Nik at Nite

Angel S5: Eps 13, 14, 15

2012-01-31T20:00:00.000-05:00

5.13 Why We Fight
5.14 Smile Time
5.15 A Hole in the World

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

While last week's episodes were stellar, THIS is the week I've been waiting for. Because after "Why We Fight," we're treated to the single funniest Angel episode of all time, followed by the single saddest. Only a Joss Whedon show could take you on such highs and such lows. First we get "Smile Time," an episode that didn't just elicit laughter from me, but full-bodied guffaws. I mean, the PUPPET is brooding, for goodness sakes. HILARIOUS. Oh, how I love that little puppet man. And Spike's response? Sends me into giggle fits every time I see it.

And then... the laughter is over. For Wesley has FINALLY been united with his true love, only to have her ripped from him in the most horrible way.

"There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known."

I remember interviewing Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, separately, and both talked about how difficult those final scenes of Fred were to film. Apparently they begged Joss to do the episode, and he wasn't originally slated to, but he eventually got things switched around, and then pushed both Alexis and Amy to the ends of what they could handle, making them do the scene over and over again until it was so utterly painful to watch. And of course, that's when Joss is happily finished. Could anyone but Joss have written this scene?:

FRED
Will you kiss me?

Wesley kisses Fred on the lips tenderly and passionately.

FRED
(pulls back, looks down)
Would you have loved me?

WESLEY
I've loved you since I've known you. No, that's not—I think maybe even before.

FRED
(leans her forehead against his)
I'm so sorry.

WESLEY
No, no, no.

FRED
(chokes on her coughs, crying)
I need you to talk to my parents. They have to know I wasn't scared, that it was quick. That I wasn't scared.
(starts convulsing)
Oh, God.

WESLEY
(grabs her, looks into her eyes)
You have to fight. You don't have to talk, just concentrate on fighting. Just hold on.

FRED
(holding onto Wes's shoulders, looks into his eyes, quivering)
I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm not scared.
(her grip softens, she can't hold herself up)
Please, Wesley, why can't I stay?
(she goes still as Wes holds her in his arms)

WESLEY
(looks at her limp body in his arms)
Please...
(hugs her)
Please...

I will never forget the first time I saw this episode. When Wesley first takes Fred back to her place and she asks him to read to her, I quickly looked at my husband and said that if I came down to my final moments and could have any book read to me, it would be Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess.

And then... that's exactly what he's reading to her a few moments later. I've never had a moment of television feel like it was speaking directly -- and only -- to me, like that one did. I began crying right there, and didn't stop until long after the episode had ended.

Goodbye, Fred. And for anyone who thinks losing Fred is the deepest pain Wesley could ever feel, keep watching.

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 13, 14, 15

2012-01-31T19:59:00.000-05:00

For all the wibbly wobbly, spoiley woiley Angel stuff. (Yes, I've been watching too much Doctor Who.)

Ferris Bueller's Second Day Off

2012-01-30T10:14:00.003-05:00

So. Awesome. Last week a video of a middle-aged Ferris Bueller opening the curtains and saying, "How can I handle work on a day like today?" went viral, with people suggesting it was the beginning of an extended commercial that would appear during the Super Bowl. For what product? Turns out... Honda. And despite the tagline at the end touting the full video would be out on February 5, apparently Honda was so excited by the pre-buzz they put it out early. And here it is. LOVE this.

"Broderick... Broderick..."

Once Upon a Time: "7:15 AM" and "Food of the Poisonous Tree"

2012-01-29T21:33:00.005-05:00

I feel like I start every blog with an apology these days, but this week has been a particular whirlwind, and I've sort of taken the week off. Hence nothing on Once Upon a Time, Alcatraz, or Fringe (the Angel posts were something I did altogether at the beginning of January and just post-dated them to go live one at a time). I've been out of town for part of this week, and then returned home and my husband went away (we actually just missed each other at the airport) so it's been a very busy week for me.

But this afternoon I sat down and caught up on Once Upon a Time with my daughter (she hadn't seen the Hansel and Gretel one, so I showed her, and at the beginning I said, "I can't figure out why the shopkeeper who busts Henry is sneezing like that's significant, yet they never say why..." and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized, "It's Sneezy!" How did I not catch that the first time around?)

We both loved "7:15 AM." It's the first time we watched one together where I hadn't seen it in advance (I like to vet them first) and so both of us were chanting, "Kiss him... kiss him..." every time Mary saw David, and when they finally DID kiss, we were cheering like hopeless romantics on the couch. You know, I've said this before, but for as much as we all loved the mysteries and science of Lost, every time there was a tragically romantic scene on that show (think Penny and Desmond) I was head over heels in love with the show. It just hits you in a different spot. We can follow all the twists and turns of Season 6, but nothing touched me like Ab Aeterno, where we saw Richard Alpert's backstory. The Constant was a mindbending work of genius, but my favourite part was the phone call at the end.

So watching this episode was so much fun, so joyful, and so rewarding because of how much heart it had, I truly loved it. We were both excited to see Red in the other world (that's the first time we've seen her over there) and can I just say that without the Amy Winehouse hair and makeup, she's quite beautiful. And Stealthy the dwarf! As soon as Grumpy said, "Stealthy!" I thought, "Uh oh... that's not one we know..." To think, Snow White was almost living with eight of them. Seven always did seem like a strange number.

But then there's that stranger in town. That mysterious, writerly stranger. As soon as he opened his wooden box to reveal an old manual typewriter, I was smitten. A man who carries a typewriter everywhere with him? Swoon...

Which brings us to this week's episode, and WHY is that guy here? How could someone outside have found out about Storybrooke? He's somehow obtained Henry's book, and he's not of the world of Storybrooke, yet seems to know something about the other world. Emma escaped that world as a baby; is it possible someone else escaped it, too? Is there another portal in another story where he perhaps made it out of the fairytale land before the curse was enacted, but he was given some memory of it? Something has brought this man here, and he seems to have glommed onto Henry right away.

In the other world, we watch a replay of Aladdin, one of my kids' favourite films. This genie runs through all the same rules as Robin Williams' genie does, though much quicker and with less pizzazz and rhyming. (I would have loved to see him break out into, "You ain't never had a friend like me!") And just as [spoiler alert for the one person who hasn't seen it] Aladdin grants his final wish to the genie by freeing him, this king does the same thing.

This, of course, is a much darker story. This genie doesn't grab a travel bag, honk the king's nose and head off to great adventures, but sticks around and becomes part of a much larger master plan. He tells the king when he first meets him that he's granted 1001 wishes, and watched 1001 of them go wrong, and that happens again here. First, the king frees him, and in doing so secures his own death. Second, he wishes that the third wish could be transferred to the genie, and thus allows the genie to make the horrible mistake with the third wish, trapping himself in something much worse than a gold lamp. It was a fantastic story, melding together two parts, and I didn't see any of that coming.

As Sidney and Emma work together in Storybrooke to "find who [the mayor] really is], looking for the crack in the mirror, as they put it, once again we're being tricked into thinking this is Sidney finding revenge in this world (albeit subconsciously) for what happened to him in the fairytale world, but instead he's as much in the thrall of the queen here as he is there (notice above the Mayor's door it says MAGISTER, which sounds a lot like MAJESTY, a nice touch). I love that the breakfast finer doubles as a pub -- there are no nighttime bars in Storybrooke (is there a curfew there or something?) It seems that while the Mayor sleeps, NOTHING happens.

But back over in the fairytale world, I was very intrigued by the pain the Queen was in (even if some of it was put on). It was a hint of why stepmothers are always evil in the books -- maybe they didn't want to be, but they could never live up to the perfection of the first wife. They lived under the constant judgment of their husband, who married them out of convenience so they could be around in bed and to help raise a child, and when their husband died, they finally were free, and had very little sympathy for this rugrat who was the apple of their husband's eye, and who clearly paid them no attention (did Snow actually have any relationship with her stepmother? She doesn't seem to think anything her father says is out of line as he's addressing her at his birthday party). We're to believe the king is benevolent, but he says thoughtless things in front of a crowd, doesn't notice his wife's presence, and READS HER DIARY. (??) Which, of course, we know she meant for him to read, but still... I loved the little details of this episode, like the genie *almost* eating the apple but not (is the tree poisonous?) or the skeleton key of the queen's literally being a skeleton key, complete with skull (does the mayor's key ring open every little lock in the kingdom?)

I think this show is getting better and better every week.

The Ecstacy of Breaking Bad

2012-01-28T10:03:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Ensley Guffey for directing me to this AMAZING tribute video to the first 4 seasons of Breaking Bad (warning: you must have seen everything so far, for there are spoilers right up to the end of S4). Incidentally, Ensley and his wife Dale will be penning a Breaking Bad book for release in 2013! Watch this space for more information.

Angel S5: Eps 10, 11, 12

2012-01-24T20:00:00.001-05:00

5.10 Soul Purpose
5.11 Damage
5.12 You're Welcome

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

"Soul Purpose" and "Damage" are both good episodes, but thank the writers for "You're Welcome." For all of us who were immensely upset with the way Cordelia's character ended in S4, this gave her the send-off she deserved (and by the way, she looks FANTASTIC). We not only followed her through four seasons of Angel, but three seasons of Buffy before that, and her character arc deserved much better than to become some pseudo-incestuous mommy end of Connor's Oedipal issues. I remember crying for ages after the end of the episode, and it still chokes me up.

Next week: Two episodes that are a big part of why we babble incessantly about our love of S5.
5.13 Why We Fight
5.14 Smile Time ♥♥♥
5.15 A Hole in the World ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 10, 11, 12

2012-01-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

And here is the place where you can discuss this week's episodes in light of the rest of S5 of Angel.

Fringe: Enemy of My Enemy

2012-01-20T23:24:00.004-05:00

The message hidden in the commercial break glyphs on tonight's episode of Fringe was DEATH. Pretty ominous... But while I've enjoyed so much of this season (as you can tell from my posts every week) I must admit, as I hinted at last week with the multi-verses that have been built up this season, I'm starting to feel a detachment from it. I didn't realize it at first, but two things triggered that realization.

1. People have begun the "Will there be a season 5?" chatter now that it's the new year and we know many networks begin making their decisions in February and March. I thought, season 5? We were damn lucky to get season 4, and most of us were surprised we got a season 3. I just assumed all along that this was the final season and the writers were going to wrap things up. Apparently that's exactly what they're planning to do, and if FOX picks it up for a fifth season they'll keep something open so they can go in a new direction. But I'm thinking a fifth season will be one too many. I want them to wind it down and come up with a hell of a finisher this year. EW quoted someone from FOX saying that if the show remains this expensive, they simply can't afford it. Fans think otherwise, and want it to continue. But my reaction was different.

2. Olivia about to go through the portal and Peter shouting into his walkie that she'll die if it closes. Last year, I would have been on the edge of my seat. This week I thought, "Yeah, but... if she dies you'll just go to another universe and find the other Olivia who's still alive because you were always in her life and she's not this Olivia."

I don't KNOW who this Olivia is. I just don't feel like I know who anyone is except Peter anymore. These aren't the characters I've grown to love for the past three years. I was very intrigued by the premise earlier in season 4, but this week I noticed that Anna Torv, when playing Olivia, is using a similar swagger that she uses for Alt-Olivia. Last year she was able to separate the two (AND play a version of Leonard Nimoy) with very subtle differences. She could play Olivia and Alt-Olivia. She could play Alt-Olivia pretending to be Olivia, and vice versa. Her performance was staggering. But this year, Olivia isn't our Olivia. She SHOULD be, since Olivia only met Peter a few years ago, and therefore should be a similar person to the one we knew. But she has too many elements of Alt-Olivia, like Torv has forgotten the way she originally played the role.

I really liked the scene between Walter and the alternate world version of his wife. But that wasn't our Walter, who still had Peter, who was broken but back together and loved that boy more than anything. This was a different Walter. I wished I could have seen that scene with our Walter. (That sad, I adored the line, "You should know that your mother was a wonderful woman. Every version of her.") I was happy when this Walter showed up to see Peter, because now maybe he'll start to feel more like ours. But he really isn't.

What I did love about this episode was the two universes working TOGETHER against a common enemy, instead of against one another. There's so much potential with that idea I don't even know where to begin. Too bad neither universe remembers Peter...

And the "Nina, WHAT?!" moment was undercut by me thinking, Which Nina is this? It's getting near impossible to keep track of everything. I feel like I need a whiteboard permanently attached to the wall.

Don't get me wrong, this is still a show I look forward to week after week. But my emotional investment is slipping away, and that worries me. What I've always loved about Fringe is that it's sci-fi that favours love and the power of the human heart over science and technology. But this season? It's about science, technology, cleverness, and a bunch of people who look like the ones I love, but aren't really them.

So I guess I just have to sit back and continue to love Seth Gabel. Which, to be honest, is not a difficult thing to do.

Alcatraz

2012-01-18T21:11:00.001-05:00

As mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to post something on Alcatraz on Monday night, but I've been very sick this week. Sadly, I didn't even watch it on Monday night. You know things are bad when... but I finally got to watch both episodes last night, and I'm happy to say, I was absolutely hooked about 20 minutes in. Lost ended in May 2010, and since then we Losties -- who just won't let it go -- have been searching for the new Lost. Is it Person of Interest? It's got the numbers and the Abrams stamp and Michael Emerson... no, it's not Person of Interest. Is it Once Upon a Time? Created by Kitsis and Horowitz, it's full of little Lost references and numbers, and the fairytale stories serve as the flashbacks from Lost. Perhaps, but it's really its own show, quite removed from the more reality-based Lost.

And now we get Alcatraz. Produced by Abrams, directed and executive produced by Jack Bender, with several Lost writers on board, starring our beloved Jorge Garcia, this show's first episode (called "Pilot"... sound familiar?) features a supernatural event that happens on an island, where the survivors of a particular accident have time traveled to re-emerge in the real world and through flashbacks we find out who they are. They're being hunted and watched by people in a secret organization. All set against the instantly recognizable score by Michael Giacchino. And did I mention the lead survivor's name is Jack?

Oh, and it's brilliant. Compelling writing, a great ensemble cast, Giacchino's screechy violins that take us to every climactic break, twists we didn't see coming, backstories that fill in who these people are, and fast-paced direction. Oh my gosh, I think I've found my new Lost.

Now, being the spoilerphobe that I am, this is what I knew about Alcatraz: It was about Alcatraz. It starred Jorge Garcia as a comic-book store guy with some sort of expertise the cops could use. (I didn't even know exactly what that expertise was.) JJ Abrams produced it. Sam Neill was in it. And... that concludes what Nikki knew. So I was coming to this absolutely cold, knowing nothing, and they were going to have to pull me in. And they did so, IMMEDIATELY. I love the sci-fi element of it, the X-Files feel of the underground replica of Alcatraz where Hauser keeps his captures much like the Initiative kept hostiles in season 4 of Buffy. It's like his own personal adult dollhouse, where he pops the little soldier into their slots until he gets the full set. It's like one of the aspects of Lost has been flipped -- where on that show, the Dharma Initiative and the Others were aware of the survivors on the island, but the survivors knew little about them and neither did we, now we, the viewer, are watching from the perspective of the Others, tracking the survivors and watching the ~~good guys~~ ~~bad guys~~ Hauser's team pounce.

My husband and I are considering doing a podcast, just because we had very different views of the show. While he, like me, really liked it, he thought the Lost stuff was annoying, and that the music was overbearing and far too Lost-like, that the silly references to numbers are getting tired (I made the mistake of noticing the room key in the building next to Cobb's was Room 423, and when I said it, he groaned and said, "When will they MOVE ON?!" I will admit, the references nine episodes in on Once Upon a Time are getting a little overdone).

But I don't know, maybe it's the Lostie in me, but hearing that music, seeing the dark stormy set, moving back and forth through time, watching the questions build up with no answers, seeing Jorge Garcia play a character who is at once useful yet unsure of himself, it just had a warm familiarity to it. And it felt like home.

I promise that in the weeks to come I'll be switching this to a more Lost-like post format. Next week I'm actually away, so it'll have to start with the fourth episode, but I wanted to let you all know that I watched this, LOVED it, and if you watched Lost, you really must be watching this show, too. Don't miss it. If you did miss it, Fox will be airing the Pilot episode (this week they played the first two eps, "Pilot" and "Ernest Cobb") on Saturday night at 11pm again.

Once Upon a Time: True North

2012-01-18T20:31:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned on my Facebook wall earlier today, I've been really sick this past week, and in between not sleeping because of the cold and not sleeping because my kids have decided to suddenly start routinely getting up at 2am for an hour or two (how do children always manage to know exactly when you need sleep the most and THAT is when they decide you can't have it?) and also working until late every night on a paper I'm giving at Wesleyan University in Nebraska next Tuesday, I didn't manage to post on either Once Upon a Time or Alcatraz. But I want to post on both, so I'm going to write up two very quick posts tonight.

First, Once Upon a Time (which I actually watched TWICE before it had even finished airing in the US and STILL didn't manage to get a post up!) I loved this episode. I don't know what others thought, but I've always loved the Hansel and Gretel story, and from that gorgeous gingerbread house set to the great acting from Gretel especially, this episode was a lot of fun to watch.

And I know I've mentioned it before, but I really do adore the Evil Queen's wardrobe? How fabulous was that black hat?!

In the original story, the part that's always bugged me most is that the pathetic father leaves the children in the woods (in some versions of the story; in others he's let off the hook when the stepmother leaves them) and then when they eventually find their way back he hugs them and apologizes and says She made me do it! How spineless can one person be? (Unless he'd been really ill and maybe the kids were waking up for a couple of hours every night; in that case perhaps leaving them in the woods is justified... hehehe...) So I felt that in this episode they paid homage to that useless excuse for fatherhood through Michael, the mechanic who is the biological father of the two kids, and the way he looks at the compass, sees that those are definitely his kids, and says, "Nope, sorry, can't do it." Like the father of the fairytale, he doesn't have the guts or strength to fight for his kids.

But... he does. Unlike the father in the story, this guy eventually steps up and decides to give these two kids a chance. Who could watch that final scene of the father slowly walking toward the two confused children in the car, knowing the huge responsibility he is walking towards? I do hope we see more of this family and how it works out.

I hope everyone who joined in the Buffy Rewatch immediately recognized our Anya in the Blind Witch! I shrieked when I realized who it was; my husband, on the other hand, despite my, "Oh come ON you have to know who that is" prodding, had no clue. I promptly took away his Buffy fandom card.

I was amused that one thing this episode seemed to suggest is that fairytales are not just full of evil stepmothers, but annoying younger siblings. How useless was Hansel, really?? However, it's actually flipped the original story, where Hansel is the older sibling (the one who leaves the trail that helps them find their way home), the one who outsmarts the witch, and Gretel, though younger, is still helpful and does what he says. She's the one outside the cage who helps get Hansel out, and Hansel is the one who pushes the witch into the fire. Interesting they did a gender switch on these two.

I thought the Storybrooke story was good, too. At first, when Emma left the kids on the doorstep I thought, "What kind of detective IS she? Everyone knows you never pull away until the kids are in the house." So I was very happy she immediately redeemed herself in the next episode.

What did you think?

Angel S5: Eps 7, 8, 9

2012-01-17T20:00:00.001-05:00

5.7 Lineage
5.8 Destiny
5.9 Harm's Way

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

This week marks a turn in the events, with "Lineage" and "Destiny," two great episodes. As I've mentioned, Wesley is my favourite character in the Whedonverse, and every time the writers throw Wesley for another loop, my heart sinks for him, but soars for me as a television viewer, watching the extraordinary Alexis Denisof sink Wesley deeper and deeper into himself. The torment he endures in "Lineage" shows us that Dark Wesley wasn't a new thing, and perhaps was inevitable if that was really his upbringing. The Wesley we were first introduced to in S3 of Buffy was covering a lot of pain. (Despite the sadness of the end of this episode, we get that fantastic line from Spike where he mentions the events from "Lies My Parents Told Me.")

In "Destiny" Angel realizes he's got some competition for greatness, and of all creatures to pose a threat to him... it's SPIKE. I love the race for the Cup of Perpetual Torment.

"Harm's Way" is ok, but it distracts from the overall building tension of the season.

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 7, 8, 9

2012-01-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

As always, here is the place where you can talk about this week's episode within the context of the rest of S5 of Angel.

Fringe: Back to Where You've Never Been

2012-01-13T23:55:00.003-05:00

I only just got to watch this week's return to season 4 of Fringe, and it's midnight, so I'm going to make this very quick. What a great return to the show! It was fast-paced, pulled in a lot of the mythology of not only this season, but all of them that preceded it, and ended on a whopper.

I'd actually been tracking the glyphs throughout the show, so when it got to JONE I turned to my husband and said, "Oh my god, it's going to be JONES." "So?" "You know, that guy from season 1 that Jared Harris played?" Sure enough... I haven't watched it closely enough to catch little things (other than did you notice in the bus terminal the mom was reading a copy of American Geographic?) but I'm sure lots were there.

But back to the ep. Great storyline, and it's been hard to juggle some of the mythology. We have World 1, which we watched in the first couple of seasons, and that led to World 2, the alternate world. But Peter was erased from those and plopped into a World 3 of sorts, which is actually a World 1 where he doesn't exist, and now he's back in the alternate world (World 2) but it's not quite the same World 2 because Peter was erased from it, so it's kind of like a World 4. Yeesh. And yet... it makes perfect sense. Peter doesn't need to necessarily get back to a place, per se, but an ontology... a world in which he exists and always did exist, where he's something more than a bad memory or someone who's not supposed to be there. I loved the scene this week where his mother looked into his eyes and immediately saw that it was him. Beautiful.

And then... that ending. First, we see David Robert Jones, who we last saw being chopped in half when he was going to the other universe (he's the guy Peter was referring to when he told Lincoln that he once saw a guy get chopped in half, "But he was a bad guy." He had connections to ZFT and had been trying to get to the other side.

And then we see the Observer, who has been shot (can you shoot an Observer?!) telling Olivia that no matter how many different outcomes he's seen in the future, it all ends the same: Olivia has to die.

Who shot the Observer? What did he mean? How is Jones still alive?

Well, I don't know about you, but I can't wait for next week!

Memorial for a Lady

2012-01-11T10:00:00.003-05:00

For anyone out there who’s ever lost a beloved pet, for anyone who’s ever had to say goodbye too soon, for anyone who’s had to make a terrible decision to put that pet out of his or her pain, this one is for you. I experienced my own loss a month ago, and it’s taken me that long to write this. I know there are a lot of people who don’t understand the importance of a pet’s death, that you feel like you’ve lost a member of the family (people tried to be kind, but a few said things to me afterwards that no one would ever dream of saying if I’d lost a human), but here’s hoping there are a lot of animal lovers out there who get this. I wanted to memorialize my girl in a special way. So here goes.

The moment we locked eyes, I knew she was mine. And I was hers.

I came from a one-cat family, and my fiancé came from a multi-cat household. When we moved in together after dating for several years, we decided to compromise with two cats. A woman who lived near my future mother-in-law’s house had a cat who had recently given birth to kittens – two were solid (one orange, one black) and three were calicos. I wanted males – the cat I’d grown up with, who would live to be almost 19, was an orange male. We decided we’d get the orange one, and one of the calicos. Then we went over to meet them.

She was standing in the box, and the other four were crouched. She was the orange one (we thought she was a he). But while the three calicos were all huddled together on the right, this orange tabby stood on the left, and had one arm protectively hugging the black one, who was huddled below her. She stared at us without moving, as if to say, “I don’t go, unless he comes, too.” That was it: we were taking the two tabbies.

We named her Oscar. I always wanted a cat named Oscar. A couple of weeks after they came home with us, we took them in for their first shots. The vet flipped her upside-down and said, “Uh… this is a girl.” A girl? We had to change her name. But despite the dignity of her new name, we called her The Girl. And eventually that became The Lady.

She was a little skittish, and where her brother was the friendly tabby, she was the one who hung back a little, eyeing strangers and hiding while watching them from afar. Her tubby little brother would try to jump up on our bed at night, but he was too small and could never make it. She, on the other hand, found other places to sleep. Often curled up with her brother. I remember just a few months ago my husband nudging me and pointing, and there they were, two senior tabbies still curled up together, just like when they were kittens.

If something could go wrong with a cat, it went wrong with her. When we had them both fixed, her stitches came out – we don’t know if she pulled them out or her brother managed it, but suddenly that little incision was gaping open. Luckily, the vet was across the street. I ran over, and they stitched her back up, but put one of those little plastic collars around her head, and we had to separate them. I still remember her shooting backwards like a crayfish through the room, desperate to get it off. That night, I slept in the bedroom with her, while my fiancé slept out in the living room with the other cat. Just as I was dozing off, she suddenly jumped up, nudged my head with hers (almost poking my eye out with her plastic cone), and snuggled up next to me. She was scared. She was never scared, but tonight, things were weird, and she didn’t know what to do. So she turned to me. I remember hesitantly lifting up the covers and she crawled under, turned around, and slept lengthwise against me, with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her. She slept with me like that all night. She never did it since, but that night we bonded.

I know you shouldn’t choose a favourite cat when you have more than one… but she was mine.

My boyfriend and I got married, and we moved – twice – and then on a routine vet visit they said she needed to have her teeth cleaned. I was eight months pregnant at the time and I remember lying awake all night because she was staying overnight at the vet’s, and I couldn’t imagine her being there all alone (and yes, that anxiety foreshadowed my often-worrying mothering style). When I went to pick her up the next day – waiting outside the vet’s office when they opened – she practically leapt into my arms.

Our first baby was born, and while her brother decided he was having NONE of this, she was the one who did that creeping thing cats do when they’re testing the waters – she’d move toward the basket on the floor, jerking her body backwards slightly, then stepping forward two tentative steps, jerk back, two more steps, etc. – and she circled that basket like a shark, with her nose sniffing every corner of it. A couple of days later, the baby was napping (something she almost NEVER did) and I ran downstairs to throw a load of laundry into the washing machine, and when I came back up, there was The Lady sleeping in the bottom of the basket, next to the baby’s feet. I was shocked. From that point on she was always rather interested in the kids, although there were times when even she appeared to think, “Good god, why did you decide to bring these yowling cats to my house?!” and she’d disappear to the basement. Here's a pic of her with my son.

A couple of years after that she was diagnosed with hyperthyroid, something that happens often with cats, and it involves a lifetime of medication, or surgery, or a radioactive iodine treatment. The latter was the most expensive, but it had the highest success rate. She was only 11, and we figured we had a lot of years left, so we chose that option. They put a radioactive iodine in the cat, it runs through her system while they monitor her for a week, and then you separate her from the household for the next month, carefully putting her litter elsewhere and monitoring what she did. She was great, and we’d bring her upstairs at night, snuggling with her and joking about how our radioactive cat could be used as a nightlight, or perhaps could power our TV.

She was always thin, while her brother was fat, but he knew he should NOT mess with his sister. She always gave as good as she got, and when we got a four-storey six-foot cat tree, she immediately claimed the penthouse suite at the top, where she could roost and bat at her brother as he sat on the level below her.

She chirped. When she was in a happy mood, purring and sitting next to me, if I coughed she would make a chirping noise with her eyes half-closed. We would talk back and forth like that for ages. My husband thought it was hilarious. “Cough, make her chirp,” he’d say.

She hated the vet. Whenever I took her, they assumed she was the male (orange tabbies are typically male) and they’d try to do the checkup but her pulse would race and one time she drove her body temperature up almost 8 degrees. It was insane. I’d have to sit with her and calm her down in another room before they could come in and give her the annual shots. But considering how many other treatments the poor little girl had had, I don’t blame her for not liking that place.

She was my circus cat. She’d come into the bathroom as I would come out of the shower, and I’d hold my hand in the air and snap my fingers, and she’d stand straight up and stretch her body out completely as if she were bipedal, and she’d grab my wrist with her front paws and rub her cheek against my hand. I loved when she did that.

We got a new kitten in May, much to my childrens’ delight. She was yet another orange tabby-cat girl. My original orange tabby-cat girl began growling more than I’d ever heard, and she found new and inventive ways to hiss, but eventually there was a begrudging tolerance of the new little beast. Everything seemed to be fine, and we were now a three-cat household. And then…

It happened on a Saturday.

Just this past December, I was away in NY on business, and on Friday night my husband took the kids to his parents’ house because he was playing a show in town there. The next day they swung by the airport to pick me up on their way home, and when we got home she didn’t seem right. She slowly picked her head up and looked at me a little dazed, and I asked my husband if she’d been eating. He said she’d seemed off the day before, but nothing too unusual. Just a week earlier I’d been saying to him that we should monitor their food intake, because she looked a little skinny and I was wondering if the new little kitten was stealing all the food. That night instead of putting her down with the other cats, I gave her her own bedroom, with her own litter, water, and food. She jumped up on the bed in the room and curled up, glancing at me as I left.

I wish I’d stayed. How I wish I’d stayed.

The next morning the litterbox was untouched, and so was the food. Of course it was a Sunday, so the vet was closed. My husband decided to take her up to the animal emergency hospital. They charged him $1000 to admit her and put her on emergency fluids, and when they looked her over they found a lot of sores in her mouth. No one knows where they came from, but we suspect that’s why she’d stopped eating. Just after midnight they called our house and said they were transferring her to the ICU, and that she was in stage 4 kidney disease, and it was unlikely there was anything more they could do for her. My husband came across the landing and into the bedroom and delivered the news, and I crumpled into a sobbing mess. My girl was all alone, in an ICU, and we were going to have to put her to sleep the following day. I should be there. I told him I really should be there. He called the ER back and they said she was comfortable, and there was no reason we should come up. I said if we have to euthanize her on Monday, I don’t want her to be alone on her last night. They said to be honest, they didn’t think she was aware of anything around her, and she was sleeping. I decided I’d wait.

Next morning, I was back up there first thing. A vet took me into another room and talked to me, and said he’s not allowed to recommend euthanasia, but if that was what we wanted to do, he said, “You’re not making the wrong choice in this case.” He said they’d put a catheter in her arm to administer the IV fluids, and they could leave it in there so when we euthanized her they could just inject her in the catheter and not have to invade her body any further. I opted to keep it there. But, he added, it would only be good for about six hours. I now had a time limit with her.

I sat in the waiting room for what felt like an eternity while they disconnected her from countless machines. I watched the clock, thinking, “Come on come on COME ON…” I didn’t have much time with her, and I didn’t want to be separated from her. I began reasoning. If she comes out and seems happy to see me, then maybe I won’t do this today. Maybe she’ll get better.

They brought her out and I chirped her name as happily as I could, with a lump in my throat the size of a basketball and desperate to get out of that place. She looked at me and meowed back. She knew me. Would she be OK?

