BtVS season4 revisited (spoilers, no boxes)

Cafe Society
1

The weather is awful, I’m grossly bored, so I decided to see all of S.4 this past weekend. Seeing that it’s just been released on DVD in the U.S. I thought I’d open a thread and see if anyone else wants to talk about it.

First - DVD production. I got the European version about a year ago, and it would be interesting to compare. The menus are better and don’t take such long time on this, as they did with S.2 or if it was S.3, where it was flying all over a cemetery. The extras is kinda lame. The region 2 version contains:

  1. Script for ‘Fear Itself’.
  2. Commentary for ‘The Initiative’ by Doug Petrie
  3. ‘Hush’ commentary by JW, script, featurette.
  4. Featurettes: ‘The sets of Sunnydale’, ‘Introducing Spike’, ‘Buffy, inside the music’.
  5. Cast biographies (Yawn!)
  6. Trailers (Yaawn!)
  7. Commentary for ‘This years girl’ by Doug Petrie
  8. Commentary for ‘Superstar’ by Jane Espenson
  9. Script for ‘Who are you?’.
  10. Commentary for ‘Primeval’ by David Fury and James Contner
  11. Script and Commentary for ‘Restless’ by JW.
  12. ‘Season 4 Overview’ (Yawn, I just saw it.)
  13. Stills Gallery (we need to fill out space)

All in all, lame. The commentaries are nice and seems to be done with some enthusiasm. The other extras are just boring. There is a big and very knowledgeable fan group out there. Judging from the frenzy on the Internet, fanfiction, conventions ASF, these are fans who are really into the show. It kinda sucks that there isn’t a single interview with SMG, Nick Brendon, Alyson Hannigan or ASH. JW seems to be very uncomfortable with being interviewed, but does a good job with the commentaries. Why no cut-outs or bloopers?

On to the arc. I didn’t see all episodes, basically because I think some of them sucked and I know what’s happening anyway. So I skipped: Living Conditions, Beer Bad, Doomed & Who Are you.

I know a lot of people didn’t like Riley. I kinda like him. I think Marc Blucas did a good job. The problem is what the writers did with him. Now, I’m a so-so journalist and obviously, JW is a much more successful writer than I am, but I can’t help thinking that making him a part of the Initiative was wrong. Buffy wanted Joe Regular. Why not let him stay that way. There is so much more tension to be had from that scenario. Was Joe Regular really what she wanted? We never find out, since Riley is a super-being too. Has Buffy ever dated anyone normal besides Parker Abrams, who was major league dork?
I would have liked S.4 a lot more, had Riley been a regular guy. I think he does a good job when he’s playing the part of the Midwest, Jimmy Stewart type /Cowboy!/ guy. And what the writers did to him in S.5…

Giles is just muddling through, and I think it would have been better setting him up with the Magic Box sooner.

Anya’s always rubbed me the wrong way and she’s really annoying during this season.

Xander is still Xander. Sorta. Some of that bitterness we get more of during later seasons is shining through. Maybe that’s just hindsight, as well as my feeling that when he starts out with Anya, he just settles with her. Not because he loves her, but because she’s available and he’s a 19 year old guy.

Willow is at her most adorable. And all scenes with Tara are just as sweet as Miss Kitty Fantastico. It’s good to see some happiness there. Although all the double entendres on magic/sex gets a bit lame after a while.

Spike is Fun!Spike. Snarky, evil, cool, badass, with all the great lines. Without going into details, James Marsters said in one of the interviews on the DVD, that he came on full time to fill the void after Cordy, and then he adds that Anya is doing the same thing. Maybe this was when things started turning bad for the franchise. Spike was a really cool guy, and could have taken the part of ‘stating obvious things and telling the ghastly truth’ that Cordy played. But I guess the writers thought that Xander needed a girlfriend, so Anya was made a regular. With Tara in the mix, we suddenly had six regulars. This expands in S.5 with Dawn and of course, living in the Summer’s house gave Joyce more screen time. Too many actors and characters, not enough for them to do, which is starting to show in S.4, but it hasn’t gotten to the point where it’s annoying.

