contrived S7 writing?

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mmmdonuts

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So... Caleb is here. with 5 epps left. and he's supposed to have been around at least since Amends. How contrived is that?!

the big bad this season is not caleb, but the first. i think it wouldve been better for the writers to do the weekly monster deal, while connecting that with the first, so it seems like the first is sending out each one, each one more difficult to kill, leading up to caleb coming to sunnydale.

right now it seems like the writers are saying, "hmm well the first can't take any corporeal form, so we're screwed for a final fight. hey! let's introduce a super-powered villain they've never seen before and work him into the bigger scheme of things so it seems like he's been around for a long, long time!"

what do you guys think?

cliff
 
I tend to agree.

It would have been nice to see at least a hint of Caleb before Dirty Girls aired. They crammed a lot of stuff into this episode and it showed. Not only did they bring Faith back, the introduced a major antagonist.

They should have left out a couple of filler eps to deal with Faith's return. There are a lot of issues for the entire gang to deal with.

Then they should have had little scenes of Caleb spread throughout the last two or three episodes at least. Build up his arrival in Sunnydale, not dump it on us. Even if they wanted to dump it on us, it shouldn't have been the same episode that a character with the history that Faith has returns.

That's my two coppers worth.
 
It was quite crammed, gotta agree ... but Caleb was just great, marvelous character!
 
I kinda agree...

with every villian exept Angelus and Willow, we have always seen the bad guy in their own elements... The Master in the underground church, The Mayor in City Hall. I think we should've seen some part of Caleb before he was dropped in at the beginning of Dirty Girls...

but I do like that this guy just showed up and claims all the things he's responsible for... the bringers, blowing up the Council
 
the thing is that Caleb isn't the villain of the season... he's just an agent of the first, like the turok-han...
i find nothing wrong with that... i actually always wanted to know how the council was blown...
i like it like that...

and my 2 cents for all the people complaining about how faith is underutilized.... all recent faith episode both on btvs and ats aren't about faith!!, she is there as part of the story, she's not the center anymore and she won't be
 
screw filler episodes...thats what makes this season horrible...

that episode was the best of the season...

and so what if they didn't "introduce" caleb...would seeing a masked preacher blow up the watcher's council make you feel better about him??

if you base your feelings on his setup...rather than the excellant villian that he is...then you missing out.....
 
Yeah, I think they introduced Caleb qutie nicely. He's a hell of a villian.

Still, I do feel like the plot has been going nowhere fast They introduce the big bad, and then they diddle around for episode after episode with no change in the status quo, and little development of the plot. It's true that they have been developing characters, but the plot has been very linear.

In the past 18 episodes, the following things have been essential to moving the plot:
Caleb introduced
The First identified as the enemy
The SIT's

Most of the rest wouldn't create a significant deviation if it was missing. We don't need turok-hans as the monster of choice, it could be any old hell-demon with great power. We don't need to know that Spike went on a warpath and we don't need to know about Wood and his mother. 90% of the season's content has been circumstancial. I'm not saying i didn't like the episodes. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy seeing Willow 'becoming warren' or Spike facing his inner demons or Buffy beating down the Turok-Han, or Andrew being forced to accept reality. I enjoyed all those things. I would say that they are definately important to the story, but don't really change the net-outcome to any great extent.

What I am saying is that for most of the season Buffy has been faced with fighting the ultimate evil, and no significant moves have been made by either side until now. It has just been one long, onorous sparring match with countless feints, and not a blow struck. The state of affairs hadn't changed noticably until now.

By comparison, in season 5, the plot was developed constantly throughout:
Buffy gets a sister
Buffy looks for evidence of spells on her mother and discovers her sister isn't really her sister
Buffy discovers that her sister is 'the key'
Buffy happens across Glory and gets her butt kicked
Buffy finds out exactly what the 'key' is for
Buffy discovers that she is facing a god.
Buffy meets with the first Slayer and discovers that 'Death is her Gift'
Glory discovers that Dawn is the key and captures her.
The finale: It all comes together.

In season 5, the ending would have been completely different had any of these events not happened. This is an abridged list too, I chopped out all the lesser (but still pertinent) events. In season 7, the bulk of the airtime could be taken away, and it wouldn't affect the ending in any major capacity, although we'd lose some character development. The plot of season 7 has been frozen as 'Dancing around the hellmouth, waiting for the final battle' for something like 10 episodes now?
 
yeah thats totally the problem with s7... nothing has happened. they've taken single episodes to deal with and give closure to certain issues which DO need to be resolved, and i really like that since all those epps are very well-done. but it's true.. the plot has been stagnant.

s5 is one of my favourite seasons because of the many things that happen and the really interesting plot... s7 is just buffy vs hellmouth.

cliff
 
Season seven may not be that much in terms of intricate plot twists, but it's been really intense throughout. It's like a 22 hour finale episode, because there isn't really a specific seperation between the stories, it's just continuous really hard fighting, with a lot of despair and discontent thrown in.

I'm not complaining. It beats the soap opera storylines of season 6 (although I loved them too).
 
I totally agree, Khaych -- I think Season Five was better paced than possibly any season of a show I've ever seen. The episodes all moved along, there were important developments very frequently, it was fast paced enough for it to be enjoyable but slow enough that things just didn't feel rushed. ...On a side note, I think the cast (especially Buffy) really looked top-notch in that season 😉
 
I agree with you completely about season seven, Khaych. It's unfortunate that the season has these plot problems because it makes it feel like a lot of the important stuff was just "tacked on".

Right now, I'm just hoping the season looks better when you watch it all at once. 🙂
 
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