It was supposed to hurt when Tara died. That was what made Willow at least somewhat sympathetic when she went dark.

Meadra

Head of the Guild of the Damask Rose

We're not lost. We're locationally challenged.
-- John M. Ford

But having it be all honky doory okayfine two months later completely pisses all over Tara's character and the signifigance of what happened.

This is about more than Tara's death. There was a nasty trend last season where Buffy, Xander, and Willow could do no wrong. Buffy treated Spike like complete and total shit after he risked his ass to save her and Dawn time and time again. Solution? Write a quick after-the-fact attempted rape to justify her actions for the past six months. Xander leaves Anya at the alter and never even tells her why. Simply explaining to her what the magician showed him would fix most of their problems. What do the writers do? Have her become a demon again, get drunk, and screw Spike. Thus Xander can be an ass and feel good about it. Willow threatens Giles and it's completely ignored. She almost kills Dawn and it's all good two episodes later because she's "getting better now". Willow willfully, flagrently, and carelessly violates Tara's mind. She gets caught so she does it again and screw with everyones head this time. Again, it's okay an episode later because she's really trying hard to do better now. Then she goes full-on evil, harms her friends, and commits cold-blooded murder. All that and next time we see her, maybe three months down the road, it's going to be a "happy light-hearted" Buffy and crew again?

Joss said that the theme for last season was supposed to be growing up. Buffy and her crew acted more like children last season than they ever have. They acted like jerks, they ignored their problems completely, and when those problems slapped them in the fact the writers copped out and just made everything they did ok. With the stuff that happened this year there is simply no way you could return to happy season one type Buffy without continuing this trend and simply glossing over/ignoring all the problems of this last year. The fallout from this season should have taken years to deal with. Life shattering addicition, death of your true love, loss of all trust, walking out on your fiancee, being ripped out of your final resting place in heaven... and it's all going to be fine in three months?

Granted, there was some great stuff this season. The musical was amazing. When Warren killed his ex-girlfriend it was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen on TV. When Xander left Anya at the wedding because he feared becoming his father and hurting her that was a truly emotionally touching and gut-wrenching moment. After all the toys and tricks Warren simply pulling a gun out and shooting Buffy in the chest was shocking almost beyond belief (nasty how potent the real world can still be, even in our fantasy realms). But it ceases to matter much if the creators are going to negate the emotional impact of all that by simply saying "Oh, it's all okay now" there is no point.

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jello.
aka aron.

Good, then their plan worked. The intention on Buffy has always been to portray the life of the Scoobies as realistically as possible. For dramatic purposes, the main characters can't die (and their agents wouldlikely complain about it as well) but the secondaries . . . well, people die. It sucks, but it happens, and fairly often, usually without warning and almost always without reason.

So, they give the viewers a choice: get emotionally attached to the characters and risk getting hurt, or stay distant and stop caring. Neither option's pleasant. Neither is life. Welcome to the Hellmouth.

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In the end, I'm left with a selective memory and the tyranny of eternal hope.

For fans of Angel:

In the episodes where they visit Lorne's home dimension, there is a scene where Lorne revisits his family home. His mother is disgusted to see him and commands a nearby relative, Numfar, to do "the Dance of Shame." Numfar is played by Joss Whedon.

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In the end, I'm left with a selective memory and the tyranny of eternal hope.

Dweller - Did you even read my whole post? It's not the death that's pissing me off. It's that the main characters have run around being complete shits to everyone, watched friends die, and killed people and the writers going to just let them off with a "La-la-la.. it's all okay now." Characters dying is good. It does give the stories a greater weight and a sense of the real. But destroying lives and killing people then completely ignoring it is just bad writing.

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jello.
aka aron.

Actually, I didn't read the second page. I'd blame it on the new board, but that's just laziness on my part really.

It sounds to me that unless Willow starts out the series on trial for murder and everyone wears black because Tara died, they've failed to make the series what you want it to be.

Yes, they made bad choices, but none of them worse than the choices a lot of people their age make, particularly when there wasn't one single role model or authority figure present, no one to whom they could go to for advice or counsel.

Xander will deal with the fact that his actions were the proximate cause of his ex-fiancee becoming a demon.

Dawn dealt with and is dealing with her kleptomania.

Willow will deal with her grief and pain.

Buffy will deal with the fact that she can't afford to judge the effectiveness of her life by the amount of approval she gets from men.

Anya will deal with the fact that she is now a demon again and deal with her still-lingering feelings for Xander.

Or they won't. Like my second cousin who, at the age of 30, hasn't come to grips with his parent's divorce when he was a teen-ager. Like my sister who still blames my father for the poor choices she made in high school. Like me, for never really forgiving those who've wronged me.

