S07.E22: Chosen

[illdoc]

35 minutes ago, lembergwatcher said:

Thousands of Slayers are an army.

Yes, but they had, what, three dozen (at best) with them at the Hellmouth???

[Halting Hex]

If you need an "army", call Riley.  It seems to me that Initiative troops could have managed a brief delaying action just as well as the Junior Miss Brigade did.  Plus, they presumably know what they're doing.  More than poor Chao An, at least

Edited December 21, 2018 by Halting Hex

[lembergwatcher]

1 hour ago, Halting Hex said:

poor Chao An

I always wanted to know how did the Scoobs manage to break down the language barrier with her...

[Joe Hellandback]

On ‎21‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 8:31 PM, Halting Hex said:

If you need an "army", call Riley.  It seems to me that Initiative troops could have managed a brief delaying action just as well as the Junior Miss Brigade did.  Plus, they presumably know what they're doing.  More than poor Chao An, at least

Hey Chao Anh made it! Not like my beloved Amanda. And we've already seen how superior a Slayer is to GI Joes?

[lembergwatcher]

This Bangel reunion scene at the beginning of an episode makes me wonder whether Buffy knew (she obviously doesn't know at the moment due to Mindfuck 2.0) about Connor? And how would she react if she knew about Angel and Cordelia either? 

Of course, I love Angel's fake disappointment ("I'm getting the brush off for Captain Peroxide") here. Seems like he fell out of love with Buffy long ago and I get the impression Buffy's death in The Gift didn't bring him as much pain as sending Dear Forehead to hell dimension did to Buffy in Becoming, Part 2. But that's just my impression. Then again Angel was drooling for Cordy for nearly two seasons and thus his mind probably played "Buffy who?" games time after time. Though he's clearly over Cordelia by his show's fourth season's finale.

And yeah, I don't like both Angel and Spike (my aversion to Forehead and what he did to Buffy and the Scooby Gang made me think hundred of times before giving the spin-off a chance back in the day), actually I can't say which one is worse as of Buffy S.07/Angel S.04

Spoiler

(and especially Angel S.05),

but than again I never cared so much about Buffy's love life and most of her partners.

I won't be surprised if Buffy knew nothing about A/C drama. What's even more conspicuous is that neither she nor her ex-boyfriend mention Cordelia's name. Once again everything revolves around Spike. And even if Captain Peroxide himself is absent at the moment (or not in close proximity to other characters) everybody still talk about him (and his precious sooooouuuul).

Btw, I have difficulties with understanding what exactly makes Spike's soooouuuul so much more important than, say, Willow's soul or Xander's? Or Dawn's. I don't remember many references to Xander's soul throughout the series. Apparently Spike's soooouuul makes it okay for him to murder everyone at Casa Summers in case The First pulls the trigger because W/D/X/G/A and the SITs lives and souls aren't important enough for Buffy to take precautions (keep Spikey chained at least).

[Halting Hex]

Doesn't Willow say something in Orpheus that indicates that the Scoobs know about Connor's existence?  I'm too lazy to hunt up the transcript, but that's my recollection.

[illdoc]

49 minutes ago, Halting Hex said:

Doesn't Willow say something in Orpheus that indicates that the Scoobs know about Connor's existence?  I'm too lazy to hunt up the transcript, but that's my recollection.

She does say (when meeting Connor) something like "so you're Angel's androgynous son. The scowl is hereditary, who knew", which gives the impression that at least Willow had been told about Connor (perhaps in Fred's phone call). Don't know about the other Scoobs. On the other hand, by Chosen,

Spoiler

the "memory wipe" has taken place (since Angel has the amulet, he must have accepted the deal & Connor has been "Dawned" into a new family), so no one (except Angel and W & H employees) knows about Connor.

[Halting Hex]

On 6/13/2014 at 2:15 AM, DAngelus said:

well, then surely there would be a reason why Buffy suddenly isn't dying, can suddenly run and jump and outrun a CGI effect that swallows the entire city whole, right?  It can't be as stupid as "um, Buffy just decided not to die", right?  

But on a more important topic than "it makes no sense that Buffy survives the 'mortal wound' and the final battle", we have to ask…"and why does she look like shit doing it?"

Seriously, our final image of Buffy is her wearing a bland beige jacket and nondescript jeans?  I know Joss apparently wanted to turn the show into Joyce, the Vampire Slayer (still don't know why)…but even Joyce would have the sense to wear something more vibrant than the mediocre mall-wear Buffy ends her run in.

Contrast the iconic outfits that Buffy wore in her earlier finale episodes with the…less-than-iconic look on offer here:

1. Prophecy Girl—Buffy goes to her Inevitable Prophesied Death in her Virgin Sacrifice white dress, with Angel's jacket showing the contrasting mantle of the supernatural hovering over her.

2. Becoming, Part 2—Buffy wears black to mark the darkest period of her life, accented with a low-cut neckline to show her no-longer-virginal sexuality and with Angel's Cross on prominent display as she prepares to excise Dear Forehead from her life and this planet.

3. Graduation Day, Part 2—Dark and sassy, in tribute to Faith, both with the leather jacket* and the copious eyeliner. "Wanna get it back…Dick?"

*-is this the same oxblood jacket that dies at the hands of the Trio's Last Crusade saw-blades in Seeing Red?  Forget about Tara, Will; that's why you should be flayin'-n-fryin' Warren's ass.

4. Restless—"In the midst of death, we are in life."  Flowing and fruity, Cherry Dress Buffy stands vital amongst the desert dreamscape of the First Slayer's visions.  She walks, she talks, she shops, she sneezes (EW!).  There's trees in the desert since Sineya moved out, and Buffy don't sleep on no bed of bones, bitch!  Now take away give her back her (awesome) friends, Joss! (Yeah, still bitter…)

5. The Gift—Okay, it's a bit mumsy (thanks a lot, Dawn!), but the sweater still has some nice texture and the cool cream color invokes Buffy's previous sacrifice-wear. Not the greatest, but works well enough, I think.  (Certainly better than what follows.)

6. Grave—Blah.  I guess black doesn't always have to mean "sexy", huh?  Buffy wears an unimpressive representation of "negative space", her low-cut neck nowhere near as interesting as the Becoming, Part 2 iteration.  Dawn manages to somewhat outshine her, even if the "pure green energy" look was last season's storyline, not this one's.

7.  The "Finale" That Dare Not Speak Its Name—Bland, Beige, and Boring.  Buffy's not the only one ill-clothed (Willow's nightmare of an outfit looks as though she's wearing a Season 1 Susanna Puisto bargain-bin find, only except that Will hasn't washed it in a few months' worth of grime…and Xander has apparently embraced his inner "bear" with that oversized plaid sack), but it's her show, after all. If she doesn't look good, none of them do.  Terry Dresbach and Matthew Van Dyne* are making us wish we had Fashion Nazi Bergstrom back…she may have been occasionally insane, but she was rarely boring.  And that's what this crap is.

*-Matthew van Dyne??  Your cousin Janet is very disappointed in your unfashionable ass, young man.  You're embarrassing the family name, here.

Also, I didn't have room to work it into the parenthesis above, but Dawn's "belly-baring denim flight attendant" look could stand some improvement as well. Do we really need that many zippers, Dawnster?

Okay, that's a lot of words to say "No, I really don't [like your outfit]", I admit.  But sometimes you have to, IMO.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Halting Hex

[Halting Hex]

24 minutes ago, illdoc said:

On the other hand, by Chosen,

True, I'd forgotten that Home precedes End of Days/Chosen, of necessity.  One normally thinks of the BtVS wrap-up as happening first, but not this season.

[Halting Hex]

Well…I tried. I heard the prophecy that the Master was about to break free and I came to stop him.  But prophecies are tricky things…

Er, wait, that's wrong.  Sorry, my bad.  I only got confused because this episode makes me feel as though I just drowned in a pool of dirty water, but that's not what happened.

What happened was that, because Joe pointed out that Shan was wrapping up her BtVS coverage with a video on this episode, I gave in and had a look.  And while Shan's pre-video vid was very cute (a montage of her reactions through the series, a la the "Previously…" for The Gift, if not as frenetic), there was only one problem:  eventually, the episode started.

We get to the Angel/Buffy scene (after the cheap Caleb crotching; thankfully Shan didn't subject us to "He had to split") and there's this gem I'd forgotten:  Buffy doesn't say that she loves Spike, but…"he's in my heart".  Oh, goody. [/vomit]

Funny way to spell "arse", Slayer.  Even if the two words sound somewhat similar.  (And so much for my "Buffy had a Slayer Dream that Spike would be needed as a sacrifice and was just stringing him along all season" desperate fantasy theory; while you could hypothesize that Spuffy conversations are just Buffy blowing smoke up Spike's ass of necessity, there'd be no reason for her to lie to Angel about this.  Ah, shitfuck.)

Then we get the idiotic "cookie dough" speech, complete with "eat cookies" awkward double-entendre.  Ah, cheap sex humor jammed in inappropriately…I think I'll miss you least of all.

Then Buffy snuggles up to her undead mass-murdering rapist and Shan swoons over it, and that's when I decide I'm done with this garbage.  (And really uncertain that I'll ever watch any of her UPN reactions; I don't want to spoil the pleasure of rewatching good episodes with her by having visions of her Spuffy-'shipping shitting all over the moment.)  But I'm a little slow on the "close tab" button, and so I get to see…this.

Quote

FIRST!CALEB: [Spike] can't help you. Nor Faith, nor your friends, certainly not your wanna-slay brigade. None of those girlies will ever know real power unless you're dead. You know the drill: (morphs into Buffy's form)

FIRST!BUFFY:  Into every generation, a slayer is born. One girl in all the world. She alone will have the strength and skill to— There's that word again. What you are. How you'll die. Alone. 

So, between the time where Caleb virtually hands Buffy the SuperWeapon that will destroy him and the time when Wolfram & Hart's gift of Magic Bling will let Buffy defeat the First, Ol' Firstie itself took a moment to taunt Buffy into her "bloody brilliant" plan, by talking up how "alone" she was and how the Junior Misses were all powerless and how that was what was going to get Buffy killed.  Gee, who could ever have seen a "power-up" spell coming after that?

Oh, and clever of Joss to ignore the fact that Buffy isn't currently "alone" in her Slayerness, that there's another Slayer literally sleeping two flights upstairs in Buffy's bed at this very moment and that Buffy and Faith just had a talk about the bonds of their Slayerdom only last episode.  (As Shan went, "there's two of them!")  It takes some dramatic balls to mention Faith by name and yet claim Buffy is "alone" as a Slayer less than 15 seconds later.  Oy.

