Some Buffy S6 thoughts

[butterfly]

Just rewatched Once More, With Feeling and Tabula Rasa today and they really are so very wonderful. Bright and brilliant. And OMWF is especially bright after watching Angel a lot. Angel really is so much darker, visually. And in tone, really.

But back to S6 - really, everyone hits bottom in S6. S6 is all about becoming your worst fear and then starting to get over it. The more in denial someone is, the stronger their defenses, the longer it takes. But once they've reached their lowest point, gone as far down as their character can go, then they can start rebuilding. But they must tear down the faulty structure before they can rebuild.

Willow took the longest - she of the "I'm very seldom naughty", the one who is all about disclaiming her own dark side. She doesn't hit until near the very end of the season (Two to Go/Grave). Spike hits fairly late in the season as well (Seeing Red), which makes sense. "I may not be a good poet, but I'm a good man." Good men usually don't need to point this out. Buffy hits earlier - though I mark the change later than some might - not at her beating of Spike (Dead Things), though that was horrible, but at the plan to have her loved ones murdered (Normal Again), which was much more so. And Xander hits earliest (Hell's Bells). For all of them, hitting bottom is when they do the thing that would most horrify them in their 'right mind'. "Love's bitch" Spike 'hurt the girl', Xander left Anya and she ended up becoming a demon again (Am I marrying a demon?), Buffy betrayed the people she always tries hardest to protect. And Willow, who 'wanted in the good fight' utterly betrays that.

Hitting bottom is all about betrayal for this group. I'd argue that Giles' is when he leaves in Tabula Rasa - when he abandons the gang to their fate. In Older and Far Away, Dawn speaks carelessly, once again bringing evil to the Summer's home (as in The Real Me), but Anya points out her true betrayal - we took care of you and in return, you stole and lied to us. A less damaging image of what Connor does in the beginning of Angel S4. Much of Dawn is Connor's less hurtful mirror. Or, rather, Connor is Dawn's more broken reflection.

Interestingly, neither Tara nor Anya hit in this season - Tara's happens the season before (Family) and Anya's the season after (Selfless).

And on a different subject, it's nice that Buffy/Xander still gets me giddy. I'm all about the Love of Buffy and Angel nowadays, but just the thought of my favorite two twoing together makes me giggly and happy. I haven't lost the love. It's good to know.

Comments

[eve-tempts-adam.livejournal.com]

Angel and Buffy..meh. But I digress. The point of this comment is to agree Once More with Feeling is one of the most genius works of television, that and Hush.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

It truly is.

And a year and a half ago, I'd have joined you in that 'meh'.

[eve-tempts-adam.livejournal.com]

Nice icon. My friend Jer has it for one of those test livejournals where the staff experimented in giving free accounts with paid account features but Greatestjournal really is better if you can ignore that the majority of the journals on that site are celebrity rpg's. But 1000 icons, man.

I don't see what's the big deal about Angel/Buffy. It's apparent he loves her because of reasons I'm sure I don't need to explain XD but where's the chemistry? The dysfunctional passion of it all? Of course I'm a fan of the strange relationships that only work because the two are repulsed by each other.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

This specific icon or one from the same scene?

I didn't get it until End of Days, when Buffy just glowed at the sight of Angel. She just lit up when she saw him. Of course, I'm all about relationships that I think would be happy and healthy. Because I'm a sap and I embrace that.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Heh. B/X does NOT a happy Mona make. Which doesn't change my deep love for your reviews and episode commentaries. & :-)

And OMWF is especially bright after watching Angel a lot. Angel really is so much darker, visually. And in tone, really.

This is a common conception, and I'm not sure I would disagree as such; but to me, part of the strong emotional and dramatic impact of Buffy has always been drawn from contrast-- this bright, bubbly California world twisted just so that you can see the darkness. In my eyes, the intensity of the light makes the shadows so much more prominent, and as for the *depth* of aforementioned shadows...I watched parts of Pangs yesterday, and it was such a stunning, almost painful experience to witness these characters I love in more carefree times (already so much more burdened than the early episodes of Season One, Two, Three). The change is gradual, but this makes it no less dramatic. While I grant that Wesley and Cordelia have changed significantly, the shift towards darkness within our Sunnydale characters is, to me, far greater. More subtle due to those seven years, maybe; but contrasting the characters of Season Six or Seven with the children once bouncing through high school hallways just had me shocked and awed.

