YMMV / Buffy The Vampire Slayer S 7 E 19 Empty Places

• Broken Base: The infamous mutiny — who was in the right? Was it justified or not?
• Fanon Discontinuity: You'll find very few fans who agree with the mutiny.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Kennedy starts warming to Faith of all people over Anya's teaching techniques. Faith will end up working for her in the comics. Dawn's concern for Xander and glomping onto him when he came back from the hospital.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Everyone, yes everyone, cheers when Rona is shut up by Dawn when the former attempts a tacky "Ding dong the witch is dead" after Buffy's been kicked out. Whatever you think of the rest of the episode, you'll enjoy that.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Where to even start on the mutiny? Nearly everyone present (except Faith) comes off as an idiot at best and an outright hypocrite at worst.
  • Given Willow's actions the previous season, she's really not one to question anybody's judgement.
  • Anya's speech telling Buffy that she didn't earn her abilities or right to lead is nonsense, as this video proves.
  It never made much sense to me, because becoming the slayer is not something you earn. It is just something thrust upon you. Buffy never wanted it, never asked for it, but she damn well spent the next seven years after she had been called proving that she deserved to be in that leadership role. If Anya had said the speech in season 1, fair enough Buffy probably hadn't earned it by that point. But in the context of the seven years leading up to it; she died twice, killed the love of her life, sacrificed herself for the world and saved it numerous times. She had stopped everything that had ever come up against her and ultimately spent her life feeling alone because she could never have the normal life she wanted to. Everyone around her had been tempted by the dark side, Willow, Giles, Faith and Anya. Yet Buffy never lost her humanity, and always forgave her friends who did. Being the slayer is not lucky, yeah you get slayer strength, but the other aspects you lose because of that just do not measure up, as Anya had said earlier in the season, "Short, brutal death" is how she described the life of a slayer. Tell us Anya, how does that make someone luckier than you? They spend an entire season looking to her to lead, leaning on her and pressuring her to make all the decisions, Giles even insisted she became a general, but the minute she does and it does not go exactly how they wanted, they turn on her. tut tut. Buffy Summers you deserve better than that.
  • Dawn kicks Buffy out of her own house - forgetting that Buffy's not only her sister but her legal guardian and Dawn's a minor.
  • Giles siding against her told her to start acting like a general yet sides against her when things don't go their way. Even if they're still mad at each other, his betrayal is especially petty. Wood also told her focus on the mission, yet sides against her.
  • Prior to this when Buffy chews Faith out for taking everyone to the Bronze and nearly getting them killed, Faith rubs the defeat at the vineyard in her face. Thing is, that was a planned attack that went wrong, whereas this was a wanted fugitive taking a bunch of young girls to a nightclub and being surprised that the cops showed up.
  • The Potentials (Kennedy and Rona especially) come off as whiny, selfish, ungrateful cowards who balk when the going gets tough.

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