From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V3 #183 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, November 24 2001 Volume 03 : Number 183 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/comments11/23 ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments11/23 ["Berni Phillips" ] Re: b/comments11/23 [allenw ] Re: b/comments11/23 [Hilary Hertzoff ] Re: b/comments11/23 ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/comments11/23 [Todd Huff ] Re: b/comments11/23 ["Marta Grabien" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 12:47:35 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments11/23 And now the Thanksgiving Edition, I guess. Just in case, Some spoiler space, Meredith, don't read this yet, But you will When you've seen The last episode, I bet. (Wow, that's bad.) Onward. Or rather, backward (through the last three episodes). I asked Deirdre, after "Smashed" (that's the title of this past Tuesday's episode)--she has been wanting Spike and Buffy to Get Together, it's a Bad Boy thing (she prefers Spike in his leather jacket to his suit)--if she was happy or creeped out. Pretty much happy, she said. Myself, I thought it was pretty creepy. I also had asked Deirdre (who's roughly halfway between Buffy's age and SMG's actual age) if Buffy's state of mind about Spike made sense to her, and she said yeah--something to the effect that hanging around with Spike was better than feeling depressed and alone. Some interesting parallels suggest themselves. The structure of the episode suggests "Doomed" from 4th season: that was the one that began by continuing the (non-)conversation that ended "Hush," and that proceeded to show us several more conversations between Buffy and Riley, all to the effect of Buffy saying "no" (to their relationship) and Riley saying "why not?"--until Buffy changed her mind at the end (a change I still don't quite understand). Similarly, in "Smashed" Spike badgers Buffy several times, she keeps saying "no" very forcibly, then they have a big fight at the end, and... Which also suggests a parallel between this and Xander and Cordelia's sudden physical attraction in the midst of (verbal) fighting long ago in 2nd season. Not to mention, how interesting is it how much that last scene resembles Spike's "nightmare" last season which set this whole scenario off? And how it resembles Spike's play-fights with the Buffybot? (The interesting difference is how much sunnier the robot's personality was compared to the real Buffy's.) Just demonstrates again how violence and sex are all mixed up in Buffy's head. ("Wonder where I get that from?") But all this, of course, is not the =most= interesting aspect of the episode. I found myself asking, right after the first quarter break, when Spike was unable to bite that woman after all, the salient question: "What the hell happened to Buffy's soul??" I think that will turn out to be the pertinent point: the difference between humans and demons (including the possessing demons that animate vampires), which Spike's chip is calibrated to detect, is the presence of a soul. So either Buffy's soul is missing, or it's damaged in some way. I thought, just briefly, when Spike confronted Buffy with the situation, that he was going to lie to her, let her think that the chip wasn't working anymore; but that sells him short, because =of course= the way to hurt her even worse was to simply tell the truth. And of course it did shake her really badly. (And note that this goes to show that Willow was wrong, and Spike right--Giles, too--about Buffy's condition.) This suggests a really wild speculation. What if the Big Bad of this season is not the Trio (which seems unlikely), nor even Willow (which seems more likely)...but Buffy? What if she recovers from her trauma and turns evil? What if she goes on some kind of rampage? What will they all do? Will this snap Willow out of her denial? Will the Trio team up with the Slayerettes against this threat to them all? Will they break Faith out of jail to track Buffy down? (I can only hope!) And how will they fix it? One suggestion: they could "curse" her with the soul-restoring spell, which, remember, was the first major spell Willow ever cast. Wouldn't =that= make a wild season. At this point I want to compliment Bob on bringing up those two parallels between "Tabula Rasa" and "Restless," neither of which had occurred to me. I had seen the first one (Spike's suit) mentioned before (and by the way it's not =exactly= the same: different shirt and tie), but not the second, the "shark...with less fins...and on land." Very weird. (But why were they in Xander's dream?) Because then I got thinking about other "Restless" bits that have never come