Y’know…maybe BtVS might work better as a half hour program.
Once again Jane Espenson helps deliver a witty, character driven episode. But with one episode to go, wouldn’t this be a good time to be plot driven?
The episode starts off with a bang (which is how the previous one ended.) Then we have fifteen minutes of excitement.
Followed by a half hour of very well written character scenes that do nothing to move the plot forward, rolling us into a puzzling five minute sequence with a druid woman who appears to serve the same purpose as the Knights of Expositionium from season 5 (come out of nowhere, deliver exposition, and die), and a climactic final act in which Buffy seems to have tons more trouble with one guy than she did with three uber-Vamps forty minutes earlier. I don’t care how amped Caleb was. Either she’s lethal with this thing or she’s not. Either the uber-Vamps are super-dangerous or they’re not. SOMEbody make up their minds.
Was there fun to be had? Sure. Lots. The classic Whedon-esque twists that Espenson has mastered, from Caleb’s “Oh darn” to Dawn’s literal short-circuiting of Buffy’s syrupy farewell plan. Wheelchair fights. Anya’s off-hand pronouncements of doom while her patient keeps saying “WHAT?!”
Plus, I keep waiting for Xander to solve the problem by calling in SHIELD. Or possibly Brenda Starr.
But. No. Urgency.
Look no further than the TV series that follows on another channel. You know the one I mean. “Smallville” is building with a head of steam that’s…well…more powerful than a locomotive. I’m interested to see what happens in next week’s “BtVS.” I can’t WAIT to see what happens in next week’s “Smallville.” And that, kiddies, is the mark of top flight pacing, and that’s what’s been lacking for weeks now. There’s only so much that can be chalked up to UPN’s abominable scheduling. We are exactly one week away from the end, and we STILL DON’T KNOW FOR SURE WHAT THE FIRST EVIL WANTS. To unleash a horde of ubervamps? WHY NOW? The schemes of every other Big Bad in Buffy history has moved on some sort of schedule. Granted, sometimes it was an arbitrary schedule (Glory had a “narrow window” to bleed Dawn. Why? Dunno.) but at least there was something.
Bottom line, by this point there’s always been a ticking clock. Something bringing matters to a head that gives us a real sense of everything coming together. They’ve done it before on BtVS (sometimes it even outspeeds the villains themselves. Remember, the mayor never got to read his whole section on civic pride.) They did it on “Angel.” They’re doing in now on “Smallville.”
And BtVS just kind of meanders to its conclusion.
Good character stuff. Decent in and of itself, and it wouldn’t have bothered me if this episode had aired, I dunno…five weeks ago. As the penultimate episode? Nope.
PAD
• 
I’m sad to see Buffy go too, but considering most of seasons 6 and 7, it’s more like the mercy killing put-down of old yeller at the end of that movie. It has to die before it gets any worse….
*THIS MESSAGE IS FOR RON*
You are, beyond any shadow of doubt… a GENIUS!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Giles. What you state makes PERFECT SENSE.
And, if it turns out to be true– I don’t feel it is a “spoiler” for the finale.
I actually hope you are right. It is very comforting going into the finale– at least hoping that Giles has been controlled for the whole season.
That would, like others have said, explain everything.
Thanks again Ron! It’s insight like yours that make me read this board.
***I hope Ron is right about Giles too. It would help take away alot of what was bad about this season–the only bad season in my opinion! I loved Buffy and looked forward to it every week, but this entire season sucked big time! Take away this season and I wish it could go on and on….but as it stands now, its just time for it to go. Bye Scoobies–I loved you all!!!
To answer Pack’s question about Caleb and the priest garb, based on what Caleb has said, he’s either a fallen priest who turned to worshiping the First, or he’s a serial killer who found disguising himself as a priest made things easier for him. Or both.
My personal theory is he was a priest, but he began to question his faith and, possibly due to a particular incident, came to see humanity (and women in particular) as a corrupt, flawed species that need to be destroyed. It’s entirely possible that the First saw his potential and helped manipulate him to this decision (though it looks like his behavior is what attracted the First to him, based on some of their dialogue.) He continues to dress as a priest both to mock what he now sees as empty, and because it makes it easier for him to kill all those “dirty girls”.
Everyone keeps talking about the good episodes of Buffy from the first half of the season…but I can barely remember anything about them. I remember Willow in England and her coming home and being invisible and all, but after that all I remember is one looonnnng run of the First appearing to people to tease them or whatever, Buffy giving “pep” talks, lots and lots of nothing happening, and now Faith and Caleb. I know I am getting older, but I can remember specific scenes and dialog from just about every other episode, but not this season.
