Buffy Season 7

Yargh.

First, I have an unhealthy amount of affection for that show. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous how much I like it. I love horror even though almost all horror sucks. I love chop socky even though almost all chop socky movies suck. I'm a sucker for well-done girl power stuff. And I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stuff. Buffy just pushes a large number of my buttons. IMHO, it's a damn great show.

But man, that season 7 is just not very good, is it?

I've managed to make excuses, spin the evidence, avert my mental gaze and all that for quite awhile, but JQ and I just finished watching the whole series again. (Huddled on our futon mattress in our still-unfit-for-human-occupancy house, with a giant extension cord snaking through several rooms to the one outlet that works. Grumble. Anyway, it's been really awesome to have the stack of Buffy DVDs waiting after hard day after hard day of not finishing this &%!@* house...). But anyway: season 7, not good.

It's really like the writers suddenly forgot what show they were writing for. Where is the humor? Where is the chemistry between the characters? Where are the unforeseeable twists and turns? Who is this cranky, superfluous fellow who looks like Giles? Sure, Conversations with Dead People is great--one of the relatively few genuinely frightening episodes in the whole series. And Him cracks me up. But other than those, I'd be hard-pressed to pick out a good episode. Chosen has its moments, and isn't too bad given what Whedon had to work with by the time it rolled around. But gah. Kinda painful to watch a large number of those episodes.

I'm not even going to discuss how painful it is whenever Kennedy is on screen. (And if people are fast-forwarding through the lesbian scenes...well, you're doing something wrong...) And Buffy's interminable inspirational speeches. Gah! A thousand times gah! And the whole idea of the slayerettes. Gah I say! And the awesome girl power stuff of earlier seasons is replaced by stuff so heavy-handed that it's almost unbearable. Gah! Gah! Gah! Caleb would have been immeasurably better if the audience had not been beaten about the faces and heads with his misogyny. And the lame meta-watcher woman who shows up for three minutes, twenty minutes from the end of the entire series, just to say "hey, we women watched the watchers so, ya know, still girl-powery!" So, so bad.

And man, if there's one thing I hate, it's an inconsistent conception of a monster's power. For three shows we see Buffy completely outmatched by the ubervamp. She drops several thousand pounds of pipes on his head, squashing him against a concrete floor, and he gets up no only unharmed, but faster and kung-fu-ier than he was before! Then we get the oh-so-lame set-up fight of Showtime, in which suddenly and for no apparent reason, Buffy is able to dust the vamp in order to inspire the troops. And by Chosen, Giles and Wood are taking on ten ubervamps at once by themselves.Even Anya (who dusts two in one second) and Andrew are dusting them. Oh so lame.

One shouldn't complain when a bunch of people have generated a story as delightful, amusing and downright heartwarming as Buffy. The show builds up enough capital and good will that it can coast through the last part of season six and season seven without generating too much frustration on the part of the viewer. But man, by that point it's not half the show it used to be. (Last night as we were watching End of Days, JQ said "by this point, it's just Charmed." She quickly decided that was too harsh. But still...

Anyway, I can't stand to write anything on this topic that doesn't end with something like: overall, that show really does rule.