Questions (SEASON 7)

[dane5by5]

I have some questions about season seven, or the final episodes to be specific.

Did Joss or his team ever explain how the uber-vamps got out and found the potential slayers and Faith when they went on their mission?

And also did anyone ever mention why the uber vamps in the hellmouth were much more easily dispatched by the slayer army when Buffy had so much trouble killing the original?

If anyone can clear this up it would be much appreciated.

Also any fans of the Buffy/Spike saga should watch this tribute video (I guess that's what you'd call it...) on youtube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozzd3OpDm7I

[Bennyboi]

I do not know about the events of 'End of Days' but Jos mentioned on the 'Chosen' commentary, that in the battle, he wanted to show the empowerment of these girls and was less worried about continuity.

[dane5by5]

Hmm. I wish he'd give a more logical answer in terms of the Buffyverse. Like the original ubervamp was the oldest and therefore more powerful or something...

[shep]

I often too wondered about the Ubervamps and how hard it was to kill the first one but the others were picked off by the Slayers.
Perhaps the original one was the strongest of them all?

[El Diablo Robotico]

S7 is an unmitigated mess in so many ways... Honestly, the best thing you can do with it is not scrutinize it too closely and wonder 'why-this?' and 'why-that?', because the more you do, the even more shot-through-with-holes it becomes.

When I watch it, I just kinda let it flow by, laugh at Andrew (one of S7's few highpoints), and look forward to getting to the end so I can get back to S1. Honestly, it's tough to think that one of my favorite shows went out like that, which is why I'm even more excited about the S8 comics--let's consider S7 a blip and get back on track with the awesomeness... :jump:

[dane5by5]

I actually loved season 7, it was one of my favourites, if not my absolute favourite. I think people had these massive expectations with it being the final season, just like with Angel. The only fault it had was it never had time to address some issues, which crazy fans like me want answered. And it had many hilarious moments, Anya was definitely my highlight of the season, remember:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OQN2S5UhGQ

That is my favourite scene of Buffy. Ever.

[Lukee]

I was thinking maybe the first uber-vamp was the hardiest to kill because Buffy wasn't expecting it. She didn't know what it was. So i think that made it harder to kill.

[El Diablo Robotico]

dane5by5 said:

I think people had these massive expectations with it being the final season, just like with Angel.

Except that the final season of "Angel" was probably the very best they did, so that comparison doesn't necessarily hold true.

The only fault it had was it never had time to address some issues, which crazy fans like me want answered.

That was only the tip of the berg with S7's problems. But if you really enjoy it, cool-- . Sure wish I could...

[dane5by5]

Aww. I wish you could enjoy it too! Because it was a great season. The Angel final season was one of the best in my opinion too, but I don't think you will find too many people that would agree with us.

[El Diablo Robotico]

dane5by5 said:

The Angel final season was one of the best in my opinion too, but I don't think you will find too many people that would agree with us.

Well, maybe that's true of the attitude here (haven't been around long enough yet to say ), but in the 3 years since AtS S5 ended, my experience online seems to be that more people like it than don't.

S4 seems like the one year of "Angel" that gets the most negative reaction. There are people out there who absolutely love it (I'm not one of them), who will argue with you for pages and pages that it was the best season of the five, but to me, it was "big overture--little show", and got too far away from the types of stories that made the series so great to begin with...

[Bennyboi]

I much prefered Angel season 5 to Buffy season 7. There was much exploration and I really liked how everything linked together. Except for Connor who I despise, it was a great final season. I also liked how they interlinked the aftermath of Buffy season 7 via 'Damage'.

[dane5by5]

diablorobotico said:

dane5by5 said:

The Angel final season was one of the best in my opinion too, but I don't think you will find too many people that would agree with us.

Well, maybe that's true of the attitude here (haven't been around long enough yet to say ), but in the 3 years since AtS S5 ended, my experience online seems to be that more people like it than don't.

S4 seems like the one year of "Angel" that gets the most negative reaction. There are people out there who absolutely love it (I'm not one of them), who will argue with you for pages and pages that it was the best season of the five, but to me, it was "big overture--little show", and got too far away from the types of stories that made the series so great to begin with...

