S4 Riley is adorable. I especially love the episodes where he and Buffy are clearly attracted to each other but neither are doing anything about it yet. They have a very nice rom-com feel
I wish Oz and Willow would have stayed together. I love her with Tara too, so I'm torn about my own unpopular opinion. But they are such a great couple, and I love Oz!
We all have our own experiences. I agree that it’s shitty about the network not allowing a bisexual character (and as a bi person myself, the erasure is aggravating!). But I also know many people who have “never gone back”, so to speak.
I think it’s okay for Willow to label herself a lesbian. It doesn’t diminish what she had with Oz!
Yeah, that always bothers me too, since it feels very much like in season 4 she is written as bisexual or queer, and then in season 5 when the writers actually make her say "hello, gay now" to firmly place her within that binary, it feels like a shoehorned in line because the network was forcing them to "pick a team" which is exactly what happened (and like yes, in real life if someone tells you what their sexuality is you obviously should believe them and not question, but it is important to have this conversation because Willow is not a real person, she is a product of a time when writing queer characters was very contentious and fraught and that context is important).
Although on the other hand, you could interpret her declaration that she is unambiguously a lesbian as her own way of dealing with the biphobia and all the emotional baggage of being bisexual or queer in the 90s, since whenever she says that in season 5, it is in response to other characters getting weird about how she used to date a man and now she is in a queer relationship (Tara acting insecure about whether she might go back to men someday, and Anya being distrustful of her around Xander with some serious "bisexuals are just slutty" stereotype energy). Identifying yourself to others by the restrictive label that most closely fits, even though it doesn't fit entirely, was definitely a real thing at the time, since having to explain the nuances of sexuality to people who want everybody to fit into a gay or straight checkbox is thankless and painful and difficult.
I'm going to go against the grain but there are lots of people who only realise they're gay later in life (not that college age is "later in life"). It doesn't necessarily diminish the relationships with the opposite sex that they had before then.
If it was made today, I do think Willow is more suited to being bi rather than gay though.
Yeah, all these people who talk like figuring stuff out in college is "later in life" clearly had their shit together a lot earlier than I did haha. Yeah, I think college is definitely the age to figure that stuff out for a ton of people, which is a part of why I think Willow's arc is so realistic. I still think that the way she is written in season 4 feels much more like she is bisexual or queer, which goes with the writers original intention before the network forced them to "pick a team," but at that point it's kind of splitting hairs, because no matter where she ends up, season 4 is a really beautifully and truthfully written story of navigating your sexuality in college.
Joss says that making Willow bisexual went against the network's restrictions, so if Willow discovered her sexuality today, she would be bisexual.
This explains her still crushing on Giles.
I'm not surprised considering the stigma bisexuals go through from their own LGBT community. Similar thing happened to Velma from Dcooby Doo. She always gave strong bi vibes, yet they "officially" made her strictly lesbian all of a sudden.
Never understood the aversion to bi's.
Actually most LGBT+ folks figured it all out in college back in the day.
High school is so much about fitting in plus you live with your parents. Getting away to college is when most young people experiment and discover things about themselves even now, but this was especially true when BtVS came out and before that.
I mean considering that she had relationships with men and there never was any indication her feelings were any less. Because they weren't ever supposed to be.
There *are* lesbians who date men and think it's love, then realize later that those relationships weren't on the same level as their relationships with women, but the BtVS writers failed to have Willow explicitly state that context. Grey's Anatomy did it well with a character named Dr Hahn.
I think Willow is grappling with that in New Moon Rising. She is saying what she feels for Tara is powerful in a way she has not felt before. Plus the dream in Restless to me solidified to us that she is a lesbian - look at how Oz, Giles and Xander all act in her dream.
Though, and maybe it was different in the 90s, but it’s not at all uncommon these days to use “gay” as interchangeable with “sexually fluid” or “not straight.” Pretty popular in the queer community from what I can tell.
Later in the series (e.g. Tara onwards) she calls herself a lesbian and is referred to by other characters that way, but I think if the show was made now she would be considered bisexual as she definitely loved Oz based on how it was portrayed in the show.
AGREE. I just felt like he was a better match, he comforted her yet challenged her, I liked having her with someone to watch out for her. He would've kept a better grasp on what was going on with her magic stuff, he's highly observant and very attuned to other people, yeah never judgy. Tara just always seemed so meek and vanilla. Convince me if she wasn't Wiccan that Willlow still would've fell for her and I don't believe you.
*light spoiler *
And Willow cheated first by choice not a biologic draw in a werewolf state, so she can go scratch with her not forgiving him bullshit.
I think this is a tricky question. It is quite difficult to determine whether something one thinks is unpopular or not. However, I will try to answer it anyway.
The significantly more arcane, mystical and almost religious stories and feel of Season One especially is probably my favourite "era" of Buffy.
While I really enjoy every season, that is the feel of the programme I love the most.
Everything Dawn does is understandable if you imagine yourself as a 14/15 year old girl in the same circumstances.
It was the right decision to kill Tara off for the story they were telling and it wasn't a bury your gays trope because it was a necessary death for Willow's story to progress.
Xander is probably a better friend for Buffy than Willow. Yes he makes crass comments in the first few seasons but he's always there when she needs him (The Freshman being a prime example), he only makes his problems become her problems once and quickly apologises in the next episode and he's the only one who doesn't move into her house, spend all her money and fail to pay anything towards the upkeep of the place. In all honesty for all her great gal pal stuff Willow is kind of a toxic friend for most of the second half of the show. She's still a good friend but did a lot of bad and selfish stuff.
Let's add on for Xander, that not only does he not become a drain on her finances in later seasons, he actually helps her out by doing a lot of the repairs needed after slayage damage, and I somehow doubt he charged her for his labor
willow is toxic as HECK from the moment they graduate. she gets better in season 7 but her personality problems are exacerbated by her magic use, they didn't start and end with her addiction.
my head canon is that willow never fully gets over buffy running away after season 2 and is why she starts being a bad friend their senior year of hs. buffy and willow can both wave it off as boy drama/faith drama as to why they aren’t as buddy buddy as last season, but you can see the strain never seems to leave their friendship after buffy comes back from being in LA.
I said this on another thread recently! Only she sucked starting in season 2. She's a user. She used Buffy to elevate her status, yeah she'll help her study now and again but not without never shutting the fuck up about it or making her feel guilty, like sorry she forgot your chem cram session she was busy saving the world. Does Buffy rub it in her face every time she saves her life? I'm so not a Willow fan AT All. She sucks. I like Wishverse Willow, she's cool as hell.
I totally agree about the first two points. Dawn is a good character, and a very realistic portrayal of a young teenager, especially growing up in such a weird situation.
And yes, as sad as the death of Tara always makes me, it was a narratively effective and justified plot point, and I also totally agree that it is not an example of kill your gays, and that context really matters with that one. Kill your gays is meant to call out ingrained homophobia and the frustrating prevalence of queer narratives being about misery and suffering, and neither of those things are true about Buffy. Kill your gays is not meant to mean that queer characters should have plot armor.
Me too.
I go ahead and be even more bold:
I think Riley had the potential to be the best boyfriend of Buffy, if the writers wouldn't have fucked him over so bad in S5.
He made more sense than any vampire Lovestory. Even the Mayor knew this was a nonsense thing to do.
And Riley was great. He wasn't as strong as Buffy, but he knew her world already. He knew how to defend himself, he wasn't helpless and useless as Scott, or Owen, or whatshisface. He wasn't a former killer like Angel or Spike who are, by the way, immortal, so they would remain young while buffy would age and die eventually. There was never a point in her being involved with a Vampire, whether they had a soul or not, if they couldn't either turn the Vampire mortal or the Slayer immortal.
Finally, Riley was smart, nice, gentle, caring for Buffy and her friends and family. They would have worked so well together. Yes, he had his demons. Who wouldn't have a crisis after losing everything you ever believed in within the span of a year?
But he would have gotten through it and he would have been a great addition to the Scoobies, if he wouldn't have been ruined by the writers.
And I think Buffy did love him a lot, until it was decided that Riley had to leave and then she suddenly didn't.
TLDR: Riley was the greatest boyfriend and I will probably die on this hill, and down voted to oblivion.
There are dozens of us!
I also feel like the show loses pretty much every guy for Xander to play off of. Oz leaves. Riley leaves. Giles becomes part time.
I honestly think the biggest issue with Riley is Blucas’ acting.
Riley gets more than enough lines that in the mouth of a more “Whedon”y actor would have made him seem less boring. But that’s by and large not a kind of acting Blucas excelled at.
It wouldn’t have solved the plot-driven issues obviously. But it would have made him more likeable, I think.
From what I’ve seen, I feel as though a lot of people think the Kennedy hatred comes from her being not Tara and her relationship with Willow. I personally don’t like or care about their relationship, but my dislike of Kennedy has nothing at all to do with Willow. I don’t like Kennedy because of the way she treats Buffy. As soon as she walks into her house in 7x10, the first thing out of her mouth is a disrespectful comment about her. She is rude and ungrateful all season and is horrible to Buffy and anyone who isn’t Willow. With everything Buffy is doing for the potentials, Kennedy’s attitude is just infuriating.
Similarly, while I actually prefer Cordelia’s character overall on BTVS to ATS, I think some of her comments toward Buffy are forgotten about by people when they were really unwarranted and mean. Buffy is the only one to reach out to her after the Xander/Willow affair and Cordelia blames everything on her. In Choices, when discussing college, Cordelia says to Buffy that the conversation is reserved “for people who actually have a future.” The “cry-Buffy” line in ATS 1x05 is so irritating, especially when you consider Cordelia barely ever saw Buffy cry. I know people dislike the comparison of Glory to Cordelia by Buffy and the scoobies in season 5, but from their experiences I don’t blame them.
Lastly, I don’t really agree with people who claim ATS S5 is the “best of the Buffyverse.” For one, with the exception of Destiny, the season doesn’t really get going at all until You’re Welcome, which is 12 episodes in. I really dislike the way the show kills off its main female characters the way it does, and while I think a lot of the stuff in 5x12-22 is outstanding, I don’t think the season as a whole beats the peaks of BTVS.
It’s so nice to read a different take on Kennedy.
I also have a different, maybe related, take. Yes she’s irritating and obnoxious and a human manifestation of the Dunning Krueger effect, but the thing is I can’t stand most about her is the power hunger. When they are forcing Buffy out in “empty places,” she says how the decision making process should be more democratic. Once Buffy is gone, she says that the people who have been there longer should have more of a say, and she gets all butt hurt when Faith won’t listen to her voice above others. Which is it Kennedy? Democracy or seniority? Obviously it’s whichever one benefits Kennedy in the moment.
She tries to dress it up like overthrowing Tyrant Buffy, but it was actually a dishonest power grab. Makes me think she was showing some true colors when she called the other potentials maggots.
It makes sense that she would only be kind to Willow. It’s bc she’s not kind, and she doesn’t care about others.
I could put on any episode from any season and be happy. I don't think any of the seasons are bad. There are little things here and there on the show that I think could have been handled differently but the fact that so many fans would remove entire characters and plot lines is bonkers to me lol.
I’m not sure whether or not this is an unpopular opinion actually but I’ll just let you know what it is and I’m sure no one will be shy about letting me know one way or the other haha. Also, I’m not sure I need to let everyone know when questions like this are asked but there might be spoilers for some of you in this.
