Halting Hex

Goes right along with Buffy telling Ben that "it's okay to try to sacrifice my sister once! But you tell Glory that if she ever tries it again…" I love the taste of empty threats in the morning. And I remain flabbergasted that Spike managed to re-dye and re-gel his hair while he was fucking insane. Showing how completely up the ass of the Spikettes Joss was by this point…oooooooh, don't change Spike's hair! We love the calcified look of the platinum helmet! He should wear it forever and ever! So it was left to wardrobe to try and change Spike's look, at least a little. Hence the blue shirt with the three-quarter sleeves. Which I've never been a fan of, to be honest. And let's look at the chronology of Xander/Spike interactions: 6.17-Xander beats Spike up, only stopping when Buffy collapses 6.18-Xander beats Spike longer and harder, only stopping when Buffy and Anya call him off. Spike sticks the knife in deeper by bragging about his having fucked Buffy all over town. 6.19-Spike tries to rape Buffy. Only Buffy's pleas stop Xander from going after Spike. Spike leaves town. 6.20 through 7.01-no interaction, Spike not present for most of this time. 7.02-Xander sees Spike for the first time since the rape…and barely whispers a complaint to Buffy. Geez, Xan, did Anya wish your balls into the cornfield while we weren't looking, or what? And we get yet another fucking useless Willow/Giles scene, where Willow worries the group won't accept her back, and both she and Giles are too stupid to suggest that she use "the ingenious speaking tube" to call B/X/D up and find out how they're feeling. Gotta keep the "suspense" for next episode, don't you know? Still, it has its good points. Xander tells Anya she doesn't get to use the non-wedding as an excuse for the rest of her life. Buffy smacks Spike around, even if the "fight" is static and lacks, well, punch. Nick Brendon and Kaarina Aufranc (Nancy) have very nice chemistry…I wouldn't mind seeing her come back. And it's well-paced; we meet the monster at the end of the teaser, not after farting around for the first act. Well, he had his enabler (Joss) telling him "this was supposed to be your episode" and "I'm going to save you" and then rewriting the crucial church scene to fluff Spike's pale white ass. Petrie's original was fucking kick-ass ("How you like me now?"), whereas Whedon rewrote it to give Spike excuses (ohh, Sparky never wanted that nasty sex! His wuvv is twue!!) and damaged what should have been a sharp climax. "Can we rest Buffy? Can we rest?" Could you rest six feet under? Please? Marks: 7/10 as written (originally); 6/10 as aired.

No, it isn't. In Earshot, she thought Jonathan was attempting a mass murder, when she talked him down with compassion. "Sneering bitch" really isn't a good look, no matter whom it's directed at. a) no, it wasn't. b) it's "Wood", in the singular, not "Woods" in the plural. c) very unprofessional of him, if true. d) likely counterproductive, if true. Is he telling the actual mothers that they look like grandmothers, then?

Regarding Buffy finding Eddie's copy of Of Human Bondage in his "abandoned" room: Heh. I remember David Hines calling this out as too easy and saying that Joss would have done better to have Buffy go look for the Somerset Maugham and not find it and only later become convinced that something was wrong, despite the evidence…but of course that's a meta critique. Inside the show, there's the simpler fact that Sunday's gang misses only one item in Eddie's room…and it just happens to be the one item that is guaranteed to set Buffy's alarm bells a-clanging. Wayyyy too easy. Hack writing, Joss. Sigh.

Anya, of course. Willow has never been to Hell, much less sold her humanity for power. (Twice.) Yes, she's acting horrifically here, but all she's done is reached Anyanka's default setting. (See The Wish.)

