Halting Hex

The cast was great (there's really no point for Stephen McHattie to be in it, but I always enjoy him), the situation was intriguing, the mislead (when we don't know that TJ is twins and we think Nico being in the court is TJ and it's actually Lee Tergesen's Rob who died) was clever…and the execution was, as all too often, poor. It's laughable, of course, that Justin would be called as a prosecution witness. Indeed, as the accused, I believe that's a black-letter 5th Amendment violation, right there. Now, they could have finessed this by doing a time-lapse to show Chiklis already on the stand and having the D.A. say "Mr [Chiklis], you testified that [blah-blah-blah]", making it clear that this is cross-examination, but that didn't happen. And if Justin had already testified on direct, his lawyer would have entered the medical exam into evidence, and he's cleared, right there. (I don't care if Justin doesn't want it into evidence, the attorney has an ethical obligation to "zealously represent" the client's interests. Withholding exculpatory evidence while staying on the case is probably a disbarrable offense. The attorney doesn't represent Erica, he represents Justin. All he has to do is go "Your Honor, I'd like to enter this [holds exam] into evidence as Defense Exhibit #1", show it to Justin and ask him to identify it. No need to ask if Justin ever learned it was a forgery, no likelihood the prosecution would ever try to subpoena "Dr. Powell" to verify evidence that seems to wreck their case, and as long as the attorney never states that Justin never suspected TJ was on roids, he's not suborning perjury. Just keep it to "and this form states that TJ was drug-free, correct?" and let the matter stand there. The fact that Justin discovered that the form was a forgery after TJ was dead is in no way germane to the actions Justin undertook while TJ was alive. Also, if anybody ever suspects that the form is a forgery, there's no way to prove that Erica was the one who forged it; it could just have easily been TJ.) So instead they skip over the possibility of any direct testimony and instead open with the DA asking Justin about Daedalaus and Icarus, which shouldn't even need an objection to get shut down. The moral responsibility of fictional characters is hardly a fit subject for testimony. (Also, nobody pronounces the name "DAY-da-lus". The American pronunciation is "DED-uh-lus", where as the British say "DEED-a-lus". Moral: don't make Greek myths a plot point if none of the actors know what you're talking about.) Furthermore, the whole "you need to taper off from steroids, jerk!" line of questioning should have been thrown out for irrelevance, since none of the the possible side-effects that the DA recited had anything to do with cardiac incidents. TJ didn't die from joint pain. Unless the DA can prove that cutting of the roids cold turkey causes heart attacks, specifically, that's all irrelevant. And I know that Justin feels guilty because he helped TJ fake the piss test, but that's not actually the case, either. It's not as if the urinalysis is done instantly and TJ would have been disqualified and wouldn't have wrestled the finals; any exposure and penalties would have happened after-the-fact. So that's unnecessary guilt. I can't find any documentation that mandatory reporter laws (which are there to guard against child abuse) extend to the use of steroids in athletics. Justin might well have been in violation of the ethics of the State Athletics Commission (or whatever governing body was administering the piss tests), but I find no indication that this violates Pennsylvania criminal statutes. He can be barred from coaching, but not thrown behind bars, AFAICT. JMO, IANAL, etc.

