Halting Hex

Shouldn't take an entire year between updates, however. Great Scotty! Director Michael Lange not only creates a number of memorable images (check how represented the episode is in the Season 3 credits), but has the sense not to break the momentum by having Bangel glance ostentatiously at the bed. The intensity of the kiss conveys the deepening passion on its own. (And besides, we are about get an Wiffy demi-scene discussing Buffy's decisiion to "seize" the Forehead. No worries about the audience not knowing what's on the Buffster's mind.) Oh, no, he doesn't, Marti. That "pick her up" deal is way too sexist. (I suppose Marti might have been trying to mirror the "carry the bride across the threshold" imagery, but that's overstating things, impending "seizing" or not.) Also, how is Boreanaz going to keep working on TV for another quarter-century if you strain his back this way? Smidge may only weigh 100 lbs, but that still counts. (SEAL Team is still cranking along on Paramount +. The seasons are only 10 eps long now, and the upcoming season 7 is the last, but it still counts. So that brings David up to 26 seasons of "main cast narrative television" [2 on this show, 5 of Angel, 12 of Bones, 7 of SEAL Team], one short of the Michael Landon/Harry Morgan record for men, although Mariska Hargitay has blown past that, with Law & Order: So Many Perverts! still chugging away.) Instead, what Lange does is have Buffy walk backwards to the door, her hands still on Angel's arms and his on hers, until they reach the door. Better for showing her torn between her desire to leave and her desire for him. And the line becomes "All right. I know. This is me; I'm going.", which not only mirrors the previous dialogue, but makes Buffy's point be about leaving Angel, not merely asserting her identity. In the aired episode, SMG inserts "seeing" between "like" and "you" in both lines, which not only matches Buffy's next line ("I like seeing you. And the part at the end of the night, etc."), but has the virtue of being less blunt. HOWEVER, it does make Willow a liar, because we then cut to: Well, no, not quite like that, naughty nerd! Of course, they couldn't fix it because the Torrance High scenes had been shot first. So Sarah basically hangs Aly out to dry. Bad Smidge! Okay, still snail's pace, but any progress is good progress. And at least we've gotten Buffy out of the basement! Actual deleted scenes next time, methinks.

"Vanilla Ice is cool. He's like Muddy Waters, only not."

Granted, it takes ten more episodes for the gang to formally unseat her, but we know that Season 7 is not big with the pacing.

Almost no military units are led by "the strongest fighter", for the excellent reason that fighters tend to, y'know, die. That's why generals try to stay a bit away from the action, lest what happened to Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (killed by his own sentry, panicking in the dark) as well as the man who gave him the nickname, Clair Bee (shot dead whilst trying to rally his troops by citing Jackson as an example ["Look at Jackson, standing like a stone wall!"]) happen to them. Okay, so technically it already has happened to Buffy. Twice. Good thing she had "ungrateful assholes" who were willing to force antagonistic vampires to lead them into the Master's lair or have their body taken over, spew up snakes and risk having their soul ripped apart, huh? (One might say that Generalissima Buffy treating her nearest and dearest like some Chloe-come-lately or a useless mass-murderer would make her the "ungrateful [orifice]" in the room, actually.)

Good heavens! The big 7-0 already. Best wishes, Tony.

Literally nobody did that. Until, perhaps… "Nuff said! I propose Buffy slays—" well, no, that would probably be an overreaction. Chill, Buffster, chill. (I would ask when Xander was a "sexist creep", exactly, but…)

Synopsis: Buffy is disgruntled to realize that her newfound devotion to a writing exercise has been harming the group's internal cohesion. Q: What is 5-7-5 poems Corrode our Scoobs' friendship bonds "The Haiku Factor" ?

Y'know, I can forgive First Daughter, which is a decent enough rom-com…but I'm not sure I can forgive that faux-hawk. Yeesh. There's only one Miz to a generation, Riley. Facts.