As for Smallville, yes the love triangle is very tiresome for me as well, but I’m a grumpy old man (I’m 39). I do however recall the four years of hëll I endured called “high school,” and it was a lot like that. I pined away for a girl, we would get close, we would break-up, yadda, yadda, yadda. So I give the show a little slack in addressing the concerns of some of their less grumpy and old viewers.
Oh, and I think that maybe there was more than one survivor of Krypton. After all, the Native American (what is the name of the tribe?) cave paintings are hundreds of years old…maybe it took Kal-El a little longer to get to earth? Maybe another arrived first, lived, had children, whose descendent might become one of the most powerful men in the world…? I’m just spit-ballin’ here.
Pack,
As I recall, the reason that Caleb wears the outfit of a priest is that he used to be a priest before he was seduced by the First Evil, and as Caleb mentioned, he “liked the outfit” so he kept it. It can be very useful (from the bad guys’ perspective) to have a wolf in sheep’s clothing… or, combining metaphors a bit, a wolf in shepherd’s clothing.
davidh
I think that Joss is being very deliberate in his choice to have Caleb be a priest. Caleb’s whole thing seems more related to a hatred of women than to an actual desire to be evil itself. The First helps him with that, he helps it with its plans.
Christianity is rife with misogyny, and Joss (having been a feminist studies student, and creating Buffy explicitly as a symbol of female empowerment) is commenting on that. “Dirty Girls” was the title of the ep he debuted in, and that says it all. To Caleb, women are disgusting temptresses, unclean, sources of corruption. I live in the South: I’ve known quite a few down-home Baptists to be just a few knives (and a strong patron) shy of Caleb.
Joss has also made it plain he’s a flat out atheist with an innate mistrust of organized religon. If you go back over the whole series and look for it, you can see that every time a sign of conventional religion appears, it is subverted, and is often a source of badness.
Naturally, this tendency and the fact that he’s thrown in a few anti-Bush jokes here and there, not to mention the anti-family and utterly Satanic nature of the show, prove Joss to be about as unpatriotic and un-Amurican as a guy can get.
Bless him. We need more like ‘im.
Several topics to respond to:
PAD wrote: The sad thing is, the series started off *so strong* this season. The first half seemed to motor forward.
I sorta agree and sorta disagree. It motored forward but in a direction totally different than how things ended up. The focus early on was Spike going nuts, the rebuilding of the school, Buffy’s new job and the mystery of Wood (not adolesence). All that is 180 degrees from where were at now.
I firmly still believe that this is what happened: At the begin of the season, Joss intructed the writing team to introduce certain plot elements (such as the First or the Spike-killed-Wood’s-Mom thing) but to keep things kind of vague. Don’t commit to anything earth-shattering since season 8 was still a possibility.
Then SMG decided to hang up the stake and THAT’S when they pulled the trigger on this current storyline. Which explains why first 1/2 of season 7 didn’t quite match up to second 1/2. They’re furiously trying to wrap things up but only had a little more than 10 eps to do it.
On why we hate Kennedy
I think its mostly the actress. She has what is sometimes called “negative charisma.” As somebody else pointed out, her character is actually a lot like Cordelia circa BTVS Season 1-2. Except I liked Cordy, or rather, I disliked her because her character was a jerk…Kennedy is supposed to be LIKABLE (I’m guessing, since she’s our favorite redhead’s girlfriend) and yet I dislike her every word and action. I suppose that has to do with the way the actress reads and acts so I blame her.
ANGEL vs ENTERPRISE
Does anybody still watch ENTERPRISE? I am as big a Star Trek geek as anybody (I even went to see the last movie and buy all the DS9 dvd’s) but I just can’t watch ENTERPRISE. It’s so horrible. The storylines are all typical recycled STAR TREK-y stuff we’ve seen 1,000 times already and nothing EVER HAPPENS! I stuck with it season 1 and never felt like it was moving forward. Bakula is so bland and colorless as Captain..and the babe-Vulcan is the most ridiculous bit of casting since I heard Wolvie from X2 wanted to do a musical? I mean, who knew Vulcan not only was the galaxial home of science and philosophy..but of silicon implants as well. I’m likely to get boo-hissed saying this but I actually found the Rodenberry series ANDROMEDA to be far superior.
SMALLVILLE
First, to those who don’t like the Lana-Chloe-Clark triangle (or as my buddy calls it, “The DAWSON’S CREEK stuff”), I admit it gets tiresome but it does/did have a point. I think Chloe is destined to be an enemy of Clark’s and her jealousy over Clark choosing Lana is what pushes her over the edge. So there is a reason for it.
I do agree that now that I’ve seen Chris Reeve, heard the John Williams music and heard Zod’s voice, that when they do one of these X-files villain-of-the-week eps like last week’s little clone girl, I just can’t get excited. I want to hear about Krypton, about Kal-el, or see Lex turn more evil!
