From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V3 #2 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, January 4 2001 Volume 03 : Number 002 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/comments01/03 ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments01/03 [allenw ] Re: b/comments01/03 [Dori ] Re: b/comments01/03 [Dawn Friedman ] RE: b/comments01/03 ["Karin Rabe" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 12:04:42 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments01/03 Strange situation next week. Last night was reruns, of course, and next week is a new =Buffy=...but =Angel= is a rerun again (the telekinetic woman). I don't know what's up; maybe some kind of production glitch and they didn't have a new episode ready? On some website I discovered that there will be a new =Buffy= on 1/16 as well; this will be the twelfth episode of the season, which the staff has designated the "Buffy birthday episode," so things might well get turned up a notch. Things I speculate will have to happen, if not then, then soon: 1) Dawn's powers will manifest. Well, actually, she doesn't so much =have= powers as she =is= a Power. Her secret can't stay secret much longer, I'm guessing. 2) Glory is due to make another move. She's been quiet too long since her snake-demon failed to return. 3) Ben the Intern will have more role to play. I don't think I've mentioned here how surprised I was that he turned out to be part of the problem, not necessarily evil but not an innocent bystander either. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. I was vastly amused last night to note that during the 9-10 PM hour, assuming one was not watching the college football game, one could have tuned into =Angel=, =Dark Angel=, or a TV movie called =Chamelon III: Dark Angel=, starring Bobbie Phillips (who once played an entomologist on =X-Files=) as a "quasi-human government agent 'enhanced' with animal genes" in a post-disaster future. Trope Proliferation Alert! Thanks to Micole for pointing me to the following URL: www.fandom.com/Buffy/Editorial.asp?action=page&obj_id=252896 (What =is= it with these newfangled URLs?) Anyway, it's a 9K press release I won't reproduce in toto, but here's the gist, with some interesting additions: "A BUFFY book has been accepted for publication by IB Tauris of London. Edited by Roz Kaveney and Lisa Brown, the essays in the collection have been commissioned and are due by June... "`Reading the Slayer`...will aim itself at both an academic cultural studies audience and at the more thoughtful sort of fan such as ... [those] who are interested in why Cordelia and Faith are both Nietzcheans or in subjecting the extended dream sequences to close and psychoanalytic readings... "Chapters already discussed with potential contributors include: "...The status of various characters as shadow doubles of aspects of other characters - Cordelia is what Buffy used to be like before she discovered that she was the slayer; the slayer turned villain Faith is Buffy without friends and control. In particular, this essay will look at the episode where Faith and Buffy swap bodies in the light of feminist object-relations theory (rather than psycho- analysis). In the context of recent horror criticism, the swap emphasizes moral displacement over gender identification." I'm not sure what "feminist object-relations theory" is, but I fear it has something to do with Lacan... Anyway, this should be a good book, too. Roz Kaveney is a respected English sf/fantasy critic who played a major role in John Clute's =Encyclopedia of Fantasy=. Just from the release it sounds like the book will explore some interesting angles. So there are now at least =three= books of essays in production, the other two being =Fighting the Forces= which accepted my essay and =Red Noise=, edited by Lisa Parks and Elana Levine, forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press. I was lending some =Buffy= tapes to a friend, and the NFL playoff game was boring this weekend, so I watched "Passion" again for the first time in a long time. I'll still maintain that, through the end of the third season anyway, it's the best episode (despite strong challengers). (Certainly "Hush" and "Restless" are even stronger challengers since.) And I noticed something I don't think I ever had before: during the scene when Giles is gathering weapons in his apartment to go after Angel we discover that the LP that was playing when he first got back to his apartment in an earlier scene is still revolving in its end-groove. Clever little detail. A few very belated comments on the discussion re "Into the Woods." Do we feel that Spike did the right thing? (Obviously for the wrong reason). Did Buffy need to know? I have a question which my dark TV won't allow me to answer. There's a moment where Buffy and Spike have come out of the house where Riley is, and