Some Scattershot BtVS thoughts

[shapinglight]

I've been meaning to make this post for a while. Can't remember how many times I've written it in my head. I just haven't managed to find the will to write it all down properly.

I'm also not sure whether I should flock this post or not. It probably doesn't matter. We'll see.

As you know, I've been rewatching BtVS in its entirety. I'm now near the end of season 5. I meant to post as I was going along, but then the official rewatch started on fantas_magoria so I wasn't sure I should. But here are a few muddled thoughts which probably don't belong over there anyway.



I'm finding I'm watching far more through Buffy's eyes than I ever have previously. I don't know if this is because I've written her POV quite a bit in fanfic since I last watched the show, or what. Either way, I am very, very impressed with SMG.

Buffy/Angel is far more of a Big Thing in the seasons after Angel leaves than I remembered. The shadow of Angel looms large in season 4, and is still there in 5. I hadn't remembered it as being quite so all-pervasive. Angel really is the benchmark against which all Buffy's other relationships are measured. Not least by Buffy herself, even when she doesn't mean to.

Spike and Dru are a gorgeous couple, but what the show could have done with them if they'd stayed together was very limited, and they'd pretty much done it by the end of season 2.

I feel less sympathetic to Faith in season 3 than I used to. I do still feel sorry for her, especially early on. She obviously comes from a very unstable background and doesn't have any of Buffy's advantages in life. By the time she arrives in Sunnydale, she doesn't even have a Watcher. (Speaking of which, has anyone ever written fic about Faith and her first Watcher? All we know is that the Watcher was female and that Kakistos killed her, but I bet there's fic anyway). Despite that, my sympathy for her plummets when she shops Buffy to Giles as the killer of the deputy mayor (bitch!), and I no longer think that Buffy didn't do enough to help her. Buffy does plenty. She gives Faith one chance after another. Giles should probably have done more (got Faith away from that horrible apartment, for instance), but then again, Faith is so unstable she might not have let him.

Season 4 is really great. I love it, and I love Riley. He's so sweet. He's so nice. He really was Buffy's best chance at normality. I'm just so annoyed with him for being such a bloody idiot. And at such a terrible time.

Season 5 is probably the most coherently plotted season of the show. It's also the most emotionally demanding of the viewer. Yes, season 2 has some harrowing moments, but nothing - not even sending Angel to hell- can really beat Buffy losing her mother. The fact that it's down to mundane illness rather than something supernatural gives it even more power.

Finally, some stuff about Spike. As of where I've got to in season 5 (Forever), he is only just beginning to show some glimmers of the character I came to love. Okay, he's a good villain in season 2 and he's funny in season 4 and early season 5, but it's only after he falls in love with Buffy that there's the slightest inkling he might still harbour some small trace of humanity deep within him that his particular circumstances (being chipped) will finally bring out (in both good ways and bad ways). You see it first in the porch scene at the end of FFL and then not again until Forever. For most of the season, though, he's floundering, trying totally ineptly, to make himself into someone that Buffy could love, and having no clue that when he tries to be helpful he usually makes things worse. He is developing empathy though, even if who he feels it for is pretty selective.

In other words, he's very, very much a work in progress.

Which brings me to my final point. It's my opinion that, as of the end of the shows (BtVS and AtS, that is), Spike is the only major character whose storyline and potential for character development haven't gone arm in arm (if I can put it that way). As we all know, I think, Joss never originally intended to bring Spike back from the dead full-time after Chosen, but the WB insisted on JM being a series regular if AtS was to be renewed (and I've never before wondered if that rankled with the other cast members. Surely it must have), and so we got Spike in AtS season 5. And he was a very different Spike to the one in BtVS. Basically, he was meant to be a foil for Angel so he would be all the things Angel, as a vampire with a soul, was not - rude, unrepentant, abrasive.

He's only nice to Fred, and by the end of the season is barely beginning to learn how to play nice with other people.

Which is sort of my point. By the time NFA comes around, Spike has only had his soul for a year. Maybe if he'd not died in the alley along with Angel, Gunn and Illyria (which, if you ignore the comics, is probably what happened) he might have changed for the better down the road (the way he has in Buffy season 10). After all, Angel didn't exactly become a paragon of virtue the minute he got his soul, did he?

