A Defense of S6: The Heroes as Villains
I feel the need to post a bit of a rambly mess on S6. Now I know that I have a large number of people on my flist who do like S6. In fact, I think the proportions there are skewed a bit in relation to the larger fandom. So I'm likely to be preaching to the choir here. But, hey, it's nice to read stuff that validates our opinions, right?
I'll admit, it does somewhat perturb me when people complain that the show "jumped the shark" in S6 or just complain that S6 sucked. I feel the need to defend the season, because I think it's a brave example of what Joss can do.
No, S6 isn't perfect. Oh, yes. There's execution issues galore. The pacing slows in the middle, and the focus is erratic with intense concentration on Buffy's story for most of the season until the very end where Buffy becomes an afterthought in the wake of Willow's story (And the attempt to draw a parallel between Buffy and Willow in Smashed just didn't work). Not to mention the execution problems with the overly-preachy "drugs are bad" message of Willow's arc in mid-season.
So, yes, S6 has issues. I'll be the first to admit it.
But, then, every season has execution issues. S2 drags largely until Innocence comes along, and, even then, the quality is largely inconsistent with a very wandering arc. The end of S3 is quite anti-climatic with some problematic characterization. S4 was hurt by the loss of Walsh midway through. Etc etc. I can go all day, peeps.
That's not why we watch Buffy. Raise your hand if you're watching for the excellent plot? What? Nobody? Wow, surprise.
The characters are what matters. The ongoing character arcs and realistic development that sucks you in and makes you feel for these people on screen. Up to S6, we spent five years growing to love these characters. They grew stronger and stronger and faced tougher and tougher problems. And at the end of S5, they were a group we could look up to for their accomplishments. They defeated a hellgod! Come on! They're big damn heroes!
S6 did what a lot of shows are too afraid to do. They make the heroes do bad things. Not just bad, in general. They do bad things to each other. That's painful to watch. Watching a beloved character hurt another beloved character is distressing.
S6 flips the heroes over and shows us their dark underbellies. And the part that's hardest to accept is that everything these characters do is completely in line with their characterization. It's not OOC. It's not even particularly unrealistic. Buffy being withdrawn and lashing out at Spike during her depression, Willow trying to manipulate the group by doing memory spells, Dawn acting out due to abandonment issues, Xander leaving Anya at the altar...
None of this is against character.
That's why it's so frightening to watch. Because it's disillusioning to see characters you've come to admire and love act like that.
And I'm not speaking abstractly. This is all stuff that I initially felt while watching S6. I hated it. I couldn't stand it. It was so very unpleasant and upsetting to watch. It was only after thinking about it and rewatching a couple times that I came to terms with it.
How do you follow up on fighting a hellgod? That puts everybody firmly in the "hero" camp. How can you possibly top that?
Because there is a greater enemy. Everybody has it. It's the darkness inside themselves. That's what the characters have to face in S6. Without an actual enemy to fight (Not counting the Trio as I see them as an external representation of Buffy's depression, most noticeable in Life Serial, a highly underrated episode. Must do some meta about the connection between the Trio and Buffy's depression sometime), the characters instead must war with themselves. And, ultimately, that ends up being the most devastating enemy of all throughout the entire show. The Scoobies are never quite recovered from the ordeal of S6.
But this is why I've come to love S6 and why I count it as my second favorite season: Because it didn't sugar-coat anything. It showed the full effects of what the group had done in bringing Buffy back from the dead. It turned the heroes inside out and showed us how human and fallible they truly are. And that's very brave for a TV show to do. Especially a show targeted at teens/young adults.
I want to highlight a couple points by presenting some of the regular issues I see connected with S6.
Buffy's a bitch.
Yes, she is.
But her story is my favorite of the entire season. Buffy's not just a bitch. She's depressed. And I mean that in the most clinical sense. Buffy had thought that her job was over. All the pain and suffering of the past season was finished with her sacrifice in The Gift. And she was rewarded for all her hard work in heaven.
