Some Scattershot BtVS thoughts
Mar. 22nd, 2015 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightI'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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-23 11:03 pm (UTC)Well, I don't know much about American schools, but Faith says she dropped out of high school, so doesn't that mean she has to be at least 16, possibly older? I agree her behaviour doesn't fit a particular age. There are many very damaged young girls like Faith who act/appear older than they are. But I really don't think she's any younger than Buffy. She could even be older. I'm also not sure I agree about the Mayor. He's quite fatherly towards her, I think. On the other hand, he's getting her to be more evil, so it ends up being abusive anyway.
But as they are in S2, either one could have chosen some form of redemption arc. Hell, they both could, and could go about it in very different ways.
This is true. has written a really nice story about souled Spike deciding he's still in love with Dru and Dru seeking some kind of redemption. Crazy Madcap Redemption.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-24 12:07 am (UTC)Yeah, Faith is the same age as Buffy is. Says 18-ish so possibly even older.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-24 01:01 am (UTC)(side note: every single American school district varies. the commonest arrangement shown on TV is kindergarten and 1st through 5th grades in an elementary school, then a middle school/junior high for 6, 7 and 8, and a high school for 9, 10, 11 and 12. but I lived in a district where there was K-3, then "intermediate" for 4 and 5, then the middle school and high school matched the common arrangement. If I were 10 years older tho, high school would have been 10, 11 and 12 and 6 would have been in the elementary school. K-8 in one building happens a lot too. Or 7-9 off by themselves. Older than 18 is possible, but in combination with drop out... not usually in the way that Faith presents?)
The other thing is Faith is written as a kid in foster care, because in American culture they're the archetypal Bad Kids. (I have no idea what the UK analogue is) That means she has been taken from her biological parents because the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts ruled her parents as unfit (this usually takes multiple counts of child abuse *and* multiple counts of drug possession by the parents). Kids in foster care have pretty horrible outcomes on average even now, and when the show was airing the stats were worse. Kids fairly routinely get "lost", in that the checks to make sure that they're with the foster parents and attending school just don't happen, or happen less often than they're supposed to. And for a kid in the high school age range, the checks are once a year or so. (again, all this varies from state to state, there are no uniform standards)
Since the Mayor is y'know, the Mayor, he's part of the government. So he's supposed to y'know... uphold the law. That means harboring a runaway teenage girl is not exactly something he's supposed to be doing. Doesn't matter how kind he is, or how fatherly he might seem. His job as a grown up and a civil servant is to get her into some semblance of a home life with adult supervision and advice, and to do so legally. Since Giles is a school employee, this is also his job. And instead they both just... let it go. And the writers do too. Whoops.
The sucky bit is Faith isn't the first time or the last time writers from Buffy do this kind of lazy writing, where they just skip out on an easy source of dramatic tension and conflict. They do it at the start of S3 in Anne. Then in S6 with Dawn. It shows up with Claudia on Warehouse 13. It shows up in Agents of SHIELD with Skye. And I'm sure it's been a problem on other shows too, these are just the instances I as a fairly infrequent TV watcher can come up with.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-24 09:58 am (UTC)I will say again, though, that I believe Faith is the same age/older than Buffy. Also, the Mayor, however kindly disposed towards her is evil and is trying to get her to do evil things so that if he doesn't do the things he should be doing as a civil servant it isn't really surprising.
I also think that these kinds of fantasy/genre shows are probably not the best place to be exploring in depth the social issues you mention as they are not really equipped to do so in a responsible, realistic way.
Thanks for your interesting comments.