My Buffy Dream Date is… Giles? I guess I can accept that. I do like when he goes all Ripper and kicks some ass. I was really hoping for Oz though. I think the quiz sucks. Because really, within the realm of the show you’d expect Willow to get Oz, right? But there’s no way she’d have picked any of the answers that correspond to him. She’d have picked all the bookish ones like I did… which get you Giles. (Maybe that’s why there’s all that Willow/Giles fan fiction?) But anyway, I base my claim to Oz on the fact that if Willow gets him, so do I. (Link courtesy of Fresh Hell.)
Kris
October 20, 2001 — 2:58 pm
The Snook is gloating because he got Willow. 🙁
He did point out, though, that really you should take the *opposite* quiz to see who you *are*, and then just look to the show to see who your counterpart is. So using that scheme, I am clearly Willow… which means – yay! – Oz.
Jenny
October 20, 2001 — 7:18 pm
Oz is my boyfriend, and I would take Seth Green in any of his incarnations. 🙂
John
October 20, 2001 — 7:56 pm
Damn, I was sure I was going to end up with Willow, but I got Cordelia! What did I do to deserve that?
Kris
October 20, 2001 — 9:03 pm
John… You’re in love with Jennifer Love Hewitt. Who IS Cordelia. Accept it. 🙂
I don’t know if I’d take Seth Green in ANY of his incarnations. He was pretty dorky in “Can’t Hardly Wait”. You can have him in that movie, and I’ll take Scott Evil. 🙂
John
October 21, 2001 — 12:54 pm
JLH=Cordelia?
[John stops and thinks about that comparison for a minute.]
OK, it’s a fair cop. If I can’t have The Goddess JLH I guess I’ll just have to settle for Cordy.
I’d still prefer Willow though…
brigita
October 22, 2001 — 7:01 pm
i first got Spike but the did the flip-flop quiz and got Cordelia. i’m not sure what that means, exactly, but i know that i don’t like it.
Kris
October 22, 2001 — 7:35 pm
Yes you do! It means that you love Xander! And that you’re eventually going to leave him to chase Watcher-tail and eventually end up working in a vampire’s detective agency. Or something. 🙂
brigita
October 22, 2001 — 7:58 pm
so that means i love Spike and Xander? woah, that’s hot. 😉
Kris
October 22, 2001 — 8:09 pm
*mental image forming*
Ewww, sorry. Oh wait…
*putting self into mental image*
Now THAT’s better! 🙂
brigita
October 22, 2001 — 9:42 pm
it’s just too damn bad that buffy is sucking this year. either the writing has gone down the toilet or i’m suffering from some kind of pre-matrimonial acceleration of the aging process. say it isn’t so!
Kris
October 23, 2001 — 12:22 am
No, I think it is (and I haven’t even seen any of the episodes). Based on what I’ve read at MBTV, everything went downhill during Seasons 4-5. Characters changed and the plots got sucky. I’m really looking forward to getting Season 3 DVD soon, but I think that’ll be it for my Buffy fandom. I don’t wanna see the suckage.
John
October 23, 2001 — 12:49 pm
I’ve only seen what’s been on the BBC (though I do know some of the major plot twists to come in the remainder of season 5, including the two biggies) but I don’t agree that Buffy sucks now. Season 4 wasn’t as good as seasons 2 or 3, but that was mostly because a) Riley is *so* dull, and b) the Initiative/Adam turned out to be a fairly dull Big Bad. There were some uneven episodes to be sure, but when season 4 was good it was very good.
There are very few shows that get past two seasons without attracting this sort of talk. It’s hard for the writers, who often find themselves having to expand the cast and find new situations to put their characters in while still remaining true to the show’s basics.
In a way, really good shows that are killed off after one season (My So-Called Life, Now & Again, Cupid) have it easier: we remember the freshness of the idea and the characters, and they don’t have time to get stale or face the problems of making significant changes. I’m sure the writers would have made a decent fist of a second season in each case, but beyond that how would we have reacted to, say, Angela Chase going to college and losing touch with Jordan and Brian and Rayanne? Wouldn’t the change of environment have changed the show’s essential appeal? Certainly that’s what happened with Party of Five after season 3, when the main characters had moved out (college, moving in with a boyfriend) and all of a sudden the dynamic of the show changed.
