Well, why do you think that the Watcher's Council insisted that the Slayer keep her identity secret?

Take Billy Fordam and multiply by, say, 50,000.

This. Owen. Joyce. Having to live somewhere. CNN. Stalkers. Madonna having to rent entire floors of hotels when she is in town. Homeland Security and George W. Bush.

Comics and speculative fiction are filled with good and vast explanations for keeping a secret identity secret. I'm not saying that's the only way it could be, just that there are plenty of other and interesting explanations. Also, Buffy as Madonna might be an interesting show (and might not) but it wasn't the one we were watching from WTTH.

Patriarchy=Eb1L, got that anvil, but I just think that the Helpless-only focus on the Council is a limited take on secret identity and other Watcher-related issues and it gets waved around alot. Sorry, didn't mean to pick on you, that's just one of my interpretation hot buttons.

Yeah, I don't buy Giles and Wesley as the only good things the Council has ever produced in several thousand years. I'm sure Quentin Travers is *far* from their only evil malnipulative bastard, but it still seems likely they did quite a bit of good in their way. And regarding the Kendra Slayer method, frankly, there were bound to be plenty of Slayers for whom that would've been a blessing.

I don't think the council should be viewed as good or bad. It's purpose was good. Some of its methods were good, some were bad. Some watchers were good. Some were bad. I think the Council enjoyed wielding the power the secret-identity-issue gave it over the slayer. I don't think that power was its only motive for keeping the slayer's identity a secret, or even the biggest one. I think was a motive, though.

Okay, Cindy is me, but much clearer.

I'm rather more of an end = means type of person, I think, and the Council's means as we saw them absolutely blew.

Yes, I realize that's sort of like trying to judge all English bureaucrats by the yardstick of James Bond, but at the very least the Council desperately needed a really good publicist who could lie them out of the stupid blunders they committed.

I don't have a problem with the concept of a Watchers' Council; clearly they gathered and preserved a lot of resource that were useful in the fray; but they desperately needed things like an honor code and some modern management techniques if they had any intention of surviving their proteges. Which, they didn't.

I find Charisma Carpenter to be that insanely too-pretty-to-be-human type of pretty

I was just coming on to post about this very thing, because I saw the Charisma Carpenter episode of Baywatch. Way too hot to be a ninth grader. Other than that, she did a pretty good job at playing a high schooler opposite Jeremy Jackson in 1994, when he was 14 and she was 24.

There's a lot of Buffy castmembers on TV lately. My Tivo showed me Alyson Hannigan in My Stepmother is an Alien, Outside the City Limits, Hayley Wagner, Star, and an episode of Roseanne that she was in for about ten seconds, all within two weeks.

Okay, FX Halloween Buffy Marathon lineup (it starts at 7 Eastern):
Teacher's Pet
The Pack
Inca Mummy Girl
Halloween
I Only Have Eyes for You
Go Fish
Dead Man's Party
The Zeppo
Fear, Itself
Buffy vs. Dracula
All the Way

I think the Council enjoyed wielding the power the secret-identity-issue gave it over the slayer. I don't think that power was its only motive for keeping the slayer's identity a secret, or even the biggest one. I think was a motive, though.

exactly.

I think was a motive, though.

Without the Slayer, they're just watching Masterpiece Theater.

If they knew about the Angelus-in-reading-glasses-as-host option, they might have opted for it.