What do you think about season 6?

I'm curious if the people who hate it watched it while it was on the air. Because I did and it was excruciating how long UPN made us wait for new episodes and aired reruns. It made the season drag out really long and feel a lot longer than it was. When it reaired over the summer, I came to see how brilliantly the whole season tied together and appreciated it a lot more. I also have come to appreciate its meaning a lot more as an adult. When I was sixteen/seventeen when it aired, it just felt way too depressing, though now I understand it more.
 
If I had to rank the seasons this would be near the bottom, but I still enjoyed it. (There isn't a single season I didn't enjoy) The only reason why would be the overall plot to the season. Every other season had a Big Bad introduced early on and all the episodes lead up to the conclusion. I thought the Nerd Herd of Warren, Andrew, and Jonathan looked nonthreatening and a bit of a joke. In comparison to other villains, they just didn't seem scary. If Willow was considered the Big Bad, it would of been more effective to start that earlier in the season. It only lasted a couple episodes.
 
yeah... Season Six is Buffy "going dark", Willow "going berseker", Dawn "going abandoned", and right on Top "The Trio"😱

I used to think it was the worst Season ever, right to the garbage with it... and then... I kind of ended up stocked with it for research and I don't think is so bad at all 😕

It's surely at the bottom, when taken as a whole, but it has very good episodes, and I not only referring here to OMWF... and fabulous quotes

"Buffy: How have you been?
Amy: rat. And you?
Buffy: dead"
[Smashed 6009]

among others 😉

---------- Post added at 06:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:41 AM ----------

The Trio was funny???

Where they not a cliché on fans being geeks and needing to "get a life" maybe...
Actually they were Whedon's critic on "bad/negative fandom"

Why did you think it was the worst - garbage worthy and even now, with time and your change of opinion still place it rock bottom. What things do you see differently now?

---------- Post added at 03:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:49 PM ----------

Ok, lets talk about the infamous season 6!

Personally I have a love/hate relationship with this season. It brought the worst of everyone to the surface, but oh how I wished it would work out for Buffy and Spike. And in a way, a strange, twisted way, it did.

But let me start from the beginning. I don't think we have a main villain here. Ok, we have the Trio o idiots, led by an insane jerk, Warren, but I always had a hard time seeing them as truly evil (not like all the other villains from previous seasons, anyway). Then we have Willow, our sweet, yellow crayon Willow. How can I ever see her as a villain? She let herself get seduced by dark magic, like a drug and always had poor orientation about it. Giles could have done a lot more from the begging, but never thought about it until it was too late. This led to abuses such as resurrecting Buffy or the spell from Tabula Rasa. To me chasing the Trio and trying to destroy the word was a desperate, agonizing cry (and all the characters had one this season), caused by Tara's murder. Someone shot and killed the person she loved most, her first impulse was to avenge her. She just has too much power, pain and grief, is normal to run out of control, given her unguided situation.

If you want a true villain: LIFE! That's the message this season. Living the normal day-after-day is hard and cruel to the entire Scooby Gang.

Buffy was in peace and suddenly is reaped out of Heaven, forced to go back to a world full of pain, suffer and adversities not by an enemy but her own friends, people she loved and trusted, who knew well all that she had been through in her life and how she deserved to finally rest. But bringing her back wasn't enough, they constantly demanded from her, as if she had to thank them, and be happy to be back, not to mention Dawn's kleptomaniac problem (who only wanted to be treated like one of them, not someone they need to take care of), house expenses, unemployment and most of all: Spike!

Ok, I must confess I'm a little biased to talk about it, because Spike is my favourite character. In truth, he was the only one who left Buffy be herself after her resurrection. He was there for everything without any demand, accepting her fragility. Never pressure her to be the same person she was before or what he expected her to be, unlike all of her friends.
In a way, I think that's what made her get close to him, it made her crave is company, while she avoided her friends. And this terrified her!
After episode Smashed their relationship becomes more intimate and even though I hat Buffy' attitude towards Spike, I can understand it. She comes back, feels lost, pressured by everyone and the only person she fells good with is exactly the most unlikely one, but he makes her feel alive on those moments they spend together.
I know a lot of fans believe she's with him to punish herself, but to me is exactly the opposite. She's with Spike because she feels good, comfortable with him and punishes him for making her feel like that. The last scene of Dead Things where she beats him to a pulp is the proof. She's punishing someone she should hate, but in truth makes her feel alive, something her friends aren't able to do.

