Buffy Rewatch Week 24: Spoiler Forum

Once again, here is the place where you can post freely on Buffy and Angel from a spoilery perspective, ahead of where we are in the rewatch on both shows. I decided to refrain from mentioning Tara too much in the above post, at least until New Moon Rising...

Game of Thrones Ep 9: Baelor

Just when you thought TV couldn’t surprise you, along comes this week’s episode. I’m still freaking out over it almost 24 hours later. And because of the nature of it, we decided we simply couldn’t wait until Wednesday to post our thoughts on it. As always I’m joined by Christopher Lockett, who must have been bursting with anxiety knowing what he did about Ned, watching the n00bs like me talking about how maybe Ned will join with this camp or that one. He’s reviewing the episodes from a reader’s perspective, and as I joked with him on email this week, it would have been interesting to have watched the ep together to catch the look of shock and horror on my face, matched by the look of bemusement on his as he anticipates my reaction. Unbelievable. So, because he’s been so patient and amazingly spoiler-free, I’ll let Chris start us off this week. (And be sure to check out his blog, where he’ll simulpost this blog post and host his own comments.)

Chris: So, kind of a boring episode, eh? Nothing really happened, just your usual run-of-the-mill stuff. Certainly nothing to shock the n00bs. ;-)

But seriously, folks … Ned’s TOTALLY UNEXPECTED execution is the moment, in reading the novel, when you suddenly think “Holy shit, this guy plays for keeps.” And that realization sort of comes in stages, as the actual beheading is described vaguely enough that you spend much of the rest of the novel waiting for the revelation that he’s not actually dead. I’ve had several acquaintances finish A Game of Thrones and say, “OK, so this is a Gandalf thing, right? He ‘died,’ but is going to come back in the second book?” I’m pretty happy they didn’t really leave anything to the imagination in the series—now I don’t have to be all mysterious about whether or not Ned actually got it, or worry about having “Yep, he’s dead” be a total spoiler.

Yep, he’s dead. And just a word of warning for those embarking on reading the series: do NOT get too attached to any of your favourite characters. NO ONE IS SAFE.

But of course, the shocking finale of the episode threatens to eclipse everything else that happened, and, all things being equal, this was a pretty eventful episode. And also an episode that warrants another of my “what they changed” lists:

• Shae—in the novel she is not “foreign.” I don’t know what that change bothered me, but it did a little. I kept waiting for Tyrion to guess, in their drinking game, “that accent is fake!” and have her relent and start speaking like the Westeros girl she is in the novels.
• And yeah … that drinking game was not within ten city blocks of the novel. A nifty device to reveal stuff about Tyrion, but it totally screwed up the pacing of an otherwise gripping episode.
• Tyrion getting accidentally conked on the head and missing the battle. That bugged me a little—in the novel, he fights; and his hillmen aren’t in the vanguard, they’re on the left flank, as Tywin assumed they would collapse in battle and entice the northerners into a charge that would leave them enveloped.
• Also, they missed a chance to use one of my favourite of Bronn’s lines: encouraging Tyrion before the battle, he says, “A little man like you with a large shield? You’ll give the archers fits.”
• In the novel, Robb did not sacrifice two thousand men, but sent a healthier host south to engage Tywin Lannister and then retreat, as a diversion, while they took on Jaime Lannister’s force.
• Also, I don’t know if this gripe fits under “what they changed,” but—snow in the Riverlands? Seriously? That strikes me as a HUGE continuity error.

OK, I think that’s enough for that list. What would you like to talk about, Nikki? :-)



Nikki: OK. Breathe, Nikki… BREATHE.

OHMYGODICANTBELIEVETHATJUSTHAPPENED!!!!!!!!

OK, I think that was a rather calm response, don’t you??

I have been watching television for many years, as you all know. I have been WRITING about television and studying it for many years, as many of you know. In that time, there are certain things I know to be true: when a character pops up out of nowhere with a tiny role, but the part is played by a giant of film or television, that is going to become a recurring character (unless it’s on 30 Rock and the cameo was touted in commercials for weeks leading up to it); when a character has been built up with such a rich history surrounding him, and a clear path of right and wrong drawn before him, where you can see how he could join forces with this camp or that one, you know he will remain a focal point of the show; you do NOT kill off your lead… you don’t kill off Jack Shephard on Lost or Buffy on Buffy or Sydney Bristow on Alias because, as mentioned earlier, if much of the show’s plot and mythology has been built around that character, you don’t have much of a bloody show without him/her; when that lead is in terrible peril and you know there may be a way out, there is ALWAYS a way out, especially if people who side with that person are not immediately present in the scene… in which case they shall come swooping in at the last second, lopping off the executioner’s head and saving the day; when you have SEAN BEAN in the lead, you don’t kill him off!!!!!!!

OK, sorry… I’m kind of becoming hysterical again. I think I can say there hasn’t been an ending of an episode that has shocked me the way that did. The end of Lost’s season 5, when Jack dropped the bomb and they didn’t show what the frak happened and just ended the season there… that made every fan scream in frustration. But the events themselves weren’t a shock. I’ve seen characters get killed off, and that was upsetting, but that’s reserved for the end of the series and not near the end of the FIRST BLOODY SEASON!!!

Simply put (in case all of this maniacal ranting wasn’t clear) that ending shocked the hell out of me. My hands were tightly clasped over my mouth, my eyes were gaping open, and I screamed a crazy person’s scream (thank goodness for those hands over the mouth). My husband and I gawped at each other, and I think he may have spoken first, saying, “They killed him!”
“No!” was all I could say once I let out that breath I’d been holding in.
“I can’t believe they killed him!”
“That didn’t just happen. Back it up and let’s watch again.”
“They killed him.”
“How is… what… why would… oh my GOD.”

Honestly I don’t know how I’m going to get through the rest of this week’s post. So much for analysis. I’m just rambling on and on with my reaction. I’ll turn it back over to Chris while I continue to try to get my head around this, because I still have SO much more to say but I’m bogarting the action with my shock and awe. (And by the way, for the record, I think it was a BRILLIANT move on the part of the writers, not a mistake, because I will never, ever forget that moment of television watching…)

Chris: Hee.

I think I speak for all (or most) GRRM fans when I say just how cathartic that moment of television was. Everyone I know who has read the novels invariably says something along the lines of “I can’t wait to see people’s reactions when they kill Ned.” Because it really is something of a game-changing moment—as I said above, it’s the moment when you realize GRRM ain’t your grandma’s fantasy writer. It is akin to the end of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when you discover that the murderer is SPOILER (yeah, not going to give that one away here)—a brilliant moment of generic rule-breaking.

And as long as we’re on the topic, can I gush for a moment over how well that scene was done? It was handled perfectly, from Arya’s arrival to the emergence of Ned, to Joffrey’s sickeningly self-satisfied grin when Ned calls him the true king, to Cersei’s look of horror when she realizes what Joffrey is doing … and finally to that heartbreakingly long moment of muffled silence as Ned realizes that he is about to die. It was all more or less exactly as it is described in the novel, except for two things: Ned spotting Arya crouching at the base of the statue, and telling Yoren that she is there. (For those who didn’t understand the communication, the statue is of Baelor the Blessed, the holiest of the Targaryen kings—Ned shouts “Baelor!” at Yoren, who then spots and rescues Arya). I must say, I loved this little change: it gives Arya and Ned one last moment of connection, and reinforces for Ned just why he’s agreeing to this travesty of his honor. It plays as a beautiful foil to Maester Aemon’s little lecture to Jon Snow on honor versus love; in the end, Ned chooses love, love of his children. Jon’s stipulation that his father would “Do whatever is right, no matter what” then becomes an interesting philosophical question—did Ned do the right thing? Was it right to choose his daughters over his honor?

Whatever the answer, it was for naught, and Joffrey shows his autocratic, capricious ways. He will come to plague his family with his willfulness as the books proceed. I hope everyone has a stomach for his repulsiveness—it finds way more outlets for expression in book two.

Assuming, Nikki, that you’ve caught your breath by now, what did you think of the episode’s other shocking moments? Which, admittedly, seem only mildly surprising next to Ned’s decapitation.

Nikki: I think it will be several days before I’ve caught my breath. I think I need to watch it again, just to see the end part. (On a completely random side note, my daughter watches the excruciatingly awful “Suite Life on Deck” on Family, and the other day it had the first funny line I’ve seen, where one guy tells this group of environmentalists that the captain has capitulated to their demands, to which ditzy London — who always misunderstands big words — exclaims, “Oh my GOD, they cut off his head?!” Heh.) Anyway, what I found in this episode, now thinking back on it, was that many of the scenes were there to help bolster up the very expectation I was suggesting they tore asunder with Ned’s death. Khal Drogo appears close to death, and I do NOT want him to die, and said to my husband, “They CAN’T kill him off, not after everything we’ve gone through with him and Dany”… and they seem to have found a way around that. Tyrion is knocked unconscious in battle, and the next thing you see is him appearing to be floating above the battlefield, tricking the viewer momentarily into thinking he’s dead and having an out-of-body experience… one I didn’t fall for simply because he’s Tyrion, and you simply can’t kill HIM off. We see Catelyn ride into the Walder (sp?) fortress, and we know she’s probably not in any grave danger because, well, she’s Catelyn, and they won’t kill her, right?

Now I’ll never rest easy. I’m thinking Drogo and Tyrion and Sam and Arya will be in a massive battle to the death next week at this rate. Cripes.

So that is perhaps why they added in the Tyrion scene. But as you say, I would have much rather seen him do battle, especially since we’ve seen him bludgeon a guy to death with a shield. :::shudder:::

But back to Ned (see, I just can’t let it go… Lost has taught me nothing), aside from the shock that ending gave me, I’m really saddened by that final, terrible, beautiful few moments of his life, which at the time I didn’t realize were his final ones. He sees Arya crouching on that statue (and THANK YOU for explaining the name of the statue, because my big question of the week was, why was the episode called Baelor? Is there any tie, by the way, to Baelish?). There’s a look of pain and shame on her face, and of course, anger that her father is spouting such blatant lies. I kind of hated Sansa in this scene, who, on the one hand, is trying desperately to save her father’s life, but on the other, is allowing him to compromise his very soul with those final words. Joffrey made his pronouncement, and Arya made her move. As she was weaving her way toward the stage, I began yelling, “Come on, Arya! Show us what those dancing lessons taught you!! Arya for the WIN!” I was so convinced she would be his savior. Silly me. But now, with a clearer head, I know she would have walked to her own death, and her father’s and possibly Sansa’s, too. Stopping her was the only thing that could have been done in this scene.

But my heart broke when Ned looked out to that statue one last time and she was gone. The one person who seemed to share his soul was gone, and he would never look at her again. Heartbreaking.



You remember what happened to Viserys a couple of episodes back? That’s child’s play compared to what I want to happen to Joffrey, that sniveling little toad excrement.

So… once word gets over to Ned’s son and his army of bannermen, I’m wondering how long Jaime Lannister is for this world…

Chris: Speaking of that bit where Tyrion seems to be floating over the ground, can I call foul on the director for totally ripping that whole thing off of Gladiator?

I loved all the Drogo/Daenerys parts of this episode, just as I did in the novel. It’s such a harrowing sequence as we realize that however powerful Dany has become, however much she has come into her own, her power as far as the Dothraki are concerned is entirely dependent on Drogo. Jorah’s urgent entreaty for them to flee at first seems cowardly until he explains what is at stake: the khalasar is held together solely by Drogo’s strength—once that strength ebbs, the whole house of cards threatens to come down. And yet Dany hangs on, desperate, willing even to trust to blood magic. And … well, we’ll see how that works out next Sunday.

We also finally get to see Jorah’s own skill with a sword, and he proves himself not as nimble as his Dothraki foe, but tougher—delivering the killing blow while his enemy’s blade is literally stuck in his hip. It’s an interesting little preview of what a war between the Dothraki and Westeros might look like.

