Sarah's Sober Second Thought Series: Wasted Potentials

[Primetimer]

Interesting ideas and top-notch acting circle a repetitious, disorganized drain as the Buffy Rewatch nears the end.

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[swimmyfish]

SO much of this season is just wasted time! I'm sure watching it is worse, but just reading about it is almost infuriating.

[spaceghostess]

Thanks, Sarah, for doing this so I never have to. Season 7 was such a painful mess that I suspect only a combination of knitting and copious drinking could ever get me through it again. Even that approach would only result in a fucked up project with numerous dropped stitches accompanied by a headache and low-grade nausea . . . kind of Season 7 in a nutshell, anyway.

 

Baby Slayers = So Much Hate
Stupid Miscommunication/Secret Keeping = Hate
First Evil = Hate
Souled Spike = Sadness for Marsters (but happy he eventually got to skip on over to Angel and have some fun)

Final Episodes You Have Yet to Review = Hate Beyond Reason

 

Must cleanse palate with happy feels -- a re-watch of last nights Mets game may be in order!

 

Edited to remove unnecessary space.

Edited April 17, 2015 by spaceghostess

[Sarah D. Bunting]

"Even that approach would only result in a fucked up project with numerous dropped stitches accompanied by a headache and low-grade nausea" - so you got the photos I sent! (hee.) (...sigh.)

[spaceghostess]

Heh, been there. Don't knit drunk; don't knit angry (except to create voodoo garments for "gifting" to arch nemeses).

[AndySmith]

I really don't mean this in a snarky way, I don't...but I'd much rather see what you ended up knitting during your re-watching more than seeing most of what ended up in season 7 (some good ideas, bad/boring execution). Maybe you can post pics with your final re-watch review?

[Sarah D. Bunting]

I would be happy to. Maybe I can get Bernat to sponsor the post so some good comes out of this last bit here, hee.

[beadgirl]

One of the things I always wondered when watching the show is what was going on in the rest of the world with regard to vampires and demons. Yes, the Hellmouth attracted them, but it stands to reason they were plaguing other parts of the world. Who was defending people outside of Sunnydale? It made sense in the first few years to keep the show insular, because high school students are generally pretty solipsistic and convinced that their problems are The Worst, but later seasons could have benefited from opening up the world more, especially once Buffy dropped out of college. Surely there were other anti-Vampire groups she could have encountered and either worked or clashed with. There was the Initiative, but that was dropped. What are all the other watchers and members of the Watcher Council doing when they are not pestering the Slayer? I bet the Catholic Church would have a secret team on this (gotta use those albino assassin monks for something); other religious traditions would, too, particularly the ones with a strong good v. evil ethos. Samurai? Ninjas? Voodoo or Santeria practitioners? Heck, if there are demons, where are the angels? If the demons are really just alien races, where are the helpful ones? That's why I actually liked the potential slayers storyline, in theory, at least. Not in execution.

Re Spike's soul: for me it was a big waste of potential, because I really wanted the moral ramifications addressed on Buffy or on Angel. What does it say about their characters if good, noble Angel had to be forced into regaining his soul, but amoral cynical Spike chose reensoulment? What about Spike's good deeds before he got his soul? Heck, what about free will? Why can people and "demons" be good or evil, but for vampires it depends on whether they have a soul?

[AndySmith]

It wouldn't shock me if there was a quilt that you subconsciously stitched out "But he has a soul!" on it.

[spaceghostess]

I would be happy to. Maybe I can get Bernat to sponsor the post so some good comes out of this last bit here, hee.

Way to make the best of a bad situation -- can't wait to see!

[Fat Elvis 007]

I've always hated Botox's Eye (can't remember the actual name right now, and can't be arsed to look it up) as a stupid plot device that was in no way consistent with the plot before or after, but I don't think I ever realized how truly appalling it was as a physical prop until that still photo in the review. Good lord.

[kalamac]

I recall spending this whole season being annoyed that it was still all about Buffy, especially when she was the one who got to wield the scythe or whatever, and it was from her that Willow pulled the power for all the potentials at the end, simply because I thought that all should have been Faith.

I remember when people were all "but why didn't we get a new Slayer after Buffy sacrificed herself at the end of Season 5?", Joss saying that it was because the Slayer line now ran through Faith. Which was probably him making shit up to appease the observant fans, but in my mind that meant that even though the show was still called Buffy, Faith should have been the important one in season 7.

