Re: OT: Warning, More Bitterness Ahoy!

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

The Bear wrote:

>Oh, Dan, you got me started.

Well, it's nice to know I'm not the only crazy ranting type out there. 

**moves over to make room in the padded cell**

On your points: I agree that "power-hungry" Willow of early Season 6 is
a huge jump from out of her previous character. Previously, Willow had
essentially never cast a spell on anyone except herself or an opponent
in combat.

(The only possible exceptions would be the floaty dance with Tara, which
she shared, and the "restoring Tara's mind" portion of the un-brainsuck.
Unless you count vision-questing in Buffy's mind, but I believe she did
the spell on herself to enable the trip, not on Buffy to let herself
in). "My Will Be Done" was intended for herself, the book and the bendy
Q-Tip; the effects on Giles, Buffy, Spike and Xander were completely
unintentional. All of a sudden, it's zero to mindwipe in 240 minutes
flat.

So Marti made what I considered a necessary turn, from "Willow uses
magic on people because she's EEVIL" to "Willow uses magic on people,
because she's addicted to the empowering feeling of being able to help,"
which seemed a little more in line with the character. But then she
made a sharper turn into literalness with the crackhouse and the spasms
and the mindtripping.

Her lack of focus was particularly obvious in "Wrecked", where Marti
changes Willow's motivation for going to Rack's in the space of five
minutes. When Willow complains about not being able to cast after
draining herself, Amy tells her she knows a guy who "has spells that
last all day". Yet when the Bad Witches (y'know, the ones with
personalities) show up at Rack's, they've suddenly gone from wanting to
boost their spellcasting ability to wanting to have spells **cast on
them**. What does floating on Rack's ceiling have to do with magicking
the curtains shut? Nothing. But Marti's blurred the focus from wanting
to be "special" (as in the final scene) to wanting to get (literally)
high.

It's no surprise that Marti flubs the timeline three separate times in
this ep. I particularly like when Buffy and Spike talk about the sex
"last night", conveniently forgetting that there was a whole 'nother day
in between. (It's three nights; first Willow and Amy go to the Bronze
[and Spuffy yuckiness], then Willow and Amy go to Rack's, then Willow
and Dawn go to Rack's [and Spuffy talk]).

Nor can I be surprised when, the week before the grand finale where
Xander saves the world because he doesn't use Buffy's "intervention"
cliches but rather speaks to Willow from the heart, Marti (who's only
the woman in charge of the whole arc) writes Buffy and Xander **the
exact opposite way**. I still think B/X pulled a body-switch in between
"Villains" and "Two to Go" and that "beautiful and powerful" cornpone
"Buffy" gave Dawn in the grave was just Xander looking for an excuse to
cop a feel on Dawnie.

This lack of focus showed in the finale, where Willow's powers and
motives kept changing, a sure sign that Petrie and Fury didn't believe
in their story. Nothing as basic as "Glory's a god; she wants The Key"
here, nope; we go from "Willow's a little crazy from the dark magic
books and wants to kill Jonathan and Andrew for revenge" to "Willow's a
LOT crazy from Rack's juice and wants to kill Buffy and Giles out of
resentment" to "Willow's full of love because of the white magic that we
forgot to mention before, so she's going to mercy-kill the world using
the Penis of EEEVIL that we forgot to mention before" in barely an hour.

Hell, Fury can't even keep himself straight: if Willow suddenly feels
everybody's pain and is ending the world because it's the right thing to
do (oh, stop copying Glory, you blind juicyfruit in the kingdom of the
one-eyed!), then why is she still making with the supervillain chat when
she sends the Killer Dirt at Buffy and Shiny? Shouldn't that speech go
more like this:

"Buffy, I'm sorry for what happened before, but this is the only way I
can make up for it; I have to make the pain go away. For everybody's
sake. I know you'd try and stop me, because that's what the Slayer
does, so I'm going to give you something to fight. This way, you won't
be able to interfere and you'll get to feel like you tried. It's better
this way.

"Besides, deep inside, you want this as much as I do; I'm stopping the
pain for both of us."

Wouldn't that have been more in character for the remorseful
euthanasizer Willow is supposed to be at this point in the story? Yet
DF wrote more cartoon Villow stuff instead.

Actually, "confused" is the generous explanation for Fury's writing.
The more cynical concept is that he needed some reason for Villow to end
the world, yet at the same time he wanted to keep Villow doing the "WWF
Smackdown" dialogue (because it was so "kewl") and he didn't give a damn
that the two didn't mesh.

So the only thing I can say about Marti's inconsistency on the
Willow-arc is that it's consistent with the inconsistency on every thing
else all year (I had a list, but it got boring and kind of, um, lost its
focus, so I snipped it). Anyway, not a good year for consistency, or
characterization, or action, or humor, or romance, or interesting bad
guys, or...well, you get the picture.

Dan

bitter on principle but actually kind of mellow right now...