Buffy - Season 6 impressions (episode 15)

[thalia_seawood]

I haven't posted any Jossverse reviews in ages due to a very busy RL which resulted in a lack of fannish motivation.
Then I spend an evening showing Buffy to my oldest friend hopefully winning another fan. (She liked the show and took season 1 with her for further watching

Comments

[thalia_seawood]

I agree with you on all counts. I'm not fond of Riley's speech myself. Like I said I didn't like it as Buffy's motivation for ending things with Spike.
What I can't figure out about this episode is:

Are we supposed to *not* be moved by Riley's speech? Because Buffy is at a point in her life where she can't really feel anything; she just tries to feel things and to react accordingly? So: Does the episode dump us in Buffy's brain?

Or is the whole episode just sloppily written? You see, I can interpret a lot into it when I'm trying really hard. I can make it work in a way. But all the same it feels off. Mostly because I can buy Buffy seeing Riley as her dream man since her self-esteem is so low at this point; but I *hate* that Riley what triggers her to break up with Spike.

And, of course, now I could argue that Spike caused Buffy to break up//argue with Riley - and this episode mirrors this. I can also argue that in both cases, the presence of the other man/vampire makes her realise what's going wrong in her current relationship.

I think this episode does have some fascinating elements, but there are so many illogical factors that you have to want to make sense of it all.

[spikendru]

IMHO, the episode is sloppily written, but BtVS fans are not shallow people; we tend to look for the meta, even when it's not intentionally there, so it makes perfect sense to *see* the episode as Buffy's fantasies about what she claimed she always wanted, and what she could have had - a normal relationship with a normal guy. Of course, when she actually had it, it didn't come close to meeting her needs, but viewed through the severe depression she experiences throughout S6, she *remembers* it as a better relationship than it was. And Riley is no longer getting sucked off by vampire whores - he has a productive job (in which he gets to wear cool black kevlar rather than traffic cone orange), he has a stable relationship with a demon-hunting wife/partner (instead of a 'dirty little secret' that could have been a relationship with a demon-hunting partner if she wasn't terrified of rejection by her friends), so the fans choose to believe that the episode dumps us into Buffy's brain, and events are seen through her skewed viewpoint.