The Trio

[Skanky Vamp]

Basically The 'evil' Trio was the scooby gang in season one. The misfits, geeks and outcasts. And while we cheered these tropes in the first season, we mocked and laughed at them in the 6th. The scoobies had grown and 'matured' and became the thing that they rallied and fought against in the first season.

The central theme, 'it's okay to be different', in the first season was the heart of the show, yet by the sixth certainly the heart was cold, dark and distant. If season six Buffy, Willow and Xander were placed in the first season they would be the villains.

I understand evolving stories and growth, but this goes beyond that. Its the fundamental change within the ethos of the show. I have always wondered why that is, and I think the answer may have just popped in my head as I typed this. I posit that the show is a microcosm for Joss Whedon's own attitude.

In the first season he wasn't 'famous'
His movie tanked, he was a script doctor and not a showhead. He was the outcast and misfit.

By the sixth season he had bought in and sold out.
The person in his group he started the show with left him - twice (the first time after the 3rd season)- to pursue his own things. He brought in talented 'outsiders' as writers for hire.

That's about as far as I got, as I am at work afterall!! but you see my point.

 

[thetopher]

No, the Trio weren't the 'New Scoobys' because their motives were the exact opposite- they wanted to 'take over Sunnydale', they wanted power and money and not work or get real lives.
The Scoobys were growing up and going to school and defending the hellmouth from the forces of darkness. They, y'know, worked and sacrificed and stuff. They may have been geeks and outsiders but ultimately that didn't matter because they had good hearts and the willingness to do the right thing, even if it cost them.

There's a fundimental difference right there- motive is everything.

And how many times did someone like Jonathan (the most decent one of the Trio by far) get a second chance? He just never learned from his mistakes.
Of course their reactions to things like getting away with murder, or setting an insanity demon on Buffy weren't really Scooby like, or nice in any way. I really can't see the Scoobys doing that sort of thing.
Warren was a woman-hating rapist, Andrew was weak willed and ultimately a sheep (even now), Jonathan was pathologically immature.

Buffy, Xander, Willow and co had their faults and some of them did questionable things, but they weren't in the same league morality-wise which is why I still have a problem with Andrew being in any way considered a Scooby- the worm.

 

[EVIL UU]

One problem here - there are evil nerd trios in season 1 and 2 and they already mirror the gang. Moloch, Fritz and David in "I Robot, You Jane" and Daryl, Chris and Eric in "Some Assembly Required". Also, season 6 nerds aren't immature - they're just evil. BtVS is very idealistic in its portrayal of evil. Basically, evil and immaturity are very often linked in this franchise and thus evil becomes something one can grow out of. Just like that! Not the case in our world, sadly.

 

[Blaze]

I fail to see the comparison. What's the worst Buffy did in highschool, sneak out of the house to save the world? What the worst Warren did...let's not even go there.

The trio and the Scoobies are completely different. It goes beyond saying "oh, but they're both outcasts". Just because a pig and an elephant both have 4 legs doesn't make them the same.

 

[janas]

I see perfectly the point I has traced @Scobro and in general I agree with his vision. It is said that in the sixth season Joss had abandoned the metaphor in favor of real life. In the sixth season is all "real", how many times have we read this in our threads? By virtue of this, I can see The Trio could be a distorted representation of the first Scoobies, and Joss shows us his view of life, which, in my opinion, almost empties into nihilism. I speak of nihilism because the vision of Joss is a pessimistic view of life. In the sixth season, the word "Love" is banished from their vocabulary and with the death of Tara, Joss kills the last spark of love. The Scoobies no longer speak to each other, they are blind, deaf and dumb, every one of them closed in their own personal hell, in a microcosm that ultimately leads they to self-destruction. It is no coincidence that Xander manages to save Willow just using the words. When they manage to restore what once united them, only then they return to be themselves. Buffy embraces Dawn and she is finally aware which has neglected her sister.

The Trio is evil? No, the real evil in the end, are their own. Buffy, Willow and Xander.
Buffy betrays herself, and she not able to pick up the pieces of a life that didn't ask to live. Willow succumbs to the charms of magic and she can't cope with the pain of the loss of the loved one. Xander is trapped in a relationship that scares him and he fails to take responsibility for this relationship.