up again, and my mind roved over that most mysterious statement of Buffy's in the climactic scene "I'm going to be a fireman when the floods roll back." Note that Buffy's basement got flooded earlier this season...and she joked about burning down the house for the insurance money. (Which would be "fireman" in the =Fahrenheit 451= sense of one who =starts= fires.) Maybe she =will= burn her own house down? Leaving Dawn homeless? The structure of "Smashed," by the way, is very odd: it only makes a =gesture= towards a formula episode: the Trio steal a diamond and freeze a guard, the Slayerettes research to try and figure out who did it...but then they never solve it. So there's only a truncated "plot," and it's much more of a "soap opera" episode than usual. The threads of the episode, in order of importance, are: 1. Buffy and Spike 2. Willow and Amy 3. The Trio (the "plot") 4. Dawn and Tara And the episode proceeds basically by crosscutting them. The only "crossovers" are the brief scenes where Buffy interacts with Willow and Amy, and the scene where Spike goes to visit Warren and gang. (How hilarious was that, with the action figure? And will Spike eventually lean on Warren to get the chip out?) I'm a little dissatisfied with Willow suddenly "just realizing" she knew how to de-rat Amy (the suggestion, I guess, is that she hadn't thought about it in a while); and what, exactly, was it that she did? But it's =long= past time for Amy to come back, and it's the right situation (Tara leaving, Willow craving the company of another magical person). I really liked, in general, how they handled Amy's return: the way she acted like a rat for a couple scenes, Willow's visible guilt at how long Amy was in the cage, Amy mulling over all the things that had changed (amusing conversation she had with Buffy), and how Amy and Willow were so quickly in cahoots. Clearly it's going to make Willow's addictive behavior worse, not better: note that Amy is just about as powerful as Willow (i.e. more so than Tara), and possibly even more unscrupulous. Which suggests a parallel with Buffy and Faith in "Bad Girls." Hillary: is that what you were seeing when you saw "Bad Girls" recently? I'm curious to hear your thoughts more fully: "Bad Girls" is still one of my all-time favorite episodes, and I never get tired of talking about it. Obviously Willow and Amy will remain a major theme next episode. A footnote: I wouldn't have figured it out if I hadn't read it somewhere, but the guy playing the "helpful" magician in the preview is Jeff Kober, previously seen on =Buffy= as the vampire nemesis in "Helpless" 3rd season; he was also on =Kindred: The Embraced= as a member of the Nosferatu clan (so you can imagine the makeup): this will be our first chance to see his real face. (Also, the demon who brought the guy forward from the 18th century on =Angel= is the same actor who played Cain the bounty hunter on =Buffy= in "Phases" 2nd season.) I thought it was a really nice touch to posit an ongoing friendship between Tara and Dawn: it's a way for Tara to keep in touch (and to stay on the show!), and it makes all kinds of emotional sense. Clearly Dawn is getting no attention from her sister right now; Buffy and Dawn weren't even in a scene together the whole episode. On, or back, to "Tabula Rasa," which I also liked a whole lot. The entire "amnesia" episode, especially the waking-up scene, was =so= well done: everyone's basic personalities remaining the same, but making =very logical= wrong guesses about their actual relationships (of =course= Giles and Anya would conclude they were a couple! And Spike conclude he was Giles son!). And the way that their body-memories came back more gradually--Willow and Tara's attraction for one, but most spectacularly "Joan"'s Slayer skills. (I actually thought she might start remembering when she picked up a stake, but it made sense the way they did it, too.) The =most= hilarious part, of course was "Randy" and "Joan." She picked "Joan" of course because of Joan of Arc (woman warrior, and remember she almost got burnt at the stake in "Gingerbread," which was also when Amy turned herself in to a rat); and the first time I thought she said, at the moment her memory returned, "Nobody messes with Joan of..." (as in "...Arc"), but as Meredith pointed out to me (and as a more careful observation confirms), what she actually says is "Nobody messes with Joan the V..." (as in "ampire Slayer"). And the whole "noble vampire" riff was a complete stitch; the "vampire with a soul...how lame is that?" combined with Cordelia and Wesley re-enacting the Romance of Buffy & Angel on =Angel= shows Joss Whedon's willingness to poke fun at his own oh-so-serious (sometimes) mythology. But