(no subject)

[shapinglight]

Okay, because work is boring and I’m miffed about not getting to watch the last series of BSG yet, what with next week’s TV books going on and on about how good it is etc, I thought I’d make a post about BtVS, just to be different.



One thing no one new to the fandom could help noticing is that season 7 comes in for a lot of stick. Lots and lots of people don’t like it for various reasons. In fact, with one representative of one of the extremist factions of fans, it seems to have become a major article of ‘faith’ that during the last two seasons of the show, the other writers formed a conspiracy to ‘ruin’ it behind Joss’s back, and that Joss himself had nothing whatsoever to do with seasons 6&7 (presumably, he was tied up and gagged in a closet while Marti Noxon, urged on by rabid Spike fans, wrote ransom demands to his family with one hand while penning show-trashing episodes with the other).

Nonsense like that aside, as I said, many people don’t like season 7, so what I wondered is, if you could have written the season, what would you have done differently?

I think, to be fair, suggestions have to conform to the restrictions of character and RL that Joss was faced with at the end of season 6. For instance, you can’t decide arbitrarily that Tara never died or that Spike didn’t get his soul back because it’s established that both those things happened in season 6. Nor can you write Spike out of season 7 after only one episode just because you don’t like him. You have to remember that JM had signed a contract for 22 episodes. Similarly, you have to take on board that SMG had said she didn’t want to do another season, making 7 the final one, that ASH had only a limited number of episodes and that if DB did make a guest appearance, it was only going to be a cameo, what with AtS being on a different network.

It also seems only right that Joss’s seasonal/end of show theme of female empowerment should still be the same, so if your big beef is with the Potentials, another way has to be found to incorporate the female empowerment theme into the story or to make the Potentials more palatable. Or something.

I have plenty of nit-picks about season 7 myself, but overall I like it. I think if I was going to change anything, it would revolve around the annoying Guardian – talk about lame dea ex machina!- who I would either write out altogether or make a very different character and introduce somewhat earlier (or possibly only in Slayer dreams), Caleb, who I loathe with a fiery passion and who I would get rid of completely, finding some other way for the First Evil to be more physically menacing, and Andrew, who I would probably replace with Jonathan, because I like him more.

Comments

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Oh, so much that could have been done. So much! So here's just two points that have popped into my head!

I think I would have kept the Potentials, made them more likable (or just more in the background... or you know, got rid of Kennedy), and then at the end, where the show was really supposed to be about female empowerment, I would have had the Potentials actually be given a choice about accepting the Slayer power. It should have been an individual, personal choice, the one thing that Buffy complained that she was never given. If a girl didn't want the power, she should have been able to walk away without the power being forced upon her. THAT would have been empowerment. Instead, for every little girl who's now able to hit a fly ball over the fence, we're stuck with the girl who finally stands up to her abusive father but accidentally beats him to death and gets tried as an adult and winds up on Death Row. And let's not forget the Danas and pre-jail Faiths out there. And honestly, Kennedy is not a person I would trust with superpowers. She's got boundary issues that are probably going to lead to a sexual assault charge.

I also would have left out the high school stuff. "Back to the beginning" yadda yadda yadda. I didn't need Buffy to go back to the beginning; I needed her and the Scoobies to grow the fuck up. The only problem is if they grow up, they wouldn't be friends anymore because it's already been abundantly clear since S4 that they just aren't compatible in the long term. They're the type of friends that send each other birthday cards and at the holidays and maybe talk over the phone a few times a year, but they're not really bestest buddies anymore. If BtVS is the ultimate metaphor for growing up and high school, then they've missed an important step- the part where high school ENDS. You grow apart from your high school friends; you love them and consider them friends, but you're not as close as you used to be. I have maybe one close friend left out of the people I went to high school with that I am in regular contact with, but even that relationship is very strained since we went to college. It's natural that you go out and gain new experiences and make new friends in college or in the work place. Being with the same people for the past eight seasons hasn't done Buffy or anyone else a damn bit of good. Why has Team Angel worked out a bit better? Because they were all adults in the workplace. It's a whole different vibe, allows for more personal growth.

[shapinglight]

The idea of giving the Potentials a choice is actually a very good one. It could easily have been done by a show of hands in the scene where Buffy rallies the troops before the final battle. However, it wouldn't solve the problem of how she goes about getting the permission of every potential Slayer in the world, since they aren't all there to ask.

I suspect that Joss meant us to see the empowering moment as symbolic rather than actual, but when the story goes on afterwards, as it did in AtS, that's not so easy.

As I said to someone above, I don't think the back to the beginning idea was an attempt to relive some of the show's earlier glories, but more a rather ham-fisted attempt to bring things full-circle.

