I was going for ferocious-scary, but it’s coming out more dryly sardonic. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4
by JimTheFish
Season three was the Buffy formula at its most perfect. Good blend of Scoobies. A strong arc. A cast and production crew now utterly confident in what they were trying to achieve.
But it couldn’t stay like that. They couldn’t stay in high school forever. Quite apart from anything else it would have looked ridiculous. Most Sunnydale High School students outside of the core cast seemed to look suspiciously well into their 20s as it was. And more importantly to have preserved the show in aspic would have been a betrayal of the show’s core ethos. Buffy is a show about development, about growing up. So it had to grow up already.
And college (or university to us back in the mother country) seemed the logical next step.
I have to admit I’ve kind of enjoyed this rewatch of season 4. It’s easy to overlook the triumphs amidst the low-points. It’s just that there are not enough of the former and too many of the latter.
It’s not that there are actually that many out-and-out bad episodes. It’s been pointed out that the otherwise satisfying S2 has a surprising amount of duffers. But it has some really soaring counterpoints and a great arc to take the nasty taste away. s4 doesn’t actually have that many stinkers — just Beer Bad really. Yes, it has some great moments — Cave Buffy and Parker being owned by Willow are satisfying. But it’s badly written and overly preachy. For me, it counts as the worst episode of Buffy because it’s like the show’s been temporarily possessed by some preachy moraliser. It just doesn’t feel like a Buffy episode, even a bad one. It feels like someone trying to copy a Buffy episode to make their lame moralising point.
Not that Buffy is above moralising. Compared to the endlessly grey moral areas of Angel, Buffy has a strong puritan streak going right through it. This is largely because it’s operating in horror tropes and no matter how it tries to subvert them, there are some groundrules it can’t ignore. Rule number one is, of course, that Sex is Evil and that anyone indulging in it will face great unhappiness and probably death. Whedon and others have expressed their disquiet about this but there’s not a whole lot they can do about it if the narrative is still to work. But Beer Bad is just moralising for the sake of it. It’s too obvious and Buffy is generally smarter than this.
(Interestingly, as highlighted by @Pedant, Graduation Day in the previous season raised a major moral conundrum as Buffy, and by extension Angel, were willing to kill a human — Faith — so that he might live. But this coming after a season’s worth of moralising to Faith is deeply problematic. But it’s interesting that this contradiction is barely addressed at all but rather awkwardly and quietly ignored. It’s interesting that when Angel (the series) confronts similar issues, it tends not to shy away from the implications.)
And this is why s4 is one of the most disappointing of the entire Buffy run. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that there are whole swathes of it that are just so under-achieving. It’s just a case of ‘could do so much better’. The show had a lot to do this year. It was facing the first real departure of major regulars, it had a change in setting to deal with, it was moving out of its comfort zone. Like the characters themselves, they had some big decisions to make. Unfortunately, it got rather a lot of them wrong.
Let’s look at some of them.
RILEY. Riley was always going to be on a hiding to nothing. Like Martha having to deal with being Not Rose and Clara having to deal with being Not Amy, Riley had to deal with being Not Angel. But I don’t think the writers did him too many favours here though. The temptation was always going to be to put the two of them up together at some point and, of course, Angel was always going to win that fight, what with him having his own show and all. But it was a mistake letting Riley being so comprehensively beaten by Angel. It effectively castrated him as a character from there on in. He should have at least have been given some payback, some smaller victory. For instance, having Angel having to watch from the shadows while Riley is able to take Buffy into the sunlight. I kind of liked Marc Blucas’s performance — especially in the following s5 — but while I can see why they made Riley so ostensibly wholesome, they ended up making him just a bit too much on the wet side. The guy’s essentially Jason Bourne, for God’s sake. He could have been made a little cooler.
