The curtains close on a kiss, god knows
May. 23rd, 2003 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyNot closure on Buffy, 'cause no such animal, but closure on S7.
1. Name your favorite character ever. Yes. You can only pick one.
Giles.
2. Give one line you love:
Still having to explain wherein this is just my outfit.
3. Favorite three episodes:
"Normal Again"
"Dead Things"
"Doppelgangland"
4. Favorite villain:
The Mayor
5. Favorite song used in a scene:
K's Choice, "Virgin State of Mind."
6. Favorite season:
Third. Then Sixth.
7. Scariest episode:
"Normal Again"
8. Best kiss/sex scene/romantic whatever... it can be tame or not:
The end of "New Moon Rising": Willow and Tara and the candle.
9. Favorite relationship (of any kind):
Spike and Drusilla
10. Set/location you'll miss the most:
The cemetery
I've decided, in my own head, that the problem with S7 is that it used the Junior Slayers (as a metonymy for the plot) as an excuse to avoid doing the character work that I think most of us would genuinely have preferred to see. So I'm just going to do a run-down of the places I wish they'd gone instead, and then maybe the Slayerettes will quit hanging around in my head, bugging me about it.
So, starting with
Dawn (whom Joss has said he also feels they short-changed). I don't know where Dawn's story would have gone if they'd followed up on the pattern visible in "Lessons," "Him," and even "Conversations with Dead People," where she's talking with Kit on the phone. I liked Kit, okay? I thought Kit totally rocked. And the classroom scene in "Lessons" was hysterically funny; I would have liked to have Dawn's life in high school be a major part of the season. Which leads me to
Buffy. I wish, very much, that they had chosen to treat Buffy's job--not seriously, because they're Mutant Enemy, but with respect. I wish that they'd done what HL and I have been saying they should do since "Flooded," and let Buffy start a self-defense class (perhaps in the space that was once the Magic Box?). Yes, Buffy was a terrible counsellor (and I love Robin for admitting that), but she didn't have to be as terrible as she was, and they didn't have to treat her terribleness as a joke. Buffy does know what it's like to be in high school and miserable, and if they could just once have let her display the insight she shows in "Earshot" ... well, it would have been a different season. They got very lazy about the social realities in S7, which segues me into
Xander and Anya. Xander hasn't had any real character development (in a non-romantic context) since S5. Yes, that's partly because he's successfully made the transition to adulthood, but surely there are other things that could happen besides the crash-and-burn and the slow struggle to rebuild his relationship with Anya. Very much ditto for Anya, who gets fabulous character attention in "Selfless," and then largely recedes into the background until "Chosen." What is Anya doing for money? How is she interacting with the world now that she has chosen, irrevocably, to be human? And why must the D'Hoffryn subplot die away? (I know, First Evil, army of neander-vamps, yada yada, but that's exactly my point: we get the FE and its minions INSTEAD of the perfectly legitimate pieces of plot we had going before the Junior Slayers start to flock.)
Willow. Willow got pretty good development, all things considered, but there were places they could have gone after "The Killer in Me" that would have been extremely interesting. Willow apparently harbors an inner-Warren, a misogynist of the first water (which I think they could have tied beautifully into her insecurities when we first meet her in S1), and I would have liked to have seen that dealt with.
Spike. Okay, I admit, I had a whole pet theory about Spike, and a set of things I particularly wanted to see happen. I was completely fascinated by what "Beneath You" showed us about what S6 had done to Spike: Hey! Hey! No touching! Am I flesh? Am I flesh to you? Feed on flesh. My flesh. Nothing else. Not a spark. Oh, fine. Flesh, then. Solid through. Get it hard, service the girl. ... Girl doesn't want to be serviced. Because there's no spark. This problem with the material body is completely aside from the craziness, although that's what lets it well to the surface. And they (or at least JM, bless his socks) picked it up again in "Sleeper," with Spike's fidgety, defensive body language. I wanted them to DEAL WITH the questions of power and domination, gender-reversal, passion and darkness raised by Buffy and Spike's relationship in S6 and above all else with Spike's fear of Buffy--also fear of himself, that he'll try to rape her again, but the twist of the knife here is his fear of letting her touch him, which we see again and again in the early episodes of the season. This would be a completely new relationship dynamic for Buffy, and I think it would have been amazing if we had been able to watch it play out. I also wanted way more of William; I adored the idea that Spike's regaining his soul would mean he had to deal with who he was before he reinvented himself as Spike. We get a little of this in "Lies My Parents Told Me," but Spike never has to tell Buffy the truth about his mortal life (I'm assuming that he lies like a flatfish in "Fool for Love"); once they decide he isn't crazy any more, he never comes a cropper over the vulnerabilities, insecurities, and psychological tics of the neurotic little boy he was.