Regarding the pacing, they should be fine if they stick to the origianl plan I heard which is 7 years and then Tom Welling is Superman on the big screen. You gotta figure they can milk the Lex-Clark friendship until season 4 (which would be when Clark graduates) and then have them antagonistic for 2 or 3 while Clark is at Smallville University.
On Kristy Swanson reappearing as Buffy
That was a funny post. But I’ve actually been waiting years for that Luke Perry cameo. I mean, how big of a surprise would of it been to hear “hey you” *POW* Bad guy goes flying..Buffy looks up and says “Pike?” and Luke’s standing there. Hey, it’s still the best movie role he ever had.
Final ANGEL thought
I was watching some old BTVS dvd’s, I saw the ep with the ROSWELL kid about kids who wanted to be vampires (“LIE TO ME”-ep’s title)–I’m pretty sure it was season 1 or very early season 2.
Anyway, I couldn’t believe what they did to Boreanaz’s face. In the first half of the ep, he had thick white makeup on and lipstick. It looked really freaky and ridiculous. Later he lost the whiteface but still had the lipstick. He lost that next ep. I guess they were going for a “Living Corpse” ala INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE-look but dámņ, I’m glad they abandoned that idea because it was really dumb-looking.
Best-Chris
Why pull apart every single nuance of a show? Surely over analizing it would diminish any enjoyment of something? But then why log onto a website to read someones views on a show, can’t we just be happy that we enjoyed or hated something, why look for validation of our own views from a total stranger? Humans are weird.
I’m the one who originally wrote “I can’t wait until you’re all complaining about ‘Smallville’ the way you do about ‘Buffy.’ If thy show offends thee, turn it off.”
I guess I forgot to sign my name; I suppose I was tired and I wanted to go home.
I don’t think it’s “validation;” it’s fun to look to fellow “fans” for clever insights and speculation. It’s disappointing to see the same complaints week after week.
“Rest assured, I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world. Worst episode ever.”
“What right do you have to complain? They’ve given you hours of free entertainment. If anything, you should be paying them.”
“Worst episode ever.”
Or words to that effect.
I’m pretty sure I’ll get what I’m looking for when “Spectrum” comes out later this summer with its Buffy Season 7 issue, but I don’t want to have to wait!
It doesn’t mean anything to say that “Smallville” hasn’t tailed off in quality; it’s only in its second season. That’s when a show usually starts to reach its peak (“Anasazi,” anyone?). They’re coming up with ideas and, confident of renewal, free to spend as much time as they want getting to them. I haven’t watched “Smallville,” but from some descriptions above, it sounds a little “X-Files”-ish; mythology alternating with monster-of-the-week. I wonder if people will put up with that now for as long a time as we did with “X-Files.”
When the excitement inevitably dies, people get out their knives. Remember Nancy Kerrigan? She finished in second place — with a wounded knee — so she became an absolute failure, worthy of ridicule.
Incidentally, “Twin Peaks” had about five months to rework its ending, but stayed with the cliffhanger. I doubt they’re doing much monkeying with “Buffy,” but who knows?
Why pull apart every single nuance of a show? Surely over analizing it would diminish any enjoyment of something? …can’t we just be happy that we enjoyed or hated something, why look for validation of our own views from a total stranger?
Good art — visual, written, film, or other media — can not only stand up to scrutiny, but is enriched by in-depth analysis.
Two examples that first come to mind are Shakespeare and Sandman, which I enjoy even more (and find them even more impressive) since I supplemented my personal readings with outside knowledge and annotations.
Even in this forum, the fact that other posters read “Fray” and shared relevant info from that series has helped shine a light on aspects I otherwise would’ve missed.
I’m not looking to this forum for validation, but it’s nice to be able to move beyond the instinctive gut-level like or dislike and try to understand why one feels as one does.
Sorry, Tim, “My Fill-in-the-Blank, love it or leave it!” is no more valid a defense of TV shows than it is countries.
And by the way, I knew Kerrigan was a self-involved arrogant brat long before she came in second…
Pack,
Er, what?
I seem to be the only Tim in this discussion thus far, and it wasn’t me who referenced Nancy Kerrigan.
That said, I’ll address what you say anyway, because I happen to think you’re wrong.
It makes far more rational sense to say “My TV show, love it [watch it] or leave it [turn it off]” than it does to say “My country, love it [agree unquestioningly with our leaders] or leave it [give up your life here and move to another country].”
If a show really bugs you, that’s good reason not to watch it. Political disagreement — particularly in a country founded on the right to such — is in no way a good reason to leave the country.
Not yet, anyway. W is working on, it though.
