Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6

Contains Spoilers

After the emotional turmoil of season five, with the mystery of Dawn's existence, the illness and death of Joyce Summers, the unbeatable villain, and finally Buffy's own death, I thought that season six would be a relief. Buffy would come back, and yes, I had been spoiled on the fact that she "came back wrong," so maybe she'd be a little bit out of control, maybe a bit slay-happy like Faith. I WAS SO WRONG!

I've been observing for seasons that Willow has been getting in too deep with the magic pretty much since she started dabbling in it, and her desperation to bring back her friend gets her doing some very dark spells indeed. The ritual which brings Buffy back to life is horrifying, and is interrupted, leaving us wondering how far it's worked. (And they manage to bring her back to life but are chased away from her grave leaving her to dig herself out - UGH NO!)

No wonder Buffy is traumatised! Who wouldn't be, after her experiences? But as much as Willow wants her friend back, she wants reassurance that she's done the right thing, and Buffy does not give it, because little does Willow know that Buffy had been happy where she was. She had fought a hard battle in the last season, and had found peace, only to be dragged back to a difficult, violent world by those who loved her best. And she can't tell them why she's not okay with being alive again, because the truth would destroy them.

It's not only Buffy who is keeping secrets in season six, and here's where the famous musical episode "Once More With Feeling" comes in. Oh, I have been hearing about this episode ever since it first aired; the one that set the standard for every other series and sitcom. It was all everyone talked about at school the next day, and at Christmas I saw a couple of clips on one of those rubbishy "top ten musicals" countdown shows, which must have been made about ten years ago. The bits I remembered being shown did not do the episode justice AT ALL, bits of songs like "I've got a theory," (fun, but that's it) "What can't we face when we're together?" (which makes it sound all mushy and completely missells the tone of the episode) and "Where do we go from here?" (which is a lot less poignant without context.) There is an amazing mixture of musical styles, each suiting the characters. Buffy gets the big musical numbers, Tara sings a romantic ballad, Spike gets an angry rocky number and Giles performs a very Gilesish acoustic ballad, while Xander and his fiancee Anya have a comic duet with some troubling lyrics. I had expected a cheesy, fun, gimmicky episode, to lighten the mood and take a break from the main season's plotlines, but instead "Once More With Feeling" is the catalyst for all the cats to be let out of the bags. Tara discovers the extent of Willow's magic, Anya and Xander discover each other's reservations about their forthcoming marriage, and everyone learns what really happened to Buffy after she died. Giles decides that he's getting in the way of Buffy learning to stand on her feet again, and flies back to England. Also Spike and Buffy kiss for the first time.

I think it was inevitable that Spike and Buffy would get together at some point, but I didn't want to see it. I loved the chemistry he had with Buffy, and enjoyed their scenes together, but a relationship, if you can call what happens between them that, was never going to work out. This season shows a very damaged dynamic between the characters, and one I found very difficult to watch. This is a relationship of desperation, one that is unbalanced, violent and loveless. I think what Spike calls "love" is more like obsession. I've liked Spike as a villain, a frustrated would-be monster, and then as a lovesick puppy. I love a morally ambiguous character, a villain with a soft side or an anti-hero, but the ambiguity is dashed away after he assaults Buffy in her bathroom. It was a horrible conclusion to a nasty relationship, and I couldn't care about Spike's story after that. He crossed the line and I can't see how there is any coming back from that. I didn't think the story was handled very well: the writers dwelled more on how the attack affected the perpetrator than the victim, and Buffy's story galloped away from the incident without a backward glance. In a world of vampires, robot girlfriends, invisibility rays and beer that turns its drinkers into cavepeople, the only time I've really said "nope, this would never ever happen" was when Buffy decided to entrust her little sister to the care of her would-be rapist. A serious misstep there, I felt.

In season six, Willow really does get in too deep with her magic. It's been hinted at for seasons, and I guessed that sooner or later she would turn to the dark side. I anticipated Evil Willow, but what I got instead was Mean Willow, whose magic became an addiction, and she turned on everyone who tried to help her to see she was in trouble. Willow is my favourite character, but for about half a season I started to dislike her immensely: she kept making the same mistakes over and over, not learning from them, and crying when she had to deal with the consequences of getting caught. It took endangering Dawn's life to get her to realise the error of her ways, and even when she turned her back on witchcraft, I suspected it was only suppressed, not gone for good.