And then she got ripped out, woke up six feet under in a coffin in the middle of a demon raid on Sunnydale.
Can anybody blame her for being a little bitchy?
Buffy's journey throughout the season is to find the strength to go on living again. She withdraws so much. She ignores Dawn. She overlooks Willow's problems. She loses herself in her destructive affair with Spike. She pushes aside her duty.
Quite frankly, she loses her way. And it takes a long time for her to find it again. Riley's visit is a start as it makes her remember that she's the freaking Slayer. Then we get another breakthrough in Normal Again (another underrated episode that always makes me cry) where she chooses to live in the Slayer-world as opposed to the alternate mental hospital universe. The final step is, obviously, in Grave where she literally crawls out of her grave again, this time with Dawn at her side and she faces a lovely scenic picture instead of motorcycle demons.
I can't feel resentment for anything Buffy does in S6. I can't fault her for any of it either. I only feel sympathy for her. Joss took my hero, who I admired more than anything in S5, and he threw her down in the mud and flung dirt at her. But I needed him to do that. Because I needed to be reminded that, while Buffy may be a hero, she's still human. She still isn't perfect. And she can also take the wrong path. That just makes me love her even more, especially in S7 when she continues fighting after what she'd been through.
The Spuffy sucked.
Yes. Yes, it did. I actually don't call the relationship in S6 "Spuffy" because I don't see it as being overly romantic. I call it Buffy/Spike (or Spike/Buffy). It makes sense in my head.
I know for people watching as the show aired, there was an expectation or hope after S5 that Buffy and Spike would have an actual relationship of sorts. And the uber-destructive relationship they had in S6 must surely have seemed like a slap in the face. I absolutely understand that, especially with the behind-the-scenes stuff going on.
But I still love the Buffy/Spike of S6.
We get some genuinely touching moments between them in early S6. After Life, Flooded, All the Way, etc etc. Spike is really the only person Buffy can turn to in her post-death state. She can't go to any of the four that resurrected her, and she wouldn't feel right burdening Dawn with her problems. So she turns to Spike, appropriately. She knows he'll listen and be there for her because he's in love with her. And she feels a connection to him due to his undead status.
Spike becomes a crutch for Buffy. This isn't fair to him. It isn't fair to Buffy, either. But after Giles leaves, it's the only way she has of coping.
Of course, after Giles leaves, the relationship explodes in a grand display of rough sex and various instances of abuse and insults and just all-around badness.
And I wouldn't give it up for the world.
Yes, I love Spuffy. Hell, I love the Spuffy that we got in S7. But the Buffy/Spike relationship of S6 is so much more interesting than a straight out "Buffy slowly falls in love with Spike" plot would be. Buffy's death throws a wrench in the works. In doing so, we get one of the most complex, intricate and psychologically fascinating dynamics I've ever witnessed.
Of course it's excruciatingly painful to watch at times. And it's sometimes the victim of some of that poor S6 execution (the lack of follow up to the Dead Things beating, which is another very underrated episode, and the entire execution of As You Were plays as one long plot contrivance). But even those weak spots can't detract too much from the sheer depth that their relationship had.
So, no, it's not pleasant. It's not warm and fuzzy and shippy. But it's interesting, and it takes the characters to whole new depths with such an intense exploration of their dynamic (Dead Things...I can't praise this episode enough).
Willow's a bitch.
Yes. Yes, she is. I detect a pattern here. *g*
I do have issues with Willow's development in S6, which have been discussed elsewhere. Up to Wrecked, though, I think Willow's character is fantabulously fascinating. It builds on development that has been ongoing from the very beginning of the series. Willow's character was so well-done up to Wrecked, that I have nothing but love for her. Yes, even when she does the memory spells.
The absence of Buffy over the summer made Willow the de facto leader. This was enough to push Willow over the edge. Her confidence which had been growing since the high school years reaches critical mass and turns into arrogance. She is more and more willing to disregard the rules and make decisions for others without their knowledge. This is Willow. This is what everything had been developing towards.
