Mentally Ill Protagonists #1 - Buffy Summers

[Taylirious]

I know.

I am just saying they bring her back and she dies again, they kill her in alternate universes. She is The Slayer, not Kenny from South Park.

I posted the thing about her deaths in fun. I am sorry.

 

[gblews]

Apple Goblin, are you suggesting that someone who is mentally ill cannot also be a hero? You consider mental illness to be "evil"?

I'm not saying that. Her constant heroics, however, might actually be adding to her already serious psychological damage.

Buffy NEEDS help. No wonder she was so intimidated by Faith, who acts out her pain in various inappropriate ways. Buffy needs helps but her friends and family never get it for her. When was the last time you saw Buffy smile a genuine smile that wasn't laced with irony? Why are the lights in her eyes dimmed? Why doesn't she seem to fit in anywhere she goes? She's a bigger outcast than Willow because at least Willow has her Wicca friends and narcissistic tendencies. Buffy's deep depression makes me uneasy just to think of it.

Obviously Buffy needed help. That episode in season 6, I think, where she had that long psychoanalysis by that vamp gave us a bit of just how much she could have used a mental healh professional. But considering that she had this "calling" thrust upon her and had to go about saving the world in secret, it would have been very unlrealistic to show her just pleased as punch about everything all the time. If she was, people would be complaining because here's this teenager with all this responsibility and she's happy all the time.

And as others have pointed out, Buffy's reaction to her plight is part of what made the show so compelling.

Hey, do Oz next: "Support characters who are autistic and don't know it". You're welcome.

 

[JD]

Sure Buffy went through a lot of shit on the show, and it did have an effect on her, but I don't think it was anywhere near as extreme as the OP makes it sound.
Also it's a little too easy to use Season 6 as a part of this, since the whole point of her arc for the early part of the season is the fact that she was having trouble dealing with being back on Earth.

 

[Thestral]

It's amazing how you can use some of the worst moments of the show to build a case that she was crazy. Really goes to show how bad season 6 was.

Season 6 was good - I'd call it dead middle at worst in ranking the seasons, probably tied for third with S2. It was Season 7 (the back half) that was just ugh.

I think she did overcome her mental scars when she decided to not play after the rules of ancient dead magic men anymore and got the scythe. It was weakly disguised symbolism, but it worked.

"Scythe." Alleged Scythe you mean. I remember reading about it before and thinking how awesome it was gonna be to see Buffy going all Grim Reaper, and then it's just a damned axe. A pretty sweet axe, all choppy and the stake-end is a nice touch, but in no way a scythe. /rant

Damn if that whole subplot didn't come right the fuck out of nowhere. And first introducing the Ancient Controlling Magic Men right on the heels of one of Buffy's worst moments, gahhh... such a messy end for the show.

 

[Apple Goblin]

Hey, do Oz next: "Support characters who are autistic and don't know it". You're welcome.

Oz was actually a lot more perceptive and self-aware than his homicidal girlfriend.

 

[AgentCoop]

One of the core concepts of the show is that Buffy is someone who had an inhuman amount of responsibility dropped on her shoulders at a very young age, so it would be pretty poor writing to not show the toll that took on her over the years. She reaches her lowest point in Season 6 (a season which I love, but I seem to enjoy watching my heroes get their asses kicked. It's one of the reasons why "Empire" is my favorite SW movie), but she comes out the other side scarred but unbroken. I think it actually shows a tremendous amount of strength that she came through it as well as she did.

 

[Kemaiku]

Damn if that whole subplot didn't come right the fuck out of nowhere. And first introducing the Ancient Controlling Magic Men right on the heels of one of Buffy's worst moments, gahhh... such a messy end for the show.

The Shadow Men where alluded to in season 2 when Giles put Buffy through the de-powering test. The serum is native to the lands of ancient Sumer where the Slayer was created.

They were hinted at again with the First Slayer in seasons 4 and 5 with shadows moving around behind the Slayer and mentions from Giles to the creators of the line.

I admit they did a poor job because they were waiting for a better time to show them, then slapped them right in with season 7 in one go.

The only ass pull was the female counterpart community and the Scythe (which Buffy does swing like one when she remembers) that was 'always meant to be there'.

 

[Thestral]

Ok, fair point about the vague foreshadowing (heh) of the Shadow Men. Like you said though, poorly handled proper introduction - and we're supposed to cheer Buffy overcoming them right after one of her most callous, heartless General Buffy moments when she needed a punch to the face.

