Buffy Rewatch Week 2 Spoiler Forum

Welcome to this week's spoiler forum for the rewatchers; post here if you'd like to talk about this week's episodes in a context of future episodes:

1.4 Teacher's Pet
1.5 Never Kill a Boy on the First Date
1.6 The Pack

First, rather than put my spoiler comments in white, I've decided this is a better home for them. Go here first to read the full rewatch post (only spoilery stuff is here; everything else is in the other post). And my brief comments will be followed by the uncensored version of David Lavery's post from this week. (I've put his credentials in non-spoiler post above.)

Spoilery bits:
• “Never Kill a Boy”: I howled when Giles popped up from the tombstone and immediately began reading off his criticisms (“it should be plunge and move on, plunge and move on!”). It’s the very kind of behaviour he’ll later roll his eyes at Wesley (my beloved Wesley) for doing, and he’ll tell off the Watcher’s Council for being so damn stuffy.
• The Master slams the book shut and says, “Here endeth the lesson,” a line that will be remembered by Buffy fans more as the way Spike ends his backstory in “Fool for Love” when he tells Buffy all about who he really was.
• Cordy’s line, “Hel-LO, salty goodness!” will later be used in the Angel episode, “Spin the Bottle,” when everyone reverts back to their 17-year-old selves and she once again sees Angel for the first time.
• David Lavery makes this same point in his essay below, but I also wondered why Buffy seems like a bit of a dullard in the library, and yet in S4 she’ll be making references to William S. Burroughs.

“Can I just say one thing? HEEEELLLLP! HEEEELLLLP!”
— Xander to Mrs. French (the she-mantis) in “Teacher’s Pet”

When the episodes I’ve just rewatched originally aired, I was paying no attention. (You can read a brief account of my “coming-to-Buffy” in Season 4 experience here.) Nor have I ever been a big fan of BtVS S1. I have even been known to discourage potential future adherents to skip the entire season and begin their Buffy immersion with S2 (in the hope such a navigation of the verse would more likely lead to love/addiction).

My critical opinion of two of my three rewatchables was, nevertheless, high: I’ve long considered “Never” and “Pack” among the strongest from Buffy’s rookie season. “Teacher’s Pet,” on the other hand, I had filed away in my memory as a BBF (Buffy Bottom Feeder), an episode every bit as lame as, say, “Inca Mummy Girl” or “Beer Bad.” (I know, I know: judging television episodes is an exercise in critical relativity, and the worst Buffy may still be pretty good television.) I am happy to report that while “Never” and “Pack” remain worthy, “Pet” has improved with age.

That Joss Whedon half-expected Buffy to be canceled after only one season is well known. The series’ signature “flexi-narrative” formula (the term is Robin Nelson’s) — one season = the struggle with and defeat of a singular Big Bad, punctuated with “Monster of the Week” episodes — was a fortunate side-effect. Like most initial seasons of long-running series, Season 1 BtVS shows Whedon and company uncertain about a number of other matters as well, still calibrating, if you will, its most basic assumptions. In my three episodes the calibration is almost audible.

For example, Buffy’s Summers’ IQ is still in doubt. Though her verbal kicks are as quick and accurate as her physical ones, the young woman who will later earn an SAT score good enough to gain admission to Northwestern does not always seem the sharpest tool in the shed. Consider the entrance of Owen Thurman into the library in “Never”:

Owen: I lost my Emily. Dickinson. It's dumb, but I like her around. Kind of a security blanket.
Buffy: (awkwardly) I have something like that. Well, it's an actual blanket. Uh, and I don't really carry it around anymore . . . So! Emily Dickens, huh? She's great!
Owen: Dickinson.
Buffy: She's good also.

Even allowing for her smittenness with Owen’s Owenocity in this scene, this level of dumb seems incompatible with the intelligence Buffy exhibits in her smack down of a vamp in the episode’s teaser:

We haven't been properly introduced. (pulls out a stake) I'm Buffy, and you're history!

or later in the same episode in the following exchange with her Watcher:

Giles: If your identity as the Slayer is revealed it could put you and all those around you in grave danger.
Buffy: Well, in that case I won't wear my button that says, “I'm a Slayer. Ask me how!”

Nor have Whedon and Company, or David Boreanaz for that matter (who shows little evidence of acting ability until Season 2), yet figured out Angel. Though it is abundantly clear (as Xander notes in “Pet”) that he is “a very attractive man,” radiating “salty goodness” (Cordelia in “Never”), it is by no means certain yet that he is a hero. Angel in my rewatchables reminded me — nota bene: odd comparison ahead — of Kramer in the first two partial seasons of Seinfeld — before Seinfeld, David, and Richards realized the character’s potential as a “hipster doofus.”

Nor is the continuity precisely calibrated yet. When Giles tells his charge (in “Never”) that he always wanted to be a fighter pilot, the confession seems a bit odd coming from the Ripper of “The Dark Age,” and his insistence that he has no instruction manual is of course contradicted by Kendra’s knowledge of one (“What’s My Line,” Parts I and II). And what’s with the vampire look? All vampires at this point seem to be Master lookalikes. Later, John Vulich and company will go lighter on the latex.

On the other hand, Xander and Cordelia are already fully and completely themselves. It is revealing, is it not, that two of my three rewatchables (“Pet,” “Pack”) — from the middle of Season 1 — are Xandercentric. I suspect so much Xander so early in BtVS reflects a great deal of comfort in the writers room with both Mr. Harris and Nicholas Brendon’s portrayal of him.

I had entirely forgotten till this rewatch that “Pet” begins with a “Superstary” dream sequence in which, like Jonathan Levinson in Season 4, our beloved Zeppo takes over the narrative and becomes the Slayer’s savior, kicking a vampire’s butt, and then, in a “Restlessy” moment mounting the stage in the Bronze to perform. (When Buffy awakes him from his biology class nap with the words “You're drooling,” the omniscient among us can’t help but flash forward to Buffy’s own “minimal drool” in “Hush.”)

If Brendon excels as dream-Xander, he shines as well as the virgin about to be the recipient of Mrs. French’s eggs in the final scene of “Pet” and, even more significantly, as the Hyena-possessed bad boy of “The Pack.” (Like Boreanaz, the dark side serves for Brendon as a performance enhancer.) I find “The Pack” difficult to watch, genuinely scary.

And what are we to say about Charisma Carpenter’s role as the poster child for meanness? Consider her Principal Flutie ordered (“Heal!” “Heel!”) meeting with a grief counselor (after finding Dr. Gregory’s corpse):

I don't know what to say, it was really, I mean, one minute you're in your normal life, and then who's in the fridge? It really gets to you, a thing like that. It was . . . let's just say I haven't been able to eat a thing since yesterday. I think I lost, like, seven and a half ounces? Way swifter than that so-called diet that quack put me on. Oh, I'm not saying that we should kill a teacher every day just so I can lose weight, I'm just saying bright side. You know?

I am sure I am not alone in identifying this kind of black humor one of the things I love most about Buffy and no one brings it better than Queen C.

Giles, too, with the exception of his possibly inconsistent backstory, is recognizably Giles. Consider, for example, this wonderful exchange with Buffy in “Never”:

Giles: Alright, I-I'll just jump in my time machine, go back to the twelfth century and ask the vampires to postpone their ancient prophecy for a few days while you take in dinner and a show.
Buffy: Okay, at this point you're abusing sarcasm.

Gilesish to the max.

Thanks to this rewatch I don’t think I will be recommending “go directly to Season 2” in the future. “Teacher’s Pet,” “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date,” and “The Pack” may not be my favortist Buffys, but they remain inescapable — like puberty.

Miscellaneous Notes, Queries, and Observations
• Buffy will give us several mean teachers over its run, but “Pet” give us perhaps its nicest, Dr. Gregory (“one of the few teachers who don’t think Buffy’s a felon”—as Willow observes) and then, in classic Whedon fashion, immediately kills him. It will come as no surprise in “The Prom” (3.20).
• Will we ever again see Xander as one of the girls (as he is in “Never”)? Take note, in a further act of emasculation, Xander (in the epilogue of “Never”) sips on a juice box in a very Andrew-like manner.
• In her attempted extrication from Owen’s interest in the life of danger at the end of “Never,” Buffy insists “It’s not you, it’s me.” Has Buffy been watching Seinfeld and fallen under the influence of George Costanza?
• In “Never,” we get the following exact duplication of lines (both, of course, describing Buffy):

Giles: She is the strangest girl!
Owen: (to Angel) She's the strangest girl!