ADAM. Adam just sucks as a Big Bad. He’s boring. He’s unscary. He looks stupid. It’s almost like they couldn’t decide to what kind of Big Bad to go for. How about an uber-Demon? Nah. How about a big Robot? Nah? How about Frankenstein? Hey, why not just do all three? I realise there were major production problems in s4. The Oz/Verruca arc was meant to go on for much longer. And Lindsay Crouse and Joss had some issues, I believe. (If @pedant wants to fill in some info if he knows it BTL I for one would be interested.) But Adam is just rubbish. There are one-off villains in almost every season who beat him hands down in the fear and awe departments. I think it’s clear that this was realised by the production team too. Just how often do you get a Big Bad who doesn’t even make it to the season finale?
THE INITIATIVE. Which brings us on to the rest of Adam’s arc. Now, I find gung-ho military stuff boring as hell. And conspiracy theories too a lot of the time. Or rather I just don’t think they fit in Buffy. Like at all. I don’t know if it’s still a hangover from the then dying days of the X-Files, or whether Buffy was feeling the pressure to compete with Alias which was generally considered its big competition in those days, but the Initiative arc just felt wrong and frankly bored the piss out of me. Again, it seemed like what was distinctive in Buffy was being taken away and replaced with rather more generic by-the-book plotting. Plus there’s the fact it was just done so badly. No military cliche is spared here.
GILES. There’s a strong case for saying the production team should have just bit the bullet and got rid of Giles this season. But I’m very glad they didn’t. There will come a point when Giles’s story has come to an end but we’re nowhere near it yet. Nonetheless, it’s clear that they didn’t know what to do with Giles and the badly fumbled his character this season. Almost terminally, reducing him to a comedy drunk by the end of the season. It starts early with the whole Giles-as-slacker angle. This runs absolutely contrary to the character set up in the first three seasons. Giles is driven, focused, diligent. The suggestion is that this is as much to keep his own demons at bay as it is with Buffy’s interests. I just don’t buy this mooning, drifting version we get in s4. He would either have moved on or he would have had a project. A book on witchcraft or perhaps something even darker. While generally a disappointing entry in the Ethan Rayne stories, A New Man was interesting in that it suggested the influence that Ethan might continue to still have over Giles. Perhaps an arc, or mini-arc, with Giles at a loose end falling under Ethan’s spell and perhaps seeing a prolonged revival of Ripper would have been interesting. It certainly couldn’t have been any worse than Adam as Big Bad.
But of course a season that sees both Tara and Anya come to the fore can’t be all bad. Both are great but Emma Caulfield I think does an amazing job with Anya. The part could have ended up just being some sort of bastard hybrid of Cordelia and Data and ST:TNG but EC brings something warm and funny and touching to the role.
And s4 has some good episodes. This Year’s Girl, Who Are You, Something Blue, Pangs and even The Yoko Factor are fine stories. But it’s Hush and Restless that really stand out. There’s been so much written about Hush that there’s not really that much left to say. Great use of traditional, more Victorian, horror iconography. The story has a real Poe vibe to it too. And it gives the lie to — as intended — the idea that Buffy was all about snappy, smart dialogue and nothing else.
But its Restless that for me is the real triumph of the season. Coming right at the end (when you’ve all but written off the entire season) it’s a terrific story with some great set-pieces. It’s somewhat similar to s1’s Nightmares but brings an added edge to it and seeds in lots of stuff for future season arcs. It’s also interesting to watch in light of Last Christmas, the most recent Who Chrimbo special, which must surely have been influenced by this story. It’s also interesting to see Joss further flexing his directorial muscles again here. Compare this to Prophecy Girl to see how much he’s grown as a director. But mostly I just love it for Armin Shimmerman’s great Brando pastiche. Sigh. I miss Snyder.
OK, you know the drill. Any thoughts gratefully received but not spoilers beyond s4 if you please. Next time, a brief diversion into Angel S1.
