Tara's Death

[ambersknight]

Yes its that well worn old chestnut again. Always a difficult subject this to come to from a neutral, unemotional position but I do feel that there are real problems with this whole set up. As there are several problems I will deal with each in a separate post rather than put them all together in one very long and possibly very tedious post.

Firstly, the question becomes, why kill Tara at all? For me, there are only 4 good reasons for killing off a character in a tv show:

1) The actor/actress wants to leave and does not wish to return.

2) The character is severely disliked.

3) the character has reached a point where nothing new or interesting can be done with them.

4) A storyloine so important has come up which can only be dealt with by the character's demise.

Now the first 3 certainly don't count. Amber wanted to stay, the character had a strong following and there was still plenty to say and do with the character (in fact I'd go as far as to say the character hadn't even begun to be explored). To be fair to the writers, they never claimed that it was the first 3 reasons either.

No, reason number 4 is the one in contention here. But I disagree with the writers completely. Was it really that original a storyline? Not really. Drug storylines have been the meat and veg of many a teen orientated show for decades now to varying degrees. I suppose if the writers had something new to say or had really went with the storyline and took it into uncharted territory for a fantasy show (or for that matter a mainstream tv show) then it might have been something but there was nothing new about Willow's so-called addiction. We got a very weedy "tripping" scene followed by an even weedier scene of ehr going cold turkey (and looking more like she'd just stepped into a steam room). I mean really, after the dream-like and highly effective cold turkey scene from Trainspotting (who can forget Renton screaming his head off as that baby crawled across the ceiling and did a full Exorcist head turn to look at him) the one in Buffy was laughably tame. I'm not saying they needed to go that far but at the same time, it does a disservice to people who have gone through the hell of addiction and insults the families and friends who have lost loved ones to drugs. In short, I believe it was irresponsible storytelling on Joss' part.

Did Tara need to die? Nope. Season 5 had already shown what happens when someone hurts Tara. Willow goes nuts on them. In fact, Dark Magic Willow could be seen as merely a re-hash of that season 5 thread (amongst others I'll mention later).

My feeling is this: The writers would have us believe that they plotted out an addiction storyline that as plotted, required Tara's death to really hit home the drama. I disagree here as well. I believe that what they wanted was DMW and they decided re-hashing season 5's revenge plot and wrapping it up as a badly written morality fable about the dangers of drugs, would give them ample justification.

It didn't.

Next I will discuss the shooting of the shooting.

[ambersknight]

Okay, the shooting of Tara. i have a couple of problems with this:

1) Yes, that bullet. Sorry, I know that Buffy isn't exactly CSI but there is no way THAT bullet was going into THAT window at THAT angle. it is simply preposterous. it does all that and yet, amazingly, is incapable of exiting out the other side and hitting Willow who is right in the bullet's trajectory. Nope, sorry, it simply doesn't compute. If they really wanted to shoot Tara through a window why didn't they have them in the kitchen when the shots rang out? At least then a stray bullet being fired once Buffy had hit the deck would've been believable.

My problem with the bullet is this: The writers claimed that their use of a bullet was because they wanted to highlight the very real damage that guns do, rather than Tara dying by means of some spell or medieval weapon. Okay, noble intention but if that truly was the intention why then film it in such a way that makes it look so preposterous? Doesn't this then undermine the credibility of the reality that the writers wished to highlight? They want to talk about the relaity of death and yet shoot it in a clearly unrealistic way. Doesn't add up.

But then there is the second point which doesn't make sense that is Tara's actions. So Tara is looking out the window, and is near the window. We know that the windows are not sound proof at the Summers' house. So Tara is near the window, looking out and then turns to face Willow to chat to her. Warren comes in, starts shouting, mouthing off and then its guns a-blazing. Does tara look out the window to see what is happening? Does she duck when she hears the gunshots? Does she head over to where Willow is and duck down with her?

Nope! She does nothing. She just stands there, apparently oblivious to all that is happening outside (which is completely contrary to her character and nature) and doesn't so much as attempt to duck or hit for cover when the gun shots ring out. Again, this simply makes no sense in terms of the character. This is the writers writing illogically for a character in order to make a story work. Illogical doesn't even cover it.

I will next deal with the aftermath of the shooting.

[ambersknight]

So Tara has been shot dead and Willow is told that because Tara died by natural means (albeit by very unnatural bullet trajectory and character actions) she cannot be resurrected. My question becomes - Why not? I ask this as this seems to go against the show's own canon.

Season 3, episode "The Zeppo" and the character of Jack O' Toole. Here is a character who was shot multiple times but was raised within moments of his death with no discernible side effects. No rotting flesh or putrifying organs to be seen. Sure the bullet wounds are there as scars but apart from that there seems no real change in jack. We can tell this because no one in the episode makes any mention of a change in Jack's character in recent months. Now there can only be a certain number of explanations for this:

1) The spell resurrects completely with no side effects.

2) The spell resurrects you with the emotional range and feelings at the point of death (which in Jack's case is one of extreme pissed off-ness).

3) There are side effects in terms of character demeanor but on Jack it looked no different.

