Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Headscratchers/Season 4: Difference between revisions

== Rebellion and Old vs. New ==

* One of the major themes of the show is rebelling against the "old ways". Buffy does not adhere to the mythos; she attends school, has friends who help her, she quits the Council, and when a demon that supposedly can't be killed by any weapon appears, she uses a rocket launcher. The biggest expression of this is in the Season 3 finale when an Old One incarnate is taken down by the youth of Sunnydale, and some TNT. Fast forward to the next season finale, and a high-tech government outfit has started to fight back against the supernatural, only to be told by a Chosen One who pokes demons with a sharp stick to back off because it's not their business, and they're playing on her turf. Did anybody else find this a complete contradiction to the message the previous three years had worked so hard getting across?

** Alternatively, the problem with the Initiative is that they attacked the problem of demons with science. A smarter Initiative would have accumulated a library to put Giles' to shame, and had a few witches or warlocks on staff. Evidence indicates that the reconstituted Initiative was moving in this direction. Besides, Wesley used guns (with mixed results) on Angel.

** Besides, the Initiative was actually doing pretty well so long as it focused on fighting monsters {{spoiler|and not creating demon-cyborg supermen}}. Buffy's complaints aside, the lesson didn't seem to be "modern military sucks, old-fashioned slayers rule" so much as "[[Evil Is Not a Toy]], so stop trying to run tests on it and just kill it already". Or at least, the lesson was eventually toned down to that: when Riley returns later, he's still a government agent using high-tech weaponry to take down demons, and he seems to be doing a bang-up job at it.

 

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[[Category:Headscratchers]]

[[Category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Headscratchers]]