the line that had me on the floor, for some reason, was "I think I know why Joan's the boss!" (Can't you just see the fanfiction writers revving up to write "The Adventures of Randy and Joan"? With Giles and Anya married, and a triangle between "Alex" and Willow and Tara, and Randy and Joan fighting the forces of darkness? Curiously, it would be more of a lighthearted comedy than the actual =Buffy=, because Randy and Joan so clearly relish their roles, something Buffy and Angel, the party-poopers, never have.) David: Here might be the place to comment on your perception of "Angel," the 1st-season episode. Your interpretation (I assume you're talking mostly about the conversation/confrontation between Buffy and Angel near the end) is that Angel =wanted= to be bad, but his soul wouldn't let him, just as Spike's chip won't let =him= be bad. I don't think so, and I didn't think so at the time. The key phrase, to me, is when he says, about having his soul restored, "You have no idea what it's like to have done things I've done, and to care." His primary feeling is guilt and remorse. When he =seems= to be relishing his evil--talking about killing his family, wanting to bite Buffy's mom, wanting to kill Buffy (which, in retrospect, foreshadows Evil Angel the following season), it seemed to me, even at that early time, that it was an ironic pose: he wanted to dump the full horror of his position on Buffy, and even to goad her into killing him: like Faith much later, like Buffy even (as Spike pointed out later), Angel had a longstanding deathwish. But no, I don't think he =really= wanted to do evil and his soul wouldn't let him; a hundred years of brooding really had changed him. Spike is a different case. Also, David: that's a really interesting quote from =Lord of Light=. I never would have thought of the parallel either, but it's salient. And I just reread part (that part) of the book a year or so ago (seeing if it had any Hindu stuff relating to =Buffy+: it doesn't). This has gotten really long, so I'll table more comments on the musical for the nonce. All in all, the writers are messing with things very nicely at the moment, and, wild speculations aside, I really have =no= idea where they're heading. Which I like, actually. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 12:29:23 -0800 From: "Berni Phillips" Subject: Re: b/comments11/23 From: "Donald G. Keller" > Some spoiler space, > > Meredith, don't read this yet, > > But you will > > When you've seen > > The last episode, I bet. > > (Wow, that's bad.) > > Onward. > > Or rather, backward (through the last three episodes). > > I asked Deirdre, after "Smashed" (that's the title of this > past Tuesday's episode)--she has been wanting Spike and Buffy > to Get Together, it's a Bad Boy thing (she prefers Spike in > his leather jacket to his suit)--if she was happy or creeped > out. Pretty much happy, she said. > > Myself, I thought it was pretty creepy. David and I were very creeped out. I thought it the most shocking and graphic scene since "Graduation Day, Part I" when Buffy had Angel feed on her. This was suggested by the way they filmed it, the silence and the violence mixed in with sex. (Remember, Buffy appeared orgasmic as Angel fed on her.) The difference was that in GD, Buffy was saving Angel's life. A friend at work was upset by this episode because of Willow's behavior. I found the episode upsetting not so much because of Willow's behavior, which we're supposed to be upset by, but by Buffy's, which I'm not sure if we, the audience, were supposed to be upset by or not. They pretty-fied everything, cutting out all the sounds of the walls crashing down about them (how unsubtle was that!). Lucky Spike, not to have gotten staked by all that falling debris! > Just demonstrates again how violence and sex are all mixed up in Buffy's > head. ("Wonder where I get that from?") Besides that she evidently came back damaged, it makes me wonder the cause of her parents' break-up. And remember that Joyce sheepishly produced a pair of handcuffs (taken from the policeman) in "Band Candy," so perhaps she was not as "vanilla" as she seemed. > I found myself asking, right after the first quarter break, when Spike was > unable to bite that woman after all, the salient question: "What the hell > happened to Buffy's soul??" > > I think that will turn out to be the pertinent point: the difference > between humans and demons (including the possessing demons that animate > vampires), which Spike's chip is calibrated to detect, is the presence of > a soul. So either Buffy's soul is missing, or it's damaged in some way. Funny, I didn't think it so much a matter of her soul as wondering if Buffy came back fully human -- body, not