Any Buffy fans around to discuss some things that have annoyed me on rewatching?

[MrsBertMacklin]

Posting in Chat because this doesn't warrant a permanent thread. I fully admit to overthinking the issues below, I've been binge watching and may have lost perspective.

• Faith was made a slayer when Buffy died the first time. When she dies in Season 5, no mention of a duplicate Slayer, correct?

• The Principal in Season 7 talks to Buffy about how he's looked through her file, why is her response not, 'you creepy fuck, what a breach of privacy, I left school 5 years ago'?

• Neither Buffy or Willow have regular jobs (Willow is never seen in employment). Who pays for Willow's flights to England for rehab, their weapons, various house repairs (don't tell me Buffy could get insurance for accidental damage / civil unrest with her claims history), Dawn's school books etc.?

• When Spike goes to get himself restored to his former self: why exactly does that Demon con him and actually give him his soul? If it was a good demon I could understand it's ultimately setting him on the road to redemption, but it's not.

• Why did Joss Whedon make Angel Irish, when it must have been obvious within 5 syllables that David B's Irish accent was the worst thing in the world?

• Kennedy: I was all for Willow finding someone else after Tara, why on earth did they make that person such an utter knob? Is she meant to have some redeeming features / be perfect for Willow and the actor ballsed it up?

• After Joyce died, why didn't Buffy's dad make a single appearance, surely they could have found some reason / decent plot to make this happen, it's so clanging for me that a parent, no matter how absent, wouldn't even stop by once after his childrens' mother died suddenly.

Jeanne - Anya says I take it back Ill pay the price 'the life and soul of a vengeance demon' thinking she will die and Hallie gets killed. This is heratonement for the murder of fratboys

Her being jilted isnt her punishment. Her other punishment is to stay in her human duige after Giles smahes her talisman. Then you see her slwoly grow as a person. From skeddadling at the first sign of trouble to staying and getting run through with a dagger in the final fight. Less drama but definately growth?

In my view the one big thing that doesnt really get wrapped up is Giles murdering Ben

Isn't one of the recurring issues the grey area between good and evil?

Good people do bad things; bad people do good things; good people have bad things happen to them; bad people have good things happen to them; good people can become bad people; bad people can become good people.

In this sense, Buffy was much more morally ambiguous than most of the vamp / horror films and shows that preceded it. I think it's easy to forget this nearly 20 years (gasp!) on

I actually love that Anya just like the other demons shows an emotional stuntedness durnig the time she is evil, like they dont grow up without souls. And when she finally decides to be good and Xander comes after her 'you shouldnt be alone in this' she says she should and that shes always clung to whoever came along and she needs to try to find out who she is and what if shes nobody.

Same for spike when he first gets his soul he finally ahs a moral compass that isnt just 'do what might help get into buffys pants'. But its really confusing for him. He goes wussy in fights, gets all freaked when he accidentally hurts ronnie the wormboy. I think before the sould spike does good things but he doesnt do them for good reasons and so he cannot be redeemed - the point of the rape in my view is to point out spike is evil in his being, doing good acts doesnt change that he has no moral compass of his own, he remains a demon and so buffy cannot love him.
I love spuffy but I feel a lot of spuffy shippers get that wrong,or think its ok for spike to just have buffy as his compass. I think thats romantic but he's not actually a person if thats all he is and so they cant have a realtionship if thats all he is, even tho he does love her he sort of has nothing to love with

jeanne there you have a female character who is punished less than the male characters, vindicating Whedon from the charge that he creates strong female characters in order to punish them. He punishes indiscriminately.

Willow gets off fairly lightly for someone who tries to destroy the world. Rehab in England looks quite fluffy. She's accepted back into the fold fairly easily too.

Yes, she does offer to pay the price, but it's quick - there's no long arc of it being a big part of the story, is what I mean.

And yes, noble, my point (in agreeing with you) was that he does sometimes discriminate the other way. Not sure it vindicates him though!