Myself, I wouldn’t say either, though if someone is particularly bìŧçhÿ about a TV show, I might wonder why they’re wasting their time watching it or addressing it at all. If someone’s complaining about politics, that means they’re at least paying some attention, which apparently puts them above, what, 65% this week of the moronic sheep making up our national voting populace. (And the “My country, wrong or right” folks are almost universally the kind of folks who slaver after Gov. W’s every photo op and got pìššëd at the Dixie Chicks”).
Now, in the Buffyverse, they’ve always played fast and loose with religion. Crosses repel vampires but there’s no indication that there has to be any belief behind the symbol. (Who remembers when Giles used a cross to rescue Cordelia from vamps Xander and Willow in the “Wish” episode. And the cross worked on Willow because…?)
I think it’s the faith of the one wielding the religious icon that matters, not the vampire. I don’t know if it’s ever been addressed in Buffy, but Chris Claremont illustrated this in his X-Men stories 20+ years ago whne they faced off against Dracula. A cross formed by the faithless Wolverine with his claws did nothing to repel Dracula, but one formed by the deeply religious Nightcrawler did. Dracula also got burned when he grabbed Kitty’s neck and accidentally touched the Star of David on her necklace.
I’d always reasoned thusly about crosses and vampires: The cross is symbolic of life after death through God, which according to Christianity is the only way to survive past death. Vampires, however, have found a way (through Satan or evil or, in the Buffyverse, demons) to live past death without God. So whenever vampires touch crucifixes, the two powers collide, so to speak, and God’s power wins out and burns the vamp.
According to that logic, I’m not sure if the Star of David or other religious symbol would work in the same way, because they don’t necessarily symbolize life after death. Perhaps they could harm different sorts of demons, depending on what those demons represent.
It doesn’t seem like Buffy herself is particularly religious, but holy objects like crosses and holy water generally have to be prepared by churches, so their power is probably innate. (Unlike, say, “‘Salem’s Lot”.)
I had always thought it would’ve been interesting to see an episode where a vampire hunter who is firmly religious comes to Sunnydale and meets Buffy, who carts sacred objects around in the same bag as her crossbows. It wouldn’t necessarily end in a huge argument, but having the two different viewpoints bounce off each other would be interesting. (“So… you’re teaming up with a vampire, a demon, AND a lesbian witch, to combat evil? That’s an, um, interesting tactic…”)
(Actually, Buffy’s knack of teaming up with baddies could be compared with Jesus staying with the taxmen and the lepers, since they’re the ones that need to be saved…)
(Ever get the feeling you’re thinking too much about something? 😉 I’ll stop now…)
The more i start analysing the last couple of episodes the more i get the feeling that the plot is more complex and thought through then we give the writers credit for.
lets go back to the cellar incident. one thing that bugged me is why did Caleb kill the two SIT
If anyone is still reading down this far, be aware that the official novelization of the entire season 7 storyline, including the as yet unaired finale, is in stores now! Check your local WALDENBOOKS this weekend if you really can’t wait!
What was REALLY stupid was the fact that Faith and the SIT’s managed to survive a *CRATE* _FULL_ OF *C4* exploding at 10 FEET AWAY!!!
I mean come on! Those explosives should have vaporized the whole freaking area, but instead go off like a couple sticks of dynamite.
There won’t be another slayer for Sunnydale after next week, because there won’t BE a Sunnydale after next week.
What was with that sexual tension between Andrew and Anya? Andrew is supposed to be gay (or so he’s been portrayed until now.)
There’s probably nobody reading this thread anymore, but in an interview in today’s Salon, Whedon says about Caleb: “I want to come down against the patriarchy and there was simply no more potent image. At the same time, I’m not coming down against priests. This guy clearly is not one. He’s very bad at it.”
There’s probably nobody reading this thread anymore, but in an interview in today’s Salon, Whedon says about Caleb: “I want to come down against the patriarchy and there was simply no more potent image. At the same time, I’m not coming down against priests. This guy clearly is not one. He’s very bad at it.”
There’s probably nobody reading this thread anymore, but in an interview in today’s Salon, Whedon says about Caleb: “I want to come down against the patriarchy and there was simply no more potent image. At the same time, I’m not coming down against priests. This guy clearly is not one. He’s very bad at it.”
There’s probably nobody reading this thread anymore, but in an interview in today’s Salon, Whedon says about Caleb: “I want to come down against the patriarchy and there was simply no more potent image. At the same time, I’m not coming down against priests. This guy clearly is not one. He’s very bad at it.”
I’m reading it, for what that’s worth. Also, there’s an interview with Joss in the NY Times in which he admits he thought Dawn got short shrift this season. I agree.
PAD
I always thought it would have been cool if Xander had been the next coming of Christ; he is a carpenter after all 🙂 Maybe for a reunion episode.