A cute way to use Whedon's (relatively-)recently-revealed transgressions against an apparent unfavorite, but not historically accurate, as Joss has always maintained that all five of the original cast represented Aspects of his personality. Buffy was the hero he envisioned himself as (or hoped to be) and "the Burden of Slayerhood" was an analog for the responsibilities Joss felt as the One Man in All the Studio who ultimately had to Make the Hard Choices to save the world show. Xander was the wisecracking outsider he found himself as being reduced to. Willow was the Nerd he was trying to outgrow. Giles represented Whedon's time in England (and perhaps his seeing himself as the knowledgable one on the staff.) Cordelia was his way of acknowledging that he could be a nasty self-involved diva every so often. (Her insults, such as "who gave you permission to exist?" and "Why? Because you're boring" are sometimes things Whedon himself has said.) They are all Joss's children, for better or for worse. If Xander had been a specific self-insert, it is likely he would have fared far better than he did. (See Piz from Veronica Mars and doubtless other examples. JMO.)

Ah, if only…

Well, Oz's academics get a few mentions along the way. From discussing his being recruited by Totally-Not-Microsoft in WML2 to his 'fessing up about ditching summer school in order to spend an entire extra year stalking his underage girlfriend in Anne to Willow gently rebuking him for the same in BatB. Of course, it's ridiculous that Oz would do this when he could probably test out with his GED during a lunch break, and ridiculous that Willow neither noticed his lassitude nor is on his ass to rectify it, but Joss thought that they needed Seth based in the High School…even though we literally never see Oz in class until The Freshman. But that's Oz, chronically undeveloped. I think it's more in my reactions to YT videos than here, but I get so frustrated that everybody is just perfectly fine letting this kid (he's 18-20 when we see him; not even legal drinking age) spend his life in chains, 10% of each month. Haha, metaphor for menstruation, we get it, but women can still have reasonably full lives while dealing with their "monthly" issues. (Buffy apparently makes it through multiple crises in School Hard while still discharging the flow of "a nice ripe girl") Oz gets to be locked up and insane, 3 nights out of every 30. (Or is it 28? Lunar months are shorter, right?) And nobody seems to give a shit. Not Mr. Watcher-man, who gets paid to deal with this stuff. Not his never-seen family, who might want to stop this unending curse. Not Buffy, who validates her life by protecting the Innocent. Not Xander, who is so desperate for "guy friends" that he spends much of S3 trying to chill out with the guy he cuckolded. (Which might be a subtly cruel burn, but still.) And not his exceptionally smart and empathetic girlfriend, who gets emotional about dead people, but doesn't seem terribly upset at her boyfriend's torment. Nor Oz himself. Because Oz is nothing but a plot device to keep Xander away from Willow. A "hologram", as I call him. Drusilla gets more character development, as does Harmony, as does Forrest. Waste of several opportunities. Sigh.

I don't find it terribly odd for Willow to check in with Buffy (Slayer) and/or Giles (Watcher) as the first resort when something supernatural is up. I'm fairly certain she does that in S1-S2 as well. (It is more their specialty than Xander's, after all.) Her going to seek Xander behind the scenes whilst Buffy is heading to her death in Prophecy Girl is lovely, but she can't go to Buffy (for obvious reasons) and Xander lives closer to her than where the school is, it is generally implied. I mean she does tell Xander her worries over Rodney Munson's fate in Inca Mummy Girl rather quickly, but no offense to the Xan-man, I think she went to the Library to find Giles or Buffy and Xander simply happened to be there. And any Xillow-closeness brownie points that After Life earns are IMO rather severely cancelled out by Gone (IMO an otherwise semi-tolerable episode) where Xander's response to "somebody in a town of 38,500 did a bad spell?" is " Must be Willow, that bad bad bad bad bad addict! It's not as if I'm boning an amoral sociopath who co-owns a magic shop and has been casting maleficent spells for over 1000 years or anything! Or if it could be that vampire we somehow allow to roam free, who has done a dark ritual or six himself! Or Dawn, summoner of dancing demons or T-t-t-tara, who put a curse on us last year, or any number of other possible suspects! No, let's blame my 'best friend', immediately, and bully her when she denies it!" (And then there's the…lovely episode where Xander sells out the sobriety that he knows Willow fights to maintain every day, just to appease his Hellbitch's invented-only-for-this episode claustrophobia! You know, that she showed zero indication of when Xander himself locked her in a closet last year! Oh, and that classic moment where Willow walks right past Xander while covered in [what turns out to be] her dead girlfriend's blood and X doesn't even blink.) It takes more than one "seeing as how Buffy is completely out of it and Giles is 10.000 km away, let me ask Xander's opinion" moment to redeem S6 as some sort of Xillowrific paradise for me. Sorry. (Also, I recall this in 4.18: That looks like an example of Willow seeking out Xander in a supernatural crisis [if that's the exact square we're trying to land on] a good two seasons before "I was torn out of Heeeeeeeaven. By my 'friends'. Hold me, my darling Cheekbones!" and other S6 joys, AFAICT. JMO.)