Agree about Willow - though I think that fits with the way Xander is only able to get her back by telling her he loves her.

Yes youre right its quick and its not dwelt on jeanne. But what I like when I rewatch buffy - is I start to spot these more subtle arcs with the supporting characters.

Willows interesting in terms of the big black bad willow end of s6 and then white goddess willow end of s7. Not sure it works for me. But I do like how her character weaknesses are already there in s 1 and 2 (or kind of) and clearly in s 4: Doing too much magic, feeling shes not worth much without magic. I love watching restless for this reason - the sense taht the writers really know all the characters in really deep ways. Or in the body the oment where Willow keeps changing what too wear and that it shows her constant worry of not being enough

Plus willows too cute to punish horribly for ages (totally patronising but shes just soo cute)

YY, absolutely! I love rewatching.

And yes, Willow is so cute. I love the bit in Angel where she has a very brief scene with Alexis Denisoff and he's just grinning a little too much - they'd got together by then and I would like to think it shows.

Yes v cute with Alexis D, makes me smile. cant get myself to dislike how I met you mother simply because - but its really willow and I love willow.

im also convinced SMG and JM must ahve had some crazy hot affair. How can there be soo much chemistry??!

Yes, they have huge chemistry. I love the episode where Willow curses them, saying something like, 'why don't you two just get married', and you get to see them all loved up and sickly sweet together without all the baggage.

jeanne surely appearing to discriminate in favour of men sometimes and women the other = equal treatment! I think Whedon likes to test all his characters, male and female. It's by testing them that we get to see who they really are, and it gives them opportunities to be heroic.

I love this thread. I've been re watching from series 1 following another thread recently, and love how much more I notice and how different it is now I'm an adult from when I watched it the first time. I know people say it's dated, but I honestly don't feel it's aged too much.

noble - the rehab (filmed on A Head's nice estate I believe) looks lovely and fluffy but coming back to the nasty strip-by-strip skin-removing demon with additional blood drinking tendencies is there I presume to show Willow just how nasty skin removal of any kind is!

Apologies - I feel the same, I notice stunts feel clunky at times and the use of the stunt doubles is more obvious in high definition, the CGI is v basic and sometimes Im a bit at the fashion. but the story and the emotional stuff resonates with me more if anything the more I watch it. And its still makes me cry. I wish I could recreate the first watch and not know what happens but the big emotional moments and the pure joy I sometimes feel at watching a woman be a hero - sometimes it hits me even harder now because I feel sad/frustrated that there isnt more of this about.

Willow raped Tara, took Dawn into a "crack" den and then "drunk" drove her into a car accident that seriously injured her... and then she murdered Warren.

I know they'd've been fucked if Willow had gone to jail but remember when Buffy gave herself up to the police when she thought she'd killed a person (Warren's girlfriend/bot)? I liked that writing.

I've just watched S6ep3 and the Trio talk about hypnotising Buffy to become their "sex bunny". Not at all wrong, no

First with the CGI the budget was so limited at first as well - I remember reading it cost something like $6000 to "dust" a vampire so they could only afford to do 1 an episode

Firsttimer - it's been fascinating rewatching with a 13 year old DS as for him it's all new. He loves Joss Whedon and all his works so I thought it would be good for him to see the clever lower budget stuff before he got the MARVEL megabucks. It has totally absorbed DS and made us both cry and laugh and given us a wide range of catch phrases.

It's also, particularly with series 6, given us a chance to do some serious talking about relationships; about how they can get abusive, about how love sometimes makes you do things you shouldn't, about friendship (between the Scoobies but also the less pleasant friendship between the Nerds), about substance abuse (in this case magic but it covers all other forms of addiction), about responsiblity - about growing up.

I can't think of another series that packs quite the punch over 7 series that Buffy does (even if it is sometimes patchy and heaven knows there are some shocking eps occasionally) - and reaches out to teenagers/adults in the same way either.