In a way, the two shows are polar opposites-- Buffy is about the shift from light to darkness (or a more conflicted world with those shades of grey everywhere, blurring the bright contrasts), and Angel is about the shift from darkness to light (or the attempt to do so, what with redemption, helping the helpless, and the whole nine yards).
Granted, this is too general an analogy, as BtVS/AtS are both about concepts of good and evil, innocence and experience, ignorance and knowledge, hope and desperation, all of which could reasonably be substituted for "darkness" and "light", just depending on your definition of the term and your focus on the narrative.

Dear. Does this make sense at all?

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

They are the happiness that couldn't be, yo!

Buffy is more about growing up, while Angel is more about what you do when you're there. So, Buffy is bright and cruel, harsh and beautiful. Angel tends to, yes, start darker. There's less of a contrast, and yet, at times, there's almost more, flares of hope that burn brightly in the darkness.

So, really, Buffy is more about showing the contrast of the darkness against the day, while Angel is about showing the contrast of the light against the night. Different approaches to the same problem, because they're each guided by their main character and their approach.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

I've always found Angel a bit more... uplifting? Less depressing fer' sure. There are times when BTVS feels like it's just going out of its way to rip your heart out and leave you miserable. (Seeing Red being a prime example wherein so much deus ex machina angst is thrown around.) It just leaves me feeling manipulated. Sure, TV is all about manipulation, but in Buffy it's just... I dunno, like JW has set out to convince us that the world is even more depressing than it really is.

Angel, for all the pain, feels more natural. I can understand why people do the things they do, I can see why they had to do them. I didn't believe it when they chucked Buffy out of her house in S7, but I totally bought Wes kidnapping Connor.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I never felt that way. Well, I agree that the pain in Angel feels natural, but the pain in Buffy feels that way to me, too.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Sometime the pain in BTVS just feels... off to me. Personal thing, almost certainly. The high school stuff and the college stuff I didn't feel like I had any connection to. "But that's not my school pain! You're doing my school pain wrong!"

Angel's got a different take on so much these days - pain, ethics, fate...

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yes, whereas it captured my personal pain fairly perfectly.

[flaming-muse.livejournal.com]

Wonderful commentary about each of the Scoobies doing the thing that was the worst to them, and I still squee over B/X. I loved their early-S7 closeness. Yay for your icon!

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Yay for B/X squee-age!

Thanks. It's actually interesting how perfectly each of them did discover their worst side - the side that would most horrify them as we first meet them. Xander's the side-by-your-side guy and he leaves, just leaves. Willow's all about not hurting the innocents or the harmless and she's about to fry the whole planet. Buffy tries at various times to keep Xander, Willow, and Dawn out of the fight and ends up making them helpless to the monster she's supposed to fight. Giles tries so hard to guide Buffy and leaves her when she needs that guidance the most (Buffy was right in Tabula Rasa - and Xander supports her in that exact reasoning later in the episode, and again, he's right).

And Spike. Wow. "You know I'd never hurt you." He's all about molding himself to appeal to his lady love - so that she'll choose him. He wants her to choose - that's what he's always about - he wants her his by her consent. And then he tries to force it. Tries to make her care, without having her choose first. Spike says in Seeing Red that he'd have never left Anya at the altar - true, that's not his damage. But his damage is worse, just in a different way.

Apologies for dropping in late yet again

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

I seem to check into your LJ about a week late. Great thoughts on S6 characterization and descent. There's always a part of me that looks back at the early season scoobies, and wonders just how much of their personal strengths were permanently beaten out of them (by life and by themselves) And it's interesting to see how Willow, Xander, and Spike seem to overcompensate for the flaws they exhibit in S6. Less so Buffy and Giles.