Spike turns to her and says something to the effect that he thought she ought to know; there's a shot of Buffy, and then she walks past him without a word. How would you describe the expression on her face? (I can't discern it.) Shock? Anger? Numbness? Response or no response to Spike? On re-viewing the episode, I just don't buy Buffy's "conversion" in the conversation with Xander; all the evidence seems to me to point to Buffy's taking Riley for granted and not having the level of passion for him that she did for Angel. Xander's presentation to her was very much phrased as a conditional ("=if= he's the guy"), and I was kind of surprised Buffy jumped to accept it and rushed off. When I was talking to my daughter about the episode, Deirdre pointed out what she thought might be a continuity glitch: Buffy and Riley are together at her house with Spike outside, Riley leaves to seek out vampires, Spike follows; then we get the scene from the next day with Buffy at the hospital with Joyce; then comes the scene where Spike fetches Buffy to show her what Riley is up to. Deirdre thought that the two night scenes were supposed to be the =same= night, and the hospital scene didn't belong in between; but on re-watching, I noted Buffy saying to Joyce that she was expecting Riley to come over that night, so the second scene I think =is= supposed to be the next night. If it had been the same night Buffy would more likely have waked up surprised that Riley wasn't still/already there rather than expecting that it was he who had awakened her. (Did that make any sense at all?) Trivium: I thought Dawn's story about her chopstick fangs and Buffy chasing her around the house was a stitch. Allen: You speculate that Joyce figuring out what was up with Dawn was an =effect= of the spell (if I've bungled your point please correct me). I think it's just the opposite. They've been very careful to establish that people with anomalous brain function are not susceptible to the spell (the crazy man outside the magic shop, two different crazy people in the hospital), and Buffy only figured it out because she cast a counterspell. (I don't remember if I asked this before: was that the first time we've ever seen Buffy do magic by herself?) Also compare the fact that Adam (whose brain did not work in an ordinary human way) was not susceptible to Jonathan's very similar spell. From this I conclude that Joyce's brain being out of wack from her tumor made her similarly unsusceptible to the spell, and since she was fading in and out of proper functioning, when she regained her senses she could remember what she perceived while "not in her right mind." The fact that she even thought to bring up the subject with Buffy shows that she has actually adapted rather well to, and accepted, Buffy's special status in the world and was able to consider the possibility of Dawn being important as well. Karen: My sense about Riley is that =if= he's coming back at all it won't be soon. When Oz left last season it was early (first half-dozen episodes), and when he came back it was only temporary. When Faith went into a coma it was for three-quarters of a season. As usual they've set things up so they can do =anything=: Riley =could= be back very quickly (though I doubt it) if the op goes smoothly; he could be killed; he could come back much later. Completely open possibilities. My guess is he's served his narrative purpose and won't return. This idea of a bomb shelter that only opens from the outside is indeed a peculiar one; what's even more peculiar is that this isn't the first time they've used the trope: it figured in "Lie to Me" as well, where at the end Spike and Drusilla and gang are locked in the vampire-club basement. Buffy said casually at the end that "they'll get out eventually," which is what happened (we weren't told how). I'm guessing that's what will happen on =Angel= as well. A few tidbits from the current (#10, Winter 2000) issue of the official =Buffy= magazine, which has two different Q&As with Joss Whedon. One is a little lettercolumn thing with reader questions, one of which goes as follows: "Q: Do you have the whole =Buffy= mythology planned out, or do you let it play ot as the season moves along? "A: I have enough of it planned out to know where I'm going, but enough of it not planned out that I can turn if I need to." Typical Joss Whedon answer. The other Q&A is a feature article with a longer interview about the future of the show. Whedon notes that contracts run beyond this fifth season, and "I don't think anybody's going anywhere." There's always the chance of cancellation, of course, which in a way would be a relief, because he's exhausted, he says. He also foresees movies after the series is over, a la =Star Trek=. The interviewers refer to Faith's "little sis" comment in "This Year's Girl" and ask if that meant he already had the 5th season in mind. Whedon