Well, it should be Angel instead of Drusilla (the WB was still objecting to out-of-network crossovers for a lead character), of course, and you can tell that Harry Groener was doing a play, because they didn't have him long enough to do a morphing effect on the Mayor, we just cut to him from Adam and to Drusilla from him. And of course you have to wonder why the Mayor and the Master are even in the scene, since Spike has never met them. If these are the real baddies, it's odd they'd join a plot against him, and if it's somebody impersonating them (as the First Evil did against Angel in Amends), why would they think that the images of strangers would make an effective psychological weapon? Especially given that Spike's already apparently insane, and you don't really need to push his buttons that much. Feels more like fan-service than anything necessary to the storytelling. That said, the Master (or First!Master, or whomever Mark Metcalf is playing) calling Spike "a pathetic schmuck"? Never.Gets.Old. Unfortunately, one scene does not an episode make, and the rest of this ep is slow and stupid and annoying. The Courteous Zombies are a ridiculous excuse for antagonists, given how they stop "attacking" every time the plot needs them to, for no reason whatsoever. Need Dawn to whip out her cell phone? Suddenly the Zombies stop attacking. Need to have a Spuffy moment to kiss up to those 'shippers? Again, the fucking Zombies stop attacking. You know, you guys would have a lot better chance of killing Buffy if you actually tried to kill Buffy. I'm just saying. And what's more repulsive, Buffy not caring that people may have died and she never even noticed it? Buffy mocking the Zombies for being uncool losers (didn't this show use to be about the outsiders?) and not "hotties" like Angel and Spike? Or Buffy seeing Spike for the first time in months, out of the blue and looking half-crazy, and letting her rapist fondle her face? Vomit, vomit, and projectile vomit. Sheesh. (And as far as Buffy's disappearing moral code goes, apparently she's been letting Anya cast vengeance wishes all summer and hasn't lifted a finger to stop her? Good gravy…) I also really can't stand having Principal Wood "mistakenly" think that Buffy is Dawn's mother, just so Joss can shove in his stupid "mom-hair" joke. Wood read Buffy's file; he knows she's 21. FFS. It's nice that Joss was willing to shoot Giles's scenes at ASH's property in West England but wow, those are some useless Willow/Giles scenes. (Although I suppose it is nice to see that Willow was so guilt-riddled that she willingly went with Giles even though she thought she was being taken to her execution.) But it still annoys me that they cut the third W/G scene, the one that actually raised important questions: But overall boring and stupid and wayyyy too convenient (how nice of the Zombies to just leave the talisman where Xander practically trips over it, isn't it?) and if I never see the block of wood that played "Carlos" again, it'll be too soon. Damn, could that kid not act… Marks: 3/10, because I don't want to drop it all the way down to Season Sux levels and because I'll scrape up a point for having the courage to change Spike's incredibly-boring decades-old look and give him hair that more properly reflects his deranged mental state. And because that final scene is quite good. But overall, not exactly the best start to get "back to the beginning". You know, when the show was a delight, rather than a painful chore… (Label for the tape that includes Villains, Two to Go/Grave and this one: "The Ultimate Shit Tape". Yeah, not exactly a thing of beauty that's a joy forever, IMO.)

It may not have been a long-planned slowly-unfolding master scheme, the way Ford's was, but they all made the decision, to some extent. Nobody got their face rubbed in the vampire's blood, forced to suckle against their will. I grant you we don't actually see the change on the girls the way we do with the boys, but still. They had to make the choice to suck their sires' blood. That's a certain level of consent, IMO.

See my other comments for "the ghost of what, exactly" Willow is dressed as. (Imagine Buffy wearing that to school?) As for CC, that's for later. I'm in the now, here.

This girl is half his age… 16 to his 41, actually. And yet there's rather a bit of suggestive body language going on there. No wonder Joe cites ephebophilia so often.

So I'm looking at (parts of) this, and I notice that in the scene where Angel feeds Buffy the potion to cure her, Buffy's bedroom is just flooded with sunlight. I mean, Angel's practically bathing in it. Which obviously is a problem. It would be one thing if this was just a "David stepped off of his mark a bit" minor flub, but it's broad daylight and the light is streaming in through Buffy's windows, completely obliterating any shadows. And it's not as if the script had been oblivious to these issues; there are two separate "Angel needs to avoid sunlight" bits earlier in the episode. First when Buffy comes to visit him and she apologizes for pulling back the curtain and nearly exposing him to the light, and second when Angel comes over to deliver the potion and arrives under a blanket, smoking. Just a complete blind spot by the director, Regis B. Kimble. Who, to be fair, is normally the series's editor (he's had a fine editing career, but this was his first directing gig), but still, somebody should have caught it. I mean, even David could be "wow, that sunlight is all in my face. Pretty sure Angel doesn't like that" or something…

And of course, if you're going to 'ship B/G, you might as well go full down the rabbit hole and do The Police's ode to Lolita, "Don't Stand So Close To Me". As Bobbi McGriffin has here. Only disappointment is that it's a truncated version of the song. But still lots of fun.