soul. As the slayer, she's not an ordinary human. Did the resurrection put her one step beyond that? > This suggests a really wild speculation. What if the Big Bad of this > season is not the Trio (which seems unlikely), nor even Willow (which > seems more likely)...but Buffy? Interesting speculation. I'm still leaning towards Willow, especially with a human Amy in the picture. I think Amy was a bad influence on Willow before she was a rat. She is a bad influence again, and perhaps there's also a malicious wanting to get back at Willow because she remained a rat so long. She manipulated Willow with "unless you want to stay home at night, like you did in high school" (or whatever the exact line was). Amy did the first magic, forcing another person's will by having the lesbian leave her partner and come on over to Willow. I keep thinking about the scene with Giles and Willow in the kitchen when he scolds her for the resurrection spell. She says that she may be the only one who could do it and he tells her that there are others, she just doesn't want to meet them. I think she's going to be meeting those others, now that she's crossed all kinds of lines. I liked the way Joss played with us with Willow and the laptop. When she tells Xander and Anya there's another way to find out something, they so obviously are expecting a spell and are anxious to discourage her. They're visibly relieved when she pulls out the laptop and appears to be old Willow. But then she uses magic to get the information from the computer instead of doing it the "old-fashioned way." > And will Spike eventually lean on Warren to get the chip out?) I thought that was what he was there for at first. If Warren could verify that the chip was working properly and trace the signal, I would expect him to be able to block the signal, too, nullifying the chip while leaving it in place. > I really liked, in general, how they handled Amy's return: the way she > acted like a rat for a couple scenes, Willow's visible guilt at how long > Amy was in the cage, Amy mulling over all the things that had changed > (amusing conversation she had with Buffy), and how Amy and Willow were so > quickly in cahoots. Clearly it's going to make Willow's addictive behavior > worse, not better: note that Amy is just about as powerful as Willow (i.e. > more so than Tara), and possibly even more unscrupulous. My favorite part was the cookies! That went right back to the introduction of Amy. I'd say definitely much more unscrupulous. I think we're going to see that Amy is her mother's daughter. The flashback we saw of Amy turning herself into a rat (on the "previously on Buffy") showed her not just wanting to escape but to frighten her attackers. Looking forward to the next episode! Berni ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 14:32:45 -0600 (CST) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/comments11/23 On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Donald G. Keller wrote: > And now the Thanksgiving Edition, I guess. > > Just in case, > > Some spoiler space, > > Meredith, don't read this yet, > > But you will > > When you've seen > > The last episode, I bet. > > (Wow, that's bad.) > > Onward. > > And the episode proceeds basically by crosscutting them. The only > "crossovers" are the brief scenes where Buffy interacts with Willow and > Amy, and the scene where Spike goes to visit Warren and gang. (How > hilarious was that, with the action figure? And will Spike eventually lean > on Warren to get the chip out?) > Then again, if Warren figures out how the chip works, will he use that knowledge to build a Spike-remote-control? > I'm a little dissatisfied with Willow suddenly "just realizing" she knew > how to de-rat Amy (the suggestion, I guess, is that she hadn't thought > about it in a while); and what, exactly, was it that she did? But it's > She cheated magically, just like she's been doing with her other problems. Instead of researching or figuring out the unratting spell, she realized that she could just conjure (or summon) up a suitable scroll, and did so. > quickly in cahoots. Clearly it's going to make Willow's addictive behavior > worse, not better: note that Amy is just about as powerful as Willow (i.e. > more so than Tara), and possibly even more unscrupulous. > However, note that (from the preview) Amy seems to have a magic "pusher," and may not be at Willow-power levels naturally. Which raises the question, what will Willow's power-level be like when *she's* jazzed up? Allen W. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 15:06:47 -0500 From: Hilary Hertzoff Subject: Re: b/comments11/23 On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, you wrote: > And now the Thanksgiving Edition, I guess. > > Just in case, > > Some spoiler space, > > Meredith, don't read this yet, > > But you will > > When you've seen > > The last episode, I bet. > > (Wow, that's bad.) > > Onward. > > Or rather, backward (through the last three episodes). > > > Some interesting parallels suggest themselves. > > The structure of the episode suggests "Doomed" from 4th > season: that was the one that began by continuing the > (non-)conversation that ended "Hush," and that proceeded to > show us several more conversations between Buffy and Riley, > all to the effect of Buffy saying "no" (to their > relationship) and Riley saying "why not?"--until Buffy > changed her mind at the end (a change I still don't quite understand). > Similarly, in "Smashed" Spike badgers Buffy several times, she keeps > saying "no" very forcibly, then they have a big fight at the end, and... > What struck me the most about this was that in the end they were on an equal footing...with the chip disabled Spike could fight back. > But all this, of course, is not the =most= interesting aspect of the > episode. > > I found myself asking, right after the first quarter break, when Spike was > unable to bite that woman after all, the salient question: "What the hell > happened to Buffy's soul??" > > I think that will turn out to be the pertinent point: the difference > between humans and demons (including the possessing demons that animate > vampires), which Spike's chip is calibrated to detect, is the presence of > a soul. So either Buffy's soul is missing, or it's damaged in some way. Perhaps what came back is "the slayer" or the proportion between Buffy the human and Buffy the slayer has changed in some way. There have been implications before that the slayer isn't totally human. > This suggests a really wild speculation. What if the Big Bad of this > season is not the Trio (which seems unlikely), nor even Willow (which > seems more likely)...but Buffy? What if she recovers from her trauma and > turns evil? What if she goes on some kind of rampage? What will they all > do? Will this snap Willow out of her denial? Will the Trio team up with > the Slayerettes against this threat to them all? Will they break Faith out > of jail to track Buffy down? (I can only hope!) And how will they fix it? > One suggestion: they could "curse" her with the soul-restoring spell, > which, remember, was the first major spell Willow ever cast. > > Wouldn't =that= make a wild season. Ooh, I like this. Come to think of it, why not cast the spell on Spike?... > The structure of "Smashed," by the way, is very odd: it only makes a > =gesture= towards a formula episode: the Trio steal a diamond and freeze a > guard, the Slayerettes research to try and figure out who did it...but > then they never solve it. So there's only a truncated "plot," and it's > much more of a "soap opera" episode than usual. The threads of the > episode, in order of importance, are: > > 1. Buffy and Spike > 2. Willow and Amy > 3. The Trio (the "plot") > 4. Dawn and Tara > I would have said that Amy being deratted or Spike's chip malfunctioning was the plot. Or perhaps there were 3 thirds of plots none of which was really resolved. > And the episode proceeds basically by crosscutting them. The only > "crossovers" are the brief scenes where Buffy interacts with Willow and > Amy, and the scene where Spike goes to visit Warren and gang. (How > hilarious was that, with the action figure? And will Spike eventually lean > on Warren to get the chip out?) Consider that he knew exactly where the gang was vulnerable. Of course we already know he watches Passions... > > I'm a little dissatisfied with Willow suddenly "just realizing" she knew > how to de-rat Amy (the suggestion, I guess, is that she hadn't thought > about it in a while); and what, exactly, was it that she did? But it's > =long= past time for Amy to come back, and it's the right situation (Tara > leaving, Willow craving the company of another magical person). Maybe the implication was that Willow has come so far so fast, she isn't aware of just how deep she is. Willow's also been shown to be very focused on what SHE needs, with no awareness or consideration of how this will affect other people; she deratted Amy because SHE needed a friend, not because Amy needed to be deratted. > I really liked, in general, how they handled Amy's return: the way she > acted like a rat for a couple scenes, Willow's visible guilt at how long > Amy was in the cage, Amy mulling over all the things that had changed > (amusing conversation she had with Buffy), and how Amy and Willow were so > quickly in cahoots. Clearly it's going to make Willow's addictive behavior > worse, not better: note that Amy