We got out to the car and I opened the front of the cage and put my hand in. She began purring. I began crying. I was sobbing so hard the whole drive home I could barely see the road at times. I brought her into the house and carried her upstairs to my bedroom, where I assumed she’d want to be. I opened the cage, and she got out of it and walked away, her front arm in a splint and walking very wobbly, and she slowly went down the stairs. I followed her, a little perplexed, and we got to the main floor, she turned and went down to the basement, and right to the kitty litter. Of course. They’d had her on IVs and the poor thing had to pee. But she’s peeing… that’s good, right?

I carried her back upstairs and put her down. She walked in a zigzag. That wasn’t like her. She stopped every few steps to give her front arm a shake as if to get that damn splint off, and that made me chuckle through my tears, but she walked to the back patio door, where she loved to sleep in the sun. (Pathetic fallacy was in full swing that day; there was no sun, only a downpour.) She stood for a minute, and then just fell sideways. She couldn’t even ease herself down. She lay there, and I laid flat on my stomach on the floor, petting her head and talking to her and crying.

And crying.

I eventually decided to leave her alone, but that resolve only lasted a few minutes at a time before I’d be back over with her. After about an hour, I left her alone again, and she got up and went back upstairs, where she managed to jump up onto my daughter’s bed. I began wondering if maybe she might be OK. We got a call from the vet’s office saying they had the paperwork back from the ER, did we have any questions? Yes… do we have to euthanize her today?

The vet got on the phone and said her kidneys were at such high levels, he’d never seen a cat come back from it. He said we could put her on some aggressive fluids and we’d probably get some more time with her. “How much time?” we asked, suddenly so hopeful. “Four… maybe five days.”

Oh.

When should we come in?

How does 3:20 sound?

A quick look at the clock said it was just after 2:30. There’s no time. How do you thank this wonderful little creature for bringing so much joy to your life? How do you take your last few moments with her and make them last forever? How do you let her know it’s going to be OK?

How do you say goodbye?

All day when I’d been sitting next to her, I kept giving her a little cough. Chirp for me, I thought. Just chirp for me this one last time. She didn’t. I whispered her name. Nothing. At one point I put my hand on her head and she sat up, and nudged my hand with her head the way she used to. It was more feeble than she used to, but she did it.

Now she just lay there, curled up in a ball, and we pet her and pet her and cried and cried together. She had come into our lives two weeks after we moved in together. She was an essential part of our lives. We couldn’t imagine our world without her in it. But we were going to have to. This is the last photo I took of her.

We went over to the vet at 3:20. They’re only a couple of blocks from our house (we always manage to live close to vets, for some reason) so I didn’t put her in the cat carrier. God, she hated that thing. Instead, I wrapped her in a towel and held her in my arms as we drove through the pouring rain. We walked in, and sat and listened to another couple talk about their sick dog. You can take your dog home, I thought. “Can you put her on the scale?” they asked me. Why? This isn’t a routine check. “Um… we need to weigh her to estimate how much the ashes will weigh, so we can charge you accordingly.” Of course you can. (The $500 bill for her euthanasia and return of the ashes came later. I love vets, but it’s hard not to feel gouged when it cost us $1500 to basically watch her die.)

Then the vet called us in.

He asked us if we wanted to see the records from the ER. No. Did we want to hear anything more about the renal failure? No. He’d already explained to my upset husband on the phone that despite the $500 or so we’d spent only four months ago on a full bloodwork set for her, often things like this don’t show up. At this point, we didn’t want to delay this anymore. He asked me to lay her down. I kept her in the towel and carefully placed her on the table, still keeping my arms wrapped around her. She looked at me strangely as he pulled out her arm.

“She’s not going to close her eyes,” he told us. “And it’s going to be really quick, OK?” OK. He prepared the syringe. He put it into her catheter. I leaned down and whispered, “I love you so much, my girl. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Are you ready?”

No. No, I’m not ready. She’s only 14. She was supposed to live for five or six more years. I went away to NY five days ago and didn’t give her a second thought and now we’re “putting her to sleep.” I should have let her sleep with us more often. I should have cuddled with her a couple of weeks ago when she nudged me with her head on the couch when I was sitting there typing a blog post about Once Upon a Time. I should have noticed she was frail. But the vet said this had the signs of a sudden failure, not something that had happened over time.

No, I’m not ready. Don’t do it. Please don’t do this to her. Please.

“Yes,” I said.

He slowly depressed the plunger. She looked up and growled at him, and then dropped her head. And that was it. I thought by “quick” he meant a minute or something. But it was maybe three seconds. And my lady was gone. The vet quickly checked her heart, whispered, “She’s gone,” and quietly slipped out of the room to leave my husband and I sobbing and grief-stricken. I draped myself over her body and cried and cried into her fur, smelling it for the last time, petting her, and reassuring her that she was OK. I noticed one of her hairs was in her eye, so I swiped it out. And then it left a mark on her eyeball. I can still picture that mark. I shouldn’t have touched her eye.

“Why do you call her The Lady?” my daughter had asked my husband only a few weeks earlier.

“Because she’s a lady,” he said. “She’s dignified and graceful. She’s our lady.”

And our lady was gone. Her last act had been to growl at a stranger who was doing something she didn’t like. Just as she’d stared at me knowingly the first time I looked at her, with one strong arm around her brother and making our decision for us, she left this world as defiant and strong-willed as she’d always been. And god, I love her for doing that.

Fate could have landed her in any family, and I'm so endlessly appreciative and honoured that it gave her to us, and allowed me to share that wonderful life of hers.

Goodbye, my girl. My lady. My sweet, sweet lady.

Angel S5: Eps 4, 5, 6

2012-01-10T20:00:00.002-05:00

5.4 Hell Bound
5.5 Life of the Party
5.6 The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

Last week you guys seemed to take the reins of watching Angel really well, so once again I'll provide the forum, and I really enjoyed what you guys said. Just a note that I think the rewatchers might enjoy these episodes more than first-timers, simply because we know what's coming, and these episodes seemed a little odd the first time through, but once you realize how the season ends, they make more sense. Keep at it... you won't be disappointed. :)

Next week:
5.7 Lineage
5.8 Destiny
5.9 Harm's Way

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 4, 5, 6

2012-01-10T19:59:00.000-05:00

Here's the spoiler forum, where you can talk about these episodes in the context of the remainder of S5 of Angel.

Amazing Video!

2012-01-09T19:47:00.002-05:00

My husband showed this to me on the weekend. I hadn't heard of Gotye (apparently he's huge in Australia) but I love this song. First, watch this stunning video:

Pretty amazing... but nothing compared to the jaw-dropping achievement of this next video. This is a Burlington-based band called Walk Off the Earth (Burlington is about 45 minutes outside of Toronto) doing the same song, with five people playing the same guitar. Their voices are stunning, and you won't believe what five people can do with a single instrument.

Once Upon a Time Ep 8: Desperate Souls

2012-01-08T22:06:00.001-05:00

Before I begin this week’s writeup, I just wanted to mention a book I read in the fall called The Book of Lost Things. If you enjoy fairytale stories for adults (the same way OUAT is twisting the stories) I think you’ll really like this. A boy crawls through a hole in his garden and enters a fairytale world, where he is met with familiar creatures from the storybooks (and followed everywhere by the person who is the main character of this OUAT episode) only to find they’re not what they seemed in his books. Definitely check it out… it’s a great story.

The writers of Once Upon a Time have said one of their missions with this show is to show the other side of fairytales, to lead us along with the notion that what we’ve always known to be true (bad guys are bad, good guys are good, happy endings are always forthcoming and evil gets it in the end) is true, only to pull the carpet out from under us and show us the opposite. Evil can prevail, good guys aren’t all good, but bad guys are actually sympathetic. What made the Evil Queen evil? What turned Rumpelstiltskin into a trickster? Why are there so many people in storybook land who have a bug up their arse and are always plotting other people’s revenge?

And so, in the 2012 return of the show, we go back to the origins of Rumpelstiltskin, the man who is quick to make a bargain, and just as quick to turn it around on people and trick them into having to hand over more than they thought they’d bargained for. Rumpelstiltskin was a loving father who would do anything to keep his son out of the hands of the conscriptors who mercilessly pulled children into the ogre war when they turned 14. His boy is a couple of days away from that fateful birthday, so he attempts to escape from the men, until they’re caught on the road. The men taunt Rumpelstiltskin and tell the boy that his father was a coward who ran away from the ogre war and left the others behind to be slaughtered, and his wife couldn’t bear the sight of him when he returned from the war. He humiliates Rumpelstiltskin in front of his son, no doubt making him son see him as less than he once thought, and another man, disguised as a poor man looking for alms, takes him under his wing. He convinces him to go after the Dark One, and once he discovers that man’s name, he would be able to control him. He tells Rumpelstiltskin to steal the Dark One’s dagger, which has the Dark One’s name written on it, and he will call him forth by saying his name, and then he has to kill him. Rumpelstiltskin does that, and when he kills the Dark One he realizes he’s been tricked… the Dark One is in fact the poor man, and now Rumpelstiltskin will succeed him. Upon the man’s death, Rumpel’s skin begins to turn greenish-gold, his teeth rot, and he is all-powerful. He returns to his home to slaughter the men who threatened him, but instead of awe in the eyes of his son, he sees nothing but fear.

Meanwhile back in Storybrooke, another succession is taking place – Graham is died and Emma assumes she’ll take the mantle of sheriff. But, no surprise, Regina has other ideas and puts Sidney in place of Emma, until Emma challenges the appointment and demands an election. Mr. Gold tells Emma he’s on her side, and burns down the mayor’s office. Emma realizes what he’s done, and announces at the debate that he’s committed a crime on her behalf, but everyone in Storybrooke is thrilled that they have someone in town who’s actually honest, and Emma wins. In the storybook world, Rumpelstiltskin has had a role thrust upon him; in Storybrooke, Emma has reached for that role and earned it. But in both cases, they have taken on a dangerous power that, on the one hand, should make everyone respect them, but instead, they’ve adopted a whole new crop of enemies.

Highlights:
• Emma yelling to find out if Mr. Gold is in the store, and him muttering, It IS my store…
• Emma telling Henry to read something more reliable, like the Internet.
• Regina asking if Henry now knows that Emma cut his cord with a shiv. Haha!
• Archie’s stammering introduction of Glass… Swan…

Did You Notice?:
• Emma’s actually not one of my favourite characters on the show – she’s unnecessarily harsh at times and I just don’t like her that much – but I’ll have to rethink that after hearing her blaring Sonic Youth’s Kool Thing.
• In Mr. Gold’s shop, you can always prominently see a mobile of glass unicorns hanging near the cash register. I wonder if those unicorns were magically turned to glass. I don’t trust anything in that shop – I’m assuming everything in it is a result of dark magic.
• There’s a Mickey Mouse figurine in Mr. Gold’s cabinet. OMG, did he attack Mickey Mouse, too?
• There’s also a chess set… I’ve wondered if that’s a subtle Alice in Wonderland reference.
• When Mr. Gold said, “I don’t know… be a hero in a fire?” he flicks his fingers in the air the same way Rumpelstiltskin always did.
• The talks between Emma and Mary Margaret are very mother-daughter.
• When he sees his name on the dagger, it’s misspelled as Rumplestiltskin. (Rumple instead of the far more common Rumpel…) Rumplestiltskin is used on occasion, but Rumpelstiltskin is the far more acceptable spelling of the name.

Lost references:
• Emma still drinks the McCutcheon.

Ruby Red:
• Mr. Gold wears all black except for a tie patterned with red.
• Henry’s scarf has red stripes.

Any Questions?:
• I’m still wondering what Rumpelstiltskin had been gardening in the forest in the previous episode…
• How did Rumpelstiltskin go from being a fearsome Dark One to a cackling crazy person who hopped around and taunted everyone around him with an odd shake of his head and a flourish of his fingers whenever he talked?
• In the original fairytale, no one knew Rumpelstiltskin’s name – that was his power (just as the Dark One in this episode has a secret name, and the way to get power over him is to find it out). But in previous episodes, everyone knows Rumpelstiltskin’s name… he doesn’t try to hide it at all. Why the change? Especially when Rumpelstiltskin is still caught up in knowing names (remember him asking Snow White what her baby will be named?)

One Year Ends, Another Begins

2012-01-07T21:40:00.007-05:00

I’ve been remiss at keeping this blog updated over the holidays. The end of the Buffy Rewatch took up a lot of time, and then there was turkey… and more turkey… and more turkey… and more turkey (yes, four turkey dinners)… and Pizza Hut (that was the Christmas dinner that I hosted, ha!) And then, as I’ve mentioned on my FB page and on here, I’m preparing for a talk at Wesleyan University in Nebraska at the end of January on Twilight, so I spent a lot of the holidays reading those books. My comments to come on all of that post-discussion, which I’m actually really looking forward to.

But as usual, I’m hoping to contribute more to this blog this year, mostly because I don’t have new Lost episodes or a Buffy Rewatch to keep you guys tuning in. The reviews and entries might be a little shorter (with kids getting older, I find they’re up later… no longer does my evening solitary time begin at 8) but I won’t forget you guys if you don’t forget me.

However, as usual I often say one thing and do another, so this blog post will be my usual lengthy rambling. This is my review of my favourite things this year.

Favourite Book: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
It all started back in the summer when Tim, who comments here occasionally as Tim Alan and is on Facebook under another name, sent me a FB message and asked if I’d heard of this book. He told me I should check it out, because he’d just read it and thought I’d really like it. I began seeing it in stores and I picked it up a few times, but I didn’t have time to read it until the fall. And then I read it like a fiend.

Ready Player One is set in the not-so-distant future of 2040. Just thirty years ahead of us, it’s enough to make you think, “That’s not so far out… I could see the world moving in the direction Cline suggests” but far enough that you also think, “Oh my god, I’m going to be HOW OLD in 2040?!” Sigh. In this future, we’ve all moved from social networking and RPGs to the OASIS, which is what the playground of the internet is now called. But it’s more than just the internet – it’s an entirely immersive experience, where people suit up with virtual reality goggles and suits and can feel physical blows and see other people. The world has become so vastly overpopulated that people now stay at home (in tiny apartments or trailer parks, where the trailers are literally stacked a couple of dozen cars high) and go to work, attend school, and the amenities that we currently enjoy all exist only virtually, with human beings jacking in to an OASIS that consists of hundreds of planets and limitless possibility.

The OASIS was created by James Halliday, a Bill Gates type who is worth billions when he dies. Turns out he’s only a year older than I am, and a huge fan of 80s pop culture. And the moment he dies, a message goes out everywhere on the OASIS: that he’s left behind no heirs, and instead has hidden three easter eggs somewhere on the OASIS, and whoever finds all the easter eggs first will inherit his fortune, worth about $360 billion.

The key to finding them? You have to know everything a kid in the 1980s would know. EVERYTHING about it. You have to know how to play Pac-man to the last level; you have to be able to quote Monty Python’s Holy Grail (FINALLY… all my hours of learning it were worth something, I thought to myself, forgetting I wasn’t actually IN THE BOOK).

What follows is a race against time, seen mostly through the eyes of the guy who finds the first easter egg (he reveals himself as such on the first couple of pages, so I’m not spoiling anything here), and the novel is as fast-paced as the top level of Space Invaders. There were videogames in there that I wasn’t familiar with, but my husband, only two years older than I, knew all of them. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, and was begging my eyes and brain to GO FASTER because I needed to keep up. It…. is… AMAZING. I have recommended this book to countless people, and now I recommend it to you. Go here to get a copy from Amazon. If you spent way too many hours playing Centipede in the basement, and thought Alex P. Keaton was dorky and Duran Duran videos were the shit, this book is for you.

Favourite movies: The Descendants and Hugo
I saw both of these films over the Christmas break, and was astounded by both of them, for different reasons.

I’ve always been a fan of Alexander Payne films: About Schmidt and Election are two of my all-time favourite movies. I tend to think of him as tackling serious issues in our lives, but in a humorous way. The Descendants was no exception… well, for the serious part anyway. Don’t go to this movie if you’re looking for Payne’s trademark funny, because while it is there in dribs and drabs, it’s a really heartbreaking film. This is a movie about a man (George Clooney) whose wife has been in a boating accident and is now in a coma. Because he’s always been a hard worker who hasn’t been around much, he now has to collect up his broken family (a younger daughter who is sassy and hilarious, and an older daughter who’s in a special boarding school after various drug and alcohol problems) and bring them to see their mother, who probably won’t last much longer. And then… he discovers that his wife had been having an affair and was planning to leave him, and thus begins the mystery caper where he must find out WHO she was sleeping with, and more importantly to him, WHY. But the second part can only come from his wife, and she’s not exactly available right now. In addition to that madness, Clooney’s character is part of one of the founding families of the area (hence the title of the film) and they’re being forced to decide what to do with a large piece of land that’s been in the family trust for years, and Clooney is the decision-maker who must choose whether to sell the land or keep it, with his great-grandparents’ legacy hanging in the balance. What follows is an emotional rollercoaster, which isn’t as depressing as it sounds (it never is in Payne’s hands) but will still elicit tears from you by the end. And it’s all set against a backdrop of Hawaii, but not the Hawaii we’re used to seeing in Lost or Hawaii Five-0… this is the residential area of Hawaii, which you almost never see in film, and it’s gorgeous. I’ve never wanted to live in Hawaii as much as I did when I saw this movie. This is the movie with the best performances of the year.

The most magical film I saw this year is Hugo. I was talking to my friend Richard Crouse yesterday, who is a film critic here in Canada (for NewsTalk 1010 and Canada AM) and he and I both agreed that this film is extraordinary and had a trailer that really let it down. I went into this thinking it was a movie about a little boy who was hiding in a train station and had a mechanical toy named Hugo. In fact, it’s about a little boy named Hugo who runs the clocks in the Montparnasse train station in Paris, who has inherited an automaton that doesn’t work. When he steals from a man who runs the toy shop in the station, the man takes Hugo’s diary, which has sketchings of the automaton, and the look on the man’s face indicates he’s seeing a ghost from the past. Why is the man so shaken by the sketches? What did he just see and why did it upset him so much? THAT is what the rest of this movie is about.

Without giving away the rest of the film, this is a tribute to the earliest silent films, when moving pictures were magic in a way that today’s society can’t appreciate. There was a time when a moving picture of a train hurtling toward the viewer was enough to make people dive under their seats in fear that they were going to be run over. Now even the most spectacular special effects can make people yawn and ask for more. We need 3-D to make us happy, apparently, and we go to films not for the magical element of it, but for the storytelling and acting. Hugo takes you back to the films of one particular director, who was a pioneer when it came to ushering us to our seats and unveiling a world of wonder before our eyes. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous film (some of the cityscapes of Paris will take your breath away, and I have no words for how thrilled I was when the boy was running through the clocks – I wanted to go live there), and I want to go back and see it again. I sat in the theatre with my 7-year-old daughter, and both of us were as transfixed and caught up in the magic as if it were 1896 and we could see a train hurtling towards us on the screen for the very first time.

Biggest Movie Disappointment: The Muppets
Don’t yell at me. I was actually hesitant to write this, and didn’t say anything at the time, but I was really disappointed in The Muppets. I love them. I love everything about them. I was DYING to see this movie and went the day it opened with my kids. My four-year-old asked me when we could go about 30 minutes in. My seven-year-old liked it. But the premise is this: Everyone has forgotten about the Muppets, and they’ve split up and gone to live separate lives and have even forgotten each other. What?! That’s not what the Muppets are all about. Now, I know my view is not a popular one. A friend disagreed with me and said someone she knew was born in the mid-80s, and had no clue who the Muppets were, and that that’s probably pretty typical. I don’t know if that’s the case (what about Sesame Street – which features Kermit – wasn’t Tickle-Me-Elmo the omnipresent toy through the 90s? Or the Christmas specials, or Muppets Tonight, or the ongoing YouTube Muppet parodies… I mean, are these people living in caves if they don’t know who the Muppets are?) To me, that’s like saying, “Gee, I wonder what Mickey Mouse is up to these days? Haven’t heard from him in years…”

But more importantly than us remembering the Muppets are them remembering each other. Would Kermit really live in a decaying mansion and have Fozzie Bear living in an alleyway? Miss Piggy and Kermit were married, last time I checked, but that’s never stated outright in the film (instead they show a wedding photo ripped in half as the subtle reminder they were once Mr and Mrs Piggy) and she now lives in Paris in a Devil Wears Prada parody (complete with Emily Blunt as the receptionist) and hasn’t spoken to any of the others. Gonzo is too stuck up to speak to anyone anymore, Sweetums is back at the car dealership where he started in The Muppet Movie, etc. etc. It just, I don’t know… hurt to think my beloved Muppets would treat each other like that. (To which my movie critic friend said, “You, um… know they’re not real, right?”) ;)

I went out with a friend of mine who also disliked the movie immensely (and he loves the Muppets as much as I do) and I asked him if he thought Miss Piggy’s voice sounded weird, and he said it did, because Frank Oz didn’t do it. I said, “What? He DIED?!” He said no, he didn’t, but he read the script and said this wasn’t true to what the Muppets were all about, and refused to participate. So, I guess I’m not the only one who feels this way.

That said, there are definitely great things in the movie. Unfortunately, it’s when the Muppets decide to mount their own fundraising show, and we see rehashes of Muppet sketches, and they sing the songs from The Muppet Movie. Apparently the best things about this movie are retreads from what the Muppets already did best. BUT, while I would argue that no original song from this movie is as good as “The Rainbow Connection” (which they do here again, and which will still bring you to tears) my daughter was in her room the next day and as I walked by I heard her singing, “Am I a Muppet, or am I a man?” so clearly they had an impact on her. Who knows… maybe my parents thought The Muppet Movie was crap (actually, I know they didn’t, but let’s just be theoretical) and I just don’t see this the same way. But if you’ve seen their YouTube parodies of The Green Lantern and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trailers, or seen them do “Bohemian Rhapsody” or any number of songs, you realize they are capable of sheer brilliance. And this movie has very little of that. (Though, watch for a moment where a barbershop quartet sings “Smells Like Teen Spirit”… in that moment, I had a lot of hope for the future of The Muppets.)

Favourite Ongoing TV Show: Breaking Bad
You already know why I think this. In my review of Breaking Bad’s stunning season 4, I talked about how this show is one of those things where you feel like it’s YOUR show, that it’s talking directly to you. It has the best ensemble cast on television right now, and I think in every episode (or at least every other episode), there’s a scene that is so sublime you realize you were holding your breath throughout. The suspense is painful at times, the actions the characters take are never predictable, and the series is basically the journey of one man’s descent into the Dark Side, and the people around him who are forced to either follow him down, or get left behind. Season 5 is going to be 16 episodes (jury’s still out on whether it’ll be in one long go or split into two) and I cannot wait.

Favourite New Show: Homeland
Sorry to disappoint anyone who thought it might be Once Upon a Time. I love OUAT but Homeland is that special kind of show that, like Breaking Bad, has you glued to your seat, wondering what the writers could possibly throw at you this week. This is a show about a CIA agent, Carrie (Claire Danes), who has some mental health issues – you see her popping pills throughout the season – and who has never forgiven herself for missing something before 9/11 and allowing those events to transpire. An American POW in Iraq, Brody (Damien Lewis from Life), has just been discovered alive after 8 years, and he’s coming home. Carrie is convinced he has been turned and will be a traitor to the country, despite the protestations of her mentor and protector, Saul (Mandy Patinkin). Danes is phenomenal. NO ONE has given a performance like her this year, not Bryan Cranston, not anyone. They need to invent a new award just for her and give it to her. She is mesmerizing in every frame, and in the last two episodes she will actually make you forget about every scene she’d done beforehand. Damien Lewis is the perfect mouse to her cat (or is it the other way around?) and the way they play off each other in every scene will have you on the edge of your seat.

Is Brody a traitor? Is Carrie crazy? Is Saul so used to Carrie’s erratic behavior that he’s missing obvious things? I don’t want to say too much because I want you to check out this show and be as amazed and surprised as I was in every scene, but I will say that what eventually unfolds made me shocked that a show like this would ever be okayed for American television. Homeland is astounding, and if you’re not watching it, find a way to do so. It won’t disappoint.

Least-Favourite Television Event of the Year: The finale of The Killing
Oh COME ON. Seriously? Bah. They promised that we’d find out who the killer was at the end of the season, then backpedalled when they imagined they could pull in more viewers to S2 if they didn’t reveal it. You know what? I loved this show until you did that. Sure, it had its issues (I hate a show that is so covered in red herrings and wrong pathways in a single season that you feel like you were constantly so misled the main plot no longer interests you) but I was going to follow through. Now you can have S2 without me. I’m outta here.

Biggest TV Disappointment: Dexter
I haven’t even finished the most recent season, but I’m just SO bored with this season of Dexter, and that’s coming from someone who loved this show SO MUCH I was actually involved in a bid a couple of years ago to do the show’s official book. Thank god they ran out of steam before going ahead with it, because I’d hate to have to do it now. There’s an episode where Dexter drives around with his brother and dad in the car that was abysmal. Just terrible. And knowing the behind-the-scenes drama (that Jennifer Carpenter and Michael C. Hall have split because he was allegedly unfaithful, leading to such hostility that most of their scenes are filmed apart or over a phone) has become really distracting. The storyline is lame, Colin Hanks is terrible (seriously, the guy was really good on Roswell but if I were his dad, I’d be asking him to use another surname), and James Edward Olmos is the most annoying villain yet. It’s just gory for gory’s sake, and I’m tired of it.

Biggest TV Pleasant Surprise: Boardwalk Empire
I really enjoyed S1 of Boardwalk Empire but season 2 is jaw-droppingly good. If not disturbing (who can watch a scene where a mother tells her son that when he was a baby and she’d change his diaper she would “kiss his winkie” and not be haunted by that line for the rest of the season?!) But the various storylines were great and characters that were interesting in the first season are astonishing now. Unfortunately, stupid EW spoiled me for the huge surprise in the S2 finale only a week after it had actually happened, and since I watched all of S2 over the holiday, I knew what was coming right from the beginning. But it actually created more suspense for me, and I noticed things I might not have noticed just by waiting for this monumental event to happen.

Biggest TV Shock EVER: Game of Thrones
You know the scene I mean. You remember how I reacted. Holy. Crap. I still haven’t recovered from that. Here’s hoping George RR Martin has more wicked surprises up his sleeve.

Favourite TV Comic Episode: “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” on Community
I might be wrong; it’s possible this was from last year, but I saw it this year. This is HYSTERICALLY funny, especially in the open when a voiceover sets up every character as if they’re about to go into an epic battle. The game play had me in stitches from beginning to end.

Things I’m Most Looking Forward to in 2012:
• The Hunger Games movie
• The return of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad
• Alcatraz (starts January 16… set those PVRs!)
• The Joss Whedon Triple Threat: Avengers, Cabin in the Woods, and Much Ado About Nothing
• The Slayage conference in Vancouver (I hope some of the Rewatchers join us!)
• The Dark Knight Rises

OK, your turn. What are your favourite things from 2011?

Angel S5: Eps 1, 2, 3

2012-01-03T20:00:00.000-05:00

5.1 Conviction
5.2 Just Rewards
5.3 Unleashed

Well, I really intended to write a few words for this first of the Angel S5 episodes, even though I said I'd basically just be posting these to be forums. But it's been a crazy week with holidays and all, and I've read been spending most spare moments reading the Twilight series (I'm just finishing Breaking Dawn right now, and I really want someone to put a stake in me). It's research. No, really it is. I'm going to be giving a paper in Nebraska at the end of January on Twilight, and I'm reading all the books so I really know what I'm talking about. It hasn't been all bad. I mean, I have had the joy of seeing Bella in extreme pain on a few occasions, so that was fun.

But back to Angel. He and the Angel Investigations team is... working for Wolfram & Hart? Wait, they RUN Wolfram & Hart?

Don't worry, it'll make sense soon. ;) Until then, these are a fun group of episodes. I especially love the very opening of "Conviction" when we see a repeat of the Angel premiere, with Angel saving a girl from the alleyway. But... it's a little different this time. He's not quite so alone, as much as he wants to be.

I know there was something else I was going to mention... blonde, vampire with a soul or something... but it escapes me. So I'll let you guys discuss it. ;)

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 1, 2, 3

2012-01-03T19:59:00.000-05:00

And just in case anyone wants to discuss this week's Angel eps in relation to the end of S5 or the comics, here is the spoiler forum.

The Great Buffy Rewatch Archive

2011-12-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: With the Buffy Rewatch over, I wanted to pull this archive post (which originally appeared in March) up to the top, for anyone who wanted a quick reference guide of where to find what episode, and also for anyone who is now finished and wanted to go back to see the spoiler posts. Quick word of caution: there's some Angel S5 talk in there, but it's mostly near the end.

At the behest of many people jumping in partway (and wanting to quickly catch up), here's your one-stop clickthrough guide to the Buffy Rewatch so far. I'll update this weekly so you can go back to any of the previous entries you may have missed. For first-time watchers, this will be a handy guide if you'd like to go back to the beginning when you're done and check out some of the spoilery comments on the other boards (or check out what I've been hiding under the invisible ink!).

For each week I'll provide the link to both the main post and the spoiler post (in some weeks, there's a large post on the spoiler board). An asterisk (*) indicates the names of the guest hosts for that week.

