Commenter Lookup *Caution* Unless you see an ADMIN tag, the comments below may not all belong to the same person! "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" | View Comments2 | PaulaDec 10, 2010 Bullying is a good theme that doesn't get such great treatment in this episode... OoMOoS is not a total miss, but Marcie turning out to be a lunatic in the end was, while fairly unexpected, ultimately just uninteresting. I was bullied pretty horribly through several years at school by girls very much like Cordelia, and I'm not likely to ever forget it or forgive certain people, much as I'd like to (not that I want to take revenge on them either; I just don't want to ever see them or talk to them again). Which I guess is the main reason why I cannot tolerate Cordelia at all and just don't care how lonely and misunderstood she may feel. IMO there's no justification for being such a cruel bitch, and acting like one makes you one. "Once More, with Feeling" | View Comments3 | PaulaDec 7, 2010 Iris, I meant they kiss here in Once More, With Feeling in the exact same place where they first met back then (in the alley behind the Bronze). Sorry about the unclear phrasing, English is not my first language. :-) "Once More, with Feeling" | View Comments4 | PaulaDec 7, 2010 ...and not counting Something Blue either. :-) Sheesh, how many pre-S6 Spuffy kisses am I forgetting here?! "Once More, with Feeling" | View Comments5 | PaulaDec 7, 2010 Feeling like a complete moron here for not realizing before that Buffy and Spike first kissed (not counting Intervention, obviously) right where they first met, back in School Hard... "The Puppet Show" | View Comments6 | PaulaDec 3, 2010 (Well, unless you count Jenny Calendar and the Amazing Technopagans, but I for one don't really.) "The Puppet Show" | View Comments7 | PaulaDec 3, 2010 Thinking a little bit further, I figure there's one not-totally-inconsequential aspect in this episode, although it has perhaps more to do with AtS than BtVS. Meaning, isn't this the first episode where it came up that there are such things as demon hunters out there, and that therefore the Slayer and the Watchers' Council aren't the only people fighting supernatural evil in Buffyverse? "The Puppet Show" | View Comments8 | PaulaDec 3, 2010 I somehow feel the need to jump in this episode's defence, as I feel it's one of the most watchable "normal" S1 episodes as a whole, but I do get your points, Mike. Whedon & co. should feel flattered that the fans' standards for a good Whedon show episode are as high as they've come to be. Yes, pretty inconsequential. I'll always love the way they wrap up this episode, though! "First Date" | View Comments9 | PaulaDec 2, 2010 when Robin reveals to Buffy that his mother was a slayer and that she was killed by a vampire wouldn't she immediately suspect Spike? Um, why exactly would she have done so? I'll bet that vampire slayers (and there have been quite a number of them even within the last forty years, what with most Slayers lasting a couple of years at best at the job, I gather) are eventually almost exclusively killed by demons, mostly vampires, which Buffy knows all too well. While we saw in Fool for Love that the second Slayer killed by Spike was black, Buffy didn't watch Spike's mental video, and the color of that particular Slayer's skin never came up. Neither was New York mentioned in First Date (or before, in connection with Robin, I think). So no particular reason for Buffy to come to think of a connection. Giles didn't, either, until a name he recognized came up. "Graduation Day Pt. 1" | View Comments10 | PaulaApr 18, 2010 Michelle, it's "You just show up at the prom and then you disappear into the ozone". So hardly. "Shadow" | View Comments11 | PaulaJun 11, 2009 Sam, you do recall Spike's a vampire, right? Of course his behavior is fairly disturbing; it's supposed to be. "Lies My Parents Told Me" | View Comments12 | PaulaJun 6, 2009 Great work, guys! I love this episode too. A few points I'd like to make: * Wood knows it's the First that's prodding him toward killing Spike, and he no doubt realizes on some level that it must have a good reason for this which can't ultimately bode well for his side, but he's so fixed on avenging his mother's death that he doesn't care. Talk about questionable judgment. I wonder how Giles would have reacted if he had come to know of this. * Buffy has been letting Spike roam relatively free for the last few weeks, but she's generally present and ready to deal with him herself, and even here she expresses doubt over leaving someone else to watch him as she and Giles train at the graveyard. * I rather think that Giles thinks Buffy's attachment to Spike makes her blind to the danger he poses (much as all of the Scoobies have feared from time to time re: Angel), and since she seems not to be able to do the necessary thing and rid them all of this particular danger, he must step in one more time. I also don't think he truly regains his confidence in Buffy's judgment before "End of Days" (until which they also have a pretty strained relationship), and this goes some way toward explaining why he will shift his support to Faith soon. * I don't think Spike actually bit Wood (least of all drank a drop). He made him think he was going to for a moment though, no doubt to drive home the seriousness of his threat to kill Wood. * For some reason, somewhat chilling as it is, the way Spike just tells Buffy that he's going to kill Wood if he tries anything any more is... satisfying. Ensouled Spike finally gets his act together and takes charge of his existence for real. "Storyteller" | View Comments13 | PaulaMay 26, 2009 I really need to watch this episode again for any serious commenting, but thanks and a great job, Mike! On my first round of BtVS, I lost my nerve in late S6 and went googling about the plot for the rest of the series. Learning what was going to be made out of Andrew in S7, I pretty much went, "What?!". Actually watching the season though, it just works. And this episode is excellent (although the Seal of Danzalthar bit is admittedly messy). "Storyteller" | View Comments14 | PaulaMay 26, 2009 I rather agree with llinnae: Andrew pretty much desperately sticks to a fantasy version of reality (or the one of several versions, whichever best suits his needs in any given situation) because he can't deal with what he's done (murdered his friend) and what's going on (apocalypse with no certainty of the good guys being able to save the day). He has a thing or two in common with Faith, actually, although she of course resorted to slightly different sort of escapism. A point of view worth thinking about, though, is that we all do this to some degree. Rewrite stuff, that is. Mostly quite unintentionally, too, as human senses and memory are in fact not at all reliable and are easily manipulated either by external factors or by ourselves. I don't doubt that Andrew knew well enough deep down exactly what he had done, but sometimes in our lives it takes indisputable external evidence to establish what we actually did or what happened to us or right in front of us, because we can't reliably tell for one reason or another. "Storyteller" | View Comments15 | PaulaMay 26, 2009 Of course we all tend commit escapism as well - and that goes double for us who hang around a lot on a Buffy review site. :-P "As You Were" | View Comments17 | PaulaMay 6, 2009 This is easily among the hardest Buffy episodes for me to make myself rewatch, but it turned out last night that I liked most of it well enough. Unlike most fans (it seems), I don't really have trouble with either Riley or Sam in this episode - sure, Sam doesn't have an awful lot of dimensions and she's a bit of a Mary Sue, but she's a one-episode character and anyway I find she suits Riley rather well. I found some bits badly thought out and written - notably, the whole initial Riley/Buffy demon chase ending with the admittedly dramatic but all kinds of stupid "What exactly are you doing with my husband?" - and I can't really watch the Spike/Buffy/Riley scene in the crypt out of sheer sympathy for Buffy, but other than that, fine. A point perhaps worth considering is that Spike was probably damn lucky to get caught this way. Had Riley found him in the crypt alone with the eggs down there, I don't think he'd have much hesitated to take him out right away. But since there was obviously, er, something between him and Buffy, she got to decide. (Also I'm not at all sure Spike's highly questionable money-making ventures started with the egg scheme. Could be he pretty much just cheated at cards before, but unless he just straight out stole all that furniture in his crypt, he'd have needed money for that stuff too. Not to mention all the blood, drinks and cigarettes - somehow I doubt he's been resorting to scaring people for money à la "Where The Wild Things Are" just lately.) Um, and yeah, the name "Doctor" doesn't really work out for me either. It just doesn't sound right. "Selfless" | View Comments18 | PaulaMay 5, 2009 JohnF, they're speaking Swedish. One can tell that neither actor can actually speak the language though. (I've studied Swedish and one can just about follow them in that language, but the pronunciation is not very good.) "First Date" | View Comments19 | PaulaApr 27, 2009 oneI like this episode very much - particularly the numerous excellent conversations. It's true that it builds up nice chemistry between Wood and Buffy which then never goes anywhere, but I think that's quite plausibly handled: Wood discovers here already that Buffy is very friendly with a vampire (and a little later also learns who exactly this vampire is), which immediately lowers his opinion of Buffy notably, and a few episodes ahead he gets caught by Buffy trying to kill Spike behind her back for personal vengeance reasons, which does nothing to endear him to Buffy to say the least. The things that really don't work for me in this episode are both Wood and Willow pretty much laughing off the idea that Buffy might be doing a good job at counseling (while she tends to be pretty busy and preoccupied with other things, nothing we've seen suggests she's bad at it), and the Chinese Potential's lines. The latter are just stupid and unrealistic rather than funny - no one talks like that, particularly when it's clear that nobody understands a word you say. Communication problems with a foreign-speaking Potential could have been handled much better. "First Date" | View Comments21 | PaulaApr 27, 2009 Spike's calm acceptance of Buffy going on a date is worth thinking about. He clearly still loves her, but his "eyes are clear" and wants Buffy to be happy over anything else. ... At the end of the episode, though, Spike offers to leave town for everyone's safety and that he's not that useful to her. While Spike's line about his eyes being clear is mostly made in fun, at this point he really is being rather more clear-sighted and objective than might have been thought possible for him ever to be. It's obvious he's as much in love with Buffy as ever, but while he's grateful for having been forgiven to such a degree and for her support and friendship and belief in him, I think he's here firstly, not at all sure that he's safe and in full control of himself, secondly, doubtful that he's of any real use, and thirdly, pretty sure that he's exactly the wrong sort of guy for Buffy and that she couldn't nor shouldn't ever love him back. Both his acceptance of Buffy's date and the later offer to leave town reflect such thoughts, I think - it doesn't come easy to him at all, but he's really, really trying to do what he considers to be the right thing. Of course, it will yet turn out that he's selling himself short on all accounts. "After Life" | View Comments22 | PaulaApr 22, 2009 AJ, that's a valid continuity complaint. I've seen it argued though that even though Spike never had a real funeral, Dru may have buried him in a coffin just for the sake of tradition. (She buried Darla over at AtS, after all, although w/o coffin. And it's not like burial is necessary in order for a vampire to rise.) Most likely though, the writers just forgot/changed their minds about that little detail. "After Life" | View Comments23 | PaulaApr 22, 2009 A comment I've been meaning to make to Harfan's (#35): Seriously, I didn't believe for one instant that Buffy could have ended up in Hell after sacrificing herself for the world I think Willow's point was that since Buffy was killed supernaturally in connection with a portal to all sorts of hell dimensions opening, she fears that Buffy (well, her soul or essence or something) might be trapped in one of those. So not actual Hell as a punishment for something, but, well, no big difference. Not saying that I'm with Willow all the way, but her thinking the above is not incomprehensible. "Life Serial" | View Comments24 | PaulaApr 22, 2009 There's a casual moment in this episode that I for some reason like a lot, in the back room of the demon bar when Buffy initially protests against the kitten poker and Spike takes her aside. Right there, when he's about to put a hand on her shoulder and talk to her, and Buffy shoves it away with an immediate, fluid and decisive movement and Spike backs off at once. Spike is already showing a tendency here to try to drag Buffy down on his level, but you're right Mike, their night out in this episode is very date-like. And in many ways something to look wistfully back to when they actually start their secret, violent and all kinds of unhealthy affair a few episoded ahead. "Smashed" | View Comments25 | PaulaApr 22, 2009 Gotta agree out loud with a lot of other commentors... That last scene is all kinds of bad for the both people involved but still, hot damn. "Smashed" | View Comments26 | PaulaApr 22, 2009 This may be a bit too self-evident to point out, but check out the music playing at the Bronze during Willow's and Amy's night there (alternating, of course, with the Buffy/Spike fight): The boy band sings... What is wrong here? What is wrong here? What is wrong with you? What is wrong here? What is wrong here? Where is your head? But Willow prefers a girl band playing... I don't wanna be, I don't wanna be alone I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go it alone Every time I see you I can't find the words to say I just wanna turn and run away Yeah, that night of overindulgence in magic is silly, but this bit I think was pretty neatly thought out. (I'd rather like to know where Willow and Amy went after this and what they did, though. They didn't show up at home until morning, after all, and were talking here of "something bigger".) "Passion" | View Comments27 | PaulaApr 20, 2009 