Big ranty thing on Spike in S7
Jul. 23rd, 2009 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupSo, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
penny_lane_42 made the mistake of asking me what it was about Spike in S7 that I didn't like, and my response seemed a bit excessive for just a comment. So, here 'tis, with caveats.
A couple things to keep in mind: first, I hated a lot of things about S7, like the First Evil (cosmologically nonsensical; largely ineffectual as a villain), the execution of the Potential storyline (unending claustrophobic slumber party), the Guardian (no set-up!), Caleb (introduced too late, totally one-dimensional, and had nothing to do with the larger theme of the season) and the overwhelming sense of DOOOOM that pervaded the season. I think my dislike of those things tends to bleed over onto things that I otherwise might feel neutral about.
Second, I've only seen the season once, so this is my holistic impression of the season and the episodes. My grasp of some of the details is weak, and since I disliked it all so much the first time, it's unlikely that I'll rewatch anytime soon. These are largely gut-level, Do Not Want opinions, so you're unlikely to talk me out of them, 'kay?
That said, Stuff I didn't like about the Spike parts:
* The soul. It's not like the writers ever really knew what a soul was or what it did, but Spike getting his made it matter that they didn't know, espcially since Spike himself had broken the previous Angel/Angelus split-personality understanding. I really wanted at least part of Spike's storyline to be about what it meant for him to have a soul - and I wanted it to be more than just guilt and crazy. The one bone they threw me in this regard was his declaration to Buffy at one point that now, finally, he understood that she'd been using him the previous season, implying that the soul was allowing him to understand humanity more fully. I wanted more of that.
* The soul + the misfiring chip + the First Evil in Spike's head. Too much! Everybody knows that in an experiment you only change one condition at a time. Here, there was simply too much going on in Spike's head to understand how any one of those things was affecting him. (Also, I have basically no use for storylines in which magic has a character doing things that are OOC. Whedon and I seem to be in disagreement on this, since he uses the idea frequently throughout the series. Not to mention Dollhouse, in which the actives don't even have characters to be OOC from. But I digress.)
* Somehow, one of the soul's effects on Spike is that, as I put it in my original review, it stripped all his subtext out. When he talks to Buffy in S7 (post-"Beneath You"), he... doesn't talk like a person anymore. That is, he has no verbal defenses. He never says things slantwise; there's none of the parrying and implying things not actually said and the bad lying that I always liked about his character before. He's worn his heart on his sleeve since S5, but in S7 his speech loses all complexity; the words are all you get. His speech in "Touched" is a fabulous example - as far as I'm concerned, it's just boring. It's the Grand Speech to Ladylove as written by someone much enamored with romance novels and with only the barest familiarity with Spike and Buffy. "You're a hell of a woman"? "It was the best night of my life"? I think we were supposed to see that as him finally laying himself bare, except good grief, Spike has been laying himself bare since his first scene with Dru in S2. And until S7, he was always still Spike while he was doing it.
I think I'm especially grumpy about all this because I really love elliptical dialogue - it's a major narrative kink of mine, and darn it, I missed it!
* The whole Spike/Buffy relationship in S7. In some ways, I'm madder at Buffy about how she treats Spike in S7 than in S6. At least in S6 she had the excuse of serious post-resurrection depression. In S7, she keeps Spike dangling after her, still - she's still using him, even though the relationship isn't sexual anymore. I really loathe that scene between them after the "Touched" night, when Spike asks her what it means and she asks if it has to mean anything. (In fact, I want to write a fic sometime about how Buffy's actions - not her attitude, necessarily, but her actions - towards Spike in late S7 remind me of Faith's attitude towards guys in S3. "Just skin," and so on.) Of course, a lot of the lack of Buffy commitment has to do with...
* The non-discussion of the AR. It is the huge purple elephant in the room in S7, rarely referred to but entirely overshadowing Spike and Buffy's relationship. I wish they'd actually talked it out sometime, even if we didn't see much of the discussion on screen. Just a hint that this was something that they were working through and moving on from would have been helpful.
* The Robin Wood thing. There ought to be have been all sorts of complexity in this antagonistic relationship, and there just isn't. I come out of LMPTM feeling completely unsympathetic towards either Robin or Spike.
* The big finish. To quote an old comment I made: "Saving the world: good, appropriate to arc, etc. Dying: gratuitous and verging on silly, especially considering that he only stayed dead for seventeen days. I am actively repulsed by the redemption-by-martyrdom idea, and I think it's a particularly poor fit for Spike's arc - I'd much rather watch him live with his past than die for it. So I have no special attachment to the end of his arc."
So, was there anything about Spike in S7 that I remember liking? Well, I lack the words to express just how much I love the church scene in "Beneath You" - it's definitely in my top five scenes for the entire series. There are a few nice moments of quiet Spuffyness that I like, and a few fun moments of awkward Spuffy. And, uh, I rather liked parts of the ep in which Spike's chip gets taken out.