Week 1 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 1 Spoiler Post
1.1 Welcome to the Hellmouth
1.2 The Harvest
1.3 The Witch
*Nikki

Week 2 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 2 Spoiler Post
1.4 Teacher’s Pet
1.5 Never Kill a Boy on the First Date
1.6 The Pack
*David Lavery

Week 3 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 3 Spoiler Post
1.7 Angel
1.8 I Robot, You Jane
1.9 The Puppet Show
*Matthew Pateman

Week 4 Non-Spoiler Post, Part 1
Week 4 Non-Spoiler Post, Part 2
Week 4 Spoiler Post
1.10 Nightmares
1.11 Out of Mind, Out of Sight
1.12 Prophecy Girl
*David Kociemba, Jennifer Stuller

Week 5 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 5 Spoiler Post
2.1 When She Was Bad
2.2 Some Assembly Required
2.3 School Hard
*Becca Wilcott

Week 6 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 6 Spoiler Post
2.4 Inca Mummy Girl
2.5 Reptile Boy
2.6 Halloween
*Chris Lockett

Week 7 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 7 Spoiler Post
2.7 Lie to Me
2.8 The Dark Age
*Cynthea Masson

Week 8 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 8 Spoiler Post
2.9 What’s My Line? Part One
2.10 What’s My Line? Part Two
2.11 Ted
*Evan Munday

Week 9 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 9 Spoiler Post
2.12 Bad Eggs
2.13 Surprise
2.14 Innocence
*Tanya Cochran, Stacey Abbott

Week 10 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 10 Spoiler Post
2.15 Phases
2.16 Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
2.17 Passion
*David Kociemba, Rhonda Wilcox, Janet Halfyard

Week 11 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 11 Spoiler Post
2.18 Killed By Death
2.19 I Only Have Eyes for You
2.20 Go Fish
*Ian Klein

Week 12 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 12 Spoiler Post
2.21 Becoming, Part One
2.22 Becoming, Part Two
*Nikki, Janet Halfyard

Week 13 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 13 Spoiler Post
3.1 Anne
3.2 Dead Man’s Party
3.3 Faith, Hope and Trick
*Cynthia Burkhead

Week 14 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 14 Spoiler Post
3.4 Beauty and the Beasts
3.5 Homecoming
3.6 Band Candy
*Jennifer Knoch

Week 15 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 15 Spoiler Post
3.7 Revelations
3.8 Lover’s Walk
3.9 The Wish
*Suzie Gardner, Stacey Abbott

Week 16 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 16 Spoiler Post
3.10 Amends
3.11 Gingerbread
3.12 Helpless
*Rob Wiersema, Janet Halfyard

Week 17 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 17 Spoiler Post
3.13 The Zeppo
3.14 Bad Girls
3.15 Consequences
*Ensley Guffey, Michael Holland

Week 18 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 18 Spoiler Post
3.16 Doppelgängland
3.17 Enemies
3.18 Earshot
*Suzie Gardner, Tanya Cochran

Week 19 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 19 Spoiler Post
3.19 Choices
3.20 The Prom
*Kristen Romanelli

Week 20 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 20 Spoiler Post
3.21 Graduation Day, Part One
3.22 Graduation Day, Part Two
*Jennifer Stuller, Janet Halfyard

Week 21 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 21 Spoiler Post
4.1 The Freshman
4.2 Living Conditions
4.3 The Harsh Light of Day
*Nikki

Week 22 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 22 Spoiler Post
4.4 Fear, Itself
4.5 Beer Bad
4.6 Wild at Heart
*Janet Halfyard
*Beer Bad Battle: David Lavery, Crissy Calhoun, Stacey May Fowles, Matthew Pateman, Evan Munday, Elizabeth Rambo, Cynthea Masson, Jennifer K. Stuller, Ensley Guffey, Dale Koontz, Kristen Romanelli, Ian Klein

Week 23 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 23 Spoiler Post
4.7 The Initiative
4.8 Pangs
4.9 Something Blue
*Michael Holland

Week 24 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 24 Spoiler Post
4.10 Hush
4.11 Doomed
4.12 A New Man
*Evan Munday

Week 25 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 25 Spoiler Post
4.13 The I in Team
4.14 Goodbye Iowa
4.15 This Year’s Girl
*Elizabeth Rambo, Lorna Jowett

Week 26 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 26 Spoiler Post
4.16 Who Are You?
4.17 Superstar
4.18 Where the Wild Things Are
*David Kociemba, Cynthea Masson, Tanya Cochran

Week 27 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 27 Spoiler Post
4.19 New Moon Rising
4.20 The Yoko Factor
4.21 Primeval
*Christopher Lockett

Week 28 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 28 Spoiler Post
4.22 Restless
*Matthew Pateman

Week 29 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 29 Spoiler Post
5.1 Buffy vs. Dracula
5.2 Real Me
5.3 The Replacement
*Cynthea Masson, Stacey Abbott

Week 30 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 30 Spoiler Post
5.4 Out of My Mind
5.5 No Place Like Home
5.6 Family
*Tanya Cochran

Week 31 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 31 Spoiler Post
5.7 Fool for Love
5.8 Shadow
5.9 Listening to Fear
*Rhonda Wilcox

Week 32 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 32 Spoiler Post
5.10 Into the Woods
5.11 Triangle
5.12 Checkpoint
*Bryan Curry, Lorna Jowett

Week 33 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 33 Spoiler Post
5.13 Blood Ties
5.14 Crush
5.15 I Was Made to Love You
*Kristen Romanelli, Tanya Cochran

Week 34 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 34 Spoiler Post
5.16 The Body
*Ensley Guffey and Dale Koontz-Guffey, Suzanne Kingshott

Week 35 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 35 Spoiler Post
5.17 Forever
5.18 Intervention
5.19 Tough Love
*Nikki Stafford and Nikki Fuller

Week 36 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 36 Spoiler Post
5.20 Spiral
5.21 The Weight of the World
5.22 The Gift
*Rob Wiersema, Tanya Cochran

Week 37 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 37 Spoiler Post
6.1 Bargaining, Part One
6.2 Bargaining, Part Two
6.3 After Life
*Elizabeth Rambo

Week 38 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 38 Spoiler Post
6.4 Flooded
6.5 Life Serial
6.6 All the Way
*Graham F. Scott

Week 39 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 39 Spoiler Post
6.7 Once More, With Feeling
*Janet Halfyard (analysis)
*Group singalong!:
Going Through the Motions (Nikki Stafford)
I’ve Got a Theory (Nikki Stafford’s family)
They Got the Mustard Out (Matthew Pateman)
I’ll Never Tell (Ensley Guffey and Dale Koontz-Guffey)
Parking Ticket (Rhonda Wilcox)
Rest in Peace (Cynthea Masson et al)
What You Feel (Nikki Stafford)
Standing in the Way (Robert Thompson)
Walk Through the Fire (Tony Burgess)
Life’s a Show (Nikki Stafford)
Where Do We Go From Here (Nikki Stafford’s action figures)

Week 40 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 40 Spoiler Post
6.8 Tabula Rasa
6.9 Smashed
6.10 Wrecked
*Dale Koontz-Guffey

Week 41 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 41 Spoiler Post
6.11 Gone
6.12 Doublemeat Palace
6.13 Dead Things
*Stacey May Fowles

Week 42 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 42 Spoiler Post
6.14 Older and Far Away
6.15 As You Were
6.16 Hell’s Bells
*Graham F. Scott, Lorna Jowett

Week 43 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 43 Spoiler Post
6.17 Normal Again
6.18 Entropy
6.19 Seeing Red
*Alyson Buckman, Cynthea Masson

Week 44 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 44 Spoiler Post
6.20 Villains
6.21 Two to Go
6.22 Grave
*Nikki and Robert Thompson

Week 45 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 45 Spoiler Post
7.1 Lessons
7.2 Beneath You
7.3 Same Time, Same Place
*Elizabeth Rambo

Week 46 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 46 Spoiler Post
7.4 Help
7.5 Selfless
7.6 Him
*Nikki Stafford

Week 47 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 47 Spoiler Post
7.7 Conversations with Dead People
7.8 Sleeper
7.9 Never Leave Me
*Crissy Calhoun

Week 48 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 48 Spoiler Post
7.10 Bring on the Night
7.11 Showtime
7.12 Potential
*Jennifer Stuller

Week 49 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 49 Spoiler Post
7.13 The Killer in Me
7.14 First Date
7.15 Get It Done
*Elizabeth Rambo

Week 50 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 50 Spoiler Post
7.16 Storyteller
7.17 Lies My Parents Told Me
7.18 Dirty Girls
*David Lavery, Lorna Jowett

Week 51 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 51 Spoiler Post
7.19 Empty Places
7.20 Touched
7.21 End of Days
*Cynthea Masson

Week 52 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 52 Spoiler Post
7.22 Chosen
*Nikki Stafford

Great Buffy Rewatch: ChristinaB

2011-12-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

And for our final post of the night, I saved this wonderful, heartfelt post from the last of our commenters who I'm pulling up on stage. ChristinaB only recently discovered Buffy and watched the series for the first time right before the rewatch began, so she followed along as someone who'd seen the show already, but was still new to Buffy fandom. We'd chatted a lot back and forth on Facebook, and then I finally met her face-to-face this past August at Fan Expo. I was at a booth, and suddenly I saw a flash of a Tom Baker multi-coloured wool scarf, and this woman appeared in front of me, dumped a bunch of knitted Daleks onto the table in front of me and said, "Your choice!" and I looked at her, recognized her instantly and said, "Christina!!" It was wonderful to put a voice to the face and name that I knew so well.

A couple of weeks ago she left a comment on one of my posts (where I was talking about extending the Buffy Rewatch into Angel S5) and it surprised and touched many of us, where she mentioned she'd been wary of fandom because of dealing with anxiety, but that through this Rewatch and the generosity of the people here, she's come out of her shell.

Well, not only has she come out of her shell by typing up her comments, but here she is in VIDEO (!) with an amazing poem she wrote. As I said to her, I've seen people try to sum up BtVS in 10 minutes or less, but I've never seen anyone actually accomplish it as well as she has. I hope you enjoy her summary as much as I did. Thank you, Christina!

And thank you to all of you. Here endeth the Rewatch.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Kristen Romanelli

2011-12-28T21:00:00.001-05:00

A Haiku for Anya

Vengeance, money, love...

She falls swiftly in battle,

Centuries crumbled.

An abrupt poem for an abrupt death of someone who spoke... abruptly. ;)

Next up: The final post of the rewatch!

Great Buffy Rewatch: Lorna Jowett

2011-12-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

This seriously made me laugh out loud (and I also had to look up the word "stotious").

MacChosen

Lorna Jowett

One thing I was always kind of glad about was that they never tried to do a Scot in Buffy. So when I lacked inspiration for the final Buffy Rewatch I thought of this…

If Giles were Scottish.
BUFFY: You don’t think it’s a good idea?
FAITH: It’s pretty radical, B.
GILES: Better no’ mess wi’ us, by the way - it’s pure dead brilliant!

If Xander were Scottish.
XANDER: Pairty n ma ee-socket n youse ur a’ invitit.

If Buffy were Scottish.
DAWN: Yeah, Buffy. What are we going to do now?
Buffy looks off into the future, a smile spreading across her face.
BUFFY: Get stotious.

Here’s tae us, Buffy fans, wha’s like us? Damn few, an’ they’re a’ deid!

Great Buffy Rewatch: Dale Koontz

2011-12-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

WHY BUFFY MATTERS

(with apologies to Rhonda Wilcox for nicking the title of her book!)

It’s not going too far to say that Buffy changed my life. Really, it did – and no one was more surprised at that development than I was. Through a show that I at first resisted watching due to the silly title and ridiculous premise (I was a heathen back then), entire worlds have opened up to me. I’ve written blog posts, articles, chapters, and a book devoted to the creations of Joss Whedon and that all started with Buffy. I’ve talked about Whedon’s work in locations ranging from map-dot-small university towns to the metropolis of Istanbul. I’ve signed books and asked for autographs. I’ve met people whose intellect, kindness, and creativity could power the space station if you could figure out a way to harness it. Moreover, I met my husband through Buffy and for that alone, I should send Whedon a fruit basket.

In addition, through Buffy I’ve learned a few things. Among the lessons:

• Darkness can be fought, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll win. That’s why you fight in the first place.
• Family matters – and that family extends far beyond the one we’re born into.
• Courage is found on battlefields, but it can also be found in high school hallways.
• Libraries matter.
• We’re better off not knowing what other people think.
• Love is stronger than death.
• Souls are pesky things, but life without one isn’t really life.
• Humans can be worse than demons and better than angels.
• Everyone – always – is dealing with their own pain and that’s why sometimes they don’t notice yours.
• Sometimes, no matter how hard you try and how skilled you are, you lose.
• And sometimes, despite the odds and the prophecies, you win.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Nikki Fuller

2011-12-28T18:00:00.001-05:00

An Ode to Anya

Whenever I think of “Chosen,” I see that final smile on Buffy’s face. It makes me smile. However, we die-hards know it doesn’t end there. I won’t spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t cracked open the comics yet, but the truth is we didn’t really have to say goodbye to our beloved Slayer, Giles, or the core Scoobies. We didn’t even have to say goodbye to Andrew. There’s only one character we really had to say goodbye to, and because there was no time to grieve for her in the final battle, I wanted to write about Anya. I think she was one of the strongest characters in the series, and she was amazingly well-written. While it may have seemed at first that she was a plug-in for killer one-liners after Cordy went to work for Angel Investigations, Anya had more depth than even Joss had imagined when he originally created her for a stand-alone episode. She bravely portrayed some key human struggles we all face from time to time: mortality and insecurity. She tapped into the very heart of the human condition and was not afraid to ask questions and express what was on her mind. She was bold, she was beautiful, and she was brave. Xander was proud of her in the end, and so are we. May you never look at bunnies in the same way!

Great Buffy Rewatch: David Kociemba

2011-12-28T17:00:00.000-05:00

Understanding How “Chosen” Went Right When So Many Series Finales Go Horribly Wrong

David Kociemba, Emerson College

Jason Mittell’s influential article, “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television,” suggests that the past two decades of television has seen a new approach arise: narrative complexity. This approach spans network hits (ranging from Seinfeld to LOST to West Wing to The X-Files), premium cable breakouts (The Wire, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Battlestar: Galactica, Mad Men), and cult hits (Veronica Mars, Arrested Development, Firefly, Angel, and, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) This shift was sparked by shrinking audience sizes sparking an appreciation for boutique audiences, DVD and download sales providing an economic incentive for Most Repeatable Programming, a talent influx of writers fleeing the empty-headed blockbuster-dominated film industry of the last 30 years, and the internet permitting audiences’ to work together to document and critique the narrative’s evolution, convolution, and involution. The spectacle that stuns the audience in TV is increasingly the narrative, as more narrative lines are more intricately woven together than the classical A-B storyline structure. A complex narrative series’ range of genres, rebellion against episodic conventionality, and evolving and deep ‘verse demands more out of its audience, who must not only be invested emotionally but analytically to fully understand the program.

So why do so many finales to these shows stink? Is there something about this narrative form that makes it more difficult to end these complex shows than, say, M*A*S*H? And does “Chosen” stick the dismount where others failed?

The classic example of a series being unable to rise to the narrative challenge posed by the long-form series is Battlestar: Galactica, which never had a plan, according to series re-creator Ronald D. Moore. The last half season provided a variety of disappointing dénouements, culminating in a finale that managed to combine moral ickiness, an incredibly underwhelming resolution to a central prophecy, wholesale betrayal of social psychology, and a late pair of smugly-delivered nonsensical revelations. Other examples of audience betrayal finales include Roseanne and St. Elsewhere.

Networks not understanding how narrative complexity works is another cause. The X-Files and Babylon 5 got unexpected extra seasons, which meant either stretching out mythology long past its expiration date or coming up with a season-long coda. Some aren’t given the chance to develop an audience, such as Firefly, My So-Called Life, and Wonderfalls. If an excellent finale isn’t aired, does it make a sound? Dollhouse clearly went into hyper-drive to cram everything in its last season, somewhat successfully albeit haunted by the what-if scenario of what the show could have been on a better network.

Sometimes, it’s the loss of a key artist. The only thing the last half-season of Twin Peaks did right was its surreal finale after network meddling caused David Lynch to petulantly abandon the show until the last episode. (That last line still haunts me.) The loss of Larry David’s guiding pathology doomed Seinfeld to repudiate everything we loved about its characters in its prosecution of them for violating Good Samaritan laws.

But schadenfreude is bad for the soul. Let’s think about how to successfully end a show built on narrative complexity.

LOST’s solution was to make one of the most heavily-promoted clip shows of all time. This was not an uncontroversial choice, as what surrounded the clips was not well received. Hopefully future series will learn not to have the protagonists blindly follow a god-like jerk who ruins the lives of children and lets a woman get run over by a car. The fact that its underwhelming final fight consists of a 37-year old man punching a 48 year-old man (as played by a 59 year-old actor) means that the flashbacks take center stage. Surprisingly, the clip show stirred viewer emotion so well that the genre’s appeal to memory might be a viable model for future TV series dabbling in narrative complexity. Think of LOST as the shipper’s solution to the problem of narrative complexity: an audience sobbing over Sun-Jin, Sawyer-Juliet, and Jack-Vincent will forgive a lot.

Another solution is insanity. That’s really the only way to describe the finale of The Prisoner (and several of its other episodes too.) Steeped in symbolism and theatricality, the finale crams more surrealism into one hour than had ever been aired on the networks. You thought LOST fans wanted answers? Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof didn’t need to leave the USA to escape irked viewers, unlike Patrick McGoohan after The Prisoner aired in the UK. McGoohan’s bravery in creating such a difficult, complex finale at a time before VCRs throws the gauntlet down to today’s producers and audiences. Could this be the path taken by Community? Or Mad Men, if it lasts until LSD becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist? If the show’s based on complex plotting, characterization, visuals, and symbolism, perhaps the finale should be the most difficult one of all.

Which brings us back to good, old Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Honestly, I was just hoping for a dignified death when I watched the seventh season finale in broadcast, because its acting and writing had been so uniformly bad. (Seriously, how do you get a bad performance out of Nathan Fillion?! “Conversations with Dead People” and “Storyteller” are really the only two good episodes, and it’s not a coincidence that they both depend on meta-narrative rather than originality for their excellence.)

Yet, Mutant Enemy came up with a stunning series finale that provides a great model for how to end a complex narrative. There’s a final battle that’s epic in scale and while still having a small enough scope for us to mourn the soldiers lost. There’s two layers of trickery complicating the war against the First Evil: Willow evens the odds, tucked away from the melee, and The Senior Partners from Another Network provide Spike with a handy amulet because they’re working on their own apocalypse, thank you very much. There’s something nice about the script doctor of Speed having the great escape portion of the final fight consist of the protagonist literally leaping onto the last bus out of town. When it comes to romance, both warring parties in the biggest shipping debate in the series have scenes to warm their hearts, while the writers carefully refuse to ruin the fun with closure. They fill a major hole in the Buffyverse, just a few episodes after finally revealing the origin story of the Slayer line. Willow’s spell shows there’s genuine divinity in the Buffyverse, as it references the Wiccan drawing down ritual that channels divinity directly into the supplicant. That’s a pretty nifty payoff after they got so much wrong about the religion. Best of all, the protagonists change the world rather than saving the status quo, which every blockbuster would tell you is sacrosanct. Who doesn’t cry at the montage of women and girls empowered? And that final shot that goes straight into the TV canon of image-making: that enigmatic expression on Gellar’s face, which suggests everything from “It is finished” to “We are not alone.”

What “Chosen” shows future creators is that a series ends best that doesn’t end at all. Characters grow and the world evolves even as the show dies, which means that it never really does.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Steve Halfyard

2011-12-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

The wonderful Steve/Janet Halfyard is back to talk about the music of Buffy in "Chosen," after I asked her if she wanted to comment on that beautiful music that played when Buffy stood up after we thought she was done for.

I have been a very bad Rewatch contributor since the start of the summer (life caught up, alas) but the lovely Nikki is very forgiving! She sent me a message and wondered if I had any comments about the music we hear in the final fight scene in "Chosen". "I was rewatching it last week” she said, “and the scene where Buffy stands up after we think she's dying is amazing, and the music is unlike anything else I've heard on Buffy". Hmm, thought I. Unlikely to be new...if it's cropped up before, where would it be? And there was one really obvious place to look for it and that is the fight with the ubervamp at the end of "Showtime". Go have a listen sometime: after she has killed the ubervamp, as Buffy makes her speech to the Potentials, there is a slow theme low in the cellos, the first five notes of which are hopefully shown below if Nikki has worked her HTML magic.

Cut to "Chosen": as we flashback to Buffy telling the Potentials her plan to make them all Slayers, the same theme comes back, develops, transforms and continues in the underscore as we flashforward again and the final battle begins. We loose it when it looks like Buffy is going to die; but when she gets up and resumes the fight there is it again, gloriously triumphant. The reason it sounds new at this point is because of some fantastically film-music-ish orchestration, a grand old ultra-emotive trick in creating ideas of heroic powerwhere you have a steady, controlled melodic line against a furiously energetic, higher pitched accompaniment (Danny Elfman does it all the time in Batman, but he's not the only one): it juxtaposes something controlled and powerful against something that's making your heart race at the same time, and in this case the wonderfully Riverdancey feel of the accompaniment turns it into something joyful as well as powerful: we know they are going to win now. It only stops when Spike goes nuclear (oh, how I wept when I thought he was dead!) but we get the theme back (slower now, battle over) at the end when they get off the bus and look at the crater. Robert Duncan, scorer or the final series only, loves his film music borrowings: he uses lots of ideas and gestures from The Matrix and Lord of the Rings (well, Turok-han does rather obviously rhyme with Uruk-hai, if you see what I mean), and he poaches a motif from Gladiator for the Buffy/Spike relationship in the last few episodes, but that final battle orchestration of the Slayer Power theme is a little moment of musical genius, a final big theme to unite all the Slayers - note the way the camera does not focus on Buffy in the Riverdance bit, but cuts from one Slayer in action to the next - at the series' close.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Matthew Pateman

2011-12-28T15:00:00.003-05:00

Great Buffy Rewatch: Colleen aka redeem

2011-12-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

Another of the commenters who was loyal all the way through is Colleen aka redeem, who I first met probably over 10 years ago now as part of Buffy fandom, when we were in the same group, OBAVA (Ontario Buffy/Angel Viewers Association). Since then we see each other a couple of times a year and she's always delightful, as were her posts and comments throughout the year. I asked if she'd like to contribute something, and she said yes: a bit of fanfic!

After discovering Buffy I joined some message boards, but found I was having trouble expressing what I tried to say about the show. I found that if I put the points I wanted to make in the form of fiction, people seemed more receptive to what I was saying. While not new to fan fiction, Buffy inspired me to a whole new level of involvement and in one year I wrote a fic, or chapter of a fic, every day. Later in the series I discovered drabbles, and while they have a few different definitions, I prefer the one that states a drabble is a one hundred word story, no more, no less.

Though fan fiction I made some very close friendships, both with other writers and readers. In 2004 I was proud to be a committee member for the first Whedonverse fan fiction convention, Writercon, held in Las Vegas.

Nikki asked me to write a little something about the finale and I did it my favourite way, in the form of a drabble.

If anyone would like to read any of my other fan fiction, you can find it under redeem147 here.

Thank you for the rewatch Nikki. It's been a truly wonderful experience.

Colleen, waiting to see what Joss gives us next.

She almost couldn't believe it was over. Buffy knew things could have been so much worse. Her sister was safe. Her best friends, not only unscathed, but joking. Relieved. Happy. She had transportation and a bus full of newly-minted Slayers to carry the load. She looked out over the crater that had once been her home. The town had emptied before the devastation so very few lives were lost. But she thought about the sacrifices. So many young women. Amanda. Friends. Anya. More than friends. “Spike.” Yes, she thought, we can rest now. We can rest. And she smiled.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Rhonda Wilcox

2011-12-28T13:00:00.000-05:00

When I threw out the idea for people to make a video or write an essay or a poem or even a haiku, the wonderful Rhonda Wilcox took me up on that last one. ;)

Like a Sneeze

By Rhonda Wilcox

By the crater a

Smile in the sun; our bus rides

With the Chosen ones.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Evan Munday

2011-12-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

My only response to the end of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer is a short and ridiculous one: to one day hope they would make a Grosse Pointe Blank type movie, where Buffy Summers returns to Sunnydale High for a ten-year high school reunion. Though she's just there to meet up with Xander Harris again, she ends up having to slay a bunch of vampires and demons. And the reunion movie/episode would replace the songs of The English Beat and Violent Femmes with K's Choice, Rasputina and Nerfherder. As in this poster.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Elizabeth Rambo

2011-12-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

Buffy Flashback

Since 2001 I’ve been co-moderator of a YahooGroup that started out discussing Buffy and Angel. With the ending of Buffy season 7, May 2003 saw the highest number of postings ever on that list. With minor editing for clarity, this is what I wrote the day after “Chosen” aired at SunnydaleU.

Wednesday May 21, 2003:
I'm posting this before I even try to read the 104 postings since last night, most of which seem to be replies to "Hated it, hated it, hated it." [People hated that Buffy & Spike didn’t end up happily ever after somehow, or that Anya died, or that Andrew survived, or…many, many things.]

I can just imagine. As for me, I was very pleased with "Chosen." Bittersweet that it's all ending, of course, but I came to the final episode with very few expectations, and I wasn't disappointed, mostly. I'd invited three of my friends--Gina & Donna, fellow English profs., and Donna's husband Peter, and Jacki, a history prof., to watch with me. We had dinner together before and talked about how we discovered the series, favorite characters, etc. They all started watching within the past two years, more or less by chance & got sucked in (the "whole big sucking thing" Buffy the Vampire Slayer effect that some of us are familiar with). It helped a lot to have friends to laugh with, sigh, discuss the fine points during the commercials. No one actually cried. They commented that the writing seemed snappier than almost any other episode this season--before I pointed out that Joss Whedon had written it.

Peter claimed to like Spike best, but Donna insisted that he really has a crush on Willow. Jacki, it turned out, was most distressed by Spike's disintegration. We're all sure he'll be returned to this dimension somehow, though--perhaps resurrected by Angel Investigations using info provided by Wolfram & Hart (similar to the spell used to bring back Darla, but hopefully not so dark), sent back as a reward by the Powers That Be, or by the power of the amulet--or by some other arcane method dreamed up by Whedon. It seemed to me a good ending, one he chose for himself, and I'm not sure I believe him when he says Buffy doesn't love him--he may be saying that to get her out. Telling the truth with lies, lying with the truth has been an interesting thread throughout this season.

In fact, almost everything the First Evil says is, in some way, a lie.

Other things I really liked about "Chosen":

Angel's petulance about Spike's soul and Buffy's involvement with Spike--"going all Dawson"--"What are you? Twelve?" She is so over him. They'll always have Paris, but she's her own woman. Yay!

Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz made the dorky cookie-dough metaphor work. Very typical of season 1-2 BtVS style--deep thought, goofy words.

Angel disappearing into the night with exactly the same turn as in “Graduation Day” 2. "I'm not getting any older" was nice touch.

Anya stroking Xander's hair in the kitchen--she so loves him--reinforcing my contention that their kitchen floor passion was not meaningless.

Buffy reaching out to Spike, reiterating his reaching out to her from 7.1"Lessons" and 7.20 "Touched"

Giles doesn't take off his glasses when Willow refers to her girlfriend's pierced tongue--evidently he's grown up a bit too.

Wood--"That's bleak" echoing Sweet, "That's gloomy." Taking Faith down a peg--just what she needs to keep her interested. Again--their encounter was not meaningless.

Loved Andrew, Giles, Xander, and Amanda playing D&D. Giles seemed to speak for Joss?--"I used to be a highly respected Watcher. Now I'm a wounded dwarf with the mystical strength of a doily." [Whedon made many comments in interviews that season about being tired. He was running three shows and wearing himself out.]

[Robin Wood’s ] "Welcome to Sunnydale High"--back to the beginning with a vengeance, both back to 7.1, and back to 1.1--very, very nice.

Absolutely beautiful: Scoobies "So, what do you want to do tomorrow?" discussion, leading up to Giles "The earth is definitely doomed" echoing the conclusion of 1.2 "The Harvest", Giles "The earth is doomed."

My one quibble: when the girls open the seal, how do they know ubervamps won't start popping right up immediately? If this was explained, I missed it both times I watched. I'm willing to let it pass, however.

Spike's hand flames--as in 3.8 "Lover's Walk"--and at last Buffy touches the fire and it doesn't freeze her. As I said above, I'm not sure that Spike doesn't believe her when she tells him she loves him. He wants her out of there. There are more ways than one to love someone.

Andrew tells his best story, one that's not quite all about him, about Anya--"She was incredible. She died saving my life." Xander's "That's my girl." is the important part of his response, not "Always doing the stupid thing." What does he mean, not what does he say? It's Xander--and although Xander's been known to make the heartfelt speech, it's just as typical for him to say something dumb because his real feelings are impossible to express. What was stupid? It's stupid that Anya's not alive, that's all. Compare Anya's speech about Joyce's death in "The Body."

And finally, one last echo from “Once More with Feeling,” "Where do we go from here?"

When I turned on FX this morning [FX ran daily Buffy reruns for several years] and found it was "Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest"--interrupting what had been season 4--I almost did cry. All that innocence. Then I picked up what might be one more echo from 7.22--Spike's "weird dream" in which he's "Drowning in footwear!"--possibly a little wave to Cordelia's greeting to Buffy: "I would kill to live in LA--that close to that many shoes!" Could this be prophetic? [It had already been announced that James Marsters would join the cast of Angel season 5.]

Great Buffy Rewatch: Marebabe

2011-12-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

I wanted to include some voices from the commentators -- those readers who followed the Great Buffy Rewatch from beginning to end. One of my favourites was Marebabe, who was actually watching the series for the first time all the way through with us, and through whose eyes I was able to see many things for the first time again. Every week she gave us great posts (she was usually the first one up!) and so I asked if she might be interested in writing something for us. And happily, she was! Take it away, Marebabe!

My First Time
By Mary everything-reminds-me-of-something-else Evans

Thank you, Nikki, esteemed Buffy scholars, fellow n00bs, loyal minions of the Nikkiverse, and honored lurkers. *adjusting glasses, glancing at notes*

Back in November, I did sort of a marathon, zooming through the last dozen-or-so episodes of Buffy S7 and Angel S4, well ahead of our rewatch schedule, so that I could prepare my comments and “hand them in” to Nikki, giving her plenty of time to arrange and format everything for this huge finale event. It was only AFTER I’d watched “ Chosen ” for the first time that I discovered I really should’ve seen “Home” first, in order to make sense of the amulet and Angel’s trip to Sunnydale. I looked up the original broadcast dates and found that, back in 2003, fans got to see “Home” TWO WEEKS before “ Chosen ”. Oh, well. I soon got straightened out and became less confused.

I liked how Angel called the scythe “that real cool axe thing”. It’s fortunate that Buffy got the scythe when she did, because Caleb seemed totally unstoppable and unkillable. But then Buffy’s line, referring to dead Caleb, “He had to split” was SUCH a groaner in my book. I could see it coming, and I was actually wincing, thinking, “Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it.” That’s exactly the kind of punny, wink-wink line that Arnold Schwarzenegger was always saying in his 1980s action movies. It seems to me that lines like that should be followed by a Groucho Marx eyebrow-waggle. It just didn’t work for me in Buffy. A minor nitpick, but there it is.

Moving on. My theory is that Joss had Dawn kick Buffy in the shin and call her “Dumb-ass” in order to demonstrate to the Dawn-haters that they were correct to hate Dawn.

I loved EVERYTHING about the Dungeons & Dragons scene, even though I didn’t immediately know it was D&D. (I’ve never played it or even seen anyone play it.) And Giles is this week’s winner in the best line competition: “Could it possibly get uglier? I used to be a highly respected Watcher. Now I’m a wounded dwarf with the mystical strength of a doily.”

I like to think that this D&D scene was the inspiration for the Risk scene in LOST: “ Australia is the key to the whole game.” In both stories, they did a very elegant fake-out, making us think the characters were having a real-life strategic summit conference when they were actually just taking a game-break.

