Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Six

When reviewing the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I said that: "the pattern for season openers is rather clear, now: Buffy is in a bad place psychologically, and, by the episode's end, she's pretty much reverted to normal." To be fair, season five had nothing to do with that, but we're back to it in force in season six, even if the bad place she's returning from psychologically is quite literally death. Most of these openers don't work so well for me, because, while Whedon and Co are generally masters of metaphor, these starting episodes are often played too sentimentally, too focused and without enough depth and complexity yet built up to support the emotions they try and get from you right at the gate. The two part Bargaining is, I'm sorry to report, the worst yet in that respect, though the return from the bad place here is stretched over episode after episode. That dragged out feeling is one that comes to characterize a lot of season six, and it's made so much worse by the fact that, like in Bargaining, the villains simply don't have the power to keep the plot moving enough to contrast and explore the characters' emotions. There are strong episodes in this season, but I'm sorry to say that they're few and far between, and the rest of the show's weak, messy, sometimes maudlin, and oftentimes simply silly.

Yep, these look like good villains.

Of course, one of the pressing questions going in was just how the writers were going to top having had a literal god as the prior season's villain. The answer? Three douchebags in a van. No, really. Previously, Tom Lenk's Andrew, Adam Busch's Warren, and Danny Strong's Jonathan were one off characters or, in Andrew's case, simple failures. Now they're back, and they've got the big billing, the writers having evidently gotten their comic relief and antagonist flash cards mixed up. The results are stupid. Not flashingly so, not daringly so, not even humorously so. Just fucking stupid, and stupid villains make for a stupid plot. The fact that, come the halfway point, the Trio all turn out to be masters of magic, technology, and manipulation to an extent that the Mayor and even the just-shown God would sell their souls to be doesn't redeem them but just cheapens everything that came before. And when, in Dead Things, the Trio kidnaps, attempts to rape, and murders a woman, it doesn't make them any less ridiculous, just makes the joke disgusting.

The main thrust of season six is Buffy's coming into adulthood (I specify Buffy's, mind you, because every other character made this transition into maturity some time ago). Admittedly, the writers had no real choice but to go here. After Dawn's entrance into the picture, Buffy's becoming Dawn's guardian, and Buffy's simple rise in age, this was an inevitable shift, and I suppose I should give the show some credit for not simply oozing along in a time freeze. But the arc oscillates between being boring and being a disaster.

The chief early episode of all this is Life Serial, where Buffy attempts to grow up and either work or go to college and fails, handily due to magic. At the end, her early season rise to adulthood is completed by Giles simply writing her a check to handle all of her money problems. Wow, what maturity! What self sufficiency, independence, and general competence! Later in the season, once Giles' left (he spends the entire season dramatically departing for England, coming back, sitting about a bit, and then dramatically departing again (before, once again, coming back)), Buffy decides to pay for her expansive California house with a job flipping burgers at the Doublemeat Palace. Yep, that sounds workable.

Besides her so-gripping monetary woes, the other half of Buffy's coming adulthood is her parenting of Dawn. Let's not shy back here: Buffy is a terrible parent. She basically leaves Dawn to do what she will, with no idea what's going, and occasionally stops in to apologize profusely for how bad at the whole thing she is. To be clear, though, I don't want her to become a good parent. The few times she tries are incredibly boring. The problem is that motherhood is not the most dramatic thing in a show about vampires, dark gods, and Three Douchebags in a Van (alright, it's better than the last of those), and, though the show's writers badly worked themselves into this corner, it doesn't make it any better a place to be in. Admittedly, however, this arc does lead to one (and only one!) good thing, the episode Older and Far Away, where Dawn's accidental wish leaves Buffy and all her guests trapped in the house.

Just so you know, I don't need you,
and we're going to break up after this.

By far the most interesting thing that Buffy gets up to this time around is Spike. In the course of the season, the relationship between the two grows and grows twisted, and its fundamental dynamics – her need for him and disgust with him, his love and dedication to her and his cruelty – are definitely the highlights of the season. Unfortunately, there's no  variance to be found in this plot. The same few elements are hit over and over, and they're hit in the same way, as when – for episode after torturous episode – the two fight, kiss (or fuck), and then Buffy says that she doesn't need him, that they're done, and that she's never going to talk to him again until they do it all over again in the next forty-plus minute segment. Change only comes towards the end, when, after one of Buffy's many, many break offs of their relationship, Spike attempts to rape her. The scene is horrifying, clumsy, and painful in marked contrast to the majority of the show's fight scenes, and it's likely to leave the viewer feeling more than a little sickened. Afterwards, horrified at what he's done, Spike flees Sunnydale, heading to try and, in the final episodes, succeed, at getting a soul.

Is it too late to break up?

Then there's Xander. After a relationship with almost no shown problems, and after an ungodly long buildup before Xander finally reveals to the group that he and Anya are engaged, the two are set to be married. And then he leaves her at the altar. Really, I wish I could be kidding as I type that. It's not a grand, I-am-evil-incarnate kind of betrayal. It's just him being an asshole, and, no matter how much he tries to play it off and act charming, and then later act like he's the moral high ground here, he's completely at fault for it all.

