Yes, I’m responding again. Sue me.
It was the same actor who played Adam–George something. I can’t remember, though I do remember the interview from last summer when he confirmed he was returning to the show.
Angel didn’t show up because is on the WB and there is a strict “no crossover” policy. Since Spike couldn’t show up to himself, the next logical choice was Dru. Especially since by Becoming II, Dru was a lot more “evil” than Spike.
Ah, but a crossover is not a cameo. I don’t see why they couldn’t have gotten Boreanz in for fifteen seconds of screentime, especially since Angel isn’t premiering for another month. What, WB is going to cancel his show over it? I think there’s a non-Hollywood reason why we saw Drucilla instead of Angel in that scene.
And my lawyers will be contacting you in the morning.
I think cameo is the same as crossover as far as the WB is concerned.
Miller despite Buffy’s tendancy to take journey’s into the sunless land she’s still quite alive so her presence in the line of shapes should indicate that being dead isn’t neccesary to have your form coopted by this thing.
Also I like how Giles said that magic wasn’t a hobby or addiction. Thank Joss that this has been tossed into the official Buffy-verse take. Willow can do magic as long as she isn’t a power junkie she can use it responsibly.
downbylaw I should have previewed. I knew it when I saw it.
As for what the Big Bad is this thing doesn’t seem to have the same MO as the First Evil. It was telling Spike that everything was going to end, that the universe was going back to the Void that it started as. The First Evil was far more personal than that. Also the First Evil doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you can beat. How would you undo the First Evil done?
So is the consensus here that the shifting Bads at the end were real? While watching I just assumed that they were all in Spike’s head, something he was imagining. It’s a lot more interesting the other way, though.
Great episode. Plenty of action, great dialogue, funny lines, and all the characters got at least one scene that held promise for the episodes to come. Dawn whined once in the opening scene, which brought back way too many memories of last year, but she redeemed herself with some nice work using the old bricks-in-the-purse weapon. Shades of Sean Penn in “Bad Boys”.
Pretty much all last season I was watching this show more out of rote than anything else. This episode made me excited about watching Buffy again.
And it was great to see the Mayor!
:smack:
Shoulda figured that one out myself.
cmburns Spike never met the mayor. There isn’t any indication that he ever met the Master either. Given Angel’s disrespect towards the Master I doubt Druisilla and Spike were ever presented to him in the way that Darla presented Angel. So there is at least one, and possibly two, people in the shape shifting line up that Spike wouldn’t have knowledge of. So it seems a pretty safe bet to say that he wasn’t just hallucinating.
If they are all in his head, then there are some major continuity errors. He never met the Mayor, we have no indication that he ever met the Master, and he didn’t know Warren as anything other than the geeky guy who built him the Buffy-bot. To Spike, Warren definitely wasn’t in the same league as Adam and Glory–or Drusilla.
While there’s nothing in any of the shows about, it’s not impossible that Spike knew the Mayor. Even if he wasn’t on the show, the Mayor was still around Sunnydale when Spike, Dru, and Angel were doing their little apocalypse thing. He very well might have made some sort of contact with them that never amounted to anything. And there’s a good century, what, sixty years? where Spike could have come into contact with The Master. It ain’t exactly canon, but the Buffy game on the Xbox, which takes place during the third season, has Spike being coerced into trying to ressurect The Master again.
Still doesn’t really explain why Warren would be there, though. Unless somehow Spike learned that he had killed Tara, or what happened with Willow. Can’t see how that happened, though.
Hey, I just remembered something else: the opening scene in Istanbul. Who do you figure that girl who was killed was? Slayer in training?
Wow, that almost looks like a sentence, and yet not. Lemme try that one again:
“And there’s a good sixty years where Spike could have come into contact with the Master before he got locked up in that buried Church.”
I hadn’t thought to wonder about the girl until you mentioned her. Damn the episode’s distracting level of quality and making me forget the bizarre opening sequence.
My initial wild speculation is that she was a sacrifice that almost got away. But then killing her wouldn’t have made sense. They’d need to drag her back to the appropriate place for the rituals. After all if you could just knife people in the street as sacrifices to unholy things it would be a lot easier to summon them.
