So, pepperlandgirl, I see I’m not the only one who found that spoiler you posted on the Spike fan thread.
are you finally ready to concede that Spike, under the influende of TETD, will be this season’s little bad?
BTW, I have a theory about TETDITB. It doesn’t actually morph, per se. It does a mind thing, a la the salt vampire in the Star Trek episode, “The Man Trap”, whereby it fishes into peoples minds and appears to them in a form that they would find familiar and comforting. Thus, Buffy and the entire Scooby gang could be looking at it and each be seeing something/someone different.
I’m very, very worried right now. Almost to the point of shaking inthe corner and sucking my thumb. However, the people on other boards who usually know what’s going on is telling us not to worry, things will be OK in the end. And I agree. But I don’t think Spike is the little bad or even the kind little bad. If he were, Buffy would kill him. Look how willing she was to kill Anya last week? Spike has a choice now, cuz he has a soul. She’d stake him, and Xander would encourage it. Where’s the drama? Evil in ep 8 dead by ep 9. I don’t think so.
And if TETDITB is just a shape-shifter, I’m going to be greatly disappointed. Why? Because it would be lame. “Oh no, it’s the Master! Wait, I killed him 6 years ago, it’s just the shapeshifter. Ho hum.” It might be scary the first time they see it, but after thta it wouldn’t be too exciting. “Ahhhh! Warren is back! How? I killed him! Oh, I feel so guilty…wait, it’s just a shapeshifter. Ho hum.”
Despite their ages - for some reason, I see Giles as a father figure in the group, including Spike. When they were living together, it was a dad/rebellious teenager kind of vibe. (One of the reasons I think it worked in Tabula Rasa, they’ve been father & son-y for a while.) It’s just kind of icky.
My birthday is tomorrow. I’m going to be twenty-eight. Or so I thought, until my mom pointed out to me last night that I am, in fact, only going to be twenty-seven. My point is, not everyone keeps particularly carfeul track of these things, even while we’re still alive and they have some sort of actual meaning. After being dead for a century, I imagine most vampires pretty much stop keeping track.
(Continuity flaws? In Buffy? Liar! Heretic! Outcast unclean!)
Uh, pepperlandgirl, I don’t think that TETDITB is just a shapeshifter. I think it’s the First Evil. I also think that it’s invisible, or it’s true form is something wildly incomprehensible. I do think, however, that it has the ability to appear to be whatever the person “seeing” it would want to see. I mean, it’s been Buffy-ish twice now. Which is why I think
That in Spike’s vulnerable mental state, it could influence him. Fuck with his mind. I don’t think Spike would intentionally go back to being evil, but under the mis-guidance of TETDITB, he could still do a lot of damage. In other words, Spike could unintentionally become the Little Bad, not realizing who, or what, he’s working for. Remember when he was talking to TETD-Buffy, he told it, “I can’t trust what I see.” Remember, when TFE was fucking with Angel, he had already recovered from his trip to Hell. Spike, though becoming more lucid, is still pretty much insane. And if it is TFE, after failing with Angel, it’s probably learned to be more subtle in its approach. And Buffy’s finally gotten hip to the idea that TETD is, in fact fucking with Spike’s mind, so killing him would be something she would accept that she might end up having to do, but only as a last resort. More likely, she’d enlist Willow to psychically enter his mind, as she once did with Buffy (was that “The Gift”, or the episode preceding it?), which would be a much, much more dangerous place than Buffy’s was, and see if she could help him sort out what was real and what was TETD’s mind games. So, don’t go into a corner and suck your thumb. It will be OK in the end. Really. (Fixes **pepperlandgirl **some hot chocolate, using Joyce Summers’ secret recipie.
OK, that wasn’t so much spoiler as speculation, but it was speculation based on a spoiler hence the spoiler box.
The problem I have with The Thing in the Basement being just a shapeshifter is that, if you notice, in Lessons, when it assumed the various guises of the Bad Folk, it spoke in the same ways that they would. F’rinstance, the being that spoke of souls as “slippery as a greased weasel” with the Mayor’s face on was clearly speaking differently as Glory when she was talking about how fabulous she was. Now, add the fact that these images couldn’t have been coming straight from Spike’s head (he never knew the Mayor; never heard Warren talk about his hatred for women) and we have a baddie that’s actually shaping up with potential. All that said, I still think it’s the principal.
I was inclined to believe that Loving!Buffy from “Selfless” was a creation of Spike’s mind rather than TETD, but now that I think about it, I guess that Spike’s hallucinations haven’t manifested themselves for the camera. But outside of the initial TETD sequence in “Lessons,” he hasn’t hallucinated so much as raved. So until shown otherwise, I’m going to call Loving!Buffy a non-evil-induced hallucination.
I think I’m just resistant to the idea that TETD will sweet talk Spike into hurting the Scoobies again. He deserves better! Damnit, Dwelling Evil! Be nice to Spike!
I can’t believe no-one’s mentioned this, but there’s an obvious reason, both for Anya’s wig, and for the dress-transformation. The entire scene is a strong reference to another great horror musical, the Rick Moranis version of Little Shop of Horrors.
Specifically, the “Suddenly Seymour” scene. The part where she sweeps through the doorway and the dress changes is just about identical.
Now, somebody might have picked up on this already, but didn’t the Buffster et al throw out all of Willow’s magic stuff somewhere mid/late last season?
What’s she doing with the amulet of D´Hoffryn, then?
In Older and Far Away we find out that Willow didn’t throw out everything “just in case.” It’s not too much of a stretch that Willow hid the amulet from Buffy, or didn’t bother, and Buffy just didn’t recgonize it for anything other than a pretty necklace. I think Willow was making the effort, giving it the old college try, but she’s too much of a geek to allow herself to be unprepared for any eventuality.