Okay, forget friendship vids. Let's get some real Buffy/Giles in here, for those who think the best man for Buffy is the best man she knows. (No offense to Xander, or Riley.) dcam78 brings us "Crush", to a song by David Archuleta, who apparently got a full album out of 19E, despite losing the American Idol finale they'd hoped he'd win. I was never a fan of Li'l Davy, but the song is okay, I guess. On a personal note, this is the first time I've seen Danny Strong's and Tom Lenk's guest-star credits for Grave, as that's one of those episodes I only ever watched once, and that was in the two-hour bloc it originally aired in. (And if I ever got the unlikely urge to revisit it, that's how it would be on the tape I made…I'm not buying Season Sux DVDs, obviously.) Strange to see something "new" from the series 16 years later. Even if it's just a guest credit. (But I'm still not checking out those Andrew scenes I skipped past in the final episodes. Sorry, Tom. What I saw was more than enough, already.)

So, I've started following a video reactor, because she's unspoiled (of course) and because she's not overdoing things like some of those people I've seen trying to be "internet famous" by screeching uncontrollably with joy and that sort of thing. (There were a couple of "reactions" to Taylor Swift's reputation that made me flat-out cringe. I don't hate the album [I think it's her worst since the debut, though; I guess Karlie Kloss just isn't the "muse" that Dianna Agron was*], but the "OMG tay-LOR!!!!" stuff wasn't helping, let's just say. Even if it wasn't these idiots' idea to have Ed Sheeran rap. [Seriously, TS…wtf?]) But Shan is a teenage girl (Australian), so she's right in the target audience, and she's blessedly inarticulate and not terribly bright, so she's not getting ahead of the plot or anything. She had no clue that Angel was a vampire, for example, so her reaction the bedroom scene in Angel went something like this (of course, she's a HUGE B/A fan at this point; as I wrote, target audience): It's so fun to see it all through her eyes. (She was convinced that Angel was dying at the end of Surprise, and was yelling at Buffy to wake up and save him! It was hilarious. Don't worry, Shan…he'll be fine. People around him, not so much…but he's fine.) So it's even more surprising when she brings up something I hadn't thought of before. As in this episode, where we get to the end with Buffy watching the group on the school steps and Willow saying the final [spoken] line of the season, "she'll be by in a while". And Shan was like, "they don't know she got kicked out", which is absolutely true and something I completely missed all these times. Cordelia is hoping for Buffy to join them at final exams ("We still have school") and Willow's co-signing it, and Giles is wondering about Buffy's emotional state, as is Oz ("well, then she'd want to be alone")…and not one of them knows about the practical barrier to Buffy's coming onto school grounds, the fact that she's been expelled. (I don't know if Willow and Oz even know that the police want to talk to Buffy, although Xander does and Giles and Cordy probably do. But none of them are aware that Buffy can't even legally cross that street, never mind the emotional turmoil that puts her on the bus out of town. So it's a nice piece of detail work, to have Willow close the season in such hopeful, blissful ignorance as Buffy shoulders her burden and leaves, brokenhearted on more than just one count. JMO.) So, well-spotted, Shan! Thumbs up, down under! *-yes, I mean "muse" just the way you think I do. But such "muse"-ings are wayyy OT for this forum, I'll admit. ;)

And here's another from starryeyesxx1's catalogue that I hadn't seen, Buffy essentially washing those men out of her hair (never mind that Angel actually drifts off, Riley choppers away, and Spike burns up; the song gives Buffy the agency that the show doesn't) to the tune of Kim Ferron's "Nothing But You", which I confess I'd forgotten was on the jukebox in Beer Bad: "I got nothing to lose…nothing but you." Well, I'm sad for Riley, but if that's the price you have to pay to shed VampJerk 1 and VampJerk 2…sorry, Spud. ;)

