Remember, guys, this thread is no longer a NAFDA zone.

Shit! Sorry. Thanks for the clean up.

No prob.

That's what I'm here for.

People! People talking in the Buffy thread!

I've missed it so.

People! People talking in the Buffy thread!

I've missed it so.

Yeah, I suppose for most people in the English speaking world the end of Buffy is something that happened quite a long time ago. For me it happened last night at around 12:20. After globe trotting (not nearly as exciting as it sounds) for the past three years I've contrived to never be in a country when they were showing season seven. And then on Monday after months and months of waiting (the VHS editions came out in the UK back in September-ish) I finally got my DVD after it had winged it's way across the Atlantic... (and now I have a cute little mental image of a little silver disc with white angel wings above the ocean). I guess after waiting this long to see the final season, I can at least brag about having all the DVDs before the Americans.

I thought it was a pretty good season to end with. I really liked the ending of Chosen when Sunnydale is nothing but a great big hole in the ground. The big ubervamp fight scene was also pretty cool, although I thought the ubervamps looked a little too similar to some of the stuff from Lord of the Rings. Sadly, my spoiler avoidance tactics over the last year didn't prevent me from knowing about Spikes death.. so I was just waiting for it to happen while I watched, which wasn't ideal.

I agree that it's a shame the last two seasons didn't have very much Giles in them, I missed the gravity (I think Joss's description) that he gave to the show. But at least he got to play the almost bad guy this year. I would have liked to have seen a truly evil Giles at some point, I think he would have made a pretty cool villian.

I really don't understand all the Kennedy hating. Sure Tara was this wonderfully nice, kind character, but gotta move on and all that. (Also think it was a pity that AB didn't come back to taunt Willow et al in person... or at least in incorporeal form). But Kennedy wasn't so bad... besides she was hot.... okay fairly easy to please here.

Um... I was going to say a couple of other things...um... oh yeah. The one thing that was truly appalling with Season 7, was the potential with the Dick Van Dyke accent. I'm not quite sure which one it was as I was physically wincing every time she spoke. Did she die? Or just stop talking so bloody much. I think I'm going to have to start my own Campaign for Realistic English Accents on Television over 'Ere, or CREATE. Urggghhh.... (that's the sound of my goat getting up).

Just wanted to say, wrod with wrod sauce to the people talking about how the writers were sick of Buffy by the last season. I mean, all that stuff about 'We're going to make her proactive, cause people are tired of the moping', and then to turn her into pompous speech girl? that's their idea of Likable!Buffy? Sheesh.

Oh, and what would have redeemed season 7 for me? After Buffy made that big speech about taking the fight to the First, they should have attacked. Got geared up, come up with a plan, gone in there and kicked butt. Then spent the rest of the season on character stuff.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my favorite TV show, ever. In fact, I can't even imagine a day when it won't be my favorite show. That's said, it wasn't flawless. There were perpetual pacing problems, and to me, they seemed to worsen, from season 4 on. Even then, there were pacing problems evident to me in every season (possibly save season 1, because it was only a mini-season, and so I can't hold it to the same standards).

NOTE: When reading my complaints, please keep in mind: Those who can, do; those who can't, bitch on posting boards, then note what I am doing.

In the early seasons there seemed to me more blatant stand-alones, that for me, mitigated the pacing problems. I was fine with the off-pace of season 2, because the placement of the stand-alones made me feel like I was watching two series. I was watching a serial (soap), where the plot started with the Annoying One and the Master, and carried on to Spike and Drusilla, with Angel reverting into Angelus.

The soap served to show Buffy and her friends (and us) what they were made of, what they could do, and where their weak and/or blindspots endangered them. In short, it showed them their shortcomings, such that they could learn to overcome even the most seemingly insurmountable of foes. The revelations about the Little Bads/Medium Bads/Big Bad were paced to be woven into the B plot of each of the core four.

The stand-alones served many of the same character-driven purposes, but from another point of view (or something, I'm having trouble articulating this). The day-to-day challenges the Scoobies faced in the stand-alones used monster metaphor to great effect, to tell me about high school, young love, and family problems. And they served as big breaks in the serial, the soap opera—if you will—such that it wasn't a problem that Buffy and friends went from something silly like Bad Eggs, to the sudden jolt of Surprise, or from the wacky Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered to the heartbreak of Passion, or from Xander. In a Speedo. Wet. (mmmm) of Go Fish to (arguably) one of the main two points of the entire seven seasons as told in Becoming. I could accept that things had happened off screen, in between any two given episodes. Most of the time, it felt like time had passed. I didn't have this sense of minor plot points being stretched out over hours, and enormous developments being crammed into about a quarter of the time they deserved, in season two.

Contrast that season with season 7. We had a potential stalked and killed by the FE's minions in the teaser of episode one. That continued at least for a couple of episodes. We had The Parade of Big Bads Past in the final scene. The big bad was basically exposed in episode 1! Then we had how many episodes following, with "From beneath you, it devours," hammered into our skulls. On top of that, we were cleaning up our messes from season 6: Jonathan and Andrew's involvement with Warren; Spike's attempted rape of Buffy; Willow's magicks abuse, and flaying of Warren and betrayal of the gang; Anya and Xander's aborted wedding.

Soap fans are fairly patient about not much happening in any given episode, but in part, that's because soap fans generally get five hours a week of story. BtVS was a weekly drama, with only 22 episodes/hours a season. A good ten episodes (approx., I'm too lazy to research this, today), so ten hours, in the center of the season accomplished about as much as was accomplished in season two's two hours of Surprise/Innocence.

Add in the Potentials and McHottie, and all the time spent on misdirection, whether it was Dawn, Not!Joyce, or Pod!Giles, and there was just way too much static. It threw everything off. Then we have to cram in Faith's story (which is very important to Buffy's journey as hero). If I tell myself the story of season 7, it is a good story. When I watch it, I feel a bit like I do when reading an important story, based on a fantastic idea, written by a fair-to-middling author.

and all the time spent on misdirection, whether it was Dawn, Not!Joyce, or Pod!Giles,

This is the thing that bugs me as much as anything. All of sudden we had a red tide of red herring in S7. And none of them fucking panned out as interesting. Or even necessarily coherent. It was cheap. Obviously a misdirect can be a key part in building narrative suspense - not the way they did it. So much time wasted on bullshit. Grrrr. Let Giles be Giles! Let Xander do...something. I didn't mind Principal Hottie - he was one of the intriguing figures of S7. But they really made a mistake by stuffing the house with potentials.

It was supposed to build a siege-like pressure, but all it did was disperse focus.

Half the number of potentials, with names and a semblance of a story, would have given twice the dramatic punch. Or, shocking thought, you've got a bunch of people with seven years or so of carefully built back story, use them. I loved Andrew because he's cute, but he took time from other folks.

I loved Andrew because he's cute, but he took time from other folks.

I'm not sure that was a mistake by itself. The show had long been able to integrate new characters into the group, and it didn't become clear until pretty late that S7 would be the last. Maybe he didn't deserve quite so much emphasis, or at least needed to provide more of an impetus to everyone else's story, but I liked his story.

But not enough wrod in the world to show my agreement on the "too many potentials" line of argument.

I loved Andrew because he's cute, but he took time from other folks.

I think Andrew's story was one of the few things that was fresh and interesting and consistently entertaining in S7. Obviously the writers enjoyed writing for his character and didn't feel so constrained as they did with the show's own mythology.