And Spike does have good instincts. Yes, he says rude and obnoxious stuff all the time in AtS season 5, but he always does the right thing.

So, though of course there's plenty you could say about what all the characters did next, I've ended up feeling that Spike in the show was sort of cheated (which I know will make the subset of fans who think he took over the show and ruined it roll their eyes, but there it is). Either he should have stayed dead after Chosen, or he should have been allowed to go on past NFA, live and learn, and perhaps (one day) become a better person. As it is, I feel like all the characters in both shows got a proper send off (as it were, and I know some won't agree with me) with completed character arcs (which is not to say there's not more to be said about them, just that they finished at a place where it was okay to finish emotionally) but Spike, because he came back, got sort of awkwardly stuck in the middle, neither fish nor fowl.

YMMV, obviously. I know many fans of other characters also feel their favourites were short-changed. And I'm not talking about story. Spike got plenty of that. I'm talking about emotional...er, progress.

Comments

[kikimay]

I went to the reverse process with Faith. When I first watched I was all "bitch!" because of how she betrayed Buffy. Later I tried to understand what she was going through at that time. I still think that she made dumb choices but she was also very lonely.

Riley in S4 is a good guy, but mostly I adore his interactions with Willow. I think that MC and SMG had a tremendous lack of chemistry and that didn't help Marc.

[shapinglight]

I do still feel sorry for Faith, just not outraged at the others on her behalf any more. She had a rough time, but except for Angel she had a bad habit of pushing away everyone who tried to help her.

Riley in S4 is a good guy, but mostly I adore his interactions with Willow. I think that MC and SMG had a tremendous lack of chemistry and that didn't help Marc.

I dunno. If I've learnt anything in fandom it's that onscreen chemistry is very much in the eyes of the beholder. I've seen plenty of Bangel 'shippers for instance claim that JM and SMG have no on screen chemistry at all. And while I'll happily believe that in some cases that's because they're Bangel 'shippers and don't want to see it, in others maybe the fact that they can't see it is part of the reason why they're Bangel 'shippers?

DB and SMG have it in spades, and I think JM and SMG do too. But I think there is chemistry of a sort between Marc Blucas and SMG. It's a lot quieter - more like the Buffy/Riley relationship, in fact - but I think it's there. I will agree that their sex scenes aren't particularly sexy, though. But then a lot of TV sex scenes aren't. Also, the height difference between them is so great it's kind of silly. SMG is about the same height as Blucas when he's sitting down. ;)

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

I will agree that their sex scenes aren't particularly sexy, though.

The first one kinda sums up the writing of the relationship: Trying too hard. I mean with the cuts from the fighting to the bedroom. Cringeworthy.

[shapinglight]

Yeah, it is a bit...what's the word?

Okay, I think you already used the word.

Oh well, at least I got this nice icon (courtesy of ruuger out of it.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure what they were going for with Riley. I'm not sure the writers did, either. In the story, they write it as a more tempered romance, but then try to make it hot in directing and it doesn't work. Riley is just not written as that kind of character. At least not what one would conventionally call hot. It's not a jab at Blucas, he's just not written that way.

Also, it seems like every writer has a different take. Joss calls him well-adjusted (he wasn't) and Marti and Petrie clearly think he's the one who got away. Yet there was a podcast with a bunch of the writers not too long ago and they claimed it was supposed to be about Buffy realizing normal wasn't enough. This is surely not what was shown onscreen 'cause she was happy and chased after the helicopter. So someone's either fibbing or it was a completely botched storyline. With Joss I think he attempts to re-write the story after the fact, as he has a tendency to do. It's probably where Allie got it from.

[shapinglight]

With Joss I think he attempts to re-write the story after the fact, as he has a tendency to do.

I agree, though he may not realise he's doing it.

That's very interesting - some of the writers now satyng that Buffy/Riley was supposed to make Buffy realise normal wasn't enough, I mean. I've never, ever heard that interpretation before from anyone 'official'. It's possible they rewatched the eps and that's how it struck them now, I suppose?