Willow's plotline is arguably more important to the season's overall course than Buffy's, and it's the plotline that contains the lion's share of the season's best aspects, even if it, too, has its manifold faults. Through the first third or so, we see Willow gradually using, and abusing, more and more of her magical abilities, culminating in what is essentially the mind-altering of her lover, Tara, and also the absolutely hilarious episode Tabula Rasa, in which she accidentally wipes the mind of the entire cast.

Her arc's middle, however, breaks up the building tension of this. Magic becomes a metaphor for drug addiction, and she tries to break free from it. The emotions on display here are quite effective, but the comparison itself falls apart at the most cursory glance. A drug like cocaine makes you feel invincible, yet it actually weakens you. Magic, on the other hand, actually gives you all the powers it feels like it does, leaving the simple addiction language that's used to describe it, and the scenes of magic-caused weakness that come out of nowhere, feeling simply false.

Not what drugs do to you...
But so totally badass.

The climax of Willow's arc and the season, though, is fantastic. After two of the three Van Douchebags are arrested, the final one, Warren, goes after Buffy with a gun. This, contrary to expectations, works just fine (why has no other villain ever tried this?), and, though he doesn't do more than wound Buffy, he does hit and kill Tara. That's when things get rather more than interesting: Willow goes full on badass, becoming – to use the fan base's nomenclature – "Dark Willow." She sets off, fully utilizing her magical powers, consumed with hate, and bent on slaughtering the Trio.

And so we come to what is the thematic heart of this season, as it is of so many others: the weight of consequence and the possibility of redemption. Willow, needless to say, comes down on the side of vengeance, of punishing and slaughtering the killers and monsters of the world at all cost. Buffy, meanwhile, believes that the human authorities should be left to deal with this human villain and his human means. She claims that, much as he is deserving of all flavors of hell, it's not up to them to administer it, saying that she "can't control the universe." The consistency of that position, though, is just a tad questionable, in light of a whole slew of past events, not the least of which her certainly outside the law methods of dealing with Faith's murder in season three (and, even though Faith did eventually go to jail at the close of the Angel episode Sanctuary, Buffy actively opposed the idea), not to mention her defense of multiple murderers that were, even if innocent in intent, responsible for countless deaths (Angel not the least among them). The argument seems to be the natural nature of Warren's final crime, but I'm not sure how much of a moral difference is made by his use of a gun or a spell. Then there's the fact that the idea of jailing a supernatural threat, essentially a prison stay enforced only by the consent of the theoretically imprisoned, is just a tad absurd, and, though Warren may not possess any literal powers, his season's run of quasi-magical and quasi-technological trickery certainly seem to put him into that category.

But, despite my reservations, there is something to be said for the question, something that does cut close to the heart of the character of Buffy and the entirety of the show's thematic. Which is why it's so infuriating when Willow's debatably justifiable drive for a magical (and fatal) solution to magical problems is shot right over as Willow, seemingly without cause but grief, reaches the heights of every previous end-the-world aiming Big Bad. I suppose that her progression to such destructive nihilism isn't completely farfetched in terms of her actual development, but it does remove any and all complexity from the season's climax. Still, the action is enjoyable, and Willow does remain darkly magnificent. The end of it all, with Xander only just managing to draw her back from the brink by showing his love, is hardly surprising, but is quite hard hitting and effective. But the world's continued existence – something never in doubt more than two episodes back – is only the most superficial of resolutions, one that quite literally lets the moral complexities of the arc, embodied in the Trio's two surviving members (both, let me remind you, guilty of kidnapping, attempted rape, and murder), slink off stage unpunished.

Vampires, Slayers, Demons, Gods...
and SONG!

Still, the main plot, here, is a stop and go thing, with everyone's (least) favorite nerds often dropping out for episodes at a time with little reason, and as in seasons one and four, many of the season's strongest episodes are stand alones. But, even if Warren and Co aren't present, the damage they and their arc did and does to the characters and the show's atmosphere remains, crippling a fair few of the side stories that they're nowhere near. I've already mentioned Tabula Rasa (excellent) and Older and Far Away (quite good), but there's Once More With Feeling and Normal Again to consider. The former is the show's famous musical episode, an idea that, like the silent Hush, should have failed spectacularly but doesn't. It's not deep, but it is incredibly fun. The latter, meanwhile, shows a Buffy tormented by visions of herself in a mental hospital, told by the doctors to confront her inner delusions, the vampires she battles and the friends that keep her in the fictional Sunnydale of her psychosis. The idea that it's all been a dream's rather unacceptable after six seasons, but it's an effective episode nonetheless.

I've seen a fair few internet apologists try and claim that some of this season's bad reputation just comes about because it's dark, but that's bullshit from episode one to episode twenty-two. The problem here is not that the events are dark but that they're all too often poorly written and poorly executed, and don't try to tell me that I don't know dark fiction. There are some great episodes in season six, but they're not nearly enough to save it. I hope that Buffy's seventh season can redeem the show, but, after this, I have to wonder if it might not've been better if Buffy had, at season five's close, stayed dead…

Standout Episodes: Villains, Tabula Rasa, Once More With Feeling