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shadowkatRead two things on the net about Buffy and Whedon. I'm not linking to them, because I don't like the posts and don't like either of the people who did them - so do not want to provide either with needless free marketing.
1. Seeing Red - this episode has been talked to death. But, over time I've begun to figure out why it doesn't work for me and why in some respects everything that came after didn't quite work. At first I thought it was because it was a bit of your standard cliche tv tropes which I'd seen done so many times in soapy serials that I was actually able to predict what happened in this episode long before I saw it. But that's not quite it. And I shrugged it off before. No, it's how the writers handled what happened. They did two things in this episode mainly for shock value and to further two characters (who the writers were understandably fascinated by) arcs. Yet, the method they chose to further these characters arcs was...somewhat cliche and easy. Lazy. And it wrote both characters into a corner, along with all the others, and and..was ultimately disappointing. They took the proverbial short-cut and the story suffered in my opinion as a result. (Mileage obviously varies on this point, doesn't it on everything? Honestly I think people will fight over whether the date should be 8/16/12 or 16/8/12. Wait, they do. Never mind.)
The two events I'm talking about - which changed the show and lost a lot of viewers were in no particular order - the death of Tara/Willow's rage and the attempted rape of Buffy/Spike's brooding and taking off. Note in both cases - the emphasis is on Willow and Spike. What happens to Buffy and/or Tara is sort of swiped under a rug. Neither are really examined. The victim isn't important. Most of the focus in the episode is on Warren/Spike and Willow. A show about female empowerment or Buffy - goes elsewhere. It's the first time in the series this happened that I can think of, I may be wrong about that. Also, it occurs to me now, years later, what bugged me...the writers never really deal with rape.
Or attempted rape. What it means to the victim. Never. Nor does Whedon really tackle this in other series - not really. Dollhouse - does to a degree and it may be in this series that he comes closest to looking at the topic from the victim's pov. But even then, it feels almost as if he's making excuses or hunting ways to redeem those who do it? And this has always to a degree grated or bugged me. I find myself questioning it and realizing as I do that perhaps there's something to be said for not over-analyzing television series that are written mainly off-the-cuff. Whedon is admittedly a plotter who makes it up as he goes along or off-the-cuff, much as I write these journal entries. It's what I hate and love about him. (In case you haven't figured it out by now, I have a love/hate relationship with Whedon's storytelling and Whedon. Also, oddly, with Whedon's fandom and they with me, since I keep criticizing their god. I don't worship anything. I question everything, including myself.)
It just feels as if Spike's attack on Buffy was more about Spike than it was about Buffy - which admittedly is true about rape - it is about the rapist. In the same way that Xander's was about Xander - true as well. That's actually realistic. The problem is both are oddly swept under the rug. Spike's less so...
I keep thinking it would have worked better if they had him do anything else or if they constructed it differently. I've read fanfic that actually did construct it better, because obviously I wasn't the only fan who struggled with this.
Also it felt so contrived in some respects, as if the writer's thought, we have to come up with a reason for Spike to seek a soul. We have to motivate him. And in order to develop Spike, to push him off the cliff, we have him brutally attack Buffy - he doesn't rape her, but he does brutally attack her in a way and under circumstances that make it almost impossible for her to fight back. It felt, and still does, lazy, too easy, a short-cut.
And one they hadn't thought out. It felt too much like the Soap Opera trope - hero attempts to rape or rapes heroine, they break up, he finds a way to redeem himself, changes completely because the fact he hurt her tramautizes him, and they get back together. (Too many comic books and soaps have done this. It almost feels like the rape was a good thing - because it made him look at his inner monster and start on the path to redemption! Too often redemption stories do this - they have the character do a horrible thing - kill others or rape or whatever...and then they get to be redeemed. It's like that act causes their journey. And I'm not sure that's the way to go, nor is it realistic. In most cases that's not what happens, even if we wish it were.)
Same with Tara's death, which admittedly had originally been Oz's death. This was plotted out a long time ago. But I'm not sure it works. The misleads, the structure, all of it feels just ever so slightly off. Plus it's a negative trope much like Spike's attempted rape is - in tv. Too many tv shows and films have done this. The couple is happy, they kill off one, the other goes for vengeance. It's almost cliche. Making the couple gay...is even worse, particularly at this time period - when Willow and Tara were amongst the few female gay couples on television. They were ground-breaking. And the way Tara is killed - she's shot in the bedroom...next to the window, near the bed, after they had sex - all these metaphors point to the Dead Lesbian Closet trope. This has, of course, been discussed ad nauseum on the net. And at the time I argued against it - because Whedon would have killed whomever Willow loved to get Dark Willow. My difficulty is he chose the cliche. It would have been far more interesting if Dark Willow occurred earlier and we didn't go down the drug mislead. The death of Tara = Dark Willow is just so...cliche.