• In case you did not know: Musetta Vander, the South African actress who plays Natalie French in “Pet,” would later play one of the Sirens in Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother Where Art Thou? (Nikki note: She also played an Amazon on Xena among many other small roles in genre TV.)
• I had forgotten that key School of Whedonite David Greenwalt (an essential Angel contributor as well) wrote “Pet.”
• When the vampire (with a giant claw) runs in terror from Natalie French, did anyone else hear?
• Xander: Generally speaking, when scary things get scared: not good. (“Dead Man’s Party,” 3.2)
• In “Restless” (4.22), Xander tells Apocalypse-Now-Principal-Snyder “how glad I was you were eaten by a snake.” On the other hand, I was really, really sorry to see Flutie eaten by The Pack. Wonderful character, played by Ken Lerner, the brother of Michael Lerner, the actor (yes, another Coen Bros. reference) who gave us mogul Jack Lipnick in Barton Fink.
• Some very nice indie music at the Bronze in all three episodes — a Buffy trademark.
• Perhaps it’s just me, but I would lose the “to be continued” ending of “Pet.”
• Television directors tend to be invisible. (Whedon would not himself direct an episode until the Season 1 finale, “Prophecy Girl.”) Two of my three episodes were directed by Bruce Seth Green, a twenty year industry veteran, who came to Buffy with an impressive resume that included assignments on the following TV series: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, American Gothic, Xena: Warrior Princess, Babylon 5, Law & Order, I'll Fly Away, Swamp Thing, Doogie Howser, M.D., Baywatch, MacGyver, T.J. Hooker, V, Knight Rider, Magnum, P.I. After Season Two (in which Green helmed “Some Assembly Required,” “Nightmares,” “Halloween,” “The Dark Age,” “Ted,” and “Phases”), he would never work for the series again.
• On the DVDs, activation of each episode is accompanied by a Buffy witticism. When you play “Pet,” Buffy announces “We’re talking full-on Exorcist twist.” With “Never” we hear “If the apocalypse comes, beep me.” Nice.

Lost Movie Poster Mash-ups

(Thanks to redeem for the link.) Empire Online has posted a bunch of movie poster mash-ups in various categories, and one of them is Lost. A few of my faves:







Go here to see all of them. Sigh... I love Lost fans. ;)

My Blackberry's Not Working!

This one is for humanebean. ;)

A True Forehead-Smacking Moment

Over the holidays, we always head to London, Ontario, where our extended family lives. While there, I try to make a night where I can head over to my best friend Sue's house so we can catch up, exchange our Christmas gifts, and gab. This past Christmas, we were in the "gab" part of our evening when I noticed she had the game Scattergories under her tree. I asked her if someone had given it to her and she said yes, she's always loved the game. I told her I'd never played it. Her jaw dropped and she said, "Well then we MUST play it now!" She bounced off the couch, unwrapped it, and I played it for the first time. It's REALLY fun, but considering lately my brain feels like it's filled with molasses, it's not good for someone who takes as long as I do to answer (before Christmas we had friends over who have been engaged in a years-long Trivial Pursuit battle with us -- husbands vs wives -- and when the other woman and I were faced with the question, "What snack item introduced a 7-centimetre thick version called the Right Stuff in 1988?" I KNEW I knew the answer, and it took me about 10 minutes before I finally said, "Oh my god OREOS!!" to which the other husband, who was already beating his head against the table out of frustration, said, "That's it! We're using a timer from this point on." Hahahaha!)

Anyway, if you've never played Scattergories, you're given a card with 12 categories on it, like "Kind of gemstone" or "Brand of car" and there's a line you have to fill out beside each line (everyone has the same card of categories). Then someone rolls the die and it lands on one letter of the alphabet, and your answer has to begin with that letter.

OK. So. I had a bad habit of beginning to answer right at the top, and not scanning my eyes down the card to see what was to come, and then by the time I got to the end, I was almost out of time and couldn't think of anything. So the letter was F (not awesome) and I'm moving through these categories, drawing one blank after another (Nickname? Ugh... Four-eyes?) and I get to the last one, Book title. Oh my god, I can't skip this one. I have 2000 books at home, SOMETHING must begin with F. Finn. Huck Finn. Can I write "Finn, Huckleberry?" Quick glance at the rules and... no. What the hell begins with F? F. Scott Fitzgerald. That's a writer, you idiot. F... F... Finn. Finn. Suddenly that's all I could think of, and suddenly, "ENH!" Buzzer went off, I was out of time.

Now you compare your answers to your opponent's. Nickname: "Four-eyes?" Sue said, "I put Freckles." Oh come ON how did I not think of that??? She laughed and laughed. And then we got to the end. "I've got nuthin," I said. She looked up.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. Did you come up with something?"
"I did," she said. "And it happens to be sitting in this room... it's a little book called... Finding Lost?"

Sigh. I need to check my head for signs of the lobotomy surgery I seem to have forgotten about.

Happy 64th Birthday, Mr. Bowie!

Now, please, go on tour so I can see you again. It's been too long... xox

Lostaholics Anonymous: The Lost Top 10 Episodes

Last week someone posted on my Facebook page asking if I could recommend my top 10 favourite episodes of Lost. That was a really tough question, and honestly, I can't believe I never really thought about it before. (No, really, I hadn't! What is WRONG with me??) I knew what a couple of standouts were for me, and I can easily name favourite scenes and lines and moments, but episodes? Eek. That's a toughie. Often there would be a favourite flashback for me, but the corresponding on-island stuff wasn't as interesting, but in the next episode I'd love the on-island stuff and the flashback would be a little meh. So I guess I never really stopped to come up with anything.

But after he asked me that, I really had to think about it. I know what my favourite episode is, so that was easy, but how do I rank the others? I REALLY had to think about this one a lot, but I think I've come up with them. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind 10 minutes from now. ;) But what I'm really hoping is that this causes everyone else to come up with their top 10 and share them with all of us.

1. The Constant
2. Ab Aeterno
3. The End
4. Walkabout
5. Through the Looking Glass
6. The Shape of Things to Come
7. The Incident
8. The Cost of Living
9. Live Together, Die Alone
10. The Man Behind the Curtain

Buffy Rewatch: Week 1

**To leave comments with spoilers, go here.

Welcome to the Buffy Rewatch!!! Cue opening music:
[Creepy Vincent Price organ, werewolf, screechy guitar]: Nar... nar nar nar... [screamy sound with picture from The Witch]

OK, enough of that. I know some people thought that theme song was cheesy. I, on the other hand, LOVED it. Not as much as the Angel theme song, but the Buffy one fits the show perfectly.

This is my first time rewatching the first season of Buffy since 2002, when I was working on the second edition of my Bite Me book. That was a LONG time ago. I didn’t have kids back then, and I was still in my 20s. Ah... Those were the days. Bite Me was first released in 1998 with just the first two seasons in it, and then again in 2002 with the first six (and finally the complete “Chosen” edition came out in 2007 with all of the seasons). The books were all well reviewed, but I received one criticism over and over again: I was too harsh on Joyce, Buffy’s mother. I remember watching the show and finding her very ineffectual. She was too caught up in her own life and not noticing the immense trials and pain her daughter was going through. It’s not like she had three children, she just had one. She wasn’t taking into consideration that her daughter was dealing with losing her father after he’d run off and left them (more on that in future episodes, for those watching for the first time), and there are many scenes where she simply refuses to listen to Buffy. Now, I’m going to stand behind some of my thoughts in those upcoming scenes, but I have to admit, I watched these first few episodes very differently this time. Now I watch her as a calm, collected mother, who’s dealing with a daughter who, for all she knows, is a troublemaker who burned down her school’s gym. Her husband has just left her for someone else, and she’s alone and trying to make a go of it in a new town, with a new job, and desperately holding on to the hope that her daughter won’t eff this one up. She tries to stay calm with Buffy, but it usually backfires.

In “The Witch,” there’s a scene where Buffy trounces into the kitchen and talks about her tryouts, while her mom is too busy trying to open some crates to even pay attention to her. When Buffy asks her, “Mom, what am I trying out for?” Joyce pauses, closes her eyes, and admits she has no idea. I remember watching that and, while not condemning Joyce, thinking it was too bad that she couldn’t pay more attention to her daughter. But now I find I do the same things, that I’m busily working overtime every evening while my six-year-old is trying to talk to me, saying things like, “That’s great, honey, but Mommy REALLY needs to get this thing done quickly and then I’ll have LOTS of time to talk to you tomorrow!” and tomorrow never seems to come. Parents beat themselves up and are filled with guilt, and Joyce does that, too. In the scene at the end of The Witch, when Joyce comes into Buffy’s room and says she’s decided she simply doesn’t understand Buffy and isn’t meant to, I used to think that was a cop-out... it’s clear what’s wrong with Buffy, why can’t she see it? I thought. But now I can see why Joyce thinks that.

Maybe Buffy is a great parenting tool – by watching the show from Buffy’s perspective, you understand why she’s frustrated with Joyce all the time, and you can see what Joyce SHOULD have done in the scene. At the same time, watch it from Joyce’s perspective and you’ll see how confusing Buffy can be to her. Perhaps parents and children should all be watching this show together! But in any case, I’ve wronged you, Joyce. And for that, I’m truly sorry.

