Buffy The Vampire Slayer

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Buffy Season 7 DVD Region 1 - Now Available For Pre-Order

Click here to pre-order :

Buffy Season 7 DVD Region 1 - Now Available For Pre-Order

Price: $38.99

Availability: This item will be released on November 16, 2004. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives.

Edition: DVD

* Director: Marti Noxon, Tucker Gates * Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. This DVD will probably NOT be viewable in other countries. Read more about DVD formats.) * Format: Box set, Color * Rated: Unrated * Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Home Video * DVD Release Date: November 16, 2004 * DVD Features: o Number of discs: 6 * ASIN: B0002XVKMC * Average Customer Review: 4 out of 5 stars Based on 13 reviews. Reviewer: Robert W. Moore (Chicago, IL USA) Unlike other seasons of BUFFY, one needs to defend either a low or high rating for this season. One can take either of two tacks with Season Seven. One could give it a low rating based on comparison with other seasons of BUFFY, because there is virtually no debate that this is the weakest season in the show’s seven. On this criterion, I would probably give the set a three-star rating. On the other hand, one could base the rating not in comparison to BUFFY’s other seasons, but to other shows, and on this basis I don’t see how you can give the season anything less than a five. Yes, it is BUFFY’s weakest season; yes, there are some serious errors made during the season; yes, the writing isn’t as sharp or as consistent. Nonetheless, it was during the 2002-2003 television season, along with ANGEL (which had its own problems in its Season Four), FARSCAPE (which while superb was not as nearly sharp as Season Three), and ALIAS, among the finest shows on TV. It is my least favorite season of BUFFY, but given the option of watching either it or any season of LAW AND ORDER or FRIENDS or CSI, I would choose Season Seven of BUFFY in a nanosecond.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

So why do BUFFY fans find Season Seven to be so disappointing. I think there are a variety of reasons. Here are a few: 1) Although there is some very sharp humor during the season (e.g., a conversation about fast food delicacies between Spike and Andrew on a motorcycle, after which Spike warns that he will kill Andrew if he ever tells anyone about it; Anya’s asking Andrew why he doesn’t use the bathroom for the same purpose everyone else does [not the purpose one might first imagine]; and a phenomenal first encounter between Faith and Spike, when she doesn’t know that he now fights on the side of the good guys, and tries to slay him, with the two of them debating on who has reformed and who did so first), the humor isn’t as consistent. But the tone of the series changed. Even in Season Six, the show maintained a humorous tone most of the time. In Season Seven, there is a constant attempt to inject a sense of impending doom, which unfortunately alters the show’s mood in unpleasant fashion. Buffy almost completely ceased her quipping. 2) Although Sarah Michelle has gained a number of detractors since the end of the series (I think mainly for her lack of interaction with fans), I always think she did a marvelous job in the only crucial role on the show. Unfortunately, in Season Seven she was asked to do something that her character wasn’t well equipped to do: more or less be a great leader. Buffy in the first six seasons was always more of her own person, not quite a loner, but although the central figure in the Scoobies as the Slayer, not a leader either. But in Season Seven after the Potentials arrive, she is asked to be a leader. What is worse, she is asked to lead not merely by example but by giving morale-boosting speeches in every other episode. Unfortunately, the speeches were horribly written and awkwardly inserted into the episodes. I was more put off by her General Patton speeches more than I was by the notorious "cookie dough" speech she gives Angel in the final episode. 3) Worse of all, the Potentials completely altered the structure of the show. I know many people simply didn’t like the individual actresses portraying the Potentials, but to me that wasn’t what was so bad about them. Because there were so many of them, they gradually started eroding the screen time left to deal with the stories of the main Scoobies. Actually, Season Seven is very good up to the episode when the Potential start arriving. The episode where Anya slaughters as vengeance demon all the members of a fraternity, only to repent after failing to convince both others and herself that this was what she really wanted to be doing, and then walks off by herself at the end of the story is quite as good as what we had seen in the previous two or three seasons. But once the Potentials arrived, there simply wasn’t room or time to deals with individual characters any longer. Xander, Anya, Dawn, and Giles more or less get squeezed out of the story. Only Buffy, Willow, and Spike, and later in the year Faith, get to have their stories told at all. In Seasons One through Six, four or five or six or seven was company, but twenty proved to be a crowd. 4) The lameness of The First as the Big Bad. Cementing this was the terrible use of the great use of Nathan Fillion (who was spectacular as Mal Reynolds in FIREFLY) as Caleb.

One other thing to lament about Season Seven was recently revealed by Joss Whedon, when he explained that they hoped to bring Tara back in Season Seven before contract negotiations broke down. In an early episode, Buffy would somehow manage to gain the ability to make a single reality-altering wish. Several alternatives are instantly imaginable: wishing her mother back, lifting Angel’s curse, perhaps not even being the Slayer. Whedon imagined Buffy going to Willow and showing her new shoes, as if they were what she had used her wish for, Willow’s incredulous reaction, and then Buffy telling her to look behind her, where Tara would have been standing. Now that is an episode I would have liked to see.

