Hey, Fiver– yep, I saw your last reply in the “Fray” thread. Will probably try to see what I can find here in NYC, though I haven’t gotten to it just yet.
Season Two starts tonight on FX, if I’ve got my episodes straight. Yay!
I liked the Heaven thing too. Especially the way she told Spike about it-- I’m paraphrasing, but the “I don’t know about theology… but I knew everyone I cared about was ok, and I was warm, and loved, and at peace” was great.
OK, jeez, enough with the griping about Xander’s job. he works in construction, and construction is seasonal. If he’s any good at it, he can probably go a long way toward setting his own hours when he does work. Move along, people, nothing more to see here.
And the demon wasn’t a price, it was a gift with purchase. I thought it served more of a purpose than just a mcguffin. Listen to what it was saying to the Scoobs (and can we change that name please? Oh wait, SMG is in the Scooby Doo movie, of course we can’t), especially to Willow. All that stuff about the blood staining her? The demon was a harbinger.
Regarding Willow’s insistence that Buffy was in hell. If you watch both episodes, you see Willow’s story changing from “we don’t know where Buffy is” to “she could be trapped” to “she IS trapped and we can’t leave her there.” I took that to be a sign that Willow knows she’s done something fundamentally wrong and she is seeking a way to justify it other than her purely selfish reasons.
Willow is definitely going to be the big bad this season or next. When is Alyson’s contract up?
Yeah, all I could say when Willow killed the fawn was, “Bad move. Very bad move.”
Not only will Willow be absorbed by the Dark Side, but my money sez she kills Tara, or causes her to be killed.
I guess my biggest problem with Angel was how it all felt recycled. “You’ll be my friend if you kill me when you have to.” “Not all demons are bad.” “Gunn is isolated from his former crew.”
I don’t like it when I can sit and predict every single thing that’s going to happen. I could do that for Angel this week.
Vamps have blood in them, it’s just other people’s.
I think that Willow isn’t consciously becoming dark so much as it’s sucking her in. She sees herself as doing what has to be done, and she’s blind to the consequences.
I find Tara fascinating. Funny, that. 
Weirdo.
BTW, did anyone else think “She didn’t really call Giles. She’s lying.”?
Or was that just me?
Okay, we’ve figured out the rest of the season. Can I have my Tuesday nights back, please?
Wow, Trion, it hadn’t even occurred to me that maybe Willow hadn’t called Giles. I did think it was odd that we didn’t even see her on the phone. You may be on to something there, and that would go along with the notion that Willow’s going bad.
If Willow’s already going bad, then I don’t think she’ll be the Big Bad for the season. Buffy’s got a history of pulling the Big Bad switcheroo somewhere near the season’s halfway point:
Season 2: Spike & Dru are one-upped by Angelus.
Season 3: Mr. Trick gives way to Faith (although granted, the Mayor is the full-fledged Big Bad all the way).
Season 4: Maggie Walsh gives way to Adam.
Season 5: Glory shoots my theory to hell.
I’m not saying that Willow won’t go bad, though. Just that things’ll probably get more complicated than that. And that someone/-thing else may come along to supersize Willow’s serving of evil. The Buffiverse feasts on complications.
Another note about last night: one sign that Buffy is still Buffy is her determination to let her friends feel good about “rescuing” her. She’s in hell, but she won’t tell anyone . . . classic Buffy.
Warning, anybody watching the early seasons on FX for the first time–there be spoilers here.
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I’ve always thought Xander gets kind of a bum rap about this issue. As I see it, he had to make a pretty tough decision there. And consider what had to be going through his mind:
There’s no guarantee the resouling spell was going to work–Willow was still very much a novice witch at the time.
Even if it did work, there’s no guarantee it would work in time. Which, you’ll recall, it didn’t.
Buffy has to fight with everything she’s got if she’s going to beat Angel. If she starts holding back, waiting for a spell that might never take effect, it could easily get her killed.
I agree that there should have been some repercussions from Xander’s action (or rather inaction). I agree Buffy should have been royally pissed. But I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as “here’s Xander obviously being a jackass.”
Actually, you want jackass behavior, you need only look at his treatment of Anya, which has bordered on the psychologically abusive. For someone who claims to love her, he often doesn’t seem even to like her very much, and puts her down quite a bit.
Oh, yeah, this season. Well, for me it’s a bit too early to tell yet. I tend to agree, Willow seems to be going toward the dark side. This, at least, is being presented fairly realistically. She seems to be taking little steps, each one of which she can justify as being for the greater good, that will ultimately lead to ruin. The interesting question, if that happens, is whether she’ll be redeemed or lost. Personally I’m hoping for the former.
That’s part of what got me thinking that. Plus it keeps Giles in England.
But I should warn you - my theroies never turn out to be true.