Stilicho, I'm not sure right now if it was actually shown in some earlier episode, but obviously Giles had invited Angel in at some point when he still had a soul. And Giles hadn't quite yet performed the deinviting spell. And public spaces, including shops, aren't protected against vampires the same way private homes are. It's been shown before that vampires can freely enter schools, hospitals, etc. There's an episode in "Angel" (the spin-off series) where Angel enters a home without invitation in order to save someone's life, but it's pointed out right away as an exception probably due to intereference from higher powers. Other than that, I think the writers do manage to be pretty consistent about this. "Potential" | View Comments28 | PaulaApr 20, 2009 First of all: great to see you getting new reviews out with such regularity, Mike! :-) "Potential" | View Comments29 | PaulaApr 20, 2009 Aagh, what happened? :-( My comment showed up fine in its entirety at first (not just preview, either). "Potential" | View Comments30 | PaulaApr 20, 2009 Okay, here goes with more or less what I tried to post earlier (my bad for not having the sense to copy the text somewhere before posting, I suppose): Spike hits Rona and his chip doesn't fire off. :/ Well, there is an explanation of sorts to this, although the writers certainly were vague on this point. Remember this exchange from "Never Leave Me"? BUFFY: When did your chip stop working? SPIKE: I wasn't aware that it had, you know. Not 'til now. I seem to remember the chip firing when Spike hits Xander in "Sleeper", and I tend to think that the First Evil simply overrode the chip by having Spike do all the bad stuff without knowing it, but what with "The Killer in Me" being the very next episode from "Potential", I think there's a distinct possibility that the chip was at this point working erratically, if at all. Then on to my personal grievances with this episode: * While I do love everything Spuffy, that little graveyard scene just feels a bit over the top to me. They could have made Buffy's concern over Spike's wellbeing a little more subtle. * Somebody please tell me I'm not the only one sorely missing some sort of an explanation regarding Amanda's smooth move to the Summers house. It's not like her family are all dead or something, and they're right here in town, too! Regarding Buffy and leadership, Jason makes a good point: Buffy just doesn't get it right. While she's a highly experienced Slayer, obtaining and exercising leadership is something she hasn't got much experience of. In the past she has due to her position been forced to lead the Scoobies and make the big decisions to the point of exhaustion, but this bunch of younger girls (each a potential future Slayer) are a completely different thing from a few old friends who have been with her for years. It's easy to just rely on the authority given by your position, but it's not going to work for long with these girls - from them, Buffy needs to earn her leadership. I think though that what Buffy tells Spike much later in the season is a more relevant explanation than a superiority complex: "These are girls that I got killed. I cut myself off from them... all of them. I knew I was gonna lose some of them and I didn't... [...] I've always cut myself off. I've always… Being the slayer made me different. But it's my fault I stayed that way. People are always trying to connect to me, and I just slip away." Also, remember how well Buffy previously being friendly with fellow Slayers ended? Kendra got killed, Faith went about as bad as a Slayer can go and did her best to hurt Buffy in any way she possibly could. No wonder Buffy had issues making friends with these girls. I'd also like to add that Buffy's relationship with Spike can only undermine her position from just about every direction. It's understandable that she's none too willing to discuss her history with Spike or explain why she now deals with him the way she does, but even the old Scoobies are uneasy about Spike's presence, and the Potentials are bound to question Buffy's judgment - a vampire slayer who's had two vampire boyfriends and even now focuses quite strongly on this formerly very bad-ass vampire? The soon-to-occur removal of Spike's chip surely doesn't improve anyone's confidence in her either. Add a few bad situations and the more sociable Faith into the mix, and you get what takes place in "Empty Places". I'm just sayin'. "Never Leave Me" | View Comments31 | PaulaApr 16, 2009 One thing I personally always wonder about is how Buffy initially ties Spike to a chair in order to restrain him. A chair?! I appreciate that writing-wise, they needed him to be able to break free quickly later in order to attack Andrew, but I still can't help wondering how Buffy could have thought that a chair - even if it's a sturdy one - would be enough when we're talking about someone with Spike's physical strength. Getting chained to a wall in the basement really makes much more sense. "Bring on the Night" | View Comments32 | PaulaApr 14, 2009 Just wanted to say I'm loving all these new reviews, so thanks, Mike. Will do some actual commenting later. :-) "Showtime" | View Comments33 | PaulaApr 14, 2009 As for the conversation with the Eye itself, well, it's a bit over-the-top for one. The thing that probably bugs me more than anything else is that I found the information it had very revelatory and fascinating, but it was never brought up again! I mean, seriously, why even have this sequence in the episode if this very interesting piece of information is never even going to be told to anyone else? This adds an entirely new layer to everything that happened last season, yet it gets pretty much pushed under the rug. Yep, exactly. I do sort of think though that maybe Giles and Anya didn't share what they found out because it wasn't in any way helpful in the situation (was it?) and it would only have made Willow, Xander and probably Buffy herself as well feel worse about it all. I also feel (maybe it only makes sense to me) that this knowledge is what starts to push Anya away, in the strange and illogical fashion human brains tend to function (guilt -> defensiveness -> resentment -> enstrangement). Had Xander and Willow been told on-screen at some point, the writers could have used this later in the season to add an interesting psychological layer to the whole Buffy getting overruled and kicked out of the house sequence of events, but for some reason they didn't do it. Telepathy? Really? Couldn't they just excuse themselves from the room for a private chat? I actually thought this was pretty cool use of the special connection the old Scoobies have. Also, probably quite hard to have a private chat in this house at this point. "Showtime" | View Comments34 | PaulaApr 14, 2009 @Wilpy: On top of that, the way in which it was used was unnecessary seeing as the orchestrated plan of giving the girls a demonstration was really stupid. Why didn't they just go straight to the construction site?! Why bide time?! Why make your unstable friend do a huge protection spell for no reason whatsoever?! You're not making a totally unfair point there, but that whole scheme can be thought of as mentally inoculating the Potentials against blind panic as well as improving their confidence in Buffy et al (which they really were in need of at this point). My point being that the girls were allowed to think for a little while that things were seriously out-of-control bad, then they were not merely told but clearly shown that everything went in fact according to plan and that Buffy was on top of the situation. Gotta hand it to Buffy though: she's got real guts, putting herself in a situation in which failing to win her fight with the Ubervamp in front of everybody was simply not an option. But then we all knew she has them. :-) "Never Leave Me" | View Comments35 | PaulaApr 12, 2009 Yayness, the reviews keep coming! :-) Pretty much vigorously nodding in agreement. I want to add though how much I like Willow's inquiry in the hallway as to whether Buffy's feeling okay - it's nicely acknowledged here that it's not at all easy for Buffy to spend time in Spike's company after everything that's happened between them, soul or no soul. Yet the current situation finally forces her and Spike to have the sort of serious talk both of them have been needing but rather understandably (particularly when it comes to Buffy) avoiding. Also yay for Buffy for that simple reply to Spike's "You used me": "Yes." And for soulful Spike for stepping out of his up to now rather gloomy and resigned niceness and politeness, and starting to voice what he actually thinks and feels. What the First Evil has had him do lately is horrible, but it has actually served both to sort of liberate him mentally and to jolt him out of the cheerless state of inactivity he's sunk into. Granted, he's still mostly wallowing in how evil he was/is, and the course of action that first occurs to him is getting Buffy to kill him before he does more evil, but at least he's not just listlessly killing time any more. "Him" | View Comments36 | PaulaApr 10, 2009 (Quite the turn around for Buffy, btw again. First her readyness to kill Anya comes out of nowhere and then it disappears to nowhere). Um, so Buffy shouldn't have known what her duty was when a demon in the neighborhood had started slaughtering people obviously out of her own choice and without any apparent remorse? And at least should not have changed her mind after said demon had willingly gotten the previously mentioned slaughterings undone and turned from demon to human? "Sleeper" | View Comments37 | PaulaApr 9, 2009 @Wilpy: On the subject of Sunnydale, IMO it makes limited sense to complain about the inconsistency and nonsensicality of the town (including size, population, geography...), because beyond vaguely explaining some stuff by referring to the influence of the Hellmouth and/or the Mayor, the writers have never even pretended Sunnydale to make any sense. From the start this town has emphatically been whatever the current plotting requires. "Sleeper" | View Comments38 | PaulaApr 6, 2009 Wow Mike, great to see a new review! I too like this episode (and the next) a lot, they're not perfect but they're quite effective. One thing I wanted to point out: when Buffy confronts Spike in his room about the girl she saw him walking away with, neither gets into enough detail for it to become obvious that they're actually talking about a different girl and different night. As Spike sort of mentions to her ("It's boring, it all bleeds together"), the First's influence really is blurring up his current existence for him to such a degree that he can't keep up with the whats, whens and wheres. Now he can't really remember a thing about last night, only the girl he gave a cigarette to in the bar the night before - it's her he comes to look for later, in order to prove to Buffy that he isn't killing anyone. And in his current mental state (not just the post-insanity but the sort of depressed aimlessness as well), I do buy him not really catching on until now, particularly what with the new soul to blame any weirdness on. Also, gotta love Buffy's chat with the bouncer. @Tom_Kippling: Maybe the street musician just happened to play that tune, but I suspect the First was somehow influencing the musician as well. "Bargaining Pt. 2" | View Comments39 | PaulaApr 1, 2009 Something I noticed this second time I watched the episode: apparently, they buried Buffy with the cross Angel gave her (back in "Welcome to the Hellmouth") around her neck. They never really focus on it, but she does wear a largish silver cross here. Appropriate, somehow (although we haven't really seen that cross outside of the opening credits since "Innocence", I think). I wonder if Angel came over for the burial. Somehow I don't really think Spike and Angel met at all between the AtS episodes "In the Dark" and "Conviction" (well, the very end of that one), though. "Conversations with Dead People" | View Comments40 | PaulaMar 24, 2009 @Wilpy: I agree with Teresa and Darth Bunny about the Dawn thing. Trying to pit sister against sister is something I can't see the real Joyce wanting to do or doing - whatever the reason, it would have made a highly unconstructive warning. It's far more likely that it was given in order to promote mistrust in Dawn toward her sister, ultimately simply in order to diminish Buffy's self-confidence and the support she gets from her family and friends, which are the greatest sources of her strength. This is what the First continues to do for much of the rest of the season, after all, and the warning Dawn gets here finally bears fruit in Empty Places, doesn't it? "Conversations with Dead People" | View Comments41 | PaulaMar 24, 2009 @llinnae: Is it just me or does it seem very out of character for the First to slip up with Willow like that? Back in Season 3 and all through this season the First is very calculated -how could it give itself away like that because it 'gave into the temptation' of wanting to kill Willow? I think that's mainly because the stakes were quite high. Willow afraid to use magic is a good thing for the First Evil, but Willow dead and gone (in addition to the magical potential she would have taken with her, think of all the possibilities of using her form!) would have been a real accomplishment. So the FE kind of had to go for it, even at the risk of going too far. It failed at this, of course, but it did manage to undermine Willow's magical self-confidence a little further and seriously freak her out, which probably counted as much better than nothing. (Ultimately in this season, of course, both Buffy and Willow prove themselves stronger than the FE could see.) Also, I don't think the FE was all that fussed about revealing itself; if it couldn't drive Willow to suicide, it didn't much matter anymore. It was clear that the Scoobies would figure its identity out fairly soon anyway, and this would neither help them very significantly nor really diminish the dread factor, what with the FE being something that could easily spy on them and could not be killed or directly fought. "Conversations with Dead People" | View Comments42 | PaulaMar 24, 2009 @Robert: While I certainly don't think that S7 was perfectly written (in many ways, it is a mess - just not a particularly unenjoyable one, as far as I'm concerned), I'd argue that unless one drastically rewrote the rest of the season (which I can't terribly blame anyone for wanting to do), there're these points against the First Evil working with Willow over a longer period of time: #1 In many ways, what it does to Willow here can only really work as long as the FE has Willow alone