There are so many good episodes during this season, yet the whole purpose of the arc leaves me cold. The Government and Technology vs. Ancient Magic and hand-to-hand combat. It got too X-file-y. A show about the supernatural is not enhanced by trying to tie it in with the real, albeit twisted, world. It sucks the magic out of it. I like Adam as the Big Bad, though.

It’s also kinda cool, the way some things for S.5 is hinted. In Faith’s dream scene, when she and Buffy are making the bed and she says that it must be ready for when sister comes. And in ‘Restless’, in the same room, by the same bed. Buffy looks at the alarm clock, which is 7.30 (I think a.m.). Tara is there and Buffy says she has to go find her friends. Then Tara remarks: “Be back before dawn.” I checked the subtitles, and it’s written with d, not D, but still…

There is also a scene in ‘Restless’ where Buffy is standing in a hall, talking to Adam (in human form) and Riley, where she says, emphatically “I’m not a DEMON!” and the First Slayer comes into focus, behind her, over the shoulder. Restores my faith in Joss, thinking that he actually knows the lore of the Buffyverse and sticks to it, even when there have been times when I’ve doubted that.

Let’s hope his project of making Firefly into a Movie doesn’t distracts him from Ats, S.5.

So, what’re your thoughts?

2

Season 4 was when I first started watching. I guess that’s why the large number of cast members never bothered me, since that’s how I’ve always known it. Now when I go back and watch the first three seasons, it seems so strange to see them in high school.

I dunno, I thought season 4 kicked a lot of ass. YMMV.

3

Mostly, I agree. S4 had some good episodes, but the main story-arc was IMO very lacking.

I think part of the problem was Marti Noxton. I really hate her scripts; they strike me as far too heavy on angsty cliches like crying and shouting simultaneously and soap opera instead of sharp, believable dialogue and interesting twists. She started to gain a controlling hand by S4 and it really shows in soppy, stupid story-arcs like Oz’s departure.

Oz’s loss was also a real blow to the show. It’s hard to define what makes this guy so cool. He’s an enigmatic, taciturn figure. We don’t even learn his real name until after he’s left. I think he was one of the strongest things about Buffy, and it’s a shame he was mostly never used as anything except ‘Willow’s boyfriend guy’.

I would have liked to see more of Professor Walsh. I thought she was a very cool villain, or maybe even an anti-hero. We should have seen more of her motives.

The problem with Adam was that he had nothing that made him human. All the best *Buffy * villains had some kind of redeeming feature. The Master had a strange kind of bond with Darla and the Anointed One. Spike and Dru had their love for each other. Angelus had the Angel side of his personality. The Mayor had his creepy relationship with Faith. Adam was just basically a big demonic robot and so we neither emphathized with him nor feared him (although it’s kind of hinted at by the way he refers to Walsh as ‘Mother’. It might have been so cool and creepy if they’d kept her around).

The Initiative really annoyed me. It just struck me as all wrong for Buffy to have a huge big secret high tech complex below Sunnydale University. A small team of elite government agents I could just about stand for, especially if we only saw glimpses of them (like the invisible assassin’s school in the first season) but that place was huge, and had any amount of scientists, cleaners, soldiers and what-have-you.

The college setting’s use was very half-hearted. The writers started out trying to simply update Buffy’s high-school-is-hell metaphor into college, with episodes about demonic roommates and mean senior-year vampires, but they simply seem to lose interest in it shortly into the season. Without a strong central theme, Buffy feels very loose and disorganized. Did you notice they don’t even bother to explain what happens to Professor Walsh’s classes after she’s killed, or show any lectures Buffy attends besides her’s?

4

I enjoyed S4 a great deal. In fact, it’s one of my favorite seasons. The overall arc wasn’t strong, but it had some very solid epiosdes. Harsh Light of Day, Pangs, Something Blue, Hush, Doomed, The Yoko Factor, Restless were the best ones off the top of my head.

As for Oz, and Maggie Walsh, they weren’t written out of the show at Whedon’s behest. Green wanted to leave, and the actress who played Wash had a scheduling conflict they couldn’t work out.

