Semi-OT: Don't tell me why I hated the last two years, please.

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

Although I personally don't see anything wrong with OT discussion, I'll
be glad to stay off the Tara topic. But one thing that annoyed me even
more than Dory's statement that people who don't feel the way she did
about S6-7 should "get over it" was Kris's claim that people only
disliked the UPN years because they were B/S rather than B/W. I find
this to be very nearly an ad hominem attack, implying that because I
have a 'ship preference I am incapable of impartial viewing, and thus I
wrote the post below in response.

Still, just to be really safe, let's start this off with a warning:

WARNING!

Those who think that criticism of Seasons 6-7 is an attack on them for
liking it, or who think that Joss is a genius and any criticism of him
proves you're not a "real" BtVS fan, should probably not read this post.

Just hit the "Delete" key. It's there for a reason.

WARNING!

Okay, here it is:

>I think everyone on this list is defining the last two seasons within
the narrow parameters of the B/W 'ship and nothing else.

Well, Kris, pardon the snark, but **I** think you shouldn't make
assumptions about what other people think.

I disagreed with just about every word you wrote, but let me give you a
succinct reaction to that one particular statement above:

Oh, HELL, no!

Or, in other words:

Much as I'd have loved B/W, I certainly wasn't counting on it. My
primary objection to the last two seasons was the annihilation of the
main characters and their positive traits (you know, the ones who were
why I and much of the audience was watching and the reasons why we liked
said characters) so Joss could pimp Spike/Anya/Tara and use them to bash
the others. And no, I don't think any of the developments flowed
logically from what had come before.  

I think Joss wanted Buffy with Spike and therefore made Willow into a
crappy friend so Buffy would feel alone and turn to him (ditto for
Xander). I don't think that any of B/W/X's behavior is there than for
any other reason other than to try and regain the B/A ratings of
yesteryear with the latest vampire "heartthrob".

And entirely aside from this, or any character considerations, I believe
the eps sucked as television. For several specific and not subjective
reasons.

1) They were slower.  

Compare the amount of scenes, and what happens in them, in any S1-S2 ep,
with any S6-S7 ep--I think the second act of "BB&B" has more scenes and
more action than the entirety of "Entropy". And several times ("Once
More, With Feeling", "Entropy", "Never Leave Me", "First Date")
characters discovering what the audience *already knew* was treated as
the climax of an ep, when it should be the motor to *start* one (see
"Becoming, Part 1", "Beauty and the Beasts", or "Revelations", for
starters).

Far too often, UPN episodes were there only to dribble out a few tidbits
about the season-arc, without telling a strong, self-contained story as
in times past. This led to stories being extended way longer than they
had to be--there's utterly no reason for Robin to take FOUR eps to try
and kill Spike--and the individual eps being padded with repetition and
timewasting. (Perhaps the low point here was in "Bring on the Night",
where they repeated clips from the "Previously..." segment *in the
episode itself*. Or perhaps it's "Storyteller", which is practically a
clip show in and of itself. Or perhaps it's one of those times when
Drew Greenberg took a 5 or 10-second joke and ran it for 90 seconds,
which is an eternity in TV time. Or perhaps it's the Trio, who were
basically an extremely-extended, timewasting, joke. [I'm thinking
particularly of the Andrew/Jonathan jail scene in "Villains", but many
others apply.] And let's not forget all those Clem scenes at the end of
S6, which Joss and Marti have admitted were added as filler because the
eps ran short.)

2. They weren't as funny.  

Humor in the UPN years is generally confined to one or two "wacky"
scenes in the ep, rather than being woven into the story itself, as in
the earlier seasons. It is an objective fact that there are fewer
*attempts* at humor in the UPN years. Hell, Spike only has 1 funny line
in all of Season 6 (and precious few others that might even be construed
as *attempts* at humor), that's pretty much an indication of how much
the show has slipped from only two years before.  

For example, "Dead Man's Party"--which is, you'll remember, a Marti
Noxon-written angst-fest that includes a long argument and a long
battle--has quite likely as many attempts at humor as any *two* S6
episodes. Just count them.

Now, whether the attempts at humor succeed is, of course, subjective.
But I did notice a marked increase in sexual single-entendres, nerd
"humor" and meta-commentary the last two seasons, and I generally find
that a little of any of that goes a looong way.

3) They're inferior technically

>From Thomas Wanker's plinking scores (vastly inferior to not only
Christophe Beck, but Murray/Clement, and even Walter Murphy, IMO) to Ray
Stella's over-bright cinematography which removed the mood, even in the
night-time scenes (contrast this to how often Michael Gershman let parts
of faces remain in shadow for effect, and listen to his commentary on
the DVD version of "Consequences" to get more insight here) to weak
direction that eliminated Joss's famous "one-ers" in favor of "close-up,
cut, close-up, cut," choppy editing (the Buffy/Willow scene in "First
Date" is a galling example) to basic incompetence like the voice-over in
"Gone" (which, to quote [okay, probably misquote, since I'm going from
memory] TWoP's Sep, "sound[ed] like it had been recorded over a cell
phone as [Sarah Michelle Gellar] phoned in her performance from the
beach in Aruba"), the UPN years saw just plain bad work done on the
other side of the camera. At times, it was embarassing, as with the
awful makeup and lighting that made Aly look so pale and sickly in some
scenes in "The Killer in Me" and "Empty Places".