tired and in a sad mood, without too much time or ability to think rationally or, above all, be in any contact with her friends. Particularly if said friends have also been getting strange and ominous visits from dead people and are likely to share this. #2 The FE is kind of in a hurry, the way it has things scheduled right at the moment (it doesn't know Jonathan's blood won't open the seal). If Willow's to be driven to suicide, now is the time - before the Scoobies become aware of what they're dealing with, and before such events start (read: the Ãœbervamps starting to come out) where Willow's magical abilities can be a hindrance to the FE. #3 Willow may not have been very easy to catch suitably alone lately, particularly if the FE needs Dawn to be alone at home at the same time in order to work on her too. So IMO, the FE only having this one night to work on Willow is not such a terribly long shot. "Conversations with Dead People" | View Comments43 | PaulaMar 24, 2009 Of course, there's also a probable technical reason for the First Evil's working on Willow being restricted to just this one episode: availability of a suitable actress (and salary considerations, no doubt). Warren, of course, is used as the FE in a number of episodes in this season, but Adam Busch may well have been more available and cheaper than Amber Benson in particular would have been. "Conversations with Dead People" | View Comments44 | PaulaMar 23, 2009 Aagh, I've never paid attention to that song. Now I've got to watch this episode again ASAP. Thanks a bunch. :-) This is a seriously cool episode, although you're quite right about the rest of the season just plain not managing to live up to the promise given here. One of the moments that will always stay with me is when Willow stands up and goes "Who are you?" I do so wish they had gotten Amber Benson for the Willow parts of this episode - Cassie works out quite well, but Tara herself would have been, as you say, disturbing. But in a good way, so to speak. (It's a bit unclear to me whether Benson wouldn't or for some reason couldn't do the part, but I know she said somewhere that she thought they couldn't do something like that to Tara fans. I say nonsense.) And the entire conversation Buffy has with Holden Webster is pure excellence. "Conversations with Dead People" | View Comments45 | PaulaMar 23, 2009 Okay, lengthy post with responses to numerous comments alert. :-) @Sam: Regarding why Xander, Anya or Giles were not "visited", Mike makes good points above. Actually it's my understanding that originally Xander was meant to get a visit from Jesse (!) here, but this was dropped mainly because the writers decided that adding even one more "conversation" would have already made this episode rather crowded. Xander would certainly have been next on my personal priority list, but I can live with him not getting attention here. As for Giles, there's also the point that the writers were entering a stage of this season when the first-time viewers are supposed to be seriously uncertain as to whether he's the real Giles or the First. I have a hard time explaining exactly why, but I think his being included here would have worked against that. (I never watched S7 w/o knowing for certain that Giles was alive and well all the time, so personally I can't really tell how well it worked as such.) Also, I have a hard time thinking who it could have been to visit Giles - except Jenny, maybe, but Robia LaMorte was already unhappy about having to appear in such a role back in "Amends" and would no doubt have refused to do it again. @Darth Bunny: Regarding all the weird physical stuff happening in the Summers house (considering that the house is just about wrecked at the start of "Sleeper", I think the damage done was very real), I know the First Evil itself can't do stuff like that, but it can certainly make others, particularly evil or demonic creatures, work for itself - look at the Harbingers, the Ãœbervamps, and hell, Spike. A poltergeist or some such thing was at work here, I think. Willow might well have been able to deal with it (even in her current state), but of course kind of the whole point was that Dawn was alone in the house and Willow occupied elsewhere. @Wilpy regarding the same issue: no way would I buy your explanation! I'm with Mike - the First was playing Dawn hard in order to start unraveling her confidence in her sister. Why would the real Joyce have been appearing and dealing out frankly quite cryptic warnings anyway? We don't get anything like that in the rest of the show, nor does Buffy's description of her time in Heaven lend support to the dead interfering with the lives of their loved ones on Earth like that or any other way. And continuing @Wilpy, regarding the likelihood of Buffy's conversation with Holden Webster... I have no trouble buying her talking so openly to a stranger (well, someone she'd almost known a little when he was alive) because I have done such things myself. Maybe it's a girl thing, but it really can be much, much easier to talk to a sympathetic and understanding stranger you somehow got talking to about the big issues of your life than to your friends. Nor do I have real trouble buying the vampire Webster's behavior. It's been shown on BtVS before this that vampires retain a lot of the character of the human they used to be, and can act fairly human particularly right after they have risen. We were never shown what Holden Webster was like when alive, of course, but a sociable, curious academic type seriously interested in psychology could IMO easily end up that kind of a vampire. If the romantic angle could override Spike's bloodlust even back when he was soulless and seriously bad, why couldn't another guy be at least temporarily distracted by psychoanalysing someone they'd always been curious about at school? It's not like his evil and murderous tendencies are entirely suppressed by this, after all. ...Right, enough for now. :-) "Gingerbread" | View Comments46 | PaulaMar 21, 2009 Emily: Well, I thought it was rather obvious that everyone was under a spell/possession of some sort. Their reaction to the dead children was sort of realistic at first, but things then go rapidly very much over the top, not to mention that the people see and hear these "dead" children talking to them. "Dead Man's Party" | View Comments47 | PaulaMar 16, 2009 Agreeing with MissKittyFantastico. It was selfish and bad of Xander to lie to Buffy, but it didn't ruin any lives and didn't change what was going to have to happen to Angel. (It's a little strange though that Buffy didn't - much before S7 - realize Xander had lied to her about Willow's message, since it's pretty obvious that it was Willow who had restored Angel's soul and she would hardly have sent Buffy a message like that if she was working on the soul restoration.) "Him" | View Comments48 | PaulaMar 11, 2009 Mike, a correction to the Minor Pros (I think): Xander's fight with Harmony in "The Harsh Light of Day" (4x03) Wasn't that fight in "The Initiative"? "Forever" | View Comments49 | PaulaMar 10, 2009 A fun thing about this show is how those who have been watching it and paying attention can here immediately tell that we're not dealing with some harmless old man when Spike and Dawn enter Doc's apartment. A vampire doesn't need invitation to enter? Demon inhabitant much? Dawn must have been very distracted indeed not to get it before the growling and the scary eyes (which I do buy, no problem). "Him" | View Comments50 | PaulaMar 10, 2009 Darth Bunny and Leelu, I quite agree about the inconsistency of Willow's sexuality, but I suspect this was something the writers were very aware of yet deliberately did this way at this point. It would have made more sense to make Willow bisexual, gender indifferent or something like that, but having Willow attracted to a man now after Tara's death would have made a lot of viewers think that the show was chickening out of having a lesbian character and that they had killed Tara off in order to have Willow "head back to boys' town" again. Which impression I guess they just didn't want to give, even temporarily. (And then again, I don't think it's unheard of in the real world, either, for gay people to have heterosexual relationships which they don't consider at all worthless before discovering their actual sexual identity.) "Beneath You" | View Comments51 | PaulaMar 9, 2009 Another thing perhaps worth mentioning here is how the title of the episode can be understood in a number of different ways: * As a reference to Buffy's (and Cecily/Halfrek's) line "You're beneath me" to Spike in "Foof for Love" * Likewise to the monster of the week (Ronnie the "worm") * Likewise to the First Evil and its favorite threat ("From beneath you, it devours") ...anybody got more? "Him" | View Comments53 | PaulaMar 9, 2009 Wow, another review! I can't help but agree about everything. A pretty much feather-light episode when it comes to the content, but so funny I'm nearly rolling on the floor laughing just reading the review (and remembering all the best bits)! :-) Additionally, I kind of think of this episode of the show writers' fond farewell to S1 - like, "if we could redo it now, it'd be a lot more like this". :-) "Selfless" | View Comments54 | PaulaMar 8, 2009 Wilpy: regarding the amulet, as I've argued before on Mike's BtVS forum, I don't think anyone but Anya herself even knew about it or that it could be used to reverse her vengeance spells. None of it happened in this reality the last time, after all, so the Scoobies don't really know it's an option, do they? And it may well be the case that a vengeance demon can't destroy their own amulet or ask others to do so, although I'll admit that's far less obvious. The more likely explanation may be that Anya herself was so defiant and so uncertain of what she really wanted until D'Hoffryn turned up that even she didn't really come to think of the amulet. It seems to me there's some of the same thing in the Buffy vs. Anya fight scene as in that fight of Angel and Faith in "Five by Five" - Anya wants to be hurt and punished more than to fix things. "Same Time, Same Place" | View Comments55 | PaulaMar 6, 2009 HarFang, re: Willow's parents (esp. mother), I don't know what bit from S4 or so you're thinking about because I can't remember anything like that taking place or even mentioned in the show, but here's what she tells Kennedy in "The Killer in Me": "My mom was all proud like I was making some political statement. Then the statement mojo wore off and I was just gay. She hardly ever even met Tara." So it doesn't really sound like her mom, anyway, had big problems about her coming out. And before this episode, the last time I can recall Willow's family mentioned is in "Forever", when she tells Xander she's going to go visit her mom. I guess Willow's parents are some of those characters who are used pretty strictly as plot elements/aids, so when they aren't needed for anything, which is at least 95% of the time, they're ignored by the writers. If they hadn't come across as such pretty detached parents from the start of the show, I might have more issues with Willow leading such an independent life once in college. I suppose they still finance her studies though. "Selfless" | View Comments56 | PaulaMar 5, 2009 Wow Mike, you know you're spoiling us rotten, right? :-) And a good review, too! This is an excellent episode all the way through. I really like the insight that Anya has, starting with her original human life more than a thousand years ago, always been selfless in both the positive and the negative sense; and I'm glad she finally sets out to find out who she actually is, outside of her job, ideals, relationships. And I know many people have trouble accepting that argument among Buffy, Xander and Willow about what's to be done with Anya now, but like you, I buy it entirely and I think it's wonderful. I think though that it's a bit unfair to blame only Buffy for not killing Spike, since it very much seems to me that the original decision not to kill him so long as he was chipped and unable to kill was more or less collective. While Xander himself has been fairly hostile toward him all the time, all the girls except for Buffy herself (who was originally pretty damn stake-happy when it came to Spike) have actually been pretty sympathetic and sort of accepted Spike as one the gang, and Giles even tried to appeal to Spike's hypothetical better nature back in S4 before adopting his pragmatic approach to him. There are a couple of points in S4 and S5 when killing Spike would have been a more than reasonable thing to do, but at those I tend to hear Buffy tell me, "Yeah, you know, I should have and I really wanted to, but the writers forbade me to." So I blame the writers, not Buffy. :-) Also: It's interesting that the First is giving Spike what he wants while Buffy is giving Spike what he needs. Yes, yes, exactly! And poor Spike is confused as hell, as he seems really not to be able to tell who around is real and who isn't. "Selfless" | View Comments57 | PaulaMar 5, 2009 Darth Bunny: I think it's quite justifiable to criticize that bit as unnecessarily unclear writing. To decipher things, it would certainly help if we knew when the finals took place, but my best guess is that Willow took the finals after quitting magic and before she and Tara got back together. I think she drowned her sorrows in her studies and just plain did well at the finals, which would actually be typical Willow. Then the drop in her grades that the professor mentions would have been during her "addicted-to-magic" phase and probably partially while she was quitting and having a hard time with it. I think that response of hers is simply due to general feelings of guilt - of course the professor isn't actually accusing her of using magic to pass the finals, but she can't help wanting to deny it all the same. My second-best guess is that the coven Willow was taken to somehow took care of these things in order to facilitate her return to Sunnydale later. "The Gift" | View Comments58 | PaulaMar 3, 2009 I just finished S5 on my second round of the whole show. While "Spiral" pretty much just made me yawn (even with all the urgency, knowing Giles was going to live and Tara get her sanity back took away most of the impact, and the Knight of Whatever are pretty lame and pointless - I was downright happy that Glory slaughtered the whole lot of them), "The Weight of the World" was excellent, and this episode just plain made me cry. It didn't do that to me the first time I saw it, but all the best bits of BtVS just seem to cut deeper the more times you see them. "Beneath You" | View Comments59 | PaulaMar 2, 2009 