That’s why the whole “magic addiction” thing was such a blunder. Five years of character development had established Willow as someone whose weakness was looking for shortcuts to solve her problems (offering to sleep with Oz to “make up” for getting caught kissing Xander, trying the “delusting” spell, blanking Tara’s memory after their argument, etc, etc), and they throw that all away to give Willow a completely new motivation for going evil - “magic addiction” - phoey!
There’s someone who is heading for lichdom…
I’ll agree that the winsome Ms. Rosenberg wasn’t CONSCIOUSLY ripping Buffy from the choir invisible, in our favorite faux-Wiccan has a breathtaking ability to rationalize her evil deeds. But given the breadth and depth of her magical knowledge, it’s not credible to me that she didn’t know that heaven (or heaven-like) dimensions existed. It’d be like Reed Richards (who attempted something similar once, by the way) not knowing that both protons and electrons exist.
I love the character of Willow. She’s intensely interesting. But she’s not to be trusted. I was probably the one person rooting for her NOT to get back together with Tara, because she was going to get worse, not better. I’d be utterly unsurprised to see learn that she psychically pushed Xander, Anya, & Tara to agree with her plan. She clearly had experience with mind-rapes before the two we’re shown in S6; remember, when she neuralized Tara, she did it with ingredients she kept at her bedside, and when Tara looked up the uses of the herb she found, the mind-screwing was the first listed use.
Damn skippy. I think, though, it was a matter of losing their nerve, and not wanting to ruin the character for further use in a heroic capacity. What should have happened, I think, is that when Giles arrived to save the day, and Buffy told him that Willow was addicted to the magic smack, he (or Anya) should have listed all the ways Willow had slowly been going Darth since '96 or so. She’d have gone on to be the big bad of the last season.
Weeeelllll…the two are not mutually exclusive, you know. I think if we substitute “drugs” for “magic” (as was obviously the texty subtext), you’d find that a whole lot of drug addicts are people who look for shortcuts to solve their problems. The addiction happens when they use drugs as a shortcut to solve their problems (“I’m sad”, “I’m bored”, “I want to feel exhilarated”, “People like me better when I’m drunk”, “I like people better when I’m high”, “Work sucks.”) and then they can’t stop.
Willow’s treatment in England was as much about her learning to use her true power instead of relying on magical shortcuts as it was a magickal detox unit.
I disagree - V never bothered to hide his inner bitch; she was always proud, impatient and dismissive of others. In fact, up until now the only surprises we’d seen from him is that she can occasionally be nice. V was always just barely clinging on to human society by his fingertips, with only Roy and Haley’s leadership anchoring her down.
What we have now is something different - his grief and self-loathing over the loss of Roy and especially Haley (with whom she was always particularly close) has pushed him over the edge, leading to the recent unpleasantness. It’s not as if some vaneer has been removed, but rather that a certain aspect of her personality has been brought to the fore.
Hmm…I always thought Monica was like that with Chandler because she’s such a perfectionist - this is what ‘good relationships’ are like, so that’s what she/they should do. He says some really mean things to her sometimes (although it’s always OK cos it’s funny). I think they’re a good pairing, and I wouldn’t have Monica down as bitchy at all.
The shark porn one was on TV yesterday here btw, I did think, Wow, she is good to that guy!
I think Andy L’s point is that blaming Willow’s turn to the dark side on magic addiction is emotionally unsatisfying. It’s a letdown because it seems to imply that her corruption is not something she’s ultimately responsibe for; it’s an attempt to dodge the moral implications of the events. Ultimately it makes her corruption rather like the Angel-Angelus dichotomy: not her fault. Only no one (but Buffy, and possibly Fred, who are both special circumstances) ever lets Angel completely off the hook for the things Angelus did, because Angelus’s noteworthy viciousness was born in part out of the evil bits of Liam.
Saying Willow is a magic addict rather than someone who slowly got corrupted because of her odd combination of shyness, brilliance, body dysmorphia, self-loathing, and willpower is annoying. It lets her off because Aly is so incredibly cute.
Totally!
Marcia’s bitchiness really came out in the episode where she had to play Juliet. But IIRC, the other members of the family wrote it off as a kind of temporary insanity. What were they thinking?
Jan was bitchy too at times, but I’m not sure that was her nature. Between her frustration at being Marcia’s also-ran and her natural conclusion that emulating Marcia would have the desired results, who could blame her for it?
From what I remember, Mary was an insufferable goody-two-shoes in both the book and the show, and both pre-and-post blindness. I don’t know if she was “bitchy” per se. Perhaps the books cast her as the designated bitch in the years before the family moved to Walnut Grove. Once they got there, of course, they ran right into the double-barreled bitchfest that was Mrs. Oleson and her evil hellspawn Nellie.
