If I understand correctly,[spoiler] sometime in the 21st century ALL vampires and demons were somehow exiled from the Earth, and that condition held for some centuries before they returned. (per Whedon’s Frey comics.)
My theory is that Willow makes use of Dawn’s energy as the Key to strengthen the walls between realities, eliminating the “leakage” from universes where magic works and our own, where it doesn’t as a general rule. This would naturally cause all soulless vampires to immediately poof into nonexistence, demons to die, Wolfram and Hart to vanish from the world, witches to lose their powers, and ensouled vampires to become mortal humans again. Buffy then retires from Slaying (having lost her super-strength) and settles down in a menage a troi with Spike and Angel - or, rather, with William and Liam. Does Dawn survive? I don’t know.[/spoiler]
I don’t know how much this counts as spoilers, but I’m using the tag anyway.
First, the Slayer (or one of her ensouled vampires) is not the only thing standing between the world and instant destruction. There are other people fighting and killing vampires in the world–the Council of Watchers had to be doing something besides obsessing over a single girl at a time. There are many neutral and good demons in the world, as well as witches, wizards, and all matters of other people. Gunn and his crew certainly did a fair job of trying to keep the vampire/demon population under control in their part of LA. So you’re starting with a faulty premise here when you insist that if it wasn’t for the vampires self-policing, the world would be over.
Second, there are very few vampires in canon who show any amount of prolonged self-control. One of the things that set Angelus apart was that he had the ability to put off his own immediate desires–in other words, he could prolong the torture. This wasn’t something that vampires were known for. That’s why Angelus was so fucking scary. He was perfectly comfortable with delayed gratification. They’re essentially animals, driven by the need to consume, except they have human intelligence. That doesn’t mean they have the moral compass necessary to know the difference between right and wrong, or good and evil, that means they have the intelligence required to act in their own self-interest. How does that translate to morality? How does that mean that Buffy shouldn’t be killing them?
What we have in canon are countless examples of vampires doing what predators do–find a niche and settle in it. Like Sunday and her gang in S4 who used the college campus as their hunting ground. They were very careful about who they took, and they were very careful about setting it up so that it appeared as though their victims ran away or committed suicide due to the “stress” of college. Just because they had the ability to stop themselves from indiscriminately killing whoever they pleased didn’t mean they had the desire to stop eating people.
Beyond that, most of the vampires we saw on the show were minions. Harmony was essentially Angel’s minion in S5, if you think about it. They do the bidding of their master. Now, I don’t think I would go as far as saying they had some sort of society with rules that they all agreed to. Their hierarchy is much more simple–do what I say or I’ll kill you. That also doesn’t indicate they have some greater ability to control themselves or be good, it just means that minions were purely expendable but were self-aware enough to not want to turn into a pile of dust.
I was confused by your comment about joining vampire societies because there were very few examples of vampires joining anything in canon. There was Harmony’s pyramid scheme group, but I can’t think of any other organizations that welcomed vampires in. The Master’s group of vamps were all minions. Angelus only traveled with vampires he (or in Spike’s case Drusilla) made. Spike didn’t bother making minions in the 2nd season, but he inherited the ones that were already there due to the Master and the Anointed One. It isn’t clear if Kokistos was Trick’s sire, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he were. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Mayor’s cadre of vamps were all made by Trick or somebody else specifically to serve him.
So in essence, you’ve made some generally unfounded assumptions about how the Buffyverse vampires work, took some half-remembered elements of Spike’s story, and then concluded that the show was inconsistent with how vampires work. You’ve provided no in canon examples or evidence, except to cite Angel, Spike, and Harmony, and all of them disprove your thesis. You’re veering into fanfic territory–although if I were reading a fanfic with any of the premises you proposed I would be pretty skeptical of it.
Just rewatched the musical episode tonight on Logo. So good.[spoiler]Love how dirty Tara’s song was:
*The moon through the tide
I can feel you inside
I’m under your spell
Surging like the sea
Floating here so helplessly
I break with every swell,
Lost in ecstasy
Spread beneath my Willow tree
You make me com - plete
You make me com - plete
You make me com - plete*
More to the point, though, is the perfect double-meaning. Tara is singing about how she’s enchanted by Willow’s love, when in reality she’s enchanted by her magic. The lyrics are really well done to drive this point home.
The whole episode is so perfectly infused with plot relevance it still boggles my mind 9 years later.[/spoiler]Also while watching it I was thinking about where olive is in the series and how……she’s watching Angel, Cordelia, Oz and (soon to include) Faith, having not even met Tara, Anya, Dawn or Spike 2.0 yet.I decided that I’m really jealous; it would be so fun to wipe the series from my memory and watch it all again for the first time.
EDIT: Oh, and as for the hijack, I found pepperlandgirl’s viewpoint compelling.
Season 2 is over (MAJOR OPEN SPOILERS on Season 2 and part of 3 TO FOLLOW)
I just watched the episode where Buffy drops Angel’s ring on the floor and apparently the hell portal spits him out (naked! woo!) It’s not clear if he has a soul or not (I presume so). This raises so many questions about how everyone’s going to react. I think Angel would probably forgive Buffy, considering all the shitty things he’s done over the centuries, but I’m not convinced anyone else would forgive Angel, or even that Angel would forgive himself. I could see him lurking around for a long time before he actually confronts her.
