Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Buffy Rewatch Week 19: Spoiler Forum

And here's the place where you can talk about this week's episodes without worrying about spoiling anyone. There are a few spoilers in the essay above (just highlight any white gaps you see and you'll see them come up). But as I mentioned, I see these two eps as the way out for Angel, Cordy, and Wesley, although Wesley is less obvious. I still can't believe this bumbling guy will become my favourite character. But he will.

13 comments:

Lisa(until further notice) said...

I also can't believe at this point that I will grow to love Anya as much as I do. Oh Whedonverse you....

Tom D. said...

Choices is one of my favorites, mainly because of all the Willow stuff where she gets more confident and brave and figures out a direction in life. But that last scene between her and Buffy, where she says she's going to UC Sunnydale... watching that scene makes me very very very sad in light of, um, recent events that Nikki doesn't want us to discuss here.

Unknown said...

I had a whole section on Willow, how she totally has her shit together, how determined she is, and how much I love the ::TACKLEHUG!!::

Alas... it pushed the post into "well over 3,000 words" territory. XD

Also: I love Anya. "Men are evil. Will you go with me?"

Efthymia said...

Willow is one of my favourite characters on the show, so had she left it would have lost a lot of its charm for me, yet knowing what's to come for her I want to scream to the screen "Go to friggin' Oxford or Harvard or somewhere worthy of your brain, just please GO!". But screaming at the screen probably wouldn't be very productive...

Tom D. said...

Yeah, even if I didn't know what's going to happen, I would want to yell at Willow to go to a better university. But I can't help sharing Buffy's happiness that she's sticking around.

Also: she says she wants to stay in Sunnydale in order to develop her witchcraft, but that's evidently a flimsy excuse, as we'll see next season when the UC-Sunnydale Wicca scene turns out to be a flop. Willow probably would've been better off by going to Oxford to study that stuff too. Her real reason for staying in town, I guess, is just that she loves Buffy and Xander and Giles and of course Oz, and wants to keep being part of the scooby-gang-fighting-evil thing.

Colleen/redeem147 said...

Poor Buffy. Not only would Hank not help with University, he won't help her again, financially or emotionally, at all.

Buffy has a tendancy to march in without a plan - and will continue to do so when she confronts Caleb at the Winery.

There's a hint in Wes' "Damn you, listen to me" of who he will become.

Willow stays in Sunnydale "To fight evil, to help people" - and then she tries to destroy the world. Then again, if she left she'd never meet Tara. The choice we make, good or bad, shape who we are. Well, unless you call on a vengeance demon and end up in another dimension. :)

In The Prom we see the beginning of literal, plain-spoken Anya.

There's two references to Angel's dream from his series' season 5 - "I kill my goldfish" while she's in bed with him making love to Spike, and "You have a heart?" and Fred's exploratory surgery and a walnut.

When Andrew turns up everyone knows Tucker, but here he's just a guy in Oz's class. Angel never even meets him, but he will recognize that Andrew is 'Tucker's brother.'

In retrospect, it's sad that it's Jonathan, but I tear up at the umbrella every time. This sets up the next two episodes and why the students are ready to rally behind Buffy.

Unknown said...

Tom D., don't discuss it here! I'm only halfway through Season 8 comics, so yikes!

Oh gosh, I forgot Anya's funny lines in asking Xander to prom, Kristen. Xander saying how men like to drink of the beer and watch of the sports--a thousand years exacting vengeance upon men and that's all you've learned?! LOl too lazy to look up the quote for realz.

Colleen/redeem147 said...

Did Tom delete a post, because I don't see him saying anything about the comics.

Witness Aria said...

@Kristen Romanelli, I laugh at over 3,000 words -- and I don't even hide and run away after.

Great write-ups. Thanks for your Buffy insights.

Jonathan's speech makes me cry every single time, including when it's quoted in a podcast and I'm trying to drive (arg!) The award also lays the groundwork for the class coming together at graduation to fight with the Scoobies.

I enjoyed the heist aspects of Choices and the hostage exchange, throwing in a couple of genres that Buffy doesn't do as often, but will be more the flavor of Angel, so it foreshadows the show that way as well.

Andrew's brother is way lame. I wonder what ever happened to him.

Tom D. said...

I didn't delete a post. My first post above contains a veiled reference to the comics.

Colleen/redeem147 said...

Yeah, I did see that when I looked back further, Tom. Veiled indeed!

We need a second spoiler post to add comic spoilers that Nikki can't moderate until she finishes reading them. Incentive!

JS said...

Yay, I get to sit at the big kid's table now! I just finished season seven and watched chosen yesterday. Wow, they are so young at Prom and have no idea how crazy their lives will get. And I think fighting at graduation will be the closest they every are emotionally as a group. After that, there is always some level of separateness amoung one, some or all the scoobies.

also, ANYA!!

Tom D. said...

I belatedly got around to rewatching The Prom tonight, so I'll just throw in a couple more cents' worth of thoughts.

I wish Xander and Cordelia had met again at some point before a bunch of weird shit happened to her in L.A. and she eventually died. The two of them have this great, understated reconciliation moment in The Prom, which is lovely but so short as to leave me wanting more, which we'll never get.

I think the moment with the Class Protector award is almost a miracle like the snow in Amends. Both moments are so pure and redemptive and sweet. There aren't a whole lot of moments like that on this show (and of course you can't have too many of them before it turns into schmaltz).

Hmm, now I'm trying to think of whether there are any other moments on the show that are really comparable to those two. The closest ones that come to mind for me are some Willow/Oz and Willow/Tara moments, but even those don't have the same sense of redemption and joy that these two moments have.