True, but you’re complaining about the Angel script-writing that is mainly done by a different team, not the Buffy/Angelverse continuity.
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:mad:
Starting a thread doesn’t make you special.
OOC, how was Pylea discontinious with the Buffyverse?
Evil Death, methinks you must chill and stop being so anal. It matters not what we discuss here so long as there is some perspective on the OP. I could start comparing this to Anne Rice if I thought it could help my argument.
Because Angel is in the Buffyverse, the same “laws” should apply and so it is very relevant, especially since it wasonly being used as an allegory.
I understand you want to get this right, but geez.
Well, my life has no meaning anymore.
OK, let’s take the bull by the horns and answer robertliguori’s question: in what way did the trip to Pylea violate known laws of the Buffyverse?
There are no rules. Every rule has numerous exemptions to it for the sake of plot. There are some general principals to the show.
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Spike. Thou shall not stake Spike, no matter how many humans he has killed. Thou shall tie up and maim Spike at least once every 3 episodes no matter how nice or how many people he has saved lately. Thou shall equip Spike with break away clothes to keep the shippers tuned in.
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Buffy. Buffy must take a beating before she is allowed to kill. Buffy must never have a good relationship with a man. Buffy tends to have horrible taste in men, but great taste in clothes.
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Willow. It is ok to retcon Willow for plot purposes, just explain in interviews that’s what you always intended, the first 4 seasons of episodes and scripts aside. Willow’s intellect is flexible enough to cover for the “Giles” role when needed. Willow’s magic ability is less consistent then the writing for Xander. Willow’s parents must never be shown, even though she lives in the same town with them and they are paying her way through College.
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Xander. Poor Xander. All the shippers will hate you because you are not nice to the semi-helpless pointy toothed demon in the house. Like Buffy, you are not allowed to have a simple nice relationship with a woman, ever. Unlike Buffy, your character will get retconned from episode to episode, leading to character whiplash. When all else fails, super soldier memory plot device may be invoked.
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Clem. Clem is simple perfection. His brilliance is threatening to the other characters so he must only be used in small doses, sadly enough.
Cellphones? Why not a Super Soaker 3000 filled with holy water? Where did that kick butt Hammer of the Gods go? Bet that would have squished Mr. Scary UberVamp but quick.
And having worked for the Government, it is entirely unsurprising that the concrete never got used, nor the mess cleaned up.
Also somebody here needs naptime :rolleyes:
Nothing you’ve written constitutes an exception to any rules.
At best, it’s characters not thinking of things you’ve thought of. But there is no point of continuity that requires the characters to stake Spike. And I can name kills Buffy’s made without taking a beating. It would defy logic if she NEVER took a beating, though.
I’m not sure what you mean by “retcon” Willow. If there’s a point of continuity that was violated, let’s hear it.
There’s a big difference between “I don’t like what the characters are saying/doing,” and “You broke continuity.”
- Rick
Yeah, I agree, I am not too fond of Xander, but he’s always been a self-righteous prick, from S1. So that’s not a big continuity break. And not staking Spike has been a rule since S2 when JW decided that he liked JM so much (as did the fans) that he didn’t want Spike to die in WHat’s My Line 2. Spike didn’t and doesn’t die becaue the writers, for whatever reasons, want him there to somehow serve Buffy’s story because as everybody is so fond of pointing out it’ All.About.Buffy.
Of course Willow is smart enough to fill Giles’ role…she’s the one who spent all those hours in the library with him researching, and is already the smartest person in the school.
Buffy is fighting supernaturally strong beings. Just because she’s the “one girl in all the world” (ahem) doesn’t mean she’s stronger than the demons, it just means she’s strong enough to kill them. It wouldn’t be interesting if she killed everything in 2 seconds. Afterall, she’s still the Slayer…we have to watch her slay stuff occasionally. As for the relationships…well, all snarkiness aside (I have my own beliefs about this but…) If they have gave her a happy relationship, then it might become the Sam/Diane thing and nobody would be interested anymore. Always gotta have the drama and the life lessons or else JW et al aren’t interested.
