Thanks for catching me up on the continuity reference, all!
And besides, Olaf has a gig on ER, which I’m guessing pays better.
But Miller, the world only ends when the gate was opened. When Xander told the Buffster his lie, the gate wasn’t opened. The death of Angel was only necessary to close the gate, right?
Yeah, Angel(us) only had to die if the gate was opened-- but Angelus managed to open the gate, so his death was necessary.
elf6c
The knights, as well trained as they were, were human and still gave Buffy plenty of trouble in attacking en masse (including almost killing Giles). It was Glory who tore through them in a matter of seconds. As for Glory, recall that Buffy didn’t fight her alone. She had the Buffybot and Spike, not to mention Xander with a big wrecking ball, the strength-sapping sphere and a big troll hammer. Even with all that she didn’t defeat Glory totally; Giles administered the coup de grace. It doesn’t strike me that Buffy’s powers have really been scaled back that much. They seem like they’ve been pretty stable and consistently portrayed for the last several seasons.
And to clarify: Buffy beat up on Glory so bad that she retreated and Ben emerged. It was Ben whom Giles killed, not Glory.
As for Anya vs Buffy, why can we not give Anya props for being able to kick some ass? In her first ever appearance she almost killed alt-Giles. We saw her whale on Spike two weeks ago and he’s beaten Buffy numerous times and killed two Slayers. Just because Anya hadn’t been shown throughout her time on the show (during most of which she was fully human) to be a bad-ass doesn’t mean Anyanka wasn’t one.
Well, Barbarian, I know what Angel did, but when Xander told his lie, he couldn’t have known (1) and, objectively, Angel hadn’t opened the gate yet (2).
It is possible that he did this for Buffy, to not confuse her more, and if Willow was successful then all the better. But I don’t think so, knowing how hard he was pushing for Angel’s demise, and how much he has disliked him since the first season.
I was a little sad when Halfrek got toasted, even though she was evil. I thought she was an interesting character, and I was hoping this season it would be revealed that she was, in fact, Cecily. Hell, it still might, but I don’t think we’d get any more backstory on her than what we got in “Fool For Love”. I would have loved to have seen a flashback of her first meeting with D’Hoffryn. I still think it would have taken more than breaking William’s heart, with the result of him meeting Drusilla and being sired as a vampire to land her the gig, but it’s an auspicious beginning, don’t you think?
In the opening scene, when the camera panned all the Ambercrombie and Fitch bodies, all bloody with their hearts torn out, then landed on Anya, all shaking, saying “What have I done?”, well… I think this episode was some of the best acting I’ve seen Emma Caulfield do. After three seasons of pretty much nonstop penis/bunny/doesn’t understand the value of discretion/greedy jokes, it was nice to see her pull out all the stops and really make the audience feel. Even in “Hell’s Bells” and the episodes following, she didn’t really have that much opportunity to show Anya’s heart. I think even the Anya-hating portion of the viewing audience will be won over by the end of the season, and then Emma gets to leave the show in a blaze of glory. Too bad more wasn’t done with her character in the past three seasons, though. I always thought Anya had a lot of unrealized potential as a character.
I think Willow’s flash of meanness when she was fending off the spider demon (spiders shudder) is a portent of things to come. I think we’re going to see the Last Temptation of Willow Rosenberg this season, and another character, who I won’t name, but is also on a really intense guilt trip, will be the one to keep her from going over to the Dark Side of The Force. He would be the only one who could understand the guilt and shame she feels, being in the same boat himself, and therefore could be the only one to convince her that she is not irredeemably evil, and that she shouldn’t abandon herself to it.
And no, I’m not taking any bets this time. It’s becoming increasingly likely that this season is going to end with me owing Weird_Al_Einstein twenty dollars, and I don’t want to get in over my head financially.