4. The story continuity is just awful

It's bad enought that both seasons ended with multiple deus ex machinae
being pulled out of left field to resolve the stories (Anya can
teleport? A super-coven in Devon? Proserpexa's temple? Guardians?
Axe? Amulet?), but the show couldn't even keep the arc consistent, much
less develop it logically. Even something as basic as "The First is
incorporeal" not only contradicts First!Jenny's stroking of Angel in
"Amends", but even First!Dru's caressing Spike in "Lessons". The most
basic premise about the Big Bad, and they can't keep it straight.

Or how about the fact that they spent the whole year trying to safeguard
the Potentials because the First is close to wiping out the Slayer
line--and then in the finale, suddenly there are thousands of
undiscovered Potentials all around the globe? Joss wanted his "Girl
Power!" moment, and forgot that he was undercutting the basic premise of
the season arc.  

That's right: in the *series finale* Joss, **the creator and author of
every imprortant moment on the show**, was so obsessed about an image he
wanted to create that he FORGOT THE ENTIRE PREMISE OF THE SEASON. Buffy
and Willow could have been 69ing on the coffee table and I still
probably would have had an aneurysm over Joss's cock-up.

Next to this, the dozen minor stupidities in individual eps (The
Initiative's still using the complex [you know, the one that was
supposed to have been "fill[ed] with cement"?], but they don't have the
lights on? And they haven't removed the 3 year old dead bodies yet?
And Riley, who was nearly courtmartialled and now works for another
branch of the military can order them to give Buffy, a civilian, carte
blanche? And Spike "remembers" them giving him drugs, even though "The
Initiative" [4.07] clearly shows that never happened, nor was there time
for it to do so?--and this is all in the #3 plot of my favorite episode
of S7, btw..) are almost comical.

Almost.

4a) The story itself is poorly resolved

How exactly is the First!Evil considered "defeated" at the end of
"Chosen"? What did Joyce mean when she told Dawn "Buffy will be against
you"? Was that Joyce, or wasn't it? Why did Giles act so strangely
that people thought he might be the First? What was the significance of
Xander being the "one who sees" to the point that Caleb chose to blind,
rather than kill him? Who was Caleb and how did he get his powers?
What the hell was the First's plan, anyway?  

All this and more, we'll never know. As for S6 and Buffy's rededicating
her life to showing Dawn the world...well, in S7 they never leave town
and Buffy and Dawn don't have a single meaningful talk after "Him", so I
don't really thing that arc got paid off, either.

Oh, and does Buffy love Spike? Three years, a death, a rape, an
ensouling and another death later, and we still don't know. Strong
handling of your central story, Joss.

5) The acting was just dreadful.

Sad to say, every regular but Michelle Trachtenberg threw in the towel
in Season 7. James Marsters actually yawned in one scene (and made no
effort to keep Spike consistent from one ep to another), Anthony Stewart
Head couldn't even bother to do Giles's Etonian accent in several eps
(reverting to his own Scouser tones, which were JM's model for Spike),
Nick Brendon far too often let a squeaky voice and big, clumsy arm
movements substitute for emotional involvement, Aly was terribly flat
(contrast this to her work in the "Angel" ep, "Orpheus") and SMG, as she
had been since about Season 5, was clearly on autopilot, hauling out
stock poses and expressions and rarely varying them (the infamous "angry
arms", for example). Check out David Hines's review of "Checkpoint" at
blueshiftstudios.com for an in-depth look at the one-note-ness that
crept into Sarah's work (where she used to fully invest in multiple
emotions at once), and note that it got even worse the last two years.

Heck, just check any S7 opening credit sequence for the shot where the
camera pushes dramatically in on Buffy during her showdown with Willow
in the Magic Box in "Two to Go"--and Sarah shows no emotion except to
blink like she's about to nod off. So very sad.

So what I disliked about the UPN days was having
Buffy/Willow/Xander/Giles made into weak, unrecognizable shits during
slow, unfunny, technically inept episodes that only served to string out
inconsistent and poorly executed arcs, made worse by bad acting. Spuffy
may have been both a cause of this and its most visible symptom, but it
sure wasn't anywhere near the totality.

Heck, I hardly think I'd ever dislike a well-done season of BtVS, even
if it was all about Buffy being stupidly in love with a vampire who she
should never get involved with in a million years. Come to think of it,
I think I'd love that.

Come to think of it, I do. It's called Season 2, and I treasure every
second of it. What the hell was on my screen last year, I don't have a
clue.

Dan

PS--I've left out the manipulations (which are often inconsistent with
each other) to try and sell us on Spike and Andrew as "redeemed" heroes,
at the expense of all logic, and the enormous philosophical differences
I have with both of the key points of "Chosen" (the thousands of
Slayers, the destruction of Sunnydale) in the context of the ideas that
Buffy and the show are supposed to metaphorically represent.  

Perhaps I should just end by [again, probably mis-]quoting
buffygiles.com's Gabi Schulz: "Anything you could have said the show
was about (girl power, growing up, the triumph of the outcasts, the
power of knowledge) makes no sense after Season 7."