And I did feel that the nature of Buffy, Xander and Willow's friendship had changed by the end of the season and become more mature. I thought that scene in the school hall where they meet and then go their separate ways symbolised that. If I ignore the comics, I still see it that way.

I do agree that all of this could have been done better.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

The idea of giving the Potentials a choice is actually a very good one. It could easily have been done by a show of hands in the scene where Buffy rallies the troops before the final battle. However, it wouldn't solve the problem of how she goes about getting the permission of every potential Slayer in the world, since they aren't all there to ask.

I think I should have clarified what I meant in my first post- I don't think that every Potential in the world should have been given powers in the first place, just the ones that were in Buffy's home. They should have been given the choice. If they accepted, then only they should have gotten the power. Now, with what was shown on the show that wouldn't be possible apparently (the deux ex machina Scythe with its unlocking bright white light didn't allow for proximity or picking/choosing, I guess- did they explore anything other than the grand show option?), but they could have written a better ending using some other plot device where the girls could have gotten the power a little bit before the big battle. It just would have made more sense than going into a battle with absolutely no power at all, so that half the girls get wiped out before they even get their shiny new Slayer powers. But I guess the writers liked the idea of all the Potentials being fodder in Buffy's new army (why does she need a castle and an army again?).

As I said to someone above, I don't think the back to the beginning idea was an attempt to relive some of the show's earlier glories, but more a rather ham-fisted attempt to bring things full-circle.

I don't think that it was a more literal attempt at keeping them as they were, but more of a stubborn-headed attempt at keeping their personality growth at a minimum out of fear of change (i.e. fear of losing a chunk of audience). We had the whole full circle thing before back in Season Four with the big fight and then they make up (and by making up, I mean that they put their anger aside, fought the big battle, pretended like the big fight never happened, and never resolved any of their issues with one another). Then in S7, we have it again. Only in S7 we get the nice little hallway scene with Giles repeating the "World is doomed" quip, so that all the fans can go "Awwww."

The problem for Buffy and the others is that they keep going full circle, but they eventually wind up in the same spot each and every time, only a little bit more worn around the edges. They need to break out of the cycle and go forward, walk the winding path not the circle. Maybe the Scoobies could go a full dodecahedron if it meant a little more character growth all around.

I'm going to send a copy of William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell to Joss Whedon. XD

[shapinglight]

Sorry to have been so long responding to this. The problem with only the Potentials in Buffy's house getting the empowering is that it wouldn't then be very inclusive.

Of course, it's not that inclusive anyway, since it's confined to Potential Slayers, but the message Joss was trying to get across would have been diluted even more had he limited the empowerment to just the handful in Buffy's house.

I agree it would have been better to have them all empowered before the battle. After all, they had no guarantee the spell would even work.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Of course, it's not that inclusive anyway, since it's confined to Potential Slayers, but the message Joss was trying to get across would have been diluted even more had he limited the empowerment to just the handful in Buffy's house.

I'm afraid that is where we will have to agree to disagree. The most empowering message of all would have been to limit it to Buffy's house, to the ones who had a choice. Then they could have gone out into the world offering Potentials the option, much as they are going around recruiting up the new Slayers now. I mean, with the Watcher's Council destroyed and with no guarantee of living to fight another day, what did they think was going to happen to all the girls and women now afflicted with supernatural powers? Forcing unwanted power upon people is not empowering. The whole existence of the Slayer is that of misogyny from the beginning- the Shadow Men picking a girl, an unwanted, and giving her demonic powers so that they themselves would not have to fight. The writers had a chance to explore what real empowerment would mean- giving the girls, all the Potential Slayers that they had access to, a choice, the one thing no Slayer had ever had. Instead, they convinced these girls to come away from their families, for many of them to a part of the world they were either unfamiliar with the locality or the language, and trained them to be soldiers. Sure, they could have run away, but where would they go? Did they have money? Could a parent or guardian come to get them? Did they have proper access to long distance phone service? I hardly think that girls like the one Potential Giles brought back from China would have fully understood what was going on even with all the speechifying. Isolation, fear tactics, forced military training? Is that the Whedonverse road to female empowerment? Just because the writers throw in the Feminism-Yay! Guardians at the end with their big fancy scythe with Slayer-granting powers doesn't make it okay. The whole thing becomes the absolute antithesis of empowerment.

[shapinglight]

Well, I didn't say I agreed with it, but on the other hand, Joss was limited by the fact he was writing a TV drama. The images of the girls being empowered around the world is a powerful one, even if it doesn't bear too much thinking about.