Who Indeed...

If you haven't watched last week's Community yet (Competitive Wine-Tasting), do. At the urging of my friend C, I jumped ahead last night (I'm a few eps behind) and watched the latest episode, which, as she told me, is basically a long send-up of people who write companion guides to TV shows. So I knew it would be awesome and I would love it. Abed takes a class taught by an academic who wrote this book:



And yes, the class "discussion" (for there is only one) that ensues is as hilarious as the title of that book promises. You can probably stream it on the network's site (City-TV in Canada) but definitely check it out.

Buffy Rewatch Week 16

3.10 Amends
3.11 Gingerbread
3.12 Helpless

So... when I posted on last week’s trio (Revelations/Lover’s Walk/The Wish) I was thinking it might be my favourite week of season 3. No... that was trumped by this week. Amends, Gingerbread, and Helpless may be as perfect a trio of episodes in the centre of a season as we’ll find in this rewatch, highlighting both the hilarious highs and gut-wrenching lows this series has to offer.

“Amends” shows us that the crimes of Angelus weigh heavily on Angel’s heart. Where it seems to come a bit from left field, I’ve never really questioned it before, and it would explain his constant Tai Chi and why we keep seeing him reading existentialist books, as if he’s longing to find some sort of meaning to his life. We have the Angel/Buffy showdown on the hill, the miracle that happens to break it up, and a Buffy plea that equals the one she gives to Giles (also followed by a punch, oddly enough) outside the factory in “Passion.” While she’s desperately trying to keep the world safe, the men in her life keep attempting to abandon her, and she can’t handle it.

Another highlight of this episode is the lovely Oz/Willow talk in the classroom, as he expresses his emotions to her while she delicately speaks back, careful not to overstep her boundaries and remaining sensitive to his feelings. This lovely little scene is countered by the equally lovely but also sadly hilarious one of Willow offering herself to Oz on her couch, with a bottle of Sprite stuck in an ice-filled champagne bucket while she’s got the Barry White workin’ for her. God, I love those two.

Faith sits alone in her hotel room, with her tiny little Christmas lights failing to cheer up a dreary and dingy room (I don’t know why this gets me every time... I went and looked up what I wrote about this episode in Bite Me, and was surprised to see that I also focused on those sad little lights, after I’d jotted a note about them while rewatching it this time).

Xander sleeps outside tight in a sleeping bag because of the sinister suggestion that he might be beat up if he remains in the house (the suggestions that Xander has had domestic abuse in his life will continue throughout the series), and my heart always feels a tug when we see him in that sleeping bag out in the open, without even a tent to cover him, with a little plate of cookies by his side that he no doubt scrounged up on his own. I just wish he’d go and live in Buffy’s basement or something.

But of course the centrepiece of the episode is Angel and his past. We see him as a monstrous Barry Gibb, hunting down servant girls without remorse (I wondered at one point... do Angel’s dreams actually have a “Dublin, 1838” title card on them?), and in the present, a broken person standing on a hill, saying to Buffy, “It’s not the demon in me that needs killing ... it’s the man.” Heartbreaking. See below for this week’s guest post, which focuses on the emotional reaction this episode creates in fans who love it (and it surprised me to discover this is NOT an episode beloved by all!) Highlight for me: Joyce, snapping Buffy out of a sex reverie with Angel: “Angel’s on top again?” Buffy: “What?!” Least favourite moment: The snow looking like shaving cream at the end. ;)

“Gingerbread” has always been an episode in my top 10 faves. You’ve got to have some funny in with your angst-ridden, and DAMN this episode is funny. There are SO many moments where I’m laughing out loud in this one, and the jokes never get old for me. Buffy’s frantic, high-pitched, sing-songy, “Did I get it?! Did I get it?!” is probably my favourite line of dialogue in the series, and I probably say it four or five times a year, exactly the way she does (whether it’s me smacking a fly with a fly-swatter, or reaching under a bench to knock out a toy with a broom... if I can find an opportunity to use this phrase and say it like her, I do).

Highlights:
• Snyder’s locker checks: “This is a glorious day for principals everywhere!”
• Willow: “A doodle. I do doodle. You too. You do doodle too.” Dr. Seuss would be proud.
• Giles on Snyder confiscating his book: “I won’t take this from that twisted little monkey person!”
• Willow talking to her Mom: “Mom, I’m not an age group. I’m me. Willow group.”
• Mrs. Rosenberg talking about the patriarchal nature of the puppets on Mr. Rogers, with King Friday lording over the lesser puppets.
• Buffy: “And nice acronym, Mom.”
• Buffy: “Like that story of the kid who stuck his finger in the duck.” Angel: “Dyke.” Buffy: ???? Angel: “It’s another word for dam.”
• Xander coming up behind Giles, who is on the computer: “Frisky Watchers Chatroom, why GILES!”
• Oz, after finding out Hansel and Gretel are real: “What do we do?” Xander: “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to sell my cow for some beans.”
• Giles and Cordy are a match made in heaven: “God, you really WERE the little youthful offender, weren’t you? You must look back on that and cringe.”
• That final scene, where Giles and Cordy crash into the room, Buffy impales the monster, and Oz and Xander come crashing through the ceiling. Oz: “We’re here to save you.” It’s the perfect riotous climax to this episode.
• Buffy after the spell to de-rat Amy fails: “Maybe we should get her one of those wheel thingies.”

What makes the funny of Gingerbread such perfect timing is that it’s couched between the sweet sadness of Amends, and the sad sadness of Helpless. This is another episode that hurts just to think about it, but I love it. There has always been something about Giles and Buffy that I adore (and no, not in a weird slash fanfic sort of way... that always gave me the heebies). For anyone watching and thinking that Giles has always been like a substitute father to Buffy, this was the episode you’ve been waiting for. When Buffy’s dad lets her down (we’ve moved away from the good ol’ Almanzo Wilder from S1 and over into sleazebucket “went to Mexico with my secretary” deadbeat dad territory) she’s upset, but hides her feelings from Joyce and instead turns to Giles, suggesting none too subtly that perhaps HE could take her to the Ice Capades. Giles, however, is too caught up in the terrible task that he’s performing to notice what she’s doing. This episode could perhaps stand as a metaphor for all those bad things parents are forced to do for the good of their children – let them go because they need to go out in the world. As a parent, I watch it very differently than I did when I wasn’t one. I now see that he was in pain while he was doing it, but felt he had no choice. It’s like when you “Ferberize” your baby and your heart is breaking while she is screaming but they need to learn how to sleep... or when you leave them behind at daycare because they need to learn how to socialize... or when you give them space and use tough love to try to help them overcome an obstacle. Parenting is damn hard, but in this episode, Giles fights back, says no, and helps Buffy do what she needs to. He refuses to accept that love necessarily needs to have the word “tough” in front of it, and he gives up his vocation, his job, and everything he’s lived his life for in order to be there for her when she needs him the most. That scene where Buffy backs away from him is the mirror scene from last week’s Revelations. In that episode, Giles tells her that she has no respect for him or the duty he performs. Buffy stands there, knowing that she does show him a lack of respect often, despite her deep, deep love for him. In this scene, the opposite happens, when Buffy tells him that he’s betrayed her trust. Again, he knows she’s telling the truth, even though he cares for her more than possibly anyone else in the world, and would do anything for her. Everyone else sees it, too, including Quentin, who tells Giles, “You have a father’s love for the girl.” In each case, Buffy and Giles strive to right the wrong they had done to the other person.

As we’ve heard many a time on Buffy, connections are seen as the thing that holds you back. Buffy was supposed to be a Slayer and not tell anyone what she does. Giles was supposed to maintain a rigid distance from his Slayer and not become emotionally involved. Vampires are for slaying, not for... laying. And friends and family are unimportant. But if there’s one thing Lost and so many other shows have taught us, that’s all bunk. Connections to others are what make us stronger – Buffy is a strong Slayer because of the way Giles cares about her, not in spite of it. And his love for Buffy makes him a stronger Watcher.

Highlights and Notes:
• Buffy telling Angel that she’s going out with a man who’s older, handsome, “likes it when I call him Daddy”
• “Brian Boitano doing Carmen is a life changer.”
• Notice when Buffy goes into the house with Kralik, she’s wearing the overalls of sadness. She will transform them into the overalls of badness.
• For the Lost fans, if Kralik looked familiar to you, that’s because he played a bit part in S6 of Lost as the mechanic who takes off Kate’s handcuffs in the sideways world after she escapes the airport.
• “If I was at full Slayer power I’d be punning right about now.”
• Willow: “I’m writing an angry letter.”


