Into every generation, a Dethroning Moment of Suck is born.
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- Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
- No Real Life examples, including Reality Television and Executive Meddling. That is just asking for trouble.
- No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.
- "Seeing Red".
- Indigo: The Attempted Rape. Buffy lay there and cried and begged like a weak little Muggle victim, when she is the goddamn Slayer and could have put him through every wall in the house and beaten him to a pulp... and has done so before!
- emeriin: And in the very next episode, she takes her little sister to her attempted rapist's crypt and actually seems upset when she asks Clem when he'll be back. What did you do to my awesome Buffy?!
- Peteman: Tara's death by an impossible shot was when Joss proved he could not resist cheap death for drama. And it didn't need to be. She could have been at the window and I wouldn't be complaining so much.
- Indigo: The Attempted Rape. Buffy lay there and cried and begged like a weak little Muggle victim, when she is the goddamn Slayer and could have put him through every wall in the house and beaten him to a pulp... and has done so before!
- jakelikescheddar: Buffy's "Everyone-sucks-but-me" speech in "Get It Done", including mocking a girl as "a weak idiot" - after she killed herself.
- tsstevens: Of all the things she's done this is by far the worst. I was able to get over Angelus, Faith, even Dark Willow, hard as it was. It took a lot for me to like Buffy again after this. Do I feel any sympathy for her for the rest of season seven? No, none whatsoever. To give an idea of how bad this is the episode begins with Kennedy at her utter worst, not even the added line in Anywhere But Here made her as vile. Twenty minutes later I for one was hoping one of if not the most hated characters on television took over. When your main character is that bad you did something wrong...you did something very very wrong.
- Larkmarn: Yeah, this was it for me. There had been several hiccups through the show (I hated Faith, Dark Willow and the whole magic = drugs was awful), but Season 7 Buffy was awful, and this was the epitome of it.
- bjchit: Since a few of them already have been mentioned what I think are the show's low points, I'll say when Xander left Anya at the altar in "Hell's Bells". He promised he was marrying her not because he thought the world was going to end in season 5, leaves her because he saw a falsified vision from a demon that wanted revenge on Anya. And his excuse that he doesn't want to be like his alcoholic parents doesn't work—he already isn't anything like them.
- NCZ: Completely seconded. Even worse because he knew that the demon was messing with him and that their marriage didn't have to end up that way. That episode was depressing as all hell, and not in a good way like "The Body". It was just painful to watch.
- Dagobitus: Xander dumps Anya. That is when I stopped believing in the characters and the story and realized that the show was a non-stop Author Tract. Everything had already gone to Hell and the last remaining tad of joy was Xander/Anya and then Joss even Jossed that.
- The_Void: The whole of "Wrecked" is just one big Dethroning Episode of Suck, but the worst would probably have to be the inexplicable scene where Amy steals sage from Buffy's house. It pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with the Anvilicious "Magic Drugs" storyline.
- Wrybread: The death of Xander's love interest Renee in the Season 8 Buffy comic book (I'm putting it here rather than in the Comics folder since it's the canonical continuation of the TV series). A lazy, obvious plot development that served no purpose other than to kill off an interesting new character and relationship in order to induce cheap angst and set up the Squicky Xander-Dawn relationship. We get it, Joss, sometimes someone you've just fallen in love with dies and it's sad. And apparently if you date someone who wasn't in the TV series it's all the more likely since they're expendable. Now find a new gimmick.
- PerfectlyIdiomatic I found it very hard to care about stopping Willow in "Villains". She wants to kill an unrepentant murderer and rapist? OK. Let her. And then Buffy says how the human world has laws for dealing with this, except Warren's shown himself far beyond the human world, building jet packs and such and escaping detection for an awfully long time. Just let Willow flay the sod.
- RAZ: The second Spike became romantically obsessed with Buffy at the end of "Out Of My Mind". As a result he then spent the rest of season 5 stalking her and stealing her clothes and photos to smell/molest/likely do other disgusting things with them which was excruciatingly painful with so many doses of squick that I actually started visibly wincing whenever he started to pop up. The fact that, "The Body" aside, he was shoehorned into every episode just to force in more of these terrible moments quickly helped transform the fifth season into one giant moment of suck for me, which wasn't helped much thanks to a plethora of ridiculous storylines that season incorporated like alien demons from outer space and Riley's character exit that turned him into the equivalent of a junkie with the whole vampire-bite obsession (see? The series did bad "supernatural related-thing = drug addition" storylines even before season 6!). My enjoyment of the series would never really be the same as it was prior to when this turn came about.
- abomb30: The episode "Pangs". All of that horseshit with the Indian spirit. Willow spends the entire episode ranting about how the spirit is justified because of horribly they were treated by the settlers. Because obviously in reality the Natives were completely innocent and the settlers were an entirely guilty party. And because the (cartoonishly evil) actions of some people hundreds of years ago justifies murder. Jane Espenson fails history forever. And ever. And ever. The whole episode was bullshit.
- ThatIrishReader: I consider "Once More, With Feeling" to not only be one of the greatest Buffy episodes but also one of the greatest TV episodes of all time. It has catchy songs and a perfect mix of everything Buffy likes to deliver all wrapped up neatly in one little episode. However, near the end something happens that infuriates me to no end, mainly the reveal of who summoned Sweet, the magical demon making everyone sing and dance. The episode leads us to believe that it is Dawn but then it's eventually confessed to have been done by Xander. I can not even begin to describe how wrong this is. There are many reasons as to why this is wrong, such as the fact there is zero build-up to it (during the episode Xander is seen acting frantic as he hopes Giles can find an answer), it completely goes against the previous Character Development he got in episodes where Xander abuses magic but at the end learns to not do it and the part that tops it all off is the fact no one, not a single person criticizes him about it. Keep in mind that summoning Sweet ended with numerous deaths of people in Sunnydale and no one seems to give Xander a slap on the wrist. This is both a dethroning moment for the episode and also for Xander.
