I admit the Amy teleporting Kennedy to daylight bugged the crap outta me. I mean I know it was supposed to be a “recreate the scene of Tara’s death” but Amy just isn’t that freakn’ powerful or she’d be quite the big bad.
I am really hoping that the reason Amy made an appearance at all is because now she’s an agent for TFE because her motives otherwise were just too dumb.
Overall though, I really did like the episode. Warren doing stuttery, wide-eyed Willow stuff kinda tickled my funny-bone. As did the “well, no one’s ever going to say you aren’t butch enough…”
I like Kennedy, but I like her better when she’s tough and no so talky-with-bad-dialogue.
I’ll double-check the tape. I was pretty sure it was just charred demon bodies in their little Initiative “prison outfits”. Hard to tell with the flashlights. But the upside down, gargoyle-lookin’ guy seems to make it pretty clear that it was demon bodies.
No. She really is that dumb. Therefore, she be shot by Xander/staked by Buffy/eaten by Andrew’s demons/given to D’hoffryan by Anya/exploded by Willow/beaten to death by SITs/mauled by a returning Faith/made into Giles’s bitch.
Sure, elementary. They re-assigned the living, destroyed most of the records, and trusted that the closed facility, which was hidden underground to begin with, would be undisturbed wihile they worked out the contractual and funding kinks of a more permanent solution.
Now, this might have been madness in, say, Scottsdale. But let’s face it: history teaches us that for whatever reason (Hellmouthiness, most likely) strange events are not likely to bring a team of exposé journalists to Sunnydale. So if you’re going to leave your super-secret project alone somewhere, Sunnydale is a great place to choose.
When Amy came out with that “potential Slayer” line to Kennedy I tweaked and thought she was TFE, especially with the delivery of “oops.” But then–and I haven’t seen the episode again–I thought the Wiccan group was at least touching hands in their circle.
A favorite part for me was everyone ignoring Spike writhing around on the floor while they dealt with the Willow/Warren switcheroo. I also liked the head soldier guy calling Spike “ass-face.”
I’m astounded no one ever touched or remembered touching Giles when he came back to Sunnydale. You’d think Willow at least would have hugged him, or Dawn. But I was sort of looking forward–sick, I know–to seeing Big Bad Giles.
Did Sarah Michelle Gellar have a head cold or something through the first fifteen minutes or so? Her voice sounded a lot more nasal than usual.
Next week looks like a bit of a sleeper. I hope I’m proved wrong. I’ll be hunkered down on the couch tonight, wrapped in a blanket, for the return of Angelus.
RE: the implausibility of Amy envying Willow’s power,
Her explanation wasn’t entirely rational, but then Amy isn’t rational, so it fits. I think that Wrack planted the seed of jealousy in Amy’s mind when Willow became his favourite.
I’d like to know how Giles got out of being beheaded. I’m going to be very disappointed if I don’t get an explanation on how he pulled that one off.
I winced at some of the acting in this ep too, but I’m not going to be so harsh because there is precious little girl-on-girl action to be had on television these days. And as long as Aly shows up for some of it, I’m gonna be waving my pom-poms.
Admittedly, it’s been a while since I took a psych class, but if I remember the chapter on conditioning right, it will be more interesting when Buffy tells Spike the chip is removed and he still feels pain when he hits someone.
I may be alone here, but I’m not really all that bothered by what Amy did, because, despite her being a bit off balance(who wouldn’t be irrationally jealous of the person who managed to bring them back to human form? That right there shows that Willow was more powerful, at least in Amy’s mind, since Amy couldn’t bring herself back), she’s right. I found the whole “let’s welcome Willow back with open arms and only a touch of nervousness after she tried to destroy the world” bit to be hard to swallow. She did terrible things, and before this episode the only really repercussions she faced was feeling bad about it. You have to expect that there would be more negatives to it than that, since no one in the the Buffy universe ever gets off that easily. After you screw up you go to jail, die, or get banished to LA, not have everyone you’ve ever met fall over you in the joy that you’ve probably mended your wicked ways and are now good again. Amy toes the line between bad and indifferent, so I can’t think of a better character to dispell something like justice to Willow.
As for the initiative…I was far more disturbed by their callously allowing the demons to just die unattended than the plot inconsistancies. I know they closed up shop quickly, but letting them starve to death is horrific. They could have dispatched them in a humane manner. I’ve always hated the initiative, so this is within keeping with my idea of their ethics, so I guess it’s not a stretch to think they’d be so cruel.
Wrecked is the one where Amy takes Willow to see Rack, AKA “the blatant and crappy drugs metaphor ep”. It’s the one with the demolition fuck at the end, if you don’t remember it for anything else.
DMP - I should really have written 2MP to avoid confusion with Dead Man’s Party, sorry. It’s Doublemeat Palace, AKA “Night of the Penis Monster”.
WTWTA - Where The Wild Things Are - is the one with the orphan torture, where Buffy and Riley are supposedly going to screw each other to death if they aren’t saved. It’s also the only Buffy ep where safe sex is visibly practiced.
