Much of the reason I came to dislike Kennedy (despite *really* liking her when she first showed up) was the air of entitlement she seemed to wear so unapologetically. While they did explain - too late, IMO, to mitigate the damage already done - that she came off as a brat because she was a rich girl who grew up used to getting her way, the fact that she seemed to be "sleeping her way to the top" didn't do my feelings about her any favours. Buried in all this, however, was a point I'm willing to concede, which is that with most of the other Potentials completely new to the concept, Kennedy, at least, seemed to have received at least a degree of training by her Watcher and had a greater familiarity with techniques and weaponry than the others.

So she was more advanced than the other Potentials and could speak with *some* authority on fighting and such. But I can't imagine her being tapped to *train* the others, however, and certainly not in any position to call them maggots and look down her nose at them. Giles and Buffy - and possibly even Spike - should have been the ones doing all the training. But with Giles frequently out of town rounding up new girls (and shunted aside on an ill-executed "Ooh, is he The First?!" tangent), he didn't have much opportunity to do that. Buffy was too busy giving her unmotivational 'motivational speeches' and worrying about Spike to be much more hands-on than she was, and Spike was too mired in his soul-having, chip-fritzing, being-a-vampire to be entrusted with solo training of the Potentials. Actually, once Robin was brought into Slayer Central, he'd have made a good choice to help train them, but I'm getting waaaay off-topic... Basically, the new girl was *way* too big for her britches.

I did hope to see Kennedy and Willow get together in the beginning because I liked Kennedy's sassy boldness. But the sassy turned into flat-out attitude in short order and left me unimpressed. Measured against Oz and Tara, Kennedy had some damn huge shoes to fill, and I don't think the writing allowed her to do that. Perhaps if the writing had let the W/K relationship build more gradually, or if Kennedy herself hadn't been so frequently bossy and contrary - or outright insensitive to Willow's oft-repeated fears and pain about what she'd so recently been through...

Actually, I think that's a lot of what it boils down to for me: her complete indifference to Willow's concerns. Personally, I got tired of Red's magick-waffling a long way back, but she did have some serious issues to deal with here. Having recently murdered a man by FLAYING HIM ALIVE, after which she rounded off the attempted murder of every single one of her friends by very nearly destroying the entire frigging planet, Willow had every right to be concerned about her powers. But every time she tried to talk to Kennedy about it, all Kennedy could muster was a hearty "Pfft, whatever." Sure, she said - very late in the season - that she'd be Willow's kite string, tether, whatever. But coming on the heels of a season full of not so much giving a damn about the biggest issue in Willow's life, the sudden tenderness just didn't work for me.

If they'd built a more stable foundation to bring the two of them together, I could possibly see them staying together past the end of the series. But considering that Willow and Kennedy really didn't have anything in common, I can't help but think that Kennedy was more of a rebound and that, with her epiphany and breakthrough in 'Chosen', Willow has some growing and exploring and accepting of herself to do that Kennedy may not be able to understand and support her through.

[ back ]