Year: 2003

Really enjoying where “Angel” is going this season. Cordelia’s “get over it” speech was marvelous. No apologies. No explanations. It happened, get over it. For some reason, I could see Cordy setting up a Lucy Van Pelt-like psychiatric help booth and start dealing with everyone in the Buffy&Angel verse in the exact same manner. Come to think of it, that’s how she dealt with Buffy during her funk early in season 3. Remember? Something like, “Whatever’s bothering you, deal with it, spank your inner moppet, whatever. Get over it. Before you don’t even have the lame friends you have right now.”

Wesley is guardedly back, and if Gunn doesn’t cut the ‘tude, he’s going to drive Fred right to Wes, which would be interesting. Seeing Conner knocked out a window was nice. I’m still hoping that they can have him guest star on “Buffy” so she could knock him out a window (and Xander could fix it, of course.) And the slow reveal of the involvement of Angelus was pretty cool. Just, please God, don’t force Boreanaz to do an Irish accent again. Please.

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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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Wouldn’t it be interesting if Adam Strange were transported to Chicago because he’d been struck by a Catherine Zeta-Beam?

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This Sunday was Caroline’s christening. Being of different religions, Kath and I discussed way at the beginning of our relationship what would happen if we had a child. I’ve already had the pleasure of raising three children in my faith; it didn’t seem fair to deprive Kath of the opportunity to do the same for hers. So with the arrival of Caroline, a christening was required. Her parents and sister came up from Atlanta, my folks came up from Pennsylvania, and we went for the ceremony to the nearby church where Kath attends mass every Sunday.

I admit I was very concerned about the procedure at first. It seemed as if it would be painful, even dangerous for the baby. A huge potential for head trauma. But then I was informed that christening an infant is a completely different procedure from christening an ocean liner. I was much relieved.

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If you have to change airplanes when returning to the United States from a foreign country, go through *any* airport but George Bush Airport. Because the intelligence level of the personnel is of such quality that making jokes in relation to the Airport name is criminally easy.

Shana and Gwen returned from their trip to Cancun and had to make their connection at GBA. They had an hour to make the connecting flight, but since Texas was their port of entry into the US, they had to clear customs.

So they went to the first customs guy. He asked them, among other things, if they had liquor with them. Shana, having no desire to lie, said, “Yes, two bottles.” Which she did. Nothing illegal about it.

But this apparently bewildered the customs guy, so he sent her to a second customs guy, who asked her the exact same questions. With time ticking away, she gave the same answers. He stared at her and said, “You have to be 21 to bring liquor into the US.”

“I am 21,” she said.

“I need to see your ID.”

She gave him her passport.

He stared at it. Stared some more. Stared some more. Looked up at her. Looked back down. Stared some more. More time ticked away. Finally:

“Who’s ‘David?'” he said suspiciously.

“That’s me! That’s my last name!” she said to someone who worked in international arrivals in an airport but was incapable of deciphering a United States passport.

More suspicious looks. “I need to see your Texas state ID,” he told her.

“I don’t have one.”

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because I don’t live in Texas,” Shana said, watching her connection slip away and trying to keep her cool. “I live in Boston.”

He paused, considering that. Then he shook his head. “I need to see your Texas state ID.”

Shana snapped. “I DON’T LIVE IN TEXAS! I LIVE IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS! I CAN SHOW YOU A BOSTON STUDENT ID, OKAY?!”

She yanked out her Boston student ID, presenting it to an official for whom a US government passport wasn’t sufficient. He stared at it, gave it back, waved her and Gwen through…without ever having looked in the bag to see the alcohol.

Shana and Gwen then sprinted to the desk where they now had to recheck their luggage for the connection. They got to the desk. The woman behind the counter said, “Where are you going?”

“Boston,” they gasped, having dashed across the airport, having lost nearly half an hour to customs.

“Have you rechecked your bags?” asked the woman.

They stared at her. “No. That’s why we’re HERE.”

“Well, you’re never going to make your flight if you’re standing here,” said the woman.

At which point Shana nearly reached over the counter and beat the woman senseless, except she realized that apparently no one she’d encountered at George Bush airport had a lick of sense anyway. The woman then took the bag and threw it onto the carousel as if she were tremendously put upon and being made to do something far beneath her, rather than her job.

Despite the best efforts of George Bush Airport personnel, they made their flight with all of ten minutes to spare.

Oh…and Comedy Central never did film any kind of promo thing with them. What a waste of an opportunity. Heck, filming them trying to get back into the US alone would have been worth a half hour of laughs.

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Both “Angel” and “Buffy” are looking mightily apocalyptic this season. And considering the average apocalypse historically takes an episode, two at most to handle (and indeed became so SOP that it was reduced to a mere “B” plot in the hilarious BTVS episode “The Zeppo”), we’re obviously talking some major league world destruction.

The two series are going about it from very different approaches, however. Buffy has essentially become Slayerfest 2003, “Private Benjamin” meets “The Untouchables” with stakes as Buffy channels Sean Connery to whip her troops into shape (“I don’t know but it’s been said, Rupert Giles might be dead! Sound off, one two!”). Meanwhile Angel, who these days is just as likely to hang up on the helpless as help them (when was the last time they actually *did* that, and no, helping Conner doesn’t count) has become darker, more foreboding and, frankly, more compelling.

The recent episode was no exception. The only problem I had with it is that it came across like house cleaning. Let’s face it: Wolfram and Hart never went anywhere. They had senior partners, the exact nature of which we never really knew. They had a doomsday plan, the specifics of which we never learned. They had some connection to Pylea (or however you spell that dimension), the details of which were never pursued. And now, this week, they’re all dead. It came across (to me at least) like the producers saying, “You know what? Screw it. They’ve been around for three seasons, we don’t know what to do with them anymore, they’re more annoying than menacing, and they’ve said repeatedly they can’t kill Angel because he’s ‘important,’ so there’s only so much menace they can provide. Let’s just annihilate them and move on.” Which, barring a surprising plot development, is what they did.

As for Cordelia bøffìņg Conner…I dunno. I could see out-of-character behavior for someone who’s never endured end-of-the-world scenarios before. But Cordelia’s an old hand at this. It was–how shall we put it–questionable. Except I hear scuttlebutt that Charisma Carpenter’s pregnant. If that’s true, this might be how they cover it. She was sent back by the Powers That Be to have it off with Conner and produce yet another baby to be yanked off to another dimension. Either that or send her out on missions carrying a laundry basket in front of her.

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In answer to repeated questions:

Yes. It’s true. I’ve been approached by Dreamwave about doing a new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” series tying in with the new animated TV show. And I said I would do it because, frankly, my kids wouldn’t have it any other way. My three elder daughters are huge TMNT fans (Caroline hasn’t weighed in with an opinion) and made it clear there would be dire–DIRE–consequences if I passed up the opportunity.

Further details will be forthcoming as soon as Dreamwave irons out the final kinks with the Turtles folks.

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