Season 6 of Buffy is easily the most polarizing season among Buffy fans. Everybody loves Seasons 2 and 3, and even if there are difference of opinion as to how good Season 5 is, everyone pretty much agrees that it's at least pretty good. Everyone is pretty agreed on the fact that Seasons 1 and 7 are below-par for Buffy seasons, and that Season 4 is a definite drop-off from 2 and 3. Season 6, though, elicits a much wider range of opinions. For some people, it's their favorite season, or at very least on par with the greatness of Seasons 2 and 3. Others consider it the worst season, just a depressing slog. According to an aggregate ranking, Season 6 has both the best Buffy episode ("Once More With Feeling") and the worst ("Doublemeat Palace"). So, where do I come down on this highly polarizing season?
I've long been an ardent defender of Season 6. It's a season that really stands out in memory because it's filled with really iconic moments. I've gone back and watched individual episodes from Season 6 maybe more than any other season. On a full rewatch though, the season has some pretty glaring faults that it's hard to ignore. It's a really ambitious season, trying a lot of different things and taking a lot of risks. When that works, it really works. When it doesn't, well, things get kind of rough. On the whole, I'm still overwhelmingly positive about Season 6. I'd much rather have a show that is ambitious, even if it means failing sometimes, than one that is stale and boring. Still, there is enough that doesn't work to keep me from lumping this in with 2,3 and 5 as the best seasons.
So, what works in Season 6? Well, the first thing that really works is Buffy's resurrection. We knew Buffy had to come back. I mean, the show isn't called "The Generic Vampire Slayer", it's called Buffy, so we knew she'd be back after her death at the end of Season 5. So, when your audience knows what's coming, how do you make it interesting? Joss Whedon's answer to that question was, in my opinion, pretty brilliant. Buffy is brought back, but it isn't a cause of joy for her. Bringing characters back from the dead has a long history in super-hero comics (which Buffy is heavily influenced by), and it is always considered a good thing, rarely are the implications of it discussed. Buffy turns that on its head, by having Buffy brought back not from Hell, but from Heaven. It's a fantastic twist that sets the pace for the rest of the season. Buffy's arc over the course of Season 6 is to figure out how to deal with life, not just grown-up, adult life, but with life itself.
Another thing that works well for me is The Trio. A lot of people disagree about this, but I like the 3 nerds. They aren't the traditional "Big Bad" that Buffy has faced in the previous seasons, and that's ok, they don't have to be. As I said above, the "Big Bad" in Season 6 really is "life". Our heroes are grappling not with some overwhelming evil that wants to bring about the apocalypse, but with the simple truth that life is hard, and the choices we make have consequences. On top of that backdrop, the Trio gives us both a sense of continuity and some comic relief. The dynamic between the 3 of them works really well, and I think their arc is really believable. Warren was a pretty despicable figure when he was first introduced in Season 5, whereas Jonathan has always been pretty likable. It makes perfect sense, then, that as the season goes on, Warren gets more extreme and violent, and Jonathan becomes more and more wary as he realizes how far they've gone. Andrew is a follower, and far more than the other two is wrapped up in fantasy, so he backs up the stronger leader (Warren), and doesn't have a problem with what they're doing because it isn't real to him. I like the lightness they bring to the season (which badly needs it).
There are some more things that really work well, but I'll address those in the individual episode segments below.
What doesn't work then? Well, it's mainly two things, and they're very significant. Neither is a complete failure, but they're definitely flawed. The first is the Buffy/Spike relationship. Here's the thing, I don't have a problem with the idea of this per-say. In fact, the Buffy/Spike dynamic yields some of my favorite moments from early in the season. It makes sense that Buffy would gravitate towards Spike after being resurrected. He wasn't part of the group that brought her back, he isn't going to constantly ask her if she's ok, and he knows what it's like to be "between two worlds", as it were. So, the general idea isn't terrible, and for the first third of the season (through Tabula Rasa), it works pretty well. The problem is that it's much less effective in execution than it is in theory. What it ends up doing is making Spike a much less effective character. Instead of being the comic relief and "point out when Buffy is being an idiot" guy, he's just a major downer for most of the season, either brooding or pining for Buffy or having sex with her. He's just no fun anymore, which is a shame, since he's the most fun character on the show in Seasons 4 and 5. This season really lacks that "stop being stupid, guys" character that Buffy has always had. It's Cordelia in the first 3 seasons, and Spike in 4 and 5. Spike stops filling that role though, and the show suffers because of it. Again, while a Spike/Buffy relationship makes sense on a character level, the way that relationship evolved just didn't make for entertaining TV. It was all self-loathing and depression, which is ok for a stretch, but I don't need a whole season full of it. The other problem is what I dealt with in the last post, which is the problem of Spike's lack of a soul. What exactly does that mean? What makes him different from Angel? It all kind of comes to a head in "Seeing Red", where Spike attempts to rape Buffy. Is this who Spike really is? Does it matter that he doesn't have a soul? If the show had drawn a sharper line between lust and love, or between souled and unsouled, this might have worked better, but it's all kind of twisted. So, while it isn't all bad, the storyline as a whole drags the season down.
