Buffy Series Finale (Buffy spoilers, please no Angel spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

I’ve just finished watching every single Buffy episode over the last 4 months (China doesn’t know the meaning of non-pirated!), and I feel compelled to discuss the final episodes of the last season. I’d been reading the related thread about each episode here in the Cafe archives, but it seems that the threads from about June 2003 to January 2004 were lost…

So, the adventures of Buffy Doo went out with a bang, but it was not very satisfying. I love the series; it’s likely my favorite television show of all time, and I desperately wanted to love the final season. The Spike storyline was probably the highlight of the season, up to the pity “I love you” that so perfectly demonstrates why I love the show. Even at the redemptive Deux Ex Machina end, Spike and Buffy didn’t have that moment of earth-shattering perfection between them; it was still muddled, though as clear and warm as it ever could be. It wasn’t easy, but it was a satisfying resolution.

The problem with almost everything else was that it was either too easy, unsatisfying, or discarded, or some combination of the three. The solution to the Big Bad didn’t have any real drama to it; Willow’s role was just very confusing, since she was allowed to do magicks some of the time, sometimes powerful, but other times she couldn’t. There was no real explanation of how she conquered the dark side. Or if she already had, then why wasn’t she just using her magicks directly to whack the Hellmouth army? The releasing the Slayer power to all potentials had to be just as dangerous and powerful as direct intervetion, no?

With regards to the final battle, I was surprised by the lack of anything special. It was just big brawl, buffy and scoobies getting beaten up, buffy getting pissed, buffy and scoobies kicking ass, then Spike basically wipes everyone out himself. The last was a surprise, sure, but it didn’t feel earned; no dramatic tension there. The amulet just suddenly went nuclear, and there was no struggle (moral or physical) to activate it or anything.

There also didn’t seem to be any satisfying innovation in tactics, as was demonstrated in seasons 3 and 4. Sure, turning everyone into slayers is a new tactic, but in the end, the battle plan was essentially “Let’s go down there and whack things with our pointies”. A bomb was used in the 3rd to last episode; seeing as how such things are established so recently, why not at least attempt to just open the seal and line the chokepoints with explosives and wooden shrapnel? I mean, part of the growing up of these characters involved the understanding that you shouldn’t always just charge in there when you’re a leader, something that was pointed out with big neon signs by both Buffy and Faith’s ambushed expeditions…

It didn’t really matter too much, since The Big Bad, at the end, had all the cleverness of a weak-minded monster of the week; the legions of Hell just showed up to die. Where was the wickedly clever fiend that mind-boinked 90% of the cast earlier in the season? Surely the First Evil could have put up a better show?

Back to the Thousand Slayers-- did anyone else think this was totally unnecessary, given Spike’s light-bomb? I feel really uncomfortable with this, as, again, it seemed too easily achieved. And wouldn’t evil be pretty much screwed now? What would be the ramifications for Angel (non-Angel-spoilin theorizing only please :))?

As for the character development and relationships, some good work was done, especially with Andrew, Spike, Buffy, and Faith. Buffy was a collosal bitch a lot of the time, but it was perfectly in character, and it was something that she dealt with at the end. The superiority thing is something that has hovered around on the fringes of her interactions for almost the whole show, and was a fantastic theme to explore in the final season. Also, the one thing I liked about the Call the Slayers solution was that Buffy chose to give up the main catalyst of her superiority, namely her (almost) unique Slayer status. Great thematic stuff.

Andrew, Spike and Faith were the most interesting characters this season, and it’s probably no coincidence that they all were evil, and they were all redeemed. The redemption process was different for each of them, and they are Buffy’s (and friends’) greatest triumphs. I guess it makes sense for these guys to be featured in the battle against the First Evil; they conquered their own evil, and perhaps served as the most important blows against the FE. I also liked that it was not Buffy that provided the final solution but Spike, since he is Buffy’s greatest victory as an evil redeemed, not destroyed (and again, I didn’t dislike the Spike-sun solution, just that it happened without much struggle for it). It really makes the Spike-heavy content of seasons 4-7 have much more significance, since the Peroxided One is perhaps Buffy’s most unique legacy in the annals of Slayer history, and it makes sense that it would be such a long and hard road to travel. Again, great theme that did pay off.

