Buffy fandom post - Seeing Red redux and Top 10 Whedon episodes

[shadowkat]

Read 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??

Comments

[empresspatti.livejournal.com]

Band Candy - I loved that ep. I about *died* laughing.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

You may remember that I argued at the time that the treatment of Willow and Tara fell into cliche. I got reamed for that at AtPO, but I feel good looking back on it. I've changed my mind on many things over the years, but that isn't one of them.

I think part of the problem with S6 was the decision to make Buffy depressed all year. That's daring, but it's hard to pull off. They lost a lot of the audience because she seemed unsympathetic. SMG got criticized for her acting, but you try acting with a flat affect -- it's pretty much a contradiction in terms.

As a result, they had to focus a lot on other characters. Willow was a sensible choice, because she served as Buffy's metaphorical spirit. If one is depressed, then the spirit is the natural focal point. They just executed it poorly for reasons I don't need to get into (but I know you agree with).

The other consequence was the increasing focus on Spike. There were good reasons for that too: audience appeal and a focal point for Buffy's self-destructive behavior. But that left them with little choice but for Buffy to kill him or Spike to get his soul (they apparently rejected having him become good without it). So each decision led pretty inevitably to the next.

I hadn't really noticed before, but you're right that all 3 cases of attempted rape on the show (The Pack, Consequences, Seeing Red) focus on the would-be rapist rather than the victim. Two of those might be explained because the power dynamics are different with a super-powered woman, though as you've argued repeatedly, that doesn't translate well to real life because the cognitive dissonance is too great. I don't know why Xander's reaction to Faith is so tame. Maybe because he's a guy.

Top ten what? Best? Favorite? Assuming they mean "best", for me they'd all be Buffy. I don't think a single AtS episode would go even in my top 20, though A Hole in the World or Epiphany might. For Dollhouse, Epitaph 1 is my favorite and it'd be top 20. Man on the Street would be next. My Buffy top 10 changes from day to day, but it might look like this:

1. The Body
2. Passion
3. OMWF
4. Becoming 1&2 (I know that's cheating)
5. LMPTM
6. Storyteller (sorry to drive you crazy)
7. Normal Again
8. Hush
9. FFL
10. Innocence

top 10 list

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Top ten what? Best? Favorite? Assuming they mean "best", for me they'd all be Buffy.

According to the list I read? Best. Although seriously, I'm not sure you can do that...but whatever. ;-)

I went by what was memorable for me at this point in time. It keeps changing.

I do tend to agree, for me Buffy resonated more than Angel. There were a few episodes of Angel that were memorable.

The best of Dollhouse was Man on the Street, with Spy in the House of Love and Epitaph 1...close seconds.

There's three on your list that I don't agree with and find incredibly flawed. You know one of them, so won't bore you with the reasons for that one. ;-) The other two, surprisingly enough are "Normal Again" and "Innocence" because they are almost too neat in their metaphors, but at the same time don't quite work when you think about them. They jar. I realized this when I read a review of Innocence on my flist recently, when it was pointed out that the whole curse thing and its build-up doesn't quite track and/or fit logically.
Why curse Angelus with a soul? It doesn't make Angelus feel guilt, it makes the human feel it for what the demon did? They wrote it in a weird way - almost as if they wanted their cake and eat it too - ie. let's give Angel a get-of-jail free card. Which makes no sense, why would the gypsies do that? Angel the Series kept circling around it.
It only works if Angel and Angelus are the same, and Angelus is just Angel without a conscience, but the writers didn't want to do that.
So..nice metaphor, but bad plotting. Normal Again has the same problem - it jars, and it also provides a rather cliche view of insanity or the tv/film trope of the mental ward. I had problems with it at the time. It felt like too easy and neat a metaphor - and too similar to St. Elsewhere's conceit...ie. the whole hospital is in the Autistic boy's head. I liked the episode well enough, but found it to be really flawed, so it didn't make my list for that reason.

Passion? I like Dopplegangland better in some respects. Passion is a great episode in many ways. And one of my favorites. I might take away one of the Angel episodes and put it in its place, not sure.

Seeing Red...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The problem with Willow's arc and Spike's in Seeing Red and S6 is actually similar to the whole Innocence metaphor bit - it's a case of the writer trying to eat his cake and have it too. He wants to strip the metaphor away and do the bad-boy friend/abusive relationship while at the same time doing a redemptive story about an existentialist anti-hero, and not change his rule vampires can only be good with soul - because he doesn't want to screw with Angel too much. So we get...well you saw it, a juggling act, where at least two balls are inevitably dropped - Buffy being one of them, the other - oh god that horrible rape cliche.