This week’s first guest writer is novelist Robert J. Wiersema. Where most of the bios begin with, “I met so-and-so at Slayage,” Robert is neither a Slayage peep, an academic, nor someone I actually know personally. He is a friend of a friend, and someone I’ve known to be a Buffy fan just from reading other things he’s written. He may or may not know this (and I think I mentioned this once before) but he actually gave me my first review, waaaaaay back in 1998 when my first book on Xena came out. His review came out in Quill & Quire (the trade paper for the publishing industry), which is the first and last time that one of my books was deemed review-worthy in that publication. I still have a copy of it. I posted an article he wrote recently about rewatching the series with his son, Xander (who he says was not named after the character on Buffy). Robert is the author of Before I Wake and Bedtime Story, both national bestsellers, and the novella The World More Full of Weeping, which was shortlisted for the Prix Aurora in 2010. A respected critic and reviewer, he lives in Victoria with his family. I’m absolutely thrilled to have him as part of this rewatch.

Amends and Miracles
Robert Wiersema

“I believe in miracles.” — Pearl Jam

“If I can’t convince you that you belong in this world, then I don’t know what can.” — Buffy

And the snow starts to fall.

* * *

For me, it’s all about the snow.

I think if you asked most people I know, they would call me cynical. Pessimistic. Dark. And they’d be right. I tend toward the maudlin on a pretty regular basis. I brood. I mutter negatively. I am, a lot of the time, a moody, cantankerous bastard, seemingly limited in my ability to see the positive, to embrace the good.

If you were to ask me, point blank and to my face, whether I believed in miracles, I would probably laugh, and say something along the lines of “It’ll be a miracle if I ever get this book finished.”

I’ve actually been confronted with that question. My first novel Before I Wake centered on a very young girl who, in the wake of a car accident, seems to have the ability to heal. After the book came out, people would ask about my own beliefs, and I would do everything I could to dodge the question, usually saying something about the nature of fiction, or the importance of looking at different viewpoints, or vague comments about how sometimes things happen that we can’t understand.

The thing is? I do actually believe in miracles.

You can’t really say that to people, though. For a cynical, urban, maudlin atheist such as myself, it’s the equivalent of being fourteen years old in the schoolyard and letting it slip that you still believe in the tooth fairy. The word itself, “miracle”, has so much weight to it, so many connotations and layers of implication that admitting you believe puts you, in many people’s minds, just to the left of the snake handlers and the television evangelists. When I think of miracles, I think of crappy TV movies and cheap, rushed-to-market paperbacks. I think of people who don’t have the strength to stand on their own, waiting to be rescued. Sure, that’s a cynical, pessimistic and highly judgemental way to feel, but I’m a cantankerous bastard.

And I do believe in miracles.

I don’t attach any faith to them; I have none to attach. Rather, for me, they’re a glimpse of the mystery that underlies the rational world. They’re a momentary awareness of the magic that underpins everything we do. If they could be logically explained, they wouldn’t be miracles, and I revel in that mystery. I revel in the magic.

To my mind, there are two miraculous moments in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and owing to the almighty power of “Dibs!” I’ll be writing about both. The second is a few months from now.

The first comes in “Amends.”

There are few episodes of Buffy quite so divisive as “Amends”.

A few months ago, I did an online event ostensibly promoting my new book, Bedtime Story, which included a live-blog simulcast commentary of a Buffy episode. (It’s a long story, but the short version: the interviewer, Julie Wilson knew that I was a fellow Buffy fan, and a bit of a scotch aficionado. In that “my uncle’s got a barn, let’s put on a show!” spirit, we decided to incorporate a Buffy viewing into our interview. The scotch -- before noon on a Monday -- helped.)

A few weeks prior to the interview, I put out to Twitter a general inquiry as to what episode I should watch. I suggested “Amends” as it’s one of my favourites. The response was... galvanizing. There was so much vitriol directed toward the episode. So much loathing. And I get it at home, too. My son Xander and I have watched and rewatched the series, and “Amends” is the one episode he always demands we skip.

I decided to go with “Hush.” It was safer.

People hate “Amends”.

And I love it.

I should probably hate it. It should set off my cynicism, and my pessimism. It should offend me as a writer. But it doesn’t.

Instead, it embraces the mystery. It doesn’t attempt to explain away the miraculous, even with the logic of the Buffyverse.

It’s that snow...

“Amends” is about forgiveness, and coming to terms with the sins of the past. It is not about atonement; it’s not about making things right. It’s about accepting that things aren’t. When Oz offers forgiveness to Willow, having caught her in flagrante with Xander weeks before, he does it with the acknowledgement that her feelings for her longtime friend aren’t, as she tries to argue, in the past, and he’s come to terms with that. When Giles invites Angel into his apartment, and decides to help him figure out who or what is tormenting him, it’s with the acknowledgement that, yes, this is the same vampire who tortured him, who killed his love.

And then there’s Angel himself.

Driven by his visions of the First Evil, and haunted by dreams of his horrific deeds, he must face himself, and come to terms with who - and what - he is. It is only when Buffy appears in his dreams, however, witnessing the atrocities of his life as a vampire, that he fully realizes the depths of his depravity. The horror in her eyes, the shame it elicits, drive him to despair. As the First intends, this awareness chips away at his humanity, revealing how very fine a line it is between man and demon for him (for us all), and how it will be his humanity -- his capacity for love -- which destroys those things he loves. “It’s not the demon in me that needs killing,” he tells Buffy desperately, “It’s the man.”

His acceptance of this is what drives him to the hillside to wait for the sun to rise. In order to fully embrace his humanity, he must sacrifice himself for those he loves.

The confrontation between Buffy and Angel on the hilltop is one of my favourite scenes in the series (and it’s a hearty rebuke for the “SMG can’t act” crowd.) Everything is laid bare for both Buffy and Angel; neither has anything left to lose. Buffy’s speech is heartbreaking. Shot from above, she looks small and frail, innocent. Her voice catches when she asks “what about me?” before professing her love for Angel, and the scene is suffused with the same power as the final moments of their fight in the Season Two finale (“I love you. Close your eyes.”).

Set early on Christmas morning, and with dialogue that verges on the Biblical (“Am I a thing worth saving?” Angel asks. “Am I a righteous man?”), we’re in the realm of miracles. And we get one.

That snowfall that saves Angel is, of course, more than a freak meteorological event: it’s a moment of grace, a benediction. It not only saves his life, but it baptizes him in his new one. From that moment forward, he is a new man. Without that moment, he would never have left Sunnydale. He would never have become the hero of Angel The Series. He would never have become a hero, period: he wouldn’t have been capable.

Watching “Amends” breaks me every time (and I’ve watched it a lot in the last few weeks).

There is something so primal, so pure, about the moment the snow starts to fall. Buffy’s pleading, her desperation, brings a tear to my eye, but the first flutter of snow destroys me. It is as if, for once, the universe is unfolding as it should.

And people call it hokey.

They scoff. They scorn.

I think the root of the aversion to “Amends” is that people feel that it’s too pat, too easy. But there’s nothing easy about it: the five minutes before the snow starts to fall are undiluted agony and pain, two broken, distraught human beings reaching out for one another, and pushing each other away. It’s anger and despair and beauty and love and desperation.

And when the snow comes...

Look, I know it’s deus ex machina: people say that like it’s a dirty word. In this case though, that’s not a literary failing, it’s just a description, and it’s an accurate one, which will be borne out by the remainder of season three and the whole of Angel the Series. We’re talking about elemental, divine forces at play here: the First Evil, and whatever brings the snow, whether you call it God or the universe or the Powers that Be. Of course it’s deus ex machina: what else could it be?

This is starting to sound like a defense of “Amends,” and it really shouldn’t be. There’s nothing to defend. We all like what we like, right? And we don’t like what we don’t like. There’s nothing wrong with that. Somewhere out there, I’m sure, is someone who adores “Doublemeat Palace.” Don’t scoff; it could happen.

For me, “Amends” is a moment of grace and meaning in a sea of chaos and confusion. It’s a soft, cool refuge in a world of fire and pain. It’s a balm for broken souls.

And it makes this cantankerous old bastard cry, every single fucking time.

Yeah, I believe in miracles.

But let’s keep that between us, shall we? I have an image to uphold.


***

Thanks, Robert! And now someone who is as much a part of this rewatch as I am, our music specialist Janet Halfyard! Rather than giving us a slice of gouda this week, she’s given us the entire wheel. I for one can say I’m now listening to the score more closely, noticing snippets of one motif or another being reworked to evoke meaning through the music, so I’m really appreciating her analysis throughout this exercise. Here is her take on the music in this week’s trio:

Mothers, fathers, lovers: problematic relationships at the heart of season 3
Janet Halfyard

These three episodes mark the dead centre of season 3 and as such they have a lot of work to do in terms of bringing earlier problems to a head. ‘Amends’ resolves (if only temporarily) a lot of the problems that have plagued the first half of the season, such as the antagonism between Faith and Buffy that has been particularly problematic since Faith was fooled by Mrs Post in ‘Revelations’; and the rift between Oz and Willow from ‘Lover’s Walk’; but most importantly, it marks a climax of the problems between Buffy and Angel. ‘Gingerbread’ marks a similar moment in Buffy’s relationship with her mother; and ‘Helpless’ does the same for her relationship with Giles. Each episode therefore marks a moment of crisis in her relationship with the three adults who feature most significantly in her life and who, literally or figuratively, fulfill the roles of lover, mother and father.