The other relationships and loose ends really seemed quite poorly done, though. Xander didn’t really seem to have developed from his season 1 character, other than having the occasional good speech. Willow-Kennedy seemed very forced, and Willow-everyone-else was basically all business talk. Giles seemed to become one-dimensional again, and Anya was pretty much useless, though she became somewhat interesting as she found Xander again. Dawn was less annoying, but again didn’t seem to develop much; Buffy-Dawn was just more “I’ll protect you” crap. The Slayers in Training took up way too much screen time, and were too numerous to matter individually; I wish there were only the original 3 that made it. I was disappointed that the core characters didn’t really have to face their own personal issues as much as Buffy and the 3 Redeemed Ones did. Xander didn’t really have to deal with The Lie and The Musical deaths. Giles and Buffy never really hashed out their deal. Willow never got a chance to go to the brink and back; I was really hoping they did an episode focusing on her mastery over her dark side, even if it meant that Kennedy would have to play a crucial role. Amy was never resolved, and it’s disturbing how she’s getting to be close to Willow power while being quite malicious if not evil already.

In all, I guess I was just hoping for something truly spectacular for the end of Buffy, something that would show the growth of all the characters and relationships, and something that would have each character’s self-improvement somehow contribute to the final victory against a diabolically-clever foe that still almost manages to outwit them (as opposed to the brute force approach).

At least some of the humour was back (D&D Giles!!)…

The finale was still great television, and I am now extremely sad that my scoobs are no more, but I just wanted so much more from it. What did you guys think?

(psst… please put Angel spoilers in little boxes… Tortured Vamp: The Series coming up next :))

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That, and uhm, perhaps calling thousands of Slayers to be active all at the same time. :smack:

That might not have been done before :wink:

3

Joss et al didn’t have a story to tell. So they just made it up as they went along. UPN offered them one more season and hey, who’s gonna turn down a job offer which will provide another year of steady income?

Related Angel S.5 spoiler:

There was no story in this season either. It just ran out of gas.

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That’s because the First Evil was just a Monster of the Week.

5

By far, my biggest problem with the finale was that these super-bad-ass uber-vampires suddenly became as easy to fight with as a normal vampires. The first one nearly kills Buffy, but then suddenly mortals with swords can fight them off.

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Hmm, I don’t think so. There were great stories there to be told, but the execution just fell apart. The writers sort of touched on some of them (which shows that Joss probably did have a scheme for the season, but didn’t have time to develop it), and left others completely unexplored:

  • The exploration of what it means to be a leader. Buffy had the mantle most of the season and they did kind of go into it, but wasted way too much time doing so. The speeches were, for the most part, poorly written and inconsequential. The raising morale bit with the Thunderdome was cool, but the mutiny aspect took too long in coming, and the resolution just didn’t feel satisfying (Buffy just came back and everyone fell in line, yay). It would have been nice to see Buffy admit her boneheadedness and then have a nice quippy strategy session with lots of folks contributing and building upon ideas and Andrew drawing colorful maps and Buffy defusing an argument (instead of causing them) and making a final decision. Or something-- anything-- that shows that Buffy has learned something and is putting it to use…

  • The First Evil is an inspired villain, perfect if handled well. Just this alone would have made a great season had the FE lived up to its moniker. Conversations with Dead People was the zenith of the FE’s villainosity, after which it dropped off precipitously into MOTW.

  • Atonement and facing up to past crap. The characters on the show have built up a lot of baggage over the years, and some of that was resolved fairly well (Spike, Andrew, Buffy-sorta), but some of it wasn’t (Willow, Xander, Anya). A more thorough delving into this and the relationships between the core would have made the season, even if much of this remained inconclusively resolved. I was hoping they could have worked it in to the main arc by perhaps having the inner circle having to join together for a massive spell against the First Evil, but the catch being that if any had evil (or doubts or whatever) in his/her heart, it would fail.

  • War. Expanding the scope of the Buffy fight is a great idea for the final season. With such a great set-up of Bringers all over the world striking the initial blow, this feature was another potentially great storyline. Bringing Riley and the government back in the loop would have been great to see, and I was having a great time imagining strategic battles happening all over the world for important mystical artifacts, allies, etc. Buffy and company having to scour the globe and lend a hand in various engagements, all while holding true to the plot arc, character development, and cracking wise… One can dream. Even if Paris was the studio parking lot, and Moscow was an old factory, they could have made it work…
    Perhaps Joss didn’t have a bunch of big ideas for season 7. But given the quality of work in Buffy overall, I have to imagine some of the big ideas were there, just neglected. Alas…

Hot pockets!

7

I still cringe when I remember those awful Slayerettes. Especially that snooty little biatch who against all reason ended up as Willow’s new girlfriend—whafuck? And the one with the hideous southern accent. Oy, they were awful. It was a relief when Capt. Mal turned up and started killing them.

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To each his own I guess. What was S.7 about?
BtVS used to be an allegory, sometimes non too subtle, sometimes convoluted in many layers,.
Even the much bitch slapped S.6 stands up: “Crap, life as a grown up isn’t all I thought it was gonna be.”
But S.7, with some good episodes and a good idea for BB ended up being … Charmed, Too much soap, not enough drama. Too much about killing vampires and fighting an evil guy (which the show was never about).

