Don’t you think it’s a big much to ask her, right after she saw him in another woman’s arms, to know how she’s going to feel in a month? What if she said she could forgive him and then couldn’t? Especially after he told her what he wanted from the vamp hos, which was to be needed. What would Buffy have had to do in order to be that needy? It wasn’t in her nature. That convo proved that they were wrong for each other. I didn’t like that Buffy had to second guess that TWICE. The message it sends is that her strength and independence are liabilities when it comes to love, and IMO that’s a crap message.
You really saw potential for a happy marriage there? Not to put too fine a point on it, but no way in hell. Look at who Riley DID end up marrying: a self-effacing, submissive mouse who worshiped him. That’s what he wanted. They could never satisfy each other. And that’s OK; relationships don’t work out, move on. The fact that Buffy was made to feel, by Xander in ITW and Riley in AYW, that it was a flaw in her that made it fail was what annoyed me. Buffy should not feel bad about her strength and independence.
I guess I didn’t get the message, but that could be because it was a crappy message. Yes, Buffy was screwed up, but not because she wasn’t with Riley anymore, and not because she was with Spike, either. It was because she was depressed, broke, alienated from her friends, lost her mentor and father figure, all valid reasons. Riley coming back all heroic and married to make her feel like crap about her life was begging the point.
I thought he was self-righteous, needy, and obtuse. Cornfed is just a minor irritant.
The series end show - I would have Giles find a book that tells that Buffy is not the Slayer in Sunnyvale, the Slayer is Faith, But keeps this info to himself, since he’s not into Faith, and likes Buffy better. Angelus comes back and finds Buffy “pretending” to be Angel and wanting to reconcile. Buffy and Angel (so she thinks) make love and after he turns into Angelus, and Vampires her, turning the Slayer into what she has been fighting - he blames her for killing him and sending him to Hell. Concerned for Buffy, Spike has follows her, and eavesdrops on whats going on, since he doesn’t trust Angel. He finds out that Buffy is now a Vampire, and goes back to Giles and the others. They get a hold of Faith, she must now slay Buffy, and Spike has to find Angelus before he goes back to LA. Fighting insues between Buffy and Faith, she is successful in slaying Buffy. Spike does not find Angelus, he has already left. Giles, Faith and the others hold a memorial service and burys Buffy beside her mother, she stays dead - not to be resurrected. Giles knowing the truth that Faith was actually the Slayer, lays this info on Faith. She and Spike goes to LA to find Angelus.
Buffy ends - there is Cross-over with Angel and you can send whatever characters from Buffy, who wants to go.
**
Find me examples of Buffy, Spike, Xander etc saying “Straight now.”
Or
“If I wasn’t straight before…”
They may be straight. But they don’t announce it once per ep.
**
Kindly refrain from telling me what I do or do not notice, perceive or think.
Because they aren’t. Neither was Willow until she worked so hard at it. Xander may be straight. He doesn’t make speeches about it. He may talk about Anya, or Cordy, have sex with them, talk about having sex with them etc. But he doesn’t make speeches including the line ‘I’m straight.’
After Tara died, it was like Willow had to walk around with a neon lesbian sign. There was a denial she had ever been interested in men. Her feelings for Oz and Xander were not superficial behavior because society told her that 'girls like boys'. When Oz left, she felt as though she were dying and empty. She had plenty of speeches that episode. None included 'I'm straight.'.
I started watching with the fourth season, then fell out of the tv habit entirely between it and five, so I’m rather behind until all the dvd sets come out. But having watched through season three now, and from what I’ve heard of the seasons past four:
I wish they’d taken a page from Babylon 5’s book, and sat down at the onset (knowing ahead of time they’d be wildly successful, of course–psychic foresight is part of having druthers) to fit the show into four or five seasons, period, the end, with every story arc designed to fit within that timeframe.
Start out with a full first season instead of the half-sized one they had. Ignore the movie entirely, and start Buffy fresh as a new freshman at Sunnydale. Have the characters actually grow and mature through their experiences, rather than simply age while performing theme-and-variation on wacky/mopey adolescents. Xander begins as our beloved fount of butt-monkeyedness, and by the end of the series retains his wit but has found a mature core.
