Oh, holy crap. I’ve got it. 
According to Merriam-Webster’s definition:
mel·lif·lu·ous
1 : having a smooth rich flow <a mellifluous voice>
What’s a 7 letter word for mellifluous manner that ends in “Y?”
ANSWER:
Harmony.
- Those are other things that bothered me, but to a lesser extent. I don’t think she knew Romanian or Chinese. I think she just aped phrases from dreams/visions. And while Chinese fits with Spike killing one slayer, Romanian doesn’t fit at all. I realize that the girl’s brain had been through a blender, but I still thought it a stretch that she knew how to kill a vamp.
- It has nothing to do with their professions. It’s just the thing that in parts of the Angelverse (as opposed to the Buffyverse), demons seem to be a pretty normal sight in the big city, whereas at other times, it’s way out there. Angels almost-romance with that female cop and how her collegues thought she was wacky flies right in the face of the chief of police calling W&H about a vamp attack. I think it’s sloppy writing. Either the demons are a natural part of everyday life in L.A. à la Wheadon, in which case the lack of reaction from the realtor of having a horned, greenskinned demon in a house is understandable.
Or, they are not normal, in which case the doctors reaction makes sense, but not the realtor.
Remember when Angel walked around with a chopped off demon’s head and tried to pretend that he was working with special effects? It simply doesn’t mesh with what we’re seeing in this season.
What, you don’t think they’d screen “Dracula” on movie night at the loony bin?
If she was aping phrases in foreign languages–“Tell my mother I’m sorry” for example–why couldn’t she ape phrases in English? How do you know she wasn’t reciting words from another English-speaking slayer, and then put it all together somehow. As for the Romanian, that was for Angel’s benefit.
Also, the Watchers need to tell newly called Slayers that vampires exist because it’s commonly accepted that vamps don’t. However, the First Slayer is in them, and once they’re told “Look you gotta look for these monsters”, I don’t see why “instincts” as it were wouldn’t take over. The Primal will recognize the demon. We know it does, because Buffy has “spider senses” when it comes to vamps. Giles told her she has to “hone” them in S1, but she didn’t have to develop them. They’re part of the Slaying package. Which means, even if the girl was crazy, she would know a vampire when she sees him, even if she doesn’t know what it means. And if she heard “Heart and head” and “cut until it’s dust” a million times, she might be able to put one and one together.
Thanks, Chastain, that’s gotta be it. I knew there was an inside joke there somewhere.
Even without the inside joke, it still made me laugh out loud. That makes it even better!
Daniel
Remember, Angel etc. have only tangled with the L.A. office of Wolfram and Hart. They’re not just a multinational law firm, they’re multidimensional. The Watchers surely knew about them, which means Giles knows about them, even without ever appearing on Angel.
Pun intended?
Anyone else think, after the end of the episode, that saddling Angel with Andrew was intended to be an insult, or even a deliberate decoy? Give Angel your single most useless and annoying team member, and while they’re all sitting around a board room table listening to him ramble on about Tales of the Vampyre, you have your real agents (a bunch of Slayers) scouring the city for Dana, hoping to find her while Angel is still trying to get Andrew to stop speaking entirely in Star Wars quotes.
I wonder if Andrew had realized that yet. Either way, that hug was pretty telling.
There’s some evidence that Angelus really is a seperate being from Angel. In season two of Buffy, in the ep where Jenny Calender is possesed by a demon from Giles’s past, they destroy the demon by forcing him into Angel’s body, where it is basically eaten by the vampire demon inside of him. And then there’s the episode last season, when Faith and Angelus are both unconscious from the magic heroin (or whatever it was) that Faith doped herself with before Angelus fed off of her. In their shared dream, Angel and Angelus end up fighting each other. But that might have been psychological, and not metaphysical. More Freudian than Faustian, if you take my meaning.
I wondered about that, because Spike shows up at the hospital just as fast as Angel does. Spike’s only source of info is Lindsey’s Doylesque psychic visions. Last episode, I assumed that Lindsey was faking them and setting up dangerous scenarios for Spike to play the hero in. If that’s true, I wonder if he somehow arranged for Dana to be given the wrong meds.
My guess on this is that, while the Bringers were killing Slayers worldwide in Buffy’s last season, they were focusing most of their efforts on Sunnydale. There probably weren’t any potentials left alive in Southern California who weren’t already working with Buffy, so the effects of Willow’s spell haven’t been felt by Angel and company until now.
I did, at first. I thought he didn’t recognize her because she’d grown up. By the time they ended up in the basement, and he still didn’t recognize her, I figured it probably wasn’t him. I thought maybe that he had kidnapped her and was using those drugs on her trying to figure out a cure for Drucilla, since at that time, she still would have had that mysterious illness she had when they first showed up in Sunnydale way back when.
