FaxModem1 wrote:No arguments about the Trio losing a moral high card, but as discussed earlier, the Buffy gang were a group of killers by that point, so moral nihilism was the season's theme.
I don't agree that being a killer ultimate equals moral nihilism, moral equivalency, or a complete lack of morality.
Say what you will about the Scoobies, none of them (with the possible exception of pre-soul Spike) are outright sociopaths, nor are any of them (including pre-soul Spike, I think) without any moral convictions.
I've watched the show three times. When I initially watched the show as a kid, I loved it. I watched it a second time, as an adult, and while loving it for a lot of its storylines, I could see that there was a lot of laziness in the way the story was made, and with the characters in their actions.
Well, I think any long-running series is likely to run into contradictions in the plot and characterization eventually, though they could have made more of an effort on that score, particularly, I think, in season seven.
My biggest beef with Buffy was how they treated threats in general. Buffy treated being a Slayer more like an overnight shift at a gas station than a calling or destiny quite a lot of the time. If your threat is primarily vampires, why not hunt during the daytime(after school), find their nests, and exterminate them when you have the advantage. Go on a campaign to wipe them out. Any time someone does that, it's portrayed as wrong(with Faith, and being too careless, with Riley, and treating it as serious business and it not being right to hunt vampires without Buffy ).
I don't think its that Riley took it seriously that was the problem. Its more that he was going off half-cocked due to his insecurities about Buffy, and not keeping the others in the loop.
And for all his training, without the infrastructure and technology of the armed forces backing him up, Riley really is arguably less fit to do the job than Buffy.
As to Faith- well, doing that shit in broad daylight in a town risks exposure, but that presupposes that exposure is a bad thing (though it probably is when the local police force is openly hostile, at least). More on that shortly.
Also, it was symptomatic of her tendency to get a bit too enthusiastic about the darker aspects of her work, I suppose.
As to Buffy's level of commitment to the job: she's a teenager who wants to actually have a life outside of waging a war that will inevitably end in her death. Unthinkable.
There was also Buffy's odd scrambles for hiding the truth whenever she could. Less people would be dying by 'barbecue forks' if people knew to wear crosses and not invite strangers in at night.
Yes, and the dishonesty of that deeply bothers me. But at the same time, let's recall that:
a) Buffy started out as a fifteen year old who knew nothing about the supernatural, and was acting on the advice of the Watcher's Council- a bunch of secretive, manipulative traditionalists. It wasn't a good call, but it makes sense why it would happen that way, and its something I'd blame the Council for more than Buffy.
b) Buffy was trying to keep her family/friends safe by keeping them out of it, at least at first. Hell, at first, she wanted to quit herself (quite understandably).
c) It was retconned in later that Buffy did try to tell her family at first, and ended up with a trip to the mental hospital for her troubles.
Oh, and when she did tell her mother, it lead to a fight and her getting kicked out of the house.
So yeah, her experience is "When I try to be honest, the people closest to me will screw me over."
I think that a lot of people tend to put all the blame on Buffy for her mistakes, which isn't remotely fair. She's effectively a child soldier at the start of the series, who by the end of the series quite possibly has PTSD, or at least severe depression, as a result of being expected to deal with things every night that most of the adults/authorities are apparently afraid to acknowledge exist.
Season 3 is my favorite season, for the best villains(Faith and the Mayor), as well as showing that Buffy was actually making a difference. Before the episode "The Wish", I wondered if Buffy's lack of care to killing evil was making a difference, as a lot of the time, she was more reactive than active in her 'slayage'. In the episode, she slays a demon in the middle of the day, and then has a picnic. She then says that they have to bury it, so that no one can find it. Why? The more people that know demons are real, the less people die.
Then we saw the 'Wish-verse', and actually saw that Buffy killing the Master made a difference, and a lot more people were alive. But, it still remained in my mind, how many people in Sunnydale would be alive if vampires were public knowledge? If she threw one into sunlight in front of the city council to let them know they have a problem, or brought that demon's body to their office.(True, the mayor is partnered with demons and evil, but Buffy doesn't know that). It's Buffy helping keep people in danger, for no real reason than she's not that concerned about saving people.
It's one of the biggest faults in the franchise, and Angel at least makes it to where the Masquerade is somewhat broken.
I do like how the secrecy seemed to be gradually breaking down towards the end of both Buffy and Angel. People should know, and its more realistic given the scale, and highly public nature, of some of the supernatural things that happened in the series.
That said, I am also very much of the view that a sudden total revelation of the supernatural would be catastrophic, just as much so as keeping it secret. Its the same deal as the Statute of Secrecy from Harry Potter: People would panic, there would be riots and killings of anyone who seemed "abnormal" and witch hunts would make a huge resurgence, and paranoia would lead to greater authoritarianism.
Or someone would just undo it with a mass reality-warping or memory-wiping spell. Hell, that sort of thing happens quite often, and can be pulled off by some random college geek in the Buffyverse.
Its a shitty situation, and one where I don't think there's an answer that doesn't hurt and kill a lot of people. And its even worse than the Potterverse, because Buffy-verse magic can get a hell of a lot more destructive and malevolent. You have to tread carefully when the stakes are literally the existence of the multiverse.
Edit: I'll add that as far as not taking slaying "seriously" enough is concerned, its quite obvious that for most of the Scoobies, their flipancy is part of how they deal psychologically with the situations they find themselves in.
