>It never ceases to amaze me that sci-fi/fantasy allows all sorts of things
>to hide in plain sight. While the media discusses the comparative existence
>of gay & lesbian charcters on various networks, while noting how little
>action they get, Willow and her squeeze have happily been making out pretty
>regularly with a couple of pretty erotic shows.
I don't think Buffy et al successfully made the transition to college. Riley is just GI Joe - a jimbo who gets no good lines and doesn't give the impression he could carry 'em off, anyway. Willow's new squeeze is dull compared to her erstwhile wolfman, who did the dry delivery better than any of 'em. And the whole thing just ain't doing what it could with the sordid-underbelly-of-white-picket-fence-idyll theme I originally thought it was out to milk.
Faith and the mayor were the zenith, for mine. Naughty pulchritudinous Faith was always asking the big questions of Buffy, which is beaut, coz she's in a position to go the whole Nietzchean nine-yards, superwomanwise. Faith doesn't quite get away with it herself, mind - she has a bit of the Caligula in her ('no Caesar has ever realised quite how powerful he is') but she needs relationships (a sorta quasi-incestuous-daddy thing with that abso-bloody-lutely marvellous mayor, and a quasi-uber-lipstick-lesbian thing with Buffy), and can't get through the wall between her and mere mortals (she plays the boys like the juvenile red fin perch we so often are when awash in feminine blandishments, but gets no more out of it than a scratched itch - poor Zander). Mind you, in a desperate attempt to make Riley interesting, aprez-Angel, they implied an unnatural genesis for him, too, didn't they - it just doesn't quite work, that's all. So Buffy's stuck with a nerd with good shoulders. Hope that ends violently. Anyway, Spike and Dru are the only improvements in a general decline, for mine.
>I should note that my circle of progressive law student buddies all pretty
>religiously watch the shows, although Angel has been getting especial
>appreciation this year. The fact that the bad guys are a corporate law firm
>whose senior partner is Satan or some variation is of course great. But the
>trials of Angel & friends to run a small org to fight the good fight, while
>struggling to pay the bills, is about as close as you get on TV to detailing
>the actual day-to-day trials of many political activists.
I like 'Angel', too. Cordelia, LA-in-a-babe whilst she's in Sunnydale, goes to LA and realises that even she's not down to the shallowness, duplicity, and general rat-race-whoredom the big end of town requires of its denizens. Bill-paying gets a lot of mentions from her, but the show generally avoids explaining how they actually get paid, no?
Going-that-extra-yard-in-work-avoidance, Rob.