Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6, Episode 9: "Smashed"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Season 6, Episode 9: “Smashed”
Grade: 6.2

It’s been over a month since I’ve seen this episode so bear with me.

This is pretty much where the slump of Season 6 begins. I have no idea what I think of this season so far. I get why the pacing and tone are so so different. The stuff that is going on would have absolutely no meaning of it did not affect the tone of the show. But after a while it starts to drag you down as well. Even though it is the intended feeling, it’s not something I am completely huge on when it is not done right. This episode marks the beginning of some serious issues that the season has and when you combine the issues together into certain episodes it makes for an actively bad episode. While many think “Wrecked” is worse and while I think that episode has larger problems, I got pretty bored with “Smashed”. The end scene is definitely fantastic though.
Something I do really like about the episode are the parallels it draws between Buffy and Willow and the inability each of them have to connect with each other because of their isolation. They have the scene where Buffy wants to talk to Willow about what is going on with her and Spike but they really just are not connecting and are interrupted by Amy.

I don’t really care for Amy. Willow at this point is really incapable of understanding why Tara dumped her. I just really could not care less about their story in this episode. Their shenanigans at the Bronze were so trite and immature. Again maybe that’s the point but it came off as really lame.

Then we have Spike and his discovery that Buffy can be hit. This involved The Trio; lots of the Trio. Again I really was not that interested in any of this because I hate the Trio. Although I understand that it needed to happen; that Spike needed to find this out.

Besides the last scene which I really did like a lot as it had been building for ever now, I really liked the scenes with Tara and Dawn. Tara has proven to be more mature than most of the characters on this show and has grown into being own of my favorites. Her and Dawn were in the same outsider position in the show and Tara is really the only one that really understands how Dawn feels and she goes out of her way to spend time with her.

I really cannot remember a ton of the episode so that is all I have for this one.