Over at Shakesville, Liss asks, “What’s your favorite season?”
My answer? Season five. Fewer lame episodes than the first two or the final two seasons, and the seasonal plot is stronger than it is in seasons 3 or 4. (Although season 3’s is almost as strong.)
Anyhow, that’s what I thought in the quarter-second or so before my eyeballs scanned down and I read the rest of Melissa’s post.
So, umn… autumn. I like autumn. Especially if I get to visit New England.
(Image found here.)
100% agreement on Season 5. I’d also add that it was the only season where I felt like Buffy was in serious danger of the “I am unable to deal with this and should really just run” variety.
And I like spring. Here in California, everything is dry and brown in summer, and winter is wet and cold, so spring is a great time to get outside and go enjoy lush greenery without needing to bring an umbrella. Muir Woods in particular is lovely.
—Myca
I’m with you on autumn. Season 5? Really? Dawn? Really? Glory? Ugh. I think 2 and 3 were the high water mark and subsequent seasons were a slow decline from there.
Very funny post though, I would have done the same thing.
I liked Dawn a lot, and thought Glory was okay as a villain — and tons better than, say, Adam, or the annotated one, or the Master. I think both Dawn and Glory worked because they were warped reflections, in different ways, of the way Buffy presented herself in season one.
Season two had the strongest seasonal plot of any of the seasons, but it also had some painfully bad episodes (“Some Assembly Required,” “Go Fish”). Plus, I think the strongest individual episodes — Hush, The Body, Restless, The Zeppo, etc. — are mostly from seasons 3-5. Plus, I love Tara, and she doesn’t appear until third season.
Season three was hurt by having Angel hang around for an entire season waiting to be spun off but not really having much purpose in the show. On the other hand, seasons 4 and (part of) 5 have Riley, who is worse. So I could definitely see a case being made for season 2.
Season 5 is absolutely the best season and I am a dedicated Buffy fan. Are you looking forward to Dollhouse? Feb 13th is the premiere…still no substitute for Buffy…
I’m eager to see Dollhouse, and I’m hoping it’ll be good (and that if it is good, it lasts a few seasons!).
Whedon’s track record isn’t perfect — in particular, I thought Angel was a weak show overall, and the final two seasons of Buffy had some great moments but were on the whole a let-down — but maybe it’ll be great.
What I’d really like to see Whedon do is a show for HBO or Showtime — something with half the number of episodes per season, but with the extra time put into better scripts.
Agreed. Glory was my favorite villain of the series – and no annoying Angel around either.
And I have to admit, I cheered when Buffy whacked her with the Troll-God’s hammer. And that I was slightly creeped out when my wife cheered when Giles suffocated alter-ego-boy to kill Glory.
Season Five is my definitely my favorite. I really liked Glory as the villain – it worked for me – and I really liked Dawn, as well.
Season Six, for all of it’s slow motion train crashiness, had a lot of very good episodes. It was just destroyed by the magic/drug addiction what? Metaphor? Allegory? 900% Fail?
Summer, though. Summer is what it’s all about. It’s warm, daylight lasts forever. Winter is just painful and autumn, with it’s incessant whining of, “Winter’s coming,” (the Stark family motto) is depressing. Spring is okay.
I’ve got that shirt, actually.
—Myca
I have lots to say about how I think Dawn’s introduction was Buffy’s shark-jumping moment (despite the fact that there were still occasional outstanding individual episodes in season 5) but I am out of time today. I’ll write more about it later.
Re: autumn, I admit I am biased living in Vermont. Autumn is perfect, crisp, sweatery weather and the apples are in season. Too good. And the looming winter just adds a beautiful melancholy note to the whole thing. Sorry, I get wistful just thinking about it. Summer’s pretty great too, though my wife disagrees.
Season 3 is clearly the best. Virtually every episode is strong.
Season 2 clearly has the best arc. The Buffy/Angel/Spike dynamic is amazing. It’s the only season which is great because of what the arc is about, as opposed to the rest where the arc provides the backdrop for good episodes.
