What If: Olivia wasn't around?

nightshade

nightshade

Your grandfather is a cat
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Black Thorn
Thinking particularly about Hush, what if Olivia wasn't there? Spike staying with Giles, or her not seeing the Gentlemen.
 
If she hadn't been there would she been of the belief Giles was a founding member of Pink Floyd?

Do you think Pink Floyd were the gentlemen?
 
Her seeing the Gentlemen, and having the skill to sketch them out, did result in Giles being able to determine what they were and how to defeat them. Spike might have seen them, vampires naturally being up and about at night, but unlike Angel he never showed a skill for drawing. Perhaps he could have described them well enough for Giles to find them?

Other than that, Giles would probably have come home every night he was singing and playing his guitar at the coffee shop with a different woman. Which he may have done anyway after Olivia did not come back...
 
Before Hush, we were left with the impression that Giles might still be pining away for Jenny. At least this shows that he has moved on. And any girl who would go to Heathrow, get on a plane for 13 hours than drive or fly on a feederliner to Sunnydale just to be with Giles is a keeper.
 
Ethan Reigns said:
Before Hush, we were left with the impression that Giles might still be pining away for Jenny. At least this shows that he has moved on. And any girl who would go to Heathrow, get on a plane for 13 hours than drive or fly on a feederliner to Sunnydale just to be with Giles is a keeper.
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Yeah in theory very true. Obviously we know that didn't happen though. Part of that though is it is made clear Olivia did not approve of Giles's 'hidden life'. And since that is Giles life, well...it's clear why this was a fling.

It wouldn't have made much difference really. Olivia actually seeing The Gentleman was just a plot device, it could have easily gone to Tara or Anya. And they probably could have just found a sketch in one Giles old books or something. There are plenty of ways to have done this besides Olivia just lucking out and seeing them.

Likewise, if they felt the need to at all, they could have found other ways to show that Giles had 'moved on' from Jenny. Joyce after all was still alive at this time and they had teased something between her and Giles on and off in the previous seasons.

Long run her presence, or lack of, really doesn't matter.
 
NotASlayer
NotASlayer
Teased? They had sex on the bonnet of a police car! Twice! :D
N
NoShip
And Giles was a Stevedor.....
Nothing. Olivia is completely extraneous. That's like asking, what if Amelia's scenes from Underworld were cut? Anything she did could be transferred to another day player or assigned to the regular cast. They did next to nothing with the character.
 
Now, to be fair, I speculate that it is very likely that Olivia was a last minute diversity hire. Time line matches up, Summer of '99 was the time Black leadership complained about the lack of representation on network television. All the Networks sent out a last minute mandate. Quickest way to meet it, introduce new recurring character in series premiere, give her a plausible reason for being gone most of the time. But, due to some combination of the actresses's schedule, poor planing, and the simple matter of Giles not being very important in season 4, you don't have a lot for her to do outside of the really important episodes that Joss was able to work her in. But, casting in season 4 clearly had issues.
 
NotASlayer said:
Other than that, Giles would probably have come home every night he was singing and playing his guitar at the coffee shop with a different woman. Which he may have done anyway after Olivia did not come back...
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Love to see Buffy's response when Giles turns into a real.Hugh Heffner.
 
NoShip said:
Love to see Buffy's response when Giles turns into a real.Hugh Heffner.
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Her popping around to see him and him having a different partially clad woman there every morning...

Admittedly, that might well be the way to stop the Scoobies from charging in without knocking or anything.
 
Yes, I could see Giles as a character defined by Lou Bega in Mambo Number 5:

A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side
A little bit of Rita is all I need, a little bit of Tina is what I see
A little bit of Sandra in the sun, a little bit of Mary all night long
A little bit of Jessica here I am
A little bit of you makes me your man

It would have been a completely different series with Buffy coming around and the girl du jour asking him, "Aren't you getting them a little young these days?" Maybe show some trepidation on Buffy's part about going to Giles' house to see him. Maybe have him get into trouble with the school board and have the board overruled by the Watchers' Council. Maybe some of the girls would be witches or demonologists adding some insight into what the scoobies are facing.
 
Yeah, the whole gentleman of leisure gimmick did need more casual sex to sell it.

I somewhat wish they would have gone all in on the campus life aspect of Season 4, and Giles just showed up on campus one day, with the only explanation being that the Council didn't want him to get bored, so they arranged for him to work as an adjunct professor as a punishment, or that he had always been a lecturer, but only got to work there during the summer. I think Olivia would have been a better fit in that kind of environment. I'm not really certain what she did, but academic with a Busy travel schedule seems like a thing.
 
Heck, the campus had a big library and Giles was a currently unemployed librarian. He could have had even more books to guard and even more students to become annoyed with.
 
True, Giles's credentials probably could have qualified him for a job in the library, and a vast college library building with a massive archive and "rare books" room could have been the launching point for a many plots. However, filming on location is expensive, using the lecture hall set, is not.
 
N
NoShip
So true.
I think if you did have Giles become a librarian again, you could have the Scoobies meeting him in a side room, perhaps the rare book room, on a similar scale to the old library, with just the occasional stock shot of the main library.
 
N
NoShip
This could work also. But..... would require the kind of creativity and truly original thinking that Whedon and Co seemed incapable of by S4.
ILLYRIAN
ILLYRIAN
Given how popular the Sunnydale High library was I'd suggest him being in charge of a reference library.
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