I’m gonna spoil it so don’t click unless you’re sure you want to see. There isn’t really much to spoil though.
[spoiler]I felt so bad for Dawn when she was trying to get in with the cool kids and RJ. I was expecting a kick ass gymnastics type performance from Dawn, what being made from the slayers’ blood and all. I wasn’t expecting…the performance she gave. Then whiny Dawn came back and my pity turned back into the usual Dawn-hate. Pushing the guy down thw stairs didn’t help matters.
I thought it was really entertaining and funny. Spike running away with the rocket launcher was priceless. Also the “big plan.” Run up to the high school kid and steal his jacket.
I have to admit that i was wishing i was RJ for most of the episode, right up until Willow was going to turn him into a girl. And i thought she was Bisexual, not straight lesbian (pun not intended). A couple seasons age when Oz came back she was torn between him and Tara.
Didn’t advance the plot much at all, except to show that Spike is ever more lucid and sane. i really liked it though, so 8/10.
(I’m just joshin’ ya–you’re posting your spoilers in a perfectly polite, acceptable way. Keep it up if that’s what makes you happy. But it’s such a temptation to the spoiler-free but weak-willed among us!)
I admit it! I peeked! I couldn’t stand the temptation! Dayum my weakness! Of course it doesn’t make much sense without seeing the episode. Thank for the sneak peek though. Even with the sneak peek I’ll be watching for my beloved Spike (back off ladies, he wants me, I can see it in his eyes) .
Spoilers don’t bother me. In fact I kind of like them. I don’t need to be suprised to appreciate a good episode. Apollo 13 and Gettysburg were good movies even though I knew the outcome. It’s the journey I enjoy, not the final destination. And often, knowing things in advance can let me appreciate what happened rather than recover from the affects of the suprise. (If that makes sense)
Since I’m some hours early too, I’ll put this in the black:
[spoiler] The re-lapse of New And Improved Dawn® into whiney brat was a less than happy moment for me. Also - any movie or TV show, where there is obvious and acute embarrasment for a main character really really bugs me. I simply can’t watch.
Some good humour in this episode though, but it was certainly a stand-alone, and the only thing that moved the arc forward, was Spike moving in with Xander. I guess it’ll get is the comedy bits in episodes to come, but other than stating the fact that he’s moving in, nothing happened there.
It was kinda weird that the show was so naughtily raunchy. The sex scene with the Buffster was different from any other on the show, so far.
In the Buffyverse, it was 4/10. In TV land, total, 7/10. [/spoiler]
I spent all day yesterday reading reviews, spoilers, speculations, looking at clips, gawking at pictures, reading some rants and “I’ll never watch again!” ultimatums.
Talk about being a spoilerwhore.
It’s over here on the east coast, but I’ll continue the spoiler boxes til other people join in…
[spoiler]Actually, I thought it was a neat throwback to the scene with the BuffyBot and Spike in the graveyard, which Xander also happened upon. But it may have just been me who made that connection.
I laughed out loud at Spike tackling Buffy and running away with the rocket launcher while poor Principal Wood burned the midnight oil… what a great scene!! [/spoiler]
The enter contest to prove who loved RJ most was great. One of the funniest things shown on TV. The four way split screen and music were just perfect. The funniest of that was the bit outside of Principal Wood’s office seen through the window. I also liked the end of the episode with Anya dodging the question about what she did and then the news report of the bandit comming on.
Xander’s flash back to his use of a love spell was also great. The look on his face when the flash back ended was priceless.
I agree that seeing Dawn’s humiliation was hard. I don’t like scenes like that either and this one wasn’t even that good of a humiliation scene. I think the return of whiny Dawn was to show how bad RJ’s mojo was for the girls it hit.
All in all it wasn’t the best Buffy comedy episode but it was a solid 6 or so. I think Xander and Willow’s reaction to hot Dawn adds a full point. Just perfect.
As for Willow’s gayness Joss has said that she is not bi-sexual. She wasn’t aware of her actual orientation until Tara.
Speaking of Tara next week’s episode looks like it could be damn creepy. We get to see Joyce and Tara again, albeit in a more shambling rotting form.
Maybe I’m weird, because i really liked this episode, much more than the one from 2 weeks ago with Anya killing the frat boys. I even liked the one from three weeks ago better (with the Home Improvement kid and Cassie the psychic) than the last new ep. Of course the Vengeance Demon thread ended up being well over a 100 posts long. I was just sitting on the sidelines thinking…why?
Gaspode is giving this ep a 4/10? Am I way out of line with my 8/10? It didn’t do anything for the story arc, but it was fun and entertaining and had dome good laughs, something which has been missing lately IMO. (admittedly “Vengeance” did have alot of laughs with the subtitles and whatnot)
I’m still trying to decide what was more funny: the Buffy/Spike/ Rocket Launcher scene with Oblivious Principal in the foreground, or Xander and Spike’s “plan” to get get the jacket (Run up. Grab jacket. Run away silllily. Heeee.)
