I can’t respond to the poll because none of the options accurately describes my opinion, which is that both seasons had some of the best episodes the show ever did, and also some of the worst. They both suffered from some significant structural problems (Season 6’s maddening inconsistency of character; Season 7’s endless BuffySpeechifying and the whole “UberVamps” nonsense), but the average quality overall was still well above average for television.
And OMWF by itself made all the shitty episodes worth it.
You’re talking about “The Zeppo”, I think - and I’m surprised you don’t think that Xander “mans up” in this episode. He saves all his friends’ lives by calmly, logically staring down the aforementioned zombie-bully while a bomb ticks away one meter from him. Oh, sure, the scoobies are off saving the world from some damn apocalylpse or other - but the whole point of this episode is that while everyone thinks Xander is useless, they’re mistaken.
Though I think Faith has at least an inkling that Xander isn’t useless.
Hated the inconsistency, both in the writing and characters, hated the plots, hated that it lacked the charm of the previous seasons. It was clear that Whedon had changed his focus to other shows.
I’ve gone on record several times saying that I thought it should have ended at Season’s 5 suicide leap, and I still stand by that. It would have been a courageous ending for a great show.
Alternatively, I recall another Doper suggesting that the show should have been continued - but without Buffy, and focusing upon Willow, Tara and Dawn’s new “family” - how they learned to cope with grief, move on with life, and so on whilst fighting the demon menace.
That would have worked for me. The resolution to the Glory problem–saying that Dawn was basically a mystical clone of Buffy–could have been an easy lead-in to her being the new Slayer.
They’re not the strongest seasons for me, because the addiction thing got ridiculous - yes, having it be an addiction is sort-of OK, but treating it exactly the same as drug addiction isn’t - and because some of the slayerettes were annoying. I’ve also never warmed to Dawn. However, there were enough plus points to make both seasons well worth rewatching.
I like them, but not as much as the other seasons. I first watched season 7 as a Boxing Day marathon, so I wasn’t fully coherent all the way through, but it’s a good memory.
I think it’s easy to confuse how much one likes a season’s story arc and how much one likes the individual episodes in that season. I didn’t much care for the Big Bad in season 4, for instance, but I like a lot of episodes in that season.
DtVS could have been quite good. Watching her trying to learn the ropes, with no help from the Council and no training, no Watcher. The Scoobies each taking a different role in her education. It would have been better than what we got, in any case.
No, it was a brand new plotline for season 6. In season 5 Willow and Tara got in a minor tiff because Tara let it slip that Willow was growing so powerful that Tara was a little scared of her, and reading spellbooks on the sly just to try to keep up. So in a sense Tara started nagging Willow about her use of magic in season 5, but the addiction angle was brand new for season 6.
And it never stuck. Every glimmer of Xander maybe not being everyone’s bitch was crushed. In the Dracula episode he says something like “I’m tired of being everyone’s butt boy,” or, something like that, and it was another time I thought that he would toughen up a bit. But he never really does.
No, I can’t stand Dawn. I like her even less than Buffy. I just mean that a show can exist without a likeable protagonist. See: House, M.D.
ETA: I should have been more specific. Buffy was likeable in the early seasons of the show–maybe up to about four. But in the latter seasons she was not likeable, and I don’t think she was truly meant to be liked. Empathized with, us, but not liked.
ISWYM. A lot of shows do seem to have a central character that’s a lot less popular than the side ones, it’s true, and I reckon Buffy was less liked than Willow or Xander. But I still liked Buffy in later seasons, personally; actually, I can’t think of anything she said or did that was obviously dislikeable - certainly not like in House where he’s meant to be a bastard (viewers do like him, though, don’t they?) - and she was still funny and hard-working and kicked ass.
By Season Six or so my dislike for the actress was starting to out-weigh my liking of the character. Hell, my cat was starting to out-weigh the actress!
While I enjoyed watching Willow as a character, and while I thought Aly Hannigan was quite a stealth cutie, I did not, by any stretch of the imagination, like Willow Rosenberg. She didn’t even have the minimal integrity of the vampire characters–she wouldn’t admit that she was, on balance, a bitch.
I didn’t find her that way at all, but I can see where you’re coming from. Perhaps I get the idea that Willow’s widely liked because so many Buffy fans I know are lesbians - though they liked her before she came out too; she fits a particular type. Or perhaps it’s just that so many geeky women watching would identify with her more than a former cheerleader like Buffy.