(Not to mention the whole "Buffy has to die to make Kennedy (or whoever) a Slayer" claim when we've two years' worth of evidence at this point that killing Buffy [in The Gift] didn't do squat as far as making new Slayers.  The One Girl in All the World was safe and snug in Stockton Penitentiary; Buffy's diving off of towers or going catatonic or struggling to beat dirt affected the Slayer Line not one whit, it's been proven.)

Finally, isn't it cool that Joss quotes the Slayer Description but remembers to stop short of the "hunt the vampires and stop the spread of their evil" part?  I mean, given that it's been 38 episodes since a vampire killed anyone (Zach draining Kaltenbach in All the Way) and the only "spreading" that vampires do these days relates to Buffy's legs.  Remember, Angel and Spike are "hotties" (-Buffy, Lessons) and we wouldn't want to soil Buffy's Redemption of the Hunks (and threesome fantasies) with concepts such as "vampires hunt and kill; that's what they do" or any of that "simplistic" "high school" stuff, right?

Not even the prospect of watching Anya get sliced can make me dedicate another nano-second to this filth.  Eat Andrew and die, Joss.  Seriously.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Halting Hex

[Halting Hex]

Discussion of Whedon's being an ass to SMG on the commentary for this episode in the "Buffy Calendar" thread led me to scan the transcript of the commentary as a whole, and find more "pearls" from that swine.  Such as:

Quote

JOSS:  The idea behind their sleeping together was very important. It was that their relationship had enough trust in it: that it was physical and romantic but not sexual. That was, of course, in response to the rape issue of last year, when he had attempted to rape her because he didn't understand the boundaries of their relationship – he was soulless. 

There was no "relationship", asshole.  She dumped him four episodes previous to that.  They had a conversation about being exes at Xander's (near-)wedding and Spike griped about being dumped in the previous episode.  How difficult a concept is "broken up", exactly?

Spike tried to rape a woman who hadn't been with him in over a month and whom he clearly knew was no longer in a "relationship" with him.  But I guess Buffy's vagina is like her home, is that it?  Once Spike's been invited in, he's always welcome?  Fuck you, asshole.

Quote

JOSS: But having gotten his soul and having fought to become a person, we wanted to say this man can be redeemed from that.

You fucking disgusting mother-raper.  So the whole purpose of the final season was "redeeming" a rapist? JFC.  

And of course, no mention of the thousands of people Spike has murdered.  (Including those he murders this season.)  Because Buffy found that to be just funny anecdotes, anyways.  Whether Spike was "joking" about murdering her family and friends (Flooded) or making "pillow talk" about the (likely) homo decorator he slaughtered (Dead Piece of Shit).  No, the only bad thing Sparky ever did was "attempt" to rape Buffy.  And that was just a silly misunderstanding and he's "redeemed" (HALLELUJAH!) now.

Please set yourself on fire, Joss.  I know you're not supposed to burn toxic waste, but still.

Quote

JOSS: Not – and I've said this before, but I'll say it again – not in a Luke and Laura "he rapes her and they get married" way. Not in an "all is forgiven" way. 

Yeah, because you made that so clear.  Oh, eyeroll.

Quote

JOSS:  Just in the way of he's still a human being who did a wrong thing and we still count him as a human being.

He's NOT "a human being", you dick…he's a VAMPIRE.  You know, it's in the title of the show?

Quote

GILES:  Remember, when you see Jesse, you're not looking at your friend…you're looking at the thing that killed him. 

—The Harvest

Quote

BUFFY:  Can a vampire ever be a good person? Couldn't it happen?

GILES: A vampire isn't a person at all. (clears his throat) It may have the movements, the, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but i-it's still a demon at the core, there is no halfway.

WILLOW: So that'd be a 'no', huh?

—Angel

Quote

ANGEL:  I can walk like a man, but I'm not one.  I wanted to kill you tonight.

—Angel

Quote

BUFFY:  What happens is, you die and a demon sets up shop in your body.  And it walks and it talks and it remembers your life…but it's not you.

—Lie to Me

Quote

JENNY (re Angel's reversion to soullessness):  He's not Angel any more.  Are you?

ANGEL (choking Willow harder):  Wrong!  I am Angel.  At last!

—Innocence

Quote

ANGEL: [The First] told me to lose my soul in you and become a monster again.

BUFFY: I know what it told you. What does it matter? 

ANGEL: (raises his voice) Because I wanted to! Because I want you so badly! I want to take comfort in you, and I know it'll cost me my soul, and a part of me doesn't care.

—Amends

Angel is a demon.  He's always been a demon, and he'll always (bar one episode) be a demon.  He has Liam's memories and he can (mostly) restrain his demonic impulses when he has his soul.  But he's still a demon.

Quote

ANGEL:  Things change.

SPIKE:  Not us!  Not demons!

—School Hard

Quote

SPIKE:  Don't make it sound like something you'd flip past on the Discovery Channel. Becoming a vampire is a profound and powerful experience. 

—Fool for Bleach

Quote

SPIKE:  I know that I'm a monster.  But you treat me like a man.

—The Gift

Spike's a demon, too.  William (including his pathetic inability to have a basic rhyming vocabulary that always has me SCREAMING) has been gone for a very long time.  Spike's been restrained by his (short-lived and since-failed) chip and now he has a SOOOOOOOUL.  But he's still a demon.

He's not human, he considers the change the most important moment of his entire memory, and his demonic nature is unchanging.  Circumstances around the demon might change, with chips and souls and attachments to women…but the demon itself stays the same.

Just as Angel thought about choking Willow every time he saw her, Spike thinks about raping and torturing Dawn every time he sees her.  He restrains his impulse…but he has it.  Because he's a fucking demon! Not "a human being."

It's great he has a soul (from an objective moral standpoint, if not for the benefit of the series in general), but souls can go away.  Five years ago, Angel lost his soul because de-virginizing 17-year-olds is the bomb.  Four years ago, Angel nearly had his soul taken by a random magic attack (simply being lucky that the Mayor [somehow] hired one of Giles's old sex buddies).  Three years ago, Angel got so drunk he thought he lost his soul, and acted accordingly. Two years ago, Angel was so depressed he tried to lose his soul, but even after 300 years as a whore, Darla is still useless in the sack.  A few months ago, Angel had his soul voluntarily removed.  In exactly none of those cases would Angel's being "a human being" have protected, say, Fred from being raped to death (as Angel threatened).  Because he isn't human; he's a demon.  Temporary and transient impediments aside.

Hell, you don't even have to be a demon to be soulless.  The Mayor sold his.  Kathy was stealing Buffy's soul.  Spike ain't no "human being";  he's a demon with an add-on.

You'd think Joss would know this by now…but no, apparently.  Sigh.

Quote

JOSS: I think that's a very important message, that their relationship should be complicated, and yet come to a place of trust. Without saying "Okay, now they're going to become lovers again", because I think that would be wrong. I think that's the wrong message. It's a very fine line. 

Okay, so Buffy and Spike are definitely not having sex here?  That would be "wrong"?  Okay, good to know. Let's bear that in mind…

Quote

JOSS:  [Buffy] should literally be the person telling herself that she is alone. 

Except, of course, that Buffy isn't alone.  Not as a person (except through her own bitchtudinousness, and even then the others have [inexplicably] stuck by her), not romantically (she's being chased by so many ensouled horny corpses that she just sent the spare back to LA), and not as a Slayer, with Faith literally sleeping in Buffy's own bed right this very second.  Faith, whom First!Caleb just mentioned.

I guess you could say that First!Buffy should tell Buffy that Buffy is alone, because only Buffy could possibly be stupid enough to believe that, so it's appropriate for the First to wear Buffy's own moronic face while spewing this nonsense.  But still.

Quote

JOSS:  Some people have complained that the magic that this Scythe – originally from the Fray comic that I was writing at the same time – is a little too convenient. And my answer to those critics is, "Well, don't tell everybody!"

It is convenient, and that doesn't really bother me, because ultimately, to me, the magic, the phlebotinum is always secondary to what needs to be said.

And here Whedon fails to understand what Greenwalt's own made-up word (Phlebotinum) means.  It's a way of handwaving the unimportant details, the hows and the whys and the words in the spell and all of that.

Unfortunately for Joss, logical plot construction is not an unimportant detail.  And so the Little Red Axe (never even remotely like a "scythe") isn't "Phlebotinum"…it's a deus ex machina.  (Just like Spike's Magic Bling.)  And thus it's crappy storytelling, the way such things have been since the ancient Greeks were too lazy to tell their stories well, either.

Quote

JOSS: In [the "mad skillz"] scene, [Eliza] accused me of getting back at some girl, because of the way Wood kind of disses on her. But actually it just made me laugh. And there aren't any girls I need to get back at! (Fake laugh) Actually, I think I told her that if that was what I was trying to do with the show, it would be going another four seasons... 

Eliza could smell a creep long before she met Michael Weatherly, it seems.

Quote

JOSS:  this is not something that necessarily would have been in the last episode – a relationship talk from [Faith and Wood, of all characters]. But it deals with the isolated nature of the Slayer – embodied here by Faith rather than Buffy – which is really an important part of the season. 

Again, Joss, if you have two rather-similar characters, they're not exactly "isolated", you know.  "Two is Better Than One", as the song goes:

Quote

JOSS: And it just tells us a little something about [Faith and Wood] and it pays off really nicely at the end.

Yeah, that creepy scene at the end where Wood fakes being dead to freak Faith out, that's really justifying this scene, you bet!  Please.

Quote

JOSS:  it's not a big secret that originally I had planned to bring Tara back; and when that didn't work out, I was looking for the anti-Tara. 

He's said this for years now.  Meanwhile, Amber continues to deny that she was ever asked back for anything beyond playing First!Tara in CwDP.  Most recently this past April at ClexaCon 2019:

Quote

Benson’s love for her fans extended to turning down a chance to return to the show in season seven. She had plans to go to London to direct Ghosts of Albion and was approached to return for “Conversations With Dead People.” When they told her they wanted to bring her back as the First, she turned it down and kept with her plans to go to London. She knew fans were already really hurt by what had happened and she didn’t want them to get hurt more.

So, it appears that either Joss or Amber is lying.  Bets on which one?

Quote

JOSS: And to me [Spuffy cuddling in bed is] almost the most important shot in the show because it really shows the mystery of their relationship. And that's one where I wanted the audience to fill in the blanks.

Riiiiiiiiight.  I mean, you've dicked the fans around by not resolving your main story for longer than the entirety of the high school years…why take a stand now?  FFS.Well, at least we know Buffy and Spike did not have sex.  Because Joss told us earlier that would be wrong.