‘Amends’ is a musically extraordinary episode. I am not going to mention the creepy little theme used for the First; nor the utterly gorgeous folk-like viola melody used during the flashback in the opening sequence; nor, indeed, the insanity of having Pachelbel's Canon playing in the background of a 19th century party (it would never happen!). No, what makes ‘Amends’ special is that it brings back the different themes that have so far been written for Buffy and Angel as he reaches his own crisis point. Firstly, it brings back what I can only call the Buffy/ Angel sex theme from ‘Innocence’ in Season 2, the music we heard over Buffy’s dream-memory of having sex with Angel, the events that led to him losing his soul. Like the first time round, it’s a dream sequence. This time, we hear it as Buffy falls asleep in the library, while Angel is asleep at the mansion, and they share the dream in which they are in her bedroom and start to make love. The theme itself is reproduced exactly but the instrumentation is different. The exotic/ erotic duduk from the original is replaced by the western flute, and the heartbeat drum sound that we heard in ‘Innocence’ disappears. Instead, we have a celeste, like a music box, accompanying the flute.

The music is an essential part of recreating the circumstances under which Angel previously lost his soul. It’s almost as if the First has stolen the music itself, disguised it with the deceptively innocent-sounding flute and celeste and is using it as part of the overall plot to try and seduce Angel into losing his soul again. The instrumentation is part of this idea of the music (and the events) being magical rather than a real memory or event: the celeste has a very long standing association with magic and fantasy in film scores from Edward Scissorhands to Harry Potter. In season 2, when this theme was part of Buffy’s memory, the heartbeat sound grounded it in physical reality. That is now gone, and the magical celeste contributes to the illusory nature of this second sequence, a trick being played on Angel. We hear this particular theme in the only two moments in Buffy itself that we see the couple fully engaged in a romantic and (ahem) adult relationship. I should also mention that we get it a final time as a sort of naughty joke, as Buffy is helping her mother decorate the Christmas tree. Lost in thought, we hear a hint of this ‘sex theme’, which cuts out as Joyce says ‘So, Angel’s on top again?’. No question what Buffy was thinking about, then.

The climax of the episode is Angel’s attempt to kill himself, and to mark such an extraordinary moment, Beck reunites the thematic material of the original love theme with the reduced ‘This is what is left’ theme that he previously extracted from it. In ‘Amends’, on the hill side just before dawn, the two themes are combined, the melody of the new theme being interspersed by the distinctive falling sixths of the Love theme itself. Narratively, this brings everything together: what they had, what they lost, what they have now. The cue (beginning at the point that Buffy says ‘Angel, please, the sun is coming up’) starts with the usual version of ‘this is what is left’, and then as Buffy says ‘What about me? I love you so much’, we hear her fear that she is going to lose even the little she has left of Angel being articulated in the way that Beck places the falling sixth of the Love theme within the fabric of ‘This is what is left’, between the first two notes, and then again between the second two notes, so bringing back the idea of the love theme itself in parallel with the stripped down ‘This is what is left’ version. The past and the present collide as Buffy tries desperately to stop him from killing himself and, for the first time, tells him how much she still loves him, at last admitting now what she denied to Spike when she told him in ‘Lover’s Walk’ that she and Angel were just friends. And then the snow falls, and the episode finds resolution in the shot of Buffy and Angel walking down the snowy street (well, wading thigh deep through foam, if you look closely) as a major key melody allows them a moment of respite in their otherwise doom-laden relationship. The fact that this melody bears a surprising resemblance to ‘Going through the motions’, Buffy’s own moment of existential gloom from ‘Once More, With Feeling’, is curious to say the least.

‘Gingerbread’ and ‘Helpless’ explore issues to do with mothers and fathers: coincidentally, they occupy the same position in the season (episodes 11 and 12) as ‘Ted’ and ‘Bad Eggs’ in season 2, another pair of episodes that have ideas of problematic parenthood at their heart. ‘Gingerbread’ brings to a head Joyce’s process of trying to come to terms with Buffy as the Slayer, founding MOO (great acronym, Mom) and attempting to burn her daughter at the stake (nice way to deal with things, Joyce. Very Sunnydale). The music does something unusual and interesting in the way it complements the narrative: it falls silent. Not the whole way through (we have to wait for season 5 for that) but nonetheless, after the first scene following the teaser, the music falls silent for a full 8 minutes, from the point that Buffy goes to Giles to demand action, to the point that Joyce starts to speak at the vigil. Music, as many film music writers have noted, is important in imbuing characters with agency, the power to act. In a film score, the way music is used will tend to point to one specific character as the narrative agent, the one who is at the centre of the film, driving the story forward. In Buffy, the music tends to point to her as that narrative agent, whether it is scoring her fighting, loving, planning or speechifying to rally the troops (always more effective when not wearing yummy sushi pyjamas). Now, it turns out that the evil doers of ‘Gingerbread’ may not be something she is allowed to fight. It may be a someone with a soul rather than a demon; and so she has her agency stripped for her, and with it, all the music that underscores her actions and points to her power. Instead, when the music returns, it is scoring Joyce as she speechifies to rally her own troops, leaving Buffy disempowered. The general (not exclusive) absence of music continues right the way into act three, when Buffy meets Angel in the playground where the children were killed, with the episode theme for the dead children playing gently underneath their dialogue. She is depressed, demoralized, has been convinced by her mother’s comment that being the Slayer is fruitless (No fruit for Buffy) – but then Angel delivers his ‘why we fight’ speech, giving her back her agency, her reason for doing what she does. After this, she gets both her mojo and her music back: we have normal amounts of music for the rest of the episode as Buffy finally twigs that something is very wrong with the whole story surrounding the murdered children and gets back into action – what more proof of agency do we need than that she can kill demons when tied to a stake and surrounded by the still slightly smoking remains of the recent attempted immolation?

‘Helpless’ is the episode on which I very nearly did my entire 60 minute keynote at last year’s Slayage conference, which will come as a surprise to some people, as I’m not sure it is generally regarded as a particularly important episode, but in terms of the music, it is pivotal; and actually, in terms of the plot (her relationship with the Council), it is as well, even though I don’t think anyone’s ever put it on their favourites list. Buffy turns 18 and is put through the Council’s test. Giles suppresses her strength and coordination with injections of some mysterious substance, the plan being that she is then trapped in a house with a vampire and has to kill him to escape. A reference underlying this episode is Hitchcock’s Psycho: the house she is to be trapped in has a distinctly gothic appearance, resembling Norman Bates’s house above the motel; the vampire she has to face admits he has a thing about mothers, having killed his own; he kidnaps Buffy’s motherwith the intent that Buffy will kill her. Whedon and his writers then add fathers into this mix: the episode juxtaposes Buffy’s numerical transition to adulthood with a narrative that is about good fathers, bad fathers, absent and present ones.

Motherhood comes out well: Buffy saves Joyce and Joyce in turn displays evident confidence in her daughter and her abilities. Fatherhood is more difficult. When Buffy comes home to find that her father is not coming to take her to the ice show, we hear her disappointment at his absence in a slow clarinet melody with pairs of piano chords over the top. We have a brief hint of it at the end of the scene where Giles tells Buffy what he has done to her; and then at the end of the episode, when Giles has been fired by the council for caring too much about her – Quentin Travers specifically accuses him of having ‘a father’s love for the child’ – we hear the theme again as Giles and Buffy are more or less reconciled. The theme connects two scenes at opposite ends of the episode, making the connection between Giles and fatherhood explicit, but it also poses a questions which it does not fully resolve about whether Giles is any more successful and reliable a father than her actual dad. The theme was first used to score the idea that her father had let her down; and there is no question that Giles has let her down as well; but by transferring the fatherhood theme to Giles, who is present rather than absent and who is trying to offer comfort and make amends (that word again), it not only confirms his symbolic fatherhood but reminds us how complicated and difficult his relationship with Buffy is, just as the relationship with her actual father is difficult and complicated. These ideas carry on well into season four and beyond: does she still need him, has she outgrown him, will he end up standing in her way? So one very small theme, but it feeds into the whole trajectory of Buffy and Giles’s relationship and points to the issue of not just the father’s love but the daughter’s trust. The theme is about Buffy’s disappointment – themes tend to represent Buffy’s point of view, so the issue of her trust is just as much at stake as that of Giles’ paternal role.

This is essentially an episode-specific theme: I would be the first to admit that the fatherhood theme in this episode is ultimately not hugely important in the greater musical scheme of things (although it will come back in odd circumstances in season 4). But Helpless also contains a theme that is seriously important: it runs for the rest of the season. We first hear it just after the credit sequence at the start. Buffy has very nearly been killed by a vampire with her own stake. She’s not just hurt: she is shocked at how close to death she came. As she picks herself up, we hear a slow three note motif which although short is actually quite distinctive.