I disagree, for a number of reasons. First, the ways of killing vampires in the Jossverse aren’t much different from the ways of killing them in real-life vampire fiction. Any ten year old knows how to kill a vampire. Second, because of her mental state, she apparently has Slayer visions constantly and with far more reality than any of the previous Slayers we’ve met. She remembered fighting Spike as Nikki and as the Chinese Slayer, it’s stands to reason she might have the memories of other Slayers training with their Watchers. And finally, its not canon that Watchers have to tell potentials how to kill vampires. I don’t think we’ve ever met a Slayer, Buffy included, who didn’t already know how to kill vampires by the time they met their Watcher. A Watcher trains them how to kill vampires well, and maybe convince them that vampires really exsist. Obviously something no one ever taught Dana, since she didn’t mange to kill anything that wasn’t an innocent human in this episode. But it seems obvious to me that how to kill vampires must be largely instinctual for a Vampire Slayer, otherwise they wouldn’t be a Vampire Slayer.
It seems entirely realistic to me that a realtor would be more likely to believe in demons than a scientist. That’s speaking strictly real-world. There are laws in some areas of the US that make it illegal to sell a house that’s reputed to be haunted without first informing the new buyers of the house’s reputation. Selling houses doesn’t require the degree of skepticism one expects in a doctor or scientist.
In terms of the Joss-verse, it still makes sense. When is a demon going to need to seek out a psychiatrist? Almost never, and they’d probably eat the psychiatrist as soon as they were done. Now, when is a demon going to need to seek out a realtor? Any time it wants to move into a new place. There are probably certain real estate companies that cater specifically to non-humans, and make a point of acquiring properties where terrible crimes have been committed, because that’s the sort of thing a demon probably looks for in a new home.
It’s also possible that the doctor does believe in demons, but doesn’t want that widely known because it could hurt his professional reputation. He doesn’t know from Wolfram and Hart, and had no way to know that Angel and Spike weren’t normal humans.
Lastly, although never explicitly stated anywhere in either show, I get the impression that the number of demons and magical phenomenon have been increasing exponentially since Buffy was first called. Ten years ago, no one believed in demons and vampires. This has been changing, especially thanks to the number of highly visibile near-apocalypses in recent years, but there are a lot of people who still think its all superstition and mass hysteria.
Harmony! Ha!
Didn’t Angel also switch to his vamp face in the first episode of the season when he killed his bodyguards when they tried to attack him at the school?
This episode was okay. I really do wish that Buffy would have ended at Season 5. It was a great stopping point and Season 7 was horrible, IMO. In any event, had they ended it sooner, Angel’s writers wouldn’t be stuck trying to figure out a way to explain ridiculous plot devices such as the notion that there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of potential slayers running around now. There are just too many problems with that notion.
First of all, the Watchers Council is kaput. There’d be no way Rupert, et al could control all the slayers on all seven continents. Hell, they couldn’t keep them in line when there were only two of them. But we’re supposed to believe that somehow Willow, Andrew, Xander, and Giles figured out a way to get all these women under their control. Uh huh.
Secondly, if I were a vampire, even one with a soul, I’d sure be watching my back walking around the streets of L.A. with all those slayers running amouck.
And finally we have last few episodes where Spike goes vigilante. They know that a vigilante is on the loose because a lot of monsters are turning up dead. Hellooooo? There are supposed to be thousands of slayers loose now. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that 7 months later, a few monster death wouldn’t even make the news anymore?
But the real reason Season 7 bugged the crap out of me was Kennedy. The thought of Willow ending up with her? ARGH!
I felt that Andrew was just sort of limp. His Vampeere shtick just isn’t all that funny in the new context: it made sense when he was a geek trying to deal with scary demon shit in a geek’s way. But it seemed forced here. It was cool to see him standing up to Angel at the end, and I like his Dr. Who thing, but I feel like Andrew gets played for laughs too much in a really goofy gay stereotype way.
I don’t think we’re supposed to believe that at all. They’re trying to start a new watcher’s council, and they’ve got some Slayers working for them, starting with the cadre of potentials they were training in season seven. I never got the impression that they controlled or were in contact with all Slayers everywhere. The fact that they didn’t know about Dana until Angel contacted them indicates that some, probably many, Slayers are still slipping through their fingers.
Considering all of the other poweful supernatural threats in L.A, I think this goes with out saying.
I don’t think there are any Slayers living in or around L.A. There’s no way they have escaped Angel’s notice. The ones we saw at the end of the episode were sent there with Andrew, and presumably left with him. (Although it’d be a good twist if they left a couple behind to keep their eye on Angel)
For the record, the activation of all Slayers everywhere is one of the only things I liked about the last season of Buffy. It should have been like that from the beginning, would have made the show much cooler.
Wellllllll…
First off, the New and Improved Watchers Council doesn’ have control of all those young women. They’ve probably rounded up maybe a couple hundred at most. And it’s not unreasonable to think that they could maintain control for seven months. Beyond that after the Slayers start to gain confidence, then arrogance, yeah, if AtS is still around next season, a rogue Slayer storyline is a definite possibility.
