Buffy The Vampire Slayer

All are happy... except the author. Poor Joss Whedon...
So, this was, is, and in some ways will always be one of my favorite TV Series. I mean it. If I were forced to choose between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who, my head would implode from the stress. There's no way to handle that sort of thing. It's... painful almost.  I know the series has flaws. Lots of them. I'm aware that some people disliked it.

However, I must address one issue here and now. Disliking Sarah Michelle Gellar is NOT an appropriate reason to have not even tried to watch, like or appreciate a series. Yes, she was the main character, but the ensemble is what made the series so wonderful. If Blonde Bint got a little annyoying, you could check out the cute red-headed lesbian witch or find out what Loveable "Sees Everything" Xander Harris is doing. Or laugh at Anya's... general awkwardness or drool over the hot, hot, hot men (especially Angel and Spike). Or you could relax to the dulcet tones of Anthony Stewart Head's voice. Disliking Sarah Michelle Gellar is in no way valid and I feel like flicking the ears of the number of people who are like, "Never could get into it. I didn't like the main actress."

I didn't like Milo Ventimiglia or Hayden Penettierre on Heroes, but I still managed to sit through three seasons!!! You can give BtVS a chance for at least the equivalent (three quarters of seven seasons not to mention the comics where there are no actresses to get annoyed at).

That said, this show did have flaws. It wasn't all roses and posies. There were a lot of things about the show that I didn't like or appreciate. The first thing I really hated was what I like to call "Joss Whedon Syndrome"... TV Tropes calls it's "Cerberus Syndrome", but everyone who's ever watched anything by Joss Whedon knows it for what it really is. What is it?

Okay, some characters are moving forwards in their lives and they've finally hit a point where they have a chance to be really happy. You know, Kiss of Doom style. And then, like the Kiss of Doom, everything goes to hell. Whatever happiness is bulldozed. Whatever forward momentum a character had reached? GONE.

And it never comes back.

It just gets worse and worse and worse and worse.

That's Joss Whedon Syndrome. See, I've seen his commentaries. He does it on purpose. He thinks happy people make bad TV. He said so... repeatedly in the commentaries for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, whenever his characters start to have a modicum of happiness, it's blasted into itty-bitty tiny bits. Which, yeah, makes the show interesting to watch, but at the same time, you can only go so far before sinking into a deep depression. Life isn't like that. Things do get better. We do move onward and upward.

Don't believe me? Well, then look at Joss Whedon himself. If his life were steadily getting worse, then he wouldn't be a successful writer, everyone would think he was a hack.

... And on this topic at least, he is a hack.

Happy people do not make for bad TV, sometimes a TV show needs characters to move up, move forward, be happy just to give people a pinch of hope. I mean, seriously? Look at Xander and Anya! Granted, I didn't exactly love the couple. But they were getting married! And then he split them up because "happy people make for bad TV". Nevermind that they were like a real couple with ups and downs and they obviously had issues. It got worse though. When the ex-couple began to patch things up again... Joss killed Anya in the series finale. Yup. Four years of character development. Three years of relationship building. And... he killed her. For drama.

It's like J.K. Rowling killing the Lupins and a Weasley twin. "Oh, we can't have and complete couples survive other than the one nobody wants to work (Willow and Kennedy), so I'll just kill half of each couple!" He did the same thing with Angel pretty much... and Dollhouse. I think Firefly only worked because the finale was the Big Damn Movie and happy couples make for great movie endings.

See? Fox is good for something!

Quick! Look at shirtless Spike before you lynch me!

Mm... you can bite me any day!
That brings me to another thing... Spike's Badass Decay. I'm not saying it was utterly horrible. However, it wasn't my favorite thing. I liked Spike when he was evil. I really did. I nearly loved him, in fact. If I met a vampire like Spike, I'd probably... do some very badly-thought-out things.

However...

Well, let's first cover one thing. I didn't start watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer until the end of third season/beginning of forth season. The first episodes I remember seeing were somewhere between Enemies and Graduation Day. I had seen some episodes of Season One before that, but I didn't become a truly loyal viewer until season four, when Buffy and company start college. So, my first episode seeing Spike was Harsh Light of Day.

