The Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel Appreciation Thread - Page 18

Something else that occurred to me, as to why I can't rank 2 higher than the subsequent seasons: so many of the characters and aspects that define the show when I think about it as a whole are not yet in place, which makes it feel somehow nascent.  Obviously, it introduces some of the best characters and hits some of the highest highs, but a season with no Anya, no Tara, no Dawn, no Faith, no interaction with the Council, no Clem, no Magic Box, and Spike as a purely evil figure (finale aside, sort of) feels somehow incomplete, at least in retrospect.

S3, in addition to being more consistent overall, introduces several of these elements (Anya, Faith) and beefs up others (an expanded role for Oz, more details on the Watchers and Slayer mythology).  Which makes it feel more fully formed when looking over the entirety of the series.

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Originally Posted by Schwartz 

I think my "problem" with S2 is that it's duds are duddier than the middling episodes of 3 or 4, and the overall arc takes until Angel goes bad to really kick off, then still has some fitful pacing as they work in some MOTW stuff like "Go Fish" where it doesn't belong.  But the good parts are really, really good.

 

I can't argue (S2 is still trying to find its feet early on), except the duds in Season 4 are every bit as bad, if not worse.  Doomed and Where the Wild Things Are are awful, awful, awful episodes.  (I'm letting Beer Bad slide for the cheap laughs.)  And man, the arc just doesn't work.  Adam's boring.  The Initiative's boring.  Riley's boring.  And they take up so much of the season.

Truthfully, I think Season 3 is the most wall-to-wall solid season of the show.  Great arc, great standalones, very few clunkers.  But the main through line of Season 2 is so great that it elevates the rest.

Like I said, 4's flaws are easy to spot, but it's strengths are a bit more intangible, so it's difficult to argue for.  I just had such a blast with it start to finish, dud villains and bland love interests be damned.

Also, just to reiterate, "Hush" and "Restless".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schwartz 

Like I said, 4's flaws are easy to spot, but it's strengths are a bit more intangible, so it's difficult to argue for.  I just had such a blast with it start to finish, dud villains and bland love interests be damned.

 

Also, just to reiterate, "Hush" and "Restless".

Hush and Restless are great episodes but outside of those two and probably Pangs, A New Man and I unapologetically like Doomed just for Spike in that episode I can pretty much do without season four. I just love season two more as a whole, go fish and its horrible placement right before the end of the season not withstanding.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schwartz 

Like I said, 4's flaws are easy to spot, but it's strengths are a bit more intangible, so it's difficult to argue for.  I just had such a blast with it start to finish, dud villains and bland love interests be damned.

 

Also, just to reiterate, "Hush" and "Restless".

And Something Blue.  And Fear Itself is worth it just for "actual size."

I don't despise Season 4 or anything, I just find it quite a bit less compelling than most of the other seasons on the whole.

Ah I forgot about Something Blue.

Every time we do this, I'm baffled again that "Lie To Me" (S2) doesn't get more love. I like how it addresses the rise of vampire lore in real-world pop-culture. Also, Dru is somewhere near the peak of her creepiness in the cold open.

I rank em 2>5>3>6>4>7>1

I seem to be one of the few people here who really digs Season 6, so I'll put in a little word in its defense.

- I think 6 is by far the most ambitious season. They really swing for the fences with a lot of what they're doing. Some of that works, and some of it doesn't, but you've gotta admire the guts. And what work REALLY works and hits on a deep emotional level.

- Case in point: "Once More With Feeling", which is a brilliant and super-gutsy piece of TV. It isn't content to just be "the musical episode", but it's also the episode where Buffy reveals she was pulled out of heaven, and the episode where she kisses Spike, and the episode where Tara learns Willow cast a spell on her, and the episode where Giles decides to leave, etc. It's incredibly ambitious, and they totally knock it out of the park.

- Buffy's resurrection is handled really well. I absolutely love the idea that Buffy wasn't saved from Hell, but ripped out of Heaven. It's an inspired twist on the idea, and sets the groundwork that Season 6 is really about trying to figure out how to deal with life. Not just grown-up, adult life, but just life itself.

