A mixed bag in last night’s episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (as opposed to the 100% rock solid kick-ášš “Smallville.” Holy COW was that a hëll of a show.)
New slayers have been showing up through the expedient of walking in the front door, so spending a whole episode searching for one seemed to stretch things out. Also, the First’s stronghold seems to be in Sunnydale because of the Hellmouth: He’s capping slayers worldwide and he only just now notices there’s one in his backyard?
I had very little problem when the notion of who and how slayers get called was nebulous backstory. Now that it’s become front and center what the show is about, the mechanics of it (or lack thereof) are starting to piss me off.
And…wait. If Buffy dies, a slayer is called? Since when? Buffy’s death activated Kendra, Kendra’s activated Faith. At this point, Buffy’s death shouldn’t be able to activate a toaster oven because the line of succession runs through Faith. If that’s not the case, we’ve got a big honkin’ question: What happened to the Slayer who must/should have been activated when Buffy died fighting Glory? There should be at least one more Slayer wandering around out there. Now who knows, maybe that’s a plot point they’ll get to. But if *I’m* asking these questions, why the hëll aren’t Buffy and pals?
The scene kicking off Act II with the “discovery” of Dawn’s status was just absolutely endless. Would that they’d trimmed it by two minutes so we could see the Wannaslays going head to head with the vamp in the crypt. A major test for them and we see them chatting about it afterward? Whatever happened to the fundamental writing precept of “show, don’t tell.”
Still, the episode was largely worth it for that final scene with Dawn and Xander. I kept waiting for him to refer to himself as “the Zeppo.” Still, whereas last season’s Dawn pity-party seemed unfounded (your sister’s back from the grave! Be happy and shut up!), this season’s similar go-around comes across as far more justified, especially since Buffy promised she was going to be working more with Dawn and suddenly is treating her like out-of-fashion shoes.
And we didn’t have to spend an episode trying to catch Giles touching something.
Now “Smallville” on the other hand–if you’re not watching the following hour on the WB, you are screwing yourself. The show’s firing on all cylinders, and last night’s episode brought a lot of simmering plot lines to a full boil. Everything from Jonathan Kent’s frustration with his wife (I’m sorry, but he had a point; you just don’t blow off your anniversary celebration to work on a Sunday) to Clark’s slo-mo vault from the Daily Planet rooftop (and the guest appearance of comic book’s Maggie Sawyer) just worked as you sensed you were watching something truly mythic unfolding.
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