From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V4 #61 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Wednesday, May 8 2002 Volume 04 : Number 061 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: o/giles update ["Marta Grabien" ] Re: b/tuesday [allenw ] Re: b/tuesday [GHighPine@aol.com] b/seeing red [meredith ] Re: b/seeing red [Todd Huff ] Re: b/seeing red [Joseph Zitt ] Re: b/seeing red [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/seeing red ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 06:38:39 -0700 From: "Marta Grabien" Subject: Re: o/giles update BBC station. In SF it is channel 162. > ?!? What is this, and where is it airing? > Story is 5 guys in thier 50s, looking for a good time. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 08:46:24 -0500 (CDT) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/tuesday On Mon, 6 May 2002, David S. Bratman wrote: > At 08:06 PM 5/6/2002 , Joseph wrote: > >Well, since it's the biggest thing to happen to *Sunnyvale*, I'd think > >in terms not of Buffy's death but of, say, the transformation of the > >Mayor and destruction of the high school. Though the massive flying > >demon infestation that Buffy's death cured musta been a tad traumatic, > >if her dying didn't just completely rewind the event. > > Indeed, which is why I wrote "'bigger' in the other sense," i.e. in the > events of the show as we and the principal characters perceive them, having > already discussed "bigger" in the first sense, i.e. in the perception of > the average Sunnydale bystander. > Mild thematic "Seeing Red" spoilers, in the context of it's preview: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ready? . . . 1: The preview is indeed, as we've grown to expect, sensationalistic and misleading. 2: David is correct; insofar as "bigger" has meaning, it relates to the impact on the characters (and the audience), not Sunndale as a whole. 3: Whoever hoped that it wouldn't be too distressing, don't get your hopes up. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 11:41:13 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/tuesday In a message dated 5/6/02 11:55:49 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@stanford.edu writes: << Indeed, which is why I wrote "'bigger' in the other sense," i.e. in the events of the show as we and the principal characters perceive them, having already discussed "bigger" in the first sense, i.e. in the perception of the average Sunnydale bystander. >> Considering all the big things that have happened in Sunnydale, I also suspect that this may be hype -- it isn't even the season finale yet, and something bigger than the destruction of the high school already? -- but I do think it must have been intentional to say "Sunnydale" and not "Buffy and her friends" or something like that -- unless the UPN announcers consider those terms synonymous. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 22:57:19 -0400 From: meredith Subject: b/seeing red Hi, Oh thank GOD. Now I can finally vent!!! spoilers galore ... don't say you weren't warned!! Joss is evil. That is the printable version of what I (and my friends who also cheated and saw the episode early) have been saying, anyway. See, I knew what was going to happen. Not the whens and the hows, but I knew that a much-loved character was going to die. I'd heard plenty of rumors to indicate it was going to be Tara, but I'd held out hope that those were false spoilers planted to throw us pesky Internet people off the trail. Maybe it would be Amy, I thought to myself with some hope. I mean, her death would have some impact, and could conceivably cause Willow to fall back off the wagon (another thing I knew in advance), but best of all, it wouldn't really be that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. I mean, Amy is nice and all, but she wouldn't really be missed. Not like Tara. But as soon as I saw Amber Benson's name *finally* in the opening credits after all this time, I knew for sure. Joss did say, after all, that he had always wanted to kill off someone in the opening credits. And so it was that for the entire episode, I was on increasingly sharp pins and needles, just waiting for the inevitable. Watching Willow and Tara (and Dawn :) be so happy was positively excruciating. The spoilers I'd seen didn't even begin to touch on the whole Spike/Buffy thing, so I was as shocked as anyone else at the rape scene. That was almost too much. But I'll leave that for another time. So the episode is almost over, and everything seems to be going okay. Could it be that *everything* I'd heard was wrong, Amber Benson really is finally an honest-to-god regular (which she should've been since last season, dammit), and Tara's going to make it out of the episode alive? Nope. Argh. I've had some time to process, but I gotta say I'm starting to understand the mindset of the people who freaked to the