But to return to Tyrion, what did you think of his confession during the drinking game? I reiterate my annoyance with the drinking game sequence, but it was really there to reveal one of the defining moments of Tyrion’s life, and the root of his antipathy to his father: his short-lived marriage, and the horrifyingly cruel way in which Tywin ended it. Again, though I disliked the scene the story was embedded in, I thought Dinklage’s retelling of it was heartbreaking.

(Also, now that Shae has made her appearance I can say without fear of spoilage that I had wondered if perhaps the ubiquitous Roz was going to show up as the whore whom Tyrion takes on in the field. But no—she stays in King’s Landing, which means there’s a more likely role for her in season two).

Nikki: Yes, that Dany/Drogo scene was rather disheartening. She’d come so far, and I’ve said in past weeks that she’s gone from being this character who is the object of the story’s misogyny, whether from her brother or husband, to one of extreme feminine toughness, rising above her outsiderness and becoming one of the Dothraki. The scene of her eating the heart was the peak of her power among them, and is the moment when Viserys noticed it and realized she has power because she is loved and respected, and he doesn’t have what she does. But he was wrong. She’s only powerful, as you say, as Drogo’s wife. Nothing more. She means absolutely nothing without him, Dragon or no. I admired her strength in refusing to let the Dothraki rape and pillage, but by taking that away from them, they are certainly questioning their Khaleesi. I hope we see the Dragon emerge next week. ;)

I also want to say on a sidenote that I really enjoy listening to the way the Dothraki language is delivered. Dany says it with some ease, but with a very different accent than the Dothraki use. Drogo speaks it so quickly it’s as if it was the actor’s native language, and the man who challenged her in the episode over and over again (I can’t remember his name) spoke it less gutterally, but with the same accent as Drogo. The way he said “Khaleesi” was entirely different from the way Dany says it, or the way that slave girl said it who worked for her (and who was English-speaking). What a nice, subtle touch.

While there are moments where Dinklage’s English accent doesn’t quite work for me (he seems to say so many of the words with an affectation and a sneer, but in a way that works for his character), I thought his retelling of that story was, as you say, heartbreaking. One wonders if Tyrion is such a sexual character – it’s how we were first introduced to him, after all – because of the way he was treated when he was 16. Perhaps with that woman, his “wife,” he felt like a whole man for the first time in his life, and he’s been attempting to recreate that by cavorting with other whores. Or, could it be some sort of self-punishment, sleeping with so many whores because he’s resigned himself to the belief that he will never find a woman who is not a whore who will actually love him? I just love this character, and that story added a much deeper layer to him this week.

Incidentally, I was reading this week’s Rolling Stone magazine (a book I’d been editing for the past year was reviewed positively in it!) and there was a brief interview with Dinklage. My favourite part of the article was where they talked to Lena Headey, who plays Cersei, who said she’d been very aware of Dinklage’s other roles, and when he walked in the room she was prepared to meet a man who was small. What she wasn’t prepared for, she said, “Was that he would be THAT hot.” Hahaha!

While it doesn’t compare to the shock of the ending, I must say the other gasp moment in this episode was finding out the old blind man (notice how I don’t use names because I simply can’t keep track of them all) at the Wall was, in fact, a Targaryen! Another fascinating backstory!

So, with only one episode left to go, does it feel to you, a reader of the book and someone who’s aware of what is still left to cover, that they are rushing things at all? While the pace is much quicker than it was earlier, and while I do believe there are a lot of things they may still have left to cover, I’m really enjoying the pace, but I wonder if fans of the books feel differently?

Chris: No, I actually think they’ve done an admirable job in pacing the story. When I first heard it would be ten episodes, I was a little concerned that it would be rushed … but I’ve never felt that it has been. I would in fact go so far as to hold up GoT as an example of how to adapt a novel to the screen—with the exception of one or two missteps (which, frankly, might just be me being cranky), the realization of GRRM’s narrative in televisual format has been exceptionally well done. And really, the proof is in the pudding—the fact that so many people I know who haven’t read the novels (like your own lovely self) are absolutely LOVING the series.

I will say nothing about what is in store for Dany next week, aside from saying—don’t worry. All her growth and strength has not been for naught, and the sense that she relies absolutely on Drogo for her power is … well, again, I’ll wait for next week. Suffice to say: the Daenerys we met in episode one would have fled with Jorah. The Daenerys we have now is an entirely different woman.

I agree with you entirely on how smart the writers have been with the Dothraki language. I can’t recall if this has come up before, but they hired a linguistics professor to invent the language. A lot of GRRM’s uber-fans—the type who teach themselves Klingon or Sindarin—asked him for Dothraki grammar and vocabularies so they could learn the language. To which he had to reply, with chagrin, that he had invented all of about seven words. So the achievement with the language in the series is astounding, and Jason Momoa in particular has been particularly impressive with how fluent he sounds. Not just a piece of beefcake, that fellow. It almost makes me want to go see Conan the Barbarian.

So … one more episode left. I am so going to miss this series when it is done, and will have to rewatch it from the start several times just to fill the hole it’s going to leave (that the Seven for PVRs). I’ve been thinking through several article ideas that will give me an excuse to go back and rewatch it under the guise of “research” … there is, I think, certainly something to be done comparing this series to The Wire.

Any final thoughts, Nikki?

Nikki: Only that while waiting for your final missive to come back to me, I was doing an image search for pictures of this episode (they always seem to pop up a few days later, so the pickins were slim) but when I search for “Ned Stark execution” there was a photo of Ned holding the sword in that first episode, and I realized that’s the parallel scene to this one. In that opening episode, the man runs into camp and claims to have seen the white walkers and the wights. Ned doesn’t believe him, and in his black-and-white world, says the man must be executed if he’s suspected as a traitor. Here the sword comes back around, taking Ned’s head because he was too honest and told Cersei what he had discovered, and didn’t act when he should have. Oh Ned…

I, too, will miss this show… I can’t believe we have to wait another year for the next season! I will also miss our discussions; this has been a lot of fun!

I cannot wait for next week’s episode, because I want to know what will happen to Dany… to Sansa… to Ned’s son and his army… to Cersei… to Jaime… to Drogo… and to Jon Snow. So many people revolved around Ned, so I’m interested to see what happens when the centre is gone.

TCA Award Nominations Announced...

Clearly not as big a deal as the Golden Globes or the Emmys, the 2011 Television Critics Association (TCA) awards instead nominated shows and people who DESERVED it (imagine that!!) I guess when you've actually seen all of the shows, you can nominate things that are worthy, rather than whatever won last year. Can I just say, YES to Peter Dinklage and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS!!!!! Woohoo!

Check out these great noms for 2011:

Individual Achievement in Drama

Steve Buscemi (“Boardwalk Empire,” HBO)
Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones,” HBO)
Jon Hamm (“Mad Men,” AMC)
Julianna Margulies (“The Good Wife,” CBS)
Margo Martindale (“Justified”, FX)
Timothy Olyphant (“Justified,” FX)


Individual Achievement in Comedy

Ty Burrell (“Modern Family,” ABC)
Louis C.K. (“Louis,” FX)
Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation,” NBC)
Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation,” NBC)
Danny Pudi (“Community,” NBC)
Jon Stewart (“The Daily Show,” Comedy Central)


Outstanding Achievement in News and Information

“If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise” (HBO)
“Restrepo” (National Geographic Channel)
“60 Minutes” (CBS)
“The Rachel Maddow Show” (MSNBC)
“30 for 30” (ESPN)


Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming

“Amazing Race” (CBS)
“Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” (Travel Channel)
“Survivor” (CBS)
“The Voice” (NBC)
“Top Chef: All Stars” (Bravo)




Outstanding Achievement in Youth Programming
“A Children’s Garden of Poetry” (HBO)
“iCarly” (Nickelodeon)
“Nick News with Linda Ellerbee” (Nickelodeon)
“R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour” (The Hub)
“Sesame Street” (PBS)
“Yo Gabba Gabba” (Nick Jr.)


Outstanding New Program

“Boardwalk Empire” (HBO)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“Terriers” (FX)
“The Killing” (AMC)
“Walking Dead” (AMC)


Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials

“Cineme Verite” (HBO)
“Downton Abbey: Masterpiece” (PBS)
“Mildred Pierce” (HBO)
“Sherlock: Masterpiece” (PBS)
“Too Big to Fail” (HBO)


Outstanding Achievement in Drama

“Friday Night Lights” (DirecTV/NBC)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“Justified” (FX)
“Mad Men” (AMC)
“The Good Wife” (CBS)


Outstanding Achievement in Comedy

“Community” (NBC)
“Louie” (FX)
“Modern Family” (ABC)
“Parks and Recreation” (NBC)
“Raising Hope” (FOX)


Career Achievement Award

Steven Bochco
Dick Ebersol
Cloris Leachman
David Letterman
William Shatner
Oprah Winfrey


Heritage Award

“All in the Family”
“Freaks and Geeks”
“The Dick Van Dyke Show”
“Twin Peaks”



Program of the Year

“Boardwalk Empire” (HBO)
“Friday Night Lights” (DirecTV/NBC)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“Justified” (FX)
“Parks and Recreation” (NBC)

Game of Thrones Ep 8: The Pointy End

Welcome to week 8... only two more weeks left! As always, I'm joined by my readerly compatriot, Christopher Lockett, who helps illuminate the episodes from a bookish perspective, while I look at them as a viewer who hasn't read the books. So let's go!

Nikki: WOW, what an episode!! I think this show just gets better and better. This is the first episode actually written by George RR Martin, and it showed. He managed to cover a ton of ground in under an hour, moving us to the final two episodes. The attack on the Starks at the beginning, that amazing swordfight, Tyrion and Tywin together, King Joffrey (excuse me... I feel sick to my stomach again), Dany trying to soften Drogo, the walking dead attacking Snow... all that AND watching a direwolf take two fingers off a guy. Can a gal ask for more in an hour of television??

I want to start with the swordfight, because my husband and I were whooping and gasping aloud. It was BRILLIANTLY choreographed, and an astounding way to move us from Arya’s “dancing” lessons into the real world of swordfights. Ned certainly didn’t skimp when it came to finding the best teacher for her... he was incredible to watch, taking down most of an army with a wooden sword. And the repetition of his mantra from earlier – “What do we say to Death?” “Not today” – was wonderful and heartbreaking. We didn’t see what happened when Arya ran out of the room... I’d like to think he did a quick somersault and grabbed one of the dead men’s swords to take out the leader. My husband thinks he’s such a fantastic character they wouldn’t kill him off. But I wonder if he was, like King Robert, a catalyst to take Arya from one level to the next. I won’t ask you to spoil it, Chris, since we’ll probably find out soon, but I thought that scene was just absolutely stunning.

But of course, it would be easily overlooked with so much else happening in this episode! The scene where Drogo’s men try to rape and pillage the people as Dany looks on was shocking, and what happened afterwards really moved those characters forward. How did that scene compare to the book?

Chris: I think the scene of rape and pillage is one of those instances where seeing it rendered that well on the screen is more affecting than reading it—mainly because it removes whatever defence mechanisms we have when we read to make it more palatable. It basically followed the book exactly, except that the part where Drogo’s man challenges him and they fight is new. And ... wow. More than one person I have talked to has admitted that the climax of that fight was an uneasy conflation of icky and sexy. And Drogo continues to come into his own as a character—he’s been rocking the house for the past two episodes.

I will admit, I sqeed a little as Syrio took out the Lannister men. That was yet another scene that was perfectly done, and deeply satisfying to see Syrio in action. The ending is of course sad ... and I will say nothing spoilery about Syrio’s fate.