Glory is horrible, and one of the worst villains. She’s simply too powerful. I agree that it seems like the only solution is “run” but that’s because the buildup makes it clear that nothing else makes any sense. I actually like the idea of Dawn, but I’m just not sure it ever really works. The final episode of Season 5 is pretty good, but the endless 3 or 4 episodes prior to it (basic theme: “we’re screwed) could have been condensed into one very easily.
The quality of villains actually declines in a pretty linear fashion starting with season 2. The Mayor is good during the arc (I love the “you’re invulnerable but still hates germs” bit) but his final form at graduation is actually a little anti-climactic.
Adam is executed poorly, but if you see the real villain of the season the stupidity of the military-industrial complex it works better. Glory is simply too powerful and not really sympathetic in any way. Also, there’s virtually zero interaction with her until close to the end of the season.
The Geek Trio are horrible, and season 6 would be the worst by far, except for the twist where it turns out that the real villain is Willow – which is quite good, and makes for the great final scene with Xander.
The less said about season 7 the better. Yuck.
Also, Tara is clearly the best character. I think it says something about Joss that he never kills off the main characters (or if he does, brings them back), but he always kills of the single person who deserves it the least.
Five, absolutely. I feel like it had the most reality, or something. Although I also loved season six (and the magic=addiction thing, to me, was handled subtly enough up to the single episode with the opium den place, which sort of tainted the rest of the metaphor and made it seem simplistic.) The thing about the later seasons is that as the main characters become adults (or adult-like creatures, anyway) the consequences are greater for everything– they’re not in a sheltered kid world saving the world, they don’t have a place to retreat to. I dunno, I think it makes better drama.
Of course, my opinions on the subject are dubious, as I really loved the Buffy-Spike romance arc. Apparently I like the darkness.
I also like Season 5. I really liked Glory and Dawn. I thought Glory was a fun villain and I must admit I found Dawn’s story line to be moving. Also, Buffy doesn’t have any terrible love interests! Yay! Down with Angel and Riley!
Season 6 was dark and interesting but I think its potential was wasted by making the scoobies into people I didn’t like anymore. By the end of the series I was sitting around hoping Xander would die because he was so judgmental and irritating.
Season 4 was undermined by the fact that Riley was there and he’s just so awful.
I have to admit I really liked season 6. For all that the villains were kind of subpar–until you realize what Warren means as a shorthand for what a “normal” misogynist guy will do when you remove restraints, and how that’s just as bad as any demon–and the magic-as-addiction thing wasn’t great for me, I appreciated the theme they mention in the commentary:
The Trio aren’t the Big Bad. Willow’s not the Big Bad. Life is the Big Bad.
There’s just so much about how hard it is to come to terms with adult responsibility, to balance worlds, to make ends meet no matter who you are, to cope with
disappointment. Maybe it’s the place I’m in in my life (“My hat has a cow.”) but that’s stuff that I think needed going into. The early seasons are High School is Hell or at least Growing Up is hell; Season 6 is where they went, okay, now put away childish things. Holding onto flawed adolescence makes things worse, not better. Pining for things that aren’t any more doesn’t help, and neither does selfishly grasping at being a Somebody at the cost of hurting others. You don’t have a right to other people’s love. You don’t have a guarantee of a happy ending. Mom and Dad go away. Sometimes you let people down, including yourself. It hurts.
And then, at the very end, turning that around and going, yeah, it hurts, yeah, the world is hard, but people love you, and you have to let that be enough sometimes. In the end, love and humanness, not power and superhumanness, are the thing that saves the day.
That, and I’m a sucker for the “am I a monster?” angst. The whole arc of, okay, the rules seem to be gone, so how do I define myself instead?
There were some solid duds, and some huge individual-episode successes, and it’s sort of uneven overall, but season 6 might even be my favorite.
If nothing else, I cannot handle the awfulness of the actress for Glory. Ruins it for me a bit.
Charles:
The word “virtually” is presumably where “Amends” lives. :-) But yes, the batting average of season 3 is very high. But the constant Angel/Buffy O-our-doomed-love-is-so-painful-to-us stuff got more than a little tedious — and had all been better done in season 2.