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Pretty much agree with that (apart from the wrongness about Beer Bad. I suspect you may have sussed that I’m not soemone who responds well to being preached to, and I do not see any preaching in Beer Bad. Just as Parker is nothing more than “the boy who never called back” – a bit of a going-to-college trope, Beer Bad was “careful that you’re not slipped a Mickey”, and given that roofies were all the rage, that’s not really preaching. And there is a much (much) worse episode to come. But anyway, moving on….).
Anyway, this is the season that, for a while, stopped Buffy being appointment TV for me. Pretty well as soon at the taser-thingy equipped green-sweatered-guys turned up I went “uh-oh”. This was when the X-Files was on its 4 season long down slope, and it felt like everybody was trying to do “paranoid government is eeeebbbbiiiiilllll” shit). It was a good couple of years before the DVDs let me see it as a whole and while it does soar to marvellous heights, the lows are not so much low and just “meh” and the arc was a bit “Is that it?”.
Don’t agree about Giles – I think that was one of the things that was deliberate and I think it worked. Willow and Buffy joked about him being a “slacker” in The Freshman but, of course, that was them being young and not grasping how at a loose end a man like him would be, how useless he would feel. Also, it did set up the hilarious Behind Blue Eyes scene. And the Exposition Song. The other high point…..er, high line? Series of dots…?…. is meeting Anya properly. Emma Caulfield is glorious.
The issue was Crouse was a misunderstanding of how many episodes they had booked her for and what options they had – it was more with her agent, who had already set her up with other work (and I think might have been a bit rude to Whedon). With Kristine Sutherland away for most of the season (in France, iirc) what they had in mind is hinted at by Adam’s “mother” schtick, but they had to reshuffle when she wasn’t available and it just didn’t work.
And then Season 5 turned up and everything was OK again.
Incidentally fact fans, this season features two bands who got very respectable extra international sales thanks to Buffy:
(Actually, going back to S3, Doppelgangland features K’s Choice, a Belgian duo – if you buy one album in the next week make it Paradise In Me – it is utterly brilliant and “Not An Addict” one of the best songs I have ever heard).
This musical interlude was brought to you by Pedant Promotions.
Haven’t read the blog yet -for spoiler protection.
I loved New Moon Rising. Loved Oz -but I was a little irked despite my comments on the other thread about “sex sex sex” -at episode’s end the candle being blown out symbolised what Fox may have labelled as “too much deviance”. Grr. Even at the end I wasn’t quite sure what would happen. Would Oz be tortured to death? When saved, would he have a ‘happy ever after’ with Willow and was Spike REALLY going to help?
I did enjoy the William Burrough’s line despite the lengthy explanation for Boy Ilion which stopped the pace somewhat. “I’m an anarchist” from young Ryl was terrific as was his ‘oh gosh’: “If I leave I can’t ever come back. I just needed to say that out aloud”.
That episode more than made up for other, shall we say, less than satisfying ones?
but what I meant to say -and should have paragraphed/structured properly was that Tara and Willow are very very good together -there’s a certain stuttering hesitation in Tara’s delivery which may not be necessary -and who knows? Maybe it was meant to be that way, but somehow, I expect a self deprecating delivery helped pass this episode with the censors?
How to keep the execs and middle America happy? Not easy (I’m not havin’ a go at Middle America. Not really sure what it is…conservative Bible belt; the Washington beltway -the latter definitely not ‘middle’!).
@pedant
Yeah, I get that and also thought it was an interesting thing to do. But it’s an idea that can be explored in a couple of episodes and then taken Giles onto somewhere new.
Also true. But these are done at the expense of the character over the entire season and it’s just terrible writing to essentially rewrite a character for a couple of funny pay-offs. As I said above, how Giles is written here runs absolutely counter to pretty much everything we’re told/have seen about him in the previous three seasons. It’s a bit like if s4 had turned round and made Xander Buffy’s studly and non-nerdy boyfriend with no explanation of how that might have happened.