And finally, Giles. My primary question is: WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH GILES THIS SEASON? They over-herringed their red herring and then, when they'd revealed it as a red herring, kept giving Giles these weird lines and out-of-character actions, so that HL and I were constructing all these elaborate theories to account for it (Giles is a manifest spirit, like the guys in "Lessons"; Giles is like Caleb and working for the First Evil; our Giles is dead, and this is an alternate-universe Giles), and then it turns out in the last episode that, no, Giles is just Giles and has been all along. And that's just irritating.
I've been pining for more Giles-centric episodes since "The Dark Age," and even more so since "Band Candy" (which is one reason I am mad with hope that the BBC will actually do "Ripper"). And I think there's a lot they could have done with Giles's relationship with the Watchers' Council (both before and after the Council went ka-blooey), with Giles's relationship with Buffy (and they WERE doing stuff, but not enough and without a sufficiently clear sense of what the fuck they thought it meant). They could have brought back Ethan Rayne, for goodness sakes. That would have been fun.
And, finally, on a much more shallow level, I'm deeply saddened that we did not get any Buffy-Faith fight scenes this season. Faith-Spike was almost as good, but it just didn't have the same lesbian subtext. :)
1. Name your favorite character ever. Yes. You can only pick one.
Giles.
2. Give one line you love:
Still having to explain wherein this is just my outfit.
3. Favorite three episodes:
"Normal Again"
"Dead Things"
"Doppelgangland"
4. Favorite villain:
The Mayor
5. Favorite song used in a scene:
K's Choice, "Virgin State of Mind."
6. Favorite season:
Third. Then Sixth.
7. Scariest episode:
"Normal Again"
8. Best kiss/sex scene/romantic whatever... it can be tame or not:
The end of "New Moon Rising": Willow and Tara and the candle.
9. Favorite relationship (of any kind):
Spike and Drusilla
10. Set/location you'll miss the most:
The cemetery
I've decided, in my own head, that the problem with S7 is that it used the Junior Slayers (as a metonymy for the plot) as an excuse to avoid doing the character work that I think most of us would genuinely have preferred to see. So I'm just going to do a run-down of the places I wish they'd gone instead, and then maybe the Slayerettes will quit hanging around in my head, bugging me about it.
So, starting with
Dawn (whom Joss has said he also feels they short-changed). I don't know where Dawn's story would have gone if they'd followed up on the pattern visible in "Lessons," "Him," and even "Conversations with Dead People," where she's talking with Kit on the phone. I liked Kit, okay? I thought Kit totally rocked. And the classroom scene in "Lessons" was hysterically funny; I would have liked to have Dawn's life in high school be a major part of the season. Which leads me to
Buffy. I wish, very much, that they had chosen to treat Buffy's job--not seriously, because they're Mutant Enemy, but with respect. I wish that they'd done what HL and I have been saying they should do since "Flooded," and let Buffy start a self-defense class (perhaps in the space that was once the Magic Box?). Yes, Buffy was a terrible counsellor (and I love Robin for admitting that), but she didn't have to be as terrible as she was, and they didn't have to treat her terribleness as a joke. Buffy does know what it's like to be in high school and miserable, and if they could just once have let her display the insight she shows in "Earshot" ... well, it would have been a different season. They got very lazy about the social realities in S7, which segues me into
Xander and Anya. Xander hasn't had any real character development (in a non-romantic context) since S5. Yes, that's partly because he's successfully made the transition to adulthood, but surely there are other things that could happen besides the crash-and-burn and the slow struggle to rebuild his relationship with Anya. Very much ditto for Anya, who gets fabulous character attention in "Selfless," and then largely recedes into the background until "Chosen." What is Anya doing for money? How is she interacting with the world now that she has chosen, irrevocably, to be human? And why must the D'Hoffryn subplot die away? (I know, First Evil, army of neander-vamps, yada yada, but that's exactly my point: we get the FE and its minions INSTEAD of the perfectly legitimate pieces of plot we had going before the Junior Slayers start to flock.)
