Literally just finished watching

[azz0r]

Hey guys, guess this is also my hello thread 🙂

Okay so I've literally crammed 7 series of Buffy into 2 months while working (2 monitors).

Anyway, I can't say enough how much series 7 sucked! Every other series had its high points, its great narrative plot, its fantastic turns and character evolution and then then this series was an absolute train wreck. With new bland characters standing around acting scared and every main character just kinda...existing.

...more than that, has anyone ever bought up how wreckless the end actually is?

a) Willow empowered EVERY potential, so we're led to believe that half of the worlds women (maybe less I dunno) suddenly turned into super beings? How moronic, why not just turn everyone in the world into super heros and see how things go tits up!? Besides that, its incredibly cheesy and sexist.

b) They destroyed Sunnydale completely. Granted it wasnt the "plan" but no-one seemed particulary bothered when they stood on the road looking. Don't worry scoobies, I'm sure every animal and human got out, oh wait...you didn't know for sure if they did or not? Lest we forget the literature, property and artifacts that got blown to smitherins, but hey Giles cares more about making a shopping joke.

Right.

Am I alone in my horror at how badly it all seems thought out?

 

[October Bantum]

I thought season 7 was alright but I do agree with you on some of the things you said like Sunnydale being destroyed.

 

[Washburne]

Hi and :welcome: Most people do find season 7 one of the worst seasons but I'm not sure they hate it as much as you seem to do. If you're just finding bad logic in the last season you really haven't been watching that closely. 😉 Joss has always been about emotion not logic. But have to add that you're overestimate the number of potentials in the world. Yes, they're more than a few but don't come near to half the women of the world. And as for not worrying about humans, animals and artifacts. We already know the humans have left and after that big of a fight I'd say one is mostly happy about being alive. I would be surprised if anyone had more in their heads at that point, hence cheezy jokes (can't expect them to have their mind in order to make great ones 😉).

 

[Buffyverse Fan]

Welcome!

While I agree with some of your objections, I thought S7 turned out okay. Getting both Spike and Faith on the same team as Buffy at one time was pretty cool, imo.

re: Bland Characters
I didn't love the potentials. Honestly, I don't really think Joss created a good character after S4, with the exceptions of Clem & Robin who weren't exactly lead roles (Andrew's alright too). But if you think about the true fan faves, they pretty much all started out in Buffy's HS years.

re: Sunnydale's Destruction
The show was ending... If there had been an onscreen S8 I'd agree with your objection.

If you're going into logistics, the plan itself was horrible and failed. Angel saved the day with the amulet, Buffy's plan didn't work at all.

Buffy saw an Army of thousands of Uber Vamps, and was banking that two real Slayers (Buffy & Faith), two Champions (Spike & Robin), a Watcher (Giles) and a handful of Rookie Slayers could take them down. As Buffy said, if her plan failed, the Uber Vamps would destroy the world within a few days. Buffy did fail, really badly. She didn't even put a dent into the army.

Specific Errors on Buffy's Part:
1.) She should have had Willow activate the Potentials in advanced. For seemingly no reason, she took Willow, her heaviest hitter, out of the fight.

2.) She should have destroyed the High School again, so the Uber Vamps couldn't escape during the day (they'd be walking directly into the sun out of the seal).

3.) Not only should she have let Angel stay, but she should have recruited his entire team. A second front in one city would have at best defended LA, but the rest of the World would have fallen.

4.) Her going into the Hellmouth made little sense itself.

But, these mistakes can be overlooked as a combination of artistic freedom on Joss' part and plain ignorance on Buffy's.

 

[BillyidolwannaB]

I used to think it was the worst season, but after watching it a couple more times i think its great now. It starts getting really good when it gets to bring on the night, and from storyteller onwards its immense. I loved the spike/wood story and even the potential story.

 

[fly on the wall]

a) Willow empowered EVERY potential, so we're led to believe that half of the worlds women (maybe less I dunno) suddenly turned into super beings? How moronic, why not just turn everyone in the world into super heros and see how things go tits up!? Besides that, its incredibly cheesy and sexist.

