So, surprise. An all new episode just before christmas. All in all quite good, quite dark, filled with doom.
[spoiler] For us spoilerjunkies, this is the episode where Giles brings the slayers-in-traing, SIT, to Sunnydale. We continue where the last episode left off, but for me, the episode didn’t actually bring the story arc of the season forward.
What did happen to Giles? We never see how he avoided getting decapitated. Is Giles actually now another manifestation of Morphy? Did Morphy-as-Giles bring the SIT’s to Sunnydale to have them all in one place. What’s strange is that he walks around with a defeated air around him. It’s all “we can’t fight this…” This is ecoed by Joyce who shows up, in Buffy’s dreams. So is it a dream, or can TFE evil do a Morphy when people are sleeping.
The SIT’s don’t seem to have the superpowers of Buffy. I never did get that bit of Joss’ vampire lore. So they know they’re potential slayers and train, but have no special skills.
As spoilers sorces claimed, there is a love interest for Willow, but it’s only hinted at. No romance happening so far.
The principal is still in limbo - good or evil? We don’t get to know. Buffy might suspect that he’s more than what he seems to be.
Buffy gets her ass kicked, in a serious way, by the über-vamp, which really isn’t a vampire at all, but a related species. Very good fight scene.
Morphy-as-Drusilla is being very bad to Spike. I love Drusilla. She’s so incredibly disturbed. Juliet Landau is looking better than ever.
In the beginning, Anya is wearing glasses. Damn, she looks good with glasses.
[/spoiler]
On the Buffy scale: 6/10
On the normal TV scale: 10/10
On the spoiler boards, the consensus seems to be that for spoiled fans, the episode is kinda pointless. For non-spoiled fans, you may need to watch it twice to catch everything.
Noxon and Petrie wrote it, so I’m just hoping it’s not as bad as Wrecked and As You Were. shudder
[spoiler] I specifically looked for Giles to pick something up or otherwise show that he has a solid body, but no good. Never changed clothes either from what i could tell.
Principal guy, maybe good, maybe bad. Ambiguous. From his point of view, is Buffy good or bad? He might think that they were down there to bury Jonathan. Or were they covering up the seal? From Buffy’s POV, Was the principal digging the seal up or what? Maybe Buffy will think he’s in on it. OOOOOHH. AHHHHH.
I don’t think that Buffy’s mom is the first. Everything she said re:evil being a part of us is true, and i think the final solution will somehow incprporate this. I think Buffy’s speech at the end backs this up (evil is a part of everything, yaddayaddayadda)
Willow’s maybe new girlfriend is way hotter than Tara. “Do you think she wants to eat?” (I have such a dirty mind)
Why did Buffy even bother trying to stake the super-vamp? I don’t think it’s obvious by looking at it that it’s a vampire. it could just be a demon.
Buffy has not gotten her ass kicked that bad since Glory, and i find it hard to believe that super-vamp is as powerful as Glory. but that’s more of a continuity issue than an issue with the episode.
The problem i had with the ep was why the stink did the uber-vamp not kill buffy? He had her all injured and unconscious, he coulda just had a nice meal of slayer blood and been happy. But no, he just left her there. Argh! It’s stuff like that that gets my goat[/spoiler]
And i think that even knowing what happens, it’s still worth a watch. Maybe not the greatest Buffy episode, but entertaining.
One, did anyone else think the stirring background music during Buffy’s ending speech bore a striking resemblance to Braveheart?
Two, I think the First Slayer will be making an appearance at some point. How else to fight the First Evil than with the First Slayer?
Three, about Giles… he did take off his glasses at one point, but didn’t touch anything else (except for once when he sat on a convenient table). So if we’re going to go with the theory that he is a manifestation of The First, we should add that the manifestations can touch things that are a part of their wardrobe (as we saw with Dru and her dress). Contributing to the Giles-as-The First is the fact that for some strange reason he let a slayer-in-training, one without the ability to defend herself AND with few brains, carry the last remaining files from the Watcher compound.
Four, We now have confirmation that the Watchers are gone, despite the piss-poor editing.
Five, to answer Pure’s question… I imagine that Buffy is still alive for the same reason Spike is… The First ain’t done with her yet.
I liked the episode, but was anyone else kind of glad to see that future slayer kick the bucket. I don’t think I could have taken much more of her on again, off again English (I think that’s what it was supposed to be) accent. The other future slayer needs some accent training too. It was very distracting.
I don’t think Giles is Real Live Giles, but an appiration of the first. There were so many times where RLG would have given Buffy a hug or helped in some way that he just didn’t do. My Dad, however, agrees with Homebrew that he is from the PTB and not the First. He also thinks that about Joyce.
What I want to know is, what is up with the principal? He seems to have gotten maniacal over night.
Okay, do we really need spoiler boxes in a thread specifically titled after a particular episode? It says Buffy 12/17/02 right there at the top. If I haven’t seen a new episode of Buffy on 12/17/02 yet, and I don’t want spoilers, I’m just not going to enter the thread. If I do want spoilers, or if I’ve seen the episode and want to talk about it, I hate clicking and dragging over the damned things. Can we knock that off now? T’ank ya.
Anyway, tonight’s episode: Eh. I was hoping Faith was going to show up to save Buffy’s ass during her second fight with the ur-vampire. Instead we get Xander, who at least had task-relevent experience with moving rubble.
I really hope Giles isn’t dead, because that means no Ripper TV show, but it makes too much good plot-twisty sense for him not to be another manifestation.
I still think the principal is a Watcher, and he was going back to re-bury the devil seal. Which I am at this point assuming was not the Hellmouth, but merely a little side prison for the ur-vampire. How come no one ever found it before? Probably because it wasn’t there a year ago. “The walls move around down here.”
pure wrote: “Why did Buffy even bother trying to stake the super-vamp? I don’t think it’s obvious by looking at it that it’s a vampire. it could just be a demon.” True, but a stake through the chest will kill just about anything, not just vampires.
pure also wrote: “Buffy has not gotten her ass kicked that bad since Glory, and i find it hard to believe that super-vamp is as powerful as Glory. but that’s more of a continuity issue than an issue with the episode.” Also true, but when she finally beat the snot out of Glory, she had a lot of time to plan and a lot of good toys to put the beat down on Glory with. (Although why she doesn’t just carry the troll hammer around with her whenever she patrols, I don’t know.) Also, I think Buffy is off her training. When she was fighting Glory, she was training constantly. She hasn’t been training hardly at all since Giles left.
The Scoobies know that Andrew killed Jonathon. They even know where he left the body. But when they showed up at the marker and found no body, not a peep was uttered by anybody.