(I know, I should hit the script [I actually have it open in another tab], but I've got fresh stuff that I want to cover first. Sorry.) So, I can't help noticing that Buffy's vampdar is really shit in this episode. I mean, while she's scolding Dalton about stealing, there is literally a vampire in the truck's cab no more than three feet away from her, plus another on the truck bed that she doesn't spot, either. And then later, when she and Angel are having their (near-) tearful (near-) goodbye at the docks, there are three vampires (Dalton and two henchmen) who get within punching range of Ms. Slayer without the 'dar pinging. It's been almost a year since Buffy came to Sunnydale, and it's as if she hasn't "honed" at all. (Her occasional successes, such as being able to sense The Three in Angel and Angel himself in When She Was Bad aside.) Sheesh. *************** At the Bronze, I for the first time noticed that when Buffy stakes the vamp, we actually get a reaction shot of Willow looking across Xander at a confused Oz. I guess Will had actually put a bit of thought into the "how do we keep Oz from learning about the whole 'Buffy slays vampires'?" issue and thus was already worried about how the guitarist might react. Smart Willow, thinking ahead. Of course, she might have had rather a bit of time to think about "how do we break the news about the supernatural to Oz? Should we?", given that What's My Line, part 2 was the week before Thanksgiving and this is mid-January. Buffy is telling Willow, "Make a move; do the talking thing", but clearly Oz isn't being very chatty, himself. (Not that I'm necessarily 'shipping Willow and Oz, but I do feel a bit sorry for Willow. Here she is being all "wow" about Buffy probably getting "seized" and Willow's never even been kissed or on a date, even. And yes, 90% of that is on her and Xander's inability to get on the same page, but still. I feel awkward when Buffy shifts the convo from her and Angel to Willow and…whomever. [Since Buffy notes that Will is still "waiting for Xander to wake up and smell the hottie."] Not that it's a competition, but the dichotomy is a bit jarring, when I consider it.) Anyway, when we get to the next bit: and I can't believe that it has taken me over two decades and dozens (possibly over 100) viewings to catch this, but Xander's bored tone and walking away isn't just about how there's so much going on that he doesn't want to do the exposition, but that this is him being fucking jealous because he doesn't want Willow to have a date to begin with, much less his having to bring some dude Xander barely knows (remember, Oz is a senior; this isn't like Cordelia, whom Xander has known for 12 years and had lots of classes and social interactions with, since the grades are fairly segregated, for the most part) up to speed. Because again, Joss (semi-) stupidly cut the "Willow has a date and Xander is instantly possessive and jealous!" scene, which is the underpinning for the whole story you've been trying to tell. Marti almost literally spells it out in Act I; Oz's entire function in this story is to make Xander "wake up and smell the hottie" wrt Willow. But because Marti wrote So. Much. Goddamn. Stuff., Joss had to do a lot of cutting, and he missed the mark on this. Because if you don't have the set-up, we can't get this as the punchline it's meant to be. (Although the only obvious cut is that stupid "round robin" bit that I railed against, so I don't know what else should have gone if that isn't enough. I suppose we don't quite need the entire "Xander and Cordelia try to come out of the relationship closet to Harmony and Willow and it flops hard" cut scene, much though I adore it, but even the following Oz/Willow/Xander bit might be too much. Sigh.) Okay, I've written half a book, I clearly need to actually add the cut scenes I'm constantly referencing, and I haven't even touched on the stuff I really want to talk about, which is in the main story. Time to put a pin in this and come back soon. Sorry.

While, by the time we get to S2, Jay will be reacting to the original [4x3] files, right now he's using that horrible "remaster" and OMG, it's worse than I remember. Because they cut off the top and the bottom to fake the 16x9 aspect, they can't capture any scene that has elements at both the top and the bottom of the frame, and director John T. Kretchmer liked to use the whole frame. For example, in the first Library conference (shown upthread), we have this classic bit: But this means that in the "remaster", Buffy is standing next to the seated Willow, and Buffy's head is out of frame, as is the table itself and a good bit of Willow's torso. It's horrible. Later on, when Giles is explaining the pending Apocalypse, at least half the time his head is missing, from the eyes up. And I'm sure I've blanked out other nightmares. Who tf ever thought it would be a good idea to release this crap? "Half-assed" is too generous. This one-eighth-assed, possibly one-sixteenth. Yuck.

