(long silence)
(finally)

JW:

To which I can only say, with my trademarked dryness bordering on irony… No, Joss. You’re certainly not the Idea Shop.

And don’t call me Jesus.

Fiction always has a skeleton… certain things that have to be accomplished, to move the plot along, to explore the themes you’re trying to put forth, to establish your essential conflicts and then resolve them, to build to a climax that is both satisfying, logical, and unexpected. Good fiction hides this skeleton well. Good writers clothe the skeleton of necessary plot development in a flesh of stylish dialogue, intriguing characterization, dramatic misdirection, sudden story twists, and exciting action. Good writers are like very deft stage magicians; they don’t let you see the rabbit hiding behind the fake lining in the top hat, or all those cards pinned up their sleeves. What happens in well written fiction is that you get surprised, but the surprises are always fair; you aren’t left staring at the book, the comic, the TV, or the movie screen slack jawed and stupefied that any writer, director, producer, or actor honestly thought you were stupid enough to buy into that crap, to not see through that garbage, to not be able to predict that utterly stupid resolution coming a thousand miles away.

Buffy hasn’t been good fiction for a long time now.

Lately… and I mean, for the last fifteen episodes or so… each installment of Buffy has pretty clearly been created very specifically to accomplish certain story goals. Probably the nadir of this season was the episode in which the entire point of the ep was getting the chip out of Spike’s head. The episode had no real plot, nor did it really have any essential conflict. For no reason ever explained, Spike’s chip started to malfunction. Buffy, who has never really worried about her phone being tapped prior to this, picked up the phone to give her government eavesdroppers a message to pass on to Riley, although logic dictates that if the Initiative, or its survivors, were to find out that Spike was the vampire with the chip in his head that had escaped them years before, the last thing any of them would want would be to help him. Riley himself has no reason whatsoever to help Spike. Regardless of any of this, eventually Buffy and Spike break back into the underground headquarters where once the Initiative dwelt, for no good reason anyone can understand, have a brief and really stupid fight with a monster that’s down there just so they can have a brief and really stupid fight with it, and then the Initiative shows up and, because Riley (a renegade agent they don’t like very much) said to (for reasons no one will ever understand) they helpfully take Spike’s chip out of his head.

Oh, and in that episode’s B story, Amy the Evil Witch, for those by now very familiar Incomprehensible Reasons, casts a conveniently undefined curse on Willow, which causes Willow to appear to be Warren, the guy she murdered at the end of the previous season, until such time as Kennedy kisses Willow, forcing Willow to finally accept Tara’s death, which somehow breaks the curse. Of course, if you were Amy and The Most Powerful Borderline Psychotic Spellcaster In The Universe already had good reason to be annoyed with you, I’m sure the first thing you’d do is piss her off worse by casting a curse on her.

But hey, never mind logic. That episode accomplished a great many necessary goals. It gave the actors who play Amy and Warren another paycheck. It got the chip out of Spike’s head. It allowed Willow to stop grieving for Tara and start macking on another female hottie. It gave the writers an excuse to suddenly upgrade all the potential Slayers’ ages by about four or five years, so Willow wouldn’t be arrested for sexual battery on a minor. It let Buffy toss off some really idiotic dialogue about how ‘having Spike with that chip in his head was like keeping a dog in muzzle… it was just wrong’. And all of these things were very very important; so important, in fact, that writing an actual script with an actual conflict in it for the episode, as well as, you know, interesting dialogue and consistent characterization, was seen as far less a priority than accomplishing these very important story goals.

And now with our latest episode, we see that once more, the major goals that had to be accomplished were far, far more important than, you know, coming up with an actual story that worked. Apparently, no one can figure out what to do about the ubervamps, much less an army of ubervamps. So we’ll bring in this super powerful, indestructible, really annoying Evil Preacher instead. Now, the writers know this looks awfully contrived, not to mention creatively desperate, so they toss in some dialogue indicating that this Evil Preacher helped to organize the Bringers for the First. This is odd, because when we initially saw the First in Season 3, Buffy found a picture of the Bringers in some really ancient scrolls, which would seem to indicate… no, never mind, doesn’t matter. Ubervamps are out. Can’t figure out what to do with the stupid seal so we’re ignoring that now, too. Nobody has the vaguest clue what to do with the army of potential Slayers, or Faith, or the regular cast, either. So, we cut Buffy loose from her entire support network and give her another opponent we haven’t defined as being quite so tough as the damn legion of ubervamps. And then we introduce a plotline where Buffy will eventually find a magic sword (doubtless the Evil Preacher’s only weakness) which, in the end, she will use to defeat him, and the First, and all will be well.

We can’t have that happen too quickly, though, so we’ll kill time in our previous ep by wasting some of the potentials and mutilating Xander, we’ll churn through a few more moments in this ep by having Evil Preacher show up and throw Buffy through a wall and Faith fight some cops, after which Dawn will make some completely deranged speech about how it’s her house too and she needs Buffy to leave (causing me to wonder who’s going to buy groceries and pay the light bill, but honestly, who’s been buying the groceries for all those damn potential Slayers this long, anyway?).

And then we can burn through our next ep with everyone having sex with everyone else, after which it should be just about time for Buffy to go on a quest to get the mystic sword (that will occupy the next to last episode) and then kill Evil Preacher with it (which will occupy the very last episode, and if he’s just managed to open a portal to a hell dimension and Buffy running him through is the only way to close it again, well, that’s just gravy).

Personally, I just wish they’d stop killing time and get where they’re going. I love Buffy, and the train wreck this series has turned into in the last two seasons is just beating me up. The sooner it’s over, the better.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I’m not a likable guy. I’m not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It’s simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don’t like my opinions or my blog, don’t read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I’m not going to say that this time around, because I’ve realized that what this is basically saying is, ‘if you don’t like what I have to say, tough, I don’t want to hear it, don’t even bother to tell me, just go away’.

And that’s actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country… for a little while longer, anyway… and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I’m not sure that’s a right when you’re doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don’t feel like reading… and I’m really quick with the delete key… as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don’t like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance… these things are only worth my time and attention if they’re entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough with, style, and/or panache to amuse me… try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

Like it? Hate it? Hit me with your best shot.

NOTICE

There is such a thing as a social contract. Even among bloggers. And I pay attention to it.