I don't agree with you; I think that Season 7 was a mess, full of directionless episodes, with the overall theme not being Acceptance but "OMG they're cancelling the show and SMG is gonna leave whatever we do! Can we come up with a spin-off idea that will save our jobs?" And I believe that Caleb was no pre-planned big bad, but an out-of-place insertion existing only to give Nathan Fillion a job following the cancellation of "Firefly".
You have far more trust in Joss and in the ME team than do I. I don't think that they knew what they were doing, and if they achieved something that fit into the "5 Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News" framework (Dr Kubler-Ross, who created the concept, never mentioned Grief in her original work) then it was only by pure accident in my opinion.
Also, I see the later parts of Season 7 as anti-feminist in the extreme. To me it seems to say that women can only achieve any worth by emulating men, and that it is the single quality - physical strength - in which men are normally superior to women that is the quality by which they will be judged. And at the end a man will have to step in and save the girls. An idea that I loathe and which to me negates the entire concept of Buffy.
Your argument is persuasive, however. Perhaps not enough to convince me, but it would me nice to think that ME did know what they were doing.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-02-09 04:09 pm (UTC)You have far more trust in Joss and in the ME team than do I. I don't think that they knew what they were doing, and if they achieved something that fit into the "5 Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News" framework (Dr Kubler-Ross, who created the concept, never mentioned Grief in her original work) then it was only by pure accident in my opinion.
Also, I see the later parts of Season 7 as anti-feminist in the extreme. To me it seems to say that women can only achieve any worth by emulating men, and that it is the single quality - physical strength - in which men are normally superior to women that is the quality by which they will be judged. And at the end a man will have to step in and save the girls. An idea that I loathe and which to me negates the entire concept of Buffy.
Your argument is persuasive, however. Perhaps not enough to convince me, but it would me nice to think that ME did know what they were doing.
Excellent post.