(no subject)
Jun. 16th, 2010 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avamcleanCan someone explain to me why Hank Summers wasn’t told his daughter died at the end of season five? Yes, he missed his ex-wife’s funeral and the chance to support his children. Yes, that doesn’t paint him in the most flattering light, but the Hank Summers we meet in season one and at the beginning of season two after he spent the entire summer with his daughter was not the same character that ignored that child’s eighteenth birthday.
Parents don’t suddenly go from caring to not. I’ve always wondered if perhaps Buffy was suppose to spend the summer with her father again between seasons two and three and Joyce feared him suing for full custody if he learned of Buffy’s disappearance so she told him Buffy wanted nothing to do with him and to please allow their daughter the chance to build a life without him. Granted this is pure speculation, but it makes sense because Buffy spent time with her father during the Thanksgiving break her freshmen year of college which if he was such a horrible person and terrible father then I doubt she’d have wanted to spend time with him once she turned eighteen and wasn’t forced to by the courts.
But back to my original thought. I think someone like Hank would have been a good influence for Dawn after Buffy’s death and perhaps he would have noticed her downward spiral just as he noticed how introverted Buffy was during the summer she spent with him. He wasn’t a terrible person and Dawn growing more attached to her father would have made more sense then allowing her to continue the unhealthy attachment she had with the BuffyBot.
What? So I like Hank. :P
Parents don’t suddenly go from caring to not. I’ve always wondered if perhaps Buffy was suppose to spend the summer with her father again between seasons two and three and Joyce feared him suing for full custody if he learned of Buffy’s disappearance so she told him Buffy wanted nothing to do with him and to please allow their daughter the chance to build a life without him. Granted this is pure speculation, but it makes sense because Buffy spent time with her father during the Thanksgiving break her freshmen year of college which if he was such a horrible person and terrible father then I doubt she’d have wanted to spend time with him once she turned eighteen and wasn’t forced to by the courts.
But back to my original thought. I think someone like Hank would have been a good influence for Dawn after Buffy’s death and perhaps he would have noticed her downward spiral just as he noticed how introverted Buffy was during the summer she spent with him. He wasn’t a terrible person and Dawn growing more attached to her father would have made more sense then allowing her to continue the unhealthy attachment she had with the BuffyBot.
What? So I like Hank. :P
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 03:13 pm (UTC)I never put that togehter before! You're right -- the 'bot was supposedly good enough to fool them all, at least in their initial conversations, but they thought Hank would recognize something was hinky right off.
Though, to be fair, Buffybot's 'real world knowledge' about Buffy's friends and family never seemed to progress very far beyond the initial programming given her by Spike via Warren, and unless Spike and Joyce had talked about her ex-husband extensively during their occasional chats over a 'nice cuppa' (or however Spike phrased it), I doubt that Spike would've known anything about Buffy's relationship with Hank, so there'd be absolutely no database of the sort of childhood memories and shared family history that even an estranged father would expect to hear reflected in a rare conversation with his daughter. He might not leap to the immediate conclusion, "My elder daughter's been replaced by a robot!", but he'd be likely to think that Buffy was on drugs or mentally disturbed.
Buffy had a number for him in Spain. It's referenced in the 'Family' episode...
My recollection was that Buffy had called that number but was never able to reach him there (the notes on that episode at BuffyGuide.com say he hasn't been returning her calls, which -- if accurate -- is slightly different from my initial thought that the number she had might not have even been current, as well as from the idea that she'd been talking with him but wasn't getting much out of the experience), but I'd have to re-watch "Family" and at least the episodes surrounding Joyce's death in order to be sure.
I've seen all seven seasons over and over in re-runs, as well as in their first run and having them all on VHS and/or DVD, but I confess that I haven't actually sat down and re-watched season 5 in years, and my brain's not as young and retentive as it used to be!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-20 02:47 am (UTC)Good times!