Finally! With my busted DVD player, I had to resort to borrowing a friend’s (thanks, Jason Z!) and I was finally able to finish up the penultimate season of Buffy. I wasn’t ecstatic about the way Season Six started, but I think the show managed to end the season on a stronger note, even though there were some weaker episodes in the mix.

Despite the dread I had going into “Doublemeat Palace.” I appreciate what the show was trying to do here – despite the fact that Buffy is a superhero, she still has bills, and she has to pay them anyway she can, even if that means taking a fast-food job. If they had gone the predictable “it’s made of people” story line, I would have been disappointed, but the bait and switch made it better.  After Giles left, Buffy was forced to start acting like an adult, and part of that is having a job that you know, pays.  Will Buffy have jury duty in Season Seven?

Xander and Anya’s wedding was a really tough episode to watch. Maybe I’m biased as a newlywed, but the fact that Xander would skip out on their wedding day made me really angry. First of all, HE proposed to HER; if he wasn’t ready to get married, that’s fine, but nobody was forcing him to do it. And it’s not like he didn’t know how his parents turned out, so why was he all of a sudden so squeamish about the idea of getting hitched? I didn’t buy the “future vision” guy, and neither should Xander. But even if he did, he shouldn’t have left. If for no other reason than leaving a former demon, who used to torture men who hurt women, just sort of screams “bad move.”  As much as I was angry with the X-man, I did sort of feel his pain when he came back and tried to patch things up with Anya, but any way you slice it, he really screwed the pooch when he walked out, so he has to blame himself for driving Anya into Spike’s arms.

Which was annoying for me mainly because I thought that when Buffy called it off with Spike, I wasn’t going to have to watch anymore of James Marsters’ thrusting.  Oh well.  As much as the Spike-Buffy thing bothered me at first, in the context of the whole season it made more sense; Buffy was having a really tough time adjusting to coming back to life, and dealing with the responsibilities of being an adult, and sleeping with Spike was the only way she could feel anything.  She did the right thing by breaking it off, and the way Spike repaid her, by trying to rape her, was not something I saw coming.  The way he took off to get back to “the way he was” seemed like an overt red herring; we were SUPPOSED to think that Spike wanted to lose his chip, but ACTUALLY he really wanted to regain his soul.  Although if that was his goal all along, it seemed a little odd that he kept referring to his beloved as “that bitch.”

“Normal Again” was an interesting premise for an episode, but the way it ended was really annoying.  You DON’T let your audience believe that what is happening to the main characters isn’t even real to them. (See my thoughts on Super Mario Bros. 2 for more on this.)  The episode really made it clear that Buffy was not in an institution, but they just had to throw that curveball at the end, that maybe she really is.  That’s not cool.  I don’t accept that six seasons of adventures were all the delusions of a mental patient, and the insinuation that they actually could be is sort of insulting to viewers.

The evolution of The Trio took a dark turn when Warren bumped into his old gal pal Katrina. She called them out for what the guys were really trying to do – rape.  It would have been easy for the show to ignore that, and pretend that they were just pathetic guys trying to get girls to like them, but they didn’t hold back, and Warren committed his first act of homicide. But not his last!

The way that Warren shot Buffy and Tara was incredibly powerful and sad, and it fit perfectly with Warren’s descent into desperation, that after failing with science and magic and demons, he went for a simple gun. Although I don’t understand why Tara FINALLY made it into the credits as a cast regular in the episode when she dies. And why did the DVD-box-art-maker-people go through all that trouble of spoiling the fact that Willow turns evil when the transformation doesn’t even happen until the last second of episode 19? WTF?

At least they didn’t spoil the fact that Giles was going to be returning by putting his credit at the beginning of “Two to Go.”  The battle royal between Willow and the Scoobies, Giles included, felt a little hollow, mainly because it was so clearly not the *real* Willow.  But I loved the fact that Xander was the won who got to save the world for a change.  And I was worried they were going to kill off Giles, and I’m glad they didn’t do that, because that just would have been too much death right in a row.  I was a little disheartened when he didn’t show up for Xander and Anya’s wedding, but he more than redeemed himself with his late-season cameo, especially when he cracked up when Buffy told him all that he missed.

I saw that one of the special features on the DVD was called “Life is the Big Bad: Season Six Overview,” and that kind of clicked it all into place for me.  The main villains of the year weren’t the gang of nerds or evil Willow, it was just the gang getting acquainted with life as adults, and all the drama that entails.  With that perspective, the season did kind of retroactively make more thematic sense, but at the same time it does still feel a little disjointed as compared to seasons past.  All of the of attempted rapes, fully clothed humping, and the word “bitch” being thrown around constantly might have been a little much, and the season definitely took a dip from the awesomeness that was season five, but it was still enjoyable.  And now ladies and gentleman, I move on to Buffy’s final six discs!  How sad…