Hey, apparently it's not 4 pages, it's 5 pages. Enjoy.
Why Season Six was so Awful
Destruction of all characters
Basically, this is the season where every character became completely detestable. Let's break them down character by character.
Buffy - From a witty, friendly, optimistic girl that we all loved to an empty shell devoid of any human emotion. Her being ripped from Heaven was played realistically - far too realistically. Her suicidal depression was just that, depressing. She lost all of her warmth and humour. How are we supposed to enjoy watching a character who is not entertaining and hates her life and wants to die? Watching it was about as fun as living it. And when she did try to be "fun", such as in "˜Gone', she was so annoying and petulant that she made
Dawn look mature. There was also a serious case of angst dissonance - we cannot relate to her problem. Compare early S3, where she is still angsting over Angel. We can relate to that because we've all lost someone we love and wished they could come back. However, none of us have died and then been pulled out of heaven, we cannot relate to that. Then the rest of her problems were just far too relatable, which I'll explain later.
Willow - Early season, Willow moves closer to the dark side and mind-rapes her girlfriend. Already she's turned into a horrible person that is impossible to like. But it's an interesting avenue for the character, we could've explored the effects of having so much power on a person, and their abuse of that power. Then "Wrecked" aired. All subtlety was thrown out the window and the show started beating us with a massive hammer with MAGIC=DRUGS written on the side. This storyline was an insult to our intelligence, lame in an after-school special kind of way. And this lameness transferred onto Willow after this episode. I couldn't care about her struggle with withdrawal because the storyline was just so mind-numbingly stupid in the first place. First half of the season she was a horrible person, second half she was a walking cliche of a drug addict.
Xander - Escaped this season largely unscathed, but still damaged. He did very little in the first half except for talk about wedding plans with Anya. Which turned out to be a complete waste of time since they didn't even get married! The show could have taken the characters someplace new, explored what married life was like, but since happy couples are illegal in the Buffyverse and the status quo must be maintained, Xander was required to act like a jerk for a short while and leave Anya at the altar. Basically all he did all season (save for the climax of "Grave") was plan a wedding, ruin a wedding, and hate Spike. Which leads me to...
Spike - If any character was ruined in this season, it was Spike. Remember when he was cool? He's fallen a long way, ending up with the job of stalking Buffy. He was a complete an utter selfish douchebag in S6. He emotionally manipulated Buffy, playing on her depression to convince her that she "came back wrong" and "belonged in the dark", all so that she'd feel so alone and numb that all she could do was jump into bed with him. And when she finally got a hold of herself and ended it, he couldn't accept that and tried to rape her. We're talking about rape here. The highest level of evil. How were we supposed to like this character after he did that.
The big mistake that the writers made was to confuse a character being entertaining and a character being sympathetic. Spike in S2-4 (and to an extent 5) was entertaining, but not sympathetic. He was cool, and sexy, and witty, and just generally awesome "“ but he was still an evil, selfish douchebag. But this was fine because those seasons didn't expect us to feel sympathy for Spike, just be entertained by him, and we were. However S6 Spike was not witty, not awesome, he'd gone from a punk-rock killer to a lame-ass stalker. He was not entertaining. And they tried to play up the sympathetic-ness of his character, but it didn't work because it assumed that we already had sympathy for him. Spike did nothing in S6 to earn sympathy, it was assumed that because the fans loved him that we would feel sympathy for him. Wrong. We loved him because he was awesome, take that away and put manipulation, stalking, abuse and rape in its place, and you've got one thoroughly detestable character that I think deserved to be a smouldering pile of dust.
Giles "“ Oh Giles, how we missed you this season. Giles wasn't just awesome, he was an essential part of the group. Lets forget how much we missed him for a moment, and focus on his role in the Scoobies. He's a sensible, mature person. He's a voice of calm, intelligent thought in a gang of wacky characters. The problem with S6 is that it became oversaturated with wacky, non-sensible characters and simply disintegrated without any voices of reason or calm. Giles was the main holder of this role, but at other points it was filled by Oz, Tara or Angel, then next most mature, calm characters. Oz and Angel left, and Tara was missing for a few early episodes before dying. The more "wacky" impulsive character were left free to roam and all hell broke loose. Buffy slept with Spike, Willow got hooked on drugs, Xander left Anya at the altar"¦ could you see all that happening if Giles or even anyone with a functioning adult brain had been there?