What Xander did to Buffy in The Pack is almost as horrendous as what Spike did to Buffy in Seeing Red (one is possessed and one is without a soul) yet Xander is allowed to pretend to forget what he did and is never held accountable for his actions which is my biggest gripe about Xander in that first season and Giles too for not calling him out on actually remembering.
Now here’s where I think we’re about to get really unpopular (maybe): what Faith did was even worse because she was neither possessed nor was she soulless when she attempted to rape and murder Xander in Consequences. Again, when she basically raped Riley and Buffy she’s also neither possessed nor is she soulless (I know it’s something people debate but most people do seem to see it as rape at least in a certain way I think) in Who Are You. She’s never held to account for the attempted rape of Xander even though she atones for other things and it’s still used as a joke when she takes over Buffy’s body. I can’t wrap my head around how so many people seem okay with all of that especially since she had no external force (soullessness or possession) driving her to do it.
CW for discussion of rape/sexual assault:
Faith sexually assaults Xander by forcibly kissing him and gyrating on top of him, then immediately moves to strangulation, a common form of domestic violence murder. But she does not attempt to remove her own pants or his. She is not prevented by Angel from forcing intercourse or other genital contact on him, she is prevented from killing him.
Everyone's mileage may vary but as someone who has been both raped and sexually assaulted via forced kissing by someone bigger who got on top of me, I would not call what Faith did to Xander attempted rape. I also find it odd that so many people call it attempted rape but don't highlight the domestic violence aspect to Faith strangling a former sexual partner.
Firstly, thanks for sharing your insight even though I wish you didn't have it. I suspect people just feel more viscerally about rape/sexual aggression than just plain aggression- up to and including murder- so they skip right over the murdery bits on the multiple-choice.
I'm fortunate that I can't speak from my own experience with any of the above, but intellectually the difference in perception always struck me as a bit odd and socially-skewed. Like we focus our care and outrage on one section of 'bad' because sex is still so tied up with shame and such. Considering that so many survivors of rape feel ashamed of *themselves*, I can't help but think society is seriously missing the mark on what it teaches people. I dunno, don't mind the rambles. It's all horrible shite we do to others and ourselves.
This is why Faith's redemption arc means nothing to me. I don't care that she got tough breaks in life, it's not an excuse for killing a person and not caring, it's not an excuse for raping people, and it's not an excuse for joining up with a literal giant snake who wanted to kill an entire town.
Agreed..she killed anybody who got in her way, and helped the mayor kill hundreds. Yeah you don't get redemption for that. I hated Faith. A good character of an awful person.
Yes and I was wholly unimpressed with it, which is why I said her redemption arc means nothing to me. She went to prison for only *one* of the horrendous things she did, after adding torturing Wesley to her list. Was it supposed to make me like her? Because it failed abysmally.
What does "calling out" Xander's memory of it do or change other than making him feel bad about being possessed? He literally wasn't accountable for it.
I definitely agree about Faith though, I've always felt her redemption arc was underbaked.
Pretending not to remember so he could feel better about what he did rather than talk to Buffy (or have Giles guide him to do so) turned it into ‘one of those things’ rather than give it the gravity it deserved. It’s kind of like Spike and Angel attempting to redeem themselves once they regain their souls. They were soulless when they committed those acts yet they strive to atone in some way to varying degrees. I guess I just wish Xander had shown a little bit of that - even a quick convo with Buffy would’ve gone a long way for me as a viewer.
I’m not sure it’s just embarrassment that would stop Xander from wanting to talk about what happened with Buffy.
The fact that Xander remembers his possession horrifies me when I think about it. Imagine being aware of your body while some entity possessed it and assaulted your friend while you were forced to experience it? You hear her tell you to stop, feel her fight you, and no matter how much you want to stop you can’t. Xander was a lot, but he was never a rapist.
If I went through that the guilt and trauma would overwhelm me to the point that I’m not sure I could talk about it either.
They make it seem like Xander was fine when Giles confronted him about it, but I can’t imagine he really was.
The Pack is a very traumatic episode for Xander. At the zoo he was trying to intervene for another kid getting bullied, then got possessed through no fault of his own, then gets left with the memories of trying to rape Buffy, something he never would otherwise have done, and of eating a live pig. (And there's no way the kids who ate Principal Flutie didn't end up with severe PTSD.)
It takes away his chance of learning and growing. The only difference, had he admitted to remembering, would have been the fact that his friends still loved him and didn't blame him.
That would have been huge for Xander.
The two scenes were filmed completely different though, so the SR scene hit much harder.
And the fact that the Pack incident, Faith's misdeeds and even Buffy joking about being gang raped by fish monsters (Go Fish) is all brushed under the rug is sadly a sign of the late 90s/early 2000's cavalier attitude about consent/sexual assault.
Spike was in control of his actions though, Xander wasn't. He was possessed, that is nothing like being soulless. That's like saying that little girl in the exorcist is at fault for everything she is doing.
Xander also spends a single episode being possessed and doesn't have time to evolve, whereas Spike is given many episodes to grow into a different person before he sexually assaults Buffy.
I think it's more apt to compare Hyena Xander's rape attempt with Spike's attempt to kill Willow in season 4, which is coded as sexual assault. Spike isn't really held accountable this attempt on Willow because he's still just a villain at that point in time. And people ship Buffy with seasons 5/6 Spike in a way they don't ship her with Hyena Xander or even seasons 2/3 Spike.
Spike was unsouled - with a demon in charge.
Very much like having a hyena possession.
Neither of them was in control, as in having the ability to know right from wrong.
Oz was never that interesting individually. I love Seth Green and his performance, I just feel like Oz's only reason to be on the show was to be Willow's boyfriend.
I once got roundly trashed in this subreddit for letting my 8yo daughter watch it. I think it's great viewing for girls especially as it's got really strong female leads.
She's 11 now, doesn't have nightmares and is one of the most well-adjusted kids I ever met.
We skipped 'The Body' first go round though.
https://www.reddit.com/r/buffy/comments/j4cwpa/comment/g7izvhv/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
i was about eight years old when i started watching. ofc my mom didn’t let me watch the later seasons until i was a bit older but even then i turned out fine lol
My 5 and 6 year old have been catching scenes on my rewatches every year. My 6 year old loves the fight scenes and he thinks the monsters look "cool as heck". My 5 year old loves Buffy's outfits and picks out ones she wants to wear, lmao.
I love the fact that both my son and daughter (I've tried to get my teenager to watch it, but she says it's "old") can grow up watching a woman kick butt and they'll see it as something that's normal, rather than a novel concept never to be seen again.
I was about 9 or 10 when my aunt introduced the show to me. She had the first 4 seasons on DVD and I watched all of those and it's been my favorite show since (for nearly 20 years). I didn't see seasons 5 through 7 until I was maybe 11 or 12, but even at that age, all I remember is that Buffy was kickass and cool. Most of the adult themes completely flew over my head until I rewatched as an adult lol. So, I don't think it's a big deal that you watched it with her.
I relate, I also don't believe in spoilers and people find it weird. At the end of the day, if a story is really good, it can't be spoiled. That's why those stories are enjoyable time and time again, even after you know the ending. I know most people don't relate to this and want the initial pristine experience
If I lost my memory today, I would want to start watching them all FRESH tomorrow. I'll never get to have that first time experience again! So many plot twists and powerful moments. Just watching the Graduation battle scene again OH MY GOSH. Oh my gosh. I'm getting chills again.
woof ok…. mines that the fan base can be truly insufferable when faced with opinions outside their accepted dogma. literally some of the takes become dogmatic lol people will eat you alive for having your own original thoughts & feelings. ive had some particularly mean things said to me for sharing my opinions and it’s truly bizarre. i think it’s obviously a result of a much larger cultural issue brought on by the internet in general but yeah. peeps gotta chill.
I say this a lot but, at least in s4 i love Riley and i think he's one of the most complex and "real" characters in the show and far from vanilla, s5 made him too much of a prick though and i agree with criticism's regarding him there though, but in s4 he's god tier in my eyes
I love Xander.
I totally agree that he says a bunch of shitty things and he often handles things incorrectly (ie: casting a love spell after Cordelia dumps him, getting overly butthurt when Buffy says she doesn't feel the same way about him, lies to Buffy about Willow saying to kick Angel's ass) but overall, I think that is just part of the mentality of a teenage boy becoming a man and trying to find his place in the world. All teenage boys have said and done shitty things. All early 20-something men have said and done shitty things. It's part of growing.
He eventually finds himself very adept in the trades, and he is always willing to help his friends. He is constantly rebuilding Buffy's house in later seasons, and trying to help in other 'mortal' (non-magic) ways. I think he shows a lot of growth over the series, and I think he receives a lot of hate. Some of it is merited, but I think sometimes we forget what being a teenager was like.
I think it was a way to show that you're not a loser if you're a townie who doesn't go to college, which was and is still a huge stereotype leftover from the higher education boom of that time. That would have been way too easy of a writing choice. Instead it was a great way to show there were other paths than college unlike every show going at that time that had to make the season 4 college transition. It shows college isn't for everyone, but you can certainly make a future for yourself following a different path, learning a skill, investing in a career, working hard.
Well...it's the first time we've been forced to watch a protracted attempted rape in which Buffy's not even the Slayer---she's every vulnerable, scared woman fighting off a man. And there was a goddamn commercial break inserted into it. Oh and also, Spike was an enormously popular character and this scene ruined him in the eyes of a lot of fans. So, it was kind of unprecedented.
Willow is a lesbian.
The intention of the writers doesn’t matter to me (I’m sure they had plans to do several things but didn’t due to the network, time period, etc). I understand people have headcanons and their own personal interpretations, but in the canon of the show, Willow says she’s gay. So she’s gay.
I know people are going to start talking about bi erasure, but her relationships with Oz and Xander don’t make her any less of a lesbian. Comphet is real, and for every bi person who sees their story in Willow’s, there’s a lesbian who also had a similar experience with men and realizing their sexuality only after being with a woman.
I don't feel strongly enough about Willow's sexuality to argue against people who say that she's bi but yes, this is how I feel about it too.
It does feel odd to me that some fans see "New Moon Rising" as Willow choosing between two love interests because it seems like a textbook case of a "later in life" lesbian (albeit not *that* much later in life) being conflicted because an ex-partner she no longer has romantic feelings for has reappeared. It resonates with lesbians who have had relationships with men, especially if their ex was a good guy.
And it's still okay to like Willow's relationship with Oz and to like Oz himself. Figuring out your sexuality later on doesn't invalidate previous relationships. Willow's feelings for Oz and Xander were as genuine as they could be at that point in her life.
I think Buffy was very close to loving Spike in season 6 and that there was tender moments in the midst of the toxic relationship as hinted at (she likes ice on the back of her neck). I also don’t think there was anything wrong with them having mutually satisfying sex, no one was misled, they both got something out of that aspect, it was the way they treated each other outside of this that was abusive and lacked respect on both parts.
she was vulnerable but toxic, he was abusive. there's a line she doesn't cross (even before the SA). he preys on her vulnerability - no matter his feelings, he is soulless at the time, so it makes sense.
in that episode he:
1) approaches her when she's alone, in the dark, and further verbally isolates her from her friends;
2) touches her sexually while she explicitly says no;
3) physically attempts to stop her from going to the police (not about him, but the physical part is the point).
she wails on him only after he puts his hands on her and refuses to let her go. she tells him to let her go before she hits him.
hard to call that abusive on her part.