Willow being a bitch isn't a detraction to the season. It's the whole point of her character.
The AR scene in Seeing Red just ruins the season.
Okay, yeah, I'll buy that.
I do have issues with that scene, for reasons that have been discussed to death in various posts so I'm not getting into it. And I can certainly understand how it can ruin the season.
I don't let it, though. I isolate that scene in my mind and look at the rest of the season as it is. And the rest of the season is, frankly, quite brilliant at times.
Fact is, Joss gave us such wonderful characters that we could relate to. And then in S6, he let them go wild and do bad things to each other. It feels like a betrayal because, in some ways, it is. We're so connected to these characters, it's hard to see them acting in those ways.
But here's where I found my peace with S6: I couldn't look to these characters as people I might be friends with. They aren't. Not all of them. I love Buffy, but I don't know that I could be friends with her.
They're characters. They're frightfully realistic characters with foibles all their own. And, taking them as characters, S6 is brilliant for them.
In some ways, I suppose it's like loving the villain of a show. No, it's not a person you'd want to hang out with in real life. And in real life, you'd probably hate the villain. But they're so damn cool, you love their fictional selves.
The Scoobies became a group of people I wouldn't want to hang out with in S6. They became people that, in real life, I'd probably not like at all. That's not the point, though. They're characters on a TV show, and S6 was good for exploring those characters.
S6 adds a layer of new depth to each one of the characters. It boldly displays the hero, Buffy, in the worst light possible. It is courageous enough to depict a relationship such as the one Buffy/Spike had in S6.
I think I love S6 despite its faults for the same reason I love Spike: It tries. It didn't always succeed in what it set out to do. But it did its damnedest. And when it did succeed, it did so spectacularly (After Life, OMWF, Dead Things, Normal Again).
So I'm gonna continue to love S6. I'm gonna continue to derive joy from analyzing its intricacies. I'm gonna unabashedly love the naked!Spike. I'm gonna adore Buffy in all her bitchiness. And I'm gonna defend this season till the end of days, because, dammit, I do believe it was a good thing for the show and I can't imagine feeling as close to the characters as I do without seeing that part of them.
I'll admit, it does somewhat perturb me when people complain that the show "jumped the shark" in S6 or just complain that S6 sucked. I feel the need to defend the season, because I think it's a brave example of what Joss can do.
No, S6 isn't perfect. Oh, yes. There's execution issues galore. The pacing slows in the middle, and the focus is erratic with intense concentration on Buffy's story for most of the season until the very end where Buffy becomes an afterthought in the wake of Willow's story (And the attempt to draw a parallel between Buffy and Willow in Smashed just didn't work). Not to mention the execution problems with the overly-preachy "drugs are bad" message of Willow's arc in mid-season.
So, yes, S6 has issues. I'll be the first to admit it.
But, then, every season has execution issues. S2 drags largely until Innocence comes along, and, even then, the quality is largely inconsistent with a very wandering arc. The end of S3 is quite anti-climatic with some problematic characterization. S4 was hurt by the loss of Walsh midway through. Etc etc. I can go all day, peeps.
That's not why we watch Buffy. Raise your hand if you're watching for the excellent plot? What? Nobody? Wow, surprise.
The characters are what matters. The ongoing character arcs and realistic development that sucks you in and makes you feel for these people on screen. Up to S6, we spent five years growing to love these characters. They grew stronger and stronger and faced tougher and tougher problems. And at the end of S5, they were a group we could look up to for their accomplishments. They defeated a hellgod! Come on! They're big damn heroes!
S6 did what a lot of shows are too afraid to do. They make the heroes do bad things. Not just bad, in general. They do bad things to each other. That's painful to watch. Watching a beloved character hurt another beloved character is distressing.
S6 flips the heroes over and shows us their dark underbellies. And the part that's hardest to accept is that everything these characters do is completely in line with their characterization. It's not OOC. It's not even particularly unrealistic. Buffy being withdrawn and lashing out at Spike during her depression, Willow trying to manipulate the group by doing memory spells, Dawn acting out due to abandonment issues, Xander leaving Anya at the altar...
