From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V3 #83 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Friday, May 11 2001 Volume 03 : Number 083 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments [allenw ] Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments ["Susan Kroupa" ] Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments [meredith ] Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 09:09:55 -0500 (CDT) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments On Thu, 10 May 2001, meredith wrote: > -- I felt sorry for Xander in this episode. Lest we forget that at the > start of this season he declared loudly that he was no longer going to be > anyone's butt-monkey ... yet here he was stuck being carsick in the > Winnebago, and serving no useful purpose whatsoever anywhere else. I hope > he gets a chance to do something useful soon. > Meredith, Granted, he wasn't *very* useful, but he did facilitate the "negotiation" that let Ben in. (Yeah, I know, but it presumably saved Giles' life.) Plus, he lit Spike's cig and accomplished Male Bonding. :) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 09:05:02 -0700 From: "Susan Kroupa" Subject: Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments David, I have to agree. I cringed at both Ben's conversation with the minions and the scene with the general, even while I was holding my breath hoping that Giles wouldn't die. I get tired of generic fantasy tropes, and the virtue of BUFFY is that it ususally gives such things a twist. But not this time. Which wasn't to say I wasn't worried for Our Heros all the way through anyway. And Angel was worse. The only redeeming moment for me in the whole ep was Angel's delight at being in the sunlight. The twist at the end seemed capricious and not believable.(And Cordelia's outfit--absurd!) Even more disappointing, Gunn's return seemed to have no motivation whatsoever. If they're going to show how he's torn between helping his former friends and working for Angel, they have to show a little bit of how he worked out the resolution. All his grief and depression over the death of his friend disappeared awfully quickly. Sue - ----------- "Harden Times" now out in the April 2001 REALMS OF FANTASY - ----- Original Message ----- From: David S. Bratman To: Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 11:02 PM Subject: Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments > This week's episode was certainly full of exciting events, and also full of > anguish and cause for concern for those of us who love these characters. > > But as a story, I found it not very good. > > The problem is, the writing had too many signs of hack fantasy. > > The knights as Highlander rejects didn't bother me per se, though I have a > lot of questions about them. Where did all those knights come from? Had > they flown into the states disguised as a drunken rugby team? Where did > they _suddenly_ come from at that moment? Had they been hiding behind tiny > bushes in the open desert, a la Monty Python's training film "How Not To Be > Seen"? > > And how did they catch up to the motor home? A race horse at full gallop > can manage about 40 mph. And that's without a fully armored knight on its > back. Even a Winnebago can go faster than that. (If it's moving at > all. Maybe the non-moving Winnebago comes from the same shop that provides > rubber demons for Spike to fight.) > > Maybe there are answers to all these questions. (Maybe they're magic > horses.) But any answers would be in the form of hole-plugging. BTVS is > usually much better at not letting questions like these come up in the > first place. > > No, the real problem was the not one, but two, lengthy expository > lumps. The first one, between Ben and the minion, teeters on the edge of > being one of those "As you know, Bob," talks. It's not as bad as it could > be -- but that's no compliment. What's worst about it is that here the > actor playing Ben, otherwise reasonably good, is required to reach way > beyond his limits of competence as an actor. > > The second lump is delivered by the General while tied to the post. This > is one of those extraordinarily common, and extraordinarily tiresome, > speeches in which a character is summoned up for no other purpose other > than to explain the Nature and Purpose of the Universe to the heroes. That > there are some good BTVS touches doesn't disguise its essential banality: > not within the fictional universe, but as a form of storytelling. The fact > that it reads like the climax of _Lord Foul's Bane_ only makes it worse. > > It also doesn't disguise problems within the fictional universe > itself. How does the General know all this stuff? (That Buffy asks this > question herself doesn't make it OK.) How do we know to believe him? He > may be feeding them a bunch of hooey, or he may believe it himself but be > mistaken. If BTVS raises these points later on, good for them; but again, > any attempt to address these points flirts with the danger of sounding like > special pleading. > > The one saving grace is that, having written a character whose only purpose > is to spout various speeches of hack guff (first to his soldiers, then to > Buffy), they at least hired an actor who could reasonably pull it off. > > > > As for "Angel," it also fell victim to one of the laws of hack fantasy: > imaginary worlds are always faux-medieval. The high-tech slave collar only > underlines how routinely medieval everything else is. Putting in a Xena > reference doesn't solve that problem either. > > The Host's unhelpfulness, and his inability to give a straight or relevant > answer to a question like "So what's so hellish about your dimension?", is > beginning to make me very suspicious of him. I also fear that this actor, > too, is beginning to be pushed beyond his level of competence at his craft, > or at least beyond my interest in watching him. A pity, because he was > great in small doses. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 19:10:30 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments Hi, David posted: >And how did they catch up to the motor home? A race horse at full gallop >can manage about 40 mph. And that's without a fully armored knight on its >back. Even a Winnebago can go faster than that. This was very clearly set up earlier, when Spike told Giles to step on it, and Giles retorted that he 'had a tricycle that had more pickup' than that thing. As for the other questions, I could come up with answers to them all ... but then again I have several years of _Xena_-watching experience behind me ("I'm a Xenite -- I can rationalize *anything*!"), so you probably wouldn't want to hear them. ======================================= Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille ======================================= Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://www.smoe.org/meth/muzak.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 16:52:52 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/ 5/8 ep comments At 04:10 PM 5/10/2001 , Meredith wrote: >>And how did they catch up to the motor home? A race horse at full gallop >>can manage about 40 mph. And that's without a fully armored knight on its >>back. Even a Winnebago can go faster than that. > >This was very clearly set up earlier, when Spike told Giles to step on it, >and Giles retorted that he 'had a tricycle that had more pickup' than that >thing. Not good enough. Pickup is acceleration, not speed. Repeat: even a Winnebago can go faster than that. The reason I'm not interested in such explanations is because they all have the air of desperately filling in plot holes. I like BTVS because it's usually better than that. I've been thinking further about the problem with the expository lumps. I think the root here is the use in the plot of the Key. The Key worked fine as long as it was just the McGuffin - something everybody was after, and it didn't much matter why. But make a plot turn on the purpose of the McGuffin, and you're in trouble. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V3 #83 ****************************