Quote

JOSS: If people believe that on their last night together they made love, great! 

Wait, what??  What happened to Buffy and Spike sexing it up would be "wrong"?  What happened to "that would send the wrong message"?  Now it's "great"?  DA FUQQQ???

Oh, and notice Joss doesn't say "got busy" or "sexed it up" or "boinked" or "screwed" or "fucked".  No, it's "made love".  Because Spuffy is love, yo.  Oh, vomit.

Quote

JOSS: If they believe that on their last night together they talked all night, great! If they believe that they had a fight, great! 

Whatever it is, it's up to the viewer and I think that the viewer has earned that, and I love that elliptical nature of their last night together. I think that there should be work for the viewer to do

Excuse me, I don't want homework!  I want you to tell your goddamn story! 

But of course saying something positive about Spuffy would piss off the Bangels and saying that Spuffy wasn't "love" would piss off those 'shippers.  And we can't let mere storytelling technique stand in the way of all that lovely money!!  

I wish they had told me that Anya was writing the show now.  It would have saved so much time.

I mean, the next Spuffy scene is going to end with both of them making declarations about the relationship and one of them dying.  You'd think it might be slightly important if we went into that scene knowing whether the characters had resumed their sexual relationship after over a year apart (with such…interesting intervening developments as the rape attempt, Spike's ensoulment, Spike's insanity, Spike's "not responsible" murder spree, etc. having occurred) or if they'd had a serious talk or if they'd had their third fight in two days?  You think that information might be important for the audience to know?  You THINK?

But no, let's just stay vague and let the viewers play "guess the plot".  What a lazy sloppy cowardly dink Joss is.

And of course, given all that, Sarah and James can't get on the same page in that dumbass self-contradicting scene.  (So Spuffy ends either by Spike calling out Buffy as a liar, or by his being too stupid to believe her honest declaration of love, is that it?  Gee, I'm so glad we spent all that time on this story, then…)  And Joss, King of Class that he is, blames them for it.

You know, I don't carry much water for Skinny Jimmy, but between this and Joss flat-out lying to him the year before (Spike totally biked to Africa to get his chip out!  The soul was a Monkey's Paw! He had no idea! Trust me, James!), I'm even offended for him.  Even if it is rather a case of "make your own bed and do naked push-ups in it", after all.

Quote

JOSS:  I felt it was very important, and I think the audience did too, that these four [B/W/X/G], of everyone, have their moment together. These four who started it all should finish it all. And much in the same way they began it, which is why I echoed the exact line "The Earth is doomed" from Giles.

Except, of course, that Willow and Xander and Giles are excluded from the final battle, replaced by Spike and Faith and a bunch of near-random girls.  And while Xander and Giles make cameos away from the main action, Willow spends nearly half the final episode "spelled out" and lying on a floor somewhere.  Way to "finish" with "these four", dick-spew.

Oh, and the minor detail that the gang was together and happy at the end of The Harvest, whereas they're broken in every sense of the word now.  With not the slightest attempt to repair their relationships (from Buffy treating Willow as a "Wicca that won't-a" gun and ignoring the First's attempt to drive Willow to suicide, to our discovering just last episode that Giles is making jokes about Xander's permanent and painful maiming).  But hey, a half-assed non-apology about "the good guys not so good at communicating" in a scene where Willow doesn't speak and Xander isn't even present and it's all good, right?  Let's rape the corpse of S1 and regurgitate some dialogue and it's as if Spike had never come to town, right?

Drop dead, shit-brain.

Quote

JOSS:  This shot is an echo of the very ending of the two-part beginning. And this shot, also, very important as they peel off, one by one, best friends going to their destinies and Buffy left alone.

Erm, dummy?  That's the opposite of the pilot, where they were together and that's why Buffy lives where other Slayers didn't.  Why Xander saves the world with CPR.

Quote

SPIKE:  A Slayer with family and friends.  That sure as hell wasn't in the brochure.

—School Hard

So the Bleached Wonder knows Joss's show better than Joss himself, apparently.  

Well, that's why he's "Our Boy", I guess.

Quote

(Spike burns like Joss's talent and integrity apparently did, years ago)

JOSS:  Our boy, going down for the last time. Even though everybody already knew he was going to be on Angel...

Yeah, why should "our boy" have to suffer the consequences of his actions?  That's so…pedestrian.  Spikey's So Spe-Shul!

(Somehow I don't know if it was "the last time" James was "going down", though.  But that's for the #HeToo campaign, I guess.)

Quote

JOSS:  the writer in me couldn’t not resolve [Anya's death] somewhat, and I think the audience needed what Xander needed, which was something. And that something was Andrew learning that the thing that he's sort of reviled for, making up stories, becomes the thing that he helps Xander with. Becomes the thing that he actually is good at. Giving her the epic death that she didn't actually get to have.

Now this is actually interesting and rather counts as character growth for Andrew.  But there are a couple of problems with it, the basic "I don't give a shit about Andrew" issue aside.

1) This completely reverses and thus undercuts the moral of Storyteller, which is that "telling stories" is Andrew's way of hiding from the world and he needs to move past that.  As fucking ridiculous as it was that we got an Andrew-centric Episode #138, it's even more of a waste if that pile is completely reversed a mere six episodes later.  Actual good writing would let Andrew have his "I'm so full of shit! I'm a coward and a waste!" crisis over the Seal during the episode, only to discover his truth, that what he was meant to be is what he already was and there's a place for that*, at the episode's end. 

(This also has the benefit of not wasting time on Andrew in Dirty Girls [the Faith clip-show], Empty Places [Andrew graphically explains Anya's sex life], End of Days [Andrew and Anya have multiple scenes in an empty hospital that you'd need to pay me money that would choke Spike before I'd watch], and this steaming pile.  Many, many good things. Let him comfort wounded Potentials where Anya can't, let him play D&D as an icebreaker, and let him die "redeemed" in battle. And that would be all the Andrew you'd need. And then some.)

*-this is the essential moral of one of the great episodes of How I Met Your Mother, "Aldrin Justice".  Or as I like to call it, "And in the End, Willow is Happy". ❤️

2)  Sooooo…Anya dies so Andrew can have character growth, is that it?  And Buffy nearly gets raped so Spike can go get "redeemed" in Africa?  And Inara gets gang-raped so Mal will learn to stop slut-shaming her, huh?

Gee, wouldn't it be cool if there was a show where what happened to the female characters was important to the female characters themselves, where women weren't there just to be the menfolk's "Magic Negroes" and inspire them?  Maybe somebody could write a show like that…someday.  (Mother-fucking SIGH!)

Quote

JOSS: I think [Faith and Wood] have as grown-up and textured a relationship as any characters on the show and they had about four scenes together total.

What?  Pranking some chick you just insulted sexually by faking your death to freak her out is "grown-up"??? To quote Cordelia, "in what alternate universe?"

And if Food really were as [mature] a relationship as any other pairing in their four scenes total, that really doesn't say much for the other 'ships you gave scene after scene after scene after scene after [x ∞] scene to, does it?  Call me crazy, but I'd like to think that seven years allows you more time to develop characters than four scenes.  I mean, seriously, dude.

Quote

JOSS:  Thank you for watching my show.

Thank you for ensuring I'll never watch this episode or listen to any of your late-season commentaries again, even if I live to be as old as The Master.

To repeat, "eat Andrew and die, Joss".

(And pardon the length, obviously.)

Edited June 25, 2019 by Halting Hex

[Joe Hellandback]

7 hours ago, Halting Hex said:

Discussion of Whedon's being an ass to SMG on the commentary for this episode in the "Buffy Calendar" thread led me to scan the transcript of the commentary as a whole, and find more "pearls" from that swine.  Such as:

There was no "relationship", asshole.  She dumped him four episodes previous to that.  They had a conversation about being exes at Xander's (near-)wedding and Spike griped about being dumped in the previous episode.  How difficult a concept is "broken up", exactly?

Spike tried to rape a woman who hadn't been with him in over a month and whom he clearly knew was no longer in a "relationship" with him.  But I guess Buffy's vagina is like her home, is that it?  Once Spike's been invited in, he's always welcome?  Fuck you, asshole.

You fucking disgusting mother-raper.  So the whole purpose of the final season was "redeeming" a rapist? JFC.  

And of course, no mention of the thousands of people Spike has murdered.  (Including those he murders this season.)  Because Buffy found that to be just funny anecdotes, anyways.  Whether Spike was "joking" about murdering her family and friends (Flooded) or making "pillow talk" about the (likely) homo decorator he slaughtered (Dead Piece of Shit).  No, the only bad thing Sparky ever did was "attempt" to rape Buffy.  And that was just a silly misunderstanding and he's "redeemed" (HALLELUJAH!) now.

Please set yourself on fire, Joss.  I know you're not supposed to burn toxic waste, but still.

Yeah, because you made that so clear.  Oh, eyeroll.

He's NOT "a human being", you dick…he's a VAMPIRE.  You know, it's in the title of the show?

Angel is a demon.  He's always been a demon, and he'll always (bar one episode) be a demon.  He has Liam's memories and he can (mostly) restrain his demonic impulses when he has his soul.  But he's still a demon.

Spike's a demon, too.  William (and his pathetic inability to have a basic rhyming vocabulary that always has me SCREAMING) has been gone for a very long time.  Spike's been restrained by his (short-lived and since-failed) chip and now he has a SOOOOOOOUL.  But he's still a demon.

He's not human, he considers the change the most important moment of his entire memory, and his demonic nature is unchanging.  Circumstances around the demon might change, with chips and souls and attachments to women…but the demon itself stays the same.

Just as Angel thought about choking Willow every time he saw her, Spike thinks about raping and torturing Dawn every time he sees her.  He restrains his impulse…but he has it.  Because he's a fucking demon! Not "a human being."

It's great he has a soul (from an objective moral standpoint, if not for the benefit of the series in general), but souls can go away.  Five years ago, Angel lost his soul because de-virginizing 17-year-olds is the bomb.  Four years ago, Angel nearly had his soul taken by a random magic attack (simply being lucky that the Mayor [somehow] hired one of Giles's old sex buddies).  Three years ago, Angel got so drunk he thought he lost his soul, and acted accordingly. Two years ago, Angel was so depressed he tried to lose his soul, but even after 300 years as a whore, Darla is still useless in the sack.  A few months ago, Angel had his soul voluntarily removed.  In exactly none of those cases would Angel's being "a human being" have protected, say, Fred from being raped to death (as Angel threatened).  Because he isn't human; he's a demon.  Temporary and transient impediments aside.