stratosphere about the series finale of _Xena_ (in which the Warrior Princess ended up well and truly dead). Not that I'm going to write a nasty letter to Joss or stop watching the show or sell my memorabilia or anything ... but I feel like someone I know actually died. How silly is that?!? I was listening to the MP3's of the musical episode earlier today, and when Tara's song (my absolute favorite) came on I had to turn it off. And lest it look like I'm forgetting about the other thing that happened in the last 10 seconds of the episode ... I'm a Xenite. My reaction is "Oh, Buffy is dying *again*. She'll be fine." :) But there sure are plenty of questions about what's next, though. Will Willow leave enough of Warren to put into a baggie for burial, or will there be absolutely nothing left? Did she learn her lesson from the last resurrection, or will she try to bring Tara back? And where the heck did Spike go? (One assumes from the previews that Buffy is going to be okay.) ================================================= Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth ================================================= Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://www.smoe.org/meth/muzak.html ==Next Up: Jessica Weiser & Emily Wells 5/12/02== ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 20:07:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: b/seeing red - --- meredith wrote: > Hi, > > Oh thank GOD. Now I can finally vent!!! > > > > spoilers galore ... > > > > > > > don't say you weren't warned!! > > > > > > > > > > > > Joss is evil. But like Buffy and Spike, ya keep coming back. > The spoilers I'd seen didn't even begin to touch on > the whole Spike/Buffy > thing, so I was as shocked as anyone else at the > rape scene. That was > almost too much. But I'll leave that for another > time. > This was a harrowing scene, and I found myself actually staring slack-jawed at the screen as it happened. > And lest it look like I'm forgetting about the other > thing that happened in > the last 10 seconds of the episode ... I'm a Xenite. > My reaction is "Oh, > Buffy is dying *again*. She'll be fine." > :) It's been a while since we've even seen Buffy hurt by a fight. I liked the "rhetorical" gag earlier in the show. > But there sure are plenty of questions about what's > next, though. Will > Willow leave enough of Warren to put into a baggie > for burial, or will > there be absolutely nothing left? Did she learn her > lesson from the last > resurrection, or will she try to bring Tara back? I think she's going to end up doing something truly vengeful and either send him to some hell dimension or transform him into a tapeworm. > And where the heck did > Spike go? > I don't know if we'll even find out this season. BTW, there's a small interview with Nicholas Brendon at http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,4237561%255E3042,00.html Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 00:23:25 -0500 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: b/seeing red On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 10:57:19PM -0400, meredith wrote: > spoilers galore ... > > > > > > > don't say you weren't warned!! > > > > > > > > > > > > See, I knew what was going to happen. Not the whens and the hows, but I > knew that a much-loved character was going to die. I'd heard plenty of > rumors to indicate it was going to be Tara, but I'd held out hope that > those were false spoilers planted to throw us pesky Internet people off the > trail. Maybe it would be Amy, I thought to myself with some hope. I mean, > her death would have some impact, and could conceivably cause Willow to > fall back off the wagon (another thing I knew in advance), but best of all, > it wouldn't really be that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. I > mean, Amy is nice and all, but she wouldn't really be missed. Not like Tara. I'd figured it would probably be Tara, since Joss had mentioned Willow and Xander doing things next season. I was wondering if it might be Spike (at one point in the episode, just before the friendly goofy party demon showed up, I thought he might be fixin' to stake himself) or even Jonathan. > The spoilers I'd seen didn't even begin to touch on the whole Spike/Buffy > thing, so I was as shocked as anyone else at the rape scene. That was > almost too much. But I'll leave that for another time. Yeah, that really threw me. > I've had some time to process, but I gotta say I'm starting to understand > the mindset of the people who freaked to the stratosphere about the series > finale of _Xena_ (in which the Warrior Princess ended up well and truly > dead). Not that I'm going to write a nasty letter to Joss or stop watching > the show or sell my memorabilia or anything ... but I feel like someone I > know actually died. How silly is that?!? I was listening to the MP3's of > the musical episode earlier