As Promised, Buffy Thoughts

Well, I've now finished Season Six of Buffy, including all the DVD extras. (OK, most of the DVD extras. I confess, I couldn't quite make it all the way through the amazingly boring commentary on "Hell's Bells.") And, yes, I do have very mixed feelings about the season.

On an abstract, artistic, "meta" kind of level, I find it extremely interesting, and I have deep, deep respect for what the writers were doing. They're willing to allow the characters to grow and develop in ways that aren't always easy or pleasant, to follow through on the consequences of events even when they go into disturbing places. And, as I said before, I think that's very brave storytelling, and very honest storytelling, and in many ways it's very refreshing. Joss Whedon and his team repeatedly say in their comments that the idea of the season was to show these people growing up and facing, not metaphorical monsters, but the realities of adult life. I think, generally speaking, they do that very well. I also think it's an interesting thing to do, and that the season provides a lot of fascinating food for thought. There are many issues and themes woven through the season's various storylines, some of them obvious, some of them subtle: the lure and abuses of power, the necessity (and difficulty) of achieving adult self-reliance, the nature of healthy vs. unhealthy relationships, etc., etc., etc.... I watch this season, and the higher centers of my brain are constantly going, "Hmm, interesting," and "Oh, cool, did you see what they did there? Plot Point X reflects on Metaphor Y to enhance Thematic Motif Z!"

Which is great and all, and it makes the season worth watching... once. But the truth is, while my brain is engaged by it on that abstract sort of level, my heart and soul just aren't, not the way they were in previous seasons. Season 6 Sunnydale isn't a place that it's fun to spend time in, the characters aren't people I'm eager to go and hang with, and (with rare exceptions), no matter what's happening or how happy or sad the characters get, my emotions really just aren't fully engaged with them. I'm not wrapped up in the show, losing myself in it, feeling and being along with the characters. I'm sitting back being Art Critic Girl.

I have a theory about this. (And, no, it's not "bunnies.") I think what makes season 6 appealing to me on the "art critic" level is exactly what leads to it losing me on the fangirl level. It's too real. Earlier seasons certainly dealt with real issues and real emotions, and that's a lot of what made the show so darned good. But there was always sort of a comforting layer of fantasy there to cushion the blow. No matter how the characters might suffer, and no matter how deeply relevant that suffering might be to our own real-life experiences, there remained an element of escapism about the whole thing. The show might reflect on real life, but, for the time I'd spend watching it, I wasn't actually living real life. I was living something a little more fanciful, a little more colorful, a little more fun. And if I cried when sad things happened (which, yes, I did), it was the cathartic sort of emotional release, where I felt better afterward and at least I could say, "Well, thank goodness my life was never quite that bad."

In season six, somehow, that's all gone, and Buffy-life doesn't really feel all that much different from real life, despite the presence of vampires and demons and magic. And instead of feeling catharsis when bad things happen to the characters, I simply find myself wincing at my own painful memories. Not laughing at them, as I often did during the high school years of Buffy, which served to put my own high school years in perspective, but squirming uncomfortably in my seat as, for instance, my fast-food days come all too vividly back to me.

In other words, I think Joss and company did exactly what they were aiming to do, but they did it so well that the end result was simultaneously intellectually fascinating and emotionally alienating. They aped the feeling of reality so well that, paradoxically, the world and the characters felt less real, because I was never able to disengage with my own reality enough to fully enter theirs.

Which leaves me very glad to have watched it (properly, I mean, as opposed to the sporadic bits of it I saw when it aired), but with no great desire to ever sit through it again. Unlike, say, season three, which I kind of feel like going and watching again right now...