Herewith my weekly “Buffy” comment (which will annoy the crap out of my daughter, Gwen, who claims that all I ever discuss on this log is “Buffy.” Perhap I should be talking about something that truly interests her, like…her. Okay. She’s got a job interview at New England Comics this Thursday. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Happy, Gwen?)
Last night’s was the weakest entry this season…although even a weak entry put it head and shoulders above many from last season. It’s what I call a Placemarker episode: It endeavors to entertain and give some vague tie-ins with the overall season arc without advancing either the “big-bad” arc or the character arcs too much. They do a number of those each year, particularly early in the season. “Bad Eggs” is an off-hand example from season 2. The only real standouts of that type are usually the Halloween episodes.
So for a placemarker it wasn’t bad. But it dragged. The pacing was off; it suffered from an occasional lapse one sees in the series, wherein the true subject matter of the episode doesn’t make itself known until the end of the first act. Nothing was accomplished in the teaser, and most of the first act was dedicated to telling us what we’ve already known for several episodes: Buffy is working as a counselor. The array of students would have been better and funnier compressed to a fast montage about thirty seconds long. Having Cassie come in and announce that she was going to die next Friday was a nice punch; *that* should have been the teaser, and you go from there.
Next week’s with Anya looks intriguing, and also seems to be addressing my questions regarding Anya’s soul. I had speculated that Buffy could kill Anya since she’s now a souless demon…but if she was souless, how could her marriage to Xander have ever worked? And if she’s not souless, then why was she never agonized over all she’d done, like Angel and Spike? Perhaps we’ll find out. Also perhaps next week has the rumored “Anya sings” flashback.
PAD
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I agree that the episode felt off…
My wife didn’t care for the episode last night either, I thought it was a nice change of pace, but I’m also a relatively new convert who has only seen all of seasons 1 & 2 (C’mon guys, release seasons 3-6 on DVD already!), a small scattered smattering of 3, 4 , 5, the last few of 6 (I really want to see the Musical episode, the CD is great) and all this season so far. I hope they don’t actually kill Anya, I’ve grown rather fond of her blunt tactless honesty (she’s kind of a non-vain Cordelia).
As far as having a sould and feeling/not feeling bad about her deeds (or for that matter any of the show’s characters), Ethan is human but a dirtbag, does he have a soul? Does he feel bad about the evil things he’s done?
A person can have a soul and still do evil. Look at the terrorists, they commit great acts of true evil. Do you think they feel bad about it? No, having a “soul” doesn’t automatically make one “good” and “nice” and the like.
BTW, I was making a comment last night during the epsiode and missed what Cassie said to Spike. Can anyone tell me what she said to him? I like the little jerk, especially when he kept hitting the oldest Taylor boy even though the chip was hurting him as he did.
Speaking of Buffy’s killing, what’s with her leaving the demon-bitten, bleeding kid from Home Improvement presumably to die?
One thing I did like that, like last year, it ended on a downer but, unlike last year, it didn’t end with a sense of failure. Buffy’s actions did make a difference — she got Spike to come out of his hole, stopped a demon, and, in essence, gave Dawn a friend. It wasn’t the difference she wanted to make, but she didn’t fail in her duty, either.
In other words, she’s still a hero. That’s what they lost sight of last year.
—KRAD
It was not a perfect episode, but it kept me engaged. Keith is right about what makes a hero.
There was one scene that I loved: Willow at the graveyard, leaving the stones on the headstone. I don’t know if non-Jews do that, but it’s long been a Jewish tradition. We got a good glimpse of Willow last night, of the woman who loved Tara and of the girl who crushed on Xander and Doogie Howser and even of Ira Rosenberg’s only daughter and her identity as a Jew as well as a Wiccan.
Four for four in the not sucking department. Not bad at all, given that Smallville is only 2 for 4 so far.
All I want to know is, if we had Lightning Lass in Angel last Monday, and Dream Girl in this episode of Buffy, which female Leigonnaire gonna be next?
>>I was making a comment last night during the epsiode and missed what Cassie said to Spike. Can anyone tell me what she said to him? I like the little jerk….<<
Well, Ken, you’ll like this, then. She said….I may not be letter perfect here, but I’m not paraphrasing wildly, either….”She’ll tell you. One day, she’ll tell you.”.
Hooper
On Anya’s soul:
I’m not sure if she has a soul in the traditional sense, but she got *something* during her time as a human. In last week’s episode, she comments to Willow that being a vengeance demon wasn’t all that it used to be. In fact, she wasn’t enjoying her job anymore. Not proof of a soul, for sure, but still an indication that her time as a human introduced her to the concept of guilt. Maybe you can grow a soul back, little by little? Or perhaps it comes and goes, depending on whether you’re ‘human’ or not? Just some ideas.