That aside, we just missed Giles. He pretty much single-handedly saved the season finale with his return. He was brilliant and we missed him. But because the actor had other things on, he was dumped with an OOC reason for leaving that made him look like a moronic jerk. Yes, Buffy needs to be an adult sometime "“ emphasis on sometime. First she needs to be helped through a serious rough patch. Her mum died, then her sister almost died, then she died, then was ripped out of heaven and is now suffering from depression and serious financial worries. Do you really think that this is the best time to be leaving her, Giles?
Dawn "“ Poor Dawnie. If it wasn't for whoever wrote All the Way and Older and Faraway, she'd be the most sympathetic character on the show. For large chunks of the season she basically sat around like an abused puppy who really wants to be taken out for walkies. Her jerk of a big sister was far too busy shagging a vampire to bother about her (see "As You Were" for Buffy turning up late with a cold, squashed bag of fast food. What a wonderful sister), her friends were too busy getting high or leaving their loved ones at the altar. But anyway, AtW and OaFA were written, just in case we were starting to like Dawn and need to be reminded to hate her. I'm not even gonna go into these episodes in detail, you saw them, you know what I'm talking about. Dawn was whiny, annoying, irresponsible and just plain dumb. Another character destroyed.
Anya "“ Probably the best-off of anyone who lived through S6. She remained funny and entertaining for the most part, her only problem was that she remained a very static character. She'd gradually gone from a selfish, evil demon to a brave, caring woman in S3-5, in S6 she was just hanging around waiting for Xander to break her heart. She got a few good jokes, but didn't really become interesting until Entropy.
Tara "“ Her death was a complete insult to her character. She was warm, kind, funny, and loved by the audience. She had the sense to get away from everyone else and so remained unscarred by the horrors of S6. But in her death she was not a character, she was reduced to nothing more than a plot device, a trigger for Willow to go evil. It was completely random, and meant absolutely nothing for her character. In death she was nothing more than an extension of Willow, to be disposed of at will. Utterly insulting to her and her fans. Not just that, but it was a real waste of a character. She was an interesting, lovable character, unmarred by S6 and still left with plenty of potential development, but we had to lose her for the sake of three episodes with Dark Willow.
Three episodes! Dark Willow wasn't even that interesting! Three! Frickin! Episodes! As far as I can see, that's an unfair trade.
The Legion of Dim
And you thought it was just the main characters that were the problem? The Trio sucked for many, many reasons. I can see the thinking behind them. It's a very depressing season, so they went with a "funny" Big Bad to lighten the mood. The only little snag in that plan is that funny Big Bads are usually supposed to be, you know, funny. The Trio were just not. They were just a pile of tired old "nerd" clichés. LOL, nerds watch Star Trek! LOL, nerds collect action figures and live in basements! Isn't this hilarious? No, it isn't. It's just lame. Expecting us to be impressed by these lame-ass stereotypes is yet again insulting to our intelligence.
Not only were these jokes unfunny, clichéd, unimaginative and just plain stupid, but they went against everything this show was about. Back in S1-3, our beloved characters
were the geeks. It reached out to all the geeks out there, because it connected to us. Our group of heroes were the outsiders that everyone thought were a bit weird. The show went from celebrating the outsiders to poking fun at them.
Spuffy and the attempted rape
I've already said most of this in the sections on Buffy and Spike. They really ruined each other's characters. Spike's obsession turned him from a fun and interesting character to just a creepy vampire who was in love with Buffy. It reduced his character until that was all that was left. And then his attempted rape of Buffy made him completely detestable and irredeemable in my opinion. And I, like Xander, lost a hell of a lot of respect for Buffy when she started sleeping with Spike. It was horrible to see a once-loved character lower herself to an evil soulless creep who wasn't even cool any more. And when Spike attempted to rape Buffy and then didn't end up on the end of a stake, I lost a bit more. If that had happened in the early seasons he'd be dust. But the fact that he wasn't "“ and that Buffy still seemed
concerned for him afterwards portrayed her as weak and pathetic. The whole rape business trivialised the subject, and what was really horrible was when Spike
blamed Buffy afterwards for "leading him on". This miserable, horrible, destructive relationship destroyed the characters and added to the general feel of S6 being completely depressing to watch.
Lack of dynamic between the Scoobies
Instead of a tight-knit gang, they became just a bunch of people who didn't all interact with each other, and barely seemed to care about each other any more. Does anyone remember Spike having a conversation with someone who wasn't Buffy? Or Buffy and Willow acting anything like they were best friends? Or Xander or Anya in a single scene pre-wedding without the other? Any Giles whatsoever? They just went off and had their own problems and barely seemed to give a crap what was going on in each other's lives.
