Thoughts on Buffy Season 5

Cafe Society
21

Yeah, but it’s a comedy(/drama/horror) about vampires. To me, the “hook” to Buffy was the way she was exactly the opposite of what you’d expect from a Vampire Slayer: a petite, perky, slightly ditzy cheerleader. As the show went on, they got further and further away from that. Which is natural, since Joss wanted a show where the characters change and grow, and considering the sort of life Buffy lives, it was more or less inevitable that she’d grow into the person she was in season six. Which is why I think the show should have ended after season five. It’s just not fun to watch a clinically depressed Buffy. That’s not a character I want to watch a whole show about.

Besides, Angel does it better.

Oh, and Anya was one of my favorite characters, too. She had some of the best lines in the show, and her scene in “The Body” is a high point to a episode.

22

No, it really isn’t. It’s about a lot of things and there are vampires in it, but it isn’t about vampires or the slayage of them. If it were, then it’d be just like Charmed, which is about witchcraft stuffed in a soap opera and with cute people to appeal to a certain demographic.

23

There is not such thing.

I like S6. I think it’s better than 4 and maybe even 5. But perhaps it’s dark and I was going through a pretty dark period in my life when I watched it, so it spoke to me. I hated that they killed Tara; but Willow’s reaction, especially flaying Warren, was powerful. And Xander’s Yellow Crayon Speech left me in tears.

24

That was a special one time event which didn’t fit in the real time line. Joss knew better then to try something as lame as “life as the big bad” or make three pathetic nerds as the villans. That was just bad fan fiction. I even heard rumors that he contemplated killing off Tara, which everyone knows would just be wrong.

Nope, BtVS ended with The Gift.

25

Her character makes no sense, for starters. She clearly knew how to act human back when she was a vengeance demon - her job depended on her being able to blend in with people like the Cordettes so she could get people to make wishes - and yet as soon as she’s a regular character, she has no idea what she’s doing (she, in fact, gets progressively stupider for a while) because it makes her funnier.

And she is funny. In a way, though, that’s another reason I don’t like her. It’s kind of like in s7 where they give that abomination of a character, Andrew, some really good, funny lines, that I feel angry about laughing at because I hate the character so much. Of course, with Anya it’s to a much, much, much lesser extent.

26

I’ve had the opportunity to watch the episodes when they originally aired, on DVD and then on DVD again the next year, etc, etc, I’ve seen 1-6 around 5 times, and 7 twice.

I think people who dislike 6-7 are wrong :slight_smile:

Not because they’re not allowed to have an opinion, but because many people who criticize them (and of course I’m not taking about you) seem to have forgotten the positive parts of 6-7 and the negative parts of 1-5.

I think the real problem is that BTVS got more ambitious for season 6-7 (the First Evil as a Big Bad is a perfect example of that) but it didn’t really live up to it’s potential, and that’s interpreted as failure, and that’s extended to be a failure for the season as a whole.

To re-state/clarify: 6 and 7 tried to be something on a grand scale, Buffy was extremely depressed, Willow had an addiction problem, the First Evil is going to destroy the world (for real this time) and so on. What was the worst thing that was going on in season 4? A villain, that’s it, just a demon/cyborg trying to kill people. The season aimed low and hit it’s mark, and that’s a good thing. Season 6-7 aimed higher and missed by a wide margin, but they still scored as high if not higher then any other season.

1-5 (although less for 5) were lighter, they were easily digestible, they were about a bunch of schoolmates that fought vampires and saved the world, all the while making puns and wisecracks. Of course they had their tragic moments as well.

6-7 were about a Slayer that has lived longer then she should have, a Girl who has lost everything and still has to keep fighting, there are no authority figures, there is no one to turn to other then themselves and they end up failing as much as not (they’re barely able to keep the trio under control and those guys are mostly harmless)

6 dealt with more gray-areas then any other season. It was “dark.” Really explaining what happened in 6 would take twice as long as 1,2,3,4 or 5. Why was Buffy sleeping with Spike? What exactly happened in “Seeing Red” when Spike almost raped her? Should Spike be forgiven? I’m not going to look it up, but I remember a very lengthy thread on just that issue. How many heated arguments were there about Primeval or Band Candy?

Maybe the problem is that BTVS S6 is not the same show as BTVS S2. Some people didn’t like the show that S6 was, but don’t confuse dislike with quality, 6 was not inferior to any other season on technical merits, in many ways it was far greater.