I know it served to ratchet up the dramatic tension, but I kept wondering why they waited so late – until the last possible second – to have Willow do the spell that turned all the Potentials into Slayers. Was that necessary, for some reason I missed? (Seems to me that it could’ve easily been done that morning, or even the night before.) The massive army of Orcs, er, Turok-han, was already charging at them before the spell was complete. (Shoot. I just noticed how similar Turok-han is to Uruk-hai. They’re really, REALLY similar.)

I think White Willow was one of the most beautiful images of the entire series. It was “nifty”.

Let’s talk about the awesome, powerful music in this finale. That beautiful piano theme I’ve been enjoying all season long on the “language selection” screen of my DVDs played ever so softly over the end of Buffy and Angel’s farewell scene in the cemetery, as he backed into the shadows. It was exquisite, and I was delighted. Then when Buffy was wounded and handed the scythe to Faith, saying, “Hold the line”, we heard the start of that great battle music, which has been playing on the menu screen for S7. It reminded me of some of Howard Shore ’s fabulous score for “The Lord of the Rings”, and that is high praise! I hope to hear more of Robert Duncan’s compositions in the future. I’m a fan.

I had heard that the series finale of Buffy was very divisive, that some fans absolutely HATED it. Before watching “ Chosen ”, I guessed that it had to do with some character deaths, or about the destruction of Sunnydale. (Yeah, that’s one of the major plot points that got spoiled ages ago.) My first time watching the finale, I failed to notice Willow running out of the school, and until the moment when everyone exited the bus, I thought maybe Willow had died. Wouldn’t THAT have sent the fans into an enraged snit, complete with torches and pitchforks, tar and feathers!

Regarding Spike’s heroic death, I used to think that only latter-day fans like myself would’ve been spoiled about it, because of Angel cast pictures that included Spike, and because Nikki’s book has a picture of Angel and Spike on the cover. So I knew that, no matter what happened to Spike in the Buffy finale, he was going to eventually show up in Los Angeles . THEN I learned that the stupid WB suits ruined it for everyone by loudly announcing that Spike was moving over to Angel in the next season. I’m sure it was an extremely rare first-run Buffy fan who went into the finale completely unspoiled about Spike’s fate. But can you IMAGINE the impact of seeing Spike disintegrate/burn up, believing that his death was final?! That would’ve been such a powerful, emotional moment, and the network boneheads robbed everyone of that. I am offended on behalf of all you first-run fans!

The Mutant Enemy monster looked out into the audience, as if in a farewell salute. That was very nice. “See ya, Monster!”

At the end of my first viewing of “ Chosen ”, I was pleased to realize that I could now listen to Joss Whedon’s commentary on it. Nothing is off limits now! There’s no more getting spoiled on anything in Buffy seasons 1-7. And eventually, after a break (Nikki isn’t the only one who wants/needs a break), it will be fun to listen to the DVD commentaries and watch all the Special Features. But the thing I’m most looking forward to is reading all of the spoilery comments that y’all have made this past year. When I do my own private rewatch, those comments will be most enlightening.

Here’s an afterthought, one we can file under Things That Don’t Matter Anymore. Back when we were discussing “Get It Done”, I mentioned how burying dead Potentials in the backyard could really backfire. No worries. ALL of Sunnydale’s backyards were completely obliterated when Sunnydale became a gaping crater.

This week in Angel news, we have Lilah as the mysterious and very surprising “messenger”. So, was she Ghost Lilah? Reanimated Lilah? Or (my favorite), Nearly Headless Lilah? Thankfully, Tim Minear knew the fans would be scratching their heads over that one, and he addressed it with full writerly authority in the episode commentary. She’s not “back from the dead”. She’s just “back”. Good, I’m glad we got that cleared up. :/

Technically, I shouldn’t have listened to the commentary on “Home”. There’s a whole ‘nother season of Angel to go! (Duh.) The freedom I was feeling about having open access to all things Buffy accidentally spilled over into the Angel corner of my brain. So, it was an Oops! on my part. But fortunately, there were no shocking revelations about S5. Just a few things I had mostly figured out on my own.

Fred: “We ended a nefarious global domination scheme. Not world peace. [long beat] Right?”

The snappy chorus of “Good morning, Mr. Angel” at Wolfram & Hart reminded me very much of “Trading Places”. Remember at Duke & Duke? First we had, “Good morning, Mr. Winthorp”, and later, “Mr. Valentine”. (I love the classics!)

This was the moment. With the appearance of the shiny amulet and the file on Sunnydale, I realized that I was watching these final episodes in the wrong order.

I liked that Wesley tried to release Lilah from her Standard Perpetuity Clause. A very convincing sign that he really, truly loved her. (I was dead wrong, several weeks ago, when I theorized that Wesley was only getting close to Lilah because he was a spy, after secret info or forbidden access.) And Lilah was so right: “It means something that you tried.”

I’m left with several questions at the end of Angel S4. First, what was the meaning of Gunn’s encounter with the beautiful black panther? (Then I said to myself, said I: “Whoa! Back in his gang days, was he a Black Panther?!”) The episode commentary was most informative. Tim Minear said, without spoiling, that more interesting stuff happened to Gunn on his tour of W&H, which we haven’t seen yet. We’ll find out about it in S5. Also, about the big, black kitty, they originally wanted a regular spotted leopard, but none were available. So they thought a black cat would look cool in the all-white room. And it most certainly did! (Didn’tcha love its great big FEET?) There was nothing political about it, however. Gunn was never a Black Panther.

Why did Connor decide to become a terrorist/hostage-taker? Was it despair over losing Jasmine? I mean, was that the last straw that finally pushed him over the edge?

Here’s another choice item from the commentary: Charisma Carpenter had just given birth, but she agreed to come in and lie on the floor for the scene in the sporting goods store. I knew she was pregnant, but not THAT pregnant!

What exactly happened in that white-flashy moment between Angel and Connor? It sure LOOKED like the fulfillment of the prophecy, “The father will kill the son.” According to the commentary, Angel struck a deal with Lilah, and there’s “some sort of blood magic going on.” OK. That’s sufficiently vague.

Seeing happy, well-adjusted, family-oriented, college-bound Connor at the end reminded me of the sideways world on LOST. That is to say, I did not understand it one bit. So, I relied on my fallback strategy: just go with it. Ours is not to question supernatural wheeling and dealing.

Fred’s exit line was a doozy: “Who’s Connor?” Hoooowee! I’ll bet that made a lot of fans mad! This was first shown the year before LOST came along to teach us the true meaning of freaky and mysterious.

Well, I’d better wrap this up. I hope x infinity that I will continue to see all of you lovely people around Nik at Niteland. I will certainly be here. And if you’re on Facebook, do look me up! I’ve already connected with many of you on Facebook, and we’re having such fun! My email address is Marebabe1@aol.com.

Grrr! Argh! ~ M

Great Buffy Rewatch: Stacey Abbott

2011-12-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

‘Chosen’ – Goodbye to Buffy

Stacey Abbott

I am a professional film snob. I have been a film buff all my life and began studying film when I started college in Montreal when I was 17. I have been studying and teaching film ever since. My undergraduate degree in Film Studies at Concordia University taught film, all film popular and art-cinema, as a form of Fine Art. I have been trained to see film as second to none. As a result, while I have always watched TV, I never really took television seriously. I watched loads of silly action series while growing up, and loved Star Trek more then any other show but that was my inner geek speaking – or so I thought. Like every good film student in 1991, I stopped and basked in the brilliance of Twin Peaks but that was ok because it was made by a film director, David Lynch. So when I heard that the film of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was being made into a television series, I was bemused and dubious. I watched because I was writing my PhD thesis on vampire films so it seemed necessary. I didn’t think it would amount to much more then an interesting footnote – how wrong could I be? It was this little show with a rather silly name, adapted from an unsuccessful teen-horror-comedy, that taught me that television could not only be equal to film but in some ways could exceed film as a narrative and art form. That is not to say that television is better then film but simply that there are certain things that can only really be done in television.

Buffy taught me not to judge a series on one or two episodes, or even an entire season, but to let a show unfold and slowly reveal its secrets and complexities. It taught me that sometimes you need to earn those wonderful dramatic revelations or disturbing moments, like Angel losing his soul after sleeping with Buffy or Angelus murdering Jenny and leaving her body for Giles to find. The horror of these moments is so overwhelming because we have the spent time watching these characters grow, watching their relationships develop, and learning to love them so we feel the loss almost as poignantly as Buffy and Giles.

Buffy taught me that within the narrative drive of commercial television and despite the budget and production constraints that are unavoidable when making twenty-two episodes of television a year, there was space for some of the most audacious experiments in style and narrative. It showed that audiences who become invested in a series and its characters will be more than willing to accept playful experiments like the fairy-tale silence of ‘Hush’, the narrative poetry of ‘Conversations with the Dead’, or the dream logic of ‘Restless’. While it might be fair to say that Twin Peaks paved the way for Buffy, it is equally fair to say that we would not have had Lost, Supernatural, or Fringe without Buffy.

Buffy taught me that television could be multi-layered, complicated and wonderful to discuss and analyse. The textual analysis skills I learned as a film student were put to the test with Buffy, a show that continues to invite analysis (as evidenced by this Rewatch).

Buffy taught me that in the darkest of moments, there is a space of tenderness – Tara sharing her own experiences of bereavement when Buffy loses her Mom in ‘The Body’ – and humour – Angel and Spike’s school boy jealousy in ‘Chosen’ (I love, love, love, Spike’s drawing of Angel pinned to his punching bag).

The season finale for a show like Buffy was always going to be a tall order and it has its weaknesses – the special effects in the final battle especially. It is, however, an immensely satisfying, if open, conclusion (at least until the comics) to the story of the Slayer. The series that begins with the narrative voice over explaining the Slayer myth ends with the rewriting of that myth by turning all potential into slayers, showing the epic narrative vision that encapsulates the series (and who doesn’t feel a surge of power when all of the potentials are activated – especially the girl at bat – what a wonderfully knowing smile she gives). The finale begins with humour – Spike and Angel – includes anguish – Anya’s death – and warmth – Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles sharing a moment together before launching into battle – and concludes with hope – Buffy’s smile. In effect, it brings together the best the series had to offer and leaves you wanting more.

Buffy taught me to love and appreciate television, and to take it seriously. I began writing about television after Buffy completed its fourth season and I wrote my first Buffy article for Slayage. Since that moment, I haven’t stopped writing about television (Angel, Firefly, Alias, Lost, Supernatural, True Blood).

Thank you Buffy.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Buffy Book Club

2011-12-28T08:00:00.001-05:00

As promised, today will be a day of our Great Buffy Rewatch contributors (and a few new faces!) talking about "Chosen," Buffy the Vampire Slayer in general, and/or the Rewatch itself. To start things off, I wanted to pay tribute to the many authors we had involved in the yearlong Rewatch by discussing the Buffy-centric books that many of them wrote (see below for links to most of them). So here is a VERY long video... you can zip ahead to see if I cover your book. (I think my voice actually goes out of synch at one point, but I haven't watched it back all the way through...) Enjoy! And please stay tuned to this blog, for throughout the day, every hour on the hour (the last one will go live at 10pm!), we'll have another post from someone talking about our favourite Slayer.

Bite Me! The Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Chosen Edition
by Nikki Stafford

Once Bitten: An Unofficial Guide to the World of Angel
by Nikki Stafford

Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier
Edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran

Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery

Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
by Rhonda Wilcox

The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
by Matthew Pateman

Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology
by Jennifer K. Stuller

Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan
Lorna Jowett

Buffy Goes Dark: Essays on the Final Two Seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Television
Edited by Lynne Y. Edwards, Elizabeth L. Rambo and James B. South

Faith and Choice in the Works of Joss Whedon
by K. Dale Koontz

Inside Joss's Dollhouse: From Alpha to Rossum
Edited by Jane Espenson

Joss Whedon: Conversations
Edited by David Lavery and Cynthia Burkhead

Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Edited by Paul Attinello, Janet K. Halfyard and Vanessa Knights

Buffy Rewatch Week 52: THE END

2011-12-27T20:00:00.003-05:00

7.22 Chosen

Follow along in Bite Me!

And if you’re watching Angel, this week’s episode is the season 4 finale, “Home.” Follow along in Once Bitten.

And with the Sunnydale sign finally giving up and falling over for the last time, and Buffy smiling the most sincere, genuine, and relieved smile she’s ever given… our romps with the Scoobies come to an end. (Well, in live-action form, anyway.)

Now, I’m going to be up front about something in this episode, and I know a LOT of people will disagree with me. But I really hate the cookie dough speech. As I said in Bite Me!, it came off like Joss trying too hard to be cute. “See, I’m cookie dough…” Ugh. Even the memory of it irks me. And I hear Buffy fans quote that all the time, or even just roll with the metaphor. “Well, maybe you’re not done baking yet!” I can live with it, though, because there’s just too much else to love about this episode.

The ongoing friction between Angel and Spike is one of the key ones. From Angel calling Spike “Captain Peroxide” to Spike punching a bag that has a caricature of Angel drawn on it, the little bitchy asides from these two about the other are always hilarious. (In the commentary, Joss admits that he drew the picture of Angel and that a crew member saw it and said, “Why does he hate Butthead?” HAHA!!)

I also love the D&D game, and the idea that in the face of impending doom where these people are going to stride into the fight of their lives, they’re still not above role-playing games where you just pretend to stride into the fight of your life. In fact, if you think about it, they probably welcome RPGs because it’s nice to imagine that the apocalypse is just fantasy. But for them, it’s not. (Note that Andrew is wearing Buffy’s red riding hood outfit from “Fear Itself.”)

I love the roundtable scene in the school where the gang all talks about what they’ll do after they avert the Apocalypse. Giles’s comment, “The earth is definitely doomed” is a continuation of his “The earth is doomed” comment that he made way back in the second part of the show’s pilot. Joss wanted this season to go back to the beginning, and so much in this episode does.

Of course, there are the things in there I didn't like the first time, and no matter how much I can explain them in my head or try to reason with the plot, my heart still doesn't like it. Like Anya's death. I know it's meant to be shocking and we see what happens in the heat of battle -- sometimes there is no time for mourning, and people just die. But I think it's Xander's flip response, and the fact he's joking about the Sunnydale mall afterwards, that has always bothered me. Yes, this is Xander covering up, and we can assume he'll go off and mourn somewhere else, but if this weren't the final episode, we would have watched him crumple and then sit in a basement with a bottle of something strong, thinking of everything he might have done to change things. He wouldn't have been joking about Toys R Us.

And to put you in the context of May 20, 2003, the date of the actual finale, the WB did the really cruel and dumbass thing of issuing a press release about one week before the finale, announcing that a certain star of Buffy was going to be joining the cast of Angel in its fifth season. Joss Whedon was immediately on the warpath, but he waited until after the finale to announce how angry and upset he was that they couldn't have waited one week, because by knowing this character was coming back, it rendered his death in this finale almost meaningless. I had a finale party that night, and the room was filled with fans, and it was interesting to look around the room at the end of the episode and see the faces. To a person, those who had read the press release were dry-eyed and thought the episode was okay. Those who knew nothing about the press release were bawling and declaring it one of the best endings of all time. Stupid WB.

And so, I write the next part as if I didn't know what was happening next, because within the context of Joss's arc, Angel notwithstanding, it was beautifully done.

“Chosen” isn’t my favourite Buffy episode, and doesn’t come close to being my favourite television series finale, but I like it a lot. It’s epic, and brings so many stories full circle:
• Willow began by dabbling in magicks and soon became a powerful witch, but when she let the magicks take her over she was no longer a help to her friends she was a serious danger, and now she lives with a constant terror that she will be the one who will doom all of them.
• Buffy has resisted being the Chosen One from the beginning of the series, seeing her mantle as a curse rather than as a gift. She’s died, she’s been brought back, she’s faced things no one has had to face, and no matter how many times she saves the world, she’s not thanked by anyone, and is just expected to do it again and again. It’s the most thankless of thankless tasks, and it keeps getting bigger. She runs on no sleep, and when she does sleep her rest is filled with nightmares. She’s unable to have a relationship with a “normal” guy, but the undead guys are both dangerous and fill her with guilt and remorse that she’s in bed with the dark side. She is the first Slayer to be completely surrounded by friends, yet she’s always alone. Way back in “Prophecy Girl” she discovered that her destiny was to die, and that death would simply signal the next girl to step up in her place.
• Spike came on the scene as the Big Bad in S2, the stronger of the Sid & Nancy co-dependent vampires, but soon was usurped in power by Drusilla when we realized he was almost powerless around her. He had a soft spot from the get-go, and was unlike the other vampires. Angel was cursed with a soul – Spike never seemed to have lost his. He was turned by Drusilla, and remained true and loyal to her always. And when she finally walked out on him after 120 years of dating, he realized he was in love with Buffy, something that filled him with more self-loathing than Buffy’s feelings for Spike did her. When he gave in to those feelings, he realized he might be dead, but perhaps this undead existence holds more in it for him if he stops pretending to be the Big Bad and actually embraces the softer side within him. But Buffy refused to let the relationship continue, and he was lost. Ultimately, we saw that Buffy means more to him than anyone ever has, and when it comes down to the final, total end of the world, he will still fight by her side.

With these three key stories as the ones most in need of resolution, “Chosen” weaves them all together into one beautiful ending: Willow finds a greater power within herself that can perform powerful magicks for good, and in doing so she empowers women around the world to no longer be Potentials, but Actuals. Slayers everywhere are born, and at the moment where Willow no longer lives in fear of her power and stops being a wallflower and becomes the goddess, Buffy is no longer alone. And moments later, Spike proves himself to be the worthiest of friends when he channels the sunlight through his amulet and immolates himself in the process. With Buffy holding his hand and saying she loves him, he looks at her and says, “No you don’t, but thanks for saying so.” She smiles a smile of agreement and leaves. And yet, in that moment I really do believe she loves him. Maybe not in a lusty, throwdown, passionate kind of way, but a much deeper, richer, appreciative way.

So I see all of these stories coming to a wonderful close. Now, there’s been a lot of criticism of the idea that all of the Slayers would be empowered. For one, Buffy and all Slayers before her were logged by the Watcher’s Council, and the moment they were imbued with the power they had Watchers standing by to tell them exactly how to use it. They had their calling explained to them, and rather than live with the confusion of “what the hell is happening to me,” or worse, the danger of seriously hurting someone with this new power (what’s to stop a girl from accidentally killing a bully at school, or a younger sibling?) they had someone there to guide them through it and train them. These girls will no longer have training available to them. So in many ways, the idea of all girls being empowered is more attractive than the actual execution of it.

And so that’s what I’ve always gone with: the idea. I love the idea that Buffy was a show that was about women being empowered. At the time, it was a strange thing to see this young girl with powers on television. Women (well, most women, not Xena…) were damsels in distress, supposed to be saved by male superheroes. Even female superheroes (including Xena) could be one-upped by men who had to save them. But not Buffy. She was more powerful than anyone or anything. She could always rise to the top. It wasn’t always pretty, and she had a lot of Dark Knight–type issues to deal with, but she did what she had to do. And since Buffy I’ve noticed how much stronger and more powerful women seem to be in popular culture. Not just superhero strong, but mentally, emotionally, strong.

We see a montage of women becoming strong, but imagine that in a broader sense, of the television landscape changing as Buffy’s voiceover happens.

“From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer…”

Kate Austen strides into the woods and refuses to listen to Jack telling her to stay behind. She lets the men chase after her (Jack = Angel; Sawyer = Spike) and she won’t choose one, but keeps her options open. In the end, she doesn’t allow her life to be controlled by the men, but makes her own decision.

“…will be a Slayer.”

Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights is a strong, independently minded woman who fiercely loves her husband and family and will do anything she can to maintain order within her household and throughout her friends, but even her husband can find himself on the wrong side of Tami if he pushes too hard.

“Every girl who could have the power…”

Skyler on Breaking Bad…

“…will have the power...”

Gemma on Sons of Anarchy (no really, do NOT mess with her)…

“…can stand up…”

Zoe on Firefly…

“…will stand up…”

Margaret on Boardwalk Empire…

“Slayers…”

Laura Roslin on Battlestar Galactica…

“…every one of us…”

Donna on Doctor Who…

“Make your choice…”

Kima on The Wire…

“Are you ready to be strong?”

Yes. Women have always been ready to be strong, and the television landscape was utterly changed because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sure, if you think about it too hard you’ll realize the dangers of activating a bunch of unwitting women, but the idea that Joss was trying to get across – that women everywhere are powerful and strong and capable and they just need to be given the opportunities to show these things – was far more important.

Buffy changed television. It changed lives, regardless of how corny that sounds. It changed my life, and because of Buffy I have become a discerning viewer of television. It’s made me demand far more of the storytelling that TV shows offer. It’s made me love television. Believe it or not, before Buffy I really didn’t watch much television. (No, really, it’s true.) I watched Xena and The Simpsons and King of the Hill and reruns of Roseanne and that’s about it. Going through university, my main distraction was movies. I watched half a dozen films a week, and I wasn’t in the film studies program. And then Buffy came along and showed me what television was truly capable of. And since then I’ve seen so many shows that are vastly superior to anything in the movie theatres, shows that have stretched my imagination, introduced me to new ideas, and have given me characters that I’ve completely fallen in love with.

I spent six years writing about Lost, and through my blog and books probably published over a million words on the subject. And yet despite my deep love for that show, Buffy will always be #1 in my heart.

And now, because of this Rewatch, I hope I’ve demonstrated to the newcomers exactly why that is. Thank you to everyone who has watched and commented along the way, and who have contributed to make this Rewatch what it is.

I have so many thank-yous to give out, and many of those will happen tomorrow when I roll out a lot of final words from many of our longstanding contributors and even a few new ones. I can’t thank the following people enough:

Cynthea Masson
Tanya Cochran
Rhonda Wilcox
Lorna Jowett
Steve Halfyard
Michael Holland
Alyson Buckman
Matthew Pateman
Elizabeth Rambo
David Kociemba
Ensley F. Guffey
Dale Koontz-Guffey
Kristen Romanelli
Evan Munday
Cynthia Burkhead
Stacey Abbott
Jennifer K. Stuller
Chris Lockett
Nikki Fuller
David Lavery
Graham F. Scott
Stacey May Fowles
Bryan Curry
Robert Thompson
Tony Burgess
Suzie Gardner
Ian Klein
Becca Wilcott
Crissy Calhoun
Jen Knoch
Rob Wiersema

Thank you for giving us your time, for showing us Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a new and exciting ways, making the Rewatch valuable not just for the new viewers, but for those of us who have watched it again and again. I’ve written two books on the subject, and I learned so many things from those of you who contributed.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in week after week, who contributed their own comments and who made all of us know we were doing this for a reason, who gave positive feedback to the guest hosts and who stuck with us all the way through, offering your insight and allowing US to see the show with your eyes.

It really seems like it was just a couple of weeks ago that I called the first person on my contributor list and said, “What do you think of this idea?” I figured I ran a Lost Rewatch in 2009 and it was a lot of work, but if I had a bunch of other people running this with me, it would be a breeze. I was wrong. In the Lost Rewatch, I only wrote a paragraph or so per episode, but I not only had three episodes per post to comment on, I wanted to offer something different than my guests. So this Rewatch turned out to be a big undertaking, and I’m REALLY looking forward to getting several hours of my weeks back (wow, think of all the new shows I’ll watch!) and yet I can’t help but think, “Hm, what rewatch could I take on next?”

The thing is, if I do another one, it’ll probably be alone. And it’s not because I didn’t enjoy doing it this way – like Buffy, I knew I really couldn’t do this alone, and instead called upon all the other tough Slayage kids I knew who stepped up and helped me. But it’s because I don’t think there’s another show on television, now or before, that has this kind of scholarship backing it up, that has an academic conference devoted to it with so many people who come back again and again. I LOVE going to Slayage (it’s in Vancouver in 2012 and I hope to see some of you first-timers there!) so I can talk about my favourite show with so many brilliant people. I’ve met some people who have become very close friends, and I’m so thrilled to have been asked to come to it back in 2008.

As I’ll mention again tomorrow (watch for my Buffy Book Club video!) there’s an award given out at Slayage called the Mr. Pointy, given to the best book and the best article in the Whedonverse. I am THRILLED to have had on this Rewatch so many people who not only qualify, but who have been nominated and have won. And many of them will be nominated again. I’m so blessed to have had so many of these fine academics join me.

But I’m also thrilled to have had so many non-academic writers join me on this, with both novellists and companion guide writers like myself, and bloggers and journalists, coming on here to talk about the show with as much insight as those who give university lectures.

I had several reasons for doing this Rewatch:
1) I wanted to rewatch Buffy myself
2) I wanted to introduce Buffy to all of you who have watched Lost along with me and who have heard me going on and on about the superiority of Joss Whedon
3) I wanted to show my pop culture savvy readers that pop culture academia is neither dry nor stuffy, and is in fact exciting and fun to read
4) I wanted to show that bloggers and non-academic writers could go toe to toe with the academics, and together we could form a large conversation from many walks of life, various voices, different points of view and differing opinions

It took a show like Buffy to make those last two things happen. Buffy ended in 2003 and the discussion now is as dynamic as it ever was; more so, in fact. I hope the Great Buffy Rewatch of 2011 contributed to that discussion and brought it back to life, and introduced it in just the right way to so many of you new viewers. Thank you to whoever it was early on who suggested we offer a spoiler forum away from the new viewers; it was an inspired suggestion, and one that has kept people from finding out things that are going to happen, while still allowing us seasoned viewers to discuss those upcoming episodes in light of what we were watching.

Thank you to all of you. This has been an extraordinary task and I owe all of that to the guest contributors and to everyone out there reading along with all of us. Please do check out the books written by the contributors (again, watch my video tomorrow for some recommendations!) and keep talking about Buffy. Just think: maybe YOU can introduce someone to this fabulous show.

So, Buffy… what are we gonna do now?

Buffy Rewatch Week 52: Spoiler Forum

2011-12-27T19:59:00.000-05:00

Yes indeedy, we still have a spoiler forum in case anyone needed to discuss S5 of Angel in light of anything that we saw in this week's episodes.

Live Buffy Rewatch

2011-12-25T21:42:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note that there is going to be a live Twitter Buffy Rewatch of "Chosen" Monday, December 26 at 7pm EST. Go to Twitter and while you're watching you can comment on "Chosen" using the hashtag #gbrfinale. I won't be able to make it (I'm having family holiday dinner #5!) but I hope many of you will be able to join in the fun!

Twelve Days of Buffymas

2011-12-24T19:46:00.004-05:00

To honour the soon-to-be end of the Buffy Rewatch, I offer the Twelve Days of a Buffy-filled Christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone!

On the twelfth day of Buffymas my true love gave to me,

Twelve Watchful Gileses
Eleven Heartfelt Xanders
Ten Goddess Willows
Nine Wolfy Ozes
Eight Bitchy Cordys
Seven Wiccan Taras
Six Snarky Anyas
FIVE… SOULFUL SPIKES!!!
Four Angry Faiths
Three Crazy Drus
Two Brooding Angels...

And a Slayer who is named Buffy!!

Buffy Rewatch: Week 51

2011-12-20T20:00:00.000-05:00

7.19 Empty Places
7.20 Touched
7.21 End of Days

Follow along in Bite Me!

If you’re watching Angel, this week’s episodes are:

4.19 The Magic Bullet
4.20 Sacrifice
4.21 Peace Out

Follow along in Once Bitten.

Before we move on to this week’s episode, I said in a recent post that I would continue on with S5 of Angel for everyone who has been watching and wants a forum in which to chat with other Angel fans about the episodes. And because S5 is my favourite of the Angel seasons, I’m not going to leave you hanging. So I suggest this as the schedule:

January 3
5.1 Conviction
5.2 Just Rewards
5.3 Unleashed

January 10
5.4 Hell Bound
5.5 Life of the Party
5.6 The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco

January 17
5.7 Lineage
5.8 Destiny
5.9 Harm’s Way

January 24
5.10 Soul Purpose
5.11 Damage
5.12 You’re Welcome

January 31 (aka the Emotional Rollercoaster Week!)
5.13 Why We Fight
5.14 Smile Time
5.15 A Hole in the World

February 7
5.16 Shells
5.17 Underneath
5.18 Origin

February 14
5.19 Time Bomb
5.20 The Girl in Question
5.21 Power Play

February 21
5.22 Not Fade Away

As I mentioned in that post, I won’t be commenting each week because unfortunately I’ve made other commitments at the beginning of the year that prevent me from doing so, but I hope to make a comment or two and just open the floor to all of you. (And if there’s any Buffy Rewatch contributor out there reading who wanted to write anything for one of those weeks, please let me know!)

But now on to this week’s trio of episodes, containing the top moment of the season for me, and the lowest. We start with “Empty Places,” where Sunnydale clears out and leaves only our Scoobies, the Slayer, and the Potentials behind. As if Buffy weren’t lonely enough already… This is a wonderfully written episode by Drew Z. Greenberg, filled with great dialogue, lots of sight gags, and then… that ending.

Things I loved:
• Clem!! Oh Clem. This is the last time we’ll see him, and James C. Leary, who plays him, is just wonderful. I haven’t talked about him enough in this rewatch, but from the Dorito taste test to kitten poker, every scene in the series with this guy is gold. I remember several years ago being at some fan convention at a signing table, and I was seated between Harry Groener (The Mayor) and James Leary. They were lovely, and between autographs they were flipping through a copy of my book (this was the second edition with Buffy and Angel on the cover) and they flipped to the colour photos in the middle, and began snickering at the photo of David Boreanaz. “He looks like he’s in a boy band!!” they laughed. Leary just kept going on about how he couldn’t believe his name was in a book. I think the guy is brilliant, especially in this episode:

Clem: “We've seen some bad stuff in this town before but, you know, this time, it's like it just seems different, more powerful. (shakes his head) I don't think anyone's gonna be able to stop it. (catches himself) I mean, I'm sure you'll do fine. Complete confidence in you. Heh. Uh, if anyone can do it, you can, because you...rock! If you save the world, I'll come back, we'll have drinks. When! When, I mean. When you save the world. (Buffy nods) It's gonna be great with all the... rocking. Maybe... maybe you should just get out of town this time.

• The hospital scene between Willow and Xander. Every time I think of Xander losing his eye, I picture this scene, and Willow desperately trying not to cry while wringing Xander’s hand, and joking about parrots and peg-legs while Xander begs her not to cry. It breaks my heart every time. I love that this close to the end of the series, we come to the friendship that was there before anything else was.
• Anya and Andrew conducting the tutorial for the Potentials, especially Andrew writing “breakup sex” on the whiteboard, haha!

