A Few Thoughts on Buffy: Season 8

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Star Trek again. Strange way to open a Buffy article, but there’s relevance, so stick with me. This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Next Generation, a (pardon me) bold step in taking an established universe into new territory. (Oh, and for Coach Jon’s sake, that was the same year that Winona did Square Dance with Jason Robards and Rob Lowe; love some Winona, too).

I couldn’t wait for those first few minutes to come on. We got to see it on a local independent station (I didn’t have cable available in 87, you see). For weeks leading up to that moment that we got to see what happened 79 years after Kirk’s time, I was geek-giddy. What would this universe look like?

Twenty years later with about a month to go, and here I am again. I was told about Buffy by a close friend for years and even bought her Buffy toys for her birthday once but was never a watcher (the TV kind, not the Giles kind). It took a state filled with corn and not much else to do to turn me on to Angel and, in turn, Buffy.

And, I have to admit it. I’m in love with this universe. I’ve invested as much in it as I have just about any other of my fandoms. I’m currently watching through the entire saga with a couple of friends and experiencing it through fresh eyes. A couple weeks ago, we got to Spike’s ensouling and the wife half of my couple-friend figured it out about 30 seconds before Spike got it back. They jumped up and clapped. It made me smile.

I’m dying to share with them my thoughts and hopes for season 8, but I can’t yet since we’re working through two more seasons of Angel before we get to season 7 of Buffy. Since I can’t share it with them, I am going to share with you (lucky, lucky you). If you want to know what feverish four-color Buffy thoughts are running around this head, click. If you don’t, move along. There really is nothing to see here…

Here’s a little history lesson for those readers too young to remember. Back in ’87, we didn’t have a shiny optical-laced world wide web to spoil upcoming shows like Star Trek. Mostly it was fan zines, word of mouth and the occasional magazine spoiler. The net effect was that most every episode I saw was a great surprise.

I decided along the way to season 8 that I was going old school. Aside from what Georges shared with me at Dragon*Con last year, I know almost nothing of what’s going to go down. I’ve even been avoiding the spoilers in Diamond’s preview. I want each page to surprise me. I want to find out how Buffy, Willow and Xander’s stories unfold as they happen.

So, as I write these quick thoughts, I may be contradicting what’s out there already. Don’t care. It’s what I want, and really, isn’t that all that matters anyways? Here’s a few thoughts. I hope to keep up with a review for each issue as they hit. I’m going to try.

Natural Progression

My biggest complaint about comic books in this post-modern era is that they sometimes cannibalize themselves. I'll give you a great example of a franchise that blatantly squandered an opportunity to tell a great story – Star Trek: Enterprise's final episode (like I said, Trek fixation lately). I've always hated most clips show – that episode where they frame a story around existing clips to save money mid-season. Enterprise finished its run with what amounted to a clips show without the clips.

They retold a TNG episode and bounced Enterprise's final days off of that story. It was pretty weak, and wasted a chance to really tell a great finishing story. Compare that to "All Good Things…", Next Gen’s final episode and well, you get the point. Unfortunately, a lot of comic books that deal with characters these days do the functional equivalent of a clips show.

What I mean is that many stories simply rehash a storyline or a reference from a previous book or in the case of Buffy, a book. The recent story with puppet Angel on a date with Nina comes to mind. It was set of funny references and that’s OK, but what I really want is a story that drives the saga and its characters forward the next logical step in progression.

A great, recent example of progression was Angel: The Curse. It acknowledged the events that came before and then asked the question, what now? And that’s the question I have for Buffy: Season 8. What now? Oddly enough, that’s the very last question we were left with at the end of the TV life of Buffy.

What will Buffy do? Can she go enjoy the world? That leadership role that began in Season 7 sure looks like a logical point of progression for me.

Whence Xander? Anya gone. His eye gone. Fighting his part but still the non-super-powered one. What does that leave him? The late 20s and early 30s don’t play well with the silly guy. Will he be bitter guy? Leader?