Forget that they are lesbians, if it had been OZ it would have been cliche and predictable.
The idea of turning Willow dark in s5 - after Glory tortured Tara..or maybe after she brought back Buffy, and show her getting darker and darker as the season progresses might have worked better? I don't know. But the writing choices in Seeing Red are unfortunately lame ones. They hurt the show. And are examples of how the series is flawed and will never quite hit the quality benchmarks of other series.
I had similar issues with Angel and the curse - which also wrote the character and series into a corner that it never quite got out of. But it at least felt new, not old hat or repetitive.
What do you think? Think I'm nuts? Or on the mark? Or a little bit of both? ;-)
2.Top 10 episodes from all Whedon series...I didn't agree with the list I read which was (The trial (Angel), Out of Gas (Firefly), The Message (Firefly), You're Welcome (Angel),
Fool for Love (Buffy), The Wish (Buffy), Hush (Buffy), Smile Time (Angel), Lullaby (Angel),
The Body (Buffy) - this guy liked Angel better than I did (most guys do) and Firefly for that matter.)
1. The Body (although I admittedly can't re-watch it without sobbing uncontrollably)
2. Once More with Feeling (weirdly enough the fact that Xander accidentally summoned the demon never bothered me, he's done that before, and why would it have been addressed? The show wasn't that moralistic. And it is the best musical done as a tv episode that I've seen for a series that is not meant to be a musical, plus it was a sort of parody/homage to musicals.)
3. Hush- Buffy
4. Home - Angel
5. Smile Time - Angel
6. Fool for Love - Buffy
7. Objects in Space - Firefly (it's actually one of two episodes from that series I remember)
8. Dopplegangland - Buffy
9. Serenity - Firefly
10. Destiny - Angel
Honorable mentions - Man on the Street - Dollhouse, and Spy in the House of Love - Dollhouse, Becoming 1 &2 Buffy, Lullaby and Darla - Angel, Beneath You and Lies My Parents Told Me - Buffy.
What are yours??
1. Seeing Red - this episode has been talked to death. But, over time I've begun to figure out why it doesn't work for me and why in some respects everything that came after didn't quite work. At first I thought it was because it was a bit of your standard cliche tv tropes which I'd seen done so many times in soapy serials that I was actually able to predict what happened in this episode long before I saw it. But that's not quite it. And I shrugged it off before. No, it's how the writers handled what happened. They did two things in this episode mainly for shock value and to further two characters (who the writers were understandably fascinated by) arcs. Yet, the method they chose to further these characters arcs was...somewhat cliche and easy. Lazy. And it wrote both characters into a corner, along with all the others, and and..was ultimately disappointing. They took the proverbial short-cut and the story suffered in my opinion as a result. (Mileage obviously varies on this point, doesn't it on everything? Honestly I think people will fight over whether the date should be 8/16/12 or 16/8/12. Wait, they do. Never mind.)
The two events I'm talking about - which changed the show and lost a lot of viewers were in no particular order - the death of Tara/Willow's rage and the attempted rape of Buffy/Spike's brooding and taking off. Note in both cases - the emphasis is on Willow and Spike. What happens to Buffy and/or Tara is sort of swiped under a rug. Neither are really examined. The victim isn't important. Most of the focus in the episode is on Warren/Spike and Willow. A show about female empowerment or Buffy - goes elsewhere. It's the first time in the series this happened that I can think of, I may be wrong about that. Also, it occurs to me now, years later, what bugged me...the writers never really deal with rape.
Or attempted rape. What it means to the victim. Never. Nor does Whedon really tackle this in other series - not really. Dollhouse - does to a degree and it may be in this series that he comes closest to looking at the topic from the victim's pov. But even then, it feels almost as if he's making excuses or hunting ways to redeem those who do it? And this has always to a degree grated or bugged me. I find myself questioning it and realizing as I do that perhaps there's something to be said for not over-analyzing television series that are written mainly off-the-cuff. Whedon is admittedly a plotter who makes it up as he goes along or off-the-cuff, much as I write these journal entries. It's what I hate and love about him. (In case you haven't figured it out by now, I have a love/hate relationship with Whedon's storytelling and Whedon. Also, oddly, with Whedon's fandom and they with me, since I keep criticizing their god. I don't worship anything. I question everything, including myself.)
