AOQ Review 6-19: "Villains"
Arbitrar Of Quality
threads.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
(or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
ambiguously dark?")
Writer: Marti Noxon
Director: David Solomon
What would appear to be the season-ending arc essentially began in
"Entropy," although some might say it didn't totally start until
"Seeing Red" set things up. And others would say that it's all
so connected that we're dealing with unprecedented levels of
serialized storytelling on the show. But in any case, "Villains"
is the one that kicks things into high gear, with the adjustment in
direction that launches us towards the presumably explosive finale.
Doing the kind of thing that I'd actually kind of hoped for earlier,
the show sticks with the themes of S6 by dispensing with its nasty but
dorky standard villain in favor of exploring the darkness that's been
inside certain regular cast members for a long time.
The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
goofy melodramatic pronouncements. Amber Benson gets paid and credited
to lie around looking dead, which may or may not have been nice for
her. Given that she's a dead character in the Buffyverse, though,
it'd be nice if she gets one last speaking appearance.
Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
Someone please tell the writes to stop trying to do hospital-talk
scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
okay?
Warren's new enemy looks nice and dark with the jet-black hair dye,
and plays around with a lot of spells, some of which are quite cool and
some of which are just cheesy. The very fake energy bolts she throws
around to keep Buffy and Xander at arm's length ate a good example of
the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
her skin, which is deeply cool.
Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
from the events of "Wrecked." I've pretty much been seeing her
as a time bomb waiting to explode since then. Treating magic as a drug
addiction somewhat absolves her of guilt - falsely. By internalizing
her problems with magic abuse and paying less attention to the morality
issues that have led her to hurt others, Willow accepts that magic is a
problem only when it threatens her personally, and particularly her
all-consuming need to be in control of things. That selfish view of
things is an okay starting point, but not a full recovery. Ironically,
a "selfless" act can make her dangerous again, since under that
construction, if Willow finds something that she cares about more than
herself, enough that she's willing to not come back from it, she's
right back to the dark arts. Something like, say, resurrecting Tara,
or failing that, hunting down her killer.
Of course it's always a slippery slope. Warren's the villain,
right? A dangerous killer, attempted rapist, and basically someone who
needs to be stopped. Upon learning of Tara's death, the others
don't have much time to internalize it and come up with a coherent
argument for why Willow shouldn't let vengeance be her master. To
the end, both Dawn and Xander go so far as to basically recommend
giving her a carte blanche where Warren is concerned. Buffy is
otherwise fairly passive in this episode (do we give her a break on
account of having been shot?), letting Willow basically dominate and
drive the action, but she's the one voice of moderation who gets the
others to follow her. Resurrecting an argument that's probably
already been talked to death, our hero makes a big out of the statement
that "we don't kill humans." It'd be more accurate, as some
have pointed out, to say that Buffy kills only in self-defense, and
only in the most literal immediate-danger kind of way. The notable
exception, of course, came when she went after the human who'd almost
killed her own lover. Whether opposing Willow doing something similar
represents guilt or hypocrisy is left as an exercise to the responder.
Oh, while we're speaking of little recurring elements, Dawn gets to
see Tara's corpse and stare in shock for an indeterminate amount of
time. Does this series love its little recurring elements or what?
Remember who kept Dawn company in "Real Me" when the gang didn't
want her to be around a dead person?
The argument about what to do about Willow is compounded by a few
sub-discussions. Xander continues to be baffled by Buffy's tolerance
for Spike given the previous episode, and I'm... well, I don't know
whether to be impressed or not that he's able to set this aside and
take her at her word on this one, at least for now. Dawn tries one
more time to get through her need to get involved, not be protected,
and she has that personal connection with Willow; she can't convince
her sister any more than Buffy can convey how out of her league she'd
be, but everything's said with a minimum of screaming.
Other characters... the brief prison scene is presumably designed to
try to persuade the viewer to kinda like Jonathan and The Other One,
which will presumably soon be relevant, given Willow's last words and
the fact that the next episode (the second to last, of course) is
called "Two To Go." The Spike fans will demand that I mention
his blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance too. Again the monster in
question has a silly voice, but the rest is all right; the place seems
out of the way and the spirit seems hard to deal with, so I didn't
spend excess time worrying about why Spike didn't go here two and a
half years ago. It's mostly moving him from points A to B, although
what exactly B turns out to be is still up in the air. Last time he
admitted how thoroughly changed he was, now I imagine the next step is
to see that the new Spike isn't totally tied to the silicon. Will
talk more when the show gives me more. And Anya would seem to be back
in the game on a provisional basis, attachments to old friends who
aren't Xander intact. As is typical of the series, there's plenty
of angst to maybe be mined more extensively for them later, but right
now, there're things to do.