Umm lets discuss principals vs rules here.
Principal-- usually happens. i.e., even the lowliest vamp normally gets to pound on Buffy before gettin all dusty. Rule- Vamp must beat one Buffy propr to dying.
Retcon- to redo a character changing or ignoring their past.
My point is this- continuity does not really matter here, it is observed UNLESS it gets in the way of the plot. There are just some general principals or overriding themes which must be followed. i.e. no staking Spike, or happy Buffy.
Typo’s eeep.
PLG- you don’t like Xander? I hadn’t noticed. 
Good point on the Sam/Diane thing.
Still one decent relationship in all these seasons seems likely from a statistical stand point. Buffy - Angel, Giles - Jenny, Xander - Cordy, Willow - Oz, Willow - Xander, Buffy - Riley, Willow - Tara, Xander - Anya, Buffy - Spike (not so good so far. . .), ouch.
On the Buffy the Timex point- she has gone toe to toe with a God, and all sorts of huge demons, and yet sometimes the random vamp or two seems to give her an inordinately hard time.
Of course this is for dramatic purposes. That was my point- continuity isn’t all that important to the writers, especially in the later seasons. Its all about the plot, and continuity takes a back seat. As somebody above stated, it is a show about Vampires and Demons- so no sense getting to worked up on the random headscratcher they let slip through. Angel is even worse for this, yet I enjoy the show more, so continuity isn’t my biggest concern.
However, to be fair, I like Xander, and liked Riley- so my opinion should probably be taken with several grains of salt.
See, and I just don’t buy that at all. We’ve seen nothing from this Wicca group that indicates they even performed magic before. When Willow suggested they try some spells they ridiculed her (“Yeah, then maybe we can jump on our broomsticks, and ride around on our brooksticks.”) Whereas Willow’s been in close contact with the coven for months, working with them to locate Potentials and what have you. Willow’s going to the campus Wicca group was bad writing and as you note a cheap way to get Amy back in the story. Christ, did anyone think, when Willow said she was going to look up “some old friends” that she meant Amy? Why not have her look up Amy and the male witch from S3 (whose name escapes me) instead of sandwiching in the Wicca group? Lame lame lame.
I am continually amazed at viewers who expect on-screen characters to be brilliant, perfect, all-knowing, and capable of following through on every little suggestion with complete literal behaviour.
Friggin’ hell, these aren’t Heinlein heroes we’re talking about here folks! Just because someone says “Fill it with concrete, salt the earth” doesn’t mean you actually do that! Ye gods, get a sense of proportion.
As for Amy-- ever since she came back from a rat she’s been a bitch from hell. Or did you not notice her casting miscellaneous spells on patrons of the Bronze last year? Who else is going to be petty enough to do something nasty to Willow?
And cellphones-- why exactly does everyone need Buffy to do everything in your world? I mean, all the crew were doing was driving out to the desert to slap Giles/TFE, and we already know that TFE on its lonesome can’t do squat. It’s only if it brought the Bringers-- and it’s already been established that this year, Buffy can’t take on a bunch of foes at the same time…
However, I agree that Willow seeking out the wiccans on campus was very lame, as was trusting the girl who got her hooked on pleasure magic in the first place, but Willow has always been naive.
It didn’t; we know from Anne (among others) that parallel dimensions exist in both halves of the Buffyverse. I agree with Gaspode in that I think Pylea sucked (1) and that it doesn’t belong in either show in terms of style; I just don’t agree that it doesn’t fit in with continuity, because in that one regard it is consistent.
(1) Then again, I’m the guy who suggested that Angel:TS would be more entertaining if J. August Richards played Gunn as a Gary Coleman impersonator (“Whatchoo talkin’ about, Wesley?”) and that the theme tune should be replaced with I’ll Be There For You (Someone’s actually done it, and it fits horribly well - mail me if you want a copy, it’s about 9Mb). I think almost all of Angel:TS sucks.
You forgot the one about all gay characters biting the dust. Good list, though.
