From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V5 #44 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, March 8 2003 Volume 05 : Number 044 Today's Subjects: ----------------- a/Where is Cordy really? [Joseph Zitt ] Re: a/Where is Cordy really? [Todd Huff ] a/salvage. ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 12:16:07 -0800 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: a/Where is Cordy really? It struck me last night that the evilization of Cordy may have been planted farther back than her supposed return. The whole "higher being" thing came to our attention when Skip suddenly showed up to tell her. She, and we, automatically believed it, though it did seem to be a bit of a credibility stretcher. All we've apparently seen of her since is her kvetching from up in the sky that she's bored. Could it be that that was a ruse, and that Skip (or whoever was appearing to be him -- at this point we can't trust *anyone's* identity) was simply moving her off the chessboard and dumping her in a limbo dimension (though I get grumpy at the use of the word "dimension" to mean "place") so that the Big Bad could take her place? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 17:58:42 -0800 (PST) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: a/Where is Cordy really? > Could it be that that was a ruse, and that Skip (or > whoever was appearing to > be him -- at this point we can't trust *anyone's* > identity) was simply > moving her off the chessboard and dumping her in a > limbo dimension (though I > get grumpy at the use of the word "dimension" to > mean "place") so that the > Big Bad could take her place? It would not surprise me to find out that Cordy is still in that same higher dimension, looking on and shouting "how can you people be so stupid!?!". . Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 01:37:37 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: a/salvage. Mea culpa. I must have misread one of the myriad post-its cluttering my computer desk (can't even find the one I mistakenly read now: the one I did find was pretty unambiguous). The episode is in fact titled "Salvage" (though the term "release" was used at least once and has obvious relevance itself). Thought it might amuse the assembled multitude to pass on the e-mail I got from my daughter yesterday: > From: Deirdre > Subject: FAITH!!!!! > Oh Faith, how we have missed you! I never thought I'd get to hear Wesley > say "five by five", I think I laughed through the whole commercial > break. And Cordelia's little comment about "a thing for Slayers" was > great. What's up with Cordy anyway? Her whole evil thing is so > confusing, she's not the First because people have touched her and she > killed Lila, so what's the what? So nice to have Eliza back, she was > great and actually the fight sequences really impressive (love that > Matrix style slo-mo). ("What's the what" being a quote from "Bad Girls"--Buffy to Angel at the Bronze--as she knew I'd know.)(And myself, I'm really sick of slo-mo in fight scenes.) Now, Deirdre and I are really "close viewers" (in the sense of "close reading"), but =neither= of us realized that the knife the other convict had was a Bringer knife! We knew it was Significant because of the way the camera focused on it, but (speaking for myself now) I guess I didn't have my =Buffy= hat on, because I was idly trying to remember where it had been on =Angel= before. Of course, its being a Bringer knife explains everything, especially the convict's "nothing personal"/"needed the money" statement. Though it does pose other difficulties, which I'll defer for the present. Minor point: Connor's verb was "breeze in"; therefore, "waltz in" is mine own. Another minor point: I thought it was a nice little reference when Faith said to Angelus, "Come out and give me a kiss." Kind of a trademark of hers: one previous occurrence was when she said to Buffy, "Give us a kiss" before the fight in "Graduation Day." One other statement by someone else, on another list I'm on, who I think expressed a point I was trying to make before better than I did: > Let's see. There's a problem on both shows. Slayer #1 diddles about, > makes numerous annoying speeches that annoy and depress people, and > basically wastes precious time. Slayer #2 hears there's a problem, > breaks out of the jail she was obviously only in because she felt she > deserved to be there and not because they could really keep her there, > comes into a situation where she knows almost no one, takes over > efficiently, kicks some major ass and on the way slaps some much needed > sense into Whiny Boy. Amen. I can't believe I forgot to mention the phone call. What a cute bit. I wondered, too, if we were going to get the other side of it on =Buffy=, but here's a difficulty: =Buffy= and =Angel= are seriously out of phase this year: =Buffy= has run 16 episodes so far (yes, folks, only six to go!), and that last =Angel= was only the 13th. (But they're running =Angel= without a break to the end, so it's actually going to catch and pass =Buffy.) This means we should =already= have seen Dawn's side of the conversation...but I spent a good while yesterday skimming through =Buffy= from the 12th episode on, and if it was there, I missed it. (The phone call from Robson, answered by Andrew, not Dawn, would have been in the right spot, but it was a different call altogether, of course.) This brings up another point, which someone here mentioned briefly and