I thought that the whole “precognition” element was pretty cool in the episode . . . the comments to Spike and Buffy were both well done, and add a nice element of mystery to the season. As a new Buffy convert I thought the episode was good, but I would have liked to have a bit more closure on the whole demon angle . . . could it be that the HOME IMPROVEMENT kid will show up again with some sort of Demon powers from the bite? And personally, the LSH member I’d like to see next is Dawnstar.
D
Ken – If you have any of the peer-to-peer file sharing programs like grokster or kazaa and a fast connection you can download the episode – just type “Buffy Musical” in the search field.
>>>Speaking of Buffy’s killing, what’s with her leaving the demon-bitten, bleeding kid from Home Improvement presumably to die?<<
Eh, he was a whiner, that bite didn’t look life threatening.
The whole discussion about whether or not Anya has a soul reminds me of another story I read a while back. There was a human who gave his soul to a demon in exchange for power. The human became a demon himself and spent centuries bringing misery to other people. He met a heroine who caused him to try and reform his evil ways. He kept having excruciating headches and it turned out that it was his conscience. It was explained to him that it was like exercising a muscle that you haven’t used in a long time. It’s going to hurt at first. Now, if I could only remember where I read that story at. Where! Where was that? 🙂
Fazhoul
Btw, the http://www.cassienewton.com website was actually put up by Mutant Enemy, looking like the shots we saw last night and including multiple poems. Of course, currently Geocities is reporting that it’s offline due to exceeding bandwidth, but probably worth checking out in the next few days.
Did like Willow admitting to writing Doogie fanfic. While I was never that fond of the show (the kid in a professional role part I liked, but pretty much all of his personal life seemed excessive overcompensation for being smart, hanging out solely with folk who were nowhere near his intellect. Which I think 1) is unrealistic as most extremely smart folk I know like to hang with other such and 2) sends the wrong message that being smart automatically makes you not have various social skills), it is the sort of just off-center thing that Willow would’ve liked at that age.
I agree that the HI kid who got bit will return possibly as the villian for a future episode thanks to his demon bite powers.
My question is this – I know summoning demonds is not neccessarily in turn-a-blind-eye-sunnydale, but shouldn’t he get in trouble for the kidnapping and threatening to kill Cassie aspect of his stunt?
It didn’t seem like it.
One of my favorite bits in the whole episode was the short bit where Spike learns to turn his chip to his masochistic advantage, pummeling the kid repeatedly while muttering, “I’m a bad man…” Creepy and funny at the same time–classic BUFFY!
Gak! I never looked at Spike’s pummeling that way Clay, thanks!
Kevin echoed my thoughts, both on the the HI kid becoming “Demon-man, Demon-man, does whatever a demon can…” and the whole issues of police charges, but by the same token, this IS Sunnydale, and the police are basically useless in the town, plus what about the demon corpse?
Of course, my wife agreed when I mentioned that Giles would have kittens if he knew what was going on in school library…
I thought Bufy had one of better episodes this season. it focused more on the human side of things then fighting demons. Yes there was that. I like that fact that Buffy was trying to save Cassie from Dying but in the end she shouldn’t. Its good to see Episodes where characters die of non demon cause i think it more powerful emotionally. As far the whole Anya soul. She was human once a long time ago. Then she became a demon. I don’t think she lost her soul. With evil people they still do evil and a soul. They just don’t listen to conscience they aren’t feeling. They are basically human but also they aren’t cause they don’t have human compassion or feelings.
it was a terrible episode. Buffy waits until the ritual is finished before stepping in to stop. (this is of course done because we need buffy to actually fight a demon this episode. Even if you make the argument that she didn’t know what she was up against, then you have to ask where was Xander, this wasn’t just a fight mission it was a rescue op. Dawn went back to tottally annoying and somehow at the end still managed to make Cassie’s death about her. (btw nice frind who forgets about you at the first sign of a guy showing intrest.) unless they do a season six spiral again i see this as being one of the worst episods of the season
I’m very much in agreement with Keith that what made this episode work was that Buffy got to be the hero, even if she didn’t win. Hadn’t thought about it in those terms before.
But Jason, I’ve got to disagree with you… I thought this was, as PAD said, an OK episode, but nothing to write home about. However, the ending bit with Michelle Trachtenberg (whose name I’ve probably just massacred) was pretty powerful stuff, for me.
It wasn’t that Dawn was making it about her. She was instead trying to convey to Buffy that she had done some good, even if she couldn’t see it.
As for where the rest of the Scoobies were… Buffy does have a tendency to get overconfident about these low-rent menaces. These guys didn’t look all that threatening, and she probably didn’t even think the ritual would work, so she wanted to give them the disappointment of screwing up before she started kicking their heads in.