Actually, I really loved the build-up to the end; the final three or four episodes ended up feeling almost like a single, massive episode. But if you didn’t enjoy that, it would kind of bring the season down. I also liked the relative lack of encounters with Glory; if there had been a lot of encounters with her, then the idea that she was really powerful and dangerous would have felt a lot less plausible.
He wasn’t really presented that way. And even if he had been, I don’t think that the stupidity of the military-industrial complex would have been a villain that makes sense, thematically, for Buffy.
Also, I disagree with you about the evil trio — I thought they (or, really, Warren) ended up being great villains, for exactly the reasons Little Light says. (Which is why “Dead Things” is one of the highlights of the season.)
But we agree that season 7 bit. And definitely had the worse villain.
Little Light, I think the theme and overall plot arc of season 6 were great — maybe the best of any of the seasons. But the overall weakness of the writing pulled the season down (I think it really showed that Joss had reduced his day-to-day involvement with the show). And the magic-as-pot-smoking-in-an-afterschool-special plotline all but killed act 2 of the season (which is to say, the middle third of it).
I’d really love to love season 6, but I can’t.
Season Two, the “in my fantasy, when I’m kissing you, you’re kissing me” speech by OZ is fantastic and even the weaker episodes plot-wise have good writing
The trio is lame, the drug metaphor was lame, but I always have a soft spot for season six because of the Spike romance. It was sick, it was self-destructive, it was wrong, and it was the best writing and acting the show had in all seven seasons. The Spike romance was a grown-up mockery of the childish, idealized Twilight-esque romance Angel was.
And it was so fscking sexy.
But I mostly liked Season 5, with season 3 coming a close second, flawed by good-Angel-romance, and with the anticlimactic end of the mayor.
And I have a very specific time of year I favor: the month of May. Blooms of spring, warmth of summer.
edit: thinking it over, I think somebody needed to explain the concept of “metaphor” to Joss when he was working on Buffy. I mean, whenever he tried to tackle a real-world issue metaphorically, he beat you over the head with it that it became a tasteless Lifetime Original cliche, with a slight “Buffy” twist. Jekyll-Hyde episode is a stereotypical domestic-abuse metaphor. Magic-as-a-drug is practically one of those DARE-sponsored after school specials. Its not that they were bad ideas, but that they had no subtlety, nor anything new to say on the subject other than “it’s like coke, but with MAGIC”.
I agree with you about the magic-is-coke metaphor, but that was presumably Marti Noxon’s fault, since she was the showrunner and head writer for season 6.
The thing is, The Mayor was the best villian by a wide margin.
I’d rank something like this–3, 2, 4, 5, 1, 7, 6.
And you’re crazy about Angel. Angel didn’t have as many stand out episodes, but Seasons 2 and 3 are better than all Buffy seasons not also bearing those numbers. (So there!)
djw, I think my ranking mirrors yours exactly. I disagree about your love of Angel, though I thought Angel season 5 was noticeably better than the previous 4.
I thought the Buffy/Spike “romance” (hah!) was great because it was so fucking repulsive and emotionally twisted. Sexy? No, the exact opposite. And they did such a good job of slowly building the repulsiveness until they hit its zenith on the catwalk at the Bronze. That was just so horrible and offputting I don’t have words for it. But if I was ever involved in a “relationship” like that, I know I’d be suicidal.
But that’s the great thing about the existence of subjectivity. I can know that you’re wrong with exactly the same force as you know you’re right.
I have a hard time choosing between seasons 2, 3 and 4. Season 2 had the best arc stuff, no question. Season 3 had some absolutely fantastic stand-alone episodes. And season 4, while it was weighed down by Riley and the Initiative and Adam and all that awfulness, had Tara and Willow meet and fall in love.
So, on second thought, season 4 by far: Tara and Willow sweetness > all.
No way. Season 5, 6, and 7 were all a decided step down from the first four seasons, and about a million miles from the excellence that dominated throughout seasons two and three. Aside from the fact that each of the later seasons contained an outstanding episode or two (The Body, The Musical, etc.) they were radically inconsistent with character, sloppy with plot mechanics, too often contradictory or non-sensible, repetitive and mopey, and just, overall, not very convincing or engaging. If I’m supposed to blame Marti Noxon, then fine. Somebody’s hand wasn’t steadily fixed on the tiller; that much is certain.