I'd actually forgotten about the "Watcher Watchers" women entirely - they get, what... one scene in the penultimate episode, or maybe finale?

 

[Kemaiku]

Ok, fair point about the vague foreshadowing (heh) of the Shadow Men. Like you said though, poorly handled proper introduction - and we're supposed to cheer Buffy overcoming them right after one of her most callous, heartless General Buffy moments when she needed a punch to the face.

I'd actually forgotten about the "Watcher Watchers" women entirely - they get, what... one scene in the penultimate episode, or maybe finale?

One scene, at the end of the second to last episode, for ~1.5 minutes, then dies.

Yeah the finale was a mess of a thing.

 

[Hound of UIster]

The axe/scythe and the Shadow Men were all from the Fray comic.

 

[Rarewolf]

Buffy's deep depression makes me uneasy just to think of it.

Then don't? She's a fictional character who's not been in new drama for a decade. You can't change her now.

There was a soap character in the UK a while back who had serious issues, 6 months later he was completely cured and 'normal' - I found that the least convincing aspect of it.

 

[Kemaiku]

The axe/scythe and the Shadow Men were all from the Fray comic.

Which they had planned for years prior. All the details of the two were in the original plans for the show, for whatever reason, they held off far too long incorporating them properly.

And the comic continuations...oy, that's a clusterfuck for another day.

 

[Hound of UIster]

None of Whedon's comic work is any good.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I actually love Fray and still see it as the future for the Buffy-verse.

While S9 was much better than S8, neither reached the heights hoped for.

 

[Thestral]

None of Whedon's comic work is any good.

I dunno, I really really like his X-Men run. The Danger arc was a bit iffy, but overall it's good stuff.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Oh, yeah! I was just thinking in context to his Buffy comics, but overall, his X-Men work was good. I even didn't totally hate the "Danger" arc.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Hey, do Oz next: "Support characters who are autistic and don't know it". You're welcome.

Oz was quiet but seems pretty with it. He's not like Abed from Community.

"Scythe." Alleged Scythe you mean. I remember reading about it before and thinking how awesome it was gonna be to see Buffy going all Grim Reaper, and then it's just a damned axe. A pretty sweet axe, all choppy and the stake-end is a nice touch, but in no way a scythe. /rant

Damn if that whole subplot didn't come right the fuck out of nowhere. And first introducing the Ancient Controlling Magic Men right on the heels of one of Buffy's worst moments, gahhh... such a messy end for the show.

Reminds me of the Circle of the Black Thorn at the end of Angel. That was also very abruptly introduced at the very end.

The axe/scythe and the Shadow Men were all from the Fray comic.

I wish that Fray was done as a TV show, or at least a set of animated DTV movies.

Buffy was just crazy depressing from Joyce's death onwards. I've never properly watched the last two seasons but the stuff I have seen was largely terrible.

Exceptions: "Once More with Feeling," "Tabula Rasa," Giles' badass entry in "Two to Go."

 

[AgentCoop]

The Circle Of The Black Thorn thing on Angel seems rushed because it was. They didn't find out from the network that they were getting cancelled until they were two-thirds of the way through the season. They had mere weeks to tie up four and a half years worth of show. Given those circumstances, I'd say the results are pretty impressive.

 

[Lance]

It's amazing how you can use some of the worst moments of the show to build a case that she was crazy. Really goes to show how bad season 6 was.

Season 6 of BtVS was just unhinged. I don't know why, I don't know if maybe something went wrong behind the scenes? But for whatever reason, all of the ducks lined up at once... and created an entire season that was just totally over the edge.

While I appreciate Joss's thinking in wanting to make a season with the theme "Just Grow Up!", because he was clearly thinking along the lines of wanting the show to keep ahead of its comfort zone and avoid just being samey-samey and dying a slow death of endless repetition of themes, I think their efforts to completely destroy... well, everything that people had come to root for were completely misjudged.

And then Season 7 arguably compounded the problem by trying to recapture something of the pre-season 6 feel, which just made things feel even more hollow as a result. It's like, "Okay... so all that 'flaying people alive' shit didn't matter after all, right?"

 

[AgentCoop]

I think it's tough to argue that it "didn't matter" when two entire S7 episodes (as well as parts of others) are devoted to the fallout of Willow's actions in the previous season. Neither Willow nor her relationships with her friends are ever quite the same.