The other big complaint I have is with Willow's arc, which comes so close to being great, but gets really muddled by the "magic = drugs" metaphor that the show pushes on us. The basic problem is that the show suddenly decides that magic is bad, or at least that the overuse of magic is bad. This is after 5 seasons where we've never been given any hints that this is the case. Magic has certainly been portrayed as something that can be used for evil or good, but there's been no evidence of it being addictive. Season 6 has a problem in that it completely changes the rules on the fly. Willow has done very powerful magic before, and she's done simple magic just to get things done, yet in Season 6 this suddenly becomes a bad thing. As the season goes on, we get these clumsy magic as drugs metaphors. Willow goes to the magic equivalent of a drug den, she gets "hopped up on magic" and crashes a car, then they get rid of all her magic paraphernalia and Willow acts like she's in withdrawal. It's all very heavy-handed, not to mention unnecessary. The metaphor doesn't need to be there. A line in "Wrecked" sums up what this plot line should have been, when Willow says "if you could be plain old Willow - or Super Willow? Who would you want to be?" The allure of power makes a much more compelling addiction than the "magic addiction" the show portrays. This should've been about Willow's inability to give up power and her lust for more of it. This makes much more sense for the character, and much more sense in the show's mythology. It isn't the magic itself that is bad or addictive, it's the longing for power that is addictive. It would also make Willow's turn at the end make that much more sense. The show gives lip-service to this idea, but it's so muddled in with the drug metaphor that it's completely unclear. It's a shame, because I like where the plot goes in the end with Willow's turn to the dark side, it's just that the story along the way isn't focused enough and makes too many missteps.
Seeing as those two problems are really the two major storylines of Season 6, you might think the season is somewhat of a failure. Again, though, those plots don't completely work, but there is good stuff in there. Despite the faults, there are a ton of powerful emotional moments mixed in. Also, most of the big failures of the season come in one stretch in the middle of the season. Basically, the first 8 episodes (through "Tabula Rasa") and the last 7 episodes (starting at "Hell's Bells", though some would disagree with that one) are really solid, and the middle 7 really struggle. Those two runs, and a handful of episodes in particular, are really high quality, because when Season 6 hits, it hits hard.
After Life: My all-time most underrated Buffy episode. An aggregate ranking lists it as the 81st ranked episode, which is below-average, whereas I have it in my top 10. I think it's close to a perfect episode. It's basically part 3 of the season opener, starting immediately where "Bargaining" ends, with Dawn having found out that Buffy is alive. There's some great stuff at the beginning of this episode as Dawn leads a dazed, numb Buffy back to their house and starts to clean her up. The best moments in the episode, though, are between Spike and Buffy. When Spike sees Buffy coming down the stairs and realizes that it is really her and not the Buffy-Bot, it's incredibly powerful. He's the one that recognizes Buffy's hands are damaged from clawing her way out of a coffin (having done it himself), and he and Buffy have this exchange:
Buffy: "How long was I gone?"
Spike: "Hundred forty-seven days yesterday... um, one-forty-eight today. 'Cept today doesn't count, does it?"
This is followed later in the episode by probably my all-time favorite speech from Buffy, when Buffy visits Spike in his crypt:
Spike: "I do remember what I said. The promise. To protect her. If I'd done that, even if I didn't make it, you wouldn't've had to jump. I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course. But after that. Every night after that. I'd see it all again, do something different. Faster or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways...Every night I save you."
Those are the two things I wanted to highlight, but this episode is full of great stuff. More than that, it lays the foundation for almost every major plot line for the season. Regardless of how you feel about how each of those plots ended up, this episode does a marvelous job of setting them up. Buffy's relationship with Spike is here, the revelation that Buffy was pulled out of heaven, Buffy lying to her friends, all here. We also get the first little foreshadowing of the magic pulling Willow away from Tara when they cast the spell to solidify the demon. The only thing that really holds the episode back from perfection is that the actual demon is pretty lame, with Buffy's traditionally bad CGI. On the whole though, it's a great episode of television.
Flooded: I just wanted to include this here for the scene where Giles confronts Willow about raising Buffy. Anthony Stewart Head is unbelievably good here, as he calls Willow a "very stupid girl" for doing that spell, then they have this exchange:
Willow: "I did what I had to do. I did what nobody else could do."
Giles: "Oh, there are others in the world who can do what you did. You just don't want to meet them."