Damn board ate my first post…
Otto, I just wanted to nitpick something you said earlier. That scene during the opening credits in which they’re all screaming at the door opening was from Tabula Rasa and is, therefore, not a sign of things to come. Oh, and not only did Buffy have all the help you mentioned in fighting Glory, she also had Willow put the major voodoo whammy on the god right at the beginning of the fight. Incidentally, that was one of my favorite bits of The Gift. “She’s with me!” Heh heh heh… Powerful Willow should get her own show…
The only continuity thing that really bugged me in this episode was Anya’s hair in the flashback to Once More, with Feeling (and how’s come I’m the only one that noticed the comma in that episode title?). I mean, they obviously had to give her a wig for that scene, so why couldn’t they give her the right wig?! The wardrobe-change thing is easily explainable as one of those things that just happened 'cause Sweet was in town. Remember, when he was around, any musical convention was fair game in the real world. Think about Xander and Anya’s talk about how it was like there were only three walls in their apartment, the strobes and fireworks during the Bunny Interlude, or Xander’s spinning chair from last night. The quick-costume-change is a time-honored tradition. An interesting (to me, anyway) idea is that perhaps Anya didn’t actually own that wedding dress before that moment, but later decided to use, in her actual wedding, this dress that magically appeared. That’d be neat.
Regarding the “just smash her amulet, stupid!” approach to the Anya-wish-reversal problem, I’ve come up with two theories. One is that D’Hoffren (by the way, it was nice to see him be an actual badass for a couple seconds there) smartened up over the centuries, especially after Anyanka’s first defeat, and didn’t put Anya’s power center in such an easy-to-smash place. In fact, maybe he made the demon herself the power center, which would give Buffy added justification for the killing of Anya. Anyway, to bolster this argument is the fact that Anya didn’t have any stand-out, eye-popping jewelry during the fight or, really, since she’s become a vengeance demon again. The other option is that since all she did was summon the demon, but didn’t perform the carnage, smashing the amulet wouldn’t have brought the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog back to life. Personally, I lean toward the first theory.
Actually- remember Buffy first faced 4-5 trained, armed and chain mailed knights in a small alleyway, unarmed and beat them pretty good. This was before her cool speech on power to the watchers council types at the magic shop.
Everyone helped fight Glory, but it was Buffy who did the heavy lifting, Buffy who put the plan together, and Buffy who pounded Glory so hard that she retreated back into Ben. Sure Giles finished off the massively beaten to a pulp Ben, but make no mistake Buffy stood toe to toe and delivered that beat down.
Don’t forget the evil wizard who quickly whipped Spike on the scaffold was knocked aside easily by Buffy. Buffy’s been detuned a bit, as has Willow. I don’t mind- I think it is more consistent with Seasons 1-4.
Anya was whipping butt a bit, but the Slayer did run her through. Demons are powerful, but Buffy had faced much bigger and badder demons in the past and killed them. In fact the only Big Bad she couldn’t beat was Adam, she had to use the magical menage a trois to kill him.
Otto is your board name in tribute to our favorite bus driver?
http://rhiannon.dreamhost.com/angel/episodes.html
It has summaries and reviews for all of season 1, most of season 2, and about half of season 3…it’s a work in progress, but I like them a lot.
I’m really glad someone else has noticed this, I’ve been harping on it since “Hell’s Bells”. This is a huge continuity error that marred my enjoyment of an otherwise fine ep. Not to mention, Buffy didn’t have to kill her, just destroy her power source, as Giles did in “The Wish”. I guess they are just completely ignoring that episode now.
About “The Lie”…count me in among those who sympathize with Xander on this one, in spite of the writers’ recent determination to make me dislike the man. In his place, I would have done the same thing. Think about what was at stake here. Think about the price they had already paid because of Buffy’s reluctance to kill Angelus, which stemmed, I think we can all agree, from her hope that she could get Angel back. A hope that would have been rekindled if Buffy had known what Willow was doing.
Xander’s motives were not pure, I’ll admit. But again, given what was at stake, I don’t see how he could have done it differently.
Heh. Hell of a show that can make you pick up an argument dormant for 4 years, just like that…
Heh. I was going to guess Faith, until I noticed you said “him”. If I win that bet, by the way, you can donate the money to charity in the name of Weird AL Einstein. Haven’t figured out which charity yet, tho…but then, I still don’t know that I’m going to win. But I think I will…
No one in the Buffyverse knew about smashing the amulet. It was alt-Giles who did the research and, presumably, our Giles took the reference with him to England (or else Dark Willow drained it last year). Willow does know that Anya values the amulet (because Anya enlisted her help in an attempt to recover it) but doesn’t know why exactly. Anya was clearly shown wearing a duplicate amulet several times after resuming her VD duties and, as far as I could tell, was still wearing it after Halfric was toasted.
For those who care, my name isn’t a “tribute” to anything, I just like the name. It’s more from Repo Man than anything else (although my best friend insists I named myself after her cat…um, nope).