today, and when Tara's song (my absolute > favorite) came on I had to turn it off. Oddly, I felt much less impact from this episode than from many others. I suspect that some of that impact may hit *next* week, when we see the Scoobies reacting. OTOH, I was a bit frustrated by the choice, since Tara has been sort of the writers' victim-of-choice, getting her mind taken by Glory, then getting killed here, each pretty much determined as a plot point to trigger Willow. While she's among my favorite of the characters, she's not been particularly well developed, and I wished she could have been fleshed out more and continued. > And lest it look like I'm forgetting about the other thing that happened in > the last 10 seconds of the episode ... I'm a Xenite. My reaction is "Oh, > Buffy is dying *again*. She'll be fine." :) Heh, yeah. "It's do or die / Hey, I've died twice." > But there sure are plenty of questions about what's next, though. Will > Willow leave enough of Warren to put into a baggie for burial, or will > there be absolutely nothing left? Did she learn her lesson from the last > resurrection, or will she try to bring Tara back? And where the heck did > Spike go? My hunch is that she'll consider it and Xander and Buffy will talk her out of it. My other immediate guess was that Spike was headed to LA to find out from Angel about the whole "having a soul" thing. But then I remembered that he'd have to drive his motorcycle across the Unreachable Crevasse between Channel 11 and Channel 9 :-). I was really pleased to see Jonathan save Buffy, and laughed out loud when Andrew banged his head. I was also a bit thrown when Buffy was in the trio's lair -- for the first moment I thought he was in Spike's lair, then wondered where he got the cool Apple monitor. - -- | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.josephzitt.com/ | | http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt/ http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt/ | | == New book: Surprise Me with Beauty: the Music of Human Systems == | | Comma / Gray Code Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 01:41:44 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/seeing red In a message dated 5/7/02 9:33:19 PM Pacific Daylight Time, jzitt@metatronpress.com writes: << Did she learn her lesson from the last > resurrection, or will she try to bring Tara back? And where the heck did > Spike go? My hunch is that she'll consider it and Xander and Buffy will talk her out of it. >> I agree, but I think that she will become a "vengeance demon" with her magic who puts Anya and Halfrik (sp) to shame. That will help to escalate things to the season finale crisis. (Maybe that is obvious.) I think that Willow will be the "big bad" by season's end. What no one has mentioned, that struck me right off, is the irony that this is surely the first time that we have ever seen a weapon as mundane as a gun used in Sunnydale (or even appear in the show). I almost thought they didn't exist in the Buffyverse -- otherwise, someone could have simply shot the Slayer a long time ago. The title reminds me too -- is this also the first time that we have seen blood outside of vampire bites? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 23:29:26 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/seeing red At 07:57 PM 5/7/2002 , Meredith wrote: >Hi, > >Oh thank GOD. Now I can finally vent!!! > > > >spoilers galore ... > > > > > > >don't say you weren't warned!! > > > > > > > > > > > >Joss is evil. >but I'd held out hope that those were false spoilers planted to throw us >pesky Internet people off the trail. Maybe it would be Amy, I thought to >myself with some hope. I mean, her death would have some impact, Amy?? We've barely seen her. "Well-loved character" not. >But as soon as I saw Amber Benson's name *finally* in the opening credits >after all this time, I knew for sure. Joss did say, after all, that he >had always wanted to kill off someone in the opening credits. I remember that too (from the commentary on the first episode), but of course Joss knows that we know that, so I thought he could be faking us out by wanting us to think that this time the added opening-credit character gets it. With potential levels of trickery as potentially deep as that ("But you know that I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the glass in front of you" - The Princess Bride), it's best to just not expect anything. So I didn't. And I still don't. I'm still processing the surprise ending. Willow may be mad already, but I'm still just startled. Nor do I know what to think. For one thing, Buffy looks as dead as Tara, but we can presume from the preview that she either is not dead or will be revived (again). So who knows what's to become of Tara? Maybe Joss is _still_ faking us out. Or maybe he just wants us to think that! >But there sure are plenty of questions about