OT: Marti Noxon, B/S, and Villainy, or "Tumor, si! Glory, no!"

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

Hey there,

It's late night for me, so this may ramble. But I was writing a letter
where some talk of spoilers led me off on a tangent on the Buffy/Spike
scene at the start oi "Wrecked" and Marti's apparent befuddlement at the
popularity of B/S, which she thought everyone would see as "Buffy making
a mistake". I went on to tie this in to Marti's decision not to have a
Big Bad this year and decided to post it.

Now I've snipped all reference to the spoilers that led up to this, so
it begins in the middle, but it is spoiler-free...

***************************************************

...what Marti doesn't get is that by showing Buffy struggling with her
passion (she wants it!), the scene makes Spike look honest and ardent
and Buffy a repressed tease. Marti has way too much faith in people's
ability to keep the past in mind and not judge by what they see on the
screen.  

Which is stupid of her, because she's assuming the entire audience has
the entire history of the show memorized, which they obviously don't.
If we get a scene where Spike is certain about their relationship and
Buffy is confused, conflicted, flustered and denying, Marti has to give
us a reason why we should believe her and not him. After all, isn't
emotional honesty one of the big themes of the show? Yet, Marti is
shocked, I tell you shocked, that most B/Sers have made Spike their hero
and take his side.

Here's where an actual threat, where we could see Buffy fighting evil
and be reminded how horrific it can be, would have helped. If we know
Buffy, outside of her sex life, is a strong heroic woman who fights
evils that must be stopped, and that Spike is, at his core, one of them,
that makes her emotional conflict interesting without making people
think she's making a big deal over nothing. (What is evil? Spike can
change. The world is "grey". Blah. Blah. Blah.) That way she can
know what's right and still be messed up--this way she's so messed up,
most people don't believe she knows what's right, so her protesting
against Spike isn't a moral crisis, it's just "denial".

Of course, according to Marti, Glory was such a super-baddie that "you
can't top a god", so let's have no threat at all, and slog through the
"Days of Our Whines". (Not my joke, alas?) Apparently, Joss forgot
to hand Marti a memo on his way over to "Firefly" and point out that a
villain's impact isn't about his or her muscles, but the threat to what
the hero holds dear--her emotions ("Kendra, my emotions give me
power"), like Angel was; her identity as The Slayer ("I'm Buffy the
Vampire Slayer. And you are?"), like Faith was; her bonds with her
friends ("[college is] turning out to be a lot like high school. I can
deal with that."), like Walsh/Riley/the Initiative were supposed to be.

Glory isn't a Big Bad--she's just muscle, like the Judge and Acathla
and the Mayor and Adam. One of the problems with Season 5 is that the
true villains (Joyce's mortality, the monks messing with everyone's
mind; in other words, the internal threat to Buffy's deeply-held sense
of family and self) were things Buffy never got to confront face to
face.

The sad thing is, Spike could have had his chance to be the Big Bad this
year: Buffy has a sleazy affair, falls down on the job, gets people
hurt--and Spike, fresh off rejection and gleefully killing again, is
there every step of the way, attacking Buffy's belief in herself as a
good person. Work in the bored and dangerous (NOT comically pathetic)
Nerds as people who can cause major damage (a possible nice synergy as
Spike's dedication to evil gives Warren and co the sense of purpose
their easy conquests in the first half of the year would have lacked)
and you've got a good old personally-threatening
Villain/world-threatening Muscle set-up working for you.

Beats the hell out of "nothing's more dangerous than Glory so let's not
have a bad guy this year", IMO.

The power of a true villain is in the seductive believability of their
lies. (Christians may wish to make references to Satan which I am not
qualified to expand upon here.) Here are the things the true baddies
say to Buffy, the things they make her believe:

"You're a stupid little girl who doesn't know what love is all about"
(Angel)
"Being a slayer isn't about a cause, it's about having fun. The rules
don't apply to us." (Faith)
"We offer an exciting new life, It's time to leave the old gang
behind." (Walsh/Riley)
"Your family doesn't matter because it isn't real; life doesn't matter
because it won't last" (the missing Season 5 internal villain--Evil
Dawn, perhaps?)

Having Spike spend every ep after Christmas break telling Buffy "You're
a selfish cow who uses people for pleasure and this is all your fault,
you stupid bint!" would have fit nicely in here. Instead of making
Buffy's outer demons reflect her inner ones, Marti just gave her an
"affair with a bad boy". And she's just so surprised people took his
side. Sigh.

Dan

"You know what I am; you always have."--Spike, "As You Were" (but
imagine it as a taunt, rather than pathetic little-boy whining)