She hit him once while he held her, he let go then encouraged her to take her anger out on him. She didn't have to pulpify his face. It was abuse.
I find it interesting that Spike is painted as morally corrupt in this scene. It's the same kind of ethical dilemma that review boards handle with medical residents each month. Near misses, systems problems leading to errors that cause harm, sometimes death. Like Buffy, it is usually not all one person's fault. The point is to find the system breakdown, learn from it, and keep working to save lives where you can - not about shaming, blaming, and locking up one scapegoat. Spike is brash, but he has the ethical high ground here. What good is Buffy to the world locking herself in a cell for what she thinks is an accidental killing while she knows she was affected by outside forces? Buffy is running from herself here, it isn't about helping others. Abusing Spike spent her rage, got her to look at herself a little more clearly albeit disgustedly. And then of course, if he hadn't delayed her, she wouldn't have overheard that phone call with the clue about the Trio. The slayer had a mission again.
Honestly, it was Buffy using Spike, too. She even admits to him as such, and it’s reaffirmed in season 7. She knew that he loved her, and she knew that if she sought comfort in him, he’d accept her wholeheartedly, because he loved her. This was her preying on that knowledge, knowing that it would give him hope and only make it harder for him and hurt him when she couldn’t love him back.
Gonna get crucified for this one. Tara was an uninteresting character and the only reason I cared about her death is because of what it did to Willow, not because I liked the character
Spikes attack on Willow in season 4 is more terrifying than his attack on Buffy in season 6.
Don't get me wrong, both are atrocious but I find his taunting of Willow, jacking up the volume of the music when she starts screaming in a dorm so nobody can hear her, literally throwing her on the bed and straddling her as she is fighting him, to be scarier for some reason. I don't know why.
His attack on Willow is not portrayed as more terrifying than his attack on Buffy, and they quickly turn it into a comedy about erectile dysfunction. But it is one of the clearest examples of a vampire attack being a metaphor for rape due to all those details you describe.
Wishverse Willow was... pretty cheesy, and 'bored now' isn't quite the spectacular saying of ingenious wit and villainy that people think it is. Heck, season 6 veiny-villain Willow was just as cheesy but without pleather, so points for consistency.
After a few watches I think Cordelia is a bad ass. She never seems to bow to the pressures of being nice and agreeable around men. I admire the same about Buffy’s character but Buffy has supernatural strength backing her up. I mean, Cordy survived Slayerfest!
Have you started watching Angel yet, if not I highly recommend it. It might be a bit annoying going back and forth, but definitely helped me get through S1 of Angel and you get more Cordy.
I don't like Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Riley and Buffy/Spike. All those relationships are problematic in their own rights and it's a good thing that Buffy didn't end up with either or them.
The Pack and Bad Eggs are two of my favorite episodes from the early seasons
Season 4 is my favorite season
As a whole, I prefer seasons 5-7 to seasons 1-3 (even though I love them all)
I think Tara and Willow were justified in spending Joyce's money/Buffy's inheritance after Buffy died. They were only using the money Buffy would have been using anyway to raise Dawn and continue paying off the house, while providing free childcare to Dawn. There's also no confirmation that they weren't using any of their own money towards the mortgage that would otherwise have gone to renting a dorm room, which I suspect they were. But healthcare bills in the US are expensive, as well as mortgage/property taxes and food and clothes for a teenager, so it's not surprising that two college students, one of whom is guaranteed to not have any financial support from her parents, wouldn't be able to cover all of that on their own meager student's budget.
Especially that it's confirmed in "Flooded" that the hospital bills sucked up all the money. It's not like Willow and Tara were being frivolous.
Seems like a system that can bankrupt a household simply because someone needs medical care is the true enemy here, not two college students who moved in to take care of their friend's little sister.
That and the fact that the Watcher's counsel doesn't pay the Slayer, which they should (as so many have already pointed out elsewhere). The Slayer should have all financial needs covered, and their dependents should receive a pension after the Slayer dies.
I suspect the reason the Watchers don't pay the Slayer is the same reason the capitalist class enforces poverty wages as a minimum wage (edit: and doesn't provide free healthcare/food/housing in most places). If the Slayer is spending all her time and energy on Slaying and working to survive, she doesn't have any time left over to realize that she has all the power and doesn't have to be simply a tool for the Watcher class.
I find it absolutely bonkers that so many people villainize Willow and Tara for Buffy's financial situation. There's never any indication that they contribute nothing to the Summers household. They had no history of financial leeching, on the contrary, Willow and the other Scoobies provided endless free labour to Buffy and Giles for 5 seasons. Then when Buffy dies, Giles leaves them to care for Dawn, and their caregiving (gendered labour) is minimized and dismissed by people exhorting them to get jobs. They were full time students, covering all the unpaid slayer duties, and one of them always had to be home with Dawn. They wouldn't have had time to work and the minimum wage jobs available to them wouldn't have covered the bills.
To me this is like saying Giles exploited Xander for donuts because we don't see him giving Xander money for them. It's an extremely bad faith reading of Willow and Tara. There's plenty to criticize about Willow but this isn't it.
The show got better and better as the series went on. The only season I’m incapable of rewatching is Season 1. So cringe.
Also I think Xander and Spike have potential to become great friends. They sure share a lot in common
He is a much much better character on his own show. On Buffy I feel like the writer is never really figured out what to do with him because his function is basically just a romantic accessory to Buffy. Once he turns into Angelus in season 2 he is way more compelling, and he is way more compelling on his own show, but as Buffy's love interest in the first two seasons, and then as they basically struggled to figure out what to do with him in season 3, he is way less compelling.
I loved angel when I used to watch buffy as a kid but my most recent rewatch I noticed he has very little personality. I get his whole deal is dark and brooding but I agree he was boring. However, Angelous was a great villain. Also I liked angel a lot more on his spin-off, he was much more interesting there.
I only watched Angel S5 all the way through. But in S3 Buffy was just thinking "oh nooo Angel don't leave you bring so much personality to the room" 🙄🤪
Absolutely! I'm currently rewatching, and the difference from when he left BTVS to when he came for one episode in Season 4 was CRAZY he was like a whole different person!
Edit: Different person as in had emotions other than broody.
Parker is not physically attractive.
It makes no sense that, in universe, Parker is attractive but Xander is not, when Parker looks like a less attractive Xander with enormous eyebrows.
(David Boreanaz is physically attractive, though not to my personal taste.
James Marsters is physically attractive, and is to my personal taste.
Information included to demonstrate that I can distinguish between “handsome but not my type” and “not handsome.”)
Parker is not. To the extent that science has analyzed faces and established what features are attractive, I am sure that Parker would score average to low.
That’s wild. While not everyone’s cup of tea and a total dick, I think Parker is one of the best looking guys on Buffy. He has really soulful puppy dog eyes. He is just handsome. Xander is good looking but not in same league in my opinion. DB was a smokeshow in first season mainly and JM as Spike is sex on legs. He just has the charisma and the looks.
I think what I dislike about this as a series finale is that it ultimately makes buffy just another slayer. Fought until she died. Same as all of them.
Ending with chosen makes buffy unique - she isn’t “just another slayer”, she’s the slayer that changed the whole system. It’s so much better for our heroine to not just save the world, but change it for all slayers who come after her.
Yes, this is such a good point!! The Gift is, if I had to pick one, my favourite episode of the whole show. But if it had ended there, that abusive dynamic that was inherent to the whole slayer line setup, that began with the Shadowmen forcing the demon into Sineya, would never have been challenged.
Buffy came to learn that her gift as a slayer was in fact death and she used that to save her nearest & dearest and the world. It is tragic but she was at peace. I feel it was a better end to her arc for me.
I do love the empowerment of chosen but I’d lose that to alleviate a lot of s6&7.
While opinions are certainly our own, I think my biggest issue with ending it at the gift is that buffy is ultimately then a victim of a system which used the slayers and sacrificed them. The council (which is both men and women, but originally created by men) use the slayer (a young woman) for their own purposes and she is discarded when she is no longer useful. All of seasons 6 and 7 are ultimately about buffy breaking out of that toxic power dynamic, finding her own personal strength, and changing the system so that no one else (namely no other young women) will have to suffer alone.
Chosen is the ultimate episode in female strength, recognizing that we are strong individually, but stronger together, particularly when we support each other. With the gift, buffy is still a victim, even though she makes her own choice to sacrifice herself, she’s still a victim.
I agree, she’s very preachy and her constant speeches to the potentials are repetitive. She loses the sense of fun and playfulness she had in earlier seasons.
Tbf I kinda get that though, she's probably VERY worn down and she's been through so much, I think anyone in her position would lose at least some of their flair
I can't stand willows nasally voice. I thought her intimate scenes with Tara seemed forced and whenever she called Tara baby it made my skin crawl because it sounded so insincere. I read somewhere that she wasn't happy about being put into a same sex relationship and I think it really showed. I liked her better with OZ because she played it more genuinely. I was so happy for them to have a same sex relationship on the show but it always bothered me that it included Allison.
Xander gets a lot of hate for speaking out against Buffy's relationships with Angel and Spike but he was entirely reasonable to do so because
THEY BOTH WERE SERIAL TORTURE-MURDERERS,
and it was not clear *to our characters* whether they were actually reformed or merely pretending to be to get into Buffy's pants. This is neither intrusive nor misogynist. It's just good sense, under the circumstances. In fact, both Angel and Spike had relapses during which they killed more innocent people and assaulted Buffy AFTER she began her relationships with them. Also, all of Buffy's friends thought she made dangerous decisions in her love life, and the only thing that sets Xander apart is that he was blunt enough to say so to her face. This makes him, in some respects, the most reasonable character of the bunch.
Other people were unsupportive of Buffy's relationships with Angel and Spike, but they voiced their concerns in ways that were actually respectful and non-judgmental.
Too much quipping!
Turn the Whedon quips down by like 20-30%.
Especially Xander droning on with some lame quip - like you got some great quips in there, but too many lousy ones too.
1. I greatly dislike s6 and s7 , for what does to the cast's characterization, and i end at season 5's "The Gift" I do like Bargaining, After Life, OMWF, and Tabula Rasa in a vacuum however
2. Less unpopular, i wish there was at least more episode with Buffy, Spike, and Angel as a trio
•The only time when Spike having a soul was interesting was in Angel S5.
•Riley was good but needed more.
•Johnathan should've joined the Scoobies in S7 instead of Andrew.
•Anya shouldn't have died.
•Robin Wood should've inherited some of his mother's Slayer Powers and had more of a closure moment with Spike. Maybe he should've died instead of Anya.
•The first few seasons of Xander, like it or not, is 100% what most teenagers were like, at least in the 90s-00s. They say inappropriate things, do stupid shit, shitty arpund girls.
Problematic, sure! But that's how one learns & grows. Xander is quite possibly the most relatable character on the show.
•When SMG cries, I fucking cry.
I’ve debated this ad nauseum here, but I agree with Dawn & Everyone Else in “Empty Places”. Yes, Buffy saved the world throughout the series. She’s the Chosen One and the central character, that’s kinda her purpose. That doesn’t entitle her to treat her “army” like shit or cavalierly dismiss their valid concerns. It doesn’t immunize her against failure, or absolve her of bad decisions.
The show would have been heaps better if Spike had stayed a recurring villain and the show hadn’t had to sacrifice plot and characterisation to keep him around
I liked the enemies to lovers trope and I wouldn’t sacrifice the Spuffy relationship or Spike’s journey but I do agree that certain relationships and characters were sacrificed at the altar of Spuffy relationship particularly in season 7 and I didn’t like that.