someone else elsewhere mentioned in more detail: is Angel pretending to be Angelus? This is what I answered: > My two cents is that what we have is =not= Angel pretending to be > Angelus, for these two reasons: > 1) He would have had no reason to hang up on Dawn. > it seems to me he would have preferred to have Faith on his side, =and= > (maybe more important) let her know he was still on =her= side. To which the reply was that Angel doesn't know what powers the Beast's boss has, so he has to pretend to be Angelus in all situations, even when he's by himself. I don't buy it. I know these shows can be byzantine and convoluted, but I think we need to be aware of the danger of =over=convoluting our speculations: sometimes Occam's Razor is the appropriate tool. The situation with Cordelia is complicated enough, what with figuring out what both she and Angelus are up to, without giving it an extra twist by assuming it's Angel, not Angelus. Similarly, I think the simplest explanation is that Wesley was having a conversation with Lilah in his head, and it was dramatized externally, much the way Spike imagined Buffy rescuing him (before she actually did. And oh by the way, have we ever figured out if Sympathetic Buffy was an internal fantasy or a manifestation of the First? Not So Sympathetic Buffy seemed to be Real Buffy.)(Sorry, if that chain of thought is hard to follow I'll unpack it.) In any case, clearly Wesley's thought about trying to redeem Lilah led to his thinking of Faith as a solution to their problem. A very strong sequence. Similar remarks also apply to the theory that Cordelia's baby is actually Lila's. I guess I wouldn't put it past them, but gee, it really seems farfetched. Now, having delivered that little sermon, I'm going to not practice what I just preached, and get involved in trying to sort out what's going on with the Slayer line. Buffy has been repeatedly referred to (by herself as much as by others) as "the" Slayer; and everyone seems to be assuming that her death will create the next Slayer (that's a near-quote from Buffy, in fact). The First is deferring killing Buffy until all the Potentials are dead (leaving no one to replace her) before killing Buffy and extinguishing the Slayers forever. Or so the plan has been expressed. Let's start with this: why should this plan extinguish the Slayer line? Won't potential Slayers continue to be born? Won't the first one to reach maturity be activated? (There's no action necessary, apparently; it happens automatically. Remember that the original trope in the movie is that Buffy was activated, but it took the Watchers several years to find her. Plausibly, this is a trope they hope we've forgotten.) Sure, there will be an interregnum, but why wouldn't the line be rekindled? (I note here that this very plotline had already been used in Christopher Golden's novel =Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row=, and I questioned it there, too.) But that's not the biggest problem here. The problem, of course, is Faith. I don't have a citable reference here, but apparently =somewhere= Joss Whedon has declared that the Slayer line now runs through Faith. This makes sense: Buffy died temporarily in "Prophecy Girl"; Kendra was Called. Kendra died in "Becoming"; Faith was Called. Buffy died again (again temporarily) in "The Gift"; =as far as we have been told=, no new Slayer was Called. (And you would think that if one had, she would have turned up by now.) But though Joss Has (Apparently) Spoken, =it has never been so stated within the continuity=. And I wonder if we're being set up. Is it possible that Buffy (and even Giles) are =unaware= that the line now runs through Faith? (Remember Buffy's line in--which episode was it, "Bring On the Night"?--that the First would kill all the Potentials, "and then Faith, and then me.") Certainly Buffy and Giles (and the rest of the Scoobies) know Faith is an active Slayer (though the Potentials don't even know for sure that she exists: remember Vi saying she'd heard there was another Slayer "somewhere" and Kennedy scoffing? Kennedy is in for a rude awakening). But they are operating under the assumption that the line still runs through Buffy. =And=, consider that the First has explicitly stated it's saving killing Buffy until last--but it contrived to send a Bringer knife into the prison to kill Faith--=as though she were merely a Potential=. I was thinking it was pretty dumb, actually--three or four Bringers can certainly bring down a Potential; but sending one (admittedly strong-looking) assassin after an active Slayer? But maybe the explanation is this: =the First is unaware that Faith is an active Slayer=. Deirdre and I got into an argument on a side point in this discussion: she was assuming that the First and the Bringers were finding out about Potentials from the Watchers' Council records, but I've been assuming that they have some mystical mojo that clues them in (equivalent to, though probably different from, the way the Coven found the one in Sunnydale, and different again from Willow's spell. Or was it Willow's spell that clued the Bringers in on Amanda?) =Whatever= the method the Bringers are using, is it possible that it doesn't distinguish between a Potential and an Active Slayer? This is a very complicated and confused situation, and the show needs to address it and clear it up before they wind this whole thing up. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V5 #44 ****************************