You know who else was kinda bitchy? Father Mulcahy from MAS*H. Radar was bitchy as hell, but I think that was fundamental to the character and pretty obvious. From the beginning, the dichotomy between his looks and outward demeanor and his sneaky and slightly evil nature was played up. But with Father Mulcahy…he was supposed to be this lovely, easygoing guy, but he sure was good at needling folks!
Rose on Golden Girls. Yeah, she seemed sweet and naive, but I noticed several saucy comments from her directed towards Blanche.
Michael was supposed to be the ‘good guy’ on Arrested Development but ended up being overly self-righteous and ignoring his son’s feelings much of the time.
But what I’m saying is that Joss was saying Willow is a magic addict because she’s someone who slowly got corrupted because of her odd combination of shyness, brilliance, body dysmorphia, self-loathing, and willpower. I think the addiction was the manifestation of exactly that corruption. I think he did do exactly what you think he didn’t.
I think you’re both right. Willow does seem to have an addictive personality, and it makes sense for her to get “addicted” to magic as an outgrowth of the character bits you guys are talking about. Given the premise that “magic works like smack”, it makes sense that Willow would get hooked.
That said, I think it would have made a more interesting story if magic weren’t addictive, but Willow simply chose to become evil over the course of the series. It would certainly make the Scoobies suffer more - and isn’t that always the most fun? 
Having Willow turn genuinely evil, slowly, without drugs or vampirism or anything, would be far worse than when Angel turned. The Scoobies could say “this isn’t Angel” - but there would never be a point when they’d be able to say “This isn’t Willow that we have to kill now.” That would be agonizing, and hence awesome.
You have posted exactly what I was going to say, except far more pithily. As a reward, when the time comes, you death shall be quick and painless.
Well, quick, anyway.
Ah, I thought we trod that ground admirably with Wesley.
I’m missing something. When was Welsey corrupted? Are you referring to his kidnapping Connor? Because at worst that is indicative of an error in judgment. Also someone–it might have been you, but I don’t recall–once opined hereabouts that Wesley loved Angel more than anyone else did (in a manly way, of course) and his concern for his friend’s soul, even more than his concern for an innocent baby’s life, is what motivated him to throw in with Holtz.
Mary Richards - you just know that when things didn’t go her way, she’d pout and sulk. And passive-aggresively try to manipulate everyone into giving in to her.
StG
Back to Cap’n Picard, on a different tack. I like Patrick Stewart. At the same time, I don’t like this character, in a way that was not intended. Picard is an extremely egocentric n’ enthocentric man.
For all that the Federation supposedly embraces everyone as brothers, they are ridiculously egocentric. They are obsessed with “Big”. Big governments are better than small ones. Worlds must adopt more or less federation culture and assimilate. Just about every major installation is human-led and dominated, and even Vulcans have only a small share in the power centers.
Picard is basically a symbol of the Federation at its best, but that’s not good enough. His perpetual moral outrage over, well, everything, his unwavering sense of self-righteousness, his ego that he must be involved in everything. He will violate the Prime Directive any time it pleases him, but only when it pelases him, or the Federation has some other reason to act. He doesn’t respect it, he uses it as an excuse.
Granted, he’s not nearly so odious as Sisko from Deep Space Nine, who as the series went on became a particularly obnoxious manipulator who used extemely dirty methods and then launched into some rant about how he “hoped to God it was worth it.” Not that he believed in God. This was apparently his way of evading responsibility for his deeds. Sisko sparked wars and caused the deaths of untold thousands in the hope it would help him out.
I can accept a character who does dirty deeds if they are neccessary and doesn’t pretend it’s right or good - just better than the alternative. I can’t respect one who does them and then pretends he didn’t do anything wrong, or even complains about the results he clearly intended later on.
It might have been. But all that became clear mostly in hindsight, as I recall it. At the time it was mostly, “OMG! Wesley’s going off the deep end!” Until, of course, Angel…uh…went off the deep end. splash
He kneecapped a man because he wouldn’t leave his office. He was a sociopath by the last season of Angel.
In the first place, he shot the guy in the knee in the interest of motivating the other worker bees to concentrate on saving Fred. This is justified by the fact that it was FRED, who is, by actual calculations, worth 457,084 lawyers, secretaries, and assassins.
In the second place, he kneecapped someone who worked for WOLFRAM & HART. That’s like kicking the Joker in the balls. Knowing nothing else other than that the guy was a lawyer at W&H, one may conclude that he had done dozens of other things that merited a bullet in the brain in the knee. With the exceptions of Fred and Lorne, everyone who worked there was evil.
Yes, I know that implies Wes was evil and thus I have refuted my own argument. Bite me. 