Good episode- nice fast moving plot, nobody cried, for those of non-spoiled types the twists were interesting (except for the Spike killed Wood’s mama story-- meh).
Spike in peril again? Yeesh.
Andrew, Willow, Spike, Zander and even Buffy were enjoyable. Strong episode.
Also, woo hoo- Kennedy not featured at all. Yeah! Dawn was non-whiny too.
Good stuff. Not sure about next week-- the preview music montage was a little goofy-- but the hints seemed interesting.
Funny stuff- the return of the gruesome stick figure drawing style of Giles from Hush. The Chinese’s girl line about Giles trying to kill her with dairy products. “his shoes squeeked” Heh heh heh.
I’ll go ahead and retract my statement from last week that said this ep was going to jump the shark with its ‘very special guest star’. Even though Ashanti’s acting was more evil than she was, and more undead than Spike, I liked the ep. The witty was back.
And Buffy finally didn’t have bags under her eyes the entire show.
And speaking of acting, I’m really liking the guy who plays Principal Wood. You could really feel the hate he had towards TFE taking his mother’s form. And then the conflict when he had to thank it for its info. Nice facial expression there. I still don’t think he’s totally good though. (but I used to think he was an agent of The First Good, or TFG itself. Still wish they had gone that route.)
Good ep, not great.
Better than some of the earlier ones this season that most of you raved over, but not as good as the last couple which I liked and the majority panned.
My fave parts were the 2 times Buff was mentioning her skills as a counselor - once to Willow and once to Woody, and both couldn’t stop from laughing.
With China Girl they have someone more annoying than Dawn. Kill her quickly. Double milkshake, please.
Much of the dialogue was weak. And X’s “gay me up” bit was embarrassing.
I love the references in this show to other shows - last night, “Captain Archer - mmm!”
Anya - dialogue, acting, and hotness - was as strong as she’s evere been last night.
Yeah, TFE does seem a little on the dim and impotent side.
I also missed the intro section. Teach me to trust video responsibilities to my 11 year old!
Good ep. I liked Giles admonishing the team to stay focused. I mean, The First Evil is lurking around and they’re worried about dating?!?! Xander’s “gay me up” line would have been better if it didn’t last so long, one quick “sure, you’ll just attract male demons instead” would have sufficed.
The rope thing was kind of dumb, though, there isn’t any rope on the market that is unable to hold up a kayak, OR a person. You can tie a person up with shoelaces or twine if you wanted too, they’re plenty strong enough. A couple of negatives, but the show overall was good.
I am so not buying that Xander sent the text message prior to being bound to the wheel. I suppose it would help the timeline if we’d seen Lissa actually capture him to see if there was a chance for him to send it. regardless, it’s a plot hole and it’s annoying and it points up yet another dumbass Xander moment. If you have time to fire off a text message you have time to, oh I don’t know, run away?
I didn’t get the impression that Wood was looking at/through Spike in the rearview mirror. I rather thought he was actually using it to drive and ideally you don’t want to have someone sitting in the middle of your mirror zone while you’re driving.
Just because Spike bragged about killing two Slayers doesn’t mean that anyone’s going to know which two specifically. Was it written anywhere which two by name Spike killed or only the time and place (which admittedly would narrow it down). From “Fool for Love” we learn that there was “one in China during the Boxer Rebellion, one in New York.” Buffy herself didn’t necessarily know the “when” of the NYC slayer prior to that and since Spike was alone with the Slayer who would report on the identity of her murderer?
Principal Wood has quite the arsenal hidden away beneath that dry-erase board. It got me to wondering why Xander hasn’t constructed some kind of weapons cabinet in Buffy’s place; that old trunk just cannot be cutting it anymore.
I definitely thought Principal Wood was looking at Spike in the mirror, since he made some comment or asked a question about him immediately after glancing at the backseat.
Particularly as the young Robin was then raised by his mother’s Watcher, who I think most certainly would have known who killed his Slayer. Otto, I always thought the Watcher Diaries or whatever kept records of prominent vampires and significant kills they made. Giles never shared any of that information with Buffy, right? And as far as reporting on the identity of the NY Slayer’s murderer, I think Robin did say there were witnesses at the subway who described him as a vampire.
I can understand why Wood didn’t immediately know that it was Spike.
Why would he expect Spike the vampire who killed 2 slayers to interupt his dinner with a slayer?
Why would he expect Spike, the vampire who kileld his mother, to work with Buffy in the struggle against evil?
Why would he expect the crazy punk vampire to be the quiet subdued vampire in the back seatof the car?
The Watcher could have said “William the Bloody” killed your mother and never once mentioned the name “Spike.” After all, int he Watcher’s journal, WtB is listed first. Their records aren’t that great.
It’s not like there are a million pictures of Spike floating around. “A blonde vampire dressed like a punk with eye liner.” Well, except for the blonde part, that doesn’t really describe Spike anymore.
I’ve given this way too much thought.
Buffy wouldn’t make the connection because she doesn’t even know the Slayer in New York was black, much less the exact time andplace he killed her.
Also, in the original script, Buffy says to Spike inthe car “Principal’s Wood mom was a slayer.” And Spike replies, “Is that right?” I guess they cut it, because I think Spike would have made the connection. I guess it heightens the angst and drama if Spike doesn’t immediately know what’s going on.