The average quality of episodes bell-curved around season 3-5 (depending on opinions) but didn’t change drastically throughout the series. S7 had it’s share of stinkers, but also some of the best of the whole run. From episode to episode (I watch about 7-9 a week as a straight run S1-7+ATS1-5) I find myself anticipating and being ambivalent towards episodes at about the same rate regardless of season (starting @ about S2.5). There are just as many pointless episodes in season 5 as any other season. Glory is a terrible Big Bad (completely failing to capture what the Mayor had), Tara and Dawn suck the life out of the screen with their whining and stuttering, but the actual episodes are par for the course.

I hear comments about how Adam was introduced to late, or Maggie was killed off to soon, and that hurts the season as a whole, but it doesn’t hurt the individual episodes, BTVS is no more about Big Bads then it is about Vampires, Glory and the Mayor are the exception, not the rule.

Ramble ramble ramble, but maybe that’s ultimately my point: the later seasons are not the same as the earlier ones, the tone definitely changed, but there is still so much going on that people can talk and debate for hours about what it all meant, and why they thought it was good or bad.

Maybe you didn’t like them, but they are part of the story, and they make the overall adventure better by being there.

As an aside: I just watched Gingerbread last night and there is a scene where Angel is consoling Buffy and says something to the affect of: “It’s not about winning: you can’t ever defeat evil, but some things are worth fighting for anyway.” This of course is what the final message of Angel season 5 is, he gives a similar speech to the Fang Gang before the final attack on the Circle of the Black Thorn some five and a half years later… pretty cool.

27

Yes, we all know that. What I was trying to point out was that, from the beginning, the show had significant elements which were always dark, and to me, complaining that it is “too dark” seems inherently silly as the show was always “dark”.

28

She had to blend in, but she never had to be human. She knew enough to get by, but after her transformation she had to deal with all the little day to day stuff she never had to bother with, as well as coming to grips with the big issues, mortality, marriage, career. They did milk her awkwardness for comedy a bit too much though.

29

A ‘dark’ source material can absolutely be made ‘too dark’ - the original Batman movie hit a pretty good balance, for instance, excet killing off the joker, which was dumb. Batman Returns, however, wasn’t a Batman movie at all, it was a Tim Burton Weird-Fest, that happen to have Batman in it. Then the pendulum swang the other way, of course, giving us a slightly-silly, but okay nonetheless Batman Forever, then the wretched Batman and Robin.

Season Six had some of the most inspired comedy of any of the seasons, with the Nerdly Trio. It also had some of the darkest moments, with Willow’s corruption, and Spike’s attempted rape.

The trouble with it, for me, was that these elements weren’t properly balanced. I blame Marti Noxon.

I still like Season Six, but it is my least favorite, except for Season One.

Season Seven, on the other hand, saw a decent recovery - Tara’s gone, thank Og; Dawn’s not nearly so whiny and annoying; interesting plot shaped up … then Whedon gouged out Xander’s eye and ruined the whole thing for me, but hey, it’s still better than Seasons 6 or 1.

30

As Roger Ebert says, what makes a movie good or bad is not what story it tells, but how it tells it. Just because the stakes are higher in the last two seasons does not make them better by definition.

My problem with the sixth season is that all they gave us was tragedy, and after a while, you just become numb. The earlier seasons balanced the tragedy with a lot of lighter-hearted fair, which gave the tragedy that much more punch. Season two had what was, for me, the best emotional gut-check in the entire series: Buffy killing Angel seconds after Willow restores his sould. What gave it it’s kick was that the rest of the season was fairly upbeat. Season six, it was like Buffy was killing Angel every episode. About halfway through the season, I was just stopped caring. All the cumulative tragedies simply didn’t effect me any more.

How many heated arguments are there about Star Wars, as compared to Attack of the Clones? Volume of debate is not an indicator of quality, merely controversy.

Define “quality.” I disliked season six because the writing was, in my opinion, of distinctly lesser quality than in the preceeding seasons. Production values were generally up, but that’s more about having more money and newer technology. The fancy CGI monsters looked great, but they were generally not as interesting as the rubber ones they used in the earlier seasons.

I disagree entirely. The Big Bad season-long arcs are precisely what drew me to Buffy, and were a staple of every season except for the sixth. There were only three seasons where they really nailed the arc, though. The first season was too short to really give the Master the arc he deserved, the fourth season fumbled the ball in transitioning from Maggie Walsh as the villain to Adam as the villain (which they’d pulled off succesfully in the second season with Angel) and the last season just didn’t seem to know where it was going. But with out a doubt, the season-long story arcs are first and foremost what set Buffy apart from the rest of the sci-fi/fantasy television rabble.