Willow. Ah, Willow. Universal power levels coursed through her and she has control. What do you do with that kind of power?

Thousands of Slayers and only one Watcher in the know? Giles should be happy. Is he? I’m wondering if Giles will see the end of this series for some reason. Joss loves to kill them and Giles feels like someone who could impart some final wisdom.

I could make a comment about Dawn, but meh… Surprise me. It would take a lot to make me like Dawn, actually, so anything to that end would be a surprise.

Get the idea? Based on what we’ve seen, let’s not take characters back to a rehash of where they were and have them do the same thing over and over. It’s a new century. Every girl who would be a Slayer, is. What does that world do to this story?

There’s a whole article or maybe even paper about Buffy/Angel being a great American epic for the latter 20th Century.It could be argued that Buffy and Angel could be ranked with epics like the Godfather series and Roots that reflected sweeping changes in culture, told massive stories in which characters and events were swept with and fought the times and ultimately great themes were explored in the midst.

Buffy and Angel rarely attained those moments on a scale that was worthy of them. The limitations of television budgets prevented that. Fray achieved that scale better than either TV series did for me (although Firefly did approach a backdrop as big as the story they were trying to tell). Fray was as big as the ideas it contained. Big monsters. Big moments. And a big changes for Melaka.

Buffy achieved the great changes and moments but the scale never felt as big as it could have or I would dare to say, SHOULD have been. Chosen and Not Fade Away were the closest they ever got for me. Even Willow’s attempted destruction of the world felt smallish in retrospect.

So, I want Buffy to be on a world-wide scale. I want big monsters. I want the fights to be huge. They should be second Death Star battle big. I know that the small moments are important, but I want some biggies hung in there.

Yep, one of my first thoughts about the series is how it’s going to go out. It makes me a little nervous about talk of an ongoing series. Entertainment that goes on without a stopping point gets stale in almost every case. How many of you love the Simpsons the same way you did in the first season? Wasn’t it time for Star Trek to take a break? How excited am I to see what a few years off and a fresh mind is going to do for that franchise?

So, I am hoping that season 8 will be just that – season 8, not forever ongoing Buffy. Tell the story and then lay off. If you want to do a season 9, cool, but give it a definitive expiration date. It will help make the hard storytelling decisions when it comes time.

And ultimately, when the time is right and the story should ultimately end, wouldn’t it be cool if maybe, just maybe, the final act of this series would be to see a Slayer, and several of her super-powered friends fight a final apocalyptic battle that in the end, banishes all magicks from the earth? Well, for a couple hundred years at least. What an ending that would be…and it would help my sleep as I try to figure that little continuity bug out.

How many Nick Fury-Xander references can get coyly worked into the story? And in a slightly less related manner, will I figure out a way to get my cat named Xander to wear an eyepatch without striking me with his claws of death?

Will Dawn be the whiniest college student ever? Wait, she’ll probably join a sorority. The whine factor will suck the world into a consuming darkness that even an army of Slayers can’t stand against (ask me about about my Second Great Universal Axiom, the Shared Brain theory sometime).

Does Faith settle down with Wood and help Jack Bauer save the world for democracy? Wouldn’t that be a nifty little crossover?

Can they find a way to bring Amanda back? I’m still digging on her mathlete character from Freaks and Geeks. Really, I’m not joking. I honestly love me the geek girls.

How quickly can they find a way for Kennedy to fade into a quiet place in my memory. Iyari is one of the nicest, sweetest actresses I ever met at a con, but Kennedy felt like nails on a chalkboard.

I want to see Cleveland’s ‘mouth.

I’ll be at my local comics shop that Wednesday afternoon to pick up my copy of Buffy: Season 8. I want to see past those first few pages I saw last September. Let’s see what happens together. Leave the comments. Chat on the board.

Now, if I can just get that Cagney and Lacey reunion TV movie going, my life will be complete and I can shuffle off this mortal coil…