I own all five seasons of Angel. At its worst, and it did slip badly during its later seasons, it never got so bad I was constantly throwing up my hands and saying, “Okay, now why would (he, she, they) do THAT? I don’t buy this behaviour AT ALL…” By the later seasons of Buffy, when the themes began to outweigh the stories, I was saying something similar every week.
I only own the first three seasons of Buffy. I’d get four–which wasn’t horrible in retrospect–but I just like having what could be called “The High School” years. Neater that way.
Did you guys just do a whole bunch of drugs? Season 5?
I’m (mostly) with Charles, it’s a tough call between season 2 and 3. Season 2 usually wins for me because of the sublimeness of the main plotline. There are a surprising number of life’s problems that can be allieviated by watching Becoming 2 . But Season 3 has more consistently good episodes (Amends is a fine episode as long as you only watch the Willow/Oz scenes Amp), and the Buffy/Angel scenes between Revelations and the Prom can be skipped without in any way detracting from the plot. I’m generally a sucker for collective action episodes and Season 3 is strong in that – what I like about Graduation isn’t the mayor per se, but the strength of their resistance (plus the blowing up of the school).
I’m with Amp on Season Six though. I like it all on paper, and think there are some individual episodes that are brilliant (the musical obviously, but also Dead Things, Normal Again, and even Seeing Red if you can brainwipe yourself of Season 7). But the writing quality isn’t good enough, and so ideas that should have been brilliant, such as Dark Willow, are so often cheesy. I think my biggest problem is that Buffy and Willow’s individual character arcs weren’t tracked carefully enough, and neither was their relationship.
Of course all of these problems pale into insignificance when compared with the Spike arc of Season 7. It’s bad enough that they had someone attempting to rape the main character, and it not being about her at all. That he magics himself a soul – which is unmetaphorable onto our world, so she can absolve him of all sins, and hangs around, is not a feminist story about rape.
I really want a feminist cut of Chosen, where Spike is digitally removed from every scene. Because I love Chosen. For all it’s faults, and all Season sevens faults, Buffy’s big speech and Willow’s spell is my favourite moment of TV ever. I cry every time I watch it.
They had to do the rape-attempt. Apparently, too many fans were missing the point of the season 6 affair, that it was supposed to be self-destructive. So they had to make it obvious with “Spike is not good for you – Spike is obsessed with love, but he is also a horribly evil man”. That scene was a perfect way to express that. It was the perfect mockery of the kind of crap people idolize in Twilight. The perfect knock on the head for people who think “obsessive, controlling, stalker-ish dude” is romantic.
The problem was that they pretended it didn’t happen afterwards.
I do love the Mayor as a villain. He may be my favorite.
And I’m suddenly getting reminded of a lot of good bits of season 5–if I can ignore how irritating I find Glory, I really like 5 a lot, and keep thinking a lot of the 5 episodes I like are season 6. …huh. I’m more of a season 5 fan than I remember being.
At least, I think, all the seasons had pretty awesome climaxes. Season 3 onward especially.
Glory is horrible, and one of the worst villains.
Charles is spot on. I’d add that whoever played Glory was about the worst actor in the series (and there was some pretty horrible acting at times).
djw gets it too. The Mayor was the best villain ever. Insanely funny and evil at the same time.
Season 3 in a walk. For the love of Spike, look at this set list:
35. Anne
36. Dead Man’s Party
37. Faith, Hope, & Trick
38. Beauty and the Beasts
39. Homecoming
40. Band Candy
41. Revelations
42. Lovers Walk
43. The Wish
44. Amends
45. Gingerbread
46. Helpless
47. The Zeppo
48. Bad Girls
49. Consequences
50. Doppelgängland
51. Enemies
52. Earshot
53. Choices
54. The Prom
55. Graduation Day, Part 1
56. Graduation Day, Part 2
Not many duds in that bunch. Lovers Walk and Doplegangland were some of the best TV ever, and The Zeppo , well that was sublime. And Band Candy, where Principal Quark revealed a sympathetic angle to his character for the first time. Throw in Faith and the Mayor, and you’ve got a hell of a season. And dude, they blew up the school!