The closer we get to the end of the season, the more each episode becomes a total geek-fest for me as I watch how they’ve brought all GRRM’s goodness to the screen. I was especially excited about this episode, because I knew we would see the wights for the first time. It sort of makes me regret not having made a point of giving these posts an episode-specific title, if for no other reason than this week’s could have been “The Ice Zombies Cometh.”

You once asked me before if I ever wish I could watch this without having read the novels; at this point, not so much, because it is at least as great a pleasure to see how that adapt it. And to imagine how people such as yourself, who haven’t read the books, will react to seeing such moments as Ned’s betrayal by Littlefinger, the true prowess of Syrio, Arya using Needle for real for the first time, Robb coming into his own as a commander, Tyrion’s alliance with the Mountain Clans ...

That last element was something I quite enjoyed. They have Tyrion acting more hesitant in the series than in the book, but the payoff is when they’re looking down at the Lannister camp and Shagga warns Tyrion that if “if the Halfman cheats us, Shagga will cut off his manhood ...” and Tyrion impatiently finishes, “And feed it to the goats, yes.” Shagga is constantly threatening to cut off people’s manhoods and feed them to the goats in the book; in that brief moment of Peter Dinklage’s superb indifference, this repetition is communicated beautifully.

But back to the ice zombies. I always must remind myself that this novel was first published in 1996, before the walking dead hit critical mass on film and television. What was your reaction to their appearance here?

Nikki: Fantastic. I loved the scene prior where Sam points out that the men don’t smell. (I’ve just started following the actor who plays Sam, @johnbradleywest on Twitter, and he’s hilarious.) Perhaps Sam’s strength won’t be in his fighting skills, but in his brains. But back to the scene itself, it was terrifying. You can’t kill the dead who won’t be killed, and it offered a real supernatural element to the show. It’s something that the series opened with, when we saw the massacre out in the woods, and I thought the show would have several supernatural elements. Instead, it hints at them – there used to be dragons, Dany can’t be burned, the white (wight?) walkers are the dead come back to life, the direwolves have an attachment to their owners – but it’s not overt. But now it is. I knew something bad had to be going on if it freaked out a direwolf. It was scarier than The Walking Dead, to be honest, because on that show you expect the zombies. You don’t expect them here.

I’d mentioned last week that I wondered if Tyrion would give as good as he got when he met his father, or if his dad could be the one person who disarmed him. In the scene we got, it was a bit of both. There was the hesitation on the hill (and you are bang-on with your observation about the way Dinklage says the line – not having read the books, I didn’t realize Shagga had repeated that line over and over, and yet just assumed he had by the way Tyrion responded to him) and you can see Tyrion is nervous when he goes to his father, but he walks into the tent without hesitation, and introduces his men. You can tell there’s no love lost between Tywin and Tyrion (I’m surprised that Tywin would have given his dwarf son the name that sounds most like his, while his other son has a completely different name... perhaps because Tyrion came first?) and when Tywin said that rumour had it Tyrion was dead, there’s a sound in his voice like he’s disappointed that isn’t actually the case. You can tell by Tyrion’s face that he picks up on it, too, but he’s also used to being treated like that, and it doesn’t surprise him.

You asked a couple of weeks ago if I’d trust Varys or Littlefinger, and neither one of them seems particularly trustworthy. Now we have Littlefinger having betrayed Stark, but Varys is the one sneaking water down to the dungeon. I wonder if his caring is genuine, though, or if Varys and Littlefinger are smart enough to know Ned’s important to keep alive. I did love the dialogue between them, though, especially at the end: Ned: “Tell me, Varys, who do you truly serve?” Varys: “The Realm, sir. Someone must.”

Chris: The trope in a lot of contemporary fantasy is this “post-magical” world. I think it was set up in part by the sense of a waning culture in The Lord of the Rings, which of course ends with the elves passing into the West and the rise of the Age of Man. With novels like those of GRRM, we get a sense of a world in which magic remains, but only in traces, a shadow of the power it once had.

The relationship between Tyrion and his father is pretty fraught—Tywin resents his dwarf son (remember Tyrion’s comment to Jon Snow in episode one: “In the eyes of their fathers, all dwarfs are bastards”), doubly so because Tyrion’s mother died giving him birth. But he also has to acknowledge him as a Lannister. The cruel irony of it all is that Tyrion is more his father’s son than is Jaime, at least in terms of his shrewd intellect. We see Tywin’s own shrewdness at work when he flatters the representatives of the hill tribes into joining his army, recognizing them as a potential asset. It wouldn’t have occurred to Jaime to ally himself with them as Tyrion does—he would more likely have fought to the death when they came upon him in the forest.

And just to clarify: Tyrion is the third of Tywin’s children, with the twins Jaime and Cersei being born several years before him.

It was at this point in the novel that Varys really sort of became interesting to me—because we finally start to get a sense of the depth of his machinations, but also a sense of what may or may not be their altruism. Of course, you never know—and when he tells Ned he serves the Realm, the big question is: what is the Realm? Does he mean whatever the most peaceful path is? Whoever the anointed king is? Or does he plot to bring back the Targaryen dynasty?

Nikki: Interesting you should say that, because my husband and I were talking about Ned when he was in chains, and I wondered... is it possible that Ned could get away and align himself with the Targaryens? Now THAT would be an interesting combination.

The game of thrones certainly shifts in this episode, where you begin to see how people could switch sides. Catelyn goes to her sister (HONESTLY, watching Robyn pull at his mother’s cape ties while moaning that he’s hungry just made me hope there aren’t any pregnant women watching, because they’ll be put off breastfeeding forever...) to plead for her help to go up against the Lannisters, her sister refuses and says her job is to keep her idiot-boy son safe, rather than align herself with Catelyn. Catelyn rejoins part of her clan, and you can see the pressure building on both sides: Starks vs. Lannisters. The Lannisters also want to destroy the Targaryens, but Ned defended Dany and her unborn child. Hm...

Two questions I have for you this week that I hope can be answered without spoilage: I seem to have missed who the guy was who stood up against the one Stark son and ended up losing two fingers. Is he the head of his army? And secondly, have we gotten an explanation for why there are certain trees with faces on them that appear to be crying blood? Are they carved that way? Or do the followers believe the trees suddenly appeared and what they see is a sign from their higher power? (And if this is an explanation to come later, we can leave it for now.)

Chris: Happily, I can answer both questions without a whiff or hint of spoilage.

Robb’s antagonist is Jon Umber—called the Greatjon—one of Ned Stark’s bannermen. What needs to be understood is how GRRM establishes the seven kingdoms as explicitly feudal: which means that being a lord entails responsibility to the people who live on your lands, and fealty to the more powerful lord to whom you are sworn. Each of the seven kingdoms (plus the Riverlands) has their liege lord—Ned Stark, for example, is the lord of the North. All of the lords beneath him are sworn to his service. All of these most powerful lords, in turn, are sworn to obey the king. But as the new king’s legitimacy is challenged, we see the seven kingdoms beginning to splinter.

So what Robb did when he ordered Maester Luwin to “call the banners” was to order all the lords sworn to House Stark to raise arms and follow him. Now, in the feudal system, the land-bearing lords would all be knights, or at least mounted heavy cavalry, having been raised in castles and trained by men-at-arms—remember how Jon Snow so easily handed everyone else’s asses to them in the practice yard? That was because he’d been trained since he was a child. Each of the lords then presses their commonfolk into service—they make up the footsoldiers of the assembled army.

So basically, the Greatjon is one of Robb Stark’s most senior lords, and what he was basically arguing about was his right to lead the army’s vanguard—a place of honour. That Robb had given that honour to another led him to challenge Robb’s authority, and Robb’s response (before siccing his direwolf on him) was to warn him that if he took his men and left, his life would be forfeit as an oathbreaker.

Sorry, slipped into lecture mode there for a moment. ;-)

To answer the second question in a less long-winded manner: the trees with faces are weirwoods, believed by those who follow the Old Gods to be those gods’ vessels. I’ve never quite been certain whether the faces are naturally-occurring or carved into them, but they appear to cry blood because their sap is red.

Well. That was quite the episode this week, and apparently it was the highest-rated one so far. The show seems to be gaining momentum in terms of its audience, and was nominated for a Critics Choice Award in the category of Best Drama. That no one on the show was nominated in any of the acting categories is at once a scandal and (big sigh) completely unsurprising to those of us who watch SF or fantasy-based TV. I suppose you could make the argument that, in terms of who you’d nominate—where’d you begin? But that Sean Bean didn’t even get a nod is just frustrating and annoying.

Next week: remember the moments of “OMFG!” in this episode and the last? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Buffy Rewatch Week 23

4.7 The Initiative
4.8 Pangs
4.9 Something Blue

Read along in Bite Me! pp. 222-226.

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

1.7 The Bachelor Party
1.8 I Will Remember You (♥♥♥)
1.9 Hero (sob)

Read along in Once Bitten, pp. 118-124.

Before I get started I wanted to mention that if you're in the Chicago area on June 25th, you could stop in to the annual Slay-a-thon Whedonverse fundraiser, with all money raised going to the Children's Make-a-Wish foundation. You can find more information about the event here.

A brilliant week in the rewatch for both Buffy and Angel, this is where the underlying arc of season 4 is revealed – the Initiative are a bunch of army guys relying on government weaponry over folklore and books to catch the bad guys so they can study them, not slay them. They use the university as their cover, with the leader actually teaching the first-year psychology course. Yeah… my least favourite of the season-long arcs.

Now, as this week’s guest host will reiterate below, S4 is much more fun to watch the second time through, when you’re already aware of the disappointment that the arc will bring and instead you can look at the upside to it all (plus, I'm playing it down so the first-time watchers can go into it not expecting much and be pleasantly surprised). See, The X-Files did it better. MUCH better. It was about government ops and supernatural beings and army guys acting like civilians… Buffy is a show that’s always been about folklore and fantasy and books, and it has a fairy-tale-like quality to it, and the Initiative just… didn’t work. On a rewatch, it’s more fun to watch because you know what to expect and you can just sit back and enjoy the one-off episodes (and honestly, despite “The Initiative” being the disappointing reveal, it’s actually a great episode filled with excellent dialogue and situations).

No, I don’t like Riley. But I mind him less on a rewatch. (I said, I mind him less… do I like him yet? NO.) That… hair. And that good gosh golly I’m just a good ol’ boy from the midwest loserness is just too much. You can tell they were going for an actor who looked similar to David Boreanaz, right down to the large Cro-Magnon-like forehead. Big guy, broad shoulders, wants to protect Buffy, etc. But they needed to contrast him with Angel and Angelus’s dark past by presenting us with this super nice guy who just wants to “court” Buffy (really, Riley? “Court”?? I mean, COME ON, Angel lived in a time when they actually said that… and he doesn’t say that…) But in the end Riley’s just Angel-lite. He doesn’t work. At the time, when the season first aired, fans tired of him instantly, there was a backlash against him, the Initiative storyline, and a lot of the fourth season… so now, watch as things switch gears quickly as Joss & Co. realize this arc just ain’t gonna work, and they move to standalone episodes just to get us through the season in the best way possible. At the time, when it was first airing, I remember thinking it was a great idea, because it made sense that if the Mayor and police department knew what was going on, wouldn't the government know, too? But I'll say no more, and we'll just watch it play out and I'll see what everyone thinks. As I said, every time I watch this season I like it more and more. And the worst season of Buffy is better than yadda yadda yadda...

Maggie Walsh is rather loathsome, Riley is milquetoast, the other commandos are annoying and stereotypically macho, but you can easily overlook all of that (and what they’re ultimately doing) by looking at the best parts of season 4: Anya, Xander & Giles (more scenes with these two, please!), the friendship between Willow and Buffy. All of the original elements are still there, and these characters are still so fantastic. And I have to mention Spike, who becomes a series regular with these episodes and really shines as the new fan fave throughout the series. He's hilarious, he's insightful, and he fills the void left by both Angel and Cordelia, always arguing with everyone else will still managing to be the vampire with the dark past. He's brilliant, and the best part of S4.

