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Date Posted: 21:12:38 08/15/05 Mon
Author: Ramses 2
Author Host/IP: 69.242.120.180
Subject: I'm not sure I buy all the various spin off talk
In reply to: John 's message, "Re: Re-watching some episodes of season 7 and it still doesn't make sense." on 16:29:11 08/15/05 Mon

Faith, Spike and Wood? Yes, I can see that. Sit school or Dawn and her own scooby gang? Sorry, I never saw anything that would support either of these two ideas. Lessons was All About Buffy, it wasn't a concentrated effort to showcase Dawn. She then went back to being almost wallpaper.

The sits? The sits were simply employed as a symbolic device to show Buffy's issues piling up on her proverbial and literal doorstep. Every care was taken to make us as fed up with them as Buffy herself was. If they had truly wanted a sit spinoff they would have fleshed them out a bit.

I don't think the storyline of 7 was complicated at all. I think it got rather murky not from dropped threads so much as throwing gotchas and red herrings into a season that was already asking people to recognize metaphors and symbols everywhere. If Giles isn't the First but you just wanted to play with peoples heads, then don't make it also an important part of the story that the watchers council didn't have the girls best interest at heart and they themselves needed watching.

But other things that people say are dropped threads...like Beloxi's Eye and the First not being effective is imo just missing that in season 7, Buffy was Buffy's worst enemy.

And I think Joss was very enamored of the comic book form and tried to play with some of that in 7, while it was an interesting concept I don't think it actually was a smart idea after season 6.

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[> [> [> Well, I don't know -- Eurydice, 21:58:21 08/15/05 Mon [1] (151.203.52.118)

I do think there was some occasional drifting away from All About Buffy. Characters like Wood and Andrew and Kennedy (just to name a couple) got that extra little bit of attention which raises suspicion. Sort of like when the camera does a closeup on some random knick-knack and you just know it'll turn out to be the murder weapon. The same is true of certain threads and ideas - too much attention leads to expectation.

And I don't think that wondering about FE's effectiveness is missing the point. Over the years we've seen that Whedonverse characters have a dual purpose - they're metaphors but they've got a physical presence, too - a presence which physically affects their surroundings. Vampires represented arrested development and immaturity, but they still had to be dealt with as vampires - there had to be a somewhat consistent framework in which they operated. The same with FE - it might have represented Buffy's darkest self, but it was also depicted as an entity unto itself - an entity older than time and powerful enough to command armies. Its attentions weren't just focussed on Buffy, it was destroying the entire Slayer system around the planet - we saw this happen before our eyes at the beginning of the season. So, when faced with this sort of physical evidence, I don't think it's unreasonable for the audience to expect some sort of coherent explanantion of how it works, even if they already understand the metaphor part of the equation.


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[> [> [> I guess so but -- Ramses 2, 22:52:08 08/15/05 Mon [1] (69.242.120.180)

I think I can understand(at least it works for me) that what looks to be the absolutely worst threat turns out to be something easily defeated by facing it head on and dealing with it. Buffy spends 7 seasons worried about her darkness, she spends a huge chunk of time refusing to examine her issues with her self....huge buildup pointing to her being somehow not quite right. When she finally accepts what she fears most, the fear simply goes away.

I think they did tie the First and Caleb to people's fears and insecurities. As for what it wanted? I actually think the greater failing in the story was making it have a goal. Evil found in the hearts of every man, woman, child and poodle shouldn't need a goal. The fact that it could lead(seduce)people into giving into their strongest fears without being embodied? Not a totally loser idea. Making it want to be able to touch? Maybe it's as stupid as it sounds...or maybe they were trying to say something about Buffy's inability to 'touch', her lack of fire?(Insert shrug:))

I definitely think Wood was being mulled over for a spinoff. I think I read somewhere that he was supposed to be with Faith and Spike. Kennedy always seemed like a hamfisted attempt to placate a group of fans. She certainly didn't seem to be, at least to me, anyone that was being setup to star in a spinoff. Andrew always seemed like the writers attempt to wink and nod and pull the audience in as a part of the story. Andrew definitely made it feel as we were watching a last season, I didn't get spinoff from him.


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