Great work, Mike! I'll probably return to some of the deeper points of this episode later, but for now just a question: The scene where Nancy is trying to work out all the relationships in the Scooby group, gets totally confused, and then asks "have any of you not slept with each other?" Xander and Spike then exchange a hilarious look. :) Yeah, but well, why? I feel like I'm probably stupid and missing something, but why would these two both glance at each other here? I could understand Spike looking at Xander, but Xander, not to put too fine a point on it, knows both Buffy and Anya have slept with Spike. And both of these guys of course know that they haven't slept with each other. :-) "Lessons" | View Comments60 | PaulaFeb 26, 2009 It's clear from these comments that I have a lot of work to do this season. I for one am looking forward to reading you doing it, Mike! Speaking of which...? :-) "Lessons" | View Comments61 | PaulaFeb 17, 2009 Paula, originally I had always been sceptical about Buffy's reaction to Spike in this episode, but this actually makes perfect sense. Kudos! I'm positively blushing at this, Wilpy. :-) I want to add though that even I would have trouble buying this scene if Whedon hadn't made this encounter such a total surprise and such a weird experience for Buffy. And elaborating: not only does she find Spike while she's in the middle of a hectic supernatural rescue operation, he also looks and acts so odd from the first second that nothing she may have thought she would do or say if and when Spike made another appearance in her life, well, applies. As she tells him in the next episode, she wasn't even really sure he was real. And adding my open question about this specific episode: doesn't anybody else wonder who it was who put the talisman in the school bathroom? Or whether it may have been Spike (in which case I guess the First would have put him up to it)? "Lessons" | View Comments62 | PaulaFeb 17, 2009 AaronJer, well, I think there's a third possibility: those boys from the school who were trying to raise demon in "Help". Judging by their activities then, I wouldn't put some random talisman-dropping (for fun or whatever) past them. They are going to school on top of a Hellmouth, after all. Also, Spike does actually demonstrate knowledge of fairly random supernatural, magical etc. stuff from time to time (it's, e.g., him who picks up a book and starts looking for some specific spell to cure Giles's blindness in "Something Blue".) It's not surprising, either, since he's been a demon and living adventurously in that world for rather a long time already. That said, I still think it pretty probable that it was Spike who did it. Why Buffy never looks into it is admittedly a bit of a question. She may simply have a lot on her mind right now, what with trying to protect Dawn and the shock of Spike suddenly being back and all weird in a basement, so after managing to rescue Dawn and her schoolmates and get the talisman destroyed, the next big problem in her mind may easily be "what's up with Spike?" rather than "who put the talisman there?". She'll soon find out about his soul, and I guess that (together with the Hellmouth) satisfies her as to why he's effectively insane, so the more sinister possibilities won't really hit her before CWDP/"Sleeper". And at that point the trouble Spike is in is already rather worse than just leaving nasty talismans around. "Grave" | View Comments63 | PaulaFeb 16, 2009 HarFang, wasn't it pretty much revealed in S7 that the First was another "hitchhiker" of Buffy's? I don't remember which S7 episode it was in, now, but I think it was Giles and Anya who went to contact an oracle sort of thing which said that bringing Buffy back had weakened something or other about the world and made it possible for the First to start acting like it does in S7. "Grave" | View Comments64 | PaulaFeb 16, 2009 HarFang: ah yes, thanks, the episode I recalled was indeed "Showtime". Now that I've checked the relevant bits of the script though, while we don't directly hear the whole explanation the Beljoxa's Eye gives Giles and Anya, from their conversation afterwards it sounds like it made it pretty clear that it's Buffy's second death and particularly the resurrection which matter: ANYA I don't understand how Buffy's death mucked up the whole slayer mojo. You know, it's not like she hasn't died before. GILES It's not because she died. The Beljoxa's Eye was quite clear about that in its enigmatic way. It's because she lives. Again. Buffy's not responsible for that. ANYA Oh. Oh. Willow and me and Xander and Tara. We're the ones who brought Buffy back. We're—we're the reason The First is here, the reason those girls were murdered. No, it's our fault. The would would've been better off if Buffy had just stayed dead. (walks off) "Lessons" | View Comments65 | PaulaFeb 16, 2009 Glad to see you've gotten started on S7! :-) Regarding the Buffy/Spike scene in the basement, in view of what went on when these two met last, it was a very interesting choice from Whedon to have Buffy behave the way she does here. Instead of, say, frightened and resentful, she appears more like, firstly, surprised (well, let's go with flabbergasted while we're at it) and, secondly, concerned - for him. The way I think this should be read at this stage is that since Buffy is back to her strong, confident and decisive self, she's just plain above being afraid of Spike now - she knows she can handle him both mentally and physically, if need be. And obviously there is something very strange and pathetic about Spike the way she has suddenly found him. He has been a part of her inner circle for quite a while, and his presence in Sunnydale and his mental state can't really be matters of indifference to her any more. Not to mention that her obviously complicated feelings about him probably haven't completely gone away. I'm looking forward to your next review at least as much you're looking forward to writing it, Mike. :-) "Lessons" | View Comments66 | PaulaFeb 16, 2009 Harfang, re: what Spike is doing in the basement, I think the First dragged him there very much on purpose. Close to the Hellmouth seems to be where its hold of him is the strongest - elsewhere it generally has to resort to the trigger thing. Also I can imagine Spike not really wanting to go to a crypt. Not only does he now have a soul (which no doubt makes him pretty damn ashamed of the sort of unlife he's been leading), it also seems to me as though even when he's capable of some sensible thought, he doesn't think himself ready to face Buffy. And living in a crypt he would be sure to run into her pretty quick, what with those nocturnal activities of hers. So the school basement makes about as much sense as any other underground place outside graveyards. "Fool for Love" | View Comments67 | PaulaJan 28, 2009 This is one of those outstanding episodes which I have re-watched several times, but last night I saw it the second time in its original context. It's just about The Definitive Bad Spike Episode. Darn, he's so cool, sexy and creepy here. And you gotta love the Spike/Buffy interaction. It's clear that Buffy doesn't really wish to be anywhere near Spike at this point and that she finds him mostly just plain repulsive, but she's determined to get as close to him as necessary to get out of him what she wants to know. Spike embraces the sort of darkness which Buffy strictly rejects, and it's going to take him a long time to understand that dragging her into it (which he does in S6) won't do her any favors at all. And that last scene, oh boy what a moment. When I first saw this I expected Riley to turn up any moment, which he never did. Marsters does a wonderful job with Spike's face, and we get from Spike the determined killer to Spike the tender and concerned lover in a few unforgettable seconds. This is where we first really see what love - even completely unrequited love - is capable of doing to him. My only complaint here is that after that last exchange in the dark alley, Buffy really should not have been so surprised to learn in "Crush" that Spike is in love with her. That's a bit of an inconsistency. "Season 6 Review" | View Comments68 | PaulaJan 26, 2009 One may argue that Giles should have at least had another serious talk with Willow before he left (maybe he counted on Tara leaving her to wake her up), but as to why no one consulted him later on, I'd like to make a few points: * Giles had very much said it aloud that he was leaving because the Scoobies needed to learn to tackle their problems on their own. * Both Buffy and Xander were more than a bit in denial about Willow having a serious problem with magic in the first place until "Wrecked". Which was when Willow herself acknowledged the problem and decided to quit magic, which she stuck to, too. From "Gone" until the end of "Seeing Red", she's getting better all the time, and I don't think anybody thought she particularly needed Giles's help with it. * Both Buffy and Xander were occupied by problems of their own, and Buffy in particular had a guilty secret she probably didn't want even Giles to discover - she probably felt she wasn't handling her life at all so well as Giles expected her to be able to, and so wasn't too keen to get him back in Sunnydale or get in touch with him, even. * All the bad stuff following the end of "Seeing Red" happened in a very quick succession. This might have been the time to alert Giles, all right, but if the Scoobies thought about it they probably also thought that the situation was so acute that it would take him too much time to get back to be particularly useful. "Season 6 Review" | View Comments69 | PaulaJan 23, 2009 Very thoughtful and thorough season review! I've yet to re-watch S6 in its entirety, but for the sheer guts it's pretty close to my favorite season. And it may be because I first watched the show when I was already over 30 (and went quickly through the whole show, thanks to DVDs), but I have about as little time for Dawn haters as you. (Most fandoms are pretty scary if you look into them deep enough, but stuff like this is IMO sheer childishness.) She's not my favorite character and she could have gotten more thorough character arches, but as a teenager and a little sister and someone going through the sort of scary things and losses that Dawn encounters, she's well written and acted. "Buffy vs. Dracula" | View Comments70 | PaulaJan 19, 2009 Just re-watched this last night (I'm starting S5 on my second round of the complete show). I just can't help feeling that in this episode, both the writing and the acting are off and nothing makes sense. Dracula is annoying and his "special powers" go totally unexplained, as does just about everyone calling him The Dark Prince or whatnot even if they haven't met him at all (like Riley). Just about the only bits I like are the opening, and Willow's and Buffy's private conversations with Giles. The end scene is a little funny, I always wonder whether the moment when Buffy looks at Dawn strangely just after asking her "What are you doing here?" is when the magic of those monks kicks in, or whether that was at some earlier point in the course of this episode. "Restless" | View Comments71 | PaulaJan 8, 2009 I don't know if anyone's pointed this out here before, but I think there may be a pretty simple (at least partial) explanation for Willow's "they will find out" fears all over her dream. It's "impostor syndrome", the irrational nagging feeling that one is actually a fraud and has achieved all their success by sheer luck or deceiving others, and the similar fear that everyone will "figure it out". This is a pretty common thing among successful women and young academic people, so Willow is actually pretty close to the textbook example, too. "Restless" | View Comments72 | PaulaJan 7, 2009 Just re-watched this on my second round of the whole show and after the just plain dumb ending of S4's largely just plain lame actual major Big Bad plotline, I've got to hand it to Whedon - this episode is awesome. There are any number of details in each Scoobie's dream that can be interpreted in a number of ways and infinitely argued about, but I just love this combination of "dream reality"/"dream logic", insights into each character's mental state at this time and foreshadowing. And while I don't necessarily count this among my top favorite Buffy episodes, I do think it may be the single most impressive example of Whedon's writing skills within this show. This sort of stuff is not easy to create. (I wonder whether the idea of doing an episode like this may have stemmed from those enigmatic and foreshadowy Buffy/Faith dreams in "Graduation Day" and "This Year's Girl", which I also like very much.) "The Zeppo" | View Comments73 | PaulaDec 15, 2008 Is the bit with Xander (nearly) being forced to join a gang a nod at the movie American Graffiti, I wonder? For all I know the plot device has been in more generic use, but there are a lot of similarities between this episode and Curt's adventures in the movie - which also covers the goings-on of one night, as it happens. "The Wish" | View Comments74 | PaulaDec 11, 2008 Just saw this for the second time last night. This is such a dark and intriguing episode. In particular, both Xander and Willow make chillingly cool (is that "freezing"? :-)) vampires. Regarding the complaint that it makes no sense for Giles and/or Angel to be in town if Buffy never came, the way I take Anyanka's wish-granting powers is that they are great but still limited. So she didn't grant Cordelia's wish by changing everything so that it would have made sense for Buffy to be elsewhere, and everyone else would have acted accordingly; she simply had Buffy not come to Sunnydale, but didn't change the fact that she was fully expected to come. Thus the presence of Giles and Angel (who no doubt both had their hands full as soon as they arrived). My own complaint would be the pretty astonishing use of the school library by the white hats as their base of action, what with this being a public space which vampires may and do enter as they please. It doesn't make all that much sense in the regular BtVS reality, and it makes even less here. Why didn't they just meet at Giles's house?! Also, now that I'm viewing the whole show the second time I realize that Anya as a character (particularly as a vengeance demon) was modified in many ways after this - what's with her having Cordelia wear the pendant, for example? Since they probably didn't originally intend to bring her back again, as a regular anyway, this is pretty understandable though. One more thought - I suppose Oz and Larry had ended up becoming Giles's little helpers (sort of