What Do You Do With a Problem Like Buffy

[shipperx]

It's been interesting reading some of the reactions to the last comic. I've been fascinated by the ones who keep speculating that someone needs to come pick up the pieces of Buffy and put her back together again (Candidates generally seem to be Xander or Spike). Am I the only one whose reaction is... no? I think there have already been enough problems with the comics what with the apparent source of the problem being that Buffy screwed things up by empowering more than just one woman in the world. Somehow this 'threw off the balance'. Then we have guys trying to make decisions for Buffy behind her back. And we have things like Willow summoning up some earth magic phallic root to penetrate one of their enemies while she struggles against a literal vagina dentata. The feminist cred isn't as strong as it used to be. Plus there's the fact that Buffy actually needs to learn something from this four years long series of bad decisions.

And, at the risk of being labeled a 'hater' I have to think that the problem that needs to be addressed in the wake of Season 8 is the problem that is Buffy. I don't mean that in a hater sense. It's just if the character is ever going to be allowed to grow up (something I'm far from certain that Joss has any interest in doing), but if the character is ever to grow up, now is the time to put up or shut up about it.

This got me to thinking of the character arc of Season 1-2 of Being Erica. I actually liked how they book-ended Season 1 and Season 2. For those who never watched or don't know about the show, it's a female protagonist in magical time-travel therapy... and it's more interesting than weird as it sounds.

The series starts with the heroine, Erica Strange, having an incredibly shitty day, she's dumped by her boyfriend and she also gets fired. This is bookended at the end of Season 2 when in the finale Erica is fired (again) and also breaks up with her boyfriend. But, it's actually a quite good ending. I enjoyed it and thought it was great, because the point was that what's changed between the first episode and the Season 2 finale wasn't so much Erica's circumstances but the character herself. She was in roughly the same circumstances, but this time she was okay. It was all good.

In the first episode the job she was fired from was just the latest in a long series of stop-gap jobs and the boyfriend who dumped her was just yet another bad relationship coming to a bad close. Erica is directionless and lost. Over the course of the show (and therapy) she's allowed to learn from her mistakes. So, in Ep 1 she's fired and in Season 2's finale she's fired, but she's not directionless any more. She knows what she wants and she takes the chance, partnering up with a friend to launch their own business. She now has a direction. And while the break-up in the first episode had her going into the usual meltdown over being dumped, the breakup with Season 2 boyfriend was a good thing. In Season 1 she was being dumped in a dysfunctional relationship. Since then she actually 'got' the guy that she always thought she wanted. Turns out, the dream "Mr. Right" was just a human being, the kind with his own wants and needs and flaws. He really was a nice guy. She wasn't disillusioned by him, but she had to give up the fantasy and admit to herself that just because he's the guy she always wanted, that doesn't mean that the relationship actually works for her (or for him). They don't really want the same things in life. So they break up, in a honest and caring fashion, because she's strong enough to no longer cling to fairy tales, to not need a prince charming to rescue her, and to look for a relationship that will fulfill both her and her partner's needs. This break-up was a good thing.

So why do I bring this up with Buffy. The point I took from the Being Erica arc was that the problem wasn't just a matter of circumstances. Her circumstances and in Season 2 were roughly the the same as in Episode 1. The problem had been in and the change had been in Erica. It wasn't what was around her, it was her. Her learning from her mistakes, allowing herself to develop and move forward, gives her an entirely different outlook. In Episode 1 she was devestated. In the Season 2 finale, she was actually in a really good place... despite that in both instances she was unemployed and single.

So when I say that the problem is Buffy. It isn't in a haterade sense. It's that no character is ever going to fix her story for her. No character will ever fulfill her. No character will solve her loneliness, her lack of connection, her misery, etc. No character but her. No character needs to pick Buffy up and put her back together again. No character but her. (I just don't know that I trust Joss or Dark Horse to tell that story.)

[ETA: And I know that it's easy to reference that Erica has her therapist. I wouldn't be against Buffy having one of those too. (Actually I've thought that since Season 6). But I think the time for mentors for Buffy is over.]

Comments

[rahirah]

Back when S6 started, there was a guy whose name I can't remember who posted a lot on BAPS. He was primarily a Willow/Xander fan, but he liked Spike too. And when the spoilers for S6, with Xander hiding the engagement came out, he went bugfuck. He insisted that Joss couldn't handle writing adult characters, and that he was going to regress all the characters and their relationships, and ignore all the character development they'd had in S5, and so on. At the time, we thought he was crazy, and he eventually got so obnoxious that he was banned.

But in retrospect, he wasn't that far off. Joss seems to be able to take a character up to a certain point... but he can't get past that point, and has to roll them back.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Yes, that seems to be the problem.