Hell, you don't even have to be a demon to be soulless.  The Mayor sold his.  Kathy was stealing Buffy's soul.  Spike ain't no "human being";  he's a demon with an add-on.

You'd think Joss would know this by now…but no, apparently.  Sigh.

Okay, so Buffy and Spike are definitely not having sex here?  That would be "wrong"?  Okay, good to know. Let's bear that in mind…

Except, of course, that Buffy isn't alone.  Not as a person (except through her own bitchtudinousness, and even then the others have [inexplicably] stuck by her), not romantically (she's being chased by so many ensouled horny corpses that she just sent the spare back to LA), and not as a Slayer, with Faith literally sleeping in Buffy's own bed right this very second.  Faith, whom First!Caleb just mentioned.

I guess you could say that First!Buffy should tell Buffy that Buffy is alone, because only Buffy could possibly be stupid enough to believe that, so it's appropriate for the First to wear Buffy's own moronic face while spewing this nonsense.  But still.

And here Whedon fails to understand what Greenwalt's own made-up word (Phlebotinum) means.  It's a way of handwaving the unimportant details, the hows and the whys and the words in the spell and all of that.

Unfortunately for Joss, logical plot construction is not an unimportant detail.  And so the Little Red Axe (never even remotely like a "scythe") isn't "Phlebotinum"…it's a deus ex machina.  (Just like Spike's Magic Bling.)  And thus it's crappy storytelling, the way such things have been since the ancient Greeks were too lazy to tell their stories well, either.

Eliza could smell a creep long before she met Michael Weatherly, it seems.

Again, Joss, if you have two rather-similar characters, they're not exactly "isolated", you know.  "Two is Better Than One", as the song goes:

Yeah, that creepy scene at the end where Wood fakes being dead to freak Faith out, that's really justifying this scene, you bet!  Please.

He's said this for years now.  Meanwhile, Amber continues to deny that she was ever asked back for anything beyond playing First!Tara in CwDP.  Most recently this past April at ClexaCon 2019:

So, it appears that either Joss or Amber is lying.  Bets on which one?

Riiiiiiiiight.  I mean, you've dicked the fans around by not resolving your main story for longer than the entirety of the high school years…why take a stand now?  FFS.Well, at least we know Buffy and Spike did not have sex.  Because Joss told us earlier that would be wrong.

Wait, what??  What happened to Buffy and Spike sexing it up would be "wrong"?  What happened to "that would send the wrong message"?  Now it's "great"?  DA FUQQQ???

Oh, and notice Joss doesn't say "got busy" or "sexed it up" or "boinked" or "screwed" or "fucked".  No, it's "made love".  Because Spuffy is love, yo.  Oh, vomit.

Excuse me, I don't want homework!  I want you to tell your goddamn story! 

But of course saying something positive about Spuffy would piss off the Bangels and saying that Spuffy wasn't "love" would piss off those 'shippers.  And we can't let mere storytelling technique stand in the way of all that lovely money!!  

I wish they had told me that Anya was writing the show now.  It would have saved so much time.

I mean, the next Spuffy scene is going to end with both of them making declarations about the relationship and one of them dying.  You'd think it might be slightly important if we went into that scene knowing whether the characters had resumed their sexual relationship after over a year apart (with such…interesting intervening developments as the rape attempt, Spike's ensoulment, Spike's insanity, Spike's "not responsible" murder spree, etc. having occurred) or if they'd had a serious talk or if they'd had their third fight in four days?  You think that information might be important for the audience to know?  You THINK?

But no, let's just stay vague and let the viewers play "guess the plot".  What a lazy sloppy cowardly dink Joss is.

And of course, given all that, Sarah and James can't get on the same page in that dumbass self-contradicting scene.  (So Spuffy ends either by Spike calling out Buffy as a liar, or by his being too stupid to believe her honest declaration of love, is that it?  Gee, I'm so glad we spent all that time on this story, then…)  And Joss, King of Class that he is, blames them for it.

You know, I don't carry much water for Skinny Jimmy, but between this and Joss flat-out lying to him the year before (Spike totally biked to Africa to get his chip out!  The soul was a Monkey's Paw! He had no idea! Trust me, James!), I'm even offended for him.  Even if it is rather a case of "make your bed and do naked push-ups in it", after all.

Except of course that Willow and Xander and Giles are excluded from the final battle, replaced by Spike and Faith and a bunch of near-random girls.  And while Xander and Giles make cameos away from the main action, Willow spends nearly half the final episode "spelled out" and lying on a floor somewhere.  Way to "finish" with "these four", dick-spew.

Oh, and the minor detail that the gang was together and happy at the end of The Harvest, whereas they're broken in every sense of the word now.  With not the slightest attempt to repair their relationships (from Buffy treating Willow as a "Wicca that won't-a" gun and ignoring the First's attempt to drive Willow to suicide, to our discovering just last episode that Giles is making jokes about Xander's permanent and painful maiming).  But hey, a half-assed non-apology about "the good guys not so good at communicating" in a scene where Willow doesn't speak and Xander isn't even present and it's all good, right?  Let's rape the corpse of S1 and regurgitate some dialogue and it's as if Spike had never come to town, right?

Drop dead, shit-brain.

Erm, dummy?  That's the opposite of the pilot, where they were together and that's why Buffy lives where other Slayers didn't.  Why Xander saves the world with CPR.

So the Bleached Wonder knows Joss's show better than Joss himself, apparently.  

Well that's why he's "Our boy", I guess.

Yeah, why should "our boy" have to suffer the consequences of his actions?  That's so…pedestrian.  Spikey's So Spe-Shul!

(Somehow I don't know if it was "the last time" James was "going down", though.  But that's for the #HeToo campaign, I guess.)

Now this is actually interesting and rather counts as character growth for Andrew.  But there are a couple of problems with it, the basic "I don't give a shit about Andrew" issue aside.

1) This completely reverses and thus undercuts the moral of Storyteller, which is that "telling stories" is Andrew's way of hiding from the world and he needs to move past that.  As fucking ridiculous as it was that we got an Andrew-centric Episode #138, it's even more of a waste if that pile is completely reversed a mere six episodes later.  Actual good writing would let Andrew have his "I'm so full of shit! I'm a coward and a waste!" crisis over the Seal during the episode, only to discover his truth, that what he was meant to be is what he already was and there's a place for that*, at the episode's end. 

(This also has the benefit of not wasting time on Andrew in Dirty Girls [the Faith clip-show], Empty Places [Andrew graphically explains Anya's sex life], End of Days [Andrew and Anya have multiple scenes in an empty hospital that you'd need to pay me money that would choke Spike before I'd watch], and this steaming pile.  Many, many good things. Let him comfort wounded Potentials where Anya can't, let him play D&D as an icebreaker, and let him die "redeemed" in battle. And that would be all the Andrew you'd need. And then some.)

*-this is the essential moral of one of the great episodes of How I Met Your Mother, "Aldrin Justice".  Or as I like to call it, "And in the End, Willow is Happy". ❤️

2)  Sooooo…Anya dies so Andrew can have character growth, is that it?  And Buffy nearly gets raped so Spike can go get "redeemed" in Africa?  And Inara gets gang-raped so Mal will learn to stop slut-shaming her, huh?

Gee, wouldn't it be cool if there was a show where what happened to the female characters was important to the female characters themselves, where women weren't there just to be the menfolk's "Magic Negroes" and inspire them?  Maybe somebody could write a show like that…someday.  (Mother-fucking SIGH!)

What?  Pranking some chick you just insulted sexually by faking your death to freak her out is "grown-up"??? To quote Cordelia, "in what alternate universe?"

And if Food really were as [mature] a relationship as any other pairing in their four scenes total, that really doesn't say much for the other 'ships you gave scene after scene after scene after scene after [x ∞] scene to, does it?  Call me crazy, but I'd like to think that seven years allows you more time to develop characters than four scenes.  I mean, seriously, dude.

Thank you for ensuring I'll never watch this episode or listen to any of your late-season commentaries again, even if I live to be as old as The Master.

To repeat, "eat Andrew and die, Joss".

(And pardon the length, obviously.)

1. The series is about Buffy becoming an adult but also about redemption, especially for Angel, Spike, Faith and Anya (and arguably Willow).

2. The whole point was we expected Andrew to die, he was expendable, it pulls the rug from under us to kill Anya instead, he completes Jonathon's arc.

3.  Nice HIMYM ref. 

[lembergwatcher]

1 hour ago, Joe Hellandback said:

The series is about Buffy becoming an adult but also about redemption, especially for Angel, Spike, Faith and Anya (and arguably Willow).

1. Yes, but the thing is Buffy from later seasons appears to be much less mature than the one we came to love at the beginning, back when the show was truly great. Buffy from seasons 1-4 would have never called Willow a "weapon", would've listened to her friends and shown some concern in cases their lives were in danger. S.01 Buffy would've never abandoned her two best friends to deal with the aftermath of terrible injury;
2. I'm kinda tired to hear these countless stories about "redemption without redemption". Angel was such a good loving friend he kicked Cordelia out of the hotel in the middle of an Apocalypse and didn't give a hoot about her strange behavior until it was too late. After getting his precious soul back for the second time Dear Forehead almost literally sold it to the devil (The Big Bad for almost 3,5 seasons), raped his friends' minds
   Spoiler

   and went on to destroy their lives later.

   As for Spike and Anya I remember neither him caring too much about the innocent lives he took after re-ensouling/apologizing to Wood nor her being too upset about the things she did in the past. And, you know, putting Willow in the same category as Spike, Angel and Anya is somehow offensive.

9 hours ago, Halting Hex said:

And while Xander and Giles make cameos away from the main action, Willow spends nearly half the final episode "spelled out" and lying on a floor somewhere.

It's a miracle some sneaky Bringer/Turok Han didn't get through to the Principal's office... OTOH, yeah, Willow is "spelled out" for half an ep, but at least she's one of the most important players in the game and her importance is aknowledged by Buffy herself. The "big gun" has just made her biggest shot to date and can take a nap for a little while. As for Xander he's not supposed to even be here at all. If it wasn't for some taser and Dawn's mad driving skills, the one-eyed carpenter would spend the final fight anywhere but Sunnyhell (since he's of no use to Buffy due to injury, unlike Spike, Willow and SiTs). And even though Buffy asks Xander to be with Dawn during the battle it is clear Dawn doesn't need him around. She's doing fine on her own and it's she who saves him (twice), not vice versa. Because Xander is soooooooooo useless, don't you know it? I thought Buffy & the useful part of the team kept Xander around for amusement in the final season or because they were too "kind" to just kick him out since Xander's input in defeating The First was next to nothing. However, End of Days has shattered my beliefs...  

