Buffybinge Interlude II: On retconning, resentment, and why my least favorite Buffy episode should maybe be my favorite…

(For the record, I’m breaking my pattern of going chronologically through the show. So if you’re watching along for the first time, this won’t make much sense and will spoil lots of moments to come. Consider yourself warned.)

For almost any show that makes it past the first season, regardless of the size of its fan base, it ultimately has to face the question: when did it “jump the shark”? I’m not sure that moment is locatable in Buffy, and I’d like to think it doesn’t happen at all (although, unlike Josh, I just can’t get on board with season 7). I do know, though, that a lot of people think that it happens in the beginning of season 5 when Dawn is brought on board, thus essentially invalidating 88 episodes of previous narrative.

(More on "Amends" and the psyche of serials after the break)

For instance, Buffy’s conviction that she’s the reason for her parents’ divorce motivates a lot of her behavior in the first two seasons, from her fears in “Nightmares” to her hostility to John Ritter’s robo-dad in “Ted.” If she’s suddenly had a little sister “all along,” then these moments don’t stand anymore—they couldn’t have gone down in the way we saw.

Dawn has never bothered me, though—I really like how her arrival gives Tara’s character previously unseen depth, and there’s an admirable chutzpah in Joss Whedon’s willingness to rewrite the narrative so brazenly. So it’s strange that I’m so bothered by “Amends,” which participates in the same retconning dynamic. As those of you know who have seen the entire series, the seemingly one-off bad guy the First Evil returns as the major threat in season 7. What gets me about “Amends” is that, besides setting the stage for what will be the show’s most disappointing season by far and giving us way too much of David Boreanaz’s execrable Irish accent, the episode breaks the narrative’s established rules for the nature of the First Evil as a villain. One of the big plot points in season 7 is that the First Evil can’t assume corporeal form, but there’s Jenny Calendar, back from the dead and getting seriously handsy with Angel.

So I was watching this with Our Very Own Ben Owen last weekend and he pointed out something I hadn’t considered before:[1] why is it that I get upset with this episode instead of frustrated with the later ones for not following the rules set out here? If there’s an oversight, it’s happening when the First Evil gets reintroduced, not here, but this is the episode that gets the brunt of my negative reaction. I find myself laying the blame for later problems here, and the episode becomes a kind of originary trauma that preordains and explains the crappiness of season seven.

I doubt my reaction is typical (since it does seem so backwards once I think about it), but it’s revealing to me in terms of the way that serials work, at least when I've watched them while they were first released. Perhaps it’s because the story got so enmeshed with the rhythms of my daily life, but I understand the disconnect between earlier and later episodes through the retrospective logic of autobiography (and psychoanalysis) instead of the presumably preplanned logic of fiction (and gamesmanship). In other words, the explanation for problems lies in the story’s past, not its present, in the same way that neurotic symptoms can (we always wish) be explained by some original trauma. The story, it seems, has gained a life and an unconscious of its own.

This is the serial’s dirty secret, I think: long-form narratives can’t really be planned in advance, as much as we’d like to think they are. As crazy as the finale of Battlestar Galactica makes me, I’ve always really appreciated the way that Ron Moore refuses the pose that so many writers insist upon (from Dickens to Lindelof and Cuse), that they’d had everything planned from the first episode on. Serials evolve like life does—it was supposed to be Oz who gets killed in season six, for instance, but Seth Green wanted to do movies. And because of that, Alyson Hanigan is a lesbian icon and Amber Benson thinks she will have a singing career one day. The final chapter of the first installment of Our Mutual Friend was too long, so Dickens moved it to the next month and introduced Silas Wegg, who ultimately reveals the novel’s central mystery. Libby was (maybe) the piece that held the puzzle together on LOST before Cynthia Watros and Michelle Rodriguez got caught drunk driving. As in life, circumstances change the course of the story.

So, if I think about it, what I find so disconcerting about “Amends” isn’t its specific problems, really, as much as it is the way that it exposes the lie of a coherent, preplanned story. As in life, I get a certain comfort from the illusion that there’s some kind of grand design behind everything, even though I know this can’t possibly be the case. More than anything, I think the episode bothers me because it makes me disappointed in the predictability of my own reactions: I should by all rights welcome this development. I celebrate contingent meaning, right? I revel in chaos! I’ve staked my whole dissertation on the idea that serials push us to reevaluate truth through their changeability and openness to revision (by their fans as well as their own futures). But when I’m faced with this example of the instability of narrative reality, I find it deflating and sad.

Fortunately, “Amends” is followed by “Gingerbread” and “The Zeppo” which both remind me that old stories can always provide new meanings, even when the reactions they evoke keep looking familiar.

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[1] Besides, that is, the profound nerdiness of my obsessive attachment to continuity. The saddest realization I’ve had in the process of the Great Buffy Rewatch is how much I’m like Comic Book Guy, zoning in on the ways that the story contradicts itself, and keeping my eye out for places where—what?—I’ve outsmarted the show?