It just feels as if Spike's attack on Buffy was more about Spike than it was about Buffy - which admittedly is true about rape - it is about the rapist. In the same way that Xander's was about Xander - true as well. That's actually realistic. The problem is both are oddly swept under the rug. Spike's less so...
I keep thinking it would have worked better if they had him do anything else or if they constructed it differently. I've read fanfic that actually did construct it better, because obviously I wasn't the only fan who struggled with this.
Also it felt so contrived in some respects, as if the writer's thought, we have to come up with a reason for Spike to seek a soul. We have to motivate him. And in order to develop Spike, to push him off the cliff, we have him brutally attack Buffy - he doesn't rape her, but he does brutally attack her in a way and under circumstances that make it almost impossible for her to fight back. It felt, and still does, lazy, too easy, a short-cut.
And one they hadn't thought out. It felt too much like the Soap Opera trope - hero attempts to rape or rapes heroine, they break up, he finds a way to redeem himself, changes completely because the fact he hurt her tramautizes him, and they get back together. (Too many comic books and soaps have done this. It almost feels like the rape was a good thing - because it made him look at his inner monster and start on the path to redemption! Too often redemption stories do this - they have the character do a horrible thing - kill others or rape or whatever...and then they get to be redeemed. It's like that act causes their journey. And I'm not sure that's the way to go, nor is it realistic. In most cases that's not what happens, even if we wish it were.)
Same with Tara's death, which admittedly had originally been Oz's death. This was plotted out a long time ago. But I'm not sure it works. The misleads, the structure, all of it feels just ever so slightly off. Plus it's a negative trope much like Spike's attempted rape is - in tv. Too many tv shows and films have done this. The couple is happy, they kill off one, the other goes for vengeance. It's almost cliche. Making the couple gay...is even worse, particularly at this time period - when Willow and Tara were amongst the few female gay couples on television. They were ground-breaking. And the way Tara is killed - she's shot in the bedroom...next to the window, near the bed, after they had sex - all these metaphors point to the Dead Lesbian Closet trope. This has, of course, been discussed ad nauseum on the net. And at the time I argued against it - because Whedon would have killed whomever Willow loved to get Dark Willow. My difficulty is he chose the cliche. It would have been far more interesting if Dark Willow occurred earlier and we didn't go down the drug mislead. The death of Tara = Dark Willow is just so...cliche.
Forget that they are lesbians, if it had been OZ it would have been cliche and predictable.
The idea of turning Willow dark in s5 - after Glory tortured Tara..or maybe after she brought back Buffy, and show her getting darker and darker as the season progresses might have worked better? I don't know. But the writing choices in Seeing Red are unfortunately lame ones. They hurt the show. And are examples of how the series is flawed and will never quite hit the quality benchmarks of other series.
I had similar issues with Angel and the curse - which also wrote the character and series into a corner that it never quite got out of. But it at least felt new, not old hat or repetitive.
What do you think? Think I'm nuts? Or on the mark? Or a little bit of both? ;-)
2.Top 10 episodes from all Whedon series...I didn't agree with the list I read which was (The trial (Angel), Out of Gas (Firefly), The Message (Firefly), You're Welcome (Angel),
Fool for Love (Buffy), The Wish (Buffy), Hush (Buffy), Smile Time (Angel), Lullaby (Angel),
The Body (Buffy) - this guy liked Angel better than I did (most guys do) and Firefly for that matter.)
1. The Body (although I admittedly can't re-watch it without sobbing uncontrollably)
2. Once More with Feeling (weirdly enough the fact that Xander accidentally summoned the demon never bothered me, he's done that before, and why would it have been addressed? The show wasn't that moralistic. And it is the best musical done as a tv episode that I've seen for a series that is not meant to be a musical, plus it was a sort of parody/homage to musicals.)
3. Hush- Buffy
4. Home - Angel
5. Smile Time - Angel
6. Fool for Love - Buffy
7. Objects in Space - Firefly (it's actually one of two episodes from that series I remember)
8. Dopplegangland - Buffy
9. Serenity - Firefly
10. Destiny - Angel
Honorable mentions - Man on the Street - Dollhouse, and Spy in the House of Love - Dollhouse, Becoming 1 &2 Buffy, Lullaby and Darla - Angel, Beneath You and Lies My Parents Told Me - Buffy.