Edited June 24, 2019 by lembergwatcher

[Halting Hex]

1.  It really wasn't, not in the earlier, better years.  (to bastardize the Stardust Memories quote)  There was one character who had a "redemption" arc…and he failed, and instead became the greatest villain the show would ever see, and was the motor for character development for the four kids who had to grow up quicker than they otherwise would.

(I exclude the not-yet-main-cast Oz here;  Seth's movie commitments prevented the Angelus arc from making him a full-throated Scooby the way it did for Cordelia.  Although Innocence indicates they were thinking of going that way.)

But (sigh) there was $$$ in the fucking spinoff, and so Angel got a completely unearned third chance (and a fourth, and a fifth…), and the next thing you know, there's another murderer and then there's two, and before you know it, the picnic's ruined, as Jinx so well put it.  And you have Andrew saying with a completely straight (no offense, Tom! Happy Pride!) face that "a lot of Buffy's people are murderers, actually."

Not when the show wasn't shit, they weren't.  Sigh.

2. Much as I'm always glad to think of Anya getting sliced, it would make more sense to kill an Andrew who had found his place rather than an Anya whose humanity was still very much a work in progress.  As noted by Joss in the commentary, the reason Andrew lives is to have him discover that "storytelling" is his gift…which I contend should have been the climax of Storyteller, not a six-episodes-later reversal. And how does this reflect on Jonathan, exactly?  I'm confused.

3. Thank you.  Ironically enough, the episode that followed "AJ" was "Swarley", which was Lenk's guest spot. (As a waiter, IIRC.) I managed to miss that one originally and nowadays TL's presence and the storyline description ("The group tries to convince Ted that his new girlfriend is crazy") both rather make me cringe, so I didn't get around to watching it when I recorded various S2 episodes…and then the damn DVR hiccuped and they were all gone, anyhow. Including an unwatched "Aldrin Justice". 😢

But, with the show on three different stations (FX, WGN, and my local CW channel), I'm rebuilding the Season 1 classics ("The Duel", "Belly Full of Turkey", "The Pineapple Incident") and waiting for the season finale, "Come On!" to come back again.  I did catch that one before the glitch and was just blown away by how brilliant it was.  (Denisof makes one of his early "Sandy Rivers" guest spots and Amy Acker has a role that IMO could easily have become recurring.) And we see Ted refusing to give up on love and daring to dream, like Xander at his best…and it all pays off through a ridiculous miracle, and all seems possible for Ted and Robin…and then he comes home and finds Marshall absolutely devastated (because he and Lilly have split up) and the season ends with them in the rain that Ted "made happen", helplessly sharing Marshall's pain.  

And I watched that and wondered how we got from such utter heartrending brilliance…to a show that I flat-out gave up on after episode 8.02 (where the fucking writers actually put a meta justification of the show's decline to pathetic absurdity in Ted's mouth, as some sort of mission statement or whatever).  I mean, it's bad enough I skipped parts of this show's final episodes…that's 40+ complete epis of Alyson that I've never seen and may never watch.  

How can writers turn gold into shit that way?  At this point, I'm almost suspecting that Aly is cursed.  Or maybe I'm on a Hellmouth; not sure which, tbh.  Sigh.

("Three Days of Snow" was still beautiful, though.  Although when I saw Pat Crawford Brown in the credits as the passenger on the plane with Lilly, I was like "wow, she really has aged!"  

But that was my fault, as I'd thought Pat had played the nurse in Anne, when in fact that was Mary-Pat Green, and Pat Crawford Brown was the Wig Lady from Doublemeat Palace.  Hey, the names were pretty similar [Pats of a not-so-different color, as it were] and it's only natural that an apparent case of aging puts me in mind of Anne, after all…)

[Halting Hex]

34 minutes ago, lembergwatcher said:

Dawn's mad driving skills

I'm sorry, and no offense to NB in his larger moments, but I still giggle at the thought of Dawnie dragging Xander out from behind the wheel he's hunched over so that she can drive them home.  Maybe the monks really did make her out of Buffy and she's showing off the super-strength, at last?

34 minutes ago, lembergwatcher said:

even though Buffy asks Xander to be with Dawn during the battle it is clear Dawn doesn't need him around. She's doing fine on her own and it's she who saves him (twice)

I'd forgotten this, honestly.  (As mentioned, I don't watch the episode.)  The pairings are bizarre, anyhow.  It would make sense for Xander to be with Anya (truthfully, he'd probably insist on it regardless of what Buffy wanted), but Joss didn't want him to be "blamed" for Anya's death.  And it would make sense for Buffy to have Giles (whom she trusts as a fighter far more than she does Xander) "protect" the little sis, but since Dawnie's getting her "empowerment" moments, we can't be buttmonkeying the G-Man so badly, so the old comfortador gets to do the job and lay down so Dawnie can shine.  Well, he's pretty much used to that, I guess.

34 minutes ago, lembergwatcher said:

[Angel] raped his friends' minds

Spoiler

and went on to destroy their lives

Yeah, but at least he

Spoiler

showed a diverse skill set in killing them:

• he lets Cordelia die from neglect (I still can't believe he didn't visit her even once…well, okay, I can believe that, I guess)

• he kills Fred through staggering incompetence (how does he not bring either Fred or the sarcophagus to the Hole?  Either way would probably have saved her life…)

• he facilitates Wesley's suicide, rather than trying to snap his friend out it, or anything a true "champion" would actually do

And of course he flat-out murders Lindsey, because "redemption" isn't available in Oklahoma, apparently.  (Damn local regulations.)  Why he makes Lorne get the blood on his hands rather than just going back to the neck-snapping ("there's a reason it's a classic", to quote Oz), I really don't know.  But given that Andy Hallett barely outlived Glenn Quinn 😞  I suppose I shouldn't quibble too much about any of Our Host's airtime, regardless.

Edited June 24, 2019 by Halting Hex

[illdoc]

13 hours ago, Halting Hex said:

Spoiler

he kills Fred through staggering incompetence (how does he not bring either Fred or the sarcophagus to the Hole?  Either way would probably have saved her life…)

Spoiler

Actually, Drogon tells A & S (when they go to the hole) that once Illyria is out (and, at this moment, the "spores" are Illyria which is what is making Fred sick) that they could move the sarcophagus, but everyone between LA & the Well will be infected, so moving it isn't an option. Although I once read a fanfic in which Willow (being an excellent teleporter in fanfic of course) just snaps her fingers & teleports it to the Well. Since it teleported, there is no one between LA & the Well to get infected.

[Halting Hex]

18 minutes ago, illdoc said:

Spoiler

Actually, Drogon tells A & S (when they go to the hole) that once Illyria is out (and, at this moment, the "spores" are Illyria which is what is making Fred sick) that they could move the sarcophagus, but everyone between LA & the Well will be infected, so moving it isn't an option. Although I once read a fanfic in which Willow (being an excellent teleporter in fanfic of course) just snaps her fingers & teleports it to the Well. Since it teleported, there is no one between LA & the Well to get infected.

I mean, I've never seen that episode, but I have a hard time thinking that you couldn't just

Spoiler

seal up Fred, the Sarcophagus and the whole lab, if need be, put them on a plane and fly them to the Hole.  The Spores are in Fred…move her at the same rate you're moving the Sarcophagus and I can't see the spores hopping out over Philadelphia because they're craving a good steak sandwich.

But that's nothing more than wild speculation, obviously.

[lembergwatcher]

On 6/24/2019 at 12:16 PM, Halting Hex said:

The pairings are bizarre

As much as I hate the idea of Xander spending the final fight with Anya, I do agree with you. In fact, I can't quite grasp the writers' logic. Xander has no super powers, he's maimed and useless, and yet it's he whom Buffy asks to watch her precious little sister. Twice. Even though, yes, Dawn would be much safer with Rupert by her side. Actually I do not understand why does babysitting Dawnie have to be Xander's sacred duty? Either he's a wimp or he's not but seems like Joss & his team want to have a cake and eat it too... 

In the past it took Buffy two episodes to kill one stinking Ubervamp, now she and her "Slayer army" slaughter them like sheep. Yeah, we already covered that subject, but at least I can understand how slayers do it (although Buffy herself nearly died trying to deal with just one Ubie). What I can't figure out is how exactly are six non-super powered humans (Wood, Giles, Dawn, Xander, Anya, Andrew) supposed to stop, say, Turok-Han? It's a miracle X/D fight at the place with access to sunlight (this skylight window just happens to be in the ceiling)... 

And one more question: what kind of fucking "genius" decided to leave WILLOW all alone and "spelled-out" (unconscious), without any protection, at the principal's office??? This is how you treat your "most powerful" weapon, Buff? 

[Halting Hex]

3 hours ago, lembergwatcher said:

Actually I do not understand why does babysitting Dawnie have to be Xander's sacred duty?

"Into each generation, a Sitter is born.  One Man in all the Land, bred with the Stamina and Stubbornness to stand against the Shriekers, the Whiners, and the forces of Random Cat-Shooting.  He is…The Sitter."

[lembergwatcher]

XANDER THE BABY SITTER? Sounds like a name for a spin-off...

Although Spike and Amanda do fit the profile too.

[Halting Hex]

3 hours ago, lembergwatcher said:

In the past it took Buffy two episodes to kill one stinking Ubervamp, now she and her "Slayer army" slaughter them like sheep. Yeah, we already covered that subject, but at least I can understand how slayers do it (although Buffy herself nearly died trying to deal with just one Ubie). What I can't figure out is how exactly are six non-super powered humans (Wood, Giles, Dawn, Xander, Anya, Andrew) supposed to stop, say, Turok-Han?

Joss discusses this in the commentary.  (Yes, there are actually parts of the commentary I didn't cover in the tome ^ above.  Seems unlikely, I grant, but it's true.)  So let's see what The Man Himself has to say about this…I'm sure he has some thoughtful and profound explanation for this discrepancy, right?  Right?

Quote

JOSS: Some people complained, again, that the vampires were too easy to kill. That they were supposed to be stronger than other vampires. And the fact of the matter is… it's true. Like the convenience of the magic, it's true. Because, again, I was more interested in showing the empowerment than I was in the continuity. To make every vampire as hard to kill as the first one would have been too hard.

Wah, wah, wah, good writing is HARD!  Let's just talk about "empowerment" and ignore the part where the climactic battle of my seven-year TV show MAKES NO SENSE.  FFS.