31

Let’s get one thing straight, I’m not saying S6 was better then all the others; it wasn’t. I’m not saying that the perfectly balanced S3 wasn’t better; it was.

But S6 and 7 were good; they expanded the Buffy universe and made the characters 4-dimensional (they changed with time, often in complex/unexpected ways) The episodes themselves were just as good as any other season; there were some great ones, some slow ones and a bunch in-between.

I don’t agree with the argument that the season as a whole is bad (or even terrible) because the tone was too dark for too long. How is that any different then saying The Body was terrible because it was too dark for too long? The Body is to S5 what S6 is to the whole show; it makes it that much better as a whole. Another example: is Legends of the Fall a bad movie because it’s so depressing? This is what I’m getting at when I try to differentiate between personal preference and actual quality.

Very true, but that’s not what I meant to imply.

Here’s an awkward high-school basketball analogy: Season 2 was playing in the C conference and kicking serious butt. Season 6 got pushed into the B conference and didn’t really fulfill expectations, but the level of ball played was still better then last year, and not just “because the stakes were higher” I feel it honestly did play better on its own merits.

Fair enough, but don’t forget that most of season 2 wasn’t really all that great: Bad Eggs, Ted, Go Fish, Some Assembly Required, Inca Mummy Girl, Reptile Boy – not top-ten list material here, just filler (and the first three kinda suck).

Surprise/Innocence and Becoming, Part II were awesome, and really gave S2 something to brag about, but the season as a whole really doesn’t have that much going for it.

And that’s exactly what I’m talking about; people tend to forget the pointless episodes of the early seasons and only focus on the great ones, but when it comes to 6-7 they forget all the good episodes and only focus on how the season as a whole was too dark or too angsty for their tastes.

I’m not sure that’s a fair analogy, who was arguing about ideas raised in SW Ep1? Most arguments were about weather it sucked more then life itself or if it was just really really bad.

“Quality” was a decidedly poor choice of words on my part.

Writing wasn’t as good? Debatable, but you’re probably correct (The absence of Whedon I’d say has lot to do with this, he didn’t write any of the episodes himself except for OMWF)

As to rubber monsters I’d refer you to Beauty and the Beasts (The one were angle returns and Oz fights the Jekyll/Hyde guy as a wolf) That werewolf costume was beyond pathetic and really pulled me out of the episode, it’s hard to be engrossed in the action if your eyes are rolling back in your head.

My point wasn’t that I don’t like the arcs (I do) it was that the arcs do not make the show what it is anymore then the vampires do (which I also like)

Pick a random episode from S2, your very unlikely to get a great arc episode; you’re more likely to get a monster of the week. We didn’t even know Angel was going to try to destroy the world until Becoming, Part I
Now pick one from S6, there were hardly any pure monster of the week episodes, you’re going to get plot and you’re going to get episodes that lead into the next. Especially the unfolding plot of Buffy/Spike.

I guess where I’m coming from is that if you took each episode and rated it based on its own merits the seasons would come out pretty even, some better then others, and the “Great Early Seasons” would do worse then you remember. Season 1 especially is only really enjoyable for nostalgic reasons.

32

FTR, Season Six may be my favorite: Life Itself as the Big Bad. THis is the season that made me place Buffy among the greatest TV series ever.

33

Debatable. Which episodes in particular stand out to you? Looking at the episodes guide here, I’m only seeing six episodes I’d consider good: “Life Serial,” “Once More with Feeling,” “Tabula Rasa,” and the three episodes after Tara dies when Willow goes evil. There’s really nothing else in the season that I’d want to watch again. That’s six out of twenty-one episodes that I consider rewatchable, whereas in any previous season, there’d be an average of six out of twenty-one episodes that I consider to be among the best things ever shown on television.

Because “The Body” is forty-five minutes of “dark.” Season six is sixteen hours of dark. It’s the difference between using a pinch of salt to flavor a meal, and dumping the whole salt shaker on it.

Beyond a very, very basic level of technical competence, I don’t believe there is a difference between personal preference and actual quality.

That metaphor doesn’t work for me. The team doesn’t fulfil expectations because the stakes are higher, they fail because the competition is tougher. I don’t see anything in season six or seven that would necessarily be harder to write than the plot arcs of the first four seasons.