We hear this on about half a dozen other occasions in the episode, such as at school when she attempts to defend Cordelia and is knocked down, and then Willow helps her up; and as she walks home, miserable and alone in her red coat like Little Red Riding Hood (more complicated familial relationships there) just before she is attacked; and during the scene where Giles confesses. The meaning it seems to generate in this episode is the idea of Buffy’s mortality: let’s be cheerful – let’s call it the Death Motif. She is at considerable risk of dying in this episode because she has been literally disempowered; but the same motif appears in later episodes as the particular threats to Buffy’s mortality make themselves known. [To be continued…]

***

Next week: Three more brilliant episodes:
3.13 The Zeppo
3.14 Bad Girls
3.15 Consequences

Guest commentary to be provided by Ensley Guffey and Michael Holland

Buffy Rewatch Week 16: Spoiler Forum

And here is the place where you can discuss this week's episodes (after reading the post above) without fear of spoiling anything for the new viewers.

So... how about that First, eh? ;) I was dying to talk about that above, but obviously couldn't say anything. Interesting that the Big Bad of the series' final season makes its debut in a mid-season 3 episode in a way that makes you forget the First itself and focus on the impending Angel immolation instead. Many fans had forgotten about the First in S3 when it returned in S7. Perhaps it was an early attempt to break Buffy by taking Angel away from her. Now I watch Angel seeing Jenny standing behind Giles, and all I can think of is Cassie taunting Willow as Tara. (And how much I still wish Amber Benson had been available to be in that episode.)

Fringe: Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

WOW... just when I thought Fringe had hit a new high, it goes higher. This week's episode was tense, hilarious, poignant... and totally turned into a comic book partway through. Amazing. This ep (which, for the sake of my fingers, I'll just call "LSD") upheld the notion that Fringe is still the most innovative show on TV. We discovered "where" Olivia has been all this time, trapped so deep in her sub-conscious that she'd hidden herself as far into it as she could... in a place where only Peter would find her. And finally -- finally -- Peter approached the wrong Olivia... and knew it was the wrong Olivia. Glorious. Another look into what the cortexiphan trials did to this poor girl, and one where Bell finally got to see firsthand what he did to these children. And then... he disappeared. I think the death of Bell's soul hit Walter even harder than losing the body the first time around.

Highlights:
-Walter calling Astrid "Astro," and her countering by calling him "Wall-E." Ha!!
-That eyebrow thing that Anna Torv is doing, channelling Leonard Nimoy in such a wonderful way. She must have practised just moving that one eyebrow for hours. ;)
-Peter when the acid first kicks in, because we're always used to him being So. Serious. "You're bald. [whisper screams] I think he's an Observer!"
-Walter on the bus, whooping as it pulls away.
-Peter questioning Walter outside the cab: "Wait, you're driving??" Walter: "OK!"
-Peter, Walter, and Bell turning into cartoons, followed by Walter's immediate thought bubble, "How wonderful!!" LOL!!! My favourite moment of the episode.
-Broyles getting high, staring straight ahead with his mouth gaping open
-Peter knowing exactly where to find Olivia, without hesitation, and knowing the stories of her childhood. Beautiful.
-the little girl coming over and telling Peter that she knew the real him would recognize her
-Peter jolting awake into Walter's arms. Peter rarely shows that much emotion, and that scene was more amazing because of it
-Astrid (who plays the mom to everyone in this episode... she is so caring, I'm assuming now I was wrong in my first season assumption that she was somehow a double agent) coming in to see Walter and downloading that kids' show, Zoom, for him to watch. Of COURSE Walter would love Zoom.
-seeing our Olivia smile with her whole face, something I'm not sure we've ever really seen. She looked really different in that final scene.

Did You Notice?
-the commercial break glyphs spelled FEARS
-I couldn't find the Observer, but I really hope he's a cartoon. Did anyone else see him? He could have been in the hospital, or in the street when Walter and Peter first entered Olivia's subconscious, or one of the cartoons chasing them into the building...
-Did anyone else worry that rather than Bell's consciousness jumping into the body of the big guy in the ice tank, Olivia's consciousness would jump? I thought, "Oh man... this could get really disturbing."
-when Walter took the LSD, his personality didn't change at all. Haha!
-I wonder if Nina is particularly evil and untrustworthy because Olivia simply doesn't trust her? Within Olivia's subconsciousness, Nina is the sort of person who could push you down an elevator shaft.
-I'd have to read more on how they made this episode, but it reminded me a lot of "Waking Life," that Linklater movie that came out probably 10 years ago now (or more...) where they filmed the actors in every scene, and then the artists created their artwork on top of the actual scene. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the three actors actually filmed the scene and then the artist painted over their features to create the lifelike movements in their faces. Watch how Peter's facial reactions are bang-on, exactly the way Joshua Jackson would have reacted.
-interesting that Olivia's subconscious is the other reality, which is perhaps Bell's consciousness laid over hers
-Bell saying that he'd love to ride on a motorcycle before asking Peter if he's ever ridden one is a subtle nod to the Joshua Jackson film, "One Week," where he rides across Canada on a motorcycle over a week


Next week's episode is the first of the final four for the season, and word has it the final four will be one complete arc that will shock and awe all viewers. I can't wait!!!

Game of Thrones: A Must-Watch

It's rare that a show on HBO doesn't make me excited. HBO has created such a high standard of TV excellence over the years with shows like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, True Blood, and so many others, that it's almost singlehandedly raised the standard of television itself. No longer are viewers happy with pablum, but demand shows with higher production values, sweeping epic stories, excellent ensemble casts, fantastic writing, and fewer throwaway episodes.

So when I first saw a trailer for Game of Thrones (premiering this Sunday, April 17 on HBO and HBO Canada) that not only looked like Lord of the Rings but boasted all of the other attributes of HBO programming, the days until the premiere couldn't fly by fast enough. After having seen the first six episodes, I can reassure you that it lives up to its billing.

Don't listen to completely CRAP reviews like this offensive one that appeared in the NY Times, no less (thanks to Jen Stuller for the link) wherein the reviewer says that shows like this are for boys only, because there's no girl who could possibly like fantasy or sci-fi fiction. (Wow, maybe SHE should put her Harlequins away and emerge from HER mom's basement to discover there is a world of much more interesting women out there.)

If you liked Lord of the Rings, tune in. If you liked The Wire, tune in. If you like a sweeping story that crosses generations and geographical boundaries, tune in. I can best describe this show as Rome meets The Wire -- it's got all the excellence (and incredible costuming) that Rome had, but is as complex as The Wire. Considering the books the show is based on -- like Harry Potter, they will eventually be 7 volumes, but four of them are out now with the fifth in July -- are about 700 pages each, I imagine that a lot of material is being truncated into quick scenes. But check out the opening credits... watch them closely the first couple of weeks, because they intricately and beautifully lay out not only the geography of the area we're in (which is a lot like England) but each of the seven realms rises up one by one as the camera sweeps over the areas, and you get a sense of where everyone is located and why the tension is peaking.

Now, I'm not going to go into too much detail on the show here, this is just a pre-post to tell you how much I loved it. Instead, I decided I'd do something new. See, I haven't read the books at all, so I couldn't tell you if the show is a successful adaptation of them. I can only say if it's a successful series on its own. However, my friend Christopher Lockett (you may remember him from the Buffy Rewatch) is a huge fan of the books. So, he graciously agreed to do a co-post with me every week. We'll watch the show on Sunday night, put together a post where I address the show on its own, while he talks about the show as an adaptation of the books, and then we'll post it on each other's blogs at the same time. Look for the first post to go up Wednesday night, and if it works, we'll attempt to make this a weekly thing, barring personal commitments.

Until then, please tune in this week and enter the world of Winterfell, direwolves, and The Imp.

Buffy Rewatch Week 15

3.7 Revelations
Lover’s Walk
The Wish

This week’s trio of Buffy episodes were about pain, pain, heartbreak, pain, SPIKE, one of the best what-if scenarios I’ve seen, WILLOW AND XANDER AS VAMPIRES WHAT?!, pain, love, loss, one of the cruelest camera tricks I’ve ever seen, pain, and more pain. Love these three.

“Revelations” is the first episode where we see a break between Faith and Buffy. There’s clearly some tension between them, but despite us siding with Buffy because we’ve been through so much with her, the writers do create a lot of sympathy for Faith. That dingy motel room, the comments about her mother dying, her inability to connect with everyone (unless it’s with Xander out of a mutual hatred) and her harsh exterior and vulnerability are all adding up to one helluva character development (and yes, I hope this isn’t considered a spoiler, but she will go in amazing directions this season). Xander once again goes back to being the ass he was in “Dead Man’s Party”... there’s just something about the way he does it, that voice, the inflection, those eyes, the flair, the way he pulls out that chair for Buffy to sit in it with not-very-well-hidden delight... Nick Brendon plays him so wonderfully in these scenes. And yet while there are moments where I’m yelling, “Shut UP Xander” at the television, my disappointment in him never lasts long. I love that character too much to hold a grudge.