'Course, Spike used to say that to Buffy all the time in season 6, but I always assumed we were meant to think it was just part of his evil plan to drag her down into the dark with him. ;)

Then again, there is an element of it - definitely. It's there from the first episode of season 5 when Buffy wakes up in the night, sneaks out of bed, goes and kills a vampire, then sneaks back to bed all without waking Riley up. That probably is a bit of an anvil, now I think of it.

Possibly, they started off thinking Riley was to be the anti-Angel - nice, normal, can go out in daylight, then realised it wasn't working and changed their tunes. In fact, that's more probable. The original story was changed because the chemistry wasn't right/the fans didn't like Riley etc, etc.

After all, from what we hear, if Joss had stuck inflexibly to his original plan for the show, there would have been no Angel, for a start. And probably a lot of stuff people like in the show would have been quite different.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

The BvD scene never struck me as Buffy being unsatisfied with Riley. I can see how it could be read that way, but to me it came off as her at least subconsciously acknowledging she likes slaying.

But yeah, I think it's a case of 'fans think this, so yeah that's what we were writing, yup'. Just them trying to cover up for ineffective writing. They did the same thing with Spuffy, tbh. Contrast their comments in S6, which were all over the place, with the way they softened things up when referring to it in S7.

And probably a lot of stuff people like in the show would have been quite different.

Yup. That's why Joss's word has never been gold to me. Without the suits injecting stuff like Angel or writing playing off the actors, the show would not have been what it was. I firmly believe that without Gellar or Marsters, the characters would have been drastically different.

[shapinglight]

but to me it came off as her at least subconsciously acknowledging she likes slaying.

Well, season 5 (or really from Restless onwards)had a lot about what being the Slayer really means, and was also the first season where Buffy really seemed to accept that part of herself. Prior to that, especially in the high school years, there'd been a long-running theme about how being the Slayer was just a burden. And it still was, but she was also aware of being part of this long line of mystic warriors etc, etc.

They did the same thing with Spuffy, tbh. Contrast their comments in S6, which were all over the place, with the way they softened things up when referring to it in S7.

Oh, definitely. Seeing Red was a great about teaching the fans a lesson, then later it morphed into (according to Joss) into some bizarre notion of trying to show that even someone who commits the most heinous of crimes can genuinely want to change. Or some such. I can't remember Joss's exact words.

But yes, it was pretty all over the shop.

I firmly believe that without Gellar or Marsters, the characters would have been drastically different.

True of all the cast, I think, but in the case of JM, for certain if Spike had been played by a less charismatic actor Joss would probably have stuck with his original plan to kill him off half way through season 2. When making TV shows, though, you go with what works and you don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs etc, etc.

The fact that so many factors came together in just the right mix to create the whole of BtVS is what I meant in my 18th anniversary post about the show being lightning in a bottle (which is a phrase first used in my hearing sueworld2003).

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Well, season 5 (or really from Restless onwards)had a lot about what being the Slayer really means, and was also the first season where Buffy really seemed to accept that part of herself. Prior to that, especially in the high school years, there'd been a long-running theme about how being the Slayer was just a burden. And it still was, but she was also aware of being part of this long line of mystic warriors etc, etc.

I think the long-running conflict was never Buffy liking slaying* so much as slaying vs. being The Slayer. Choice vs burden. Willow gets to choose to join the fight, Buffy doesn't. Things look a little different if you don't have an option. We see this presented rather starkly in Bargaining when the Scoobies are out doing a routine patrol. Suddenly it's work and they're clearly not enjoying it. So they bring Buffy back to do it. Chosen makes it so none of them have to slay, don't have to be alone, don't have that burden. I know there's a lot of debate about it, but there is never anything (other than a few gags about hugs and handshakes) that says a slayer can't live a regular life if they want.

*I think what S5 is it's more about what slaying means. They mirror it in BvD and The Gift. "I prefer the term slayer. Killer sound so..." goes to "I guess a slayer really is just a killer after all." That goes back to Restless when dream!Riley addresses her as killer, her subconscious fears poking through.

[shapinglight]

I would like to respond intelligently to this comment, but I fear it's beyond me at the moment. I do see what you mean, though.