Good summary, amarinth. So now, Xander’s lie is revealed – but no one picked up on it! Willow said “I didn’t say that”. Buffy didn’t respond, Willow didn’t repeat it. We’re left waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I, for one, was glad when Buffy killed Angel. He was not a Big Bad but a Big Bore, and his removal from the show was a true blessing.
You would have lied to your best friend in order to achieve your ends?
He should have convinced Willow to not do the spell at all, that Angel didn’t deserve this. If his determination was so strong that should have been enough. After all, the only reason he left to see Buffy (that I recall) was to give her Willow’s message.
He lied to Willow and he lied to Buffy to achieve ends that didn’t require one bit of lying. Sorry, I like the guy, but he needs a smack in the face for this one.
Willow put on her resolve face. Xander knew what it meant. There would be no dealing with her after that.
JohnT, it seems to me that Buffy is attracted to two types of men- vampires and really boring guys. Angel didn’t really become an interesting character until S3, when ME was gearing him up for the Angel: the Spinoff, and even then he wasn’t that great.
In S4 and 5, after Angel’s departure, she hooked up with the ultra-boring Riley Finn. When he dumped her (well, OK, it took a while) she ended up with Spike. Not the healthiest of relationships, but certainly never a dull moment (“We missed the bed again” “Lucky for the bed”)
With Angel, she had the best of both worlds.
Like I said earlier, I don’t think Xander decided to lie to Buffy until he was actually face to face with her. If he had decided not to pass on the information to Buffy any earlier, why would he have busted his ass to catch up to her? It would be way easier (and more in character) for him to take his time getting to the mansion so that by the time he arrives, Buffy’s already done for Angel. I think he caught up to her, realized that she needed to be absolutely on top of her game to take down Angel, and decided on the spot to hold back about the ritual. And whatever his motivations, it was the right thing to do. Hell, what were the odds of the spell even working? Willow was not very good at magic at that point. Her spells almost never worked, she’d already failed at the ritual once, and she would have failed again if something hadn’t intervened.
This is the way I see it: Angel was going to destroy the world. The Scoobies had two chances of stopping him: giving him back his soul, or killing him. Considering the stakes, they couldn’t afford to hold back on one option on the off hand chance the other, far less certain, option might work out.
I agree he should have been killed. Nothing seems to present itself (apart from Willow’s resolve face ;)) as a reason to lie to Buffy about it. He should have never left Willow with the promise to tell Buffy if he felt this strongly, and even then, he should have never told Buffy that Willow said something she didn’t. At best he could have had a sin of omission and not lied about Willow at all, and just said “Kick his ass for me” or something.
We all make mistakes, and he made one, and it has never come to light until now. Sorry, Xander is an ass on this one in my book.
I don’t think he did lie to Willow. It seems obvious to me that he went to meet Buffy intending to give her Willow’s message, and changed his mind.
In addition to what Miller has posted, watch the actual moment when Xander meets up with Buffy. He seems to begin to give her the message, then hesitates. It seems pretty clear that it didn’t occur to him to do anything other than deliver to Buffy the message as given until that moment.
And I’m with the Xander supporters on this one. Would I lie to my best friend if it made her even a little more likely to save the world from being sucked into a demon dimension where every person on earth would be tortured by demons for eternity? In a second.
Not quite. There are two ways to keep the world from being sucked through the gate. 1-Close it . 2-Prevent it from being opened in the first place. In either case killing Angel/Angelus would serve this purpose. Given that Buffy had already let Angelus go once when she had the chance to kill him because she was hoping for redemption. Giving her hope of redemption at this point would have been irresponsible.
I also think Buffy was a bit unfair to Xander in her comparison of Anya to Angel. First, she gave Angel a bye the first time she had a chance to stop him, yet she isn’t willing to give Anya the same second chance. Second, she killed Angel because it was necessary to save the world. That can’t be said of Anya.
Third, she didn’t kill Spike despite many opportunities because as she said, he was no longer a threat. If this is the criterion–she kills to end the threat, not to punish for past misdeeds–it is questionable whether killing Anya was truly necessary. She didn’t really consider trying to find ways to end Anya’s killing without actually killing her.
That said, I do think Buffy was doing what she had to do. Killing demons who kill people is part of the job description. I just think she jumped to that a little too quickly without looking for another solution.