From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #239 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, December 23 2000 Volume 02 : Number 239 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/Who's in the wrong, here [meredith ] b/comments12/22 ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/tvgbest00 ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 00:26:15 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: b/Who's in the wrong, here Hi! Dawn replied: >What are her mom and Dawn, chopped liver? She's been there for them. True. I guess what I meant was that Buffy has been getting more and more of a God complex all year. She feels like she has to be able to fix EVERYTHING (kind of like what Max was going through in this week's _Roswell_, for those who pay attention to that show too). She doesn't seem to want to accept that while she is the Slayer and as such is special, she's not perfect and can't make everything that's bad Just Go Away. This attitude led to how she treated Riley -- if there was something that she felt needed fixing, regardless of whether she could or should fix it that's what she would concentrate on, at the expense of their relationship. >(I wish Giles had paid more attention.) Y'know, for a Watcher, Giles sure has been missing a lot lately, hasn't he? +==========================================================================+ | 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: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 02:41:16 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments12/22 It's not like I haven't been watching the show, or reading the list (but it's not like I've been finishing my essay, either); it's just that life's been a little crazy. Very interesting discussion re the Buffy/Riley situation; I don't think I'm being =merely= evenhanded when I say that there's some blame on both sides, and at the same time both parties deserve some sympathy. The disagreements here, it seems to me, are more a matter of emphasis, a case of which character one likes better. For example, my daughter Deirdre has been grousing about how much she dislikes Riley for weeks (she prefers Spike), and is glad that Riley is out of the picture. But even she said that some of the things Riley said in his last conversation with Buffy made her feel sorry for him...which kind of annoyed her. (Deirdre really got me with her Christmas card: above the printed message and her handwritten message, she'd written "Tis the season, whatever that means." Which completely cracked me up: That's what Faith--Deirdre's middle-namesake, remember--said when Buffy, dropping by to invite her to Christmas dinner in "Amends," said she liked Faith's little string of lights.) Anyway...what I'd like to present here is a little context in the Buffy/Riley situation. One episode I think we have to remember is "Doomed" (the one that follows directly after the ending of "Hush"), which is where their relationship really began. (Which means, incidentally, that their relationship lasted almost exactly a year, from 4th season episode 11 to 5th season episode 10.) Remember Buffy's emotional situation at that point. She was still dealing with Angel, having a few episodes before visited him in L.A. (for only a few minutes, as she remembers it); she was still smarting from the Parker disaster as well. And now she discovers that the Nice Normal Guy she thought she was getting to know is a covert commando. Not to mention that she's freaked about the earthquake and the possibility of the Hellmouth opening. And it's in =this= situation that Riley decides to press his suit and not take no for an answer; and they have those two rather bitter conversations, one in the graveyard and one in downtown Sunnydale, where Buffy tries to tell him to forget it, and he won't listen. (I still, incidentally, as many times as I've watched the episode, don't understand what exactly softened her resolve and persuaded her to take up with him at the end of the episode.) Is it possible to look at this situation and muse that =maybe Buffy was right from the start=? Maybe this was a doomed relationship? Maybe she wasn't ready for something serious just then? It certainly seems in some ways that Buffy and Riley never really budged very far from the impasse in "Doomed." One thing Riley has gotten dead wrong: Buffy =preferred= him as a normal guy; the military training and the superdrugs were an =impediment= to how she felt about him. There's also the point Faith made to Buffy on the rooftop in L.A. in "Sanctuary," berating her for always needing to be in control. Faith's dead on about that, and there's a real problem then, because as someone (Micole, I think) pointed out, Riley does has an oldfashioned macho streak. If feeling inferior to a Slayer was a problem for him, well, it's a problem he owned. Dawn was right about the difference between Buffy's feelings for Angel and Riley, too: Angel for Buffy was constant angst, and that's the last thing she wanted for herself this time. Again, if that was a problem for Riley, then the relationship was doomed, indeed. It's absolutely true, too, that Buffy has held out on Riley: remember how he =jokingly= said so in "This Year's Girl" when she patently hadn't told him everything about Faith, and how much trouble it caused when it became clear she hadn't told him everything about Angel, either. And there's the Dawn situation, where as I've said before she's making a mistake not telling everyone, and that's still a situation waiting to blow up in her face. And several of us have noted that Buffy =never once= told Riley she loved him despite ample opportunities. Something else to throw in here: remember in Buffy's dream in "Hush" where Riley turned into a Gentleman at the end? Buffy's unconscious was telling her that all was not what it seemed with Riley. Furthermore, I thought at the time how interesting it was that the dream-Riley