TheObsoleteMan said:
She also wasn't raised in a hell dimension being mind@#&*ed by a twisted, bitter, vengeful old man.
I think Connor gets a bad rap. I liked the unpredictable element he brought to the show.
I can understand that perspective, but Connor affected me in the opposite way. I hated his complete unwillingness to redeem himself and move on. Here he's surrounded by people trying to bend over backwards to prove they love him, and he never accepts it. He's willing to give an ugly reality-warping hellspawn like Jasmine the benefit of the doubt as she's killing humans, but not give Fred, Gunn, Wes, Lorne, or Angel the benefit of the doubt though they kill only demons. You'd think a guy who grew up in a demon dimension defending himself against demons with the only other human, would know better. I disliked much of S4
Angel because of Connor and what I perceived to be the devolution and debasement of Cordelia.
As for Dawn on
Buffy, she never bothered me the same way because she was never extreme and willfully ignorant or spiteful. She was absolutely essential to the whole of S5, a favorite season of mine, and her erratic behavior in the middle of the season is understandable given first the revelation about her nature, and then the great loss. But for the most part she was cute and mysterious in S5.
In S6 some complain that Dawn became too much of a whiny teenager, but really it's a natural progression based on Buffy's and Willow's self-centered and self-destructive arcs for the season--as Tara moves out and Giles leaves, Dawn loses the love and attention of everyone she needs it from. At the beginning of the season she already misses her sister and mother so much that she sleeps beside the Buffybot, which is heartbreaking. But she never really gets Buffy's love and support back that season, and loses everyone else's as the season rolls on and everyone becomes self-involved and clinically depressed or disappears. Dawn is therefore the most normal and understandable character in S6, in a way. Everyone else is acting out in far worse ways, and as a mere 16-year-old Dawn doesn't know what to do about it and no one will take her seriously. She's slightly whiny and temperamental because she's a normal teenager surrounded by a family of increasingly isolated and overbearing people who wear their depressions and addictions on their sleeves and provide no comfort or support.
S6 and early S7 is full of great Dawn episodes and moments.
All the Way is a memorable Dawn-centric episode, alternatingly fun, tense, and sexy.
Him in early S7 is the best combination of humor and sex appeal since S2's
Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered and is one of the series' standouts--thanks to Dawn, who carries the episode. Her role in
Conversations with Dead People is a pivotal injection of intensity and uncertainty to glue Buffy's and Willow's scenes together, without which the episode wouldn't work--Dawn's role as important "glue" in storylines is often overlooked. The determination she shows there foreshadows her performance in
Potential, where Xander points out their similar roles as "everymen" in the story and underlines how much harder it is for them to be normal people in a world full of superheroes. For the rest of S7, Dawn is as strong and mature as anyone, and actively takes her rightful place in the final battle instead of letting Buffy send her away.
We basically see Dawn grow up fast on
Buffy, from the 15-year-old cute younger sister of S5 to the strong-willed and rightfully troubled but normal teenager of S6--and finally in S7 she's a strong, sexy, capable young woman who's out there on the front lines by choice. Dawn has a compressed but good character arc, and she matures and evolves even as others become more immature and self-centered.
Connor in contrast never evolved and grew up; it took some big Wolfram & Hart magic to keep him from going psychotic.
(The Loan Shark was pretty cool too!)
