I am as ardent a fan of Buffy as they come, it’s actually kinda pathetic. But there are still things about it that irritate me.
The two that come immediately to mind:
Buffy instantly assumes the worst whenever she sees her boyfriend du jour doing anything that could possibly be construed badly. She was at her worst with this with Angel, of course.
The stuttering. Could everyone stop stuttering, please? Newsflash: SOME people struggle with what they are saying SOMETIMES when they are lying or nervous. But not EVERYONE. I find it intensely grating. Worst offenders: Willow and Tara. But everyone does it. It must be a direction issue, but I hate it. (Spike doesn’t do it, but then, Marsters is 3 times the actor anyone else on the show is.)
If you just hate Buffy overall, that’s fine but I’m not looking to hear about it. I just want to know what bugs other people who basically love the show.
The way most people in Sunnydale seem oblivious to the supernatural goings-on despite their extreme obviousness. They notice only when it serves the plot. For instance, when Warren killed his ex they went through this great rigmarole covering it up, though a zillion people have gotten killed in previous episodes without anyone seeming to investigate.
Of course, I understand why they built that into the situation, but the longer the series goes on the more preposterous it gets.
Technically, Willow is a stammerer. And she’s so damned cute when she does it, I can’t be offended. Tara has a stutter, but it’s a deliberate character note. Notice it was a lot worse when she was first introduced, but got better and better as she became more confident. Since she broke up with Willow, it’s been almost gone.
What bothers me: the total lack of tactical preparation among the Scoobies. How many times have we seen Giles or Willow fumbling to load a crossbow after kicking down the door into a vampire lair?
Buffy’s manic-depressive cycle: “I can’t do it. He’s to tough and smart and all my friends hate me and I have bad hair. Oh, wait a minute, I’m the SLAYER!” <kicks ass> Can’t we just skip to the ass kicking? (See also #1 in the OP)
The occasional Gaping Plot Hole. Remember that episode last season where Glory kidnaped and tortured Spike? And the Scoobies, Buffy, and the Buffybot rescue him before he’s forced to reveal Dawn is the key? And they take him back to his crypt, which was where he had been kidnapped from in the first place? Like they’re not going to look for him there?
Also, their FX department’s chronic inability to make a cool-looking werewolf.
Well, I came on to the board and wanted to find out my post count. I clicked on CS saying “I wonder if they’ve started a Buffy thread yet…” I love you guys. It was the first thread on the page.
I think we just notice the stammering and stuttering on TV 'cause it’s not usually done, though it is a lot closer to how people speak in real life.
Agreed about the werewolf thing.
Joss likes to rip our hearts out on a regular basis. That’s annoying.
I’m annoyed that no one really seems to care that Angel and Angelus are two totally seperate people. They apply this to every other vampire (“He’s not the person he was when he was living” or “You die and a demon sets up shop in your body”).
I actually like the way the show handles the obliviousness of the citizens of Sunnydale. I mean we all know that vampires and demons don’t exist–so when they’re confronted with one, they just rationalize it away. Like when that demon was running amuk down Main Street & Riley flashed his badge and announced “I’m with the forest service, outta the way folk, we’ve got a wild bear!” Sure it didn’t look like a bear…but I betcha the next day, people were telling stories at work about that freaky looking bear that was running around downtown.
What bothers me: How often are the Scoobies scrambling around looking for a piece of wood to stake the vamps with? Come on–if you were confronted with vampires on a weekly basis, would you ever leave the house without a nice sharp stake? And a vial of Holy Water? But no–they have to wait for a chair to break to scrounge up a sliver of wood!
Let’s see…there’s Dawn, um, Dawn, and Dawn. Please just kill her off soon, I can’t take much more of her whiny, bitchy, show-ruining ass. :mad: I lose my keys all the time, can’t Josh lose just one?
The “magic is a drug for Willow” plot device annoys me,also. It just seems kinda stupid and has never been explained to my satisfaction. I think the real reason they did this is that Willow was becoming too powerful for the show. I mean, what do you need a Slayer for if Willow can just blast the nasty into oblivion?
All in all, I really enjoy the show. My brother turned me onto it when it started and I’ve seen almost every episode. Thank goodness for DVD. Can’t wait for June 11 to get the second season. Gotta start saving money now, though, the second season of The Simpsons comes out on the same day.
for ripping our hearts out, there is some masterful heart yanking coming up. Depending on your personal preferences, your heart may be getting ripped out, stomped on, and run through a meat grinder and served on a tasty bun with pickles.
Oh, yeah, well, when the boards went down I went off and found Buffy spoiler boards to hang out on. Heh heh.
I love the show, but the thing I’m beginning to find tiresome is the way everyone refuses to tell their feelings to their friends, causing everyone to misunderstand. You saw this last week with Xander, who stopped just short of saying the real reason he did what he did. If he had explained that, everyone would have been happier (“You’re not your parents, Xander.”).
