Shark Bytes

I agree. Season 7 was decent enough and Chosen was a very solid finale.
But people really missed Tara - she was a breath of fresh air on a show that sometimes makes you feel claustrophobic for watching sad, unsatisfied, and some really annoying (hello, Kennedy!) characters.

Didn't really jump.
But killing Tara? That was just so wrong. SO WRONG.

The show never jumped. For a show to jump the shark, something must happen that makes its decline irreversible.

That didn't happen. Yes, the show did decline, but the decline wasn't irreversible.

The closest the show came to jumping the shark, in my opinion, was graduation. The show was never the same after that. But while it was different, and not quite as good as before, it was still good.

I watched Buffy from Season 1 to Season 7 and it was and still is my all-time favorite show. The show never "jumped the shark", but there was a point when I became less interested.

First, let me say that I am a die hard Buffy/Angel fan. I was heartbroken when he turned evil, when Buffy sent him to hell and when Angel left her.

Things I Loved

-Buffy and Angel
-Willow and Oz
-Spike before he had a thing for Buffy and had a soul (he was quite funny)
-Faith (when she was good AND bad)
-Willow getting addicted to magic
-Evil Willow
-The amazing writing when Buffy's mother passed away

Things I HATED:

-Angel leaving =(
-Spike/Buffy
-Riley/Buffy

Things I didn't like:

-Riley and his corn fed Iowa act. Whenever he was on, I threw things at the TV
- Buffy sleeping with Parker after knowing him for 12 hours.
-The sudden appearance of Dawn and how everyone magically had memories with her
-Oz cheating on Willow
-Adam, Glory, Caleb and all those potential slayers
-Giles moving to England
-The Initiative (basically anything to do with Riley I hated)
-Xander losing his eye
-Not using Faith's character enough
-The musical

This show jumped the shark when they made Willow gay after something like four seasons of her being stright also the whole Spike turning good plot line was just too cleiche for words

Having watched the seasons in order on DVD more times than I want to admit, Willow suddenly being gay is when it went down hill.

Have read several comments on here. I don't believe the show ever jumped the shark. One way that this show was completely different from other TV shows was that it used its success as an allowance for experimentation with story and character. This is something that, until Buffy, was not seen at all. However, I have my quibbles, as does everyone else, and here they are:

1) I disliked the fact that while every character seemed to get an episode that explained why they were who they were, this never seemed to happen for Oz. Oz was the most interesting and underwritten character on the show, and I always felt that there should have been an episode or at least some scenes in the episodes after he left showing him dealing with his werewolf curse. Tara was a good addition, but never seemed to interact much with the other characters except for Willow, which I felt was a mistake. Her death seemed like an excuse for making Willow the big bad and then doing the rather tedious and badly thought-ought analogy of Willow's "addiction" and should not have happened. Tara should have been there to the end.

2) I didn't buy Willow's sudden lesbian transformation either. In some bits it seemed that this was being presented as a consequence of her witchcraft studies, and I think that she should have been presented as bisexual rather than lesbian. The business where she and Xander suddenly fall in violent lust with each other after both have moved on with other partners didn't feel right either; at best they should have had an episode where both characters fully realized the other's importance. The core group of Buffy, Willow, Giles and Xander was built so strongly at the beginning that it was obvious there was no way these characters would be able to fully part ways. They began as a family, and I am happy to say that they continued as a family to the end.

3) I felt that the entire business with Angel/Angelus for Season 2 was, while necessary, unduly harsh in its execution sometimes.

4) The musical made me feel that BTVS was trying to compete with the Xena: Warrior Princess musical episode in the same way that the Initiative made me feel that BTVS was trying to compete with the X-Files.

5) The "demon" thing was overused, and many times felt lke an excuse.

6) I despised Glory. It was hard for me to buy the idea of an Uber-Evil being untouchable for almost an entire season when it was presented as a selfish spoiled brat.

7) The Trio were stupid. I thought the turning of Jonathan into an evil person was exceptionally sad, but I suppose one can only be ignored so much. It was made all the worse by the fact that he was the one who made the Protector speech in "The Prom" and gave Buffy her award.

8) Sunday should have had more of a story arc as a villain.

9) Dawn was not a bad idea, but poorly executed. Her being the Key felt as though someone had written themselves into a corner.

10) Um... Buffy Vs. Dracula???

11) Should have been some wins for Season 6. The whole thing felt like a long drag through Hell, and it contributed heavily to Buffy becoming so unlikable in Season 7.

As for the comic, I am not liking Buffy's sudden lesbian exploration; it feels too much like "this worked before so let's do it again."

If the second season was treated as a mini mini-series, the show would have been a classic. Everything from Season 3 onward just wasn't the same (other than Spike).

