever watch again.

Okay, the magic jacket episode from the last season. But that’s it!

13

I never said they were mindless fan zombies, only that, after a while consensus ***seems ***to reach critical mass and feeds on itself in a vicious self-perpetuation.

I understand why that would annoy you but I’m not trying to say anything about your thoughts and opinions on the SW prequels or even about the last two seasons of BtVS… rather, I’m talking about the hive mind mentality that a large group of fans always seem to develop after a period of time and how, if you dare to disagree, you will be attacked mercilessly by its drones.

And that sort of behaviour annoys me to no end. People that dismiss part of a story (or canon) out of hand because it’s not up to their personal standard really frustrates me. If you don’t like it, fine… I’ve no issue with that, but when people, even jokingly, trot out the line that “Buffy ended after Season 5” or “Star Trek jumped from The Voyage Home to The Undiscovered Country with no move in-between” I get very thoroughly annoyed.

14

Okay, I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about why they held those opinions, not why they defend them as vehemently as they do. And I think you’re right: it is a vicious cycle. It’s almost a running gag with my friends: every time we get together, at some point the conversation turns to how much we all hated the Star Wars prequels. It’s almost pathological. We’ve all shared what we hated about the prequels, and learned new things about them to hate, and inventive new ways to express that hatred. I can tell you more about why I hated AotC than I can tell you about why I liked Star Wars. I’ve spent a lot of time honing my opinions on those movies, and they have become quite pointed.

Of course, that’s only half the equation. The other half is that sci-fi geeks, especially ones who spend a lot of time on the internet, often are somewhat lacking in social graces, and aren’t good at expressing disagreement without being a prick about it. I don’t see that as a “hive mind mentality.” You don’t need a hive mind to act like Comic Book Guy. Of course, five hundred Comic Book Guys are a terrifying sight. And an even worse odor. But I digress.

So how do you feel about Highlander 2? :smiley:

15

It exists - they have it at my video library.

16

You don’t happen to know if it’s a Region 1 DVD, do you? We get regularly hosed on the TV DVD market over here.

17

I have no idea; the library (the Third Ear on Sheinkin St, best audio and video shop east of St. Marks) carries all types. All Israeli DVD players are sold with instructions on converting them to multizone, so nobody really cares where disks come from.

18

It’s Region 2: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008N6ZH/202-4145118-0978225

19

For what it’s worth, I like seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

4: I recall hearing that Maggie Walsh exited the season prematurely due to some sort of conflict with the actress. However, this may be entirely untrue, I have no idea.

5: The delay in the explanation about Dawn was intriguing, I thought. It’s like that episode where Jonathan is tossed into the opening credits and you’re utterly confused. I like that they weren’t afraid to just throw her into the mix and not fill us in immediately. Besides, the wait wasn’t really that long.

6: Most of the criticism of six I find puzzling. Usually, people say it’s “too dark”. Um…isn’t this a show about vampires?

7: Aside from the flashcards, season 7 is just appalling.

20

I too apologize for the hijack, Lsura.

But why does everyone hate Anya? I like her. Mostly. Her and Willow’s animosity was somewhat irritating, but overall she made me laugh.

Daphne