. It looked interesting to me, but there was no cable TV at my parents' house, and I saw maybe half of one episode. That is, until I was in my twenties, and my wife and I decided to try Netflix. I watched each of
's seven seasons.
The first four certainly had their moments. There were episodes in later seasons that had merits, too. But the more I watched the show, the more I began it see it as an artistic and aesthetic failure. By the end, I felt that Joss Whedon had woven a dozen-odd brilliant threads (e.g. the musical episode "Once More, With Feeling," the silent episode "Hush," etc.) into a subpar, even absurd, tapestry.
, it would likely take the rest of my natural life. But I decided it would be worthwhile to point out the most important reasons that the show is a failure, and perhaps the most overrated television series in history.
Spike is a completely incoherent character. The great thing about Spike, when he first appeared in season two, was his toughness and bad attitude. And the fact that he is an irredeemably depraved demon. A pretty fair villain. So, naturally, the show's makers put a chip into his head that magically transformed him into a soppy romantic who is in love with Buffy because... well, just because. Even then, instead of being Buffy's bad-boy boyfriend, he's a pathetic, pussywhipped whiner. Everything that makes Angel work - the fact that he has a soul, his dour, broody demeanor, his mysteriousness - Spike has none of it, and all attempts to inject these traits into the character through his backstory and/or character "development" just made him more confusing and plastic.
The show increasingly becomes Joss Whedon's platform to plug his pet political causes. I get into some of them in more detail below; the long and short of it is that it's annoying when one is trying to enjoy a television show, but can't because the entire thing is beginning to feel like an extended political commercial. It seemed every week,
Buffy was blasting a new villain, but not one with horns or fangs: men, religion, capitalism, patriarchy, men, heteronormativity, men, white people, rich people, and men were a few of the show's most heinous monsters. Where is the line that separates art and propaganda? Somewhere in Joss Whedon's rearview mirror.
Whedon's Idea of non-Witchcraft Religion.
Villains include: The Master, the Anointed One, Faith, Adam, the overzealous and dogmatic monastic "Knights of Byzantium," "the First," and Caleb (pictured above).
# 3 - The Absurdity of "the Slayer"
The Slayer is a perfect feminist literary woman: she is at once an all powerful, girls-can-do-anything-boys-can
-do-and-do-it-better Rosie the Riveter on steroids, and also a poor, enslaved, exploited victim of predatory men. Of course, this second, and contradictory, aspect does not appear until the later in the series, when the show begins to explore the origins of the Slayer, who was (apparently?) raped by the "Shadow Men," three black wizards, (...read into that what you will) before being given magical super-strength (?) so that she could be exploited (?) by being forced to fight demons and vampires.
What a bizzare set up. Oppression by the granting of power? As demonstrated by Faith and Buffy, a Watcher's Council composed of ordinary humans (mostly male) can't force the Slayer to do
anything, exactly because she has superpowers. There is no reasonable way to rectify this disconnect between the Slayer (hero) and the Slayer (victim) - no one gives power as a means of oppression.
The "Slayer" as a feminist hero is part of a long history of feminist writers fantasizing about women being physically superior to men. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1915
Herland, a feminist utopia in which women are stronger and faster than men, and reproduce by parthenogenesis independent of any male involvement, is a similarly absurd pipe dream. Perkins seeks to escape "patriarchy," by presenting an ideal society, but for her vision to work human biological mechanics must be completely rewritten. Similarly,
Buffy seeks to empower women with imaginary powers. If feminists of Whedon's mold must imagine reality out of existence for their ideas to work, I think it might be fair to say they are intellectually bankrupt.
The Slayer should have been a character of either sex, sometimes male, sometimes female, more like the witches/wizards in
Harry Potter or the Avatars from
Avatar: The Last Airbender. Instead, Whedon made his signature hero little more than a mascot for his crude version of Feminism.
# 2 - The Show Went Too Long
Buffy's creators, understandably enamoured with their creation and emboldened by its success, continued to produce season after season of teen drama, intrigue, and supernatural action. They even planned ahead, slipping in early references to villians and big events in the later seasons. The problem is that if you save the world in season one, you're going to have quite a time topping yourself in season two. Yet Buffy saved the world in season one, and saved the world again... and again... and again...
seven times. By the end, the villains are so tiresome, the once-innovative show so formulaic, the fresh characters so stale, the show becomes painful to watch.
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# 1 - BUFFY
Anthony Stewart Head's character, Giles, is probably the most compelling in the series. Charisma Carpenter's obnoxious, airheaded Cordelia is always worth a laugh. Xander's combination of goofy jokester and loyal terrier works well. Willow is a very good character, but the show's creators had to scratch the whimsical, beautiful nerd kitsch that made Allyson Hannigan a star, since the character was growing up and risked getting stale; plus, they wanted to transform her into a villain; she was never really the same after that. Tara is an endearing character, but instantly forgettable. Dawn and Kennedy have had the honor of being voted onto "Most Annoying Character Ever" lists, but I would argue that even they have their moments.
There is, however, not a single good thing about Buffy. She is immature, bratty, selfish, and (particularly when it comes to her relationships) she is unreasonable, petulant, and unjustifiably argumentative (e.g., when she convinces Angel to have sex with Faith as part of a plot to defeat her, then treats him like garbage for "cheating" on her). I think, probably, Whedon meant to create a stereotype-crushing "strong woman" character, but Buffy ends up being unbearable, and reinforcing many of the worst ideas people have about women generally and feminist women in particular.
Ironically, Buffy's "evil" co-Slayer, Faith, who for the course of one season deserts to the sorcerous Mayor and works as his thug, would have made a much better series protagonist. At the very least, Buffy needed some of Faith's rough pragmatism and relaxed personality. Faith, from the start, is a hero, but a flawed hero who begins to discover how bad she really is, and fix it. This makes her far more likeable, despite her shaky moral compass and erratic behavior, than Buffy, who is set up as a paradigm of virtue, which only works if your concept of virtue is more or less completely upside down.