I didn't get it until End of Days, when Buffy just glowed at the sight of Angel. She just lit up when she saw him. Of course, I'm all about relationships that I think would be happy and healthy.

It's funny. I watched the series for years, liked the B/A storyline but wasn't particularly wedded to it at all. It was sweet at times, but way to many issues. Personally, I'd thought she'd be best served getting out of Sunnydale and finding someone else eniterly new. (Whereas I really had hoped for Xander and Anya.) But when I saw old or new scenes where she's glowing just because he's near, especially when I'm used to this near-deadened S6-7 incarnation of Buffy Summers, I think that if she ought to try to be with anybody - it's him.

Re: Apologies for dropping in late yet again

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Dude, it's nice. Always feel free to drop in at any point, late or not.

Buffy and Giles get the most responsibility heaped on them in S7, which causes them, I think, to revert to their flaws - both of them consider themselves responsible for these girls that keep dying. Willow, Xander, and Spike never blame themselves for the potentials dying.

Yeah. Angel can always make her light up. Probably always will. I think it's a First Love privilege.

But Xander can make her laugh - even in S7. Watch the end of First Date - before Giles goes all gloom and doom, she's joking around with Xander in a completely real way ("What if you just start attracting male demons?"). And the joking in End of Days as they're walking out of the kitchen. She's less... tired when she's near Xander.

Re: Apologies for dropping in late yet again

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

True on the gang. Buffy & Giles have been officially tasked with carrying the burden, and both completely buy into it. W-X-S are there because they want to be, not because they have to be, so they're far less likely to hold themselves personally responsible and react accordingly in the way Buffy and Giles will.

As for the 'ships - well, I guess we all look at things through our own lenses. Xander can lighten moods very well, but I don't see the *zing* where she looks at him as more than a tertiary option. That's just me. Mostly, I still think she should be looking beyond the people she knew in Sunnydale. Sometimes, it's easy to forget she's only 22.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

You make so much sense of S6, which does have to be one of my least favorite. The reversals in direction attendent from Wrecked marred the last half of the season greatly for me, but the last few episodes picked it up. I like your thoughts about each character hitting bottom, especially Giles. His absence as portrayed by the show was just inexplicably bizarre.

I was watching the end of S3 Buffy last night - the main Faith episodes after Wesley in introduced, and reveling in the love of my show.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

It was a stupid decision on Giles' part, but it does make sense. I've always gotten the sense that a big part of the reason he left was because he really couldn't stand the thought of losing Buffy again.

I like S6 because it does make so much sense to me. They all felt in character to me - it was just the worst part of their character, the part they'd spent the last five years fighting. Each of them faces the fear that drives them. And then they needed to recover. That's why I love S7, it's about the recovery, the rebuilding - which can almost be as painful as the breaking. Sometimes, it can be even more painful. Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Spike, Dawn, and Anya all have to rediscover who they're meant to be.

And yay! Wesley! Whee!

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

It was a stupid decision on Giles' part, but it does make sense. I've always gotten the sense that a big part of the reason he left was because he really couldn't stand the thought of losing Buffy again.

I'm not entirely convinced, but it's a funky idea. To leave is to assert some control over 'fate', and he had been trying to leave for so damn long. Even when he got sacked as her Watcher he stayed. Maybe he didn't want to be defined by his relationship to Buffy anymore. What's interesting about S6/7 is the fact that Giles interacts with Willow. Given that he's been the father-figure to all of them (especially Xander, with his dysfunctional folks) it's nice to see him taking on Willow's problems on their own terms rather than as a sub-set of Buffy.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Well, he never wanted to be a father figure. He accepts the role when it comes to Buffy, but doesn't for Willow until season 6/7 and never does with Xander.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

I think it's the way he always seems to regard them as "the children". He didn't start out thinking a watcher should be a parent, but living it made him change that idea.

A distant father-figure maybe, but I reckon they thought of him as that to at least an extent. And there's a certain level of reciprocation.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Hmm. If so, he was a sucky dad. Like most of the Joss-verse parents/parental figures.

Well, less sucky to Buffy, but still mostly sucky. I like Giles, but he was bad at the fake fathering.