And now for the thing I don’t love: that end scene. The first time I saw it, it infuriated me. The second time, same thing. Same thing the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh… In this rewatch, many scenes have felt different to me. I’ve felt sympathy for characters who grated on me the first time through, I’ve changed my mind about certain character decisions, plot points, arcs, even entire episodes. But my feelings the first time I saw this episode have not changed. I hate all of them for doing what they did. Willow, how could you go along with it? Xander?! You’re the one who gave the speech in the previous episode about why we need to trust Buffy. She’s always saved you, you guys freakin’ pulled her out of Heaven and she forgave you and came back to save your asses AGAIN (oh yeah, I’m THAT guy in this scene, “Oh really? You want to rag on my speeches and say I effed up? YOU PULLED ME OUT OF HEAVEN, dillweed.”) and yes, she made a mistake, but she turned out to be RIGHT as we discover at the end of the next episode. You ungrateful, lousy S.O.B.s. I’ve always hated the scene of them ganging up on her in “Dead Man’s Party” and even that didn’t seem quite as bad this time around, but this? Nope. I can’t forgive a single person in the room for what they do to her. YES her speeches have been grating (honestly, I know a lot of people found them rousing but I just hated them, and I really disliked Buffy whenever she gave one because they were always overly dramatic and annoying) and yes, a lot of people were hurt and killed when you went to the winery. Caleb is terrifying and he is going to kick your asses. So yeah. Go ahead and kick out the one person who might be able to save you. I mean, who needs HER?

And BTW, while I’m on this rant, here’s my fantasy stage direction:

DAWN: I need you to leave. This is my house, too.
[Buffy punches Dawn in the throat.]

Ah. That would have helped a bit. Like, REALLY Dawn? This is your house, too? What after-school job are you working to help pay the bills? Buffy should be spending all of her time planning a way to avert the apocalypse but she’s down at the school working a full-time job on top of being a Slayer all night long (like, seriously, the writers never built SLEEP into her schedule) so she can keep all of you in cutesie pajamas and cereal. Anya? Willow? Dawn? NONE of you are working, just Buffy. So no, Dawn. No. This is NOT your house, too. SHUT UP.

OK, rant over. (I would recommend to all that this is an episode you should NOT watch with me. My poor husband has seen me freak out on the television one too many times with this one. SO ANGRY.)

OK! On to better things. Because guess what? Spike totes agrees with me. (Of course he does. He’s my boyfriend.) “Touched” is one of my favourite episodes in the final season, and this time through, despite being an Angel/Buffy shipper (yes, fine, I said it) for many, many years, every time I see this episode I’m instantly a Spuffy. Forget Angel, Buffy: SPIKE is the guy you need in your corner. He’s wonderful and amazing and sticks up for you when the rest of your Benedict Scoobies are turning their backs on you. (Sorry, there I go again.) In fact, let’s just look at that scene in all its glory:

WILLOW  (walks toward Spike, wringing her hands, nervously) Uh...while you were gone, we all got together and t-talked out some disagreements that we were having. Um... and eventually, after much discussion, Buffy decided that it would be best for all of us if she took a little time off, a little breather.
SPIKE  (stares in disbelief) Uh-huh. I see. Been practicing that little speech long, have you? (Willow looks hurt and walks away) So, uh, Buffy took some time off right in the middle of the apocalypse, and it was her decision?
XANDER  Well, we all decided.
SPIKE  Oh, yeah. You all decided. (chuckles) You sad, sad, ungrateful traitors. Who do you think you are?
WILLOW  We're her friends. We just want—
SPIKE  Oh, that's ballsy of you. You're her friends, and you betray her like this?
GILES  You don't understand—
SPIKE  You know, I think I do... (disdainfully) Rupert. You used to be the big man, didn't you? The teacher all full of wisdom. Now she's surpassed you, and you can't handle it. She has saved your lives again and again. (the others roll their eyes and avoid eye contact with Spike) She's died for you. And this is how you thank—
FAITH  Hey. Why don't you take it down a notch or two? The time for speech-giving is over, bat boy.
SPIKE  (crosses his arms) Oh, is that right?
FAITH  Yeah, that's right. Save your lack of breath.
SPIKE  (shrugs) All right. (punches Faith)

YES!!!! You Go, Spike! Pffffft on the rest of you. I hope the First finds you and eats all of you.

Ok. Breathe. Rant officially over. Let’s instead look at the other brilliant Spike speech, which for me is my favourite moment of the entire season. Buffy has hit her lowest, and she’s beginning to believe what everyone is saying about her. And then Spike comes to remind her who she really is.

SPIKE  You listen to me. I've been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that. I've seen things you couldn't imagine, and done things I prefer you didn't. I don't exactly have a reputation for being a thinker. I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes, a lot of wrong bloody calls. A hundred-plus years, and there's only one thing I've ever been sure of: you… I'm not asking you for anything. When I say, "I love you," it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman. You're the one, Buffy.
BUFFY I don't wanna be the one.
SPIKE  I don't wanna be this good looking and athletic. We all have crosses to bear.

Tears!! Just reading that makes me well up. Marsters pulls it off beautifully, as does Gellar, who has to sit there and react, and she’s a master of letting that one big tear well up in her eyes for the longest time before letting it drop at exactly the right moment.

“Touched” is a brilliant episode, where Spike touches Faith’s face by punching it (hehe), and touches Buffy’s heart by telling her what she means to him. The First laments to Caleb that it’s not able to touch things, and Buffy realizes that touching is exactly what allows Caleb to get the upper hand – don’t let him touch her, and she wins.

The end, where she sees the scythe (which was introduced in Joss Whedon’s Fray comic as the weapon used by Fray, a vampire slayer from 500 years into the future), is epic.

Did I mention I ♥ Spike?

And then we come to “End of Days,” with Buffy prying the scythe out of the stone like it’s Excalibur and Anya’s terrible bedside manner with the wounded Potentials (oh yeah, I forgot to mention the ingrates got blowed up real good) and Buffy telling Xander he is her strength despite him turning on her so recently (seriously, Nikki, LET IT GO) and we finally discover what happened to Miss Kitty Fantastico (a comment I’ve always despised… NOT funny, writers) and the wheelchair fight and the Guardians… and the return of Angel.

Remember how I told you about the party I had for the S6 finale and everyone cheering and screaming when Giles showed up? When you hear, “Hey!” behind Caleb, I still remember my husband going, “YEEEAHHH!!” and leaping off the couch. I’ve NEVER seen him do that since (if you know him, you know he’s a super low-key guy). So that’s a highlight for me, just because of his reaction to it.

And now, we prepare for… the end.

The last featured guest host of the entire Rewatch (sniff… I can’t believe I’m typing that!) is Cynthea Masson, who has brought us a lot of gems throughout the rewatch with her comments on “Lie to Me,” “The Dark Age,” “Beer Bad,” “Who Are You?,” “Superstar,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Buffy Vs. Dracula,” “Real Me,” “The Replacement,” “Normal Again,” “Entropy,” and “Seeing Red.” I’ve always loved her insight on these episodes, and I was very touched (ah!) when I read her comments on this week’s episodes. Thank you, Cynthea. I don’t think I could have possibly gotten a better compliment than this one.

Take it away!

The Great Buffy Rewatch and the “End of Days”
Cynthea Masson

We are nearing our own “end of days” here at the Great Buffy Rewatch. What an extraordinary task and remarkable achievement this has been for Nikki Stafford! And what a pleasure it has been for all of us—fans and scholars who were given an opportunity through Nikki’s generosity of time and exuberance to discuss at length one of the most intellectually engaging television shows of all time. Several years ago, I told my brother I would never watch a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “Buffy”—the name I had opposed—evokes a mere “girly girl,” as Caleb calls her in “End of Days” (7.21). Even the Guardian (one of the women who forged the ancient scythe), upon learning Buffy’s name, responds with “No, really” —a splendid moment in which Whedon and company remind us of our own early prejudice against the series’ title. But, as Caleb discovers, this “girly girl” can “King Arthur” ancient weaponry “from solid rock” (“End of Days”). Time and again, from “Welcome to the Hellmouth” (1.1) to “Chosen” (7.22), Buffy consistently defies expectations. The entire series certainly defied my expectations. After watching a few episodes, I became a Buffy fan; after a few seasons, I was en route to becoming a Buffy scholar. Who could have predicted a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer would inspire dozens of academic books and hundreds of articles? Who would have predicted, eight years after the series ended, a community of Buffy fans and scholars would participate in a year-long forum for critique and discussion? Thank you to Joss Whedon and his creative team for Buffy. Thank you to Nikki Stafford and her creative team for the Rewatch. Thank you to all the contributors and to all the followers who have posted comments and responses week after week. None of us could have created the breadth of the Great Buffy Rewatch alone.

In “Empty Places” (7.19), a monk shows Spike and Andrew an inscription once hidden within the walls of the mission: “It is for her alone to wield.” For her alone—these words about the scythe and the Slayer hearken back to the beginning of the series: “Into every generation a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world. She alone will….” Alone—this word reverberates through the final episodes. In “End of Days,” Faith tells Buffy, “I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life.” She is referring to her role as leader of the Potentials, the role she assumed during Buffy’s imposed absence. As Buffy emphasizes in her response to Faith, being alone is “the price of being a Slayer”: “I guess everyone’s alone. But being a Slayer, there’s a burden we can’t share.” Buffy’s conversation with Faith may best be remembered for Faith’s clever retort (“Thank God we’re hot chicks with superpowers”). However, in view of thematic concerns of the final episodes of the series, the repeated focus on “alone” is arguably the more significant aspect of their conversation. Buffy is not alone, not really—but this is what she must come to understand. Faith’s existence as a Slayer confirms that the precept “one girl in all the world” is not, as the saying goes, written in stone. I would contend (though not in detail here because of spoiler concerns), this brief conversation between the Slayers is a critical juncture on the path leading to Buffy’s primary choice in the series’ final episode, “Chosen.” To me, the title “Chosen” refers not to Buffy as the “chosen one” but instead to the decision Buffy chooses to make despite her prescribed role. By the end of the series, Buffy challenges what she has repeatedly been told and repeatedly believed— [spoiler]:Buffy chooses not to remain alone as a Slayer.

The three episodes leading up to “Chosen” deal on various levels with the concepts of being alone and being together. “Empty Places” opens with a shot of a man adjusting the “closed” sign on a door. Vehicles are lined up; residents are slowly making their way out of Sunnydale. The Scooby gang (and their growing band of Potentials) will be left alone to conquer the hoard from the Hellmouth. While briefly alone in her office at the deserted high school, Buffy picks up a framed photo of Xander, Willow, and herself; they are several years younger and appear to be happy together. The shot of Buffy holding the picture is poignant; it epitomizes the problem that will lead to her expulsion from the group—Buffy believes she is alone; being happily together with her friends is an image within her grasp but a reality currently outside her reach. She has been friends with these people for years, yet by the end of this episode they will abandon her. Indeed, even before she is forced to leave her companions and home, Buffy complains that others are not supporting her. Having learned that Spike has been sent away, Buffy protests to Giles, “You sent away the one person that’s been watching my back—again.” Though Giles assures her, “We’re all watching your back,” Buffy responds, “Funny, that’s not really what it feels like.” Buffy feels alone, and that feeling is about to become manifest.

When everyone, including Giles, Willow, and Dawn, gang up on Buffy and challenge her leadership, Buffy replies, “I don’t understand this. For seven years, I’ve kept us safe by doing this—exactly this. Making the hard decisions. And now, what, suddenly you’re acting like you can’t trust me?” (“Empty Places”). When I first saw this episode, I agreed with Buffy completely. What are they thinking? I still find the scene difficult to watch because, for me, the decision to oust Buffy lacks any sort of logic. But I am now also willing to accept the scene on a symbolic level—that is, pushing Buffy away, forcing her to be alone in a different way than she has ever been before, helps her to begin her journey toward [spoiler]: her choice not to remain alone. “We have to be together on this, or we will fail again,” asserts Buffy (“Empty Places”). Giles responds, “We are clearly demonstrating that we are not together on this.” Buffy is right—they must be together, but first she needs to be alone in order to fully understand what it means to stand together in the final showdown.

For one thing, Buffy needs to realize that part of her loneliness stems not from the behaviour of others but from her own attitude and choices. When speaking about the Potentials to Spike (who has searched for and found Buffy alone in a stranger’s home), Buffy says, “I cut myself off from them. All of them. I knew I was gonna lose some of them, and I didn’t—You know what? I’m still making excuses. I’ve always cut myself off. I’ve always—Being the Slayer made me different. But it’s my fault I stayed that way. People are always trying to connect to me. And I just—slip away” (“Touched” 7.20). Equally as important as this admission is Buffy’s choice not to be alone on this particular night. She asks Spike to stay with her and then adds, “Will you just hold me?” In this moment Buffy reaches out for someone rather than cutting herself off once again.

Meanwhile, the concept of being “alone” is likewise emphasized with Faith. When the First visits Faith in the guise of Mayor Wilkins, he tells her, “nobody will ever love you” (“Touched”). In other words, she too will be alone. Shortly thereafter, when Robin Wood enters the room to speak with her, Faith rebuffs him at first. He responds, “I'm gonna leave you alone,” at which point she immediately admits that the First had visited her. In other words, when he offers to leave, she invites him to stay. As they talk, he sympathizes with her: “Listen, nobody wants to be alone, Faith. We all want someone who cares, to be touched that way.” The scene eventually evolves to include sexual intimacy between the two of them. Thus in both the scene with Buffy and the scene with Faith, we watch a Slayer who feels alone reach out to and be comforted by someone else. Add to this mix the sexual couplings of both Willow/Kennedy and Xander/Anya, and a focus on being alone is gradually replaced with a focus on being together.

In “End of Days,” when Buffy meets the Guardian and asks who she is, the Guardian replies, “One of many. Well—time was. Now I’m alone in the world.” This ancient woman despite surviving hundreds (thousands?) of years, dies “alone in the world.” Like the scene in which Faith and Buffy discuss being alone as Slayers, this scene presents Buffy with another opportunity to think about what it truly means to be alone. Will the Slayer, like the Guardian, die alone? Is being alone the destiny of the Slayer? Or is being alone a choice? “End of Days” provides a counterpoint to being alone through an emphasis on Buffy’s connection with others. For example, Spike confesses to Buffy, “All I did was hold you and watch you sleep, and it was the best night of my life.” “Were you there with me?” he asks her. “I was,” Buffy confirms. Xander also speaks of his connection with Buffy: “I just always thought that I would—I would be there with you, you know, for the end.” These relationships with others, emphasized through the dialogue, help Buffy to understand that, unlike the Guardian, she does not have to be alone. Next week, in “Chosen,” Buffy will make her choice—one from which we can all glean a moral lesson.

In “Empty Places,” Caleb says to Buffy, “History’s gonna look back at you, at me, at this place, and they’re gonna see the glory.” I read these as metafictional words—that is, as an expression of Whedon and company’s faith in the series rather than merely a vaunted expression of Caleb’s plans under the First. The people who look back on the Rewatch will see something that I consider glorious: an extended text that academics and non-academics chose to create together. As both a fan and a scholar, I believe we need more such projects in this world. Thank you again, Nikki Stafford, for helping us to make this choice. You did what Buffy would do.

Aw. Blushing. Thanks again, Cynthea.

Next week: We come to the finale. As I mentioned last week, next Tuesday night I’ll be posting my own thoughts on the finale and the rewatch and the entire series of Buffy. That will be followed by several guest posts, poems, haikus, videos, and artwork by many of our contributors. I’ll be rolling those out on December 28 starting at 9 a.m., one every hour at the top of the hour. You are in for some amazing treats, I can tell you. I LOVE what people have done! Unfortunately, poor Angel’s finale will get short shrift. Join us here next week for our final Buffy chat. Sniffle.

Buffy Rewatch Week 51: Spoiler Forum

2011-12-20T19:59:00.000-05:00

And here is the spoiler forum for all of you who want to discuss the finale and S5 of Angel without fear of spoilage.

We Wish You a Zombie Christmas!

2011-12-14T20:00:00.011-05:00

During last week's rundown of the midseason finale of The Walking Dead, my co-author Josh Winstead promised he'd put together a Christmas shopping list for that zombie fan on your list. And sure enough, this morning he came through with this brilliant post. Thank you, Josh! I hope it helps some of you finish buying for that person who is always impossible to buy for. ;) And first, I just wanted to post my little zombie present to all of you: a brilliant short film my friend Chris sent me ages ago, where you see the sadness of a man who is turned into a zombie... while wearing a penguin suit.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the First Annual Last Minute Nik at Nite Holiday Gift Guide of the Scrambling, Shambling Undead. Apparently some moron promised you guys that we would take time out of our schedules during the very busiest and most stressful time of the year to comb the internet collecting items you could easily find for yourselves if you'd just Google the words “zombie crap.” And, well, apparently this moron is me. So at long last, and with perhaps another whole day or two of online shopping left, we finally give you... this. Thing.

I would love to begin with some kind of astute observation regarding the appeal of zombie-themed material, and apocalyptic literature in general, as symptoms of our global instability, reflections of a worldwide popular fear that the whole of civilization could suddenly go off the rails at any moment, but the truth is I don't really believe that. The truth is, I think people like zombies. They're a perfect adversary for the era of the video game, really – a mindless, guilt-free disposable human. One of the reasons I enjoy The Walking Dead so much, both on television and the page, is because the writers always seem to be looking for new ways to challenge that complacency and remind us of the person that came before the bite. Most of us could do with a little reminding of the humanity in our fellow roamers, and never more so than around the holidays, when many of them turn into such hideous ravening beasts.

Of course, you could always do all of your shopping online and avoid the hideous ravening beasts altogether. And that is exactly what this guide is all about! There is a glut of zombie-themed merchandise out there, but we have searched long and hard to bring you only the very best. Looking. Pictures. Of things we've never actually seen. (Or touched. And cannot verify the craftsmanship thereof.) Let's get to it!

First up, we have two pieces of “official” The Walking Dead merchandise. AMC.com has a number of items available in their web shop, but my favorite of them is the Daryl Dixon action figure. Produced by the always excellent MacFarlane Toys (the same folks that did the LOST figures), Daryl comes complete with a miniature replica of his signature crossbow and even a little plastic string of dead squirrels to sling over his shoulder. Which may be the best thing anyone ever made out of plastic. Whose desk wouldn't be all classed up by one of those?

Next up is the incredibly cool-sounding The Walking Dead board game from Cryptozoic Entertainment. You take on the role of one of the group as they move through Atlanta, collecting supplies and dodging undead shenanigans. The best part is that if you die during gameplay, you get to come back and menace the living players as a walker! What an irresistible addition to family game night.

And since we're talking about officially licensed merchandise, I cannot resist pointing you guys to this link. Gerber Legendary Blades is the official gigantic ass-whipping knife sponsor of The Walking Dead and have dedicated this section of their website to the implements of destruction as featured in the show and available for purchase. Yes, now you can practice your end-of-the-world backhand in the privacy of your own home! Included are Daryl's serrated machete, Lori's monster parang and Glenn's skull-pummeling Gator machete with the wicked hook. Definitely check out the site, as even the sales copy on each item is entertaining.

There's also some crazy stuff going on here, but I'm not sure what these guys do is completely legal. Entertaining, sure, but legal? Well, maybe – this is America, after all... Anyway, the braver among you should check it out. It's kind of like being a fly on the wall in Daryl and Merle's garage.

The more trigger-happy among you can visit O.F. Mossberg &Sons to get full specs on Shane's mean Mossberg 500 Tactical Persuader pump shotgun. The site also includes a store finder to help you locate a sporting goods store, gun dealer, pawn shop or armory near you, just in case you're ready to carry your imaginative play to the next level and actually spend hundreds of dollars on a real functioning firearm. And if you're seriously assembling an outbreak preparedness kit, perhaps I can interest you in Zombie Boot Camp. There is a fantasy zombie-themed day camp now in operation in the lyrically named Droitwich, England where, for 60 quid, you can spend four hours receiving weapons and survival training from ex-military personnel before being thrown into a warehouse full of squibbed-up pretend zombies ready for a thrashing. Sounds like fun to me.

The Center for Disease Control, seizing upon the popularity of the show, have also dedicated an area of their Foundation website to what they are calling the CDC Zombie Task Force. It's really just a clever way to get folks to consider gathering a legitimate emergency preparedness kit for their own home in case of hurricanes or whatever else might be somewhat more likely than a global zombification pandemic, but it's a fun way to do it. They have great Zombie Task Force t-shirts for sale at $12 apiece, too, so go get yours and be official.

The great Teefury.com has been doing some cool zombie-themed t-shirts in recent months, but because their site only sells each design for one day, we have no way of recommending them to you until it's too late to buy them. Fortunately, however, the artists that contribute Teefury designs also continue to sell the same after the fact, albeit at a higher price, if you know where to look for them. My two recent favorites are the mock Zombie Walk tee by designer rubyred, an awesome homage to George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, and the terrific Walking Dead comic/show coat of arms style logo on this shirt by WinterArtwork. (For those of you who haven't read the comics, I understand that the presence of the samurai sword in this design doesn't mean anything to you yet. But it will. Oh how it will.)

The dynamite British graphic designer Olly Moss, creator of several posters from the vaunted LOST limited edition runs (including the very best of them, in my opinion, which was the green Saul Bass-inspired Locke wheelchair design), created the following t-shirt that's on sale super cheap at Threadless.com right now.

And, more importantly, it's highly informative. It isn't every day you can buy a t-shirt that might save your life or the lives of others waiting in line with you at the DMV. And, if all else fails, you can always tear it into strips and use it for tourniquets. Reducing blood flow slows the rate of infection, you know.

You can also find a ton of zombie apparel and designs by searching sites like Zazzle and CafePress for keyword 'zombie.' And when I say “a ton,” I mean hundreds, possibly thousands of designs, far too many to sort through for all of the best stuff. So, dear reader, like a true Gen Xer, I've left that step to you.

While we're on the subject of laziness, let's talk about those old-fashioned episodic television shows called books. Perhaps the most fruitful outlet for zombie fans over the past decade has been in print. I would have thought zombie fiction an unlikely genre for mainstream success, but after landslide bestsellers like Max Brooks' 'World War Z' and Seth Grahame-Smith's 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' it would seem obvious that I'd have thought completely wrong. Now there are countless such tomes on the market in a huge variety, encompassing everything from novels to travel guides, phrase books, survival manuals and even a couple of cookbooks. Yes: cookbooks. I have not had the opportunity to read even a fraction of what's available, but two of my picks from recent years are 'The Passage' by Justin Cronin and 'Boneshaker' by Cheri Priest. Neither are the typical zombie fare, and both will have you reading well past bedtime with extra lights on, I promise.

Also, for the comic-read among us, TWD creator Robert Kirkman has just co-authored its first official novel, titled 'The Walking Dead: Rise of The Governor.' Obviously this is meant to build on the world established in the comics, not just read separately, so those of you who haven't dived into the comics yet have nothing to see here. But for those of you already familiar with The Governor, this is a fun, fun read and provides interesting insight into how he became one of the most twisted villains in comics history.

And with that, we reach what is almost the end of this list. However, we really can't dismiss without at least a few Christmas-themed zombie gifts, right? Well, you may not be aware of this, but despite what would seem to be the perfect marriage of green and red, zombie Christmas stuff is really hard to find. But lucky for you, not impossible. I give you... mistle-toe!

Unfortunately these are completely sold out now, but go ahead and put one on back order for next year. It isn't like you have to worry about it going bad. And if you're desperate for a gift this year, the same shop has these righteous zombie back scratchers.

Fun for the kids! And speaking of kids, it occurs to me that we have failed to include anything for children here. Negligence, begone! Try these on for size:

The “Dismember Me” plush zombie has pull-apart construction so your toy is torn up before the kids even open the package. Comes with extra brain.

The plush zombie monkey is just that – a zombie monkey. For those youngsters who cut their flesh-chomping teeth on the likes of 28 Days Later or are just looking to mix things up a bit with the dichotomy of zombification and cuteness. Well, cute to kids like mine, anyway.

For example, and in closing, I offer the following anecdote:

Several weeks ago, my wife and I started helping our own kids (Jeremy, 7, and Ella, 5) put together their Christmas lists. Last year's lists were instant classics (my personal favorite being Jeremy's order for “a dirt bike that explodes fire”), but what I found most surprising about this year was that once they finished assembling their own individual lists, the two cretins put their heads together and also created a COMBINED list of things that they could both agree everyone wants. This twofold list only had a few items, all circled in a catalog to illustrate: a trampoline (aka “The Splintmaker”), some kind of large bore Nerf-type foam riflery set (with special fragile tchotchke radar), and the pièce de résistance ... wait, let me go get the catalog so I know I have this exactly right. Ok, here it is – it's called the Doctor Dreadful Zombie Lab, and it appears to be a gross-out candy science kit. “Eat bubbling brains,” the box reads, “drink zombie barf,” (seriously, dude), “slurp slimey bugs, plus zombie skin,” with a picture of an eager kid pouring some kind of flaky green stuff into his open mouth. Watch it in action:

I couldn't quite believe that some high-level corporate toy manufacturer thought this would be a viable marketable product until I went to the store to buy one. Much to my surprise, I had to go to six different stores before I found somewhere that wasn't sold out. Guess there's no accounting for taste, even when it comes to zombies.

Happy holidays, everyone! We'll see you in February.

PS – Here's a bonus gift for you. Make one of these to wear Christmas morning, and your kids will let you sleep in for sure!

Buffy Rewatch Week 50

2011-12-13T20:00:00.003-05:00

7.16 Storyteller
7.17 Lies My Parents Told Me
7.18 Dirty Girls

Follow along in Bite Me!

And if you’re watching Angel, this week’s episodes are:

4.16 Players
4.17 Inside Out
4.18 Shiny Happy People

Follow along in Once Bitten.

Oh! Well, hello, gentle readers, and welcome to the third last week of the Buffy… reWATCH. Pull up a chair, and settle in as we talk about Andrew, who finally comes into his own in this week’s episodes, the return of Faith, and that nasty sonofabitch preacher that we must refrain from calling The Hammer.

Oh, and Nikki the Freakin’ Vampire Slayer. YES!!! Thank you thank you to the person in the writer’s room who named her! (Can I just mention the squeal that escaped my lips when I did an image search for “Nikki the Vampire Slayer” and MY picture came up before the image I’ve posted above?! I think I woke up the neighbourhood… heeheee!)

This week I have two excellent commentators, so I’m going to keep my own comments very short. “Storyteller” is one of my favourite episodes of the series, mostly because Andrew is just SO damn funny, and I think Tom Lenk is a comic genius. (Why doesn’t this guy have his own show yet? Why isn’t he a regular on The Big Bang Theory?!) “Storyteller” almost acts like an extended “previously on Buffy” episode, bringing people up to speed who apparently are watching the show casually and missed a few things. Like, oh, I don’t know, the end of season 6.

Of course, Andrew is the most unreliable of unreliable narrators, so you can’t believe a word of what he says. And the show is funny ONLY if you’ve actually seen the previous episodes. Show this to a new viewer and they’ll actually think Andrew was strong enough to overcome Dark Willow. Ha! Everything Andrew says is fake, so it takes Buffy scaring the bejesus out of him to actually bring out something genuine… and when she does, it closes the seal. (Just one note: when you see the quick flashes of the dream sequence, watch for the Cheeseman’s reappearance!)

“Lies My Parents Told Me” is another Spike flashback, the sequel to season 5’s “Fool for Love.” In this one, we see who Spike’s first kill was, and once again it’s implied that even though Spike had to go through many trials at the end of S6 to be re-ensouled, he really had a soul all along. A monster wouldn’t react to his mother being so cruel to him, and would probably relish it. But William/Spike has his heart broken by her, and realizes the horrible mistake he’s made. I always feel so sorry for William in this, but also for Robin. I don’t like the way Spike tells him that his mother didn’t love him. That’s bullshit. William’s mother loved him, but when he turned her, she became evil. Now he’s taking his horrible mommy issues and projecting them onto Robin. Nikki the Vampire Slayer (oh YEAH baby!) loved her son, didn’t give him up, but she had a job to do and she couldn’t shirk it. It’s not like quitting a job at The Gap… it’s her friggin’ CALLING. She can’t walk away from it. And she pre-arranged that, should anything happen to her, she’d leave him in the single safest place she could think of. Don’t listen to him, Robin.

Just for the record, when this episode first aired, I totally thought Robin was going to kill Spike, and I was crazy with fear. I can watch this with a lot more ease now!

“Dirty Girls” is where we first see Caleb, Hell’s misogynist preacher. Andrew retells the Faith story so she attacks a Vulcan, not a volcanologist (how much do I love the cheesy Star Trek music that accompanies that scene!!!) and it’s another episode filled with great lines:

GILES  And you're certain this is the best course of action? You don't even know what this man has of yours — if he, in fact, has anything.
BUFFY  It could be a girl, a potential trying to get to us.
GILES  Could be a stapler.

KENNEDY  I don't care if it's Godzilla. (raises a huge sword) I want to get in this thing.
ANDREW  Godzilla's mostly Tokyo-based, so he's probably a no-show.
AMANDA  Besides, if Matthew Broderick can kill Godzilla, how tough is he?
ANDREW  (whines) Xander... (crosses his arms petulantly)
XANDER  Matthew Broderick did not kill Godzilla. He killed a big, dumb lizard. That was not the real Godzilla.

MOLLY  (looking around) What is this place?
BUFFY  Looks like an old vineyard.
KENNEDY  An evil vineyard, huh?
SPIKE  Like Falcon Crest.

Here’s my only question: Why wasn’t Will at the winery? It made no sense to leave her behind when the Potentials were about to face their scariest foe. At the very least, Willow could have helped with a protection spell or forcefield.

Oh, Xander… SOB. Watching S7 this time around, I noticed how many times Xander said, “I see everything” or someone comments on how he’s the one who watches. And of course I couldn’t say anything, because, as River Song would say, “Spoilers!”

Before I move on to the guest contributors, I just wanted to mention that Ensley Guffey (who has been involved with the Rewatch covering "The Body" and "The Zeppo" weeks, will be featuring the various books written about the Whedonverses on his blog tomorrow, so be sure to tune in here to get some Christmas ideas for the Whedon fan who has it all. ;)

First up guest hosting this week is David Lavery… and like Giles, he’s brought pictures!

“Storyteller,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer 7.16
Rewatched by David Lavery

(40) “Stop. Stop telling stories,” Buffy screams at Andrew at the end of “Storyteller,” as part of her scheme to elicit his tears, which are needed to close the seal of Danzalthar. “Life isn’t a story.” Andrew seems to take her admonition to heart, for at the end of “Storyteller” he abruptly turns off his video camera, pointing his remote at the camera and at us.
(41) Now “Life isn’t a story” would be a startling, self-referential assertion in any serial narrative, but coming as it does in a series created by an “angry atheist” who nevertheless espouses his continued belief in “a religion in narrative” (see Lavery), it seems especially problematic.
David Lavery, “Apocalyptic Apocalypses: The Narrative Eschatology of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2003)"

When “Storyteller” originally aired in February 2003, the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was still three months away. For the second half of Season 7 I had been receiving in my e-mail shooting scripts for each episode, and because I am a bit of a Spoiler Whore (non-promiscous, but willing), I read them. So days before Anya and Andrew would have this dialogue . . .

