Did Dawn ruin Buffy for you?

I must admit when she joined, I started going off the series quite a lot.

Dawn wasn't quite what made me throw in the towel with it (that was more when the Buffy-Spike shippers got their way), there was a lot of the new lineup (Riley, Tara) I didn't warm to much after Angel and Cordelia left, but by god she didn't help.

She was probably *beyond* the Adric or Wesley of that franchise.

I always thought someone as geek-savvy as Whedon would be smarter than to repeat those show's mistakes. But I think that was the problem in a way. He knew how such an extra junior wunderkid character might come off as just cliched tropes, lacking in any real emotional core, and so often what made Dawn so unbearable is the makers took her emotional angst moments so seriously. And that's why she became so unbearably shrill and clingy, and made a number of those Series 5 & 6 episodes a real headache.

It actually wasn't until many years later, after giving up after Season 6 that some Buffy fans in Uni finally started showing me Season 7, and I have to say it was a massive improvement, and even Dawn herself had started to blossom nicely into a welcome part of the ensemble.

But boy did she have a rotten start.

I never gave up on the Buffster. Watched it to the end, and I have all of it on DVD. Still for me the last 3 seasons are the weakest.

Dawn I wouldn't say ruins it on her own. She was annoying, "get out, Get Out GET OUT!!!!!!!" Still her season 5 story was interesting. I thought Glory was one of the best villains, up there with the Master and the Mayor. I also loved the mystery about the Key. It was so mental the first time you saw it, though when you look back there are some creepy foreshadowings like the dream Tara saying "be back before Dawn" or dream Faith saying "little sis coming." I liked that it was planned so far ahead.

I also liked Dawn's friendship with Spike, and her grief over Joyce was very effective.

Forever I think its called is very underrated IMO. Zombie Joyce is one of the scariest things in the show. Its a classic example of less is more being far more horrifying. I like it when Doc just says that it will be Joyce, more or less and we are left to wonder just how much less.

Don't even get me started on that bit where Joyce's head goes by the window. Even writing about that now really does send shivers down my spine. Again I love the way we don't see her. Who knows what state poor Joyce was in.

Season 6 is when Dawn becomes intolerable, but to be fair by that point the whole show had gone to shit overall. Season 6 is almost New Who level of crap.

Buffy and Spike was a far worse cause of the shows decline, if not the main one. (Once again it was the shipper fans. Don't ever let them get their hands on a show, or decide it. They are just horny bastards who don't care about whether a romance is right for a characters development.)

S4 Spike was a brilliant character. He was like Crowley from Supernatural, a Demon/Vampire that becomes good not for altruistic reasons, but just to save his own neck. He could be of use to the team because of his status as a Vampire, but he was also unpredictable and could switch sides when it suited him.

(If you haven't seen Supernatural watch it. It goes on a bit too long, but its great and Crowley IMO is what Spike should have been.)

The Buffy/Spike romance just felt lazy. It was just "lets go down the usual sexy Vampire route" and it caused the show to wallow in soap opera dirge too.

Its a shame as the first 4 Buffy seasons in some ways represent the perfect genre series. Enough monsters and fantasy, but the characters are fleshed out enough so they feel like real people.

Season 6 however just goes too much into the soap opera territory. Its like an early True Blood or Vampire Diaries where its just "look we have sexy Vampires" rather than trying to do anything new with the Vampires.

S7 was an improvement, and yes Dawn is much better there, but even then she is also just shunted off to the side. S5 is the only good Dawn series, and its also the shows last big hurrah IMO.

I always felt Season 2 was where the show definitely peaked and had its strongest run. Season 3 felt like it had a very rocky start. I did struggle a bit to get back into it for a few episodes.

Season 4 also got a little bit away from me, but I agree that it was fun to have Spike on the team (I do love how once he realizes the chip doesn't stop him hurting Demons and his own kind, he realizes his new purpose and urgest the other Scoobies they have to get out there and save the day for the sake of the innocent, and then finally just goes.... "Come on! Let's kill something!!")

Also the Faith-bodyswap two-parter was brilliant.

Season 5, I think you're very right that it was the drop-off point, but Joyce's storyline made it worth it. Forever's ending was very powerful moment, yes. It really kills you that it's Buffy in the end who runs to the door wanting her back, and Dawn who does the sensible thing.

Looking back I don't think Season 6 had much to offer beyond the two-part opener, Bargaining. Which almost made me think it might've been better if (rather than moving networks to UPN) they'd followed Season 5 with a movie series continuation starting with that feature.

Talking about this reminds me what I think makes Dawn so annoying this season. Forever was a good reconciliation of the two sisters, and yet I got sick of how Season 6 kept the depressing rifts going like the reconciliation hadn't happened. Which is what I think really made Dawn a pain in the arse.