I talked about enjoying seeing Warren get put in his place, and clearly
so does Dark Willow. She's out to hurt, not just kill. I always
like Badass Willow, but the action sequences do go on a tad long...
maybe Buffy could've gotten there in time to stop things if she
hadn't kept walking through the same bit of woods over and over.
Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
worthless core, before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
"bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
pretty monotone thoughout "Villains," as perhaps befits the
material, but that line is killer.
This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
- "That guy's been looking at me. I think he wants to make me his
butt monkey." "Don't flatter yourself. I heard him talking to the
guard. He's in here for parking tickets." "That doesn't mean
anything. The joint changes you"
- "You've got to stop doing this. This dying thing's funny once,
maybe twice"
- "Fine, fine! Puppetmaster wants to drive? Go right ahead!"
- Clem being critical of his physique
So...
One-sentence summary: Exciting.
AOQ rating: Good
[Season Six so far:
1) "Bargaining" - Decent
2) "After Life" - Good
3) "Flooded" - Decent
4) "Life Serial" - Good
5) "All The Way" - Good
6) "Once More, With Feeling" - Excellent
7) "Tabula Rasa" - Good
8) "Smashed" - Decent
9) "Wrecked" - Good
10) "Gone" - Decent
11) "Doublemeat Palace" - Decent
12) "Dead Things" - Good
13) "Older And Far Away" - Good
14) "As You Were" - Decent
15) "Hell's Bells" - Weak
16) "Normal Again" - Excellent
17) "Entropy" - Decent
18) "Seeing Red" - Good
19) "Villains" - Good]
Espen Schjønberg
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
> This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
> - "That guy's been looking at me. I think he wants to make me his
> butt monkey." "Don't flatter yourself. I heard him talking to the
> guard. He's in here for parking tickets." "That doesn't mean
> anything. The joint changes you"
I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
rape jokes are fun. Because they are so scared, and they don't want to
admit it? Do Americans live in a constant fear of being put in jail for,
well, just anything, and then being raped?
> - Clem being critical of his physique
Never liked Clem.
> One-sentence summary: Exciting.
Huh.
> AOQ rating: Good
I would much prefer to watch Finnish TV, type
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPnGPIMUnus
--
Espen
Elisi
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> ambiguously dark?")
Love your alternative title...
> Doing the kind of thing that I'd actually kind of hoped for earlier,
> the show sticks with the themes of S6 by dispensing with its nasty but
> dorky standard villain in favor of exploring the darkness that's been
> inside certain regular cast members for a long time.
But the dorky villain became a very, very disturbing guy first.
> Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
> bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
> child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
> deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
> before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
No. And that's a very good analysis.
> Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> her skin, which is deeply cool.
Oh yes.
Lots of good thought - nothing to add really.
The notable
> exception, of course, came when she went after the human who'd almost
> killed her own lover. Whether opposing Willow doing something similar
> represents guilt or hypocrisy is left as an exercise to the responder.
Hmmm... well Buffy went after Faith because her blood could heal Angel.
Warren's blood can't bring Tara back. That's not to say that Buffy
wasn't also after revenge, but her motives were a lot more mixed. And
she knows (better than anyone else) the effects such actions would
have.
Warren deserves punishment, but it shouldn't be Willow dishing it.
> Oh, while we're speaking of little recurring elements, Dawn gets to
> see Tara's corpse and stare in shock for an indeterminate amount of
> time. Does this series love its little recurring elements or what?
> Remember who kept Dawn company in "Real Me" when the gang didn't
> want her to be around a dead person?
I'd never noticed that. Thank you.
> The argument about what to do about Willow is compounded by a few
> sub-discussions. Xander continues to be baffled by Buffy's tolerance
> for Spike given the previous episode, and I'm... well, I don't know
> whether to be impressed or not that he's able to set this aside and
> take her at her word on this one, at least for now. Dawn tries one
> more time to get through her need to get involved, not be protected,
> and she has that personal connection with Willow; she can't convince
> her sister any more than Buffy can convey how out of her league she'd
> be, but everything's said with a minimum of screaming.