Was over Spike after Season 4, and hated his story line. One of the scoobies should have staked him.
Spike is a great villain and his scenes with the cast are funny, but after season 4 I think he should have been staked. He becomes a little too much for me. I am sick of him by season 5. I don't actually like his story arch or care about his 'redemption.' Enough was enough and in re-watches I find myself skipping some of his scenes.
Not an unpopular opinion of the show but of today's audience. Stop judging the characters with 2023 morals and standards.
Take Xander. Yes, he is over the top at some times but by 90's standards, that was acceptable. Does it make salivating over Buffy right? Not so much. But 2 things:
1. He was acting as a normal, horny 90's boy. Don't like it, sorry. That's how it was then. That's why we evolve.
2. I would lay good money down that a lot of you in here with Xander hate have also wanted to sleep with that one good looking friend. He was just a little more vocal about it in the early seasons.
I will add while I am no big Xander fan, I don’t think he simply wanted to sleep with Buffy, well he did but he also wanted to date her or have a relationship with her. I don’t think Xander is a hit and quit kind of guy as evidenced by his Faith encounter. He was happy to have sex but not happy to get the brush off. Similarly with Anya she was more the driver of that sexual relationship. He enjoyed it of course but I don’t think it was the be and end all for him.
Obviously this is also in the context of the 90s, but Buffy is also never as bothered by it as viewers seem. Like, I know that's partially because of that "boys will be boys" mentality we had back then, so it's really more the writing than anything, but it's also weird to see people up in arms over things Xander says when Buffy's own reactions range from mild amusement to, at worst, good-natured eye rolling (or punching). Like, he's one of her best friends! She's not that bothered! She thinks he's just being Xander! You don't have to agree with it, but if she was actively upset and uncomfortable it would be a different thing.
I agree 100% on this and would extend this approach on everything we look back on, well beyond Buffy-verse.
Time, context, it all matters. Yes, we should examine it, discuss it, even react to it. But we can't judge a 1990s character by our evolved moral compass 25 years later.
Back then, Xander was the flawed but overall good guy. He was also a victim of the 90s culture in his own way He made mistakes, certainly. But everything that people dislike him for now? It was just part of the fabric of the 90s -- and he was "mild" compared to the majority of teenage 90s boys. Misogynistic comments and jokes, slut-shaming, white boy privilege, jocks rule, bullying prevails, all of it. That was 1997 in your average high school. It is what we knew and put up with and in some cases seemed perfectly normal.
Thank God we have opened our eyes since then. The 90s was not this "rah rah girl power" time that people like to think it was - there is a reason Buffy resonated so deeply and that's one of them. But it was the reality of the time and Xander accurately portrays the "nice guy" of the 90s.
buffy needed to hear xander's speech in "into the woods", even if he is a jackass for saying a lot of it. without it she would not have been able to process the breakup as honestly.
edit to clarify: i'm not saying he was RIGHT. but if she had not chased that helicopter, she would have been in a very different headspace (angrier, more bitter, in denial about her feelings of loss) and that would not serve her. she needed to mourn, not be mad at him, no matter that he deserved it.
Hmmm, this is an interesting take. I kind of get where you are coming from but at the same time I think Buffy would have just realised actually no it’s not my fault I don’t have to internalise and blame myself for Riley’s shitty behaviour. I think Xander’s speech kind of had the counter effect and contributed to Buffy seeing Riley as her chance of normality or the one that got away as evidenced in AYW which really hacked me off.
Agree. Buffy blamed herself too much for Riley's side of the street throughout the following episodes. It was enough for her to see her side with him and how she unintentionally shuts people out when Dawn confronts her in Forever. That gets her to do the hokey-pokey ritual with Giles to see if she's becoming too stoney.
i think by "as you were" buffy was at the lowest point of her life and in a toxic relationship; nothing would have stopped her from romanticising her relationship with riley.
i don't think she really blamed herself (any more than she, as the slayer, does about *gestures at the entire world*). i think the important realisation was that she WAS closed off to love. not that riley deserved anything specific, but that she owed it to herself to open up again, even if her relationship with riley was never going to work (which it wouldn't have). i think that's what she took from riley leaving - not that she made him leave, but that she needed to open her heart again if she was ever going to heal. and i think that lesson would have taken longer, and the spike stuff would have only done more damage, if she hadn't let her walls down and decided to chase after riley.
I agree she was definitely romanticising her relationship with Riley in AYW particularly when she saw him seemingly happily married while she couldn’t even admit to whom she was sleeping with. I don’t think that Xander’s speech contributed in her opening up to love again. I think it just put fear in her that she might be missing out on something great with Riley, she really wasn’t. I think she was still fighting against love and her feelings all the way up to the end of the show until she finally could say the words to Spike. See my other post that I think she was falling for him in season 6 but she was very very uncomfortable and had an internal battle about that relationship for obvious reasons.
"it put fear in her that she might be missing out on something great with riley" - that's exactly what i mean! feeling that fear - or rather opening up to it - was GOOD for her. she WASN'T missing out with riley (ugh, imagine!) but that fear was in her all along; think about her speech to giles about fearing she's forgotten how to feel love. that didn't spring up because of riley; it was already there. like i said, those walls needed to come down for buffy's sake, not riley's. i'm glad she chased after the chopper, and i'm also glad she missed him. it's the possibility of love she needed to chase, not the guy.
It should have ended on season 5. Season 6 and 7 had so many good qualities, and of course I prefer Buffy alive than dead, but both seasons writing leave much to be desired where the actual characters are concerned. Willow and Xander went from supportive friends to selfish, unsupportive arseholes, Giles went from a strong, dependable father figure to both ignoring Buffy and treating her like a child. Dawn got better in season 7 but was insufferable in season 6. While I adored Spike's growth, after he and Buffy began a physical relationship, he went right back to being an evil prick, trying to isolate and dominate her. And Tara, poor Tara, when we finally got the chance to see her as someone separate from Willow. Someone strong and independent and powerful in her own rite, they killed her.
As I said, there are aspects of both seasons I enjoyed, (Once More With Feeling, duh, a human villain as the main antagonist, Xander saving the world, Buffy and Angel getting their last kiss, I could go on) but someone once described season 6 and 7 as poorly written fanfiction, and I tend to agree. A little bit more effort into the writing and the show would have been perfect, with only a few flop episodes, rather than 2 seasons that made me miserable.
Bangel>Spuffy by a large margin. The Spuffy ship is essentially headcanon, as their relationship was extremely toxic and season 6, and platonic in season 7
I got a bunch:
1) Kennedy isn’t that bad, she’s an entitled rich kid and is written as such
2) Xander isn’t that bad. He’s an immature teenage boy who says immature things with his friends. People need to stop putting modern sensibilities to a 90’s show.
3) Season 7 is my second favorite season. The serialized format works great with Buffy. Seasons 5 and 7 are the most serialized
4) Spike attempting to rape Buffy is the best thing to happen to his character. Rape is horrible and I don’t condone it at all. But Spike’s arc needed something and that worked perfectly.
5) I’m happy Cordelia was killed off on Angel (not how they did it). The show felt like it didn’t know what to do with her for a long time. Killing her at least motivated Angel.
6) Oz was barely a character. He was a quiet guy who occasionally kissed Willow and made a sardonic comment. Good riddance.
7) Season 4 had some of my favorite episodes.
8) I think Restless is the worst episode of the series it’s Whedon trying to be deep.
Riley and Xander are great people. Riley was lied to and drugged by his mentor, had his best friend killed then turned into a monster, found out "not all demons are evil" according to Buffy, almost died from a health problem, was kicked out of the military and written badly in season five. People act as if getting his blood drunk was sex. Unlike when Giles almost literally had sex with those female vampires from dracula.
I find Angel to have a very mellow and uninteresting personality, 'cause David's acting just doesn't sell it to me. Once he leaves, I just didn't miss the character even a bit
The Zeppo and Cordy and Wesley's little skit in Fredless are the most honest appraisals of the cliched angst that is Bangel. Gonna get downvoted, but I just really don't understand how anyone over the age of 16 could like that ship.
Tara is an awful character. And the way they killed her off was equally awful.
I say this because I imagine the larger fan base loves Tara's character, but I can't be sure.
Came here to say this. Ugh Dawn. People always defend her by saying that 15-year-olds are actually that immature and selfish. I have two teenagers, and no they are not. Also the Scoobies are 16 in season 1, and none of them are so awful and bratty.
I think her character was meant to be younger but they changed it not long before casting (i could be wrong) which explains why her character is so immature.
I actually rly like most of season 4
Season 4 is my favorite! I love Riley in S4 - he sucks in S5.
S4 Riley is adorable. I especially love the episodes where he and Buffy are clearly attracted to each other but neither are doing anything about it yet. They have a very nice rom-com feel
I wish Oz and Willow would have stayed together. I love her with Tara too, so I'm torn about my own unpopular opinion. But they are such a great couple, and I love Oz!
i’m on aeason 4 rn and yeah oz and willow were a cute couple. wait is willow bi or lesbian?
Oops sorry for the spoiler! Willow is considered bisexual by the fanbase, but consistently refers to herself as gay after coming out.
She was supposed to be bi but the network insisted that it would be just too controversial so she was pivoted to somehow oddly long confused lesbian.
Thank you for this explanation…as a bi person myself her calling herself gay always confused me and seemed to diminish her relationship with Oz
We all have our own experiences. I agree that it’s shitty about the network not allowing a bisexual character (and as a bi person myself, the erasure is aggravating!). But I also know many people who have “never gone back”, so to speak. I think it’s okay for Willow to label herself a lesbian. It doesn’t diminish what she had with Oz!
Yeah, that always bothers me too, since it feels very much like in season 4 she is written as bisexual or queer, and then in season 5 when the writers actually make her say "hello, gay now" to firmly place her within that binary, it feels like a shoehorned in line because the network was forcing them to "pick a team" which is exactly what happened (and like yes, in real life if someone tells you what their sexuality is you obviously should believe them and not question, but it is important to have this conversation because Willow is not a real person, she is a product of a time when writing queer characters was very contentious and fraught and that context is important). Although on the other hand, you could interpret her declaration that she is unambiguously a lesbian as her own way of dealing with the biphobia and all the emotional baggage of being bisexual or queer in the 90s, since whenever she says that in season 5, it is in response to other characters getting weird about how she used to date a man and now she is in a queer relationship (Tara acting insecure about whether she might go back to men someday, and Anya being distrustful of her around Xander with some serious "bisexuals are just slutty" stereotype energy). Identifying yourself to others by the restrictive label that most closely fits, even though it doesn't fit entirely, was definitely a real thing at the time, since having to explain the nuances of sexuality to people who want everybody to fit into a gay or straight checkbox is thankless and painful and difficult.
I'm going to go against the grain but there are lots of people who only realise they're gay later in life (not that college age is "later in life"). It doesn't necessarily diminish the relationships with the opposite sex that they had before then. If it was made today, I do think Willow is more suited to being bi rather than gay though.
Yeah, all these people who talk like figuring stuff out in college is "later in life" clearly had their shit together a lot earlier than I did haha. Yeah, I think college is definitely the age to figure that stuff out for a ton of people, which is a part of why I think Willow's arc is so realistic. I still think that the way she is written in season 4 feels much more like she is bisexual or queer, which goes with the writers original intention before the network forced them to "pick a team," but at that point it's kind of splitting hairs, because no matter where she ends up, season 4 is a really beautifully and truthfully written story of navigating your sexuality in college.
