So far in my summer series on TV MacGuffins and mythologies I have discussed the unhinging of Twin Peaks (my sweet, precious Twin Peaks … and yes, I am wringing my hands like Gollum right now), and the part time mystery of The X-Files. This week I turn my focus to one of my other favorite shows of all time: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think Buffy is one show that excelled in MacGuffin management. Buffy’s answer to the MacGuffin conundrum was simple and straightforward: pick a new one each season.
It seems like such an easy answer, doesn’t it? I suppose it really is, but I also don’t think it would work for every series. Certainly a show like Lost has been driven by its mysteries. Can you imagine if we got all the answers about the island in the first season? What the heck would season two have looked like? It would have been risky to say the least. That, however, is the topic for another installment.
Back to Buffy. The season long arc worked really well for the show. Each season had it’s own “big bad”: The Master in season one, Drusilla, Spike, and Angelus is season two, the mayor and Faith in season three, Adam in season four, Glory in season five, the nerds (and evil Willow) in season six, and of course, the First in season seven.
The secret seemed to be in elevating the stakes each season. In season one, The Master was a bad dude but fairly weak; he was locked away in a sewer for most of the time, waiting to “rise.” Plus, he had fruit punch mouth. In season two, a gang of vampires, along with Angelus (This time, it’s personal) raised the stakes a bit. Dru and Spike were anything but predictable and really threw the kitchen sink at Buffy. In season three, a bigger evil came onto the scene, bigger than just vampires, in the demonic mayor. Season four brought on a government conspiracy gone horribly wrong (don’t they always go horribly wrong?). Season five brought on no less than an evil, otherworldy deity. This is where Buffy stumbled a bit. It was definitely a challenge to raise the stakes after Glory (and Buffy’s death), which led to season six, with a much lighter big bad, but a lot of darkness within the Buffy gang. Season seven returned to form with evil incarnate battling against Buffy.
By keeping mysteries and mythologies mostly contained to one season, nothing seemed to get stale on Buffy. I have to believe that the lessons learned on Twin Peaks had something to do with this model. It was clear from the downward spiral of Twin Peaks that series long mysteries were extremely difficult to pull off without the audience (or the network) getting antsy and demanding answers. It also showed that once a big mystery is solved, it’s a heck of a lot harder to get another one just as good as the first. Certainly the “big bads” on Buffy weren’t “mysteries” per se, but I think the reasoning still applies. If Buffy were still battling The Master in season seven, would the show have excelled like it did? It very well could have, but I somehow doubt it.
There is a danger in the one season arc, though. It is much, much easier to compare seasons against each other. I tend to defend season six of Buffy, which seems to be the most unpopular season of the show. I think it holds up much better over time, working best as a rewatch. The payoff on the season was great, but it took a long, highly emotional time to get there. If the Buffy story had been long and continuous, you wouldn’t hear complaints like: “I hated season six,” or “Adam was dumb, I didn’t like season four.” In my opinion those comparisons are a small price to pay for a much simpler and appealing mythology structure.
Many other shows seem to be featuring the one season arc: Desperate Housewives comes to mind, along with Veronica Mars, and even The Wire.
What do you think? Do you prefer one season mysteries over series long mysteries like on The X-Files?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Jul 06, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I’m not sure your theory holds with Buffy. Those weren’t mysteries or MacGuffins, they were opponents–villians, the main antagonistic force behind the show for a year. You want a MacGuffin in Buffy? A mystery that took all season to explain? Dawn. Ugh.
As far as most-hated season of Buffy, you really think it’s 6? I think 7 was far, far worse. At least there were redeeming episodes in 6, like “Once More With Feeling”, “Tabula Rasa”, and “Normal Again”. I also liked the nerd trio. Of course, there was all the goopy Buffy/Spike stuff and the Willow drugs=magicks=BAD bad writing to balance it out. What did season 7 have? Abusive preacher-guy? All the whiny Slay-ettes?
I think that’s fair to say, Scott. A better term would be story arc. In my first TP post though, I did say I would be taking liberties with the term because… well, because I really like the word MacGuffin. In terms of story arc, though, I think the one per season model still really works well. Buffy vs. The Master for seven seasons would have gotten stale.
I liked season seven. I thought it did well with the scope, everything felt big and important and the stakes felt higher. I remember all the Buffy watchers that I knew at the time really hated season six. Even at its worst, Buffy is still better than so many shows.
I remember a similar discussion about this came up somewhere else — Whedonesque, maybe? The way Joss was able to keep the show fresh with baddies and to give a plausible reason for why Buffy could stay in one place and have so many villains to deal with was to put Sunnydale on a hellmouth. Now there was no questioning why Sunnydale was brimming with evil: just blame it on the hellmouth. It’s why there was a chosen *one* and she stuck right where she was and saved the world a few times there.
I love this series of articles.
Now do Star Trek: Voyager :-)
*POST AUTHOR*
Thanks Sebastian! I’m having a good time writing them. Unfortunately I didn’t watch enough of Voyager to write an informed article.
This type of story arc was also what made 24 a success also. Then came the “this is only the beginning” where suddenly there were 3 story arcs a season/day.
Also like you said Veronica Mars took this formula too and thats what made VM so enjoyable as well. Its also why I think season 3 sucked because it seemed The CW had no patience for the story telling (“Hey Rob hows its going? Listen this whole rape thing is running a little long do you think you could wrap that up?” “Hey Rob remember what we told you about the rape story? Well you are doing it again with the murder story. If you could just from now on have stories wrapped up by the end of the episode that would be great.” *CW exec grabs red stapler off Rob Thomas’ desk*).
Season 7 was horrible. So intriguing at the beginning, so much ado about nothing at the end. Lots of screen time to interchangeable strangers and weak excuses for bad guys, extra-reliance on special effects, and the painful death or dismemberment of past season faves. I agree with a prior poster – however much we may have hated Season 6 at the time, at least in retrospect it had a few good episodes. Season 7 just reminded me why the series should have ended with Buffy’s jump at the end of Season 5.