- A lot of people don't like The Trio, but I never had a problem with them. They complement the main theme nicely as these guys who are living in a fantasy world, and don't react well when real life intrudes on them. Plus, they're funny comic relief (in a season all too lacking of it), and Warren's turn to completely awful human being is one I totally buy.

- There are a ton of great, memorable moments in 6. A lot of my favorite individual moments from the show come from this season. Willow's confrontation with Giles in "Flooded", All of "Tabula Rasa", Anya's slow walk down the aisle at the end of "Hell's Bells", Joss Whedon doing his own Dark Phoenix story over the course of the last 4 episodes, and my single favorite Buffy moment: "I'd like to test that theory."

- "After Life" is, in my opinion, the most underrated episode in the series. Nobody ever mentions it, but It's in my top 10 episodes. It does a great job of setting up all the different plot threads of the season, and features some really great creepy moments (in particular, when Anya gets possessed). It's also the best that the Spike/Buffy dynamic ever got. The moment when Spike sees Buffy for the first time and realizes that she isn't the Buffybot is really powerful, and then the scene later in Spike's crypt always gets me:

Spike: "I do remember what I said. The promise. To protect her. If I'd done that, even if I didn't make it, you wouldn't've had to jump. I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course. But after that. Every night after that. I'd see it all again, do something different. Faster or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways...Every night I save you."

The only problem with the episode is the lame CG creature Buffy ends up fighting, but I'm willing to forgive that for all the other goodness in the episode.

- I admit, the season has problems. The "magic = drugs" storyline with Willow is not very well thought out, and the Spike/Buffy relationship is really problematic. It also really sags in the middle. I really like the first 8 episodes and the last 7 episodes, but the middle 7 are pretty rough. Still, the high moments make it worth it to me, and the emotional beats (particularly the way it ends) really stand out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hammerhead 

Every time we do this, I'm baffled again that "Lie To Me" (S2) doesn't get more love. I like how it addresses the rise of vampire lore in real-world pop-culture. Also, Dru is somewhere near the peak of her creepiness in the cold open.

Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy: Lie to me.
Giles: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats and we always defeat them and save the day. Nobody ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar

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Originally Posted by SomethingClever 

- I think 6 is by far the most ambitious season.

Can't argue with that.  I actually think one of the issues with Season 7 is that they were stung by how mixed people were on Season 6, so they took a step back and tried to make it a little more 'familiar.'

I like just about everything in Season 5 except Glory.  Villainous God?  Cool!  Evil Cordelia?  Eh...

The Glory vs Willow fight was aces though.

I just love the part in Season 2 where they reveal Spike is no longer bound in his wheelchair. He just smarls and tosses it aside as the credits role. Awesome.

One thing the show was always great at was ending on a strong note.  It went for season finales, it went for individual episodes, it even went down to individual commercial breaks.  It's becoming more and more of a lost art in the pay cable/DVR world (although the cold open is sticking around), but I can't think of any show that did a better job of building to 4 mini-cliffhangers per hour than BTVS.  Although Lost and The Shield both did a pretty well at it.

Schwartz, if I had been following this thread all along, I'd be a little ticked that I never got an Angel S5 recap.

  The finale of season six justifies that season for me. The Scooby gang went though the worst time of their lives but they got though it.Yes, Tara didn't, but you see my point. I still don't like that Xander left Anya at the Altar. Them getting married would have been more of a shocking ending, based on how most of that season went.

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Originally Posted by MikeI 

Schwartz, if I had been following this thread all along, I'd be a little ticked that I never got an Angel S5 recap.

I...do not remember why I didn't finish that out at all.

Hey Buffy fans, I have some news that might be of particular interest to you.  Emma Caulfield (Anya) has a verified Twitter, and recently I've messaged her about the possibility of doing an AMA on Reddit.  She asked her followers to explain what an AMA is, and I provided her with a run-down of how it would work.  She hasn't provided an answer yet, but if she does agree (I suggested that she could do it after reaching the 50K followers milestone, which she's only a few hundred followers away from at the moment) I'll update this thread to let you know.

