Should there had been a few more episodes of Faith in season 3 before the major event in "Bad Girls"

[Joshua]

While I love Faith and her entire story line on both "Buffy" and "Angel" I feel like Faith's betrayal in season 3 should have had a bigger emotional impact on Buffy than it did in season 3. It didn't phase her at all that another Slayer was aligning herself with the Mayor. Prior to "Bad Girls" it really felt like Buffy & Faith were finally forming a bond and Buffy was opening up like in the scene in "Amends" when Buffy & Joyce invite Faith over for Christmas but we never saw those kind of scenes with the two again.

Faith should have had more episodes in season 3 where she was the good slayer before she sided with evil imo. either way i still love Faith and Eliza Dushku is perfect for the role

 

[Plasma]

It didn't phase her at all that another Slayer was aligning herself with the Mayor. Prior to "Bad Girls" it really felt like Buffy & Faith were finally forming a bond and Buffy was opening up like in the scene in "Amends" when Buffy & Joyce invite Faith over for Christmas but we never saw those kind of scenes with the two again.

Not really. She was really affected when Faith murdered the assistant and then just shrugged it off. Not too long before this, Revelations happened and caused a noticeable rift between the two.

The thing about S3 is that you really can’t have Faith in too many episodes, because the point is to say that the Scoobs abandoned her because she isn’t their pride and joy, Buffy. She’s the “other”, the one that we go to if Buffy isn’t around.

It makes her turn to the dark more believable if we spend the same amount of time with her as the Scoobies do, since she really went to Wilkins because they were such crummy friends to her.

However, I certainly wouldn’t mind more Faith in general lol. Amazing character 🙂

 

[thetopher]

For wish-fulfillment? Yes, more Faith would've been welcome, so see her reactions/interactions in 'Band Candy' or 'Lover's Walk' or even 'Gingerbread' but I guess she's supposed to be only 'kinda close' to the Scoobies until 'Revelations' and then distinctly apart from the rest of the group with the exception of Buffy after 'Amends'.
Faith's supposed to drift away, apart from the group, taken for granted and forgotten because, honestly, the CORE group of friends are all dealing with their own high school romantic dramas and Buffy has Angel's return/getting back into school to deal with. They don't really have time for the newbie. 'Great, superpowered slayer but she doesn't really 'go here' and so doesn't really 'get stuff'. But she sure is handy to have around for patrolling or guard duty or whatever.'
That's actually very true to real life when it comes to a close-knit group of friends who have been through a lot of intense emotional stuff together; they bonded better.

Besides, it can be impactful regarding what we don't see as well as what we see. I'll give an example; in 'The Zeppo' was saw a really intense B-plot saving tha world scenario with out 'principal heroes' (Buffy, Giles, Willow, Angel & Faith) fighting in what seems to be a rather epic battle on the Hellmouth. And from what we can gather it was a close run thing. We don't see most of it- because of the main Xander plot- but we see the aftermath; the 'post-game' at school the next day.
And with the exception of Angel (because daytime) the glaring absence of Faith is obvious; she just isn't there for some reason. Oz is, Xander pops by, even Cordy watches from a distance, but Faith hasn't been invited along to bask in the world-save-age. You would've thought the morning after a big, epic-battle event would be the perfect time for some group bonding. But Faith doesn't really 'go' there, so...

Note, that I'm not making excuses for her heel turn, but for it to feel like a sudden and shocking (but still believable) the writers had to tread a fine line between friend and outsider. Faith was an ally who had a connection/insight with Buffy (and eventually Angel) but she was always kind of apart from the rest. That wasn't her life, this wasn't 'her' town and so she picked her own path...off the edge of a cliff lol.

 

[Bop]

I think a lot of it is because they didn't originally plan to keep Faith so contract-wise I don't think they could have Eliza in all the episodes. The old plan was for Faith to kill herself at the end of Bad Girls so her turn to evil and joining The Mayor wasn't supposed to happen.

All things considered the fact that they managed to readjust and have that storyline still work is pretty amazing because I think the season was supposed to almost entirely focus on high school drama, Bangel and Mr Trick/The Mayor fight at Graduation to mark highschool ending.

As for the in story version, I think it's complicated. Buffy and Faith had a close bond considering everything but I think there is a sense of Buffy still not having time for her, if you think about it almost all of their socialising time together/friendly moments were arranged by Faith or someone else but not Buffy.
Faith definitely wasn't real friends with anyone else on the team so it's easy to see why she wouldn't be around a lot and that makes her turn to The Mayor more understandable, among other factors. There's two sides to everything- From Faith's POV, Xander's a man so I think Faith's suspicion of him would keep her from seeking a true friendship with him and she probably felt too different from Willow. So yeah Faith pulled away from them but at the same time she was never made to feel a part of their group- e.g. in Revelations I don't think Faith needed to be in the secret meeting but they could have told her it was happening and it's about something that happened before she got here. The fact that they didn't just suggests she's not part of the team. I think Faith should have earnt some good will from them because she was helping out doing scooby tasks, babysitting Oz for them before Revelations.

But yeah Faith did see a commonality with Buffy so she tried to be friends with her.

Anyway to summarise, the whole push/pull, is Faith a part of the gang/Buffy's friend or not is beautifully still something that can be debated today because it's so nuanced in parts. But I would have loved more of Faith on the good side if this is just about what I want 😄

 

[Mr Trick]

I'd say she could have been in 1 maybe 2 more, but that's about it. Its tricky when you already have 4 or 5 characters who are establish. As it is a small complaint I have with S3 is that at times there are too many characters. Like others have said its probably because they didn't quite know what they were doing with Faith, alongwith with selling certain storylines.