“Pangs” is one of my favourite Buffy episodes of all time, written by the inimitable Jane Espenson. While Buffy prepares for her yam sham, Xander’s penis gets diseases from a Chumash tribe. Rhonda Wilcox gave an interesting paper on “Pangs” at Slayage 4, where she talked about the shifts in dialogue in each scene, but also talked about how many people discounted this episode because it fell on the side of the conquerers… others discounted it because it said it was an apologist episode on the side of the natives. (Then she quoted my book where I said I felt the episode presents both sides and lets us make the decision.) Angel is here because in the previous episode of his show, his associate had a vision that Buffy was in trouble. This episode concludes over on Angel, and even if you’re not watching that show, I beg you to go watch “I Will Remember You.” If you’re a fan of the Buffy/Angel relationship, it’s one of the best centric episodes of that relationship on either show.

“Something Blue” marks the return of writer Tracey Forbes, who wrote “Beer Bad.” This episode makes up for the mess she created in the other one, but I’ve noticed that her specialty was to take the characters and make them act completely unlike themselves. In these two, and the next one she’ll write, Buffy is unrecognizable, like the writer had never seen an ep of the show and had no idea what her normal behaviour would be. And I hate the “beer is BAD, Willow… BAD!” reiteration of the didacticism of that earlier episode at the beginning.

But there, I got my nitpicks out of the way, and “Something Blue” is actually a very funny episode, but also mixed with a lot of pain. More Willow tears (seriously… can’t… handle… those) and we see the pain that Willow goes through when she realizes once and for all that Oz is not coming back and she must stop kidding herself that he is.

Highlights:
• “The girl’s so hot… she’s buffy.”
• “There’s something a bit off about her.” “Maybe she’s Canadian.”
• The look on Xander’s face when Buffy says she needs to find something slutty to wear.
• Spike: “I always wondered what would happen when that bitch got some funding.”
• Giles going ghetto at Xander’s. “Is it… raspberry… fruit punch??”
• Xander’s army monologue in the bush, and Giles’s “Oh SHUT UP.”
• Willow: “If you hurt her I will beat you to death with a shovel. A fake disclaimer is nobody’s friend.”
• The Harmony/Xander epic bitch slap fight!!!!! This might be my favourite moment of season 4. I laugh my head off every time! For anyone who was at Slayage 4, I’ll let you in on a secret: The Pateman/Stafford debate was originally going to end with a Harmony/Xander bitch slap remake, but because we were on opposite sides of the Atlantic, we simply couldn’t practise it and figured we’d never pull it off. So… it was excised and we just disagreed a lot instead.
• The entirety of the scenes between Willow and Spike. BRILLIANT. They liken his inability to perform to erectile dysfunction. “Maybe you were too nervous.” The references back to what Willow was wearing in “Lover’s Walk” in season 3 are perfect, and I love that Willow even encourages him to wait a bit and maybe they can try again, while Spike encourages her that she’s actually very biteable indeed. SO brilliant.
• “Pangs”: Willow mumbling through Angel’s hand that he’s bad again.
• Willow: “Hey, is Cordelia really working for you? Cause that’s got to be a… special experience.”
• All the British jokes in the ep. Giles: “I’m still trying to stop referring to you lot as ‘bloody colonials.’”
• “Spike had a little trip to the vet and now he doesn’t chase the other puppies anymore.”
• Spike: “Caesar didn’t say, ‘I came, I conquered… I feel really bad about it.’”
• Angel: “I’m not evil, why does everyone keep thinking that?!”
• Willow, Xander, Anya, riding in like cowboys on bicycles.
• Spike getting skewered like a vampiric Saint Sebastian.
• Spike: “A bear! You made a bear! Undo it! Undo it!” For me, the “Did I get it? Did I get it?” of season 4. I LOVE this line.
• Something Blue: Spike complaining that he’s missing “Passions” while sitting in the bathtub.
• Giles’s utter disgust at Buffy and Spike making googly eyes at each other.
• Buffy attempting to explain her impending nuptials to Riley. “He’s really old… well… not as old as my last boyfriend!”
• Blind Giles: “Stop that right now! I can hear the smacking!”
• Buffy: “Honey, we’ve got to talk about the invitations. Now, do you want to be William the Bloody or just Spike? Either way it’s gonna look majorly weird.” “Whereas the name Buffy gives it that touch of classical elegance.”
• Buffy post-spell: “Spike lips! Lips of Spike!! Pah!!”
• Buffy: “You’re a pig, Spike.” Spike: “Yeah, but I’m not the one who wanted ‘Wind Beneath my Wings’ as our first dance at the wedding!”

Did You Notice?
• When Spike’s looking through the dorm list, it’s not in alphabetical order: Lisa Rosenberg follows Willow.
• Still sweaty from the fight, Riley stands before Walsh to defend his report. Um… did he write it in the walk back over to headquarters??
• In case you missed it, go and watch the final five seconds of “Pangs” and watch the look on Spike’s face when you have the Buffy POV looking down the table. It’s hysterical.
• When Season 2 first aired, many fans didn’t like Angel and instead talked about how Buffy should set her sights on Spike instead. This episode was a wish fulfillment episode for those fans who just wanted to see what it would look like if Buffy and Spike ever hooked up.
• For some reason Xander’s mother in these episode is entirely unlike the mom we’ve gotten to know… the one who lets him sleep outside on Christmas because of the drunken arguments she has with Xander’s dad, the one who forces him into the basement and makes him pay rent, the one who doesn’t give him the time of day half the time or notice he exists. Suddenly she’s making fruit punch and fruit roll-ups for his friends.

And now on to this week's guest host, the return of Michael Holland! We last heard from him in The Zeppo week, and he entertained us with his perspective on that week's episodes. Now he's back to discuss this excellent group of eps. As always, if you see a large white space, highlight it to see the spoilers underneath... but only if this is a REwatch and not a first watch for you.

***

I promised Nikki I’d keep this brief.

My last entry – The Zeppo, Bad Girls and Consequences – ran nearly 6,000 words, longer than most, but she was kind enough to post as-is, and I do thank her for that. It didn’t feel long (to me, hope you agree), but I did promise to keep this one around 1,500.

I went back and looked at that first entry. Yikes, the Zeppo part alone ran more than 1,500 words! Had I once again bitten off more than I could chew? I have to admit, I was nervous trying to cram so much fun into so few words. (So why, you must be thinking, am I wasting so many with this drivel? Well …) Buffy’s a lot of fun. More than anything else, it’s great fun, and we as fans get to enjoy it over and over again (without it ever feeling old; probably the great compliment to Whedon & Co).

I started watching from the very first ep, and by Season 2 my then-wife and I hosted every Tuesday night so friends could watch together. (I actually miss yelling “It’s on!” when commercials ended, but I wax lyrical on that in a Dollhouse article I did.) I’ve always been a “more the merrier” kind of guy, but those get-togethers (especially by Season 4 when, along with Angel, it became a two-hour event) greeeeew; so much so that a couple people started staying home to watch because our viewings were getting too rowdy. “I can’t hear!” “Wait, what just happened?” (And we couldn’t TiVO back.) To that end, my dear friend Andy Gattuso wrote up this (I kid you not, it was taped to the outside of the front door every Tuesday night) --



Frankly I was surprised I still had it. (And I apologize for its crudeness. I even blocked out a bit. We were twenty-something then; oof, it was back when I still smoked.) Another dear friend of mine, Anne Mialaret, one of the regulars, actually stood out there until the first commercial break. Now that’s a fan! So much so, in fact, that when I couldn’t make it to ComicCon during Buffy Season 3 to have our WB Posters signed, she got two and gave me one.



Now, if you’ve continued reading this far, I know you’re asking, “Why is he wasting all this time on this?” Because the show is fun. Because we as fans enjoy talking about the fun we’ve had watching it as much as the show itself. Because, as consistently good as it is, and the longevity with which it will continue (and not get old), we’ll continue having fun with it. So thanks, Andy and Anne. All fans deserve a few words before we begin.

Speaking of, I better do so. And so, once again, the camera pushes in on me staring wide-eyed at my laptop, furiously typing away and –

Opening Credits.

The Initiative
w Doug Petrie
d James A. Contner

I’ve always thought that Season Four works really well – certainly better – the second time you see it. I remember enjoying it as it aired, but there’s definitely a change in the air. We no longer have The Library as headquarters. Buffy isn’t living at home. Angel is gone. Oz having just left? Everybody’s changing. And, in typical Whedon & Co fashion, the first third of the season are pretty much stand-alones, only teasing with The Big Bad before finally revealing it. We’ve been poked by The Commandos, but now we’re hit with them head on. Not to mention the good-looking All-American who might be a new love interest for Buffy is one of them? Indeed, lots of change in the air.

In fact, Riley is the best example of Season Four working better the second time around. For three years we fell in love with Buffy and Angel right along with them. For my money they’re one of the great storytime romances. I’m getting ahead of myself, but Pangs begins the two-part crossover with the Angel ep I Will Remember You which only solidified their relationship for us long-viewing fans even after he’d left! So, yes, it took a lot of time for me to get on the Riley bandwagon. Years and multiple DVD viewings later. Now I do like him. But then? No, change wasn’t all that comfortable.

Which was most likely Whedon & Co’s plan, and one of the things that I think makes Buffy work through seven seasons. While – as I wrote throughout Zeppo et al – they never wrote against character (key in a good show) they do love to shake things up. And shake things up they do from Initiative forward.

It’s interesting that it rests on Doug Petrie to make the turn. He wrote Bad Girls which is Season 3’s turn, and here he is again, revealing for us The Initiative as Big Bad. And I’m indeed getting ahead of myself here, but David Fury’s The I In Team will reveal Adam, the personification of The Initiative as Big Bad. While I prefer my Big Bads to be a bit more fantastic (a la The Master, Spike/Drusilla/Angel, The Mayor; even Glory and eventually The First), I guess the idea of a Government anti-demon conglomerate was inevitable. Somebody was bound to ask, “Wouldn’t they have a hand in this by now?” After all, we see rumblings of the like as far back as Season 1’s Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight. That Whedon & Co handle it as well as Season 4 plays out – especially considering the Penultimate and then Finale – deserves kudos. Remember, we’re in the change.

Pangs
w Jane Espenson
d Michael Lange

More so than most of the writers in The Whedonverse, I tend to gravitate toward Ms. Espenson. While Whedon himself hits us with the big eps, Espenson tends to bring the funny, the off-kilter, and I often list more of hers under “personal faves.”

For me, Pangs is bitter-sweet. On the one hand, given as big a Buffy/Angel fan that I am (and I mean that as opposed to Buffy/Riley or Buffy/Spike), I was thrilled to hear we were getting our first crossover (after Angel left to L.A.). Angel’s The Bachelor Party ends with Doyle having a vision of Buffy in danger, Angel returns to Sunnydale here, Buffy visits L.A. in Angel’s I Will Remember You, and it’s capped in Something Blue. I just can’t help but feel that “Angel’s return to Sunnydale” should have been bigger – later in the season? – than for a primarily comedic episode such as this. Though I Will Remember You is anything but comedic, and one of the really great tortured romance episodes of both series. Now, on the other hand, as well as Ms. Espenson handles this episode – especially with the funny – what could have been a monster-of-the-week peppered by Indian-Vs-Native-American soapboxing holds up really well, even after multiple viewings.

The His Girl Friday banter of Giles and Willow arguing over that very “Vs” is really well written, from both sides, and is (almost) as funny as its counterpoint: Buffy just wanting to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner. There are great momens throughout like --

WILLOW
This isn't a Western, Buffy! We're not at Fort Giles,
with the cavalry coming to save us! It's one lonely and
oppressed warrior guy who's just trying to --

BUFFY
-- kill a lot of people?

