Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 6

Buffy's penultimate season was also its weakest so far. The series took a darker turn the previous year, and this one continued the trend, although without the sense of direction that kept season five from seeming worse than it did. The show grabbed me originally because it had a great sense of fun despite the morbid things that often happened, and it was always funny and enjoyable even if not every single joke landed. Season five was forgivable for being more serious because the main plot was pretty darn strong, whereas season six is less so because the main plot isn't. The primary villains were mostly entertaining as they were pretty much the only thing that wasn't constantly depressing, although by the end one was just pissing me off more than should be necessary and they were just a diversion from the actual final conflict, which really turned out pretty strong.

There were some good traditional Buffy episodes scattered around, but in general there was just sort of a directionless, sour malaise about the whole thing that made it a lot less fun to watch. None of the characters were unjustified in their lashing out and depression, it just didn't make for exciting viewing. I've heard that Whedon's attentions were focused more on developing Firefly while this season was being schemed up and his absence led to the drop in quality, which is as good a reason as any. I didn't hate watching it, I was just a little bummed by the experience. The musical episode was a little blunt in how it just spelled out all the crap that's weighing the different characters down, but it was still a really cool thing to do once in a long running series, and an episode where Buffy's not sure which world she's seeing is real was one of the more chilling and interesting in the whole series, but these highlights were just a bit too few and far between. I really hope the final season can recover and deliver a nice ending, even though thanks to the comic, it's not really an ending at all.