5

I got my wife the DVDs of seasons 1-3 for her birthday, and we’ve been watching about one a night since then. I got S.4 when it came out in the States on June 10, and we’re about halfway through it now.

I had never really watched BtVS before, so now I’m getting to see why she liked the show for so long. Couple of things really stand out to me, watching the shows back-to-back like this (a few minor spoilers follow, if you haven’t seen season four yet):

  1. They were never gonna top the Mayor as the main adversary (or Big Bad). Simply one of the best villains ever.

  2. SMG is quite possibly the worst actor on the show. Granted, some of her lines aren’t well written, but sometimes she can’t deliver them worth spit.

  3. Nicholas Brendan spent some SERIOUS time in the gym between seasons 3 and 4.

  4. Spike’s character is quite good, and James Marsters does a masterful job with him. However, I think the whole conversion-to-the-good-side thing was a little rushed. He’s been evil for, what, 200 years? A couple of weeks of drinking blood from a mug is enough to convince him to fight for the good guys? Difficult to swallow.

6

No Sauron, that’s not how it worked. A couple of weeks of drinking blood froma mug convinced him that he needed to A) Make sure the Slayer didn’t have a reason to stake his ass and B) He fought demons in S4 because he needed to kill things. At that point, he didn’t care what he killed. I think his conversion to the good side was a 4 year process…well, six, if you count his offer to help Buffy in S2.

7

Some thoughts popped into my head after I posted and in a way they tie in with what you guys said.

Being evil is not an end in itself. The bad guy has a plan and to accomplish the goal, sometimes the bad guy does bad things. One thing leads to another and suddenly, big evil is brewing. After a while, collateral damage is no longer a problem, especially if you have no soul.
This is why I never really liked Angelus or Spike as the big bads. Spike just wants to hurt things and Angelus wanted to end the world. The Master wanted to take over the world. The Mayor had to repay his debt, Glory wanted to get back to her world. he geek trio started out small, but given time, any of them could have been the mayor. We don’t know what happened to him a hundred years ago, that made him sell his soul. Maybe Warren finally would have stumbled upon an überdemon, who wanted to make a deal…?
And Adam did have a goal. Yes, he was big and clunky, but I want to know why a character in a movie is acting this way or that. My guess is that the writers wanted to turn it into something half tragic, like Frankenstein’s monster. In that, they failed.

One thing I find interesting and amusing, is that the Big Bads of the seasons never tell lies. We’re conditioned, by movies and tv, to think that the bad guy is always a cheat, never telling the truth and not to be trusted. The only time there has been blatant lies is in ‘The Yoko Factor’, and that was a nice plot device. In almost all scenes where a major character interacts with Big Evil, the bad guy is telling the truth. Adam did so too.

I don’t think SMG is the worst actor. Brendon, Boreanz and Marsters are not very skilled, but get handed simpler things to do in the scripts. SMG is carrying a lot of weight and her limited range takes the strain at times. Both Hannigan and Dushku are better at expressing emotions and conveying thoughts through more subtle acting. At times I feel that SMG is acting as if she’s on a stage, we’re emotions need to be telegraphed more clearly. Then again, without knowing, my guess is that she’s in 60 % of all the scenes, putting her on a much more hectic schedule.

However, it is interesting, Sauron, that so many fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the main character as their least favorite character of the females on the show. And it’s a great tribute to the writers.

8

Season 4 is the biggest mixed bag of who-knows-what to me. I love so many of the episodes. Viewed form an episode-to-episode level, I think S4 is the strongest season. Great humor, great episode plots, great character interaction, and so on. Superstar? Hush? Something Blue? Excellent stuff, unparalleled in any other season IMO.

The main arc, however, is really lacking, but I’m not sure why. I like the idea of the Initiative, but I think the execution was flawed; admittedly I don’t know how it was flawed or what I would suggest to fix it, but I do like the idea. I liked the way college both was and wasn’t stunningly different from high school, but, as others have mentioned, they ended up leaving it hanging midway. There wasn’t really a little bad unless you count Walsh or Faith, which I don’t; I think this left midseason feeling rushed and in fact you can almost feel the awkwardness in the plot when Faith-as-Buffy talks to the group about Adam. In my humble opinion, I think Adam should have been built up as the little bad, and Buffy and crew summon the first slayer to dispatch him, who then becomes the big bad. Adam’s development wouldn’t suffer at all; he is mostly filler to have Spike play as Buffy’s Judas. Big deal. We didn’t need him in cohoots with a big bad to play that role. Adam was drawn out filler.

