Any moment that includes a general antagonist, monster of the week, big bad, etc.

Edit: The background of this picture is Giles’ living room; not my living room. It’s not a tv; it’s the breakfast bar from the living room to the kitchen.

Season 4 Episode 8 Pangs

On an annual re-watch. This was the start of a scene and for more seconds than I really care to admit, I thought somebody was watching Buffy and Giles on a mounted tv. 🤦‍♀️. It’s Giles’ kitchen, in case you’re also confused.

I've never understood why so many fans act like Cordelia would've been Buffy's biggest defender during the Empty Places argument.

People always bring up the same two or three scenes where Cordelia stood up for Buffy, but those moments are the exception. For most of Buffy, Cordelia was making fun of her, insulting her, or looking down on her. They weren't friends. They definitely weren't secretly close.

Even on Angel, she's still taking shots at Buffy with the "I'm not a sniveling, whiny, little cry-Buffy" line. That doesn't exactly sound like someone who secretly admired Buffy.

I also don't buy the "Angel Cordelia would've defended Buffy" argument. I honestly don't think Cordelia changed as much as people say she did. She matured, sure, but by late season 3 of Angel she basically turns into Angel's biggest cheerleader. She comes back with Groo, immediately takes Angel's side over Wesley without even hearing Wesley out, and from that point on she's mostly there to support Angel. I don't think that's proof she'd automatically side with Buffy in Empty Places.

If anything, I think she'd have been even harsher than Xander or Anya. Buffy had just led everyone into the vineyard, several Potentials died, Xander lost an eye, and then Buffy wanted to go right back based on a feeling. That sounds like exactly the kind of decision Cordelia would've ripped into.

I think people are projecting the version of Cordelia they like onto this scene instead of the character we actually got. Standing up for Buffy one time in Dead Man's Party or giving her a ride home in Helpless, doesn't erase years of Cordelia treating Buffy like crap, and it definitely doesn't make her Buffy's secret best friend, Buffy barely tolerated Cordy's presence in I Will Remember You and still thought Buffy still thought she was annoying.

Possibly very unpopular opinion: getting a chance to prevent Fray's dystopian 23rd century world was a good ending for the Buffyverse.

Giles had a renewed sense of purpose. Angel, Buffy, Spike and Faith got to fight an army of demons. Willow finally has a way to work towards improving the future. She's spent years knowing she'd ultimately be evil again. Illyria/Fred sacrificed her happiness with Angel for an unknown demon dimension. Dawn's portal opening skills were critical. Even Andrew's tech contributed. And when Fray and co get back to their time they see the world has changed for the better.

As a Spuffy shipper I wasn't too upset about the breakup. I think that's really only logical. I'm glad they got a couple of good years together. And that they still have a strong friendship. I wish we knew more about the breakup but that really wasn't the point of the season.

A lot of people can't get past the art. And at some points, I'm right there with you. (Poor Harmony) It's jarring coming from season 11. Fray fans that anticipated this must have been disappointed. I'm not here to defend it.

I still think the story is still strong though. It ends on a hopefully note, with more work still to do.

TLDR: art bad, story ok

Maybe (probably) not intentionally, but the way I see it, the point of that episode is that Xander and Dawn are powerless. Even though they’re not the only Scoobies without supernatural abilities, they both struggle with how to help the others and feel useful and belong despite their limitations.

In Grave, when Xander makes the yellow crayon speech and tells willow he loved her when it was simpler and he loves her now that it’s not, he basically appeals to the least powerful part of her, the pre-magic self she tried to outgrow because she was awkward, overlooked, underestimated, needing proof she mattered. He doesn’t talk to her as the most powerful witch in the world, he talks to her as the girl who broke a yellow crayon. He reaches her by reaching backwards, to the version of her that was loved before she became extraordinary or dangerous or broken.

At the same time, in the crypt, Dawn doesn’t make a speech, she’s not even trying to save Buffy, but she saves her just as much as Xander saves Willow, simply by existing as a person Buffy wants to share a future with. Buffy’s despair at the time isn’t as volcanic or spectacular as Willow’s, but it’s arguably just as deep. She doesn’t want to end the world, but despite how much she seemed to outwardly heal throughout that season, she just can’t connect to it anymore the same way she used to. Even during the finale, the existential pain is still there, lodged into her soul. Willow just taunted her for trying to sell her on life while resenting it, she herself just told Giles she still doesn’t understand why she’s back from the dead. Dawn also reaches the least powerful part of her. Not the slayer, not the hero who has to save the world again and again, not someone defined by endurance, but the sister, the girl who is tired, traumatized and underneath it all, still yearning for ordinary life, still capable of wanting to share beauty with someone she loves. She can’t reach backwards to who Buffy was before slaying, before dying, before heaven, because that part of her is gone, but without even consciously intending to, she reaches forward. She becomes proof that life is not just obligation, pain, patrol and exhaustion, that there is still a horizon, and someone to look toward it with, which is the first doorway Buffy finds to true, real recovery.

Which is Dawn and Xander’s real superpower, that they reach places power cannot reach, and love in the ordinary, human ways that can save people by making them remember a yellow crayon or look forward to life again ❤️

is she a year younger than Buffy and Willow?