FYI, the names of the next 3 eps. are “Get it Done” “Storyteller” and “Mothers and Sons” (which, we think will air the 3rd week of March).
Does anyone know if they use focus groups for BtVS? It’s done with movies, I worked in radio and we did it with music.
The reason I’m asking, is because I remember JW tralking about this season during the summer or just before the premiere. He said they were going back to High School, because there were more stories there. But apart from the Scooby-ettes in 7x01, we pretty much stayed away.
Fan reactions can change what’s been on the air, which is why I’m thinking focus groups. Maybe JW and ME decided to take a turn to school, but got really negative reactions from a focus group and had to change gear. With JW being busy trying to salvage Firefly, to no avail, the season was moving along without any real course.
One minor question that doesn’t really bug me, but was more of an observation - why did Wood have a meat cleaver in his weapons cabinet? I mean, the rest of the items in there were clearly weaponry, but the meat cleaver looked like something he would carry as Iron Chef Chinese.
The Gaspode, the ME staff reads the Buffy message boards. Places like the Buffy Cross & Stake, the Beta Bronze, Fan Forums, TWOP, and BAPS. So when there is a huge uproar (ie, none of us wanted to go back to high school, none of us wanted Dawn the Vampire Slayer…) they might take it into consideration before continuing with the arc. Also, and I don’t know for sure if this works, they write letters. Lots of letters. I don’t know if the letters get read, but they might have a lowly intern keeping track of what people want.
Pepper. That’s the whole point of focus groups - you don’t want biased opinion from fans. When we did it at the radiostation we had about 20% of the respondents being listeners to our station. They’re allready fans, so we have a pretty good idea what they want. The interesting statistics came from listeners to other stations. If I were to do this for ME, I would be sure to pick viewers that don’t follow Buffy, but similar shows, to find out what they want, to switch station.
Can Angel see himself in a mirror? I can’t remember. Last night, I figured that maybe the mirror can reflect Spike now that he has a soul. Maybe.
As for the text message, remember that Willow couldn’t remember if it meant, “I’m getting some, so don’t call me” or “My date is a demon and I need help” (or something to that effect). I think it’s perfectly plausible that Xander sent the message before Ashanti went evil, thinking that she was taking him somewhere to get, you know, intimate with him. Fortunately for him, Willow wasn’t sure and opted to have it checked out. Xander’s initial conversation with Ashanti was terrible! The acting there was so off. No chemistry, nothing. Glad it got better from there.
Overall, I thought this was an excellent episode. I totally cracked up over the flash cards, the dialog was very good (especially Andrew’s reference to Captain Archer, and Anya’s, “My feelings are changeable, but intense.”) and the plot moved along nicely. I Good stuff all the way around. I was also impressed by the pained, doubtful way that Wood said “Thank you” to the First. Very well done.
… wow… some of these comments are really interesting. I found this episode so lame that I’ll quite likely be finding something more interesting to do with my Tuesday evening next week. I actually regretted wasting the time to watch it and I think I’m done with the series despite being a die-hard fan for ages.
I’m tired of the Spike plots – my SO and I really thought he was the most interesting character of the show. (My SO used to day the show would fizzle and die without him.) Now he’s just Angel, who repeats “I’m fine.” all the time. I liked him when he was sassy.
I found the whole Ashanti part tiresome – like they wrote the little plot for no other reason than as an excuse for a guest star. Note: they only gave her glowing eyes so they wouldn’t have to ugly-her-up with demon make-up. I don’t like the GrrArgh-Ubervamp vending machine that lets any old demon pour a bucket of blood onto in order to get another one of those scrawny lurch-vamps that fights with girly fists.
The Chinese slayerette was forced and not funny.
sigh
My only hopes are that Wood and Andrew will be developed into interesting characters. Wood’s kinda sexy and if he’s a little Blade-like badass I’ll like him (please, please, please don’t trun him into a Riley!) Andrew has potential just because he is so tremendously geeky – I’d like to see him save the day, even if it’s by accident.
I’m going to tape the next two weeks episodes but only watch them if my friends say they are worth the time.
One thing that bugged me:
Giles said he practiced his Mandarin before he went to get the new SIT, but that she spoke Cantonese, so he couldonly make out a few words of what she was saying. Now, I might be wrong in thinking this, but isn’t the written language the same for all Chinese dialects? Giles could easily have written things down (NOT the flashcardsm, mind you…especially since those were in English anyways…) It just seemed like an overlooked thing…but did make for some comic relief.
Beadlin:
When Angel went to Pylea, he got a chance too look in a mirror, and ME made a cheap joke about him complaining how his hair looks. The thing was that Angel was totally aborbed with the mirror thing, so no.
Well, also in uh…Spin the Bottle, he freaks out because he doesn’t have a reflection.
Gaspode, re focus groups, I don’t think ME should be worried about attracting new fans this late in the game, I think they should be worried about keeping the fans they have.
Hmm…I don’t really know anything about it, but isn’t Chinese writing pretty complicated? It doesn’t seem too unreasonable that Giles might be able to speak a bit of it, but not write it. (For example, I know a few words of Russian, but have no idea how to use the Cyrillic alphabet.)
