um… preview. Must preview.
3rd sentence should read:
“Not that I will.”
Well, it’s impossible to argue with the claim that the episode failed to sustain the suspension of disbelief with you – you are, after all, the person that would know.
But I don’t understand why. There’s been no dearth of suggestion that there are other dimensions, and that different demons come from these other dimensions. So I had no trouble accepting that there might be… other dimensions.
With that out of the way, I’d be more offended with a dimension that DIDN’T have farmers of some sort – how, after all, would the denizens of that world eat? They’d either grow food, keep meat animals, or both.
So I guess I just don’t share the reaction. Nothing about Pylea rang so wrong with me that I dismissed it out of hand.
- Rick
Buffy did it first, though - we saw a hell dimension in Anne.
Mmm… gotta disagree. The second time we see her, in the Xander love spell episode, she’s using magic to cheat in school and affect people’s minds. That’s not exactly evil, but it ain’t good. She doesn’t do anything wrong in her third appearance, when she turns herself into a rat, but between that episode and the previous episode, she’s apparently hooked up with Wrack: she already knows about him after Willow turns her back into a human. Her behavior after that is inexcusable: she uses her magic on innocent bystanders, steals from Willow, actively facilitates Willow’s addiction, and later tries to sabotage her recovery. Her actions in this episode, while irrational, are not out of character for her. She’a also clearly been lying to the college coven: she still uses black magic, and may even be getting a power boost from the First Evil. Pretty sure TFE has been feeding her resentment of Willow and the other Scoobies, and probably planted the hex idea in her head in the first place. It’s certainly what told her about Kennedy’s Slayer potentialness.
Like I said, she fell into bad company back in season three. She already knew Wrack when she was de-ratted, and not only was she in quite a bit deeper than Willow, she was instrumental in making Willow bottom out. Willow only surpassed Amy in freaky black magic abuse after Tara was killed.
The change was finally made explicit in this episode, but it was easy to see it coming from the middle of last season, at the very latest.
As Evil Death remarks, we saw another dimension in Anne, which was more to my liking. The words Hell Dimension, to me, implies something like Dante’s Inferno. I want the place to be evil, not just medieval. YMMV
But there’s no reason that it should imply such a thing. If demons live and breed and create artifacts, there’s bound to be a wide variety of places from which they come. For all you know, a few miles away from the hellish factory we saw in Anne, there are fields with crops and farmers. Where do you suppose the cruel overseers got the food they ate?
- Rick
Well, there you have it. Pylea isn’t a hell dimension; hell dimensions are where evil demons live. The demons on Pylea aren’t all nice, but why should all demons have to be nasty? Is it because they is green?
Well. The thing about seeing Joss Wheadon dance, kinda put me off. And Fred and all the others always refered to Pylea as a “Hell Dimension” with audible capital letters.
I have never followed Star Trek very myuch, but the episodes I’ve seen, never show a cafeteria (I seem to recall a bar in TNG). Lots and lots of TV shows leave out mundane bits and imply that some things happen, but we need not go into detail. By showing Pylea, the demon world got to be too mundane. Of course some species of demons eat (or feed), but I don’t want to see the supermarkets where they go shopping.
he whole stretch in Pylea might have been within the frame of continuity, but I didn’t buy the logic. I’ll have to dig up the DVD and check it tomorrow, to get more specific, but basically, my peve is that demons, instead of being supernatural beings, were reduced to be aliens, albeit from another dimension and not another planet, but still - aliens.
We’re not in dispute that it sucks, as I’ve already said. As for the rest - demons are only aliens if their existence is solely based on science. Since demons are still magical, they aren’t just an extradimensional branch of the Star Trek Bumpy Forehead Mob.
However, I’m still having trouble understanding how seeing demons doing real things harms your ability to suspend disbelief.
<singing> if you wonder how he eats and drinks, the remind yourself it’s just a show</singing>
Actually, not to detract from your excellent point, the cafeteria was shown in The Troubles with Tribbles, when the tribbles had taken over Kirk’s tray of chicken sandwich and coffee. He was quite annoyed.
I don’t protest the fact that Amy would act like she did. It’s just the explanation that bugs me. Couldn’t she have said:
“I just felt like trying this fancy new hex to have some fun” or
“Bitch Willow killed my magic dealer” or
“She abandoned me for her stupid friends” or something to that extent?
Being envious of Willow’s powers all of a sudden just sounded strange and contrived.
