Gah. Long over-analysis deleted after an hour spent writing it. (Silly Jason, asking a Virgo a question like this.)
Basically, in the first few seasons you had the school, which meant you had an obvious place for Our Heroes to all be and encounter something. You had very little convoluted backstory, so new viewers could hit the ground running and Our Heroes weren't spending large portions of each episode dealing with repercussions of events from previous weeks.
The past couple of seasons, you instead have, as the head writer put it, "'Party of Five' with monsters". The primary dangers are internal and based on the ever-more-convoluted relationships that've built up over the last seven years. That whole Good vs. Evil thing? Gone. I'm trying to think of a major villain in the past two seasons who couldn't have been straightened out by either a good therapist or medication, and the only thing I'm coming up with is the phallus-head fast food worker.
Phrased that way, I bet you can guess which is easier to write a spec script for. :) It's not a matter of better or worse (I have a definite opinion on which I *like* better, but that's another rant), it's that Buffy started out horror/comedy, which is difficult to write, and has become soap/action/comedy/horror.
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Re:
Date: 2002-09-13 02:32 pm (UTC)Basically, in the first few seasons you had the school, which meant you had an obvious place for Our Heroes to all be and encounter something. You had very little convoluted backstory, so new viewers could hit the ground running and Our Heroes weren't spending large portions of each episode dealing with repercussions of events from previous weeks.
The past couple of seasons, you instead have, as the head writer put it, "'Party of Five' with monsters". The primary dangers are internal and based on the ever-more-convoluted relationships that've built up over the last seven years. That whole Good vs. Evil thing? Gone. I'm trying to think of a major villain in the past two seasons who couldn't have been straightened out by either a good therapist or medication, and the only thing I'm coming up with is the phallus-head fast food worker.
Phrased that way, I bet you can guess which is easier to write a spec script for. :) It's not a matter of better or worse (I have a definite opinion on which I *like* better, but that's another rant), it's that Buffy started out horror/comedy, which is difficult to write, and has become soap/action/comedy/horror.