Actually it’s a perfect example of Rape To Redeem the Bad Girl anti-feminist cliche.
They had an excellent opportunity to take the show to another level and say something about women being complex, flawed, very human creatures who make mistakes too … and that it’s okay. But they copped-out because fans who idealized the notion of the Scooby Gang being 21 and still lamenting how horrible it is to be losers in high school were outraged and because Marti Noxon wanted to tell HER story without finding a balance between reality and the metaphorical nature of BtVS. Plus she didn’t like the reaction people had with regard to Spike to boot and stated both that at one point they had no idea where the relationship was going and another that they’ve “made (their) case” (regarding the good/bad dynamics in the S/B relationship). The thing is, we know who was evil and who wasn’t. Just because you’re not evil though doesn’t mean you’re always doing the right thing. As a vampire and a soulless/consciousless being, we expected no internal moral compass or understanding from Spike. As being with a conscience, what Buffy was doing to Spike was wrong – but it was understandable and to a vampire to boot which didn’t it make it “the same”. That some people didn’t like Buffy acting “like that” or thought Spike was “good” now shouldn’t have mattered. But it did and they caved. It’s terrible when writers sacrifice drama and great story-telling to appease fans and themselves.
In this case, Marti Noxon suggested they go the ‘General Hospital’ route. Jane Espenson said that this wasn’t 1984 anymore, however it reflected an event in Marti’s life when she tried to force herself on a boyfriend who was leaving her so Jane’s protests were in vain. So we get that scene that has the sublety of a sledgehammer and we’re whisked away to ‘90210’ or a soap instead of the intricate BtVS universe. It was DELIBERATELY set up to manipulate the audience. The problem is that this was still BtVS, Spike still a vampire, Buffy still a slayer so the audience is trying make sense of it while Marti and Fury sits back going, “that’ll teach those wimmin folk!” thinking now there’s no way people can think Buffy did anything wrong. So when one says, “well he didn’t know better, how could he understand she meant no given the past?” they’re ABSOLUTELY correct because he’s a VAMPIRE, not a man. So they set us back completely by taking a very human crime and dehumanizing it as something “monsters” do, yet at the same time wanted to teach us a lesson about “bad boyfriends” and that Buffy was perfect all along! Give me a break.
They established a rule that the demon has the wheel in a soulless vampire informed by what it once was, and once ensoulled it’s a different driver living with that. It didn’t change just because of that attempted rape so THEY’RE left with the mess they created, it backfired. Not people who simply enjoyed a story. Even Jane Espenson said she wanted to be careful they weren’t saying anything about humans with that whole thing.
But really, I get tired of those who have the “women have to be perfect all the time” mentality. Not all women grew up in a great environment, many of us have been self-destructive, addicted to drugs, depressed, and hurt ourselves and those around us in the past. I’m irritated by “feminist” writings that marginalize and/or dismiss those women/experiences as “bad examples” or “other”-ing. I liked Buffy more than I ever have before in season 6 because she was relatable to me. I don’t like that people think women like me have to be almost raped to be likable. Nor do I like that people try to manipulate others’ emotions regarding women because they don’t like conclusions drawn about plots even they had no idea were about.
And yes, season 5 was my favorite. I think the first 3 were popcorn and simplistic.
Sigh…
I’ve never managed to watch Buffy except as disconnected random episodes, and only a few of those. I only like to watch TV with somebody else (doing it alone is just too passive for me) and my father has no interest in it, because he only likes science fiction and not fantasy (he also doesn’t like animation). I did like what I saw, though, even if a lot of it was from season 7 (most of the rest was season 5). I did see most of the climax of season 5, including the various character deaths, though, and I’ve come across many spoilers on the Internet over the years.
I did watch Firefly, though. I thought it was very well acted and directed but thought the scripts were distinctly mediocre.
1) Why did that one guy effectively turn into a Reaver after being the sole survivor? I’m sorry, but that’s not how a human brain reacts to traumatic events.
2) It’s obvious that, considering how Jayne joined the crew, he was obviously untrustworthy. Mal should have dumped Jayne immediately after “recruiting” him – anyone who will sell out his boss like that will also sell you out. And Jayne did, in fact, sell Mal out. Idiot ball, much?
