What Made the Buffy!Verse Great?

[woman_of_]

Ok, I seem to be slowly getting notifications back, so will risk this poll. As I cling to my DVD's amid growing dismay at the Buffy Season Eight Comic, what made the programme the classic it is?

Poll What Made the Buffy!Verse Great!

Comments

[love_jackianto]

'I seem to be slowly getting notifications back'
Oh good, it's not just me than.

[woman_of_]

No, seems to be the whole of LJ had problems today! *sigh*

[beldam1]

Think it was like a recipe leave out one ingredient and the recipe just doesn't work

[woman_of_]

I think so too. Which could be why the comics are not working for so many.

[littlesammy]

I voted for something else, even though "It was all Joss!" would have been just as appropriate, but in the same way "Babylon 5" and JMS wrote SciFi history - Joss was not afraid to tell comple stories that were beyond the normal, flat TV realm. And most of all, he knew that sometimes stories have to hurt like hell to be the ones you remember for ages.

There is no constant joy and not all that much remembrance if all is well again after 42 minutes. But Buffy killing her one true love just when he gets his soul back... that's the one that sticks to you, for years to come. Or Jenny Calendar's death. Or Buffy dying because she has earned it.

Damn. I need to watch that show again.

[woman_of_]

The more I'm hearing about Buffy Season Eight, I think it was more of a team effort myself, rather than just Joss on his own. He was brave enough to take the show down those routes, but seems to have been teamwork that excelled.

[littlesammy]

Not so sure about that. I have seen/read a lot of interviews during that time, and the show apparently excelled because in the early days he meticulously went over each script over and over, making sure that every line was in character, that the story flowed just right, that the atmosphere fit and such. He sort of finetuned each ep for hours until he was satisfied, and that pretty much left his distinctive voice all through the early seasons. And that's why the great desaster that was season six was all the more noticeable - when he left for his darling baby Firefly, he left control to Marti Noxon, who drove the show into the nearest wall

[woman_of_]

At the time BtVS was his baby. Now other projects seem to have become more popular with him.

Season Six did have a lot of problems, then I'm not sure that Marti Noxon was the right one to leave in charge. She certainly never came over as the best of the team to me.

I liked Season Seven until the last episode, which seemed rushed into a nice messy ending.

[hils]

A mixture of Joss, a good writing team and good actors I would say

[woman_of_]

Yes, it was a team effort, I would say.

[a2zmom]

I say it was a talented team but without Joss at the helm, none of the rest would have mattered.

[woman_of_]

Yes, increasingly seeing it was a team effort, but Joss was the leader.

[the_other_sandy]

For me, it was all about the dialogue. I'm a sucker for really good dialogue. And I was still crushing on Anthony Head from VR.5.

[woman_of_]

Both very good reasons!