So my second wild speculation is that she is someone who stumbled into unholy rituals by accident and was thus killed for it. What those unholy rituals are and what they have to do with the shape-shifting badness I’m not sure. I don’t think the girl is special in and of herself.
The Istanbul thing is reported by spoiler sources to be slayer in training. However, me thinks it sets up something which connects with the shape shifting. The girl in Istanbul is not interesting, the robed guys are.
There wasn’t a lot of Willow in the ep. but it was still interesting.
Anybody else caught when she said something to Giles about him going “Dumbledore” on her? Of course Willow’s read Harry Potter.
I don’t know what Joss was doing during the last 15 ep’s of last year, but seing how great Once more with feeling was, and how good this ep was, one can only hope that he takes tighter control over the Buffy ship.
Wouldn’t Joss be distracted by Firefly?
Of course, as long as it doesn’t turn into an X-Files/Millenium type debacle, I’m cool with him doing both shows.
Personally, though I loved the premiere, I’m hoping “Dawn and the Junior Scoobies” was just a one-episode thing.
D.B. Woodside, the second season of Murder One and a couple of episodes of Once and Again at the end of last season. Other than that, not much.
I’ve never been able to decide whether or not I like him.
D.B. Woodside, the second season of Murder One and a couple of episodes of Once and Again at the end of last season. Other than that, not much.
I’ve never been able to decide whether or not I like him.
As far as the morphing thing - I think it was Spike’s mind combined with the weirdness of the hellmouth - I’m not sure how “real” it is to anyone but Spike, yet. (I thought the reference to “put down the board” was him regressing - when he was in school, wouldn’t he have written in slate on chalk? And it doesn’t seem completely unlikely that William would have had trouble in school.)
Also wondering who placed the talisman in the first place, & why?
Way too much Dawn, even though she is far less whiny, and nowhere near enough Spike.
Which, according to spoilery, pretty much sums up the season to come.
Wah.
My girl, rabid Buffy fan that she is, reads all the magazines.
She seems to have read somewhere that this may be the last season of Buffy with Sarah Michelle Gellar.
If so, I think Dawn and the Jr. Scooby’s (glad I wasn’t the only one that got that… hehe) is setting us up to take Dawn as the next slayer.
My girl also though that the big bad guy may be an evil Buffy, stripped off from her soul when she was dead.
We’ll see though. She’s missed a lot of the 1st season, so she may not know of this First Evil ya’ll keep babbling about.
I was really pleasantly surprised tonight. I had reasonably high hopes, which were blown away. The writing was crisp, the acting solid and the story flowed really well.
Bravo!
Minor quibble- Dawn as junior slayer-ette was a bit ham-handed IMHO, but not enough to really effect the show.
Man, add me to the folks who just assumed the grand parade o baddies was a combo hallucination/evil hellmouth influence. I’ve proven tobe so lousy at predicting these things, that I just let them wash over me until it is all spelt out clearly.
What’s w/ Buff’s body art? Is that Buff, or SMG?
My daughters think Spike’s haor is hot.
Can any of you freaks identify the 3 talisman demons as from specific previous eps?
Same here. I just go with it until it’s laid out. Or not. I gave a triumphant “Hah!” when the Mayor showed up. God, he’s great.
I was a little disappointed by the contrivance of Spike showing up in the Basement of the Undead. It was like, what’s behind door number 3? But with the manifest spirits appearing to guard it and the shapeshifter, maybe there’s something more there, and with Buffy’s comment about “I don’t think you want me to see what’s behind that door” or whatever (I know I paraphrased poorly). Spike was a little too informed about the situation–talisman, identity of the zombies–than he should have been, with the implication he’s been stewing about in there Freddy Krueger style.
I hope this season does usher in a Dawn that whines less and can kick a little ass. I loved–loved–her introductory speech in the classroom, before Buffy busted in. “Britney Spears’s early work, before she sold out” was priceless. That’s a Dawn I’d hang with.
What about Buffy The Guidance Counselor? I’m not sure what to think, because I was flipflopping so much on whether I thought Principal Wood was evil or not. I like him, though.
A quick question on the zombies: did they ever die in an episode? I remember the girl saying something about being killed by a werewolf, but the janitor and Pencil Boy didn’t ring a bell. I may have been distracted because I was honestly scared by their appearances in the mirror. I hate that. And I had to mute a few times.