I remember thinking he was kind of cool. I felt more upset over not more being done with the whole... Gem of Amara thing. I know that destroying it on Angel was really the smartest thing the characters could've done (besides Angel himself who should've used it and kept it and kept it quiet), but at the same time, I can't help but think of the possibilities. It kind of made me mad to see it all crushed under a brick. I mean think of it. Magic has consequences. You have a magic ring that makes a vampire invincible. I'd love to see the long-term consequences of a thing like that. I can think of all sort of fun things it could do to vampires that use it.

Any how, I got to know Spike as his bad ass was decaying. Gave me a bit of perspective on the whole thing. When you first see him he's all big and bad and he almost wins. If he didn't get so... cocky. Which was part of his appeal. However, he is burdened with the worst choice of girlfriend ever. Seriously, I would've beheaded Harmony within an hour. How did he manage to never kill her? Then, the next time you see him... he gets defanged.

It made him... impotent and such... and then they made him love Buffy which really threw the idea of a soul all out of whack. I mean, with the beginning of Spike's love for Buffy, the soul is gradually decreased from "what makes you, you" to "moral compass, nothing more". I mean, plenty of people have souls and they still kill people. Unless serial killers lack souls.

Then again, maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Oh well...

Either way, I loved Spike's character development. I loved learning about his past and seeing him develop from a vampire who just wants to kill the Slayer and be invincible into a thinking, feeling vampire. However, I kind of lost interest by the end of season five.  Season six was nice for all of Spike's shirtless glory, but... meh. I'm a character development person more. Season five of Angel brought my interest back, but it wasn't the same. To this day, thinking about it makes me sad. On the other hand, he's hot!

Or maybe not...
Also, I really didn't like the lack of empathy and outright stupidity occasionally displayed by certain characters. For example, at the end of season two, beginning of season three! Buffy goes through a lot of crap. Her mom kicks her out for being the Slayer (fair enough). She is expelled from school. Her boyfriend is a vampire who has lost his soul (after they had sex for the first time EVER) and, up until recently, has been bound and determined to kill her. To prevent said boyfriend from ending the world, she has to kill him. However, just before she kills him, her best friends restore his soul.

Yeah, Joss Whedon syndrome.

Anyhow, before the battle happened, Buffy runs into one of her two best friends, Xander. He's supposed to tell her that Willow is trying to restore Angel's soul. So, distract him as long as possible. Instead, he tells Buffy to "kick his ass". So... Xander's actions basically lead to Buffy being forced to kill Angel.  Due to the emotional trauma and the fact that her whole life has seemingly fallen apart at the seams, Buffy runs away to L.A.

When stuff happens there that make her decide to come back, are Buffy's friends supportive of her as they should be? Do they take her aside and talk to her about what happened? Do they help her mourn her lost lover and maybe even throw a little funeral or memorial service in honor of the soul that got sucked into Hell?

NO!

They invite everyone in town to a "Welcome Home" party for Buffy and when she's uncomfortable and decides that they obviously don't want to spend any time alone with her, she decides to run away again. Yes, it's a bad reaction to a bad situation, but if they don't want to handle her problems and she's really such a burden the logical conclusion is for her to leave.

Rather than confront her in a quiet manner or send everyone home and try to sort things out, they confront her during the party, in front of everyone. And then they fight zombies.

And then suddenly it's all okay!!!
Even Alpha finds this mind-bogglingly stupid.
Yeah. This is a problem that came up a lot on the show as time went on. There was even a sort of implosion of selfish behavior partially driven by a distinct lack of communication towards the end of the sixth season. It was awful. Which is really bad because I really like certain episodes of the series. I just want to grab some of the characters as they hold their individual Idiot Balls and smash their heads together.

Of course, the seventh season isn't any better. Luckily we have Spike around to straighten people out when their Idiot Balls get too heavy. That's one of the few things Spike was good for.

However, half the time the writers seemed to do the whole "everyone's acting irrational, they fight some big baddie, and then Everything's OKAY!" scenario too much for my liking. I get that fighting and killing things can be seen as a pretty therapeutic activity, but the show seemed to overuse it to keep the main group together.

