Buffy 6x19 Seeing Red - Early Access & Full

i feel like everything i would have said has already been said. i hate this episode. they should not have done that bathroom scene. it was awful. the actors hated it,t he fans hated it, it was really badly received all around. and taras death is so sad. i love her. i get that it took willows arc where it needed to go but I still am sad. also I agree buffy had no obligation to tell xander anything. also I don't think buffy did anything wrong. this season has treated it like she needed to quit because it was bad for other people, but I don't see why. not healthy for her? yeah probably not. but it wasn't doing anything to anyone else. if you're not hurting anyone I think people should stop being hard on themselves and just enjoy things. and everyone else should butt out. that said, I don't think the relationship was healthy for buffy, or for spike. nothing wrong with having some fun, but I think when one person is in love you cant just have fun.

I'm relieved to read that you've already watched the rest of the season. As hard as it is to loose Tara, it is so immensely important for Willow's character arc. And also a bit for Xander's and Dawn's. We shouldn't forget that the main characters are still the inner circle of the Scoobies...

Since Jeremy Nickurak beat me to the punch on Adam Busch + Amber Benson, I'll add this: Amber Benson and Eliza Dushku were good friends years before "Buffy" happened. There's this (kinda wonky :D) movie from the mid '90s named "Bye Bye Love," and they're in it together. They basically just sit in a McDonald's and moon over boys, but it's a trip to see a very young Tara and Faith in a film together. (By weird coincidence, that movie also features Lindsay Crouse, who would go on to play the evil Prof. Walsh.) Alyson Hannigan and Seth Green have known each other for pretty much their whole lives, and in the '80s, they were together in a movie named--- "My Stepmother Is an Alien." (No, really. :D) Again, it's as ridiculous as it sounds, but the two of them as kids is just about the most adorable thing ever captured on film. (I'm hoping that one day--- Hannigan and her husband will do some more stuff together.) (Note: I was totally gonna say some serious and heavy stuff here, but--- hey--- it's "Seeing Red." Do I really need to now...?)

(Part 3) And just a couple of observations to round off my multi chapter essay... The bathroom scene is exactly what I was referring to when I said how a Romanticist* like Spike, who thinks of love as something that is "wild, and passionate, and dangerous, it burns until it consumes" could be very dangerous when that same Romanticist doesn't have a soul, or any sort of a leash on him, to prevent him from crossing certain lines. Spike's Romanticist idea of love to win Druscilla back in season 3 was to torture her until she loved him again; Spike's Romanticist idea of love to win Buffy back...well, we also saw that idea. (*Romanticist referring to the Romanticism movement of the late 18th into the 19th century, not lovey dovey type 'romance'). Note as well that Spike at least questions his actions afterwards, and asks himself why he did or didn't go through with his very effed up notion of winning someone back. That is something we've never scene Warren do, and Warren is human with a soul. That's an interesting comparison to make, and ties into the question of what the loss of a Vampire's soul means for different Vampire's, and is the loss of a soul the same as losing, or having no sense of humanity. To me Warren is the worst, most evil 'big bad' (or big bad lite) that Buffy has had up until now. The fact that he's human; the fact that he's a complete psychopath that can attempt to r*pe and then kill a woman (now two women) and not even stop to consider if any of it was wrong. And in typical "really good at playing a villian' style, Adam Busch, who played Warren, by all reports is a really, really nice guy. He did have some issues after playing the character or Warren though, and with where the storyline ended up going. He has said in at least one interview that there was a period of sometime afterwards when he had trouble going out places, even just to the grocery store, because of the way people would look at him, or even outright verbally abuse him (because how dare 'he' kill Tara). He was an actor doing a job, and it really sucks that there are fans out there delusional enough to attack someone for what a fictional character has done in a fictional TV show.

(Part 2) Right, now let's move onto the two hulking Elephants in the room: The bathroom scene. Yeah that's hella difficult to watch, and the back story of it isn't much better. That scene was based directly off of one of the female writer's own experience (Marti Noxon), where she had a relationship end, got drunk, and basically attempted to sexually assault her ex boyfriend in the hope that if they slept together one more time they could get back together. James Marsters absolutely refused to do the scene, and tried to make the writers understand that that scene was not going to play how they thought it would (basically that the audience wouldn't just see a man trying to r*pe a woman, because Buffy had super powers). The producers ended up pulling the "You have no choice, you're under contract' card, and basically put him in the position of being forced to do that scene. James Marsters ended up collapsing during the filming, because he was so tensed up it triggered off an old theatre injury. That scene also scent him into therapy after the show. He now has a clause in any of his contracts that he will never, ever do another r*pe scene. "Your shirt", two of the most devastating words in the Buffyverse. Tara's death was massively controversial at the time, and remains so to this day. It does come under the trope of 'kill your gays', which mostly came out the Hays Code era in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, where censorship boards in America didn't allow depictions of what they called 'sexual deviancy', but if they did give it a pass then it couldn't have a happy ending and it had to be clear that the characters were being punished in the end for their 'perversity' (yeah it was a really homophobic piece of censorship BS). A lot of people were absolutely furious for Buffy apparently going the route of using the "kill your gays" trope, especially after the show went to such lengths to show how happy Tara and Willow seemed being together again. Tara's death was planned at the very start of season 6, and if Joss Whedon is to be believed he had no idea about the homophobia of the trope of "kill your gays", and has previously stated that the gender or relationship orientation wasn't even a consideration, and that is Willow and Oz had been together instead of Tara and Willow, then they would've killed Oz off instead. Until quite recently as well nobody really knew that Amber Benson herself wanted out of the show. She's only spoken about this in the past few years, and she's never revealed who the person was (apparently they did end up setting their differences aside and working things out eventually), but she has stated that at the time there was a certain cast member on the show that she was having a lot of issues with (it's rumoured to have been Alyson Hanigan, but there's no solid proof of that, and like I said Amber's never revealed any names). By the time season 6 was reaching near the end, Amber Benson was absolutely done with it and just wanted out. If they hadn't already planned to kill Tara, it's more than likely she would've asked to have been written out of the show anyway.

