Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Sixth Season

Review by Tom Johnson

TomJohnson@TheCinemaSource.com

Rated TV-14 for violence, explicit sexual situations, profanity and gore

"Life's not a song. Life isn't bliss, life is just this: it's living."

The sixth season of Buffy stands, without question, as the most controversial one among its legion of fans. For many it's an unpopular one because, unlike previous seasons, there's no "epic" battle, no Big Bad to fight, no Apocalypse (visibly) looming overhead, and a severe lack of witty puns from Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) herself. No, the central theme of this season is easily summed up in the above quote, taken from an early episode. If the idea of 22 hours of television devoted to wrestling with this depressing idea turns you off, you should probably skip this season. But if you're looking for the bleakest, yet most poignant season creator Joss Whedon ever produced, it's right here.

The episode the earlier quote is taken from happens to be the show's shockingly good musical episode (it actually took a spot in the TV Guide list of "TV's 50 Greatest Rock & Roll moments", as well as spawn a bevy of merchandise all on its own), one of the very few bright spots in a season filled with death, despair, departures, and the dirtiest sex scenes ever broadcast on network television. We're a long ways from Sunnydale High.

The season is off to a depressing start before the first episode even airs, since Buffy's well, you know, dead and all. After her friends perform a dark ritual to bring her back to life, Buffy returns disoriented and confused, a depressed shell of her former self. The only person she can share her pain with is Spike (James Marsters), a soulless, formerly evil vampire, neutered of his ability to harm humans, who happens to have a morbid, lustful obsession with her. Comfort quickly turns to an unhealthy addiction, as Buffy and Spike engage in a series of too-hot for TV sexual encounters (that never would have passed the censors in the FCC's new Post-Nipplegate reign of terror). At the same time, Willow (Alysson Hannigan) becomes addicted to the magic she once mastered, and resembles a drug junkie more and more as the season progresses, losing her girlfriend, Tara (Amber Benson). From here, things only get worse, and one of our heroes goes very, very bad by the season's end, finally spicing things up with a most unexpected Apocalypse. If you take a glance at the box's cover art, it should be fairly obvious who jumps to the dark side, but for the sake of this review, I'll still refrain from putting it in black and white.

It's a bold move for a show like this to scale back and handle the terrors of everyday

living, but unfortunately throughout the season, the content too often effects the form, and interesting episodes are spaced between some seriously draggy ones. Often, the show comes closer in tone to the dreary Party of Five than to the Buffy we all loved from seasons past. But all is redeemed in the final four episodes. In point of fact, "Grave", the season ender, is the most powerful of all the season finales, though possibly because it hints at promise for Season 7 that is never truly fulfilled. In this way the finale is bittersweet, because despite a perfectly satisfactory climax to the Buffy saga lying ahead, it marks the official end of the show's best days. From this point on, Angel begins to lap its sister show as it comes into its own.

But Season 6, as said earlier, has many a plus to it. And if the depressing, "whatever" vibe the show carries doesn't always work, it is at least a daring statement by the writers, carried out beautifully by the most underrated ensemble in TV history. Sure, there are the useless characters of Tara, Willow's driftwood-dull girlfriend, and Dawn, Buffy's poorly-written whiner of a younger sister, but the good far outshines the bad, and when the season fires on all cylinders, it's just breathtaking. It's an interesting, admirable television season that transplants the fantasy of the show and boxes it into the all-too-real horror of everyday life. We see our protagonist come to realize that in real life, nothing ends when it should, happy endings rarely come, and mediocrity plagues 90% of the day, even when you're fighting vampires. In short:

"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it".

Whedon always says it best.

Show Grade: A-

As usual for the show, the discs are packed to the brim with commentaries, featurettes on production, and a season recap. "Once More With Feeling" is, predictably, the biggest episode spotlighted. The packaging is the best yet for the series, even if it gives away the season's sole plot twist.

DVD Grade: B+

Season 6 still polarizes even the most die-hard Buffy fanatics, but if you've enjoyed any of the show up to this point, it's a no-brainer to buy, especially in this format, where the slow spots are easily breezed over by watching multiple episodes at a time. It's far from a perfect season, but that's only because it's so ambitious in design. Buffy: The Complete Sixth Season is a dark, bloody chapter in one of the greatest TV sagas ever produced, and contains moments of mood unique to the whole series. At forty bucks, it's a steal. And despite its faults, I couldn't recommend it more. Like the best fantasy stories, it takes you on a journey of revelation, but unlike

any fantasy that's come before it, it has the guts to set itself in as real and gritty a world as you're ever likely to find on television. While the world of Season 6 is at times all-too-real, the story told is ultimately just as enthralling as ever. Despite its "genre show" status, Buffy was never about escapism in the first place, and proves it here, bruises and all.

Final Grade:A-