Less than half. Way less. Giles and co. had been combing the world for Potentials for a year, and they'd come up with, what..twenty? There aren't as many Potentials as you'd think.

And they couldn't turn everyone into superheros. They only had the scythe and its power. 😉

Also, I kind of liked the ending, every down-and-out woman getting back her power...then again, maybe I like me some cheese.
I don't see how it's sexist? Well, at least, any more sexist than any other theme of "Buffy" (which is, at its core, about girl power).

 

[Sam The Bloody]

Core? Hell, the meat and tissue of the show is about girl power too! haha. Jeez, I mean, I can totally identify with Spike in the season 5 epsidoe "Crush" when he's screaming about how women are tormenting him to death, because if you look at the show, the guys really DO all get the shaft. Xander gets his eye ripped out AND loses Anya, Spike gets DISTINTIGRATED, Giles gets bitched out by Buffy and pretty much rejected altogether, in spite of everything he's done for her over the years, Wood gets BADLY wounded during that fight and Andrew... Well Andrew is just the opitome of weak-willed men everywhere.

 

[InsaneMystic]

I have to agree that S7 is too full of new characters and much to full of plots and sideplots. While I don't by any means hate it with the passion the opening post lets on, it is, together with S1, clearly one of my two least favorite seasons of Buffy.

And I have to agree to point b) about Chosen. The humor at the end, watching the crater of a town annihilated - indeed, I'm Giles-y enough to find the OP's argument about "literature, property and artifacts" to strike a strong chord of resonance with me - seems misplaced to me, too, and leaves a bad aftertaste.

But then again - Angel's last season ended on so much more of a "WTF, are you kidding me?!" moment that Chosen still seems vastly preferrable to me. ^^ Alas, either series' end didn't measure up to the shows' run, at least in my eyes.

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

Welcome to the board new friend! Agreed, S7 is my least favorite season - but I can't hate any of Buffy. Each episode plays an important role in the overall story of the show.

 

[fly on the wall]

Core? Hell, the meat and tissue of the show is about girl power too! haha. Jeez, I mean, I can totally identify with Spike in the season 5 epsidoe "Crush" when he's screaming about how women are tormenting him to death, because if you look at the show, the guys really DO all get the shaft. Xander gets his eye ripped out AND loses Anya, Spike gets DISTINTIGRATED, Giles gets bitched out by Buffy and pretty much rejected altogether, in spite of everything he's done for her over the years, Wood gets BADLY wounded during that fight and Andrew... Well Andrew is just the opitome of weak-willed men everywhere.

I mean, kind of. But it's not like the girls are laying in beds of roses either.

Xander doesn't "lose" Anya...he leaves her at the freaking altar! Anya got the shaft far more than Xander in "Hell's Bells."

Then there's Buffy, dying in S1, having to kill her boyfriend in S2, Faith drama and losing Angel in S3, growing distant from her friends in S4, losing her mom and boyfriend and finding out her sister was a Key in S5..oh yeah and dying AGAIN, all the horrible crappy crap she went through in S6...I mean, she gets the shaft in a LOT of situations.

Then there's Willow...rejected by Xander in S1 + 2, left by Oz in S4 and Tara in S6, magic addiction in S6, etc etc..

I don't think one gender necessarily catches more crap than the other in "Buffy."

 

[Revolver]

I'll give you my thoughts on the season (though some of it may be repetitive).

I agree it's a fairly weak season of Buffy, though I wouldn't say it's as terrible as you imply. I first watched the show on DVD, so I'd already heard a thing or two about the show before I ever watched it. One thing I'd heard from many fans was that season six and season seven were huge let-downs and the show might have been better off ending after season five. So I went into season six with my fingers crossed....and for the most part, I'd say that was one of my favorite seasons. So I went into season seven pretty much ignoring all of the bad things I'd heard about it. Initial episodes didn't disappoint. I liked that the season was supposed to take the whole series back to the beginning (though it was spelled out maybe a little too obviously at the end of the first episode....I still kind of liked it though it was a little cheesy).