I can sense your relief from here!
> The Spike fans will demand that I mention
> his blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance too. Again the monster in
> question has a silly voice, but the rest is all right; the place seems
> out of the way and the spirit seems hard to deal with, so I didn't
> spend excess time worrying about why Spike didn't go here two and a
> half years ago.
Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
the globe (might also explain your query?).
> before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
> "bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
> pretty monotone thoughout "Villains," as perhaps befits the
> material, but that line is killer.
And how 'different' Vamp!Willow seemed from Real!Willow back in S3...
Now I want to go re-watch all these episodes...
lili...@gmail.com
> Never liked Clem.
>
> > One-sentence summary: Exciting.
>
> Huh.
>
> > AOQ rating: Good
>
> I would much prefer to watch Finnish TV, type
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPnGPIMUnus
>
> --
> Espen
awww, how could anyone not love Clem?
Not much to say on the rest of the ep, far too much Willow in it*eg*
Lore
vague disclaimer
Espen Schjønberg <ess...@excite.com> wrote:
> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
> rape jokes are fun.
It is called gallows humour and it is far far from just an American
thing.
--
Wikipedia: like Usenet, moderated by trolls
vague disclaimer
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> ambiguously dark?")
Thanks for the coffee/ screen interface.
(It was one of Osiris's minion's she offed, apparently.)
For sheer coolness I think there is only one effect in the series (still
to come) to challenge the book-sucking.
Rowan Hawthorn
> In article <ed1psr$84n$1...@readme.uio.no>,
> Espen Schjønberg <ess...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
>> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
>> rape jokes are fun.
>
> It is called gallows humour and it is far far from just an American
> thing.
I've noticed that for certain non-Americans, no matter how often
something is done in European films, do the same thing *once* in
Hollywood and it's an "American thing"...
--
Rowan Hawthorn
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer"
Elisi
Espen Schjønberg wrote:
> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
> rape jokes are fun. Because they are so scared, and they don't want to
> admit it? Do Americans live in a constant fear of being put in jail for,
> well, just anything, and then being raped?
I think that more than anything it's an Andrew thing. As usual he lives
in a fantasy world, and in the movies and tv shows there's always
something about prison rape, hence his worry. Notice how his concerns
are completely self-centered and show no understanding of the bigger
picture which includes all sorts of real things like guilt and murder.
> Never liked Clem.
I guess you're the exception that proves the rule?
Rowan Hawthorn
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> ambiguously dark?")
> Writer: Marti Noxon
> Director: David Solomon
>
>
> The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
> a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
> is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
> goofy melodramatic pronouncements. Amber Benson gets paid and credited
> to lie around looking dead, which may or may not have been nice for
> her. Given that she's a dead character in the Buffyverse, though,
> it'd be nice if she gets one last speaking appearance.
Yeah, wouldn't it...
>
> Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
> bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
> child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
> deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
> before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
Nah - Warren got what he asked for.
> Warren's new enemy looks nice and dark with the jet-black hair dye,
> and plays around with a lot of spells, some of which are quite cool and
> some of which are just cheesy. The very fake energy bolts she throws
> around to keep Buffy and Xander at arm's length ate a good example of
> the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> her skin, which is deeply cool.
As is dead calm, expressionless Willow. Eek.
>
> Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
> I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
> logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
> from the events of "Wrecked." I've pretty much been seeing her
> as a time bomb waiting to explode since then. Treating magic as a drug
> addiction somewhat absolves her of guilt - falsely. By internalizing
> her problems with magic abuse and paying less attention to the morality
> issues that have led her to hurt others, Willow accepts that magic is a
> problem only when it threatens her personally, and particularly her
> all-consuming need to be in control of things. That selfish view of
> things is an okay starting point, but not a full recovery. Ironically,
> a "selfless" act can make her dangerous again, since under that
> construction, if Willow finds something that she cares about more than
> herself, enough that she's willing to not come back from it, she's
> right back to the dark arts. Something like, say, resurrecting Tara,
> or failing that, hunting down her killer.
Can you say, "Complete emotional meltdown," boys and girls? I knew you
could.