Not anymore. Spike will die of old age before Kennedy or Andrew are killed. The Hellmouth will swallow Sunnydale, and when the dust clears, Kennedy, Andrew, and Willow (and the cockroaches) will be all that remains.
Minor pedant: it’s “principle”. “Principal” means “first and foremost”. Example: “Principal Snyder had no principles.”
Good example of one of the show’s principles, though. Another one from the first two series of the show is that the ritual to defeat one of the Ordo Monstrum Septa Dierem (1) requires rendering an English librarian unconscious.
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It’s an abbreviation for “RETroactive CONtinuity”, if you were wondering. Retcon Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com has allthe juicy details.
(1) Latin for “Order of Monsters of the Week”. You can just picture Giles saying it to the Scoobies, can’t you?
So from the chorus of replies above, I guess there’s general agreement that continuity is not a problem; what complainst there are fall into the “{Character} wouldn’t/shouldn’t do that!”
People make foolish or ill-informed decisions all the time.
For all we know, Willow is too ashamed at her I-look-like-Warren predicament to go to the English coven unless she has to; perhaps she sees less shame in working with people that don’t know her that well and are less likely to judge her inability to fix it herself badly.
There are plenty of plausible reasons.
It may well be that if YOU were Willow, you’d do it differently. But frankly, I’m tuning in to see what Willow does, not what you might do. It certainly makes for fine conversation - but it’s not an example of poor writing.
- Rick
Fair enough- the fun of what happens next is one of the reason I avoid spoilers. I really do enjoy the surprise.
As far as the writing goes, my issue has been the consistentcy of writing for certain characters has been quite bad. Not is what they do and why (if nobody made mistakes, it would be harder to get dramatic tension), but in how the character acts from episode to episode can very greatly. Xander has always been a great example of this. His relationships and interactions with Anya left me going “huh?” many times. Often his abilities and usefulness would shrink or grow marketedly in just a few episodes (compare and contrast to Giles or Spike who get consistent writing treatment) its as if the writers are not sure what do, so they use him as Plot Device 2.0. Examples include Once More With Feeling (Xander cast the spell? Huh? His reasons and new found magic ability were none too convincing :dubious: ) And the whole wedding disaster. :rolleyes:
This really stands out when you watch the first three season on DVD, as the tightness of character is much better (even though they make stupid mistakes, they are the kind of mistakes you could understand that character making).
Evil Death - since Willow is “gay now” not sure if that one holds. The rule should be- falling in love with Willow isn’t such a good idea (Xander loses Cordy, Oz becomes a werewolf and leaves town, Tara gets shot, Kennedy becomes a very bad actress ).
I think you’ll need some better examples.
Xander didn’t mean to cast the spell in OMWF - the necklace that Dawn later stole was what summoned the demon; he didn’t do anything except mistakenly trigger it. That’s not inconsistent with Xander’s character, nor is it inherently unbelievable.
Nor is Xander the type of guy that you’d think wouldn’t bail out of a wedding. I think he got in over his head and it spun out of control; he bailed before the wedding itself, which is more than a lot of people would do. I don’t see that as inherent un-Xanderish either.
- Rick
No, it doesn’t. But one might argue that as I am the OP, it’s my prerogative to decide what to talk about here. Not that I don’t. And neither should you, which was my whole point.
You’ve been snarky and anal to a number of people (three? four?) in this thread and telling me what I can or can’t bring up as an argument just about does it.
For the record, I didn’t claim that the trip to Pylea was a break in continuity. I said that the whole thing stretched my suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point. Actually showing a demon dimension, as being sort of an alien world, with farmers… It totally sucked. Angel as überdemon, with rubberface, his “true” face, was just too much.
Since watching that, my suspension of disbelief is no longer there. They took the mystery out of the whole thing. True - Angel is not BtVS and Pylea might not throw demons through the Hellmouth and into Sunnydale. But the showing of one hell dimension, just blew it for me.
So lighten up, and try to be civil. Remember the “don’t be a jerk” rule.