Willow's magic addiction
I cannot even begin to describe how awful this was. It's just simply ridiculous. It had the potential to be such an interesting storyline, then in "Wrecked", for absolutely no reason whatsoever, it went from Willow slowly being tempted to abuse her power for personal gain to an anvilicious failure of a metaphor, where MAGIC=DRUGS. Not only did it come completely out of the blue, different from everything that had already been established about the nature of magic, but it was just a stupid idea in the first place. Who on earth said "Hey, we've got this storyline about Willow abusing her power. That's good, but how about we treat the viewers like morons and go completely overboard, rubbing it in their faces that magic is exactly like drugs "“ no, wait, magic
is a drug, and Willow is a drug addict." Why anyone would think it was a good idea to treat the storyline in such an in-your-face, after-school-special type way is beyond me. I didn't really care for anything happening to Willow after that, not even Dark Willow, because the storyline was so facepalmingly stupid in the first place that I just didn't care.
Buffy's problems
I mentioned earlier that while being dragged out of heaven was a problem we couldn't relate to, Buffy's other problems we could relate to too well, and I will explain what I mean now. To quote Television Without Pity:
Y'know what my problem with this season is? It's a little too realistic. I don't want to tune in for a show about how people struggle to make ends meet and creatively manage their finances. If I want to worry about how to get the most out of each budget dollar, I can do that on my own time. Television is supposed to be an escape, and I want to see a show about magic, fantastical shit happening and people getting their asses kicked. Paying bills, worrying about money, hoping things won't break until next month is just a little too much like my life. And believe you me, I don't watch TV so I can revel in my life.
That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter. No matter how realistic, Buffy struggling with finances and searching for jobs just isn't fun. I want to watch Buffy kicking evil ass, not Buffy trying to get a low-interest loan. Not to mention the stupidity of the characters to not even
suggest asking the Watcher's Council for money. Too many plots in this season required the characters to act like complete morons for them to work.
A hella lot of really crap episodes
The season starts. The first three episodes struggle a little but are still alright. Then there's a nosedive with "Flooded", "Life Serial" and "All the Way". Three pretty poor episodes, but hey, Once More With Feeling saves the day. Tabula Rasa is pretty fun, but in my opinion overrated. Then the dung really hits the fan. "Smashed". "Wrecked". "Gone". "Doublemeat Palace", "Older and Faraway", "Dead Things", "As You Were". "Hell' Bells". That has to be the worst run of episodes ever in the show's history. 5 and a half hours of absolute durge. With all other seasons I couldn't wait to get onto the next episode. Trying to get through that lot was a chore. I had to force myself to sit through them because "it has to get better soon", right? Well, "Normal Again" was pretty good and "Entropy" was just average. "Seeing Red" was a horrible, insulting stain on the history of BtVS, sending us trundling into a somewhat underwhelming, filler-packed finale that was only saved by the return of Giles and the final scenes with Xander/Willow and Buffy/Dawn.
The main problem is that when episodes were bad, they were very very bad. In the early seasons we had to deal with some truly lame-ass plots (eg. Bad Eggs, Go Fish, Teacher's Pet), but the episodes were still very watchable and enjoyable because even though the plot of the week disappointed, we still had a cast of very fun, likeable characters that managed to make the episodes enjoyable with their interaction and banter. However, due to the destruction of all the main characters and drifting apart of the Scoobies as mentioned earlier, when the main plot was rubbish there wasn't anything to fall back on but a bunch of unlikeable morons that no longer had fun or cared about each other. Even when the plot was good, the episode still struggled due to lacking a solid foundation of characters to build on.
This season may deal with "adult" problems, but it certainly isn't adult. The lame-ass magic/drugs metaphor, tired nerd clichés, plots so stupid they require the entire cast to be complete morons in order to make them work (see the Scoobies, who have fought government conspiracies, legions of vampires and literal gods, fail to do anything about three dumbass nerds all year). The moral of the season, that simply "life is really hard and depressing" seems like it came out the diary of an angsty teenage emo rather than the pen of a professional writer. Boring, depressing stuff happening does not automatically equal adult storylines.
In conclusion, season six was a moronic, depressing, slow-paced, patronising, ham-fisted mockery of an attempt at entertainment that metaphorically pissed on the graves of many once-loved characters, insulted my intelligence, broke away from its roots as a proudly geeky show and left me pissed off enough to write 4 and a half pages on how crap it is.
