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Apologies for bumping this back up, but I just watched the end of the season last night and can’t figure out whether I liked it or not, or how much.
In terms of the bad: What was the point of Kennedy? I know Jack was saying that Whedon needed a replacement for Tara after Benson decided she didn’t want to be part of the show again, but really, *why* did he need one? There’s never any point in the series when she’s useful or a core element to Willow’s development. Stinks of loose plotting.
There’s a lot that stinks of loose plotting. Dawn. More specifically, Dawn getting kidnapped by Xander so that she could be taken to a safe place, then knocking Xander out and going back to Sunnydale. Again, the question has to be “why?” As soon as Angel turns up, going on about this amulet that he’s found that Buffy needs to give to someone who’s not human but has a soul, I was thinking it was going to be a Dawn moment. Spike’s the obvious choice, but the description (nearly) fits Dawn. And hell, there *has* to be a reason as to why they’ve wasted all that time over Xander taking her away from the danger spot, yeah? Uh, no. Dawn comes back, Dawn disappears. Pointless.
Felt short-changed by the final battle. For weeks we’ve had Buffy telling us that a lot of people are going to die, then when it comes around we lose one second-tier character and a couple of extras who might have been hanging around the Summers house before as potential slayers, but we don’t know for sure because they never had any screen time previously. Who lives? Who dies? Well, that’s pretty much “everyone” and “no-one.” I like that Anya’s death is sudden and brutal, but unfortunately it stands out as an anomaly in the context of the rest of the episode. Getting rid of someone like that in such an offhand manner can only really work if you’ve got bigger fish to fry in more spectacular ways or a number of smaller fish in an even more abrupt manner. The lack of significant deaths is an even bigger disappointment after the whole Xander/eye thing, where it suddenly looks we’re being prepared for things to get really nasty, for characters we’ve been with for a long time to get royally fucked over. Just doesn’t happen. Very poor, and looks like nothing more than a way of future-proofing the Buffyverse for spinoffs. Sure, there’s Spike’s death, but we always knew he was going to turn up in Angel so it doesn’t count.
Oh yeah, and Buffy getting stabbed through the gut, falling to the ground, then miraculously returning from the brink of death and doing a Batman over the roofs of the collapsing buildings. Wha? Why fucking have her getting stabbed in the first place? You could get the same thing from punching her out for a while, plus you’d have the benefit of then not forcing viewers to suspend their disbelief from a rope attached to Mir.
The good: I dig on the corny shit. Always have done. Willow becoming the anti-EvilWillow was cool in a very corny way. It’s where the character had to go.
Caleb. I really like the way that he’s only in the last few episodes. Sure, it sounds like that’s got more to do with last-minute worries than any actual series planning, but it worked for the character. Ever since season 4 the big bad has outstayed its welcome long before episode 22’s rolled around. The Initiative/Adam, Glory, Andrew/Jonathon/Warren, they all grew dull very quickly, mainly through overuse. We’re not given time to get tired of Caleb.
Other stuff I wanted to say. People complaining about how the show should have finished at the end of S5: rubbish. If you’re going to take the view that it had run its natural course then surely it should have finished at the end of S3? You know: a show about growing up and surviving High School, season ends with kids graduating and blowing the school up. The End. Perfect. Same with people complaining about Spike becoming increasingly important over the last two seasons. Point A: it was never purely about a girl with superpowers fighting demons (see above). Point B: if you’re going to complain about this stuff, then you need to go right back to season 2 and start bitching about how Spike was brought back from the dead (Dru carrying him out from under all that rubble) after Whedon realised how popular he was with the audience.
Guess I’m 50:50 on the big ending. Liked the season as a whole; more consistent than the last three. Funnier than the last three. Still, shitloads of missed opportunities. |
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