Reactor Vic (a female Vic, presumably Victoria) notes that not only was it wise for Der Kindestöd to drag Dr. Backer's body away so that his death wouldn't be connected with the children's ward (and thus make continued feeding easier), but that Backer's corpse being hidden is why Backer's office hasn't been locked up by the police (pending further investigation) and so Buffy and Willow are able to enter in Act III. Not that locked doors have ever stopped Buffy, going back to the pilot, but still. And while I'm still skeptical of the need to have Cousin Celia as a "personal" motivation for Buffy to act, as noted above, it is true that seeing Young Buffy watching in confusion while Celia screams for her life against the invisible killer does clear up the question as to whether Mr "Child Death" is specifically visible only to children, as Willow and Giles posited right before Aly sat on the long table and diverted my eyes to her butt back in Act II. Nope, Power Girl was as blind to the creature as Non-Feverish Buffy was when watching Kindestöd slice-and-dice Backer. It's the fever, not puberty, that determines visibility. (And "Power Girl" still is adorable and forms a baseline for Buffy calling herself "a hero" to try to convince Ryan, so there are other benefits in the story, as well.)

Well, yes. murder and cannibalism…but proper hygiene and grooming still count for something among hyenas, I guess. Lol. (I wonder if the girls reapplied their lipstick?) Alternate theory: they had napkins stuffed in their pockets and WetWipes™ for their faces. All neat and tidy before they left Bob's office. A well-prepared pack is a well-fed pack, don'tcha know?

He's a demon; chaos and suffering is his metier. (Yes, Buffy said they were "pretty much 'crush, kill, destroy'", but some are subtler.)

It's interesting that it only takes two episodes for several reactors to be getting tired of Angel doing his Actively Not Helping bit, although I suppose having Buffy explicitly call him out on it at the top of Act I here contributes. Clearly Jay isn't having any "hoo-boy!" moments yet.

Yo, Blue! While you're laying around, waiting for somebody with lot of time to put all your pieces together, consider this: if everybody around you is starting to skedaddle, that's pretty much your cue to run, too. If they're wrong, you can blame them for misleading you and making all of you look like fools. But that's a far better scenario than "stand my ground and discover that they were beating feet for a very good reason." He who hesitates gets pulverized, and all that. (I grant you that the Judge missed out on not only Cato [1712], but Joseph Addison's entire career, given that he's been in the boxes since the late 14th century, but still. Ignorance of an aphorism is no excuse for missing the truth behind the words. And yes, I never heard of Joseph Addison, either. [I thought "He who hesitates is lost" was Shakespeare.] But no, "The woman who deliberates is lost" is all him. Rock on, Joe.)

Advice for Spike (Continued): You know, Spike, you've had a very long time to learn that Drusilla is mentally unstable and doesn't necessarily focus well on tasks. Maybe it's time you had one of the minions start feeding the birds, so you don't have to be constantly replacing them? Just a thought. ************************ Attaboy, Jay! Willow-appreciation is the sign of a top-tier reactor! [/understandable bias] ****** It would have been darkly hilarious (albeit seriously anti-climactic) if Spike had decided that Ford was too much of a wanker to bother with, after all, and simply decided to go fetch Drusilla a "treat" outside the Bronze, leaving Buffy and Ford and the vampire wannabes stuck in that bunker for a few hours. (Wonder what they would to pass the time? "I Spy"? Truth or Dare? Charades?) Thankfully Angel/Willow/Xander apparently figured out that Buffy was missing and went by to check (I don't think she left word with anybody) but still. Speaking of absences, I wonder where Giles and Jenny were on the climactic night. Second go at the monster trucks, or did Jenny decide it just wasn't going to happen?

