Joss Whedon (Spoiler Alert)

I've been rewatching my way through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and just finished the 6th season (I was exiled to my bed, thanks to a summer cold, so I've had some free time on my hands).

Joss Whedon, you are a dick. I used to love you. Now, I don't. You are a soul crushing, unimaginative, high school boy.

Whedon is known for killing off his characters. Killing Sheppard Book and Wash in Serenity? Pretty unnecesary. I get that we needed some sacrifice, but Jane would have been a perfect character to lose to war. Not Wash. You can make a good argument for Book needing to die to create some faith in Mal, but there were a lot of other ways to do that. Dr. Horrible? It's a fun comedy, that ends in a pretty dark place. Accidentally killing Penny, after he did all this work to prove how great he could be? Lame, Whedon. Way to completely change the tone of the movie in the last 5 minutes.

And then, we get to Buffy. Where he proves that he really has no concept of character development. To him, developing characters means making them more and more miserable, and breaking them down into shadows of their previous self. Everyone blames SMG for ending BtVS, but if Joss hadn't strayed so far from the character, I don't think she would have left. Turning her into this disillusioned, whiny, weirdly self destructive girl- that's not who we all fell in love with. Sure, she can get lost sometimes, but two full seasons of it? Wildly unnecessary. Everyone was ready for her to be done.

All the Angel drama season 2 was perfect. She was struggling, but she was true to herself and she did what she had to do. We all felt for her and cried with her. But at some point after that, she started to get self righteous and hard. There's that whole weird thing going on where apparently she doesn't really love Riley. Then she has to be the world's biggest brat about Dawn (who, admittedly, is also a huge pain in the ass).

Killing Joyce ruined Buffy. The character, not the show. Making her this weak, incapable character was so out of character. She should struggle. We should see her struggle. But this girl has died, killed her first love, and reversed several apocalypses. She can figure out how to pay bills. She can live life without an abusive relationship. Also, that sucked. Spike loved her, we could have just skipped all that drama and made it a healthy relationship. But no. It has to somehow be destructive.

Killing Tara? Rude. Just rude. I love having Willow be the bad ass, I love Xander saving the day...but it's like he started formulating what would be the most outrageously painful combination of loss he could manage.

There are other ways to get reactions out of your audience, and other ways to develop characters. That's really all I wanted to say.