The problem with Willow's arc is that Whedon chickened out. That's the long and short of it.
She had this great ongoing arc of going subtly darker and darker, with her lack of respect for the right and wrong of things, beyond the immediate consequences. She always asked if you could do something, instead of whether you should do something.
And then she raped Tara, and she never showed a hint of remorse for it.
Only instead of dealing with that, Joss chickened out and tried to muddle things with the magic=drugs methaphor, so there'd be an excuse for her going evil, instead of the internal reasons she'd had all along.
In fact, if s7 had dealt with Willow for once actually getting held responsible for her actions, it might still have been salvaged. Instead all we got was Gnarl and suddenly we were all supposed to love her again and think she was all forgiven for all the crap she did. (made even worse by having Warren return in the comic, so that even her murder of him got retconned)
In other words, the biggest damage done to Willow's arc, was done precisely because Willow is Whedon's favorite character and he couldn't bare taking her where her storyline was heading naturally.
It's one of the reasons I utterly respect Toby Whitehouse so much. He had Mitchell do unforgiveable things, and then he allowed the consequences of that to let his story go to its natural end. Instead of trying to save the char. (the fact tht the actor wanted to leave admittedly had a lot to do with that as well)
Or an other example, if Whedon had spent as much attention on exploring the potentials as that he wasted on an annoyance like Andrew, just because he's got such a hard on for Lenk, then s7 would have improved a hundred fold.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-06-30 04:09 am (UTC)She had this great ongoing arc of going subtly darker and darker, with her lack of respect for the right and wrong of things, beyond the immediate consequences. She always asked if you could do something, instead of whether you should do something.
And then she raped Tara, and she never showed a hint of remorse for it.
Only instead of dealing with that, Joss chickened out and tried to muddle things with the magic=drugs methaphor, so there'd be an excuse for her going evil, instead of the internal reasons she'd had all along.
In fact, if s7 had dealt with Willow for once actually getting held responsible for her actions, it might still have been salvaged. Instead all we got was Gnarl and suddenly we were all supposed to love her again and think she was all forgiven for all the crap she did. (made even worse by having Warren return in the comic, so that even her murder of him got retconned)
In other words, the biggest damage done to Willow's arc, was done precisely because Willow is Whedon's favorite character and he couldn't bare taking her where her storyline was heading naturally.
It's one of the reasons I utterly respect Toby Whitehouse so much. He had Mitchell do unforgiveable things, and then he allowed the consequences of that to let his story go to its natural end. Instead of trying to save the char. (the fact tht the actor wanted to leave admittedly had a lot to do with that as well)
Or an other example, if Whedon had spent as much attention on exploring the potentials as that he wasted on an annoyance like Andrew, just because he's got such a hard on for Lenk, then s7 would have improved a hundred fold.