I imagine that some of you would be interested in creating an account to ask some questions about Buffy and the rest of her work.

What's an AMA?

Ask Me Anything.  It's an open question thread on Reddit that has attracted people from celebrities to politicians, or anyone else who thinks that they have some authority to answer questions (store managers, someone who has gone through a certain life experience, etc).  Just recently Molly Ringwald did an AMA, for instance.  Given the vast, highly varied nature of the Reddit community, a lot of interesting questions tend to be asked (Woody Harrelson was infamously asked about taking someone's virginity at a high school).

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Originally Posted by Draco Senior 

Ask Me Anything.  It's an open question thread on Reddit that has attracted people from celebrities to politicians, or anyone else who thinks that they have some authority to answer questions (store managers, someone who has gone through a certain life experience, etc).  Just recently Molly Ringwald did an AMA, for instance.  Given the vast, highly varied nature of the Reddit community, a lot of interesting questions tend to be asked (Woody Harrelson was infamously asked about taking someone's virginity at a high school).

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draco Senior 

I imagine that some of you would be interested in creating an account to ask some questions about Buffy and the rest of her work.

I think she might hate that. Heard her on an episode of Nerdist podcast..........shes kind of done with the show and hates when people call her Anya. She wasn't shitty and disrespectful about it but she feels trapped in the character and is praying she can find something else to break through. Which makes me wonder why she turned down that role in BSG.

EDIT:http://flyingfreakflag.tumblr.com/post/21733561848/my-response-to-a-fan

That's understandable.  Anya is her most high-profile role and she hasn't done much else besides one-off television guest appearances and independent film, so of course a lot of her fans are going to be coming from Buffy and expecting her to have fun with their references, questions and the like.  I mean, from my perspective being associated with one great show and multi-season character would be tremendous, but I imagine not having your other work acknowledged must be frustrating.  Every other question an interviewer or fan asks about your career is inevitably going to come down to one thing, and that's the show you're best known for.  Sure, it's great to have "that one role" in your career...but I can absolutely see the frustrations in a decade-ago role getting the most attention in your body of work.

It probably would have been less of an issue had Buffy launched her into a more successful career, but she has been fairly low-key.

I haven't watched Buffy in years, but I always remember Anya's lines... but amazingly I always remember them as if they were read by Leslie Mann. Is that weird?

Joss did a Reddit thing the other day, and skimming the highlights provided a few laughs.  And one that addressed the view I've seen pop up in several threads regarding The Avengers, about his "weakness" for killing off characters:

@dbertie: "I'm sure that killing off a character you've invested a lot of time in can be tough. Have you ever found that doing this to a particular character has had a profound emotional affect on you? Who was the toughest kill?"

@IAMAJossWhedon: "I actually find it refreshing... delightful.... vaguely arousing....Actually, I'm, no offense, very tired of being labelled as 'the guy who kills people'. Shakespeare (he's this hot new writer) does it way more than me, and everyone's all excited about how he, as it were, holds a mirror up to nature, while I'm like the Jason Voorhees of the writing community. Unfair. Also, probably Buffy's Mom."

And this was just amusing:

Joss seems to be very upfront about what he regards as regrets or missteps, but at the same time he can still seem passionate and defensive.  He comes off as very genuine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schwartz 

 

 

@dbertie: "I'm sure that killing off a character you've invested a lot of time in can be tough. Have you ever found that doing this to a particular character has had a profound emotional affect on you? Who was the toughest kill?"

 

@IAMAJossWhedon: "I actually find it refreshing... delightful.... vaguely arousing....Actually, I'm, no offense, very tired of being labelled as 'the guy who kills people'. Shakespeare (he's this hot new writer) does it way more than me, and everyone's all excited about how he, as it were, holds a mirror up to nature, while I'm like the Jason Voorhees of the writing community. Unfair. Also, probably Buffy's Mom."

 

 

He brought up this question an an Avengers press conference and it still seemed to bother him.  I don't know why he takes it as a negative.  Most shows kill off people as a stunt, his are a way to move the story forward.