Start Willow off as bi or gay and dealing with that from the start, rather than a hurried conversion when they had enough popularity in the show to push it through.
Seth Green gets an indentured-servitude contract, so Oz would have to stick around the duration–that laconic poker-face delivery was a beautiful bass beat to the faster-paced banter of the rest of the Scoobies.
Make Giles more of a central character with further development, to play the two-worlds-colliding thing up more–and bring a theme in of the kids’ growing showing how those two worlds grow together. Collapse large chunks of what might have been Ripper into it.
Angel never had a soul. First bits of his arc still played out the same though–but no gypsy curse involved, he was just lying about it. Angelus knew he had eternity, so it amused him to concoct a hundred-year plan purely to fuck with a future slayer’s head–his boy Spike might be talented at outright killing them, but watch this! In his motives-revealing scene, include rant about how it didn’t occur to anyone that a 200-plus year old fellow mooning after a fifteen-year-old girl was downright goddamn creepy.
Spike. Spike still gets chipped–but rather than defeating his essential Badness, he turns into a behind-the-scenes manipulator. He can still hurt vampires, after all, so he beats and cudgels the rank-and-file into doing dirty work for him. He occasionally tries to pull off the same schtick Angelus did, but it’s just not in his temperament.
I gather Willow was instrumental in ending the one-slayer-at-a-time thing. Keep that, but make it the focus of a couple-seasons ending arc, and make it a major wedge between her and Buffy, and then her and the Watchers; lots of Giles running heavy interference, with more glimpses of just what a ruthless bastard Ripper was/is.
The Mayor should have been a fixture villain from at least season one well into mid-way point. His Ascension-rampage should have extended well beyond the walls of the school; the Initiative shows up (apropriate glimpses of them in prior seasons) as part of containment. The whole affair blows the walls right off the possibility of Sunnydale residents denying things are pretty fubar in their town.
I’ve got a ULC ordainment roundabouts somewhere. Who do you want to marry?
More bits: keep the thing about Slayer-succession splitting away from Buffy’s pulse. (Work it into foreshadowing of Willow starting to begin research, with reluctant Giles-support, into just how this slayer-schtick thing works, and the Watchers’ interrelationship with it.) Kendra shows up, with the exception of better casting. Spike kills her, and comes very near to taking out Buffy as well, when she and Buffy team up to take him out in a standard thoughtless “run up and start kicking” approach–he never killed former slayers by dint of them truly wishing to die deathwish mopeymopey, he killed former slayers because he was an incredible badass. (Later on, Drusilla gets to kill yet another new slayer, whose succesor is Faith. Fair’s fair.) This serves as the catalyst for Scoobies falling back, having a moment of clarity, and starting to seriously work on actual tactics–which need is confirmed when one of them sees the Initiative capture him by actual functional squad-level discipline.
The occasional dream about the dude wearing the cheese becomes a once-a-season tradition.
John ,who was so memorable in the role of cheese man, claims to be banned from the Paramount lot due to a blood hunt. This would tend to make a second guest appearance rather difficult. He will not tell me what circumstances led to his being proscribed from the area. Of course, I still can’t get John to tell me how he managed to appear on the episode to begin with. Or how he apparently managed to do a a scene in daylight without bursting into flames. When I ask him, he smiles the mad smile of his clan and says “Behold. the power of cheese.”
I always wondered why they didn’t have Buffy face a vamped slayer. She wouldn’t have had to be the big bad, but maybe a little bad, or even just a stand alone ep. about her. I know Faith was supposed to be the “bad slayer”, but I think it would have been really interesting to have Buffy face someone with all of her knowledge, powers, and background who was outright evil–and with a couple hundred years of experience being so to boot.
On a TV show set in modern day America, it is a given that the characters are American and they are straight (unless it’s QaF). When they are not, such as Giles being British or Willow being gay, the issue crops up, sometimes indirectly (accents or relationships), sometimes overtly (references to England / ‘Gay now.’) It just does. Being anything outside of the norm puts you in the spotlight (in TV). Simple.