So, in 20 words or less - What was season 7 about?

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I agree, there wasn’t enough drama. And the season is really too disjointed and half-hearted in its execution to say what it was about. But taking the good elements, this is what it should have been about (i.e. it had a reason for existing):

“Learn from your past mistakes and use them to become a better person. Grow up for real, Buttmonkey!”

This works in terms of being a leader, being a strategist, being “useless” (though come on, Xander saved Buffy’s life the first frickin’ season, so how useless could he be?), being a friend, believing in yourself, not keeping secrets from loved ones, etc. Every season has had some members of the cast screwing up big time, and season 7 led the way. It would have been really sweet if they had followed through and made that the consistent driving theme; they made some inroads with some of the redemption storylines and tried (but failed) with the leadership catastrophes. They could have really tied it all together by the First Evil testing them in all the ways they’d previously screwed up (desire for vengeance or power, jealousies and rivalries, distrust and keeping secrets, horrific battle tactics, etc.) and more importantly, having the kiddies not making the same mistakes and passing the tests of character. This actually did happen for a bit, but then it seemed as if the First Evil stopped trying and the characters just became really stupid half the time, but that didn’t stop everything from being peachy keen anyway. No growth? No biggie… :mad:

10

It was about 6 episodes too long.

I felt the ending was way too deus ex machina. If Spike’s amulet hadn’t gone postal on the ubervamps, Buffy and the Slayerettes would have been toast, or should have been toast. Somehow it got much easier to kill the ubervamps when there wasn’t just one of them.

The main thing about Willow’s spell creating the hoards of Slayers was that Buffy was no longer needed to carry the weight of the world. It was her reward, getting her life back.

11

IMHO, the series would have been perfect had it ended when Buffy took the big dive. A recurring theme in the first few seasons is Buffy’s dread and fear of dying young, which was almost a certainty given her occupation. How many times did she lament tearfully, “I’m not ready to die.” Yet she perservered and came back again and again to fulfill her destiny. And in the end, she took her OWN life to save the world. Wow. What a great, bucket of tears, satisfying ending that would have been for the show.

The last two seasons, and the real ending IMO were “meh” not “wow.”

P.S. Ultimately her death would have been better for Angel (the show), too, because he could have moved on without alienating the Buffy fan base.

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Where do you live? I also have watched all 7 seasons of Buffy on DVD and live in China. I’m in TEDA, Tianjin.

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Season 7 is not yet available in the US on DVD. And, as I understand it, our DVDs don’t play well with others, so we can’t buy the overseas ones. (And what is up with making us wait??? I can’t imagine it helps sales.)

However, reruns are on all the time, and I do have most of Season 7 on tape, although I am mostly waiting for the DVD.

I have just gone through Season 6 on DVD, and I think its faults are shared by Season 7. But let me say first that each time I watch Season 6, I like it more. There are a lot of nice things in it, even aside from the sublime Once More With Feeling.

Like Season 7, nothing happens that you think isn’t possible, but it isn’t introduced properly. What does Warren really want? The other two geeks clearly want to feel cool without having to face too much real life. But Warren was able to get a pretty good girlfriend all on his own, and was doing well in college. He wasn’t so afraid of life, and could have gotten stuff the mainstream way.

This lack of focus on his motivation is what made his shootout perplexing; and his reaction when tied up by Willow was also perplexing. I never felt I understood why he shot, and why he wasn’t terrified by Willow. (Or why his terror came out as bluster.)

I also never felt I understood why Willow would turn on her friends in her power. I can make up some good stories why, but the point is that it should have seemed inevitable, but it never really was explained.

Same with Season 7: I could believe that they would cast Buffy out, but not the way it was presented. Nor the way she came back. It was great that Spike was the savior; implying that if it had gone differently at so many possible points, and Spike hadn’t been there, then it wouldn’t have happened. (Don’t bring up Angel doing it, thank you.) But that wasn’t done quite as strongly as it could have been, nor was what should have been everyone’s surprise when they found out that Spike was crucial after all. Also, this surprise was so cool, it is like the writers forgot to provide Buffy with an actual workable plan. The potentials become slayers, but that was clearly almost nothing as a real offense, as it turns out.

So, overall, some weak tie-togethers between some very nice moments indeed.

Season 7, Spike and Buffy in the cellar just before the baddies kidnap Spike: Was that the best lighting of a scene you ever saw, or what? Him all in cold light, her all warm.

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Control. He wants to control other people, especially women. Which is why he built himself a girlfriend. IIRC he built April before he started dating Katrina, and then abandoned April in the course of his relationship with Katrina, which is why April came looking for him. Couple that with some really fucked up ideas about women (gleaned from April’s programming and statements) and that’s pretty much Warren. He started off wanting to control April, then Katrina, then Sunnydale (along the way trying to control Katrina again). Along the way he started controlling Andrew and tried to control Jonathon who, when he resisted, was dumped. And then Buffy kept mucking up Warren’s plans, in the end crushing his two spherical objects kept in a sack at belt level. Buffy emasculated Warren and he struck back with the utimate phallus, a gun.