ANYA: For God's sakes, Andrew. You've been in here for 30 minutes. What are you doing?
ANDREW: Entertaining and educating.
ANYA: Why can't you just masturbate like the rest of us?

. . . I was already prematurely laughing at the signature naughtiness, but my illicit script did not prepare me for actually watching “Storyteller’s” hilarious teaser, which gave us Andrew (Tom Lenk) Alistair-Cookeing-it in a velvet smoking jacket (and choking on pipe smoke) before a raging fireplace. “Oh, hello, there, gentle viewers,” he greets us in the episode’s outermost frame. As he pats the thick, ancient volume he has been reading, he acknowledges “You caught me catching up on an old favorite” and then announces the episode’s theme: “It's wonderful to get lost in a story, isn't it?”

“Adventure and heroics and discovery—don't they just take you away?” Andrew asks, and then invites us in—into his episode: “Come with me now, if you will, gentle viewers. Join me on a new voyage of the mind. A little tale I like to call: ‘Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyrs.’”

But Anya interrupts—the first of many breaks—in the “documentary” Andew is making, and we realize he is not in a room of one’s own (a traditional, very British study with Star Wars posters adorning the walls) but on the toilet in the much-in-need only bathroom of the Summers house where he is engaged in narration instead of onanism.

Like Jonathan, the Troika member and south of the border bedmate he killed in “Conversations with Dead People” (7.7), who (thanks to a spell) assumed control of the narrative “Superstar” (4.17), Andrew seeks to take over BtVS and make himself its writer and director and perhaps star. It is the School of Whedon’s almost-always-brilliant Jane Espenson, the episode’s writer (and also the author of “Superstar”), and television-director-for-hire Marita Grabiak (who would return in May as the helmer of the series’ penultimate episode, “End of Days”) [read my interview with Grabiak here], who are credited with actual control of the story, but behind them showrunner Joss Whedon—who has acknowledged that Masterpiece Theatre was the most influential television show of his youth (Lavery and Burkhead, Joss Whedon: Conversations 51)—is having his say as well.

Still, Andrew doesn’t give up. Much of “Storyteller” screen time is seen through the viewfinders of his camcorder, his hyperactive imagination, or both. (The to-ing-and fro-ing of between frames in “Storyteller” results in more than a few continuity errors, catalogued by Keith Topping in The Complete Slayer [624].)

We are treated to Andrew’s version of recent events—actually a kind of nerdish white board-on-top-of-a-washing machine-beside-an-ironing board iteration of the customary “previously on”. . . .

Awkwardly, shyly, Andrew brings us up-to-date on the Seal, The First, the dreaded Über Vamps . . .

. . . “very mobile for blind people” Bringers.

The “actual” moments being captured on film by Andrew (like the one above) show the “Record” indicator in the upper left-hand corner of the frame. But a slow motion cereal Buffy is pure fantasy . . .

. . . as are Spike and Buffy posing (in Andrew’s imagination) for the cover of a romance novel while an intrusive Anya gobbles the grapes.

These light-saturated frames alert us that we are, as in the opening Masterpiece Theatre teaser, inside Andrew’s “mindscreen” (as Bruce Kawin called it in a 1978 study of “first person film”).

Spike’s subsequent angry vampire shtick is more real than Cereal Buffy, but still staged, as we realize when Andrew asks for a reshoot . . .

SPIKE: I thought I told you to piss off with this bloody camera, yet here you are again with that thing in my face. Would you sod off before I rip your throat out and eat—
ANDREW: OK, Spike. The light was kind of behind you.
SPIKE: Oh, right. Uh, what? Is this better then? I thought I told you to piss off with this bloody camera, yet here you are again with that thing in my face. Would you sod off—?

Other shots, covered by Andrew’s gossipy narration, are more or less real—this one, for example, of Willow and her possible new love Kennedy . . .

Here and elsewhere Andrew’s attention is often drawn to significant moments of character interaction—a moment between the bent-on-revenge Principal Wood and Spike (who killed his mother), for example—which he entirely misconstrues:

Check out Spike and the Principal. There's something going on there. Sexual tension you could cut with a knife.

Andrew is a highly unreliable narrator, especially when he speaks of his own “dark past” as a criminal mastermind, the leader of the Troika . . .

. . . a cabal that, in Andrew’s recollection, was well-nigh divine:

We are gods. Oh, we are gods. We are as gods. We are as gods!

Legend-in-his-own mind scientist Andrew has all the answers—about both physics and wardrobe:

WARREN What'll [the latest super weapon] do to Buffy?
ANDREW Make her super magnetic!
JONATHAN Wow, she won't be able to get out of her car.
WARREN And knives and other sharp things will fly at her.
ANDREW We could walk right by her, and she wouldn't be able to stop us.
WARREN Unless we were wearing metal belt buckles, then we would stick to her.
ANDREW In my plan, we are beltless.
JONATHAN Wow, you're the best, Andrew.

In Andrew’s warped memory he even vanquished Dark Willow, though we know the narrative truth—that he and Jonathan ran in fear of her all the way to Mehico.

Although this is an Andrew-centric episode, “Storyteller” has much more to offer. It is a chapter of the Buffy saga in which we learn (from Buffy herself) the difference between a dream and a vision: “You're running to catch the bus naked? That's a dream. Army of vicious vampire creatures? That's a vision.” We find Principal Wood using Buffyspeak: “I may be concussed.” Xander and Anya “still spark” (and sleep together). Andrew reveals his drink preference: “Can’t I have a cool refreshing Zima.” Jonathan made a promise to Andrew during their Latin American sojourn: “Jonathan has been a good friend to me here in Mehico. He said he'll buy me a burro.” Also, in Mehico, the Cheese Man from “Restless” (4.22) makes a brief appearance in a shared Andrew/Jonathan nightmare.

“Storyteller” would be Jane Espenson’s next-to-last episode of Buffy (she would co-author “End of Days” [7.21]) before going on to write for Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, Gilmore Girls, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, and Torchwood: Miracle Day. For Buffy fans “Band Candy,” “Earshot,” “Pangs,” “A New Man,” “Superstar,” “The Replacement,” “Triangle,” “I Was Made to Love You” had demonstrated beyond reproach her quirky sense of humor and delightfully playful characterization. (If the quite awful Torchwood: Miracle Day showed her to have feet of clay, then it was not unprecedented, for Espenson had also authored such forgettable Buffy episodes as “Listening to Fear,” “Harsh Light of Day,” “Intervention,” and “Doublemeat Palace.”)

When “Storyteller” originally aired on February 25, 2003, BtVS viewers would need to wait a full month before the season resumed with “Lies My Parents Told Me” on March 25. (Today’s multi-platform viewers, of course, need not wait, and they can rewatch it now with Lorna Jowett right here on Nik at Nite.) On May 20th, Buffy the Vampire Slayer would, after 144 episodes, “stop telling stories,” unless, of course, you count the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight (and Season Nine and . . .) comics.

Thank you, David! And next up, to discuss the next two episodes, Lorna Jowett, author of Sex and the Slayer:

“It will only hurt for a moment”
Lorna Jowett

As David’s post concentrated on “Storyteller,” I’m going to be focusing on “Lies My Parents Told Me” and “Dirty Girls”.

Highlights: flashbacks (I love flashbacks); Xander’s fantasy about the Potentials potentially being Dirty Girls; Andrew’s version of Faith’s backstory (go, Spock!); Anya telling it like it is, inconsistencies and all; Faith and Spike bonding in the basement; wine crashing across the cellar floor in “Dirty Girls” like blood in The Shining.
Lowlights: annoying Potentials; Caleb, one of the worst Bads ever (Nathan Fillion deserves better).

Spike and Robin Wood face their past in “Lies My Parents Told Me” just as Andrew was forced to do in “Storyteller”. Each of these episodes is about telling stories, stories that may be lies. It’s also difficult to know who’s telling lies. Past episodes suggest that Spike is an unreliable narrator. David talks about how the visual aesthetics of “Storyteller” highlight Andrew’s point of view and we return to this in both Xander’s fantasy and Andrew’s retelling of Faith’s history during “Dirty Girls”, but here it’s more complicated. Are the flashbacks to Spike, Nikki and Robin Wood’s past here lies my parents told me or lies I told about my parents? I didn’t include Spike/ William’s backstory in the highlights because if it’s a highlight, it’s a pretty disturbing one. The more the story unfolds, the more creepy it becomes (“all you ever wanted was to be back inside,” William’s mother mocks by the end). Even the insane Drusilla can’t believe that new vampire William wants to bring his mum along on their hedonistic vampire killing spree, so we know there’s something toe-curlingly wrong. Spike relives part of his past where he sired his mother and then staked her – well, we knew he had issues When he tells Wood that the things his mother said to him after she was turned don’t matter because it was the demon talking, we’ve seen enough of vampires by now to know this is doubtful. His mother crushes William’s argument that he’s changed now he’s a vampire, saying, “Darling, it’s who you’ll always be. A limp, sentimental fool.”

But even if this account of Spike’s past is tangled up in lies, revisiting it does rid Spike of the First’s trigger. Wood finds it harder to let go his mother. Wood has nursed the pain of Nikki’s death for years and now the fact that he’s expected to work beside the vampire who killed her becomes too much for him. Is he seeking vengeance for Nikki’s death or satisfaction for himself? Can he even tell the difference?

Wood’s dilemma is whether to accept Spike has changed and fight alongside him for the greater good, the sake of the mission, the same mission his mother died for. Buffy’s dilemma is whether to do anything about the fact that Spike may be dangerous because of the First’s influence. But just as Buffy (and Spike) take the decision out of Wood’s hands, so Buffy’s ability to decide what is best for Spike and the group is taken out of hers. Thus, the episode title also refers to Buffy. Surrogate father Giles, not just Wood, lies to her and she serves him notice of her adult status at the close of the episode in a devastating dismissal: “I think you’ve taught me everything I need to know”. About lying? About how people you trust betray you? This episode highlights again how male characters unite against the female Slayer, with good intentions or bad. We saw it with the Shadow Men in “Get It Done” [spoiler]: and there’s more to come as the season draws to its close. One of the reasons Caleb is an unconvincing villain is that he’s too obvious in his rants against “dirty girls”, but his tone is part of a broader resurfacing theme about gender and power.

There’s another lesson in “Lies” – about what it means to be close to a Slayer. Buffy, we have been repeatedly told, is unusual in keeping a circle of family and friends around her. That makes her, she argues, a better Slayer. It also takes its toll, on her and on her loved ones. In this situation, across both these episodes, we see Buffy getting conflicting advice from those around her and having to decide for herself what to do. Spike, Wood and Andrew face their past; Buffy has to face the present and the future. Faith, returning to Sunnydale fresh from Angel, has spent some time facing her past actions and seeking redemption for them by serving a prison sentence. When she’s needed, first by Angel and then by Buffy, Faith puts the present need above atoning for the past because it might secure the future. Yet what kind of a future can a Slayer have? Are Buffy and Faith just facing an endless succession of apocalypses (we never did find out what the plural was) and then a violent death? What kind of future can the Potentials have? Only one of them ever has a chance of being Chosen, and that’s only when a Slayer dies. In other words, where are they taking this story and how can it end?

When Giles tells Buffy in “Lies My Parents Told Me”, “it’s time to stop playing the role of general and start being one”, his words are compromised by his dubious positioning in the episode. And when Buffy tries to take his (and Wood’s) advice during “Dirty Girls” she makes a mistake that costs untested Potentials their lives and Xander his eye. [Spoiler]:It will cost Buffy and the group more in days to come. Buffy isn’t a general, she’s a Slayer. Slayers have been, until now, solitary warriors, as Spike reminds Wood in “Lies My Parents Told Me.” Maybe the question is not can she be a general but can she afford to be a general? Remember what story this is. It may not be Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyrs, but it’s still Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Right from season one this story asks, what does it mean to be the Chosen One? What does it mean to be the one girl in all the world with a mission to fight vampires and demons? Can Buffy make choices or is she stuck with being Chosen?

The biggest lie: It will only hurt for a moment.

Thank you, Lorna!

Next week: I can’t believe we’re at the penultimate week of the rewatch. I’m so sad! How quickly this year has flown. You will see the speech that ties with Xander’s in “Potential” for its ability to make me cry (♥♥♥) in “Touched,” and you can feel the anticipation for that huge finale about to come around. And just a hint of what you’ll be seeing in two weeks’ time: The finale night will be December 27, and it’ll be a post by me that night, and then starting the following morning and continuing throughout the day on December 28, I’ll be posting one post an hour looking back on the rewatch, on all of Buffy and featuring many of our commentators, and a few new ones! I hope you guys all like it. ;)

But until then, next week’s episodes are:
7.19 Empty Places
7.20 Touched
7.21 End of Days

And if you’re watching Angel, those episodes will be:

4.19 The Magic Bullet
4.20 Sacrifice
4.21 Peace Out

See you then!

Buffy Rewatch Week 50: Spoiler Forum

2011-12-13T19:59:00.000-05:00

And once again, here is the place where you can talk about Buffy, Angel, Angel S5, without fear of spoiling.

In these later episodes I'm starting to remember certain things in the upcoming S8 comics. Xander does look rather hot in that eye patch, I must say. ;)

Why I ♥ George Takei

2011-12-13T15:57:00.001-05:00

This just made me LOL. Watch all the way to the end for the fantastic Buffy reference! ;)

Once Upon a Time, Ep 7: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

2011-12-11T21:56:00.001-05:00

Last week’s episode of Once Upon a Time was a little slow, but they made up for it with a brilliant outing this week. We finally get to the bottom of who Sheriff Graham really was, and where many were suggesting that perhaps he was the Big Bad Wolf, he turned out to be the huntsman with a heart who spares Snow’s life when the queen hires him to find her and kill her.

Emma is ticked with Graham because she’s found out he’s sleeping with the mayor, and when he tries to tell her that he actually loves her instead, he skips the small talk and kisses her… and he suddenly sees flashes of the fairytale world. His glimpse leads to dreams where he starts to see even more, and when he wakes he wanders off and sees a white wolf that accompanies him in the fairy-tale world, one with a red eye and black eye. He turns to Mary, because he’d seen a flash of Snow White in the memory, and he recognizes her as Mary. Mary laughs it off and thinks he’s been talking to Henry, and tells him about the book. He goes to Henry and finds out more about the book, and Henry identifies him as the huntsman who spared Snow and had his heart ripped out by the queen. Graham follows the wolf to a crypt that’s pictured in the book, and with Emma, he enters the crypt to find his heart. Regina shows up and she and Emma have a fight before Graham declares he doesn’t need her, because he needs to feel something, and that’s not with her. Emma looks at him with new eyes, and where he went to the crypt to find an actual heart, he finds it metaphorically instead. And, for the first time, Emma sees his heart, too.

Meanwhile, in the fairytale world we see how the queen orchestrated the death of her husband and then finds a huntsman who cries over his kills to take out Snow. He can’t pull off the murder after he reads a note she’s written to the queen (where she says she’ll welcome her death if it means the queen will rule with compassion). He returns to the queen with the heart of a stag, and she catches him in the ruse and reaches into his chest and pulls out one glowing, ET-like, neon heart, and tells him that he’s now under her rule, and should he try anything, she just needs to squeeze his heart and she’ll kill him. She directs the guards to take him to her bedchamber. Clearly, he’s going to be a domestic pet.

In Storybrooke, after Emma and Graham walk away triumphantly, Regina enters the crypt and descends the stairs to find the very chamber of hearts that she kept in the fairytale world (another suggestion that the fairytale world exists in some way under Storybrooke). Realizing that through his self-emancipation Graham will no longer be in her mayoral bedchamber (and also piecing together that his link with Emma has allowed him to remember to fairytale world, and he’s not allowed to), she squeezes the heart, turning it to dust… and killing Graham in Emma’s arms.

Moments before Graham dies, he kisses Emma and she kisses him back, and he remembers absolutely everything EXACTLY the same way the sideways characters remembered everything in the sideways world about their real lives on Lost. It was in this moment that it became clear to me that Storybrooke is a sort of flash-sideways. This isn’t their real life; time doesn’t quite exist here and is fluid; the memories they all have seem to be generated in their own minds and don’t mesh with each other; the people they were in their former lives inform who they are in this one; when they remember everything, they die.

Perhaps Once Upon a Time is simply an extended explanation to Lost fans of what that sideways world was all along, to correct all those who thought THEY DIED IN THE PLANE CRASH. (They did not.)

And to think, I was actually going to stop with the Lost analogies this week.

Did You Notice?:
• The title of this episode is the same as a 1940 novel by Carson McCullers, considered one of the best books of the 20th century. The novel’s longevity and deserving title of “classic” is due to the voices she gives to the people who usually don’t have voices, those on the margins of 1930s society in Georgia. The book was written when she was only 23 years old.
• The Evil Queen lives in the Fortress of Solitude!!!
• Mary tells Emma that the flowers she just trashed are actually hers, and Emma doesn’t apologize or rush to take them out of the garbage. Maybe manners or etiquette or just plain human decency weren’t taught in her various foster homes.
• The camera lingers on the huntsman fashioning a whistle out of a reed and telling Snow to blow it should she ever be in trouble, so I’m assuming it actually calls the wolf to her. So we’ll probably see the wolf in a future flashback.

Lost references:
• See above.
• The horrible CGI on the deer was reminiscent of Lost
• Graham tells Mary that he knows her from “another life.” He didn’t add, “Bruh-thah.”

Ruby Red:
• Graham’s darts
• Ruby’s skirt
• Graham’s tie
• Red rose petals on Snow’s father’s grave
• Queen’s wine-coloured skirt on that FABULOUS outfit she was wearing (oh, if I had anything I could actually wear that to, what I would give for it…)
• One of the wolf’s eyes is red
• The queen’s full outfit when she’s talking to the huntsman, that I WISH I could wear. Her wardrobe was to die for in this episode.
• The door to Regina’s crypt
• Regina’s turtleneck when she shows up
• The huntsman’s very glowy heart

Any Questions?:
• What was the “spot of gardening” that Rumpelstitskin was doing? Is he secretly growing pot in the forest?
• In the letter, Snow recognizes that the queen is acting out of vengeance and says she knows the queen will never find other love because of her. What does that mean? (Still thinking it has something to do with a child…) The queen says, “I shared a secret with her, and she couldn’t keep it.” What does that mean? Did she tell Snow she was incapable of having children, and Snow said something to her father out of sympathy and her father denounced her to the kingdom or something, so now she’s untouchable?
• What are the other hearts the queen has in there? Does she have everyone’s? Can she kill anyone except for Emma?

Buffy Rewatch Week 49

2011-12-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

7.13 The Killer in Me
7.14 First Date
7.15 Get It Done

Follow along in Bite Me!.

If you’re watching Angel, this week’s episodes are:

4.13 Salvage
4.14 Release
4.15 Orpheus

Follow along in Once Bitten.

This week’s episodes are ones that didn’t necessarily stand out for me (as someone mentioned in the comments last week, S7 is a lot like S5, in that the episodes just blend together and you can’t remember what each one is about in particular, because the season was so serialized). I was pleasantly surprised by just how good they were.

On Angel, we come to the end of the Angelus arc when Willow comes to town and performs a little mojo to bring Angel back, along with a little help from Faith. The scene of his bad hair days in the bar listening to Barry Manilow are worth the price of admission alone. Unfortunately, I neglected to mention last week that these episodes are out of synch with Buffy (sorry) so it’ll be a little odd when next week, in “Lies My Parents Told Me,” you’ll see Willow get a call from Fred to come to L.A. I’d completely forgotten about that, so I apologize. But it’s a little thing, and not necessary to watch one before the other, obviously.

This week’s guest host will cover “The Killer in Me” and “Get It Done” most thoroughly, so I’ll talk about “First Date,” mostly because I was pleasantly surprised by it on the rewatch. I remember this mostly as The Episode That Starred Ashanti (blaaarrggghhh) but I’d forgotten just how damn funny it was. (Then I checked Bite Me! and sure enough, I liked it the first time through, too… but was gaggy about Ashanti even then.) The dialogue is sublime, with Willow and Buffy talking in the living room as Willow folds clothes. The entire scene is laugh-out-loud hilarious, and the actors look like they’re having a great time with it. Willow and Buffy talk about Principal Wood, and Buffy wonders what it might be like to date a normal guy for once in her life.

WILLOW:  Buff, if he's really interested, are you interested back?
BUFFY: I don't know. He's good-looking, and he's—he's solid, he's smart, he's normal. So, not the wicked energy, which is nice 'cause I don't want to only be attracted to wicked energy. Or what if he is wicked, in which case, is that why I'm attracted to him?
WILLOW:  I'm gonna wait for that sentence to come around again before I jump on.

Buffy then speaks to Anya in the bathroom (more hilarity ensues), and then Spike and Buffy talk in the hallway, leading to yet another one of my favourite exchanges:

BUFFY: You don't have to—
SPIKE: What? Be noble? I'm not. Really, I'm all right. Think I still dream of a crypt for two with a white picket fence? My eyes are clear.
BUFFY: Good. I'm glad. Thank you.
SPIKE: Never much cared for picket fences, anyway. Bloody dangerous.

Once again, Jane Espenson proves why she’s one of my favourite writers on television.

And I haven’t even begun to mention the Chao-Ahn subtitles. When Buffy ended in 2003, I threw a big party for the finale viewing, and ahead of time I made up a booklet that people could take away. It was about 15 pages long, and contained my favourite quotes throughout the series – Willow & Oz, Spike lines, Xander commentary, Giles & Buffy – and I think one entire page might have been from this episode. ;)

Like this one:

WILLOW:  Uh, this one's either "I just got lucky, don't call me for a while" or "my date's a demon who's trying to kill me."
KENNEDY: You don't remember which?
WILLOW: It was a long time ago.
DAWN: Well, if we play the percentages...
GILES: Something's eating Xander's head.

Or this one:

XANDER: What do you think happened? Another demon woman was attracted to me. I'm going gay. I've decided I'm turning gay. Willow, gay me up. Come on, let's gay.
WILLOW: What?
XANDER: You heard me. Just tell me what to do. I'm mentally undressing Scott Bakula right now. That's a start, isn't it?
ANDREW: Captain Archer... (nods)
XANDER: Come on, let's get this gay show on the gay road. Help me out here.

Oh, Xander. You said way back in “Buffy Vs. Dracula” that you were no longer going to be anyone’s buttmonkey. You were wrong.

Of course, the key things in these episodes was finally seeing who Principal Wood was, and who his mom was. We don’t find out her name until the next episode, but it’s, like, the best possible name a Slayer could have. Truly.

These episodes start turning the season in the direction of the finale, finally, and we see General Buffy become a little more like Sergeant Buffy… a little too Full Metal Jacket for my tastes. She’s mean, out of character, and I know what the writers were attempting to do, but it just seemed inconsistent, especially when you see what she says in the episodes before and after. One minute she tells Spike she’s not ready for him not to be there, and the next she’s calling him a wimp and telling him to buzz off. Buffy’s nothing if not a complicated gal.

And as for Kennedy, I held back last week because I didn’t want to sway anyone, but I CAN’T STAND HER. Just when Dawn was becoming someone I could deal with and actually kinda like, it’s like they needed to fill the void with yet another annoying little person that I just want to whack upside the head. And that is Kennedy. She’s crass, rude, awful to people. She has no tact, and every word out of her mouth sounds like an accusation. I could never stand her. Sure, it would be hard to accept anyone after Tara, but it’s like they were trying to create the exact opposite of Tara. Why would Willow ever be attracted to someone who is THAT unpleasant? Oz was sweet, Tara was sweet, Kennedy’s awful. You can do better than this, Will. (And are we to assume the Potentials have no parents? Buffy’s burying them in the backyard like they’re cats.)

This week we have the amazing Beth Rambo once again, the editor of the Buffy Goes Dark book I’ve been featuring over there on the left since the beginning of S7. You want to read the best essays around on the final two seasons of the show, that’s the one. Take it away, Beth!

Buffy Rewatch
Season 7.13-15
“The Killer in Me”
“First Date”
“Get It Done”

I started re-viewing these three episodes thinking, “Well, the episodes 13 and 14 aren’t among my favorites and they’re not that important. Willow’s dealing with her guilt, Buffy and Xander go on “first dates” that end badly, blah blah blah. But then I actually watched the episodes and remembered one of my maxims for this (and possibly any Whedon) series: There’s no such thing as an insignificant Buffy episode. While the A or B narratives of an individual episode may not thrill, some key element of the longer narrative arc will also be revealed, and there’s usually at least one bit of standout dialogue. With these three episodes, we are moving toward the end of Season Seven and the entire show, so expect to see the action start to ramp up.

“The Killer in Me” (written by Drew Z. Greenberg) deals with real and suspected killers among the Scoobies. As the Andrew admits to the First in “First Date,” “Confidentially a lot of [Buffy’s] people are murderers. Anya and Willow and Spike.” We have three narrative strands that recall seasons 4 and 5. When Willow finds herself drawn to Kennedy’s straightforward seductions, she becomes vulnerable to Amy’s “penance malediction” spell which reacts with guilt. In Willow, the spell combines with guilt for her vengeance fueled rage, the murder of Warren, and especially her guilt for surviving Tara’s death or for being unable to save Tara. The spell imposes a “penance” of literally forcing her to walk in Warren’s shoes and reenact his crime. Oddly, Kennedy’s resistance to the idea of magic, or perhaps, her faith in “fairy tale crap” magic, allows her to break the spell with a kiss, just as her kiss began it. The Kennedy/Willow relationship was (and perhaps remains) extremely controversial. A lot of people simply could not forgive the Mutant Enemy team for the death of Tara, and no one would have been an adequate replacement. I can’t really judge Willow & Kennedy’s conversation in the bar, but I can say that Kennedy is at her most charming in this scene, as opposed to her previous “brat” act, and she stands up for Willow admirably as the episode proceeds.

Spike, of course, was a killer before he regained his soul, and again under the influence of the First’s “sleeper” trigger. Now we learn he literally has a “killer” in him as the Initiative chip is “misfiring” and causing devastating pain. In another “back to the beginning” moment, Buffy calls Riley for help (comic covert ops!), then she and Spike return to the abandoned Initiative underground labs, in search of anaesthesia. Of course they fight the obligatory demon, and then I couldn’t help smiling when the Initiative guys turn up with orders from Riley: “We're to provide you anything you need to help assface here. Those were his exact words, ma'am.” They can either remove the chip or repair it. Suspense!

And while all this is going on, Giles, recently returned from his travels with numerous rescued Potential Slayers, takes them out to the desert for a vision quest like of Buffy’s in Season 5. He says: “apparently, someone told them that the vision quest consists of me driving them to the desert, doing the hokey pokey until a spooky Rasta-mama slayer arrives and speaks to them in riddles.” When a phone call from an English Watcher suggests that Giles may have been killed by Bringers, and Andrew (who should know) reveals that the First not only appears as dead people but is incorporeal and cannot touch or be touched, suddenly everyone suspects Giles is an avatar of the first. They chase after him and wackiness ensues. I wondered about this myself for a while, but my favorite part of this scene is Andrew’s final threat to convince the crew to take him along: “OK, well, if you leave me here alone, I'll do something evil, like burning something or gluing things together.”
Key points: Amy is unrepentant, Spike’s chip will kill him if it’s not removed or repaired, manifestations of the First are non-corporeal (although some early versions did appear to touch people, but let it go), and Giles is, indeed, alive. Andrew is not evil, just annoying.

“First Date” is the least re-watchable of these three episodes, and also a bad pun. Notable information in the teaser: How Giles escaped from the Bringers (two versions of this—instinct! Or he heard its shoes squeak). And Buffy decided to have the Initiative remove Spike’s chip, which Giles thinks is very dangerous. Two literal first dates: Principal Wood asks Buffy out to dinner, which is inappropriate (“I’ll get the paperwork,” he says, apparently referring to her signing some form stating there is no sexual harassment). She suspects he may be evil, yet finds him attractive. Willow advises her to “dress for the ambiguity” but they agree that Robin’s job as Sunnydale H.S. principal is a problem:

BUFFY: …there he is. On the hell mouth. All day, every day. That's got to be like being showered with evil. Only from underneath.
WILLOW: Not really a shower.
BUFFY: A bidet. Like a bidet of evil.

This and other scenes reveal the comic touch of writer Jane Espenson, but overall, the episode doesn’t hold together particularly well. Xander, too, meets an attractive woman at a hardware store…but she turns out to be a demon. AGAIN. (Stunt-casting of Ashanti in this role doesn’t particularly help.) Recall this scene from the end of 1.8 “I Robot, You Jane.” They’ve all been discussing their disastrous supernatural lovers (vampire, demon robot, giant praying mantis):

BUFFY: Let's face it: none of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal relationship.
XANDER: We're doomed!
WILLOW: Yeah!
Their laughter trails off into dubious silence.

Giles is concerned about getting down to business and preparing the potentials (his comically gruesome flash-cards recall 4.10 “Hush”), while Andrew’s “date” is literally with the First (there’s the pun, sorry), who appears to him as Jonathan & tries to convince him to find Willow’s gun and shoot the Potentials, “because when they’re gone, the [Slayer] line is gone.”
We also learn the truth about Wood: he’s the son of a Slayer, which explains how he knows about Buffy and more. He’s looking for the vampire who killed his mother—and when she appears to him, courtesy of the First, we should be able to guess that she is the “subway slayer” of Season Five’s “Fool for Love.”

“Get It Done” (written by Douglas Petrie) is one of Season Seven’s key episodes. It opens with one of Buffy’s real-seeming dreams, in which she’s checking on the Potentials and sees one, Chloe, weeping in a corner. She tries to comfort the girl, only to be tackled by the First Slayer, who says, “It’s not enough.” At the high school, Wood gives her his mother’s “Slayer emergency kit,” which should have been passed down to her, then invites himself to the Summers house and, after meeting the Scoobies, Andrew the “guestage” baking to assuage his guilt (like Willow after “Something Blue”), and the Potentials, is introduced to Spike as a vampire. Wood is still testing the First’s information here, and doubts Spike’s sincerity overall. Buffy finally absorbs the truth that the Potentials aren’t prepared, her usual gang is now a “Wicca who won’t-a,” a “Wimpire,” a carpenter, and a sarcastic ex-demon. Everyone has to step up and start doing the impossible—getting it done. The emergency kit turns out to contain a mysterious locked box full of items which, surprisingly, Dawn is able to explain—she’s been studying, it seems, and can now step in as “Watcher Junior” to do the exposition and read the Sumerian: “You can’t just watch, you have to see” (a version of one of my themes for the season). Buffy must go “back to the beginning” of the Slayer line & reenact the making of the first slayer in order to gain the knowledge that she doesn’t want more demonic power (“You can’t fight evil with evil”), and this in itself is the beginning of the knowledge she seeks. Just as in episode 7.1, the shadow men (or two out of three of them) turn out to be “manifest spirits” she can fight and disperse by breaking a talismanic staff (“It’s always the staff”), in order to gain the information she seeks.