So, I'm late to the news, but John Amos passed away at the end of August. "Gordy" was 84. And so it goes. When Mary left us in 2017, I felt a void in my heart, but I consoled myself thinking that, aside from Ted Knight (who passed in 1986), all of the cast were still with us, with Betty and Cloris seeming young into their 90s. And now, only seven years later, they're almost all gone. From Betty and Cloris to Ed and Gavin, from Georgia (way too soon at age 68) and Valerie (who endured so many health issues) to John Amos and even John Gabriel (five episodes as Andy Rivers, the Sports Guy). The WJM-TV newsroom stands empty. All we have left are Joyce Bulifant (Marie Slaughter), who turns 87 in December, and Lisa Gerritsen (Bess), who turns 67 five days after Joyce's birthday. (Fun Fact: John Gabriel, primarily known for his soap opera work, was in the unaired original pilot "Marooned" that later became Gilligan's Island. He played a high-school teacher rather than a full-fledged Professor, but still cool, I'd say.) Farewell, geniuses. Thank you for countless laughs across seven seasons of (mostly) beauty. (That wretched Bill Daily back-door pilot episode [2.22, "His Two Right Hands"] aside, of course.) [OT]Another Fun Fact: Joyce Bulifant has been married five times, and aside from a one-year blip with hubby #4, she's tried to make it work each time. First it was 10 years with James "Book him, Danno" MacArthur, then five with Edward Mallory (the primary Dr. Bill Horton on Days of Our Lives), then 17 years with famed TV director William Asher (best known for I Love Lucy), then the one year blip with some unknown fellow, and then she had settled down with Roger Perry (that's Captain John Christopher to you, Star Trek fans!) for 16 years until he passed away in 2018. Ironically, Bulifant's 2020 memoir, My Four Hollywood Husbands, tells us that all the famous spouses were alcoholics. I don't know if that's why she divorced the anonymous Glade Hansen so quickly…perhaps he wasn't enough of a challenge?[/OT]

Chris in his guest spot from S2 of Charmed, "Animal Pragmatism" A As a snake given human form by silly college girls dabbling in magic, one of the first things Chris has to learn is to not let his, er, snake hang loose. Making for an entertaining episode for some viewers…and reminding Christopher that his WB contract to be a piece of meat was meant rather literally. (He does become suitably menacing as the episode goes along, thus justifying the Halliwells' intervention. Not that Phoebe [Alyssa Milano] might ever need much justification to check out the Big Snake on Campus, but even so.)

Jay is another new-ish reactor. Here's the scene at the Bronze: I doubt he's actually 'shipping Wiffy…but it's nice that he recognizes the opportunity.

Well, the more I think about it, the more it smells like "telling without showing". Marcus is supposed to be Pete's best friend and business partner of 18 years…but the whole episode is Marcus judging everything Pete does and jumping to the worst possible conclusion. Pete is a crook, Pete is a racist, Pete is a horrible person for seducing Random Wife. (Which btw, makes Marcus sexist as anything. How does he just assume Pete is being a predator? Pete's pushing 40, he's never been married, he's given his entire adult life to making Marcus rich…maybe he's just lonely. Maybe he's fallen in love. [It's not as if he has to go to random birthday parties to meet women; he has a whole office full that he works with and given that he's decent-looking and very successful, he won't have to be trolling Tinder for dates for too long. Indeed, he could well be worried that he's going to be swarmed by gold-diggers and nobody will ever love him for himself, and so he's drawn to the authentic connection he feels he's made with Wifey.] And it's not as if Marcus has Clue One about what Wifey thinks. Maybe Hubby cheated on his first wife and she's worried that he's cheating on her now. Maybe Hubby slapped an ex-girlfriend and now he's starting to get violent with her. Maybe they only got married because she got knocked up and they've been trying to make it work for the sake of the kid and she's just so tired of being trapped in a loveless marriage and Pete is her last chance at the life she really wants. We have no idea, and neither does Marcus. He just automatically assumes Wifey is a Bad Person for sleeping with Pete and that "Best Friend" Pete is a Disgusting Pig whom Perfect Family Man Marcus is qualified to judge and scorn.) When trouble strikes, does Marcus tell Pete they need to speak privately asap? Maybe take him aside first thing in the morning at work? No, he shows up at Pete's house in the middle of the night, barges in, takes a few seconds to bitch at Pete for how Pete runs Pete's personal life, and then goes on the attack about the app (and the blackmailer had shown him the data by then, so Marcus knew the skew was both minor and not specifically targeted at blacks), reaching the worst-possible conclusions at light-speed. Never mind that Marcus should have reviewed the data before releasing the app, never mind that a few days' thought made it easy enough for Pete to realize that there was literally one other person who ever saw the data, all Marcus wants to do blame Pete and castigate him and never have a serious conversation where partners work out a solution that works best for both of them. That's not a friendship there that I could ever see. I'm not saying that Pete was perfect; he shouldn't have scrubbed the data, he shouldn't have tried to pressure Marcus into paying the blackmailer (which never works, except as a means to play for time and find a better solution, which Pete actually did without needing to pay). And maybe he gets his jollies by going after random 30-ish housewives, albeit that makes him virtually alone amongst lotharios, to my knowledge. But still. It was Marcus who IMO overreacted from an emotional place, and led directly to Pete's death. And yet the show plays Marcus as the martyr and all but says that Pete deserved to die. (Did Pete not have any family? Presumably Marcus would have met his parents and/or siblings in 18 years of being "best friends". But I don't recall Marcus using his final confession to apologize to them for his part in Pete's death.) Perhaps I'm partially reacting this way because I'm seeing an agenda at play. I don't know if Canada has a law that enforces Woke Casting, but you couldn't prove they didn't by this episode. "Good" characters: Marcus, his supportive wife, his innocent son, the Sainted Xavier Skilling (be funny if he was dealing crack on the side, after all the hosannas), the Widow Skilling, Responsible Prosecutor, and Marcus's attorney. 7 "good people", every last one black. Neutral characters: the repentant blackmailer, the corporate attorney who seemed a bit venal but not actually vile. (1 Asian, 1 white) "Bad" characters: Pete the Greedy Racist, who basically got Skilling killed and Deserved to Die, his Stupid Slut Bimbo Cheating Wife hook-up and the cops who killed Skilling. Presumably all white. (Although one of the officers in the Floyd killing was Asian.) I mean, come on, now. I don't want to see this turn into Jordan Peele's desecration of The Twilight Zone, where every hero was black and every villain was white, but this is a bit troubling, IMO. (I didn't see every S1 episode, but has any black character ever been portrayed as a Bad Person? We had Samir the Stalker, but Indian≠Black. And Aaliyah was IMO the Worst Girlfriend Ever to Esme, but I don't think we were supposed to hate her. JMO.)