I've asked MNHQ if they can move this out of Chat, so it doesn't disappear

I also dont think the rape is misogynist as such. I think its there to show spike is still evil - but now hes trapped in being evil 'why did i do it? why didnt I do it?' he asks himself right after. Hes no longer just gleefully evil whcih is how spike was before, so now he needs to change more fundamentally.
In S 7 theres the dialogue when she has him chained up in the basement just before the bringers come to get him and they argue about why she doesnt kill him afetr all hes done and he directly references the killing and raping hes already done. She says hes changed and hes done good/trying to do good. and he says 'dont dress it up as a noble deed... you like men who hurt you, you need the pain we give you, the hate...' then she says 'I dont hate like taht, not anymore' and that its because of his genuine penance.
I find that really interesting and compelling and not really some hidden structural men hating women thing but actually about what it means to try to change. Yes its extreme but thats becuase its art, its a story. But it feels very real to me in ways I dont knwo how to explain.

I also like in angel after the episode with Dana the slayer breaks out of the mental ward when spike notes it doesnt really matter that he didnt specifically abuse her and she was crazy and trying to punish the wrong guy because he has done all of those things (just to other people). Spike and angel have this moment where one of them says that before they were monsters they were victims. I think I always loved that about BtVS and ATS that these two vampires who are good guys (or on the way to ebcoming good guys) are also bad guys. But as buffy says to angel if the story stops here then all you ever were was a killer -S3.
So in that way I actually think its not at all rape apologists but more about how you move on from bad acts and what forgiveness or redemption means without trying to allow that to be easy

YY on the Katrina thing - but isnt that also the exact moment when the trio go from being nerd lame villians to being proper scary - esp warren? They go from being comic book to being oh shit!
Same with Willow - I hated dark willow and found I couldnt really take it seriously but on rewatches found that tehres so much scope for her character to take this turn - despite the fact that I totally love willow. but she takes short cuts and uses magic and thinks that just because shes good and means well the badness of some of the things she does doeesn count (and Tara is big example of that: Willow violates Tara's mind -as she says she didnt mean to she just wants everything to be good between them) but she takes power to decide for them as a couple and shuts tara out of making that decision Thats the way Willow is flawed as a person. And I love watching something that shows me just because you like a character doesnt mean they dont have flaws and that those flaws have consequences.

nimble - I would love to rewatch with my child. So much emotional hard stuff to go through with someone. Im still not done learning from Buffy. Still gives me something when I rewatch.

the pure joy I sometimes feel at watching a woman be a hero

Agents of Shield is pretty good for that. The best fighter in it is not only a woman, but Chinese and over 50 (in real life). Ming Na Wen (Agent May) is bloody amazing.
Bobbi is also fab, Skye is annoying but can hold her own. Simmons isn't a fighter, but a brilliant scientist. There are also strong female villains. But it isn't a show about women, they are equally matched by the male characters. I remember watching it and thinking it felt a bit odd, then realising it was because I had a choice of central female hero characters to like. It must be like being male and watching the Avengers, trying to decide whether you prefer Thor, Captain America or Iron Man.

On Katrina - Isnt it interesting and super creepy how that goes from narf narf lets get a hot chick to do our bidding ha ha to her going 'thats RAPE' grow up its not funny its not cool

Oh noble I need to see that then, Im aching for a kick ass woman on my screen and one over 50 (Im 40) would be even more super duper amazing

I think the Nerds are always out of their depth because what Warren wants is always way beyond what Jonathan/Andrew want. Andrew and Jonathan are still children in comparison to Warren.

I find the murder of Katrina shocking and horrible. It's the moment both Jonathan and Andrew have to start to grow up even though they want to be stuck in a happier place with their action figures and jokes about magic bones.

Warren is never part of that in the same way and his agenda is very different.

Firsttimer you'll like Agents of SHIELD. Ming Na Wen is amazing. Who knew you could still be so bendy over 50! (my body certainly doesn't know that, that's for sure