Ooh boy, I have so much to say about this episode. I'll try and go in order of what happened, and split this into two parts so I don't end up with a complete wall of text. (Part 1) Tara telling Willow about Spike and Buffy was a surprise, but it also kind of makes sense. If Tara's decided she wants to be with Willow again, she may have also felt like she needed to show Willow that she trusts her again, or at least is willing to work towards that. From her point of view that may have meant not keeping any secrets from her partner. Either that or it was just convenient for the writers not to have to write another big reveal scene. Totally agree with what you said about Xander and Buffy's conversation, and how even the closest of friends don't automatically have a right to know about each other's persona lives. My best, and closest friend is a guy. We were originally in a de-facto relationship for almost 6 years, but broke up and remained really good friends (he was actually one of the ring bearers at my wedding/handfasting). We've known each other for just over 30 years now. Unless a situation absolutely warrants it (for example when I was in a domestic violence situation) we don't automatically discuss, or interfere with each other's private business. If either of us is going through something we both know the other person is there if, or when we want to talk about it, but we don't go poking into each other's personal life. Minor point of contention for me, but the figurine that Buffy 'yechs' in the nerd's lair is a comic book character called Vampirella. She's one of the my absolute favourite comic characters ever, and the costume she wears was designed by a sex positive feminist called Trina Robbins (RIP), who worked on a lot of female led and female-centric/positive comics and magazines in the 60s and 70s (also the first woman artist to draw Wonder Woman in the 1980s). Vampirella being at least partly created by a feminist, and then a feminist show like Buffy deciding to 'yech' that character has always felt kind of off to me, especially when the show is so good at pop culture references in other cases. I mean I know Buffy is more icking at what the figure represents to the Trio, it still just bugs me though.

I'm going to be honest, I don't hate this episode as many others do. I appreciate the show's ballsy move to take things to an even darker level. I do hate that scene with Buffy and Spike though. It was thrown in there to show us that Spike is still soulless and evil, but it still felt out of character to me. Spike had many other opportunities to do something like that and never did. I usually just skip that scene, but I do like the rest of the episode. That ending had me shook to my core the first time I saw it. The remainder of the season is amongst my favorite of the entire show, and I know we probably wouldn't have gotten those episodes without this one, which is why I think I'm mostly okay with this episode.

Did you notice that Amber Benson got her name in the opening credits this episode? I agree with you that everyone has the right to keep their personal life private from their friends unless it directly impacts them and it's not fair for Xander to get upset at Buffy for not telling him about Spike, but going off of their conversation at Xander's place, I think Xander was also upset that Buffy confided in a soulless demon about what she was going through instead of coming to him, which I do think is fair.

Aside from a few bright spots I don't really enjoy watching this season all that much, and this episode is number one on my list of reasons why. Well, at least we're nearly done with your reactions to season 6 now and I can go back to pretending it doesn't exist soon! Thanks for yet another great reaction Juliette. Hope you have a lovely weekend.

I know this is the least important thing to talk about after this episode, but #copingmechanisms. Spike shouldn't be able to get drunk, since vampires don't have any blood flow so the alcohol couldn't be able to get to his brain.

Oof, this one and The Body are the only two episodes I'm not looking forward to when I watch Buffy reactions. I just watch the two key scenes first, like ripping off a band-aid quickly, and then try to enjoy the rest of the reaction. Also I'm always scared that reactors are gonna rage quit the show after this episode. Some viewers certainly did. This is also the episode where I need to remind myself that this is just a TV show, otherwise the pain would be too much to handle. A lot of fans think Joss Whedon went too far with this one, but many others think it's an excellent (although incredibly painful) set-up for several upcoming storylines. I think they're both right in a way. Even though this was tough to watch, I still love how emotional your reactions are and how passionate you are about this show. :-)

"Watching these characters that we love.... suffer and endure such pain and hurt and misery..." And further, one of those characters CAUSING that misery. Rough is right. I'm going to watch this after work. *That* scene traumatized James Marsters, and he had it written into his contracts going forward he'd never do anything like it in his career again. But the things he does as an actor for that job, here and later in the series – remarkable. To add a little levity - Amber Benson and Adam Busch (Tara and Warren respectively) were very close and were in a romantic relationship for years. And I say this in almost all the big death scenes - when a treasured character like Tara or Joyce leaves us, they tend to have a great day beforehand. It's easy to interpret that as "oh, happiness precedes disaster", but you can also look at it as "if they're going to go, they're going to go on a high note, happy, living their best life", and that's beautiful.