Dark, dark, dark. Going to be darker. I don’t like the way this season is heading so far.
In all honesty, as much as I love the show… it used to be a lot more fun. How much pain can they possibly heap onto these characters?
Specific comments on tonight’s episode:
Willow seems to be lying to Tara.
I’d be real surprised if Willow didn’t get to be really dark this season. Sob.
I miss Giles.
Spike was quite excellent tonight.
Saw the whole “she was in heaven” thing coming. I think it’s an enormous plot hole that Willow didn’t seem to consider it. I could handle bringing her back because she was needed on earth, but because she was convinced that she was in hell? Come on.
In other news, I’m not impressed with Angel yet. This week’s episode was really weak. Fred, however, is undeniably cute.
I dunno, the first half was pretty good. I got a real Evil Dead 2 frission from possessed Anya cutting her face off. Buffy hasn’t been doing much scary lately; I hope this is the start of a trend. Although a little less “Buffy as Morissey” would be nice, too.
And you miss Giles after 2 hours without him? Better get used to it…
As for not realizing that Buffy could have been in a nice place, I think that’s pretty typical for the show. Since when has anyone gone to a nice place? They deal with death, demons and destruction, but not nice happy feeling of success rewards.
Yeah, the first two episodes have been very dark, but I think it’ll change. Buffy’s just now back from the dead, she can’t be flung back into cute outfits and clever quips right away. Previews for next week seem a bit lighter.
Early on I called that she’d been in heaven, too, but I completely thought she’d make a comment about having spent time with Joyce. She kind of paused at a photo of Joyce, and I was convinced she’d had to leave her to come back.
Buffy’s unspoken resentment of Willow is hard to watch, and I think it’ll get worse. But let me just say that I was all kinds of pleased that she’s confiding in Spike!
There was a time when the characters weren’t so useless, Green Fool, but nowadays I feel you’re right. Xander used to have a purpose on the show, but these days has very little. Anya serves no useful purpose at all except her “hilarious” shallow capitalism lines. I now cringe if it even looks like she’s thinkign about talking. Tara has never done much of anything for me. It would be difficult to make her any more bland than she already is. Although I like Spike, I feel he’s been over-used.
I don’t feel the characters have developed in logical ways, just the ways that the writers made them go. I would very much like to see the cast pared down so that more attention could be paid to good characters rather than one line a week given to shallow characters.
Most importantly, I’d like there to again be some purpose to all of it. In the beginning we had the high school element, which was a very nice touch. And I didn’t want them to stay in high school forever, but I liked that there was a real world that had to be balanced against this other world they lived in. It looked like we’d continue that with the move to college, but this was not the case. College was abandoned in about five episodes and now has been dropped for good, it seems.
None of them seem to have jobs except Anya and ocasionally Xander. Dawn goes to school, but it’s certainly no large issue. There are no characters who are outside the realm of the supernatural except for Xander who seems to have been left in solely as a courtesy. So since we’ve eliminated the real world aspect of it, I feel like I’m just watching a televised Playstation fighting game where the bosses get bigger and tougher at the end of each level. And I’m wondering why the main character is fighting and kicking and I’m being told, “Oh it doesn’t matter, that’s just what she does - check out this cool bad guy she’s fighting! And every now and then she says funny things!”
So if you’re wondering why I’m still watching, rest assured that so am I.
Not me . I’m hoping Willow goes from bad to worse with the black magic thing and becomes this season’s ( or next ) archvillain. I love the Willow character, with all its complexity and growth over the years. But I’m not invested in Willow as a “person” ( her not being real and all that ) and I would love to see BTVS plumb the depths of that sort of tragedy. It could be done very subtly, with a series of well-intentioned moves slowly corrupting her ( we’re off to a good start already ). Maybe she wouldn’t even consciously realize it - Becoming instead that sort of deluded person that believes that by doing evil, she is actually doing the best for everyone in the long run.
'course I was in favor a year or so ago of Buffy kicking the bucket and an only partially redeemed Faith taking over as a psychopathic anti-hero, fighting the good fight in an entirely disturbed way .
I like the light humor. But I love the darker moments .
Damn, Legomancer, what a great assessment. As I was reading your post, I kept thinking what I could add, and you would hit it in the next paragraph. I agree SO fully with your asessment of Anya and Tara, as well as the lack of context/purpose. Anya especially bothers me. How can such talented writers fail to see that her character adds nothing. Hope it changes.