Meanwhile Dawn, in her mentoring role, walks Willow through the steps of using serious magic again, and Kennedy learns that there’s more to magic than “fairy tale crap.” Spike reclaims his vampire badness by retrieving the leather duster he took from the subway Slayer as a trophy (5.7 “Fool for Love”). As he strides down the high school corridor in this familiar coat, Principal Wood speaks from a doorway: “Nice coat. Where did you get it?” “New York,” answers Spike, confirming that he is, indeed, the vampire who killed Wood’s mother.

Now these are the Scoobies we remember. But are they ready for thousands of ubervamps?

Thanks, Elizabeth!

Next week: Wow, we’re coming into the home stretch with only three weeks left! David Lavery and Lorna Jowett return to cover off the next three episodes, which feature an episode that never ceases to make me laugh until it hurts (oh Andrew, I ♥♥♥ you), a great episode that flashes back to our favourite vampire again, the return of an awesome character, and if there’s anyone out there who loves Firefly and hasn’t seen Buffy, you’re in for a wicked treat.
7.16 Storyteller
7.17 Lies My Mother Told Me
7.18 Bad Girls

Our Angel episodes are:
4.16 Players
4.17 Inside Out
4.18 Shiny Happy People

See you next week!

Buffy Rewatch Week 49: Spoiler Forum

2011-12-06T19:59:00.000-05:00

Not much left to say over here, but here's the spoiler forum for anyone who wants to talk about the remainder of Buffy and S5 of Angel without spoiling anyone!

Trailer for Cabin in the Woods

2011-12-05T17:09:00.002-05:00

The new trailer for Cabin in the Woods (written and produced by Joss Whedon; co-written and directed by Drew Goddard) is now out, and it's not just a horror flick. It's like Dollhouse meets horror flick meets the Dharma Initiative. You can go here to see the video.

Once Upon a Time, Ep 6: The Shepherd

2011-12-04T21:22:00.002-05:00

In this week’s episode we return to Prince Charming, and see what happened to him right before that first encounter with Snow White. Turns out… he’s not actually the prince, but the prince’s twin brother. The prince was given to the king by Rumpelstiltskin when the prince was just a baby, and Thomas’s parents desperately needed the money. Then he’s killed in battle, and the king gets Rumpelstiltskin to bring the other boy to him so he can slay King Midas’s dragon and bring untold riches to his land. Thomas actually DOES slay the dragon (in a rather lame battle), and Midas wants him to marry his daughter, the very woman we saw riding in the carriage with him when Snow first ambushed him. He has to leave his beloved mother (played by the wonderful Canadian character actress, Gabrielle Rose) and go be with her instead or his “dad” will destroy everything he loves.

Meanwhile, in Storybrooke, it’s a Henry-lite week where John Doe (actually David Nolan) comes home, but he doesn’t know his wife Kathryn or anything about this life. Nothing feels right except for Mary, and so he leaves his wife and tells Mary to meet him at the toll bridge so they can begin a new life together. Mary tries to convince herself not to do it, but she’s so drawn to him she goes down there. He, on the other hand, is ambushed by the Mayor and Mr. Gold, and they make him remember his previous life and the fact he actually did love Kathryn.

Did he really remember his real life? Or … is it possible that David has a twin brother in this world, too? Could Kathryn have actually been married to the twin, which is how it doesn’t feel right to David no matter how sure Kathryn is of him? Could he have memories of his twin’s? (You know that whole telepathy thing twins claim they have?) Or is he really meant to be with Kathryn? And how will things play out between Thomas and his betrothed? She looked about as thrilled to be with him as he was with her. Will she gladly be on her way so he can be with Snow?

Lost References:
• Widmore!! Charles returns as yet another powerful father, and while he seems kinder at the beginning, turns out he’s just as ruthless and cunning as the other one. And what would an episode with Widmore be without…
• McCutcheon whisky! If a mouthful of that is worth more than Desmond makes in a month, how the HELL Mary Margaret could afford it is beyond me.

Did You Notice?:
• I meant to mention this earlier, but the opening credits on Once Upon a Time are a lot like the ones on Lost. They alternate sides of the screen, and are in the same font. And I LOVE the end logo, with the little Space Invaders guy shooting the Kitsis/Horowitz names. ;)
• In the Nolan house, they have flowers on the walls but no trees.
• “The love I lost, there’s no bringing him back.” That sentence was vague enough that I think it once again suggests she lost a child.
• When Mary’s reading the newspaper, the headline is “Welcome home, John Doe!” and it reads: The as yet unidentified man in his early 30s who has become known only bye the moniker, John Doe, has finally gone home directly to a house right here in Storybrooke. “It is truly a miracle that he had survived at all,” said hospital volunteer and local schoolteacher, Mary Margaret Blanchard, on the day of his initial admittance to the Storybrooke Hospital. “It has been interesting nursing him back to health and we at [sic] all so glad he has pulled through. It is incredible to think how far he has progressed. Not only is he conscious, but he now he [sic] has a whole new life to live.” Two problems with that story (aside from the typos): Was Mary really at the hospital when he was first admitted? And how would they have had a quote from her from that long ago? Hasn’t he been there a bazillion years? And also, why does it say he’s “as yet unidentified?” He was identified as David Nolan as soon as he woke up.
• The stories across the top are: Comet Marley Makes Debut Appearance; Destinations (with a pic of what appears to be Notre Dame), Lyme Disease: A New Understanding; Capsaicin. I wonder if these will have any meaning in future episodes (capsaicin is the component in chili peppers that creates the burning sensation when you eat them). The other headline beside the John Doe one is “Remnants of Seventeeth Century Colonial Settlement Uncovered at Harestock Bridge.”
• The walls of Mary’s classroom are different than they were when we first saw them. They have trees, too, but they’re all dead with no foliage on them.
• The CGI in this episode isn’t as good as it’s been in previous episodes – when the giant falls at the beginning at Thomas’s twin’s hand, you can see he’s not even with the ground. When Midas’s daughter walks up to join him, you can see the green screen shimmer around her head as she takes his hand.
• The ring that Thomas’s mother gives him is the one he went to the troll bridge with Snow White to find.

Ruby Red: More red in this episode:
• Thomas’s father wears a scarlet velvet robe.
• Thomas’s blood on the sword.
• The places at the round table.
• Mary’s sweater when she’s at Granny’s diner.
• Regina’s blouse under her jacket.

Any Questions?:
• Why didn’t the dragon breathe fire on Thomas when he cornered it and it couldn’t reach him?
• Why would you ask someone to meet you for a romantic rendezvous at a place if you didn’t know its location?! David’s a bit of a dumbass.
• Will the unicorn mobile make its way into the fairytale stories? Was it the Evil Queen’s mobile for her baby? Or did a bunch of unicorns get turned into glass?
• Did you guys check out that VERY spoilery preview for next week?? Now I know who the sheriff was, and I’m assuming that’s supposed to be a big reveal next week.

Coming up on Nik at Nite

2011-12-01T10:33:00.002-05:00

First, I wanted to apologize for the absentee posts on Hell on Wheels. Both Chris and I have had crazy busy weeks (and we're both away on business in different parts of the country at the moment) so it's been tough. I have ep 3 written up, and we're still working on ep 4. They'll both be posted together soon.

Secondly, there have been some questions on the Buffy Rewatch boards about what to do with Angel S5. For all the people who heeded my advice and watched Angel along with Buffy, I don't want to leave you in the lurch, especially when my all-time favourite season is about to begin. So starting in January, I'll keep things moving. I won't do big posts like I've been doing with Buffy, but I will at least give you guys the forum to discuss the episodes every week. Does that sound like a plan? We'll do three a week, with the finale on its own.

The Buffy Rewatch was a LOT of work. A lot. I thought with nearly 30 other people helping out, it wouldn't be that tough. But soon after it started people began emailing me saying they were really enjoying the guest posts, but expected me to say something more about the eps as well. So I couldn't skip any weeks, and on top of everything else I have going on in my life I was rewatching these eps, posting my own comments, as well as rounding up everyone else's posts, editing and formatting them, finding photos, putting up the hyperlinks, linking to their books, collecting bios, etc. There have been people who dropped out well ahead of time, and others who were agreeable until something came up at the last minute, so I've dealt with a lot of scrambling here and there. It's been SO rewarding and I wouldn't change it for the world (and all my guest hosts have been AMAZING and generous with their time, energy, and knowledge), but it's been a time suck (I honestly have had less spare time this past year than I did when I was writing the Finding Lost books), and I'm really looking forward to a breather in January. The blog will continue and I'll post as often as I can, but I can't take on another rewatch right away. As I mentioned in a recent comment, I would love to make this Rewatch Central and have several rewatches happening simultaneously, perhaps hosted by various people, but that would also require hounding people for their material, and scheduling, and watching the shows myself... not to mention I'm trying to keep up with the current TV season.

It's a lot of work! But I will definitely keep Angel going, because for anyone who is frustrated with season 4, PLEASE hold on for season 5. It's stellar.

And, I promise that the Buffy Rewatch will go out with a bang. ;)

Buffy Rewatch: Week 48

2011-11-29T20:00:00.000-05:00

7.10 Bring on the Night
7.11 Showtime
7.12 Potential

Follow along in Bite Me!, pp.

And if you’re watching Angel, this week’s episodes are:

4.10 Awakening
4.11 Soulless
4.12 Calvary

Follow along in Once Bitten, pp.

We move to the middle of the season this week with the arrival of new Potentials (who range from okay to positively GRATING), the return of Giles, Buffy’s showdown with the ubervamp (even knowing the real name, I never got used to calling it the Turok’han), Drusilla (!!!), Andrew finally being untied, our Slayer’s new post as General Buffy, and, of course, that speech.

I remember the first time I saw each season, when it aired on TV. Xander was that character who was goofy and loving, but he had moments where you just wanted to hit him. Hard. As I’ve said countless times, he’s the heart of the group, and he wears that heart on his sleeve, so it’s always there when people need him, but he’s going to express himself even when you wish he’d just shut up. He was always there to remind Buffy that she was dating soulless creatures, and he never said these things kindly. Xander always knew how to go right for the gut, and to say the thing you didn’t want to hear.

In “The Zeppo,” we saw him as the group’s outsider, the guy looking in who wasn’t actually a part of the group (Willow could do magic, Buffy was the Slayer, Giles was the research, Oz was the muscle, and Xander was… the other guy). Throughout this rewatch there have been moments where once again I could feel my blood boil and I just shouted, “Shut UP Xander!” but I’ve always defended him. Even when he was telling Buffy to kick Angel’s ass. Even when he was confronting her in front of everyone in “Dead Man’s Party.” Even when he left Anya at the altar. Because Xander did all of those things for love. And there’s always been a small part of him that’s been a little bit jealous and upset that he would never step up. He can drywall them into oblivion, as he put it once, but he’ll never save the world.

Of course, in saying that, he seems to forget a certain yellow crayon speech at the end of season 6.

Seven years, Dawn. Working with the slayer. Seeing my friends get more and more powerful. A witch. A demon. Hell, I could fit Oz in my shaving kit, but come a full moon, he had a wolfy mojo not to be messed with. Powerful. All of them. And I'm the guy who fixes the windows.

I always forgive Xander because I know this speech is coming. Oh, how I love it. We’ve all been there, watching someone else in the spotlight while we stand in the shadows. And you can respond with jealousy or hostility, or you can be proud of them while knowing that you were a part of it, and that you were still essential. Watching it this time, I began crying when he wandered over to Dawn and began talking to her, and I continued throughout the scene.

They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You're not special. You're extraordinary.

So are you, Xander. So are you.

Now, once again, to shed some light on what it was like watching these episodes the first time they aired (for all of you who watched it on DVD or are watching it for the first time now), there was one thing that was beginning to overshadow everything at this point: Giles. You all saw that axe about to come down on his neck, right? And then… he just… shows up here in Sunnydale? All hands in pockets and not giving Buffy giant bear hugs and acting kinda distant? Sound anything like a certain First that he himself describes to Buffy?

It can change form. It only appears in the guise of someone who's passed away…  Also it's not corporeal. It can't touch or fight on its own. It only works through those it manipulates.

Gulp.

This week we are once again joined by Jennifer K. Stuller, author of Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors, a look at the modern-day superwoman. Take it away, Jennifer!

Bring on the Night, Showtime, Potential “It’s almost like this metaphor for womanhood, isn’t it?”
I have to admit I’ve fallen behind in the rewatch. Like, way behind. As many of you know, I’ve been involved with GeekGirlCon – an all-volunteer, grassroots, nonprofit organization dedicated to celebrating female fandom as well as creating networking and mentorship opportunities for girls and women in pop culture industries and STEM professions. We recently successfully orchestrated our inaugural annual convention – an event that featured many fabulous guests and panelists including Whedonistas Jane Espenson and Nancy Holder. We also hosted an evening performance of Whedonesque Burlesque .

All in all, the programming was diverse with sessions on crafting, coding, creating community, comics and more. But I wanted to share with you all one complaint we received – a complaint that was self-conscious enough to note it was from an attendee most likely in the minority.

We were too Joss Whedon-focused in our programming.

I thought that’d make you laugh. As programming director for the con, I found this particularly amusing (especially as conversations about Star Wars were much more prevalent – nerds). But a staff member pointed out you really can’t have a conversation about genre that doesn’t include Whedon. From horror to science fiction to superheroes, film, television, webisodes, and comics – Our Mr. Whedon is there.

But back to the girl who saves the world a lot – and the people she’s going to save it with.

I was glad when Nikki reminded me of my commitment to this week’s entry – though this is more of an emotional recap than a smarty-pants one. When I sat down to rewatch the episodes I was surprised by just how much I liked them. No . . . that’s not quite it. I’ve always felt that season seven had narrative ups and downs – leading to one helluva major up. But it was only in this particular rewatch that I found myself moved to tears. During each episode. Repeatedly.

One could claim my weeping was merely a symptom of some fluctuating hormones and that perhaps said hormones intensified the feelings. (Also, I am naturally the type of person who cries at Kodak commercials. Yep.) But in this rewatch of “Bring on the Night,” “Showtime”, and “Potential”, I could really feel that these episodes were both the beginning stages of this television series’ final glorious embodiment of Whedon’s proclaimed mission statement, “the joy of female power: having it, sharing it, using it,” – as well as a nod back to the beginning of the show and what it means to be a female hero. The addition of the potential slayers and the destruction of the Watcher’s Council show that Whedon not only rewrote the hero myth, but through Buffy, continually evolves the Slayer myth itself.

And I think it’s only in having written my book about the journey of the female hero, and in talking with audiences over the past few years about women and heroism, specifically, about women mentoring women, women creating community – and sharing our power – that these episodes could be so resonant for me.

In particular, Buffy’s lessons and motivational speeches – which I remembered as being increasingly tedious (and are commented on as such in one or two future episodes) – were especially poignant, moving and meaningful.

“I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of hell, and it's going to swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me. We're not ready? They're not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do. I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse? Oh, we'll give 'em one. Anyone else who wants to run... do it now. Because we just became an army. [Cue sobs - JKS] We just declared war. From now on we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them and cut out their hearts one by one until the First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself. There's only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil. And that's us.”

It’s a theme that’s been revisited throughout the series, and as Beth Rambo cited in her recent recap the mission statement intentionally came full circle in the final season. We see this particularly in “Showtime.” Buffy welcomes Rona to the Hellmouth, alluding to Buffy’s own beginnings in Sunnydale and the title of the series premiere. She instills confidence in the girls by example – and proves to them that the Turok-Han is indeed just ash.

I can’t wait for rewatch newbies to get to the end – but a warning, if you’re anything like me, keep a box of tissues close.

Personal highlights from these three episodes include:

Dawn and Anya enabling each other’s torture-lite of Andrew; the uber-nerdiness of Andrew (and Xander); pretty much everything Anya says; Giles’ brown corduroy coat; ethnic diversity – finally; watching the Potentials watch Buffy get the shit kicked out of her, fight back – with skill – and prevail (it’s what we’ve been watching her do for 7 years); the super-hot spark between Buffy and Spike; the juxtaposition of Buffy’s speech to the Potentials in the crypt and Dawn’s own skill in fighting a vamp in the school lab – Dawn has learned more from Buffy than she realizes; and yes, Xander’s speech.

Thank you, Jennifer!

Next week: Beth Rambo, our resident season 7 expert, returns to cover the next three episodes for us:
7.13 The Killer in Me
7.14 First Date
7.15 Get It Done

And if you’re watching Angel, it’s time for a Buffy crossover episode!!
4.13 Salvage
4.14 Release
4.15 Orpheus

Be sure to check out Alexis Denisof checking her out. ;)

Buffy Rewatch Week 48: Spoiler Forum

2011-11-29T19:59:00.000-05:00

And once again here we are to discuss spoilers on Buffy and Angel. Not that there are many left in either one! (Though we do have another full season of Angel left.)

The Walking Dead Ep 7: Pretty Much Dead Already

2011-11-28T18:00:00.002-05:00

Before we start this week’s entry, my Walking Dead writing partner has been looking up some great zombie-themed Christmas ideas for the walker lover in all of you. Next week we’ll be posting some of those little treats for y’all. Until then, it’s time for the last episode until February…

Nikki: I can’t help it. I have to begin with the end of this episode. How can I begin to describe my reaction? After listening to Shane’s big speech about no longer seeing these zombies as people, but things – dangerous things that can kill you – he throws open the doors to the barn and begins shooting at them as they wander out into the daylight. Hershel looks on, horrified, but in most shows there would be a specifically big moment where his wife wandered out, he’d yell, “NOOO!” and Shane would turn, have a moment of looking him in the eye, and then turn back to finish the job. But that didn’t happen. Each walker was like the last, and each “kill” was as painful as the one before it. So for me, I kept thinking how awful it must be for Hershel to watch this, because he knew these people (he knew the ones down by the river, and no doubt knew many of the others in the barn, too). But I couldn’t imagine how he must have felt, because to me, they were just things, too. Just like they were to Shane.

And then… there was one more. I said to my husband, “It must be Hershel’s wife. This is where he’s going to fight Shane.” “No, it’s a little girl, I think,” said my husband. “Ah, it must be the stepson, remember he mentioned the stepson?” And then the camera panned out.

I literally dropped my pen into my lap and slapped my hand over my mouth and whisper-screamed, “Oh my god it’s Sophia!” and without any warning, I began crying. It was such an instant and unexpected reaction to this scene, but with everything Shane had just said about these walkers being things and not people, coupled with Carol’s scream (which echoed mine), and Sophia walking out slowly, quietly, yet with purpose, I couldn’t help it. The little girl was dead. I had flashes in my head of what she must have gone through, how she would have been alone in the woods, scared for her life as the walkers descended on her and mangled her little body. How she’s been trapped in that barn for days, with people continuing to risk their lives for her.

But mostly, I screamed because I still had hope. Unlike Carol, unlike Shane, I was like Carl and Daryl – I had hope. I really wanted her to be alive. SO much. And you know how the other walkers have those blank, evil, nasty stares? Her eyes looked beautiful. They weren’t just white and milky, but ethereal and shining. She was still a lovely little girl, even as a walker. Was I just seeing her the way Carol was?

And of course it was Rick who would pull that trigger. After all his talk and bluster, after getting everyone else on board, Shane just stood there, numb and in shock. Rick was the one who had to shake himself out of his stupor, walk down that path, grab the gun and kill the creature that was once Sophia. He still feels responsible for having left her by that tree, and he feels like he has to be the one to end things for her. Just as Andrea killed the walker that used to be her sister, Rick takes out Sophia. And with that bullet, so much hope died.

It was extraordinary storytelling, putting us in Hershel’s shoes, then in Shane’s, where no matter what side you were on before, you were probably in agreement with him when you saw those things walk out of the barn… and then putting you right back in the shoes of the person who still sees them as people. Devastating, heartbreaking, and extraordinary television.

Josh: Well, because I missed watching live last night, I finished the episode mere moments before sitting down to type these words, and I'm typing clumsily because my hands are still shaking. The entire final act, from the moment Shane first strode up to the farmhouse porch, was spectacularly intense and a perfect example of why my wife won't watch this show with me. And also why, despite its faults, I so enjoy it.

When I wrote that something big was needed to wrap up the story of the search for Sophia, this was not at all what I had in mind. Fortunately, it's much better than anything I had in mind. And when I say 'better,' of course, what I mean is better for the show. For our cast of survivors? Worse. Much, much worse. I'm with you, Nikki, in that I did not see that coming at all. ['THE WALKING DEAD' COMIC SPOILER ALERT] And perhaps I should have done so, but this is another of those cases when my having read the source material serves to heighten my experience rather than hinder it, since the comics are at ninety issues and counting now, and Sophia is alive and well. Bless their hearts for confounding my expectations, too, because it gutted me when she shuffled out of that barn.[END SPOILER]

Now that Sophia's story has ended, my mind reels with possibilities for what happens next. The issue of whether or not the group stays at Hershel's farm would hold a lot more significance for me if I thought they were half as sheltered as they all seem to believe. And after firing roughly two hundred rounds in the barnyard (what happened to quiet weapons? ammo conservation?), every walker in a fifty mile radius is bound to be headed their way. Is this the end of their safe haven? What do you think, Nikki?

Nikki: The discussion my husband and I had immediately following the episode was, did Hershel and his family KNOW that little girl was Sophia? How many little girls could there have been within those woods? They knew that Daryl and Shane and Andrea were out there day after day risking life and limb for that little girl, and they didn’t think to mention, “Oh, she MIGHT actually be undead.” My husband thinks they knew, and I’m desperately trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, there was a clip of the next episode (coming in FEBRUARY… wah) shown during Hell on Wheels that raised that very issue. At this point, the survivors will be lucky if Hershel doesn’t walk into that house, throw his bible in the garbage and turn on all of them with a gun.

My worry is, he’s going to walk in that house and turn a gun on himself.

I’m really hoping that the events of the end of the episode will actually force them off the farm and back into the world, because then the story will pick up again. I was chatting with a work colleague at lunch today about it and he said he’d been ready to give up, and said, “That episode where Daryl was walking through the woods… how long was that script? A page?! ‘Man walks through forest for 20 minutes. Sees spectre of dead brother. Walks back.’” I know a lot of fans were feeling that way, and while this season seemed to be an extended version of My Dinner with Andre and featured more existentialist conversation than zombie-stompin’, I think the end of it was (thankfully) a pay-off. The conversation mostly revolved around the idea of should we stay or should we go? Is Sophia alive or is she dead? You had those who were insisting on staying – Rick, Lori, Carl, Glenn, Carol, Daryl (how have I never noticed their names rhyme before now?) – and those who were insisting on going – namely Shane, with Andrea backing him. T-Dog's been mostly a background character with no dialogue all season; Dale’s always against Shane but it’s not clear he wants to stay on the farm, either.

So after all that talk, it all came down to that moment, and felt worth it. But they really, REALLY need to move on and make things interesting again, or I’m not sure how many people will be sticking around for S3.

Josh: Sadly true. And gee, that's almost all there is to talk about, isn't it? We're concise today, dude! High five!

There were two more quick things I wanted to mention. First, if it turns out Hershel knew that the girl they were searching for was likely the same one he had in the barn, then he's a dead man – Daryl will slit his throat while he sleeps, and that will be that. Second, I really hope they don't kill Shane at the end of this season like I think they will, because this loose cannon stuff is awesome. He's so unhinged at this point that whatever happens moving forward will just feel like marking time until he snaps.

Any final words, Nikki, as we move into the midseason break?

Nikki: Good final thoughts! I kind of agree on Shane… I can’t stand the guy, but he certainly adds a lot of tension in every scene he’s in. Part of me really wants Zombie Otis to come back and feed on him, though. Walker karma.

Speaking of karma, I did have one last thing I wanted to talk about, and it was regarding the use of religion on this show, especially in Hershel and earlier in the season when they were in the church. I was recently having a discussion with a friend of mine. I identify as Christian (I know that makes me a minority in the community of reasonable-thinking people) and this person used to be, but is now a devout atheist. He said he thought the church scene was the most ridiculous thing in the world. “Seriously,” he said, “if people honestly still think there’s a God after the world has turned to shit and their friends and family have become zombies, then they’re more fucked up than they were to begin with.” (Okay, so this person wasn't exactly sympathetic to anyone's faith in the room at the time... hahaha!) He thought it was bad storytelling. I, on the other hand, said I thought they’d handled that scene beautifully (and I think I commented on it at the time): In a time when nothing makes sense, people turn to faith and God often in desperation. They pray because it’s the one thing they know. They believe that if nothing else will get them out of this, maybe God will. I don’t go to church or talk about my beliefs (since most of the people I know are atheists or agnostics anyway) but I know that when something happens to one of my kids, I’m sitting in the emergency room thinking, “Please please please let them be OK…” I’ll pray to just about anything at that point. And so will a lot of other people. But also in that scene you had the atheists who just didn't give the cross a second thought. And you had those like Rick who hadn't really thought about it in a long time, but now began to pray.

And, as my friend suggested, I think there would also be a lot of people who had faith before the apocalypse, and would think exactly what he suggested -- I don't believe there could be a God if He allowed this to happen.

As this episode implies, when you have time to stop running from the walkers and think things through, maybe the Bible just isn’t effective anymore. It was written in a time when walkers weren’t in the world, when you weren’t running for your life from demons. New religions will no doubt crop up to take the place of whatever religion doesn’t work anymore. That said, I found it interesting that Hershel was reading Luke 8, and I’m pretty sure I know exactly what section he was reading, Luke 8:26. When you see what it is, you realize the faint hope he was holding onto so desperately, praying to God that maybe this one story just might be true…

26 They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. 27 When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” 29 For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.

30 Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. 31 And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.

32 A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs, and he gave them permission. 33 When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

34 When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, 35 and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus’ feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. 36 Those who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured. 37 Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and left.

38 The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.

Once Upon a Time Ep 5: That Still Small Voice

2011-11-27T21:04:00.002-05:00

Or should this episode be called… the return of the Apollo bar! Oh, how I love these little nods to Lost. ;)

“You are who you are and there’s no changing it, right?”

This week’s episode was written by Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Jane Espenson, and there was some dialogue that was so typical of her brilliance. Tonight we focus on Jiminy Cricket, and finding out how he became a cricket, and a conscience. From the time he was a young lad, Jiminy – who was raised as a pickpocket and a thief by his two uncouth gypsy parents – longed to be good. We see him stealing for them, while asking repeatedly why they can’t try to go another way. Despite being the voice of reason in their small group, his pleas simply don’t reach his parents. Where he was a good conscience for Pinocchio, he failed miserably as a conscience for his parents. But that’s because he felt helpless under their control. As he grew, his misery grew also as he continued to do bad things for them (and for Rumpelstiltskin, to whom they were clearly “pawning” their things for gold thread). He longed for his freedom, and was willing to destroy them as his final bad act before becoming good. But when something terrible happens, Jiminy finds another way to escape: he becomes a cricket.

Meanwhile, in Storybrooke, Mary continues to get to know John Doe, Emma becomes Deputy, and when there’s a sinkhole near an abandoned mine, the town goes nuts. The Mayor decides she’s sick of being the bad guy, and she threatens Archie Hopper that if he doesn’t convince her son once and for all that the fairytale theory is just a theory, she’ll ruin him. “I will cut you down to size until you’re a tiny shrunken creature and THIS [holds up umbrella] will be the only roof over your damn head… You take that delusion out of my son’s head and you will CRUSH it…” Archie goes against his conscience (for the second time – recall back in episode 2 he called the cops and said Emma stole his files because the Mayor asked him to) and tells Henry that he’s crazy and if he doesn’t stop this foolishness, he’ll end up in a psych ward. Henry, devastated that Archie would say this to him, decides to prove himself and heads down into the mine, putting his life (and Archie’s, when Archie follows him) in danger. Henry is convinced something is important down in those mines, and the reason they collapsed is because Emma showed up and the mines are trying to alert them to something.

In several scenes reminiscent of Jack and Charlie being trapped in the cave in “The Moth,” Archie talks to Henry while they sit in the mineshaft, and realizes that maybe Henry’s not completely crazy, and Henry realizes Archie is sympathetic to him. Archie doesn’t believe that he was Jiminy Cricket, but he’s like Jiminy in that he really wanted to be a certain person, and needs to work hard to stay on that path.

In the lovely ending to this episode, Archie and Henry are saved by Emma (I seriously thought Archie was going down with the mineshaft and was SO happy when he was holding on by his umbrella!), while we see how Jiminy was turned into a cricket so he could become the conscience to the little boy whose parents Jiminy had wronged: Geppetto. Tears!!

Highlight: The parents telling Jiminy he needs to stay with him by convincing him how old and infirm they are. Dad: “I’ve got lumps in strange places.” Mom: “I’ve got burning sensations.” Hahaha…

Did You Notice?:
• In the little puppet show at the beginning, the woman says, “I wish… I wish… but nothing changes. I wish I was better at wishing!” The puppet show not only anticipates Jiminy’s wish at the end, but that Geppetto’s parents will be turned into wooden marionettes themselves.
• The Mayor!! I was so glad to see Harry Groener as Jiminy’s parents.
• The first time Geppetto shows up at the traveling show and talks to Jiminy, he says, “Puppets! What a great job you have!” We can already see why he would grow up to make little wooden creatures.
• John Doe and Mary play Hangman… the first time they had a conversation, Snow White was hanging from a tree in a net.
• The floor of Rumpelstiltskin’s place is an outline of a spinning wheel.
• The moment Rumpelstiltskin gave Jiminy the potion, I wrote in my notes, “Are his parents the two little dolls in Mr. Gold’s pawn shop?” I KNEW those dolls would turn out to be something, as I mentioned in my previous post!
• I love the special effects on this show. It’s everything Lost didn’t have.

Ruby Red:
I’m noticing there is a LOT of red in this show. I noticed it in the very first episode, but it was only because of the distinct lack of red on Snow’s lips (which in the fairytale were described as blood-red) and I realized that despite Snow’s lips not being red, the colour is certainly prevalent everywhere else. In this episode:
• Emma dissuades the sheriff from making her take off her rust-red coat
• Kathryn makes cranberry muffins (and the towel on top is red).
• At the rescue scene, both the fire truck and the tow truck are red.
• Ruby. She’s always dressed in scarlet red.
• The Mayor’s lipstick is always a burgundy colour.
• Jiminy’s vest.
• The blood on his forehead.

