Two weeks ago, I moved to Oregon to be Gr8kat’s caretaker. For eight hours a day, I help out around the house while her husband’s at work but with her being a non-demanding boss, there’s more reading, napping, and television watching going on than actual working. One of the television shows we’ve been watching together is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a program I had never watched before coming here and one she’s only just now rediscovering after a two to three year hiatus.
I’m really enjoying the show right now (we’re in the 2000-2001 or 2001-2002 season right now… I can’t remember. Tara just left Willow and Giles just went back to England in the past few couple episodes) but it looks like it has a SLOP (Series Long Overreaching Plotline - hi, **Eonwe ** :)) and so I’m obviously missing out on a ton of information here and I’m sure if I knew more of the story, I could enjoy the show even more.
So, can someone give me a breakdown of all the major characters (both regular and semi-reg, if possible… it looks to have a rich tapestry of characters, much like my favorite show, Deep Space Nine) from all seven seasons and the major plotlines as well? It’d be much appreciated.
There are several episode guides on the I’net, including this one , that give brief synopses of the full run. Also, the first four seasons are in DVD and available at most video stores. If you’ve just started watching it in the latter seasons then the biggest things you’ve missed have been:
Buffy’s romance with Angel
Angel becoming evil again (which caused the death of some characters)
Angel leaving
Willow’s romances with Oz (Seth Green) & Zander before going gay
Spike as a recurring rather than permanent character (and his beloved Drusilla)
The hijinks at Sunnydale High
Faith (the other slayer)
The Mayor (great character- he’s immortal but very neurotic about germs and profanity)
Thanks, Sampiro. I’ll check that out and come back with any unanswered questions.
I do have one right now though. When Giles left to go back to England, Kat said something about the actor playing him wanting to get out of the show for years and this was him finally getting his way. Is that true? If so, why did he want out?
And that worked out so well too, ASH being in, what, 2/3 of the eps after that?
There was also talk of ASH’s doing a UK-based Buffy spin-off entitled Ripper which, along with Buffy the Animated Series, has been kicking around in development for years without going much further. With Joss working on Serenity now I somehow am not holding out much hope for either series.
I like to add that any series that turns the two most popular (and the lead) characters into complete unsympathetic assholes leading into the series finale… is seriously balls out.
Here’s the best example of what I am referring to…
SPOILERS
I have no idea how to do that black spoiler space thing.
Now I haven’t seen it since it aired I may be off in my retelling.
Spike has been brainwashed by the First. He is now able to murder humans while in this trance. He is unaware of his actions. They have discovered that there is a trigger, a song, which will make Spike behave in this way. They have no idea how to break the brainwashing. Buffy allows Spike to stay in the house with all the Slayers in Waiting. Giles tries to convince Buffy that Spike is too dangerous to keep around and advocates killing him. At any tiem the First coudl activate Spike and he could easily kill all the young future Slayers if Buffy wasnt’ around. The stakes are too high. Buffy refuses because she needs Spike around. For what? Mostly because Spike gives her comfort.
Giles conspires with Robin Wood (the son of the New York Slayer who Spike killed and got the famous coat from) to distract Buffy and kill Spike.
Giels takes Buffy out on a patrol-
-While Wood takes Spike to his place and torments Spike as revenge for the murder of his mother. Spike remembers back to when he first became a vampire and how he turned his sickly mother into one in order to be with her forever. The song that acts as the trigger is one his mother used to sing to him. Spike was a momma’s boy. Spike’s mom then tears Spike down as a weakling and then comes onto him in the most sinister way. Spike kills his own mother. Wood plays the song in order to turn Spike into the monster who murdered his mother instead of the souled vampire that fights for good. Wood and Spike fight and Spike wins. He badly beats Wood and almost kills him. He also refuses to show any remorse for killing Wood’s mother. Spike then reveals to Wood that his flashback broke him of the brainwashing.
Giles’ lesson to Buffy while out on patrol is that sometimes leaders need to make sacrifices for the good of the cause. Buffy figures otu what he means and rushes back to the house to find Spike.
Later Giles tries to reconcile with her and further explain his side. Buffy turns her back on Giles.
Now the way the episode is filmed you are clearly supposed to sympathize with Buffy and Spike the two main characters. … but Giles and Wood are right. At that point knowing what they knew… Spike needed to be killed. He was too powerful, under the control of the THE VILLAIN and INSIDE of the house.
Buffy came off as incredibly selfish and not worthy of her position as leader (which is made more clear later in the season).
Oh and if you compare this episode with one early in the season where Anya has gone back to being a vengeance demon and kills a whole Fraternity… Buffy decides the only way to deal with her is to kill her. Xander tries to convince there might be another way but Buffy will not even consider it.
It worked out fine. ASH didn’t want to quit the show, but he wanted to spend more time with his family. So, they agreed to reduce his ep commitment from 22 to 12 in S6 and 14 in S7 - or more accurately, to reduce his shooting days from 150 to 80-100 (figures approximate).
She’s not really a bitch, just a bit dumb. Being a slayer seems to entail having a really big hammer and the myopia to view every problem as a nail (Faith, the other slayer, had a similar temperament).
Well, see, Spike’s been a big plot problem ever since the chip. There was simply no justification within the context of the show for Buffy’s not staking him as soon as she was able to without resistance. Even conservatively estimating two victims a week (which is probably an exceedingly low estimate) Spike’s body count would be in the thousands. Even if he was unable to hurt anyone at that point, his previous kills were more that sufficient reason to dust him. Since that wasn’t going to happen, Spike got what amounted to a season-long pass. He then started making himself genuinely useful to Buffy including protecting Dawn and Joyce on more than one occasion so despite his continued penchant for increasingly incompetent evil the pass continued. And of course getting a soul back meant for whatever reason he was entirely off-limits. Anya became entirely human (which meant she was off the approved kill list) and, other than assisting alt-Willow that one time, pretty much gave the evil a miss until she actively sought out redemonization after Xander dumped her. Now, Anya’s origin is sufficiently muddied so that it’s unclear whether smashing her necklace would have rehumanized her and it’s also unclear whether Buffy knew about smashing the necklace to begin with (it was alt-Giles who knew about that and there’s nothing to indicate our Giles knew it or that the same rules even applied in the mainstream Buffyverse), so given that Anya was actively killing dozens of people around the world of her own free will it was reasonable for Buffy to try to take her out. Thematically Buffy’s willingness to kill her and specifically her “I am the law” dialog served to show Buffy’s newfound preparedness to do whatever was necessary to combat evil (and by extension the First) - well, anything necessary except dust Spike that is - and it set Buffy up for her role reversal with Faith since it echoed Faith’s “I am the law” dialog from season three.