Least favourite season?

[Clare]

What is your least favourite season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and why?

[cyclica]

My least favourite season is number 7. Not enough main characters, too many new characters, too vague first plot, stretched out too much.

I've gone into more detail on other threads, I'm sure they're around here somewhere.

[cauldron]

season 4. Buffy goes macho and they bring in the army, dreadful characters and if I want to watch macho idiots (which I don't) theres a load of other stuff I can get and Adam sucked!

[cyclica]

Buffy goes macho? When did she go macho?

[cauldron]

I meant Buffy the series went matcho as opposed to the character

[Twisted Slayer]

I don't really have a least favorite season. I've had a few episode that I didn't really care for, but I still love all the seasons.

I based the seasons on what happens in the end and how the emotion is portrayed/created in that season.

[cyclica]

Can I ask, which episodes didn't you like?

[Twisted Slayer]

Well, off the top of my head, I didn't like "Teacher's Pet," "First Date,"

[partcynic]

I can't believe I never filled this in. We've had these discussions multiple times over the years, but I guess there's no problem with having a truncated version listed here.

So - this is a coin-flip between S6 and S7 (what else?)

Both have significant, across-the-board problems with poor acting, negligible or absent plots, glacial pacing, mass repetition, little to no wit/humour and inconsistent (or blatantly ignorant) characterisation. Picking between them is mostly about the viewer's own idiosyncracies.

S6 has one excellent and one very good episode (OMWF and Tabula Rasa, though both are overrated), two others that are heavily flawed but demonstrate thought (Gone and Normal Again), and opens and concludes in a reasonably exciting manner. There's also evidence of a clear season-wide message and ideas that the writers wanted to communicate, and a general game-plan - it's just that the execution was terrible at almost every point.

On the other hand, S7 has no great episodes, but is more consistently mediocre, with its top third sitting comfortably in the show's average/below average sections. The material up until "Conversations with Dead People" also shows a few attempts at identifying and correcting the problems of S6. However, once the First arc kicks in, there's no reprieve, and any lessons learned are quickly forgotten. The remainder of the season displays no signs of planning or forethought, and seems to have been made up as it went along, resulting in a limp conclusion to the series as a whole.

Given those choices, I'd probably say that even though S7 has more episodes I can tolerate than S6, S6's (failed) attempts at theme and structure still make it better overall than S7's hodgepodge of bland nothingness. As a result, my vote goes to S7, even though I honestly consider them equally bad.

[cyclica]

May 27, 2012 6:49:09 GMT -5 partcynic said:

So - this is a coin-flip between S6 and S7 (what else?)

You didn't like s6 and s7?

Next you'll be telling me you didn't like dawn and andrew.


I pretty much agree with what you said about both seasons. I personally cared very little for 'tabula rasa' though. And I'd put season 7 above season 6, if only because of the first few episodes, 'storyteller'', and the climax to 'chosen' (if not the actual story).

So basically I prefer s7 to s6 overall (even though I called s7 my least favourite in my 2008 post above - I've changed my mind since then). Though I still think s7 at it's worst was worse than s6 (or any other season) at it's worst.

[partcynic]

You didn't like s6 and s7?

Next you'll be telling me you didn't like dawn and andrew.

What could you possibly mean there? They're my favourite characters!

So basically I prefer s7 to s6 overall (even though I called s7 my least favourite in my 2008 post above - I've changed my mind since then). Though I still think s7 at it's worst was worse than s6 (or any other season) at it's worst.

Interesting that we've both flipped our opinions on which is worst. I've been doing a rewatch of the series and will be at S6 soon - I'm of two minds as to whether I should try to stick with it, or just finish with "The Gift".