As for the Buffy-Spike thing, I remember now my first reaction to it and what my issues were.

Firstly it was such a sucker punch at the wrongest time. I was already growing sick of downbeat endings where everyone ends up just depressed and falling out again. So putting that in there too was just the last straw really.

What particularly annoyed me about it was that it's like Buffy had learned nothing from Angel or even from Riley. So it felt immediately false to the character to me, and made those prior experiences seem confounded again, but also like they were suddenly pointless. It was like if she didn't respect herself anymore, how could I?

But it certainly got uglier when it became clear that Buffy literally was just using Spike as a sex object. I tuned out before the nadir moment happened of course, but I still don't know what they were thinking.

Overall, I'm glad we got Season 7 despite all that, but yeah, the Buffy-Spike moment was almost what Series 8 of New Who was to me, where I just felt the show had gone into scuzzier territory where my trust had been broken and nothing about it quite felt true or honest anymore, and my investment died as a result. My heart in it just died.

Also, I've heard a *lot* of people recommend Supernatural to me. I'll try and check it out.

Tanmann wrote:Also, I've heard a *lot* of people recommend Supernatural to me. I'll try and check it out.

Supernatural is a brilliant series. It goes on way too long, but the cast and writing for the first five seasons is excellent. Also you'll get to see my number 1 choice for the Doctor as Death. I should warn you though BeKind hates him. The guy who plays Crowley, (what Spike should have been) would have been excellent for a proper version of the Master. He'd be like Delgado, but more sarcastic and with more of a cutting edge.

As for Buffy I think it would have been better if Spike had left after season 4 of Buffy, and he and Faith had their own spin off together. They were my two favourite characters and they had good chemistry.

I would have liked to have seen a show where they were both on the run, Spike from the government after the Initiative shut down, they'd want to destroy any proof of it, and make sure the tech didn't fall into the wrong hands, and Faith from the police.

IMO they would have gone well together. I didn't object to the idea of Spike falling in love, just making him fall in love with Buffy was a bad idea. There was no prior hint of romance.

(Its a crock of shit that Spike was in love with her since season 2. FFS he leaves her to die at Angelus' hands and is quite chipper about it!)  

Also as you say in order to have Buffy feel the same way about a character who was so ghastly and horrible, they had to have her become self destructive. In that respect it was like the Doctor/Master relationship. They don't seem to get it that if you are going to pair your hero with the villain, make the villain at least somewhat reedemable or else the hero will be compromised. That's why its Batman and Catwoman and not Batman and the Joker.

The rape scene though was the absolute nadir. James Marsters is on record as saying he would never do that scene again and I don't blame him.

It was even more ridiculous that Buffy was willing to leave Dawn in Spike's care after his attempted rape. Also they completely buggered up the Vampire/Soul thing with Spike too.

I heavily disagree with both Dawn ruining the show, or that Season 6 was too soapy for the show.
I will admit, first time watching, I hated Dawn and her overly childish attitude, especially since that she was supposed to be 14 (although upon reading that she was originally written to be 8, until SMG suggested that Michelle would have been a good fit, it does alleviate some of my grievances), but I understood why she acted the way she did, especially when she found out that she wasn't real. And as the YouTuber Passion of the Nerd (please check out his Buffy analysis, as they are so articulate, and understand the meaning of themes in both Buffy and Angel) points out, it's possible that the Monks thought that is what teenagers act like, and created her out of that basis that teenagers are childish and whiny (actually thinking about it, Dawn is technically a few months old so she actually acts really mature for her age). Also, anyone who has wonderful chemistry with Tara is a good character in my book.

On Season 6. I know that it has problems and it can be overly depressing (in fact Hell's Bells is my least favourite episode just because it feels like it was being cruel for the sake of being cruel). And it also depends on whether you like the notion of Depression/Life being the Big Bad of the Season instead of an actual person. But I really admire the strengths that it tries to go for. I can't really put it into reasons why I absolutely respect, and even love it, without using Stubagful's video or using the analysis thesis book (BTVS: Myth Metaphor and Morality), so here you go.

Good points there, EnglishGiraffe.

I have to say I didn't know they were originally thinking of Dawn being more in the realms of being an 8 year old, and it was at the casting stage where this changed. It explains a few things, since I could imagine Whedon going that route of the Poltergeist-esque child innocent in the horror film, rather than the teenage brat that Geekdon always knows is a bad move. The fact she was made a teen probably had a knock-on effect on how she was written, and maybe is where some of her angsty excesses came from.

I think Dawn definitely had her poignant moments of heart. She also had her shriller excesses, and perhaps if some of those were cut back on more, we'd have seen more of her best and come to accept her sooner.