reminds them of "Little Miss Muffett" in "Graduation Day" (which =we= knew, of course), and says he has had the 5th season in mind since before the 4th season. (And he's already thinking about the 6th season). Here's a speculation. He seems really excited about what's coming up with the 5th season (and we have only begun to dimly perceive what is likely to happen, I think). Is it possible that one of the reasons the 4th season was down a notch was because he was thinking about the 5th season too much? (Of course we have to factor in getting =Angel= off the ground, and that he had health problems as well.) I've agreed with Meredith since I first heard her say it that a great deal of the 5th season is "encoded" in "Restless": obviously the "back before Dawn" stuff, and that little encounter where Riley walks away, too, I think; what =hasn't= come up in more than hints is the true nature of the Slayer (add that to my speculations above!). I'm feeling fairly sanguine (or maybe merely hopeful) that the rest of the 5th season might be a return to form. We'll see. Just to make sure there's no confusion: the dream-incident where Riley turns into a Gentleman is in "Hush," not "Restless." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 12:01:27 -0600 (CST) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/comments01/03 On Wed, 3 Jan 2001, Donald G. Keller wrote: > Strange situation next week. Last night was reruns, of course, and next > week is a new =Buffy=...but =Angel= is a rerun again (the telekinetic > woman). I don't know what's up; maybe some kind of production glitch and > they didn't have a new episode ready? > > On some website I discovered that there will be a new =Buffy= on 1/16 as > well; this will be the twelfth episode of the season, which the staff has > designated the "Buffy birthday episode," so things might well get turned > up a notch. > Don, According to both TV Guide Online and my vaguely-insider sources, this isn't quite correct; Next week is scheduled to be new Buffy/old Angel, then the following week is scheduled to be old Buffy/new Angel. It's speculated that this is part of some ploy by the WB to get people to tune in both weeks. > Allen: You speculate that Joyce figuring out what was up with Dawn was an > =effect= of the spell (if I've bungled your point please correct me). I > think it's just the opposite. They've been very careful to establish that > people with anomalous brain function are not susceptible to the spell (the > crazy man outside the magic shop, two different crazy people in the > hospital), and Buffy only figured it out because she cast a counterspell. > (I don't remember if I asked this before: was that the first time we've Not quite what I meant, actually. I agree that Joyce figuring out that Dawn isn't "real" is a symptom of her tumor (which of course may yet prove to be caused by excessive Dawn-exposure itself). My point was that her *reaction* to such knowledge (she's important, we've got to protect her, etc.) seems (to me) to be being shaped/dictated by the spell. Allen W. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 17:42:14 -0500 From: Dori Subject: Re: b/comments01/03 >there's a shot of Buffy, and then she walks past him >without a word. How would you describe the expression on her face? (I >can't discern it.) Shock? Anger? Numbness? Response or no response to >Spike? She was shocked, and hurt, and furious with Riley, and at that moment it was all directed right at Spike. He's got another broken nose coming, that look said, and if he'd said any more right then, I think she'd have knocked him down and maybe staked him for serious. She seemed angry, too, that he'd been the one to show her. Poor Spike. He looked, when he says that he thought she should know, as though he expected her to thank him for pointing that out. And then he was pissed with himself because what she saw really hurt her, and he was the cause of it. I think if he'd handled it a bit differently, and told her that Riley was in trouble to start with, she -would- have thanked him later. But she wouldn't have believed him, would she? She'd have thought it was a trap of some kind. Hmm. I think he really did play it the only way that - -- Dori cleindori@rica.net - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ...perhaps love belonged to Chaos all along. Te - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 20:21:13 -0500 From: Dawn Friedman Subject: Re: b/comments01/03 At 05:42 PM 1/3/01 -0500, Dori wrote: >>there's a shot of Buffy, and then she walks past him >>without a word. How would you describe the expression on her face? (I >>can't discern it.) Shock? Anger? Numbness? Response or no response to >>Spike? > >She was shocked, and hurt, and furious with Riley, and at that moment it >was all directed right at Spike. He's got another broken nose coming, >that look said, and if he'd said any more right