Categories
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 flubbage

Son of Flubbage

When I re-(x3)-launched the blog I promised myself that I’d curb the self-indulgence and reduce the ratio of flubbageousness to actual content. However having had a little run of review posts I think I’ve earned a small amount of flubbage-iosity. So here it is.

I guess the first, and main thing is that I’m enjoying my blog more. A big part of that is blog stats. I love blog stats. In the past, in the dim distant free-LJ-account past, the only way I had of tracking whether I was being read was to see how many comments I got. Mostly I got none. But with WordPress I can see how many views I get, where they’re coming from and stuff like that. Which is cool because I can see what works in terms of promoting the blog.

And what seems to work is all the stuff I knew – posting on other blogs (where I’ve got something genuinely relevant to say. I’m not a spammer), putting a link in my sigs for where I already post, posting regularly. Also one thing I didn’t know worked, but does, is tagging. I used to think of tagging as organisational stuff for me, but it’s also fodder for the search engines and for WordPress blogs at least it puts you in the tag surfing system.

Tag surfing is my new favourite hobby. Basically WordPress gives you a page of recent posts with the same tags, or related ones, in other blogs. It’s a kind of random way to find other blogs you might be interested in and it’s already swelled my Google Reader subscriptions a little.

Speaking of posting more regularly, I am, as you’ll have seen, doing the Buffy Re-Watch posts again. I’ve decided the best way to do this is to do compilation posts for multiple episodes and single posts for the standout eps. When we hit Season 2/3 there’ll be long runs of stand-out eps but until then it’ll save some space and keep the momentum up. The idea for this came from this post.

Anyway speaking of Buffy Re-Watch…

Categories
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

Categories
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…

Categories
Buffy Rewatch

Buffy – the Un-aired Pilot

OK, so this was where it really all started.

3rd May 1996 (according to the fuzzy titlecard) and Joss Whedon has re-visited his movie concept and made it into a pilot for a TV series. As with the movie, I spent a fair amount of time on the net defending this back in my full-on fan days. Unlike the movie, my opinion of it hasn’t faded over time.

So what this not is a ‘normal’ TV quality production. What it is is a 25 minute mini-episode in order to show off the idea to networks to see if they want to sign up to airing the show. In other words it’s a pilot in the Pulp Fiction sense[1] rather than the first-show-broadcast sense that sometime gets used. What this means, apart from being shorter, is that this is a little rough around the edges: the titles are not in that pseudo-gothic font we know and love, Nerf Herder’s theme is missing and replaced by some random grunge and the special effects are basically ‘place-markers’ – they give the idea of what’s intended without spending much money. For extra roughness, seeing as how this was never meant to make it to anyone’s eyes but network execs, the copy that finally made it out onto the net wasn’t particularly great. Looks like someone got hold of a VHS copy and possibly we had a couple of copy-of-copy generations before someone thought to capture it in digital form. The combination of VHS technology, NTSC TV format (which isn’t kind to colours) and repeated copying means what I watched tonight was blurry, fuzzy with strange mixed, washed out colours.

But that all can be, legitimately in my view, be excused. It was never meant for broadcast, so it’s unfair to compare it with broadcast quality production values. To assess its strengths and weaknesses we have to look at what, presumably, the network execs looked at: acting, casting, story, action, dialogue. Fortunately in all these areas the story gets much better.

The un-aired pilot story-wise is a cut-down version of “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, the first aired episode. As such, I’m not going to spend much time on it here. I will mention that the writing is up to the standard we’d expect from the show – it’s Joss after all – and there are some jokes and one-liners that are fun:

Buffy: Film Club

Xander: They spend their time deciding that every movie is an existential meditation on Freudian sexuality.

Buffy: Even “Muppets Take Manhattan”?

Xander: Especially “Muppets Take Manhattan”!

or

Buffy: (on discovering there’s more than one vampire) I don’t suppose you’d be sweeties and attack me one at a time?

Vampire: You watch too many movies.

Buffy: You can never (kicks him) watch too many (kick) movies!

Well said Buffy.