For me, the moment that always stands out in “Revelations” (other than Faith kicking Angel’s ass, an image that I always coincide mentally with that ep title) is Giles talking to Buffy in his library study. Xander once again likes to publicly humiliate Buffy, relishing in bringing her down while knowing he’s also doing something behind everyone’s back; Willow attempts her “I” statements and wants to help; Oz backs up Willow; Cordy is, once again, Cordy. But just as he did in “Dead Man’s Party,” Giles refuses to join the “let’s beat up on Buffy bandwagon,” and instead he keeps things one-on-one. His words are not meant to humiliate Buffy, but to wake her up to the reality of what she’s doing. When he tells her that she has no respect for him or the job he does, it hurts me every time. She stands there silently, and knows that he’s right. All the Xander insults in the world won’t make her turn her back on Angel, but knowing how Giles feels might.

“Lover’s Walk” features the brief return of our beloved Spike and his now infamous line, “I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.” In this episode, every pairing falls apart. Xander and Willow take things too far and get caught, and thus endeth their fling along with their relationships with Oz and Cordelia. Buffy says goodbye to Angel, and in the midst of everyone else’s misery, Spike realizes what a wanker he looks like and vows to go it alone. Who needs Drusilla? (Oh Spike... we look forward to you coming back again someday!)

Some notes:
• Pez witch!!
• I loved Giles momentarily believing Buffy when she says her mom’s head spun around after seeing Buffy’s SAT results (who’d have thunk Buffy was the savant?)
• Spike returning in a drunken, bastardized version of his first arrival, hahahaha!! (Watch for a twist on that Welcome to Sunnydale sign falling over in season 7.)
• Did you notice the magic shop owner was the woman who played the phony psychic in “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead” on Lost? (She also worked at the employment agency in the sideways world in season 6.)
• Spike pouring his heart out to Joyce makes me laugh every time... I love that he’s using the same words he used to tell Willow, like he’s one of those weepy lovelorn people telling the same story over and over and over again. The scene becomes even better when Angel shows up at the door and Spike stands behind Joyce, taunting him by pretending he’s going to bite her. Oh Spike, I ♥ you and your wacky serial killing.
• Spike: “Oh god... we killed a homeless man on this bench!” LOL! (Drusilla must have had a thing for homeless men... remember the one she said who got stuck in her teeth?)
• That cut to the funeral – making us think Cordelia was dead – is one of the cruellest jokes the writers have ever played. The first time this episode aired I screamed loudly and freaked out completely... to the point where I didn’t actually HEAR Buffy and Willow saying she was OK. When we backed up the tape (yes, I was recording it on VHS back then) and realized what had happened, we laughed. But it was nervous, confused laughter. Joss you are evil.
• Notice how Buffy never flaunts Xander’s indiscretion to him in a cruel way despite everything he’s said about her love life.
• “Bored now.” One of my fave lines from the entire series. (I even bought my daughter a shirt that said that... the daycare workers used to wonder what exactly the statement on the 2-year-old’s shirt referred to!)

“The Wish” is hands down one of my favourite Buffy episodes. It’s sad, poignant, and that slow-mo ending (God, they ALWAYS get me with the slow-mo!!) brings me to tears every... single... time. What makes this so powerful is that relationships that are so meaningful to us as viewers (as a result of watching those relationships develop over three years) simply vanish, replaced by new relationships between the same characters. That end scene is amazing, where we see Oz angrily dispense with Willow, Buffy thoughtlessly shoving a stake into Xander, and Angel turned to dust before Buffy’s eyes as she not only doesn’t care, but walks through the dust to her next kill. In another life, these paths don’t cross, making you wonder if, in another life, that stranger who passed you on the street could have been your best friend.

But not everything is different in the other world. Willow and Xander, the two people who have hurt Cordelia the most in the primary reality, are the two who kill her in this one. Vamp Willow throws matches at Angel’s chest, and in the primary reality she was the one who re-ensouled him, creating a different kind of burning in his chest... that of love and remorse. Larry from S2 (the guy who came out to Xander after bullying him relentlessly) is a white-hat along with Oz and Giles, and all three of these guys are the good ones in our reality. Buffy is a mix of Faith (tough on the exterior, wearing army pants) and Kendra (“I don’t play well with others,” getting the job done and moving on), and there’s very little of the Buffy we’ve come to know and love still there, making one wonder exactly what terrible thing happened to her in Cleveland. The soaring music at the end of the episode always gets to me, especially when Anya challenges Giles by saying, “How do you know the other world is any better than this one?” and Giles responds in a desperate voice, “Because it has to be”... just as Buffy’s neck is broken by the Master. It’s a scene that still makes the hairs on my neck stand on end. Gorgeous, gorgeous writing.

This week we have two guests, and the first one is new to the rewatch. I first met Suzie Gardner when she sent me a proposal in late 2009 for a book on the TV show Glee. About a week before or after (I can’t exactly remember the order now) I got a proposal from someone named Erin Balser for a Glee book. Both of them had great proposals, and I remembered thinking if I could just convince them to do a mashup of their ideas, we’d have a fantastic book. And then I thought what the hell, let’s ask... so I did, and they did, and the book was awesome. The book, Don’t Stop Believin’: The Unofficial Guide to Glee, came out last fall and if you’re a Gleek, there’s no better book out there. Aside from her blog, Gleeks United, Suzie has written for Quill & Quire, Imprint, and Sweetspot. She was filmed as an expert on Glee for a British documentary on the show. She is also well-versed in the marketing world, particularly with social media and online promotional techniques, with experience publicizing everything from books, to conferences, to mayoral candidates. When she’s not busy writing or twittering at @suziegardner, you’ll likely find her with her nose deep in a book or her mouth stuffed with a cupcake. When I was initially putting together my eclectic cast of wonderful people for this rewatch, I thought of her, but wasn’t sure if she watched the show. We were at a literary launch together, and I asked her and she went completely nuts with happiness. So I’m so glad she’s a part of it, and watch for her in a couple more weeks when she’ll cover the other side of “The Wish” in her write-up for “Doppelgangland.” Take it away, Suzie!

“Just Friends”: Buffy/Angel and Willow/Xander in “Revelations” and “Lover’s Walk”
(and also some commentary on “The Wish”)

“You’re not friends. You’ll never be friends. You’ll be in love ‘til it kills you both. You’ll fight, and you’ll shag, and you’ll hate each other ‘til it makes you quiver, but you’ll never be friends. Love isn’t brains, children, it’s blood – blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.”
— Spike, “Lover’s Walk”

“What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”
— Harry, When Harry Met Sally

It seems a bit strange to pair the two together, but it seems that Spike and When Harry Met Sally’s Harry are two of pop culture’s most astute commentators on male-female relationships. Really.

In “Revelations” and “Lover’s Walk,” the show’s romantic relationships take centre stage as both Buffy and Angel and Willow and Xander try to remain “just friends,” despite both pairings’ instincts to act otherwise. Both couples are also entranced by the forbidden aspect of their relationships – Buffy and Angel know that if their relationship goes too far, there could be disastrous consequences, and Willow and Xander know that if their secret gets out, they’ll be breaking both Oz and Cordelia’s hearts. Relationships are always complicated on Buffy, particularly when there’s a supernatural element involved, but what makes the drama in these two episodes ring particularly true is that the complications boil down to the most basic question: Are you friends, or are you lovers?

Due to their romantic history, Buffy and Angel really don’t stand a chance at the whole “let’s just be friends” thing. They were star-crossed lovers from the get-go, and despite the risk of Angelus returning should Buffy “give him a happy,” these two aren’t ever going to be buddies. Spike’s speech in the magic shop (as quoted above) is dead-on accurate, and at least he’s man enough to admit that he’s love’s bitch. Angel may be in his 240s, but he’s still incredibly teenager-esque when it comes to his relationship with Buffy. It’s remarkable how these two can be so mature when saving the world, yet so youthfully naive when dealing with matters of the heart. Whether they like it or not, Buffy and Angel are either lovers or enemies, but nothing in between.

Willow and Xander, however, are a very different story, because they were friends first. And they still are friends...they’re just also secret lovers. Watching this storyline is always one of the most painful ones for me – part of me is cheering for Willow and Xander for finally mutually realizing their feelings for each other, while the other part of me is crying for Oz and Cordy. This storyline is a perfect example of how well Joss Whedon understands high school relationships and all their messiness. Although Buffy and Angel may have trouble establishing if they’re friends or lovers, viewers can tell that given their history, they’re much more likely to fall on the love side of the line – Willow and Xander, on the other hand, aren’t that clear-cut. Friendships that blossom into romance are always risky, especially when it’s a friendship that’s been around as long as Willow and Xander’s. The line between being friends and being lovers is completely blurred for these two, and Joss makes it clear that the mess that they’ve gotten into definitely isn’t going to be an easy one to get out of.

Now, let’s travel back to Spike and Harry. Both of their musings on men, women and sex are perfectly applicable to the more straightforward Buffy/Angel relationship, and, although their relationship is more complicated, Harry’s message rings particularly true for Willow/Xander, as well. Harry thinks that men and women can’t resist their hormones, and for a pair of confused teenagers, this couldn’t be more accurate. Spike and Harry: relationship gurus.

