Tabula Rasa

[shapinglight]

Don't have an icon for the ep, so this one will have to do.

This episode is so good, but the end is absolutely heartbreaking.



Not a lot to say - it's awfully late here and I have to go to bed - but at this point, the Willow plot still looked like it was going to be all about how Willow's desperate control-freakiness had got the better of her, which works really well. Such a pity they had to turn it into the silly magic-addiction thing, though, yes, definitely addition-like comparisons could be made to her behaviour, but when the metaphor goes belly up and addiction becomes literal it doesn't do the story any favours. Pity.

Also, Giles's reasoning behind his decision to go home is quite right, but his timing absolutely stinks. Poor Buffy!

I think this may well be the last episode of the show that got the comedy/drama balance just right. You go from laughing out loud over the antics of Giles and Anya in the magic shop and Randy and Joan's amnesia-induced heroics, to the heartbreak of the final scene without any of the reaching for that balance and missing it I seem to remember in later episodes in a similar vein, like Hell's Bells and Him.

That's it. Gone. Glad I watched them, though. BtVS was a great show.

Comments

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Stay away from Randy!

I've long had the suspicion Willow's issues turned to addiction to protect the character.

[shapinglight]

I've long had the suspicion Willow's issues turned to addiction to protect the character.

Oh, I absolutely believe that. Everyone knows that Willow is Whedon's favourite character. He's said so often enough. And, having been happy enough to more or less ignore what IDW were doing with Angel and Spike, he jumped in very quickly wanting overall control of what they did with Willow when she appeared in the Spike comic.

In this instance, though, I don't think his over-protectiveness did the character any favours. He was so desperate for the audience not to hate her that he hamstrung his own story.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Such a pity they had to turn it into the silly magic-addiction thing, though, yes, definitely addition-like comparisons could be made to her behaviour, but when the metaphor goes belly up and addiction becomes literal it doesn't do the story any favours.

Turning the metaphor's literal almost destroyed the series in S6. Risky move but bad idea. Because it made it preachy and very "special episode of the week". Also, you can't really make fun of certain things - so once they made the metaphor's literal, they lost some of the comedy. There's no way that you can make literal domestic violence, attempted rape, and drug addiction funny. If they stuck with the metaphor - like they did in S4 -with The Iniative and Something Blue...it would have worked better. Whedon screwed up royally with his whole let's drop the metaphor and go literal.

Never ever drop the metaphor and go literal in gothic fantasy series. Kiss of death!

[shapinglight]

Turning the metaphor's literal almost destroyed the series in S6. Risky move but bad idea. Because it made it preachy and very "special episode of the week". Also, you can't really make fun of certain things - so once they made the metaphor's literal, they lost some of the comedy. There's no way that you can make literal domestic violence, attempted rape, and drug addiction funny.

All very true. And you shouldn't include any of them at all if you're not equipped to deal with the fallout (or too blinkered to even realise there will be fallout). Poor Spike. Joss went out of his way to protect Willow, but he really trashed Spike.

I suppose I should just be grateful that he was naive enough (or arrogant enough)to think he could bring the character back from the AR in season 7. If Dollhouse season 1 is anything to go by, he's changed his views since.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The thing that a lot of fans do not want to acknowledge about Whedon is that Whedon is a fan of two, somewhat pulpy, mediums (both of which I've watched or read extensively): American daytime soap operas (he loved General Hospital and Marti Noxon used to write for those shows), and Marvel comic books. Both mediums have pretty much done the redeemed rapist ends up with his victim after a specific period of time too death. Every single daytime soap opera has. Whedon was a fan of Passions (that's why its mentioned) and Passions did that story too. And what Spike did in S6? Nothing compared to the actions of heroes in comic books and daytime serials. He didn't even actually rape her, he just tried and she knocked him away, and he ran off in abject remorse and got a soul. Now, if you've never watched an American daytime soap opera or seen this trope before, you probably were shocked and dismayed and thought OMG! But if you've been watching American daytime soap operas since you were 10, you probably thought...yep, saw that coming from a mile away, predictable. Damn, Buffy is such a soap opera (which is sort of what I thought). And it's not that big a deal. (Examples of the soap operas that Marti and Whedon were familar with: On Guiding Light - Roger Thorpe raped his wife, beat her up - so she ended up in the hospital, stalked her, fell off a cliff, came back years and years later, they talked it out, she forgave him, they became a couple. On General Hospital - Luke brutally raped Laura, so bad she was hospitalized, she got out, forgave him because he was drunk, they went on the run together, and their wedding was the most watched episode of any tv series until maybe Dallas' Who Shot JR. They were the hot super-couple of the 1980s. On One Life to Live - Todd Manning engineered a brutal gang rape of Marti, then the person we thought was Todd until they retconned the story this year, had a romance with Marti who didn't remember it. He was sort of redeemed, but never completely. It's also a major trope in Bodice Ripper romance novels of the 1970s and 80s.) What Whedon and Marti did is they misread the audience.

So no, more naive than arrogant, I think. Also he forgot, you can get away with this trope in daytime serials because...the stories are a lot longer.
And more stretched out. You get everyone's reactions, you get to explore the situation from every angle imaginable, and then you can find ways to show its not black and white. You can do that in a daytime soap opera which has an hour episode five days a week, 12 months a year, with various non-connected sub-plots. You can't do this sort of story in a one-hour dramedy gothic horror tv series that only appears once a week and maybe 6 months out of the year and has multiple story threads. It just doesn't work.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oops, correction, Marvel comics to my knowledge has never done the redeemed rapist trope, but I admittedly could be wrong about that.