Anyway, I could ramble on about this for ages. (Whaddaya mean I have?!)
Suffice to say that so far I’ve enjoyed Buffy season 5 on the BBC, even though it’s been clear that so far it’s been largely setting the scene for what’s to come. I want to see the pay-off for all this scene-setting for myself, but I think the best of Buffy is still as good as just about anything on TV right now.
Kris
October 23, 2001 — 1:22 pm
Well, the big problem that I have (and that most of the MBTVers seem to have) is the “redemption” of Spike, which is a complete cop-out and a negation of the show’s mythology. In Joss Whedon’s universe of the first three seasons, vampires are BAD. They can’t help it. The real person dies and a demon sets up shop in their body. The only way that Angel was good was because his soul was restored. Then along came Spike, who was a kickass villain with cheekbones to make a girl weep. (Right, B?) Eventually Angel left, everybody hated Riley, and somebody got the brilliant idea of turning Spike into a love interest for Buffy. So he gets the chip in his head. AND HE BECOMES GOOD? He, like, gets trained? That can’t happen! It literally cannot happen! That changes the rules that we accepted back in Season 1. “Why can’t Buffy just get vamped and then she could be with Angel forever?” “Because she’d become an evil killer without a soul.” But evidently, with a little aversion therapy she too could regain her status in the Scooby gang. Or are we supposed to believe that Spike’s love for Buffy is what’s effected the change? That’s even worse! Why didn’t that work for Angel? That’s crap. That’s pandering. That’s a complete and utter sell-out.
I leave you with my favorite bit of the last episode’s recap:
“Brad, you’ll remember, is Spike’s identical twin, who has a lot in common with Spike except that Brad is kind, and trustworthy, and not at all evil. You know: Brad! Boy, if Spike ever returns to Sunnydale and finds out how Brad has been ruining his reputation, heads are gonna roll. I can’t wait for that episode! But Spike’s off somewhere, reunited with Drusilla, having a good time killing people and causing mayhem. In the meantime, we’ve got Brad. Who’s cute and all, and, let’s not forget, very old, but he’s just no Spike. Yes, my powers of denial are fearsome to behold.”
martin
October 23, 2001 — 1:32 pm
You lost me.
brigita
October 23, 2001 — 1:43 pm
all spike reformation aside, i just think that the writing itself this season is inconsistent and, at times, incoherent.
also, some of the scooby slang is getting a little tired, adding a y to the end of everything (bitey, fighty, etc.y), or the overuse of the construction “the whole [fill in the blank] thing.” now that i’ve noticed it, it’s becoming very hard to un-notice it.
Kris
October 23, 2001 — 1:59 pm
I totally see John’s point about every show going through a similar phase, and you’re right, it annoyed me to no end to hear “Seinfeld has really started to suck” for five years. But I can’t help but think that in the case of Buffy, some of the complaints are justified. When do most people agree things started to go downhill? Right about the time the creator started dividing his time between two shows. Now they’re adding comic books and an animated series and merchandising and all kinds of junk. I’m sure Joss has control over the general direction of the show, but how much time can he really devote to it?
I’ve also gotta add that most of the BIG changes to the show recently are obviously audience-grabbing ploys.”Okay, everybody’s getting kind of old and we need to reel in the high school audience again. What do we do? Let’s add a sister! Yeah, a hot one that we can dress up in leather pants for lots of promotional shoots.” “Boy, Riley was boring and nobody liked him. Everybody liked Spike and Angel though. Hey, let’s combine them! Let’s invent a way for Spike to be Buffy’s boyfriend and be all nice and stuff.” “Shit. We’re moving to a new network and we really need to be sure everybody follows us to the new channel. We need a big cliffhanger to force them to tune in. I know! We’ll kill off our heroine! Everybody will expect us to bring her back somehow, even though we established in the Joyce-zombie episode that that’s not a good thing, but we’ll have one of the writers pull some lame excuse out of their ass. It’ll work.”You’re right, it’s still one of the best shows on television. But a good Spike and an evil Willow and an absent Giles? That’s not a “Buffy” I wanna be on board with.