And now for something completely different!

Originally, I chose this set of episodes because of my love for VampWillow...but then I got to thinking about the relationships in the other episodes instead. So, here I go making a few quick notes about “The Wish”:
- Is there anyone who doesn’t love VampWillow’s “Bored now!”? “Bored now” and “Five by five” are my two favourite Buffyisms to quote in real life.
- One of the most interesting parts of this episode for me is the characterization of our favourite Scoobies in the alternate universe. I see Willow as being very Drusilla-like, Xander as the Spike to Willow’s Dru, and Buffy as a blend of Faith and Kendra with her jaded, hardcore-slayer ways. Giles, interestingly, is probably the most similar to his real world self, with his endless optimism and faith in a better world.
- Also interesting to note is who kills who in the final battle scene: Oz kills Willow, a reversal from Willow shooting Oz with the stun gun in “Phases”; and Buffy kills Xander, an interesting choice considering that Xander was the one that brought Buffy back to life at the end of season 1.
- The reference to Cordy’s “come bite me” outfit feels particularly relevant right now, in light of the recent comments from a Toronto police officer, suggesting that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”. Toronto’s answer to this was an event called SlutWalk Toronto – what could we call the vampire biting alternative that Cordy should lead?



Thank you, Suzie! And now on to Stacey Abbott, who I’ve been working closely with over the last month as I edited her new collection of Supernatural essays (of which she is the co-editor along with David Lavery). Stacey last joined us on the Rewatch when she talked about “Bad Eggs,” “Surprise,” and “Innocence.” **As before, for the rewatchers, if you see a section where a sentence stops and white space follows, that's because I've covered a spoiler for the first-timers. If you take your mouse and highlight the white space, you'll see the words I was covering up. (This is the invisible ink I was referring to in a previous post.) There are a few of those sections in the following essay.

The Vamps are Back
Stacey Abbott

In my previous entry for the Great Buffy Rewatch, I mentioned that season 2 was my favourite but season 3 is the best. As I rewatch this season, I stand by that assertion. With Buffy surrounded by Giles, Angel, Willow, Xander, Cordelia, and Oz, the ensemble cast is at its strongest. These are carefully developed and complex characters who share bonds that will fortify them against the senior year traumas ahead (demons, vampires, Prom, Graduation…you know, the usual). As much as I love Anya, Tara, Spike and Andrew, the season three cast will always represent the show at its peak because they capture high school at its best. They are much like the friends you had when you were in high school, you may grow apart, break up and find new friends, but the memories of them define you and stay with you forever. More importantly each of the actors has grown into these roles so that they stand as three dimensional characters with increasingly complex relationships, all undergoing their own dark journey to graduation. Furthermore, the introduction of Faith provides us with a dark reflection of what Buffy could be like without her friends and family but also serves to expand the slayer mythology, preparing us for the onslaught of potential Slayers in season 7. The Mayor gives us the most charming, disarming and disturbing of Buffy’s Big Bads. In this week’s episodes, we only catch a glimpse of the Mayor in “Lover’s Walk”, but it is tantalising taster for the evil that is to come and it is a pleasure to watch this character unfold slowly but surely.

The standalone demon-of-the-week episodes of season 3, of which this week’s episode are examples, are nicely self-contained and sharply written (no “Bad Eggs” this season) but they also gently sow the seeds of what is to come. Gwendolyn Post is in many ways an easy to forget power hungry human (along the lines of Ethan Rayne but nowhere near as fun) but the way she undermines Giles and manipulates Faith establishes an underlying distrust for the Watchers Council that while not justified in this case will be in season 3’s “Helpless” (3.12) and season 5’s “Checkpoint” (5.12). She also prepares us for the arrival of Faith’s new Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce who, while being clearly less evil than Post, will actually cause more damage to Faith. Similarly “Lover’s Walk” uses Spike’s observations about Buffy and Angel to comment upon their complicated relationship that will continue to grow more complicated until Angel’s departure for LA in “Graduation Day, Part 2.” “The Wish” introduces Anyanka (aka Anya), a vengeance demon who wants to punish Xander for hurting Cordelia, only to conclude with her being made human where she will eventually replace Cordelia as Xander’s love interest and later suffer her own, even worse, heart break because of Xander. Everything is interconnected.

What this season also does is move Buffy beyond the realm of the vampire and into a broader supernatural landscape. Since season 1, Buffy has confronted numerous supernatural ghosts, demons and monsters but the show’s Big Bads have always been the Vampire – The Master, Darla, Spike, Drusilla, and of course Angelus. This week’s episodes reintroduce the vampire as villain, if only to allow Buffy and her friends to confront them, embody them, and then move past them before facing an even more formidable foe.

“Revelations”, along with next week’s “Amends”, is the episode that allows the Scooby Gang to come to terms with Angel’s return and we are reminded of the trauma he has caused and the damage he has done. Much like for Buffy, it is easy for audiences to forget his crimes because we are pleased Angel is back after the pain of “Becoming Part 2”. But the fear and anger expressed by the Scooby Gang during their intervention of Buffy is a telling reminder that all cannot be forgotten so easily and that Angel has a long way to go to make amends -- a theme that will be returned to in “Amends” and will be a defining theme of Angel (in fact many key elements of Angel are established in season three – too many to list here). In particular, we see a return to the Xander who withheld Willow’s message to Buffy about re-ensouling Angel in “Becoming Part 2”. Blinded by his hatred of Angel/Angelus and his inability to forgive him for the death of Ms. Calendar, Xander sees only a murderer and cannot accept that Angel has changed. He, like the others, is not prepared to see the moral ambiguity that surrounds Angel but by reducing Angel to a simple demon-of-the-week monster to be destroyed by rival slayer Faith, Xander nearly brings about disaster as the gang become blinded to the greater and all too human evil among them. This episode tells us that the real evil of season 3 won’t be so easily spotted and will present itself in the guise of a human figure of authority. [Not able to resist another Angel reference, Xander’s anger at Buffy for consorting with Angel nicely foreshadows Buffy’s fury with Angel and blindness to Faith’s rehabilitation in “Sanctuary” when she finds Angel comforting Faith in LA(Angel 1:19)].

“Lover’s Walk” sees the return of Spike and this glimpse of Spike is a nice segue between the murderous Spike of season two and the increasingly ambiguous, and sympathetic Spike of seasons 4 through 7 (plus season 5 of Angel). He brutally murders the Magic Shop owner, reminding us that he is still a force to be reckoned with [she’s not the first magic shop owner to die violently and won’t be the last begging the question, why would anyone own a magic shop in Sunnydale? Ask Giles]. Later Spike lecherously threatens Willow but also visits Buffy’s Mom. While he taunts Angel by threatening to bite Joyce from behind her back, there is no evidence that he goes there for any other reason than to get a bit of motherly love (not to mention hot chocolate with the little marshmallows) and share his pain about Drusilla. This scene is partly there to remind us how moral tables on Buffy continue to turn (to borrow a sentiment expressed in Angel everyone is born capable of great good and great evil) but it also establishes Spike’s human side in that he demonstrates his developing soft spot for Summers women. Here we see a glimpse of the Spike who will protect Joyce and later Dawn, and will bring flowers to mark Joyce’s death, explaining “I liked the lady…she was decent. She didn’t put on airs. She always had a nice cuppa for me and she never treated me like a freak”. This is the only brief glimpse of Spike in season 3 but it does provide us with some closure to his story line (at least so far) as he drives out of Sunnydale, singing along to Sid Vicious’ “I Did it My Way”.

Finally, we come to “The Wish”, a dark variation on the “It’s a Wonderful Life” formula in which we are provided with a glimpse of what the Master’s Hellmouth version of Sunnydale would have been like if Buffy hadn’t moved to town and stopped him. Much like George Bailey’s alternate Bedford Falls, “The Wish” presents us with a dystopian vision, not because vampires rule or because of the Master’s plans for vampire industrialisation – which doesn’t really make sense as it seems like lot of effort for one wine glass of blood. Instead, it is dystopian because there is no hope. Xander and Willow, the heart and soul of the Scooby Gang, have not only been turned into vampires but rather than find their inner strength through their friendship with Buffy they have escaped their future as lonely nerds and geeks by replacing Luke and Darla as the Master’s favourite, most sadistic vampires. Attempts by the White Hats to protect the town are futile, saving Cordelia only to have her murdered right in front of a helpless Giles a few hours later. Even when Buffy does arrive, she is a bleak version of herself, showing none of the personality and humanity that we expect. She has no interest in uncovering the mystery surrounding Cordelia’s claims about another reality. Instead, she simply looks to kill vamps with an even darker-than-Faith-style pragmatism. What this shows is that it isn’t simply her absence that changes the fate of Sunnydale but rather the absence of the relationships she was destined to forge. These episodes confront us with vampires once more and present a dark vision of our most beloved characters as vampires before we are forced to watch the Scooby Gang destroy each other in an apocalyptic battle to the death. While an alternate reality that is, thankfully, destroyed while innocence and normality is restored, the battle in “The Wish” remains a haunting vision of a potential fate for the Scooby Gang, turning on and destroying each other. The final image of Buffy, Xander, and Willow laughing together, oblivious to their narrowly avoided fate, reminds us that friendship and hope is what keeps apocalypse at bay in Sunnydale.

