Buffy - Season Four
Posted 30 May 05 by Scott Andrews“It was a very strange, schizophrenic season for all of us.” Joss Whedon
In the days since ‘Hush’, ‘Restless’, ‘The Body’ and ‘Once More With Feeling’ the Buffy audience has become the tiniest bit blasé about Joss Whedon’s determination to take risks, and the smallest bit complacent about his ability to pull them off. In the face of such event episodes it’s easy to forget that the first and largest risk he took with the show was to disrupt a status quo that had delivered three superb seasons, and seemed capable of delivering many more, in favour of what was, in effect, a partial reboot.
Refusing to go the Beverly Hills 90210 route of prolonging High School until the main actors are old enough to be at risk of Alzheimer’s, Joss blew up the school, wrote out two main characters, Cordelia and Angel, moved the action to University and produced a fourth season that, in its determination not to be complacent, in its drive to push the characters and the narrative to new places, was simultaneously the strongest and weakest season the series had seen.
In some respects the show’s premise doesn’t change as much as might at first be thought. Buffy is attending an educational establishment underneath which lurks something nasty that has to be dealt with, she has a boyfriend who is not all he appears to be, and she encounters an academic figure who is set up to be a pest but who comes to a sticky end. So far so Season One. However, the real change in this season is not in the superficial move from School to University, it is in the characters and the journeys they take.
“Episode by episode the strength was pretty much unmatched, but as an arc I can understand why people were sort of ‘well, it didn’t really get me there’.” Joss Whedon
The arc of the season is problematic, there’s no doubt about it. The over riding theme of the year, which is in someway made manifest in every character, is alienation. Buffy is alienated by her new surroundings and by the ease with which her best friend adapts to them; Willow is separated from Oz; Giles is completely rudderless now that he’s left the council and is no longer Buffy’s Watcher; Xander feels left out because he didn’t get into college and he’s yet to find direction or purpose; a re-awakened Faith is helpless in a world that has moved on and left her behind, and she eventually realises she hates what she’s become; Spike’s chip cuts him off from all the things that make death worth living; Jonathan remains estranged from everyone and again tries a big fix to make friends for himself; Anya is unsure how to respond to a sudden rush of emotion and the loss of the certainties that being a demon brought her; Riley falls from innocence and discovers that everything he ever believed and worked for was a tawdry lie. Every single character in this year of change is searching for lost certainties and the comforts that living in a world of clear moral choices used to provide.
Individual episodes bring out the theme in simple, yet brilliantly effective ways. ‘A New Man’ embodies Giles’ feelings of loneliness; ‘Superstar’ shows us Jonathan trying to construct a world in his image; ‘Hush’, the first great Buffy masterpiece, gives us a world in which all communication has broken down and for a moment the alienation is breached by everyone’s shared helplessness; ‘The I In Team’ shows Buffy trying to find a new family, a new team to belong to, but finding that she’s too much of an individual to ever fit into this world that at first seemed so attractive; finally ‘The Yoko Factor’ gives us the Scooby Gang ripped apart by Spike, although he has only exacerbated divisions that already existed and in doing so unwittingly brought them into the open and allowed the healing of the rift to begin.
“Living in a grey area is very uncomfortable.” Marti Noxon
As the characters became alienated from one another, so the audience began to feel alienated from the show. We didn’t want to see Buffy and Willow fighting, we didn’t want to see Giles helpless and lost, we wanted to see them being a team, getting along, fighting the bad guys, saving the world.
The audience began to feel as daunted by the new shades of grey in the Buffyverse as the characters themselves did. Never has an audience so completely shared the journey of the characters they love. And that was Season Four’s greatest achievement, and also its greatest weakness – it took its characters along a difficult and tortuous emotional path of alienation and uncertainty, and it took the audience along with it so effectively that the ride became uncomfortable for a while.
“It was sort of a chaotic season. It did have a sort of weird incoherence.” Joss Whedon
The most obvious weakness of the season is The Initiative. Science and military hardware sit uneasily in the Buffy world of Magic and spells, and lets face it Adam is dull as ditchwater after the charisma and flair of the Master, Angelus and the Mayor. Also, Riley’s square jawed heroics make an uneasy substitute for Angel’s moody brooding. But more so than in its three predecessors, the season’s Big Bad is merely an engine used to drive the narrative along and keep things ticking over. The real focus of the season’s story is the characters, hence the removal of Adam in ‘Primeval’ to make way for the conclusion of the season’s really important business, ‘Restless’ – an examination of the Scooby Gang and how they have changed during the year.
The character arc of the season examines a tight knit group who had existed in a sealed world of ordered rules and set routine but who then find themselves thrust into a world of change, freedom and liberation. They respond by embarking upon journeys of self-discovery and self-definition only to find that they have drifted away from each other in ways they would never have believed possible only a few months earlier. The characters are, simply put, growing up, and the show is growing up with them. And as Buffy and her friends experience growing pains, so does the show.
This is best embodied by Buffy’s most interesting character, Spike. The decision was made after his bravura performance is Season Three’s ‘Lover’s Walk’ that James Marsters’ bleached vamp would become a regular. But how on earth to fit him into the Scooby Gang? After all, he’s a dyed in the wool sociopath, a killer and a vampire. As Marsters has pointed out, you can feel the writers trying different things with Spike as the season progresses, trying to find ways for him to interact with the heroes, their attempts to redefine his character explicitly played out in Spike’s attempts to find a role for himself. At first he was going to be the Cordelia substitute, but it was found that Anya was perfect for that. So then he became the maggot in the apple, eating up the heroes from the inside out. Only when they hit on the idea of his infatuation with Buffy, which first surfaces playfully, in ‘Something Blue’, and then in earnest, in ‘Who Are You?’, did they solve the puzzle.
The journey of redefinition that the writers took Spike on is mirrored to a greater or lesser degree in every character on the show, but most especially by Willow. Having been the character who felt most out of place at school, Willow is the one big exception in this year of alienation, the one who finally feels that she has found a place to blossom. While all those around her flail about she adapts with ease and grace, and sets about exploring her powers and sexuality with excitement rather than fear. Alongside Spike’s, hers is the most striking redefinition of the year, and the one handled with most surety and finesse.
“The difference between Buffy and [the other slayers] is her friends.” Joss Whedon
The season ends in the only way it could, with crisis, realisation and reunion. Having redefined themselves and adjusted to new realities, the Scoobies take a long hard look at themselves and realise that although they are very different people to the kids who defeated the Mayor, they still need each other, they are still, at the most fundamental level, a team. The final spell they use to defeat Adam is the very embodiment of their unity, clearly expressing the fact that their new diversity, their new found confidence in their adult selves, is the very thing that gives them renewed strength.
Unity through diversity; it’s an old principle but Season Four of Buffy sees it beautifully explored, the whole year amounting to a sustained examination of the things that tie people to one another in spite of their differing needs and objectives, and the emotional and spiritual journeys that they may take.
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