alternative-reality Scoobies) because they were both a little different from the other schoolkids (werewolf, gay). I wonder what Nancy's story was? "Two to Go" | View Comments75 | PaulaDec 8, 2008 Xander making a virgin joke against Andrew because of his Star Wars-laced sentence. Xander of all people should be admiring the funniest piece of dialogue he's likely to have heard in weeks. His reaction felt a bit out of character to me. While Andrew's rant is funny and Xander's response to it a bit on the cruel side, considering the circumstances and Xander's probable state of mind, I entirely buy him being annoyed and aggravated by the thorough geekiness and no-lifeyness (lo and behold what BtVS is doing to my English...) of one of the guys who are partly to blame for the huge and desperate mess they're all currently in - and who still has to be protected. Xander certainly used to be pretty geeky himself, but he has largely grown out of it during the past few years. So I don't have a problem with it at all. Amusing Xander at this point would not have been that easy. "Two to Go" | View Comments76 | PaulaDec 8, 2008 I forgot to mention that Jonathan's "Hey Warren, do you read me, your girlfriend's pathetic, over" just about kills me. :-) (I'm one of those who quite like Jonathan. Although I still think that Andrew was the right choice for the comic sidekick in S7.) "Villains" | View Comments77 | PaulaDec 7, 2008 Just from reading this first review I can tell you're on a roll, Mike. :-) Which is great! I'm moving on to the next review right away, but a couple of comments: Although he knows he needs the soul to have any shred of a chance of making things right with Buffy, I honestly believe he has no idea of what he's really getting himself into. Oh, agreed, absolutely. Nor is there any way he could. I doubt even Angel could have put it in such a way that anyone soulless could have truly understood, although that may be just the way I personally think of the difference between soulless and ensouled. Spike sure got far fast! Is he in Africa or something? That's stretching believeability a bit. I don't believe this is in any sense supposed to be happening at the same time as the Scoobies are facing Willow in Sunnydale. Yes, Spike is in Africa (I believe that by the language spoken to him by the village people, one can tell it's supposed to be Uganda - or "generic" Africa, in any case), and it no doubt took him a month at least to get there. But since there's no Buffy summer season S6b, and we needed to see what Spike was up to, we get to see it here. "Beauty and the Beasts" | View Comments78 | PaulaDec 6, 2008 A few plausibility complaints here: #1 Who did the cops end up blaming Pete's death on? It could hardly be passed off as a suicide. #2 How did Angel in his animal state come up with a pair of pants for himself? #3 How come Oz's clothes just disappeared without a trace when he turned into a werewolf as he was fighting Pete? "Faith, Hope, and Trick" | View Comments79 | PaulaDec 5, 2008 While I'm not a big Angel fan, and a quite possible way to go here would have been to just let Buffy start moving on, I do kind of appreciate the way the show makes life difficult for her again, instead, by putting Angel back in her life. Even if the basic reason behind this move was preparing for AtS. (Hey, plenty of BtVS plotting has to do with practical reasons like this more than anything else.) "Faith, Hope, and Trick" | View Comments80 | PaulaDec 5, 2008 Another comment: it's funny how, while Mr. Trick is a pretty darn cool vampire when you think about it (and obviously the character was designed with coolness in mind), he never manages to get interesting the way Spike did. I wonder whether the writers aimed to introduce him as a sort of "Spike 2.0" but ultimately decided that the original Spike did the job better. "Seeing Red" | View Comments81 | PaulaDec 5, 2008 Sam, just correcting one thing from your rant: Buffy's dad didn't ever come to know about her death. Watch "Bargaining" again and you'll see that the Scoobies had put BuffyBot in Buffy's place in just about every sense, both to keep the vampires and whatnot in fear of the Slayer (because what with Buffy dead and Faith in jail, there was no real Slayer around doing the job), and to seemingly act as Dawn's guardian so that they could use the Summers house and take care of her themselves. This doesn't make Hank Summers a wonderful person, of course, but had Buffy's death become common knowledge (which it didn't), I bet he would have come for Dawn. I also recommend calming down a bit and watching the rest of the show, it's well worth it. "Dead Man's Party" | View Comments82 | PaulaDec 4, 2008 Just re-watched this episode for the second time. The zombie part is boring. The other part - Buffy and her mom and friends trying to reconnect after her return - is a good effort at actually dealing with such mutual issues in a realistic way, and has many good and fairly insightful moments (I actually do buy the anger from Xander and Willow, particularly since they tride to hide it at first; yes, things have been and still are hard on Buffy, but the same goes for her friends and Buffy is far from blameless), although it ultimately just resorts to "solving" everything by having everybody fight zombies together. The most interesting thing about this episode, though, is that I'm pretty convinced that this is where the writing team first started thinking about doing something like Season Six. The connections and similarities between this episode and S6 are many (of course there are differences too), but three seasons later, it was done thoroughly and properly without resorting to any quick fixes. "Killed by Death" | View Comments83 | PaulaNov 26, 2008 I'd have far fewer issues with this episode if the portrayal of people seriously sick with a flu, complete with that high fever and whatnot, would be a little more realistic. I'll admit that e.g. lots of coughing and a seriously husky voice would not have made a very attractive Slayer, but still. (Yeah, OK, Buffy may have special healing powers, but the kids don't appear all that sick and weak either.) Gotta love Xander standing up to Angel at the hospital, though. That's quite a chilling scene. Angel not killing people a whole lot more does feel a bit contrived from time to time in the course of the second half of this season, but I guess that vampires on their own do avoid drawing attention to themselves by doing things like killing in public and crowded places. "Beer Bad" | View Comments84 | PaulaNov 26, 2008 Sanjuro, then where do you place "I, Robot... You, Jane"?! I mean, that's GOT to be the worst BtVS episode ever. "Once More, with Feeling" | View Comments85 | PaulaNov 26, 2008 Does anyone else ever wonder how "The Kiss" ended? :-) (Obviously abruptly and without any of the Scoobies seeing them or a lot of words if any exchanged, but as for the rest...) "Passion" | View Comments86 | PaulaNov 25, 2008 Shocking and sickening as this episode is, I can't help adoring the way both Dru and Spike handle the cute "orphan" dog. (When she finally places it in Spike's lap, he just absent-mindedly puts an arm around it and scritches it behind the ear... One can always hope that maybe "Sunshine" had the presence of mind to escape when Giles attacked, or something.) Oh, and Spike's "No fair going into the ring unless he tags you first" always gets a laugh and three cheers out of me. :-) "Seeing Red" | View Comments87 | PaulaNov 20, 2008 Mike, very much looking forward to the next set of reviews! And I certainly volunteer to keep my fingers crossed so that you can concentrate on using yours for typing. ;-) "Innocence" | View Comments88 | PaulaNov 19, 2008 An additional thought... I find it interesting (although plotting-wise, it was of course also necessary) that while Angel got to know Buffy so well, Angelus grossly underestimates her spirit and courage the way he does in this episode. I guess it shows that it's Spike who has all the experience fighting Slayers, and Angelus who has been avoiding them. Angelus only sees a vulnerable teenager in love. Spike might have understood the whole "a Slayer forges strength from pain" angle and taken it into account rather better. "Innocence" | View Comments89 | PaulaNov 17, 2008 I came here to complain about the timeline, but I see other people have already done that :-) I have an idea, though, that the Scoobies did in fact go to the army base that same night but Whedon figured he had to go through the important Buffy scenes all together, so scenes were placed out of sequence. One thing I realized only this second time I watched the episode is how close both Spike and Angel(us) were to getting staked right here. (Had the Scoobies found Spike at the factory, you just know what would have happened to him, what with being wheelchair bound and all.) Also, starting from Surprise, Spike as a character with his expressions, gestures and manner of speech really is firmly established. (Before this, there's rather a lot of stuff that makes me go "but that's just not like him at all"!) And gotta love the scene early in this episode where he watches Drusilla so absolutely adoringly while she lies on the table talking nonsense about naming stars. I'd forgotten exactly how great all this Spike & Dru material is, I really had! "Buffy vs. Dracula" | View Comments90 | PaulaNov 15, 2008 Andrew, you're not the only one. I never really liked this episode, for largely the same reasons that you state. "Graduation Day Pt. 2" | View Comments91 | PaulaNov 14, 2008 I guess I just basically disagree with you about the Buffy/Angel "I'm not going to say goodbye" scene, Mike. The way I see it, Angel simply doesn't feel he can do a Great Farewell Scene (which I understand), but telling her so doesn't undermine the lack of one in any way... that's just preparing her for the way things are going to go, which IMO she has a right to. It's also just plain decent of him to show himself just briefly before going at the end of the episode, so that she knows for sure that he made it through the fight and doesn't have to keep guessing what happened. "The Dark Age" | View Comments92 | PaulaNov 13, 2008 I actually like this episode quite a bit, although the demon plottage is certainly average at best. What no one ever explains is what the demon has been doing all this time and why it suddenly just appeared again after those twenty years. One thing I wondered about when I first saw this episode, and actually still wonder about, is whether Angel was at the hospital to help save the blood delivery, or, well, steal some of it for his own use. Wasn't he shown to have some medical blood bags in his fridge back in "Angel"? Later (S3) he's shown buying blood at a slaughterhouse, but at this point in the show I'm not really sure how ethical he is about his own blood supply as long as he doesn't downright "eat people". "Lie to Me" | View Comments93 | PaulaNov 12, 2008 Having just re-watched this on my second round of the whole show, I appreciate the little (and not-so-little) ways in which Whedon makes the show's tone turn darker at this point already. One detail I only thought of just now: surely that graveyard at the end of the episode is in LA, since that's where Ford is from there and would certainly be buried too? I mean, he was lying about father having been transferred to Sunnydale and all that stuff. (And it would make sense for Giles to be there with Buffy, as she'd have needed someone to give her a ride.) "Some Assembly Required" | View Comments94 | PaulaNov 8, 2008 Re-watched this just a few days ago. The plot is dumb and S1-ish, and oh man does Angel wear ugly clothes, but scenes like the one where Buffy and Xander tease Giles about the whole asking-Jenny-on-a-date thing (including Giles's eventual "You know, I'm suddenly deciding this is none of your business") simply crack me up. Oh, and I like Jenny Calendar. Way to handle stuffy British librarians. :-) "School Hard" | View Comments95 | PaulaNov 8, 2008 I re-watched this last night on my second round of the whole show. I hadn't really remembered how when you watch it all in the original sequence, this episode has a tendency to hit you like a ton of bricks. Not only are Spike and Dru such a breath of fresh air (metaphorically speaking), they also stay around and really change things instead of just popping by and getting staked, which I could easily imagine happening in some other show. Gotta love the extremely casual way Spike gets rid of Big Ugly (the bragging vampire from the beginning of the episode whom he lets Buffy kill just to see how she fights), by the way. :-) Among my few complaints with this episode is that I have a hard time believing that Spike would really back off from a fight with a Slayer just because of a woman with an axe joining in - doesn't look to me like he got much of an injury from Joyce hitting him with it, after all. "Inca Mummy Girl" | View Comments96 | PaulaNov 8, 2008 Okay, my big big BIG problem with this episode (and I have similar complaints with a lot of BtVS episodes, but never quite so bad as here): What did who tell Joyce after "Ampata" just disappeared? (At this point, the truth obviously wasn't an option. One season later in the show it would have been.) And what in the world did who tell the real Ampata's family?! ("Sorry, tell others over there not to send their kids over to Sunnydale since innocent kids just randomly disappear here, and no, we never even found his body?") Other than that, the introduction of both Jonathan and Oz in this one episode was obviously pretty cool. "Seeing Red" | View Comments97 | PaulaOct 27, 2008 I just rewatched the S1 episode "The Pack". Oh boy, did the hyena-possessed Xander's aggressive moves toward Buffy remind me of the things that went on between Buffy and Spike here in S6 - including, but not restricted to, the attempted rape in this episode. Only back in S1, Buffy wasn't even remotely turned on by that sort of stuff, but the S6 Spuffy relationship... well, you get the picture. This perhaps belongs more among the commentary on "The Pack", but while Xander was "only" possessed by an animal spirit and not pretty much taken over by a demon like (soulless) Spike, the similarities in their behavior are pretty striking. "Seeing Red" | View Comments98 | PaulaOct 26, 2008 Yay, yay, yay! Three cheers to Mike for being back to reviewing!!! :-) Yeah, the near-rape scene... It's a hard one to handle mentally because on one hand, this show is all about metaphors and rape is NEVER the victim's fault, yet on the other hand here it's difficult not to be of the opinion that Buffy ought to at the very least have seen it coming. I think I'll settle