Yeah, I think I remember reading something a while ago about how she had to go to rehab, which is why season four was largely improvised. The Vengeful Joss Story was new to me.
Buffy and Angel 1: BUFFYNANGLE4EVA!!!!!1!
Is it better the second time around? Or the third? Or tenth? This is the place to come when you have a burning desire to talk about an old episode that was just re-run.
In reading the comments for Birthday I was boggled by the number of people who declared it the best episode to date. Really?
It's begun to boggle me how much we fans see as brilliant character development is really something that was cobbled together on the fly.
Really?
It had Skip? I liked Skip. Well early Skip. The Skip who was guarding Billy in the flamey cage.
I've begun to really appreciate the ability to make it look like things were planned even if they were not. I mean, I love a good plan, but I do admire writers who can take a look at what they've written and effectively pull elements out of the past in order to inform the present without having thought of it in advance. I'm in the final issues of Sandman, and I don't think Gaiman had the entire series planned out from the get-go, but he's doing an impressive job making it look like he did. Sometimes what looks like foreshadowing to the reader was just fortuitous and well appropriated.
Here's a new weird fandom impression in the comments: apparently Fred/Wesley shippers are hard to find? Really? Is Fred/Gunn that much more popular?
I don't think Fred was shipped much with anyone in fannish circles. I totally shipped her with Wesley as soon as she turned into a scary ancient God though.
I shipped Fred with ME.
So the rumors that Joss was pissed at Charisma for not telling him she was pregnant and made her evil and killed her or whatever the story is are...a distortion of the truth?
She was almost written out of the show because her drug abuse (Cocaine, I think) was out of control. That's why she ascended.
I think I remember reading something a while ago about how she had to go to rehab, which is why season four was largely improvised.
That was (allegedly) earlier. Season 4 is when she was pregnant.
And I should note that, if it was true, the issue wasn't like, heroin or something. But I ran across some rumors before her brief absence in S3, which made me go, "Huh, maybe that wasn't just trolling." [shrug]
Hm! And, now that I Google a bit, the pregnancy thing is supposedly why she was fired after season four. I am confusing all my rumors and hearsay.