So the writing’s there and so I’m pleased to say is the acting. All the usual gang are there and all performing well. Nick Brendon in particular deserves praise I feel because this was his first acting job, and he’s great. And the casting – in terms of fitting the parts and the chemistry between them – is great. With one important exception: Willow.

Willow is played by a dumpy looking girl called Riff Regan.[2] I don’t want to be harsh – I am after all a dumpy looking boy – but she’s not up to the task, and she’s definitely not Alison Hannigan. I can see why they might have gone for her, she’s supposed to be geeky and she looks the part. She can actually act, despite what some say, but what she gives us is one-dimensional. She gives us shy, geeky, un-self-confident Willow but she never gives us more than that. Joss talks about Tony Head getting the part of Giles based on giving not just the stuffy English librarian, but the stuffy English librarian with a hint that there might be more going on underneath. There’s no underneath to Regan’s Willow. You get the feeling she’s going to always be a bit shy and diffident and that makes you feel a little sad for her.

By contrast Hanngian’s Willow’s shy geekiness is somehow and endearing and even from the first show there’s an edge underlying her lack of confidence. Oh but there’ll be plenty of time to expound on my love for Willow (which is great) as we go through the series.

Finally whilst we’re on acting I’ll quickly mention Stephen Tobolowsky as Principal Flutie. He’s excellent. He brings the funny, much as Stephen Root does in the movie. In fact, as we’ll see, all 5 Principals have been great in various ways.

Towards the end there’s a little action scene where Buffy rescues Willow from some vampires and we get to see fights done properly i.e. with some energy and something at stake. I was slightly surprised to realise that both Xander and Willow get to have a little slaying success of their own: Xander rather deftly passes Buffy a broom and Willow uses a cross to dispatch Darla. In the show itself it would be into the second series at least before we start to really see them have any ‘moves’ as it were. Perhaps this is the difference between making a pilot and a show – you need to show something of what the characters’ potential is straight away when you’re trying to get picked up, but once you are, you can relax and let them develop at a more leisurely pace.

So, to the same question I asked myself of the movie: if I’d seen this back in ’96, would it have convinced me to watch the TV series. I 95% certain the answer is yes. It’s funny and likeable and promises fantasy horror genre intrigue – just the kind of thing I’d enjoy. The 5% remains only because of what actually happened when I watched the actual show – but I’ll tell that story in its proper place.

7/10
[1] “Well, the way they make shows is, they make one show. That show’s called a pilot. Then they show that show to the people who make shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they’re going to make more shows. Some pilots get picked and become television programs. Some don’t, become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing.”

[2]sounds like a bloke from a 70s British cop show doesn’t it?

Categories
Buffy Rewatch

Buffy the Movie

So this was where it all started.

In 1992 the original movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was released. It was written by Joss Whedon, a TV writer who’d worked on Roseanne and would later go on to work on Toy Story.

It wasn’t very good.

But before we get to that, I’ve actually been here before. In 2001, at the height of my fandom, I bought the movie when it was released on DVD. I then wrote this review. It’s interesting how positive I was. To explain/excuse that I should say that it was written for/to the fan community, the received wisdom of whom was that the movie was rubbish and should not be considered as connected to the TV show, which we all loved of course.

Although some of my thoughts on the movie have changed, I don’t intend to write a full re-review as it were. In this blog, I’m largely interested in how things fit in with my own history as a fan.

I can remember hearing about the movie around the time it was released on what was probably Film ’93. Barry Norman thought it was an interesting concept but poorly executed I think. On the strength of that, as was my usual custom at the time, I didn’t make any effort to go see it. When I finally did see it, I was already a fan and happy to find good in it. Now having watched it again with a little of that distance I spoke of yesterday, what do I think?

The thing I think is best about it is still Kristy Swanson. If there’s a moment I liked or a joke I laughed at, she was usually responsible for it. Actually there were other funny moments from Stephen Root as the Principal, but that comedy seemed a little divorced from the film itself.

