What Broke Buffy

[botias]

It's not an uncommon opinion that Angel 'broke' Buffy.

I'm not sure I agree. I would have to go with losing her mom/becoming responsible for her sister, specifically a sister that was the brass ring for the bad guy. Family is Buffy's weakness, not her love life. Season 5 attacked her family and Buffy ended it catatonic, arguably suicidal, and ultimately dead. I don't think the Buffy that came back in Season 6 was really all that much worse off than the one that flung herself into the portal after telling Dawn that she thought the survivors were the ones who had it tough.

Where was the Angel brokenness? Buffy didn't seem to have much trouble trusting Angel again when he showed up, feral and nasty in season 3. She didn't seem to have much trouble trusting Spike way too much, or with giving him another shot when he showed up all insane and sniffly, or even when he was all fangy and minion-making. She tries and succeeds in reconnecting with her friends at the end of season 6 instead of, I don't know, whatever it is that people do when they can't function emotionally; I suspect it generally involves lots of isolation and self-medicating. Heck, she even reconnects with Riley, talks about her regrets about how they broke up, and they part as friends.

I think Buffy circled the wagons when her mom became seriously ill, and was certainly pretty broke by the end of Season 5. I honestly think she ended Season 7 not-broke, and don't think she was ever 'broken' from a specifically romantic standpoint. As much as the cookie dough speech was awkward, it's nevertheless an excellent point that not having it all figured out romantically and/or finding a good, long-term match by the age of 22 doesn't mean there is something wrong with Buffy. Indeed, plenty of folks rate their romantic success, not by the duration of their relationships, but whether they are still friends with their previous lovers. Buffy seems like she ended Season 7 with a pretty good score in that regard, especially given her unique challenges.

Comments

[bendy1.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the 'broken' argument in a very long time. I didn't think she particularly was, except that killing him made her understandably emo :D

[botias.livejournal.com]

Seems like I saw it a couple of times recently. Yup, she was understandably emo, and then she learned, as did we all, that you always get more screen time after you're dead than you did when alive(ish).

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

Well said! I'm not convinced that Buffy "broke" so much as "grew up" in some very challenging circumstances. Sure, general Buffy at the end of season 7 isn't bouncy, peppy season 1 Buffy, but who really is the exactly the same at 22 at 15? I'd wonder about anyone who hasn't changed much over the course of those years!

And I've always like the cookie dough speech. I think it's good character development for Buffy to realize that she still needed to grow and mature. I certainly wasn't finished baking at that age, and I shudder to think of what might have happened if I'd married the guy I was dating at the time!

[botias.livejournal.com]

Yes, most people's taste in partners improves dramatically over the years. I don't know how many women have told me that their first husband/college bf was a belittling jerk. Which makes me wonder... do asshats over 30 have a much harder time getting dates than they did when they were 21?

I suppose most of us become better partners as well as getting choosier. I know I used to be a spoiled little Drama Princess, but I've matured, now I'm a Drama Queen, yay!

[rahirah]

I think the "Angel broke Buffy" argument is based on the fact that killing Angel was the only thing that made Buffy actually quit and walk away, not just from slaying, but from her whole life. (And yes, of course Joyce's rejection also figured into that decision.) Her breakdown in "Weight of the World" was precipitated largely by her fear that she was headed for a similar situation with Dawn. Her conversation with Giles in "The Gift," and even in her conversation with Xander in "Selfless," indicate that even if she hasn't made a big emo deal of it in every single episode since then, killing Angel affected her very deeply, and the experience continues to color her actions and reactions as late as S7. If you count the comics as canon, it seems to me that some things in the latest issue could be taken as an indication that even post-Chosen, she's still got a certain amount of baggage to work through in that respect. And for crying out loud, why shouldn't she? How soon would you get over the guy you loved more than anything (Buffy's words, not mine) going evil and you having to kill him except he goes good again and you have to kill him anyway? That's not exactly on a par with getting dumped at the senior prom.

That doesn't mean nothing else ever affected Buffy deeply. Obviously her fight with Joyce in S2, her loss of her mother in S5, her post-heaven malaise in S6 were all extremely important influences. Angel was not even the first brick in the wall of Buffy's abandonment issues; her father cheating on her mother and then abandoning the family was undoubtedly the first. Nor is he the last: Riley cheats on her and bails, Giles bails and then betrays her, Spike betrays her and then dies.

But Angel's still unique. He was her first serious relationship, the relationship she committed most wholeheartedly to, and things could not have gone more wrong. I'm not in any way a B/A shipper, but I think that it's counterproductive to downplay the enormous importance of Angel in Buffy's life to date, for good or ill. When Buffy's thirty-five, or fifty, very possibly that importance will have substantially diminished. But as you point out, she's only twenty-two when the show ends.

Even if one accepts the premise that Buffy is or was 'broken,' by her experiences with Angel or anything else, that does not necessarily mean that she was or is incapable of repairing herself. Whether or not one thinks she has managed to do so by the end of the show, or will do so in whatever nebulous future lies beyond the show, is open to debate.