WILLOW
I didn't say he was right...

BUFFY
Will, you know how bad I feel. This is eating me up --
(to Anya, who holds up the bottle of brandy)
-- a quarter cup, and let it simmer --
(to Willow, as Anya goes back)
-- but even though it's hard, we have to end this. Yes,
he's been wronged, and I personally would be ready to
apologize...

SPIKE
Oh, someone put a stake in me!

Capitalized by the great end with all of them at the table, even tied-to-the-chair Spike as returned-from-Syphillis Xander, loveable old Xander, blurts out that Angel was there.
Alas.

Something Blue
w Tracey Forbes
d Nick Marck

As mentioned, this ep caps the big Angel crossover, Buffy mentioning to Willow she only saw him in L.A. for five minutes – yep, sniffle for those of you who know. As I say, I always feel it could have been bigger than Pangs although I Will Remember You works so well that I write it off as “more of the change.” Buffy has to move on, so that her relationship with Riley can evolve. And fair enough. But the biggest change I realized in watching these episodes again (primarily Pangs and Something Blue) is this: this is where we begin to love Spike.

We’ve always loved to hate Spike, but these are the two eps in which Whedon & Co ingratiate him to The Scoobies and, more significantly, to us the audience. Whedon himself says (I’m paraphrasing), “When we lost Cordelia to Angel, we needed someone to fill that saying-what-we’re-all-thinking hole, and Spike does that beautifully.” So he was brought back. Of course, to give him those Cordelia moments, and not have him back just to wage war on Buffy, he had to get into the group, hence the implant (introduced in Pangs), being held at Giles’, and his (still biting but) more comedic handling.

Speaking of the comedy, Ms. Forbes handles it very well here; in most people’s opinion, getting a tabula rasa after her Beer Bad.

ANYA
Giles is blind?

Xander goes to Giles, waves his hands wildly in front of Giles' face.
GILES
Stop whatever you're doing. You smell like fruit roll-ups.

SPIKE
This is the crack team that foils my every plan?

BUFFY
Spike's right. We have to get organized.

ANYA
Why are you holding hands?

Xander turns, eyes them.
SPIKE
They have to hear it sooner or later...

BUFFY
Spike and I are getting married.

XANDER
(to Giles)
How? What? How?

GILES
Three excellent questions.

Buffy and Spike kiss, big time.
XANDER
(off this)
Can I be blind too?

As I wrote in The Zeppo how much I love What Ifs, this too has that feel. Some have said this ep feels like Season 1’s Nightmares, specifically in which (in that ep) Giles can no longer read, and everyone faces their own demons, but where I think Whedon & Co get away with it is in playing the comedy instead of rehashing a monster-of-the-week. (A similar argument can be made for Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight Vs Season 6’s Gone.)

And as I have the soft spot for Xander, I have to point out here that he’s the one to figure out what’s going on, underlining just how close he and Willow are (foreshadowing the Season 6 end. Speaking of that, do take note of D’Hoffryn inviting Willow to join his merry men, foreshadowing just how powerful she is, and will become).

All in all, I think these three eps play out quite nicely; as I say, especially in repeated viewings when you’re not just coming off the whirlwind Buffy/Angel storyline and can watch Season 4 for its own merit. I hope you’re enjoying it, and have enjoyed these three eps’ mostly comedic breather. Because what comes next is wonderfully anything but.

Buffy Rewatch Week 23: Spoiler Forum

Once again, the place where you can talk about Buffy and Angel episodes without fear of spoilage. LOTS of good stuff in this week's eps that are foreshadowing later ones.

The eventual relationship between Buffy and Spike, with her subtle suggestion at the end of “Something Blue” that maybe it wasn’t all a spell making her act like that. She talks to Will about how she’s drawn to dangerous types, ones that are more difficult to love.

It also foreshadows not only Willow’s homosexuality (the banner being put up at the beginning of Something Blue) but her inability to deal with difficult situations, turning increasingly to her magic to find a way out of the pain and becoming more and more dangerous each time.

Game of Thrones Ep 7: You Win or You Die

Welcome to week 7 of our Game of Thrones analysis! This week’s episode was a doozy, and for me, the first one I watched live where I didn’t have it on a preview DVD. That also means that this was the most highly anticipated week of the watch for me. I’m joined as always by Christopher Lockett, who has read the book series and is providing a more literary take on the episodes (and also explaining certain things that may have blown by us too quickly in the episode, but are elaborated upon in the books). So I’ll let Chris start us off!

Chris: So, remember a few posts ago when I asked you whom you would be more inclined to trust, Littlefinger or Varys? It was sort of the end of this episode I was thinking about. Hee.

So: lots of great stuff in this episode, but I want to address what I think is the series’ first real misstep: Littlefinger’s tutoring of the whores. First: Roz is in King’s Landing ALREADY? That seems like a pretty fast trip, considering it took the king and his retinue a month to get to Winterfell. And I suppose it was inevitable that, once they decided they wanted to keep her character around, she would end up working in one of Littlefinger’s brothels. I’m not entirely sure why they’ve decided to make her a relatively prominent character. There is one possibility that I won’t voice, as it would be spoilery … but for the moment she seems to be there for the purpose of upping the skin factor. And it’s not that she isn’t nice to look at, but it seems a bit gratuitous.

But really, all that’s neither here nor there. Littlefinger’s little soliloquy provided an interesting window into his character, but it came across to me as totally contrived. For one thing, does Petyr Baelish strike you as such a micromanager that he would deign to give his prostitutes lessons? Or to make such revelations about himself to them? One of the brilliant things about Littlefinger’s character is he keeps so much buttoned up that you’re always guessing about his motivations and ambitions. I felt at the end as if the writers thought they needed something to make his ultimate betrayal of Ned more comprehensible, which to my mind is a rare moment of them not trusting their audience.

That being said: the plot thickens! We finally meet the mighty Tywin Lannister! The King is gored by a boar! Jon Snow will be a steward! His direwolf finally gets a name (oh, and finds a human hand)! Jorah saves Daenerys from being poisoned! Drogo promises to give her the Iron Throne! And Ned Stark TOTALLY FAILS to save the realm from Cersei and her bastard brood!

So much goodness to talk about. Where do you want to start, Nikki?

Nikki: I’d say you’ve covered everything beautifully! So for next week’s blog post…

Haha… Okay, seriously, I enjoyed this episode, although I found it a little bit slow at parts, until the very end (whereupon I sat up bolt upright, hands over my mouth, and just kept saying, “I KNEW IT!!”) The next day I saw a few posts talking about what an idiot Ned Stark was – “Baelish says ‘don’t trust me’ and gives you every indication he’s going to stab you in the back… and you trust him anyway. Are you really that stupid?” but I think that Littlefinger’s betrayal was brilliant, because it showed just how slippery he was, but also what a great actor Mayor Carcetti Gillen is. First, there was always something a little weaselly about the guy – he seems to goad Sansa with the story of the Mountain and the Hound, telling her what horrible trouble she’ll be in if she ever tells the Hound what she knows; he tells Ned there’s no one he can trust; he has backroom meetings with people behind Ned’s back; we know he was in love with Catelyn, and THAT can’t be good. But on the other hand, there seemed to be something more genuine about him – he pointed out all of the listeners to Ned so he’d be aware that he’s being tracked at all times; when Ned made his court declaration last week, Baelish looked at him like he was impressed, as if to say, “THIS is the guy I need to get behind”; he cares about Catelyn, and perhaps that might extend to Ned; he seemed to be helping Ned get to the bottom of what happened to Jon Arryn. But in the end, it was for his own means… he used Ned, knowing that Ned sees the world as black and white only, right and wrong, whereas Baelish knows it’s actually several shades of grey. He knew he could easily take advantage of Ned’s morals to push him to a point where he aligns himself against the Lannisters, and then Baelish could betray him. What Baelish hopes to get out of it ultimately is unclear, but I can’t wait to see what happens next week.

Can I just pause to say the sight of Joffrey on the throne made me throw up a little? UGH.

I’d like to talk about the Drogo scene. Wow, talk about an actor being kept quiet for six episodes and finally commanding a really long scene in the seventh! I didn’t know he had it in him. And for someone who is as obsessed with words as I am, I was thrilled to see all those subtitles. I’ve been picturing the name of the queen as “Calisi” for so many episodes, and when he finally said, “Khalisi” a light went on, and I realized it was meant to be a derivative of Khal, which must mean King (I hadn’t caught that earlier; I just thought that was his name), and he referred to his son as Khalasar, which must be a further derivative, either for son of a king or just prince. Loved that.

But wow, talk about declaration. After his long speech I looked at my husband and said, “So… how come YOU have never offered to rape entire villages of women and murder their children in my name? Sheesh…” I couldn’t take my eyes off Daenerys’s face throughout this scene… rather than looking terrified or disgusted, she looked serene, as if flattered by this declaration of his. As you said last week, she is definitely no longer a child.



Chris: Heh. Yeah, you kind of now imagine the writers soothing Jason Momoa, who plays Drogo, saying “Don’t worry. We have a totally kickass scene for you coming up.” Two things kept running through my mind as I watched that scene: (1) that the Dothraki have thus far been something of a conflation of Mongol warriors and plains Indians, but here we get a little bit of Maori sprinkled in. Seriously, by the end of it, it looked like he was dancing the Haka. (2) Perhaps this was a bit of a rehearsal for the upcoming Conan the Barbarian reboot, which stars Jason Momoa in the title role? I kept waiting for “Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women” to show up in his incantation.

Yeah. Not a good scene for anyone insecure in their masculinity to watch. ;-)

I loved the subtitles in this one … especially the moment when Dany is trying to convince Drogo to invade Westeros, saying “There are many dirts across the sea,” and he corrects her, saying “Lands—many lands across the sea.” Hee. It’s such a brilliant little moment—blink and you miss it, but it’s that kind of attention to detail that makes the writing so good.

To be fair to Littlefinger (which is more than he deserves), I think the suggestion is there that if Ned accepted his advice to swallow his honour and crown Joffrey, wed Sansa to him, and later down the road eliminate Stannis and crown Renly, that Littlefinger would have kept faith. But of course Ned simply isn’t capable of such scheming. The point was made several times throughout this episode that the entire concept of what we could call divine right is bullshit—as Jorah tells Daenerys, Aegon the Conqueror did not claim the throne of Westeros because he had the best claim, but because he had might enough to do it (and dragons). Renly makes the same point to Ned—that Robert’s rebellion was not about right but might. And finally, Littlefinger says it most plainly when he points out that his plan would not be treason if they win.

This is one of the things I love about GoT, both the books and the series—in a Tolkien-esque universe, Ned Stark would be the Aragorn figure (notwithstanding his wonderful portrayal of Boromir), whose rigid and unyielding honor wins out in the end. But in King’s Landing, it merely makes him a stationary object for the likes of Littlefinger and Cersei to navigate easily around. GRRM was famously dubbed the “American Tolkien,” the highest praise one can give a fantasy author; but really, this narrative has far more in common with Shakespeare’s history plays.

And yes—the sight of Joffrey on the throne, especially when he petulantly screams “KILL HIM!” is really rather vomit-inducing. And I thought it was bad in the novel. Ugh.

Though I must say that one moment I loved is just how distraught Joffrey looks when he’s at his father’s deathbed—it’s obvious here that he worships him, which is something we imagine must eat at Cersei to no end. He doesn’t seem to spend much time in mourning, mind you, but it’s a lovely cruel irony to Cersei and Jaime that their son identifies with the lout they both loathe so much.

And speaking of Jaime … what did you think of the opening sequence in the Lannister camp?