I get that the core of Giles’s arc this season is to show that as you grow up you leave your need for the adults you relied on behind and that’s an important and worthwhile point to make. Which is why I suspect they should have just had the courage to bite the bullet and have Giles absent in s4, or at least, temporarily. (It’s possibly worth noting that s8 of Buffy in the comics handles this general theme in a far more interesting and satisfying manner.)
But at the same time, they clearly realised that Giles was still an essential part of the show’s dynamic. They just couldn’t figure out what the hell to do with him. Certainly putting him in the university library as some suggested would have been an awful idea. But having him in the university in some capacity perhaps might not have been. (Thankfully they identified and remedied the problem for s5).
I think is is a fundamental of Whedon’s writing that events have consequences and he isn’t afraid to spend time exploring them. And being fired isn’t trivial (especially when done for office politics) – been there, done that). It does change you and utterly shatters your confidence. Hence I’m OK with it.
I agree. As I said, it’s an interesting idea to look at but in terms of drawing it out over a whole season, to the extent that your character barely resembles the one you’ve previously taken pains to build up and destroys a key part of your show’s dynamic without successfully putting something else in it’s place, then it’s really not worth it. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have gone down this track with Giles, just that they didn’t think it through enough and fundamentally weakened the show in s4 as a result.
@JimTheFish
Good stuff Jim. I actually find Buffy S4 an interesting one to consider, if only because its many failures are alleviated by a couple of high points.
Its interesting that a period of transition for Buffy (ex high school) is a period of transition for the show. All of a sudden you had Marti Noxon and Jane Espenson promoted in various producer roles and David Fury signing on in a Producer capacity. The intent of this is fairly obvious – more senior roles to facilitate Whedon nursing new baby Angel to a similar success. I don’t think that team jelled immediately and it’s notable that some of the first run of stories almost seem like a caricature of previous Buffy, leading to episodes like Beer Bad. Beer Bad I find an appalling story for many reasons. If I am wrong headed in this, I reassure myself that I find myself in good company. Few, in my experience, feel compelled to say anything good about it.
It does pick up in the second half though, and the Whedon ending (an intervention, by all accounts – he felt the central character arc had become lost in the series and wrote Restless to pull the strands together) is remarkable.
Just to pick up on a few things though:
Riley – Voted, in the Phaseshift household, as “Boy most likely to don Captain America Cosplay and spout Gee Whizz homilies”. I get that the intention was that Buffy may have been seeking someone a little more, well, stable than Angel but did they have to make him that dull?! It defies belief.
Adam – I actually don’t agree with your criticism here. After three years of wise-cracking arch bad guys I think the idea of Adam, who was notable by his complete absence of sense of humour, is an interesting one. It’s an obvious homage to Frankenstein – the Modern Prometheus becomes post-Modern. The initial structure of his escape and encounter with the world may as well have been credited to Shelley. With Spike defanged and becoming the serpent in the group, it was interesting to see a dynamic in which the big bad was oblivious to those type of machinations, although willing to use them. I also think the early exit in S4 breaks a formula which RTD mirrored (the big finale) and George Hertzberg’s “cameo” in Restless is pretty disquieting.
The initiative – Its cliché done not particularly well. In particularly the “we’re trying to build a supersoldier to save lives, godammit”. I like some aspects of it though. Cast of from the Watchers Council, and lacking the stability of school, the desire for structure and belonging is one that I can believe for Buffy at this point. And Giles dismay in that his Slayer seems to have abandoned him.
Giles – Yes, the direction of his storyline could have been much better. His sense of loss, and possible reliance on alcohol could have been “the message” of this series, but the ineptness of Beer Bad undercuts the storyline quite badly. The sudden revelation of Olivia and aspiring musicianship also seemed shoe-horned in.
The later part of the series is quite adept – it seems predictable because of the hands on the tiller (or so it seems) but I’ll always love S4 for the fact it broke the mould, wrongfooted the audience and ended early. To present you with the dreamscape of Restless. It’s an astonishing episode, in which Whedon ruminated on the series, and what is to come. I can remember absolute outrage from some quarters about it but it remains my most enjoyable slice of Buffy. I may mention it again in a week.