Also, figure that most of those Slayers probably don’t know they’re Slayers. They’re probably just a bunch of chicks who have suddenly developed superpowers but don’t understand the larger implications yet. They’re probably out fighting run-of-the mill natural crime, not the supernatural variety, that is if they’re not committing crimes themselves. And as Miller pointed out, there is a good possibility that the Potential Slayer population of Sunny SoCal was pretty well wiped out by the Bringers, so there might just not be a lot of them in L.A.
Seems to me that there would maybe be several thousand Potentials/Slayers on the entire planet, but not concentrated in one metropolitan area. If Miller’s hypothesis is correct, Spike and Angel probably wouldn’t be in need of major back watching from that direction.
Cleveland, OTOH, might be another story. I hear there’s a Hellmouth there.
Oh, and I agree about Willow and Kennedy. Gag me…
Er, not to rain on anyone’s parade, but with the clue “in a mellifluous manner” the answer is going to be an adverb. “Harmony” isn’t an adverb.
I guess I must have been one of the least impressed with this episode. Certainly I wouldn’t consider it the best of the season so far (that honor goes to the ep with Number 5) but it wasn’t the worst either (two words: girl werewolf). I think Andrew for the most part was overplayed and irritating, and not in a good way. I did like his lines about the nickel (although he certainly ought to know what blood smells like, at least Jonathon’s blood) and the dozen slayers. Speaking of whom, did any of them even see Spike and if so would they know who he was? Probably no danger of their reporting it back to Buffy.
Did anyone else assume that a body part separated from a vampire would dust? Is there precedent in the series for a vampire losing a body part (other than a head)?
The only one I can think of is Kakistos, the vampire master who pursued Faith to Sunnydale. But that was an eye, not a limb.
Miller, you didn’t read my second post when I answered Pepperlandgirl, didya?
To quote my least favorite character on the show, “Du-uh!” 
Still, though, the answer works so well that it’s gotta be what they intended. Maybe it wasn’t a great crossword clue, but it was a great Jossverse joke.
Daniel
The fact that Harmony is a noun hit me last night when I got home, and I spent the rest of the evening with the back section of my brain (which usually occupies itself by running “Copacabana” on a loop–or sometimes replaying all of Star Wars–I’m a geek) working on the problem.
All I’ve come up with thus far is “silkily.” Is that even a word?
Interesting point. I wonder if the severed arms would spontaneously dust if the vampire himself is later killed.
Was anyone else bothered by the fact that the “past slayers’ memory” thing was never mentioned in Buffy? At one point Buffy had to ask Spike how he killed those two slayers, but Dana just knew.
“Past Slayer’s Memories” is just a side-effect of Willow’s activation spell.
Remember, anything that happens that is a continuity error…a wizard did it.
(Thank you Lucy Lawless!)
I don’t think it has ever been established what % of a vampire must be removed to dust them. Remember last season, Skip the Demon said he was going to snip pieces off of Angel until he “went all dust-bunny.”
Ok, since we’re discussing plot holes involving the hundreds or even thousands of new slayers running around, here’s what bothers me the most: Why didn’t W&H know about it? I mean an incredibly powerful mage casts a spell using an ancient relic of unbelievable power, and imbues thousands of girls with the power of a slayer, and W&H is oblivious? They know when a chaos demon buys a pack of gum in Topeka, Kansas. I found it hard to believe that Angel, as the CEO, wasn’t informed of this happening, and had to find out through Andrew.
Man, no kidding. Gunn knows how to play golf? Golf?! They’re coming perilously close to ruining one of the coolest characters on the show. I’m hoping that a later plot development will be that Gunn will lose all his W&H-gained knowledge, and we’ll get to see how he chooses to react. He’s gone from street-smart to book-smart, and I’d like to see what the street-smart Gunn we all know and love really wants. Anyway. I hope to God that we just saw the last of the magically-imparted knowledge popping up.
That’s pretty much what I was thinking. Wolfram & Hart have all sorts of business connections. Why not some realtors to boot? The woman didn’t even blink when the psychic said that the walls were screaming-- she just smiled and said she’d wait for them outside. She’s got W&H written all over her.
Not really. In the original “Buffy” movie, Buffy dreamed of past slayers before Merrick showed up. We know that some of what happened in the original “Buffy” movie actually did happen, i.e. Hemery High, burning down the gym, vampires at the prom, etc. So I didn’t find it jarring.
As to why Buffy had to ask Spike and why Dana just knew, I guess for Buffy, they were “dreams,” and not everyone remembers every aspect of every dream. Buffy has more recently because she knows some of her dreams are precognitive or in some way significant, but I don’t know that she paid that close attention in the past. For Dana, they were far more real, and she probably experienced them in a more detailed and vivid way. She also seems to have waking dreams or flashbacks, so rather than getting her dreams in nice, easy to manage, eight hour per night doses, she gets them all the time. More time = recollections of more slayers.