Nikki: Oh, that opening. I was absolutely fascinated by it. First, I didn’t get right away that that was Tywin… it took me a few moments before I realized, “Wait, the guy who’s skinning the animal is his father!” but that was probably because I couldn’t take my eyes off him skinning the animal. Partly because I thought it was just a brilliant introduction to this character, the way he so deftly does it (I saw him as a king figure and typically you wouldn’t see a leader doing the dirty work, but it would appear this guy likes to do these things himself and has been doing it his entire life) but also, I think that was a real animal. Usually they would use some sort of model or something, but that would have been a hugely expensive undertaking, and I was imagining how they had trained the actor to skin the animal with such mastery.

So yeah, I had to watch that scene again just to hear what they were saying! I hope I wasn’t the only one who was watching that animal-skinning over everything else. But yes, Tywin was fantastic. It’ll be interesting for me if/when we actually see Tywin and Tyrion together. We’ve seen Tyrion with his brother and sister (can I just say not seeing Tyrion at all this week was disappointing? I think that confirms he’s my favourite) but he’s mentioned on a couple of occasions how let down his father was when he discovered his son was a dwarf. I’d like to see Tyrion go head to head with him verbally… but also I’d be interested to see if his father may be the one person who disarms him. I see their relationship as being closer to the one Sam has with his father than anything else.

Speaking of which, talk about a shocker when Jon doesn’t end up being a Ranger like he thought he would be. Do you think Sam is right, and that he’s been put in a position where he could ultimately take over? Of course, I ask that not knowing if it’s an answer you already know…

And in addition to that question, I’ll ask about the King’s death. Was that as big a surprise in the book as it was for me to see on the show? The King is such a big, overwhelming character, and I was shocked to see him killed off so early in the series. But then again, he’s more of a catalyst of events – he’s that bridge between a past of glory and the present, filled with stasis. He’s a go-nowhere drunk, and despite being such a powerful character up to now, his purpose has been mostly to illuminate Ned’s morals in contrast and make us question what a king should be. He’s important because of what he’s not – he’s not moral, he’s not a good king, he’s not a loving husband, he’s not ambitious, and he’s not the father of any of his children. The only thing he was, was Ned’s friend. But even that wavered at the end when Ned saw him for what he was.

Chris: I was, to be honest, a little ambivalent about Tywin for the simple reason that my mental image of him in the books is totally different. That being said, Charles Dance’s take on the character is totally compelling, and the deer-skinning scene won me over on the rewatch. I actually think it’s a fairly clever little gambit on the writers’ part, because as a culture we’ve become at once completely divorced from such simple realities as the food we eat and at the same time desensitized to screen violence. The familiarity with violence, I want to suggest, is not unlike King Robert’s love of killing things and his concomitant reluctance to really deal with the consequences of violence. Tywin’s deer-skinning thus becomes a shrewd conceit. Unless we hunt or work at a slaughterhouse, there’s little mental connection between the cute lamb at the petting zoo and the rack of lamb crusted with herbs. And as one of the wealthy elite of Westeros, Tywin need not do his own dressing of the deer; that we’re introduced to him elbow-deep in blood suggests, as you say, that this is a character with few illusions and no tolerance for those who won’t face the unpleasant realities of ruling.

Interestingly, this aligns Tywin with Ned against Robert—don’t forget, one of our first encounters with Ned was his execution of the deserter, based on the principle that he who passes the sentence should swing the sword. He later castigates Robert on that point when Robert caves to Cersei on the issue of killing Sansa’s direwolf. Robert likes to kill things, but doesn’t care to clean up the aftermath.

I will be mum on Jon Snow’s future, for the sake of spoilers.

Robert’s death was a big surprise for me when I first read the novel, though now in hindsight it seems pretty inevitable. You’re absolutely right when you say he’s essentially an agent of stasis—him and Cersei together, really, keeping the realm steady in their uneasy marriage. For the game of thrones to start in earnest, that stasis has to shatter.

To return to Vaes Dothrak, what did you think of Jorah in this episode? He’d been revealed to us as an informer and a spy, sending information about Daenerys and Viserys to Varys, and here we see that he has won his heart’s desire—a royal pardon and the freedom to return home. Which of course raises his suspicions about the wineseller, but by intervening and saving Daenerys, he pretty much irrevocably yokes his fate to hers.

Nikki: This was definitely an episode about betrayal, and that revelation about Jorah was something that I didn’t quite understand the first time through… why was he being given a pardon? What the heck is going on? I had to watch it more than once to get that. Where Littlefinger was suspicious because of the way he actually instilled the suspicion in Ned on purpose (almost as a ploy… “I’m not the guy you should trust, you know… and me saying that pretty much means I’m the only one you CAN trust”) whereas Jorah was under my radar the entire time. The way he stood in Viserys’s way; his protectiveness around Dany; the way he’s helped her assimilate herself into the Dothraki; his sympathies for the Dothraki clan and innate understanding of everything they stand for… there was just something so trustworthy about him, and I think it’s clear, as you say, that that stems from a genuine affection for Dany. While he was sending secrets, he actually cared for her, I think.

Jorah is actually the one character I’d like to know more about, and I wonder if reading the books could cast more light on him for me? Just a couple of weeks ago my husband said, “So, okay, was he with the Dothraki or with Daenerys and her brother?” And I said, “He was with the Dothraki… no, wait, he was with the Targaryens… no… the Doth—you know, I can’t remember…” but it just didn’t seem to matter. His purpose for me was to offer a narrative to Daenerys and make her more sympathetic to us and to explain the Dothraki, who are the most foreign to us in the episode (I agree with your Maori take, by the way, and actually the very first time we saw Khal Drogo my initial thought was to wonder if the actor was Maori, because he certainly looks it).

So this turn of events was an interesting one for me, because it means Jorah is so much more than just a Johnny the Explainer, he’s a real character who could be the bridge between the Targaryens (I know I’m spelling that wrong, by the way…) and the rest of them.

Only three more episodes to go! I can’t believe the season is almost over, and it feels like it’s just beginning.

Buffy Rewatch Week 22

4.04 Fear, Itself
4.05 Beer Bad
4.06 Wild at Heart
**Follow along in Bite Me, pp. 219-222

For Angel viewers, this week’s episodes are
1.4 I Fall to Pieces
1.5 Rm w/ a Vu
1.6 Sense and Sensitivity (pp. 112-117 of Once Bitten)


This week’s trio of Buffy episodes is probably more of an emotional rollercoaster than I’ll see in any other week of the Buffy Rewatch. This might be the funniest scene in the entirety of BtVS for me:

Buffy: “This is Gachnar?”
Xander: “Big overture. Little show.”
Gachnar: “I am the dark lord of nightmares! (Buffy tries not to laugh) The bringer of terror! Tremble before me. Fear me!”
Willow laughing: “He – he’s so cute!”
Gachnar: “Tremble!”
Xander bends down: “Who’s a little fear demon? Come on! Who’s a little fear demon!”
Giles: “Don’t taunt the fear demon.”
Xander: “Why, can he hurt me?”
Giles: “No, it’s just – tacky.”

And this line…:

Buffy: “Want beer. Like beer. Beer gooood.”

triggers my gag reflex more than any other in the Buffyverse. I wish I could go back in time to the storyboarding of season 4, storm into the writers’ room and get down on my knees and BEG Joss Whedon not to do that episode. No, actually, I wish I could go even further back in time (and closer to home) and visit the writer of this episode who happens to be from... gulp... Toronto... and beg her not to go to Ryerson to take the writing course there, convincing her instead that she just might have a colourful future career as a florist. I mean, it’s such a great-smelling job! But alas, I can do neither of those things. Cue gag reflex.

And this:

“Oz... don’t you love me?”

immediately brings forth the tears for me. Willow tears are like tiny, wet daggers, each piercing my heart and wanting to gather her into my arms and make her happy again. And this episode just abounds with Willow tears.

So we’ve got the funniest, the worst, and one of the saddest episodes, all in the same week. Where to begin? Well, let’s begin with “Fear, Itself.” A fantastic episode all around, from Anya’s ridiculously awesome bunny suit to Giles wielding a chainsaw to the brilliant costume Oz wears (“Hello my name is God”) to that laugh-out-loud ending, “Fear, Itself” is one of the highlights of season 4. It’s the natural sequel to “Nightmares,” when the Scoobs all had to face their deepest fears. But notice how inconsequential their high school fears seemed compared to now, even though at the time they felt like the worst things in the world. Xander was scared of clowns; Willow had an intense stage fright; Buffy believed her parents broke up over her (something that’s mentioned at the beginning of this episode, a great dialogue cue that immediately brings “Nightmares” to mind for us); Giles got lost in the stacks; Cordy had crazy hair and was welcomed into the AV club. In this episode, Xander becomes invisible to everyone around him, like he’s no longer important in their world; Willow fears she will lose control over her talents in magicks; Buffy is scared that her friends will abandon her; Oz worries the wolf in him could threaten his friends. We’ve already seen Oz’s fear become a reality in “Wild at Heart,” and I’ll just say his isn’t the only one that will. But these are real fears that are life and death situations. The fears they all had in “Nightmares” ranged from funny to poignant, but here they’re all quite terrifying.

Until we realize that their fears are actually more dangerous to them than what lies ahead.

I’ll skip ahead to “Wild at Heart,” the episode where we finally meet the loathsome Veruca (aptly named after the vile character in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Oz breaks Willow’s heart. I feel for Oz in this episode, but that doesn’t take away the hurt of watching Willow fall apart. Buffy steps up as a real friend in this episode, and Willow plays with knives when she goes to the school’s science lab and threatens to make her fear from “Fear, Itself” actually come true. I still remember watching that ending for the first time, when Oz went out to his van, turned it on, and then turned it off. My face was soaked, I was practically hyperventilating, and I was begging him aloud to get back out of that van and go back to her. The scene cuts to Willow, and the audience expects the door to fly open and him to come back to her... but he doesn’t. He turns the van back on, and we watch as it drives away. One of the most heartbreaking moments on Buffy for me. Well, that and the fact that Giles, who’s supposed to have good taste in music, somehow thinks Veruca has charismatic stage presence. That girl looks like she’s going to swallow the microphone every time she opens her mouth. For god’s sakes, someone teach that actress how to LIP SYNCH. It’s not that hard, really.

Anyway. I think that rant just signalled me to begin talking about that middle episode I’ve been avoiding, but before I get there (and I have a treat for y’all this week when it comes to that stinky episode), I’d like to re-introduce our wonderful Janet/Steve Halfyard, who is here this week to talk about the music in “Beer Bad” and “Wild at Heart.” And hey, she doesn’t hate “Beer Bad,” I’m happy to say, so let’s hear from her first before I unleash the hounds.

Boy bad, wolf bad (beer good): Buffy, Willow, love and loss
by Steve Halfyard

I come down firmly in the love camp for "Beer Bad". What's not to love? Beer is indeed foamy, and we in the UK really do not seem to share the US's concern about the evils of foaminess. I regret to say, of course, that what Buffy is drinking does not actually appear to be beer but that feeble cousin of beer's, known here as lager. If she'd been drinking real ale, none of this would have happened.


But: the big bad (as opposed to the "Beer Bad") early in season 4 is Parker, pretty, evil, amoral, adorable Parker, one of these people of such charm and yet such damaged psyche, who has the ability to make you feel like the most important and wonderful person in the world when they turn the spotlight of their attention on you, and who then turn away, leaving you desperate to get it back. It takes until this episode for Buffy to get him out of her system properly. Lorna Jowett, author of Sex and the Slayer, has observed that Buffy’s encounter with Parker is loaded with reminders of Angel, from his own remark about “dark and brooding” guys to the way sex with him “replays what happened when she had sex with Angel only without the allegory”: she has sex with him, and then he changes, loses interest, “turns evil”, and leaves her feeling that the only way to make sense of the encounter and to restore her sense of herself is to get him back, to prove that it wasn't a mistake.