Where did I say ‘Doc Cathode doesn’t notice…’ ? The ‘you’ in that sentence was the all-purpose ‘you,’ like ‘one.’
We, as human beings who have grown up in the Western world, tend not to notice instances of ‘straightness’ on television simply because it’s more common and less noteworthy. We don’t pay a lot of attention to someone’s accent or origins unless it’s different to those around them. It would be a waste of brain cells to constantly note that Willow, Buffy et al are American, but it’s noteworthy that Giles is British. We don’t notice that which isn’t unusual. Therefore, we don’t notice the references to ‘straightness.’
Because, as I said, straightness is a ‘given.’
However, there weren’t any speeches including the line ‘I’m straight.’ There were 3 throwaway lines. How to reassure Anya Willow’s not after Xander? ‘Hello, gay now!’ Quite funny, and it resolves Anya’s jealousy issue. The worm thing: also funny, and not out of place. The line to Xander: actually, doesn’t that to an extent acknowledge Willow’s former feelings for Xander?
The only other example I can think of where ‘gay’ was stated explicitly, was where Xander asked to be ‘gayed up’ after yet another disastrous date with a woman. Willow didn’t actually say much in that scene - and amusingly, the camera also focussed on Warren That was also pretty funny, and also, by the by, it’s a reference to Xander being straight.
So, that’s four references over dozens of episodes, all one-liners, all humourous, all understandable in context. Doesn’t amount to a flashing neon lesbian sign.
‘Gay now.’
‘It’s a good thing I realised I’m gay.’
That’s acknowledging her former feelings, not denying them.
That’s because, as I’ve said, straight is a ‘given.’ However, none of Willow’s speeches post-Tara include that line either. They were humourous one-liners.
I know your ‘every other episode’ comment was hyperbole, but 4 instances is hardly a lot when the issue is as major as sexuality. Apos - you are right, it could have been foreshadowed more. Though I bet there are some people who can find hints to Willow’s sexuality much earlier in the series, I would say they were few and only visible with hindsight. I wouldn’t have said her attraction to men was that strong though, apart from the two people in particular. Which male strangers was she attracted to? (genuine question). I just don’t agree that after she came out it was so overt, or overdone.
The sex scene with Kennedy was pretty trashy, yes, but as you said so were all the other sex scenes in that ep, which some have postulated (on other threads) was the whole point, as a contrast to Spuffy’s genuine romance. If Willow&Kennedy wasn’t that believable, neither was the rest of the sex in that ep, and apparantly it wasn’t meant to be. The lesbian sex was, plotwise, the same as the straight sex in that ep. It did generate a lot of hype - but it also fitted in with the plot.
I have to go now and probably won’t be online for several days, just in case anyone who responds to my post thinks I’m ignoring them or have nothing to say.
End the series at The Gift. She saved the world- alot.
Other minor changes:
Dru doesn’t kill a Slayer with her stupid finger waving and finger nail attack. One of the Stupidest Buffy moments ever. Dru gets staked. Spike then kills Kendra but is wounded so badly in the process he has to flee Sunnydale before Buffy can kill him.
The annointed one never is a kid. That gimmick went nowhere.
Riley isn’t rewritten halfway through his run. Maggie Walsh is the big bad, not Adam.
Buffy’s dad/family is addressed.
Anya and Xander get married.
Spike dies in The Gift, but is brought back by the PTB with his soul to act as a champion as a reward for his sacrifice. He then crosses over to Angel.
Season 6-7 never happen. Buffy movies every 3 years happen instead.
Oh, and Willow wears that eskimo outfit at least once a season!
Didn’t you think VampWillow’s open bisexuality was strong foreshadowing of a gay Willow? Remember that Willow was a bit weirded out by her Vamp self being “kinda gay”? Buffy reassured her by saying that when people are vamped they are nothing like their previous selves, and Angel begs to differ…
She seemed to think Dracula was hot, and she had a pretty steamy cyberromance with a computer demon in I Robot, You Jane, IIRC. Aside from the VampWillow foreshadowing, she seemed like your average, shy, nerdy high school girl.
