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04/30/2003 Archived Entry: "Ms. Buffy Summers and Her Appalling Ignorance of the Law (Among Other Things)"

MS. BUFFY SUMMERS AND HER APPALLING IGNORANCE OF THE LAW (AMONG OTHER THINGS): Our friend Jeremy Lott praises this blog for the creativity of our entry titles and directs his readers to us (if you're someone who works for The American Prospect, you have my condolences). For this, I give him many thanks. With that done, let me now move on to another, even more important topic which Mr. Lott mentions in that exact same blog entry: namely, the televisual creations of Joss Whedon.

Like Mr. Lott, I too caught last night's episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I count myself not as a fan, but more as a morbid cultural critic analyzing popular phenomenom. As such, I have absolutely no objections to applying rigorous, closed-minded logic while watching the show and drily noting some of the more improbable plot devices Mr. Whedon and his writers feel they must subject their viewers to. For example, as Mr. Lott notes, in last night's episode, our eponymous heroine Ms. Buffy Summers was summarily thrown out of house and home through the concerted efforts of a rather large group of various friends, well-wishers, confidantes, and hangers-on. This was, no doubt, a POIGNANT MOMENT for Ms. Summers who, after seven long years of being the moral and physical centre of her group, is now made to realize that perhaps the group has finally outgrown her. This is all very well and good, but as I remarked to my sister just as Sarah Michelle Geller was getting all teary-eyed on us: "Why the heck is she being forced to walk out of her house? After all, it's HER OWN HOUSE!" She inherited it from her dead mother. It's her property. I kept on waiting for Buffy to say something along the lines of this:

DAWN: "This is my house too."

BUFFY: "Yeah, maybe this is your house too, but only on some deep-down metaphorical, emotionally wishy-washy level. In the legal sense (which is only the sense that matters, Dawn, or don't they teach you law in high school anymore?), this is MY house. Whose name do you think is on the ownership papers anyway? So guys, if you don't want me as your leader anymore, that's fine. But don't you think that throwing me off my own property and onto the streets is going a bit too far here? If you guys want Faith as your new leader, then go right ahead. I'm sure that the motel room she's renting will comfortably fit all fifty of you. So (and I'm only going ask this once before I get all violent on you), will you ungrateful bunch of squatters get out of MY house and off MY property NOW!"

Alas, Buffy allowed the squatters to triumph over all sense of her own property rights (I think she would be more aware of them, if she hadn't dropped out of college).

Here's another nitpick for Mr. Lott to ponder over. I have no idea if he watches Angel or not, which immediately follows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I do. Mr. Whedon and his team have thought of various ways to creatively link the two shows together in order to create some neat moments. One character takes off from Sunnydale in the first hour and we see him or her arriving in Los Angeles in second hour. On one show, an inexplicable phone message is heard; on the other show, a person is seen making that very same phone call. Such a device however creates some improbabilities. As we can see, the episodes of the two shows are supposed to take place in more-or-less simultaneous time-frames. Now, if Mr. Lott had stuck around to watch the second hour, he would have realized that while Buffy and her group of friends had been going through their little emotional crisis, back in Los Angeles, the villain on Angel (the goddess Jasmine) had phoned up the Governor and using her fiendish hypnotic powers, had taken over the entire state of California. Back in Sunnydale, there was nary a peep about this mass transfer of the state government from the secular, incompetant hands of Mr. Gray Davis to the very competant and very evil hands of an other-worldly divine being. Nor do I recall much gnashing of teeth by Buffy and friends, when only a few weeks before, the largest city of their fair state had been plunged into perpetual darkness and demonic creatures had roamed the streets, massacring the population. No wonder Buffy was just deposed as leader of the gang: she's so self-absorbed in her own little emotional world, she doesn't even watch the news.

Now, if you've read up to this, you'll no doubt object that I'm being humourless and literal-minded. After all, these are shows about vampires, for god's sakes! But I am merely asserting my constitutional right to be as humourless and literal-minded as I please. I'm the type of person who worries over the realism of level design in computer games. I'm the type of person who asks questions such as: "if the genius-villain knew I was about to go in and steal this valuable object, why did he disperse his guards instead of grouping them all together in the immediate vicinity of that valuable object?" or "why does this headquarters building I've just stormed into have air shafts that go nowhere, only eight bunkbeds when I count over twenty guards, and no washrooms?" I rather believe such an approach to life has its uses, though personally, I don't think I'll watch too much television anymore for fear of being driven insane.

Replies: 1 Comment

If she was born and raised in San Jose, and she has lots of friends in San Jose, how come she doesn't know how to get there?

I am a real party pooper m'self.

Posted by Kathy @ 04/30/2003 04:26 PM EST