None of this is against character.
That's why it's so frightening to watch. Because it's disillusioning to see characters you've come to admire and love act like that.
And I'm not speaking abstractly. This is all stuff that I initially felt while watching S6. I hated it. I couldn't stand it. It was so very unpleasant and upsetting to watch. It was only after thinking about it and rewatching a couple times that I came to terms with it.
How do you follow up on fighting a hellgod? That puts everybody firmly in the "hero" camp. How can you possibly top that?
Because there is a greater enemy. Everybody has it. It's the darkness inside themselves. That's what the characters have to face in S6. Without an actual enemy to fight (Not counting the Trio as I see them as an external representation of Buffy's depression, most noticeable in Life Serial, a highly underrated episode. Must do some meta about the connection between the Trio and Buffy's depression sometime), the characters instead must war with themselves. And, ultimately, that ends up being the most devastating enemy of all throughout the entire show. The Scoobies are never quite recovered from the ordeal of S6.
But this is why I've come to love S6 and why I count it as my second favorite season: Because it didn't sugar-coat anything. It showed the full effects of what the group had done in bringing Buffy back from the dead. It turned the heroes inside out and showed us how human and fallible they truly are. And that's very brave for a TV show to do. Especially a show targeted at teens/young adults.
I want to highlight a couple points by presenting some of the regular issues I see connected with S6.
Buffy's a bitch.
Yes, she is.
But her story is my favorite of the entire season. Buffy's not just a bitch. She's depressed. And I mean that in the most clinical sense. Buffy had thought that her job was over. All the pain and suffering of the past season was finished with her sacrifice in The Gift. And she was rewarded for all her hard work in heaven.
And then she got ripped out, woke up six feet under in a coffin in the middle of a demon raid on Sunnydale.
Can anybody blame her for being a little bitchy?
Buffy's journey throughout the season is to find the strength to go on living again. She withdraws so much. She ignores Dawn. She overlooks Willow's problems. She loses herself in her destructive affair with Spike. She pushes aside her duty.
Quite frankly, she loses her way. And it takes a long time for her to find it again. Riley's visit is a start as it makes her remember that she's the freaking Slayer. Then we get another breakthrough in Normal Again (another underrated episode that always makes me cry) where she chooses to live in the Slayer-world as opposed to the alternate mental hospital universe. The final step is, obviously, in Grave where she literally crawls out of her grave again, this time with Dawn at her side and she faces a lovely scenic picture instead of motorcycle demons.
I can't feel resentment for anything Buffy does in S6. I can't fault her for any of it either. I only feel sympathy for her. Joss took my hero, who I admired more than anything in S5, and he threw her down in the mud and flung dirt at her. But I needed him to do that. Because I needed to be reminded that, while Buffy may be a hero, she's still human. She still isn't perfect. And she can also take the wrong path. That just makes me love her even more, especially in S7 when she continues fighting after what she'd been through.
The Spuffy sucked.
Yes. Yes, it did. I actually don't call the relationship in S6 "Spuffy" because I don't see it as being overly romantic. I call it Buffy/Spike (or Spike/Buffy). It makes sense in my head.
I know for people watching as the show aired, there was an expectation or hope after S5 that Buffy and Spike would have an actual relationship of sorts. And the uber-destructive relationship they had in S6 must surely have seemed like a slap in the face. I absolutely understand that, especially with the behind-the-scenes stuff going on.
But I still love the Buffy/Spike of S6.
We get some genuinely touching moments between them in early S6. After Life, Flooded, All the Way, etc etc. Spike is really the only person Buffy can turn to in her post-death state. She can't go to any of the four that resurrected her, and she wouldn't feel right burdening Dawn with her problems. So she turns to Spike, appropriately. She knows he'll listen and be there for her because he's in love with her. And she feels a connection to him due to his undead status.