Yet another true classic, by Nicole Anell. Set to Alanis Morrisette's "Unsent", it matches each of Buffy's significant men (counting Xander as the first) with an unsent letter Alanis is writing to one of her exes. (There's a fifth verse, "Dear Lou", but Nicole uses it as a wrap-up. It works, I think.) Let's face it, any song that has such a lay-up for Bangel ("I used to be attracted to boys who would lie to me") is playing with house money. The "what was wrong with me?" lament over the breakup with Terence (aka Riley) is pitch-perfect, too, and even the Spuffy is one of the more acceptable takes I've seen on that "relationship". Always a favorite, glad it's up. Thanks to the uploader for finding it.

Well, we know from Killed by Death that her immune system recovers quickly. Spike can't give her any STDs she can't shake off. Oh, or are we talking morally clean here? That's a little more difficult to cope with than bacteria, I admit.

Yulin keeps rolling along, I see: a run on Ozark, an episode of Murphy Brown, an episode of For the People when that comes back next year. Not bad for just turning 81. Whereas Armin's mostly doing voice work these days. Not there's any shame in that, of course. Yulin in the Season 4 Law & Order episode, "Big Bang", the only Mothership episode I know based largely on theoretical physics. I'll take "Proton decay" for $1000, Alex.

Geez, Slayer…now is when you start with the naughty flirty talk? When Willow's already got someone else? Talk about bad timing. Of course, given that the briefly-adorable Flirty!Buffy in this scene promptly turns right back into S7 Bitchy!Buffy, stupidly punching what she thinks is "First!Warren" (yeah, the First is incorporeal; look it up…) and never bothering to apologize to her best friend for that mistake, it makes better sense for Willow to stick to the new chick, anyhow. You don't need a "fairy-tale kiss" to know that, after all.

Oh, hush, Oz! You know darn well that if the hippos really did get out of the zoo and started doing ballet, we'd get at least a "Huh" out of you. And Buffy would have to figure out how to fight them and all that. You're on a Hellmouth; show some imagination. Sigh.

Incest taboo? Neither Buffy nor Xander was related to Willow. This is nearer the mark. Xander, because of his horrible home life, on some level fears turning into Tony and hurting his "Jessica". So he doesn't see himself as a suitor to best buddy Willow ("Which makes her not the kind of girl whose lips I think about so much. She's the kind of girl that…I'm best friends with") and more naturally attracted to sarcasm machines like Cordelia and Anya (because he can't hurt them, he thinks) and Slayers (because he really can't hurt them), even though he's working through his feelings to Willow, and coming to realize that he loves her as more than a best friend. (Perhaps it's notable that he makes his admission when Willow has already been grievously injured and Xander knows he isn't responsible, his own fears aside.) But at least at first, he'd rather make sure Willow is okay ("Nobody messes with my Willow." "All I'm saying is, she's not safe with him.") than admit his own interest. Buffy is of course coming at it from a slightly different angle, as it will take her until S8 to admit her own bisexual impulses (Judi Dench? Really, Buffy?) and she has enough heteronormative indoctrination that she never suspects Willow might also incline that way, what with Will being painfully in love with Xander and all of that. (Note the awkward and confused "Will"-fest when Willow finally 'fesses up about Tara.) But even though she doesn't wear her self-esteem issues on her arm the way Xander does (no dreams about Joyce murdering her, and Joyce always knows who it is when she calls home), that doesn't mean she doesn't have them. Remember that Buffy, when we meet her in the series, has already been expelled from her first school. She's the reason they had to move to Sunnydale (as Joyce is "kind" enough to remind her) and, she worries, the reason for her parents' divorce. She's been indoctrinated that she has to keep a significant part of her life a secret (metaphor!) and that came from Merrick, who ends up dead because she wasn't able to protect him. And so do a good portion of her Hemery High friends. To quote Cordelia (about Buffy's angst on this show), "it makes a girl shy." No duh, CC. And so Buffy is kind of a mess, breezy S1 manner and ready supply of lollipops aside. And when she does have a subtext-laden conversation with her new friend Willow ("Seize the moment"), what happens? It nearly gets Willow killed, which would be all Buffy's fault, she thinks: So Buffy at first seems not particularly interested in anybody, and then gets swept up by the older, mysterious guy (after ditching Owen because her life would be too dangerous for him…), and soon enough gets killed by her extremely-dangerous job, is expelled again, is responsible for the deaths of people close to her, and gets kicked out of her house after metaphorically "coming out" to her mom. (And she "kills" her boyfriend, sending him to centuries of suffering in a hell-dimension.) So even though she might be able to pick up on what Faith's putting down, on some level, she's a good distance from having the confidence to go "seize ME, Willow" and mess up her bff's life the way she's damaged so many others. But JMO.