Personally I think Bad Eggs is worse than any of them (though not by much in the case of NotPM).
Wrecked was the “Willow gets addicted to magic” highlighter, with Amy leading her to Rack and Willow floating on the ceiling, bringing a new meaning to “getting high”.
DMP is probably Dead Man’s Party, when Buffy aka Anne the waitress comes back to Sunnyvale from her self-imposed exile and everyone is lukewarm to see her.
WTWTA is most likely Where the Wild Things Are, where Xander’s driving an ice-cream truck and we get to see the haunted-house thing happen, where spirits of the murdered express their displeasure at having been drowned by some religious nut lady, and Anya gets the great line: “Shut up, you repressed crybabies!”
Amy couldn’t bring herself back only because she couldn’t essay the spell while she was a rat. She managed to transform Buffy back from being a rat in Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered with no trouble. Another nail in the coffin of this shitty ep.
**
Willow doesn’t just “feel bad” about it, though. I think this was pretty well summed up in Conversations With Dead People before the First over-egged the pudding. Willow knows that she is in a position where in order to help or even save the people she loves, she runs the risk of destroying them herself. It’s a prison of her own making, and the only way she is ever going to get out of it is by working to rehabilitate and redeem herself.
I will concede that winding up in the cast of Angel would be a fate worse than death, though.
In a well-written episode, they would have dispatched them, and disposed of the bodies to boot. There was always going to be the risk of someone finding the facility, and that risk is multiplied a hundredfold if there’s a chance that one of those demons could escape.
I always thought it was obvious why Amy couldn’t change herself back - if the method she knew to change herself back (which could have been different from the way Willow did it, there is probably more than one way to metamorphose a rat) involved doing an incantation, lighting candles, burning incense… anything a rat is incapable of doing because rats don’t have opposable thumbs and can’t speak. To me, that made Amy’s anger at Willow more plausible - “I was counting on you to save me because it was obvious I couldn’t save myself; I trusted you and you failed me for years”.
I find it plausible that the Scoobies would trust Willow again because they understand that she had reasons for what she did. It’s not like all of a sudden she snapped for no apparent reason and proceeded to slaughter nuns and kittens and puppies. She killed a multiple murderer as an act of vengeance, because he killed her lover, who she had only just won back after a rocky patch. Willow trying to destroy the world wasn’t anything personal against her friends. She was forced to confront her own suffering and the suffering she had caused Warren when she stole Giles’ white majick, which made want it all to stop. If you want to compare apocalypse scenarios, Willow had more pathos than Angelus, who just likes destruction for its own sake.
I don’t want anyone to interpret my last paragraph as saying that Willow shouldn’t suffer consequences for what she did. I was so intrigued by this episode because I liked the concept of Willow facing some consequences. It’s strange, before S4 killing humans was a thickly drawn line that could not be crossed without grave repercussions. I was disappointed that Giles didn’t have to face up to anything after asphyxiating Ben (if I missed something there and it was established that Ben wasn’t human, feel free to correct me).
No I am not; I am saying that a human inhabited by a Hell God is still a human, and it seems starnge to me athat a formerly uncrobbale line should be rendered crossable without any exposition.
And re: your first post: :smack: I am so retarded.
But in my defense, Amy needling Willow about “You were too busy not making me not be a rat” kind of made it fit. At the time. Dammit, do I have brain damage or something? Maybe working in fast food is dulling my logic skills.
Ben was human in body but it seems he was made specifically to be the host of Glory. Also given the way the Watcher council operates I’m sure Giles has killed and ordered the death of others several times. The Watchers seem to be willing to fight their war with any method necessary and while Giles doesn’t agree with the mentality that the Slayer is expendable he does have their same ruthlesness.
As for the Giles = TFE plot the moronic nature of it has nothing to do with the characters suspecting it. Yah sure it would be a situation where they might expect it. The thing is the audience was given no real good reason to believe it. Now the discovery was played for laughs but the whole thing should have been a clear joke on the characters with the viewers in on it if it was going to be there at all. Or maybe some effort put into really making us wonder. Doing this would be fairly hard because short of an example of incorporality you can only do very circumstantial things. It would be doable but hard and I still think not as satisfying as us being in on the fact he isn’t and seeing the Scoobies flip out.
Oh and about cellphones I don’t think the pit in the ground gets good reception.
About cutting the sub-plots I think that it would be good just because it would have let them play the whole jealousy curse/rightful retribuition storyline in a better way. Amy as the Evil Witch. Kennedy as the Knight. Willow as the Maiden. Yes it wouldn’t have been particularly twist filled but simple stories that are well written with sharp dialogue and that move at a good pace are pretty much always good.
As for the teleportation I don’t think that it was totally Amy’s doing. I think she more so saw it coming. Willow needed here there for the punishment she was building for herself so I suspect that Willow plus maybe some boost from the hex on her brought Kennedy. Making night look like day wouldn’t be that hard of an illusion I’d bet. Especially if it was localized.
I liked the main plot and I agree Warren could, and should, have been far more menacing when he was really around.
