( 2112 )

Ok so for some reason in no way related to anything pilot episode like-ish your friend and humble narrator here at 2112 happens to be writing at the moment (no really, I swear) and owing to some to a depressing amount of fever induced down time … there’s been some re-watching of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Sixth and Seventh Seasons going on around Casa Del Dirk … re-watching that’s sparked a revelation of sorts as to why both seasons are profoundly disappointing (to say the least). Now don’t get me wrong, even a complete crap season of BTVS is better television than the best season of Vampire Diaries.

But here’s the thing; that’s not really a question. Here’s a question: Were Season’s Six and Seven of Buffy incredibly disappointing when juxtaposed with what Seasons One through Five of Buffy accomplished beyond being damn good TV? Now for those who came in late it might be helpful to take a moment and review exactly what that accomplishment was. Well to put it plainly, Seasons One through Five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were so unbelievably influential that they demolished a host of insulting stock character types and gave birth to what is  - all things considered – a pretty freaking positive archetype that you may have heard of—the strong, deeply emotional, smoking hot, ass kicking, chick.

You see, Buffy’s why there was an Alias, it’s why there was an invincible cheerleader on Heroes, it’s why there’s an Agent Sarah Walker on Chuck, it’s why there was Cameron on Sarah Connor Chronicles and a green lit Sarah Connor Chronicles period, it put an Ashley on Sanctuary and so on and on.  In fact, “The Buffy” if you will, became such a pervasive archetype that there have been six smoking hot ass kicking chick regulars on Supernatural in five seasons (Yes that said SIX not EIGHT ’cause I’m counting characters not actresses).

It’s actually become rather difficult to name a horror, fantasy or Sci Fi series without one.

There’s been more than a little wrongheaded pontificating saying that archetype has been or become a bad thing. By way of countering; I’d simply invite anyone tempted to make such an argument to ask say Katherine Justice (one of too many lumberjack shirt wearing single moms from 70s action TV) or maybe Maren Jensen (Athena from the original Battlestar Galactica) if they’d care to trade the roles they wound up playing for the various parts that actresses like Emmanuelle Vaugier and Eliza Dushku have been called on to assail?

Of course you probably already know all of that and you’re just reading this all wondering how and or what any of it has to do with Buffy Seasons Six and Seven being not so awesome? Well at times like this it can be helpful to avoid specifics and fan loyalties and talk big picture. So take a step back. Imagine for a moment that sometime back in 1998 someone created a T’Challa: The Black Panther TV show. And further that for its first five seasons that show managed to upend a legion of negative stereotypes in a way that never toned down the lead character’s ethnicity and rarely patronized or veered into blatant afro-centric preaching. That the show and lead character became such a cultural icon that multiple copycat series were produced and the super-smart, ass-kicking black dude became a thing … a cliché, a stock character that literally every genre show writer’s room felt obliged to include in an episode or twelve. Which would be … fucking incredible. Right?

Now imagine that during Seasons Six and Seven of that show T’Challa moved to the “hood,” descended into a welter of self loathing and dysfunction, got into an abusive interracial relationship that culminated in a hate crime, confronted a series of racist and white supremacist villains (prompting a metric ton of hackneyed black power dialog) and fought a friend turned antagonist whose out of control “blackness” threatened to destroy the world. Honestly. Wouldn’t your response to watching  all that go something like: “Dude. What. The. Fuck?!?”

You see, what I’m getting at here is that the problem with those final seasons would be that they’d be preaching what the first five seasons had already proven. That the episodes and characters would be – for the most part – thematically and culturally redundant and even more than a little insulting in light of what the show had already accomplished. That wouldn’t change because the demeaning interracial relationship-hate crime storyline involved the truly talented target of innumerable fan crushes or because the new “hood” setting accurately paralleled “real life” – since that’s just not how cultural iconography works on our collective consciousness. (Sorry, that was mildly pretentious phraseology). But anyway, regardless of how well done individual pieces of it were  it’d still amount to a retreat, to moving back over a stereotype that’d been moved beyond … decisively. It would be hugely, (as in massively) disappointing as a result. And if any of that sounded sorta familiar, it’s because that is exactly what happened at the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.