If they choose not to deal, that's their choice, sodding stupid as it will be, and that choice will lead to further problems.

As to the Spike/Buffy dynamic, she freely admitted to using him and even apologized ofr it, using his real name. Spike's inability to cope - he'll just have to deal with it.

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In the end, I'm left with a selective memory and the tyranny of eternal hope.

quote:

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Actually, I didn't read the second page. I'd blame it on the new board, but that's just laziness on my part really.

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Ack! I keep missing the second pages now too. I hate that. =P

quote:

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It sounds to me that unless Willow starts out the series on trial for murder and everyone wears black because Tara died, they've failed to make the series what you want it to be.

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Not looking for quite that extreme, but something along those lines. When Buffy's mom died we spent a good 5 or 6 episodes dwelling on that. The characters cried, laughed, screamed, and changed. It was a horrible event. I had never watched the show before that and it touched me deeply. Watching them grow and learn to live with that event is what drew me into the show, very quickly.

None of that happened with any of the many traumatic events that happened this season, which saddens me. Yes, the bad decisions they made were realistic ones. But if I wanted to see people just making stupid decisions and not learning anything from them I would walk out the door here and go two blocks down to the frat house row here. Or turn on the news about the latest bombings/attacks in the middle east. That isn't what I want in my fiction. Without growth it's just meaningless pain. Could poke myself in the eye and get that.

From what I've gathered from a whole lot of interviews with a majority of the creators is that Marti simply didn't have the ability to keep everything together as producer. The single stories all worked for the most part (each of the episodes) but there wasn't any direction to the whole thing (the growth and change that would have made those events meaningful). Joss is going to be more active next year but things got quite a bit off-track so he's just going to pull it back to the core and sort of start over.

Maybe he can pull it off. As I said, I'll give it a few episodes and see what happens. I'm just not hopeful about it. I don't see how Joss can go back to happiness and light after the "murder, death, kill" end of last season. But I do respect him enough him to give him a chance.

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jello.
aka aron.

Glad to hear you'll give it a try. Yeah, a lot of my problems with this season had little to do with the series as a whole, but rather the continuity of the whole series. By my count, Buffy had a total of six cathartic moments where she realized life was worth living, but by the next episode, it was forgotten.

The season was worth it, though, if only for the musical episode, Nicholas Brendan getting a chance to actually act and that stark moment of shock I felt when Willow ripped off Warren's skin and burned him up.

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In the end, I'm left with a selective memory and the tyranny of eternal hope.

quote:

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Glad to hear you'll give it a try. Yeah, a lot of my problems with this season had little to do with the series as a whole, but rather the continuity of the whole series. By my count, Buffy had a total of six cathartic moments where she realized life was worth living, but by the next episode, it was forgotten.

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Exactly, bingo. The stuff was there to work with, they just kept spinning there wheels.. I went with it for a while at the beginning/middle of the season as I felt the arc was mirroring Buffy's "why am I here?" thing. But it never did get out of that.

quote:

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The season was worth it, though, if only for the musical episode, Nicholas Brendan getting a chance to actually act and that stark moment of shock I felt when Willow ripped off Warren's skin and burned him up.

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The season as a whole was still worthwhile, definitely. My problems mainly stem from those last few episodes which sort of slap you hard in the face. My favorite moment of the whole season though was Xander's "I screwed up" speach when he came back from the wedding. I cried at that one.

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jello.
aka aron.

I agree with what someone (damn short-term memory! I'm gonna be the guy from 'Memento' one day...) said, about how there being a total lack of authority figures really affected the characters this season. A lot of times, people in that situation do mess up, over and over, and rarely seem to learn anything. I agree that the writing and continuity wavered a bit here and there, but overall the characters felt pretty genuine. I got pissed at them all on numerous occasions, but in the end they were realistic. Buffy is self-absorbed, not that anyone can blame her, considering all that's happened, so it makes sense for her to have used Spike like she did (I do <3 Spike though, and hated to see him go through that). Willow was fighting an addiction, anyone who knows anyone that's fought through an addiction can tell you, its not pleasant to see, and many times the person will be making progress and suddenly relapse. If the person is EVER to get better, though, they have to be forgiven for their mistakes and thoroughly supported. This makes even more sense in Willow's case...she's been Buffy's best friend for the whole series, and Xander's best friend since childhood, and they've all been through so much...even though she did a lot of stupid shit and repeatedly screwed up, they weren't gonna just leave her by the wayside. I think Tara's death did act as the climax of Willow's season-long "corruption" if you will, the breaking point, and will affect her character for the rest of the series...not quite a throw-away death.