I’m going to be honest, I truly enjoyed Riley’s character; in many ways he was everything Buffy needed, in others he was woefully lacking. He was real, that’s why I liked him. Willow, Buffy, and Riley have always been very real to me; other cast members, though I love them all, were always just characters to me. Riley shines in this season. He comes to like Buffy. She comes to like him. They actually attempt to work out their issues! Try that with Angel (snort). As well, there are really interesting dynamics between the two with respect to her incredible strength and his desire to be one of the best himself. His issues with inferiority were just fascinating to me, I loved watching their troubles unfold. Now, I don’t think Riley and Buffy were necessarily right for each other, lest BA or Spuffy shippers go fucking nuts on me, I’m just saying: I think the way their relationship played out was golden.

Overall, it cannot top S3 or S5 for me in terms of the entire Buffyverse. If I forget about the larger saga that exists in BtVS, though, S4 is super strong and chock full of fantastic acting, writing, and fun.

9

Spike didn’t just want to hurt things when he was the Little Bad of S2. He had two goals. 1) Heal Drusilla and 2) Kill his 3rd Slayer. Dru and Buffy were (as always) his motivations.

I can’t imagine how you could even put Marsters in the same category as Boreanz and Brendon. Could DB pull off the scene in Beneath You? Can Brendon convey deep, sometimes conflicting emotions, with a single glance?

ALso, why is it a great tribute to the writers that everybody hates the hero? We’re really not supposed to. She’s not an anti-hero, or really conflicted. We’re supposed to rally around her and see the show through her eyes.

10

It’s a great tribute to the writers that some people don’t care much about the main character, yet are devoted fans of the show.

As for Marsters, I’m sorry, we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that. I like Spike. He’s fun, but I think you have a blind spot, when it comes to James Marsters, Pepperlandgirl. IMO, he simply isn’t a very accomplished actor.
BTW, I don’t care to much about the main character in Ats, either. In both shows, it’s the writing, the questons of morality, that intrigues me.

erislover - Yes. Very much so, and better expressed than what I did.

11

Rewatching S4 even still, and right now we just finished out the return of Oz episode. Good lord they really used to pack a lot of story into episodes in those days! No scene was wasted, I swear. And AH is just a fantastic actress. She really amazes me. She makes me forget about sexuality and just feel the conflict she has between two people she dearly cares for. Incredible stuff.

I agree with this, too, The Gaspode. Buffy hasn’t been my favorite character since S1 and yet the show didn’t get one bit worse for this perspective change. So much of BtVS seems to be simply the interaction that takes place around Buffy; ultimately, the conflicts we are most interested in are what happens to the people around her as a consequence of being in these situations. MHO, but I do agree.

I love S1-5 Buffy a lot, she’s neat, but she’s at best my fourth favorite character on the show.

12

I think we’re talking at cross purposes, The Gaspode. I really like the character of Buffy. My problem (occasionally) is with SMG’s portrayal of her, and to a lesser extent, the lines she was sometimes given.

SMG can’t deliver a throwaway line to save her life. Sometimes it’s because the one-liners she’s given are these polysyllabic Dennis Miller-type constructions that would choke a horse. On paper, I’m sure the line looks great and wonderful. When spoken, it becomes a clunky thing that sucks the humor from the situation. In other cases, SMG herself doesn’t get the timing right, or she overenunciates. (All of this is my opinion, of course.)

To a certain extent, Brendon suffers from this as well, but overall he is able to deliver the lines much better than SMG. I agree with you about SMG sometimes appearing to act as if she’s on a stage. I wonder how much of that is a result of her early work on soap operas.

13

To digress a little, you can also tie these premonitions backwards into S3, when Buffy and Faith are dreaming that they are in Faith’s apartment and Faith mentions “Little Miss Muffet* counting down from seven-three-oh.”