I liked this episode. It wasn’t until the very moment that Cassie died that I made the Cassie – Cassandra connection, though. On the one hand, you’ve got the Trojan whose vision of the future no one believes, and on the other, you’ve got a girl who is believed, but it doesn’t make any difference. Nice constrast.
Wow, I’m surprised at the amount of negative reactions. I thought it was an excellent standalone episode. It had humor (“Doogie fanfic”), teases (“Some day she’ll tell you”), character development (“Nothing bad must happen to the girl”), and I thought the show gave us good reasons to care about Cassie before she died. Halfway through I leaned over to my friend and said “Either she has to die at the end, which would be depressing, or Buffy will save her, which will be a cheat.” So I didn’t know what would happen. The actual ending did a great job of finding the right tone.
I thought this was an okay episode too and would have been a good episode of another series; it’s just that given that this is Buffy and that it has had so many great episodes in the past, this one just comes up a little short in comparison. What can I say? Joss and the others responsible for the show have spoiled us and have therefore made their job that much harder.
About Anya, I’m really looking forward to next week’s ep. Not only does it look like it will be tons of fun, but I’m convinced that the sword thrust they showed on the preview will break Anya’s amulet and make her human again (probably Buffy’s plan anyway) which would be great. I like Anya best as a human, and she clearly doesn’t have what it takes to remain a demon any longer. I suppose that to be an effective vengeance demon one has to be convinced that humans are scum, not people who are capable of making mistakes and, sometimes, atoning for them. Anya knows this isn’t true anymore, she made one herself when she slept with Spike; and isn’t that basically the same thing that drew her to Cordy in the first place when Willow and Xander were caught making out?
Plus, there’s a rumor that they’ll finally explain her fear of bunnies! Usually I prefer to leave such things to the imagination, but I trust that Joss came up with a doozie for this one.
Raphy
I love Anya, so next episode has me really hanging on, but you know what makes it worse?
I live in the Metro Detroit area and next week’s Buffy is pre-empted until Sunday the 27th because of a Red Wings game ( I love the Wings, but I love BtVS more!)!!!
Have to talk to my sister and bro-in-law and see if their satellite dish gets other UPN stations and have them tape it for me…
Well I have to say this to people who are exasperated that there is too much buffy stuff on this website.
I have been impressed that the comments have been consistently relatively intelligent and interesting, unlike some boards dedicated entirely to Buffy and Angel.
Of course if anyone knows of some boards that prove me wrong feel free to email me.
Well I didn’t like Anya at first, it was Xander who made me like her.
However, it was this episode that made me wonder once again what the principal is up to.
I’m convinced he isn’t just an innocent common man.
Oh and I hope you got to watch BOP last night PAD.
I felt so bad last week when you said your tape was bad.
I couldn’t stand Anya right up until “The Body,” when she melted down in her frustration of trying to comprehend what she was supposed to say and do. That one scene totally turned me around on her.
As for her problem with bunnies…I thought it had already been pretty well explained. From my understanding, Anya believes that bunnies aren’t as cute as everybody supposes. They have those hoppy legs and twitchy little noses. And what’s with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
And don’t get her started on midgets…
PAD
Anya’s Soul or Lack Thereof:
She probably didn’t have one as a Vengeance Demon (though this was never confirmed — I assume Lorne from Angel has a soul of some sort, right? — however, Buffy seems capable of killing Anya next week, which implies that Anya is soulless).
As a human, she had a soul, but for some reason, lacked Angel and Spike’s reaction to it. Perhaps, becoming a human after being a demon is different (Darla, for instance).
Which begs the question, was Anya a human BEFORE she became a Vengeance Demon?
During, I think 4th Season, wasn’t Willow offered a position as a vengeance demon?
Actually, the Anya being stabbed thing is obviously just a tease. Remember the other vengeance demon getting “killed” after granting Dawn’s wish last season? She got back up because vengeance demons are apparently immortal.
Hey Pad, I don
Enterprise…
I’ve been trying REALLY HARD to like this show. I like the cast, great characters, but the stories last season and so far this season, I dunno, they just aren’t holding my interest. I watch more just to see the character development than anything, and my interest there ain’t gonna last much longer if they don’t improve the stories soon.
I do wish Porthos would’ve gained the chameleon abilities the Doc joked about though…
When Angel’s and William’s souls came back to their bodies, were the demons expelled from there vampire bodies or were their demonic, evil by default, natures simply surpressed by the souls and their consciences? If the demons were expelled, were did they go and what did they do? I didn’t get the impression that Angelus had been doing anything between being cursed and coming back to give Angel the boot after his and Buffy’s “moment of pure happiness”. If the demons were simply surpressed by the soul and still resided in the body, is Angel’s and William’s continued thirst for blood a biological need or are the demons’ evil nature directly affecting their souls? And if so, how else are the demons affecting their souls, their desires, and their actions even on a subconscious level?