Two years? It's less than 6 months! Xander is nakedly unemployed as late as Primeval, yet he's a supervisor by The Replacement. No shiny coins needed. Bob definitely got a raw deal. But that's the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to getting eaten, I'm told. And I think S2 has its metaphor moments. Reptile Boy telling us that college boys who chase high school girls are not suave dudes, but rather roofie-and-rape-driven creeps who worship their penis as if it was a god rather schwings to mind. Followed by Ethan showing us we should be careful what we wish for, and Bad Eggs telling us that children are soulless parasites that take over our lives. Not to mention a goodly amount "men are just animals" in 2.15, albeit focused on your not-favorite character.

Or because Willow had a new haircut and they wanted the titles to look consistent? And while most of the ACTION shots were from S2, everybody had new material in their portrait shots in the credits: SMG-shots from Anne ("Anybody here not having fun?"), Faith Hope & Trick (nervously smiling at Giles in the Library), and Innocence (sighting down the LAWS rocket at the Smurf). Nick-shots from Go Fish (Speedo™ time!), Anne (commenting on "Depressing Night" at the Bronze) and Dead Man's Party (raising his head from behind Joyce's bed to observe Buffy's battle with the zombies, not that he will try to save Willow from Mobani!Pat or anything like that…grrr…) Aly-shots from Faith Hope & Trick (smiling as she looks at her little phial of Marnox Root…apparently she's been really enjoying what you can do with a virgin's saliva…and I don't just mean "lubricating the toys she found in Jenny's bottom drawer"), Surprise (waving cutely at Buffy in Buffy's dream…which means this is Buffy's subconscious idea of Willow…) and Anne (giving Xander side-eye for rambling on about Cordelia when Willow was actually talking about how much she missed Buffy [of course]) CC-shots from Surprise (rising up behind the cake), Faith Hope & Trick (at the Bronze; I think this may be her recapping the Slayer Line? She's happy, rather than pissed as in "Xander? Find a new theme) and Bewitched, Bothered, & Bewildered (reacting to Xander's gift of the heart) David-(all as Angelus) from Becoming, Part I (vamping out before his first attempt at the ritual; spying on Buffy at the cemetery, earlier) and II (climactic swordfight) Seth-shots from Dead Man's Party (playing guitar at Buffy's house), Beauty and the Beasts (staring at Pete from inside the cage), and Faith Hope & Trick (approving of Willow's babble during the opening picnic) ASH-"The Decline and Fall of Rupert Giles (smiling when smelling the rose on his door in Passion; turning in shock [and possible horror] when Buffy and Willow tell him about finding The Ritual of Restoration in Becoming, Part 1; apparently not reacting well to Buffy's joke about remembering her address in Dead Man's Party [this appears to be from an alternate take]) So, SMG, Nick and Aly all had 2/3 new footage, CC and ASH had 2/3 old, David was all old (appropriate? Also, Angelus far cooler, obviously) and Seth had all new. I don't really see a push for Aly's clips that varies significantly. Also, they may simply want to use as much new footage as possible, since the 35-millimeter stuff looks different from the old 16-mm. To quit the Buffster herself, "I wouldn't worry." JMO.