- BookQ36 Xander's speech to Buffy in "Into The Woods" about how Riley is a once in a lifetime guy and she has been wrong to treat him like the 'rebound guy'. The fact is that Riley is a cheating-addict-liar whose own insecurities and lack of job/interests other than Buffy led to their relationship crumbling. They were ok in season four, when he had other friends, and his job teaching and *superpowers*, but once all of that was stripped away and Buffy's mom got sick, he just started being a whiny self-centered douchebag. "Ok, I get that your mom might be dying and you have to take care of her and your sister, but why don't you make time for *me* anymore? I guess I'll sneak around getting bit by vamps so I'll feel *needed*." Another problem was him still wanting to 'be the big man' and take care of Buffy, which just shows how much he really doesn't understand her. She loved him, but he wasn't the only thing in her life, but she was the only thing in his. That, to me, is the crux of why they were doomed.
- Truffle: Buffy and Angel are blatantly shipped as the show's OTP, and we are led to believe that Angel is Buffy's one true love. What makes this a DMOS is the reveal that Buffy was fifteen when Angel first saw her, she was sixteen when they first met, and seventeen when they first had sex. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but the image of a centuries-old vamp spying on a pigtailed teen eating a lollipop is less romantic and more Squick. The fact that we're supposed to root for them makes it even more creepy.
- Tiggerific: Riley's character, full stop. Angel had his moments of being a bad boyfriend (see above) but he at least had the chance to develop into an interesting (and even somewhat likable) character on his own show. Riley? He was as bland as the colour beige and was about as exciting as watching paint dry, not to mention he shared no chemistry whatsoever with Buffy outside of always telling everyone how amazing she is. The writers tried to make him "not Angel" and ironically made him into a cleaned up, pulse-having, idealized version of Angel. Demon hunter? Check. Physically outsizes Buffy to an awkward degree, complete with a giant wall of shoulder? Check. Bland and limited facial expressions/emotional range? Check. Goes all love-puppy for a girl he really doesn't know? Check. Throws over his beloved mentor (Darla and Walsh) for her? Check. Leaves to go play hero somewhere else and makes Buffy feel like it’s her fault? Check. Falls for the pretty brunette (with her own demon hunter creds) he works with (Cordy and Sam) in his new location? Check. And whenever the writers tried to make him interesting he just came off as an overly-jealous, whiny jerk. He accused Buffy of sleeping with Angel (thus releasing Angelus and endangering her loved ones) and excused it as "being in love with her so much he couldn't see straight", almost got himself killed in "Out of My Mind" just because he wanted to be strong like Buffy, ran for Jerk Boyfriend of the Year in "Into the Woods" (shown above), staked Spike with a plastic stake which suggests torture, and was a judgmental liar who didn't communicate and only cared about his own opinions in "As You Were". And he was supposed to be the nice guy on the show.
- dbdude01: The end of "Normal Again" suggests that the entire show is taking place in the mind of a delusional but otherwise normal Buffy, living in a normal world. Let's start with the fact that Buffy reveals for the first time that when she first became a slayer she told her parents and they had her committed. Really? Because when Joyce first saw Buffy kill a vampire, Buffy said "Mom. I'm a vampire slayer" not "See, I told you I was a vampire slayer" Joyce acted like this was a completely new revelation. Major Ass Pull. Even if you don't think all-a-dream stories aren't a giant middle finger to the audience, you shouldn't even try it on a show with a spin-off. If the entire series is just a dream, that would mean that Angel and his team are also figments of Buffy's imagination, and their adventures are all happening in her head, even though she isn't there and isn't remotely aware of them. At least when they tried it on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, they had the decency to go back and confirm that the "normal" world was the hallucination brought on by the Big Bad.
- emcats: "As You Were". As far as I'm concerned, there's no episode in the entire show as poorly written as this one. It's not even that the content itself is the most offensive, it's just INSANELY full of plot holes and things that make no sense, all in the seeming effort to wank of Riley and retcon what a jerk he was. First of all, Sam claims it took Riley a year to get over Buffy, and yet just barely over a year since he left he's married? Secondly, his and Sam's story about the Suvolte demon makes no sense. Supposedly they've been tracking this demon since South America... okay, but if the demon just got to Sunnydale, how has someone already built a black market around its' eggs? How would this dealer know where the eggs are? If the dealer stole the eggs, a) how do Sam and Riley even know that and b) how would tracking the demon back to its nest even help? Why waste time trying to track to what would be an empty nest? The tracking idea is at odds with the black market idea. Spike is the one behind it? Spike? The guy who lives in a graveyard, cheats at kitten poker and had to scavenge for his furniture at a junkyard? He's helming an international demon egg selling ring? Even if we assume he's doing so to get money for Buffy, how is he simultaneously smart enough for that but too stupid to know how to maintain the eggs? And are we SERIOUSLY going to ignore the fact that Riley cheated on Buffy, gave her an ultimatum to forgive him, then left without a word? Are we seriously going to ignore all that horribleness and frame him like "the one that got away"? And then in the next episode we forget about ALL of this, nothing is ever better explained or contextualized, so presumably, we were supposed to take all that nonsense at face value? The entire episode is beyond broken on every single level, it's wild to me that such a weak script ever got further than the planning stages.
