Apparently Buffy was supposed to end at the end of season five with Buffy’s death which I think would’ve been a crappy ending. Yes Whedon really does like killing off fan-favorite character but yeeesh, that’s more overkill than the rest of the deaths! So, thanks to the power of the fans, the show switched stations and kept on going for another two seasons, not much longer folks!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Summary: Brought back from the dead a second time, Buffy resumes her battles with the undead, takes care of Dawn, finds a job, and tries not to go to Spike for emo sex too much.
The Good: I was surprised that a lot of the really good episodes in Buffy (the musical, the fast food episode, the everyone-loses-their-memory episode) all came from this late in the shows run, there were a lot of really good standalone episodes. The burger episode, while overdone now, had a brilliant twist at the end and the alternate characterizations in the mind-wipe episode bemused me.
The Bad: I think I’ve mentioned it before, but Buffy’s constant need to be with a boyfriend really gets on my nerves. So it’s no surprise that her using Spike just for sex and saying it’s no big deal (or deny what she’s doing entirely) bugged me a lot*. Riley’s wife was also a pretty blatant Mary Sue (which surprised me, as much as I rant about the characters all of them are pretty round characters, she wasn’t round at all) and the wedding, ahhhh the wedding. I liked the build-up to it, that got a lot of laughs out of me, but then Whedon decided to mess with the audience again and I got really annoyed. Plus, the asylum episode. Now, if this had been in the first season it could’ve been used as a brilliant mid-season climax but, six seasons in, it’s really hard to take the idea of Buffy actually being crazy^ . Also really didn't like the villains this series (it’s even lampshaded in series how lame they are) and, while Giles was awesome in the finale, that whole thing bothered me as well.
The Music: I’m not a musical person at all (as in the play) so I was surprised that I loved the musical episode and have since gotten a lot of the songs for myself. I new Anthony Stewart Head could sing from Repo! but I was surprised at how well everyone else did. Tara was lovely, Buffy was good, Anya had a hysterical little rock number, and the rest sounded good in their bits (I propose now that all anime replace their beach episodes with musical episodes, it would be much funnier in any case).
The Visuals: About the same as all the other seasons, don’t think the special effects have improved much, if at all, from the earlier seasons actually. The fights are still well choreographed though, I just don’t think the video quality/cinematography are anything special.
So, there were some good moments in it but overall I was just unimpressed with this season, fingers crossed that it ends on a high note in the next one. I still don’t loath this show, hence why I still watch it, but it does annoy me a lot for the same reason a lot of people like it.
*I’m sure some of my friends can attest to how snarky I would get at those points on skype. Gah, sex in Utena, sex in my English textbooks, sex in my business class, erotic nudes in my art history, really did not need more of it here.
^Gosick has a similar problem recently, someone else pointed out that it’s hard to believe one of the characters doesn’t exist after a really action packed first arc. Not exactly what happened in Buffy but a similar problem.