I wrote my initial post based on impressions of the time. But maybe I have begun to see myself soften to her in retrospect. As you say it's an age thing. At the age I watched, I was in my late teens, early twenties, so perhaps was more inclined to see Dawn as a jarring irritation and intrusion of the gang. As I've gotten older I suppose it's given me some paternal instincts and insight into how hard it can be as a teen to figure it out, which I suppose has made me begin to see her in a more sympathetic, understanding light.

She became a subject for giant girl fetishes in the Buffy comics shortly after the series ended..my brother is quite into that sort of thing...found that when browsing his computer years ago...

Poor Dawn!

I can't quite dislike her the way I did Connor in s4 of Angel, and I'd disagree with burronjor that s6 of Buffy was Nu Who-esque... surely s4 of Angel was much worse. Season 6 is very melodramatic and crushingly unsubtle, but there's some grim metaphors on modern life that hit home - following on from s5's Joyce's death and near-zombification. I'd also say Dawn always had more clout than many of the Potentials in s7, notably Rona and Kennedy.

There was some rubbish in s6, particularly the Dark Willow conclusion - I actually think Warren could have been a more effective villain, but once Dawn became the extra wheel I guess she had to be made angsty to give her personality. In s7 though she became a much more reflective character, almost like a female Xander, and like Vincent Kartheiser in the last season of Angel (when Connor also matured) Michelle Trachtenberg proved it wasn't the performing skills that were the issue.

Mott1 wrote:Poor Dawn!

I can't quite dislike her the way I did Connor in s4 of Angel, and I'd disagree with burronjor that s6 of Buffy was Nu Who-esque... surely s4 of Angel was much worse. Season 6 is very melodramatic and crushingly unsubtle, but there's some grim metaphors on modern life that hit home - following on from  s5's Joyce's death and near-zombification. I'd also say Dawn always had more clout than many of the Potentials in s7, notably Rona and Kennedy.

There was some rubbish in s6, particularly the Dark Willow conclusion - I actually think Warren could have been a more effective villain, but once Dawn became the extra wheel I guess she had to be made angsty to give her personality. In s7 though she became a much more reflective character, almost like a female Xander, and like Vincent Kartheiser in the last season of Angel (when Connor also matured) Michelle Trachtenberg proved it wasn't the performing skills that were the issue.

Ok I must be the only one who found Kennedy alright. She obviously pales in comparison to Oz and Tara, but I still found her likeable enough and thought that she got the job done. Rona can fuck off though.

Also, I actually love S4 of Angel. What it did to characters like Gunn, Cordelia and Connor was pretty awful, but I just love the post-apocalyptic nature and the themes such as Free Will are done really well.

Dawn French ruins everything.

You found Kennedy likeable!? Didn't she bully one of the other potentials who ended up committing suicide (albeit with The First taking advantage)? I also think that Tara had the advantage of her character developing slowly + naturally along with Willow's, and Willow always seemed a bit coerced by Kennedy whilst she was still in a damaged state.

Um, no. I like Dawn. Season 5 is brilliant.
I have really gone off season 6, but that's nothing to do with her. It's just a depressing season that is actually really boring a lot of the time, mainly because the main arc is not very interesting and there's no real threat up until the last few episodes. It starts well and closes well, but most of it is tedious. Fortunately I think season 7 is a big improvement and, while perhaps not up to season 2 to 5, is still generally very good.

As for Kennedy, I don't think the issue with her is the character or the actress, it's the lack of time there was in season 7 to get to know her, and especially to get to know her and Willow as a couple. The build-up is okay, but once they get together... that's it. They get a couple of snogging scenes and that's pretty much it. The arc is so big, and there's so many characters, that many kind of get lost. I think that's why, although I like season 7 and I don't skip it, season 5 works better as an ending.  The season 7 arc hits the likes of Spike and new characters like Andrew, Wood and the Potentials more than the core group, often leaving many of them to the side. With season 5, there's an epic threat, but it's also an intimate one that affects the centre of Buffy's family and the group as a whole, ultimately all leading to Buffy's sacrifice. It makes perfect sense that that was Whedon's planned ending.

And Angel season 4 is my fave season of that show, and the only one I'd put up there with the best of Buffy. I'm not big on Angel, and I find seasons 2 and 3 unwatchable because, again, boring. I never liked Wolfram and Hart or Darla, and those entire storylines were insomnia cures for me. But 4 is like a supernatural 24, completely insane and a whole heap of fun.

Personally speaking by season 5 I was over BTVS.
I think the show peaked in Season 3 and should have ended when they graduated.
As the show went on it lost more and more of its charm.