Watching these first episodes again, I'm immediately in love with the show all over again. I've created an army of Buffy converts over the years -- my DVDs (and before that, VHS tapes) are well worn and well loved -- but with each one I usually hand out the same caveat, and I'll say it to the new viewers here now: get through season 1. At times it'll seem a little monster-of-the-week, but the seeds of the series are there, and once you get into the gorgeous storyline of season 2 you'll be swept away. I defy anyone to get to the Surprise/Innocence combo and stop watching.

That said, if you're REwatching it, as I am, watching season 1 is an absolute joy. The dialogue is still crisp and sharp, the ensemble cast is wonderful (there are a few hiccups in the beginning but they get past them quickly), the relationships between characters are evident from the beginning.

I started this blog in 2006, when Buffy had been off the air for three years and Lost was heading into its third season. Which means... I've never gotten to blog on a Buffy episode! So this rewatch is as exciting for me as anyone else who will be guest commentating over the next year. I've decided I'm going to format my commentary the same way I did my weekly Lost observations, but on the weeks where I'm not the primary commentator (which will be only six weeks over the year!) I'll offer a quick take and let the guest commentator take over. You'll see below that I'll put the spoilery bits after each episode (and render them invisible to anyone who doesn't want to look at them). So if this is your first time watching the show, don't highlight those sections and you'll remain spoiler-free.

So, onto my observations for the first three episodes! Some of this might double what I said in my book, but since I haven’t reread my book, I can’t remember what I wrote there.

1.1 Welcome to the Hellmouth

Highlights:
• The very opening, where the innocent girl in the school uniform turns out to be the vicious monster. Right from the first seconds of the series, Joss subverts our expectations of what we’ve come to know about monster shows, and he’ll keep right on doing it throughout the series.
• Xander lines: Saying the library is “where the books live.” “Xander... is me... hi.” “The only thing I can think is that you’re building a really little fence.”
• The principal. Oh my GOD I loved Ken Lerner as Principal Flutie. When he begins taping up her records again after dramatically ripping them up, it always makes me laugh.
• ♥♥♥ Willow ♥♥♥ She’s always been my favourite character, and season 1 Willow is the version of her that you just want to reach out and hug and protect from the baddies. I adored her when I first saw her (I was also the kid in high school with clothes I picked out with my mom... a fact pointed out by the Cordys of my school) and I still adore her. I think once you’re the picked-on person, you’re always going to be.
• When Buffy walked into the library, I felt like I was home again.
• Giles. This first episode is just filled with the love I have for so many characters. I still think when he’s handing Buffy the books, her question about ordering the Time/Life series (and his stuttering response) is one of the best moments of season 1.
• Again, subverting our expectations, Giles attempts to give the big speech, and Buffy cuts him off and he realizes this Slayer isn’t going to be an easy one to deal with.
• Cordy lines: “I don’t mean to interrupt your downward mobility...” “Don’t you have an elsewhere to be?” “WHAT is your childhood TRAUMA?” “Excuse me, I have to call everyone I have ever met RIGHT NOW.”
• Buffy: “Isn’t that bizarre? Aren’t you just going... ooh?”
• Giles: “But you didn’t... hone.”
• Buffy: “Live in the now! You look like DeBarge!!”

Interesting notes:
• On the DVD opening page, there’s a picture of Buffy leaning forward, and she’s all boobs and stake (this was the season where Buffy actually had boobs... before she went and lost pounds she really didn’t need to lose). That was the original cover of my first book before it was redesigned. Ack.
• Charisma is 27 in the first season, playing the 16-year-old Cordy.
• I was looking in the background at the Bronze at all of the posters of indie bands and it occurred to me that probably 99.9% of the bands on the wall no longer exist.

Did You Notice?:
• I had totally forgotten about that annoying WB announcer voice that does the whole “Into each generation” bit. Don’t worry, for those watching the first time: Giles will eventually take over that line.
• Darla is SO young! For the newbies, you’re probably saying, “Hey, check out Rita!”
• For the most part, the pop culture references stand up. But lines like, “James Spader NEEDS to call me” will cause you to wince.
• When Buffy is walking through the alley, the guy who scares her is totally the dude from Bones!!
• When Cordelia pulls out her cellphone to call everyone she’s ever met, it’s the size of a car battery.
• The Master rising seemed pretty anticlimactic. BtVS was never big in the way of special FX. Even worse than Lost, sadly.
• When I was rewatching season 1 in 2002, my husband and I noticed that the prosthetics used in the mouths of the vampires got better as the seasons went on. In season 1, they can all barely talk. For years my husband and I will occasionally do our impressions of the vampires with giant chompers. “He wash young and shtupid! You’re shtrong... I’m shtronger! You think you can shtop us, Shlayer??”

Spoilery observations (only read this is this is a rewatch for you) Read below by highlighting the white section to magically make the words appear:
• Angel telling Buffy that he thought she’d be taller is a bit of an oops... we’ll find out in Becoming that he’s been following her around for ages, and knows exactly how tall she is.
• Throughout much of season 1 and 2, Willow will be the damsel in distress, and yet she’ll be the one who will eventually save them all.
• Buffy lying in the coffin foreshadows the beginning of season 6.


1.2 The Harvest

Highlights:
• “Written by Joss Whedon.” Four of my favourite words in the English language. When placed together like that, of course.
• “They can fly?” “They can drive.”
• “God! I am so mentally challenged!!”
• Giles calling the computer “that dread machine” and then pausing to say, “That was a bit... British, wasn’t it?” LOL!!
• The pool cue scene, where Buffy stakes the vamp without even looking, is CLASSIC. I actually backed it up and watched it twice.

Did You Notice?:
• I love Giles spinning the globe while he’s talking. He’s nothing if not dramatic.
• Buffy can leap over a fence in a single bound... something she can’t quite do later. Her super-hero-ness will continue to change throughout the series, and it’ll never be completely clear what she can and can’t do.
• Seriously, Buffy... you talk about bad clothing choices on other people and you’re not going to say a WORD about Angel’s purple velvet outfit? Really?? Speaking of DeBarge...
• Harmony! (Cordy’s blond friend in the computer class will become a bigger character in episodes to come.) The trick that Willow pulls on Cordy is something that could only be done on mid-90s IBMs. Cordy could just hit the Undo button now.
• Why does the doorman ask for the vampire’s IDs? No one in the Bronze is of age!
• “Don’t go Wild Bunch on me.” Joss Whedon is a big fan of Peckinpah’s ultraviolent Western, and will actually create two characters in a season 2 episode that are based on the characters in the movie... to fairly disastrous results (oh Bad Eggs... how you mar season 2...)
• In the two-part pilot you could see who was comfortable in their role already, and who still needed some work (within the next episode or two they’ll all have settled into their character roles). I always cringe at the scene where Cordy is holding court at the Bronze talking about the difference between juniors and seniors. She’s comfortable giving out the zingers, but in this scene she’s stilted. Darla’s not comfortable yet, Angel’s smarmy in a way he’s not by mid-season... but the Scoobies, for the most part, are just right.

Spoilery observations (only read this is this is a rewatch for you):
• I found Darla a little inconsistent in this episode with what we’ll later know about her. When we see her backstory with Angel, she’s rude and completely blasé around the Master, and controls every situation she’s in. She announces she’s gallivanting off with Angel and rubs the Master’s face in it, leaving him behind without a care. But here she’s worshiping him and cowering before him, completely different than the Darla she used to be. This, of course, can easily be chalked up to early episode problems that exist in every show, where a particular character wasn’t very completely drawn yet.
• Xander’s insecurities of being less than a man (something that will come up several times in the series) are something he finally comes to terms with and explains in season 7’s “Potential.”
• Giles, Xander, Buffy, and Willow all walk along the pathway where Angel will chase (and eventually kill) Jenny in Passion.
• At the end of the episode, Giles stands alone and says, “The earth is doomed.” This scene will be mirrored in the series finale, when the group all begins talking about menial things right before a big battle, and Giles repeats, “The earth is definitely doomed.”

1.3 The Witch

Highlights:
• Giles, in one of his classic lines: “That’s the thrill of living on the hellmouth. There’s a veritable cornucopia of fiends and devils and ghouls to engage. [everyone stares at him] Pardon me for finding the glass half-full.”
• Followed by one of the classic Xander lines: “I laugh in the face of danger... then I hide until it goes away.”
• Willow retorting, “Maybe because they met her?” after someone asks why a person wouldn’t like Cordelia... then following it with, “Did I say that?”
• The actress who plays Catherine is amazing. When she’s “Amy” she has her daughter’s facial expressions and gestures, and as the mother she seems to be mimicking the performance of Elizabeth Anne Allen.
• Giles getting jumped by the black cat and then saying, “Nice... kitty?”
• Right from the beginning of Giles’s relationship with Buffy, he becomes personally involved and is more caught up in her safety than being caught out as a Watcher.