When You Wish Upon a Star:
I’ve said in the past that there are star references in every episode, and this one was no exception:
• Obviously, Jiminy wishes upon a star at the very end.
• Emma, the person who the star is usually associated with, is handed a star badge to designate her as deputy.

Any Questions?:
• If Rumpelstiltskin can spin straw into gold, why does he need people to steal things for him?
• Was Pinocchio really a wooden marionette that Geppetto made, or did Rumpelstiltskin turn a little boy into a marionette, and Geppetto loved him enough to turn him back into a little boy?
• How did Rumpelstiltskin become Rumpelstiltskin? That’s the story I’m looking forward to. And word on the street has it, we’ll see it soon.
• What’s with the flask party at the mineshaft? Does everyone in Storybrooke carry a flask of alcohol with them? (Except for Ruby, of course, who just has a beer bottle handy.)
• What is at the bottom of that mineshaft? Was it the Queen’s Mirror? Was it part of Snow’s castle? Is it possible there are remnants of the fairy-tale world under Storybrooke?

The Walking Dead S2 Ep 6: Secrets

2011-11-23T18:00:00.001-05:00

Welcome to another week of zombie talk! I’m your host, Nikki “Zombie” Stafford, here with my co-host, Josh “Walker” Winstead. Before we go further, I wanted to recommend a Twitter feed a friend of mine started; it’s @SheldonFunk, and he’s a recently-made zombie who tweets about his new experiences inside an undead body.

But on to the episode. I’d like to focus on Dale for a minute. I’ve liked his relationship with Andrea from the beginning – he’s very much a father figure to her and has always treated her like his daughter (he treated her sister like one, too, before she died). In this week’s episode he opens up to Lori that he and his wife tried to have kids, but she miscarried and it wasn’t to be. Andrea seems to be filling that void for him. But this week when he realized (instantly) that Andrea had been fooling around with Shane (it’s about time – THAT was a pairing that seemed inevitable) he immediately threatened Shane and suggested he high-tail his ass outta there. For a moment it felt like Dale was actually in love with Andrea, and jealous of Shane, but upon further thought I think he was just acting like a domineering dad again. You’re no good for my girl, so get away from her. Is that how you took it, Josh?

Meanwhile, Glenn spills the beans to Dale (“The boy has no guile,” says Dale later) and Dale immediately goes to Hershel to confront him on the undead family reunion happening inside the barn. It takes a lot of guts to do that, given the fact that Hershel’s farm has given everyone a safe haven and Dale risks losing that by ticking Hershel off, but Dale handles the moment very responsibly, asking Hersh if he’s really thought about what those people have become. The revelation that I anticipated last week – that they’re not zombies to Hershel, but his wife and stepson – explains why there’s a hue of sadness around Hershel all the time. Dale tries to reason with him, but backs away when he knows it’s time. I wonder who Hershel is going to tell, and when.

Joshua: Well, it's the week of our national day of Thanksgiving here in the States, the time when we all gather together with family and friends to reflect on the year's many blessings and gorge ourselves on hobbled chicken and barn mice. Or turkey and stuffing, if you prefer. And speaking of stuffing, this week's episode of The Walking Dead was likewise packed solid with content as all sorts of pieces slide into position for whatever deadly conflict our survivors will find themselves combating in this Sunday's mid-season finale.

These poor bastards, man. Have you noticed how no one gets to have a casual conversation on this show? There was a lot of big consequential discussion happening this week, most of which centered around Dale turning into Perry Mason and either knowing, learning or figuring out most everything that's going on with everyone. Honestly, I half expected him to pop his head into Daryl's recovery tent at some point and say, “Did I ever tell you I used to hear voices in my head?”

I agree with you, Nikki, in that Dale's intent with his harsh comments to Shane was more fatherly than anything, but I also think he's a bit conflicted about his feelings towards Andrea, too. It will certainly be interesting to see how it resolves itself, but one thing's absolute: for a pretty insightful guy, Dale can be really dumb, dude. I don't know a lot about bears, but I know better than to poke my fingers through the bars of the cage, you know?

Nikki: Perhaps the walkers in the barn will be having Thanksgiving dinner, too. And it’ll taste remarkably like DALE.

And now for my weekly nitpick. Isn’t ammo a little precious at this point? Too precious to be shooting wildly at absolutely everything and wasting dozens and dozens of bullets? I know everyone has to practice, but it seemed like they were just shootin’ for the sake of shootin’ at some points. And speaking of which, WHERE are the walkers? Before, they couldn’t even whisper-scream, “Sophia!” in the woods without fear of walkers showing up, and yet here they are shooting and shooting and SHOOTING rather loudly… and nothing comes. In previous scenes, someone drops a thumbtack and hundreds of walkers descend on them, so I couldn’t figure out how exactly there isn’t a single one for miles around (the sound of gunshots can travel for miles). No wonder everyone is desperate to stay on the property. It’s like there an invisible bubble surrounding it.

So what did you make of Lori finally (FINALLY) telling Rick the truth, and his reaction to it?

Josh: Lori's confession to Rick went exactly as I thought it would, with Rick obviously uncomfortable but totally reasonable about the matter. We found out from Dale that her indiscretions with Shane weren't the common knowledge in quarry camp that we believed them to be. Good on Lori, though, for coughing it up regardless. Too bad it took a botched secret abortion attempt to wring it out of her, but at least it's out in the open. And now we can get down to the really interesting part – Rick vs. Shane, mano y mano. I'm thinking a cage match suspended hayloft-high over the barn floor would be perfect. But Otis' wife gets to break one of Shane's legs first, just to be fair.

I'm glad you brought up gun training. It has been well over a year since I read the earliest issues of the comic, but if I am remembering correctly, gun training was the reason the group had to leave the quarry in the first place, as the sounds of their gunfire attracted so many walkers that they could no longer stay. Surely ammo must be a concern as well, but in the grand scheme of things, a few extra rounds is worth how many more will be saved with accurate shooting in the long run, not to mention how many lives it might save. It would be hard to overestimate the value of something that stands so firmly between life and death for these folks.

So the downside to gun training is that it's very noisy and somewhat wasteful of a valuable resource. The upside, particularly for the audience, is watching everyone turn into badasses. I can't deny the vicarious action-movie thrill I felt when Andrea finally mellowed out, settled into the groove, and started wailing on dead guys' noggins. And I'd say that Andrea couldn't deny the thrill she felt, either, the little minx. That package-grabbing Come Hither in the car with Shane? That's post-apocalypse forward, right there. [And would also have been the perfect moment to cue up The Pretenders' “Middle of the Road,” but alas, no.]

Watching the suburban story of Shane and Andrea play out over the course of this episode, I couldn't help but think how complex it was beneath the surface, how many different psychological dynamics were at play, how multilayered each piece of the conversation seemed to be. This kind of deep, well-informed meditation is one of my favorite parts of the show, and I think the writers do a good job of bringing these issues into play without overdoing it.

Another good example from this episode was the conversation between Glenn and Lori after he returned from his eventful drugstore run. The group as a whole feels very fractured right now to me, with even the continued search for Sophia not much of a team effort. Last week's dinner scene may have been the first time all season that everyone's been in the same place at once, and we saw how lighthearted and comfortable that turned out. The only way to pull the group back together into something resembling a team is to stop thinking of themselves as individuals. Glenn's entreaty that Lori not make her decision alone was as honest and unselfish as anything I've seen anyone say on this show and a great example of the kind of attitude that will save their lives on a daily basis.

Nikki: Agreed. Glenn might have no guile, according to Dale, but he’s got a lot of heart. The abortion issue is interesting because it seems to be something that everyone has an opinion on. I’m sure people at home got fired up watching this, whether they agreed with what Lori is doing (it’s her body, after all, and the rest of them don’t have to carry a baby to full term while outrunning walkers, getting no sleep, and being constantly hungry and/or nauseous) or disagreed with it (shouldn’t Rick or Shane get a say in the matter? What about the group morale, the fact that they’re all in this together? Haven’t they proven to her that they’d work this all out together?) The writers certainly dig up enough fodder for both sides, with Lori confused and scared, Maggie self-righteous and angry, Rick baffled and worried, Dale reassuring and anecdotal, and Glenn trying to be the unsure voice of reason.

Glenn has really come a long way. I know we talked about him last week, but this week, as you say, he delivers that great line to Lori. When we first saw him in season 1, he was the voice on the other end of the walkie calling Rick an asshole or something (if I recall correctly) and quickly racing through the streets of Atlanta, saving Rick’s butt. He draped decomposing body parts on himself and shuffled through the streets, and in that scene he looked absolutely terrified, a big difference from that first appearance. There has always been fear in Glenn, but there’s usually some pretty quick-thinking in there, too. The zombie attack in the pharmacy this week showed us more of that first-season Glenn again. He’s scared, yes – he was probably frightened out of his mind when he was talking in the walkie to Rick, to be honest – but he’s quick to the draw, immediately pulling one of the boards off the shelf, running at the walker, and beating the undead crap out of it to save Maggie’s life. (There was much cheering on our couch in that scene. Well, between the, “Ugh… oh, EWWW… gaaahhh… okay, tell me when he’s stopped crunching its face in…”) It was a poignant scene, actually, because maybe when faced with a walker that’s about to eat her, Maggie might be forced to stop thinking of the creatures in the barn as “Mom” and “Big brother.”

Josh: You bet – or else, right? I also thought Glenn's stuff this week was awesome. (In fact, at one point in my notes I may have written, “Can I be in love with Glenn, too?” Maybe.) He comes across as such an unlikely survivor and serves as a great everyman for the audience, sort of an embodiment of the idea that we never truly know what we are capable of until extenuating circumstances bring our limits to the fore. The relationship with Maggie has been so sweet and well-handled so far, and I hate to think how he'd take it should anything happen to her. Here's hoping we don't ever have to find out.

Bits & Bobs:

• “You're pregnant. You need vitamins, medicine, a nice pillow...”

• LOVE Carl in the hat. Really hope that lasts.

• Rick's new non-cop shirt looks exactly like his old uniform shirt this week, only with stripes.

• For whatever reason, when Lori approached Hershel at the fence, I was sure she was going to tell him about the pregnancy until he completely threw her off balance by telling her he expected them to leave when Carl had recovered. Anyone else?

• Using that raggedy axe with the duct-taped handle is the most dangerous thing I've seen Glenn do yet. Looks slightly safer than streaking through the barn smothered in fresh brains.

• “What do you call 'em?” “Mom.” Ooh, burn!

• I know it's just an aesthetic thing, but a post-apocalyptic landscape and a Hyundai are a lousy match. So thanks, product placement, for ruining my suspension of disbelief. (Also, I hope we aren't expected to believe that car's back seat is big enough to accommodate sex, even if it is just the angry, cursory been-capping-zombies-and-kinda-need-to-hump-now variety.)

Well, folks, that's all I have for this week. The holiday special we promised you guys will have to wait for next week's big midseason finale edition, as familial obligations have us both stretched too thin this week to get it together. I've found some awesome stuff, though, so as you begin your shopping blitzkrieg this weekend, be sure to save out a few bucks for jerky and gigantic knives, and come join us then!

Buffy Rewatch Week 47

2011-11-22T20:00:00.001-05:00

7.7 Conversations with Dead People
7.8 Sleeper
7.9 Never Leave Me

Follow along in Bite Me!, 326-334.

If you’re watching Angel, the episodes this week are:

4.7 Apocalypse, Nowish
4.8 Habeas Corpses
4.9 Long Day’s Journey

Follow along in Once Bitten, pp. 259-265.

Or maybe you won’t be able to read the pages in Once Bitten because your eyes are bleeding from the sight of Connor and Cordelia together. (I STILL don’t think I’ve gotten over that. Blecccchhhh.) We’ve finally seen The Beast on Angel and, funny story (only in retrospect), I met the Beast, Vladimir Kulich, in 2003, I think it was. I was at some fan gathering and he was wandering around, and I was back in another section and suddenly he came up behind me and said, “Well, hello there, would you like to take a picture with me?” completely out of the blue. And his voice sounds EXACTLY like The Beast. I think I first peed my pants, then turned around to see him, and looked up, up, WAY up (my first Friendly Giant reference!) and saw him. We took the picture (my scanner isn’t working and I only have it in print – remember the days before digital cameras?!) and I think I look like I’m going to cry in the photo. Scariest celeb picture ever. Then I had to go change my pants. (But seriously, he was actually a very nice guy.)

But now over to S7 of Buffy, where the Big Bad has been revealed to us finally, and… it’s one we encountered before. Buffy says she knows who the Bringers are, and who the First is, and we saw all of this back in the season 3 episode, “Amends.” If you’ll recall, back then Angel was visited by ghosts of people he’d killed, and he went up on the hill to kill himself when the daylight would come, but Buffy talked him out of it before a miracle occurred and the sun didn’t show its face. That was the First playing with Angel’s head, and it’s waited four long years to return and play with Buffy’s. And Spike’s. And Andrew’s, Willow’s, and Dawn’s.

Now, let’s look at Dawn first. In “Conversations with Dead People” (one of my all-time favourite episodes) we see a new side to Dawn, a backbone and bravery and fierce courage in the face of blinding terror. That flash of white-eyed Joyce reaching out her arm to Dawn while being held down on the couch by a crazy-scary human-sized charred Gollum-type figure sends a chill down my spine worse than just about anything in the series. I think it’s actually scarier than the Gentleman going by the window just as Olivia’s looking outside in “Hush.” But Dawn doesn’t flinch. She develops a communication system with Joyce (knock once for yes, twice for no, another scene that freaks me out completely), does a magic spell, and doesn’t stop even when she’s being slashed to bits, like a little version of Willow from “Bargaining.” Was the final image of Joyce the real Joyce shining through the darkness, or was it the First playing with Dawnie’s head?

The big problem people have with this episode is that Cassie appears to Willow instead of Tara. Just like the death of Tara, it truly divided fans who said it wouldn’t have worked if Tara had shown up because that would have been far too painful vs. those who said they wished Amber had been available to have shot this episode. And even that matter has fans divided among those who declare that Amber says she refused to play the part and turned down the opportunity to those who said she was actually in a play in London at the time and was unavailable. I tried to track down the truth and David Fury, one of the writers on the show, told me point blank she was unavailable, as did Jane Espenson, another writer on the show (read my episode guide entry for this episode to see her explanation of how Marti Noxon had to entirely rewrite the scene for Cassie and taking out Tara). I also spoke to someone representing Amber at the time, who confirmed that Amber had been busy at the time and unavailable and she would have loved to have returned to Buffy. But others say they’ve seen Amber at conventions and she’s said she simply refused. Maybe she’s just being swept up in the fan fervor, or maybe she’s telling the truth. Goodness knows, and in the end, it doesn’t much matter. Personally, I think it would have been more effective to have had Tara there. I find it baffling when people say it would have been too painful – right, and having young Dawn see her dead mother being strangled on the couch was all sunshine and puppy dogs? No, it was horrifying, and that’s why it worked.

But I think the writers did a good job of convincing us Cassie was the person to appear, and Alyson Hannigan is downright extraordinary in the scenes with her. When she looks up, with tears tumbling down her cheeks and tries talking to “Tara,” who she believes is in the room with her, my heart is breaking. I love Alyson Hannigan on How I Met Your Mother but I truly hope she finds a great dramatic acting gig after that show is done. She’s astounding.

Bibs and Bobs:
• The guy playing Holden will appear on Angel next season as a scientist.
• Do the Summers women really like Spanish music? In S5, Buffy is washing dishes in “Listening to Fear” and she flips on some sort of salsa music really loudly, and the moment she turns on the radio it’s on that station. In this episode, Dawnie turns on the radio and it’s on that station. An interesting choice.
• Buffy: “I commit! I’m committed. I’m a committee.” Hahaha!

“Conversations with Dead People” is the ultimate “going back to the beginning episode. Through the First’s manipulations, we revisit the deaths of Cassie, Tara, and Joyce, as well as Jonathan’s experiences in high school (the guy who took a rifle into the clock tower to commit suicide misses high school?!), Spike’s previous bad boy persona, and Buffy’s entire psychological trajectory throughout the season. It’s a shame that Xander is absent from the episode, but it would have been one too many people.

Pay close attention to the opening song of the episode, which is sung by Angie Hart of Frente! fame, and was written by Hart and Joss Whedon for the ep. One of the best scholarly papers I’ve ever heard was delivered in Arkansas in 2008 by Rhonda Wilcox, where she deconstructed the song line by line and talked about how perfect it was in light of season 7. Unfortunately I couldn’t find that paper published anywhere, but Rhonda, if you’re reading this and you did get it published, please let us know where we can find it! It was brilliant. The last word of the song is “alone,” and the idea of doing things alone versus being part of a group will become a key factor in S7.

Speaking of music, how awesome is Aimee Mann at the Bronze? Totally unfazed in a dazzling striped suit. It reminded me of a friend of mine, who is the lead singer of a prominent band who had a big Billboard hit (and they appeared on SNL) and she and her husband are HUGE fans of Buffy, and I remember the time she was telling me all about how she practically begged to be on the show, but her band was simply too big and Joss wanted to promote independent talent. Dammit. (Her band’s album became a focal point of an episode of True Blood instead.)

Sleeper looks at Spike’s personal hell and how he’s being driven mad by one particular song:
Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a young maid sing in the valley below.
Oh, don't deceive me, Oh never leave me.
How could you use a poor maiden so?

Why that song? Maybe the First is Canadian (Canadians know that song as the theme song for the children's show, "The Friendly Giant" -- second reference!!) which would be consistent with the Lost idea that Canadians are evil. But as for the song, stay tuned… you’ll find out. Needless to say, the song is enough to trigger the big bad in him, and turn him into the soulless demon he once was, pre-chip, pre–Buffy lust. Can he fight the anger within? Angel loses his soul when he gets a big happy, and he can’t be easily turned back. Spike’s evil turns on and off, and they need to get to the bottom of that switch.

But someone who WANTS to be evil and isn’t is Andrew. As the member of the Troika whose name NO ONE can remember (“whatshisname” makes me laugh every time), he’s now back and will be funnier in every episode he’s in. The death of Jonathan was really sad for me, as we see how far he’d come from the scared unhappy nerd in the clock tower, but now Andrew (“THAT’LL DO PIG!!!!” hahahahahaha) is the last one of his gang. Will the others let him survive?

All I can say is, I hope Anya and Xander are heading up all future interrogations.

Meanwhile, over in merry olde England, the Watcher’s Council got blowed up real good. But can I just take this moment to mention once again how useless I’ve always thought the WC was? There’s one girl in all the world, and her name is Buffy. Well, and Faith. And the WC seems to know absolutely nothing about either of them. They’re not in contact with Buffy, nor have they done a thing to get Faith out of prison. So… if their job is to watch the Slayer, and they have no contact with them, what exactly are they doing? Researching apocalyptic events? That’s all well and good, but if they don’t pass their findings on TO THE SLAYER it’s not a lot of good, now, is it? Frankly, I remember watching them go boom at the time and thinking, “Oh well…” And I still feel that way.

But… Giles…

This week’s guest is my coworker (our desks are right next to each other) and fellow companion guide writer, and we’ve edited each other’s writing before. It’s the lovely Crissy Calhoun! Her first book was on Gossip Girl but she’s since moved into the vampiric realm with me and has written books on The Vampire Diaries. Her book, Love You To Death was a hit with fans, so much so that she released a book on the second season a couple of months ago. If you are a TVD fan (and I will be soon… no really, Crissy, I WILL get those season 1 DVDs back to you soon!) you can follow her weekly recaps at Vampire-Diaries.net, and follow her on Twitter here.

Take it away, Crissy!

Here we go.

Rather unintentionally, I’ve landed on a trio of episodes that form a turning point in the final season of Buffy: the Big Bad makes its presence known and Buffy figures out that it’s in fact the Biggest Bad, Spike comes to realize just how many layers there are in the blooming onion of his identity crisis (in large part brought on by the First), and thanks to an impromptu therapy session in a cemetery, Buffy takes one step closer to understanding the complex complexities that drive her — and ultimately guide her as she takes on the First.

To begin at the beginning, “Conversations with Dead People” opens with a montage set to “Blue” (a song so perfect for the episode you’d think it was written just for it . . . oh wait, it was) and we see Buffy on patrol, like we’ve seen her a hundred times before, alone in the cemetery — alone among the dead and undead. It’s the perfect visual to set up the coming dissection of her personality with Holden: as the slayer she is isolated, there’s only one of her (“pretty much”), and in some ways she is superior to her friends. She has superhuman strength and a calling; just watch her slay those two Bringers in “Never Leave Me” and it’s doubtless than Buffy is far better than your average badass, she’s an epic heroine. But coupled with that superiority complex is her feeling that she’s much, much worse — not only for believing that she’s better than her loved ones but for, as Buffy says, “what I’ve let myself become,” the darkness and pain that fuel her (as Spike figures out). The disconnect between her identity as slayer and as human being, between being moral and needing to kill and inflict pain on a daily basis has been part of Buffy’s struggle since the beginning, but post–death and resurrection, the darkness has amped up. It means that now more than ever Buffy is alone.

“Conversations…” features all of our characters in isolation, and for Dawnie, the fun and freedom of being a teenager home alone — pizza, dance parties, trying on your sister’s clothes, playing with her crossbow… — twists into the absolute horror of having no one there for you. The haunting absence of her mother, which the Summers girls live with daily, becomes nightmarish as Joyce reappears on the couch where she died (and with the creepiest creeper creeping on her). Just as “Blue” is used to create mood and set up the theme in the opening and close of the episode, we hear the most menacing salsa in the history of television, as the First haunts Dawn. In fact, all three of these episodes have great Buffy music moments: Spike’s trigger is the lilting song “Early One Morning” that takes on a sinister edge, and in what is my favorite Bronze performance scene ever, Aimee Mann’s “Pavlov’s Bell” is interrupted as the vampire Spike sired falls from the balcony and dusts on the ground. “I hate playing vampire towns.”

As with the music, so with the comedy: it all comes together to create that quintessential Buffy tone that’s often imitated, never duplicated. Part of that comes with the strength of six seasons and trust that the audience gets it. Andrew (Tyler’s brother) is a prime example of that, giving us the lightest comic touches with a dark edge. He adopts Spike’s look after killing Jonathan but can’t kill the little piggie. The butcher mocks his “Neo” look. And in a classic scene, Willow and Andrew have a standoff in the alley, threatening each other; it’s hilarious, but actually they are both murderers.

And there we come back around to the difference between “bad people” and “people who do bad things.” Why doesn’t Buffy kill Spike like any other murderous vampire? Why don’t the Scoobies judge Buffy for violence she’s perpetrated? Why is Willow allowed to go unpunished?

Penance. As Buffy tells Spike in that brilliant scene in the basement in “Never Leave Me,” she saw his penance, she saw him face the monster inside and fight back. Between the chip, the soul, and the song, Spike’s been having a rough go of it, unable to sort out how much of a baddie he is. He’s been controlled by the First, made into a murderous puppet, but even as he seems to be breaking free of that by the end of “Never Leave Me” he knows what he, alone, is capable of. He chillingly reminds Buffy of what kind of a vampire he’s been, taking pleasure in violence and in his victims’ pain. But she won’t stop him: she believes in him, and he can stop himself. Wresting control away from the First, breaking free from the psychological manipulation and influence, and becoming more man than monster is the battle Buffy wants Spike to fight and win. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly what she needs to do herself.

For me, the Spike/Buffy “I believe in you” dynamic is an interesting one to watch in light of this season of The Vampire Diaries, where we have a bad/gone good/gone bad again vampire that will at some point have to wrestle with an existence post–killing rampage and a heroine whose belief in him as someone innately good could easily fall into the realm of lady-writing-love-letters-to-a-jailed-serial-killer. But Buffy’s belief in Spike isn’t reckless (she chains him up, after all); it’s believable. How do you give up on someone when you know their potential?

The fight to be “masters of our fate, captains of our souls” — as Quentin Travers so sagely quotes to Lydia before being blown to smithereens — is hard enough without the First Evil’s diabolical plans, but it’s the struggle at the heart of this trio of episodes and, arguably, season 7 as a whole.

Thank you, Crissy!

Next week: Jennifer K. Stuller is back to guest host, and you’ll find out the reason why I ♥♥♥ Xander so much.

7.10 Bring on the Night
7.11 Showtime
7.12 Potential

And if you’re watching Angel, enjoy the return of one of my favourite Whedonverse characters!

4.10 Awakening
4.11 Soulless
4.12 Calvary

See you next week!

Buffy Rewatch Week 47: Spoiler Forum

2011-11-22T19:59:00.000-05:00

And here's the place where we can talk spoiler-free about what the implications were of the First's hauntings in "Conversations with Dead People" and what Spike will ultimately mean to Buffy (and everyone) in the finale. Sigh. No fear of spoilage here, so talk away!

Fringe: The Season So Far…

2011-11-21T23:30:00.001-05:00

So, here’s what I don’t like about Fringe being on Friday nights: it’s on Friday nights. And apparently I always seem to be busy/out/going away for the weekend and I never watch it on Friday night, but days later, sometimes weeks later, and therefore it’s not worth blogging about by the time I get to it. (Yet when I look back, I can’t name one place I’ve been to on a Friday night so I have no idea why I never seem to be in. Maybe I’m just going to sleep at 8 or something.)

But it’s really worth talking about, because Fringe has been truly fantastic this season. The best sci-fi is the stuff that has heart. You can have plots that revolve around fringe science or transporter beams or experiments gone awry and you can get as technical and scientific as you want, but if the show doesn’t contain real characters with real emotions, it’s not going to truly pull in the audience.

This season on Fringe, Peter was missing for the first part of it, since he’d been erased from the memories and lives of the characters we thought we knew. The writers cheated a bit, having the Observers say he never existed at the end of season 3 (leading to a unanimous chorus of “WHAAAAA?!” from the audience) and having them alter that at the beginning of season 4, saying instead that they don’t remember him having been there. In a poignant scene, Broyles comments that people can leave imprints on the souls of others, suggesting that the universe can try to remove Peter from everyone’s lives, but he’s made such an imprint on them they can never truly forget him. Olivia begins having dreams about him, and Walter covers every reflective surface in his house, convinced he is seeing a strange man who’s trying to talk to him. He’s part of them, and can’t completely disappear.

But now Peter’s back, and he’s convinced these aren’t actually the people he knew and loved. These aren’t just those people with different lives; this is an alternate universe. Going back to Hugh Everett III’s Many Worlds theory, in this case these people chose to live a life without Peter (or had that choice taken from them) and a new universe opened where they would live their lives without him, while the other one – the one Peter knows and remembers – was happening simultaneously. Peter is now trying to figure out a way to get over to THAT world and leave this broken one behind. In this world we’re starting to root for Lincoln and Olivia to get together. In this world Nina was a surrogate mom for Olivia (but seems to still be evil by the end of this week’s episode!) In this world Walter is an agoraphobic who never had Peter with him to bring him out of his shell.

In this world, they have a link to the other world. But even IT is different than the alternate world we know from the other timeline. In this world, Walternate hates Walter because he took his son and caused his death, not because he knows Walter has Peter out there somewhere. Alt-Olivia is still pretty much the same as the one we know, with the same swagger and attitude, but we’ve only seen her once or twice in the season. Most of the action’s been over on this side.

In this week’s episode, Peter smiles as Lincoln tells him what Olivia means to him. Peter is happy for them, not jealous that this woman doesn’t remember him, because he’s convinced this is a different woman than the one he knows. Is he right? Or is this the same world, where things ended up different? Does he have a place in any universe at the moment?

The weekly stories, too, have shown a lot of heart. I've been brought to tears several times this season, including this week's "Wallflower" episode. We see “Eugene” (named coldly after the unique genetic code he possessed, hence the u-gene moniker), a man who was born so sensitive to light that he was invisible, and who was raised in labs where scientists tried to harness what was wrong with him. (An invisible man?! Just THINK what the military would give for THIS technology!) But as he says to Olivia, “I’ve spent my life watching other people live theirs.” His life has been robbed, and all he wanted was so simple – to be seen. In a world where so many people hang their heads or put on sunglasses and hats and wear blacks and greys to blend in, this one man realized the importance of being seen, of being noticed (see Buffy S1 episode, “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”). He longed for the woman in the elevator to notice him, and was killing people just to get the pigmentation from them that would allow him to be seen for a few moments every morning, by her. When she finally turns around and tells him that she noticed him all along, and introduces herself to him, he calls it the most beautiful day. And then she leaves, and he dies. Happy.

The second episode of the season featured the two worlds, where a serial killer in one world was eluding the police, so they pulled in his alt-world counterpart, a professor who was fascinated with serial killers. They pulled him over to look at the man’s house, but when he saw one of his own childhood photos hanging there, he went completely mental. He eventually came face to face with his counterpart, and saw where a few different choices in his life could have led him. It was a terrific episode, and once again made us look into ourselves. What moments in our lives – possibly ones that seemed insignificant to us at the time – were the ones that truly shaped who we are? (See Doctor Who S4 episode, “Turn Left.”)

These characters have been through hell, have been used and abused, don’t know who to trust, and are trying to change a world that constantly seems against them. But they find joy in that world, and do the best they can with it, and look for the colour and beauty that’s out there. In previous seasons we’ve seen many sunny days, but this season tends to be dark and colourless, as if suggesting that without Peter, that’s what the world has become.

This season has seen superb performances from its cast. Joshua Jackson is as good as he’s ever been, and Seth Gabel is amazing. I’ve loved him since Dirty Sexy Money, and even I’m rooting for him and Olivia to get together. Jasika Nicole continues to be one of my favourite characters as the sweet-natured Astrid, putting up with Walter with a kind-hearted affection yet professionalism.

However, the true tour de force performances have been from John Noble and Anna Torv. As Walter, Noble has played him as a crazy genius with a penchant for sweets and an immense love for his son. As this season’s Walter, he still loves his sweets, still taunts Astrid (he doesn’t have the closeness to her that seasons 2 & 3 Walter did), but he’s afraid of the man claiming to be his son, and is forever haunted by the fact that he didn’t just lose one, but two Peters. He’s played Walternate as haughty and conniving, and he’s played him as utterly broken. Anna Torv has played Olivia, Alt-Olivia, Alt-Olivia pretending to be Olivia, Olivia pretending to be Alt-Olivia, Olivia channeling Leonard Nimoy, and now this universe’s Olivia (and even this universe’s Alt-Olivia, which had subtle differences from the other). She’s extraordinary, and I wish more people were watching the show just so they could see her.

Yes, Fringe is better than ever. Are you watching?