The idea that it's more "important" to show some smug pre-adolescent several states away cheating at baseball (and maybe maiming whomever she smacks with that line drive) than to resolve Buffy's story logically is so…well, so Whedonesque, I guess.  Grrr.

You know, if you're creating a new villain, you might want to think about how you're going to beat him/them down the line.  Plan ahead, that sort of thing.  Instead of ending up with Andrew beating them through nothing but the power of Nerd!Rage.

Hey, aren't the üntervamps a major test for Slayers, specifically?  So why don't you put the Slayers at the entrances and keep the "civilians" safely away?  I mean, you just gave Buffy a surfeit of Slayers to allocate, maybe you make better use of the "troops" than take them all into the hole?

And didn't the ünties change into regular vamps because the world had changed?  Doesn't your script specifically call for Willow to cast a world-altering spell? How tough is it to throw some "Phlebotinum" in there about how the spell makes it impossible for Goobies to enter this world in their "virgin" condition, from now on any UV making the trip through the Hellmouth becomes an "earthly" vampire, a sort of "our world, our rules" deal?  

(This might also justify the "it's open/it's closed/it's open again/it's closed again/ah, shit, now we have to open it again" treatment of the Seal through the season, if the various conjurings upon it end up having a transformative effect, in the end.  And so Jonathan/Spike/Xander did not bleed for nothing, after all.)

Hey, didn't the same episode where we learned that there was this whole army of Scary Scary Übies unter the Seal also tell us that Slayers have a demonic essence? (Much as I hated that idea.)  Perhaps the empowerment spell makes all the new Slayers by draining power from the Ünties, just as Willow drained (latent) Slayer-power from Kennedy in that very episode?  Just a Buffy had "shared her strength" with Willow at the end of Same Time, Still Boring?  That Buffy sharing her Burden with Kennedy and the others actually makes her job easier?  Wow, that's like thematic or some shit.

And I've done all this in barely an hour, at my keyboard, with a time out to feed the cat (Ziggy's fine, because Dawn isn't here to shoot him…grrr…) and another to run a load of laundry.  Sigh.

Hey, maybe instead of Willow (arguably your second-most important character, the only one [sorry, Xander!] to literally be with Buffy every step of the way) being used up and left alone and out of the action for almost half the episode (and vulnerable to attack, and honestly damn lucky she was able to pull herself together and get out before the school collapsed on top of her as it did Dead!Anya)…maybe instead of that, you show her drawing power from Kennedy throughout the second half (but this time consensually instead of by violating K as she did in Get It Done) and being able to channel the power into any woman, regardless of the Slayer gene, albeit only temporarily, and so Dawn gets to briefly realize her Potential and Anya becomes more human than she had ever dreamed, and everyone is able to fight against the vamps to some degree.  (Except maybe Andrew)

And this deepens the Willow/Kennedy relationship while moving the "power-sharing" theme beyond a mere caste defined by their Slayer DNA to a more universal femmepowerment statement. But nah.  Random shots of random girls are much more on point than focusing on Willow, Anya, and Dawn, with their mere 292 combined episodes, or anything such as that.

Okay so this took a little longer than I claimed above, because I had more to write and because Ziggy insisted on jumping in my lap (silly cat!  You've been fed!), but seriously.  If I can work around this issue without even being paid, Joss should have at least tried.  I mean, he's supposed to be the genius, not me.

(Although I did just the other night come up with a much-better slogan for Trump's re-election campaign than "Keep America Great", which is an obvious clunker.  But he's not paying me, either, so he'll never know…)

[lembergwatcher]

13 hours ago, Halting Hex said:

Willow (arguably your second-most important character, the only one [sorry, Xander!] to literally be with Buffy every step of the way)

Hey, Xander was there too!!! Especially during Willow's stint in the magic!rehab working out the Pleiadian spirit conjuring... Of course, he wasn't blessed to be that close to any of them after Buffy's return from her second trip to LA/the great fluking disaster, but that's the way it is since Buffy treated one of her two supposed best friends as a friend and another as just some errand boy... 

[Joe Hellandback]

4 minutes ago, lembergwatcher said:

Hey, Xander was there too!!! Especially during Willow's stint in the magic!rehab working out the Pleiadian spirit conjuring... Of course, he wasn't blessed to be that close to any of them after Buffy's return from her second trip to LA/the great fluking disaster, but that's the way it is since Buffy treated one of her two supposed best friends as a friend and another as just some errand boy... 

He entrusted Xander with Dawn, the most previous thing in the world to her. 

[lembergwatcher]

30 minutes ago, Joe Hellandback said:

He entrusted Xander with Dawn, the most previous thing in the world to her.

Dawn? The whole final season's arc clearly indicates Spike, not Dawn, was Buffy's precious. Buffy doesn't even notice her sister most of the time. She spends most of the season annoying the shit out of Willow and the baby slayers or having loooooong boring conversations with her bleached obsession. "I believe in you Spike", wah. "I saw your penis, you're a good man", blah-blah-blah...

Buffy wanted to get rid of both Dawnie who was too annoying and craved attention, and Xander who was injured, had no super powers and thus was of no use to Buffy in her fight.

[Halting Hex]

I said "literally", meaning that Aly is the only person in all 144 episodes, besides SMG.  

I'm not thrilled by this; I still don't like Nick getting that "vacation" from CwDP.  But the only person you could see by tuning in each and every week would be either Buffy…or Willow.  That's all I meant.

(And yes, there are three episodes [Anne, Lessons, Beneath You] where Willow is definitely not "with Buffy"…in two of them, she's not even on the same continent as her.  But as before, I'm only totting up appearances on this scoreboard, that's all.)

[Joe Hellandback]

On ‎6‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 9:33 AM, lembergwatcher said:

Dawn? The whole final season's arc clearly indicates Spike, not Dawn, was Buffy's precious. Buffy doesn't even notice her sister most of the time. She spends most of the season annoying the shit out of Willow and the baby slayers or having loooooong boring conversations with her bleached obsession. "I believe in you Spike", wah. "I saw your penis, you're a good man", blah-blah-blah...

Buffy wanted to get rid of both Dawnie who was too annoying and craved attention, and Xander who was injured, had no super powers and thus was of no use to Buffy in her fight.

Unkind, she's quite happy to sacrifice Spike, indeed she's the one who says they need him on the front line. By contrast she wants to get Dawnie to safety. 

[lembergwatcher]

Joss after being asked whether he'll allow Buffy to be a hero of her own show in the series finale.

[AllyB]

On 11/28/2018 at 10:48 AM, lembergwatcher said:

Another question: how in the world were The First and Jasmine supposed to deal with their issues, since both had apparently different agendas?  

Just reading this forum to take my mind off real life! But when I was first watching series 7/4 with the Scoobies realising they were under threat from the ultimate evil and the AI team under threat from a seemingly ultimate evil. I assumed for quite a lot of both series that they were up against connected evils. That the thing controlling The Beast was in fact The First. That whatever was controlling Cordelia or impersonating Cordelia was an agent of The First. 

The  arcs on each series involved facing off against a threat the likes of which they hadn't faced before, that was so personally targeting the protagonists. They were very similar to each other in a way that was unlike any previous arc on either show. There was more than enough interconnection between the shows for that to have been the case, with a plot from Buffy being how we are reintroduced to Faith on Angel. Then Willow nipping across to call on the spirits of the interegnum. And ended with Angel getting a macguffin necklace from WR&H, because obviously the Senior partners weren't in the mood for The First to beat them to the apocalypse punch, which magically saved the day over on Buffy. So there was no practical reason for these two storylines not to have been truly connected on a meaningful level.

I was so gutted when we got a completely unconnected Jasmine instead. (I also hated Caleb on Buffy, enough that I didn't want to watch Firefly for a very long time knowing it was the series starring those two show ruiners.) Both series had started so, so strongly and ended up being so crazy disappointing. Buffy wasn't as bad. And I don't hate the ending plotline of Buffy empowered all the potentials. But I hate how poorly it was executed. I hate how the Turok Han were so easy to kill for no reason. I hate how The First would have won anyway without Spike wearing the MacGuffin necklace that Angel was handed as an incentive to randomly take over WR&H. Events on Angel being meaningful to the defeat of the First could have been an excellent satisfying story but instead it was just stupid.

[Halting Hex]

And it's still so bizarre that the sun disappears from LA for over a week, but nobody in Sunnydale seems to notice.  I mean, surely somebody ought to say "Do you think that's connected to this?", wouldn't you think?

The two cities are only "two hours on the freeway" apart, after all.  That's closer to each other than either is to Stockton (from whence Wesley fetches Faith) or Gilroy (where Spike and Andrew went on their "road trip". Rather strains credibility.

And while it's…not great writing that W&H (magic bling) and the First itself (Little Red Axe, First!Joyce guiding Buffy to her Empowering Nap) are the chief drivers to Buffy's victory here, to be fair, it's not the first time the bad guys were more helpful than you'd think they'd be.  I've mentioned Ethan's Janus spell gifting Xander with the military knowledge that turned the tide in Innocence and Parker supplying the Ziploc™ bag that helped Buffy contain Kathy's Evil Toenails. 

But we should probably also count the Hellmouth Muppet breaking that conveniently-placed table in Prophecy Girl, as I think Giles would have had long work to chop it into something useful with that little hatchet he was using.  And Buffy, for some reason, doesn't appear to have a stake any time after the teaser.

(She takes a crossbow to the Master's lair, she lets Xander do the staking of the "Oh, look, a bad guy" vampire, and I see kicking and punching and flipping against Fruit Punch Mouth on the rooftop, but I don't see any stakes coming out.  A bit odd, honestly.)

And I'm sure I've missed some.  (Any ideas which?  May as well get the whole list.)  So perhaps Windbag was merely following tradition here, I don't know.        

Edited April 27, 2020 by Halting Hex

[Joe Hellandback]

14 hours ago, AllyB said:

Just reading this forum to take my mind off real life! But when I was first watching series 7/4 with the Scoobies realising they were under threat from the ultimate evil and the AI team under threat from a seemingly ultimate evil. I assumed for quite a lot of both series that they were up against connected evils. That the thing controlling The Beast was in fact The First. That whatever was controlling Cordelia or impersonating Cordelia was an agent of The First. 

The  arcs on each series involved facing off against a threat the likes of which they hadn't faced before, that was so personally targeting the protagonists. They were very similar to each other in a way that was unlike any previous arc on either show. There was more than enough interconnection between the shows for that to have been the case, with a plot from Buffy being how we are reintroduced to Faith on Angel. Then Willow nipping across to call on the spirits of the interegnum. And ended with Angel getting a macguffin necklace from WR&H, because obviously the Senior partners weren't in the mood for The First to beat them to the apocalypse punch, which magically saved the day over on Buffy. So there was no practical reason for these two storylines not to have been truly connected on a meaningful level.

