Buffy Season Six is all over now.

[thorfinn]

Buffy Season Six is all over now.

I'd just like to say... Hrmph. Picked Willow As Big Bad several episodes ago... There wasn't another credible threat. Spike? Too nice, and besides, no power base. One vampire does not a world-ending threat make. The "Trio"? Sad bunch of losers, if I ever saw 'em. No world ending threat there. Ditzy buggers, yes. World ending? Nope. Rack? Nope. Strictly Fixer material, not a world-ender. Not his kink. Willow? Dark dark powers, deep "love of my life" issues... Yeah, bing, one world-ender coming up.

And yeah, I was picking plotlines as the final episodes went along, about two adbreaks in advance. I missed the Return Of Giles plot, that came as a genuine surprise, but everything else, I had.

I'm beginning, I think, to become annoyed by the ... average screenwriting. It's not crap screenwriting, but part of why I started watching Buffy, was because Joss Whedon is a good screenwriter, not merely average. Future plots aren't hinted at excessively, and there's more subtlety and depth in the episodes he writes. With him not writing anything in Season Six except for the Musical episode, the whole season lacks a certain subtlety and balance.

It's part of the reason I've been so hard-line about telling people not to talk about anything that might even vaguely be spoiler-like (that includes future casting information - please don't talk about it in my presence)... With a more subtle set of plot-twists, and better balancing of options (eg, if the Trio were actually a bit more effective, they might've been a credible option for Big Bad), I'm less worried about coming to the episode "not fresh".

But more on that in another post.

Comments

[unsworn-nomore.livejournal.com]

I noticed a lot of new names writing scripts this year - I think that accounts for part of the dislocation. I also suspect that to some extent, we are prisoners of our expectations. The general direction of this year's arc has been very atypical of the show as a whole, and gotten a pretty bad reaction in a lot of places.

Personally, so long as the surprises kept coming, I didn't mind. Unfortunately, almost every surprise this year (other than the Giles one you note, which got me too) has revolved around Spike. And has been negative (right up to the last - you just knew it wasn't gonna work out like he thought it was, after all).

And frankly, the thing I've missed most about this season has been the loss of the show's ability to handle moral grey areas as well as Hill Street Blues or The West Wing. There's been a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of over-simplification - compare "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" to "Once More With Feeling" for possibly the most glaring example, although a comparisom between "Seeing Red" and "Graduation Day, part one" is also illuminating.

Here's hoping next year is better.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

You're lucky that you didn't see the return of Giles. I kind of knew it in advance, although I was still very glad he was there. I thought his appearance in the final episode was one of the best things about it.

[baralier.livejournal.com]

An English fan commented that his main problem with this season was the lack of a "male" figure. While there are large numbers of strong female characters there was very little in the way of strong male characters. Spike's been effectivley neutered, Xander has never really been a "strong" character, Giles left and the Nerd Trio are pissweak in the extreme.

While I don't know if that's the main problem I certainly think it changed the dynamic of the show. While I very much disliked Rylie, at least he was a good male character.
Hell even the Mayor, for all his 50's family ideas, was a character you didn't want to mess with.

[thorfinn]

*nodnod* Agreed. And it's moments like that when he appeared which are precisely why I'm fascist about spoiler avoidance. There wasn't any real plot hinting to it, which is why I didn't spot it... and the impact was there for me. Which it wouldn't have been, if I'd known about it.

[thorfinn]

Yar. I agree with you regarding the lack of ability to handle moral grey area. That's mostly what I was referring to in my comments about a lack of subtlety and balance. The plots themselves, I've had no real objections to... It's been the foreshadowing and lack of exploration of the grey areas that annoy me. And they're all classic signs of Standard US Screenwriters. They're interchangeable parts, most of them. They all write the same way, they plot the same way, they follow the damn Rules Of Writing to the letter, unimaginatively. The rules are good, but applying them blindly just results in bland pap.

The only thing that's saving the show, I suspect, is that the actors, having lived and breathed those characters for years now, just are the characters, without needing external direction. Willow's completely non-verbal "Hi! Huh? What's wrong? I don't understand?!? Baby?" after Tara discovered the memory wipe spell, and walked into the Magic Shop, for example... I suspect that not much of that was written into the original script.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

I think they even went so far as to keep ASH's name out of the credits. I thought that was a nice touch (a little like how they put Amber Benson in the opening credits the week she was killed off).