I’m not one of the people who had a huge problem with gay Willow. I think it might have gone over better, however, if they had made her bisexual. There seems to be a huge reticence to portray bisexual characters on TV; in fact, I’d go so far as to say that bisexuality is more taboo on TV than gayness. We do see some bi tendencies in Karen on Will & Grace (and even from Jack, who often tongue kisses Karen), but that’s all I can think of. So, I think it would have been even more daring of ME to make Willow bi, but that’s just MHO.
A lot of people self-identify as straight early on in life, and then gay later. Why? Any number of reasons, including denial, a misunderstanding of what gay really means, a need to conform, internalized homophobia, or being in a relationship with an opposite-gendered partner. The self-identification as gay can happen as a result of an equally large number of factors, but one of the big ones is entering into a gay relationship, especially one that safely allows the person to explore their same-sex attractions.
It happens. A lot. People get married, have kids, and come out of the closet decades later, with nobody having suspected.
I think Willow’s coming-out process was well handled.
I don’t know how you’d do that, unless Joss had the ability to time-travel. It’s not like he had a plan “Ok, when they go to college, Willow will be gay! Yay!” Tara just was going to be a friend, but Seth Green left and people wanted Spike to be more interestedin Buffy, and hey, there’s Tara! As Marti said, it was just how people experiment in college. Furthermore, Tara was supposed to die much, much earlier. That’s the one thing Joss did always have planned, but she was pretty popular, so they kept her around an extra season and a half.
I personally always thought Xander should be the gay one, but then we wouldn’t have gotten Anya.
Well, if the first season had been a full season, it would have. He would have been the BIg Bad. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. And then they couldn’t do anything with him in S2, because the kid kept growing (as kids are wont to do). Of course, Joss didn’t realize until then that they didn’t have a way to kill him, because they didn’t want Buffy staking a child. Enter Spike.
I think it was effective and established that Dru had the ability to hypnotize people to the extent they couldn’t fight back, which was an important moment in Becoming.
That was my thought- they were too cute in doing the misdirection on the annoited one, in that they painted themselves into a corner of how to get rid of him. Overall a rare plot mistake during the golden era of Buffy. The character added next to nothing, and wasn’t very threatening either.
I disagree- it was beyond silly and I am getting rid of it. It’s my rewrite, and a well trained Slayer isn’t falling for it. Dru tries her wavy finger nonsense and gets staked by Kenda. A grief-stricken Spike then kills Kendra after a epic battle. A wounded Spike escapes before Buffy can stake him.
The wavy finger nonsense added nothing to the plot, and has to go. We can handle Becoming with a specialized hypno demon or spell, magic ring or something (how most problems are solved in the Buffyverse). If you go along, I will make sure Spike doesn’t wear a shirt for an entire episode- and has to fight a baby oil demon! Oh and Anya has to wear her outfit from the “I’ll never tell” number from Once More With Feeling.
I think that is far stronger proof that Willow isn’t gay.
Consider:
VampWillow is solely guy-oriented except for when she comes on to Willow.
VampWillow can’t abide her human self.
VampWillow knows as well as Angel does that vampires are based on their former selves.
Bearing these facts in mind, is it really too much of a reach to say that VampWillow knew that Willow fears being gay more than anything else, and so put on an act of gayness to wind her up? It’s certainly more believable than the Willow/Tara relationship, which went from Willow bawling with grief over her lost boyfriend to Willow balling with another woman in all of six weeks calendar time (after Thanksgiving through to Buffy’s birthday in mid-January).
If I could change one thing about Buffy, it would be to get rid of all the unbelievable and unconvincingly-acted lesbianity - which means “all of it”. Willow and Tara had zero chemistry, Willow and Kennedy had even less. It was nothing more than a shitty ratings grab.
That was also pretty funny, and also, by the by, it’s a reference to Xander being straight.
Dru tries her wavy finger nonsense and gets staked by Kenda. A grief-stricken Spike then kills Kendra after a epic battle. A wounded Spike escapes before Buffy can stake him.