Back to Restless, I have always liked that when Buffy sees it’s 7:30, she looks perturbed and says; “It’s so late”. As if she knows that when day number 730 comes, it’s curtain-time for her.
And I also feel a bittersweet twinge when she sees Tara holding the “manus” card with fists on it and she says; “I’m never going to use those”. As if she wasn’t the Slayer, as if she didn’t have to justify her existence by using her fists every night.

*See crazy “I’m a cat” guy’s remarks outside The Magic Box in S4’s The Real Me.

14

In ‘Restless’ there is also a line: “You think you know who you are. What to come. You’ve only begun”. In 5.1, Dracula says the exact same words to her.

kung fu lola, what happens on day 730?

Sauron - I agree with you on the delivery. If I gave the impression that I tried to ionclude you in the group of ‘not sp fond of Buffy’, I’m sorry. Not my intention.

To be fair, I really think SMG is good at her craft, and with shooting an episode per week, roughly, while not soap opera paced, it’s still been a huge workload for her. If she doesn’t get the timing right, I can excuse that. There is no doubt, however, that AH is a much better actress.

15

No, Gaspode, James isn’t an accomplished actor at all. Going to Juliard and working nearly 15 years in the theater, including having his own company for a good deal of that time is hardly an accomplishment. Also, you may find it interesting that the only actor who gets consistent praise from the writers/directors and from critics is James–especially the last two years.

Yeah, I think the foreshadowing of Dawn is the one valid point of foreshadowing in Restless (and in S3). Some folks will try to tell you that it laid out the template for all of 5, 6, and 7 and that Joss foreshadowed every storyline and event. Sure Joss mined the episode a few times (see Spike’s suit in TR) but Joss knew since S3 that he was going to introduce a sister for Buffy.

16

Dream!Faith said the line in the season finale of S3 (Graduation Day, part II). In the season finale of S5, which would fall (theoretically) two years (730 days) later, Buffy died (in the most lasting way that she ever did during the series). Lots of people (mostly geeky ones like me) argue over why Dream!Faith would bother mentioning it, and here are a few theories:

  • She’s the one who is counting down, until the day when she actually becomes the one and only Chosen One walking the planet (Her character seems to kind of be needled by the fact that she’s “cheated” out of being “special” by Buffy’s continued existence)

  • She is warning Buffy that her time is limited (which links up to the “it’s so late” line at seeing the clock, as if Buffy was saying; “It can’t be time for me to go already”).

  • The day Buffy dies also signifies the day that Dawn ceases to be a mystical object and just becomes a person, a luxury that Buffy doesn’t get to enjoy until Chosen.

17

Argh, just thought of something else. When Tara shows Bufffy the “Manus” card and you can see the Scoobies on it, it’s a nice little reminder of that gem they kept on hammering into us - that Buffy’s REAL weapons are her friends.
PS kids, friendship is awesome. Stay loyal.

Also, when typing the above post, I accidentally typed Cream!Faith at one point. A freudian typo if ever there was one.

18

Cream!Faith

Wipped cream… that dark complexion…It’s good that I’m old enough to controll my… um … urges…

Oh, and, Pepperlandgirl. I don’t judge a person on the resume, I do it by what they do. And IMO, James Marsters is an actor with a limited range. True, I’ve only ever seen him in the Buffyverse, but he hasn’t done anything to indicate that he could ever play a range like… oh, Ed Norton, maybe.

19

I think Jm has a pretty good range even within Buffy. I’ve never once felt that he was an actor straining to deliver a line, and his character has changed quite a bit over the years. The only other thing I’ve ever seen him in was a brief cameo in House on Haunted Hill or Haunted House or whatever the hell that awful movie with that creeping darkness thing was.

Hi! I ruined Buffy!

20

LMAO Apos. wipes a tear away It’s funny because it’s true.

ANd yeah, James hasn’t done a lot of film and TV roles. He was in Andromeda, Millenium, and Northern Exposure. (All short roles).
Though he has signed on to do a movie with Derek Jacobi and Sean Bean–Italian Heat. Filming starts tihs fall. There will be much gay sex, blood, explosions and death. I am very excited.