Marcus shoved Pete and he fell. How is that "involuntary"? Seems straight up Man 1. (Marcus can't claim self-defense, because Pete wasn't trying to hurt him. All Marcus had to do was stop trying to open the door.) However, Marcus was a complete dick to accuse Pete of being racist, since if he'd bothered to actually look at the data, he might have seen that the Asian results were even less accurate than the black results. So it was probably only that the more testing the app was able to do, the more accurate the results were. And in a country that is 60% white, 18% black and 6% Asian (those numbers may have shifted [I'm too lazy to check], but the general point holds), it's hardly surprising that the testing had more iterations of whites than blacks. I think Pete was right…Marcus saw him as a meal ticket but held him in contempt, personally, and was always ready to assume the worst. With "friends" like that…well, you end up dead, apparently. A little harsh, but Accused takes place in a harsh world, apparently.

Sorry, I forgot to post. I liked this one just fine. April made some bad calls, but she was overworked and overstressed. (I'm rushing to get this up before watching the new ep, so I don't know if Chicago Redshirt has investigated the Ohio "diminished capacity" defense or not, but there would seem to be options there.) There's no way this was vehicular homicide, though. Nick Hudson #1 (if we're going to use character names for Chambers, let's take it real old school, lol) made a conscious decision to stand in that road and yell at April. It was his fault for doing that, it was the driver's fault for plowing into him. April may have been a catalyst, but she's no way liable for his death. I also wasn't thrilled that they took her from the court right into custody. I would think that this would be a case where the defendant would be granted a few days to get her affairs in order. Slap an ankle monitor on her if you must, but the dramatic haulaway was overdoing it. I mean, does she not even get a chance to tell the kid that she has to go away and who'll be taking care of him and that he can visit her and all that? Didn't sit well. But, overall, fun. Let's see how this week goes. (Maggie Cory, Nick's romantic interest, was also swiftly recast, but went on to bigger things. The Maggie who played opposite Chambers was a very young Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, pre-Nash Bridges.) Oh, and now this is hours late because I stopped to watch tonight's episode and then fell asleep. Whatever.