Let’s start some speculation about tonight’s episode.
Will Spike and Angel fall in love in Italy?
Will Nelson from the Simpsons see them riding the bike together and go “Haw-hah?”
Will the dancing blond hair in the club be Buffy Stunt Double, Buffy played by Geller (surprise), or just someone who looks like Buffy but isn’t?
What does Italy have to do with the ever approaching end of the series?
Seriously,
I want to see some things get tied up before the series ends but I am a bit concerned that there is too much going on from before the show got cancelled for them to have some closure. I’m hoping for some Angel or Whedonverse movie next season, but at this point I’m not getting my hopes too high. Network TV is turning into a reality TV, CSI (1,2,3), and Law and Order landscape and TV shows like Angel and Buffy where the plot unfolds over time are being regulated to cable where they are given a set time slot, allowed to grow, and are given more artistic freedom, ie The Shield, Sopranos, Deadwood. Maybe the rumors of a TNT Angel movie are a good thing.
Well - it could actually BE Buffy - which would have been one hell of a well-kept secret.
Or it could be one of those episodes where they just keep missing her, which would suck.
I’m trying to decide which it’s likely to be.
The episode spoiler on my cable box says something about them going to Italy to see Buffy and are surpised by who she is with.
So I’m thinking…Buffy and Drusilla in a slayer/vamp lesbian love nest. Angel and Spike show up and hilarity ensues.
Much as I’d like to see a surprise real-Buffy cameo, I doubt it will happen. What I’m very excited about is the fact that it’s been reported this will be the funniest episode ever. I’m definitely looking forward to that.
If anything gets resolved, I’ll be somewhat surprised. After all, the Apocalypse is happening at W&H, not in Italy … maybe there will be some lingering Buffy/Angel/Spike triangle resolution, but unless we actually have SMG, I don’t think that will be it.
On the upside, according to TV Guide this week, Andrew appears in this episode. The Guide also says something about how Angel and Spike “find out what Buffy’s been doing … and who she’s been doing it with.” I would gladly pay to see Angel and Spike’s faces if they found Andrew’d taken their place.
I’m not spoiled, but I’d bet A LOT of $$ that SMG will not be there. If she were, the WB wouldn’t want to keep it a secret. They’d have been touting her return for months, since the moment they knew she’d be there.
I’ll bet Spike and Angel get an update on what (or who?) she’s doing, but don’t even come close to seeing her.
My (spoiled) sisters tell me there’s a secondary plot with the rest of the gang, so I’m hoping that addresses THE apocalypse that we’ll no doubt be seeing in the final 2 episodes.
Ouch…final 2 episodes. It hurts to even write that. I hate the WB.
Given how fucking clueless the WB is about this amazing show they’re apparently only vaguely aware runs on their network, it wouldn’t be impossible to have Gellar play Buffy in the episode and then for Whedon to tell the suits when he showed them the rough cut that it was a different woman playing the role and the clueless dolts didn’t know any better and thus weren’t aware they could use her in the ads.
Not saying it’s likely. Just saying it’s possible.
If a miracle occurs and it really is Gellar beneath the blonde do, rather than Whedon having slipped one past the suits, it will no doubt be the result of her having made it a clause in her contract that the WB couldn’t use her in the marketing. This does happen from time to time, mostly in movies when a star doesn’t want the ad campaign to misleadingly focus on a two-minute cameo as if it’s a co-starring part.
As a precedent, NBC (whose promo department overhypes everything) didn’t say a word when George Clooney made a one time, short, sweet appearance on ER a year and a half after he’d left the show.
The people who were spoiled knew, of course, but anyone who just watched the NBC promos and the show regularly was pleasantly surprised.
So it could happen. I doubt it, but it could happen.
Unless SMG could somehow teleport from Japan to LA, then it’s extremely doubtful she’s in tonight’s episode. And by extremely doubtful, I mean, impossible.
Well, I haven’t seen many from this season (I missed the muppet episode), but I gotta say, it was pretty damn funny. I didn’t expect SMG to be in it, so there’s no love loss there, but I did love the interraction between the two. I’m not sure what my favorite part was though: The “Concurrently? You never let us…” bit; the conversation about how it sucks that they can’t get drunk off of the little bottles of booze; or the return from commertial after the explotion with Spike bitching about his coat
Fun episode, but again, I don’t see how this really relates to the big conclusion.
I agree. I was expecting some major story arch beginnings, not a one off.
I also didn’t feel it was the “funniest” by any means, though it had its moments.
And I was absolutely horrified that no one had told Fred’s parents she had died!!! I can’t believe they never called her parents! WTF was the Fang Gang thinking???
My wife said it best… it’s akin to the X-Files having their second-to-last episode be a Brady Bunch pastiche. Why were they playing Angelus and W. the Bloody for laughs - I thought evil Angel was, well, evil.
The second that Angel asked “do you have the head?”, eyes were rolling and books were being opened, the episode being given up for lost.
The only thing I can figure was that it is a brilliant attempt at deconstructing the characters so that, by the end of the series, nobody will give a shiite about it or them.
One, it hasn’t been all that long since Fred died, and two, given the bizarre circumstances I’m sure Wesley didn’t know what or how to tell them.
Man, it was good to see Fred again tonight! Even just for a little bit, and even if it wasn’t really hear. Illyria’s an interesting character, but it’s Fred I wanted for my girlfriend. I miss her.
Well, I still think “Muppet Angel” has it beat for funniest episode ever, but it had its moments. Spike’s jacket. Angel’s jacket. The “head” of an LA crime family. The Rome branch of W&H. The unseen new guy: The Immortal, who I expected to have a brief scene, revealing him to be Christopher Lambert, Adrian Paul (more appropriate to the “pretty boy” reputation), or Joss himself.
But my god, Amy Acker blew me away tonight.
The way she’d flip between “Fred” and Illyria was just…eerie. I wasn’t sure who’s head was going to explode first: mine or Wesley’s.
Good to see Andrew’s growing up, which is more than we can really say for the Brooder Bear and Blondie Bear… Although when his first scene has him coming to the door in a Strongbad t-shirt, it looks like the inner nerd still lives. Although when he left at the end, I did half expect it to be Dawn at the door (there’s no way he would’ve ended up with Buffy).
I’d probably consider this a pretty good episode, except they only have two more episodes to tie everything up! This would be a perfect “one off” episode you toss into the middle of a season to take a break from the arc, not something you do at the end!!!