Did You Notice?:
• Buffy wanting to have a life is an ongoing theme in the show, and the key to what makes it interesting. Another take on the mythology would simply set it up the way it’s supposed to be – girl gives up her life for mankind and the British man is her Watcher. But instead, Joss opens his mythology with the first Slayer who refused to play along, and instead only fills in the blanks piecemeal as you go along to see the person Buffy was expected to be.
• Cordy’s line, “Who does she think she is, a Laker girl??” was an inside joke; before appearing on Buffy, Charisma was a Laker girl.
• Willow mentions that she and Amy would stuff themselves with brownies. At the time I didn’t think anything of that line, but now I wonder... was this a suggestion that Amy had an eating disorder?
• Willow asks, “Do you actually ride a broom?” and later she’ll become rather hostile to people who makes stereotypical assumptions about witches.

Spoilery observations (only read this is this is a rewatch for you):
• Amy seems very sweet here, but after she ends up in the body of a rat for a few years, she won’t be such a nice gal. (Not to mention what she does in the season 8 comic!!)
• Cordy as the baddie in the locker room is SO weird after you’ve watched Angel and come to love her so much in that series.
• This is Willow’s first foray into witchcraft... knowing the witch she will become, it’s wild to watch her in the beginning, mixing the ingredients together and feeling tentative about what she’s doing.
• That axe is the same colour as a certain scythe that we’ll see in season 7.
• Watch for a scene in the following season where Oz is staring at the cheerleading trophy and comments on how the eyes follow you.

UPDATE: Someone just made the excellent comment below that there should be a separate forum where people don't feel bad about posting spoilers, where they can talk about the episodes openly. So what I'm going to do each week is post-date the rewatch post to go live at 8pm, but the spoilery comment post will appear at 7:59, so it'll appear underneath. So for all those out there who are rewatching and want to talk a lot about how these opening episodes affected later ones, please click to the next post and you can leave comments there.

Next week:
1.4 Teacher's Pet
1.5 Never Kill a Boy on a First Date
1.6 The Pack

Guest commentator: David Lavery

Buffy Rewatch Week 1 Spoiler Forum

Hello everyone! Someone just asked if there's a place where people can openly talk about the Buffy episodes without spoiling the new viewers, and this is the best solution I can think of for now. If you'd like to talk about the show in the context of the full series, please do so here. And feel free to jump back and forth between the forums to engage in the conversation. I can't guarantee this will work well (in the end we might just have to agree to one forum and people will have to be spoiled) but let's try it for now. ;) This will be the forum to discuss "Welcome to the Hellmouth," "The Harvest," and "The Witch" with as many spoilers as you'd like.

Most Mesmerizing TV Performance of 2010

I wrote up my favourite things of 2010 a few days ago, and I'm ashamed I forgot about adding something about this character in earlier. On Boardwalk Empire, there's a character played by Jack Huston named Harrow (a fitting name for the effect he has on people), who lost half his face in the Great War and has returned, horribly disfigured. He scares children, women, and even himself when, as he admits late in the season, he forgets what he looks like and accidentally peers into a mirror. He wears a mask on the show that covers half his face (this was a time when plastic surgery would have been expensive and couldn't have done what it did today, so I imagine these masks were more the norm) and seeing him on the screen is at once frightening and breathtaking. The mask itself is almost creepier than his actual face (which we see only once, fleetingly). He speaks in a growling voice (the blast that destroyed his face also permanently damaged his throat) and does so haltingly, because it's difficult to speak without drooling. As such, he can't drink or eat in front of others because he only has half his lips, and his one working eye constantly looks away from people while he talks to them, while the one in the mask stares constantly, almost daring the viewer to look away. Huston puts in a remarkable performance, and there was a scene in the episode where he was first introduced where he explains to Jimmy what happened to him that had me in tears. And every scene he's been in since that one makes me hold my breath to wait for him to speak. I'm completely taken with this character and hope he's in the show a lot more in its second season.

My Favourite Experience of 2010

I had a lot of fun experiences in 2010, but I think the best one was going to Universal Studios and seeing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter before it was open to the general public. It was one of those things I wanted to blog about all year since I did it, but sadly, didn’t get the chance to. So I will now!

I went to Universal Studios immediately following my Slayage trip, which I blogged about back in June (well... all except for the last day, which I sadly never got around to talking about!) On our first day at Universal Studios, my friends Sue, Ryan, and Ian were joined by Cynthea, who had delivered an amazing paper at Slayage a couple of days earlier. Ian had been following the Twitter feed that was telling people how to get into the Harry Potter portion of the park, and he said you just hang around and the guards will tell you it’s closed, but they’re just trying to thin the herd before they let the hangers-on in. So we did that, standing in the burning sun with the perspiration trickling down our backs, when finally a manager came out to say that no, they weren’t lying, there was something wrong with one of the rides. So a bunch of angry people went up and began screaming and yelling at him about how they’d come from miles away (one woman had flown from England and this would be her only chance) and he apologized. I stepped up and began chatting with him and he said to come back the next day, and explained they’d signed some agreement with JK Rowling that they would never open a portion of the park; if a ride was down, they’d close the entire thing. Fine. We decided we’d return the next day, but sadly, Cynthea was only with us the one day.

So instead we went off to Universal Studios and since we were all dying of the heat, we hit the water rides. Here’s Cynthea, Ian, Ryan, and myself after going on the Popeye water canyon the first time.



But they all complained that while my body was soaked, my hair was relatively dry, so we hit it again. And sure enough, my side of the boat got stuck under a waterfall... so here we are after THAT happened.



Even my underwear was soaked. And the Dudley Do-Right ride was even more fun. Dr. Seuss Land is possibly the happiest place on Earth (or maybe I was just so giddily and childishly happy to be walking through it). And The Simpsons ride... there are no words for how much I loved this ride! Here I am with my best friend Sue hamming it up with the Jaws shark.



The whole park was incredible. The rides were amazing, the rollercoasters were a ton of fun, and I felt like a kid again.

The next day we headed back to Harry Potter Land, and the guards at the front gate were mumbling about the park being open this morning, but they were yelling at the people in line (we’d shown up at the crack of dawn so we were first) that we could NOT run through the park, we had to walk. We looked at each other and squeed, thinking this was it. We were SO getting in. Doors opened, and we passed through and began speed-walking towards the Wizarding World. At one turn the couple in front of us asked a park attendant if the Harry Potter world was open and he said, “Yup, it is,” and Ian and I looked at each other and just tore off, to the sounds of, “DON’T RUN!!” behind us. Poor Sue and Ryan... we just left them in our wake. Sue said after it was so funny watching us running. We were as giddy as children, holding hands and practically skipping the entire way there.

When we got there, we walked through the doors and right in front of us was the Hogwarts train. “Magical” doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling of walking through this world. It was 100 degrees outside, yet the village was snow-capped and it actually made it feel cool as you walked through. Well... I shouldn’t say “walked.” See, for the “soft opening” of this exhibit, they were only keeping it open for about two or three hours in the morning, and Ian and I were desperate to get on the big ride that was inside Hogwarts, so we were racing all the way through Hogsmeade and figured we’d see it later. We got there, and we ended up about 20 minutes in line ahead of Sue and Ryan, who were happily waving at us from where they were. The lineup for the ride takes you through Hogwarts, and you pass through Dumbledore’s office, and a room where the kids are whispering on a balcony (the actors were filmed in three-dimensional film so it looks like they’re actually in the room with you, which is amazing) and Ron starts a thunderstorm and Hermione switches the spell to snowflakes, and suddenly snow begins falling on you from above. It was just jaw-dropping.

In the hallways the portraits were arguing with each other, and then... the ride. The ride seats four (I wish we’d had all four of us on it at once!) and your legs dangle below you. It’s a mix of the ride moving and film rushing past you making you feel like the ride is bigger than it possibly is. You’re involved in a Quidditch match (I honestly feel like I’ve played Quidditch) and you pass through the Forbidden Forest, where things happen that elicited blood-curdling screams from me (I won’t say what they are... go see for yourself!) and then the Dementors come and the smoke and mirrors that happen when they show up are just astounding. By the end of it, Ian and I were out of breath and just delirious with happiness. I was thrilled to have done it.

And then we all met up at the Three Broomsticks, where we had Butterbeer, which I think is a mixture of cream soda and ginger ale to give it a bit more bite, and then they put this butterscotch foam on the top that swirls down into the drink. It was AMAZING.