3) The scene where Mal and Wash are being tortured by the crime boss, and the two of them just keep yelling and getting angry at each other instead of reacting to the situation at hand, struck me as weird and ridiculous. It was only much later that I understood what was really happening – Mal was deliberately goading Wash in order to distract him from the torture – but it was still silly to watch.
In terms of overall season long story season 5 all way. Someone here said that Glory was a bad villian because she was uber. Yeah she was uber but at the same time I think the writers set her character up to mentally unstable in order to counteract that uberness. (Seriously who would do more damage with uber powers, an unstable Glory or someone more stable like say,… Angelus?)
Another reason I liked season five is because it was a great example of how awesome kickass powers aren’t the keys to the kingdom. Buffy and crew spent a big chunk of season five trying to fight off a demon goddess who could kill them in an instant…while having to deal with her dying mom and a sister whose very existence was questionable (which allowed for Dawn to have something other than the typical teen angst to fuel her typical teen ansgt-like behaviors).
And speaking of her mom’s death there is one thing that I’m not sure if most people paid attention to, Anya’s reactions. When Ms. Summer’s died everyone had the usual and expected reactions but since Anya hadn’t been mortal for so long she no longer understood death from the mortal perspective. To me it was kinda like watching a child trying to figure out how to cope with death. Even to the point where I got a little mad about Willow hitting her and screaming at her.
Now as for favorite episode, season 7 “Conversations with Dead People”. Of course I would have probably made it a two part episode and added Giles being visited by Ms. Calendar, Xander getting a visit from Jesse (his close friend that was killed in the first episode), Anya getting a visit from Helfreck (sp?), and possibly Faith (in prison at the time) getting a visit from the innocent man she killed back in season 3.
Anya’s speech about how she doesn’t understand why Joyce had to die kills me every time. This is a very hard episode to watch but even having seen it many times I can’t stop myself from breaking up at Anya’s speech.
I watched Season 5 for the first time around a year after a boyfriend of mine had died, and I think this made The Body even harder to watch for me, but more significant. We had the DVDs, and I watched the commentary on the episode as well. Whedon said that one of the things he wanted to say with the episode is that everyone responds differently to unexpected and tragic death, and the way we respond is very rarely the feel-good image we get from other movies and TV shows. We say and think and do inappropriate things, and get angry at each other for nothing at all, and all of those things are normal reactions to extreme shock. It really resonated with me because when my boyfriend died, the very last thing I wanted to do was sit around with a bunch of people and reminisce about the good times and about how he’s in a better place now.
So it wasn’t just me then Denise. I was in college at the time of season 5’s original airing and so I didn’t watch until sometime in 2004, a few months after my mom died.
If Whedon’s point was to show different reactions to a tragic death then he hit a bull’s eye.
My list, from favorite to most hated: 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 6, 7.
My favorite part of the show was the Scooby dynamic–how their love and trust and friendship allowed them to make it through anything. I loved how in Season 4 they started growing apart, but then came together in the most literal way in “Primeval” and “Restless,” showing where their true power really lied.
Unfortunately, the next three seasons tried to replicate that same storyline, but it didn’t make sense, because the Scoobs were supposed to already have learned their lesson. And yet they repeated the same destructive cycle for the next three years. And if you’ve read Season 8, you know they are doing the same thing AGAIN, with Buffy feeling more disconnected than ever.
I just didn’t believe in the characters after Season 5. Riley allows a vampire to suck him off? Willow is an evil junkie? Buffy is no fun anymore at all? Giles abandons everyone? FAIL.
Didja catch Whedon on Fresh Air? He talks about Dollhouse, among other things.
I was amused to learn that on the DVD of Dr. Horrible Whedon not only offers commentary, he offers a MUSICAL commentary; he sings it! They played an excerpt on Fresh Air. Whedon sang about his frustrations with constantly being asked to comment on his work. Cuz, ya know, when the first cave man drew a bison on the wall, no one asked him to discuss his choice of a bison for a subject, or the choice of red for a color, or how the bison tested with the teen demographic….
Damn he’s clever.