Willow: "Okay, probably not - but they're bad guys. I am not a bad guy. I brought Buffy back to the world and maybe the word you should be looking for is 'congratulations.'"
Giles: "Having Buffy back in the world makes me feel indescribably wonderful - but I wouldn't congratulate you if you jumped off a cliff and happened to survive."
Willow: "That's not what I did, Giles!"
Giles: "You were lucky."
Willow: "I wasn't lucky, I was amazing. How would you know anyway? You weren't even there."
Giles: "If I had been I'd have bloody well stopped you! The Magicks you channeled are more primal and ferocious than you can hope to understand, and you're lucky to be alive, you rank, arrogant amateur."
Giles is great. The lack of Giles, as much as it made sense for story reasons and was necessary because Anthony Stewart Head wanted to leave, really hurts this season.
Once More With Feeling: Now how great is this episode? For all of the various crazy things that Buffy has tried, doing a musical is by far the most ambitious. Seriously, to do a musical with actors who are not experienced singers, and to do it on a weekly TV schedule, is completely insane. There's no way they should've pulled this off, and yet it works like gangbusters. It's most people's favorite episode, and while I won't go that far, I do think it's fantastic. What makes it so great is that it isn't just a gimmick. The episode tackles the major ongoing storylines and includes some big revelations about our characters. They say in song what they won't say on their own, and it leads to an episode that is hugely entertaining, but also highly significant from a plot standpoint.
So, the most important question with a musical episode is, "Are the songs good?" Opinions on this may differ, but I think they're quite good. Matt was less than impressed, but he's entitled to his (wrong) opinion. The cast members who aren't singers do a respectable enough job holding up. Anya and Xander's song in particular is a lot of fun. The cast members who actually can sing (Tony Head, Amber Benson, James Marsters) each have their moments. In particular, I really love when Giles sings. All the songs are cleverly written with fun lyrics, and the episode is filled with clever little lines. I think one of the biggest laughs of the whole series is just the little "They got the mustard out" snippet, and I love Willow's "I think this line's mostly filler" in one of the songs. The episode is funny, clever and most impressively it manages to not be a gimmick. The plot, the character beats, and the emotional impact works on its own merit, but is enhanced by the use of the musical as a storytelling device. It's really impressive, and really, really entertaining.
Tabula Rasa: Now this is an episode that I'd forgotten how much I love. The Buffyverse features a few instances of characters losing their memories, and they're pretty much uniformly great. "Tabula Rasa" is no exception. This episode really feels like the writers having fun, and it's filled with jokes. I mean, this episode features Giles sword-fighting with a skeleton in a room filled with bunnies. That's amazing. Other highlights include:
- Spike believes he's Giles' son, Randy Giles. ("Why didn't you just name me 'Horny Giles' or 'Desperate-for-a-shag Giles'? I knew there was a reason I hated you!")
- Really, Spike/Randy is great in this episode. His instinctive hatred of Giles ("Dad can drive. He's bound to have some classic mid-life crisis transport: something red, sporty, shaped like a penis."), his assertion that he must be a "On a mission of redemption. I help the hopeless. I'm a vampire with a soul!" (Buffy: "A vampire with a soul?" How lame is that.")
- Anya accidentally conjures a multitude of bunnies out of thin air, then whacks Giles on the head because "I feel compelled to take some vengeance on you."
- For the second time in the series - Willow: "I think I'm kind of gay"
As funny as the episode is (and it is very funny), it ends on a tragic note, as everyone gets their memory back and realizes what Willow has done. Watching Willow and Tara break up is all the more tragic, since we've just watched the two of them meet and fall for each other again. Even in their memory-wiped states, the two are drawn together. They seem so perfect for each other, and yet they've been torn apart by Willow's choices. Buffy is often at its best when mixing humor and tragedy, and this episode does so really well.
Hell's Bells: A lot of people really hated this episode and the way Xander and Anya broke up. I actually don't have a problem with it, and I think the foundation for it was well laid-out. Consider the arc of their relationship. It started more out of convenience than anything else, Anya needed someone to go to prom with, and Xander couldn't get anyone else. They just kind of fell in together, and Anya, as a former demon, happened to fit in with their group. They got engaged in the face of the apocalypse, when it looked like the world would end. As we see in Xander's reticence to share the news of their engagement, he clearly had some doubts about that once it turned out that the world was not going to end. We've seen in limited glimpses that Xander's parents have quite a bit of marital discord, and it's something that he's ashamed of. We also hear in "Once More With Feeling" that there's doubt and discontent hiding under the surface that they aren't talking about. While Anya seems to be fully gung-ho about their wedding preparations, Xander always seems a little reticent, kind of brushing it off. At no point does Xander's match Anya's excitement for the wedding. When the wedding does arrive, it's not so much the faked visions of the future that freak Xander out, it's seeing his disfunctional parents and, perhaps even more so, it's the fact that this is really happening, there's no backing out after this. In the face of such a huge commitment, all of those lingering, hidden doubts and uncertainties become magnified by 100, and that's why Xander freaks out. I think there's plenty of justification presented in the lead-up to this episode to make the break-up work. Besides, this is a Joss Whedon show, did you really think that he was going to let a couple be happy? He's particularly cruel in this episode, since we get the contrast of Xander coming undone with Anya's joy and excitement (Anya practice her vows: "'I, Anya, promise to love you, to cherish you, and to honor you, but not to obey you, of course, because that's anachronistic and misogynistic and who do you think you are like a sea captain or something?"). Emma Caulfield is particularly adorable here, which makes the end, with Anya slowly walking alone down the aisle, so heartbreaking.