Spike, on his turn, accepts all this almost passively. He loves Buffy more than anything, more than life itself and that's why he allows this treatment, to give her what she thinks she want and he believes that deep down what she feels for him is stronger than she lets herself reveal.
But everyone has limits. And while everyone faces the scene in the bathroom from Seeing Red as a rape attempt, to satisfy his own need, I can't see it like that. To me Spike has the most desperate act of someone who's brought to his own limits of acceptance. He just begs not for a love's declaration but a little crumb of affection.
When he truly understands the depth of his act he does the unthinkable for a vampire, going to Africa and making a deal with a demon to go through a trial of excruciating pain, only to give Buffy what she deserves. His soul!
He knew he hurt her more than anyone else, but unlike the others he doesn't run from the problem on the first opportunity. He goes searching for something to redeem himself from what he did.
This is an extraordinary thing for a soulless vampire. He feels remorse of what he did. He's in such suffer that he leaves everything to go find a solution to turn him a little more human, worthy of Buffy. And that's amazing!

Wow"¦I didn't mean for this to get this big, and there's still so much to say. But maybe I'll add it later. This is my main thoughts of season 6.


Excellent commentary - IMO, excellent posts as yours can get big and rant all the time.

So many viewers then and currents fans want to see things only from a limited surface layer - there are no easy answers to the themes that were presented in season 6 and trying to explain or understand this journey story will, IMVHO, not give a complete understanding of the complexity and powerful story of Buffy and Spike. Both of these character were damaged emotionally and played this tragedy out together as well as created their eventual healing, transformation and final heroic resolution in "Chosen."
 
E
Evany
Thank you! I think I studied the subject a little too much. This is the result. lol
Why did you think it was the worst - garbage worthy and even now, with time and your change of opinion still place it rock bottom. What things do you see differently now?

When I first watch Season 6 back in 2001/2002 I guess I had great expectation 🙄 like OMG Buffy is coming back and OMG really she is coming back 🙂

By the time I was a huge fan of the text, don't get me wrong, I love the series throughout, but was really stuck out for me was the text, the use of English, the humor, the slang. Season 6 not only went dark, but the humor went lost, thus I didn't like it and put it at the bottom of my list. In fact never rewatched it except for OMWF.

Then came across the possibility to write my Thesis on Buffy and though about almost everything, as the academic work in Buffy is like huge, I struggled to find something nobody did before 😱 well I know it's impossible, so decided in fan fiction (first thinking on writing on fanfic and fan production) When I rewatched the Seasons anew it hit me 😱 The Trio! nobody really worked on the Trio, and they are like "mirror universum" fans => the total clichè. By then I was already assured that Whedon never does nothing without a reason, thus I just keep on looking for the reason 😉 and found the basis data that roots my Thesis "Fan-Representation in BtVS"

The way the show represent the fans is complicated and sometimes astonishingly, but it anyway there

It will be never become my favorite Buffy Season, for once I can barely stand the way Buffy treats Spike all through it... back in Season 2001 I blamed Spike, now even if understanding Buffy, I think she should not treated him like that.

From an academic POW however, the season becomes interesting, the representations are both blunt and multilayered. We all know that the show and the fans have always have a very tightly relationship (some of us use to post to the Bronze in a daily basis and were rewarded by reply from the staff), thus to see how the fans are represented in the Trio and

how we fans seem to do not see it ? 😱

it's.... interesting

OK... this is getting long and longer, thus

Sorry 😱 hope I clarified some...
 
I love s6 because it is so much darker & I like that. There's a lot of good stand alone episodes but the overall arc dealt with life as the big bad & I think that was brilliant.
 
I like episode 1-8, Doublemeat Palace, Hell's Bell, Normal Again, Dark Willow episodes.

Basically this. In my recent rewatch (just finished Wrecked) I find that it's not such a bad season. But Wrecked is absolutely terrible! Marti Noxon didn't do a good job this time, for me at least. There were good things in the episode, like Willow hugging Tara's "ghost?" I don't know what to call that. And at the end when she's crying and fell to the ground. Overall it's a good season - I rank it my 3rd least favorite.
 
Just started a season 6 rewatch, and I've enjoyed the first two episodes a lot. We'll see how my feelings towards the season develop as I keep going.
 
I agree with this --> (I like episode 1-8, Doublemeat Palace, Hell's Bell, Normal Again, Dark Willow episodes) I didn't like the others I thought it went off key? I prefer the darker? )can't think of the word) episodes like when Faith went bad, Hush, etc I don't mean like Buffy depressed dark haha I'm going off topic but I think it could of done a lot better in my opinon, maybe they couldn't top up the big finale of season 5?
 
I absolutely love this season, it's my favourite. Yes it's dark, but it's realistic, and beautifully done.

I love Spuffy, I love OMWF, I love Tillow, I love Willow's arc into Dark Willow, and I absolutely LOVE the finale and the parallel of Buffy crawling out of her grave thinking it was Hell, and then pulling herself out of the ground at the end and seeing the world as something beautiful. 😱

I love it so much.
 
It isn't at the top of my list as far as ranking the seasons go, but I still love it. I prefer the show when it is light and funny and and isn't all doom all the time and there wasn't much of that in season 6. That having been said the themes of the season were really well dealt with and it was a logical progression after the events of season 5.
 
