From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #193 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Wednesday, September 27 2000 Volume 02 : Number 193 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/klhdebate ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/season premieres [meredith ] Re: b/season premieres [Todd Huff ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 17:31:21 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/klhdebate "And almost 65% of that was actual compliment. Is that a personal best?" --Xander to Cordelia, "Becoming" I had asked Ken, offlist, to tell me things he =liked= about the 4th season, in keeping with the =New York Review of Science Fiction= dictum we were inculcated with when we were both staff members, that a useful rule of thumb for reviewing/criticism is to talk about the good as well as bad qualities of good works of art. Which he did. More or less. And I'll reply with some similar comments of my own. >>[=Angel=] never recovered from losing Doyle to the actor's drug addiction<< My understanding was that Glenn Quinn's problem was alcohol, not drugs. In the great Doyle Yea or Nay? debate, I find myself thoroughly neutral: a perfectly good character with possibilities, but during his tenure on the show they only showed inklings of how he could develop (less than they did with Kate, who seemed from the beginning like a more interesting foil to Angel). And I actually prefer the chemistry of the team as now constituted, with Doyle's power transferred to Cordelia and Wesley (a =little= Older and Wiser) offering his complementary skills. >>the first eight A***l's were the best sustained series shows of either.<< Let's throw some loose letter grades at the first nine episodes of each show this past season. (Nine to include "Hero," the last Doyle episode, and "Something Blue," one of the strongest =Buffy= episodes, and just before "Hush," a home run which put parity out of reach for =Angel=.) Let me confess right now that this is a sliding scale: A means "one of the best episodes of this show." Without quantifying it, I suspect =Angel= grades are about half a grade lower than =Buffy= grades in an absolute sense. =Buffy= "The Freshman" B "Living Conditions" C "Harsh Light of Day" B "Fear Itself" B "Beer Bad" C "Wild at Heart" A "The Initiative" B "Pangs" C "Something Blue" A =Angel= "City Of" B "Lonely Heart" A "In the Dark" A "I Fall to Pieces" B "Rm w/a Vu" B "Sense & Sensitivity" A "The Bachelor Party" C "I Will Remember You" A "Hero" B (The shakiness of grading like this is illustrated by "Hero," which ends up being a B because it includes A material--Doyle and Cordelia--with C material--the dumb Nazi demon stuff.) Quantitatively, according to this scorecard, =Angel= outpoints =Buffy= 21-17. (Wasn't that the Jets-Bucs score this past Sunday?) So maybe Ken has a point. Still, remember that sliding scale; and note that all the A episodes of =Angel= feature strong "secondary protagonists" (characters from =Buffy= in the crossovers, Kate in the other two). I would argue, however, that neither show had its strongest episodes in this stretch (and that =Buffy= always starts a little slowly, something to keep in mind starting tonight. I mean, even the legendary 2nd season had three fairly weak episodes in its first five, to wit "Some Assembly Required," "Inca Mummy Girl" and "Reptile Boy"). "Hush" and "Restless," and the clever stunt which was "Superstar," all came later on =Buffy=, and =Angel= later had "Somnambulist" (where Kate discovers Angel's nature) and "Eternity" (the actress who wanted to be a vampire; well, =I= liked it) and "Blind Date" (lawyer Lindsey tempted by the "light side"). (Again, the =Angel=s are assisted by strong "secondary protagonists.") >>"Hush." The script was, er, nothing to shout about<< A clear minority opinion. Care to elaborate, Ken? >>The loss of David Greenwalt appears to have hurt the scripting--off the top of my head, the three best were all Wheedonscriven this year--but there seem to have been other problems...JW isn't going to write and direct 22 scripts this year...<< I don't think David Greenwalt moving over to =Angel= was the problem this year. Consider that Greenwalt wrote =exactly two= episodes in the 3rd season: "Faith, Hope and Trick" and "Homecoming." Both top-ranked, but both in the very early going. The 3rd season saw continued strong work by Marti Noxon ("Consequences" especially) and the development of new talent like Douglas Petrie ("Bad Girls"), David Fury ("Helpless"), Dan Vebber ("Lovers Walk"), and Jane Espenson ("Earshot"), who turned in some of the season's best episodes. And all wrote good episodes in the 4th season as well, with newcomer Tracey Forbes turning in =my= choice for third-best episode this year, the hilarious "Something Blue." The third-best Whedon of the 4th season being "Who Are You"? (I don't suspect you meant "The Freshman," his only other script this year, and only OK by his standards.) As I said at the time, I actually think that episode a mite disappointing compared with Petrie's "This Year's Girl." (But more on Faith in a bit.) I think the problem with the writing this year was that Whedon's split attention (and illness/operation) meant he wasn't overseeing =Buffy= as closely as before (something he's admitted to). The fact that "Hush" and "Restless" were =so= superior to the rest of the season, and that he clearly lavished his attention on them, just illustrates this point. >>The first couple episodes with The Initiative. Yes, it became drivel, but it started well...A real human-run organization Trying To Do Good was the logical next step...That it became a derivative, cliched, military-stupid-Buffy-pretty[!!--DGK] at the end didn't mean it had to. Which brings me to: Adam. Yes. again the Very Good Idea... But the best single moment of the year--had the year lived up to even the third season--would have been Adam's "mother" on stabbing [Prof. Walsh].<< I pretty much go along with this analysis. I think they made a big mistake killing off Prof. Walsh so quickly, =just= as they had set up a strong conflict between her and Buffy. Maybe the "Mother" moment would have worked better, say, half a dozen episodes later. During which time Adam did very close to nothing. Prof. Walsh might have done more. >> (As it is, the key scene of the year was "Superstar," where Johnathan [sic] Explains It All.)