Because his misogyny led him to believe that there was no way any woman could be his superior.

She desired revenge, first on Warren and later on the world, and they were standing in her way. Willow was insane with grief, she was not required to act rationally.

15

If Warren wanted control so much, he would have stayed with April. But he found out it wasn’t what he wanted–he even fell for a strong woman instead. If anything, what he really showed there was a strong desire to evade responsibility: just leaving April, and then fingering Buffy and leaving her to fight April while he went off after Katrina. No woman hate there that I saw.

I could believe misogyny more if his crimes had showed that. But mostly as one of the geeks, they were more into getting laid when the topic came up, but it wasn’t the prime motivator. He did show some of this in the later bar scenes.

And if he liked manipulation, he would have built up one of the others and hid behind him. If he liked control, he should have tried to be the clear leader, and mostly he didn’t.

And actually, misogyny would have been a good motivation for him, if they had set it up more strongly.

Willow in grief, turning from revenge to kick Buffy’s ass? She could have left anytime she wanted, but got distracted? Just doesn’t work for me, not her best friend.

Of course, we could both just be picking up on different cues. I think one of the strengths of Joss Whedon shows is that people like such a variety of things in them.

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[aside]
It’s easy to reprogram your DVD player to make it region free, and not illegal in any way. Your American tv set will handle PAL nicely, if it’s less than 10 years old, however, the transfer between frame rates and resolution might muck up the quality of sound/picture.
The reason it’s later in the US is because the production company wants to earn money from syndication before putting out the DVD. Since syndication is an American concept, they’re not worried about releasing it earlier in other markets - especially since the region system is supposed to keep discs away from different markets.
[/]

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Season 7 was about Girl Power. That’s pretty much it. Who’s got the power? Buffy and her gang – and now, every potential slayer has the power. That’s a lot of powerful girls.

Basically, it was about these girls (played via Buffy) coming to the realization that they DO have power–and they can win–despite what everyone in the world (the First, Caleb, Giles, etc.) tells them. (And you girls out there can do great things in this world, too!)

But that’s far less of a storyline than other seasons of Buffy, and the episode-to-episode plotting was really thin. Not like in Season 3 or 5, where just about every episode–even MotWeek eps–contributed significantly to season-long plotting and character development.

18

I’ll do it in one. Healing.

I’ve liked every episode of every season. Seven was no exception. And the finally was great. To each their own I guess :slight_smile:

19

Having a thing is not always as satisfying as one thinks it’s going to be. And when he lost Katrina he didn’t try to get her back as an independent woman; he tried to get her back as a sex slave and when that didn’t work he killed her.

Responsibility is not the same as control. And it is an oversimplifcation to think of misogny as “woman hatred.”

Not sure why you think he’d have to build someone up and hide behind them to manipulate them. He was manipulating Andrew quite well against Jonathan, and was not doing that bad a job of manipulating Jonathan. What did Warren want either of them to do that wasn’t done? As far as being the leader, clearly he was. All of the Trio’s schemes were IIRC hatched by Warren: the museum heist; enslaving Katrina; going after the power balls; etc.

Not sure how much more strongly they could have set it up. Warren treated women as objects and slaves. Just because he wasn’t twirling his mustache and growling “oooh, women, how I despise them” doesn’t lessen the extent of his utter disregard for women.

Well, the next time your lover is killed before your eyes and you absorb the darkest magicks available and become the most powerful and corrupted witch in the Western hemisphere, we’ll see how you react.

20

What could be more misogynistic than seeing women as objects so completely that you build one?

I’m with Toadspittle. Girl power. And given what the series was (about an inordinately powerful girl), a fitting end, I thought. But I think the evil reaction to girl power, that is, misogyny was played pretty strongly. Caleb was frightening :eek: :eek: . Well, actually, Zell Miller was doing a pretty good impression of him at the RNC, but I digress…

Personally, I always thought there was a pretty good argument that each season Joss conceived unconsciously mirrored his internal states: the first season being a reflection of his joy at discovering a new medium (power) and the parameters of it as the show got picked up. Then, (leaping ahead for brevity’s sake) the sixth season reflecting his increasing disillusionment with the resurrection of the show (Buffy’s coming back to life and “I feel dead” storyline) and attempts to “inject” some life back into it (Spike), and the last season, his wish to give the show back to the fans (potential slayers) and exit stage left, leaving nothing to come back to (the big hole that was Sunnydale). Of course, I’m a shrink and read way too far into everything, so YMMV :slight_smile: .