It’s just a minor gripe, anyway. It’s just that a lot of little things that bugged me accumulated in this episode (most of them have already been mentioned by other people so I won’t mention them again). Hence, I don’t consider it to be one of the best episodes. Way above WTWTA, though.
It didn’t sound contrived to me, it sounded disturbed. I don’t think Amy is firing on all cylinders.
Anyway, the way I see it is, Amy’s still big into magic addiction, despite what her coven seems to think She wants more than she can get. And then there’s Willow, who has all this natural power and is just throwing it away.
Alternatively, Amy is really struggling with her addiction, and perceives Willow as having an easier time of it, possibly because of her support network, and is irrationally taking her frustrations with her own recovery out on Willow.
Either way, I suspect that The First Evil has been whispering in her ear the entire time. It does seem to get a real kick out of making people go crazy.
Bricker
No, Xander meant to cast the spell. He just didn’t know that a demon came with it. “I didn’t know what was gonna happen! I just thought there’d be dances and songs. I just wanted to make sure we’d work out…get a happy ending.” Except, oops, some people ended up burned to death (for which Xander has suffered no consequnces but oh well). His casting a spell for personal gain was totally out of character as he’d been written to that point, although considering the flashback in the magic jacket episode he’s rather re-thought it. He reacted violently to the idea of Willow’s casting a “de-lusting” spell. The only other times he’d participated were to help cure Angel and when he joined with Buffy et al.
Miller
Amy hasn’t IMHO been presented as an addict as yet. Certainly not the way Willow was. She may be addicted or she may be someone who can use heavily without gwtting addicted or a “binge” witch. Anyways, I thought this season established that the addiction isn’t to “magic” but to “power.”
I think Amy has been on a gradual decline toward evilness since S2, but it wasn’t noticable for a couple of years due to the fact that she was a rat. And, being that rats only have a lifespan of two or three years, she may have a bit of senile dementia going on- sometimes senile dementia makes elderly people mean. Plus there may be some resentment because Willow couldn’t change her back into a person, except there was that moment in “Something Blue”, and Willow was so unobservant as not to notice that suddenly there was 120 pounds of human being weighing on her matress where there had previously been a two ounce rat…
Plus, it seems that a lot of the resentment does come from the fact that magic seems to come naturally to Willow while Amy had to work at it.
I actually liked the Willow/Kennedy, um, interaction. The dialogue between them could have been better written, especially from Kennedy’s end, but I don’t think it was totally lame, just not as good as it could have been.
As for the Initiative complex not being filled in with concrete, how do we know that the contractor wasn’t hired, then just pocketed the money and said, “Yep, we filled that sucker in”, and somehow nobody came out to look, this being a complex that doesn’t officially exist- kind of like Area 51, only underground, so it’s not so obviously there…
And then there was Spike, chained to a bed… Spike should chained to a bed more often. But with not so much clothing. And there should be whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles within easy reach. And the chip should come out so he can’t use the “I have a headache” excuse (not that Spike would, but I want all my bases covered).
Well, those were theories. Certainly, her nights out with Willow could be interpreted as signs of addiction, if they decide to take her character in that direction. And I thought it was black magic that was addictive, and Willow’s now trying to learn the other kind. Could be wrong on that.
What about the time Amy was sneaking into Willow’s room to steal oregano, and Buffy caught her. She seemed to be in withdrawl or suffering from something similar to it. I took it that she, too, was supposed to be “addicted.”
That’s why I suggested that Xander was in fact lying to protect Dawn, which is not at all out of character for him. But that is another flamewar, Gentle Reader, and shall be trolled another day.
Good point - Xander did cop to the intentional casting. My bad.
Exactly. It felt so tacked on. At first, I thought he was lying to protect Dawn, then I realized they were serious. A real Huh? moment. Xander does lots of dumb things, but this was entirely inconsistent with the show prior to and after the episode.
On the marriage point, he had just talked Anya into the “everything will be great” for the last couple of episodes, and was all pro-Anya love forever yadda yadda yadda, then he sees his Father acting like a jerk and he runs away? Huh? To me it was a shock for shock’s sake (plus another invocation of the principle of “no happy relationships-- ever”).
One of the reasons it seems to happen to Xander more, is after Season 4, he becomes the “catch-all” character- changing markedly from episode to episode depending on the particular writer and plot needs.
And to state an earlier point Kennedy is the worst new character since Dawn. She is as sexy as an ingrown toenail and shows the acting chops of a young Tori Spelling.
Hey, don’t insult Tori spelling like that.