On the subject of the episode's other couple, Oz really has to take Willow back, doesn't he? And not just because I love Willow and others may love Wiz; he's decided to repeat an entire year of school just to be with her*, so what kind of a schmuck would he look like if he didn't end up with her, after all? You do something like that, you have to be all the way in, as horrible as his present situation may be. "As Willow goes, so goes my nation," as Oz himself said in Homecoming. Ironic that he said it right after she'd started sneaking Xander-smooches behind his back, but no less true despite that, IMO. *-yes, never made explicit in the text, but Buffy was able to test out of junior year and become a senior, and she spent the summer on the run from a murder charge. I'm pretty sure that "practically a genius" Oz could have snagged that G.E.D. and moved on, if he'd wanted to do so.

Plus Botty's data comes from Spike. If Willow said "I met Tara when the Gentlemen took our voices", Spike would remember that was in '99, and not be aware of the pace of the progress of the relationship. For all we know, he thinks W/T got sexual that first night. I mean, he saw Anya get excited by the events of that evening. Of course, that's Anya (not to mention the "looking at lineoleum makes Xander think about sex" aspect), but Spike may not be all that discerning, after all.

Discussion of Willow's outfit in Halloween (in that thread) led me to realize that it had to be Buffy's own clothes (since Willow retains her memories, she doesn't turn into a generic "club girl" the way she would have if Buffy had bought the outfit for her at Ethan's). Which made me think that Joyce may have had a point about the rejected outfit making Buffy look "like a streetwalker". I mean, given that my preferred name for Willow in Halloween is "The Ghost of Hookers Past". When Buffy's "Hi, I'm an enormous slut" ensemble from Welcome to the Hellmouth is apparently not the raciest get-up she owns, it makes me wonder about what exactly Joyce was vetoing, here. Rawr.

Eh, I think Willow's just being a good friend, here. And Cordy's in competition mode, that's all. She seemed more into Angel in Never Kill A Boy on the First Date than here, IMO. Honestly, I think Buffy's doing more drooling over Willow than Willow's doing over anything. Dressing her up in that sexy "club girl" outfit (which had to be Buffy's own clothes, rather than anything they bought at Ethan's, since Willow is still Willow once the spell hits; all she gets from Ethan-costuming is ghostly-ness) and then telling her to "come out" and that "Wow. You're a dish." Well, those abs certainly are; Alyson Hannigan had to go to "ab boot camp" to prepare for the ep. Yum.

He didn't lie, he was just being inappropriate. (Buffy is worried about her boyfriend's life; discussion of Angel's earlier profligate days is hardly called for, right now.) Besides, there's the thought that this sort of thwappage is actually a sign of affection. So between this and Buffy's smacking his hands over the "you're not wrong" hint he dropped to Ford in Lie to Me, Xander should be a happy little Three Musketeer, it seems.

I think most people who write "Jonathon" just don't know the Hebrew antecedent ("yo-na-tan") and that it not only demands an "a" but the same "a" as after the "n" (Hebrew has two "a" vowels, one of which was pronounced "aw" until it got Americanized), but certainly there are people named "Jonathon" out there. I don't think that Mr. Levinson is intended to be one of them, but I'd have to check every one of Danny Strong's appearances where he doesn't get "guest star" credit to see which one it is here, and how consistent the show is about it. (I know that he's only listed as "Hostage Kid" in What's My Line Part 2, for example.) I have a feeling that it's mostly written "Jonathan", because if it had come up the other way, I would have seen it and gotten honked off (I honk easily, you may have noticed), but that's just a guess, I'll admit.