Next week:
3.10 Amends; 3.11 Gingerbread; 3.12 Helpless, three absolutely stunning episodes. Guest hosts will be Rob Wiersema and the always entertaining Janet/Steve Halfyard.

Buffy Rewatch Week 15: Spoiler Forum

As always, this is the place where you can speak freely about Buffy or Angel without worry of spoiling anyone else. However, I'd like to add one caveat to that that I haven't mentioned yet. Please refrain from talking about the season 8 comics. This is more selfish than anything else, but I've only read up to the Twilight arc and not beyond it, and I don't want to be spoiled. There have been a few comments so far on the comics and I've averted my eyes pretty quickly, but I'm always reading with one eye open these days hoping I don't see something by accident.

This week's episodes contained a lot of seeds of the future, from Faith's break with Buffy to the Mayor, and Vamp Willow being a sign of a Willow to come... Also, watch when Spike returns in S4: he’ll remember the fuzzy sweater that Willow is wearing in “Lover’s Walk.” And also notice that Buffy says she can fool everyone but herself... and Spike. As if Spike is the only person who truly understands her. Hm...

Doctor Who: Season 1

Earlier today, I finished watching season 1 of Doctor Who. I first posted months ago that I was going to be watching this as a complete n00b, with almost no background on the show whatsoever. Then I watched the first two episodes, and then the Buffy Rewatch began, so I put the show aside.

But the thing is, I recently acquired a book on Doctor Who for ECW Press, my publisher, and I’ll be editing this book, written by Graeme Burk and Robert Smith?, for next spring. The manuscript is coming in soon, and I don’t want to be spoiled, so I had to redouble my efforts and get back into it. And so, I did. And just as so many people have been telling me for so long, it’s amazing. Mark Askwith at Space told me that Russell T. Davies is a big fan of Joss Whedon and there’s a definite Buffy feel to it, and he was absolutely right. As with Whedon’s work, I can laugh and tear up all in the same scene.

So first, the non-spoilery stuff for those who haven’t yet watched: if you think Doctor Who is too campy (as I previously thought), it’s not. However, many people refer to this as a kid’s show, and I just don’t see my kids watching it just yet. I was told when I started that it’s for ages 6 and up; my daughter is 6, and there are certain moments that I know would terrify her (and not in the good way that kids like to be scared). That said, I think it’s a show my kids could watch at a younger age than Buffy, for sure. Probably around age 8 or 10 would be fine.

But if you’re an adult who thinks Doctor Who is just silly, you’re mistaken. The storylines are incredibly poignant, and even the aliens (no matter how bad) have humanity to them. They might slaughter humans like they’re garbage, but they do care about something... or someone. The relationship between Rose and the Doctor is very close. She loves him, and he her, but it’s not a romantic type of love. They’re closely connected and that connection is one of the best things about the show. The time travel aspect is something that is at once fascinating and heartbreaking, depending on where or when they go. I cried more than once. I cannot wait for season 2.

And now, onto the spoilery stuff. Please stop reading if you haven’t yet watched it.

Now I’m reaching out to the Doctor Who fans out there. I’m dying to discuss this, but since it’s been years since these episodes aired, it’s probably easiest to chat with you than to seek out any old discussions on it. Perhaps I’m going to be way offbase on something – there’s a chance my favourite episodes were the ones most reviled by Doctor Who fans – but on the other hand, I know what I like and don’t like, and so I’m most interested in hearing how my tastes are similar and diverge to everyone else’s. So let’s start.

I already talked about the pilot episode, “Rose,” and “The End of the World.” Both of them were fun and endlessly campy, and I fell in love immediately with the show on the first one. I didn’t like the second one quite as much, but it showed just how far-reaching the time travel could be.

The Unquiet Dead is one where the Doctor and Rose join forces with Charles Dickens, a real-world element I loved. The Gelth – the ethereal creatures that live through the gaslights – were very creepy, and at the end where the girl is instantly killed by them (but appears to be alive) and sacrifices herself for everyone, it’s a poignant moment that signalled to the viewer that, again like Joss Whedon, Davies is not afraid to get us attached to people only to kill them off. As with many characters on the show, there’s a sense that one person can make a difference in history, but many of those heroes are unsung. We read about kings and knights in the history books, but we don’t read about the servant girl who did something extraordinary to affect the world. I really enjoyed this episode (and Simon Callow was a fantastic addition to the show).

The next two episodes weren’t favourites of mine – “Aliens of London” and “World War Three” introduced the Slitheen, a family of aliens who have ingratiated themselves into the British government. The Slitheen are giant rubbery things with three claws at the end of very long arms, and up close when you could see the actors running around in the rubber suits, my husband and I were laughing. When the cameras pulled back and you could see them running at a distance, it was clearly more CGI than in close-up. As I mentioned in the earlier post, my husband grew up watching Doctor Who with his dad... he’s not a hardcore fan – he can’t name episode titles, he doesn’t quote any dialogue, and he hasn’t watched those early episodes in years, but he certainly knows his stuff from growing up with Tom Baker as his Doctor. He seemed to like these two episodes more than I did, but he did add, “Just for the record, I don’t remember farting in the other Doctor Who episodes...”

Now, with him being such a big fan, the next episode was the one that was for him. “Dalek” is the first truly marvellous episode of the series, in my opinion. My husband was excited to see his favourite baddies again, and my only frame of reference for the Dalek was seeing models of them at fan cons, or listening to my husband saying, “Exterminate... EXTERMINATE!!!” So when the Doctor first went into the room to check out the life form the collector asked him to see, and a little blue light came on in the room and a halting screamy voice started, my husband went, “YES!” and I said, “What?” “It’s the Dalek!” The lights slowly come up, and standing there is... a garbage can. “Wait, that’s the most feared thing the Doctor knows? It’s got a whisk and a toilet plunger, how the hell can it hurt anyone?” And then I saw what the Dalek was capable of. Of course, there was a scene where they were running along and hallway and ran into a stairwell, and my husband burst into laughter. “One of the biggest jokes is that the Dalek are the most feared things in the universe, yet you can baffle them with stairs.” And then the Dalek elevated to go up the stairs, and it was crazy creepy. “They couldn’t do THAT in the old series,” my husband said, while I just shivered with just how eerie this thing was. “Does it look the same?” I asked. “Well, it’s more golden... a little shinier than I remember it, but otherwise they have absolutely nailed the voice of it and it looks the same.” “Did they always scream like that?” “Oh yes,” he said. At the end of that episode, when the little goopy octopus thing was revealed to be inside (hubby said to his knowledge we haven’t seen the inside of one, but he said he couldn’t say that with any certainty), it was beautiful. The creature tells Rose to order it to destroy itself, and she at first says no, and then does it, because the Dalek has discovered some humanity within itself, and knows it can’t go on like that. It rises up, the gold balls come off the sides, encircle him, and destroy him. Silence. Then, “They couldn’t do that in the old series, either.” ;) I LOVED the episode, but my husband said he hoped that wasn’t the last of the Dalek. I said I doubted it, if they are that important to the Doctor Who canon.

Next up was The Long Game, another good one with Simon Pegg (yay!!) as The Editor. And as in real life, the editor is pure evil (aren’t all editors pure evil? Hahahaha... OK, if you’re one of my authors, don’t answer that). The corpses working at the consoles were super-creepy, but I thought Pegg made a great campy villain, and the goopy thing on the ceiling (“I call him Max”) was particularly gross. This is one the kids will love.

Father’s Day is an excellent episode that made me consider what I would have done in the same situation. If you could go back to a particular time in your family’s history and change the death of someone, would you? I’ve had a few people in my family die in accidents, and I know if I went back in time to meet them I doubt I’d be able to walk away and let nature take its course. In this episode Rose goes back to the day her father was killed by a car, when she was only a few months old. Her mother had romanticized who her father really was, and Rose finds out he was more of a sleaze than her mom ever let on, but in the end he truly cares about his daughter, and when he discovers this 19-year-old girl is in fact his daughter from the future, he knows what he has to do. On Lost, Miles explained that you can’t change the past, that whatever happened happened, but in this episode when Rose averts the accident, she opens a wound in time that sends in reapers (giant winged creatures) who decide to patch up that wound by basically destroying every living thing in their paths. To save his young family, Rose’s father goes out and sacrifices himself by standing in front of the car, restoring the lives of those who were killed that day. Years later, Rose’s mother would tell her about the day her father died, and that a young woman crouched beside him as he lay dying, but she didn’t know who that girl was. Since the earlier story was that her father had died alone, Rose was able to bring comfort to a situation without altering history, and so there’s a bittersweet ending. It was beautiful. I really loved this episode. And at that point my husband got into another show and kept wanting to watch it instead of Doctor Who, so I watched the next few episodes on my own. And the first one was just... WOW.

