BtVS-Reviews: Special edition

Buffy quits - good choice, bad choice?

Seven years on screen, now it's TTFN


It's official, finally: There won't be an eighth season of BtVS. I am a huge fan of the show, but somehow I don't feel too sad. There's still Angel, BBC didn't give up plans for its Giles spinoff and Joss is already working to turn out a new spinoff. Chances for "Faith - the Vampire Slayer" aren't so bright anymore since Eliza committed to a different TV series due to air on Fox.

Buffy had an unique concept, portraying a bunch of teenagers in their struggle to become adults, and on the same time delivering great fantasy entertainment to our homes. We still have something I'd like to call a Buffy spinoff, though it isn't: Smallville. It's the same concept, even story ideas taken from the first BtVS seasons, but way lighter than BtVS, dropping the seriousness of character development Joss branded and inserting easy and light answers where BtVS only stood for more questions and difficult answers. BtVS is clearly more sophisticated, and Smallville's rather easy-going, not a difficult meal for the weak-minded as Buffy always has been.

However, Smallville will have teenagers in school long after its third season, if it ever makes a third one, that is. BtVS couldn't. The seed of the show always has been the growth of teenagers, but they don't stay teenagers their whole life.

We've seen Willow emerging from a kid to a gorgeous woman, we've cried with her, laughed with her. We were witnesses of her feelings for Xander, her love for Oz, her confusing feelings after she kissed Xander in "Homecoming". We were with her when Tara entered her life, when she discovered magic and when the magic finally enslaved her. We've seen all that, and we hopefully remember it as the greatest hours of television in our lifes. But Willow's not longer in school, she has grown, and now she's just standing around in the house, waiting for her turn to insert a pun here and then. The warmth of her friendship to Xander doesn't find its way onto screen anymore.

Slightly, the focus of the show has shifted. It's not teenagers anymore, they became adults. Our friends, the ones we spent so many hours with, have grown and so have we. The concept doesn't work anymore, the characters are too real, too great to be slaves of the series. That's curious and confusing in this wonderful way only Joss can make us see the world. They don't belong into Sunnydale anymore, at least not all of them, they don't belong together anymore. They have to take their own paths.

The atmosphere's rather grim right now, and I am not talking about the FE. Buffy realized her destiny is to slay, and so she won't lead a normal life anymore - and we came to believe, she won't be happy ever, poor slayer. This, of course, will change during the five part finale that expects us in May this year. As I suggested in my review to 7.15 GID, we will see that Buffy's not the Slayer, but the Guardian, and when her destiny will be fulfilled by closing the hellmouth, her path again is wide open and brightly shimmering.

Yes, this should be the end. I love the series, and I am hoping to see some of the cast members in the Buffyverse spin-off serieses, but I am not sad when BtVS will be over with season 7, because I know, the end will be just as gorgeous as all the seven years with Buffy. I'd be sad and crying tears the size of a big African elephant, though, if there wasn't any Joss series anymore. But I don't think, something like that could happen... perhaps, only if a FOXistic demon ruled the world which won't happen ever. Amen.

I love the cast of BtVS, all of them, I love Joss Whedon's story-telling, and I can't thank them enough for creating a show like BtVS. You're responsible for great hours of TV entertainment, thanks guys!;-)

Yours,
Tom Ahrendt
zeitenflug@yahoo.com.

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