One quibble with last nght’s show you did not mention was, how did Buffy cut off the demon’s head? Demon goes “solid.” Buffy has the axe. Takes one swing - blocked. Takes a second swing - blocked and she is knocked down. From the ground, Buffy takes a wildly telegraphed 3d swing and, somehow or another lops off the head of the off-camera demon. No sign of Xander calling out “Hey pus-face” to distract her or anything else. WTF?!
Nevertheless, like you, I’m still watching. I’ve managed to infect my entire family. Last night when going to bed I heard my 10 and 13 year old daughters discussing Willows sexuality.
I’ve just started watching the reruns on FX and caught part of last night’s new episode on UPN- about the last half hour, I think. I actually forgot it was on.
Let me tell you, diving from season one (last night’s was “Prophecy Girl”) into the third episode of the new season (if you count the premiere, which I missed, as two) is quite the disorienting experience. I love spoilers so I’ve tried to fill myself in on a lot, but it’s still freaky. Like andygirl said, dark, dark, dark! Also, I preferred Willow’s hair long, damnit!
Am I making a huge assumption here or has the show slowly been edging towards darker themes in general? I mean aside from the chock full o’ death aspect (I’ve been tickled by how little the town of Sunnydale seems to notice the high school mortality rate!).
I too am a little bothered by the lack of real-world stuff in recent times, especially in the case of Xander, who is more of the real world than the college-girl Scoobies (or even Anya, who at least is her own boss and can close up the Magic Box when there’s slaying to be done).
Whenever I see Xander with the others in the daytime, I try to rationalize: “Well, maybe it’s a weekend.” But then last night we see Buffy send Dawn off to school, and moments later they’re all in the back yard talking, Xander included. If they’d even make the small effort of adding dialogue like “I called in sick today,” I could accept it. But they don’t.
That said, I still think the show is wonderful and has things to tell us. In particular I think last night’s episode was brilliant. andygirl, the show needs to be dark sometimes, and last night’s revelation was important in several ways.
[list=1]
[li]Usually when a character’s brought back from the dead it’s a cheat, a way of breaking the rules to save a lost character. Now we see this isn’t true for Buffy; in fact it’s a horrible thing to have happen.[/li][li]Rather than betray Buffy’s big death scene at the end of last season, her resurrection now becomes necessary for another reason: we now see why the First Slayer told Buffy “Death is your gift.” It really was a gift![/li][li]All of Buffy’s behavior in the season premiere now makes sense. She didn’t climb the tower because she was freaked out and going back to the last thing she remembered. It was because she missed Heaven, and thought if she replayed her death scene she could get back to it. Realizing she had to protect Dawn is the only thing that could keep her in this world.[/li][/list=1]
Spike’s coming along beautifully. I’ve said it before and I repeat it here: this season will give us more character development for Spike than we’ve yet seen.
I agree Anya seems to have regressed back into It’s-all-about-me Girl. I hope that trend reverses.
I haven’t watched since the first season and only started back last week. Since when is Willow gay? I can imagine a lot of women getting rid of Seth Green by saying they were gay, but she actually followed through on it.
Yeah, Anya and Tara are cute, but boring. Xander is turning into a bargain basement Bruce Campbell, who starts out pretty bargain basement already (covering my head against thrown bricks from the BC fans), and is even starting to look like him. SMG is learning how to act and her Kung Fu is getting better–it was pretty embarassing the first season. And she is looking ultrafine and ever so Jewish! (Yeah, I have a fixation. So what? )
That demon should have been spread out over more episodes. It had a lot of dramatic potential and they killed it off too easily and cheaply.
I’m glad the local Fox affiliate has started the syndication at the beginning so I can catch up.
dropzone: I remember way back when ( season two or three ), some fans started agitating quietly to have Bruce Campbell make an appearance as Xander’s dad ( later amended to Uncle Rory ). It would be beyond perfect casting IMHO .
I have my own list of complaints ad I’ve lost much of my interest in the show. But it still entertains me on some levels, so I’m supressing them for now. No doubt I’ll grow increasingly critical as the season wears on - I usually do .
Random thought from last night’s episode, did Spike bleed after he punched the wall? I thought vamps didn’t bleed? And he’s able to handle more sunlight? Is this a plot point?
Anyways, I completely missed the idea that Buffy was in heaven, never occured to me. In a way that makes her return more acceptable to me, I thought it was very cheap to get her out of hell that easily. I mean, the demon that they killed was just a McGuffin, the real cost was that Buffy doesn’t want to be back.
I think Willow would make an excellent baddie this year. Clearly, more stuff is going on in her head, she got the black-eyed look while casting the spell and clearly didn’t need Tara to make it work. I suspect they’ll work it out, possibly after losing Tara, but maybe not.