See, I thought she just gave all her magical junk to Tara, y’know, 'cause it might be useful later. They wouldn’t want to just destroy all the stuff, especially because some of it might be one-of-a-kind stuff like the Word of Valios (Though, come to think of it, keeping that didn’t turn out well) that they might need to kill stuff later. And if Tara had it, Willow would probably own it now…
Why didn’t they just smash Anya’s new amulet and turn her human again? Why was Buffy going for the throuat instead of the jewels? (heh, sorry.)
And as for Xander’s lie in season two, could he really have given Buffy a reason to hold back on Angelus? Risk the world that Buffy wouldn’t put it off for too long waiting for Willow’s spell to work and not close the portal to hell? No. And Angelus was a killer, it’s no wonder Xander didn’t like hime. Angelus had tried to kill him in Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered (which has my favorite line in Buffy of all time.
Xander (to Cordy) “We should be safe in here.”
Angelus “Works in theory!”)
Xander should have hated Angelus, and he should have made sure Buffy was ready to kill him to save the world.
Actually smashing the amulet does nothing in the long run. Anya would just get another one from D’Hoffryn. Also fight her was not easy either, so the propect of doing it over and over to keep smashing new amulets seems a bit unlikely.
Either killing Aynaka, or her willingly giving up the vengence game
were the only permenent solutions to the issue.
I definitely think Buffy was too quick to arrive at the conclusion that she had to kill Anya. Anya was in heavy-duty remorse mode, though she was still trying to keep up a vengeance front. Once she had killed the spider demon (spiders. shudder) she could have talked to Anya, found out what the score was, before she went into full Slay mode. Buffy’s mission is to kill vampires and demons in order to stop vampires and demons from killing people, not to punish them for crimes already committed.
It was pretty obvious that Anya still had a good-sized hunk of her humanity intact, and Buffy should have tried to find a non Slay-ey way to stop her, with killing her as a last resort. But Buffy declared herself to be “The Law” in this matter, tried Anya in absentia, and pronounced a death sentence ou her without hearing from the defense.
erislover has, in another thread, put forth the idea that Buffy herself will be this season’s Big Bad. I’m starting to wonder if e is maybe not far from wrong. If Buffy is willing to pronounce herself the ultimate authoity in these matters, ignoring input from the people who in seasons past were (along with Giles) her closest advisors and allies, well…
“Lessons” was rerun last night, and I realized something that I missed the first time I saw it.
The first words uttered in the episode were Buffy telling Dawn, “It’s about power”. The last words uttered in the episode were TETD-Buffy telling Spike, “It’s about power.” Foreshadowing, maybe?
I definitely think Buffy was too quick to arrive at the conclusion that she had to kill Anya. Anya was in heavy-duty remorse mode, though she was still trying to keep up a vengeance front. Once she had killed the spider demon (spiders. shudder) she could have talked to Anya, found out what the score was, before she went into full Slay mode. Buffy’s mission is to kill vampires and demons in order to stop vampires and demons from killing people, not to punish them for crimes already committed.
It was pretty obvious that Anya still had a good-sized hunk of her humanity intact, and Buffy should have tried to find a non Slay-ey way to stop her, with killing her as a last resort. But Buffy declared herself to be “The Law” in this matter, tried Anya in absentia, and pronounced a death sentence ou her without hearing from the defense.
erislover has, in another thread, put forth the idea that Buffy herself will be this season’s Big Bad. I’m starting to wonder if e is maybe not far from wrong. If Buffy is willing to pronounce herself the ultimate authoity in these matters, ignoring input from the people who in seasons past were (along with Giles) her closest advisors and allies, well…
“Lessons” was rerun last night, and I realized something that I missed the first time I saw it.
The first words uttered in the episode were Buffy telling Dawn, “It’s about power”. The last words uttered in the episode were TETD-Buffy telling Spike, “It’s about power.” Foreshadowing, maybe?
Well, we knew that Anya was remorseful, but no one on the show did. When Willow confornted her about the dead frat, she shrugged it off. When Xander tried to get her to skip town before Buffy showed up, she said (just like Buffy) “this is my job; I’m staying and fighting.” Even Buffy held back (IMO) for the first part of the fight, hoping Anya would back off. Keep in mind, Anya killed something like fifteen to twenty people. And not in the heat of passion, like Willow did. She did it cold-bloodedly and with premeditation. I don’t think Buffy jumped the gun at all in deciding to kill Anya. In fact, at that point she had clearly waited too long to kill Anya. C’mon, if Halfrek had done that demon worm thing, Buffy would have diced her up like a tomato.
Incidentally, I was kind of disappointed that no one ever threw the fact that vengeance demons hurt the wishers as much as the wishees. Anya always tried to defend her job by saying she was helping “wronged women.” Helping them how? By letting them get eaten by vampires in a literal post-apocalyptic Sunnydale? Getting them eaten by giant worms? Psychologically scarring them for life by making hem watch as a demon slaughters a frat house? Just once, I was hoping for one of the women whose wish Anya granted tear her a new one for taking a bad situation and making it incalculably worse. Actually, I was really expecting Dawn to do that to Halfrek last season.
Lastly, I noticed on the rerun of the season premiere last night that Willow says she killed people, plural. Who did she kill besides Warren? Some of the cops?
Willow killed Rack, her supplier. I’m still not sure if he was a demon or an enhanced human like Anya. The UPN website refers to him as a “warlock”.
We did not see any cop bodies, nor were any dead police referred to. If she had killed a cop, I think it would have been much harder to get out of Sunnydale. Rack may not have had a legal existence, and I don’t think there was anyone other than Jonathon and …what’s-his-name to miss Warren.