The Empty Child is set in 1941 during the Blitz in London, where barrage balloons hang low in the sky and children are starving because their parents have died. During air raids, the children rush into the houses where the inhabitants have rushed into bomb shelters and take a bunch of their food, but one particular group of children is being frightened by a child wearing a gas mask and saying in a haunting voice, “Mummy... are you my mummy? Mummy, I’m here... are you there, Mummy? Muuuuuummmmy.....” He’s about 4, has blond hair, and I swear if my son had a British accent he would sound just like this child. He creeped me out to no end, and I felt like I was on the verge of tears for the entire episode. Nancy, the girl who is the head of the group of children, tells the doctor it’s her little brother Jamie and that he’d died, and you can’t touch him or you’ll become like him. For me the saddest moment was when the Doctor orders everyone to their rooms, and Jamie drops his head like a scolded child and slowly walks away... I just wanted to hug the little guy, and couldn’t bear to watch him walk away alone. Meanwhile Rose has been separated from the Doctor and has met Captain Jack Harkness, who I know from Torchwood already (I only watched the first episode of that show, and didn’t really like it but I’m told I need to watch it within the context of Doctor Who... can someone tell me where season 1 of Torchwood falls in the Doctor Who canon? At what point in watching these episodes would I begin watching Torchwood?) He’s got the hots for her (and pretty much anything else with two legs), and he amazes her with his spaceship and his big gun. Pun intended.

Part 2 of this episode is The Doctor Dances, and together I think these are my favourite episodes of the season (seriously, I can still hear that child’s voice in my head). When they discover the gas masks are fusing themselves to the people’s heads, the group all comes together and are chased through the hospital by the people. There’s a hilarious scene where the Doctor finally refers to his little instrument as his sonic screwdriver, and Captain Jack is aghast that that’s the only weapon he carries through time with him. “Who looks at a screwdriver and says, ‘Hey, this could be more sonic!’??” Later when the Doctor plays a time travelling joke by switching his gun with a banana (you had to have been there), they’re trapped in a room with the batteries worn down on the gun, and Jack saying, “Well, I’ve got a banana, and you could put up a bunch of shelves in a pinch.” This episode was as funny as the previous one was scary. But at the end of the episode, I’ll admit I was reduced to tears when Nancy is cornered by little Jamie in his gasmask, and she admits tearfully that it’s actually her son. When she runs to him and hugs him against her better judgement, her love flowing from herself to him is what cures him and brings him back to life. While sci-fi fans tend to prefer less happy (more realistic) endings, I loved this one, and was right there with the Doctor as he was laughing and leaping around, saying, “Just this ONCE, nobody dies!!” Even Captain Jack appears to be about to die at the very end (right after he rides a bomb in a Dr. Strangelove allusion) and the TARDIS comes to save him. Beautiful two-parter.

Boom Town is next, and once again... the Slitheen. Ugh. I wasn’t very thrilled by it until a moment in the bathroom when the Slitheen women hears another woman talking about her family, and instead of ripping the woman apart, which she’s about to do, she changes her mind, and you can see how sad she is to be the last of her family. This is an episode where good and evil aren’t so clearly separated, and the Doctor accompanies the woman back to her planet where she will be executed without trial. Discussions of who’s better than the other one ensue, and in the end she tries to trick them all, but in a shocking moment, we see that the TARDIS is a life form with a soul, and when she looks into the heart of it, the TARDIS’s telepathic sense reads her thoughts and gives her what she wants – she’s reduced to an egg and allowed to start her life over again. I was glad to have this episode, because it cast a new light on the earlier Slitheen episodes. Although I’ll still be happy if I never see them again.

Next up was Bad Wolf, a slightly cheesy but still very funny episode that was a send-up of British game shows and reality shows, specifically Big Brother, Weakest Link, and Trinny and Susannah. While I personally cannot stand What Not to Wear, my best friend watches the British version of it all the time, and she fills me in on it. So I had the context for that show (and thought it was particularly funny that the android Trinny had small boobs and the android Susannah had much larger ones, just like their human counterparts). I loved that Tanya Branning from EastEnders was in this one as Lynda (OK, yes, I do watch trashy British TV, although I haven’t seen EE in ages), and when Rose was disintegrated I thought she really HAD died, although I muttered to myself out loud, “I could have SWORN she was in the first Tennant season!” but I second-guessed myself and assumed she must be dead. Watching the Doctor’s reaction was very touching, and that’s the moment (if it wasn’t clear by his jealousy with Rose’s relationship with Jack in the previous episodes) when you know how much he loves Rose. This episode ended with the Daleks (YES!) and the Emperor of them all, and I must admit, when you see a bunch of them, they are rather terrifying.

This episode led us into the finale, The Parting of the Ways, where the Doctor sends Rose away and she simply can’t go back to her old life. After having seen what she’s seen, it’s understandable – how could you possibly go back to Council flats and fish and chips after you’ve seen the things she’s seen (cue Roy Batty speech)? Mickey, her former boyfriend, is someone who’s popped up throughout the series as the poor guy left behind, but who will always be waiting for her like a loyal puppy. But in this episode, when Rose tells him there’s absolutely nothing for her there, he knows it’s over. He helps her out of love, and I wonder if we’ll see him again in season 2? He’ll probably still hang out with Jackie for a while, but I don’t know if he will still be a part of her life or not. Rose, like the Slitheen in Boom Town, looks into the eye of the TARDIS, and what she sees... is like a Tralmafadorian in Slaughterhouse-Five. She can suddenly see all of time laid out before her like a plateau of simultaneous acts, and when she emerges from the TARDIS, all glowy-eyed, and Dalek-destroying, I wasn’t sure what the heck was happening. The Doctor kisses her and takes back from her everything that is inside... but that means he can no longer be the Doctor that we know.

Last summer I was at the Polaris convention (which seemed to be 50% about Doctor Who) and had a conversation with Cindy, who posts here as SenexMacDonald, and she was telling me the Doctor regenerated. I’d always thought it was like how they change characters in soap operas: “Today the Doctor will be played by David Tennant” and you just accept it’s the same guy, different actor. But she told me no, it’s much more than that, and a vital part of who he is. Watching the Doctor regenerate at the end of this episode was amazing and sad. I really loved Eccleston a lot – he was my first Doctor, after all – and while I know the fans really love Tennant, I was sad to see him go.

Now, I do have to mention one thing I don’t absolutely love, and that’s Rose. While I think she’s great, and the companion is certainly (for me) a conduit through which the viewer can discover all the things that normally we’d be asking, my husband actually said if she fell into a burning pit of snakes he’d be pretty happy. I said, “Why, she’s not that bad,” and he said he thought she was immensely annoying. As the season went on, I began thinking the same thing. I don’t know if it’s Rose herself, or the actress playing her, or what it is. When I thought she’d been killed in Bad Wolf, I was upset, but that’s more because I was worried about the Doctor’s reaction than anything else.

In any case, I loved this season. The finale was mindblowing, The Empty Child is something that will probably be with me forever, and the poignancy of Father’s Day and Dalek raise it above most other shows on TV right now. I can’t wait to get into S2 now. What did you think of season 1? Please leave comments below and tell me what you thought of these episodes... did you like the Slitheen more than I did? Is The Empty Child a favourite episode of other fans? Please don’t leave any spoilers for future seasons, however... I don’t want to know anything that’s happening in the future.

On to the first Christmas special!!

I Still Miss Him...

Seventeen years ago today, Kurt Cobain's body was found in a room above the garage of his Seattle home. He'd shot himself in the head. I haven't seen this commemorated anywhere, but the date is emblazoned in my mind. Why? Because it was three days after my 21st birthday, and I had really long hair that I'd decided to cut off on April 8, 1994. I came into the house, walked into the living room where my mom was sitting, went, "Ta da!!" and she simply looked at me and said, "That Kurt Cobain guy is dead." I was shattered, and to make it worse, news came out a day later that he'd actually committed suicide on my birthday... it had just taken them three days to find him.

To this day, I hear "Heart-Shaped Box" and it stirs up these warring feelings within me of immense sadness and happiness. I loved that song, but listened to In Utero over and over again after his death, so I associate it with that. I loved Nirvana, and I loved Kurt. He'll never reach the age of 30, and will instead forever be immortalized as the young, lovely, angry, dishevelled voice of a generation. I still miss him. I'll always think of today as the anniversary of his death, because I don't want to commemorate it on my birthday.

RIP, Kurt.

Cutting Arts Funding

Kevin Spacey appears on Chris Matthews' Hardball to argue against cutting funding to the arts. Beautiful argument, so well said, it not only applies to funding for the arts in the U.S., but in Canada, the UK, and everywhere else around the world. Make sure you watch it all the way to the end. (And thanks to Caseen for the link!)

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