Wednesday 24 November 2004, by Anonymous :

The author was right. Season 7 was dull. I get bored before the episode even starts. Always in Buffy I get so intersted whenever Xander or Willow show up in a scene. But in season seven, they so were not themselives. I get bored in Xander’s scenes. XANDER’s scenes?! That’s something I NEVER thought I’d get to.

Wednesday 24 November 2004, by Anonymous :

Who wrote this was correct about the neglecting of the core four. They showed Giles as the bad guy and he was noticeably different from who you remember from past years. While Xander the all time comic relief, lost his role to another character and seemed to be neglected along with his realationship with Anya. Willow, the most intersting character, was major boredom. There was no development going on for Xander and Giles, and Willow’s wasn’t nearly as interesting as what had come before

Wednesday 24 November 2004, by Anonymous :

He’s right. The whole screen was for Buffy (duh, her show), Spike and new boring characters. The rest of Scoobies did not develop nor had a strong story-line, or didn’t have in the case of Xander, that is just very disappointing.

Wednesday 24 November 2004, by Lucy :

oh well...the show was still better then most of them. Even with the sometimes dull and repetitive plot of season 7. Just remember this one thing people. Remember how mad we were when they pulled the plug on the show...even when perhaps it’s time was wearing thin.

Thursday 25 November 2004, by deborahc :

S7 is my least favorite season, for many, many reasons. The reviewer touched on some of those reasons, but I take issue with his criticism of Spike. I didn’t think that he was used too much, I thought he was used too much in isolation from the core characters other than Buffy, and to some extent Anya. S7 was notably bereft of direct interaction and conversation between Spike and anyone else.

I was particularly eager to see how the Scoobies and Giles would react to the news that Spike got back his soul, because he wanted it, went after it, and fought for it, in contrast to Angel who only has a soul when it’s forced upon him against his will. But this staggering occurrence is not even referred to, let alone discussed, other than by Spike and Buffy in private conversation. Conversation between the other main characters and Spike - a high-point for me in previous years - was notably lacking in S7. These people all had history with Spike, and issues, and it certainly wasn’t as if they never talked to each other before and had nothing to say to each other now. I’m not saying that the show should have revolved around Spike resolving his issues with everyone else. I’m saying that the virtual absence of direct conversation with Spike was unrealistic. And speaking of unrealistic, Clem, Spike’s particular friend, did not exchange a single word with him during their one scene in common, or even refer to him in his second and last appearance on the show when he sees Buffy on his way out of Sunnydale. I really don’t feel that the writers were paying much attention to the integrity of the histories of the characters and the relationships between them.

Spike’s relationship with Buffy was important, but not to the exclusion of his relationships and history with everyone else.

The SITs stole valuable screen time away from the characters we were invested in and cared about. To spring them on us in the last season, with the clock ticking and time running out to say everything that needed to be said, was a shock and a disappointment. But don’t blame Spike for twisting Giles into an unfathomable Giles lookalike, or for Dawn, Willow, and Xander’s relegation to little more than window dressing. IMO, it was how they used him, not how much, that was so dissatisfactory.



Friday 26 November 2004, by Ruperta :

How surprising is it that we ended up with a sort of awkward season, when Joss was intent on that "share the power" ending, and started out trying to keep options open for a Season 8, or maybe for a Faith spin-off, or maybe to move Spike to AtS (which was under threat of being canceled otherwise), and all that stuff? How tight and focused is the season going to be, under those circumstances?

It was a good season despite the disappointment regarding the lack of seeing enough of our regular cast.

The Potentials took away from all our core characters. They were there because that "sharing the power" ending was very important to get to, and we ended up with an awkward season.

In regard to Spike in particular, Spike and his amulet was central to that ending - as Xander and his crayon speech had been the year before. But, I don’t think he got anymore screen time than anyone of the other regulars. Somebody would have to time it and prove it to me. I didn’t pay close attention but I’m always surprised when I hear this - when I think of how disappointing it was not to see more of our regulars, I think of all of them, including Spike.

There was a Spike overload? The only overload was too much time spent on the Potentials. How I wish some of those minutes could have been spent on our regulars - any one of them.

deborahc mentioned Spike’s soul- getting seemed like it should have caused more reaction, and I agree. And Willow almost ending the world and killing Warren, and Anya letting herself go back to demonhood. . . each got one episode that sort of dealt with this huge huge huge thing that they had done, and then it was on to being overwhelmed by The Potentials, and that lame "is Giles dead" thing (which I guess was just supposed to be silly fun, but it didn’t work.)

But there were some truly great moments in Season 7. And I still love that ending. It made suffering through The Potential overload worth it.



These comments are an anwser to this article : Buffy Season 7 DVD Region 1 - Ign.com Review

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