at saying that this serves as a reality check for her regarding soulless Spike's basic nature. The Buffy of S6 doesn't love Spike, but while she doesn't fully trust him either, she has come to trust him far more than has been smart. In addition to her back hurting and all that, it seems to take her a while just to realize that pleading just plain isn't going to work here. The crying Buffy Xander finds in the bathroom a little later is, as far as I see, of course still simply shaking off the fright, but also sad and shocked that Spike had turned out to be capable of trying to do something like this to her. And probably blaming herself to some extent, since she asks Xander not to go after Spike. A few questions... #1 Didn't Buffy ever explain to the Scoobies about Spike being able to hurt her as a side effect of her resurrection? (Tara died so soon, I doubt she explained things even to Willow.) Or would that have taken the discussion to territory Buffy would have felt too uncomfortable talking about? #2 Whatever happened with Spike's coat, as he left it at the Summers house, yet next time it turns up in a box in the basement of Sunnydale High? Either there's a plotting discontinuity here, or else they meant to show Buffy bringing the coat to the basement-bound Spike at some point in early S7 but it was cut out of some episode or something, I guess. "Seeing Red" | View Comments99 | PaulaOct 26, 2008 Wilpy: It would not have been logical for Buffy to rush to tell Willow and Xander, as she'd have to invite them into the world of this new Buffy who she kept for Spike only. Of course not. What I was really asking here is didn't she *ever* tell them - after these events. There's pretty direct evidence that she hadn't told Xander by the beginning of "Sleeper" in S7, and no evidence at all (is there?) that she ever did in the course of the rest of the show. That's what I was wondering about. Buffy probably did take the coat to Spike, but we didn't need a whole scene to see that. Well, this particular bit is such a big blank to fill in that one tends to wonder whether the writers had forgotten what they had done with that coat back in this episode, that's all I'm saying. "Seeing Red" | View Comments100 | PaulaOct 26, 2008 Wilpy, quoting the "Sleeper" transcript from Buffyworld: "BUFFY Spike can't be the one doing this. He couldn't if he wanted to. XANDER Why not? BUFFY Well, for one thing, pain chip, remember? He can't hurt anyone. XANDER Didn't stop him from hurting you. (Buffy looks away)" Doesn't sound to me as though she had explained. It does sound as though it's a subject she doesn't care to go into. But maybe it's just me. "Real Me" | View Comments101 | PaulaOct 12, 2008 ...has in common with... *eyeroll* Sorry about my English from time to time. "Real Me" | View Comments102 | PaulaOct 11, 2008 I just realized that in addition to all the other things that gym scene has with the training scene in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker and Buffy are also both distracted by their sister! :-) "Homecoming" | View Comments103 | PaulaOct 7, 2008 My main problem here is that I just don't buy the part where Buffy and Cordelia are supposed to be - or ever have been - friends. Yeah, Cordelia is a part of the gang now and she and Buffy get along better than they used to back in S1, but unless one defines friendship as something very superficial, that doesn't mean Buffy and Cordelia are anything like friends. Likewise, I don't think Buffy and Anya ever were friends, either. "Crush" | View Comments104 | PaulaOct 7, 2008 A further comment to Nix: actually, Whedon & co. originally intended to kill Spike off pretty quickly and keep Dru as a big bad (together with Angel, at least in S2). How plans change... :-) "Crush" | View Comments105 | PaulaOct 5, 2008 From the shooting script I've gathered that the idea was that at the end, everyone was too tired from fighting to fight any more, so Drusilla got away. Which, looking at the actual episode, I don't really buy. I bet though that it was thought just plain impossible to kill Drusilla off, with all the potential uses for the character in future episodes. In retrospect of course, since they never got around to using her again on either BtVS or AtS, they might as well have done it. (IMO, by right it should be Spike that finally dusts her, whenever that happens.) "Real Me" | View Comments106 | PaulaOct 2, 2008 The whole Spike/Harmony talk pretty much cracks me up. "You look good." "I feel good." "I remember." Hahaha. Spike really gets away with the most outrageous lines (and tones of voice to go with them for that matter). One thing I'm surprised at no one ever mentioning is that the opening scene with Buffy and Giles at the gym and Dawn breaking her concentration is a blatantly obvious nod at Star Wars (the old trilogy). This scene so close to one of the Luke/Yoda training scenes in Empire Strikes Back that just about the only thing missing is Buffy making things move with her mind. "Entropy" | View Comments107 | PaulaSep 30, 2008 Mike, I hope you realize you're driving us review buffs* bananas out here. :-) *Pun not intended... wait a minute, do I really expect anyone to believe that? :-) "Spiral" | View Comments108 | PaulaSep 18, 2008 Sean, I'm not sure if there's a (big) problem there. Vampires heal quick, Spike is a whole lot better in Tough Love already than he was at the end of Intervention, and didn't more than 12 hours pass between the scene where Spike is underground with Buffy and Dawn and when we next see him in the Winnebago? Unless I'm mistaken, Tara stayed overnight in the hospital in between. Sure they might have shown some sign of recent injuries on him still, but I don't think his being pretty much healed as they all leave town is much of a stretch. "The Initiative" | View Comments109 | PaulaSep 9, 2008 Re: the inconsistency of the chip, I know it's probably due to the writers not having quite thought things through yet, but I wonder whether at least a partial explanation might not be Spike still having some chip-pain medication in his system at this point. In S7 (The Killer in Me) he reminisces, "Any time I got a little... rambunctious, the chip would kick in, I'd feel like my head was gonna explode, they'd dope me up, and everything would be all daffodils and teddy bears. For a couple hours, anyway." Combined with the pain-reducing effects of a good ol' adrenaline rush, that might somewhat plausibly explain why the chip doesn't kick in as efficiently here as it soon will. Oh, and that Willow/Spike scene is silly but very fun. I remember really wondering whether the writers were going to go "Spillow" later on - that, too, might have made sense. Instead though, of course, we got "Spuffy". "Crush" | View Comments110 | PaulaSep 9, 2008 That "date" Spike arranges with Buffy is one of the moments in the show that are just painfully funny. One thing I always wonder about, though, is how the hell come Spike's feelings for her came as such a total surprise to Buffy when he already tried to kiss her back in Fool for Love. "Gone" | View Comments111 | PaulaSep 9, 2008 Pretty much agreeing with HarFang here. I'm not crazy about this episode, but the whole social worker affair I consider a pretty good example of S6 writing: entertaining on the surface, but it's supposed to make you feel uneasy and conflicted when and if you think about it even just a little bit further. "The Pack" | View Comments112 | PaulaSep 8, 2008 I got all excited about Firefly (my first Whedon show) about a year before I started watching Buffy. People then recommended Buffy to me, and I remember talking about it to someone who told me that Buffy was a show that never stopped finding new levels to climb to. This was the episode that started that process, at least for me. I remember being pretty impressed with it, after all the entertaining but light-weight stuff that came before it. ...And it was quite true that the show never stopped finding those new levels. Which for a seven-season show was no mean feat. "Intervention" | View Comments113 | PaulaSep 8, 2008 even though Spike didn't physically hurt her, creating the bot was a very degrading way to treat Buffy herself, even by proxy. Yeah, well, it certainly wasn't healthy. The way I see things though, Buffy's reaction is certainly disgusted, but she's hardly taking any offence as such.* Also, Spike didn't intend her to know about the bot (although by letting her slip out on the graveyard and meet Xander and Anya, he pretty much blew it already). *It's rather later that she comes to expect so much better from Spike that she'd take offence at his behavior, I think. "Intervention" | View Comments114 | PaulaSep 8, 2008 Gabrielleabelle, I absolutely welcome your input, or anybody else's for that matter - we're not exactly having a private conversation here. :-) I agree with you just about 100%. I too think that BuffyBot was inappropriate although not necessarily immoral, and that Spike knew this all right. At least some good and respectable uses were found for the bot afterwards. :-) The Spike/Willow/Buffybot scene in Bargaining puts a lump in my throat, every time. "Life Serial" | View Comments115 | PaulaSep 8, 2008 It really bugs me from time to time that we're never told anything about that meeting of Buffy and Angel between the last episode and this one. It's implied that it was "intense" and didn't go too well. That's all. Did she tell him the truth, that she got pulled out of Heaven and isn't at all happy to be back? If not, why? I'd guess that she really hoped meeting Angel would make a big difference in the way she was feeling, and obviously it didn't. Didn't she tell him, couldn't he understand her, or is it just that he was unable to help her in any way? Aagh. (The fact that Angel didn't afterwards, say, call Willow and tell her that the Scoobies had got it all totally wrong and Buffy was borderline suicidal is sort of suggestive, but maybe Buffy persuaded him not to - or maybe that's what they argued about...) I suspect the writers never could come up with the essence of that meeting, either, which is why it's never been written up in any shape or form. "Intervention" | View Comments116 | PaulaSep 7, 2008 I am not sure that Spike needs to be *taught* the difference between right and wrong, though. Well, I was talking about Buffy's attitude, not the actual question of moral compasses. I'd say that Spike knows *about* the difference between right and wrong but doesn't really understand it. As a soulless demon, that's pretty much beyond him. His whole idea about the morals of things is distant and second-hand. (And as to Buffybot, I'm actually not very sure at all whether that's a moral issue. Having the Buffybot built and using it the way he did was certainly gross, unhealthy and pathetic, but morally wrong...? Come on, who was he harming? Unless you feel sorry for the 'bot or Warren, who I'm betting never got paid a dime?) So at first, Spike uses BUFFY as his moral compass Yes, and he takes this to impressive lengths, too. After all, even Buffy's death doesn't stop him acting like he figures Buffy would want him to (help her friends, protect Dawn, etc.), apparently simply to honor her memory. (How long this state of affairs might have lasted if Buffy had never been resurrected is actually a pretty interesting question.) In addition to Spike wanting to please Buffy, though, I think there's another factor at work here – something that I was paying quite a lot of attention to before the being-in-love-with-Buffy thing became apparent, but which didn't disappear afterwards either. It's Spike's desire to be accepted in the gang. No, he doesn't think much of the Scoobies - but he doesn't like being an outsider or considered a freak, either. His integration in the group while Buffy is dead probably helps him considerably to keep doing the right thing, and the realization that he had been left out of the whole resurrection scheme (and the resentment this induces) in turn helps to alienate him also from sticking to the "straight and narrow path". I gather it's also mainly the kindness and acceptance that Buffy rewards Spike with that he responds so well to, post-Intervention in S5. Much as his (un)life revolves around love/obsession/lust, I doubt even he ever mistook the kiss Buffy gave him for anything remotely romantic. ("I know you'll never love me. I know that I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man, and that's...") Carefully, firmly and consistently handled*, particularly by Buffy, even soulless Spike might have turned out amazingly good. Unfortunately, the back-from-the-dead Buffy in S6 is far from prepared to be careful and consistent with him, and things get further and further out of hand the way they do. *Can't help but compare Spike to a captured and tamed wild animal. It's much the same thing with him, only he looks and acts human enough so it's easy to forget that he's not going to stay good unless the desired sort of behavior is continuously reinforced. The soul, of course, will make a huge difference here. "Intervention" | View Comments117 | PaulaSep 6, 2008 Additional thoughts, re: the final scene, after re-watching this episode last night... Firstly, I suspect that when she came to the crypt pretending to be Buffybot (which role she had mastered very nicely, BTW), Buffy already had the idea that Spike might not have told Glory anything after all. First off, why else would he have been so badly beaten and trying to escape when they arrived? (I'd guess Xander's words about Spike being "so trashed" made her wonder.) Also, it doesn't seem to me like she brought a stake. So while she needed an honest answer to that question and was curious to hear the honest reason behind it too, it seems not to have come entirely as a surprise. Secondly, that scene shows a very profound change in Buffy's attitude toward Spike in many ways. When she tells him that "The robot is gone. The robot was gross and obscene", she says something she might well have yelled at him in angry disgust before - but now, the words come in tones of patient reproach. She's not speaking to an "evil, disgusting thing", someone totally beyond redemption. Spike is now considered to someone who can be taught. Someone who may do stupid and disgusting things but is better than that. And, hey, look at Spike's reaction. No "Hello! Vampire! I'm evil!" He's ashamed of himself, and as the following S5 episodes will show, Buffy treating him like a person instead of a thing will make him more and more human. "Intervention" | View Comments118 | PaulaSep 4, 2008 The logic problems with this episode aren't limited to the Scoobies' amazing inability to recognize Buffybot for a 'bot (or something else than the real deal, anyway) simply by its weirdo chipper behavior. I never can help wondering at Xander's lack of big reaction even just to Buffy suddenly patrolling again with Spike, who was recently found to have a dangerous obsession with her, deinvited from the Summers house, etc. etc. Also at Spike seeming totally unconcerned when it must have been glaringly obvious to him that after that graveyard encounter with Xander and Anya, there was no hope in hell Buffy wouldn't find out about Buffybot very soon. However, I'm willing to overlook practically anything for the sake of all the priceless comedy this episode offers, and that final scene of absolute perfection on top of that. I can just imagine the writing team going all "OK, so this script makes next to no sense, but it's way too much fun not to use". And they were right about that! :-) "Lie to Me" | View Comments119 | PaulaSep 3, 2008 Responding to a pretty old comment here, but: Buffy never felt comfortable talking about the sexual side of her. Here I must say that I can relate... And I feel for Buffy for everybody around her pretty much always knowing all about her sex life. I think I'd be majorly uncomfortable in such a situation. "Lie to Me" | View Comments120 | PaulaSep 3, 2008 Also re: I loved how Buffy let it slip she used to pleasure herself while thinking about Ford (lying in her bedroom listening to "I touch myself") and then realizing she just told them something very personal/private and tried to backtrack with "Of course, I didn't know what the song was about". Sure you didn't. ;) The way that bit came across to me, actually, was that Buffy had listened to that song a lot back then because it fit her mood but she genuinely didn't fully understand the lyrics at the time (like e.g. Willow obviously hadn't, either). And now when she reminisces aloud she suddenly realizes what the whole thing must sound like, and backtracks in an amusing fashion. Being female myself, I just plain doubt that someone like Buffy would accidentally let something that personal just slip out, in mixed company no less. The above has happened to myself a few times, though. "School Hard" | View Comments121 | PaulaSep 2, 2008 I agree with Mike on that first Spike scene showing him 100% in character, but as for (all) the rest of the episode, perhaps not so much. But one of the things about this show that you just have to accept in order to be able to fully enjoy it is that it was a work in process. Few things were thoroughly thought out by the time they were introduced, and even if they were, minds got changed later. It makes things somewhat inconsistent, but I can live with it - hey, anything that made it possible to keep Spike on the show for pretty much the rest of the run instead of just a few episodes is more than fine with me! :-) "Superstar" | View Comments122 | PaulaSep 1, 2008 Like Tobias above, I think there's one big thing going for this episode: it's a hilarious take on fanfic. I remember starting to watch this episode and going all "what the hell?!" at first. Then I suddenly realized that the writers had simply, and very much on purpose, turned Jonathan into the ultimate Gary Stu character. After that, I couldn't stop howling with laughter at practically everything in this episode. Re: what Jaden says above, one of the neat things about Buffy for me is that just because we'd very much like a character to overcome their problems and get everything right in their life, it doesn't necessarily happen. That's reality for you. "After Life" | View Comments123 | PaulaAug 28, 2008 Jaden, the Scoobies' behavior is pretty understandable from their point of view, but the point is that they're getting the whole situation completely wrong and it will take them (and the viewers too) a while yet to realize it. Frankly, they're rather full of themselves and not really thinking about Buffy at all. Buffy's not just "in pain", she's mentally just plain nowhere near "Scooby space" or prepared to deal with her friends and their questions, which is incredibly understandable after hearing what she tells Spike at the end of the episode. It will take her a few days to even start to be able to act like she's halfway normal, and even that will cost her dearly. "Tabula Rasa" | View Comments124 | PaulaAug 27, 2008 Jaden, you're not wrong. :-) I mean, in many ways I don't think the writers ever had a very clear idea of how Xander fit in. However, it's entirely possible for a person to be quite perceptive when it comes to other people's affairs, and deeply stupid when it comes to their own. In fact, it's easier that way - one tends to be too close to one's own life to see clearly. (I think what Anya said in Selfless was that Xander "always sees what he wants to see", and when it comes to his own life and his relationship with Anya particularly after becoming deeply attached to her, I think that's pretty much true.) "Surprise" | View Comments125 | PaulaAug 25, 2008 Jaden, whether she can swim or not, falling in deep water with all your clothes and your shoes on can still be very dangerous. I didn't consider Angel jumping after her lame at all. "What's My Line? Pt. 1" | View Comments126 | PaulaAug 21, 2008 JVamp, Kendra beat up the airport guy because we were supposed to think she was one of the Order-of-Taraka assassins. :-) That's about the best reason I can come up with, anyway. Or maybe she was trying to maintain secrecy - well, no, since she didn't kill him, that doesn't quite add up. Maybe she figured he'd try and get her arrested or something. I dunno. Poor writing? No kidding. :-) "Normal Again" | View Comments127 | PaulaAug 19, 2008 Badlan, that is interesting. I've wondered for a good while already just how much Dawn's insertion in the Summers family changed the past as we know it. I suppose this might well be one of the things it did. So Joyce was totally surprised about the whole slayerdom thing in the past that we saw in S2, but things were probably at least somewhat different in the "new and improved reality". (Hasn't Dawn got all these memories about pretending to be a vampire and Buffy chasing her for fun? To me they sound like they happened a good long while ago, so did Dawn and Joyce both perhaps learn about vampires and Slayers earlier in the new version of reality than in the one we saw in S1-4? Although I doubt Hank Summers knew about any of it, beyond the little episode that put Buffy in a mental asylum, anyway.) Not really interested in reading Buffy comics, but it sounds like at least some of them have decent ideas behind them. "Entropy" | View Comments128 | PaulaAug 19, 2008 Darn, Mike, are you planning to keep us waiting for the next review(s) for a long time yet? :-) "The Body" | View Comments129 | PaulaAug 8, 2008 Steph, Willow's constant change of clothes stems (according to some interview) from Whedon's experience of his own behavior following a death in his family or among his friends (I forget which). One's brains don't really function normally in such circumstances and it's easy to become obsessed with little details like what you should be wearing. And having experienced such situations myself, it rang very true to me. So not really symbolic, no. It's just the way real people tend to react to sudden shocks like this. Regarding the sweater: Anya didn't know Willow was looking for it, and she just stuffed it away without Willow seeing. I guess that might possibly "mean something", but I personally took it as just another piece of reality. "Go Fish" | View Comments130 | PaulaJul 31, 2008 Can't believe you left out the Buffy quote I always remember this episode for: "Great. This is just what my reputation needs: that I did it with the entire swim team." "Faith, Hope, and Trick" | View Comments131 | PaulaJul 31, 2008 Shular, that's only what The First claims to have done. Not much in the way of evidence. :-) "Hush" | View Comments132 | PaulaJul 31, 2008 It's surprising how uncreepy I find this episode, given that I'm nearly allergic to horror. But I certainly agree it's a good one. One problem, though: I know Kristine Sutherland was largely unavailable when they filmed this season because she was abroad or something, but I still find it a bit much that Buffy didn't go check on her mother during a crisis like this. "Into the Woods" | View Comments133 | PaulaJul 31, 2008 And while Xander did resent Angel, I don't think he ever resented Spike, he just didn't like him very much (neither did most people, for that matter). This is something really for the next review (Seeing Red) when it comes, but... I figure Xander pretty much thought (in late S5 and S6) that if there was one guy around who had even less of a chance with Buffy than he himself had (or had ever had), that was definitely Spike. And he downright enjoyed having Spike the Chip Head around for him to ridicule for that very reason. (Remember that while he came to know Spike had a serious crush on Buffy, that's pretty much all he knew before Entropy - unlike, say, Riley, who obviously didn't like to find Buffy sleeping with "that idiot" but was hardly astonished about it, either.) So in late S6 when Xander finds out about Buffy having had an affair with Spike, hello to disappointment in Buffy and her guy standards and to resentment for her not having told him anything, but also to quite a bit of humiliation (which I gather Spike relished). Admirably complicated stuff, as a matter of fact. "Amends" | View Comments134 | PaulaJul 29, 2008 Am I the only one having a problem with Xander, or anyone aware of all the vampires and demons in town, ever choosing to sleep out of doors no matter how bad their family's fights are? I mean, talk about Happy Meals. "Beer Bad" | View Comments135 | PaulaJul 28, 2008 This is a very silly episode, and all right, among all the Buffy episodes, some of course have to be the worst. No one who places Beer Bad among the bottom 5 is going to get much of an argument from me. I still say it's not all that bad - I quite enjoyed it. Particularly Willow leading that slimeball Parker on like that and then giving him his comeuppance. Go Willow! (I know it's not really Parker who gets his heart or whatever it was cut out nearly on-screen by the creepy bad guys in Hush, but that's what I always like to think, anyway.) Re: Spike, of course he went to Africa for the soul. Re: quality of S7 in general, I do think the writers were by then clearly losing focus (not helped by there suddenly being all these Potentials as new characters). It was probably for the best to quit there, but I still like S7 quite a lot. All of the seasons have their own problems and assets, after all. I just wish Whedon had seen fit to never mind so much about the fans and just take a bloody stand regarding some things (ahem) instead of leaving them wide open. "Hell's Bells" | View Comments136 | PaulaJul 28, 2008 While I definitely don't hate the rest of the show, I think Bill has a point of sorts. Joss seems to be notorious for never letting his characters have a good relationship for too long. If there's no breakup, then someone dies. I first thought this was some sort of overall pessimism regarding relationships, but having read and listened to some of his commentaries, I gather it's more about keeping things interesting instead. I think it's pretty self-evidently far easier to make interesting television out of drama, conflicts and general unhappiness than about a bunch of happy and well-adjusted people enjoying thoroughly good life together. Then again, of course, there's Addams Family. :-) I for one definitely don't think that Joss and his writing team(s) have no shortcomings whatsoever. However, I still enjoy their stuff better than almost anything else on television. And anyone who thinks they could do better - hey, go ahead and do it, why don't you? "Entropy" | View Comments137 | PaulaJul 25, 2008 And some more commentary yet, re: Buffy's talk with Spike about the camera that was hidden in her garden. It's easy to think of this suspicion as unfair to Spike, but to me it seems entirely consistent. No, Buffy doesn't automatically come to suspect him herself, but when Xander suggests this as a possibility, she can't brush it aside either. The point (and one of the major problems with Buffy's relationship with soulless Spike) is that she can't really trust him not to do things like this. It's all very nice of Spike to say "I don't hurt you", but in fact he's been hurting her a lot all along - both mentally and physically - and look what happens in Seeing Red. (I wonder at what point the writers decided to send Spike hunting for a soul. I know I started to wonder about the possibility of him getting one quite early on, by the beginning of S6 at the latest. Can't recall now when they started mentioning Spike's soullessness on a regular basis, but that certainly helped to introduce the idea in the audience's heads.) "Entropy" | View Comments138 | PaulaJul 25, 2008 Re: my recent comments, when I start to get the Magic Box's name wrong like that, maybe it's time for another round of the whole Buffy saga. ;-) "Entropy" | View Comments139 | PaulaJul 25, 2008 I don't watch this episode or the next one very often as they tend to upset me (This one upsets my inner-shipper. The next one upsets my inner-feminist). Re: the next episode, no kidding. I understand the whys and how comes of The Scene, and I'm sure it's not badly done either, but I couldn't really watch it even the first time and I'm planning never to even try to watch it again. It's scary, ugly and just all manner of upsetting. Oops, getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. Again. :-) "Entropy" | View Comments140 | PaulaJul 24, 2008 "Guys!? There's only been 4... 