The whole ‘‘desouling’’ process seems inordinately cruel to me, because really the gypsies aren’t getting revenge on the vampire who tormented them, they’re causing an entirely different being to suffer for no just reason. It sort of raises the question of vampire identity. It’s clear Spike is capable of love, and while evil Angel certainly didn’t love Buffy, he was strongly affected by her and seemed incapable of killing her. I also think it’s rather telling that he killed Jenny, the woman who theoretically could have stopped his de-souling, in order to stop the restoration. Major evil Angel cognitive dissonance going on if you ask me.
This show just became kind of brutal for me, on a personal level. Somehow over the last bit of Season 2 I have started to really identify with the Buffy character. I left home at her age as well and the episode they had on her trying to start a new life as waitress hit me pretty hard. I understand why she left; I really don’t see that she had a choice, yet I also can’t blame those who loved her for their feelings of betrayal. The whole thing is just getting a little too close to home.
After Dead Man’s Party I just bawled for about 10 minutes straight. Because in real life you don’t get your old life back.
I do have a question.
Why did she have to KILL Angel to close the hell portal? It opened with just some trickles of blood from his hand. Couldn’t she have just cut him superficially and closed it? Seems like she kinda jumped the gun there. I had to wonder if she did it because she knew he would probably never be able to experience happiness again once he realized what he had done to her. As if she decided she could spare him a lot of misery by killing him.
I also agree with **wintertime **(I read a couple spoiliers I thought would be safe) that really wasn’t the most devastating moment for me. I kind of assumed she would have to kill him. It was sad, but to me that scene was not nearly as moving as the ones that followed, as Buffy tried to cope with her grief.
As you can see, the plot has grown somewhat more… complex since I created the OP. Jeez.
We don’t know that Buffy actually “killed” Angel. From the Wikipedia episode summary (which seems to agree with my memory):
Blood is important. (This will come up again in the series.) Even if the Evil Angelus had just been replaced by Angel, he had to go. So she sent him (& Acathla) to hell. Probably one of several demon dimension hells, not necessarily the Christian one.
Ah, so you’re saying he would be sucked into the hell portal either way?
Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean obviously she didn’t kill him or else he wouldn’t have been spit out of the hell portal alive. And also I forgot the only way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through his heart.
I guess I was thinking in the very least there was a way to avoid sucking him in, but I see this is not true. Once the hell portal was open, she had no choice. In a way she was actually sending him to a fate worse than death.
olivesmarch4th - Keep us updated! You’re just now entering what most Buffy fans consider the single best season of all. I’ve really enjoyed reading your impressions - it’s been so long since Buffy was “new” to me, and your posts are a refreshing reminder of why I got hooked on the show way back when.
Just for future reference - later on in the series, Evil Angel is almost always referred to as “Angelus”, and most fans do likewise. It keeps things simpler.
But Angelus is suffering every day Angel has his soul. The demon is still in there, imprisoned, fighting to break free of his cage. That’s sort of the tragedy of the character–Angel suffers whether he’s doing good, bad, or nothing at all. The only person who insists that Angelus and Angel are two completely different beings is Buffy, and obviously, she’s got a pretty good reason to believe that. Angel knows better, and he’s never claimed otherwise.
They state explicitly in Angel that he never loved that person. He loved being and doing terrible things with him or her. But he never actually loved. They made fun of the 2 young vampires that were very much in love in “Heartthrob.”
I’m really happy I found this thread. I recently watched the first episode of Buffy because I love Firefly, and I have great respect for the opinions of the Dope. My reaction to the first episode is a feeling of having missed the punchline of a joke, and everyone is laughing but me. I did NOT like it and I really don’t understand what in the world convinced people to watch episode 2.
Lots of you guys are saying the end of season 2 is when it started getting good. Can’t I just watch it from when the good part starts, or will I miss something important and be unable to appreciate the goodness?
I started watching it from Season 2, as the set of DVDs I was given didn’t have Season 1. I eventually watched the first season after I had seen the entire series through to the end. I recommend doing it that way.
When Buffy began, dealing with a fairly dire family situation & a full-time job kept me from following any TV show religiously. But I heard good things, even though I was so not in the target demographic. And I got “spoiled” for some major plot points, just from reading about them. Catching random episodes, sometimes in reruns, was quite confusing. That guy can’t be Buffy’s boyfriend–he’s a bloodsucking fiend!..(snipping possible spoiler.)
Then I had some time off while somebody was offering 4 consecutive episodes a day; I began to catch on. I Netflixed through the whole series & bought the full set of DVD’s when it came out.
Essentially, I jumped into the middle of the show & became a fan. Knowing where it goes lets me enjoy the early episodes more. And I enjoy the later seasons, which some Original Fans disdain.
All of* Buffy* is available for instant download on Netflix. As is Angel, which is more of the same, only different…
In Season One, the only necessary episodes are “Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest,” “Angel,” and “Prophecy Girl.” Season Two can be done by watching “School Hard,” “Halloween,” “What’s My Line” Parts One and Two," “Surprise,” “Innocence,” “Passion,” and “Becoming, Parts One and Two.” There are only one or two filler episodes in Season Three.