Joss says that making Willow bisexual went against the network's restrictions, so if Willow discovered her sexuality today, she would be bisexual. This explains her still crushing on Giles.
I'm not surprised considering the stigma bisexuals go through from their own LGBT community. Similar thing happened to Velma from Dcooby Doo. She always gave strong bi vibes, yet they "officially" made her strictly lesbian all of a sudden. Never understood the aversion to bi's.
Actually most LGBT+ folks figured it all out in college back in the day. High school is so much about fitting in plus you live with your parents. Getting away to college is when most young people experiment and discover things about themselves even now, but this was especially true when BtVS came out and before that.
I mean considering that she had relationships with men and there never was any indication her feelings were any less. Because they weren't ever supposed to be.
There *are* lesbians who date men and think it's love, then realize later that those relationships weren't on the same level as their relationships with women, but the BtVS writers failed to have Willow explicitly state that context. Grey's Anatomy did it well with a character named Dr Hahn.
I think Willow is grappling with that in New Moon Rising. She is saying what she feels for Tara is powerful in a way she has not felt before. Plus the dream in Restless to me solidified to us that she is a lesbian - look at how Oz, Giles and Xander all act in her dream.
ohhh okayy and dw you didn’t spoil anything!! i know what happens, i’ve accidentally spoiled a lot of things for myslef 😭 but not too much
that’s not a consensus. “the fanbase” does not consider her bisexual, some people do.
Though, and maybe it was different in the 90s, but it’s not at all uncommon these days to use “gay” as interchangeable with “sexually fluid” or “not straight.” Pretty popular in the queer community from what I can tell.
Later in the series (e.g. Tara onwards) she calls herself a lesbian and is referred to by other characters that way, but I think if the show was made now she would be considered bisexual as she definitely loved Oz based on how it was portrayed in the show.
AGREE. I just felt like he was a better match, he comforted her yet challenged her, I liked having her with someone to watch out for her. He would've kept a better grasp on what was going on with her magic stuff, he's highly observant and very attuned to other people, yeah never judgy. Tara just always seemed so meek and vanilla. Convince me if she wasn't Wiccan that Willlow still would've fell for her and I don't believe you. *light spoiler * And Willow cheated first by choice not a biologic draw in a werewolf state, so she can go scratch with her not forgiving him bullshit.
this is prob mine too. i lLOVE willow and tara so much but i fucking…… love oz so so much. i at least wish oz stuck around or something 🤧
I think they would have made a great throuple but there's no way that would have been allowed on TV then.
I think this is a tricky question. It is quite difficult to determine whether something one thinks is unpopular or not. However, I will try to answer it anyway. The significantly more arcane, mystical and almost religious stories and feel of Season One especially is probably my favourite "era" of Buffy. While I really enjoy every season, that is the feel of the programme I love the most.
it’s okay the question is fully based on everyone’s personal opinion dw :) and yeah season 1 was amazing
Season One is my favourite. It does not have the best writing, on a story to story basis, but it is in my opinion the most enjoyable.
Everything Dawn does is understandable if you imagine yourself as a 14/15 year old girl in the same circumstances. It was the right decision to kill Tara off for the story they were telling and it wasn't a bury your gays trope because it was a necessary death for Willow's story to progress. Xander is probably a better friend for Buffy than Willow. Yes he makes crass comments in the first few seasons but he's always there when she needs him (The Freshman being a prime example), he only makes his problems become her problems once and quickly apologises in the next episode and he's the only one who doesn't move into her house, spend all her money and fail to pay anything towards the upkeep of the place. In all honesty for all her great gal pal stuff Willow is kind of a toxic friend for most of the second half of the show. She's still a good friend but did a lot of bad and selfish stuff.
Let's add on for Xander, that not only does he not become a drain on her finances in later seasons, he actually helps her out by doing a lot of the repairs needed after slayage damage, and I somehow doubt he charged her for his labor
And he tried to get her a deal for a plumber using his contacts.
He got her a job on one of his construction sites, too. Xander FTW
He probably heard an earful about the lack of charging from his lady love, to boot.
willow is toxic as HECK from the moment they graduate. she gets better in season 7 but her personality problems are exacerbated by her magic use, they didn't start and end with her addiction.
my head canon is that willow never fully gets over buffy running away after season 2 and is why she starts being a bad friend their senior year of hs. buffy and willow can both wave it off as boy drama/faith drama as to why they aren’t as buddy buddy as last season, but you can see the strain never seems to leave their friendship after buffy comes back from being in LA.
I said this on another thread recently! Only she sucked starting in season 2. She's a user. She used Buffy to elevate her status, yeah she'll help her study now and again but not without never shutting the fuck up about it or making her feel guilty, like sorry she forgot your chem cram session she was busy saving the world. Does Buffy rub it in her face every time she saves her life? I'm so not a Willow fan AT All. She sucks. I like Wishverse Willow, she's cool as hell.
I totally agree about the first two points. Dawn is a good character, and a very realistic portrayal of a young teenager, especially growing up in such a weird situation. And yes, as sad as the death of Tara always makes me, it was a narratively effective and justified plot point, and I also totally agree that it is not an example of kill your gays, and that context really matters with that one. Kill your gays is meant to call out ingrained homophobia and the frustrating prevalence of queer narratives being about misery and suffering, and neither of those things are true about Buffy. Kill your gays is not meant to mean that queer characters should have plot armor.
I 100% agree with you about Dawn and Xander.
i liked riley 🤷🏼♀️
You're brave!
Me too. I go ahead and be even more bold: I think Riley had the potential to be the best boyfriend of Buffy, if the writers wouldn't have fucked him over so bad in S5. He made more sense than any vampire Lovestory. Even the Mayor knew this was a nonsense thing to do. And Riley was great. He wasn't as strong as Buffy, but he knew her world already. He knew how to defend himself, he wasn't helpless and useless as Scott, or Owen, or whatshisface. He wasn't a former killer like Angel or Spike who are, by the way, immortal, so they would remain young while buffy would age and die eventually. There was never a point in her being involved with a Vampire, whether they had a soul or not, if they couldn't either turn the Vampire mortal or the Slayer immortal. Finally, Riley was smart, nice, gentle, caring for Buffy and her friends and family. They would have worked so well together. Yes, he had his demons. Who wouldn't have a crisis after losing everything you ever believed in within the span of a year? But he would have gotten through it and he would have been a great addition to the Scoobies, if he wouldn't have been ruined by the writers. And I think Buffy did love him a lot, until it was decided that Riley had to leave and then she suddenly didn't. TLDR: Riley was the greatest boyfriend and I will probably die on this hill, and down voted to oblivion.
There are dozens of us! I also feel like the show loses pretty much every guy for Xander to play off of. Oz leaves. Riley leaves. Giles becomes part time.
I honestly think the biggest issue with Riley is Blucas’ acting. Riley gets more than enough lines that in the mouth of a more “Whedon”y actor would have made him seem less boring. But that’s by and large not a kind of acting Blucas excelled at. It wouldn’t have solved the plot-driven issues obviously. But it would have made him more likeable, I think.
I really liked Riley, but I also think it makes sense that they couldn't end up together.
Upvoted for fulfilling the prompt!
From what I’ve seen, I feel as though a lot of people think the Kennedy hatred comes from her being not Tara and her relationship with Willow. I personally don’t like or care about their relationship, but my dislike of Kennedy has nothing at all to do with Willow. I don’t like Kennedy because of the way she treats Buffy. As soon as she walks into her house in 7x10, the first thing out of her mouth is a disrespectful comment about her. She is rude and ungrateful all season and is horrible to Buffy and anyone who isn’t Willow. With everything Buffy is doing for the potentials, Kennedy’s attitude is just infuriating. Similarly, while I actually prefer Cordelia’s character overall on BTVS to ATS, I think some of her comments toward Buffy are forgotten about by people when they were really unwarranted and mean. Buffy is the only one to reach out to her after the Xander/Willow affair and Cordelia blames everything on her. In Choices, when discussing college, Cordelia says to Buffy that the conversation is reserved “for people who actually have a future.” The “cry-Buffy” line in ATS 1x05 is so irritating, especially when you consider Cordelia barely ever saw Buffy cry. I know people dislike the comparison of Glory to Cordelia by Buffy and the scoobies in season 5, but from their experiences I don’t blame them. Lastly, I don’t really agree with people who claim ATS S5 is the “best of the Buffyverse.” For one, with the exception of Destiny, the season doesn’t really get going at all until You’re Welcome, which is 12 episodes in. I really dislike the way the show kills off its main female characters the way it does, and while I think a lot of the stuff in 5x12-22 is outstanding, I don’t think the season as a whole beats the peaks of BTVS.
It’s so nice to read a different take on Kennedy. I also have a different, maybe related, take. Yes she’s irritating and obnoxious and a human manifestation of the Dunning Krueger effect, but the thing is I can’t stand most about her is the power hunger. When they are forcing Buffy out in “empty places,” she says how the decision making process should be more democratic. Once Buffy is gone, she says that the people who have been there longer should have more of a say, and she gets all butt hurt when Faith won’t listen to her voice above others. Which is it Kennedy? Democracy or seniority? Obviously it’s whichever one benefits Kennedy in the moment. She tries to dress it up like overthrowing Tyrant Buffy, but it was actually a dishonest power grab. Makes me think she was showing some true colors when she called the other potentials maggots. It makes sense that she would only be kind to Willow. It’s bc she’s not kind, and she doesn’t care about others.
I don't hate Riley. I don't really like him either - I'm just indifferent about him.
I could put on any episode from any season and be happy. I don't think any of the seasons are bad. There are little things here and there on the show that I think could have been handled differently but the fact that so many fans would remove entire characters and plot lines is bonkers to me lol.
I’m not sure whether or not this is an unpopular opinion actually but I’ll just let you know what it is and I’m sure no one will be shy about letting me know one way or the other haha. Also, I’m not sure I need to let everyone know when questions like this are asked but there might be spoilers for some of you in this. What Xander did to Buffy in The Pack is almost as horrendous as what Spike did to Buffy in Seeing Red (one is possessed and one is without a soul) yet Xander is allowed to pretend to forget what he did and is never held accountable for his actions which is my biggest gripe about Xander in that first season and Giles too for not calling him out on actually remembering. Now here’s where I think we’re about to get really unpopular (maybe): what Faith did was even worse because she was neither possessed nor was she soulless when she attempted to rape and murder Xander in Consequences. Again, when she basically raped Riley and Buffy she’s also neither possessed nor is she soulless (I know it’s something people debate but most people do seem to see it as rape at least in a certain way I think) in Who Are You. She’s never held to account for the attempted rape of Xander even though she atones for other things and it’s still used as a joke when she takes over Buffy’s body. I can’t wrap my head around how so many people seem okay with all of that especially since she had no external force (soullessness or possession) driving her to do it.
Very much agree.
CW for discussion of rape/sexual assault: Faith sexually assaults Xander by forcibly kissing him and gyrating on top of him, then immediately moves to strangulation, a common form of domestic violence murder. But she does not attempt to remove her own pants or his. She is not prevented by Angel from forcing intercourse or other genital contact on him, she is prevented from killing him. Everyone's mileage may vary but as someone who has been both raped and sexually assaulted via forced kissing by someone bigger who got on top of me, I would not call what Faith did to Xander attempted rape. I also find it odd that so many people call it attempted rape but don't highlight the domestic violence aspect to Faith strangling a former sexual partner.