I don't think any of the problems with season seven were due to the show completely running out of gas. Initial episodes were vintage Buffy. They maybe weren't the best overall episodes of the series, but they were all of relatively high quality. "Selfless" was a great Anya episode, "Him" was pretty funny even if (let's face it) they had done the love spell thing before, and "Conversations With Dead People" is another example of Buffy breaking it's own norms with great results. Personally, I like that episode even better than "Hush" but that's probably just me.

But, eventually, the season's quality dips quite a bit. And I think it's pretty obvious why. It's easy to just say it's the Potentials, and while they're certainly the biggest example of what went wrong, at the root of it was Joss and crew trying to bite off more than they could chew with the final batch of episodes. Since it was going to be the final season, they wanted a bigger bad to threaten Buffy, they wanted the "girl power" message to be clear with the final episode, they wanted to tie everything back to the beginning. In short, they wanted it to be really epic. Unfortunately, what a lot of people wanted wasn't exactly what we got. People wanted to see things wrapped up for the characters they'd grown to love during the first six years. Instead, they were introduced to a whole LOT of new characters and a lot of old ones were thrown back into the mix to keep with that back to the beginning theme. It just got to be a lot of characters to service, and it was really impossible to service them all well. All those characters didn't just mean a lot of bodies on the set. It meant that a lot of our favorites were pushed to the back and would be stuck reciting only a few lines in a lot of episodes so the show could concentrate on characters like Rhona, Kennedy, and other potentials no one gave a crap about. I liked Wood, Andrew could be funny, and it was great having Faith back, but still....that's just a lot of characters to have in Buffy's house. With all of these new people in the mix, Anya was barely used. She almost seemed like she had no place on the show anymore in a lot of those episodes. Even Willow and (even moreso) Xander seemed a lot less prominent in the final run of episodes. Xander's loss of an eye (you could have centered an entire episode around the aftermath of that) barely got the guy any extra screentime. When Giles was used, it was generally in a way that made you like him less (even if "Lies My Parents Told Me" was one of the better episodes of that last run). And the "big threat" really never seemed to be the biggest threat the gang had ever faced. The First just wasn't that scary. It couldn't touch you. I've had colds scarier than that. And Caleb just seemed like he was thrown in at the last minute so there'd be a more tangible villian, but the scene was already pretty crowded by that point.

As for the final episode, people have already done a good job of pointing out any flaws in the storytelling/Buffy's plan. It was done more out of servicing Buffy's message of feminism than out of keeping the story believable and entertaining. That's fine, as that message was always at the heart of Buffy. But I think past finales did a better job of conveying that message AND keeping things entertaining, and fun. And Buffy season seven sunk a bit on that level. That said, I don't think there are any outright terrible episodes in the season. It's just mostly really mediocre once the Potentials arrive, and it's hard not to wonder how much better it could have been had they chosen to concentrate more on Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, Dawn, and Anya (and maybe Andrew since his story wasn't really completed in season six) instead of trying to cram a bunch of new and mostly uninteresting characters down our throats.

 

[Crazy Flakes]

I wasn't a big fan of season 7, either. Even though season 1 will always be my least favorite by a long shot, 7 comes in second. It's a shame, too...the first few episodes were so great and the season had a lot of potential (no pun intended, seriously), but then the Slayers-in-training came in and screwed everything up. Still, I have to disagree with one of your points...

a) Willow empowered EVERY potential, so we're led to believe that half of the worlds women (maybe less I dunno) suddenly turned into super beings? How moronic, why not just turn everyone in the world into super heros and see how things go tits up!? Besides that, its incredibly cheesy and sexist.

Half of the female population? Hardly. Buffy mentioned in season 8 that about 1800 Slayers were activated in Chosen, so, if we assume that there are 3 billion women in the world (which is a very rough estimate...there are probably at least a couple million more than that), that means around .00006% of them got superpowers. Not exactly a percentage to write home about.

Still, I do agree that it was a stupid decision to activate them all. Not everyone has the mental and physical stability to handle the sudden development of super strength and predator senses, and I'm sure there would be more than a few Faiths out there. Even aside from that, um, Buffy wasn't exactly thrilled when she became to Slayer...why would she suddenly expect the thousand plus other girls she activated to embrace their destinies?