> Oh, while we're speaking of little recurring elements, Dawn gets to
> see Tara's corpse and stare in shock for an indeterminate amount of
> time. Does this series love its little recurring elements or what?
> Remember who kept Dawn company in "Real Me" when the gang didn't
> want her to be around a dead person?
Tara arguably being the person Dawn was closest to, here's another smack
in the face for the niblet. Dawn's probably gonna be in therapy 'til
she's an old maid.
>
> The argument about what to do about Willow is compounded by a few
> sub-discussions.
Considering how effective Warren's axe in the back ended up being, I
think "Get out of town quick" sounds like a really good option...
> Other characters... the brief prison scene is presumably designed to
> try to persuade the viewer to kinda like Jonathan and The Other One,
Didn't work, if that's the case. Although, Jonathan is showing some
signs of waking up and smelling the coffee.
> I talked about enjoying seeing Warren get put in his place, and clearly
> so does Dark Willow. She's out to hurt, not just kill. I always
> like Badass Willow, but the action sequences do go on a tad long...
> maybe Buffy could've gotten there in time to stop things if she
> hadn't kept walking through the same bit of woods over and over.
> Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
> worthless core, before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
> "bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
> pretty monotone thoughout "Villains," as perhaps befits the
> material, but that line is killer.
Can you say, "Complete emotional meltdown," boys and girls? I knew you
could.
>
> One-sentence summary: Exciting.
>
> AOQ rating: Good
>
Yep.
Espen Schjønberg
>[thats me]
>>Never liked Clem.
> awww, how could anyone not love Clem?
Well, it's nothing personal. But at this stage in the series, the show
didn't need more comic relief, it needed some really interesting
villains, and it needed writers with respect for the existing
characters. Beefing up Clem just because so many fans loved him was
neither of this. After all, he is more of an AtS-type NEET. Also, I
think he was more of an childrens-TV type character than the rest of the
show (at least, up until MN made it into childrens TV. _Bad_ childrens
TV. )
> Not much to say on the rest of the ep, far too much Willow in it*eg*
Dark Willow was OK, she is also a bit overrated though. If they had
managed to write up something else than her and this evil witchcraft
thing into this bad a villain I would have been happy.
But a very good effect there.
--
Espen
Vanya6724
Well put. That is the point - Andrew filters everything through a
media-saturated brain. Since prison-rape jokes have become such a media
stereotype over the last 10 years it makes sense that prison-rape is
Andrew's first thought. Of course, we're also probably supposed to
infer that Andrew may be secretly hoping more than complaining.
Don Sample
> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
> rape jokes are fun. Because they are so scared, and they don't want to
> admit it? Do Americans live in a constant fear of being put in jail for,
> well, just anything, and then being raped?
Americans are more likely to go to prison than the citizens of any other
country, and their current government seems to think it's okay to lock
people they don't like up indefinitely without a trial.
The American incarceration rate is about 10 times greater than it is in
any of the Scandinavian countries.
Of course Jonathan and Andrew haven't done just anything. They've
robbed banks, kidnapped, attempted rape, and are accessories to a
murder. If they get convicted of all the things they've done, they'll
be doing hard time.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
Stephen Tempest
>BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
>(or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
>ambiguously dark?")
And hot. Don't forget hot.
Or was that TMI? :)
>What would appear to be the season-ending arc essentially began in
>"Entropy," although some might say it didn't totally start until
>"Seeing Red" set things up. And others would say that it's all
>so connected that we're dealing with unprecedented levels of
>serialized storytelling on the show.
Over the weekend I sat down to watch 'Villains' again, and ended up
watching 'Two to Go' and 'Grave' in quick succession... so yeah, I'd
say that this is pretty much one huge multi-hour episode.
Only trouble is, it makes in-depth discussion slightly difficult
without spoilers, since I have to think carefully to remember what
happened in this episode and what's yet to happen... less so for the
specific events, but for the themes and character development.
>The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
>a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
>is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
>some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
>goofy melodramatic pronouncements.
I loved the opening sequence - it was one of Joss's famous 'oners',
with the camera following the ambulance, moving around the back as the
crew got out then into the garden to reveal Buffy, all in one take.
Gave a real feeling of urgency to it all.
Although I did think Buffy looked remarkably composed for someone
who's just been shot. Yes, I realise she's in shock, but it looked as
if Xander had carefully arranged her arms and legs neatly before the
ambulance people arrived...