Yes, Faith is not dead, so another slayer can't be called. Only way for them to get a new slayer is to kill Faith, and they didn't do that, I don't know why because she was in prision and couldn't figh against evil. BuffyBot did that 🙂
I know I'm a few years late lol, but that can't be it, cause when Kendra died, Faith was called, so another slayer should've been called when Buffy died.

Except if maybe in the universe's mind, Buffy has already been replaced by Kendra, so she can't be replaced anymore .. I don't know man this is confusing!
 
I know I'm a few years late lol, but that can't be it, cause when Kendra died, Faith was called, so another slayer should've been called when Buffy died.

Except if maybe in the universe's mind, Buffy has already been replaced by Kendra, so she can't be replaced anymore .. I don't know man this is confusing!

When Buffy died in season 1, Kendra was called, and after her death, Faith was called and from there on the slayer line would move through Faith. Even tho Buffy still has her slayer abilities, she is no longer the current "chosen one".

Apparently, the ancient dudes that started the slayer line didn't think about the possibility of a dead slayer being resurrected after a few minutes so they didn't put a policy in place to hold off the calling of a new slayer for a good 20 minutes to make sure the current slayer was never coming back 🙂
 
S6 is defintely one of the darker seasons in the whole series, but I actually enjoyed it more than I thought it would. I actually liked that it dealt with the big bads of the entire season basically being human instead of a demon like the previous seasons. It showed, in my opinion, that the potential for darkness exists within all of us, and only we can prevent it from coming out, or in Warren's case, let it flow freely out of us.

The only thing I did not like about the season as a whole was the Spike/Buffy relationship they showed *Spuffies, feel free to hate me, I won't blame you*. I absolutely hate the way he treated her in this season. She opened up to him about how she was in Heaven, and then he makes her feel like she came back wrong, basically making her feel worse than she already did. I won't even go into the attempted rape scene, because that alone is simply too painful to watch, much less think about. If there's one thing I truly hate with every inch of my being, its rape. It's not right, and it never will be.

Some episodes that I really liked from this season were: "Once More, With Feeling" 😛, "Normal Again", "Flooded", and "Grave"
 
The only thing I did not like about the season as a whole was the Spike/Buffy relationship they showed *Spuffies, feel free to hate me, I won't blame you*. I absolutely hate the way he treated her in this season. She opened up to him about how she was in Heaven, and then he makes her feel like she came back wrong, basically making her feel worse than she already did. I won't even go into the attempted rape scene, because that alone is simply too painful to watch, much less think about. If there's one thing I truly hate with every inch of my being, its rape. It's not right, and it never will be.

You know what the problem is with that scene, aside from it just being disgusting? It was a case of Joss thinking he's smarter than he actually is. I think from the way that things went from then on, about how the entire fallout from that scene was focused on Spike (as opposed to Buffy, you know, the person actually in the center of it), and not Buffy dealing with what happened, it's pretty clear that Joss Whedon has zero experience with rape.

As someone who has had to watch a a sibling go through this, the way it was portrayed in Buffy was not in anyway realistic. Buffy just pretty much forgets about it, Xander starts telling her off when he finds her (unless you're the biggest jackass in history, a friend would never do that, especially someone like Xander) and everyone moves on in about one or two episodes. That's not what happens, and it's actually a little insulting that it was presented as such.

Joss took the single most heinous crime a person can commit and turned it into a plot device. I'm not "mad" at Spike, he's a vampire without a soul, and as such is a completely different person then when he gets his soul back. All the things he and Angelus have done prove that. I have no issue with that. But this was one of the very few times where I was angry at what I was seeing on Buffy. I don't mind touching on serious topics, Buffy has done that before, as have many other shows. But to do so in such a sensitive area when it's crystal clear he has no understanding whatsoever about what rape can do to a person was beyond low.

That makes me angry.
 
Evil Angelus 95
Evil Angelus 95
Once again, I'm sorry to hear about your sister. No-one should ever have to go through that :(
But Buffy isn't like any ordinary girl, she's actually stronger than Spike, so it's more like a storyline about a guy getting raped by a woman, which is usually less serious .. So I actually wouldn't have bought Buffy being all victimy as she wasn't actually raped, and she knows she never could've been, the only thing that was bothering her was the fact that Spike could actually do such a thing ..
 
I really enjoyed season 6... all the characters went through so much. poor buffy was confused and lost after her mum died in s5 and died herself, came back from heaven pfft just a few things to say the least. I enjoyed watching Buffy and Spikes relationship as it was all over the shop and dawn wasnt AS whiney as previous seasons. willow had her big moment as darkwillow and i thought it was sweet how giles was there to help with bills etc. and yeah sure i thought the double meat palace was quite quirky, i like. 🙂
 
Back
Top Bottom