3! Only 3! That's barely even plural." Aahh!! I'd totally forgotten about that bit. Thanks, Mike. XD I continue to disagree about the maturity level of Buffy's dealing with the whole situation, but I figure I'm probably harsher with her simply because I'm female myself. Also, I think that everything that happened at the Magic Shop kind of got out of everyone's control (well, not so much of Buffy's, actually). The things that were done and said were largely heavily regretted afterwards. "Entropy" | View Comments141 | PaulaJul 24, 2008 Addition re: your analysis of the nature of the Buffy/Spike relationship... No, she doesn't love him, not at this point, and I agree on that being able to love a soulless vampire is just plain not in Buffy's nature. However, her feelings for him are both real and quite complicated, as her reaction to the whole Magic Shop mess IMO clearly demonstrates: Spike's actions hurt and disappoint her, deeply and personally. It's easy to misinterpret her though, and this of course is exactly what Spike will do in Seeing Red. Did I mention that I can't wait for your reviews of the next four episodes? :-) "Surprise" | View Comments142 | PaulaJun 18, 2008 I don't hate the Buffy/Angel relationship, but I was getting seriously bored with those two (particularly the endless kissing on graveyards) by these episodes. So Innocence in particular was a breath of fresh air, so to speak. (And that sentiment made even me think of myself as a heartless monster, but there we are.) I appreciated Buffy's broken heart at the end of S2 and the beginning of S3, and was kind of interested to see Angel come back, but by the end of S3 those two were again mostly just boring me out of my skull. I welcomed Riley. And I particularly welcomed Spike. I do kind of understand those who strongly feel that Buffy & Angel = epic true love forever, but I can't really see that happen. I mean... how could it? I appreciate that they for many reasons have a special bond and that Angel was Buffy's first love and so on, but she still was a teenager when they fell in love and not only she has grown up since, these two are also very much going their separate ways. And that's on top of the whole "he can't be happy even for a blink of an eye without turning into a soulless monster" issue. "Where the Wild Things Are" | View Comments143 | PaulaJun 18, 2008 I've really got to disagree with you on this episode's scoring, MikeJer. The main plot is pretty silly, but not exceptionally so (IMO, the Buffy "monster-fighting" plots are rarely anything too special; it's the character-driven stuff that shines). And all the rest about this episode was quite entertaining, so I'd have given at least a C. But I guess there's no arguing about matters of taste. :-) "Normal Again" | View Comments144 | PaulaJun 17, 2008 Jaden: if some Buffy viewers find the idea of it all being just elaborate delusion in a schizophrenic girl's head interesting, well fine, I believe Joss has said himself that it's one possible way to look at it. Personally I'm uninterested in such a view - like MikeJer, I feel that would make it all rather pointless. One can of course take a leaf out of the book of Holmesians (those who "play the game", i.e., pretend to believe that Sherlock Holmes and Watson were real people, all the stories are true and A.C. Doyle was just Watson's literary agent, and go on from there), and think of Buffy as some sort of a documentary, but I doubt one can make either of the alternatively realities "fit the facts" in an entirely logical and flawless fashion. As far as I'm concerned, the plot holes, illogical stuff etc. in Buffy are part intentional, part carelessness and part due to the show, as most TV shows, being a work in process. I can live with that. "Normal Again" | View Comments145 | PaulaJun 16, 2008 Good review! I never thought of the asylum as an actual reality candidate, either - for one thing, for that, it's far too convenient for the Trio. A few things I might add... I always wondered how Dawn took this whole "sleeps with a vampire she hates" line or if she didn't really pay attention, the situation being scary enough for her as it was. If it did register with her, did she just automatically think Buffy was talking about Angel (and that the hating thing referred to vampires in general)? Also, I see Spike's and Buffy's talk in her room as a turning point in a way you perhaps don't. More specifically, her line: "You need to leave me alone. You're not part of my life." I think it's mostly the "schizophrenic Buffy" talking here - the Buffy who's starting to become convinced of that this Sunnydale reality and all these people are imaginary and that she needs to rid her head of them. Spike, however, takes it differently and is much offended. Up till now after their break-up, he's been hurting but dealing, which Buffy's relatively kind and respectful treatment of him has helped. Now he both throws Buffy that "stop with the bloody hero trip" line, which probably is a factor when she pours off her antidote a few moments later, and starts to insist on someone - preferably her - telling her friends about their relationship, which being such a secret is now starting to seriously annoy him. (Xander and his constant Spike-bashing is probably another factor there, of course.) Which reminds me: Buffy may as of this episode indeed be at least close to "normal again", as you said, but she really should have told Willow and Xander about Spike on her own. She's certainly not dealing with that part of S6 very well, and as far as I see, she doesn't really tell anyone except Holden Webster anything much about it even in the course of S7. Her friends know that they slept together and then broke up, and that's pretty much that. "Normal Again" | View Comments146 | PaulaJun 16, 2008 Mikejer, I don't think that the post-NA Buffy is at all unworried about her relationship with Spike coming out. True, she tells Spike in the beginning of the next episode that he can tell her friends himself if he likes, but the key point is that she refuses to tell them herself. And I don't think she really expected Spike to tell any of them - so soon or under such circumstances, at any rate. Even in S7, she's obviously unwilling to talk about the whole thing to any of her friends. Of course, the secret is out by then on a general level, but I gather from her words to Holden Webster in CWDP that she does not want them to know just how badly she treated Spike. So she's ashamed of not only having gotten involved with him but also of her behavior in the relationship (and while Spike's behavior wasn't too great either, I can't blame her for being ashamed). Hence her not talking about these things even to Willow. So she may be coping with it a bit better now, but not by all that much. "Normal Again" | View Comments147 | PaulaJun 16, 2008 Jun, Dawn obviously got it in Entropy at seeing Buffy so upset, but hardly before. Just wondering how much she wondered about it before. "Normal Again" | View Comments148 | PaulaJun 16, 2008 Mikejer, Buffy may have kind of accepted the possibility (or even probability) of her friends finding out that she and Spike had a relationship, but I maintain that she never in the course of the series lets or wants anyone to know exactly what kind of a relationship it was. (And she certainly isn't entirely prepared for Xander's reaction when it comes.) "Normal Again" | View Comments149 | PaulaJun 16, 2008 "I think this ties more into Buffy's inability to admit to past mistakes/actions" This may well be true enough (and one certainly does pick such things up from one's parents), although I'm not convinced it's a character flaw she's doomed to be stuck with it for all eternity. She's still pretty damn young and, let's face it, immature. Cookie dough, anyone? :-) "Normal Again" | View Comments150 | PaulaJun 16, 2008 "I would have liked to have seen her overcome this particular flaw in season 7 by fully fessing up to her part in the destructive Buffy/Spike relationship of season 6" Well, her telling all to Webster in CWDP probably counts as progress of sorts. At least she said it aloud to someone. "Hell's Bells" | View Comments151 | PaulaJun 10, 2008 At this point of watching S6, I was so focused on all things Spuffy that Xander cancelling the wedding at the last moment came as a very considerable shock. Had I been paying attention, of course, there would have been plenty of signs to see. I think that while Xander of course left it way too late (I think I'd die if I was the bride and got left on the altar like that, and I felt horribly sorry for poor Anya), I understand why he came to act like he did. I've been cursed (obviously not literally...) with a very low self-esteem, and I constantly find myself just having to pull myself together and do things in spite of feeling majorly insecure about my chances and abilities, both professionally and in my personal life. Because otherwise I'd never do or accomplish anything, and I mostly manage it all just fine, anyway. I think that up to the wedding, Xander was just plain willing himself to believe that it would all be all right. Not to mention that the closer the wedding got, the more unthinkable the idea of calling the whole thing off no doubt became. Right up until the moment he realized that he could not and must not go through with it. (I keep wondering, though, how the writers figured the relationship of Xander and Buffy this late in the series. As I understand it, they kept the door open to the possibility of bringing them together in S7 till quite late. So here, is the main technical reason for the Xander/Anya breakup to make it possible to get those two together? And what with Buffy's death being mentioned in that fake vision of the future and all, are we really meant to think that the feelings he still has for Buffy are one of the reasons why Xander cancels the wedding, or was that just the way it came across to me?) I think it's one of S6's strong points that nearly all of the main characters make big mistakes, and both the reasons and the consequences are for the most part in plain sight. And thankfully, the series is at this point not at all forthcoming with sunny alternative scenarios where everyone acted in a sensible and responsible manner and everything came off just right as a consequence. What we get instead is how life works. "What's My Line? Pt. 1" | View Comments152 | PaulaJun 5, 2008 Don't know if anyone actually reads these comments now, but I just wanted to add something since I've been re-watching the S2 episodes with Spike in them: I agree on this two-parter being pretty lame on the whole, but on the other hand, IMO pretty much all of the Spike material since School Hard up until this episode was just lacking on a number of levels. Here, though, it really picks up. I particularly adore the first scene with Spike and Dru in this episode - when he hurts her feelings, then so totally softens and comes over to make up for it and take care of her. That kiss of theirs is just fantastic - one can feel the strength and reassurance Spike gets from Dru in return. I'm surprised you made no mention of that bit in the review. Too bad that in the second part, Spike's jealousy over Dru spending time with Angel doesn't really come across as clearly and consistently as it was written down in the script. That would have been very cool. "What's My Line? Pt. 1" | View Comments153 | PaulaJun 5, 2008 I forgot to add that it's fun and interesting to compare all these Spike/Dru scenes with later Spike/Harmony ones (particularly in The Harsh Light of Day). I guess the latter is what you get when you strip the relationship of all tenderness, support and commitment on Spike's side; with Harmony, he's being totally selfish, only in it for the sex, and downright resentful of every other aspect of the relationship. I think JM nailed it on the DVD commentary, saying he's at that point just plain revenging himself on all womankind - kinda like, "I did my utmost and much good did that do me, so to hell with it all". I'm not saying I feel sorry for Harmony, because I'm physically incapable of even typing that :-)... but she does get a bit of a rough deal. "As You Were" | View Comments154 | PaulaJun 4, 2008 First things first: I dropped by and was absolutely delighted to find you're reviewing again. Way to go!! I first watched the series on DVD just recently and somehow managed not to be spoiled about anything ahead (that is, until I lost it toward the end of S6 and read up on the rest of the series in order to free some brain capacity for getting some actual work done). By Lover's Walk I had become a Spike fangirl, it didn't take much of S5 to make me a Spuffy shipper, and it's been fun to find out afterwards that I'm definitely not the only one these things happened to. I find pretty much all of the episodes covering the Spuffy affair (S6-style) pretty messy on the whole (although I agree on Dead Things being rather cool). However, I did and do applaud the writers having the guts to take the dark and rough route they did with the relationship. At the beginning of S6, I fully realized that I sooooooo wanted those two to get together and make things right for each other, but also that I had a definite uneasiness about the whole thing, what with Spike having no soul and all. This was all addressed and IMO addressed well on the whole. I also liked the way the series got me to both to be uneasy about Spike and really feel for him for trying so hard and getting next to no credit at all for it from anyone. (Xander in particular so seems to enjoy having Spike as a mental punching bag, and never seems to stop to wonder whether he shouldn't be using him as one.) And it is a very interesting point that Buffy, of all people, only and finally seems to be able to treat Spike with some due respect when she breaks up with him. I don't feel he appreciates it much, though. Oh dear, there's so much I could write on the subject... Better stop now. "Doublemeat Palace" | View Comments155 | PaulaApr 29, 2008 Just wanted to post that I recently found these reviews and have very much enjoyed reading them. They're quite insightful, even if I don't agree with every detail of your analyses. Would love to see you review the rest of the series too, but I certainly understand if time, energy and similar are an issue... It's a big job you've done so far already! |
Latest News  Delays... MikeJer - Feb 24, 2013 Hey all!I just wanted to let you all know that I'm looking forward to getting going on my Season 2 review updates. I recently started a new job, so life has been extra bu... View Full Post Latest Comments Ryan ONeil [Consequences] *in reply to James (#30) Probably public property View CommentMay 19, 2013 Waverley [Family] This episode makes me cry like a big girly man every time. That bit where Buffy says 'Take h... View CommentMay 18, 2013 Waverly [Season 6 Review] This is a difficult season to rate for me. It's among my least favourite but I admire, and a... View CommentMay 18, 2013 Latest Forum Posts Brachen Man [Supernatural Rewatch] Season 3 is pretty great. It pretty much ties with Season 4 for second greatest season. That... View PostMay 20, 2013 Ryan ONeil [Xander Harris] The problem with DMP isn't the argument. It's A] the party being over the top and out of cha... View PostMay 20, 2013 MikeJer [Critically Touched Reviews: Frea] w00t w00t! View PostMay 19, 2013 |
I can understand the writers making the mistake of immediately killing her off
I wouldn't call it a mistake but a necessity, since the actress left the show. Apparently the writers had a quite different half-season planned, but they were simply unable to pull it off for this very reason.