But Buffy sleeping with a student??? That’s just eeew.
Well, Buffy didn’t actually sleep with the student. I don’t think there was any…uh…poke-age.
I liked tihs episode a lot more than I thought I would. Kinda wish Spike had more lines, but hey, beggers can’t be choosers who get the whole cake (or something.)
The bazooka scene and The Plan are two of the funniest tihngs I’ve ever seen. Also, I reallyidentified with Dawn having a major crush and looking a major dunce. Been there, done that.
I give this ep a 6-7.
(And I’m sure glad I’m spoiled for next week, otherwise, I’d be panicking over the promo. Spike biting people? Fuck.)
I actually liked this episode a lot. I might even go as far as to say it was my favorite one this season. I just want to say that I knew it had something to do with the jacket and a love spell as soon as Xander mentioned the power of a letterman jacket. Somehow, he always seems to be right about these things.
I don’t think the remarks about Dawn being whiny are really fair. Imagine yourself in the same situation. I know that my reaction to the events would probably be kind of similar to Dawns. I admit I probably wouldn’t try out for cheerleading or lay on train tracks for a guy, but that was just because of the spell. Buffy wouldn’t normally have killed the principal with a rocket launcher either.
I give it an 8/10. I thought the Buffy with a student thing was a little gross.
But Buffy really isn’t all that much older than them. After all she just recently graduated high school. So if you think about it that way it isn’t that strange at all.
Oh and I can’t believe I forgot it but Buffy’s dirty trick to get Dawn out of the way so she could have RJ was great. Also her continual insisting that she wasn’t under the influence of the spell, while funny, seemed really familiar. I am sure another episode involved her being hit by a splatter effect mojo and denying that she was under the sway of it like everyone else was. It is driving me crazy that I can’t think of the episode or the mojo she was struck with. Can anyone ease my suffering?
It is possible I’m just thinking of Amy and Jenny when they were under Xander’s love spell. I don’t think that’s it though because I remember Buffy saying things like, “I must not be affected because I’m the Slayer.”
After the end of the ep, my Buffy buddies and I rewound and watched the rocket launcher sequence about ten times. Man, that bit kills me!
I thought Spike’s rearranging the angel figurines was kind of spooky. I was expecting it to be the intro to some larger craziness. At least he sounds a little more like himself this week.
The first fifteen minutes of Dawn’s humiliation were painful to watch, sort if like that Drew Barry movie (Never Been Kissed? Something like that) and Buffy-the-authority-figure having a crush on RJ stuck me as creepy(though I agree with Pepperlandgirl about the lack of “poke-age” though only because they were interupted), but it was pretty funny. I liked the club scene because of Xander’s horrified reaction, and Willow’s asertion that she’s “right there with you on that” when they figure out it was Dawn. The scene with the rocket launcher was priceless, even though I knew she was going to be tackled
I missed the bit about Xander and Spike being roommates…why go back to season 4? I guess I’ll have to rewind and catch the part before the theme song, since that’s all I missed. I think.
What exactly was Anya’s plan? I know it involved a break in somewhere…
All in all it ended up being a good UPN night, since the episode of ** Haunted** that followed was very good, and actually took an original spin on a ghost story, which is hard to do given the genre.
Personally, I think the look on Willow’s face right after Anya’s “are you going to use magic to change him into a girl?” was one of the funniest moments ever on TV. Not as good as The Glance, but awesome nonetheless.
The rocket launcher sequence, of course, also great.
Anya was stealing from a bunch of places to give RJ money and nice things. As she’s the queen of materialism it makes sense that she thought she could win a person whose her supposed soul mate with gifts.
I’m curious about how many dopers were right there with Xander and Willow? Even without spoilers I realized it was Dawn but my reaction was more, “Well that’s a side of her I could get used to seeing.”
Oh and as for my rating of 6/10 I should explain that for Buffy episodes a 5/10 is about a 10/10 for most TV shows. I expect them to be better than everything else on TV and so I grade them against eachother more than other shows. My beef with this episode as opposed to other comedy episodes is that it didn’t have the same degree of plot forwarding that they did. Generally they can pack a fair deal in along with comedy and this time they didn’t. Granted they used that extra room for yet more hilarity (just thinking about the love contest makes me crack up) but still I expect my Buffy episodes to be multifunctional.
Also (on preview) I feel the need to add that the deliveries and body language (especially Willow’s, like when she tells Xander to check out the fan club her meaning is quite clear) were amazing. It made “Now I need to start over and hecetae hates that.” a far funnier line than what it should be.
If I rated Buffy purely on humour this episode would get a 9.5/10. It would have been funnier if Dawn pulled an OK to fairly good performance for the cheerleading try-outs but had a lame cheer and lost her place when someone heckled her. It wouldn’t have been as painful to watch and would have been just as bad for her even though it wouldn’t have been as horrible to see. This is because total public humiliation of that sort just isn’t funny.
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