The Scooby gang have come up against all sorts of Big Bads in the past five seasons: vampires, of course, a Frankenstein's Monster, and in the last season even a god, but in season six their "archnemesis...es" are a trio of nerdy students: Warren (creator of the Buffybot) Jonathan (he of "Superstar" fame) and... some other guy. They fancy themselves as comic-book supervillains, the Sunnydale branch of the Evil League of Evil, but basically they are just clueless jerks, stereotypes of geeks. I viewed them with contempt, and they grew more repulsive with each episode - especially Warren, who represented a purely human form of evil. Still I did not expect him to be a serious threat... until the words "he won't be much good without his friends," were spoken, after Jonathan and The Other Guy were carted off to jail. Oh dear. You mustn't say things like that. A couple of minutes before the end of an episode, that line had a ring of Famous Last Words to it, but I didn't realise quite how "last" those words were, before Warren shows up with a gun...

I have been grumbling for a couple of seasons that Willow's girlfriend Tara never showed up in the opening credits montage, but was always relegated to "guest star," the only member of the Scooby gang to fill that role. Finally, after making up with Willow, she is welcomed back into the fold, with an appearance of her own in the credits, and I celebrated. For forty minutes. 

BEFORE SHE DIED!

It came from nowhere. Warren appeared, fired a gun in the direction of Xander and Buffy who ducked out of the way. I thought for a moment that Xander would be hurt, or killed. Buffy was wounded. Then cut to Willow, upstairs, with a spray of blood splattered across her clean white shirt... and Tara falls down, dead. I stared at the screen in horror and made several incoherent wounded animal noises. I should have been prepared for this. It is Joss Whedon, after all. How does he manage to get me every time?

Oh Tara! You were not a forceful character, but you were so lovely and sweet and rounded and human, and gradually weasled your way into my affections until without my realising it, you became my favourite character. What will Buffy be without you?

Well, the last three episodes give a pretty dark indication of that, and in the aftermath of her girlfriend's death, we get to see the real Big Bad of season six: Evil Willow. THIS was kind of where I expected her magic storyline to go, though I never dreamed it would be triggered by such an awful, senseless, tragedy. Welcome, Evil Willow, an awesome villain, in a very disturbing way. Willow is ordinarily so sweet, but we've seen glimpses of her inner darkness, and now it takes over as she goes on a rampage of revenge after Warren. Awesome fades to horrifying, after she reprises the line of her vampire doppelganger of many seasons ago: "Bored now," and dispatches Warren in the most gruesome way imaginable.

It seems that no one can stop Willow now.

Hurrah, Giles is back! The first bit of light in several episodes, and it made me very happy. We get to see another side to Giles, the side that can take on Evil Willow, although it seems to be at great cost. I feared for his life at one point, and after Tara, I didn't trust anything - though I thought it was traditionally the series finale in which Joss Whedon kills off his beloved supporting characters. But for Giles to be killed as a direct result of Willow's actions would be taking Buffy into darker territory than any we've seen so far in a series filled with anguish and despair. It'll be hard enough for the character and show to come back from her (well-deserved) murder of Warren. If she killed a good friend, I think there could be no return. It was predicted that no supernatural power could rescue Willow from her magical self. Good thing there is still some good old-fashioned humanity left, then, and she is saved by Xander. Xander has never been my favourite character. I grew out of disliking him after a couple of seasons, but he's not been at his best in season six. But his friendship for Willow is pure, and it is his love and forgiveness that brings her back to her old self, as he declares, even if she destroys the world, he still loves her, and would rather die by her side than anywhere else. Yes, it was corny, but it was what was needed after this remarkably bleak season.

Episodes with the most impact: (This section is getting more and more difficult to describe accurately.)