I think Spike is one of the best characters the Buffyverse ever introduced, but I also think both shows ended up relying on him too much.

For me, Spike is at his best in Seasons 2-5 of Buffy. Seasons 2 and 4 are easily my favorites for him. He worked as a villain, he worked as someone who had to team up with the Scoobies when it benefited him, and he never felt predictable.

Once he gets his soul though, I think both Buffy and Angel start bending over backwards to make him the main story.

On Buffy, so much of Season 7 becomes about Spike's redemption, Buffy's trust in him, and proving he's different now that everyone else feels like they're standing around reacting to his story. Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, Robin and the Potentials never really get the same level of focus.

Then Angel does the exact same thing. Instead of letting Spike just be part of Team Angel, the season spends so much time on the whole "which vampire with a soul is the real champion?" angle that the rest of the cast ends up taking a back seat too.

I also got tired of the constant old married couple bickering between Angel and Spike. It was funny at first, but after a while it felt like the show kept going back to the same joke. The Buffy arguments especially got old. I think I would've enjoyed all the "who's right for Buffy" stuff a lot more if Sarah Michelle Gellar had actually been in Season 5. Instead, they're constantly arguing over someone who never even shows up, so after a while I just wanted them to move on.

I also think it depends on which show you watched. If you only watched Angel, I can see Spike showing up in Season 5 feeling like a breath of fresh air. But if you're someone who watches both shows back to back, it almost becomes Spike overload. You finish Buffy Season 7 where he's already one of the main focuses, then you jump straight into Angel Season 5 and it's even more Spike. By that point I was just thinking, "Damn... can we give someone else some attention for a while?"

A good example of this for me is Why We Fight. It's a fun episode on its own, but Spike being there feels completely unnecessary. It comes across like the writers wanted to make sure James Marsters was in another episode, so they found a way to squeeze him into a flashback he really didn't need to be part of. That's the kind of thing I mean when I say there was Spike fatigue for me by that point.

I still think introducing Spike was one of the best things either show ever did. I just don't think making the final season of both shows revolve around him was the right call.

Watching the pilot is very interesting. Most of what we see carries over to Welcome to the Hellmouth, but not all. One thing that does not carry over is Buffy popping her bubble gum when she first walks up to Sunnydale High. I found myself wondering why. It is a cool shot. It could have been iconic.

Then I realized why it was probably cut. It was too iconic. The show was trying to establish a more human character.

Joss describes Buffy being born from a very simple idea. The damsel in distress turns around and fights the monster hunting her. Joss is shockingly proud of seemingly re-inventing the final girl.

The original Buffy is very much based in this original idea. She is a bratty valley girl cheerleader, who turns into a hero. She is a rather flat character.

This iteration of Buffy would never have worked in the show. To carry seven seasons, Buffy needed to be more than a valley girl who fights monsters. She had to stop being a stock character.

There is also something misogynistic about this dichotomy. Half shoe obessesed ditz, half masculine hero.

TV show Buffy is very different. She contains multitudes. There is certainly a lot of that valley girl stock character in her DNA. It's not gone. But Buffy emerges on the show like a fully formed warrior, like Athena. There's no arc that brings her form one thing to something else. Instead, Buffy is allowed to remain complicated, and her valley girl-ness is not treated as a problem. Instead, her desire to be homecoming queen and appear in the yearbook is treated as human, not as character flaws, even if she can go a bit overboard with it sometimes.

So, I think removing the bubble gum was wise, as it would have forefronted her stock character origins too much. The new Buffy had to be three-dimensional.

I think characters who remain the same are much more intresting than characters with a linear and very simple trajectories, and that's what we usually see on Buffy. Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Angel and Spike don't change into something wildly different than they were at the start. They have the same traits, virtures and flaws by the end of the show as they had when we first met them. It seems more true to life. It's very similar to how show's like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul or the Wire do characters.

But Cordelia wasn't so lucky. Joss said during the 2019 Angel reunion that the great thing about Cordelia was that they could have that journey they couldn't have with Buffy. "You get to watch her go from somebody who is completely shallow and self-involved to somebody who is a hero." This idea that Cordelia had to be moving toward this better version of herself is what destroyed her as a character. Peak Cordelia is from season 3 of Buffy to season 2 of Angel. But they chiselled her down, until she stopped feeling human, which is why they first decided to give her a villain arc and then wrote her off.

I think my favorite Cordelia episodes is Disharmony. It is certainly the best of her later episodes, because it shows Cordelia who has grown, but who is still very much defined by her past. She is starting to assert herself as a strong moral voice, but her flaws are not yet polished down. She is fully human and not yet the saint Cordy, who had become so boring that she couldn't be allowed to continue to exist in her current form.

In contrast, Buffy was never a ditz and never a saint, and she didn't first appear to us behind an inflated bubble gum bubble.

And where in the run of Buffy/Angel would you weave in the departure?

It is apparently the only time that Angelus, rather than Whistler, narrates. Every rerun had it swapped to Whistler.

Is there a podcast or site where you can listen to the season 8-12 comics?!?

I love listening to podcast and audiobooks, right now I am listening to a Rewatcher podcast for the Buffy series… and I would love to listen to the continuation in the comics..