Honestly, if I were Anya, I would've gone back to my vengeance demon days as soon as possible and then found one of the other exes from earlier in the series and cursed the whole group in a number of ways. That, or I would've gotten Halfrek in on it. I'm sure Dawn had plenty of things she could do to her "parental figures" rather than trapping herself in a house with them.

And I know people are irrational at times and they do stupid things to each other and some parts of communication are just awful, but if I have to hear Buffy spout that line about how she now knows why there's no prophecy about a slayer and her friends one more time, I'm going to burn my DVDs. I own the complete series too, so it'd smell really bad.

So... Happy thoughts... Happy Thoughts... Happy Thoughts...

"Bored now!"
Is it bad that the image above is a happy thought?

Okay! What do I like about the series?

It was well-written (mostly, didn't like Marti Noxon toward the end), the plots were cohesive and there was an obvious amount of planning.The third and forth seasons had bits that referred ahead to the fifth. That's impressive when you look at Heroes and Charmed, where sometimes it didn't look like they planned ahead even a week. In fact, it actually feels like a bloody miracle if I watch a whole bunch of Charmed and then turn around and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. It's like... Reading some cheap romance novel and then picking up A Game of Thrones. Only thing as good as Buffy in terms of this is sometimes Doctor Who where Doctor Who is closer to the Heroes format and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is closer to the Charmed format. There are obvious reasons behind this if you think about it.

What else did I like?

I loved, loved, loved the characters! Yes they were sometimes forced to do stupid and irrational things by the writers, but when they were written best and the acting was up to snuff, they were excellent. You really got to know them week after week. So, you kind of knew when they were being stupid. The best part was, if you didn't like a character, you could focus on the others. On the other hand, it was hard not to find something at least a little endearing about each character.

I'll admit it to you straight-up. I didn't really like Xander at first. When I saw the first season episodes with him, I thought he was a goof and he was slightly annoying. And now that I'm older I can sort of relate to his fourth season period of directionlessness. However, I thought he was an immature, stupid, idiotic, moron when I first saw him. I saw him the way most people see Ron Weasley. He kind of felt like the team idiot everyone kept around to feel better about themselves.

Oh shit...

Xander was Peter Pettrigrew!

However, Xander... grew on me. By the seventh season I really kind of liked and admired him for being... well, him. The only normal guy on a team of supernatural bad asses who could probably hold his own despite his status as "normal, everyday, non-magical  human, muggle". In other words, he was "Mostly Harmless", but still awesome. He kind of gave hope to the rest of us, and yet he wasn't worse off than any of them because he had his own confidence and way of seeing things. Hell, he lost his eye and he still stopped the apocalypse  That's brilliant!

I liked most of the other characters on the show. I even had a soft spot for Andrew and Jonathon, but Warren was fucking irredeemable and I watched the part where he gets filleted alive over and over and over again while giggling madly. It's so... cathartic. However, I did like some of the other villain too.

I think that's a sign of a good show where you can like the villains and somewhat relate to what they want even if it's bad. I mean, The Master just wanted to get out of his cage and do what Fate wanted him to do. Spike just wanted to cure his girlfriend, maybe kill a Slayer, and then go on with life. The Mayor just wanted to be a giant snake... and take care of his new daughter, Faith, who just wanted to be seen as the best by someone. Adam just wanted to fulfill the purpose he was built for. Glory just wanted to go home. The First... I really don't know. The last two seasons were terrible for villains.

So, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a good television show. I was really sad when it ended because it felt like a portion of my childhood had ended too. Also, I didn't know what I was going to watch after that. Angel only lasted for one more year. Charmed lasted for two or three, and it was wretched. Where would I get my weekly escape? I tried to read the comics, but they were worse than the series when it came to the bad points (for me) and the good points seemed relatively... hard to see without the actors there to carry everything. I didn't really get too passionate about a TV show until Doctor Who came along. Yeah, I loved Heroes, but I was able to stop watching it. Meanwhile, I can't stop watching Once Upon a Time or Doctor Who for too long or my brain explodes.

Sweet Dreams!

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