Category: Season 1

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Buffy Rewatch Season 1

Buffy re-watch: 1.12 Prophecy Girl

Giles, I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.

So I finally get to the end of season 1. I guess in some ways I’ve been putting this off and I’m not sure why. I think I wanted to give it my full attention as it’s a good episode and deserves it. Also I have been busy with writing, exercise and DIY (yes really!). Anyway I got around to it.

I always think of Prophecy Girl as the best ep of season 1 and the start of a step up in quality that carried on into the next season or two. Now that I re-watch it I’m not so sure. It is still one of my favourites but what strikes me is how much it really is a climax to all the themes and story lines of season 1. Particularly the Buffy-Angel-Xander-Willow quadrilateral.

It’s not hard to see why I would like this episode. It’s got that four-way love mismatch played out to its consequences (Xander is rebuffed and takes refuge in country music). It’s also got a couple of those “moments” that I mentioned about The Pack. There’s a beautifully acted angsty one between Buffy and Giles where she finds out she’s going to die. There’s a cheesy-but-it-still-works one where she power-walks to her show-down with the Master to the tune of the theme song, not breaking her stride to deal with a vampire (“Oh look, a bad guy!” cool). Then there’s the running gag about Buffy’s dress. Xander going to get Angel to help. (“You’re in love with her/Aren’t you?”) and that heart-breaking moment when Willow describes how it “wasn’t our world any more, they made it theirs”. And that bloody hand on the TV still feels creepy and wrong.

Of course there are also things that don’t quite work and never did. Less than a minute after telling Xander, between panting, that Buffy is dead, Angel informs him that he has no breath. That’s ok, I’m very forgiving of such things. It irks me more that the “prophecy” concerning the Anointed One turns out to be that he’s able to lead Buffy to the Master because Buffy knows that’s what the prophecy says and decides she wants to face the Master anyway. Doing what some text says you will do because you read it is not a prophecy it’s a to-do list. But I guess that’s the nature of prophecy in the Buffyverse – tricky as the Master points out.

Those are things that I’ve always known about. What was new to this viewing, was the degree to which the special effects and CGI really were quite poor. That rubber tentacled monster? Did that ever seem state of the art? Perhaps the effect of 11 years of continuously improving special effects has caused me to forget what was normal back then. Or perhaps I had my fan-goggles on and was concentrating on characters and story – which are now so familiar that I’m forced to consider the wallpaper again, as it were. A bit of both probably.

Anyway to sum up. It holds up as a good episode, still probably the best of season 1. I’m not sure it’s as good as what we’re about to see in season 2 though (unless that’s faded with age too). However it has some pleasing interaction between the characters, some unrequited and requited love, a cool fight, some jokes and Buffy dies. Buffy dies and it really matters. OK she’s resussitated two minutes later and much much later she’ll sing about having “died twice” with a glibness that doesn’t fit the impact here – and that’s all fine, but it doesn’t take away from the power of having her die.

8/10

Which means that season 1 has an average of 7.5 – pretty decent. Let’s see how that holds up against coming seasons.

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Buffy Rewatch reviews Season 1

Buffy re-watch: 1.08-1.11 Robots, Puppets and Other (Invisible) Nightmares

So this is my first multi-ep re-watch review, and as you can see my titles aren’t getting any snappier. I’ll try to work on that. I deliberately left myself the final episode as a ‘oner’ because it’s my favourite season 1 ep and because it deserves a longer review than the few lines these four will get.

1.08 I Robot, You Jane – IRYJ or “Robot” is definitely a guilty pleasure. It shouldn’t work because it’s so cheesey and silly. Even for 1997 the computer stuff in this episode is just so off-beam. But you forgive it all that because it’s fun. And it’s fun because you’ve got all this lovely relationship stuff – Giles and Ms Calendar, Willow and Malcolm/Moloch with Xander getting jealous. And of course the last line and reaction which is pretty much the mission statement as far as BtVS romances go

Buffy: Let’s face it: none of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal
relationship.

Xander: We’re doomed!

Willow: Yeah!