<< Interesting. Do tell. (The scene at the end of the episode?) >>And "Restless," which offers promise of a new day, or at least Heavy Allegory, for next year.<< Do tell some more. Just what did you think of "Restless"? I'll even give you a comment hook. If any of you Freudians out there wonder what we Jungians mean by "numinous," I'll posit the desert confrontation between Buffy and the 1st Slayer as Exhibit A. (And Buffy's encounter with the girl chanting about the Gentlemen in her dream in "Hush" is Exhibit B. Both feature Buffy confronted with a shadow-self, as I've said at length elsewhere.) >>Elisha [sic] Dushku showed, not for the first time, what happens when you turn an actress who has some energy loose.<< No argument there; I'm surely repeating myself by saying the "Faith Tetralogy" was a high point of the combined =Buffy=/=Angel= seasons. >>If I didn't know better (come to think of it, I don't), I'd suggest that the fix is in and Fox is deliberately trying to weaken the property enough to move it to their network next year, with Michelle Trachtenberg as the Slayer.<< A Fox-worthy conspiracy theory! There's =something= to this, perhaps, in light of this statement of Joss Whedon's quoted in the 9/29 issue of =Entertainment Weekly=: "I want to see Buffy relive that adolescent journey through a different person [i.e. Dawn]." One can imagine Dawn being "put through paces" leading to her being a future spin-off protagonist (though maybe not a Slayer--we'll see, though). But I think before that it's more likely (see your previous comment) that the next spin-off will be Faith. A character we already know has great possibilities. (And if so, we'll see the "Faith Tetralogy" in retrospect as a dry run for said series, just as "Amends" was a dry run for =Angel=.) >>...this was the season the writers decided they are tired of SMG...who decided they didn't have to do anything with Buffy this year...? Xander and Giles were, maybe, excusable--the former got a girl friend and the latter got to sing...But Buffy did nothing this season except get angry and whine...maybe the writers will actually give SMG something to do this year, and she'll do it. Probably not the way to bet, but certainly the way to hope.<< There is a lot I could say about this, a very large issue. But I've run out of time for today. A couple quick points: 1) Buffy has always been a whiner 2) there were some strong moments for SMG this year 3) all the main characters except Willow were in a holding pattern this year (which is an excuse, not a justification). I want to think about this some more. (Ken, I hope you'll accept my apology for the "cutup technique" I used turning your comments into bite-sized pieces.) I'll talk to you all again tomorrow; I'm working a 12-hour shift starting this evening and won't get to see the season premieres until the morning. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 22:16:10 -0400 From: meredith Subject: b/season premieres Hi! This goes without saying, but SPOILER WARNING!!! So they handled Dracula pretty well, I thought. I really didn't know what to expect until I read the 4-star review in USA Today this morning. The review gave away a bit more than I really needed to know beforehand, but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the episode at all. "Restless" reference count is 2, unless I missed something: Dracula calling Buffy "killer", and of course the whole "you have no idea..." declamation. When Buffy dusted Dracula at the end, Rob chimed in from the other end of the couch, "Well, *that* was too easy." So we both laughed really hard at what happened after that. "I'm standing right here!" Cool things: - -- Seeing Emma Caulfield's name in the opening credits. Yay, Anya! :) - -- Buffy discovering her "true nature", and it's not of the vampire, it's of the Slayer, but there's still darkness there. I think this bit lends credence to the theory we discussed earlier this summer that at the core of Slayerhood may lie something demonic. This should be interesting to watch as it unfolds. - -- "What are you doing here?": interesting foreshadowing comment, or All My Children in-joke? :) Questions raised: - -- Is Dracula responsible for Dawn? - -- For that matter, is Dawn responsible for Dracula? - -- What the hell was up with Willow's makeup?! Did she get a trowel for her birthday?? Anyone else think Buffy had a huge Emma Peel thing going this week? The costume department must've gotten a deal on vinyl pants her size. I also detected a difference in the fight choreography this week. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was, but there was *something* lacking as compared to previous seasons. Anybody know who took over the job this year? So far they've set up a few good things for this year, as I see it: 1.) Dracula *will* be back. 2.) Buffy will be exploring just what it means to be the Slayer (I'm guessing she's the Slayer who has managed to survive the longest, and thus is the first to get to this stage) 3.) Giles is going to Get A Life 4.) Xander is going to Get A Life ... and of course there's the whole Dawn thing. All in all, a solid premiere. Is it next Tuesday yet? :) Oh yeah, and I actually enjoyed _Angel_. The karaoke bit was actually pretty funny, and made sense within the context without being a stupid gimmick. (I *loved* the emcee! Boy George with horns. ) What made the hour for me, though, was the scene with Faith at the end. Either I slept through the opening credits or they didn't mention Eliza Dushku's name in the list of guest stars, because it was 100% a surprise. Very, very cool. I hope we get to see a lot of her this year. Of course, now I'm kind of hoping _Dark Angel_ sucks as advertised, because I hate conflicts like this!! +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 20:09:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: b/season premieres Well, I haven't watched Angel yet, but I hope it's not mere absence that makes me want to give Buffy an "A" this week. Some of the funniest lines ever, and they did do a good job handling Dracula. Was I the only person who wanted Riley to say "no, it's too perilous" when he rescued Giles? If there are new viewers this season, this was a good one to start off with. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #193 *****************************