[shapinglight]

Well, they've never done it in X-Men. I couldn't speak for the other titles.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember something in an action comic...but I can't remember specifics and not sure it was Marvel.

[shapinglight]

Yes, shipperx long ago filled me in on all the gory details of some of these soap plots. They're mind boggling. Our soaps tend to be a little more realistic.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I don't think you have as many of the soaps as we do, or rather did - it's a dying art form. Or have had them on air as long - many go back to radio, or they did - all the ones that went back that far are dead now.

And yes, mind boggling. But worth keeping in mind that at least two of the head-writers and show-runners (Marti and Whedon) were daytime soap fans (specifically Luke & Laura on GH), and Marti wrote for them. Passions was bizarre...they had a woman get another woman pregnant with another man's child to break up her relationship with her boyfriend - with a turkey baster. So Whedon and Marti, after seeing that, probably thought Seeing Red was tame. And it was. All depends on what you've seen in tv and film. Marsters and Gellar's reactions to the material demonstrate that - Marsters allegedly rebelled and hated the idea, and fought against, while Gellar who came from All My Children, and as Kendall accused her mother's husband of raping her, shrugged it off as nothing to worry about it. I think it would have played differently if Marsters had come from a soap background not a theater background.

[shapinglight]

We do have some very long-running soaps. The oldest dates back to the 60s.

Actually, re: Noxon having a soaps background, I think that's a fandom legend, or confusion. I've looked at her profile on IMDB and it isn't mentioned anywhere.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Doesn't mean she didn't write for soaps at some point. A lot of writers and actors leave daytime soap operas off their resumes, it's not exactly a medium people are proud of.

1960s? Hee that isn't really that long. Do you have soaps that go back to the 1940s and 1950s and started on the radio? We do or rather did. The Guiding Light went back that far.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I got curious so looked up a few dates.

The Guiding Light until it was cancelled about four years ago, was the longest running soap in history - it started: June 2, 1947.

General Hospital now has that honor, according to Guinness Book of World Records with a start date of 1963.

So the true old timers, got killed two-four years ago. Truly a dying medium, unless the internet (which killed it) revives it.

[shapinglight]

Coronation Street's older than GH, then. It began in 1960.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

If it's still going, it may beat..Guiding Light.

Not sure how they are presented in UK? I've watched East Enders.
Is it every day, an hour each? Or half hour?

[shapinglight]

It varies. The two big soaps, Coronation Street and Eastenders are on for 30 minutes three times a week. There's another one aimed at teenages, though, called Hollyoaks. That's on every day for half an hour.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Less time, then. That may be the secret. US soaps are on, with the exception of Bold and the Beautiful. There's only four now. Days of Our Live,
One Life to Live, General Hospital, and Young & The Restless. They are on for an hour or in reality 43 minutes or 33 minutes...with commercials an hour, every day except weekends, 12 months a year. No wonder the storylines get wonky.

[shapinglight]

Yes, they must run out of ideas. I'm not a soap fan anyway, but I can't cope with shows that are on daily. My girls used to watch Hollyoaks and if I was there I would watch it with them, but once they left home I dropped it. Far too much of a commitment.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Have I told you about these handy little things called DVR's? ;-)

Never really thought of them as a committment. Doesn't take much time - I watch the thing while making dinner. Mom watched while eating lunch or just after getting home. It's not like we sit and focus on it. It often plays in the background. And you can skip episodes...

Buffy, now that was a committment. Daytime soap operas...hee, not so much.

[shapinglight]

I never get around to watching stuff I've recorded. Gave up years ago. I either watch it when it's on or it doesn't get watched at all.

[rahirah]

TR is the last episode where I can say that I unequivocably love BtVS.

Sigh.

[shapinglight]

Yeah, me too, I guess. There are some great later episodes - Dead Things, a whole batch in season 7, but there's a strained, bittersweet quality to all of them, plus the background arguments about Spike got so loud it was impossible to drown them out.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

I think I'll go watch it now!

That is a great ep.

[shapinglight]

It is, it is, it is! I'd forgotten. Stupid me.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I sort of thought the "addiction" trope was just one more canard Willow threw up to deflect people from her real issues. Everybody is so sympathetic and helpful and don't actually call her on her bullshit that way — but it's not really what's going on. It reminds me of kids skivving off from school on test days with feigned illness more than anything, really.

I don't buy it, even if her friends do.

[shapinglight]

Your interpretation works fine. It's just that we have this irritating magic crack dealer character (Rack) saying otherwise. But yeah. It's hard to see how Willow's problem can really be equated with, say, drug addiction, given that by the end of season 7 she's able to go back to using very powerful magic with no ill-effects.

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's how i saw it, too (and mind you - i didn't even know that online fandom existed, so no white noise for me back then ;-)).

[kassto.livejournal.com]

The end is desperately heartbreaking, and from then on in, it's all misery, too much misery. And I find it hard to respect anyone any more.

[shapinglight]

I know what you mean. No one, except maybe Anya, comes out at the end of the season looking good.

I know we're supposed to think she's very wrong for becoming a vengeance demon again, but she's so brave and helpful in the last three episodes that I can't.

[kassto.livejournal.com]

Yes, about Anya. There is so much sneering at Anya, particularly from Willow. The Anya/Spike tryst.... both in despair from being rejected... and yet they have all the anger dumped on them.

[shapinglight]

and yet they have all the anger dumped on them.

And yet, at the time, neither of them has really done anything to deserve it - which is not to say they're not culpable of other things, just that, at that point, they're pretty blameless.

[kassto.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, with both Buffy and Xander it was: I rejected you but I also forbid you finding comfort anywhere else!