1-2: Bargaining. Setting up the tone for the entire season, Willow and the Scoobies resurrect Buffy from the dead. But it is not pretty.
7. Once More With Feeling. The Musical Episode! But if, like me, you expect a nice, lighthearted break from the main plot, then you are very mistaken. The musical format advances the plot in powerful ways.
8. Tabula Rasa. Because I was already familiar with this title, I expected it to be emotionally devastating, but it is quite fun. Thanks to Willow's magical meddling, the group lose their memories and have to come to their own conclusions about who they are and how they relate to each other. Introducing Joan the Vampire Slayer and Giles' new family: son Randy (who you know as Spike) and fiancee Anya. THIS is the light-hearted break from the main plot... until the last five minutes which will require tissues.
9-10. Smashed/Wrecked. Willow's magic gets out of control. Buffy and Spike start fighting and end up... not fighting.
11. Gone. A relatively lighthearted episode, involving an invisibility ray.
15. As You Were. Riley returns, with a wife. The last scene between him and Buffy made me cry for personal reasons - I want to get back in touch with my ex before he moves abroad, but can't bear him knowing that my life hasn't changed in the slightest in the years since we've been apart. And yes, I do want reassurance that just because my life can be disappointing, I'm not a complete failure.
16. Hell's Bells. Xander and Anya's wedding day. Xander, afraid of becoming like his awful father, chickens out and jilts Anya at the altar. JOSS WHEDON IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.
17. Normal Again: Is all of Buffy just a delusion of a very sick girl in a mental hospital?
19. Seeing Red: I don't know what to make of this episode, in which Spike assaults Buffy; it is very difficult to watch, and I'm not sure if that necessarily means it's good. And this is the episode that ends with Tara's death. Again: it is powerful and shocking but...
20. Villains: Willow goes over to the Dark Side and becomes very scary indeed.

Mini-reviews: The Boy in the Dress & This Perfect World

The Boy in the Dress, David Walliams

I've never liked Little Britain, and when I saw one of its stars had written a book with a title like The Boy in the Dress, my expectations weren't high. I was pleasantly surprised when in a quiet moment at work, I picked up Walliams' debut novel and found myself immediately charmed. I need not give too lengthy a plot synopsis - the clue is in the title! Walliams' narration is reminiscent of Roald Dahl's, full of humour and authorial asides to the reader - even a sly reference to "Small England, or whatever that show's called," and the Dahl similarities are highlighted by the illustrations by Quentin Blake. There is enough childish humour to appeal to 9- to 12-year-old boys, but not so much it alienates older readers. There is a great cast of characters, my favourite being the wonderfully overzealous corner shop owner with his cries of "three for the price of two! Eight for the price of five! Thirteen for the price of eleven!" or his offer of "buy two packets of crisps get one free." (One crisp, that is.) Yet there is a sensitivity that you wouldn't get with Roald Dahl. On my first encounter with the cross-dressing protagonist's father, I mentally compared him with Mr Wormwood of Matilda, or perhaps Harry Potter's Uncle Vernon, but as the story progresses we get to see that he's not the miserable grump that adults often are in kids' books, but a loving father who's not good with the soppy stuff, and who is heartbroken about his wife's desertion. A humorous book with a heart, for children aged around 9-12.

David Walliams has written two other books for children: Mr Stink and Billionaire Boy.

This Perfect World, Suzanne Bugler

This Perfect World is the next on the list of books selected by Richard and Judy for their Book Club. The Richard and Judy Book Club has been quite a significant event for encouraging people to read and discuss books that maybe they wouldn't otherwise. Formerly featured on their afternoon show, the Book Club has really helped to publicise such books as The Time Traveller's Wife, My Sister's Keeper, and The Lovely Bones in the UK. I've had mixed reactions to the R&J selections, adoring some and being very indifferent to others. This should be expected, really, as the books are chosen to appeal to a wide audience.

This Perfect World wasn't one of the "adores" for me. The story revolves around Laura Hamley, former school bully and centre of the "in-crowd," whose life is shaken up when she receives a phone call from the mother of Helen "Heddy" Partridge - one of her former victims. Heddy is has suffered a mental breakdown and is in hospital, and Mrs Partridge wants Laura to help her to get out. Laura is not so keen.