But that's about it.
penny_lane_42 made the mistake of asking me what it was about Spike in S7 that I didn't like, and my response seemed a bit excessive for just a comment. So, here 'tis, with caveats.A couple things to keep in mind: first, I hated a lot of things about S7, like the First Evil (cosmologically nonsensical; largely ineffectual as a villain), the execution of the Potential storyline (unending claustrophobic slumber party), the Guardian (no set-up!), Caleb (introduced too late, totally one-dimensional, and had nothing to do with the larger theme of the season) and the overwhelming sense of DOOOOM that pervaded the season. I think my dislike of those things tends to bleed over onto things that I otherwise might feel neutral about.
Second, I've only seen the season once, so this is my holistic impression of the season and the episodes. My grasp of some of the details is weak, and since I disliked it all so much the first time, it's unlikely that I'll rewatch anytime soon. These are largely gut-level, Do Not Want opinions, so you're unlikely to talk me out of them, 'kay?
That said, Stuff I didn't like about the Spike parts:
* The soul. It's not like the writers ever really knew what a soul was or what it did, but Spike getting his made it matter that they didn't know, espcially since Spike himself had broken the previous Angel/Angelus split-personality understanding. I really wanted at least part of Spike's storyline to be about what it meant for him to have a soul - and I wanted it to be more than just guilt and crazy. The one bone they threw me in this regard was his declaration to Buffy at one point that now, finally, he understood that she'd been using him the previous season, implying that the soul was allowing him to understand humanity more fully. I wanted more of that.
* The soul + the misfiring chip + the First Evil in Spike's head. Too much! Everybody knows that in an experiment you only change one condition at a time. Here, there was simply too much going on in Spike's head to understand how any one of those things was affecting him. (Also, I have basically no use for storylines in which magic has a character doing things that are OOC. Whedon and I seem to be in disagreement on this, since he uses the idea frequently throughout the series. Not to mention Dollhouse, in which the actives don't even have characters to be OOC from. But I digress.)
* Somehow, one of the soul's effects on Spike is that, as I put it in my original review, it stripped all his subtext out. When he talks to Buffy in S7 (post-"Beneath You"), he... doesn't talk like a person anymore. That is, he has no verbal defenses. He never says things slantwise; there's none of the parrying and implying things not actually said and the bad lying that I always liked about his character before. He's worn his heart on his sleeve since S5, but in S7 his speech loses all complexity; the words are all you get. His speech in "Touched" is a fabulous example - as far as I'm concerned, it's just boring. It's the Grand Speech to Ladylove as written by someone much enamored with romance novels and with only the barest familiarity with Spike and Buffy. "You're a hell of a woman"? "It was the best night of my life"? I think we were supposed to see that as him finally laying himself bare, except good grief, Spike has been laying himself bare since his first scene with Dru in S2. And until S7, he was always still Spike while he was doing it.
I think I'm especially grumpy about all this because I really love elliptical dialogue - it's a major narrative kink of mine, and darn it, I missed it!
* The whole Spike/Buffy relationship in S7. In some ways, I'm madder at Buffy about how she treats Spike in S7 than in S6. At least in S6 she had the excuse of serious post-resurrection depression. In S7, she keeps Spike dangling after her, still - she's still using him, even though the relationship isn't sexual anymore. I really loathe that scene between them after the "Touched" night, when Spike asks her what it means and she asks if it has to mean anything. (In fact, I want to write a fic sometime about how Buffy's actions - not her attitude, necessarily, but her actions - towards Spike in late S7 remind me of Faith's attitude towards guys in S3. "Just skin," and so on.) Of course, a lot of the lack of Buffy commitment has to do with...
* The non-discussion of the AR. It is the huge purple elephant in the room in S7, rarely referred to but entirely overshadowing Spike and Buffy's relationship. I wish they'd actually talked it out sometime, even if we didn't see much of the discussion on screen. Just a hint that this was something that they were working through and moving on from would have been helpful.
* The Robin Wood thing. There ought to be have been all sorts of complexity in this antagonistic relationship, and there just isn't. I come out of LMPTM feeling completely unsympathetic towards either Robin or Spike.
* The big finish. To quote an old comment I made: "Saving the world: good, appropriate to arc, etc. Dying: gratuitous and verging on silly, especially considering that he only stayed dead for seventeen days. I am actively repulsed by the redemption-by-martyrdom idea, and I think it's a particularly poor fit for Spike's arc - I'd much rather watch him live with his past than die for it. So I have no special attachment to the end of his arc."
So, was there anything about Spike in S7 that I remember liking? Well, I lack the words to express just how much I love the church scene in "Beneath You" - it's definitely in my top five scenes for the entire series. There are a few nice moments of quiet Spuffyness that I like, and a few fun moments of awkward Spuffy. And, uh, I rather liked parts of the ep in which Spike's chip gets taken out.
But that's about it.