And then we have a character who becomes one of the most beloved because he is a bully, is a bad guy and then it's sexy, he is one who uses the biting sarcasm to hurt others and his fans loved him for this. In the early seasons this wouldn't have been possible. None of us loved Cordelia or Harmony because they were beautiful - rich - popular, they were bad. We have not loved the Delta Zeta Kappa (Reptile Boy) or Cameron (Go Fish).In the first season we loved Buffy, Willow and Xander because we could identify with them. They were our heroes, because we were their...

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Exactly. That was the point I was trying to make.

 

[BuffyElevated]

I don't agree with this at all. I don't see the Trio as being anything like the Scoobies (well, except maybe Jonathan). They had a taste for evil; they wanted to use their power for bad; they're the exact opposite of the Scoobies and everything they stood for.

 

[Aud]

I see the Trio more as a representation of how the Scoobies could have turned out had they not found love and acceptance with one another. It's not that the theme of outcasts and weirdos was lost; it's that our protagonists no longer fit this mold after they became something of a family. Without the love and support they found in one another, who's to say the Scoobies might not have gone totally crazy and done more villainous things? On the other hand, the Trio might be portrayed as having become evil as a product of the lack of love and friendship in their outcast lives. Just a theory.

 

[Doppelgang]

I think you get the impression Willow and Xander, and to a lesser extent Buffy would have been quite happy to lead normal lives if they hadn't been called on to fight evil by circumstances. Whereas the trio were not happy to lead normal lives, and were resentful of those who lived special lives. That for me is a key difference in why we tend to identify with the scoobies, and tend to mock, feel sorry for the trio. The Jonathan superstar episode is the classic example, as is Jonathan in ear shot, not content to lead a normal life, he tries to force some sort of dramatic circumstances into his life. Whereas with the scoobies the dramatic circumstances came to them.

 

[dillonk47polik]

I don't really see any significant comparisons between the trio and the S1 scoobies. In S1, the scoobies weren't exactly outcasts. Yes they didn't fit into any high school clique and as a result had to create one themselves, but doesn't that happen with most high-schoolers? Let's not forget that Xander and Willow were best friends before Buffy came to Sunnydale and that Jesse was a part of the group before he was sired in the pilot. The scoobies were mostly just like everyone else (except for Willow's brainiac-ness, Xander's quirkiness, and Buffy's slayer calling). I mean, they were normal enough to gain Cordy and Oz into their group, right? The scoobies' mission was to not only fight the good fight but help her lead a normal life as much as possible.

The trio were completely different. Their personalities weren't the same as the scoobies; the trio were sci-fi fanatics. They were subjected to create their own social group as the scoobies had to, but unlike the scoobies, the trio was insecure about being labeled as geeks. They came together to take over Sunnydale as a way of showing dominance over the type of people who used to 'pick on them.'

Both the scoobies and the trio were distant from the popular kids in school, but other than that they have no similarities. Completely different leaded lives and motives.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

I found an old article in Rolling Stone that better explains what I was trying to say with the initial post..

...it’s the way this emphasis has betrayed one of the most appealing themes of the show: that it’s OK to be uncool. “Buffy” began with a high school girl, formerly cool and popular, who discovers that she has a destiny that will prevent her from ever having a “normal” life, and from being cool and popular. But she finds some comfort when she befriends people at the school who are social outcasts for other reasons: Willow, a shy computer geek; the loyal but socially awkward Xander; and Giles, head of a school library that none of the other students ever seem to visit. The bond between these four characters was the heart of the show for the first four seasons, more than anything else, even romance (there were many episodes where Buffy’s love interest, Angel, didn’t appear or was relegated to one or two token scenes). Every week, these characters proved what we’d all like to believe when we’re outcasts in high school: that the uncool kids, the ones no one takes seriously, are really the coolest and most heroic of all.

To make this clear, the monsters on the show were often portrayed as the twisted embodiment of high school coolness. In the pilot, Xander’s friend Jesse goes from “an excruciating loser” to an effortlessly cool bad boy after he is turned into a vampire. Another episode, “Reptile Boy,” made frat boys the villains. And Spike, when introduced in Season 2, was exactly the kind of smartass punk who makes high school a miserable place for geeks: Arrogant, cocky and contemptuous of anyone who wasn’t equally cool, he was a superficial, self-confident type who deserved to get smacked down by our awkward heroes.

