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What's not to love? Well, after the previous two seasons containing a subplot about exactly why Giles' place is at the Slayer's side helping her he decided to bugger off home. Fair enough, but then she comes back to life, he comes back, sees that Willow is abusing magic, sees that Buffy is near traumatised and nowhere near peak efficiency and that Dawn, lacking any kind of emotional support is slowly sinking into various unhealthy attention seeking devices (and why kleptomania rather than something that would have made sense with her being the Key and the violence of Older Sister's life like cutting?) and he still leaves!
I think Giles, like everyone else in season six, makes some bad choices.Giles saw Buffy using him as a crutch when dealing with Dawn, and went with the sink or swim approach, where he'd just force her to deal with her own problems, rather than relying on him.
About the Willow magic addiction, I think he saw the seeds of it, but assumed that Willow, and if not Willow, Tara, would be able to keep it under control.
Giles is very much the father figure for all the characters in the show, and I think he felt uncomfortable in that role, as he says in his song in the musical, he feels like if he keeps helping them, they'll never grow. By the end of season six, he realizes that maybe the best way to help them is to be there for everyone rather than just forcing them to make it on their own.
Also, the Buffy/Giles relationship is pretty contentious when he's there in season seven, so if he had been there in six, things might have been worse.
But, it's not like I don't see your point. I think the choice is in character, but it's a bad choice.
The trio. Because now Marti Noxon is running the show and it's time for us all to see how men are scum and evil. Oh, and while same sex love is affirming and joyous when it's between two women, it's icky and gay if it were two men.
I don't think the gay subtext between Andrew and Warren was played up as much in season six as it was in seven, and then, I don't it was a judgment on being a gay male, it's more on that specific relationship.
The Warren character fits your points, but I don't think the trio was designed to show that men are scum. It's more to show that power corrupts, even in humans. They're designed to take advantage of the stereotypical image of the male sci-fi geek. I don't see your points being particularly valid for Jonathan or Andrew.
However, for Warren, yes, it is a bit of a strong chastising for males as a whole. His misogyny seems sort of out of place on the show, and, like Chosen, plays up the women power, bad men motif a bit too much. If you look at Buffy, probably the most noble male character by the end of the show is probably Spike, since Xander and Giles both do really stupid things in six and seven.
But, I still like the trio, I think they're both funny, and effective, in showing that demons aren't the only evil out there. They're much more intersting characters than Adam, Glory or the first evil.
The 'rape'. So dodgy there on many grounds. Compare and contrast with all the other times when Buffy either ignored Spike not wanting to have sex or pretended not to want to make out in order to entice him on. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. And neither do the writers, as it's quickly dealt with next season so Buffy can sleep with Spike again. You can't have it both ways Marti, but hey, at least it gives you an excuse to torture Spike some more huh? Dirty, dirty men!
By sleep with, do you mean have sex, since I didn't think that Buffy and Spike had sex at all in season seven. She did sleep with him, but in a literal way.
Killing off Tara. I couldn't care less about the hysterical Kitten reaction to this, but while the main characters proceeded to get more distant from the audience, Tara was the grounded one, the emotional core of the team. I truly would have preferred anyone else dying apart from her. Which probably means that it had to be her or something.
It was a real shocking thing, and in a lot of ways neccessary storywise, but I agree that it really hurt season seven. Buffy was completely screwed up by the end of six, Xander was basically done, as was Anya, both bitter and rejected, and Willow was a recovering magi-holic, the heart was definitely missing. But, I think that's more a comment on the writer's failures in the seventh season, to develop an emotional replacement for Tara, rather than a judgment on the sixth season itself.
I think there's a general lumping of season six and seven when discussing the eras of the show, but they're vastly different seasons. Six is a very intense character study, intimate in scope. Seven is a huge story-driven thing, with very little character development. They're about as different as two seasons of the show could be. |
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