The Scoobies and cellphone

[MinwaraYana]

It's amused me that the Scoobies started to use cellphone in season 7.

Cellphone help them a lot. For example, when Dawn calls Buffy to help her in Lessons.
I cant believe they didn't use it for all 6 years before and still helped each other in time. But I think it's more classic without cellphone. 😉

So my question is...

Do you think cellphone is important in BtVS ?

 

[Blondie Bear]

I think I remember Joss saying that it made things way too convenient, hence why they didn't play with Buffy's pager much, either. But, yes, I think things could have been easier if they'd had them.

 

[white avenger]

I can understand Joss' saying that cell phones would have made things much more convenient and therefore less dramatic within the storyline. Buffy's rocket launcher in Season 2 was a great gimmick for a one time shot, no pun intended, but too much use of rocket launchers, incendiary grenades, guns, even something as primitive as bows or crossbows for that matter, would take away from the action of the show. If Buffy could just stand back a hundred yards or so and blast the vampires out of existence, or even just pick up her cellphone and call for assistance whenever she needed it, we would have lost all of that great hand to hand action. Either that, or we would have just had a female version of Blade, slaughtering literally hundreds of vampires at a time.

On the other hand, within the context of the show, I would hazard a guess that the main reason that Buffy and her friends never moved into the Twentieth Century, weapons wise and communications wise, was Giles. Even though he was the one to give Buffy the beeper (or was it Joyce, and Buffy was just suggesting that he use it to call her? Whatever...) he clearly resisted modern technology in the form of computers and probably most everything else. Look at that old beat up Citeron (?) that he drove for so long, and how he complained about the automatic transmission in the red sports car that he eventually replaced it with.

Clearly, modern weapons would have worked on many if not all of the things that Buffy ran into during her nightly patrols, because Wesley used them quite effectively on "Angel." And it apparently wasn't Watchers' policy in general, because the wet team who came to get Faith were very well, if illegally. armed. Even in Season 8, when Simone initially asked why Slayers couldn't use guns, Andrew, Giles' apprentice at the time of "The Girl In Question," at least, could give no more valid reason than, in effect, "They just don't."

By the same token, there is no valid reason, beyond dramatic effect, that vampires don't wear some sort of armor to avoid stakes to the heart or carry and use firearms, other than that one time in the series premier when Darla used a pair of pistols (It just occurred to me. Darla had a pair of .38's. Okay, 9mm's, but that work as well). Surely some vampire or demon would have come up with the idea at some point that one bullet from a sniper rifle would end all of their Slayer problems. But if that had happened, the show would have been over before the first commercial break of the first episode.

 

[Edmund Blackadder]

I don't know, I didn't get my own mobile until 2002 because I personally hated and still hate them.

Plus, I would imagine that in later seasons they have 'cellphones' but I don't think I ever saw a situation where ringing someone would have been pivotal to the story at that moment.

I can live without them on the show.

 

[Mommatis]

I think the use of cell phones on the show was in time with the age groups of the times. It has really only been in the last several years that younger middle class people carried or had unlimited use of cell phones. I personally have had one since 96 but only because one of my first jobs outta high school was sales for a cell phone company (think big huge bag phones and flip phones that looked like small bricks - with batteries you were lucky to get 2 hours of talk time on). I think it was around 2002-2003 when lithium Ion batteries and digital networks made cell phones really worth the expense.

 

[Frketson]

it was almost the opposite in Angel, they used it in the first season and i cant remember them using it much after that.

 

[Perny]

Who needs phones when you can have mental convos with Willow? She's like a phone on leggies!

 

[VisionGuy]

The only one who had a cell phone at one time was Cordelia in the very first episode. I don't think we saw it after that. I've had a cell phone since I was fourteen but I'm sure things were different in the nineties.

 

[palabravampiress]

I agree with those who think it was consistent with the times. I didn't get my first cell phone until 2005, and I'm roughly the same age as the Scoobies. When I was in high school, people really only had cell phones for work and for emergencies while driving, although more and more middle class types were falling into those categories. A lot of people left their phones in their glove compartments and had expensive payment plans that made using the phone for anything other than calling a tow truck or 911 impractical.

Then, when I was in college, cell phone use just kind of exploded. Being a poor college student, though, I missed the boat. I couldn't afford one (and didn't see the need for one) until after I graduated and got married, at which point my hubby added me onto his plan for an additional $9.00 per month, so the expense became negligible. Given the fact that the Scoobies ran into some serious financial troubles in later seasons and that they fall into my age bracket, I've gotta say it makes sense that they were late adopters of cell phone technology.

Plus, it is totally better for the story. Someone with the job title "Slayer" can only be so modern, you know? It's kind of an ancient sacred calling.

 

[Fusions2]

I agree with what everyone has said so far and its true The Scoobies didn't really need cell phones so early on. It was right to bring them in, in season 7 when phones were becoming more popular. But with the gang living in a small town and practically in each others house and being room mates at college there was no need. It made more sense in Angel to have cell phones from the beginning as it seemed right for the premise of the show and being a big city, everyone had one for business and such.

I liked the idea that the cell phone thing wasn't played on too much in season 7 of Buffy. I remember having a phone from the age of 15 but it was only for emergencies at the time and not really all the rage. Of course now phones are used for much more than just calling someone. I think though if Buffy was still on the air today cell phones would probably play a much larger role.

 

[mcwitty]

I thought the first episode where Buffy presents Dawn with a cellphone was very funny. I think the cellphone was good in relation to it being given to Dawn because she's in high school... and that high school is on top of the Hellmouth and Dawn is incapable of fending off the things Buffy did at school. Therefore, a cellphone makes sense because Dawn is a teenager and needs her own phone and also for protective reasons because the stakes are upped a little by sending her to school at Sunnydale High. I think that is the only reason the cellphone was introduced in a significant way at that time; because it added something to the character of Dawn.
Beyond that, I agree with white avenger's comments about cellphones and other bits and pieces of technology not being used.