They resolve their issues and that instead of confronting them with new circumstances that pose new problems for them, he just rehashes the same conflict over and over.

I'm still comparing Buffy and Laurence from the Temeraire books in my mind and it illustrates perfectly how to do it and how not to do it.

Laurence grows, new conflicts arise that give him new issues. It's perfectly ok to push a character into a crisis but it needs to be logically constructed.

On Buffy she grows and then inexplicably she regresses again and has the same conflict again, only no reason. As if grown up life would not hold interesting new conflicts.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

On Buffy she grows and then inexplicably she regresses again and has the same conflict again, only no reason. As if grown up life would not hold interesting new conflicts.

Someone on LJ (or maybe it was BSV) referred to her as "She of the Teflon Epiphanies." I don't suspect any life lessons will really stick, or at least, they don't seem to be...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

St. Salieri (I think) dubbed her "the queen of teflon epiphanies" years and years ago.

[quinara]

I have always said and will always say that Xander and Anya should have been allowed to get married. Nothing was gained by Xander running out apart from surfacey-plotty things (and that was mostly in the service of Spike's plot with Buffy anyway) and personally it sent a fairly plain message about Joss's view on what's interesting in romance plots when they were regressed back to awkward-courtship-sometimes-we-have-sex in S7.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I think it was fairly telling that in consequence of the wedding Xander did not grow but instead was virtually forgotten in S7 because they didn't know what to do with him.

[quinara]

The thing is, Xander clearly had changed in S7 - or at least NB seemed to be playing his tiny role as a kind of stoic forebearance (of Spike etc.) in contrast to his nastiness in S6. I'll agree that he didn't get to do very much with his evolution, though.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I thought it was pretty ridiculous in their storytelling that they had Xander run out on the wedding then in the next episode have him assume that he and Anya were still girlfriend/boyfriend. Um... what about the public humiliation part, Xander?

Then again, I never understood why Carrie Bradshaw ever forgave Mr. Big for leaving her at the alter either.

The primary problem with the Xander abandons Anya at the altar was that at that point it was straight-up overkill. Everyone and everything was mired in uniform misery. The ratings plummeted after that episode. I remember all sorts of people leaving fandom because they said that there was nothing at all positive left in the show. There was no hope. The ratings never did recover (though they fell even lower with Seeing Red).

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I didn't know it was such a ratings killer. It just seemed a bit lame to me, not even during the episode itself but in the aftermath, where Xander did not try to face down his issues but just stayed as he was with nothing to do, except they crayon speech.

It still was perfectly fine though if you compare it t S8.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think it primarily just worked as the straw that broke the camel's back. It wasn't so much that people thought that the episode was bad, it was that coming after everything else (and in the wake of 9/11, and just around the time that spoilers for Seeing Red leaked) it just got too damn bleak for people to handle.

The shows that were far and away the most successful that year were comfort-food comedies like Friends, which was one of the few shows to gain audience.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I had no idea about the historic context. I watched the show on dvd after it was over and never really thought of what was going on in the world around it.

Kinda makes sense that people were not exactly interested in their fantasy world going bleaker and bleaker when reality was so dire.

It's interesting, because among my rl Buffy fanish friends Season 6 is a highly popular one.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I do think that a few things play differently because of context. I mean, the collapse of Glory's tower was pretty innocuous. Airing just a couple of weeks after 9/11, it played as gutwrenching. The network had seriously considered pulling the scene because it really did feel just way too soon.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Then again, I never understood why Carrie Bradshaw ever forgave Mr. Big for leaving her at the alter either.

But he came right back. I mean, they could have just gone to the church and no one would have ever known, or gotten married at the Justice of the Peace first, then had the circus-circus wedding (that he so didn't want and made clear beforehand).

<--has a lot of pet peeves about that film; has not seen the second one.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I wasn't too peeved about it because, honestly, Carrie and Mr. Big deserve each other [I say in a snarky way].

And I didn't see the second movie either. My reaction was "Geez, why in the hell do any of us need another one." I was satisfied with the end of the series. That worked for me.

Like the Buffy comics, I don't think the movies have added productively to the original. It was better off having been left the heck alone.

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Like the Buffy comics, I don't think the movies have added productively to the original. It was better off having been left the heck alone

Ditto.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Back when S6 started, there was a guy whose name I can't remember who posted a lot on BAPS.

Charles maybe? Or possibly "Chuck"? I don't remember precisely. I've thought of him a couple of times over the years. As OTT as I thought of him then, I now sort of remember him as the canary in the coal mine. He wasn't entirely wrong.

[rahirah]

That's him! One of the handful of token guys on the board...