I don't think the show ever really JTS but I absolutely hate the killing of Anya and Spike in the final episode. I just see it as the characters were used up and thrown out. Being as useful as they were they should have survived. Losing the potentials or Wood and/or Faith would've been a better way to go. They made the sseasons prior worth watching. To me it made the ending an absolutely disappointing mistake.

Since Bill asked...why Willow suddenly turning lesbian might be a problem.

I am not gay, but bi, but... I've never quite bought into 'suddenly one day waking up any particular sexuality.' So, a character who's been falling in love with people of the opposite gender suddenly going after their own...has a bad feel.

It feels like somebody in the writing team went, "Oh, wait, we forgot to add the token LGBT character, so let's just have one of established characters suddenly discover their love for their own gender and forget that they ever loved the other!"

Just think how it'd be if they'd had done it the other way around -- if they'd established her as a lesbian, and had her suddenly turn straight. There's no real difference here, except the order.

The show actually reverse jumped. Sit down and watch When She Was Bad, Some Assembly Required, School Hard, Reptile Boy, Inca Mummy Girl, and Halloween. Then sit down and watch Barganing, Afterlife, Flooded, Life Serial, Once More With Feeling, and Tabula Rasa. Or sit down and watch Lessons, Beneath You, Same Time Same Place, Help, Selfless, and Conversations with Dead People

Which season deserves to be remembered as classic again?
Don't get me wrong, there were aspects I enjoyed from all seasons, but seasons 1, 2, 3 are so overated it's ridiculous. Most people listing their top ten Buffy episodes will pick from the later seasons. Like episodes Teacher's Pet, Bad Eggs, and Beauty and The Beast deserve to be remembered as great works of art. The later seasons were much more complex and interesting, an episode like Reptile Boy with a phallic monster is so shallow and obvious which the smart viewers recongise


And maybe Buffy/Spike weren't popular with everyone, but Buffy/Riley had way more sex scenes, and at least Buffy/Spike had chemistry for their scenes. And people have selective memories with Buffy/Angel so they just think of the amazing Angelus plot from season 2. But if you sit down and watch the shallow reasons they first fell for one another in season 1, and then the ridiculously boring scenes from season 3 of Angel working out while Buffy stands there drooling. Joss even admitted that they were running out of storylines for Buffy/Angel in season 3, the spin-off came along just in time. And there's seriously arguments here that we should had more of those Buffy/Angel scenes in seasons 4, 5, 6, and 7? Their story was played out in season 2, Joss knew it too


Every season has faults, but the way people rip aside the later plots is just out of proportion, especially if you're going to sit there and seriously argue that an episode with fish monsters was great television

The show NEVER Jumped the Shark and some of the reasons posted are just absurd. From the JTS FAQ "A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill." So by definition a JTS can only occur once in a series. You can't say Buffy JTSed when she died and then say the musical was a high point - that violates the definition of JTS.

Joss Whedon has always said that he gives the fans what they need - not what they want. That's why he's such a good storyteller. He killed Anya, not Kennedy, in the finale because Anya's death would have the most impact while still leaving the core four characters (Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles) alive. Ditto Tara's death and Joyce's death. In a series where demons and humans get killed on a regular basis only a few very special deaths were of key characters so important to us that they gave such a big emotional impact - that's good television story tellin!

As far as Dawn's introduction is concerned it was a great inside gag (which many fans never got) taking one of television's worst cliches and reversing it. How many TV series have had 'Chuck Cunninghams' (characters who suddenly disappear with no explanation and are never referred to again)? "Happy Days", "Family Matters", etc. etc. Dawn's the exact reverse - a character who suddenly appears and everybody acts like she's been there all along.

Certainly there were weak points in the show and a Willow was addicted to a pretty bad story arc in the middle of Season 6 but overall Buffy was a series to be proud of and I'm glad so many people have voted that it never Jumped the Shark, no matter what the naysayers have said.

The last two seasons of this show were really unnecessary. Xander jilting Anya at the alter, Buffy and Spike's lust/hate affair and Tara leaving Willow made it seem like a bad soap opera. And I thought Willow becoming "addicted" to magic was especially stupid.

The series jumped when Buffy stopped wearing tight leather pants.

Graduation day was the definitive jump. No American High School drama has ever maintained its quality after the main characters move on to college and Buffy was no exception. Angel, Cordy and Oz all left.Post High school it was all downhill. No villain ever matched Series 2 Spike, Angelus or the mayor. No secondary charcater was ever as interesting or multi-faceted as Faith in Series 3. Buffy became whiny and self indulgent, Xander and Giles were reduced to background characters and the less said about college era Willow the better. Truth be told this series would have been remembered far more foundly if it had ended after three good to great seasons, sparing the viewer four mediocre to dreadful ones.