But I'm totally with you on the cheesy thing. The "are you ready to be strong" speech may seem empowering or whatever on paper, but intercutting shots of different Slayers being activated? CRINGE! I never interpreted it as sexist, though. They mentioned countless times throughout the show that Slayers were always girls, so why would we expect anything different? Besides, the whole show was about female empowerment.

 

[azz0r]

Thanks for your replies guys.

I didn't really consider that Buffys plans had failed, still I think she could have shown some concern for people who might have perished, or atleast they could have made it clear that EVERYONE had evacuated town.

Take for example the black man who Buffy kicks out his house, a good example of people who don't leave town under the circumstances.

My issue with the potentials all being activated was simply the faith issue as someone said. My 50% of the population thing was just a figure I threw out, I knew it wouldnt be anywhere near that high, but still 1800 super strong unguided women is a dangerous enough threat.

I really need to move onto Season 8 to see where they go with it 🙂

 

[Sam The Bloody]

I mean, kind of. But it's not like the girls are laying in beds of roses either.

Xander doesn't "lose" Anya...he leaves her at the freaking altar! Anya got the shaft far more than Xander in "Hell's Bells."

Then there's Buffy, dying in S1, having to kill her boyfriend in S2, Faith drama and losing Angel in S3, growing distant from her friends in S4, losing her mom and boyfriend and finding out her sister was a Key in S5..oh yeah and dying AGAIN, all the horrible crappy crap she went through in S6...I mean, she gets the shaft in a LOT of situations.

Then there's Willow...rejected by Xander in S1 + 2, left by Oz in S4 and Tara in S6, magic addiction in S6, etc etc..

I don't think one gender necessarily catches more crap than the other in "Buffy."

I wasnt comparing boy to girl ratios of torment throughout the series, just the way everyone wound up at the end.

Giles was a MUCH less liked character in pretty much everyone's eyes by the end, Xander DID lose Anya, because I dont care who you are, I dare you to look me in the eye and say they wouldnt have gotten back together at SOME point...

 

[Buffyverse Fan]

I really need to move onto Season 8 to see where they go with it 🙂

Just to prepare you without spoiling anything, Season 8 is a huge departure from the series. The scope is ridiculously huge, Buffy will be in New York City one issue and Tokyo the next. The core Scoobies (Willow, Xander, Giles and Buffy) are rarely, if ever, all in the same room together. The series delves deeply into the Fantasy Genre and the SciFi Genre, far more-so than in the TV Series (Centaurs, Time Travel, etc.). And Joss says that where Angel After the Fall is almost like the first arc on Angel Season 6 (the planned TV Season) in comic form, Buffy Season Eight (Comic) bares little to no resemblance to what he had planned for Buffy Season 8 (TV).

That said, Season Eight is enjoyable, and authentic (penned by Joss & co, the same folks who brought us the TV series). I personally really enjoyed 95%+ of all of the arcs except for the current one. The current one (Predators & Prey) has seen little to no story progression, and its first issue, Harmonic Divergence was one of the worst things I've ever read. Joss has admitted this lack of direction, but supposedly the story will come together soon.

---------- Post added at 05:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:54 AM ----------

I wasnt comparing boy to girl ratios of torment throughout the series, just the way everyone wound up at the end.

Giles was a MUCH less liked character in pretty much everyone's eyes by the end, Xander DID lose Anya, because I dont care who you are, I dare you to look me in the eye and say they wouldnt have gotten back together at SOME point...

If you're feeling bad for Giles & Xander now, you might not want to read Season Eight...

Spoiler

Xander's new girlfriend is brutally murdered, the first woman he's dated since Anya (two years after her death). And Giles is shutout by Buffy, they're not even speaking at the moment.

Honestly though, if you're looking for examples of male torment in the Buffyverse, Angel's really Joss' masterpiece of a tortured soul. Angel has lost his family, Connor (as a baby, then again when he wipes his memory), Darla (re-en-souled twice). He left Buffy for her own good. And most of his lieutenants have died horribly, working for him, Doyle, Cordy, Wes and Fred.