So even with the element of cheese it deserves a good healthy 8/10

1.09 The Puppet Show – this is another episode that shouldn’t work as well as it does. There’s a long and glorious history of “devil doll” horror movies, and none of them quite get over the inherent silliness of a toy attacking a human. The fact that The Puppet Show almost does is testament to how good it is. I think that’s partly the way it’s shot, partly the voice acting for Sid the dummy and partly the plot. This ep introduces Snyder and he’s one of about 4 characters who you could genuinely believe is the killer. So it keeps you guessing. And laughing. This is a very funny episode, especially with Giles’ reaction to having to produce the talent show.

When I was deciding what to score this ep I dithered between a 7 and 8. I’ve decided there’s no point having a 10-point scale if you award say 7.5 but whilst The Puppet Show is definitely better than Never Kill A Boy… is it really on the same level as The Pack (my favourite so far)? Then I remembered the credit sequence. After that, no problem. 8/10

1.10 Nightmares – The best moments in this episode are just that – moments. But not in the way that I described for The Pack, these are moments that stand alone, they’re simple jokes really, based on what we think individual characters might find scary. I guess I find the ending a little too simplistically moral. But we have some fun along the way. 7/10

1.11 Out of Sight, Out of Mind – this is the Buffy take on the Invisible Man story. Here though the invisibility comes from being ignored and once again, making an everyday issue into a mystical reality works really well. This is one of the few Buffy episodes that genuinely creepy or even scary. I think slashing Cordy’s cheek with a scalpel whilst she’s tied to the chair has impact because it has resonances of serial killer movies and so on. It’s good that we get to see a little more complexity to Cordy in this ep. I love that she can make us sympathise with her, because she’s lonely in the centre of attention, and still be the queen bitch. 8/10

So a good strong run up to the end of the season.

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Buffy Rewatch Season 1

Buffy re-watch: 1.07 Angel

I wasn’t sure if I was going to do a “stand-out” review for this ep since it’s not really outstanding quality wise, however Angel is a pretty important character in the Buffyverse and this is the first Angel-centric episode plus the first time we’re introduced to his back story. Buffy finds out he’s a vampire, but with a soul.

I guess here is where we get to the re- in re-watch because I’m able to say something I never would have said a few years back. This just isn’t very good. In the sense of being bad. And I don’t mean bad on a BtVS scale where it’s still much better than most other TV. I don’t even mean bad in that other BtVS sense where the central story isn’t great but there are compensations in the form of funny lines and character moments. I mean it’s just bad. OK it’s not awful. I’d still rather watch it than say a makeover show or sport, but it’s not good.

And this is because it’s lacking those extra touches, that Joss polish, that seemed to define the early seasons for me. Also there’s some plot holes and logic issues (and we know how I feel about those right?) My main one is, exactly what is it that causes Angel to vamp-out when kissing Buffy? We know from later on that he more or less has control over that so I guess it must be some semi-conscious desire to reveal himself.

Also, if he’s on the side of good, how come he doesn’t just kill Darla when she visits him at home? Or at least fight? And we’re never really shown enough to suggest he’s suicidal – because in the Bronze he tells Buffy that she should just kill him before he explains about the curse.

I can live with the couple of not-quite-settled ideas which turn into discontinuities – i.e. the fact he’s living off human blood bags and not animal blood, and the fact he says he hasn’t fed off a human being since he re-gained his soul. The Angel episode Orpheus tells us otherwise.

Angel is noteworthy because it introduces the idea of the curse and therefore clarifies the mythology regarding what a vampire is:

Giles: A vampire isn’t a person at all. It may have the movements, the, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but i-it’s still a demon at the core, there is no halfway.

and

Angel: When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn’t get your soul. That’s gone! No conscience, no remorse… It’s an easy way to live.

and whilst Angel is in a sense Giles’ non-existent halfway, he exists because of the curse, a loophole in the rule much less an exception that proves it. So for now everything is back and white, vampire=no soul=bad=ok to kill them. I happen to think the show gets a whole lot more interesting when they start to bend that rule. Because when it comes to “halfways” there is, as Yoda said, another. But we’ll get to that (eventually!)

So worth seeing if you either really bored, a completist, want all the details of Buffyverse vampire lore or just like seeing David Boreanaz with his shirt off (or Julie Benz in catholic schoolgirl uniform I suppose)

4/10

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Buffy Rewatch Season 1

Buffy Re-Watch: 1.06 The Pack

Giles: Xander’s taken to teasing the less fortunate?

Buffy: Uh-huh.