I find it difficult to enjoy a book if I can't like the central character, and I'll be blunt: I felt nothing but disgust and loathing for Laura. Reading This Perfect World so soon after Cookie, my own memories of being bullied were still close to the surface and Laura, and her friends were horrible. All through the book, she is reluctantly persuaded into helping Mrs Partridge, driving her to the hospital or looking after Heddy's child, but constantly Laura's thoughts are of getting rid of the "problem" of Heddy, keeping her in the past so that she doesn't have to think about her any more. We see how childhood bullies have grown into snobs and bigots, and how the playground politics seem set to influence their own children's relationships with each other. This Perfect World was a quick read which nonetheless provoked a lot of thought, but ultimately I found it bleak and depressing and I wasn't sorry to finish.

A Gate At The Stairs, Lorrie Moore

Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin yearns to escape her provincial home. She moves to the college town of Troy to start university and takes a job as a part-time nanny to a glamorous couple. Tassie is drawn into their life and that of their newly adopted toddler. As the household reveals its complications, Tassie is forced out of her naivety, and the past and the future burst forth in dramatic and shocking ways.

I’d had my eye on this book for quite a while, after seeing it on a display stand for some literary award or other. I’d read passages at random, and was intrigued enough to eventually buy a copy. The reviews on the front and back covers declared it to be “the novel of the year” and the author to be “one of the very best American writers working today.” Sometimes you read a popular book and disagree with the general consensus. For me, A Gate at the Stairs left me wondering not only whether I was reading the same book as the blurb-writers and award panel, but whether I was reading the same book every time I picked it up.

Right from the start I found it difficult to concentrate on this book for more than a few pages. Maybe it didn’t help that I came to this book with its six long chapters stuffed with description, from Poppy Shakespeare which was written in London colloquial language, quickly-flowing with chapters of only a few pages. But what really kept me from enjoying the book was its incessantly bleak atmosphere. First of all I likened the writing style to that of Dickens, where you really felt the griminess. There was a sense of foreboding from the start, where little things that weren’t quite right, like the absence of the adoptive father through many important processes, or Tassie’s college roommate who seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. Tassie’s employer Sarah seemed a very unlikely adoptive mother. Like a wealthy Victorian mother, it seemed as though she employed Tassie in order to ensure that she saw as little of the child, Mary-Emma better known as Emmie, as possible, which led to me wondering why she was adopting at all.

But there wasn’t the natural humour of Dickens. Moore attempted regular jokes and wordplay, but they felt forced and uncomfortable. A writer, especially a literary author, sets the work’s tone by the description. Moore, through her narrator Tassie, regularly commented on the ugliness of nature, or neutral nature in ugly terms, with special mentions of dead birds and squirrels, and the amount of mould throughout the novel verged on the ridiculous. Added to this, I never sensed I could know the characters. Not only did Moore emphasise the “phoniness” of people, but they seemed to change, not by character development, but as if they were arbitrarily replaced by people with the same name and different personality. All in all, I found that a sense of depression and hopelessness pervaded the novel, and did not want to live in Tassie’s world. To quote my sister when describing a gloomy train guard, Tassie’s world sounded like “the worst place imaginable, where the sun never shines and everyone is dead.”

Not a lot happened, plot-wise, for the first two thirds of the novel, and when plot did begin, it was very disjointed and unlikely. One criticism you can’t make of this book is predictability. Of the three major, dramatic plot twists, two came without any warning, out of the blue and then ended just as abruptly. The third involved Tassie’s family, who were featured briefly at the beginning and then, again briefly, about halfway through, as if Moore had forgotten all about them, before playing their crucial part in the last few pages of the book. And when the story happened, it happened all at once and was so melodramatic and relentlessly miserable that I revised my description of the work from "Dickens without the natural humour" to "Hardy - Jude The Obscure era."

Aside from the story, it also felt as though Moore was trying to tackle some major issues: race, parenting, family, identity and politics, but despite sometimes almost putting in arrows to say “Look! This is an important issue!” and having some scenes of unlabelled dialogue reeling off snippets of opinion, these were never really explored enough to call them “themes.” I found myself at a loss as to what Moore was trying to say, which wouldn’t have been as much of a problem if this was a story-based book. But story, here, takes a back seat amongst the issue-highlighting and the mould.