I’ll never understand the hatred “Ted” gets. It’s one of my favorites. It’s got a robotic John Ritter! How can you go wrong with a robotic John Ritter? I also quite liked “Bad Eggs,” “Go Fish,” and “Reptile Boy.” The other two I’m pretty “meh” on, but I’d watch 'em again if I caught the re-run. They’re filler, sure, but still entertaining. Which, again, is in stark contrast to most of the episodes in the last two seasons.

Quite a lot of people liked it, which I find odd. And quite a lot of people thought Episode II was better, which I find frankly baffling.

Funny, I almost used Oz as an example myself. Sure, the costume was crap, but I cared about the character and the situation he was in, so I had very little trouble overlooking the limited special effects.

Part of my problem with season six (and especially season seven) is that there really wasn’t enough plot to justify all the plot-intensive episodes. Did we really need a whole season of “Buffy deals with her depression?” After two or three episodes of that, they just started repeating themselves. There were a lot of plot episodes, but very few that actually did something to move the plot forward.

I suppose that would be the nub of our disagreement. I don’t think the later seasons, rated on their own merits, compare to the earlier seasons at all.

34

OK, now I have to ask: what was so bad about Season 1?

I Robot, You Jane, that was bad, sure. Never Kill a Boy on the First Date was pretty meh.

But I really enjoyed every other episode. Even rewatching it now - although I am willing to admit that part of it is nostalgia:

“Oh look at how innocent/young/thin/not-scarily-thin they are.”

But the Master was pretty cool. And watching the new relationships unfold gets me every time.

Daphne

35

I suppose your query is directed at me, Daphne?

Well, one, Season One had an abbreviated arc. I didn’t feel it had enough room to develop. Secondly, the relationship-bond between the Scoobies just wasn’t there yet. That’s an important factor of my enjoyment of the show. Thirdly, the Xander-pines-for-Buffy stuff is just painful, when everyone knows he should’ve been going after Willow. I mean, duh.

36

Okay, I’ll go with that, I don’t agree though, but that’s just opinion at this point.

When I watch BTVS, I watch the whole thing start to finish (including ATS) and in that context season 6 flows right along with all the others (it certainly helps that it’s partnered with ATS S4)

Going with your food analogy: ya; it’s salty. Maybe too salty for some, and I would never recommend just eating S6 by itself (or The Body by itself for that matter) but when taken as a whole it really does work. I look at the 11.5 seasons of the Buffyverse as one long movie. I don’t discount a season just because it’s dark, or just because it’s cheesy (S1) because they all work well together and tell a fantastic story.

If you want to throw a dart at the episode list and watch whatever you hit, then yes, aiming for the earlier seasons would be a good idea. They stand up well individually and are usually pretty light and easy-going (with just the right mix of drama)

But if you really want to get involved in the adventure, 6-7 are great additions to the canon (I admit that they both drag towards the middle though)

I’d even go so far to say that if 6-7 had been similar to 2 the show would have gotten really tired really quick. It was time for something different and the show delivered.

Oh, and I actually like Ted too, I basically like them all. Maybe that’s my problem: I think they’re all fantastic.

37

Well sure he should’ve been going after Willow. But how often do we go after people we shouldn’t and fail to pursue those we should? I can’t see that as a reason to dislike S1.

38

1.) Sentence meant to be semi-humorous.

2.) Just because you don’t see it as a reason to dislike the season, doesn’t mean someone else is wrong to do so.

39

I’ve never used that line. I’m more inclined to say that the people who disavow the existence of Buffy post-S5 are pathetic Tara-worshipping lamers who would rather make believe that Amber Benson’s best work on the show didn’t exist than face the fact that the stuttering lesbo witch they love so much was killed. But that is another (Pit) thread, Gentle Reader, and shall be told another day.

There’s nothing wrong with Buffy S6, there’s nothing wrong with Buffy S7 (except Kennedy, of course). They’re just not as good overall as S3.

40

The second paragraph above is how I feel as well. Re: the first paragraph, said folks are a loud presence in some corners of the internet, which can drown out the more sensible voices we see here.

CandidGamera, of course the relationship bond isn’t there yet. But the seeds are being planted. I guess that’s what I meant; it seems better in retrospect because you know what all the beginnings lead up to. Xander/Willow included.

But I still like most of the MOTW episodes from Season 1 - and Prophecy Girl was a great finale. Even I Robot, You Jane is better than Killed by Death, the only episode of Buffy I really never want to see again.

Daphne