I get pissed at Whedon sometimes, but overall he is a great writer who has a talent for witty dialogue and conveying powerful emotions, sometimes both at once. I'm looking forward to next season, although I'm not going to have any expectations. I just hope its interesting! I can't wait to see what happens with Spike's little conundrum he encountered at the season's end...

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"And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." -Kahil Gibran

As I said, taken one by one most of the actions were very much in character. But the lack of recognition of their mistakes and what was going on was both out of character for the players and for the show as a whole. As for the addiciton stuff.. yeah, friends and loved ones need to be supportive and forgiving. I know, believe me. My dad was hooked on cocain for a while, and he's still a low-grade alcoholic. My mom, step-dad, and grandfather are also all alcoholics some recovered/ing some not. There is still a big difference between forgiving being a jerk and maybe trashing your room and/or getting in a fight and killing someone. I'm just terribly concerned about how to reconcile those events/everything else that happened in season 6 with the continued stream of "back to happy buffy!" talk coming from the Joss & Co. camp.

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jello.
aka aron.

Mass forgetfulness spell by Willow wipes out everyones memory of things and uses up the last bit of her magic.
I dunno. I don't even know if this show is realistic-- its just too damn depressing. I don't want Xander to be an asshole! Jeez... and yes, it had some good moments. But what i've been told about whats going to happen makes everything sound so much worse (Anya sleeping with Spike?). I think Spike and Buffy could make a decent couple, if she ignores the fact that he killed all those people (like she did with Angel)... certainly better then that boring Riley.
I dunno. Its depressing and not fun, and not really something i'm sure I want to see. Humor would be good, but i'm not sure how to bring that back...
Ugh. Angel and Smallville seem best now.

quote:

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Mass forgetfulness spell by Willow wipes out everyones memory of things and uses up the last bit of her magic.

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I was actually hopeing/wishing for something like this towards the end of last season. Maybe a Giles using Dawn's key UberMagic to ret-con the whole shabang. That's how bad it got for me at the end.

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jello.
aka aron.

But thats cheating...
Aw, what the hell. Witchblade (which i don't watch much, but seems cool) had the main character turn back time and undo the whole first season. Roland the Gunslinger unkilled a boy, and it was cool. I think Joss and co. could pull off a major retcon, if they do it right... no "it was all a dream!" unless there's a very good reason for it to be a dream.

Well, according to TV Guide, Willow is going to start out the season dealing with the consequences of her actions and the fact that she now has a lurking dark side while Buffy will be having a much happier time of things.

Looking back at this debate, it's possible that italics would have helped a great deal.

Buffy is scheduled to have a good year. Buffy may not be so lucky.

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In the end, I'm left with a selective memory and the tyranny of eternal hope.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Well, according to TV Guide, Willow is going to start out the season dealing with the consequences of her actions and the fact that she now has a lurking dark side while Buffy will be having a much happier time of things.

Looking back at this debate, it's possible that italics would have helped a great deal.

Buffy is scheduled to have a good year. _Buffy_ may not be so lucky.

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In the end, I'm left with a selective memory and the tyranny of eternal hope.

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These were quotes from Marti Noxon.

Meadra

Head of the Guild of the Damask Rose

We're not lost. We're locationally challenged.
-- John M. Ford

So what does everybody think about the first few episodes of Buffy's new season? I saw the first two but missed the one on tuesday, so excuse me if I make any mistakes, or my info is out of date.

Willow didn't seem to take Tara's death as hard as she should, but otherwise I liked how they've started out. Some parts had me rolling on the floor laughing, (like Dawn's line about how every vampire seems to learn martial arts when they come back), and the ending where Spike was seeing every villian in the series history gave me a few chills.

The second episode was okay, I just think they could have waited longer to reveal to the other characters that Spike had his soul back.

So what does everyone think?

"His madness keeps him sane, doesn't it?"
"Do you think he is the only one?"

See the raging debate on the Buffy thread in World's End for the opinions of a variety of posters.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
--Hector Berlioz

I think Whedon is a VERY creative person, I am not really a big Firefly watcher but I love Buffy and Serenity, Serenity I found a surprisingly good (what I mean is that I accidentally saw the film) Although I've heard that he's athiest and often shows it in his work. I don't mind this, an artists' opinion really shouldn't matter, just the quality of the work. I mean, Phillip K. Dick used drugs and was hospitizled insane and look at what he did!

Just saw this link on our Mirror Board. Looks like Eliza Dushku managed to get Joss back to TV.