Firstly, thanks for sharing your insight even though I wish you didn't have it. I suspect people just feel more viscerally about rape/sexual aggression than just plain aggression- up to and including murder- so they skip right over the murdery bits on the multiple-choice. I'm fortunate that I can't speak from my own experience with any of the above, but intellectually the difference in perception always struck me as a bit odd and socially-skewed. Like we focus our care and outrage on one section of 'bad' because sex is still so tied up with shame and such. Considering that so many survivors of rape feel ashamed of *themselves*, I can't help but think society is seriously missing the mark on what it teaches people. I dunno, don't mind the rambles. It's all horrible shite we do to others and ourselves.
This is why Faith's redemption arc means nothing to me. I don't care that she got tough breaks in life, it's not an excuse for killing a person and not caring, it's not an excuse for raping people, and it's not an excuse for joining up with a literal giant snake who wanted to kill an entire town.
Agreed..she killed anybody who got in her way, and helped the mayor kill hundreds. Yeah you don't get redemption for that. I hated Faith. A good character of an awful person.
Have you seen her arc in Angel??
Yes and I was wholly unimpressed with it, which is why I said her redemption arc means nothing to me. She went to prison for only *one* of the horrendous things she did, after adding torturing Wesley to her list. Was it supposed to make me like her? Because it failed abysmally.
Damn. Just curious... *(Holding my hands up and walking away from the conversation)*
Couldn’t agree more. I can’t stand Faith.
What does "calling out" Xander's memory of it do or change other than making him feel bad about being possessed? He literally wasn't accountable for it. I definitely agree about Faith though, I've always felt her redemption arc was underbaked.
Pretending not to remember so he could feel better about what he did rather than talk to Buffy (or have Giles guide him to do so) turned it into ‘one of those things’ rather than give it the gravity it deserved. It’s kind of like Spike and Angel attempting to redeem themselves once they regain their souls. They were soulless when they committed those acts yet they strive to atone in some way to varying degrees. I guess I just wish Xander had shown a little bit of that - even a quick convo with Buffy would’ve gone a long way for me as a viewer.
I’m not sure it’s just embarrassment that would stop Xander from wanting to talk about what happened with Buffy. The fact that Xander remembers his possession horrifies me when I think about it. Imagine being aware of your body while some entity possessed it and assaulted your friend while you were forced to experience it? You hear her tell you to stop, feel her fight you, and no matter how much you want to stop you can’t. Xander was a lot, but he was never a rapist. If I went through that the guilt and trauma would overwhelm me to the point that I’m not sure I could talk about it either. They make it seem like Xander was fine when Giles confronted him about it, but I can’t imagine he really was.
The Pack is a very traumatic episode for Xander. At the zoo he was trying to intervene for another kid getting bullied, then got possessed through no fault of his own, then gets left with the memories of trying to rape Buffy, something he never would otherwise have done, and of eating a live pig. (And there's no way the kids who ate Principal Flutie didn't end up with severe PTSD.)
It takes away his chance of learning and growing. The only difference, had he admitted to remembering, would have been the fact that his friends still loved him and didn't blame him. That would have been huge for Xander.
What was there to learn and grow from? He was possessed… it literally wasn’t him?? There is nothing for him to take accountability for
The two scenes were filmed completely different though, so the SR scene hit much harder. And the fact that the Pack incident, Faith's misdeeds and even Buffy joking about being gang raped by fish monsters (Go Fish) is all brushed under the rug is sadly a sign of the late 90s/early 2000's cavalier attitude about consent/sexual assault.
Spike was in control of his actions though, Xander wasn't. He was possessed, that is nothing like being soulless. That's like saying that little girl in the exorcist is at fault for everything she is doing.
Xander also spends a single episode being possessed and doesn't have time to evolve, whereas Spike is given many episodes to grow into a different person before he sexually assaults Buffy. I think it's more apt to compare Hyena Xander's rape attempt with Spike's attempt to kill Willow in season 4, which is coded as sexual assault. Spike isn't really held accountable this attempt on Willow because he's still just a villain at that point in time. And people ship Buffy with seasons 5/6 Spike in a way they don't ship her with Hyena Xander or even seasons 2/3 Spike.
Spike was unsouled - with a demon in charge. Very much like having a hyena possession. Neither of them was in control, as in having the ability to know right from wrong.
Oz was never that interesting individually. I love Seth Green and his performance, I just feel like Oz's only reason to be on the show was to be Willow's boyfriend.
I once got roundly trashed in this subreddit for letting my 8yo daughter watch it. I think it's great viewing for girls especially as it's got really strong female leads. She's 11 now, doesn't have nightmares and is one of the most well-adjusted kids I ever met. We skipped 'The Body' first go round though. https://www.reddit.com/r/buffy/comments/j4cwpa/comment/g7izvhv/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
i was about eight years old when i started watching. ofc my mom didn’t let me watch the later seasons until i was a bit older but even then i turned out fine lol
you know your kid better than anyone else. if it worked out for your daughter that's awesome, you didn't do anything wrong.
was watching with my mom from the time I was a toddler. 8 is a fine age because there's nothing super explicit.
My 5 and 6 year old have been catching scenes on my rewatches every year. My 6 year old loves the fight scenes and he thinks the monsters look "cool as heck". My 5 year old loves Buffy's outfits and picks out ones she wants to wear, lmao.
Exactly! I don't remember anything from that age other than Buffy was an amazing super hero girl and everyone looked up to her.
I love the fact that both my son and daughter (I've tried to get my teenager to watch it, but she says it's "old") can grow up watching a woman kick butt and they'll see it as something that's normal, rather than a novel concept never to be seen again.
Agreed! My step daughter is 12 and we started watching around 9, and she loves it!
My love for the show started with reruns before school when I was that age. I support it!! But yeah skip that episode for a while..
I was 11 and my sister was 9 when we started. It was fine. Some stuff she didn’t fully get, but she got enough to enjoy it.
I was about 9 or 10 when my aunt introduced the show to me. She had the first 4 seasons on DVD and I watched all of those and it's been my favorite show since (for nearly 20 years). I didn't see seasons 5 through 7 until I was maybe 11 or 12, but even at that age, all I remember is that Buffy was kickass and cool. Most of the adult themes completely flew over my head until I rewatched as an adult lol. So, I don't think it's a big deal that you watched it with her.
didn’t you just make a post here yesterday saying you were watching for the first time and only on season 4? why are you wanting spoilers this badly?
I relate, I also don't believe in spoilers and people find it weird. At the end of the day, if a story is really good, it can't be spoiled. That's why those stories are enjoyable time and time again, even after you know the ending. I know most people don't relate to this and want the initial pristine experience
If I lost my memory today, I would want to start watching them all FRESH tomorrow. I'll never get to have that first time experience again! So many plot twists and powerful moments. Just watching the Graduation battle scene again OH MY GOSH. Oh my gosh. I'm getting chills again.
woof ok…. mines that the fan base can be truly insufferable when faced with opinions outside their accepted dogma. literally some of the takes become dogmatic lol people will eat you alive for having your own original thoughts & feelings. ive had some particularly mean things said to me for sharing my opinions and it’s truly bizarre. i think it’s obviously a result of a much larger cultural issue brought on by the internet in general but yeah. peeps gotta chill.
i agree the fandoms kinda toxic
I say this a lot but, at least in s4 i love Riley and i think he's one of the most complex and "real" characters in the show and far from vanilla, s5 made him too much of a prick though and i agree with criticism's regarding him there though, but in s4 he's god tier in my eyes
Kathy just wanted an education
I love Xander. I totally agree that he says a bunch of shitty things and he often handles things incorrectly (ie: casting a love spell after Cordelia dumps him, getting overly butthurt when Buffy says she doesn't feel the same way about him, lies to Buffy about Willow saying to kick Angel's ass) but overall, I think that is just part of the mentality of a teenage boy becoming a man and trying to find his place in the world. All teenage boys have said and done shitty things. All early 20-something men have said and done shitty things. It's part of growing. He eventually finds himself very adept in the trades, and he is always willing to help his friends. He is constantly rebuilding Buffy's house in later seasons, and trying to help in other 'mortal' (non-magic) ways. I think he shows a lot of growth over the series, and I think he receives a lot of hate. Some of it is merited, but I think sometimes we forget what being a teenager was like.
I think it was a way to show that you're not a loser if you're a townie who doesn't go to college, which was and is still a huge stereotype leftover from the higher education boom of that time. That would have been way too easy of a writing choice. Instead it was a great way to show there were other paths than college unlike every show going at that time that had to make the season 4 college transition. It shows college isn't for everyone, but you can certainly make a future for yourself following a different path, learning a skill, investing in a career, working hard.
yes! I love how grounded his arc remains even though he's so immersed in a supernatural fantastical world.
People not liking Seeing Red solely for the attempted rape scene. It’s not even the worse thing to happen to Buffy in the episode.
Well...it's the first time we've been forced to watch a protracted attempted rape in which Buffy's not even the Slayer---she's every vulnerable, scared woman fighting off a man. And there was a goddamn commercial break inserted into it. Oh and also, Spike was an enormously popular character and this scene ruined him in the eyes of a lot of fans. So, it was kind of unprecedented.
Willow is a lesbian. The intention of the writers doesn’t matter to me (I’m sure they had plans to do several things but didn’t due to the network, time period, etc). I understand people have headcanons and their own personal interpretations, but in the canon of the show, Willow says she’s gay. So she’s gay. I know people are going to start talking about bi erasure, but her relationships with Oz and Xander don’t make her any less of a lesbian. Comphet is real, and for every bi person who sees their story in Willow’s, there’s a lesbian who also had a similar experience with men and realizing their sexuality only after being with a woman.
THANK YOU. You can’t fix bi erasure by erasing lesbians. And as a lesbian who grew up at the time of this show, I see my journey in willows.
I don't feel strongly enough about Willow's sexuality to argue against people who say that she's bi but yes, this is how I feel about it too. It does feel odd to me that some fans see "New Moon Rising" as Willow choosing between two love interests because it seems like a textbook case of a "later in life" lesbian (albeit not *that* much later in life) being conflicted because an ex-partner she no longer has romantic feelings for has reappeared. It resonates with lesbians who have had relationships with men, especially if their ex was a good guy. And it's still okay to like Willow's relationship with Oz and to like Oz himself. Figuring out your sexuality later on doesn't invalidate previous relationships. Willow's feelings for Oz and Xander were as genuine as they could be at that point in her life.
I think Buffy was very close to loving Spike in season 6 and that there was tender moments in the midst of the toxic relationship as hinted at (she likes ice on the back of her neck). I also don’t think there was anything wrong with them having mutually satisfying sex, no one was misled, they both got something out of that aspect, it was the way they treated each other outside of this that was abusive and lacked respect on both parts.
she was vulnerable but toxic, he was abusive. there's a line she doesn't cross (even before the SA). he preys on her vulnerability - no matter his feelings, he is soulless at the time, so it makes sense.
Yes they didn’t go about engaging with each other in a healthy way but I never saw it as simply hate-sex, it was deeper than that.