then, I think she'd have >knocked him down and maybe staked him for serious. She seemed angry, too, >that he'd been the one to show her. I can see interpreting it that way, but each time I've watched it, her expression registered on me as "Why is that guy over there still moving his mouth?" She was feeling everything you say, but I think it was directed past Spike, not at him. >Poor Spike. He looked, when he says that he thought she should know, as >though he expected her to thank him for pointing that out. I thought he sounded pretty scared. And perhaps hoping she *would* hit him, direct that anger at him, direct anything at all at him. But she didn't. And maybe already some of this: > And then he was pissed with himself because what she saw really hurt > her, and he was the cause of it. IMHO, yes; he didn't think about how deeply it might hurt her. Didn't want to consider that her feelings for Riley might be deeper than Riley himself believed. She's devastated. And her response is to ignore him. Not at all what he must have been hoping for. Was anyone else startled by how much she seemed to, well, for lack of a better word, *trust* Spike? He told her going in that this wasn't the time or place to slay, and she did as he suggested. Interesting. Dawn ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 22:29:36 -0500 From: "Karin Rabe" Subject: RE: b/comments01/03 Don, re: > On re-viewing the episode, I just don't buy Buffy's "conversion" in the > conversation with Xander; all the evidence seems to me to point to Buffy's > taking Riley for granted and not having the level of passion for him that > she did for Angel. Xander's presentation to her was very much phrased as a > conditional ("=if= he's the guy"), and I was kind of surprised Buffy > jumped to accept it and rushed off. I don't agree. Yes, she was taking him for granted -- but I think Xander was correct in pointing out that she was working hard at not being fully in touch with the true depth of her feelings for Riley. And as I recall it, Xander's language was not entirely conditional -- I seem to recall words to the effect that she was on the verge of losing a relationship with a "once in a lifetime" lover. I'm unable to review the episode, sad to say, because I accidentally taped over it! :( But in this week's rerun, I was struck by her =earlier= speech to Riley, on the occasion when he first expressed his doubts about his own importance to her: while it's true she avoided using the "L" word, she did tell him with great emphasis and seeming sincerity that she had let down her guard more with him "than with...anyone" (although there was an interesting hesitation over that last word, which she didn't quite get out), and that she =needed= him -- not the superpowers he was trying to hang onto, but HIM. What I made of the hesitation was an unspoken exception being made for Angel, as the one =other= person she had opened up to as much as Riley -- not necessarily =more= than Riley. (And since Angel isn't exactly a living "person," technically she could say she'd let her guard down more with Riley than with anyone. ) It also occurred to me that the hesitation might have been prompted by her one experience with Angel =as= a normal human, with a beating heart -- the experience she has no =conscious= memory of, but which it seems to me has been coloring a lot of her behavior since, and could go a long way towards explaining the mind games she's been playing in her relationship with Riley. I was struck most during that fleeting experience with Angel by how she reveled in his having become the "normal" boyfriend she'd always dreamt of having a "normal" relationship with. In that context, she's arguably been holding back with Riley out of subconsious fear that he'll somehow vanish, change, if she allows herself to totally accept and rejoice in what they have between them. And the irony that Xander helped her get in touch with, perhaps too late, is that her attempt to protect herself emotionally was doomed to failure, even though it may have fooled Riley as well as herself for a time. So as you can see, I hope you're wrong when you guess that Riley has "served his narrative purpose and won't return." Clearly right now things are set up so that "anything could happen"; but I like the character too well to happily see him go, and poor Buffy certainly doesn't need major heartbeak all over again! Assuming he eventually returns, it will however be interesting to see the interaction between Spike and Buffy in the interim. :) I'm also wondering whether the evil as ever Drue is going to put in a return appearance in Sunnydale, and what Spike's reaction to =that= would be, under these new circumstances! Surely Drue would want to go after Buffy, and wouldn't =that= put Spike in an interesting dilemma! - ---Karin ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V3 #2 ***************************