[cheezwhiz346]

One of the things I always wondered when watching the show is what was going on in the rest of the world with regard to vampires and demons. Yes, the Hellmouth attracted them, but it stands to reason they were plaguing other parts of the world. Who was defending people outside of Sunnydale? It made sense in the first few years to keep the show insular, because high school students are generally pretty solipsistic and convinced that their problems are The Worst, but later seasons could have benefited from opening up the world more, especially once Buffy dropped out of college. Surely there were other anti-Vampire groups she could have encountered and either worked or clashed with. There was the Initiative, but that was dropped. What are all the other watchers and members of the Watcher Council doing when they are not pestering the Slayer? I bet the Catholic Church would have a secret team on this (gotta use those albino assassin monks for something); other religious traditions would, too, particularly the ones with a strong good v. evil ethos. Samurai? Ninjas? Voodoo or Santeria practitioners? Heck, if there are demons, where are the angels? If the demons are really just alien races, where are the helpful ones? That's why I actually liked the potential slayers storyline, in theory, at least. Not in execution.

Re Spike's soul: for me it was a big waste of potential, because I really wanted the moral ramifications addressed on Buffy or on Angel. What does it say about their characters if good, noble Angel had to be forced into regaining his soul, but amoral cynical Spike chose reensoulment? What about Spike's good deeds before he got his soul? Heck, what about free will? Why can people and "demons" be good or evil, but for vampires it depends on whether they have a soul?

 

ITA with all your thoughts here. Though I do enjoy the various ways people can fanwank the changes and inconsistencies in the BtVS world, ultimately for me I just see the writers not really thinking things through, esp. w/r/t these two issues.

I recall spending this whole season being annoyed that it was still all about Buffy, especially when she was the one who got to wield the scythe or whatever, and it was from her that Willow pulled the power for all the potentials at the end, simply because I thought that all should have been Faith.

I remember when people were all "but why didn't we get a new Slayer after Buffy sacrificed herself at the end of Season 5?", Joss saying that it was because the Slayer line now ran through Faith. Which was probably him making shit up to appease the observant fans, but in my mind that meant that even though the show was still called Buffy, Faith should have been the important one in season 7.

Faith has a line in a later ep about the scythe feeling like hers, and saying to Buffy, 'I guess that means it's yours.' And I have no idea how much meaning was intended to go into that line, but I loved it b/c I have unending empathy for Faith and her arc is possibly my very favorite, and that line almost felt, to me, like an acknowledgement from the writers of the dynamics of the show.

[Loandbehold]

It was made pretty clear from the time of Kendra's appearance that the slayer line no longer ran through Buffy. That's why when Kendra was killed, Faith was called. And why when Buffy died at the end of The Gift, no new slayer cam around. The writers seemed to forget about that in season 7 when they had Buffy tell the potentials that if she died, one of them could be called.

 

I never had a problem with the lack of an ultimate good to balance out The First. I've read other stories where God or "Good" either allows for free will and takes no part in the affairs of humans, or is completely indifferent, while the Devil or "Evil" actively seeks to take over. From the beginning of the series, we've had evil, but the only mention of "good" was Buffy's belief that she had been in heaven. Maybe that should have been made clearer. Or, maybe it's just my fanwank and allows me to enjoy the season, which I do, even though it's by far not the best of the series.

[paramitch]

Thank you for these continued recaps!  I remember at the time, I felt like the only one who just didn't love Season 7 (Kennedy! Rona! Worst Evil! Gah!) so I swear, it's incredibly therapeutic to be able to read these and fistpump while doing so. 

 

even the return of Giles is tainted to a degree by the baffling shit Head has to play. When he's not delivering portentous bulletins about the First, he's getting saddled with un-Giles-y dialogue Drew Greenberg lifted from Xander and didn't rewrite at all.

 

 

Why aren't they telling each other everything? As of "Sleeper," they seem to have figured out how the First plays on their respective insecurities and exploits old resentments, and this they could avoid. Why do they keep playing into it? Just tell Buffy you saw Joyce, and what she said!

 

 

THIS. THIS. I was angry so many times in Season 7 at the coy, nudging quality of the writing that seemed aware of the logical inconsistencies while ignoring them outright. They were fighting a stupid incorporeal thingamabob whose presence could be verified anytime in seconds. WHY weren't they always verifying each other's reality (Giles's/Scoobs's most of all) through touch? Why play with the idea that Giles might be corrupt when it was so easy to test? Why weren't they sharing even basic information? (One of the reasons I loved early "Vamp Diaries" was the way the writers constantly had characters experiencing things and then -- a total novelty -- immediately discussing them instead of waiting 3-6 episodes to build artificial tension.)