is just about as powerful as Willow (i.e. > more so than Tara), and possibly even more unscrupulous. > > Which suggests a parallel with Buffy and Faith in "Bad Girls." Hillary: is > that what you were seeing when you saw "Bad Girls" recently? I'm curious > to hear your thoughts more fully: "Bad Girls" is still one of my all-time > favorite episodes, and I never get tired of talking about it. That's precisely it. Amy's pulling Willow the way that Faith was pulling Buffy, encouraging her to use her powers for her own benefit/entertainment. They also showed Gingerbread recently (which is not one of my favorite episodes) and it was clear even then that Amy was starting to spiral out of control. > I thought it was a really nice touch to posit an ongoing friendship > between Tara and Dawn: it's a way for Tara to keep in touch (and to stay > on the show!), and it makes all kinds of emotional sense. Clearly Dawn is > getting no attention from her sister right now; Buffy and Dawn weren't > even in a scene together the whole episode. And that speech was so the "divorced parent who is no longer living with the kid." Note that the implication at the end of the episode was that Tara was still at the house with Dawn, since neither Willow (off playing with Amy) nor Buffy (ditto Spike) had returned. Hilary - -- Hilary Hertzoff hhertzof@panix.com Mamaroneck, NY hilaryh@dm.net Bunnies aren't cute like everybody supposes They've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses And what's with all the carrots What do they need such good eyesight for anyway...Anya Buffy the Vampire Slayer Once More with Feeling ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 14:32:12 -0800 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments11/23 At 09:47 AM 11/23/2001 , DGK wrote: >And now the Thanksgiving Edition, I guess. > >Just in case, > >Some spoiler space, > >Meredith, don't read this yet, > >But you will > >When you've seen > >The last episode, I bet. > >(Wow, that's bad.) > >Onward. > >Or rather, backward (through the last three episodes). > > >I asked Deirdre, after "Smashed" (that's the title of this >past Tuesday's episode)--she has been wanting Spike and Buffy >to Get Together, it's a Bad Boy thing (she prefers Spike in >his leather jacket to his suit)--if she was happy or creeped >out. Pretty much happy, she said. > >Myself, I thought it was pretty creepy. I found it extraordinarily creepy, but I'm not sure how creepy it was supposed to be. For me there are no two things as alien to each other as sex and violence: for Buffy to kiss Spike intentionally at all (as she did the previous episode) made no sense to me; for her to kiss him while he's beating her up, as she did this time, violated every emotional impulse I have: I couldn't wrap my mind around this concept at all. Yet I know, because I live in this culture, that for many people sex and violence are linked. There are people, like Joyce, who find handcuffs sexy; and there are women with co-dependent feelings towards violent mates. Buffy isn't one of these, nor a masochist: violence just turns her on, that's all. (It's just one of many strange things that turn people on: I can't understand the sexual attraction of Ravel's Bolero, or bridge-girder underwear, either.) We can't say we weren't warned: remember the strange intercut scene between Buffy and Riley staking vamps and Buffy and Riley having heated sex afterwards? (Was that the one in "Doomed" to which you were referring?) At least that time they weren't fighting each other, or having the sex at the same time; but that was also seriously creepy. This scene also answers the long-standing question: yes, Buffy's distaste for Spike was an attempt to deny her own deeper feelings. Which opens another question: how would she have behaved if her deeper feelings really had been of disgust? >Which also suggests a parallel between this and Xander and Cordelia's >sudden physical attraction in the midst of (verbal) fighting long ago in >2nd season. I missed that. It probably wouldn't have made any sense to me either. >I found myself asking, right after the first quarter break, when Spike was >unable to bite that woman after all, the salient question: "What the hell >happened to Buffy's soul??" > >I think that will turn out to be the pertinent point: the difference >between humans and demons (including the possessing demons that animate >vampires), which Spike's chip is calibrated to detect, is the presence of >a soul. So either Buffy's soul is missing, or it's damaged in some way. She's dead, so in retrospect it's no big surprise. Perhaps - though this would appear to contradict her own story - she's actually animated by a demon, which for some reason isn't yet