Blanked out Anya dragging his recently-maimed-and-heavily-medicated (he couldn't even walk unassisted in the previous episode, recall) ass onto the dirty kitchen floor in Groped, have we? Good. Nice to know the BrainBleach™ still works.

Fun fact: I'm the person who first called it "Season Sux". (On TWoP in June 2002, when I was posting as bwdan. Robert A. Black from the Kitten Board has claimed credit, but I beat him to it.) I sensed that my show was broken when After Life showed Buffy unable to stand even being the same room as the Scoobs (those fucking camera angles!) and running off (repeatedly) to seek solace from Only!Spike, and Flooded confirmed that the damage was irreparable. Not "merely" because we spend Act IV seeing Giles rip Willow a new one for violating the "rules" of Magic (paging The Zeppo, paging Primeval) while Buffy listens to Spike "joke" about killing her friends and family and SMILES, but also because it debuted the Trio, who are the most blatant attack on the audience I've ever seen. "Ohh, men who watch shows like this are pathetic losers [this was before "incel" was a term] who are actually dangerous psychopaths [Warren], weak-willed followers [Jonathan] and self-closeted homosexuals [Andrew]! You can't relate to women because you want dick in your ass, but you're too stupid to admit it! Ha-ha, what a loser!" Up thine, Joss. Aside from how gross it is that the season tries to make us hate Buffy, Willow and Xander while fluffing Tara the Abandoning Hypocrite, Anya the Nostalgic Sociopath and Spike the unrepentant mass-murderer and serial rapist (including necrophiliac rape), the season was just awful as television, leaving aside the crappy plotting and character assassination. The production values went to shit, the pacing was a complete joke, and the show wasn't even funny any more. Pretty much every attempt at "comedy" was rooted in Nerd-bashing, unnecessary meta-references, or one-dimensional sexual innuendo…and frankly, a little of that goes a loooooong way. We had entire episodes that had fewer scenes than did Act II of Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered. The first half of Dead Man's Party (which is a Marti Noxon angst-fest that features a long argument and a long fight) contains more attempts at humor than any three S6 episodes (and more success than any five, IMO, but I recognize that is subjective). The show was so dedicated to licking Spike's knob that Sparky (who was one of the best sources of humor in Seasons 2 and 4) had exactly one legitimately funny line all-season. (From Entropy: "Drusilla was always straightforward. Didn't have a single buggering clue about what was going on right in front of her…but she was straight about it!" Classic.) Precious few that were even attempts aside from that. (Yes, "Randy Giles??" Why not call me Horny Giles or Desperate-for-a-Shag Giles, then?", but that's amnesia yuks. Not really an honest funny.) Mostly we got…lovely moments like this, also from Tabula Rasa: Oooh, haha! Spike's talking about how he was getting an erection! Isn't that funny??? Hahaha! Oh, vomit. Easily the worst season of television I have ever suffered through. 90% of the episodes were utterly repulsive, including That Fucking Musical and Fat Loser Xander Saves Crazy Murderer Willow, and Buffy is So Useless She Can't Even Beat Dirt! A few (Life Serial, Smashed, Gone, As You Were) were semi-functional, albeit still drowning in Spuffy shit. Yes, the ironically-named Normal Again was actually good, but one pearl doesn't save this pile of turds. "Like watching a friend die", I wrote in 2003. I've changed a few opinions over the past two decades, but that isn't one of them. I have a lot more, but I'll let you read the episode threads, for a starter. Serious disagreement. But for now, let me quote Cee-Lo Green on the Gnarls Barkley album: And I can go on and on and on…

Speaking of 4.10, JMO.

On closer inspection, that's actually Whitney Dylan (Lisette) in both pictures! They tried Whitney as both blonde and brunette and they ultimately decided not to make Lysette a cheerleader (wouldn't make much sense for Xander to be dating one of Cordy's teammates, honestly), but that's Whitney/Lysette, all right. I guess she had already been cast and now they were just tweaking the look. Cool.

Wow, that beats the story of the person on TWoP (Television Without Pity, a previous message board) whose first episode was Doublemeat Palace. I guess you never know what will hook someone. (I, of course, first experienced the television magic that was Inca Mummy Girl, but we can't all be so fortunate.)

