Season Six in Review: A Letter to Mutant Enemy
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Season Six in Review: A Letter to Mutant Enemy |
| Creator: | Barb Cummings |
| Date(s): | 2001 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Buffy the Vampire Slayer |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Wayback link |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Season Six in Review: A Letter to Mutant Enemy is a 2001 Buffy the Vampire Slayer essay by Barb Cummings.
Some Topics Discussed
- much character analysis of the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- falling out of love with a character, "This season Mutant Enemy made me hate a character I'd previously liked a lot."
- discussion of het slash, though this term is not used
- disillusionment with Joss Whedon
Excerpts
According to Jane Espenson's recent interview, Buffy does live with her own recriminations—but if those recriminations never make it to the screen in any recognizable form, how the heck are we supposed to know they're there? If Buffy, who has a soul and ought to know better, is not to be held accountable for her actions, then how can we hold Spike accountable for his? The wrong actions of one character don't cancel out or negate the wrong actions of another. Two wrongs remain two wrongs. Both characters did evil things; both characters are responsible for the evil they did.
The writers should not have to explain the characters' motives; the characters' motives should speak for themselves. I started out this season with the assumption that, like Spike, I knew what kind of girl Buffy was; that for all her flaws, and they are many, she was essentially a caring person. By the middle of the season I was reluctantly convinced that I was completely wrong, and that the only thing Buffy felt for Spike was lust, loathing, and some kind of possessiveness which demanded he remain her devoted worshiper but denied him even the most basic respect in return. I'm willing to take the word of the writers that this was not what they intended, but the sad fact is, this is how it came off to a large portion of the audience—even those who are not Spike fans in particular. And that is not good.
We were endlessly told that Spike was bad for Buffy, that their being together was immoral and a perversion of nature. And no matter how many times we heard this, what we saw on the screen contradicted it. For every oooh-look-he's-eeevil moment we got, there were always extenuating circumstances or counterbalancing oooh-isn't-he-sweet moments—if the original moments were really evidence of eeeevil to begin with. Example: In "Doublemeat Palace," Spike tries to convince Buffy to leave her job. Evil, right? Well, except that Spike rightly points out that the job is killing her by inches and she could do way better. And a couple of episodes later Buffy walks out mid-shift in a hot second when Riley wants her to.
His lack of moral compass, his raging inferiority complex, and the desperate desire to get Buffy to, just once, choose him over her friends, led Spike to make the huge tactical error of trying to convince Buffy she was a creature of darkness like him. Not bright, Spikey. Despite this, ultimately it was not Spike who was bad for Buffy. It was Buffy who was bad for Buffy, and Buffy who was bad for Spike. Yeah, Spike's evil (or was), and that's not something Buffy should have ignored or glossed over—but Buffy's self-loathing and fear of what people would think of her for having sex with Spike hurt her, and hurt the relationship, and most of all hurt Spike, far, far more than Spike's evil nature. Would it have killed Mutant Enemy to admit some of this in mid-season interviews, instead of trying to convince us Spike hadn't changed at all and any badness was All His Fault?
Joss is always talking about giving people what they need, not what they want. But that (and I mean this in the nicest way) is bull. A writer who gives the audience only what she thinks the audience wants is a hack. A writer who gives the audience only what she thinks the audience needs is a preacher. A writer who writes what she needs and hopes it strikes a chord in the audience is an artist. To succeed in a commercial medium, you've got to be a little bit of all three. If you don't give us a little of what we want, the show tanks and you lose your jobs. If you don't give yourselves a little of what you need, you'll hate yourselves in the morning. And if we don't get a little of what we need out of what you write, we won't be obsessing over the show the way we do. Balance, guys. It's all in the balance.