Willow. Willow got pretty good development, all things considered, but there were places they could have gone after "The Killer in Me" that would have been extremely interesting. Willow apparently harbors an inner-Warren, a misogynist of the first water (which I think they could have tied beautifully into her insecurities when we first meet her in S1), and I would have liked to have seen that dealt with.
Spike. Okay, I admit, I had a whole pet theory about Spike, and a set of things I particularly wanted to see happen. I was completely fascinated by what "Beneath You" showed us about what S6 had done to Spike: Hey! Hey! No touching! Am I flesh? Am I flesh to you? Feed on flesh. My flesh. Nothing else. Not a spark. Oh, fine. Flesh, then. Solid through. Get it hard, service the girl. ... Girl doesn't want to be serviced. Because there's no spark. This problem with the material body is completely aside from the craziness, although that's what lets it well to the surface. And they (or at least JM, bless his socks) picked it up again in "Sleeper," with Spike's fidgety, defensive body language. I wanted them to DEAL WITH the questions of power and domination, gender-reversal, passion and darkness raised by Buffy and Spike's relationship in S6 and above all else with Spike's fear of Buffy--also fear of himself, that he'll try to rape her again, but the twist of the knife here is his fear of letting her touch him, which we see again and again in the early episodes of the season. This would be a completely new relationship dynamic for Buffy, and I think it would have been amazing if we had been able to watch it play out. I also wanted way more of William; I adored the idea that Spike's regaining his soul would mean he had to deal with who he was before he reinvented himself as Spike. We get a little of this in "Lies My Parents Told Me," but Spike never has to tell Buffy the truth about his mortal life (I'm assuming that he lies like a flatfish in "Fool for Love"); once they decide he isn't crazy any more, he never comes a cropper over the vulnerabilities, insecurities, and psychological tics of the neurotic little boy he was.
And finally, Giles. My primary question is: WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH GILES THIS SEASON? They over-herringed their red herring and then, when they'd revealed it as a red herring, kept giving Giles these weird lines and out-of-character actions, so that HL and I were constructing all these elaborate theories to account for it (Giles is a manifest spirit, like the guys in "Lessons"; Giles is like Caleb and working for the First Evil; our Giles is dead, and this is an alternate-universe Giles), and then it turns out in the last episode that, no, Giles is just Giles and has been all along. And that's just irritating.
I've been pining for more Giles-centric episodes since "The Dark Age," and even more so since "Band Candy" (which is one reason I am mad with hope that the BBC will actually do "Ripper"). And I think there's a lot they could have done with Giles's relationship with the Watchers' Council (both before and after the Council went ka-blooey), with Giles's relationship with Buffy (and they WERE doing stuff, but not enough and without a sufficiently clear sense of what the fuck they thought it meant). They could have brought back Ethan Rayne, for goodness sakes. That would have been fun.
And, finally, on a much more shallow level, I'm deeply saddened that we did not get any Buffy-Faith fight scenes this season. Faith-Spike was almost as good, but it just didn't have the same lesbian subtext. :)
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-23 01:25 pm (UTC)Thus, only a big WORD re: Giles-- while your other suggestions address elements that could have made this season better, a different handle on our favourite Watcher definitely would have made this season less weak when it came to story-lines and characterisation.
And, finally, on a much more shallow level, I'm deeply saddened that we did not get any Buffy-Faith fight scenes this season. Faith-Spike was almost as good, but it just didn't have the same lesbian subtext. :)
This was a general problem, in my eyes; considering the incredible power of their backstory, there should have been so much more Buffy/Faith interaction-- End of Days gave us some wonderful, poignant moments, but it was so little, so late.
(Although they DID make the subtext text, remember? Buffy to Spike in End of Days: "I'm tired of defensiveness and weird mixed signals-- I have Faith for that!")
Cheers,
M.