Spike becomes a crutch for Buffy. This isn't fair to him. It isn't fair to Buffy, either. But after Giles leaves, it's the only way she has of coping.
Of course, after Giles leaves, the relationship explodes in a grand display of rough sex and various instances of abuse and insults and just all-around badness.
And I wouldn't give it up for the world.
Yes, I love Spuffy. Hell, I love the Spuffy that we got in S7. But the Buffy/Spike relationship of S6 is so much more interesting than a straight out "Buffy slowly falls in love with Spike" plot would be. Buffy's death throws a wrench in the works. In doing so, we get one of the most complex, intricate and psychologically fascinating dynamics I've ever witnessed.
Of course it's excruciatingly painful to watch at times. And it's sometimes the victim of some of that poor S6 execution (the lack of follow up to the Dead Things beating, which is another very underrated episode, and the entire execution of As You Were plays as one long plot contrivance). But even those weak spots can't detract too much from the sheer depth that their relationship had.
So, no, it's not pleasant. It's not warm and fuzzy and shippy. But it's interesting, and it takes the characters to whole new depths with such an intense exploration of their dynamic (Dead Things...I can't praise this episode enough).
Willow's a bitch.
Yes. Yes, she is. I detect a pattern here. *g*
I do have issues with Willow's development in S6, which have been discussed elsewhere. Up to Wrecked, though, I think Willow's character is fantabulously fascinating. It builds on development that has been ongoing from the very beginning of the series. Willow's character was so well-done up to Wrecked, that I have nothing but love for her. Yes, even when she does the memory spells.
The absence of Buffy over the summer made Willow the de facto leader. This was enough to push Willow over the edge. Her confidence which had been growing since the high school years reaches critical mass and turns into arrogance. She is more and more willing to disregard the rules and make decisions for others without their knowledge. This is Willow. This is what everything had been developing towards.
Willow being a bitch isn't a detraction to the season. It's the whole point of her character.
The AR scene in Seeing Red just ruins the season.
Okay, yeah, I'll buy that.
I do have issues with that scene, for reasons that have been discussed to death in various posts so I'm not getting into it. And I can certainly understand how it can ruin the season.
I don't let it, though. I isolate that scene in my mind and look at the rest of the season as it is. And the rest of the season is, frankly, quite brilliant at times.
Fact is, Joss gave us such wonderful characters that we could relate to. And then in S6, he let them go wild and do bad things to each other. It feels like a betrayal because, in some ways, it is. We're so connected to these characters, it's hard to see them acting in those ways.
But here's where I found my peace with S6: I couldn't look to these characters as people I might be friends with. They aren't. Not all of them. I love Buffy, but I don't know that I could be friends with her.
They're characters. They're frightfully realistic characters with foibles all their own. And, taking them as characters, S6 is brilliant for them.
In some ways, I suppose it's like loving the villain of a show. No, it's not a person you'd want to hang out with in real life. And in real life, you'd probably hate the villain. But they're so damn cool, you love their fictional selves.
The Scoobies became a group of people I wouldn't want to hang out with in S6. They became people that, in real life, I'd probably not like at all. That's not the point, though. They're characters on a TV show, and S6 was good for exploring those characters.
S6 adds a layer of new depth to each one of the characters. It boldly displays the hero, Buffy, in the worst light possible. It is courageous enough to depict a relationship such as the one Buffy/Spike had in S6.
I think I love S6 despite its faults for the same reason I love Spike: It tries. It didn't always succeed in what it set out to do. But it did its damnedest. And when it did succeed, it did so spectacularly (After Life, OMWF, Dead Things, Normal Again).
So I'm gonna continue to love S6. I'm gonna continue to derive joy from analyzing its intricacies. I'm gonna unabashedly love the naked!Spike. I'm gonna adore Buffy in all her bitchiness. And I'm gonna defend this season till the end of days, because, dammit, I do believe it was a good thing for the show and I can't imagine feeling as close to the characters as I do without seeing that part of them.