JM Interview on TWOP

[tessarin]

Just noticed that James Masters has done an interesting interview recently. Now I can take or leave him and thought he was one of the weaker performers amongst the ensemble and some of the adoration that goes his characters way leaves me cold but the interview is very revealling particularly in this portion.

JM talks about what Buffy was about?

JM

Comments

[xandzfaith]

JM has to me always come of very full of himself. This interview for me is no different. He says what the audience he is talking to wants to hear and then changes his tone the next interview. I have nothing personal against him and wish him all the best, but have never thought he came off very well in interviews or whenever he talked about his time on Buffy or Angel.

I do think the show wanted to show that vampires were about sex in their appeal. Angel was the first sexy vampire, and Angelus the first real bad boy. Spike always came off as the bad guy who never quite got it right, but got the neat lines. Then you stripped that from him and he was just a bad guy in the same clothes who every once in a while changed his face but was basically human. Spike was never what I would say areal menace or real monster on the show. He was barely even a vamp.

I don't think the character of Spike was ever marginalized, just overused, badly written and in the end frankly boring. They had to change Buffy to make him even be acknowledged by her, but try as they might they could not change the rest of characters or even Spike himself. Which lead to the bad soul or no soul spike which was in every way the same character. Spike was never meant to become the abused and broken character he was twisted into just to stay on the show. And the more the pushed the farther he fell form connecting to any character in any real or impacting way. Even Buffy.

I think Spike and the need to keep him there once Angel left(not noticing a they already had very good leading men) destroyed the value of the character and then any story around him. That then lead to destroying Buffy as they tried and failed to come up with reasons to keep him involved and not staked.

Season 7 was the very example. He had no reason, was never shown to be a great fighter, was a security risk to the girls, hated by everyone and even the First story went nowhere, but he was kept around. Then thrown over to Angel to be comic relief and monopolize the stories there.

The writers never found the happy medium in his stories, always though he only had to have them working of the lead(Buffy or Angel, and the end made him a carbon copy of Angel. Making it easy to dislike the character and feel unsympathetic to any story he was involved in.