Giles: And, there’s been a noticeable change in both clothing and
demeanor?

Buffy: Yes.

Giles: And, well, otherwise all his spare time is spent lounging about
with imbeciles.

Buffy: It’s bad, isn’t it.

Giles: It’s devastating. He’s turned into a sixteen-year-old boy.
Of course, you’ll have to kill him.

One of the things I’ve noticed about favourite books, movies, TV eps — and The Pack is definitely a favourite — is that it’s often more a question of cool, poignant or otherwise enjoyable moments. A favourite book/movie/episode has a few such moments and the enjoying is not only savouring them but also the anticipation of the build-up and the frisson of the fall-out from them. A truly great episode is simply a collection of such moments one after another, seamlessly and smoothly connected – usually by a theme.

What are my “moments” from The Pack then? Well there are three – Xander being mean to Willow when he tells her he’s dropping geometry, the slo-mo walk toward camera of the pack backed by rock music and the final scene. The first because while it’s awful to see Willow in pain, it’s nice to see her feelings for Xander brought out.

The second, well those things always look cool if you don’t over-do them. I can think of four instances in the first two seasons of BtVS – this is the second.

And the final scene is a moment because it’s where they fix the pain we had in the earlier moment. Xander tacitly apologises to Buffy and Willow whilst pretending not to remember. Plus he lets Willow know that he loves her – clearly it’s friendship love but still… And of course the final joke is funny – which always helps.

Those are the moments but the underlying goodness of this episode the Xander-Willow relationship. (Are you getting the fact that I like the idea of these two as a couple?) There’s also the usual high standard jokes in the dialogue such as “kid’s fat”, “weird behaviour award” and the quote I began with.

Speaking of which, like NKaBotFD, The Pack is summed up by such a quote, it’s another High-School-as-Hell-with-monsters-as-issues metaphor episode. The metaphor is obvious but it works well nonetheless.

Which is odd because in many ways The Pack shouldn’t work as well as it does, the concept is just too silly. Although you could say that about the show as a whole. It works because everyone commits to the silliness, and they write/direct/act well. However there are times when the silliness threatens to show through. It works best when the pack are acting like what the metaphor points to – bratty teens – not what they actually are – hyenas. So in the slo-mo walk or the stealing hot dogs scene the pack are cool and threatening whereas in the scene where they are found sleeping in the woods, drooling from their recent pig-feed, or when they attack the SUV, well the inherent ridiculousness is hard to hide. Fortunately those scenes are in the minority.

Another thing that helps the episode is nice performances in a couple of minor roles – the zoo keeper and the gym class teacher. They both do a lot with relatively little.

Finally I’ve got to note the passing of our first TV principal. I liked Flutie. The actor that played him made him likeable and funny.

So, overall, something a guilty pleasure since a) it’s very silly and b) the stuff I enjoy is the relationship stuff. But once again that could go for the entire show.

8/10

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Buffy Rewatch reviews Season 1

Buffy Re-Watch: 1.05 Never Kill a Boy on the First Date


“Clark Kent has a job. I just wanna go on a date.”

“Never Kill…” is an important episode. It dramatises something I think is one of the core ideas of the show. Not “High School is Hell” or “Monsters as Metaphors” those are the how. The what is encapsulated in that quote I began with – the conflict between being The Slayer and being a normal girl. The show in the early years did a great job of using the horror genre to talk about every day problems the audience could identify with. Later on it got harder to do that and not repeat themselves, until by season 5+ these were pretty much just telling stories in that world, without so much the direct parallels. However one thing that runs all the way through from Welcome to the Hellmouth to Chosen is the way being the Slayer isolates you and yet how Buffy still tries to live a normal life, connecting to those around her. To varying degrees she succeeds but often at great cost.

It’s this conflict that’s not only at the heart of the show but, I believe goes a long way to making it what it is. After all, the danger with something that wears its feminism so clearly on its sleeve as BtVS does is that you become po-faced and preachy. What rescues it from that, apart obviously, from humour and lots of it, is the fact that Buffy is not just a hero she’s an ordinary teenager. She likes boys and shopping and chatting with her friends. She gets frustrated with adults who don’t understand what’s really important, like dates and having the right shoes. So this instantly gives us a way in, makes her identifiable and makes us care.