El Diablo Robotico this isn't directed at you but I think the reason people didn't like season 4 of Angel (which was my favourite season) is because it was similar to Buffy season 6 in many respects. It had more "dark" themes and subject matter, the characters changed so much that some people had trouble adapting to the new demeanour of the show. I can't stand it when people criticise Buffy & Angel because they "changed". It's absurd. Series' like Buffy & Angel are built around change and character developement. If they want stale boring characters that never change, go watch Desperate Housewives.

And "Damage" was a awesome episode of Angel! I haven't seen it for a while but I remember there being a masculine-ish Slayer with Andrew at the end. Does that remind anyone of the Slayer in the season 8 comics that keeps asking about guns? That would be pretty nifty if Joss tied that in to the comics. Or maybe I'm just remembering things that never happened...

[El Diablo Robotico]

dane5by5 said:

El Diablo Robotico this isn't directed at you but I think the reason people didn't like season 4 of Angel (which was my favourite season) is because it was similar to Buffy season 6 in many respects. It had more "dark" themes and subject matter, the characters changed so much that some people had trouble adapting to the new demeanour of the show. I can't stand it when people criticise Buffy & Angel because they "changed". It's absurd. Series' like Buffy & Angel are built around change and character developement. If they want stale boring characters that never change, go watch Desperate Housewives.

Well, to again throw that theory out the window (at least as it applies to me; sorry ), I like S6 of "Buffy", but hate S4 of "Angel" (at least in comparison with the other seasons; it's still better than just about anything else out there). I don't mind dark themes--that's not my issue with S4.

The one thing I will say in S4's defense is that at least the characters remained a main focus. Yes, they had this huge series of events going on around them, but all the characters still grew and developed during the year, which isn't true of "Buffy" S7, where the focus went entirely onto the FE storyline, and the characters took a backseat.

My biggest problem with S4 is that the end (Jasmine) is out of sync with the middle (Evil Cordy, the Beast). None of the things Evil Cordy does seem to make sense in hindsight. Why was "getting and keeping Angelus crucial to (her) plan", for example? Yes, I've heard the reasoning, "Oh, that was all a distraction to keep the gang busy while she got pregnant." Um, can you say overkill? That's like going after a housefly with a bazooka.

Besides, we found out as the year went along that she was probably as skilled at magick as Willow--maybe even more so, being a former higher being. Why not just do a spell that would make any locator spell the rest of the gang tried ineffective, grab Connor, hop in the station wagon and take off for Battle Creek, Michigan until the "baby" was born? Answer: because that wouldn't have been as "cool" on TV, and that seems to have been the big problem with S4: the writers did things because they were "cool" and "exciting", not necessarily because they made sense within the context of the story they were trying to tell. Near the end of the year, referring to the Beast's master, Angelus tells EC: "I bet he doesn't even have a master plan--he's just making it up as he goes along." Watching it now, I feel the same way about the writing staff.

And when I said it got away from what made the show so great to begin with, what I meant was that "Buffy" was always the show that did the wanna-be world-conquering/devastating Big Bads, while "Angel" (ironically set in the big city compared to small-town Sunnydale) was more about the smaller, personal stories: Darla, Holtz, the ongoing struggle against W&H... When they tried to do the giant, epic storyline during S4, it just felt too out-of-character...

[henzINNIT]

There are many questions to ask about season 7 really...

Where did the Seal come from?
Where did the Amulet come from?
Where did the Scythe come from?
Where did that Guardian come from?
What logic does D'Hoffryn base his punishments on?
How did the first make Caleb strong?
What the hell was the first's plan again?
What the hell did that first/joyce and Dawn conversation actually mean?
Where did the like-able Giles go?
Where did the like-able Buffy go?
Why did Xander get fat?
Why do americans think that casting americans as english people works? (Molly, lol)


Season 7 in episode terms has a hell of a lot of greats though. It's a shame the season as a whole was let down by such a vague and lazy story.

[henzINNIT]

I think Season 4 is Angel's weakest. The big plot was fine with me. I love Connor's arc and he's the only reason I rewatch the season really.
(dane5by5 is gonna love this) I hated the the way the characters changed. Cordy got fooked over comepletely by the crappy decision to make her evil. And in my opinion, Gunn and Fred were just dilluted, not developed.
Wes was pretty cool, but I much prefer his drop into painful isolation in season 3 over his reintergration. Lorne did sod all. Gwen was the shittest, dullest, most 2 dimensional character ever conceived, so you can imagine my dispair when they bring her back notonce, but twice! I don't like that having the HUGE arc sacrificed any chance of nice standalones (as I feel most of the best episodes stand alone). Although, thinking about "Players", less is definately better.