At the post office you could get postcards stamped with the Hogwarts stamp. In the wand shop there were special effects that swirled around you as you tested out wands, and they told you when you’d found the wand that had chosen you. Ian and I also went on the kiddie Hippogriff rollercoaster, which was a laugh and had a couple of surprisingly steep drops. In the window of the bookshop, copies of Magical Me – complete with moving pictures of Gilderoy Lockhart gracing their covers – were in the windows. There were posters throughout that moved as well. A Quidditch ball set sat in a window of a sporting shop, with the Bludgers jumping around in the box, desperate to escape. And in the sweets shop, two attendants dressed as wizards squealed when they saw my t-shirt, and begged me to tell them where they could get one, too.

In the past few months I’ve reread the first Harry Potter book to my daughter, and we’re now on Chamber of Secrets. I’ve also seen the latest Harry Potter film. And as I read the books and watch the movies, I feel like I’ve actually been there now. I’ve walked the halls of Hogwarts, I’ve played Quidditch, I’ve rubbed shoulders with people in The Three Broomsticks. If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, the Wizarding World at Universal Studios is a must-see experience. It’s truly amazing, and something I will never forget.

2010: The Year That Was

Happy new year everyone!! We can say goodbye to 2010 (thank god) and say hello to the promise and potential of a new year. After the year I had, I was cheering very loudly when that crystal ball fell last night on Dick Clark’s special... after, of course, watching the Backstreet Boys pair up with the New Kids on the Block in one of those “is this really happening?” moments that only television can truly bring to us. Then I completely embarrassed myself by knowing the names of every one of the NKOTB. Sigh.

As I’ve done in the past, I’m not going to offer top 10 lists, but instead just ruminate on some of my favourite things in the past year, pop-culture-wise. On January 1 of a brand new year, I no longer want to focus on the stress 2010 brought to me on many levels, but instead the good things it brought. Thanks to Lost, I was on page A1 of USA Today... I guest-hosted Space... I brought Finding Lost to a close and finished the final volume of the series... I met many of you at a couple of Nik at Nite meet-ups that I will always remember... my final book was blurbed by Jeff Jensen and David Lavery. And outside of Finding Lost, I got to travel to New York, London, Mexico, and Florida... my kids are beautiful and healthy and happy... I delivered a paper at an academic conference that was a success... there’s a lot to be happy about. May 2011 bring about much health and happiness to all of us!

And now, on to some of my favourite things from 2010!

Favourite book trilogy:
The Hunger Games. I read the first two volumes of this book in the summer of 2009 when a friend of mine lent it to me. So I did... and was hooked about 10 pages in. The Hunger Games is a riveting story of Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic society where the population of North American (now Panem) has been reduced to thousands and she’s in one of the 12 remaining colonies that is ruled over by a tyrannical government. To keep the colonies in line, every year the government chooses two children, ages 12 to 18, from each colony and puts them into an arena, where they fight to the death and only one is left standing. And yes, this is a Y/A novel. The first book is brilliant, the second book is amazing, and I had to wait several months to read the third book, which I finally got around to reading a couple of months ago, and I was satisfied with how the series ended (although I think the first is still my fave). I recommend this to anyone (and I bought the trilogy for both of my sisters-in-law, so I’m eagerly awaiting their take on it!)

Favourite TV Show watched on DVD:
Breaking Bad. I know I already gushed about this once on here when I finished the second season, but the third season was ASTOUNDING and I cannot recommend this enough to people. I went from one family Christmas to another (we have large families, so there are MANY) saying to aunts, cousins, and uncles, “OK, so it’s about this high school teacher who finds out he’s dying of cancer and he has to leave a nest egg for his family, so he hooks up with a former student who’s a drug dealer and they begin cooking meth and... hilarity ensues!” And the looks I got in response were about the same as when I used to say, “Oh my god you HAVE to watch this show, it’s called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and... um... where are you going?” Or how about, “So it’s about these people who crash-land on an island, right? Only it’s not just any island, it’s totally inhabited by these crazy people? And there was this group of people who were also on the island doing experiments for years? And... I think the island itself might be alive... and there’s this smoke monster who comes through the jungle and... um... where are you going?” Anyway... if you’re not watching Breaking Bad, WATCH BREAKING BAD.

Best Hour of Television
I’m torn on this one. I loved the season 3 Breaking Bad episode, “The Fly,” where Jesse and Walter are chasing a fly around the lab to hilarious and devastating results, where Walter admits something about himself and realizes the negative effects his very existence has had on the world around him. It’s an amazing episode.

But then there was “The Suitcase,” the season 4 episode of Mad Men I already raved about, which was a set-piece featuring Peggy and Don as they both sit in his office all night, trying to come up with a marketable ad for Samsonite luggage. Don has hit rock-bottom and has found out that the only person he believes truly knows him is about to die, and he can’t bring himself to phone the family for fear they’ll tell him she’s already gone. It’s Peggy’s birthday, and she eventually tells Don off, but with some booze, outpourings of feelings, and hours of soul-searching, these two discover a lot about each other and what makes them tick – and in doing so, both become stronger characters for the viewer. It’s unbelievable television.

But after much thought, I simply have to say the second hour of the Lost series finale was the one that did it for me. I’ve seen Lost on very few top 10 lists for show of the year, and have found it more often on “Biggest Disappointments of 2011,” and that saddens me. That second hour of Lost made me cry, laugh out loud, made my chest hurt, and made me feel like I was losing actual friends and family. The season had its ups and downs, but it also had gems like “Ab Aeterno.” And the finale was perfection. I will never, ever forget the feeling that washed over me when the camera zoomed in on Jack’s eye closing, the screen went white, and that final violin string plucked quietly. I’ve said it before, but I remember dropping my written notes on the floor and burying my face in my hands and just sobbing and sobbing. It was beautiful, it was perfect, it was satisfying (to me, anyway)... and it was an incredible catharsis. Damon and Carlton have had to brave their share of criticism for the past few months, but I, for one, want to thank them for giving me the single most memorable television viewing moment of my life.

Favourite Movie
I actually haven’t done too badly with movies this year! I used to go and see three or four movies a week... I was a movie addict, much more than a television one. Even when I wrote my first couple of books, I still didn’t watch a lot of TV and spent far more time at the movies. Every year my best friend and I would go to the film festival and do the 30 films in a week thing, writing reviews and “oh my god you’ll never believe what we overheard in the lineups” write-ups and send our musings out to a group of friends as a newsletter... we were blogging before blogging was cool! I always wanted one of those Cineplex cards that VIPs have where you can get into any movie for free, and even bid on one in an auction. But alas, it didn’t happen. And then... I had kids. Now going out to the movies requires finding the time to do it, finding people to watch your kids at specific times, no dinner beforehand, no chit-chat after because the person you’ve gotten for the evening only has about 2 hours to spare, so it’s rush to the movie, watch, rush home, and that’s that. And of course... three years ago my husband, who is a newspaper reporter, got one of those damn cards AFTER we had children and couldn’t really use it. It was like fate was having a field day at my expense. This year was our last one with the card, and we still barely used the thing, but I did much better at watching movies than before. I’ve seen many of the films touted as being Oscar contenders, have watched The King’s Speech with suspense, watched Black Swan with puzzlement and joy, enjoyed True Grit as much as every other Coen Brothers film, thought The Ghost Writer was a little overwrought, and thought Winter’s Bone had several of the best performances of the year.

But my favourite movie of the year was Toy Story 3. I was a HUGE fan of the first one. I saw it when I was still an undergrad at university, and it instantly became one of my all-time favourite movies. I saw Toy Story 2 just before I got married, and loved it as much as the first one. I STILL can’t watch that scene where you see Jessie’s backstory with Sarah McLachlan singing “When She Loved Me” without my eyes welling up with tears. And so, when people told me Toy Story 3 was going to make me cry, too, I braced myself. And it was perfect. I’m so glad the movies were staggered the way they were. Now I’m a parent, and I wouldn’t have had the same reaction to the film if I were still an undergrad at university, or newly married, as I did as a parent. Considering Andy is heading off to university in this final instalment, he’s the age I was when I watched the first movie and he was still a kid. I watched the scene of the Daycare of Insanity while laughing hysterically, thinking of my son’s daycare and how those crazy toddlers are unleashed on those poor toys day after day. I ADORED Ken, especially when he was trying on clothes, because... gulp... it was a 1970s Ken like mine and he had many of the 1970s and early 1980s clothes that my Ken dolls had. There’s a scene at the very end when he comes out in a white disco suit with a purple shirt showing underneath... my Ken TOTALLY had that outfit (mine had shiny white shoes to go with it because he was THAT stylish... oh yeah, baby, he sizzled... ssssst!). But the best moment, for me, was the ending. I watched it in the movie theatre with my six-year-old daughter, who thought the end scene was thrilling and wonderful, because she was watching it from the perspective of the little girl who was getting all of these fabulous toys and was just beginning her adventures with her beloved playthings. I, on the other hand, remembered being Andy, giving my toys away and realizing some of them were harder to lose than others (my favourite doll went to my daughter and every night when I find that doll upside-down behind the couch or stuffed between couch cushions, I pull her out, pat down her hair, kiss her, and gently put her back with the other toys). But more importantly, as Andy drove away and waved goodbye to the toys who shaped his childhood, and, in turn, himself, I saw him as one of my children, who will one day no longer want Webkinny the not-so-pink-anymore poodle or U.S. Open Bear, the stuffed teddy that my son drags around with him everywhere. Some day they’ll toss those aside and won’t need them, and will drive away from them – and me – and head off to college or lives of their own. And just as Andy’s mother did in the one scene, I sat in the theatre with the tears rolling down my face. I find that the Toy Story movies have always hit the nail on the head when it comes to understanding our emotions, and this was no different. On Christmas Day I gave the DVD to my daughter, and we all watched it again (my husband saw it for the first time, and laughed hysterically during the daycare scene) and I loved it as much the second time as the first.