Another way Never Kill… is also a key episode for the Season 1 over-all arc. It introduces the idea of the Annoying One who has a lot to do with the finale. So given how important this episode is it’s a shame it’s not a better one. I mean it’s still very good, there’s lots to enjoy. But that’s mostly Joss’s humour and some good performances by Sarah and Tony Head, but still on a BtVS scale it lacks something. Partly I think it’s that the show is still finding its feet. I think you can tell that there’s still a lot they haven’t figured out yet. It hasn’t yet quite broken out of the mode of a teenage show, albeit a slightly quirky one. You can see this in the costumes (some very short skirts) and even some of the dialogue –

“You’re acting a little overly, aren’t you?”

“Tonight! Isn’t that so?”

“Yeah, so it is. It sure is so.”

I’m not sure but this sounds to me like it’s deliberately intended to sound teenage-ry. Joss talks about trying use real teenager slang at first and then gradually developing something else, something that was unique to the show, so-called “Buffy-speak”. So compare the above with for example:

“Ooo, two points for the Slayer, while the Watcher has yet to score!”

Giles: Well, you know what they say. Ninety percent of the vampire
slaying game is, is waiting.

Buffy: You couldn’t have told me that ninety percent ago?

In season 2, 3 and beyond the skirts get longer and we get more of the second kind of dialogue. That’s when I feel the show has found and is playing to, its own audience rather than chasing a “demographic” or some-such. Not that there’s a lot of that, but it’s not completely absent.

Perhaps another reason for me personally not to out-and-out love this ep is the prophecy. Prophecies in the Buffyverse have a habit of being self-fulfilling. In fact a major part of a seasonal arc in Angel was built around just such a concept. I don’t mind a prophecy having that sense of irony that the outcome is changed by the telling itself, but in order to be called a prophecy there needs to be an element of genuine mystical foresight. Telling a group of vampires that on a certain night five people will die and then having those vampires go out and kill five people on that night, is an instruction not a prophecy.

One final reason is that Owen is, despite the way he’s cast, a bit wet. They got the right kind of boy that you can imagine Buffy and Cordelia drooling over, but that whole shy, Emily Dickinson reading, talks about bees thing seems out of line with that somehow. I get that he’s supposed to have more depth but he just seems a bit too other-worldly in a weird way. And of course at the end the script requires him to do a complete 180 and want to become a danger-thrill-seeker. Now I can see how that might happen, reaction to his earlier, don’t get out much lifestyle but… I dunno, it just makes him overall seem much less impressive than he could have been. Probably that was the point but it left me wanting a better foil for Buffy. Oh wait Angel’s waiting in the wings, maybe he’s the one to… 😉

This is getting long so just a couple of note-worthy things to erm, note before I wrap it up:

  • pedants and continuity types, notice that Giles says “I don’t have an instruction manual”. Later on we find out about the Slayer Handbook
  • more Willow-Xander-Buffy-Angel love quadrilateral hints – with Owen and Cordy thrown in too – not so much as with Witch but still cool.
  • “OK at this point you’re abusing sarcasm” is one of the few BtVS quotes that can be easily re-used in everyday life. Trust me I’ve tried and most Buffyspeak, however cool, are too specific to work out of context.
  • first of a run of gags about the Library – the ‘batcave’ of the Scooby gang – actually being used as a Library.

So, overall, it’s an episode that deals with a, if not the, major theme of the show. It comes from a season where it’s not yet become the show I fell in love with but it’s still full of a lot of fun stuff.

7/10

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Buffy Rewatch Season 1 writing

Monday Night is Blogging Night

…which is just my attempt at a title that captures a few topics, not a statement of intent.

Although it could be and it might not be such a bad idea. See, the thing I have feared has happened, as I think one of Job’s comforters said. That is, (re-)watching Buffy has become a bit of a chore because I feel like I can’t proceed until I’ve blogged about it. So we have…

 1. Watching Buffy with M.

I went over to see M. the other week and took my Buffy S1 DVDs with me. We watched the first 4 episodes together. I was nervous about this for a couple of reasons.

First, four is a lot when I needed to remember what I wanted to say about them in my blog. However that’s not too much of a problem. I know the episodes well enough.

Second, I was nervous that M. wouldn’t like them. I was very aware of the problems with the episodes. Not that there are many but I’ve been in this situation before – the ‘fan’ wanting to share my love for something only to get a ‘mmm that’s nice’ polite response.

