I don't get how she's not. I mean... I just don't feel like there's anything special or great about her character. I love the "five by five" thing and I say it all the time... but that's just a catch-phrase. I mean, she's this bad "tough" girl who's really an insecure scared little girl but we never find out why. I think I would like her much more if it was talked about more why she was an insecure scared little girl and I think I'd connect with her more if I knew the pain she'd seen before arriving in Sunnydale... or a least bits and pieces of it...
I thought it was pretty heavily implied. That's what I liked about Faith, her past wasn't laid out on a platter, it was fed to us in subtle little hints. A line from "Faith, Hope and Trick" comes to mind, when she's fighting the vampires - "My dead mother hits harder than that!" - at first glance she's just taunting the vamp, but it's actually very revealing - she knows exactly how hard her mother hits. And episodes like "Revelations" too, showing her serious abandonment issues - it's telling how quickly she attaches herself to the new watcher (and later the Mayor too), because she's desperate for a parental figure, but every one of them has betrayed, abused or abandoned her. She wants love so bad and has never had it until the Mayor came along, which of course it why she did all those things, not out of evilness but just because she was desperate for love. And of course she has no idea how to express affection because she's never received any, which is where her overt sexuality stems from - she doesn't know to to deal with emotions, but she does know how to use sex to her advantage, which is probably down to being abused from a young age... anyway, I could talk for hours about her abandonment issues, her anxious-ambivalent attachment issues, her crippling lack of self-esteem, her attempts to project herself onto others... I'm just going to get to the point.
I love Faith because there's so many layers to her. She's a bundle of confused, conflicting emotions and complexes - I like a character with issues, and Faith has them by the bucketful. I could talk about Faith's character for hours, because there's so much to talk about. And it's not all there, spoon-fed to us, it takes careful analysis of the nuances of her dialogue and actions to reveal the layers. A few people in this thread are comparing Faith with Buffy, so I'll follow the trend. I have often spoken critically of Buffy in the past, but in all truthfulness, I did quite like her in the early seasons. She was funny, and peppy, and pretty awesome in places. And I felt bad for her because of the whole slayer/destined to die/yada yada stuff. But that's it. I can't think any deeper about Buffy, that's all she is, and all her character is laid up on a platter. Scratch the surface, and what do you get? More surface. That's no fun. I find that Faith is a much deeper character, one that I can think about, explore and discover new things about. There's never any end to Faith, and that is why I love her.
As for the catchphrases - I love how ironic they are. Like "five by five", it's supposed to mean "fine", but of course she's not fine, she's in turmoil but in denial. Similarly, with "want, take, have" - Faith indulges in some petty theft but she does not take her own advice at all. Like in Consequences - where despite wanting help so bad, she rejects Buffy and Angel's because she's just too scared and still a bit in denial. See what I mean - there's more beyond the surface.
And hey, I notice you're talking about the olive theory. Perfect balance, right? One partner brings to the relationship what the other can't, and they balance each out, becoming like two sides to the same coin...
Fuffy: Masters of the Olive Theory.
😉