 

And if you can kill it by beheading it, why didn't Buffy just do that, sooner? Yeah yeah, to teach the Potentials a lesson. I'm still unclear on what they learned, other than that their fearless leader will go all the way around the block to get to the house next door

 

I remember this being one of my biggest problems with the season while it was airing, and that was while I was still in full-on love with the Buffyverse. But the buildup on the Ubervamp's strength and toughness so that Buffy takes nearly a full episode to kill one (or that's what it felt like) was poorly done -- not least because eventually Potentials will be mowing them down like yesterday's lawn by the end of the season. It's just one of the many inconsistencies of the season.

 

One of the things I always wondered when watching the show is what was going on in the rest of the world with regard to vampires and demons. Yes, the Hellmouth attracted them, but it stands to reason they were plaguing other parts of the world. Who was defending people outside of Sunnydale? It made sense in the first few years to keep the show insular, because high school students are generally pretty solipsistic and convinced that their problems are The Worst, but later seasons could have benefited from opening up the world more, especially once Buffy dropped out of college. Surely there were other anti-Vampire groups she could have encountered and either worked or clashed with. There was the Initiative, but that was dropped. What are all the other watchers and members of the Watcher Council doing when they are not pestering the Slayer? I bet the Catholic Church would have a secret team on this (gotta use those albino assassin monks for something); other religious traditions would, too, particularly the ones with a strong good v. evil ethos. Samurai? Ninjas? Voodoo or Santeria practitioners? Heck, if there are demons, where are the angels? If the demons are really just alien races, where are the helpful ones? That's why I actually liked the potential slayers storyline, in theory, at least. Not in execution.

Re Spike's soul: for me it was a big waste of potential, because I really wanted the moral ramifications addressed on Buffy or on Angel. What does it say about their characters if good, noble Angel had to be forced into regaining his soul, but amoral cynical Spike chose reensoulment? What about Spike's good deeds before he got his soul? Heck, what about free will? Why can people and "demons" be good or evil, but for vampires it depends on whether they have a soul?

 

Great post. What I loved about Buffy in the first 3-4 seasons was that it felt like part of a larger universe, and there was often some really lovely worldbuilding. I liked that we were reminded fairly often that this was just one Hellmouth of many, and I really liked the ways in which the other characters and organizations would pop in from time to time just to wave and remind us that it wasn't just Buffy's fight. But then by season 5 (and especially season 6), Buffy's world just began to feel very claustrophobic to me -- suddenly, they weren't part of a larger effort. The fight felt like it had shrunk down to the Scoobies, who were not all that effective, and from there, it shrank all the way down to Buffy, who became the only one who mattered. I just think it was a mistake and a shame, storywise.

 

The sloppiness regarding the "soul" issue will always bother me, because it was so inconsistently written and the rules kept changing. I've also often wondered if Whedon ever regretted writing the vamps of the Buffyverse as irredeemable and irreversibly evil -- I loved it in the first few seasons, but even then, they were already cheating it a bit with Angel's story. It was a bummer because it left characters who were vamped with nowhere to go -- and yet there was so much potential there if for instance, you were tempted to evil, or MOST became evil, while others fought it off -- it would have added so much moral complexity to the Buffyverse.

 

Like, remember Eric Balfour's Jesse from the pilot? And how being vamped gave him the self-esteem to go from ignored geek to confident, sexy guy Cordelia would dance with? That was really interesting if there'd been anywhere to take it. It was an interesting trade-off.

So I kind of loved Spike's twisted evolution as a character, because he was always a fool for love, and while he was a terrific villain, there was a genuine likability and vulnerability to the character that made his potential for good really intriguing. I just never thought they needed the soul to explore that, and was disappointed when it was reintroduced.

I agree with the recap that there was some good acting this season -- I especially always felt like Adam Busch was just terrific as Warren in the body-switch episode, I always love Anthony Stewart Head, and despite my exasperation with Dawn, I always thought Michelle Trachtenberg did a terrific job (especially in this season, when she wasn't asked to play all her scenes with the "bratty" dial turned all the way up and was allowed some quietness and nuance).

ETA: Ack, typos!

Edited April 24, 2015 by paramitch