Yeah, but OTOH, Buffy ***** A bit of a muddled antecedent here; for a micro-second I thought you were complaining that Willow failed to kill Angel. Which would be asking a bit much, dramatically (Buffy being the titular heroine and all), no matter how wonderful it might be. (You have read Dawn Steele's classic "everybody-kills-Angel" fanfic, "Let Me Count the Ways", right? I love the Xander chapter and Cordelia's is a delight, but Willow's will always be my favorite.) A bit inorganic, since Whedon admitted it was an attempt to "get Oz over" with the fans. It's a pretty natural reaction from Willow, though, and the scene would work just fine if Oz didn‘t have A Speech ready to go at the drop of a hat. Something more like would work fine, without the over-blown "freeze-frame" and the dramatic "oh, I'm not going to kiss you" and artificial phrasings like "to the casual observer" and "your friend Xander". (Willow knows who Xander is, Joss. He was literally just in the van with them. Oz doesn't have to specify. I get that you want to show that Oz is new to the group, but Marti did that just fine last episode.) Oz is a new character; it's best to develop him as naturally as possible. I mean, there will be opportunities going forward, but still.

Xander, trying to stay poker-faced while getting some touch. Buffy, wondering where Willow Giles Cordelia Angel has gone to… (He's at the junior high, scouting up possible replacements, Buff.)

Trying to replicate success is a danger in almost any art form. I can't tell you the number of rock bands where I end up thinking how much better they were before the commercial breakthrough. It may not always be "wow, Bob Seger was so much better before that Silver Bullet truck commercial crap" (Bob and his manager try to bury his first seven albums, keeping them off of Spotify and never releasing them on CD), but there's a lot of it around. I will defend S3-S4 Willow, though, as if you couldn't see that coming. She's always been glad of male attention, going back to "Malcolm". She's been willing to tell Buffy off since 2.01. And magic is her way of keeping Jenny alive. (Which puts her one above Jenny's boyfriend, but that's a different iss-yew…) If you're talking about her liking girls, well, come on, now. But I suppose such discussions are best suited for the Willow thread. (I will agree that Faith is pretty much fanservice. Albeit lovely fanservice, but still. Indeed, I could argue that Faith is what shallow people envisioned Buffy as being.)

Honestly, most Honest Trailers are funny, but they tend to provoke a "well, they're stretching that for the joke" or "wow, they took that out of context" at least once in the piece. This is pretty much the best one I've seen. Even a couple of points, about how Puberty is the Real Monster (this goes back to Teacher‘s Pet, but it's good to have it enunciated) and that it makes that since Angel is an age creeper (he fell "in love" with a virginal 14/15-year-old Buffy without even speaking to her, then went and peeped through her bathroom window that night, per Becoming, Part 1), that he would dump Buffy as she graduates high school. No more "get the fruit while it's fresh", eh, Broody? She's an adult now, and where's the fun in that? And I did not know that "Dangerous", Marster's song about dangerous MT was to him (what with being all sexy and 15, what's a man to do?), had a lyric about the Trachtentoes, specifically. Good Lorde. Thanks.

Channon in Boogie Nights (as mentioned before), getting ready to beat down Eddie "Dirk Diggler" Adams [Mark Wahlberg, left] for not being able to get it up. Don't advertise what you can't deliver, Eddie. If the Dirk don't work, you look like a jerk.

Buffy's willingness to take people at their word is both strange (even journalism requires two sources…or it used to, anyhow) and out of character. I mean, she was skeptical about even Angel, until Darla verified his story about the curse. She didn't even believe her own mother about how great Ted was. She held out against Giles and Willow and Xander in believing that Emily was killed by a demon, not a human, in The Puppet Show. I grant you that a dying declaration carries more weight (is Idiot Jeb going to go to the great beyond being all "ha-ha, totally fooled that Summers girl!"? Unlikely), but given that Buffy was practicing magic to find out the truth before, it is a bit odd that she simply lets the matter drop afterwards.