Comments

[Sam]

I think about long-form tv narrative structure a lot as well. I agree that preplanning is difficult to impossible, for the reasons you've stated. Another issue I've seen with long-form shows is the need to one-up the previous season in some way. I would call this the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" syndrome - if you're familiar with that cartoon, every season involves the hero having to fight a bigger, badder foe for higher stakes, using rarer previously unknown cards. I know what you're thinking now: Sam = nerd. However, the issue is that when you finish up a season with this great storyline and a big bad that totally rocks, and your hero pulls out all the stops to defeat them, where do you go from there? I think some seasons, Buffy avoids the pitfall of just going bigger by tying the big bad in with the characters lives - spoilers for first-timers: Angel is the bad guy by the end of Season 2, for example, and Willow gets to be the bad guy at the end of Six. That was a great move. By contrast, Mayor Wilkins, Adam, and Glory, the big bads from seasons 3,4 and 5, are kind of ho-hum. The seasons are saved by the stand alone episodes and by the other storylines that travel through the seasons, like Buffy's relationships, the alternate slayers, Xander's love life, and general ensemble magic.

So, the first six seasons each have their unique storylines and bad guys and all that, and are excellent tv because of a variety of elements. Then comes Season 7, which is why I brought up the whole Yu-Gi-Oh syndrome. Here is one-upmanship on every level. More slayers, bigger badder bads, worse vampires, and ultimately, a bigger explosion and devastation than at the end of Season 3. Is it over? No. Because if you've read the comics, you know that there are plenty of other vampires in the world, and plenty of still living slayers, and Dawn is 50 feet tall? So there was no reason to take it to that level. What would they have done if the series kept going? Eventually, they'd have to blow up a whole country, or the planet, or take the planet back in time to start at the dawn of time, killing all the vampires, but starting humanity over from scratch.

I do go on.

[Josh]

The Mayor is ho hum? Hell to the no. He was my favorite big bad by a lot.

I agree with your larger point about the existence of one upmanship, but I'd argue it's mostly a good thing. This is how stories are structured, and yeah... eventually they'd have to blow up the whole world or something. But we don't have to worry about that, because the series never goes there. And maybe I'm alone here, but I don't think the comic counts. It's another medium.

What I liked about Season 7, despite its flaws, is that it goes to a bigger, higher octane place but also brings it back to its origins by bringing back Sunnydale High and introducing a villain that allows all the characters we love fro past seasons to come back for closure.

Nerd!

[Nick]

I liked Season 7 waaay more the first time 'round than when I rewatched it. It is a flawed season - but I agree with Josh - for all those reasons, Season 7 WAS great. We saw old faces (Dru! Glory!) AND it brought Sunnydale High back for the series' last hurrah! Excellent.

I think that if viewers can handle the entrance of the Dawn character, than they're golden for the rest of the ride. Sometimes the "new character" technique is a super-cliche ploy, but for some reason it kind of worked. Even though Dawn remains one of my LEAST favorite characters ever, I still don't feel the show jumped the shark by introducing her.

I love Buffy. I miss Buffy. I own every copy, including variant covers, of the Season 8 comics...but it's not the same. Season 8 is pretty unnecessary and that makes me sad. The way 7 ended (Buffy is a "normal" girl...just like so many others in the world) was the PERFECT way to end the series, am I right?

(PS - In terms of story/plot errors - Warren is alive in the comics. If Warren was, in fact, alive - The First wouldn't have been able to morph into him throughout Season 7. JOSS, MAJOR MESS UP DUDE!)

[Eric Pfeffinger]

I've always been lukewarm on "Amends" not because of consistency or anything having to do with retconning, but just because it's always stuck in my mind as a comparatively mediocre episode.

I've never tended to get hung up on continuity errors in a long-running serial (Angel was Spike's sire? Or maybe not? The monks made Dawn out of Buffy--except it kinda feels like we just had that idea three episodes ago) because if a narrative is compelling I can forgive all kinds of nitpicky sins. (I lose interest in something like "Lost" because the fact that it feels like they're working without a map seems in that case to have a lot to do with why the show isn't compelling.)

Of course, there's always a palpable or gratuitous thrill when you get the feeling that something has been planned out--cf. Faith's little sister 7-3-0 remarks and Tara's "be back before dawn."

Meanwhile, however uneven its execution, I thought the Dawn thing was conceptually brilliant: appropriating a hoary serial narrative device, fully justifying it within the supernatural rules of this particular show, and then living with its implications for the long term. I thought it was bold and clever and kind of a gutsy upending of serial fans' love for the status quo.

[Josh]

"Meanwhile, however uneven its execution, I thought the Dawn thing was conceptually brilliant: appropriating a hoary serial narrative device, fully justifying it within the supernatural rules of this particular show, and then living with its implications for the long term. I thought it was bold and clever and kind of a gutsy upending of serial fans' love for the status quo."

I couldn't agree more. It was a brilliant play on a classic trope of late season TV shows.

[Eric Pfeffinger]

Oh, and I meant to chime in with another endorsement of the Mayor as a favorite villain. I was actually pretty fond of Glory, too.

Also wanted to register that despite my assorted frustrations with season 7 on an episode-by-episode basis, I thought it was all made more than worth it by the wit, kick-ass-itude and savvy closure of the series finale.

[Daniella]

Thanks for this post I loved reading it. Cant wait for more. Bring Buffy back!