Favourite trend in films:
Seeing Toronto exist as... Toronto! Do you know how many times I’ve been walking down a street in Toronto and there are lines of yellow cabs on the street and you realize they’re filming a scene, and Toronto is standing in for New York? Well... with the Canadian dollar at parity right now, it doesn’t happen as often anymore, because they’re not getting a break on the price. But you can always spot Toronto pretty quickly in movies, even when it’s pretending to be something else. (My favourite was one a few years ago when two people were standing on a beach in “Chicago” or something, and in the background you could see the CN Tower, haha!)

But thank you, Scott Pilgrim, for letting Toronto just be Toronto! I loved that movie, and if you haven’t seen it, please do. And better yet, after you’ve seen it, go out and get the six-volume graphic novel series, which I read AFTER seeing the movie (I can’t believe I hadn’t discovered it earlier) and the movie hadn’t altered my enjoyment of reading them at all. It actually might have enhanced it. There are tons of inside jokes for Torontonians that had me in stitches (on one page... which is not in the movie... Scott challenges one of the exes to a race through Honest Ed’s to see who can get to the other side of the store without going blind from the fluorescent lighting – if you’ve ever been in Honest Ed’s, you were probably laughing hysterically in that scene. Seriously, you need SUNGLASSES in that place it’s so freakin’ bright) and it was just so great to see that they stayed true to the book and ate in Toronto places and there were plenty of Toronto landmarks throughout the film.

And then there was the usual Toronto not being Toronto, which was in Kick Ass, another superhero film I really enjoyed this year. If you’ve seen the film, there’s a great scene where Kick-Ass is first filmed jumping these two guys trying to mug someone, and that was entirely filmed in the parking lot of the Dip-n-Sip donut store near the place where I work. For 15 years I’ve driven by that place on the way to work, and it was kind of crazy to see it in the movie. (The place sucks, by the way, and I can’t understand how it’s still there. OK, I’m a little biased... I stopped there once with a toddler who was potty-training at the time and went in and asked to use the washroom, and as my daughter was bent in half, jumping from one leg to the other, desperate to go pee, the woman behind the counter simply sourly crossed her arms in front of her and said, “You must make purchase first!” I said I’d grab something on the way out. “No. You must buy first, THEN bathroom.” I bought a bottle of water, and the woman slowly counted out my change and then gave me the key to the bathroom. I remember at the time thinking that I should have just said, “OK, honey, you know what? You’re wearing a skirt, just go pee right here. Squat a little so it doesn’t go in your shoe and go right here. I’m sure this nice lady won’t mind mopping it up.” But I didn’t.) But anyway, all that aside, it was weird to see a place I drive by almost every day featured for a very long scene in a great movie!

Best TV line:
Yikes. A tough one. But I think, despite all the brilliant Roger Sterling zingers on Mad Men, it belongs to Jesse in “The Fly,” when he tells Walter they need an assistant who would be at their beck and call, and he imagines himself bellowing, “Gatorade me, bitch!” My husband and I have used that line a few dozen times since seeing that episode.

Favourite album:
Another tough one. The new Arcade Fire is pretty amazing, and when I saw them right before the album’s release, it was one of the best times I’d seen them. (That's a pic of me and Mr. Nikki Stafford at the show... I'm not sure if I've ever shared a photo of him, but there he is!) I do adore Sleigh Bells’ “Treats,” if for nothing more than the feeling of having melodic noise wash over you and just take away the stress of the day. It’s like listening to a bunch of cheerleaders on meth. If you haven't yet heard them, go listen to the opening track here. (I was thrilled to see it listed in the acknowledgements of the final Scott Pilgrim graphic novel, where he always thanks the music that helped him write the books.) When I was writing the finale chapter in my book over a few days, I wore headphones (even though I was the only person in the house) and listened to Henryk Gorecki’s “Symphony No. 2” over and over and over and over again. (That’s not an album that came out this year, but is one that affected my writing a lot... especially the John Locke section.) And I was blown away by Jonsi’s solo album (Jonsi is the lead singer of Sigur Ros, one of my favourite bands). “Go” is extraordinary, and if you weren’t already amazed by what this man can do with his vocal cords, this album will take you to new heights. Just listen to "Grow Till Tall" and be as swept away as I've been.

But my favourite album of the year is by a Montreal band called The Besnard Lakes. “The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night” is an extraordinary work, filled with orchestral guitars and beautiful voices, and is mainly the work of the husband-and-wife team that front the band. While I love Arcade Fire, I find that Regine’s voice is often thin, and you can tell that she’s taken some sort of lessons on the latest album because her voice was a lot better. But live, not so much. Olga Goreas, on the other hand, has a gorgeous and very strong voice, and her husband, Jace Lasek, often sings in an incredibly high falsetto, so the two voices together are gorgeous. Pick up this album if you get a chance. Check out the opening two tracks and you'll get a sense of the album.

Best SNL Musical Performance:
I PVR Saturday Night Live so I can zip past all the sketches that go on about three minutes longer than they should and lose the funny pretty quickly. So the week that Jay-Z was the musical guest, I was watching it the Sunday morning after the performance... and I think I watched it 15 more times that day. Rather than doing two different songs, as musicians usually do when they’re guesting on the show, he did one 10-minute medley of his hit songs, and he performed them to perfection. I’ve seen SNL all the way back to the 1970s, and I’ve never seen anything like this performance. Unbelievable.

Shows I need to catch up on in 2011:
I’ve seen The Good Wife on tons of top 10 lists, and my best friend tells me it’s amazing, so I really want to see it. I’ve been watching Supernatural on DVD (slowly) and have only gotten through season 1 so I really need to speed things up there. Everyone in my office watches The Vampire Diaries except for me... I think I’m up to episode 9 or 10 of season 1 and I’m waiting for it to grab me, and since many of the people whose opinions I most respect when it comes to TV tell me that it’s good, I really need to watch it (I saw it on TV Addict’s top 10 list, and since my tastes have always been very close to his, that made me need to see it even more). I made a big deal about watching Doctor Who because I was certain my husband would watch it with me, being a big Doctor Who fan when he was a kid. But now that he’s an adult (ahem), he’d rather watch big-people shows and is not watching it with me, and since my chances at watching TV without him sitting there are pretty low, I think that’s the main reason why I haven’t gotten very far with it. I will make a new and concerted effort with it in 2011. And I’m starting to catch up on season 2 of Community now after many of my readers and friends have told me to watch it. I know there are other shows I need to be watching.

What I’m looking forward to in 2011:
Game of Thrones on HBO, and the Great Buffy Rewatch! I can’t wait to see what my venerable group of writers come up with week after week to keep you entertained. (The first post goes live on January 4 so I hope you’ve begun watching season 1!)

What I’m least looking forward to in 2011:
The end of Friday Night Lights. Every episode of season 5 has been a simultaneous joy and a stab through the heart because it means I’m one hour closer to the end. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to these characters. A character who’d left the show made an appearance a couple of weeks ago and I was so happy to see him, it actually caused me to weep with joy. I can’t think of another show that’s ever done that to me. This show sits next to my heart in a way few shows ever have. I know what the end of Lost did to me, and strangely enough, I didn’t love those characters as much as I do the ones on Friday Night Lights (don’t hate me for saying that!) So I think I’ll be gutted for a few days after that one makes its final bow. And I’ll drown myself in my Explosions in the Sky music collection.

Favourite gadget of 2010:
I’m not a gadget girl, but I got an iPhone in May and have been pretty addicted to it ever since. And I’m someone who carried a cellphone only for emergencies and never, ever turned it on, much to my husband’s chagrin. I think three people in the world had the number. Now I have the iPhone, and while I love it, I do find it causes me to check email all the time, even on weekends and in evenings, so I’m never really away from work at all (not like I ever was). But the flip side of this is Angry Birds, which is crazily addictive... and Blue Block, which has a setting that allows my daughter to play with it, too (you can always tell when an iPhone belongs to a Mom; there are more apps for kids than for adults on there). And the other day I discovered a voice memo function... I am SO going to start recording people when they least expect it!! I love my iPhone. I hate the camera (it has no flash!! And I find the flash on the new iPhone is so damn bright it washes everyone out and makes them look like they’re made of porcelain) but the rest of it is pretty awesome. Humanebean has been bugging me for some time to switch to Mac (yes, I’m a PC gal) and the iPhone may have been the thing that did it for me.