If it is the 1st reason, then Tara would come back as we all know and love her. If its the 2nd reason, she would come back perhaps a little sadder, more skittish which could be a new angle to play the character on. if its the 3rd reason it gives Tara real change and the possible storyline of them having to deal with that change and if their relationship could ahve survived. Point is, it was possible, so why claim it wasn't?

I mean let's face it, Willow had shown earlier in the season that with one small incantation she could immediately bring whatever incantation she needed to hand (as she did to de-rat Amy). Yet we are meant to swallow the notion that when she is cradling her lover's dead body in her arms, she is unable to find the incantation in a similar if not identical fashion. The writers may say that she was grieving and not thinking clearly but this doesn't then hold with the cool headed dark Willow that goes black and veiny and horrible and knows exactly what spell to use to get a bullet out of Buffy to stop her dying. No, the idea that Willow couldn't find the incantation referred to in "The Zeppo2 simply doesn't hold water.

Then there is Warren's death. This has two very specific problems for me. Firstly, in relation to the notion of the "Dead/Evil Lesbian" cliche (which I will discuss next) it worries me that the writers chose to write Willow as incapable of holding back her vengeful side in a way she could when dating a man (think back to "Wild At Heart" and Oz's betrayal). Also, the torture seemed far less about Willow extracting justice/vengeance and more about the writers wanting to push the boundaries. And I personally found the sdlow motion bullet sequence to be nothying less than symbolic rape. Whilst the writers may have thought the notion of a symbolic rape of Warren some kind of perverse justice for his own rape of Katrina, the simple fact is two wrong do not make a right and you don't make any point about justice or vengeance by simply adding violence and pseudo-rape simply for the sake of shock value.

Secondly however, is the matter of Warren himself. By the point of his death Warren had become such a cliche of misoginy and almost two-dimensional and reprehensible that his death holds no greater emotional resonsance than say the killing of The Mayor or the killing of any number of demons and vampires on the show. In other words, he had ceased to be a flesh and blood human that we could identify with and simply become another monster. This makes the idea of his death being something different to the killing of a demon a fairly vaccuous one at best.

Then we have Andrew and Jonathan. Why is Willow going after them? She knows they ahd nothing to do with Tara's death, there is no reason for her trail of destruction. No reason of coruse except one - the writers needed a big finish and Warren's death sold them short. So rather than do something logical or at least dramatically viable, the writers spun out the story with the idea that two people who ahd nothing to do with Tara's death being held accountable for it by someone who knew they weren't involved. If they had perhaps been there and had fled in terror when Warren pulled out a guyn and started shooting, then her chasing them would make sense but as it was, it made no sense.

Next I will deal with the over-riding idea of the "Dead/Evil Lesbian" cliche.

[ambersknight]

Ahh, the dreaded cliche rears its head.

First let me make my point clear - I do not believe that it was the conscious intention of Joss and his writers to in any way denegrate lesbians or gay people in general. However, I cannot speak for his or the writers subconscious intentions.

The cliche, simply put, is this: lesbian couples never end well. One either dies or becomes an evil stalker or man-hating psychopath. This invariably happens after the couple have consumated their relationship. There is a further cliche, that I will call the Freudian cliche, that states that gay people are only that way because they haven't found the love of a good person of the opposite gender. When that happens they will be "normal" again.

So what do we have in this situation: tara dies, and Willow goes into crazy, evil, psychopathic mode, after the first episode in which it has been made completely clear they ahve had sex (rather than the usual hints and allusions up until then). Willow's actions are excessive and irrational. To top it all, she is stopped from ehr evil ways and turned back to "normal" again when a man tells her he loves her.

Was it intended? I'd like to think not but Joss and the writers had stated many times in interviews that they were aware of the dangerous cliches that are associated with gay characters on tv and said they would never go near them. So my question is: Given this was the way it played out, how on Earth didn't they recognise this as the cliche playing out in its entirety? Where was the writer saying "hold on Joss, this thing reads like the "Dead/Evil Lesbian" cliche played to the hilt". I simply do not accept that the writers wrote this storyline, storyboarded it shot for shot as they do, and din't recognise the cliche. What is more galling perhaps is that Joss then seems to want to blame everyone and anyone else rather than take any blame for himself (which is why I've never trusted him since this debacle).

Add to that the whole Yellow Crayon Speech (so badly done, the actors looked in pain saying the trite dialogue) which of course gave the added resonance of all Willow needed to be normal again was the love of a good man. How could the writers not see this as potentially insulting to a section of their fanbase?

No, no matter which way you look at it, the writers made a catalogue of errors in how they presented this so-called "necessary" plot twist of Tara's death. It ultimately led to them killing off a character that didn't need to die, for a storyline riddled with inadequacies and based on a very weak and flawed premise, one they morphed into and away from a premise which was actually working.

I state this in closing: if the storyline had been strong enough, I would have been annoyed about Tara's death but I would have accepted it in the context of a bigger storyline. But what I got I do not accept, for the reasons I have mentioned above and for other reasons I am sure.