John
October 23, 2001 — 9:45 pm
I’m in two minds about Spike. In season 4 he was totally wasted, and it really bugged me when the Scooby gang kept forgetting he hated them (e.g. when Xander and Giles told Spike that this evil slayer called Faith was in town, thinking he’d help them find her!), but OTOH I really enjoyed the most recent BBC2 episode (the Spike flashback episode) and the whole Spike-is-strangely-drawn-to-the-Slayer (but gets slapped down by Buffy in *exactly* the way he was rejected way back by his last human love) thing looks as if it could be very interesting.
Obviously the *real* reason Spike wasn’t staked way back right after his escape from the Initiative in season 4 was that he’s a popular character and the writers are trying to find an excuse to have him around. Which of course ties in with the comment about so many of the big changes being down to the need to grab and keep an audience.
The idea that a show with an evil Willow and a good Spike isn’t what you signed up for is quite understandable, but it seems to me that it all depends how it’s handled: seeing Willow turn to evil could be very, very interesting. (Obviously I could be talking out of my arse here, not having see the episodes in question. I’d just note that the US is, what, four episodes into season 6: isn’t that the sort of storyline that deserves a whole season for the writers to spin out the ramifications before we give up on it? Look at what fun it was to see Angel become Angelus and then revert to Angel in season 2!)
I can see the sense in the Joss-is-overloaded argument, but as long as he’s still setting the overall direction for the show and handling the major arc episodes himself I’m not sure it’s necessarily a major problem. Some shows (e.g. Babylon 5, a show where about 90% of the episodes were written by the show’s creator, J Michael Straczynski) do better when someone else comes aboard to write an episode – Neil Gaiman did a magnificent season 5 B5 episode, for example. Way back in the day some of the better episodes of the original Star Trek series were written by pro SF writers rather that Gene Roddenberry. As long as the essentials of the show remain in place (but also evolve as the show’s characters grow up) then it needn’t be a problem that other writers get involved, IMO.
As to the resurrection of Buffy, not having seen it yet I can only hold on to what Joss said in the Onion interview a couple of months ago (I’m paraphrasing from memory, so forgive me if this isn’t word-perfect): you can rest assured that Buffy’s return will not be easy, and there will be a price to pay. That sounds like a storyline that will run all season, so I look forward to seeing where Joss & co take it. Joss hasn’t let me down badly enough yet for me to give up on the show.
In the end I’m at a disadvantage here, not having seen the full-on Spike-turns-good storyline or indeed the last two thirds of season 5. I’ll just have to reserve judgement for a while (i.e. at least a year, until it shows up on BBC2). All I can really say is that so far the show hasn’t jumped the shark for me.
Brandon
February 10, 2002 — 7:47 pm
I have loved Buffy since the beginning, and it has always been really the only show
I looked forward to. This season is REALLY bad. I’m not just talking about
a couple of bad episodes, because they’ve killed the entire season. There were
a few I liked, but none of the eps correlate with each other and for some
reason, the writers don’t think we need any sort of character or story
development. I am still at a loss as to why they decided to destroy
Buffy’s character by having her shag Spike with no explanation. All we see
between them now is like 1 minute of gratuitous sex with no dialog and a lovely
look of horror on Buffy’s face. I have heard people say that it gets hard
for writers after so much time, but the drop between last season and this one
really makes me wonder just what is happening in the Buffy camp. For the
viewers in the UK, you don’t have much to look forward to. I really am baffled
as to just what happened to the show. I also lament Giles’ departure. I am
convinced that at this point nothing can be salvaged because hi, there hasn’t
been any type of character development for them to battle any evil, whether it
be from within or from outside. And to those who say Willow and her magic:
PLEASE! You can honestly think of the stupid story with Willow constantly
getting the shakes because she can’t do a spell and now goes to Witche’s Anon with a straight face Right.
Talk about your stupid story lines. Hi, she’s a witch and now that everyone is pretending that she has gotten out of control, eventhough
I am still at a loss over that one, how many millions of times have her spells saved the Scooby gang’s asses? Yes, I lament for the destruction of my favorite show.
Brandon in New York
Kris
February 10, 2002 — 11:35 pm
Wow. Great first post, Brandon! I haven’t seen any of the new episodes, but based on the recaps I’ve read, you’re probably right on the money. I’ll just have to keep re-watching my seasons 1-3 DVDs and pretend nothing ever happened afterwards.