So here’s a confession: as much as I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I almost only watch season 2 or season 3. Sometimes it’s on reruns and I’ll watch whatever, and of course I’ll watch, “Once More with Feeling,” any fucking time—like maybe right now instead of writing this—but I have only seen season 7 once. One time. I’ve seen season 3 so many times that I can say the words along with it like I’m watching Star Wars. So when I was coming home from the fucked up Japanese movie (more about that later) wondering if I should go back to watch the horrendous CBS show (more about that later, too.) and Alex at FD said, she was just going to go home and watch Buffy I envied her, but I also thought, I ALWAYS watch Buffy. I need to watch something new. Jerkpatrick said he was going to rewatch season 5 I thought, WHAT?
Season 5 was originally on in 1999, so when I still lived in San Francisco and maybe videotaped it, but it was so annoying, it’s possible I didn’t even watch the episodes as they were aired because Dawn was so horrible. I don’t even remember when I stopped recording it. I mean, buying DVD seasons didn’t become a thing until the mid aughts.
I mean season Six, when Buffy comes back from the dead is better than season Four “College is so hard” season.
Who watches season Five? Isn’t that when gross little Dawn shows up? YUUUUUck. Could they have made her more ehlthdh? I don’t know how to express my distain for adding a whiney little annoying thing to Buffy. Sure, they had Cordelia. But Cordelia never was stupid or a whiner. The character was well written, bratty and intentionally shallow. Meant to represent the person that Buffy would have been had she not be cursed to be the slayer. She wouldn’t have been chilling with the likes of Xander or Willow if she could still have been prom queen or a cheerleader. But because she was a weirdo who needed some help—which she does always need from Willow, less often from Xander, but also from Angel and Giles, and we are to understand the reason she is so successful as the slayer, more than any other girl before her—she doesn’t die at sixteen like most slayers because of her friends. But if Dawn had showed up before season 4 NO ONE would have watched this shit. I mean talk about ruining a perfectly good show. Anyway. This isn’t about Season 4 at all, this is about HOW COME NO ONE LEARNS FROM EVERYONE ELSE’S MISTAKES. Really? Bringing on a young person worked so fucking well for Family Ties and Growing Pains and every other fucking show that has done it. And for god’s sake, she’s the same age as they were when the show started, can they stop treating her like she’s four? And can the character stop being written that way?
Anne O'Neil 