in "Restless" (rerunning this coming Tuesday) was such an ambivalent figure. Buffy has all along had some unconscious doubts about him. And remember this part of "Restless" (step through it carefully with me): there's a military situation, Riley comes across Buffy all self-absorbed in her Slayerness (with the mud on her face), and he =walks away from her=. Was this just Buffy's anxiety/fear about what =might= happen? Or loosely prophetic of what was =going= to happen? In the way of dreams, it was probably both. A comment about Xander. Although Willow is Buffy's best friend and probably knows her better than anyone, Xander has known her as long and has observed her closely; he doesn't even need to talk to her to know what she's thinking, sometimes. And while Willow is inclined to be sympathetic in nearly every circumstance, Xander has a little more distance (and, I suspect, residual anger from being rejected long ago), and has no compunction about telling her what she needs to hear, whethere she =wants= to hear it or not. And he's almost always right. As he was this past episode. Why didn't he speak up sooner, someone asks? Well, if you're going to critique Buffy you need to screw up your courage, because she can literally kill you; and Xander usually waits until his outrage reaches the boiling point. The other thing I wanted to point out is the way we were set up for Riley's departure: 1. Riley has a health problem; his former troopmate Graham contacts him. We discover that the troop still exists in some capacity. 2. Riley has a situation (hostile extraterrestrial); =he= contacts =Graham=, and the squad comes to deal with it. We discover that the troop is still doing what it had been doing, without the labwork. 3. With those two little pieces of setup, it's not as sudden as it might seem otherwise that they have an op in some other country that needs attention, and Riley is invited along. Simple as 1-2-3. Never saw it coming, either, despite Graham asking him, on that first occasion, the seemingly-rhetorical question of what was keeping Riley in Sunnydale, concluding with "You belong with us." Very neatly done, I thought. I never did comment on the previous episode, either. Most of what I want to say centers on that final scene between Joyce and Buffy. A most intriguing situation, that people with some kind of brain malfunction can "see through" Dawn's "masquerade" (is this related to the fact that Adam was impervious to Jonathan's spell?), and it was really striking that usually-clueless Joyce, in her poor health and confusion, should have put two and two together and =figured out= that Dawn wasn't really her daughter. And good for Buffy not dissembling! The honest answer was what was necessary. It was further remarkable that Joyce should have been so accepting of the situation. A tremendously moving scene, I thought, maybe the best this season (with SMG doing her usual bravura work). Lastly, a meditation on season-patterns. The December episode, in past seasons, has been a kind of standalone (since it usually features a couple rerun weeks either side of it): "Ted" in 2nd season, "Amends" in 3rd season, and "Hush" in 4th season. All vacations from the central storyline ("Amends" being sort-of the first episode of =Angel=). The January episodes, in particular whichever one falls near Buffy's birthday (epsode 12, the writers have decided), tend to be the pivot of the season, where the ground shifts under our feet and everything changes: "Surprise"/"Innocence" in 2nd season, "Helpless" in 3rd season (though "Bad Girls"/"Consequences" was an even bigger turn), and in the 4th season "The I in Team" and "Goodbye Iowa" (so that pivot happened a little late). It seems to me that "Into the Woods," with Riley leaving, is the beginning of the pivot of this season, meaning it's started a little early. (Love the title, by the way: remember Buffy saying early on that "we're out of the woods now"?) The situation with Dawn is very unstable, so in the next couple episodes I expect something to happen with that, and there's always the wildcard of Spike. Stuff to chew on, as usual. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 02:42:50 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/tvgbest00 This year's =TV Guide= "The 10 Best Shows" is out. Digging through my =Buffy= file, I discover that the show finished #10 in 1997 and #4 in 1998; can't find the 1999 list. This year it finished #7; here's the blurb by Matt Roush: "When Dracula came to Sunnydale this year, Buffy was shocked to realize that 'Count Famous has heard of me.' We in the =Buffy= brigade weren't in the least surprised. While =The X-Files= has successfully reinvented itself this season, WB's enchantingly enjoyable =Buffy= is easily TV's top purveyor of dark fantasy. The relationships among the now college-age 'Scooby gang' have deepened, none more than the awkward and tender blossoming of love between the spellbindingly witchy Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and the demure Tara (Amber Benson). And while we're still skeptical of Buffy's new kid sis Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), whose true identity is too bizarre to explain here, we're loving the comically pathetic crush that punk vamp Spike (James Marsters) harbors for the slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar). He stammers like a smitten schoolboy when caught stalking her or sniffing her sweaters. After four seasons, =Buffy='s bold blend of comedy and terror is as confident and compelling as ever." Another fair comment. I think the show has been down a peg the last two years, but still at a very high level; and I think Dawn is (along with the new Spike storyline) the best thing about the show this year; certainly I'm waiting patiently for what they're going to do with her as the season develops. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #239 *****************************