What are yours??
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Seeing Red...
Date: 2012-08-17 02:25 am (UTC)Willow same deal. Whedon wants cake and eat it too. He wants to do the ground-breaking lesbian storyline and send a positive message, but at the same time he wants to do DarkWillow (or Dark Phoenix) which he'd been planning since at least S4. The sad thing is, he could have done both, but he wanted to give Willow a get-out-of-jail free card too. He didn't want her to be irreedeemable. So he set it up as revenge deal, which meant he had to kill off her lover or give her a reason to seek vengeance, and make the audience want to go there too. One problem with that - Willow's lover is female and she's gay and well..
So he drops two balls. And they are major balls.
I kept hoping he would do something else, even though I knew it was unlikely...watching S6 at the time felt a bit like watching a trapeze act that you just knew was going to crash and burn at any moment but kept hoping they'd pull it off. Or a train wreck, although I like the trapeze act without a net metaphor better.
And I think you're correct part of the problem was the decision to make Buffy depressed all season long and let that be the focus of the narrative, with Spike and Willow taking up the slack. Xander/Anya as a friend stated at the time were put in as place-holders or back burner status. And Xander's actions at the end of Entropy made it very difficult for me to like the character until S7. Which was also problematic - since they had him be the hero of the Season. And they, in a way, justified his speeches to Buffy and Anya in Seeing Red - speeches that were, I'm sorry, hypocritical and bigoted.
Saying - see Buffy, Xander was right. Selfless doesn't quite get them off the hook for that.
Again...it's a case of the writer's wanting their cake and eat it too. It's ambitious, but not well-thought out or planned.
Re: Seeing Red...
Date: 2012-08-17 02:44 am (UTC)Could have solved both problems by killing Xander. :)
Edit to add that obviously I agree with your points on Xander.
Re: Seeing Red...
Date: 2012-08-17 09:47 pm (UTC)Would have been a whole different dynamic, and Buffy would have been more torn over what Willow was doing. Plus, finally a male character dies permanently in the series. One who isn't a guest-star (Jonathan doesn't count any more than
the big bads or vampires do.)
That's another interesting thing about Buffy - all the main human characters that die are women. Buffy (she gets brought back), Kendra (probably doesn't count), Jenny, Tara, Joyce...(Giles dies in the comics - and Angel is working to bring him back to redeem himself - so that doesn't count, since I ignoring the comics anyhow).
So yes, he should have killed Xander. (And I like Xander, quite a bit actually).
OTOH...would it have been enough to motivate a happy Willow who has found love with Tara? Not sure. While I think Willow becoming consumed with her hunger for power did work - the sideline into drug addiction didn't. So it may have worked better if Willow gave into her power addiction - and went on a rampage - which resulted in Xander's death? I don't know.
I've read various fanfic takes on the season, some much better than what aired, some much worse.
Re: Seeing Red...
Date: 2012-08-17 10:05 pm (UTC)Re: Seeing Red...
Date: 2012-08-17 10:40 pm (UTC)The problem with Xander saving Willow is they are using it to redeem Xander, but all it does is reinforce that everything Xander said and did from Hell's Bells to Grave is valid and supportable. And I'm sorry, Selfless is not enough to counter-act that.
Xander, unfortunately, comes across as a bit of nerdy redneck hypocrite metaphorically speaking by the end of S6. Which is undoubtedly why a lot of Xander fans hated S6-S7. I don't blame them. If they'd done that to Spike or Willow or Buffy, I'd have been annoyed too. Although those traits are definitely in character and the writers do explain them once we meet his parents.
But yes, I think what you proposed above could have worked and taken Xander to a better place than the writer's did.
Re: Seeing Red...
Date: 2012-08-17 07:36 pm (UTC)Re: Seeing Red...
Date: 2012-08-17 09:38 pm (UTC)Although...it would have been better than what they did. They went for the emotional punch, instead of what worked best for characters and story arc. Or emotion over plot. I admittedly enjoy emotion packed serials, but one of the main flaws is often they sacrifice plot, story and character for the emotion.
The plot arcs of S6 and 7 really weren't thought out well. The writers strayed from their formula and sort of got lost.