Bingin' Buffy - Season 4 wrap-up

[bunnyboo]

Guess who’s back—back again. Guess who’s back. Tell a friend. I won’t link the music video here because I like to keep things pretty PG here, but I hope I got that stuck in your heads. My actual mood is less celebratory than my song quote implies, but I’m… okay. Just dealing with a new and apparently chronic condition that sprung up on me this past week. It’s been a journey, let me tell you that.

Anyways, I finished Buffy season four about a week ago. It was a lot of fun!

 

There were a lot of changes this season, and a lot of the episodes focused on the emotions and struggle of these characters dealing with growing up and moving on—with varying degrees of success. I’ve talked about Buffy redefining herself in a college environment, but there’s a lot of focus on identity and self-representation here. I will always love a Giles-centric episode so Giles going drinking with Ethan and getting turned into a demon was a lot of goofy fun with a nice sweet Buffy/Giles center (“A New Man”). It even gets a call-back in the Buffy/Faith body-switching two-parter (“This Year’s Girl”/”Who Are You”) which was nice.

Of course, there’s Willow and Oz’s relationship falling apart after Oz breaks her heart by “cheating” on her (“Wild at Heart”), though they made the situation ambiguous with Oz’s werewolf transformation first sleeping with Veruca and Oz himself only sleeping with her (or so it’s implied) to keep her from hurting people. I think a straight-up “Oz cheats on Willow” story would’ve rang hollow so they contrived a situation where he wasn’t really at fault for doing so… kind of. It’s sort of confusing, but the emotions behind it all feel real. Willow’s anguish after Oz leaves has weight to it, and her growing closer to Tara makes sense too. The step between being Tara’s friend and being Tara’s girlfriend is left a little in the air though. That might be because the show was discouraged from doing a more explicit—and I don’t mean that in a sexual way—confirmation of their change in relationship. I could see them becoming closer but I’m struggling to remember a decisive moment in their relationship—other than at the end of “New Moon Rising,” which was very sweet.

When I mentioned that I was watching season four to a co-worker, she immediately singled out “Hush” as the best episode of the season—and perhaps of the entire series. I’m less enthusiastic, though I didn’t learn until later that the episode I’d seen was actually “Hush.” Sure, it was creepy and it had a good gimmick in that the characters couldn’t speak (they had a lot of fun with that one), but I wasn’t blown away. It felt like an above-average Buffy episode, not a game-changer. I did enjoy how goofy the Gentlemen were—all polite and complimentary of each other—and how I just kept imagining them riding skateboards when their feet were off screen. It was memorable, yes, but I wouldn’t liken it to anything like Doctor Who’s “Blink.” I’d recommend that episode to anyone, Who fan or not, whereas I don’t think that a causal or first-time viewer would get the same impact if “Hush” was their first Buffy episode. It has a lot to do with Who’s format being mostly non-serialized adventures and “Blink” in particular not focusing on the Doctor himself, making it easier for newcomers to engage with the story. (Incidentally, “Blink” is one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes. Still gives me chills.) Again, I’m not saying that “Hush” was bad, just that I don’t quite see the hype.

Now to move on to an episode I was hyped for, I was kind of disappointed by “Superstar.” I love Johnathan, and I love him getting a spotlight episode (in more ways than one). The premise was fantastic too! It just fell a little flat for me, I guess. The jokes were pretty one-note, and the novelty of seeing the man, the legend Johnathan everywhere wore off pretty fast. I think it might’ve been better served if there was one of the Scooby Gang suspicious of this new reality from the start. Tara, I think, would’ve been a natural choice because she has no clue who Johnathan is and is a new enough character that she deserves some time to be fleshed out apart from Willow. The monster reveal was just lame—nothing really else to say about that. I do like that Johnathan is portrayed somewhat sympathetically at the end in his conversation with Buffy. I think he’s kind of an exaggeration of Xander’s original role—the average (painfully so in Johnathan’s case) teenage boy in the midst of all this supernatural craziness. I hope he makes a return in season five. His stories really resonate with me.