Seeing Red/Villains/Two To Go/Grave: I warned Matt when he started "Seeing Red", "If you watch this one, you're going to have to watch the next 3 as well." And, sure enough, that's what happened. This is basically a four-part season finale, and it's pretty much impossible to stop once you start watching. Tara's death at the end of "Seeing Red" is fast and brutal. We've just seen Willow and Tara get back together and be blissful and happy, and then suddenly, with no long, dying speech, Tara is dead. That leads into the crazy roller-coaster that is the last 3 episodes.
"Villains" might be the best of these episodes start-to-finish. As Buffy is rushed to the hospital, the blood-splattered Willow goes to the Magic Box and absorbs all the dark magic from the books, turning her hair and eyes black and informing us that things are going to get really bad (though I don't think anyone would've guessed just how bad). She then goes to save Buffy in a heartbreaking scene where she magically remove the bullet and heals Buffy, then stares at the bullet and quietly says "It's so small." It's a quiet moment before the storm, made all the more sad because Buffy and Xander have no idea that it's Tara that Willow is really talking about here, not Buffy (not to mention that at the same time, Dawn is finding Tara's body and not knowing what to do). Then the hunt for Warren is on, including a great scene where Willow stands in front of a bus and stops it dead in its tracks, Magneto-style (fitting, since this is Joss Whedon's take on the Dark Phoenix story). Finally, she tracks him down, and in a scene that really is shocking, given how much we've learned to love Willow over the years, she sews his mouth shut, slowly bores the bullet into his chest, then with a casual "Bored now," rips his skin off.
After a crazy ending like that, surely "Two To Go" couldn't top it. Ha. Two To Go features more of Dark Willow rampaging around and trying to hunt down Jonathan and Andrew, the two remaining members of The Trio. Due to Whedon's propensity for killing characters, she feels legitimately frightening. When she threatens to turn Dawn back into a ball of energy, there's real menace in it. When she finally pummels Buffy in the Magic Box, it leads to my favorite scene in the whole series. As Willow declares "No one can stop me now," a blast of energy knocks her out of frame, and Giles is standing in the doorway saying "I'd like to test that theory."
GILES IS BACK!! Oh man, I love Giles. The way Anthony Stewart Head quietly delivers that line, then goes on to subdue Willow is simply fantastic. The show so badly missed his presence, and to see him again says that everything is going to be alright again. As Willow says, "Daddy's home," and he's going to help set things straight. I think there are some flaws with this episode, but all the stuff with Willow works like gangbusters. I really enjoy her showdown with Giles, where she rages at him, still resentful at him from that confrontation in "Flooded". Then, of course, there's the fantastic Willow/Xander scene at the end. What doesn't work for me is the Buffy/Dawn stuff. When Buffy delivers a big speech or has a big emotional moment, it almost always works for me. Here, for whatever reason, it just feels sappy and overwritten. All the dialogue just feels oddly stilted, it just doesn't really work. This would be a problem, except that the other major speech is so freaking phenomenal. It's a great moment where Xander faces down the terrifying Dark Willow. He doesn't try to fight her, he doesn't even try to persuade her to not end the world, he just wants to be with his best friend and tell her he loves her in spite of herself. Xander has been a screw-up himself for plenty of this season, and here is his moment of redemption. It isn't a fist fight that saves the world, it's one broken person loving another broken person. That's powerful stuff, and the simple dialogue combined with the powerful imagery hammers home the emotional impact of what has happened. Willow will face a hard road ahead, but the darkness recedes as she weeps in Xander's arms, and with the rage gone, she can finally start to feel her loss and begin the process of dealing with it. It's one of the best scenes Buffy ever did, and redeems what could otherwise have been a lackluster finale.
In the end, the finale is much like Season 6 as a whole. It's very ambitious, it stretches for a lot of big emotional moments. It isn't perfect, and some stuff doesn't work, but when it does work, it's amazing.
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