Re: Request and Questions - Rewrite season 6

["blinviz" <debvii@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- In buffywantswillow@y..., "blinviz" <debvii@y...> wrote:
> 17. Take out the entire middle of the season. Jump from Tabula Rasa 
> to As You Were, skipping Smashed thru Older. Try it at home: It 
> works!

blah, blah, blah, i have nothing better to do, so i might as well 
expand upon this. i just spent the last several hours watching 
Afterlife thru Tabula Rasa and then the start of As You Were. even tho 
i rec'd picking up at AYW, doesn't mean i think it's a great up (in 
fact, a drill to the temple is probably preferable to sitting thru it), 
just means that i think everything from Smashed thru Older was pretty 
much a waste of time and that AYW gets you up to speed on what happened 
during that long period of wheel-spinning. 

See, Afterlife thru Rasa went at a nice fast clip and then everything 
just ground to a halt. by the end of TR, the Troika have already been 
introduced, Tara & Giles have left, Will is out of control, Dawn's 
stolen some stuff and expressed her feelings of isolation, Xanya have 
announced their engagement, and Spuffy are swapping spit. In TR, 
Kirshner did a far, far better job with keeping addiction at the level 
of subtext & metaphor than did Greenberg & Noxon, while also tying 
Will's magick abuse to the self and interpersonal issues others here 
have identified. She also had the neat little comic bit about Spike as 
a noble vampire, highlighting that that's exactly what Spike is NOT.

It's amazing the difference in tone between what i've come to think of 
as Jane Espenson's period (the 1st part of the season) and MN's period 
(the 2nd part). Period I -- with the exceptions of Bargaining II 
(sorry, David!) and All the Way -- is tight, brisk, mixes comedy with 
drama, and stays true to the characters. Buffy's PHD is still fresh; 
and the anger & resentment between Buff & Will is palpable, 
understandable, and looks like it might go somewhere quickly. Period I 
also has a fascinating little B/W/S triangle going on that Period II 
reduces to a simplistic B/W compare & contrast. Period II is a 
nightmare in pacing and characterisation. It moves too slowly on the 
Spuffy, Xanya, and Dawn fronts and too quickly wrt Willow. I mean, 
what's the point of 2 eps of addiction and 4+ eps of post-addiction 
talky-talk? It just made Willow sound whiny, esp. since most of what 
she said was "no magick no magick no magick"; IOW, shallow.

AYW touches on every plot thread except for the Troika. Amazingly, AYW 
also manages to both show the B/W disconnect and keep it in the subtext 
without making it seem accidental. If you watch Period I and then skip 
to AYW, because of Period I's briskness, you'd get the impression you 
missed only 1-2 eps. Then the next 3 eps after that (Hell's Bells, 
Normal, Entropy) touch on stuff that Period II languished over and 
starts moving toward the finale.

bye.