Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> On Nov 27, 7:53 pm, "One Bit Shy" wrote:
>
>> Oh, and the gift? I've written about this before, but I think it bears
>> repetition. In this season of futile fighting death, the series reaches for
>> the classic solution. Death isn't defeated by forestalling it. Death is
>> defeated by bringing life. When Buffy died to close the gate, she didn't
>> merely save Dawn. She brought Dawn to life. In all the debate about how
>> Buffy's blood could be the same as Dawn's, and close the gate, what commonly
>> gets set aside is that the greater implication is that Dawn's blood is the
>> same as Buffy's. Human. This was not clear until Buffy demonstrated it by
>> diving into the portal herself. At that moment Dawn stops being a magical
>> ball of light in disguise and is shown to be a real Summers. Kind of a
>> Pinocchio moment - as in becoming a real boy. So the way I see it, the gift
>> of death was life. Dawn's life.
>
> Hmmm. But hadn't the show already convinced us by this point that
> Dawn was a real girl?
Some of us, yes. There was a small but *very* vocal contingent,
however, who never grasped why Buffy ever saw her as anything but a
construct and didn't just dispose of her out-of-hand. I'm not sure what
that says about those viewers' real-life connections with people, but
I'm pretty sure I'm glad I don't have any with them...
> Maybe she's the one who needed to get gifted,
> though.
>
I'd say. For all her whining, Dawn actually had some pretty good
reasons to whine. If I woke up one morning and discovered that my
entire life, everything I remembered, everything I felt, was a lie, and
that I wasn't even really human, I'd probably do a little whining, too.
>
> I'm more feeling like the show is wrestling with stuff that's a little
> too big for it to fully grasp. Very little about Season Five hits me
> in the gut the way it does Buffy, and that's what it's trying for.
> But I'll agree to the point that the attempt comes from a noble
> place. It's about as ambitious and daring thematically as the show
> has ever gotten, rivaling the obvious choices for that description
> like S2 and S7. I'd classify it as an attempt to use the kinda-silly
> tongue-in-cheek cheerleader story as a forum to explore life and death
> in a way that's brutally true to life without ceasing to be epic
> fantasy. One could argue that (like every season), it's not quite
> like anything else in BTVS.
>
> Worst season ever!
Certainly my least favorite, but mainly because Glory is like nails on a
chalkboard for me (although she had her moments,) if Ben was supposed to
be a sympathetic character, he failed miserably, and the Knights just
felt too out of place. Glory's minions were hilarious, though...
--
Rowan Hawthorn
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer"
