Pop Culture AHC: Buffy the Vampire Slayer PoDs

Garrison

Well have to disagree with you there. S6 wasn't great but I found S5 so badly flawed. So many irrational situations. For instance how Glorie is a god but you can permanently get rid of her by killing her alto-ego! Or if she opens the vortex to return home why not do that rather than keep it open, which would destroy all universes?

Most of all it needs the blood of either Dawn or Buffy to close the vortex. However I know of no reason why it needed all the blood of one of them? Buffy could have just cut herself, bled until the vortex closed then gone home.

Steve

The whole season was a build up to a sacrifice. Gloria is a Goddess in exile. That limits her power. When you bring God into a story logic always goes down the drain. Watch what happened with Supernatural when Castiel become God. Silly season.
Up until season six was announced it looked like it was to be the end of Buffy, with someone else becoming the new slayer in yet another spin off...
They could have "the new slayer" like Dr Who has "the new Doctor" every 3/4 years. But they decided to play it safe and keep SMG as an anchor for the show.
 
AdA said:
they decided to play it safe and keep SMG as an anchor for the show.
IMO they made the right call. Recall, it's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," not "The Slayer".

In the second place, to buy the show, you have to buy the central character, & that needs a strong, talented actress. Sara gave it that solid center. Who do you get in her place? Especially that late in the run?

Do this in S1, you can, just maybe, get away with it...but IMO the show would tank. Unless you get a major talent--& what real talent would join a cult show on a minor network? Who could you get, really? I can't name anybody.
 
IMO they made the right call. Recall, it's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," not "The Slayer".

In the second place, to buy the show, you have to buy the central character, & that needs a strong, talented actress. Sara gave it that solid center. Who do you get in her place? Especially that late in the run?

Do this in S1, you can, just maybe, get away with it...but IMO the show would tank. Unless you get a major talent--& what real talent would join a cult show on a minor network? Who could you get, really? I can't name anybody.

Sara did a great job on five seasons. But Angel kept the BTVS audience without her. There could have been a spin off centered on Faith, or a totally new series with a diferent slayer. I think the Dr Who model of starting fresh every four ou five seasons works.
The one thing TV is never short of is pretty young actresses for action roles. If I had to cast a BTVS movie today I'd go for Saoirse Ronan, but they surely would find a suitable alternative back then. And a better actress than SMG might even do for the show what David Tennant did for the Doctor.
 
AdA said:
But Angel kept the BTVS audience without her.
He kept the fanbase. He didn't create it. Sara carried the show. All respect to the others, as well cast as they were, none of them had Emmy credit when the show started. That she did, IMO, says she had something they didn't.

That said, you could be right, the show might survive. It's a big if, iMO, seeing how shows undergoing such radical transformations tend to tank, because it means there's trouble elsewhere. ("Ohara", anyone?) Not to mention, the ratings were never stellar.
AdA said:
a better actress than SMG
I invite you to name one: someone young enough to play teenage & early enough in her career to take a role on a bottom-rated show on a fringe network, yet talented enough to carry the show. I can't do it.

I keep thinking of Tiffani Thiessen with a blonde dye job, tho... (Maybe that's "White Collar".:p)
AdA said:
There could have been a spin off centered on Faith
I often wish there had been, myself.:cool::cool: (Or the Watchers Council spinoff.) Spinoffs don't save the originating show.
 

Heavy

Banned
As I recall, there was some talk of a Spike and Faith spin-off and, of course, a Giles spin-off called Ripper which would've been produced by the BBC. Many of the ideas from both found their way into the Angel & Faith comics.
 
I invite you to name one: someone young enough to play teenage & early enough in her career to take a role on a bottom-rated show on a fringe network, yet talented enough to carry the show. I can't do it.

I keep thinking of Tiffani Thiessen with a blonde dye job, tho... (Maybe .


Julia Stiles (for an alternative season six, with a new slayer, minimal carryover from the BTVS originals). IMO she could be the David Tennant of Slayers

Julia Stiles 17.jpg
 
Alternate season six pilot

Pilot: Gilles attends a meeting of the Watcher's Council were he is told that a new slayer as been "called" to replace Buffy. He his introduced to the new watcher and gives him advice.
The rest of episode is narrated from the POV of the new watcher, who must travel a small town in the US, locate and meet the new slayer. The viewers spend most of the episode looking for the new slayer. She is first revealed in a dream sequence, in wich she is attacked by a vampire and slays it. The following day she is attacked in real life and uses the "intel" from the dream to defend herself, achiving her first slay. this of course, is the moment the new watcher finds her and introduces himself.
The rest of the show picks up from here.
The watcher/slayer duo will, in this continuity, work a lot like the Doctor/Companion duo in the Dr. Who seasons...
 
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