You know what Buffy needs? Pillow fights!

Now that the Lesbian Adventures of Buffy is done, we can all look back on it and reflect with the perspective only time can allow. And, honestly, it's only okay. The highs of Giant Dawn fighting Mecha-Dawn in the streets of Japan, coupled with the adventures of Racist Dracula and Xander (a buddy comic just waiting to happen), are gold. Then, they throw in Lesbian Buffy.

Back in college, my girlfriend had a group of friends with whom she was very close. Lady friends, to boot. And she has told me that, not only did NO lesbiany activities take place, but that they also NEVER HAD PILLOW FIGHTS IN TEDDIES! I was shocked. Because pop culture would lead us to believe that all college-age girls "experiment" and have pillow fights and so forth. It's the "Girls Gone Wild"-ing of America, if you will.

Which leads me to my problem with this arc of Buffy: Lesbian Buffy. Joss Whedon is an excellent writer, so when he wrote Willow's discovery of her lesbian-ness in the show, it was a careful progression rife with subtext involving her discovery of magic, etc. When he revealed that one of the slayers had the hots for Buffy in the comic, then, he had had Buffy (now roughly 27) handle it with maturity. Then came Drew Goddard.

For those who watched the show, Drew Goddard was part of the last two seasons of the show where they traded sub-text for super-text and drove home metaphors with the subtlety of an Abram tank. Or the subtlety of the metaphor (simile?) I just used. Plus, he wrote Cloverfield, a good movie but not known for its compelling character development. And he brought these skills to Buffy Season 8 and ran roughshod over Buffy and her friends and the hard work good writers like Joss Whedon and Brian K. Vaughan had done.

So why is Lesbian Buffy so bad? Goddard, rather than have Buffy act like a mature woman who is leading a batallion of bad-ass super-heroines instead has her act like a fifteen-year-old boys fantasy of what Buffy might do in his dreams: she falls into bed with a hot, asian girl. Then, they go back and forth about how Buffy's SO not into chicks. Then they talk about how awkward it made them feel afterwards. Then Buffy and Satsuo both agree Buffy's not into chicks (in case you forgot). Then they have sex again because they're bored. It's all so casual, like this is what girls do; get two hot women alone with a bottle of wine and of course they are going to explore each other's bodies and experiment. You know, if they're in a Cinemax movie.

Now, again, I am not a woman, but I've asked these questions enough times to know the answer. Do women just randomly fool around with lesbians because they're bored or flattered? "No, not really," says Emily. "Maybe in porn or something." This is by no means definitive. There have been journal articles written that suggest that women today are likely to find women attractive, an interesting side effect to the phenomenon described in "Reviving Ophelia" that first drew the lines between advertising and poor self-image (and suicide, bulimia, anorexia, and other terrible things) in teens and young adults. But there is a pretty big, thick line between finding Angelina Jolie attractive (consistently listed as the woman women would "be bi with") and having hot, sober, sweaty, animal, lesbian action with another woman. Unless a Girls Gone Wild cameraman is offering you a hat. Then all bets are off.