I needn’t have worried. I’d forgotten that long before she’d met me M. had been a regular Buffy watcher. Not a fan the way I was, but certainly a fan the way I began. Someone who basically liked the show and wanted to fill in the gaps in eps she hadn’t seen.

So what did I think?

Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest – this is where it really all started, for me. It was still cool, and I enjoyed as ever such favourite moments as Jesse’s line “I’m not ok on an epic scale” and Buffy’s ‘dawn’ gag on Luke. But what I really noticed was how trad horror-movie-esque the Master is. I mean I knew that he was and was so deliberately, he’s the scary organ music to Buffy’s energetic rock tune, but I guess I’d forgotten how much that’s true in the first couple of episodes. Even as soon as the next two it settles down a bit with the Master making jokes and such. 8/10

Witch – this was the episode I saw the promo for and decided not to continue watching Buffy (only to pick it up again much later). To this day I’m not really sure why except that for some reason I didn’t like the idea that the show was about things other than vampires! Of course now I love this ep because it’s got juicy Xander-Buffy-Willow triangularity in it. Aww so sweet. 8/10

Teacher’s Pet – I watched this with one eye on M. to see her groan at the monster (I mean giant praying mantis?) but she didn’t, she enjoyed it as I did. I like the opening dream sequence with Xander playing the hero. I like the teacher who dies and how he believes in Buffy. I like the fact the way that even though we are dealing with a giant praying mantis the actors sell the fear as real. That’s the thing about Buffy, it may make jokes, even self-referential ones, but it always attempts to play the emotional situation as real. 7/10

 2. Time and Writing

So, at the start of the year I came up with this timetable for myself re: writing. How ‘m I doing? Well so far since I started (barely 3 weeks). I’ve missed one evening (an hour) and one full weekend (five hours). I’m certainly not planning to try to do the catching up thing since that way lies madness and sweaty palms. I was thinking that I might incorporate my failure into my plan – to my already generous time-off quotient. What I could do is have one weekend a month where I plan not to do my usual writing. Two hours on saturday and three on sunday is not a lot really and let it seems to take up most of my weekend by the time you factor in some procrastination and faffing around.

Plus my usual habit of not setting my alarm and getting up when I feel like it shortens my day. My day still ‘ends’ pretty much at midnight because that’s when I tend to call M. for an end-of-day chat. So one thing I’m considering is setting my alarm for something suitably late but not midday for the weekends.

Actually it was pretty predictable that I’d not be writing this weekend as I re-built (from a software point of view) my Mythtv box. Leading to

3. MythTV Multirec

There was probably no real need to wipe my system and re-install except well, I kind of enjoyed it. I also fondly imagine it gives me a ‘cleaner’ system somehow. Anyway I’ve installed a new version of Mythtv that supports multiple recordings from the same multiplex.

What’s that mean? Well the Freeview signal is split into different frequencies that carry a multiplex – a collection of channels. When you ‘tune in’ to a channel you actually tune in the multiplex and just record/display the channel you’re interested in. What the clever MythTV developers have done is make it possible to record one, some or all of the channels in a multiplex using a single tuner. In other words using my dual-tuner tv-card I can now record several channels at once (providing they’re on no more than two multiplexes). Earlier tonight I successfully recorded 6 programs at once.

Actually I rarely need this, at least in that way. I’ve been running a MythTV box with 2 tuners for over 9 months now and I very rarely need more than 2 tuners. The reason I like it, and the reason – other than the enjoyment of doing it – to install multirec is that I can record back to back programs on the same channel and have an overlap (finish recording prog1 5 mins late and start prog2 5 mins early) and only use one tuner. Sounds trivial but it’s not. I record Mastermind and University Challenge which are back to back on BBC2. Since occasionally there’s something on another channel I want to record, I set it so Mastermind finishes at 8:30 and U.C. starts at 8:30. But if the timing’s not exact then I end up with the end of Mastermind chopped off early and a little bit of it at the start of the U.C. recording. Which is annoying. It would be even more so if I intended to archive them to DVD.

Anyway I installed it, re-installed the complete machine in fact, with a new version of Linux and everything. A weekend suitably ‘wasted’.

That’s probably way more than you wanted to read, so until next Monday…