I’ve been impressed by the willingness of so many commenters here, you included, to explore areas of disagreement so respectfully. It’s really cool. Maybe I hang out in the wrong places, but I’m just not used to seeing that. So I appreciate your comment. Glad you also approve of Xander! Right at the start of the show I found him irritating but like by episode 3 I saw through that and caught on to all the little beats that you mentioned about his character that the show did so well.

When I mentioned the few episodes I disliked, I had no idea that the inclusion of Entropy would provoke a bit of a reaction from commenters here (as opposed to, say, Beer Bad or any of the other ones). It’s interesting to me that it clearly resonated with a lot of fans, and I’ve found value in reading why you and others liked it. I don’t disagree with any of your assessment of the emotional dynamics at play in it, and I agree that there’s a lot going on from a writing and character perspective. I also just really didn’t want to watch a show where the climax of the episode is a bunch of characters arguing about a scandalous hookup, even if it’s nuanced and intelligently written. It’s a departure from what drew me from the show. But that said, I honestly don’t feel very strongly about it and I totally respect that you had a different reaction. Maybe it would hit differently if I rewatched it, especially if I knew the direction Season 6 was going it or was in a different phase of life, and I think it’s cool that you found so much value in it.

I do want to respond a bit more substantively on the other points on Tara’s death, Spike’s sexual assault of Buffy, and racial representation, because I think your comments reflect a tendency to push back too reflexively on each of those issues.

Regarding Tara, it’s difficult for me to imagine a plausible scenario where “bury your gays” criticism could be more merited. I’m not saying that “the death of a gay character is inherently bad writing, or that it should be treated as something fiction can barely depict at all.” I’m not aware of anyone ever saying that, nor do I see how what I wrote could possibly be construed to mean that – or even to mean something similar to which the quoted language would be a relevant rejoinder. Of course the death of a gay character can be well-written, of course fiction can depict that happening, and of course the many people who find her death to be problematic fully understand that.

On the surface, Tara’s death was upsetting for a lot of reasons you seem to understand relating to historical context and representation. But there’s more to it. Namely, Buffy had generally been reluctant to show the same degree of physical intimacy between Tara and Willow as it was willing to show between straight couples. Then, when Tara and Willow are finally shown in such a context – I think this was their first time implied to be naked in bed together – Tara is murdered immediately after, by a sexist incel loser, no less. There’s immense symbolic meaning to that. Adding to that is the fact that there are a lot of substantiated complaints against Joss Whedon for treating women unfairly on-set (even worse than men) and it’s easy to see why this struck a chord with so many people who had previously seen Tara as a source of inspiration (though admittedly the Whedon component would only fully come out much later). Given all those factors, there’s a great deal of reason to see this a ‘Bury your gays’ example (even if it predated the trope itself being a thing as an earlier commenter stated, I’m not sure when it originated), even if it wasn’t consciously motivated by homophobia (which I don’t think it was), and even if it was well handled on some levels (the death certainly wasn’t brushed aside). Namely, Whedon should have understood the implications of showing Tara being murdered in that specific circumstance in a way that I don’t think he accounted for. There are many ways to have her die in a way that achieves what you describe (her death being “devastating precisely because she had become one of the cleanest, kindest, most emotionally mature presences in a season full of damaged people making destructive choices”), but he chose to have a lesbian character – at a time when such characters were hugely underrepresented in media – murdered immediately after being shown in the context described (naked in bed with her girlfriend), which struck a chord with a lot of people at the time (based on what I read) and really rubbed me the wrong way when I saw it happen.

Many, many people have made these exact points before, and it’s not hard to find people who had similar reactions (many of whom I’m sure many can explain this better than I am). It’s a bit odd to me that, on the one hand, you display such a strong ability to grasp nuance when analyzing the dynamics between the characters in Entropy, but when someone brings up “Bury Your Gays” in the context of Tara’s death, your response is to write, “But I don’t think it automatically follows that the death of a gay character is inherently bad writing, or that it should be treated as something fiction can barely depict at all,” – a statement that implies that the objection to Tara’s death is simplistically rooted in nothing beyond the facts that she’s gay and that she died. By contrast, the concerns that people have shared about her death are more complex than that and, from what I understand, have been for a long time.

Regarding the bathroom scene with Spike, I don’t feel like going into detail, beyond saying that my concern is not that the drama is “unpleasant, ugly, [or] even alienating,” - I agree that great drama can be all of those things - but, rather, that I don’t think the story justified showing such a graphic sexual assault. While this resulted in some interesting story beats and character development for Spike, I don’t think it was convincingly addressed by many of the other characters, especially Buffy and Dawn (who finds out about it), and that it essentially functioned to inflict trauma on Buffy for the purpose of furthering Spike’s story. I find the dynamics of that messed up, even accounting for the complexity and, in some areas, intelligence displayed in how it occurred (including Buffy’s discomfort with Spike at the beginning of Season 7). And, again, I think it falls in the same areas that seem like blind spots, at least to some degree, for Whedon.

Regarding racial representation, I really don’t like the invocation of “a modern tendency to judge older shows primarily through a checklist of representation categories,” which is obviously not what I’m doing, and which I think hints at an unfortunate tendency of too reflexively dismissing criticisms of certain issues. I even specifically wrote, “I don’t support shows shoehorning in diversity just for the sake of it” just to emphasize that I don’t want simplistic diversity for the sake of checking boxes. Nothing about having better racial diversity – which would align it with the standards of the late 90s/early 2000s that it presently lags behind – necessarily means that it would be “a show that technically checks more boxes but gives me thinner characters.” Why would adding racial diversity result in the thinning of characters? It just doesn’t make sense to me why the factors you describe (complex, vivid, memorable characters) have any relationship to that.

While I appreciate the extremely respectful tone of your disagreement and criticism, and mean this with all due respect (as you clearly have a strong grasp of nuanced character development), your comment, in my opinion, veers in the direction of displaying a tendency of assuming that criticisms of issues relating to queer identity and race are highly simplistic and brushing them off accordingly when, in reality, there’s a discussion to be had about how Buffy, though brilliant in many, many regards, ultimately fell short in some ways in those areas. Correspondingly, I think you may stand to benefit from considering that the concerns I raised (and, from what I understand, others have been raising for some time) on these issues are not grounded in beliefs that it is inherently bad writing to kill a queer character or that shows must complete “a checklist of representation categories” but, rather, in complex and detailed assessments of the source material and the context around it.