With the transformation of Spike into a lovable antihero, “Buffy” stopped celebrating the uncool outcasts; instead, it celebrates the cool punk, the guy who would push the first-season Willow or Xander out of the way in the school halls. And it’s not just Spike. Willow’s love interest, Kennedy, is a self-confident loudmouth with a privileged upbringing, who obnoxiously admires Willow not for her intelligence but for her power. Spike’s nemesis, Principal Wood, is described in one of the scripts as “The Coolest Principal Ever.” And Andrew, the show’s answer to “The Simpsons’” Comic Book Guy, is constantly mocked for his geekiness, because a show that was once on the side of geeks now portrays them as buffoons or villains. It seems that on a show where an unrepentant mass murdering monster can be a hero, there’s no more room for a celebration of the nobility of uncool people.​

 

[thetopher]

Judging by that article the problem seems to the focus on Spike in the later seasons, rather than the Trio- which I agree with to some extent.
Spike is a snarky, hurtful bully (and actually contines to be in a lot of instances) who doesn't really alter his behaviour during the shows run because he's 'cool' and 'edgey' and 'sexy' and the writers can't be bothered (or were worried about fan-reaction) to change him.
William Pratt was a loser and an outcast, but I see precious little of that in S7 Spike's character- beyond his more romantic tendancies towards Buffy.

Andrew, to me, was portrayed lamely in S7 because he was a fantasist who continually denied the stakes of the coming Apocalypse by trivialising them to a ludicrious degree.
Xander making a quip or two to deal with the unbearable tension of a scary situation is one thing. Geek reference after geek reference about everything from monsters to his own crimes as a villain, instead of characterisation is worthy of contempt imo.

I also dislike Andrew because he murdered his best (only) friend in cold blood and is pretty much given a pass (just like Willow and Spike are in S7) for it because he showed token remorse in one scene and then never developing on from that.
(Plus there was murdering Katrina, which he helped cover up by framing Buffy, siccing a demon to drive Buffy insane so that she almost killed her friends, cheering Warren on while he almost beat her to death, little things like that...😡)

In the comics he's still the sad, deluded little idiot from the show- that's why a lot of people hate him, not because he's a nerd. Xander is still portrayed as somewhat of a nerd (action figures, comics, geek references) , but that's not ALL there is to him as a character- he has positive characteristics.

Can anyone name any of Andrew's positive characteristics? Apart from 'funny', which is very debatable depending on your tastes.

 

[Blaze]

I disagree with that article. The trio has nothing to do with making the "uncool" guys the villains. It has everything to do about taking some losers (not losers as in unpopular, but losers as in people that think they are the shit when they are just the scum of the Earth) and making them villains. I'm manly referring to Warren here, but Warren is not even "uncool" or a nerd, he is a murderer and a rapist. This has nothing to do with him liking action figures, and everything to do with him being despicable. Plus his two sidekicks who are much nerdier than him are actually made out to be the good guys in the end, Jonathan by choosing the good guys over Warren, and Jonathan by becoming a Scoobie himself.

With the transformation of Spike into a lovable antihero, “Buffy” stopped celebrating the uncool outcasts; instead, it celebrates the cool punk, the guy who would push the first-season Willow or Xander out of the way in the school halls. And it’s not just Spike.

Are you kidding me, Spike is pretty much made out to be one of the biggest loser in the verse until he gets his soul. Just because he wears leather and has a witty tongue doesn't make him cool. Anyone that pays attention will be able to realize that Spike is not a cool guy, and I don't think the series ever tries to make him into a cool guy. It's mostly people that fan girl over him because he's good looking, the show itself didn't portray him as such (until s7 at least).

Willow’s love interest, Kennedy, is a self-confident loudmouth with a privileged upbringing, who obnoxiously admires Willow not for her intelligence but for her power.

Since when does Kennedy admire Willow for her power? Pretty sure Kennedy never pressured Willow into doing anything related to her powers, actually, to quote her from the Killer in Me: "I'm not so into the magic stuff. Seems like fairy tale crap to me. But it matters to you. You care about it. So it's cool." Kennedy didn't give two craps about Willow's magic, which was a nice change of pace.

And Andrew, the show’s answer to “The Simpsons’” Comic Book Guy, is constantly mocked for his geekiness, because a show that was once on the side of geeks now portrays them as buffoons or villains. It seems that on a show where an unrepentant mass murdering monster can be a hero, there’s no more room for a celebration of the nobility of uncool people.

From what I recall, Andrew is also a murderer... And they make fun of him for the geekiness how many times...actually not very many times. Unless we're talking about Xander asking him to order some geeky stuff for him too.

I just think the article fail to take into consideration many factors.