Adam and the Institute in general is kind of a mixed bag. I like the idea of a governmental organization getting involved with the weird stuff that’s happening in Sunnydale, and I also like the idea of them trying to control it through science and technology in contrast using more traditional methods. Where the Institute flops, I think, is when it presents this scientifically minded, super cutting-edge organization that just… sprung up out of nowhere and honestly kind of sucks at the whole demon hunting thing. I can suspend my disbelief when it comes to the supernatural showing up in Sunnydale—that’s kind of what it’s all about—but the government had to have been here for years and yet they still don’t know who the Slayer is. I guess by focusing on technological solutions, they’ve neglected the more practical or supernatural ones, but it still feels a little weird. Sunnydale isn’t that big… or at least it didn’t use to be.

To get back to Adam and him being a mixed bag, I don’t quite buy him becoming this kind of “demon messiah” in such a short amount of time. I didn’t see him do anything particularly special. I guess he’s perceptive or insightful, but again, it just doesn’t feel that way to me. His plan to create an army of—to quote Wikipedia—“hybrid cyborg monsters” is stupid. I have mixed feelings about his relationship with Riley too. He talked about how they were brothers, but that never really went anywhere other than “oh, you have a chip in your brain that makes you do what I say.” I can kind of see where they’re coming from with this angle. Riley pretty much followed the Institute’s orders without question until he met Buffy and when he left, both the Institute and Adam used physical methods of control to bring him back in line (the special soldier’s “diet” that’s never mentioned again comes to mind and, of course, the chip). But enough complaining about Adam (for now). What I do like about him is that he’s got a great presence. George Hertzberg gives a great performance and has a great voice. I’m pretty keen on his makeup too. It reminds me of Star Trek in the best of ways. Combined, they sell the idea of this big, hulking monster who Buffy can’t defeat through conventional means or through reasoning with him. She can’t even fight him with traditional supernatural weaknesses! What’s a girl to do?

I thought the ritual the Scooby Gang did at the climax of “Primeval” was pretty neat. It was nice for Buffy to have her friends go all Captain Planet and inhabit her body. It was a more involved way of supporting her than usual, I suppose. I have less nice things to say about the actual finale of the season, “Restless,” which deals with the fallout of the ritual. It just felt… unnecessary. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it felt like they had another episode in the schedule and decided to make a follow-up to their actual finale rather than stick it somewhere else. Seeing the psychology of the characters manifested in these trippy dream sequences was cool but wore out its welcome quickly. It was like fanfiction, but like really good fanfiction. The reveal of the First Slayer and Buffy refuting that to be a Slayer is to be alone was just dorky and kind of cheesy. I’m sure I’m missing some stuff that becomes obvious on a second watching or completely skipping over some deeper meaning, but “Restless” kind of took the punch out of killing Adam.

Moving on to just general characters, Riley is… alright. There’s nothing really wrong with him as a character, but there’s nothing I was excited about with him either. He just seems like a genuinely nice guy. Spike was a delight in every scene he was in, so props to James Marsters for rocking it.  “Defanging” him with the chip was a smart move. It let him show off his sillier side and gave the other characters a reason to interact with him without either side immediately trying to kill each other. Plus, I like “vaguely pathetic and can only verbally attack others but still thinks he’s a badass” Spike much more than he was in season two. Tara is fine. She has this sweet side to her that I like, but we haven’t seen much fire out of her yet. I see her as Willow without the character development. Maybe next season we’ll find out a little more about her.

Overall, I have good things to say about the individual episodes and the character plotlines this season, but I wasn’t too engaged with the overarching threat of Adam. I think the series was finally able to breathe a little after Angel left and the Buffy/Angel dynamic let her branch out into different relationships. The college setting was a big boost for the series too. They did a little bit with frat parties (a lot of parties…) and I hope to see them tell some different kinds of stories now that Buffy’s a legal adult and out on her own, even if they’re not college-related.

After this post, I’m taking a break from Buffy and binge watching in general. I’ve got other things that are more pressing at the moment. I’ll be back when I’m in a position to do so. In any case, I hope that everyone is doing well. Happy March!