And that’s almost it... except for my favourite experience of 2010. I began writing it on the end of this, and then it ballooned into its own monster, so I’ll post it separately tomorrow. But let me know some of your favourite things of 2010, and I hope you check out some of mine! And happy new year, everyone!

We Have to Go Back!

I'm hoping many of you have been following Matt and Justin's excellent Lost rewatch blog, but in case you haven't, I just wanted to let you know I was a guest on this week's rewatch panel as we discuss the season 1 finale, "Exodus, Part 2." Come and check it out, and leave a comment on this week's post.

And in the meantime, have a very merry Christmas and happy holiday!! And as I said on Facebook, may your holiday be as happy as this one:

You’ll Shoot Yer Eye Out!!

A couple of weeks ago I posted the following status update on my Facebook page: “Some people look forward to Christmas for the family get-togethers, or the turkey, or the egg nog, or the presents. I’m looking forward to the 24-hour marathon of ‘A Christmas Story.’”

A Christmas Story was released in movie theatres in 1983 to a poor reception. It’s only when it began showing on TVs at Christmas that it really picked up and became the holiday classic it is today. It’s relatively new in the greater scheme of things – It’s a Wonderful Life and White Christmas are decades older – but it’s like it’s always been around.

When I posted that status update, the response I got was immediate and enthusiastic, and it was only in reading some of the responses that it suddenly occurred to me just how important this movie is to me. It not only pervades every inch of Christmas for me, but much of everyday life.

• Every time I see FRAGILE written in large letters on something, I say, “Fra-gee-lay... must be Italian.”
• As a mom, almost every meal consists of me getting the kids’ plates filled up first, then ours, then jumping up to get something more for the kids, then filling drinks, then getting seconds for them, then remembering condiments... and I can’t help but think of that line, “My mom hadn’t had a hot meal in 15 years” from the movie. I laughed at the time, but now I laugh even harder.
• Getting my son to eat can be a negotiation. I’m always saying things like, “Here comes the choo-choo train!” or “Can you count to five with your fork by taking five bites?” and my husband always replies with, “Tell us how the piggies eat, Randy!”
• Whenever my kids are bundled in snowpants and coats and scarves and mittens and hats, my husband says they look like a tick about to pop.
• My brother and I are extremely close, and we’ll be in the middle of a discussion about someone who’s driving us particularly nuts and my brother will raise a fist in the air and yell, “Bumpuses!!”
• In our first apartment, someone in the adjacent building had dogs, and my husband and I always called them the Bumpus hounds.
• I bought one of those hospital lottery tickets one year, you know those ones for $100 and you can win a million bucks or a car or something, but even if you don’t win you know Sick Kids is getting the money? Anyway, I won a boombox... like, with a TAPE deck. This was three years ago. My husband and I, after our fits of laughter subsided, stared at it for a minute and I said, “You know, this is my major award!”
• When bathing the kids, I used to joke to my husband not to get the soap near their mouths, “You don’t want them coming to us when they’re 25 and blind and accuse us of ‘Soap... POISONING!’”
• Whenever my brother and I see one of those store Santas, we always do the evil, “HO... HO... HO!!” voice.
• My daughter loves the 1982 Annie movie, but when I’m looking for the DVD I can’t help but sing in the nasally radio voice from the movie, “Little orphan Annie!”
• I think I use the “You’ll shoot yer eye out” line on a weekly basis.
• Every time I think I have too many cords going into one power bar, I picture that absolute mess of cords in the wall behind the Christmas tree in the movie.
• There have been many, many occasions where a conversation between my husband and I goes something like this: “So I was out and I [insert line about doing something stupid here] and I said oh... fffffffuuuuuuudddgggge.” “Only you didn’t say fudge, did you? You said the queen mother of all swear words, didn’t you?”
• I’ve often wanted to put a bar of soap in my mouth to find out what it tastes like.
• My husband hates meatloaf and won’t let me make it, and so I call it “Meatloaf beetloaf,” just like Randy.
• We’ve walked by houses with weird lights in the window, and one of us will inevitably say it’s like electric sex gleaming in the window.
• I’ve been known to swear like the dad. “Bifflefarklefrakkingeffin...” (Though I’m more often known to swear like that guy in the movie Johnny Dangerously... my husband and I have been using the term “fargin icehole” for about 20 years now...)
• Whenever I see one of those word games where you’re supposed to decode something, I assume there will only be one answer. I waited for years for John Locke to uncover something on the island that promised all the answers, only for it to say, “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” I think everyone in my family can do that scene by memory. “Be sure to... be sure to what???... Ovaltine? Son of a bitch.” But the closest Lost ever got to A Christmas Story was when Scut Farkus ended up as Jack’s best man at his wedding. I was thrilled to see him again!

It’s everywhere. This is probably one of my all-time favourite movies. Much of it was filmed right here in Toronto (when you see scenes with the streetcars, that’s us!) The actual house is in Cleveland, and my aunt and uncle went there in the summer and showed me a picture of it just the other day. Now I MUST get to Cleveland and tour the house... they had a picture of them standing next to the electric sex gleaming in the window. I wonder if there was a faint smell of ozone as they lit it up.

How about you? What’s your favourite holiday movie and why?

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse... at Christmas!

Thanks to Corey for the link.

The Lost Encyclopedia

I would love to be able to write a review dissing The Lost Encyclopedia by Tara Bennett and Paul Terry. I’d love to be able to tell you it’s absolutely no good, and instead you should just save your money and buy my Finding Lost series, or at least my Season 6 one, which analyzes and explains the finale in a 50-page section. (Well, actually, I WILL tell you that last part... if you just buy one Lost book, buy mine!.. or read on to find out how you can win a copy of the Lost Encyclopedia and then you can STILL buy mine!)

But I’m not going to tell you The Lost Encyclopedia is crap, because, quite frankly, it’s not. It’s a beautiful book that goes out of its way to service the diehard fans as well as the casual ones, offering up entries for the most obscure things on the show that may have been shown only once. It’s not perfect – more on that in a minute – but when I got my copy, I was immediately mesmerized and spent the next 20 minutes slowly flipping through the pages, not reading it, but just looking at it. Then I had to get back to work, and the minute I was done, my nose was buried in that book again.

I’ve worked in publishing for over 13 years. I don’t just write books, I edit them on all levels. I do substantive edits (that’s when you read through a book and decide if a character needs to go, or a chapter at the beginning should be moved to the end, or if the ending needs to be rewritten... big picture stuff), copy edits (looking at the copy and cleaning up the sentences, correcting grammar and typos, rewriting sections that are sloppy) and proofreads (that’s catching the final typos and mistakes that have slipped through the other parts of the process). I’ve overseen the design work and the typesetting, knowing the difficulty of fitting blocks of text on pages with several photos, and having to line up the text with the photos. I know what can fall through the cracks, such as when captions are misspelled because they were stuck in at the last minute, etc.

And that’s why I was able to look through The Lost Encyclopedia with an immense appreciation of the EXTRAORDINARY amount of work that’s gone into it. There are SO many photos, and gorgeous ones at that. The numbers are everywhere (on pages 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, the pages are devoted to the actual number of the page, with various uses of the numbers in and outside of the show written all over the page). The books referenced on the show are all mentioned in one way or the other. There’s a FANTASTIC two-page photo spread of a bookshelf containing all of the major works that have been listed on the show. I gasped audibly when I came to that page and saw the bookshelf. What an amazing photo.

Characters who appear in one episode with one line of spoken dialogue seem to get their own entries, with a complete plot description of who they were and why they turned out to be significant (I’m not talking about background extras or the person who sells Desmond his coffee, but someone who turns out to be important... as well as the woman who sells Hurley his “I ♥ Shih Tzus” shirt). There is very little in the way of analysis (don’t come to this book looking to get into the heart of a character or find deeper meaning from a particular object or come away with a richer understanding of the finale) but it’s an encyclopedia – they’re supposed to offer up a lot of information without analysis. That’s what encyclopedias do. There’s been a lot of talk about the problems with the book, but I think many of the nitpickers are missing the forest because a few pesky trees are in the way.

Yes, it’s riddled with mistakes. Not necessarily important mistakes – they don’t attribute things to one character when another did it – but I did find a few errors. One that a friend of mine pointed out, actually, was that they say Vincent comes to Jack in the finale and lies down beside him, just as he did in the pilot. But in the pilot Vincent ran up to Jack, sniffed him, and then ran off to the beach and Jack followed him. Very minor indeed, but those little mistakes are throughout.