The “magic as drug” is a trivial and hooks into all the various “drug addiction” cliches. It’s even worse since they were poised into doing something really great with the characters – having her being corrupted by her own power. Willow could have been the major villain this year, but alas, they didn’t have the nerve to take that path.
a) The fact that it became totally shite for a season, causing me to stop watching so that by the time it had become good again I’d lost the thread; and
b) The kabbess hates it, so I never get to watch it anyway.
The whole “only one girl in all the world” stuff, because it really is “one girl in all the world, plus her friends, and plus some military types with cool weapons, and some gang-bangers in L.A., etc.” It seems that the Scoobies et al. kill vampires much more readily, and sustain much fewer injuries, than they should be able to.
If the Council of Watchers pays its Watchers, and it does, then why doesn’t it pay the Slayers? Why should Buffy have to work at DoubleMeat Palace, or some such place?
Mainly I hate the fact that NO ONE CAN BE HAPPY!!! I understand that the show focuses around conflict, so do most shows. But still, every show has at least one person/couple that ends up HAPPY. So far, everyone’s been screwed constantly. I understand it’s part of life, but still, in my circle of friends, I seem to be the only one with consistant bad luck, everyone else has been well off for a good long while now. Can’t some of these people just not fuck up their personal lives?
The fact that, after fighting with the slayer, the rest of the Scoobies still suck. In the first episode of this season, they did a really cool thing with Willow using telepathy to takl with the others and organize. Obviously, they’d been training. Yet ONE VAMPIRE took the remaining four members to bring him down.
And someone related to that is the basic ineffectiveness of Spike once he became “good.” It always sickens me in shows when you have a seemingly invincible, or at least totally bad ass villain, but the second he becomes good, any chump can kick his ass. I’m sure if it ever came down to it and the two of them had it out, Xander could kick his ass now, even without the chip. And we’ve all seen how inneffective Xander is at fighting vampires.
The whole military “anti-demon” squad thing. That was just stupid.
And the ever changing aspects of the slayer’s powers. To my understanding, a slayer has strength roughly the equivilant of a vampire, no? So why is it Buffy could lift the Troll hammer with one hand and Spike could barely drag it on the ground? If she is that much stronger than a vampire, why is it she still gets beat up every now and again by a single vampire? “I have a lot on my mind” just doesn’t cut it for me. And why not use that combining thing to battle all the ubervillains?
Buffy’s money problems. I’m the Slayer, I’ve spent the past seven years intensely training in martial arts and weapons combat. I live in Sunnydale, a town with likely the highest “murder” rate in the world. I need a job that has flexible hours and doesn’t take up too much time. It would be really good if I was my own boss.
Solution - start a self-defense school.
“Magic as a drug” pisses me off because it is a rational development and could have been handled well. But they just threw it out there because they wanted to cut back on Willow’s power and they needed to advance the plot.
If you compare how they treated long-term plot elements like Reilly’s drug-induced illness (and his eventual departure) or Mom’s death (or even some subtle clues about Dawn’s arrival), the writers usually had plot arcs set out well ahead of time and could slowly develop them. They weren’t thinking ahead on this one.
Anya, Anya, Anya. Could you make a 1000 year old ex-demon, who has been witnessing humanity for all that time, any more one-dimensional?
Why is it everytime one of the scoobies have to research the latest menace to threaten Sunnydale all the volumes they consult look like they were personally printed by Gutenberg.? Shouldn’t there be new editions printed by the Watcher Council on file?
In an early season four episode, Willow talks about using magic and Oz warns her to go easy on it. It looked like the writers were planning a magic-as-smack plotline and dropped it for a while. In season 5’s “I Was Made to Love You” Willow makes reference to getting headaches and nosebleeds from spells, which had never mentioned before. I’m not saying in any way that the addiction plotline as written doesn’t suck, but they did drop a few hints along the way.
My main annoyance is that there’s not a single good actual father in the show.
Buffy’s father is non-existant, and apparently doesn’t care about his kids at all. Xander’s is an abusive drunk. Willows… uh, have we even HEARD about Willow’s dad? Tara’s made her believe she was a demon.
The only father figure in the show is apparently Giles… and he’s gone.
As long as we’re talking research, just once I’d like to see them come across something they already know about from previous research sessions.
“Wait a minute - I know this one. I read about it while looking up the <bla-bla> demon. All we have to do is stick a number two pencil in it’s nose. Let’s go!”
When they get basic things about teen life wrong it makes me angry- for example, when the scoobs were applying to college. Perhaps it was because I was going through the same issues, but they got a lot of basic facts wrong. You can’t apply early decision to more than one school, for example.
Could go on, but alas my internet time is up. When I get back to teh states I’ll make a list.
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