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: top 10 list

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

I read a review of Innocence on my flist recently, when it was pointed out that the whole curse thing and its build-up doesn't quite track and/or fit logically.
Why curse Angelus with a soul?

(1) Because vengeance isn't about logic - it's about expressing your anger. Often, the wrong people often get punished, or the right people get punished wrongly.

(2) It doesn't just punish Angel(us) - it also punishes the people who would dare to love him. Kind of like the way the Cruciamentum was a test of the Watcher as much as a test of the slayer.

Re: Seeing Red...

[sophist.livejournal.com]

"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."

Could have solved both problems by killing Xander. :)

Edit to add that obviously I agree with your points on Xander.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

The whole 'Seeing Red' episode is filled w/problems... personally I would have been happier if Spike had been trying to bite/sire Buffy, and if Willow had been w/Oz at the time... but (as the kids say) it is what it is.

Anyway you have mentioned most of my favorites, except that no Angel episode is in a top ten favorite list of mine (I don't hate Angel, I just never loved it).

Favorites:
1.OMWF
2. Objects in Space
3. The Body
4. Out of Gas
5. Epitaph 1
6. Man on the Street
7. Jaynestown
8. Dopplegangland
9. Serenity
10. Dirty Girls (I can't help it, that scene where Faith is fighting the Vulcan kills me, it is my favorite moment of watching TV ever in my whole life... so it raises an otherwise ordinary episode IMO).

[liliaeth]

Not to mention that Buffy's attempted rape of Spike in Gone, and Willow's actual rapes of Tara are pretty much ignored.

It's what made the whole bringing Tara and Willow back together and then killing her even worse for me, because Willow never even once showed remorse over her rape of Tara. Not even to herself. It's probably what cost Willow any sympathy I might have had for her before that point. To then kill Tara whom I did still care about, just to advance Willow's storyline was just disgusting.

Especially considering the whole magic=drugs storyline pretty much came down to an excuse for Willow, so she could blame her problems on the magic, rather than on her own need to control things around her.

Re: top 10 list

[sophist.livejournal.com]

I think Innocence works, but only if the gypsies share Xander's view of the soul canon: "At the end of the day, I pretty much think you're a vampire". I don't, but from a Watsonian perspective I think it's consistent even if wrong.

[shapinglight]

I wouldn't pick anything from Firefly. I disliked it so much I couldn't get through all the episodes and I've never watched Serenity. Needless to say I don't understand the so-called Browncoats at all.

Re: what you say about SR, yes, I agree. I think I'll be angry with Joss for what he so stupidly did to Spike forever.

Re: Seeing Red...

[rahirah]

IIRC the backstage spoiler scuttlebutt at the time was that Tara was originally planned to die mid-season, but Joss got cold feet and kept putting it off. So the depressed Buffy storyline went on much longer and got much worse than originally intended. Still boils down to them not thinking it out very well.

Re: Seeing Red...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Not sure if killing her off earlier would have made it any better.
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.

Re: Seeing Red...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I agree...I think killing Xander off might have worked better than Tara. Xander had been written into a corner and they never quite knew what to do with him in S7. After Selfless...his story just sort of...hangs there.

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.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Regarding Firefly? Yeah...I have people who LOVE it on my flist and people who HATE it. I'm ambivalent to be honest. I can sort of see why people hate it.
I don't understand the undying love...but I do feel for the poor fans that love, love, love it...the series only had 13 episodes, only 7 aired, and one movie. Talk about a frustrating series to be a fan of. Can you imagine loving a series that only had 13 episodes? Ugh. Now that's painful.

Re: Seeing Red...

[sophist.livejournal.com]

I think they could have made this work, but they'd have needed to set it up. Perhaps they could have had Xander pull Willow out of a true drug addiction. Then having Warren kill him, especially if he took a bullet for Buffy, would have motivated Willow. Either Tara or Buffy could have brought her back.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

Painful indeed. Some of us still get lost in fanfic for My Mother the Car. :)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

As opposed to Mr. Ed? Or did that last longer?

I can't say I ever got fannish enough about a cancelled series to read the fanfic and get the DVDS...but the only series I've ever been fannish over was Buffy to be honest.