Two things really stand out on watching it again. One is how static it is, especially in the action scenes. It’s more than needing to “do flippy things and kick each other a bit.” it’s the fact that the reality of any stake (pun unavoidable) or any threat is undermined. Not seeming to either run toward or away from the fight, or expend much effort in it, leaves a feeling that that character doesn’t care much about the outcome. And if they don’t why should I?

The second is the blase way in which everyone reacts to the discovery that vampires are real. Apart from Hilary Swank, whose screaming whilst scenery chewing was way over the top, everyone seems to treat the discovery as mildly annoying or irritating. Even where they say things as if they’re scared for their lives, the acting and delivery of the lines betrays that. Again they don’t really care, so I don’t. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of how to do comedy (he says as if he’s an expert!) – no matter how broad the joke, the actor should play the character’s reactions as real, because to them, within that fictional world it’s real – even if it’s ridiculous and funny to us. As the TV show later proved, you can have great emotional reality and humour side by side.

Anyway, the big question – for me at least – is if, in 1992/3, I’d seen this movie, would I have seen enough in it to want to check out the TV show 5 years later? I think the honest answer is no. I might still have watched but it would have been despite not because. I don’t think I would have thought “here’s a good concept done poorly” I think I would have just dismissed it as a bad movie. Not a bad movie with good parts, just bad.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie: 3/10.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch

Buffy Re-visited

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, planning it in fact.

I’m going to re-watch all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in order, and possibly Angel. I think.

I started to think about it back in the early part of last year. From mid-2000 I’ve been a huge BtVS fan. I acquired the videos and later the DVDs and watched them over and over (often in preference to anything new on TV). I discussed each new episode on the internet endlessly with other fans. However when it ended I was not distraught. It had run its course, finished whilst it was still good enough not to tarnish its reputation (others would not agree). I remained, remain, a fan but there’s less to be fannish about. The internet discussions died down and the ones remaining tend to re-visit the same old ground.

Then last year, after some of the dust had settled from moving house, and after I had got over the initial initial excitement of setting up Mythtv, I began to realise I hadn’t watched an episode of Buffy for some time. I began to deliberately not do so i.e. not pick out a favourite ep when I was at a loose end what to watch.
I wanted to have a clear stretch – at least a year – so that I could, to some extent watch them with new eyes. Would they, I nervously wondered, stand up? I think the answer to that is yes for the really good episodes and perhaps less so for others. I was very forgiving of any mistakes when I was in full-on fan mode.

During October, when I had some time off work, I started copying my DVDs onto my Mythtv box. This means I can watch them without getting up to change the disc. In my mind this was all part of the preparation. As I was transcoding them down to smaller files this took 3 or 4 weeks to do them all, plus Angel. Then I got into writing again. Then it was Christmas.

And now, now that I have organised myself time-wise, I am actually going to do it. I think.

Why the hesitation? Well the idea was not just to re-watch them but to review them in my blog – like the Harry Potter re-read. The problem with that is that there are 144 episodes of Buffy and 110 of Angel. That’s 254 45minute episodes. At one a day that would take more than half a year. Of course in the old days I watched four in an evening sometimes. But I wasn’t trying to write anything about them, or about anything else come to that. And even if I accept that it’s a longer term project and maybe take a year or two over it – do I want my blog to be about that for so long? After all my worries about getting people to read is this a good strategy? 3-4 years ago it would have been, even now though there will be people who’d be interested, I’d be discussing things that have been done to death in many ways.

So what to do? Well I think my plan is to definitely watch all the episodes but not necessarily comment on them all. Or perhaps I will comment on groups together with a line or two about the less interesting ones, keeping the focus always on – what it’s like to re-visit them. My goal also is to update this blog a couple of times a week with only one being a Buffy review post.

Another question is what order to do them in. Sounds a silly question – but it’s very tempting to do them in ‘autobiographical’ order – the order I originally watched them in and the meaning that had to me (so my first ep was the first ep but after that I missed a few only later going back when I had them on video/DVD). It’s tempting but I don’t have the memory to get that order right, except for a few key points which I’ll highlight along the way.

Having got that off my chest, and therefore not ‘contaminating’ the reviews themselves with it, I’ll now go and watch the first – which is probably not what you think.