I was so gutted when we got a completely unconnected Jasmine instead. (I also hated Caleb on Buffy, enough that I didn't want to watch Firefly for a very long time knowing it was the series starring those two show ruiners.) Both series had started so, so strongly and ended up being so crazy disappointing. Buffy wasn't as bad. And I don't hate the ending plotline of Buffy empowered all the potentials. But I hate how poorly it was executed. I hate how the Turok Han were so easy to kill for no reason. I hate how The First would have won anyway without Spike wearing the MacGuffin necklace that Angel was handed as an incentive to randomly take over WR&H. Events on Angel being meaningful to the defeat of the First could have been an excellent satisfying story but instead it was just stupid.

You can read more into it than that? The girl who tries to kill Faith in jail is using a Bringer knife and fans theorise that the Darla who appears to Connor is actually the First? 

I take your point with the necklace but as Angel observes, Buffy would have found a way.

If you're bored and Buffy deprived head over to YouTube, every week there's a new reactor starting. Van is just starting season 5 and we're all going to gaslight her over Dawn.   

[watcher1006]

I don't think the showrunners of the two shows cared all that much about their plotlines sync'ing with each other. On Angel:

It was fun to see Willow show up at the hotel to help restore Angel's soul. There was a "gone full circle" aspect to the event, remembering how at the end of

Buffy Season 2 the gang had gathered once before to do the same thing. Then it was Willow in the sickbed, now it was Cordelia. And yet powerful self-confident Willow here didn't mesh well with hesitant reluctant Willow in Season 7 of her own show.

Regarding Jasmine, from what I remember this story arc was improvised, somewhat hastily, to deal with Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy. Please correct me if I wrong.

In general I don't think crossovers between series often work all that well, even between a show and its spinoff, which was the situation here. There are different teams of writers and showrunners and the characters coming over more often then not seem out of place.

Just for the record, I really dislike Buffy's two big speeches in this episode. The infernal "cookie dough" speech and her grandiose "chosen" speech.

I can't forgive the idea of Buffy owing her victory to Wolfram & Hart.

Really with Spike and his shiny amulet, what was the effect of Willow empowering all the potentials in the cave except to execute a holding action to give the amulet time to get going? There was only one scythe. Joss Whedon seemed determined to bring that one over from his comic series Fray but it hardly played a decisive role in the final battle. I suppose it did get rid of Caleb. All in all it seemed like there were too many ideas thrown into the finale and they didn't fit all that well together. I guess BtVS isn't the only show in TV history which ended that way.

[Halting Hex]

19 hours ago, watcher1006 said:

Really with Spike and his shiny amulet, what was the effect of Willow empowering all the potentials in the cave except to execute a holding action to give the amulet time to get going? There was only one scythe.

Heh, now I'm envisioning Buffy and Faith and Kennedy and Vi and all the others tossing the Little Red Axe all over the battlefield, from one to another, like some giant game of Hot Potato.

Seriously, Buffy gets all these signs that she, specifically, is important.  (Not that Little Miss Ego has ever needed much impetus to believe that, I grant you.)  She uncovers information about her new weapon being for "The Slayer", singular.  Annoying "Guardian" woman claims she's been following Buffy, specifically.  (Not doing a great job, as she doesn't even know Buffy's name, but still…)  

And if Giles and Anya ever did get around to telling Buffy what Beljoxa's Eye said*, it was that the Slayer line had been weakened by Buffy's resurrection, and thus logically more Slayers = bad.  "There is an order in things," to quote Star Trek's Commissioner Beel.  The Eye seems to be arguing against the sort of Chaos that Buffy promotes here.

(*-yes, that's right, the entire B-plot of episode 11 is devoted to this intelligence-gathering maguffin…and then it is never mentioned again and we have no idea if Buffy even knows the outcome.   Great writing, guys!)

And yet Buffy creates scores of new Slayers out of the Junior Misses, and still somehow wins.  (Virtues of being a lead character, I suppose.)  As for the girls' role turning out to be nothing more than a "holding action", well, Anya didn't call them "the cannon fodder" for nothing, I suppose.

Seriously, never mind all my (endless) complaints with the morality of this episode and the lack of character continuity, it just plain blows from a plot mechanics standpoint, too.  We get enough false climaxes to fill an entire brothel.  (Okay, just four, but that's still four too many.)  

Is our big moment Buffy using her Slayer Legacy, her prophesied weapon "for her", to march into Hell, itself?  

No, wait, it's Willow ruining empowering girls' lives around the world, with the activation spell!  ("Are you ready to be strong?")

No, wait, it's Faith taking the axe from Buffy, stepping out of "big sister's" shadow and reaching her true potential! ("Hold the line")

No, wait, it's Buffy standing up to fear, finding her own inner strength and vanquishing her self-doubt by beating the First through nothing more than sheer willpower ("Get out of my face!") and suddenly deciding not to die.  (Gee, could have saved a lot of trouble in both S1 and S5 if Buffy had known about her cool "I'm not going to die because I SAY SO!" powers, huh?)

No, WAIT, it's Spike, of course!  The big climax to the battle, to 144 episodes of Buffy's story, is "The Sun Shines Out of Spike's Ass".  Because, duh.

I mean, yes, Spike burning slowly and painfully to death, never to return*, is immensely satisfying…but it does feel a bit out of left field.  Not to be ungrateful, but perhaps a bit of pandering here?

Spoiler

*-"Angel season 5?" "Comics continuation"? Your words are strange.  To quote Ferris Bueller: "It's over.  Go home. Go."

 

[Joe Hellandback]

16 hours ago, Halting Hex said:

Heh, now I'm envisioning Buffy and Faith and Kennedy and Vi and all the others tossing the Little Red Axe all over the battlefield, from one to another, like some giant game of Hot Potato.

Seriously, Buffy gets all these signs that she, specifically, is important.  (Not that Little Miss Ego has ever needed much impetus to believe that, I grant you.)  She uncovers information about her new weapon being for "The Slayer", singular.  Annoying "Guardian" woman claims she's been following Buffy, specifically.  (Not doing a great job, as she doesn't even know Buffy's name, but still…)  

And if Giles and Anya ever did get around to telling Buffy what Beljoxa's Eye said*, it was that the Slayer line had been weakened by Buffy's resurrection, and thus logically more Slayers = bad.  "There is an order in things," to quote Star Trek's Commissioner Beel.  The Eye seems to be arguing against the sort of Chaos that Buffy promotes here.

(*-yes, that's right, the entire B-plot of episode 11 is devoted to this intelligence-gathering maguffin…and then it is never mentioned again and we have no idea if Buffy even knows the outcome.   Great writing, guys!)

And yet Buffy creates scores of new Slayers out of the Junior Misses, and still somehow wins.  (Virtues of being a lead character, I suppose.)  As for the girls' role turning out to be nothing more than a "holding action", well, Anya didn't call them "the cannon fodder" for nothing, I suppose.

Seriously, never mind all my (endless) complaints with the morality of this episode and the lack of character continuity, it just plain blows from a plot mechanics standpoint, too.  We get enough false climaxes to fill an entire brothel.  (Okay, just four, but that's still four too many.)  

Is our big moment Buffy using her Slayer Legacy, her prophesied weapon "for her", to march into Hell, itself?  

No, wait, it's Willow ruining empowering girls' lives around the world, with the activation spell!  ("Are you ready to be strong?")

No, wait, it's Faith taking the axe from Buffy, stepping out of "big sister's" shadow and reaching her true potential! ("Hold the line")

No, wait, it's Buffy standing up to fear, finding her own inner strength and vanquishing her self-doubt by beating the First through nothing more than sheer willpower ("Get out of my face!") and suddenly deciding not to die.  (Gee, could have saved a lot of trouble in both S1 and S5 if Buffy had known about her cool "I'm not going to die because I SAY SO!" powers, huh?)

No, WAIT, it's Spike, of course!  The big climax to the battle, to 144 episodes of Buffy's story, is "The Sun Shines Out of Spike's Ass".  Because, duh.

I mean, yes, Spike burning slowly and painfully to death, never to return*, is immensely satisfying…but it does feel a bit out of left field.  Not to be ungrateful, but perhaps a bit of pandering here?

  Reveal spoiler

*-"Angel season 5?" "Comics continuation"? Your words are strange.  To quote Ferris Bueller: "It's over.  Go home. Go."

 

It's about Buffy being able to stare down that endless road with her friends and family and know what the future holds for her. 

[lembergwatcher]

On 4/30/2020 at 10:55 AM, Joe Hellandback said:

It's about Buffy being able to stare down that endless road with her friends and family and know what the future holds for her. 

What friends? When did Buffy become best buds with all the junior slayers? As for her former team (X/W/G) B gave them lots of reasons in  the final season alone not to view her as a good and reliable friend any more.

[Joe Hellandback]

14 hours ago, lembergwatcher said:

What friends? When did Buffy become best buds with all the junior slayers? As for her former team (X/W/G) B gave them lots of reasons in  the final season alone not to view her as a good and reliable friend any more.

But they all kissed and made up in the end. 

[lembergwatcher]

20 hours ago, Joe Hellandback said:

But they all kissed and made up in the end.

Wait a minute, when exactly did Buffy kiss or make up with the rest of her former team? When they meet at the (restored) SHS hallway they talk shit about going to the mall or whatever but neither kiss nor make up. If Xander and Willow kissed before or after the Big Fight, I would've been in seventh heaven... Are there any fanfics in which Buffy and her army engage in a group sex while celebrating their victory? The post-battle orgy somewhere in the desert would've been, as Barney Stinson put it, legen...wait for it...dary! They deserve having some fun, after all.

 

On 4/27/2020 at 11:50 PM, Halting Hex said:

And it's still so bizarre that the sun disappears from LA for over a week, but nobody in Sunnydale seems to notice.

Well, obviously the Sunnydalers don't need any freaking sun because they got Spike. And, since Joss made it crystal clear over and over and over again, Spike is the team's currency! He's the only beacon of light in Buffy's post-resurrection bleak existence. Dawn? Dawn who? If you have Spike there's no wonder you may totally overlook minor things like sun's disappearance. 

[Halting Hex]

On 5/3/2020 at 6:46 AM, lembergwatcher said:

Well, obviously the Sunnydalers don't need any freaking sun because they got Spike.