I have seen a lot of one-season wonders:

* Now and Again
* American Gothic
* Profit
* Wonderfalls
* Pushing Daisies
* Earth 2
* VR5 (which I remember being mildly annoyed by, because ASH was great in it, they replaced it with...wait for it...Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I was pissed at the time. VR5 was like watching Blade-Runner sliced with Run Lola Run by way of the Matrix. Buffy S1 just did not live up to the greatness of that. LOL!)
*The original BattleStar Galatica...although that may have made it to two years...

After a while, you get used to it and just shrug. I was always surprised when Buffy or Angel made it another season.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

My Mother the Car ran for 30 episodes, but it was a sitcom, so each one was just 30 minutes.

Mr. Ed was a classic:

A horse is a horse, of course, of course
And no one can talk to a horse, of course
That is, of course, unless the horse
Is the famous Mr. Ed

I can give you the whole song if you'd like. :D

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Understand the others...but, have to admit the appeal of Jaynestown and Dirty Girls is sort of lost on me.

(But then, the only scene I liked in Dirty Girls and made me laugh out loud was the sex chat between Spike and Faith. ) I'm also possibly amongst the few people who found HIM hilarious in places.

Re: top 10 list

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Well the problem was that half the writers shared Xander's view of the soul cannon and half the writers didn't - so every other episode of Angel and Buffy it would either be a reinforcement of the cannon or a deconstruction of it. Was rather entertaining from my perspective, but also frustrating. To this day, I don't know which side Whedon fell on.

As for the gypsies? No, still doesn't work. Staking Angel would have been the best revenge. No chance to redeem himself. No chance for forgiveness. Done. That's what people seeking vengeance do - they torture the sucker then kill them.

Granted Whedon's definition of vegeance was somewhat more advanced and complicated.

Re: top 10 list

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh, as I stated below. If you are furious and want vegeance and to hurt everyone around them? You kill them. Eye for an Eye and all that. Might torture them for a bit first, but mainly you kill them. Only in Whedon's world do you not kill them.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh, I'll pass. ;-)

Although kudos for the great memory. That was on in the early 1960s, I think.

Re: top 10 list

[sophist.livejournal.com]

Oh, I could have done better than the gypsies too. Maybe flaying him alive would have been more emotionally satisfying.

But if we assume that Angel's suffering with his soul also makes Angelus suffer, and if we consider such suffering a true form of torment, then the curse is at least logical. Maybe not persuasive, but logical.

Re: Seeing Red...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I would have preferred that ending...more female empowering.

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.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

Sad thing is, I can still sing the theme song from Maverick, and that started in 1957. In fact, I still know the words to the Davy Crockett theme, and that aired in 1955.

Now you know why I can never be a Senator.

Re: top 10 list

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's a valid argument. From Angel the Series, the episode Orpheus with Willow and Faith makes it clear that Angelus is always in the background, a silent party who can't do anything. Who is sort of stuck watching. That the two are bound together. Also Spike echoes this sentiment on more than one occasion.

So if we assume the gypsies knew this, which is a big assumption and may be granting the gypsies a lot more credit than they deserve, than yes - it's logical. But not emotional. So dlgood's argument oddly falls flat.
He argues that vengeance is emotional. Someone who is reacting emotional isn't going to think it through this far or come up with this intricate a scheme, only a detached writer would.

Re: top 10 list

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Well, now mesphitosphels has convinced me it works logically, but not emotionally. So your argument ironically convinces me that the story doesn't work from the gypsies' perspective and only if a detached unemotional writer came up with it as a logical plot device or a great metaphor.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I don't know...if you have that great a memory, you can remember fine points of policy.

Or if you are like me...you remember meaningless data and not any of the worthwhile stuff such as multiplication tables.

I suck at lyrics. Visual memory, not an auditory one, unfortunately. Dialogue and lyrics I can never remember. And I deal better with the written word than the spoken word. Lucky for me I was born just in time for the information age - where so much is written.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm good with the meaningless data too. Little known facts little worth knowing, as my father says. Want to know Willie Mays' batting average in 1956? I'm your guy.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

Oh 'Jaynestown' was the episode that convinced me for the first time I was in love w/Firefly (it aired before Out of Gas, Objects in Space, and Serenity): to actually have a TV show discussing religion and hero-worship, and in such a way that implied that they were both just expressions of the human need for unrealistic inspirations upon which to hang their faith/devotion kind of blew my mind.