The highs of S4 compensate for many of the lows. In a perverse way I like flawed TV and this is a rollercoaster of style and substance.
(Note: I didn’t feel the need to point out how great Hush was once. Oh. Bugger)
@phaseshift — yes, got to agree that Restless is an incredible episode. Almost certainly in my Buffy top 5 and definitely Joss attempting to pull back the core of the season into some focus. It’s certainly true that you can time dips in Buffy quality with astonishing precision to Mr Whedon having a spin-off project on the go somewhere else. (See also s7).
RE. Adam. Sorry, but I think Buffy (and Angel) Big Bads need an extra layer of charisma in order to work and Adam never really rose above Monster of the Week fare. He was basically Daryl Epps from Some Assembly Required but a bit more demon-ey. A lacklustre Big Bad seems to make or break a season and it’s interesting that one of the key things the Angel production team did was to reduce their reliance on them in terms of season arcs. Of course that leads them into the accusations of ‘soap opera!!” but that’s a discussion for another time, I suspect.
RE. Giles. You can see why they had to bring in Olivia. Giles mooning about on his own, except for hanging about with all these young people and without the context of ‘it’s part of my job’ would quickly have become a bit suspect. It was necessary to give him a girlfriend to avoid the creepy-weirdo factor. I’m guessing the music thing was a concession to ASH who is quite keen on this sort of thing. And that’s probably fair enough since they pretty much were giving him sod all else to do.
@JimTheFish @pedant @PhaseShift.
Oh, my: ‘restless’. Oh my. (Boy Ilion I feel won’t like it much).
As for me: I’m watching it twice. The layering, metaphors, the lamination of fear, shame, isolation and dreams within dreams all winding back to the same place.
And the cheese-slice man? And the Comfortador?
Must have a closer look… Joyce in red satin? Utterly sublime. It’s so rare to see an episode that’s sublime rather than phenomenal. It could have failed dismally. But it was gorgeously put together: the lighting, the vastness of particular scenes, the close, haunted curtains, and the sandbox…? The score too -so very dissimilar to what we’ve heard before: images and a twirling alto as Spike and Giles (seemingly restored, or is he?) swing away. Swing away, indeed….and cut… to Willow and Tara and the long kiss- the reaction shot only of Zander’s leading to his perpetual confusion as others call him an idiot in French. Beautiful long shots. And massive clues…
This was worth the Season.
A great blog, Jim, thank you
@puroflion
Awesome, innit?
“I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I’m gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There’s trees in the desert since you moved out. And I don’t sleep on a bed of bones.”
“You think you know what’s to come, what you are? You haven’t even begun”
“Be back before dawn” *stiffles giggle*
7:30
@purofilion
Oops- tried to tag back and you can’t edit blog posts.
@pedant — I particularly like Apocalypse Now being labelled a ‘gay romp’. You can almost hear the movie musos swooning in shock.
@purofilion — glad you enjoyed the blog. You’ll now see what is meant by the controversy that surrounds s4. And can I just say that there’s something about the phrase ‘the lamination of fear’ that really pleases me…
@pedant @JimTheFish
intriguing.
I recall distinctly at the end of S3 hearing “7.30” Then I thought, ‘ah nothing’: then I heard “little sis”. I assume Faith is referring to herself? Does Buffy see Faith as a protégé? Will Faith be back at 7.30?
Will @purofilion ever stop fishing for spoilers! 😉
@pedant “be back before dawn” ?
Back before dawn? Something is dawning? A new dawn. A new big bad? Buffy herself is the ‘dawn’? A person called ‘dawn’? But the name is quite old-fashioned? So, no, I don’t think so.
Clueless.