And it is in relation to Parker that our old friend, the Buffy/ Angel Love theme appears in significant disguise, but revelatory of what is really going on in that Buffy brain. Buffy has her Parker fantasy in the teaser of "Beer Bad" In fact, if we listen to the music, we know right from the start that this is a fantasy, as the fight music is techno, not Beck’s normal orchestral underscore: this is fight music scored by Buffy's own imagination. And then, fantasy Parker makes his apology, and as he does so, listen to that music. In particular, listen to the first four notes of the theme – there they are, the first four notes of the Buffy/ Angel Love theme, in a slightly different rhythm, with different harmony, but the same melody nonetheless.


Fantasy Parker’s music is a sort of over-romanticised, easy listening, swooshy string version of the Love theme. What it seems to be saying is that Buffy thinks her problem is Parker; she thinks that what has upset her is how he has treated her. And yes, it has. But actually, her problem is still Angel, and the problem with Parker is that he’s not Angel. She doesn’t want Parker; she knows he’s shallow and unworthy. She wants him to be Angel. I believe the technical term for this is rebound.


And if any of us were in any doubt about her feelings for Parker, all we have to do is listen to how she constructs him musically in her fantasy: there’s a sort of metadiegetic thing going on here (sorry for the jargon), by which I mean that the music is arguably audible to Buffy as the soundtrack in her imaginary scene. She replaces Beck’s orchestral music for the fight with the type of thing she listens too (the type of thing of which Bay City Rollers-loving Giles would say “it's not music, it's just meaningless noise”), and she reworks her Angel love theme: her fantasy is trying to make Parker sound like Angel. It's a great sequence: and we get it not once but twice, the second time even more over the top, with Parker and his flowers and tub of ice cream - oh, Buffy! Comfort eating in your fantasies? Who could not love this episode, I ask you again?


The best bit is saved till last. Right at the end, whilst Buffy is still in cavegirl mode, Parker – who, of course, she now really has saved, although not quite as she fantasized it, she being more monosyllabic and with much less good hair than in the teaser – comes to offer her exactly the apology she had been hoping for, and we get the romantic fantasy version of the Love theme back again, a little more down to earth and sincere now (and on a piano, always an instrument for scoring sincerity in the Buffyverse), and a little more hesitant because now it is not the music of a fantasy Parker as imagined by Buffy but of the real Parker, who is genuinely grateful and ashamed. It is, of course, cut off in mid-flow as Buffy clubs him. And yes, we all know he deserved. Boy Bad, indeed.


If "Beer Bad" revisits something old, “Wild at Heart” delivers something new: not just a new theme but a theme which, just for a change, is really not about Buffy in any way. There have been little thematic things here and there not about Buffy – some Xander music, some Xander and Willow music (oh, their season 3 guitar theme was cute!) – but mostly it all comes back to Buffy, her battles and her relationships (same thing, a lot of the time). This season has been no different – there's been a whole “Buffy's disappointment” theme going through the first five episodes of this season that I decided not to bore you with (it's only a little motif, and it disappears from the score around now) – and there is more Buffy-related music to come, but this episode, musically, belongs to Willow.


You would be forgiven for not noticing this because “Wild at Heart” is the episode where Oz's musical interests drives a wedge between him and Willow; and we hear the remarkably mean Verucca singing at the start of the episode (and really, with a name like Verucca, were we ever supposed to like her?) so in fact, musically it starts out looking like this episode belongs to everyone but Willow. Her music starts up when she finds the pair of recently un-werewolfed musicians in Oz's cage; and as she runs from the crypt, we hear a flute melody, which later reappears as the music that scores Oz leaving her at the end of the episode. If the Buffy/ Angel love theme is mostly about Buffy's loss of the man she loves, this is Willow's direct equivalent, and it isn't an episode-specific theme – again, this one is coming back (as indeed, is Oz, spoiler spoiler). The scene when Oz leaves was originally going to have a song (a “Goodbye to you” moment) but Whedon and his music supervisor, John King, just couldn't find one that worked, that didn't intrude or do too much, so in the end they got Christophe Beck to write music for the breakup, which is how we come to have this lovely, delicate theme in several places in this episode and others. But the fact that Willow is starting to get her own themes (there will be more!) is symptomatic of the gradual shift in the balance of power, as Willow gradually becomes more powerful as a witch throughout this season and so deserves to have her own music as distinct from Buffy’s. Season 4 is the season in which Willow really starts to become strong enough in her own right to compete with Buffy for agency and that in turn affects the way the whole narrative and its underscore are constructed.


Thank you, Janet!

OK. So. First, I want to say that in ten television companion guides, written over twelve years, there has only been one episode where I’ve written the following:

“This episode was such an insult to both the characters and the viewers that I really don’t want to waste any more paper talking about it.”

I don’t think I’ve ever written off a single episode more succinctly and completely than “Beer Bad.” In my mind, it’s a travesty. It’s a joke. It’s not worthy of the Joss Whedon stamp. As I say in my book, YES, it has that brilliant Parker vs. Willow moment. And YES, it has that great moment where Buffy clunks Parker over the head with a piece of wood (okay, so I hate Parker... who doesn’t?) But, to put it bluntly, it’s STUPID. Ridiculously stupid. I watched it again this week for the first time in years, thinking maybe it’ll make me chuckle. Maybe I’ll think it’s funny. I clicked Start. Heh, that Xander line at the beginning is pretty funny. And Buffy’s hair is pretty awesome at the start, isn’t it? Um... okay, seriously, Buffy, you got over ANGEL quicker than you did Parker, really? Are you still really moping over this guy? Okay, whatever... oh hey look, it’s Kal Penn! And... wow, you’d never know he could act from this episode. He’s kind of terrible. Good thing he switched from acting to public office. Oh god, cavepersons are starting now... and okay, no. You know what? I HATE THIS EPISODE. I tried, I really did, I hoped it would work. But no. No no no no no. I HATE it.

It’s pretty well known among my readers that I hate this episode (I kinda made my feelings clear in my book.) And over the years, while “Beer Bad” has become a critical term, as in “That episode is the ‘Beer Bad’ of this series,” (for the Losties joining the rewatch, I once used that term to describe “Stranger in a Strange Land”) I’ve also met many people who defended it. Some went so far as to say they loved it. And so, I decided it wouldn’t be fair if I just used this space to rant even more. Instead, I’ll let other people talk.

So I rounded up twelve of the Buffy Rewatch peeps (some of them you’ve yet to meet, because they’re scheduled to be appearing later this year) and I won’t provide intros to each one of them, but you can go here to find their bios on the contributors’ page. Six of them defended it with honour, and six of them unleashed the powers of hell... or maybe they were just a little angry. So allow me to present both sides of the argument, and I’ll let you decide. (Oh, and in case you think it’s lopsided for me to take up this much space despising it, thus skewing things to the Hate side, I let the Love group go much longer, so they probably have a higher word count... so I’m just evening out the teams. And hey, Steve up there liked it, so we’re even again!)

So after my little hissy fit above, let’s start with someone in the Love column. First on deck, Stacey May Fowles, who will be appearing in season 6 of the rewatch.

Stacey May Fowles
When I told my partner I had agreed to defend Beer Bad, he stared at me perplexed and said “Why would you do that?” Yes, I, in the minority, have always had a soft spot for it (and no, it’s not just the minor Kal Penn appearance.) Maybe it’s personal, in the sense that I shared a pitcher or seven of bad beer with a tribe of fiercely loyal boys in my freshman days. Maybe I love the fact that Whedon never gets all lazy, after school special on us by making the lesson “drink lots of beer around boys, get assaulted.” Maybe it’s the fact that Parker gets told by Willow, who is still in her slightly awkward phase, making the sting of it all that much better. Whatever the reason, in my mind, Beer Bad is actually real good.

“The id doesn’t learn, it doesn’t grow up,” Professor Walsh says in the opening scene, highlighting the entire point of the episode. Buffy wants Parker, or more accurately, wants Parker to want her. Parker only wants sex, seemingly with every woman on campus, and is willing to creatively lie to get it. While it’s easy to misread the episode as a lesson on the perils of collegiate drinking, it is more accurately a critique of both the perils and purposefulness of unbridled, capital W Want.

A deluded Buffy spends much of the first part of Beer Bad fantasizing not only that Parker loves and idealizes her, but that he’s actually worthy of her affections—as Willow puts it, the Buffster is in need of “a big mental tidy.” Who among us have not gone down this road of the lovelorn only to discover, through the help of some good ol’ glass clinking (“It’s nice. Foamy. Comforting.”), that the object of our affection is actually a complete douchebag? Buffy’s busy beating herself up for being “a slut” and “an idiot” (still deluded) when a random group of boys (Hey Kumar!) invite her to drink -- the side effect of the boys and the beer? Buffy wants. And in wanting she seems to actually clear up that pesky Parker problem for good.

Sometimes you need the beer and the boys to get past the I’m a slut and an idiot phase and realize that guy was a total loser and you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it. Sure some people may get pushed around and some things may get vandalized, but the episode is Whedon’s way of saying to the broken-hearted “Beer? Hey, why not? It’s a process—just don’t accidentally set the campus coffee shop on fire.” In fact, in all the chaos and destruction of bad, bad beer, the ending has our heroine return to her former uncompromising self.

Also, I laugh every time Buffy falls off that desk chair.

LOL! OK, to counter, I present David Lavery, the man behind Slayage and the first person on deck to co-host with me in Week 2 of the rewatch. What did you think, David?

David Lavery
A now-retired, often cantankerous colleague of mine used to insist literature professors customarily teach the wrong stuff in their classes. Instead of having students read and write about masterpieces / classics — Tom Jones, say, or The Great Gatsby — we should be concentrating on bestsellers. He would teach appalling novels by Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele in a course, all the better, he was convinced, to make clear, by contrast, what makes great literature great.

If those of us studying and teaching the Buffyverse were to accept such an approach, we would not be focusing like a laser on “Innocence” and “Becoming” and “Hush” “Restless” and “The Body” and “Once More with Feeling.” Instead, bottom feeders like “Beer Bad” and “Where the Wild Things Are” would captivate our scholarly and pedagogical imaginations.

Revisiting “Beer Bad” for the Great Buffy Rewatch I am more dubious than ever about the value of the “begin at the bottom” approach. If all copies of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the world were destroyed except for “Bad,” future humans could ascertain nothing about the genius of Joss Whedon’s series. I had forgotten how inconsequential it is, not just a stand-alone episode but a go-and-stand-by-yourself-in-a-corner episode. Who are these characters? These are not the Xander, or Buffy, or Giles I know. Only Willow comes through relatively unscathed. It’s so off, so out-of-synch, that I like to think of it as non-canonical. A professor of mine once returned a paper to be without a grade and whispered “Let’s just pretend you didn’t write this.” I like to pretend “Bad” doesn’t really exist.

I began watching Buffy with “The Freshman,” and “Bad” arrived only four episodes later. I gave up on Vampires Diaries after only two, but “Bad” did not drive me away and obviously I am glad I stuck with BtVS. Not even the execrable “Where the Wild Things Are” (4.18) later in Season 4, also written by “Bad’s” Tracey Forbes, could drive me away.

Oooh! A smackdown! Well, the Vampire Diaries fans won’t like THAT one, I can tell you. Wait, what? We have the author of the Vampire Diaries companion guide to counter that one? Take it away, Ms. Calhoun!

Crissy Calhoun
“Beer Bad” is the kind of Buffy episode that a non-Buffy person could watch five minutes of and judge the series harshly (the way people currently rag on The Vampire Diaries until they actually start watching it). And while “Beer Bad” is no “Hush,” to malign it seems unfair to the episode’s simple comedic charm or its rightful place in the evolution of episodes — like “The Pack,” “Band Candy,” “Tabula Rasa” — where characters temporarily lose their identity. Buffy’s slayer strength helps her get everyone away from the fire (“bad”) in the end, but “Beer Bad” is otherwise about Buffy as a human — a college girl who feels stupid and slutty after sleeping with a guy who doesn’t want anything else to do with her.