Not necessarily. Didn’t Ben become rather monstrous? Calling the Queller wasn’t exactly a lily-white thing to do. Ben admitted that his motivation was to “clean up Glory’s mess”, implying that he was doing it out of self-preservation. Oh yeah, and then there were the final two episodes of last season. It is so creepy when the human beings turn out to be more evil than the Hell-gods et al.
Context! Context!
Xander knows that Anya’s odd behaviour makes his longtime friends uncomfortable. Anya also seems to acknowledge that she isn’t a total natural at the humanity thing (maybe she’ll never get the hang of it). I think that what sounds like “put-downs” are Xander coaching Anya in tact and mixing it with his nippy sense of humour. Anya doesn’t take it personally. In fact, she never takes anything personally, and Xander knows this.
Also there is the “Homer Simpson” defense, which is that no matter what asinine things come out of Xander’s mouth, at the end of the day he adores Anya and is unflaggingly loyal to her. Those actions matter more than anything he could ever say to her.
I’m guessing that Willow is evil by mid-season, then redeems herself in the season finale by helping to kill this season’s real villain, whoever that ends up being. I hope she keeps the magic powers, just becomes more aware of the price of using them. Instead of reverting to plain old Willow, or worse, dying.
I’m actually enjoying Angel more than Buffy, though. I like the way the supernatural is more integrated into society: anti-vampire streetgangs, demon cabaret, and corporate sorcerers filling out paperwork before casting a spell. I like it better than Buffy’s convienently unobservant suburbanites.
Personally, I’m getting tired of the teeny-weeny sets on Angel. Hell, even when they’re on the streets of LA, it seems like they’re on a set. Maybe it’s the cinematography (speaking of which, long live letterboxing!).
As for BtVS, did Anya and Xander tell everybody about their engagement yet?
No.
I sort of put this down to “big city versus little city” mentality. Big city equals diversity, more opportunities to integrate, etc. Actually, the level of integration/assimilation on Angel sort of bugs me. It diminishes the evil of demons to see them commuting and stuff.
You know, Miller and Otto, I’m of two minds about this. I usually love it when an SF or fantasy show throws in little touches of “ordinariness” like when Lilah hires a guy with an exposed brain to paranormally project visions into Cordelia’s head, then asks if he’s filled out his 1099 form.
But on the other hand: in the first few seasons Buffy (the show) worked hard to suggest that their characters lived in our world, and that the Hellmouth and vampires and demons and magic were something the people at large knew nothing about.
They still make token efforts at this, like last season on Angel when Lorne visited Fred’s college and claimed he was dressed as a school mascot.
But when they imply that Merle and other clearly non-human creatures live in regular apartments and buy Big Gulps at convenience stores, I think they must have crossed some kind of line. I need them to tell me there’s a huge “non-notice stuff” spell over all of Los Angeles, or that the individual demons can hide their faces behind human-seeming glamours.
Or even that they hide their faces behind copies of Glamour.
Even if you didn’t figure out last week that Buffy had been in Heaven or something like it, you had to get it before this week’s ep was half over. They totally telegraphed it by hammering on “you know, from HELL” in every single line from the Scoobies. True, it shows the faith they had in Willow’s interpretation of events and the fervor with which they wanted to help Buffy, but I think the writers should have eased up a little on the idea. But then, Joss ain’t callin’ me when it comes time for rewrites, so what do I know?
I was pleased with the Spike content this week, too. I felt ahead of time that, if Buffy were going to open up to anyone about what really happened, it would have to be him. There were shades of it after he first saw her and was getting ready to take care of her hands (God, he handled her with such reverence. I love him.) and when she showed up at the SpikePad. (And that “I saved you every time” speech! I think an appreciation thread is in order…) I think she was seeking him out because he was the only one who was concerned only about her. The Scoobies were desperate for reinforcement that they’d done the right thing by bringing her back. Not that they weren’t concerned for her well-being, but they needed to have their own nacent guilt assuaged as well. Spike had no part of that; he was the only one who seemed completely sincere in asking if she was all right and if she needed anything.
Junie’s Bold Prediction of the Day[sup]TM[/sup]: There will be Buffy/Spike shippage of some kind before the season is over. They’re growing closer and she’s trusting him more, not just as a fighting companion, but also as a person. I am going to go further out on a limb and predict that it will either happen on Buffy’s birthday (just a hunch; it’s far enough into the season, and something weird(er) always happens on her birthday) or on Halloween (quiet night, rudimentary patrol…you never know.)
Okay, did nobody notice the little foreshadowing when Buffy was patrolling? She walks past an angel statue and as the camera follows her the wings seem to be hers. I thought it was a beautifully shot scene.
Did anybody notice all the numbers they were wearing? The first episode Willow is wearing #11, Xander #13 and Dawn #7 (still wearing #7 Tuesday). At first I though that this might have some significance, but now I think it’s a fashion statement of some kind.