What bothered me the most (and that’s probably because I’m an editor, so my job is to read pages and find this very sort of thing) were the editing inconsistencies. Now, I’m going to talk about them from the point of view of someone who’s worked behind the scenes and could therefore see through the mistakes and how they probably got there, so this may get a little technical. But hey, it’s what I do from 9 to 5, and now I get to apply it to Lost!

This is a HUGE book, with tons of text and little photos throughout. The show ended on May 23, and the book was originally skedded to come out August 24 to meet the DVD release (for various reasons that went unexplained – but I assume were just because the timeline was basically impossible – the book actually came out in mid-October). A book generally takes about 4 or 5 weeks at the printer. Then if it has a drop-dead street publication date, you need to have the book in your warehouse about a month ahead of that. So, an August 24 pub date means the book has to be in the warehouse by, say, August 1. Which means it has to go to the printer on July 1. Which means it has to have finished all of the editing by about a week ahead of that date. And if the show ended May 23, and the authors needed another month to incorporate all of the material from the finale... well, you’re now starting to see the timing issue (and why my life becomes so difficult when I’m editing – and writing – several books for the TV season that have to be on shelves on September 1). So you give the author a June 1 date and say sorry, but you’ll just have to send us all additions by that date. That still only gives you three weeks to do all of the edits, all of the final captions, and the entire final layout. A book like this one is a giant task layout-wise, and I could see the constraints they were under on every page.

So, when you’re editing a book like this, how do you work within that schedule? You divide it up amongst a team of editors and proofreaders. “Here, you take A-G, you take H-M”, etc. What becomes evident, unfortunately, is that all of the editors were not working with the same style sheets. Some of them were using serial commas (i.e. “he bought a hat, coat, and mittens”) while others didn’t (“he bought a hat, coat and mittens”). And often, I found both on the same page, which means that perhaps a copy editor on that section was adding them, and the proofreader wasn’t looking for them to make sure they were consistent throughout. Words are spelled differently on the same page, sentences have words missing from them. Captions are wrong, or repeated on more than one page, or have words misspelled (the one I remember is that the Millennium Falcon is spelled “Millenium”). I didn’t put sticky notes on the pages where I found mistakes, because, I hate to say it, I would have had them on every other page.

The biggest mistake I found was in Kate’s entry, in a weird sidebar called “Equine/Human Relationship” (sometimes these sidebars just felt like padding, and in a book this enormous, I have no idea why they’d be attempting to pad it). Anyway, clearly the first line of the sidebar wasn’t very good, and the editor decided to rewrite it, and then edited the second sentence to either remove or add in a serial comma. Problem? He or she left the original two sentences in there, so now it appears twice. The second time is rewritten. Here it is:

The horse was an important image for humans even before they were domesticated several thousand years BCE. Since then, horses symbolized many consistent attributes across cultures, including: strength, freedom, grace, beauty, and power. The importance of equines dates as far back as the third millennium BC with ancient Elam slates reflecting their form. Since then, horses symbolized many consistent attributes across cultures, including: Strength, freedom, grace, beauty and power.

OK, so here’s the editing lesson: Look at the first and third sentences. Same sentence, written differently (i.e., an editor said, let’s change “third millennium BC” to “several thousand years BCE”). Second and fourth sentences are identical, except the first one used a serial comma (beauty, and power) and the fourth one didn’t.

So yes, there are some sloppy moments. But thankfully, those sorts of glaring errors are not throughout the book, and speaking as an editor who’s made more than her fair share of mistakes when under the wire and on extremely tight timelines, I understand how they happen. But I work at a medium-sized press with 10 people, and before a book goes to the printer there’s at least one person, sometimes more, who does one final flip through the book looking for inconsistencies, checking captions and sidebars and table of contents page numbers, etc. So I feel like a larger press like DK should have had more of those things in place. That said, The Lost Encyclopedia is massive and has so many various elements that even the editor in me is willing to give it a pass.

The writing is good; it’s definitely written by fans who know the show inside and out, which is important (too many of these sorts of books are written by pens for hire), but the writing was also at times a little cumbersome and technical. But once again, I’m going to stick up for the writers here and say it’s an encyclopedia; it’s meant to be a little more objective and impersonal.

This is not a good book when you’re trying to look something up – things are out of alphabetical order (NOT good for an encyclopedia) because this entry fit better on the next page, so instead they just put a little note that says, “in case you’re looking for this word, it’s three pages from now” sort of stuff. After I found the picture of the bookshelf, I couldn’t find it again to show my husband. I looked under B… nope. L for literature? No. Um… S for shelf? Ah… no, it’s after Sawyer’s entry. Because, um… because he reads a lot of the books? Yeah, that didn’t work for me, either. So I think this book works better if you simply sit down and read it like a book. Flip around if you want and read the S entries followed by the B ones, but don’t try to look something up (and many of the things aren’t indexed… so don’t look there, either).

And sometimes the term they’ve put it under is wonky. The sidebars, as mentioned, seemed to have been added in just for padding; my favourite was under “White Rabbit” (perfect example of what I was just saying… just now I looked it up under “Rabbit” and couldn’t find it and had to flip around until I found it under W for white) which begins, “Rabbits are small mammals found in many places all over the world.” LOL! I wish the John Locke one began, “John Locke is a man, which is of the homo sapiens variety with an X and Y chromosome, hence, male.” But it’s that sort of thing that was unnecessary in a book this big.

Some people have complained about the way the characters’ entries were alphabetized, which is generally by first name. My husband said they should be under last names only. I said, “Really? What’s Charlie’s last name?” He just stood there for a second and said, “Well… that’s what an index is for.” And I said if you’re looking for “Charlie,” you’d have to look it up in the index under Pace, and if you don’t know that’s his last name, you won’t find it. The authors instead have cleverly put it under C for Charlie, and that makes sense to me. Jack is under J, James Ford is under S because we know him as Sawyer. John Locke is under L. Inconsistent? No… because we all call him Locke. That just makes sense. So I thought the alphabetization of the names was great.

There were a lot of two-page spread pics that didn’t make sense. There’s this one that’s a chart of animals, ending in the smoke monster on the far right, and they’re on a grid that shows them from tiniest to largest. And yet… they have the Hurley bird being shown as being bigger than the horse. Um… I don’t think so. But it’s still a cool picture.

But enough nitpicking... I’d rather talk about the good stuff. Under each character you get their backstory, each part of their flashback, and the key moments of their character’s arc. For the biggest ones you get sidebar charts of what other characters they were associated with off-island and what the on-island connections are, and then you can use those lists to cross-check the other names. It’s a great resource for keeping track of everything if you’ve forgotten some aspect of that character’s story.

Like I said, the photos are amazing. Many of the artefacts used on the show are featured in photos that were obviously taken at the Lost auction in the summer; the photo of the horrific squirrel baby, for example, isn’t the squirrel baby at all, but an earlier version of the thing that they built to show the designers how they REALLY wanted the thing to be built. I remember that causing some controversy at the Lost auction because they were billing it as the actual thing that appeared in the episode, and when fans pointed out that wasn’t it at all (it’s a much less scary-looking version) then the description changed on the auction site. Unfortunately, the less scary version appears in the encyclopedia because they just grabbed the photo of the one at the auction. Or… maybe that’s a fortunate thing, actually. I don’t think I want that thing pictured in a book on my shelf.

Some fans have pointed out that Lostpedia is the better thing to have, because you can cross-reference things, look anything up, it’s constantly updated and isn’t filled with spelling errors. Lostpedia might be the more useful tool if you’re a Lost scholar, but for the fan who wants a thing of beauty to commemorate all those years on the island, the Lost Encyclopedia is a wonderful addition to their collection. It’s gorgeous, it’s hefty, and it was written with a lot of love. How many other official books could boast something this unbelievably dense and rich, and filled with minutiae that even a diehard fan would appreciate? Most official books just gloss over the series and give you some purty little thing that’s about as substantial as the Nikki and Paulo subplot from season 3, but this book is great.

I remember being a little worried when I saw this book coming out around the same time as mine, but now that I’ve read it I realize our books aren’t rivals; they perfectly complement each other. This one gives you the background and plot summary of the series, and mine analyzes all of that. It’s the beauty, mine is the brains. And that’s not me dissing it at all; I think this book is essential to every Lost fan’s collection.

But, of course, if you just have money to buy one Lost book, then yeah. Buy mine.

NOW. I have one copy of the Lost Encyclopedia to give away (and that’s for people who’ve read down this far!) I was trying to figure out some sort of contest, so I’ll go with the one I had last year. Send me a photo of you with your Season 6 Finding Lost book (or your complete series) for me to post on the site, and the winner of the best photo will win a copy of The Lost Encyclopedia! Email your entries to me at nikki_stafford@yahoo.com. I look forward to them!