self-aware. (If it wasn't her soul that went to Heaven and came back, what was it?) (It seems to be possible for a vampire to forget that he is one - see "Randy" in the amnesia episode.) Prediction, which I give about a 40% change of actually occurring: a big shock later on in the season will come when Buffy, possibly to her own surprise and certainly to everyone else's, vamps out. >This suggests a really wild speculation. What if the Big Bad of this >season is not the Trio (which seems unlikely), nor even Willow (which >seems more likely)...but Buffy? What if she recovers from her trauma and >turns evil? What if she goes on some kind of rampage? What will they all >do? Will this snap Willow out of her denial? Will the Trio team up with >the Slayerettes against this threat to them all? Will they break Faith out >of jail to track Buffy down? (I can only hope!) And how will they fix it? >One suggestion: they could "curse" her with the soul-restoring spell, >which, remember, was the first major spell Willow ever cast. > >Wouldn't =that= make a wild season. All of which kind of follows from what I suggested above, or vice versa. >The structure of "Smashed," by the way, is very odd: it only makes a >=gesture= towards a formula episode: the Trio steal a diamond and freeze a >guard, the Slayerettes research to try and figure out who did it...but >then they never solve it. Notice that they don't solve it because they assume it must be a demon. Interesting parallel to the human-mugger scene at the beginning. (Though perhaps not intentional: the human mugger may well have been there just to show that Spike's chip is still working.) >And the episode proceeds basically by crosscutting them. The only >"crossovers" are the brief scenes where Buffy interacts with Willow and >Amy, and the scene where Spike goes to visit Warren and gang. (How >hilarious was that, with the action figure? And will Spike eventually lean >on Warren to get the chip out?) Oh, the action figure scene was a gem. Priceless. (Puns intentional.) >(Can't you just see the fanfiction writers revving up to write "The >Adventures of Randy and Joan"? With Giles and Anya married, and a triangle >between "Alex" and Willow and Tara, and Randy and Joan fighting the forces >of darkness? Curiously, it would be more of a lighthearted comedy than the >actual =Buffy=, because Randy and Joan so clearly relish their roles, >something Buffy and Angel, the party-poopers, never have.) Why leave it to the fanfic writers? It'd make a better concept for an animated Buffy than the one they're using. Re first-season Angel: I don't see that, because it lacks the ironic distance that appears elsewhere when Angel is doing that. >Also, David: that's a really interesting quote from =Lord of Light=. I >never would have thought of the parallel either, but it's salient. And I >just reread part (that part) of the book a year or so ago (seeing if it >had any Hindu stuff relating to =Buffy+: it doesn't). Of course it doesn't: the Hindu mythology used in LoL is really shallow. Which is, of course, a large part of Zelazny's point. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 16:49:16 -0800 (PST) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: b/comments11/23 Big question: Did Spike ever try to hit Buffy between the time he got his chip and Buffy's death? I remember him trying to bite Willow, but never Buffy. If the answer is "no", then I think that the answer to the mystery of Spike being able to fight Buffy may also be traced back to that wonderful episode "Restless". Remember the part of the dream where Buffy approaches Riley and the man-who-would-be-Adam sitting at a table? ADAM She's uncomfortable with certain concepts. It's understandable. (to Buffy) Aggression is a natural human tendency. Though you and me come by it another way. BUFFY We're not demons. ADAM Is that a fact? [slightly sarcastic] Remember how we puzzled over this? The origins of the slayer are still clouded. Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 17:33:25 -0800 From: "Marta Grabien" Subject: Re: b/comments11/23 And we have long known that slayer blood isn't human. It cured Angel, for instance. Marty > ADAM > She's uncomfortable with certain > concepts. It's understandable. > (to Buffy) > Aggression is a natural human > tendency. Though you and me come by > it another way. > > > BUFFY > We're not demons. > > > ADAM > Is that a fact? [slightly sarcastic] > > > Remember how we puzzled over this? The origins of the > slayer are still clouded. > Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. > http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1 ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V3 #183 *****************************