Inappropriate Small Moments

vellavu

vellavu

Scooby
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Oct 17, 2015
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Black Thorn
Here is my list of small moments that annoyed me. They are not as large as "whole character defect" or "plot contrivance" but equally disturbing:

1. "Check it out. Brat's all woman sized." Faith, was that Angelus who taught you how to insult Dawn in front of her sister and Giles in your Orpheus dream? (Dirty Girls)

2. "Tell my mom, I'm sorry." Telling a vampire to send your mother a message after he killed you was definitely a good idea for a slayer. (Fool For Love)

3. Yes, wheelchair fight was fun. But a lot of injuries were waiting for you to deliver the medicine. (End of Days)

4. Right, Spike should be locked in chains in the slayer's home but it's not needed in your home because he could eat Anya instead of innocent people. It's even greater because Anya still had feelings for you and wanted to be back to the Scoobies so she would probably accept your request. I get it Xander. (Sleeper)

5. Surely Americans not understanding "peckish" and some foreign slayers not understanding English are funny. I believe that Buffy had abandoned suck kind of boring humor before S1. (various episodes of S7)

6. Dawn was trained by Buffy for months. So instead of protecting Amanda, handing weapons to the clueless potential and asking her to kill the vampire surely was a good idea.

While there are some moments that are also highly inappropriate but fine by me:

1. Giles bursting into laugh in "Grave". I take it as a meta-laugh towards the stupid plot during his leave. It's beautiful.

2. Xander making jokes about shops in the end of "Chosen" in spite of the war loss and the death of Anya. He is the one without superpower. If he has any other attitude than not taking death so seriously, he would be in a mental institution long ago, maybe after Jesse's staking. So I found it fine.
 
The way Polo the puppet sucked the souls out of children in 'Smile Time' always bothered me a bit...the happy moaning noises from Polo combined with the kid looking drained definitely made it look like Polo was molesting the kid...
 
I'm only on "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" with my current rewatch, and it's been a couple of years since the last one. I'm sure I'll be able to come up with a very long list of tasteless moments by the time I'm done, but so far I can firmly submit "Teacher's Pet"--just, the whole episode. Way to tackle the horrifying real-world issue of sexually abusive teachers with finesse and subtlety, guys.

The one that does come to mind from past viewings is what Xander says when they've just found Ted's four marriage certificates. "So either this guy was a Mormon, or..." *smacks Xander upside the head* That line always makes me so angry. I'm perfectly willing to believe that someone like Xander wouldn't know anything about Mormons, but Joss and David Greenwalt (the writers of "Ted") should've known better than to write in such an offensive and ignorant joke. None of the show's other religion-mocking moments specifically targeted a single denomination, so why'd they have to pick on mine?
 
EVIL UU
EVIL UU
Because it's funny!
vellavu said:
6. Dawn was trained by Buffy for months. So instead of protecting Amanda, handing weapons to the clueless potential and asking her to kill the vampire surely was a good idea.
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NOTE: We are talking about Dawn Summers so it was a given how that was going to end.
 
vellavu said:
1. "Check it out. Brat's all woman sized." Faith, was that Angelus who taught you how to insult Dawn in front of her sister and Giles in your Orpheus dream? (Dirty Girls)
Click to expand...

That was just how Faith talked. I have no issue with any sort of inappropriate-ness of that moment. Not only that, but I imagine that Faith really didn't care if she upset anyone. They were the ones who asked for her help, not the other way around. I don't think Faith would have really cared if they'd kicked her out or took offense to calling Dawn a brat. Many here (not me) would agree with her.

2. "Tell my mom, I'm sorry." Telling a vampire to send your mother a message after he killed you was definitely a good idea for a slayer. (Fool For Love)
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In my opinion, she wasn't talking to Spike. She was talking to her version of God or whatever belief system she had.

6. Dawn was trained by Buffy for months. So instead of protecting Amanda, handing weapons to the clueless potential and asking her to kill the vampire surely was a good idea.
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Dawn might have been trained by Buffy, she was she was still just a 15 year old girl with absolutely no superpowers to her name. I doubt Xander would have been able to handle that vampire either, given it's rage. And in any case, Amanda did actually come through and use whatever powers she had and she saved both herself and Dawn (which only fueled the fanwank that Amanda was actually a Slayer Called by Buffy's death in 'The Gift', but that's another story), so Dawn did actually make the right decision. She knew she couldn't handle the vampire and knew that Amanda might have been able to.
 
thetopher
thetopher
I think Dawn was 17 here, but I agree that Potential trumps that- or should.
vellavu said:
1. "Check it out. Brat's all woman sized." Faith, was that Angelus who taught you how to insult Dawn in front of her sister and Giles in your Orpheus dream? (Dirty Girls)
Click to expand...

I would bet money (given on the complete lack of reaction from Buffy or Dawn) that Faith had called Dawn 'brat' in the past (possibly affectionately back in S3) and is therefore trying to break the tension with a bit of callback humour.
Also see the 'not really wanted' wanted fugitive line. It's what Faith does.

vellavu said:
4. Right, Spike should be locked in chains in the slayer's home but it's not needed in your home because he could eat Anya instead of innocent people. It's even greater because Anya still had feelings for you and wanted to be back to the Scoobies so she would probably accept your request. I get it Xander. (Sleeper)
Click to expand...

I thought Willow did that? Didn't she offer to feed Anya to Spike, but Buffy says pigs blood is better so Willow goes to the butcher and runs into Andrew.

vellavu said:
1. Giles bursting into laugh in "Grave". I take it as a meta-laugh towards the stupid plot during his leave. It's beautiful.
Click to expand...

I agree. A nice moment and then you realize that Tara's body probably isn't even cold yet due to the condensed timeline. Still, I think ti was the best reaction to all the S6 horror. I know it was mine to some of it.

Another bit that was odd:

Buffy and Xander's reactions to Dawn finding the whole Tara/Willow thing cute. Teensy bit homophobic? (Once More With Feeling)
 
vellavu said:
It's more like "stopping children from talking about details of sex?" They always treat Dawn as a 10 year old child in S5-S6.
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INDEED! Teenage women understand lesbian sex just as much as the other way around! If I had a daughter, I want her to understand about lesbian sex, even that I may have pushed her to play with dolls as a little girl to understand about a life with a man. I know that is not a good way to write only a few sentences but you get the drift.

Back with Dawn and being thought of as a little girl by Buffy is weird. Dawn is a little taller then Buffy, and they both are the same bust size. It is insane to see someone the same female build as myself and think of her only as a little girl. It was not the error of the cast members, it was the error of the writers.
 
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