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   alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer      Show about girl power, written by a dude      152,792 messages   

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   Message 152,119 of 152,792   
   David to All   
   12 Casting Decisions That Hurt Buffy The   
   12 Aug 18 07:32:27   
   
   From: daviderl31@yahoo.com   
      
   https://screenrant.com/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-casting-decisions-good-bad/   
      
           23 HURT: MARC BLUCAS AS RILEY   
   It’s a worn cliché in Buffy fandom circles to despise Riley Finn. As   
   Buffy’s   
   college guy beaux, he’s as unthreatening and vanilla as it gets. He’s   
   almost   
   an anti-Whedon character. In a weird way, this makes him an automatically   
   compelling foil for Buffy and her wacky pals.   
      
   However, actor Marc Blucas didn’t quite have the chemistry necessary for him   
   to meld or rub up against Buffy and the Scoobies. Certainly, his romantic   
   scenes with Buffy were often a chore to sit through, which, despite the   
   intentional normality of the character, could not have been the writers’   
   intent, as they experimented with giving him some edges in season 5.   
      
      
           21 HURT: DAVID BOREANAZ AS ANGEL   
   This one’s controversial. David Boreanaz as Angel in his own spin-off   
   series, Angel, grew extremely comfortable within the role of the tortured   
   vampire with a soul.  His introversion and tendency to brood was both   
   charming and slightly sad by that time and his comedic chops were razor   
   sharp.   
      
     He was a fine lead in all five seasons of that show.  However, in the   
   early seasons of Buffy, Boreanaz was exceptionally wooden and monotone.  One   
   could rationalize this away as him just playing Angel as written. However,   
   as a romantic interest, he often seemed to lack the passion and intensity   
   that Sarah Michelle Gellar was bringing to the table.   
      
      
           19 HURT: IYARI LIMON AS KENNEDY   
     Oy, Kennedy. Buffy season 7 isn’t usually regarded as the show at its   
   best, and one of the largely agreed upon problems was the addition of the   
   Potential Slayers. While thematically necessary, and even inspired, the   
   execution left much to be desired.   
      Kennedy, the Potential who was bratty, shallow, and overly aggressive –   
   and an unworthy partner for Willow – largely became the punching bag for   
   fans expressing their disappointment with the final season – perhaps   
   undeservedly so, perhaps not.  However, it’s hard to deny that Iyari Limon   
   brings little to the role and doesn’t do much to balance out Kennedy’s   
   negative character traits.   
     As she follows arguably the show’s purest love story – Willow and   
   Tara’s –   
   her faults rankle all the more.   
      
      
       17 HURT: BIANCA LAWSON AS KENDRA   
      Although she was a minor character who only appeared in a few episodes,   
   Kendra the Vampire Slayer might be the most miscast character in all of   
   Buffy. On paper, Kendra is fine – she’s a serviceable if not terribly   
   compelling contrast to Buffy’s rebellious and independent ways.   
     However, the miscasting is down to the last minute decision to grant the   
   character a Jamaican accent. Lawson, an LA native, struggled mightily to   
   deliver her lines with a stilted accent.  Whether the dialect was   
   technically correct or not, it didn’t feel right. It was as if Kendra   
   resided in the uncanny valley in every scene. It was certainly for the best   
   that the character was eliminated in favor of Faith.   
      
      
           15 HURT: GEORGE HERTZBERG AS ADAM   
      Adam was one of the few Buffy Big Bads who never really got his due. As a   
   meld  of machine, man, and demon, his fractured identity and inherent   
   loneliness was ripe for some deep exploration. Unfortunately, that didn’t   
   come to be. Adam was just kind of a monotonous bore brought in at the   
   season’s   
   third act.   
      His plan to raise an army of demons was similarly generic and blah.George   
   Hertzberg, who was slathered under layers of unconvincing prosthetics and   
   audio filters, was given little room to imbue Adam with any personality.   
   Simply put, Hertzberg didn’t quite have the screen presence to compensate   
   for Adam’s shortcomings.   
       [they should have kept Prof Walsh as the season's Big Bad]   
      
      
           13 HURT: BAILEY CHASE AS GRAHAM   
      How best to describe Graham, Riley’s blander than thou Initiative chum?   
   The best way would be “military guy.” Graham was good at scowling and   
   seeming serious, but not much else. It can be supposed that he was there to   
   just make Riley seem charismatic by contrast. Bailey Chase’s stiff, bland   
   performance as Graham contributed to the main problem with the Initiative:   
   it just wasn’t very interesting.   
     Sure, it was plain to see that the show didn’t have the budget to support   
   the rather ambitious idea of a government sponsored covert demon hunting   
   squad, but it could’ve been a worthwhile addition to Buffy if it wasn’t   
   populated by Grahams.   
      
      
           11 HURT: INDIGO AS RONA   
      The Potentials were such a lacklustre addition that it’s necessary to   
   talk about two of them on this list. Kennedy had more opportunities to   
   grace, being given more story importance and all, but Rona is not to be   
   forgotten.  Where Kennedy was confrontational and hostile, Rona was whiny   
   and a drag.  Indigo played Rona with this permanent, unsympathetic   
   expression of “I’m just about fed up, here” – and the development and   
   performance went about as far as that.   
      The nail in her character’s coffin was when, during one of the series’   
   more infuriating scenes, the group kicks Buffy out of her own house and she   
   sneers “Ding dong, the witch is dead.”   
      
      
           9 HURT: CHARLIE WEBER AS BEN   
     As Ben, the human half of the malicious god Glorificus, Charlie Weber had   
   to get us invested in his tragedy – he was born only to be used and then   
   discarded when Glory finds her way back to her hell dimension.   
     Clare Kramer as Glory got all the deliciously fun and evil moments to   
   play, but Weber had to do some serious heavy lifting to make Glory/Ben a   
   little more complex and human. Unfortunately, Weber never really fleshed out   
   Ben. We knew he was a nice enough guy, and that he was a doctor, but that   
   was it. When his life was claimed by Giles, it should’ve hit harder.   
      
      
           7 HURT: JASON BEHR AS FORD   
      Ford, Buffy’s old friend from way back, was a one-off character. However   
   he was an important one. In fact, prior to Angel’s turn, he was positioned   
   as the sympathetic bad guy. With cancer slowly eating away at his insides,   
   he formulated a plan to get bitten by a vampire, thereby curing himself.   
   “Lie to Me”, although important for Buffy’s character growth, is   
   definitely   
   one of the less memorable Joss Whedon written and directed Buffy episodes.   
      Some of this can be attributed to Jason Behr’s portrayal of Ford. It’s   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)   

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