I still have hope for Anya. In “The Body” she was the best character, they can do a lot with her if they try.
So far, I think the first couple of episodes have been reasonably interested. I do think that they are trying to “earn” bringing Buffy back to life so it doesn’t appear to diminish last season’s end or come across like Bobby in the Shower.
Bottom line, this is like a comic book. When I was a kid and started reading the X-Men (with issue #95, then I bought #94 for 25 cents and Giant Size #1 for $5; of course I sold them a few years later to fund the purchase of a guitar amp - yes I am that stupid…)it was very like a previous poster put it - a playstation game that goes up a level every time the new baddy gets beaten. But I read the darn comic book for a few years. Sure there were bad issues and bad plot lines, but the darn book has been going for, what, 20 years now and on the whole is still regarded a good AFAIK. Not that Buffy would or should last that long; the point is that BTVS seems to be following the normal progression of a good comic book. The fact that you miss some characters, or that the plots seem burdened by having to shoulder increasing levels of danger and a longer past history is part of the challenge of making this type of entertainment interesting.
Some people folks like to stick with characters they’ve come to know. Some folks don’t.
As for the Scoobs, as with comic books, they will either fade out, be killed for plot fodder, or get their time in the sun, but for now, I agree, they aren’t central to the action…
The fact that Buffy was in heaven made perfect sense to me; I thought it all through the episode where she was brought back. From her waking up, shocked and dismayed in the coffin, to her exposure to the looted town (“Is this Hell?”), I was pretty convinced that she had the look of someone torn from the nicest dream imaginable into a nightmare. And the speech to Spike was a classic.
But I wanted to address the Angel comment; I thought Monday’s episode was brilliant and intense, showcasing some of the stuff that the show does best; putting its characters into untenable situations, and seeing what happens. And the hostage situation in Caritas was incredibly tense; that speech by the kid with the crossbow, mixed in with the rant by the baby-killing demon, was an amazing piece of television. As was Fred’s description of a crossbow bolt’s effect on a human throat. I’m also impressed that they’re introducing more and more mythology into the context of their Los Angeles. I have seriously high hopes for Angel this season.
Yes, I knew Buffy was in Heaven too. It made the episode more enjoyable, watching the levels SMG had to convey. I was getting pissed at the arrogance of the Scoobies myself by the end. And I knew they meant well.
I will agree that the monster subplot was pointless. This is something the show does fairly regularly. A nice character driven story gets distracted because they have to have a monster. They did it in “The Prom” and “Dead Man’s Party”. The only time it was fun was in “The Zeppo” where the generic monster of the week got turned into a wicked selp-parody.
I’m assuming that the demon was a MacGuffin price – something the characters can “pay” and believe settles the issue while forgetting the much larger price Buffy’s resurrection is going to have.
If Willow goes dark because of her dabbling in black magic, for instance, that’d be one price they weren’t expecting to pay. Buffy’s finding regular existence to be hell is another unexpected price – and I’ll be surprised and disappointed if the Scoobs don’t find out about that eventually. And I won’t be surprised if there’s another price (or consequence) or two for the resurrection along the way.
The show’s good at that kind of misdirection – the episode on FX last night clarified the power and limits of prophecy, for example. It’s written that Buffy will confront the Master, and she’ll die; the Master knows that when he kills her he gets the power to escape, so that the prophecy doesn’t tell the whole story. And the Master doesn’t realize that “dead” for prophetic purposes doesn’t mean “dead” for good.
That said, I’m also disappointed in Anya’s character. She’s had moments, and had potential, but it’s never been fulfilled. And Xander’s an interesting case, because he’s been both stalwart and true and a complete jackass, but he rarely gets called on the latter, to the detriment of the show. I mean, he knows that Angel could get resouled, but decides not to tell Buffy – and that never, ever gets addressed, when I’d expect Buffy and/or Willow to be kind of pissed about that. And then he’s got the gall to chew out Buffy for escaping to California! I would’ve socked him . . .
Of course, Buffy seasons have a history of starting slowly and building momentum; that’s what I expect this season. I’d guess that part of the arc will be Buffy’s growing gratitude to be alive again. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she was in a false heaven, for that matter, somewhere pleasant and happy that’s not as ultimate a reward as she could earn.
. I’m hoping Willow goes from bad to worse with the black magic thing and becomes this season’s ( or next ) archvillain. I love the Willow character, with all its complexity and growth over the years. But I’m not invested in Willow as a “person” ( her not being real and all that 
) and I would love to see BTVS plumb the depths of that sort of tragedy. It could be done very subtly, with a series of well-intentioned moves slowly corrupting her ( we’re off to a good start already 