Season Seven: Looking Back

Season seven of Buffy was just as rough for me as season six. While Joss seemed to be aware of the problems with darkness in season 6, he didn't do an awful lot to rectify that in this final season. I guess it wasn't as dark as season 6, but it suffered from the same lack of the unique Buffy voice, unhappy characters, and general misguided intentions.

The potential slayers thing annoyed me to no end. I was supposed to care about them, but I never did. Buffy doesn't work like that for me. It's a girl, fighting vampires, by herself. Put her in a position of power and it loses appeal for me. It's the one against a horde of evil that I like.

Joss, clearly, was absent for much of this season. He got it kicked off, then I think his attention went to Firefly. When that show failed, you can see when he came back, because the season united for a strong finish. I have no doubt that Whedon was in on every step of the creative process for this season, but when you've got your passion in another place, it shows.

There were some bright spots. Conversations with Dead People and Storyteller are some of the best episodes in all of Buffy. And like I said, it amped up for a tremendously satisfying final 4 episodes.

As an overall season, I think it was too thin of material, and when I look back on it, I feel the same way about season 6. They had ideas that weren't necessarily bad, but were just stretched too far. If you could condense season 6 into 11 episodes and condense season 7 into 11 episodes, that would have been one epic season. There wouldn't have been so much filler and stories would not have dragged on quite so much. In the early days of Buffy, things didn't dangle that long. There were season long arcs, but each episode felt like a chapter. In this season, some of these episodes felt like blurbs that were stretched into an hour's worth of content.

But when it's all said and done, I love the show and I can forgive it for it's missteps. The glory days were gone, but the show still had bite.