what's next, though. Will >Willow leave enough of Warren to put into a baggie for burial, or will >there be absolutely nothing left? I don't much care, really. Warren was a fun character for a while, but he's gone all stiffly-bad, as the Mayor did in the last couple episodes. >Did she learn her lesson from the last resurrection, or will she try to >bring Tara back? Ooh, I hope she knows better than that. >And where the heck did Spike go? From the context, he's off to find a way to get that chip out. If so, why he didn't do it before is the open question. (Yes, I know he tried once, but if he's capable of succeeding this time, why not before?) At 10:23 PM 5/7/2002 , Joseph wrote: >I'd figured it would probably be Tara, since Joss had mentioned Willow and >Xander doing things next season. I was wondering if it might be Spike (at >one point in the episode, just before the friendly goofy party demon showed >up, I thought he might be fixin' to stake himself) or even Jonathan. If I'd been Spike, one look at the party demon's bad makeup (look at his neck) and I'd have been ready to stake anybody. >Oddly, I felt much less impact from this episode than from many others. >I suspect that some of that impact may hit *next* week, when we see the >Scoobies reacting. That could be it. >OTOH, I was a bit frustrated by the choice, since Tara has been sort of >the writers' victim-of-choice, getting her mind taken by Glory, then >getting killed here, each pretty much determined as a plot point to >trigger Willow. The positive spin on that would be to consider the Glory bit as a pre-echo, or even an archetyal allusion, to what would happen later. The negative spin would be to say that Tara has a red shirt on. >> And lest it look like I'm forgetting about the other thing that happened in > > the last 10 seconds of the episode ... I'm a Xenite. My reaction is "Oh, > > Buffy is dying *again*. She'll be fine." :) > >Heh, yeah. "It's do or die / Hey, I've died twice." Yep. And having Buffy (and to an extent Spike) as baffled by their relationship as everybody else is no answer to that either. >My other immediate guess was that Spike was headed to LA to find out from >Angel about the whole "having a soul" thing. But then I remembered >that he'd have to drive his motorcycle across the Unreachable Crevasse >between Channel 11 and Channel 9 :-). Ho. Angel is kind of occupied at the moment. I still think BTVS is a better, more subtle show than _Angel_. >I was really pleased to see Jonathan save Buffy, and laughed out loud >when Andrew banged his head. Yes, the Andrew bit was priceless. But where did the rockets suddenly appear from? Was Andrew wearing it all the time? If not, when did he put it on? I liked the Jonathan bit as a twist from the expected assumption that he's be Warren's victim. By the way, have we had enough hints dropped by now that Andrew is gay? I noticed this a while ago, I think. >I was also a bit thrown when Buffy was in the trio's lair -- for the >first moment I thought he was in Spike's lair, then wondered where he >got the cool Apple monitor. Berni thought for a moment it was Xander's place. At 10:41 PM 5/7/2002 , Gayle wrote: ><< Did she learn her lesson from the last > > resurrection, or will she try to bring Tara back? And where the heck did > > Spike go? > > My hunch is that she'll consider it and Xander and Buffy will talk her > out of it. >> > > I agree, That seems to be what the preview implies. >but I think that she will become a "vengeance demon" with her >magic who puts Anya and Halfrik (sp) to shame. That will help to escalate >things to the season finale crisis. (Maybe that is obvious.) I think that >Willow will be the "big bad" by season's end. I was going to say that even without becoming a demon, Willow's known intent of attacking Warren already makes her, in a sense, the big bad, or as big a bad as we're going to get, along with Warren himself. If Willow does become a demon, I want her either to stay one, or be eliminated permanently. No more wishy-washy redemptions for her. Better, I suppose, that she gets talked out of this early. > What no one has mentioned, that struck me right off, is the irony that > this >is surely the first time that we have ever seen a weapon as mundane as a gun >used in Sunnydale (or even appear in the show). I almost thought they didn't >exist in the Buffyverse -- otherwise, someone could have simply shot the >Slayer a long time ago. The title reminds me too -- is this also the >first time that we have seen blood outside of vampire bites? That's a good point. But I expect the Slayer has healing properties against guns, too. After all, at the start of this episode she was nearly sliced in half by a buzz saw, and had nothing but a big bloody scar (there's some non-vampirically-caused blood display for you) to show for it. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V4 #61 ****************************