Slashdot Mirror
Faith Returns to Buffy
duffbeer writes "According to an
article at Yahoo!, Eliza Dushku will be in the upcoming Buffy season
7! Five episodes are scheduled, along with three over on Angel. Now starting the oft-mentioned space-cowboy-thriller Firefly on Fox, I wonder if Joss have enough juice left
over to invent plots for Faith
as entertaining as those in the past?" Since the Slayer line has to continue through Faith, and since Gellar wants to leave the show after season 7, there is much interesting plot potential with Faith's return.
Jeeze! I had forgotten all about this movie.
They have to do something. Since the move to UPN, something has been different. Buffy has gone the way of most sitcoms in that unless you have seen 3 of the 5 most recent episodes, the storyline is lost. Buffy used have stand alone episodes - each was fun, "light", and had both a beginning and an end. Lately, ever since Glorificus, it has been impossible to watch episodes out of order. The Buffy character seems to have been written into a corner, and even the introduction of the 3 arch nemisises (this is the slashdot tie-in) and their subsequent disposal has not been able break the cyclic decline into soap operadom. Maybe, if Faith kills everyone and becomes the dark slayer, we can return to the stand alone episodes of the early days and leave behind political statments and ratings whoring of the lesbian duo. I just wish they would do another musical episode. Once More, With Feeling is my favorite by far. My $.02 - and remember, an opinion is never worth more than you paid for it.
Anything you say will be held against you.
When I originally heard about buffy, I decided to pass on it. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I considered it 'bubble-gum'. I figured that, as a TV series, it would be pretty vacuous. When I finally got around to watching it, I found that it was hilarious. It is now one of only two TV series that I watch regularly (the other being Enterprise*).
In any case, I wrote up a defence of Buffy some time ago (which was printed in a local SF mag).
I also have Slashdot Journal entry about how Buffy's biggest problem in running for Emmys is that they're going for the drama prizes when they should competing in the comedy category.
*(for those of you just waiting for me to comit blasphemy, I've come to like the theme to Enterprise, and have gone to the trouble of transcribing and memorizing it... If you pay attention, it's basically a musical version of the 'where no-one has gone before' monologue.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Season 6 was terrible.... the acting looked terrible, the character interraction was terrible (blaaa lbaaa blaa blaa blaaa, 1 fight scene or 2, blaaa blaaa blaaa blaa blaa)
I mean, it's okay to have character interaction, but over 50% of talking and silence and so on in a show that you were looking at because it had a "season" storyline and lots of action and intrigues to which you didn't want to miss anything. In that season 5 rocked, and when buffy died, she should have stayed dead, after that the show just plain sucked (exept maybe the last episode of season 6).
Look at Angel, season 3 just rocked, they kept the same mood, storyline, action, darkness, heck this is supposed to be the "buffy for girls" show and I am way more on that one than on Buffy.
I always thought a good show ends up at it's peak with a good end of story, and if you want to cash in extra, you create a spinnoff that will rock as much (angel rocks). Waiting till a show suck just enough that it loses all popularity in order to cancel it shouldn't be the way to do things. And there would be trememdous value after to buy the whole episodes on DVD season by season (and ALL of them would actually sell) and be of great entertainment. Of course, we're talking about the TV industry..... so... if they'd be any stronger and have it their way, they'd film a rock for 30 minutes and charge us for it.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I ignored Buffy for years because I thought it would be like Beverly Hills 90210 or something. For some reason (I don't even remember why) I started watching the reruns that came on at 7:00 & 8:00 AM on FX. This is (maybe was) one seriously good SciFi show. The whole evil mayor season and the Glory season (I think they were seasons 3 & 4) were interesting, smart, funny, and scary.
The best and most creepy episode is "Hush", where these grinning, silent, evil beings float through town at night and steal everyone's voices and then select a few people each night to cut out their hearts while they CAN'T EVEN SCREAM. About 2/3 of the episode had no dialogue at all, the characters had to communicate in other ways. It was seriously freaky.
I know the past season wasn't as good, but there were still a few stand-out episodes, like the one where Buffy is dreaming (or really IS) in a mental institution and they're telling her that all the slayer stuff is in her mind. And the musical was much better than I thought it would be, it was actually very interesting.
Don't knock it until you try seasons 1 through 4.
Some people NEED to know if Willow is gonna ressurect Tara and live happily every after.
Some people NEED to know if Angel will ever escape from the bottom of that lake.
Some people NEED to know if Xander will ever convince Anya to take him back.
Some people NEED to know if Cordelia will leave Gruselug.
Thank Torvalds I'm not on of them!!!!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
That being said, I really think that Season 6 was almost great. Unfortunately, when you're doing this kind of creative risk-taking "almost great" usually is equivalent to "bad".
When you say, "They should have let her stay dead", you're forgetting that they chose to kill her off in the first place. In fact, the death and ressurrection had been planned more than a season before. A big gamble -- especially when you've just made a big point that Bringing Back the Dead is a big no-no.
Such an ambitious story twist required soom really good follow-up. And that's where they blew it. Af first they seemed to be leading into a really good arc, which involved a long-standing "good" character getting seduced by her own power and going over to the dark side. But then they seemed to lose track of what they were doing, going off in every which direction. Some of these directions were sort of good (the Evil Nerds had their moments) but most of it was recycled corniness that was better suited to an After School Special. (Magic as addiction? Barf!) Worst of all, none of it did anything to advance the main story arc.
Plus they put some of the characters though changes totally at odds with their past history. And then finally they picked up the original arc very clumsily, killing off a popular character in the process, but not making any real connection with the ideas raised at the beginning of the season. The final eps were very well done -- but I couldn't enjoy them, having been so frustrated by the way they were set up.
Despite his protestations to the contrary, I've come to think that Joss Whedon has spread himself too thin. He claims he delegated Buffy to people who know his mind, but the sad truth is that Season 6 foundered on gimmicks that he never allowed when he ran the show directly. He needs either to do a better job of delegating, or scale his work back.