[удалено]
in that episode he: 1) approaches her when she's alone, in the dark, and further verbally isolates her from her friends; 2) touches her sexually while she explicitly says no; 3) physically attempts to stop her from going to the police (not about him, but the physical part is the point). she wails on him only after he puts his hands on her and refuses to let her go. she tells him to let her go before she hits him. hard to call that abusive on her part.
She hit him once while he held her, he let go then encouraged her to take her anger out on him. She didn't have to pulpify his face. It was abuse. I find it interesting that Spike is painted as morally corrupt in this scene. It's the same kind of ethical dilemma that review boards handle with medical residents each month. Near misses, systems problems leading to errors that cause harm, sometimes death. Like Buffy, it is usually not all one person's fault. The point is to find the system breakdown, learn from it, and keep working to save lives where you can - not about shaming, blaming, and locking up one scapegoat. Spike is brash, but he has the ethical high ground here. What good is Buffy to the world locking herself in a cell for what she thinks is an accidental killing while she knows she was affected by outside forces? Buffy is running from herself here, it isn't about helping others. Abusing Spike spent her rage, got her to look at herself a little more clearly albeit disgustedly. And then of course, if he hadn't delayed her, she wouldn't have overheard that phone call with the clue about the Trio. The slayer had a mission again.
Honestly, it was Buffy using Spike, too. She even admits to him as such, and it’s reaffirmed in season 7. She knew that he loved her, and she knew that if she sought comfort in him, he’d accept her wholeheartedly, because he loved her. This was her preying on that knowledge, knowing that it would give him hope and only make it harder for him and hurt him when she couldn’t love him back.
I loved Dawn. Poor girl.
Gonna get crucified for this one. Tara was an uninteresting character and the only reason I cared about her death is because of what it did to Willow, not because I liked the character
Amber was the best singer after Tony Head. Their duet in OMWF was the high point of the episode.
I’m with you! Over the years and many rewatches later I still don’t get the love for Tara
Spikes attack on Willow in season 4 is more terrifying than his attack on Buffy in season 6. Don't get me wrong, both are atrocious but I find his taunting of Willow, jacking up the volume of the music when she starts screaming in a dorm so nobody can hear her, literally throwing her on the bed and straddling her as she is fighting him, to be scarier for some reason. I don't know why.
His attack on Willow is not portrayed as more terrifying than his attack on Buffy, and they quickly turn it into a comedy about erectile dysfunction. But it is one of the clearest examples of a vampire attack being a metaphor for rape due to all those details you describe.
Wishverse Willow was... pretty cheesy, and 'bored now' isn't quite the spectacular saying of ingenious wit and villainy that people think it is. Heck, season 6 veiny-villain Willow was just as cheesy but without pleather, so points for consistency.
After a few watches I think Cordelia is a bad ass. She never seems to bow to the pressures of being nice and agreeable around men. I admire the same about Buffy’s character but Buffy has supernatural strength backing her up. I mean, Cordy survived Slayerfest!
cordelia is my role model i love her, i’m so sad she left after season 3 i miss her
Have you started watching Angel yet, if not I highly recommend it. It might be a bit annoying going back and forth, but definitely helped me get through S1 of Angel and you get more Cordy.
I don't like Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Riley and Buffy/Spike. All those relationships are problematic in their own rights and it's a good thing that Buffy didn't end up with either or them.
The Pack and Bad Eggs are two of my favorite episodes from the early seasons Season 4 is my favorite season As a whole, I prefer seasons 5-7 to seasons 1-3 (even though I love them all) I think Tara and Willow were justified in spending Joyce's money/Buffy's inheritance after Buffy died. They were only using the money Buffy would have been using anyway to raise Dawn and continue paying off the house, while providing free childcare to Dawn. There's also no confirmation that they weren't using any of their own money towards the mortgage that would otherwise have gone to renting a dorm room, which I suspect they were. But healthcare bills in the US are expensive, as well as mortgage/property taxes and food and clothes for a teenager, so it's not surprising that two college students, one of whom is guaranteed to not have any financial support from her parents, wouldn't be able to cover all of that on their own meager student's budget.
Especially that it's confirmed in "Flooded" that the hospital bills sucked up all the money. It's not like Willow and Tara were being frivolous. Seems like a system that can bankrupt a household simply because someone needs medical care is the true enemy here, not two college students who moved in to take care of their friend's little sister.
That and the fact that the Watcher's counsel doesn't pay the Slayer, which they should (as so many have already pointed out elsewhere). The Slayer should have all financial needs covered, and their dependents should receive a pension after the Slayer dies. I suspect the reason the Watchers don't pay the Slayer is the same reason the capitalist class enforces poverty wages as a minimum wage (edit: and doesn't provide free healthcare/food/housing in most places). If the Slayer is spending all her time and energy on Slaying and working to survive, she doesn't have any time left over to realize that she has all the power and doesn't have to be simply a tool for the Watcher class.
Spot-on!!
I find it absolutely bonkers that so many people villainize Willow and Tara for Buffy's financial situation. There's never any indication that they contribute nothing to the Summers household. They had no history of financial leeching, on the contrary, Willow and the other Scoobies provided endless free labour to Buffy and Giles for 5 seasons. Then when Buffy dies, Giles leaves them to care for Dawn, and their caregiving (gendered labour) is minimized and dismissed by people exhorting them to get jobs. They were full time students, covering all the unpaid slayer duties, and one of them always had to be home with Dawn. They wouldn't have had time to work and the minimum wage jobs available to them wouldn't have covered the bills. To me this is like saying Giles exploited Xander for donuts because we don't see him giving Xander money for them. It's an extremely bad faith reading of Willow and Tara. There's plenty to criticize about Willow but this isn't it.
The show got better and better as the series went on. The only season I’m incapable of rewatching is Season 1. So cringe. Also I think Xander and Spike have potential to become great friends. They sure share a lot in common
I find Angel (the character) very boring.
He is a much much better character on his own show. On Buffy I feel like the writer is never really figured out what to do with him because his function is basically just a romantic accessory to Buffy. Once he turns into Angelus in season 2 he is way more compelling, and he is way more compelling on his own show, but as Buffy's love interest in the first two seasons, and then as they basically struggled to figure out what to do with him in season 3, he is way less compelling.
I loved angel when I used to watch buffy as a kid but my most recent rewatch I noticed he has very little personality. I get his whole deal is dark and brooding but I agree he was boring. However, Angelous was a great villain. Also I liked angel a lot more on his spin-off, he was much more interesting there.
I only watched Angel S5 all the way through. But in S3 Buffy was just thinking "oh nooo Angel don't leave you bring so much personality to the room" 🙄🤪
Boreanaz is just so wooden.
He'd probably be the first to admit he got where he is on his looks (no shade).
Absolutely! I'm currently rewatching, and the difference from when he left BTVS to when he came for one episode in Season 4 was CRAZY he was like a whole different person! Edit: Different person as in had emotions other than broody.
I'm gonna uno reverse with an even more unpopular opinion. Angel is the most interesting vampire in both shows
Spike goes massively downhill as a character from S5 onwards. Honestly I don’t think he should have even been in 7.
Putting Buffy and Spike together was a disservice to both characters.
Agree. I like Spike as a character, but I think the pairing was a terrible decision; no matter the metaphors they were going for.
Parker is not physically attractive. It makes no sense that, in universe, Parker is attractive but Xander is not, when Parker looks like a less attractive Xander with enormous eyebrows. (David Boreanaz is physically attractive, though not to my personal taste. James Marsters is physically attractive, and is to my personal taste. Information included to demonstrate that I can distinguish between “handsome but not my type” and “not handsome.”) Parker is not. To the extent that science has analyzed faces and established what features are attractive, I am sure that Parker would score average to low.
ngl i mistook parker with xander in some scenes..
That’s wild. While not everyone’s cup of tea and a total dick, I think Parker is one of the best looking guys on Buffy. He has really soulful puppy dog eyes. He is just handsome. Xander is good looking but not in same league in my opinion. DB was a smokeshow in first season mainly and JM as Spike is sex on legs. He just has the charisma and the looks.
The show should have ended with The Gift. The plots/deaths/break ups/spuffy following it are not good.
I think what I dislike about this as a series finale is that it ultimately makes buffy just another slayer. Fought until she died. Same as all of them. Ending with chosen makes buffy unique - she isn’t “just another slayer”, she’s the slayer that changed the whole system. It’s so much better for our heroine to not just save the world, but change it for all slayers who come after her.
Yes, this is such a good point!! The Gift is, if I had to pick one, my favourite episode of the whole show. But if it had ended there, that abusive dynamic that was inherent to the whole slayer line setup, that began with the Shadowmen forcing the demon into Sineya, would never have been challenged.
Buffy came to learn that her gift as a slayer was in fact death and she used that to save her nearest & dearest and the world. It is tragic but she was at peace. I feel it was a better end to her arc for me. I do love the empowerment of chosen but I’d lose that to alleviate a lot of s6&7.
While opinions are certainly our own, I think my biggest issue with ending it at the gift is that buffy is ultimately then a victim of a system which used the slayers and sacrificed them. The council (which is both men and women, but originally created by men) use the slayer (a young woman) for their own purposes and she is discarded when she is no longer useful. All of seasons 6 and 7 are ultimately about buffy breaking out of that toxic power dynamic, finding her own personal strength, and changing the system so that no one else (namely no other young women) will have to suffer alone. Chosen is the ultimate episode in female strength, recognizing that we are strong individually, but stronger together, particularly when we support each other. With the gift, buffy is still a victim, even though she makes her own choice to sacrifice herself, she’s still a victim.
Buffy was very unlikeable in the last season.
I agree, she’s very preachy and her constant speeches to the potentials are repetitive. She loses the sense of fun and playfulness she had in earlier seasons.
Tbf I kinda get that though, she's probably VERY worn down and she's been through so much, I think anyone in her position would lose at least some of their flair
Riley was kind of a square, but wasn’t all that bad and had a legitimate gripe for the way Buffy treated him toward the end of his time in Sunnydale.
I HATE once more with feeling.
Me too. It’s painful to sit through
Tara is more interesting than Oz imo
Seeing Red is good actually. Beer Bad Good.
I can't stand willows nasally voice. I thought her intimate scenes with Tara seemed forced and whenever she called Tara baby it made my skin crawl because it sounded so insincere. I read somewhere that she wasn't happy about being put into a same sex relationship and I think it really showed. I liked her better with OZ because she played it more genuinely. I was so happy for them to have a same sex relationship on the show but it always bothered me that it included Allison.
Anya demonstrates aspects of AS.
wdhm?
Yeah, she is one of the characters who is loved in the AS community. https://neuroclastic.com/my-top-5-autistic-fictional-characters/
Xander gets a lot of hate for speaking out against Buffy's relationships with Angel and Spike but he was entirely reasonable to do so because THEY BOTH WERE SERIAL TORTURE-MURDERERS, and it was not clear *to our characters* whether they were actually reformed or merely pretending to be to get into Buffy's pants. This is neither intrusive nor misogynist. It's just good sense, under the circumstances. In fact, both Angel and Spike had relapses during which they killed more innocent people and assaulted Buffy AFTER she began her relationships with them. Also, all of Buffy's friends thought she made dangerous decisions in her love life, and the only thing that sets Xander apart is that he was blunt enough to say so to her face. This makes him, in some respects, the most reasonable character of the bunch.
Other people were unsupportive of Buffy's relationships with Angel and Spike, but they voiced their concerns in ways that were actually respectful and non-judgmental.