Add to that the fun of seeing: Xander’s Good Will Hunting-style revenge on the poncey college guys; Willow faking us out by seeing Carter’s side of things; Buffy’s cavegirl hair; Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement Kal Penn as a caveman; Giles describing Buffy’s strange gait to random hallway dudes; Riley, all cute and full of love-interest potential; and Buffy bonking Carter on the head — twice.

And I know I’m not the only Buffy fan who’s woken up after a particularly late beer-filled night, feeling non-verbal and like stealing my roommate’s Cheerios, and in those times I can grunt, “Beer bad,” and feel close to the Slayer. Which is just about the best feeling possible in the midst of a hangover — or at any time really. “Beer Bad” good.

I feel like the sports commentator caught in the middle here... now, back over to the Hate team. And maybe the argument is just so obvious, all it takes is something short and sweet. Here is Ian, who appeared earlier in the Rewatch, using one of my favourite forms of poetry to describe his thoughts on the ep.

Ian Klein
Choosing refreshments
For the Buffy writer’s room:
Soda good, beer bad.

Seriously, we need to institute some haiku in our Buffy watch. I miss it. OK, back over to the Love team, who’s just getting warmed up. Let’s go grab Evan Munday, the guy who argued in favour of “Ted.” Of COURSE he loved “Beer Bad.” I’d expect nothing less.

Evan Munday
'Beer Bad' gets a bad rap, sandwiched between two pretty solid episodes, the Hallowe’en one featuring a chainsaw-wielding Giles and the one that breaks Willow’s heart (and had me crying in my bedroom as if my dog had just died). Additionally, the episode has that whole after-school special aftertaste of the evils of drinking, but it does have some incredible advantages:

1) This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Hairstyling in a Series! No one can style caveperson hair like Lisa Marie Rosenberg!

2) This episode features a guest appearance by Kal Penn. 'Nuff said.

3) We get a Cliff's Notes lesson on Freudian psychology (now largely discredited) in the first five minutes!

4) Buffy watches Luscious Jackson on the TV. Remember them? ‘With my naked eye / I saw all the falling rain / Coming down on me.’

5) Most importantly, this episode clearly inspired those delightful Geico caveman ads (which themselves led to another, less-successful) television series, Cavemen.

Ball’s in your court, 'Hated It.'

Oh, Evan. You almost convinced me. But not quite. OK, hated it, who’s next? Kristen Romanelli!

Kristen Romanelli
"Beer Bad" actually begins with some promise. We enter with a totally badass fight. Buffy’s kicking and punching and flipping and kicking, and she gets in some wicked quality dusting. It all goes downhill from here. This turns out to be a very sad little power/redemption fantasy about Parker. I mean really. Parker? You don’t get this hung up on a rebound. Trust me. I find it really hard to believe that a woman as badass as Buffy can get this mopey over a guy like Parker. An epic, tragic love like Angel, yes. But… really?

Ugh, anyway. This episode is like the perfect storm of awful writing, directing, and editing. The lines are stilted and the pacing is slow. Just because the characters regress to plodding idiot cavemen doesn’t mean that everyone involved in the production had to do so as well. “Nothing can defeat the penis! Too loud, very unseemly.” For reals, Tracey Forbes?

Also? This episode marks the first appearance of Veruca who came out for all of 30 seconds to slobber all over a microphone wear offensively bad pants. Hate. And it reminds me that Kal Penn isn’t on House anymore. Double hate.

Is it just me, or is everyone mentioning Kal Penn? Now, when I sent out the list of teams to everyone on here, Evan Munday immediately emailed me back to say, “We are SO going to win, because we’ve got RAMBO on our team!” Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Elizabeth Rambo, who you’ll see more of in seasons 6 and 7 of our rewatch:

Elizabeth Rambo
Yes, the subtext is blatantly textual in "Beer Bad," and I won’t even try to defend the cavemen, but lack of subtlety is one reason I find myself enjoying it. The other reasons are some character revealing moments that tie this episode to later developments:

When Buffy bumps into Riley, he’s so engaging: “I’m ungainly...[Parker] should have his attention span checked.” But she can’t see him...yet.

Willow is adamant about Buffy getting over Parker, while she puzzles over Oz’s mystifying attraction to Veruca. Willow can tell Buffy that drowning her troubles is no answer, but check her later in "Something Blue.” Willow's confrontation/conversation with Parker, in which he seems to be making an impression, giving her the “you’re the only one I can really talk to” line, until you realize that her sweet Willow smile is a cynical smirk and she gives him a well-deserved set-down.

The unsubtlety I love most: ultimately, it’s all worth it to see Buffy knock that rat Parker out, not just once, but twice. Unlike my namesake, I believe in forgiveness, not vengeance, but don’t believe for a minute that Parker was truly repentant; a good bash or two is the only way some people can learn. Um—metaphorically, of course!

One of my favourite people from Slayage is Cynthea Masson, and I was thrilled to discover she’d be in our Hate camp. A fellow Canadian, we can also get behind hating the fact the writer of this episode is one of us. Sigh.

Cynthea Masson
“Beer Bad” wouldn’t be so bad if not for the beer—the “bad, bad beer,” as Xander dubs it. Admittedly, the episode (as with all “bad” Buffy) offers us a few notable highlights, including Veruca’s song and Xander’s sensible caveat: “Giles, don’t make caveslayer unhappy.” But such highlights are sparse and dispersed amidst the overarching foamy badness of metaphor-laden beer chugging. To appreciate the badness, we need only answer Xander’s final questions to the caveslayer: “Was there a lesson in all this? … What did we learn about beer?” I refer not only to the drinking will turn you into a Neanderthal metaphor (with which we are clubbed over the head along with Parker) but also to the less obvious and highly problematic drinking can bring a woman to her senses. That is, Buffy cannot forego her irrational longing for Parker until she drinks herself into complete inhibition (or a state of pure “id,” as Professor Walsh might say). Bad, bad lesson: college guys who drink become metaphorical cavemen (of the sort who wouldn’t stand a chance against astronauts), but a college woman who drinks can find the strength to recover from heartbreak.

That astronaut joke will make sense to the Angel fans. ;) I mentioned in the contributors’ post that I was pleased to feature both Dale Koontz and Ensley Guffey, a husband-and-wife comedy team (okay, they’re academics, but really funny ones!) who I know from Slayage, and they stepped up and agreed to take opposite sides (ah!) and do theirs together. So here are the Guffeys, with their little play, “Bakhtin or Bactine? Either way, this is gonna sting…”

DALE: The Tracey Forbes-scripted episode “Beer Bad” is often dismissed by casual fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is to be expected in the virulently anti-intellectual cesspool that is so often Internet fandom. In fact, “Beer Bad” is a sparkling gem of an episode, one whose facets shine when the twin lights of logic and academic inquiry are properly focused upon it. The episode is a subversive primer in both Freudian theory, and, far more important to the post-modern critic, the explorations of grotesque realism put forth by Bakhtin.

ENSLEY: I’m glad you brought out the Bactine, since after watching this episode, I need an antiseptic that won’t sting.

DALE: Ignore the trained monkey, ladies and gentlemen. He gets snippy without a constant stream of bananas. Back to the episode – even you, incurious cretin, can’t ignore the utter propriety of setting the climactic battle scene underground, in the “Grotto.” Think about it - cave-men, cave-Buffy, cave-fire. Clearly, this is a direct reference to Plato’s famous allegory of the Cave.

ENSLEY: I think more likely it’s an allegory of the dangers posed by lax fire inspectors. Seriously – there’s a pillar of smoke rising from the middle of a college campus. Where the hell’s the fire department? And those are definitely sprinkler system pipes Cave-Buffy’s swinging on, but where’s the water?

DALE: You must have wet brain. The water pipes are a metaphor.

ENSLEY: Yeah. A metaphor for the necessity of fire codes!

DALE: As is typical, you’re unable to discern the forest for the trees, as your people would say.

ENSLEY: You mean SANE people? Just admit it – it’s a bad episode! It happens. (For example, see Dollhouse. Any episode. All the episodes. (Alan Tudyk excepted. I love you Alan!)

DALE: So you fail to see the redeeming qualities in showing Buffy striking out at the patriarchal society that has, for countless millennia, degraded and belittled the accomplishments of women?

ENSLEY: Well, you’re right about one thing. The episode does strike out; in fact, it’s a no-hitter, repeatedly bludgeoning the innocent, unsuspecting viewer with its hackneyed symbolism.

DALE: Oooohhh, look at the upright simian, using big words!

ENSLEY: You mean like “pusillanimous and obfuscating female”?

DALE: Ohhh, baby, tell me more. You know how I get.

ENSLEY: Aha! NOTHING CAN DEFEAT THE PENIS!

Oh, I love those two. Well, it all comes down to this. One last love, and one last hate. First, Jennifer K. Stuller, who you may remember from such Rewatch posts as season 1 finale and season 3 finale (the woman likes her satisfying endings!) Your team is counting on you, Jen, take it away!

Jennifer K. Stuller
“Foamy.”

That, in itself, should be enough. How can people not like the brilliant “Beer Bad”?!? (Kal Penn? Cave Slayer? Willow being the most awesomest girlfriend we all want in our lives?) Sure, the metaphor is stretched thin, but it often is on BtVS. As the hubby recently joked, “So, when Buffy is fighting Faith . . . She’s really fighting herself!”

Yes, Dear.

We can go to our classes on Big Thinking and talk about “shadow doubles” (or we can debate the geo-political ramifications of bio-engineering) but I want beer. Beer good.

Maybe, it’s all those nights I spent getting drunk with my girlfriends in Santa Cruz – and driving back to Marin in time for class suffering the afterness of a bad night of badness. Or maybe it’s that I love the Slayer because even as the Chosen One, she makes the mistakes most of us do. To all you haters – I know I’m not the only girl who acted dumb around an id-boy she later wished she could knock unconscious with a big stick.

How cathartic that our girl gets to do it.

I’ll leave the final word to Matthew Pateman, who you may remember from the third week of the rewatch, and who we’ll see again in the “Restless” week. Unfortunately, it’s not really clear what side he’s on, so I decided to leave things with a decidedly neutral party. Just to be fair.

Matthew Pateman
Beer isn’t bad; beer’s bloody brilliant. And more beer is even better. After a dozen pints, the world’s a better place (or you’re so smashed and unconscious that it not being a better place is not a worry).

Buffy is also brilliant – a morally nuanced, socially engaged, generally liberal show that offers an examination of being in the world in different ways and at different times of your life.

This episode was, at best, a blunt metaphor of absolutely no aesthetic worth, no narrative interest and peculiarly dull acting and direction; or it was a cow-towing act of nauseatingly obsequious obeisance to a corporate dictat from a bunch of hypocrite cynics and two-bob bullies.

The episode is dull, didactic and stupid. Worse, it parades its ignorant message of abstinence in a context that has always been open to multiple possibilities and to oppositionality. To love this episode is to pander to the worst aspects of a non-reflective, self-satisfied, moral myopia; it is to side with the philistines and life deniers.

No one episode has ever done more to try and defile the artistic integrity, aesthetic bravery and politico-moral sophistication of its parent show. It is an irredeemable excrescence.

I am not fond.

You know, I really wish he'd choose a side.


Next week:
4.7 The Initiative
4.8 Pangs
4.9 Something Blue
**See pp. 222-226 in Bite Me

For those watching Angel, prepare for the first truly great week of episodes... episode 8 is a don’t miss for Buffy fans:
1.7 The Bachelor Party
1.8 I Will Remember You
1.9 Hero