Moved through 3 episodes last night and a colleague (yes, another Buffy fan!) said “don’t listen to the commentaries on the last disc”. Spoilers. So, thank god I didn’t -Joss does one for Restless but it concerns me (being so good) he’ll connect something from S6 back to S4 and then I’ll be truly spoiled/stuffed.
@pedant hey!!! not fishing! at all. I’m just baiting you.
Oh, OK, well, no, I don’t want to know….Can’t help but be inquisitive. Ya all taught me that 😉
@purofilion
Oh God! I’d completely forgotten about the huge great spoilers on the commentaries (he got a bit for shit for that).
Now you need to start S5.
@pedant
*rubbing hands with glee* On my day off, should I clean the fridge and pantry? Or watch some Buffy?
No brainer. But I’ll stay away from commentaries. Colleague mentioned that Primeval had a commentary with Fury and Contner but he said “it’s boring. There’s whole passages of nothing where they say, ‘here we have Nick and here we have Buffy’ but they do drop some hints so DON’T WATCH IT.” I dutifully obeyed!
Yeah – Petrie was a fucker for spoilers.
@jimthefish
Very true. I should point out that I wasn’t particularly dissing the other producers I mentioned in the last post. I just think that when you have a show that is fundamentally tied to one persons vision, then quality control may suffer when that person is distracted by other projects.
I’m not sure about this. I think the previous ones certainly worked well for those series, but would you really want to see another big bad trying to do another version of the wise-cracking evil after The Master, Angelus and the Major?
I should have expanded on the point really, because I didn’t explain why I like the concept of Adam. I think S4 had a pretty strong character arc concept overall (but not particularly executed well for the early stages). You could say the real big bad for the series was the progressive estrangement and pressures between the main core of Scoobies, which Spike eventually exploits in the Yoko factor. As a reflection of this Adam is a construct of different parts brought together to form something intended to be superior. Hence he actually presents the team with the solution to defeat him (Super-Slayer). It is interesting though that after the Major (who I think we should all agree was a hard act to follow) each big bad took its own direction but they never tried to recreate that type of character again.
As you say, it’s interesting that Angel took a different and less predictable route with a lot of series having coda moments and flights of fancy at the end of the series (the Lorne home dimension one being a case in point).
You mentioned quite a lot of influences on the Initiative and I’d say to me that S4 seems like the writers had watched far too much Moore era Bond. There is something a bid Bond Villain about Adam, and the Initiative does scream “the inside of a hollowed out volcano”. It’s unfortunate that Austin Powers had come along just before this and took the piss out of certain tropes.
@purofilion
It’s quite difficult to find people who don’t like Restless these days. When first shown there was a lot of criticism of the “but…but….this is different! This is not how a series of Buffy should end!?” etc.
It remains probably my favourite episode of the series. Lots of others approach it and you can admire certain episodes for bravery, for spectacular action sequences or being loveably crazy. But I think it’s the episode I most enjoy. So much crammed in.
The filming is crazily good and I love the overexposed shots of the desert sequences. Lots of kudos for SMG in this one specifically as she has to play different perceptions of Buffy from the other scoobies perspectives and gets to do quite a few different things.
@Phaseshift—
Yeah, I agree with this. I think it’s not so much the idea of Adam that I object too as the execution, which was just a bit too bland. I think you’re right that a non-wisecracking Big Bad was a nice contrast but I’m just not sure that George H sold it as well as he might. I think if we’d seen the pre-Adam version earlier in the series, got to know the human version before the cyborg/demon hybrid one then it might have worked better.
But you’re dead right about him being another example of the Big Bad reflecting the character arc of the season. As with the others. Season one dwelt on free choice and Buffy’s future being ordained by her calling — personified by the Master. Season Two deals with romantic relationships, how they end, how they can go wrong, how they can bring pain — hence Angelus. S3 about parental love, fathers, mothers etc — so we get the evil father figure in the Mayor. S4 is about fragmentation of the group, the Scoobies no longer being the sum of the parts – -and Adam illustrates that well.