But sometimes the negatives seem to mask the large number of extremely good things in Season Seven. For instance: 1) Except for "Him" (where Buffy and Dawn fight over the attentions of the same high school student) there were no out and out from beginning to end bad episodes. The bad stuff largely took place within a show that features some good things. 2) A few absolutely stunning individual episodes, especially "Conversations with Dead People," the hysterical "The Storyteller" (centering on Andrew, who provided many of the funniest moments of Season Seven, and who is one of the odds on favorites to be in any BUFFY/ANGEL spin off), and the great episode where Spike deals with unresolved conflicts concerning his mother. 3) The struggles of both Willow and Spike in dealing with their respective inner demons, Willow with having killed in Season Six and Spike with his having a soul. 4) The return of Faith, which while BUFFY did not provide her with as many great moments as ANGEL did for three episodes preceding her return to Sunnydale, were great. The tremendous chemistry (more as kindred spirits than sexual) between Spike and Faith, especially in a long conversation they have in Buffy’s basement, one of the highpoints of the season, has many people hoping for the demise of TRU CALLING (Eliza Dushku’s current and lightly regarded show) so that Faith and Spike can head a spin off.

Then there is the ending. Many hate it. Many love it. Personally, I think it was a perfect end to the series. BUFFY was always a fictional representation about the empowerment of women. In the climax of the season-and indeed, the climax of the entire series-Buffy with Willow’s help discovers a way to empower not merely the Chosen One, the lone Slayer, but all potential slayers, all over the world. Best of all, the show managed to resolve Buffy’s central dilemma that was established in Season One and continued through to the end: How could she, whom fate had selected to be The Chosen One, ever manage to live the kind of life she dreamed of having? By empowering all potentials, and in effect creating dozens and perhaps hundreds of Slayers, Buffy ceased to be The Chose One. In the final seconds of the show, Faith says to Buffy "Yeah, you’re not the one and only chosen anymore. Just gotta live like a person. How’s that feel?" It seems to take a second before the question hits her, but when it does, you can almost feel Buffy’s relief, and her face lights up with an extraordinarily happy smile. You can feel her relief at having triumphed over her fate.

I can’t imagine a more perfect ending to what I honestly feel is the finest television series in the history of television. Reviewer: "muldfeld" (Montreal to Toronto)

I cannot review the DVD, since it hasn’t been released yet, but I can evaluate this season’s story. In short, this is the second-worst season of Buffy, after the not entirely funny first season. After the spectacular sixth season, this season was planned from the start as the show’s final one, but, oddly enough, felt incredibly ill-planned and nonsensical right up to the final moment. The finale, in particular, seemed so rushed, as to not fully live up to the spirit of the show or give the characters their due. The main characters, aside from Buffy and Spike, seemed to receive an undeserved lack of attention, especially Anya, Xander, and Giles.

The execution of the plot about the potential slayers — about which I won’t go into detail for those who haven’t seen the season — was very poorly done, especially with regard to dialogue. Far too much significance was given and focus directed toward characters who were introduced this season — even more than toward those regular characters who appear in the main credits. This was a huge loss. Chacters like Xander, Giles and Anya were what made me interested in the show, and their downright misuse and superficial involvement seems foolish and lacking in consideration for the fans, who invested so much emotional interest in these characters.

There are exceptions to this silly main plot. The beginning of the season is quite strong with an episode focussed on Anya that is one of the best of the season. "Conversations with Dead People" is strong, and "Potential" provides some interesting final moments between Dawn and Xander that make you forget how irritating Dawn can be, but only highlight how wonderful and underexplored Xander was this year.

Overall, if you are interested in the Angel series, which had a fantastic final year and excellent finale, this season is essential to understanding Spike, as so much of the story focusses on him. I am even going to buy this DVD set. However, understand that the show has lost much of what made it special: the fun and brilliant interlacing of humor and drama that made overrated shows like "Friends" look, well, severely overrated. Instead of forging into the show’s swan song with a formula that worked, the writers mistakenly believed that the show’s dull action scenes and foreboding were its strongest suits, and that, in X-Files-ian fashion, realism meant that our beloved characters wouldn’t joke in serious times. While this might be alright for a few episodes, it becomes intensely draining and even boring by midway through the season. Suspense and heavily-serious drama were never Buffy’s stronger aspects. What made it more fun than so many paranormal or sci-fi shows was its willingness to make light of situations. The writers had lost their ability or desire to do this, and the show suffered. More importantly, unlike the fascinating drama between Buffy and Angel in Season 2, Faith and Buffy in Season 3, and essentially everyone in seasons 2 through 6, this — the final season of Buffy — simply lacked an interesting set of tensions and character arcs. When Joss Whedon’s plotting lost the essential wit and humor that made the show so amusing, and then left viewers with just plain cheesy and bad drama, how can he have thought his efforts would amount to more than 2.5 stars, especially when Season 5 was worth 5 stars.