[El Diablo Robotico]

henz said:

There are many questions to ask about season 7 really...

Where did the Seal come from?
Where did the Amulet come from?
Where did the Scythe come from?
Where did that Guardian come from?
What logic does D'Hoffryn base his punishments on?
How did the first make Caleb strong?
What the hell was the first's plan again?
What the hell did that first/joyce and Dawn conversation actually mean?
Where did the like-able Giles go?
Where did the like-able Buffy go?
Why did Xander get fat?
Why do americans think that casting americans as english people works? (Molly, lol)

Yeah, that points out some of the gaps in the arc, but those are only symptoms of my dislike for it. Basically, my main complaint with it is this: in seasons 1-6, the characters and their stories came first, and the mystical "Oh, crap, it's another apocalypse" portion of the season fit in around it. In S7, starting around ep8, it was all about the First Evil storyline, and the characters we all love became secondary to that. Maybe--maybe--that would've worked if the arc had been really cool, really well-done, and most of all, made coherent sense from beginning to end. But it didn't. It was all over the place, and the fact that every episode from 8 thru 22, with practically no standalones in there, focused on this storyline only highlighted the holes in it. And don't even get me started on the potentials and how much screentime they sucked up from the characters we actually wanted to see... :xp:

Oh, and while the concept that the Slayer's power comes from a demon and gives each slayer an element of inner-darkness is intriguing in a way, for a show that was always, at its core, about female empowerment, does anyone else have a problem with the revelation that the origin of that power was basically a demonic rape?

[dane5by5]

henz said:

There are many questions to ask about season 7 really...

Where did the Seal come from?
Where did the Amulet come from?
Where did the Scythe come from?
Where did that Guardian come from?
What logic does D'Hoffryn base his punishments on?
How did the first make Caleb strong?
What the hell was the first's plan again?
What the hell did that first/joyce and Dawn conversation actually mean?
Where did the like-able Giles go?
Where did the like-able Buffy go?
Why did Xander get fat?
Why do americans think that casting americans as english people works? (Molly, lol)


Season 7 in episode terms has a hell of a lot of greats though. It's a shame the season as a whole was let down by such a vague and lazy story.

Deus ex machina. Which can be fun, in small doses, there was a little too much in season 7 though, and I'd like some of that to be addressed in the season 8 comics. Most of those questions don't really bother me, but I do wish the whole Joyce/Dawn conversation leads on to something, I would love it if they somehow tied it in with season 8. Because I don't feel they would create such a emotional scene and not plan on doing something with it.

[henzINNIT]

dane5by5 said:

henz said:

There are many questions to ask about season 7 really...

Where did the Seal come from?
Where did the Amulet come from?
Where did the Scythe come from?
Where did that Guardian come from?
What logic does D'Hoffryn base his punishments on?
How did the first make Caleb strong?
What the hell was the first's plan again?
What the hell did that first/joyce and Dawn conversation actually mean?
Where did the like-able Giles go?
Where did the like-able Buffy go?
Why did Xander get fat?
Why do americans think that casting americans as english people works? (Molly, lol)


Season 7 in episode terms has a hell of a lot of greats though. It's a shame the season as a whole was let down by such a vague and lazy story.

Deus ex machina. Which can be fun, in small doses, there was a little too much in season 7 though, and I'd like some of that to be addressed in the season 8 comics. Most of those questions don't really bother me, but I do wish the whole Joyce/Dawn conversation leads on to something, I would love it if they somehow tied it in with season 8. Because I don't feel they would create such a emotional scene and not plan on doing something with it.

Yeah I totally agree. I always felt there was a moment missing in season 7.

Dawn hears from the first/joyce that Buffy wouldn't chose her.
Things start getting serious.
Buffy gets mission focused and tells Giles she would let Dawn die to save the world.
Tensions rise and the gang - feeling unloved by mission girl buffy - kick buffy out.
*something changes*
Buffy returns and the gang are suddenly a likable unit again in Chosen.

[Lukee]

I think that was the whole point of season 7. Because this was such a big bad they didn't have time to worry about here selfs much. But they did always show the problems with the group and friendships like normal i think they just didn't have alto of them. But also gotta remember season was set faster then the other season they normally had like half a More then half a year and such for each season but season 7 in Buffyverse was only like a few months so everything was being rushed.