[botias.livejournal.com]

Her breakdown in "Weight of the World" was precipitated largely by her fear that she was headed for a similar situation with Dawn.

I agree. I think the notion that I don't like is the idea that Buffy was 'broken' by one spectacularly failed relationship. I never meant to argue that Buffy having to kill anyone that she loved would be horrific for her, and leave permanent scars. I just discount the notion that having to kill Angel in particular vs. any of her other friends or family, and/or not riding off into the sunset with Angel made Buffy 'broken'.

I actually suspect the 'broken' idea of the dread shippiness, believe it or not. Reasoning being: What sort of girl could possibly fail to appreciate Spike and throw herself whole-heartedly into making him the happiest vampire on earth ever? Only one who was already dead inside surely.

Buffy's relationship with Angel is certainly the one in which she was most invested, by a very large measure. But I'm reluctant to say that Buffy was incapable of putting herself out like that again if she were to meet someone else that inspired her the same way. I can think of many good reasons why Riley and Spike were not that person, far and above 'they aren't Angel' or 'Angel hurt Buffy'. And, I'm also reluctant to say that, if she in fact could not open herself quite that way again, that it would actually be some sort of dysfunction or failing, and not just the natural caution that comes with life experience.

It also makes me think about Buffy's conversation with Holden, where he accuses her of having concluded, after her dad and Angel, that 'men aren't worth the effort'. I gotta wonder, is that really a such bad thing? Does such an idea make Buffy broken? For a woman to decide that pursuing and maintaining sexual relationships isn't where she's going to put the bulk of her emotional energy, especially not at Buffy's age... Is that really so heretical anymore? Buffy certainly isn't having trouble investing in her friends. She certainly spent a lot of time and energy on Spike that season, just not as a lover.

[botias.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'll go along with that. :) Doesn't pain me a bit.

[rahirah]

Reasoning being: What sort of girl could possibly fail to appreciate Spike and throw herself whole-heartedly into making him the happiest vampire on earth ever? Only one who was already dead inside surely.

Well, possibly. But I don't think you can dismiss everyone who's not completely sanguine about Buffy's ability to form healthy relationships as a slavering Spike fangirl. A) Buffy had very similar problems connecting emotionally with Riley, and B) Buffy herself says she was dead inside during S6. Admittedly for reasons other than or in addition to anything to do with Angel - but I certainly think that her memories of l'affair Angelus played a large part in the way Buffy reacted to Spike in S6, and even in S7 - she didn't want to open herself up to the pain inherent in loving someone she might well have to kill. (I think Buffy would have been immensely more sympathetic to much of the audience had that particular emotional conflict been pulled farther out of subtext and into text.)

The trouble with Buffy concluding that men aren't worth the effort is that she doesn't just give up men and remain happily single. (Or even go gay all of a sudden.) Instead, she engages in a series of relationships - Parker, Riley, Spike, Robin Wood - that fail for one reason or another, and make her unhappy. I don't see any particular evidence that Buffy wants to spend her life single - she seems to want to date, and eventually to have a longish-term relationship with someone. In order to be successful at that, perhaps she needs to be single for awhile, but that's not quite the same thing.

I get what Joss was probably trying to say in the cookie dough speech, but in the context of everything else in Buffy's life, it's also possible to interpret it as Buffy engaging in a bit of self-justification: It's not her fault if her relationships fail, because they're not supposed to succeed, and therefore she doesn't have to put any effort into them.

[botias.livejournal.com]

I was being flip, but it seems like that notion is practically fanon. That Spike got Angel's damaged goods when it came to Buffy and that's why she won't/can't lurve him the way he deserves.

I think the really unique thing about Angel is that the relationship was ended by external issues rather than internal ones. Buffy's other relationships all had deep internal fault lines which I'm not certain more effort on her part would have repaired or bridged. I'm sure Joss would have come up with some irreconcilable difference between Angel and Buffy too, if he hadn't abruptly turned him evol just when they were getting to know each other.

Granted, it would have been better if Buffy had had the maturity and self-knowledge to tell Riley 'I'm just not that into you' rather than let the relationship die of starvation, but I don't really agree that she should have tried harder. Riley was nice, but they wrote him about as exciting as dryrot. It would have been better if Buffy had not entered into a relationship with Spike when she was quite clear from the beginning that her affections for him were grudging at best, and that there were many things about him that she found violently objectionable. I don't think more effort on her part would have solved that either, unless it was to run in the opposite direction whenever she saw him coming. If avoiding emotional vulnerability is really at the heart of Buffy's relationship implosions, then I think it is expressed in her choosing men she's not all that into, rather being really into a guy, but unable to express it due to emotional scarring.

[botias.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well... Joss said in season 7 commentary that Buffy's One True Love was Parker, so I guess that kinda puts all the other guys in the discard heap together. Maybe there could be oil of some kind involved?