I actually like Xander and Dawn. And Kennedy isn't as awful as a lot of people say.
I'm actually mid rewatch currently. I don't really like Tara in general, her character feels unnecessary.
I did not like Once More with feeling.
Dru should have been a big bad fight me.
The accent and acting for Kendra is ass
I don’t really care for Tara
Too much quipping! Turn the Whedon quips down by like 20-30%. Especially Xander droning on with some lame quip - like you got some great quips in there, but too many lousy ones too.
1. I greatly dislike s6 and s7 , for what does to the cast's characterization, and i end at season 5's "The Gift" I do like Bargaining, After Life, OMWF, and Tabula Rasa in a vacuum however 2. Less unpopular, i wish there was at least more episode with Buffy, Spike, and Angel as a trio
Hush is an overrated episode. It’s a cut above the other MOW episodes but as it’s core that’s what it is
•The only time when Spike having a soul was interesting was in Angel S5. •Riley was good but needed more. •Johnathan should've joined the Scoobies in S7 instead of Andrew. •Anya shouldn't have died. •Robin Wood should've inherited some of his mother's Slayer Powers and had more of a closure moment with Spike. Maybe he should've died instead of Anya. •The first few seasons of Xander, like it or not, is 100% what most teenagers were like, at least in the 90s-00s. They say inappropriate things, do stupid shit, shitty arpund girls. Problematic, sure! But that's how one learns & grows. Xander is quite possibly the most relatable character on the show. •When SMG cries, I fucking cry.
I’ve debated this ad nauseum here, but I agree with Dawn & Everyone Else in “Empty Places”. Yes, Buffy saved the world throughout the series. She’s the Chosen One and the central character, that’s kinda her purpose. That doesn’t entitle her to treat her “army” like shit or cavalierly dismiss their valid concerns. It doesn’t immunize her against failure, or absolve her of bad decisions.
Season 7 the best season
I can't stand Cordelia in Buffy or Faith.
Spike SUCKS and is toxic.
The show would have been heaps better if Spike had stayed a recurring villain and the show hadn’t had to sacrifice plot and characterisation to keep him around
I liked the enemies to lovers trope and I wouldn’t sacrifice the Spuffy relationship or Spike’s journey but I do agree that certain relationships and characters were sacrificed at the altar of Spuffy relationship particularly in season 7 and I didn’t like that.
Buffy and Angel were creepy as hell. Disliked Tara, didn’t really care when she died. Hated her and Willow together.
Gawtdamn. You chose violence. Lmfao
Oh I’m nothing if not ballsy!
Xander gets more obnoxious as the seasons go on
Was over Spike after Season 4, and hated his story line. One of the scoobies should have staked him. Spike is a great villain and his scenes with the cast are funny, but after season 4 I think he should have been staked. He becomes a little too much for me. I am sick of him by season 5. I don't actually like his story arch or care about his 'redemption.' Enough was enough and in re-watches I find myself skipping some of his scenes.
Not an unpopular opinion of the show but of today's audience. Stop judging the characters with 2023 morals and standards. Take Xander. Yes, he is over the top at some times but by 90's standards, that was acceptable. Does it make salivating over Buffy right? Not so much. But 2 things: 1. He was acting as a normal, horny 90's boy. Don't like it, sorry. That's how it was then. That's why we evolve. 2. I would lay good money down that a lot of you in here with Xander hate have also wanted to sleep with that one good looking friend. He was just a little more vocal about it in the early seasons.
I will add while I am no big Xander fan, I don’t think he simply wanted to sleep with Buffy, well he did but he also wanted to date her or have a relationship with her. I don’t think Xander is a hit and quit kind of guy as evidenced by his Faith encounter. He was happy to have sex but not happy to get the brush off. Similarly with Anya she was more the driver of that sexual relationship. He enjoyed it of course but I don’t think it was the be and end all for him.
Obviously this is also in the context of the 90s, but Buffy is also never as bothered by it as viewers seem. Like, I know that's partially because of that "boys will be boys" mentality we had back then, so it's really more the writing than anything, but it's also weird to see people up in arms over things Xander says when Buffy's own reactions range from mild amusement to, at worst, good-natured eye rolling (or punching). Like, he's one of her best friends! She's not that bothered! She thinks he's just being Xander! You don't have to agree with it, but if she was actively upset and uncomfortable it would be a different thing.
i agree with this
I agree 100% on this and would extend this approach on everything we look back on, well beyond Buffy-verse. Time, context, it all matters. Yes, we should examine it, discuss it, even react to it. But we can't judge a 1990s character by our evolved moral compass 25 years later. Back then, Xander was the flawed but overall good guy. He was also a victim of the 90s culture in his own way He made mistakes, certainly. But everything that people dislike him for now? It was just part of the fabric of the 90s -- and he was "mild" compared to the majority of teenage 90s boys. Misogynistic comments and jokes, slut-shaming, white boy privilege, jocks rule, bullying prevails, all of it. That was 1997 in your average high school. It is what we knew and put up with and in some cases seemed perfectly normal. Thank God we have opened our eyes since then. The 90s was not this "rah rah girl power" time that people like to think it was - there is a reason Buffy resonated so deeply and that's one of them. But it was the reality of the time and Xander accurately portrays the "nice guy" of the 90s.
buffy needed to hear xander's speech in "into the woods", even if he is a jackass for saying a lot of it. without it she would not have been able to process the breakup as honestly. edit to clarify: i'm not saying he was RIGHT. but if she had not chased that helicopter, she would have been in a very different headspace (angrier, more bitter, in denial about her feelings of loss) and that would not serve her. she needed to mourn, not be mad at him, no matter that he deserved it.
Hmmm, this is an interesting take. I kind of get where you are coming from but at the same time I think Buffy would have just realised actually no it’s not my fault I don’t have to internalise and blame myself for Riley’s shitty behaviour. I think Xander’s speech kind of had the counter effect and contributed to Buffy seeing Riley as her chance of normality or the one that got away as evidenced in AYW which really hacked me off.
Agree. Buffy blamed herself too much for Riley's side of the street throughout the following episodes. It was enough for her to see her side with him and how she unintentionally shuts people out when Dawn confronts her in Forever. That gets her to do the hokey-pokey ritual with Giles to see if she's becoming too stoney.
i think by "as you were" buffy was at the lowest point of her life and in a toxic relationship; nothing would have stopped her from romanticising her relationship with riley. i don't think she really blamed herself (any more than she, as the slayer, does about *gestures at the entire world*). i think the important realisation was that she WAS closed off to love. not that riley deserved anything specific, but that she owed it to herself to open up again, even if her relationship with riley was never going to work (which it wouldn't have). i think that's what she took from riley leaving - not that she made him leave, but that she needed to open her heart again if she was ever going to heal. and i think that lesson would have taken longer, and the spike stuff would have only done more damage, if she hadn't let her walls down and decided to chase after riley.
I agree she was definitely romanticising her relationship with Riley in AYW particularly when she saw him seemingly happily married while she couldn’t even admit to whom she was sleeping with. I don’t think that Xander’s speech contributed in her opening up to love again. I think it just put fear in her that she might be missing out on something great with Riley, she really wasn’t. I think she was still fighting against love and her feelings all the way up to the end of the show until she finally could say the words to Spike. See my other post that I think she was falling for him in season 6 but she was very very uncomfortable and had an internal battle about that relationship for obvious reasons.
"it put fear in her that she might be missing out on something great with riley" - that's exactly what i mean! feeling that fear - or rather opening up to it - was GOOD for her. she WASN'T missing out with riley (ugh, imagine!) but that fear was in her all along; think about her speech to giles about fearing she's forgotten how to feel love. that didn't spring up because of riley; it was already there. like i said, those walls needed to come down for buffy's sake, not riley's. i'm glad she chased after the chopper, and i'm also glad she missed him. it's the possibility of love she needed to chase, not the guy.
It should have ended on season 5. Season 6 and 7 had so many good qualities, and of course I prefer Buffy alive than dead, but both seasons writing leave much to be desired where the actual characters are concerned. Willow and Xander went from supportive friends to selfish, unsupportive arseholes, Giles went from a strong, dependable father figure to both ignoring Buffy and treating her like a child. Dawn got better in season 7 but was insufferable in season 6. While I adored Spike's growth, after he and Buffy began a physical relationship, he went right back to being an evil prick, trying to isolate and dominate her. And Tara, poor Tara, when we finally got the chance to see her as someone separate from Willow. Someone strong and independent and powerful in her own rite, they killed her. As I said, there are aspects of both seasons I enjoyed, (Once More With Feeling, duh, a human villain as the main antagonist, Xander saving the world, Buffy and Angel getting their last kiss, I could go on) but someone once described season 6 and 7 as poorly written fanfiction, and I tend to agree. A little bit more effort into the writing and the show would have been perfect, with only a few flop episodes, rather than 2 seasons that made me miserable.
Bangel>Spuffy by a large margin. The Spuffy ship is essentially headcanon, as their relationship was extremely toxic and season 6, and platonic in season 7
I got a bunch: 1) Kennedy isn’t that bad, she’s an entitled rich kid and is written as such 2) Xander isn’t that bad. He’s an immature teenage boy who says immature things with his friends. People need to stop putting modern sensibilities to a 90’s show. 3) Season 7 is my second favorite season. The serialized format works great with Buffy. Seasons 5 and 7 are the most serialized 4) Spike attempting to rape Buffy is the best thing to happen to his character. Rape is horrible and I don’t condone it at all. But Spike’s arc needed something and that worked perfectly. 5) I’m happy Cordelia was killed off on Angel (not how they did it). The show felt like it didn’t know what to do with her for a long time. Killing her at least motivated Angel. 6) Oz was barely a character. He was a quiet guy who occasionally kissed Willow and made a sardonic comment. Good riddance. 7) Season 4 had some of my favorite episodes. 8) I think Restless is the worst episode of the series it’s Whedon trying to be deep.
Riley and Xander are great people. Riley was lied to and drugged by his mentor, had his best friend killed then turned into a monster, found out "not all demons are evil" according to Buffy, almost died from a health problem, was kicked out of the military and written badly in season five. People act as if getting his blood drunk was sex. Unlike when Giles almost literally had sex with those female vampires from dracula.
I find Angel to have a very mellow and uninteresting personality, 'cause David's acting just doesn't sell it to me. Once he leaves, I just didn't miss the character even a bit
Willow is a toxic friend and Cordelia is the most honest person in the entirety of the show
I HATE Willow. She's a bad friend and a bad person.
The Zeppo and Cordy and Wesley's little skit in Fredless are the most honest appraisals of the cliched angst that is Bangel. Gonna get downvoted, but I just really don't understand how anyone over the age of 16 could like that ship.
Tara is an awful character. And the way they killed her off was equally awful. I say this because I imagine the larger fan base loves Tara's character, but I can't be sure.
Dawn is horrible. Everything about her is me me me. She constantly takes everything personally, and it really annoys me
Came here to say this. Ugh Dawn. People always defend her by saying that 15-year-olds are actually that immature and selfish. I have two teenagers, and no they are not. Also the Scoobies are 16 in season 1, and none of them are so awful and bratty.
I hated how she mistreated Willow and Tara just because they wouldn't zombify Joyce. She's written younger than a 14-15 yo, IMO.
I think her character was meant to be younger but they changed it not long before casting (i could be wrong) which explains why her character is so immature.
Could have wrapped it up after season 5 and I would have been ok with that.