Yeah, but he doesn't go into the illumination business until the end of this episode.  Now if Sparky had been throwing off the candlepower all season long, that would be different.  22 episodes of Spike the Eternal Flame, I could get behind.  Oh, well.

Moving on:

Quote

BUFFY:  Spike.

This still annoys me, that this is Buffy's Last Line Ever.  Yes, partly because Spike, but I don't think I would have been much happier if, through twists of storyline, we would have ended with

Quote

BUFFY:  Angel.

Or…

Quote

BUFFY: Riley.

BUFFY:  Parker.

BUFFY: Owen.

…or whatever, either.  Our lead character should be doing something more than semi-mourning her latest romantic partner as her valedictory, I'd say.

And yes, we get that "Buffy stares into the crater and a satisfied smile spreads across her face" non-verbal bit at the end, but still.  I wanted something better. 

I mean, I'll take pretty much anything.

Quote

BUFFY:  Damn, Willow's pussy tastes good.

XANDER (agog):  What?  I mean…what??

DAWN (interjecting):  She's remembering after I had the, uh, accident with the crossbow and Ms. Kitty, and we chopped her up and cooked her.  You remember, you were there.

WILLOW:  What??

DAWN:  You weren't, you were in England with Giles.  And Tara was already dead, so we thought we'd see if catburgers really did taste great. (to Xander) You remember, you were the one who had that talk with Buffy about what was in the DoubleMeat Medley when she started working there.

XANDER:  Oh, yeah, but—

DAWN (hurt that he doesn't appreciate her cooking):  You said you loved it!  Especially with the salsa! You asked for seconds!

XANDER:  I thought you guys were just kidding about the cat, though!

GILES:  Good Lord.

(Buffy stares off into the crater.  A small, satisfied smile slowly spreads across her face.)

(Willow faints.)

BLACK OUT

END OF SERIES

Or even this: 

Quote

BUFFY:  Ouch, ouch, ouch.  And also ouch. My balls are killing me!

GILES:  Yes… (does a take) I beg your pardon?

(Buffy sits on the ground, pulls off her stylish-yet-affordable footwear, and begins massaging the balls of her feet.)

GILES (getting it): Oh, I see.  Never mind. (He begins polishing his glasses.)

[Snipping endless filler talk (sigh) about the fucking mall (sigh!) from unimportant minor characters…like Willow and Xander (SIGH!!)]

DAWN: Yeah, Buffy, what are we going to do now?

(Buffy stares off into the crater.  A small, satisfied smile slowly spreads across her face.)

(The others start to leave.)

DAWN:  Hello, did you hear me?

(Buffy continues staring and smiling, silently.)
(All gone except Dawn, now.)

DAWN:  Your sister asked you a question!  Hello??)

(Buffy continues staring and smiling, silently.)

DAWN:  Geez, rude much? I can't believe this.

(Dawn starts stalking off.)

DAWN:  What a bitch!

(Buffy's smile widens into a GRIN.)

BLACK OUT

END OF SERIES

See, I'm easy.  Just put some effort into in, okay, Whedon?

Edited May 25, 2020 by Halting Hex

[lembergwatcher]

On 11/27/2018 at 2:24 PM, Jack Shaftoe said:

Why did the genius "Guardian" never bother to inform Buffy about this incredibly powerful Scythe before Caleb so conveniently unearthed for Buffy to steal?

Seems like the First's true agenda was not to eliminate the Slayer line (the task it very much neglected over the course of the season) but to do everything in its power to ensure Buffy's acquisition of the Scythe. Why? I guess only Joss can answer that question.

[Joe Hellandback]

On 5/25/2020 at 2:56 AM, Halting Hex said:

Yeah, but he doesn't go into the illumination business until the end of this episode.  Now if Sparky had been throwing off the candlepower all season long, that would be different.  22 episodes of Spike the Eternal Flame, I could get behind.  Oh, well.

Moving on:

This still annoys me, that this is Buffy's Last Line Ever.  Yes, partly because Spike, but I don't think I would have been much happier if, through twists of storyline, we would have ended with

Or…

…or whatever, either.  Our lead character should be doing something more than semi-mourning her latest romantic partner as her valedictory, I'd say.

And yes, we get that "Buffy stares into the crater and a satisfied smile spreads across her face" non-verbal bit at the end, but still.  I wanted something better. 

I mean, I'll take pretty much anything.

Or even this: 

See, I'm easy.  Just put some effort into in, okay, Whedon?

Early season 5 Dawn yes, season 7 never, no longer needs spanking.  

[lembergwatcher]

I was really shocked to find out this so-called episode got NINE (???) stars on IMDb... Nine freaking stars... Me, I think one star is too generous for this load of horse shit.

However, there were some reviewers I do agree with:

Quote

There's just so much of Buffy's pouty expression, forced smiles, and preachy melodramatic diatribes issuing forth from her oddly formed mouth that one can take.

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2295438/?ref_=tt_urv

I'd like to quote user skay_baltimore some more:

Quote

"Chosen": Good guys (and I use that term somewhat loosely) fight bad guys. Spike uses the magic trinket brought by Angel. Buffy gives uninspiring speeches. Willow does big magic with the ax. Good guys win/save the world. Spike and Anya die -- and believe me...they were the lucky ones. Anyone consigned to have to live in Buffyverse faces a future much worse than death -- an eternity stuck in Joss Whedon's adolescent nightmarish dystopia.

"Chosen" has none of the brilliance of LOTR in its final battle of good vs evil. That's because Whedon is no Tolkien. Willow the White is not even in the same galaxy as Galdalf. It takes more than tricks and gimmicks to create alternate worlds and sympathetic heroes. Unfortunately, the people talking into Whedon's ear -- telling him how great he is -- don't seem to know the difference. Instead of an epic battle, "Chosen" is nothing but an epic fail.

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2295438/?ref_=tt_urv

Well, as one Captain Forehead once said:
    

[Gigi43]

On 6/14/2021 at 5:23 AM, lembergwatcher said:

I was really shocked to find out this so-called episode got NINE (???) stars on IMDb... Nine freaking stars... Me, I think one star is too generous for this load of horse shit.

However, there were some reviewers I do agree with:

I'd like to quote user skay_baltimore some more:

Well, as one Captain Forehead once said:
     p

 

Joss once said "the plot wasn't as important as the message" which was more entertaining than anything in Chosen. What was the message? Hope you have an ex to swoop in to hand you something from an untrustworthy source and your current boyfriend is willing to wear it to his death? YAY empowerment. 

 

If you didn't watch Angel it would be even worse because then it would be even more of a what the fuck that he showed up with the ugly necklace but then again you also wouldn't know stupid fuckery that was Angel trusting something random from Wolfram and Hart, and you'd think he actually did some real work to find it. So maybe it's debatable which is worse.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Gigi43

[Halting Hex]

Wow, I was in a nostalgic mood and dug out my link to the Waybacked TWoP archives, looking for some of those fun "games" threads we had there…

…but somehow I detoured into their Worst Thing Ever thread, and found this little rant by me (posting as yes please back then) from 2006.  Enjoy?

Quote

I hate Chosen with the sun of a thousand David Furys, and it has nothing to do with the ep being an unsatisfying series finale or anything like that. I think it is crap from stem to stern and I hate every single scene of it.

I've been trying to write a comprehensive review ever since it aired, but there's just so much to hate, I've never been able to tackle it all at once. But when I named it my number one Worst Episode Ever in the Top 10 Episode game, I tried to condense some of my thoughts, and still bumped up against the 5000-characters-per-post limit. So I've moved that abridged version here:

I HATE

a) the "power-up" crap, not merely for the damage I think it does to the metaphor about Buffy's identity and her story, or for the rape implications (although I could also rage about those at length), but simply for the idea that, after TWELVE FUCKING EPISODES about "there are only a few Potentials left, we have to save them from the First!", all of a sudden there are thousands of unseen Potentials world-wide? What the fuckety-fuck-fuck-fuck??? So Joss invalidated the entire premise of the season for "cool" moment, huh? Fuck you with a rusty lugwrech, Joss.

(On a side note, I hate the smug little bitca of an actress who plays the softball girl, and when she smiles, I'd like to hit her with the bat.)

b) dropping Sunnydale down a hole, making the last seven years of ours and the characters' lives suddenly irrelevant. The whole point of Buffy's heroism is that she gives up her normal life so that others can have one—until she turns everyone into refugees so that she can "move on" or whatever. (And, I contend, had to kill at least several hundred people, as the "total evacuation" of a city of 38,500 just isn't going to happen, no matter what they tried to sell me.) What is the point of all those nights she spent in the graveyard if she ends up turning the whole town into a sinkhole? I'm also sickened at the destruction of all the places and things (even Mr Gordo?) that were so much a part of our characters lives, and at the inability of the Scoobs to ever visit Jenny, Joyce, or Tara's graves ever again being played as a "triumph". Once again, Joss destroys the premise of the series for a "cool" effect. Die, Joss! Seriously, die.

Oh, and I guess Willow didn't have to put the stones on Tara's grave as a permanent memorial, after all, huh? Might have gone with flowers, anyway, as long as the stones lasted.

c) the destruction of the Buffy/Willow friendship, with Willow's last words on Buffy being "sweet girl, not that bright", where the beauty of their bond had always been that Willow didn't see Buffy as a superpowered bimbo, just as Buffy always thought Willow was beautiful and not just smart or a "nice personality". (Topped off with Sarah's "I'm not even looking at you, bitch!" body language as they walk down the corridor.)

d) the show living down to my worst fear, that they'd ignore the ruptured friendships between the Scoobs all year, and then try and paper it over with an unearned "moment" in the finale. The fact that said moment consisted solely of Joss defiling The Harvest by regurgitating its words was merely the icing on the dung.

e) the validation of the "it's about power" claim, with Buffy's "triumph" coming by making more Superpeople, and the humans being left completely out of the main fight (even Super!Wicca Willow [much as I hate that reduction of the character] is out of the action by early in Act 3)

And look, I haven't even mentioned the multiple deus ex machina devices, Buffy's final words being about Spike, Spike being the hero, Joss implying that Buffy boinked Spike (and blessing it on the DVD commentary), the cookie-dough speech, Faith's "ghetto" slang, Giles's grampa clothes, the maltreatment of Xander, the non-defeat of the First, the stupidity of Buffy's "plan", or Buffy's completely unearned and unconvincing final "smile". Hate, hate, hate, hate, and hate. And also, HATE.

Worst Anything Ever. 

Ah, memories.  144 out of 144, and I ain't just talking chronology, kids.  Well, I suppose you can say Whedon made it memorable…