By referring to the 'murder of Osiris' - you do realise that this
means Willow is powerful enough now to kill a God? Scary stuff...
(Although my own opinion is that wasn't Osiris himself, but his
messenger. Still powerful, but not divine).
>Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
>bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
>he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
>child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
>deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
>before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
>make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
I liked the way that Warren clearly thought he was being really clever
and innovative by using a gun to kill the Slayer, and all the demons
just laughed at him. I think Warren would fit right in on this
newsgroup...
>Someone please tell the writes to stop trying to do hospital-talk
>scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
>okay?
Nice of Willow to take time off from hunting Warren to save Buffy's
life, though, wasn't it?
Point of information, since this comes up in debates fairly often:
Buffy didn't die on the operating table in this scene. If she had,
Willow couldn't have brought her back to life any more than she could
Tara. (It wasn't a mystical death). It's pretty clear she was in a
seriously bad way, but Willow got there in time.
>A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
>magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
>them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
>her skin, which is deeply cool.
An animated GIF of that scene is my current RPGNet avatar, in fact.
I won't comment on your analysis of Willow at this stage - while I
agree with a lot of it, it'd be too hard to avoid spoilers for the
next two episodes.
>The Spike fans will demand that I mention
>his blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance too. Again the monster in
>question has a silly voice, but the rest is all right; the place seems
>out of the way and the spirit seems hard to deal with, so I didn't
>spend excess time worrying about why Spike didn't go here two and a
>half years ago. It's mostly moving him from points A to B, although
>what exactly B turns out to be is still up in the air. Last time he
>admitted how thoroughly changed he was, now I imagine the next step is
>to see that the new Spike isn't totally tied to the silicon. Will
>talk more when the show gives me more.
I'll be waiting for your comments with interest...
>I talked about enjoying seeing Warren get put in his place, and clearly
>so does Dark Willow. She's out to hurt, not just kill. I always
>like Badass Willow, but the action sequences do go on a tad long...
Note that hitting Willow with a big axe doesn't do more than slow her
down for a moment...
>Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
>worthless core, before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
>"bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
>pretty monotone thoughout "Villains," as perhaps befits the
>material, but that line is killer.
Absolutely. And note that Buffy & Co do turn up just in time to see
Willow flaying Warren alive, although they missed the previous slow
torture.
Part of me wonders if the bullet Willow used was the one we saw her
extract from Buffy, or if she also took the one that killed Tara...
>This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
For some reason, it always tickles me to hear Willow's last line "One
down..." and then read the episode listing/DVD menu to see which
episode comes next...
>One-sentence summary: Exciting.
>
>AOQ rating: Good
Definitely an Excellent for me, one of the best episodes of the entire
series.
Stephen
George W Harris
:
:Espen Schjønberg wrote:
:
:> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
:> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
:> rape jokes are fun. Because they are so scared, and they don't want to
:> admit it? Do Americans live in a constant fear of being put in jail for,
:> well, just anything, and then being raped?
:
:I think that more than anything it's an Andrew thing. As usual he lives
:in a fantasy world, and in the movies and tv shows there's always
:something about prison rape, hence his worry.
Absolutely. Except, of course, that it's Jonathon
who's worried about prison rape.
--
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar." -Wash, 'Serenity'
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Opus the Penguin
> I would much prefer to watch Finnish TV, type
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPnGPIMUnus
The people who made that video should go to prison. Where they'll be
raped. Hahahahahahaha! Git it? Prison? Rape? It's funny. <giggle>
--
Opus the Penguin
The best darn penguin in all of Usenet
Opus the Penguin
> Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> the globe (might also explain your query?).
How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
windows shut?
Arbitrar Of Quality
Except that Jonathan is the one worrying about it.
The joke isn't about the idea of prison rape so much as, like everyone
has said, the characters as creatures of the media parroting what
they've seen on TV. And it turns out the guy is in for traffic
tickets. It's the turning of a cliche into absurdity that's funny,
especially Jonathan's hilarious attempt to "ominously" intone that "the
joint changes you."
-AOQ
rrh...@acme.com
Opus the Penguin wrote:
> Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
>
> > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > the globe (might also explain your query?).
>
> How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
> flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
> windows shut?
I always assumed he drove there in the car with the blackened windows.
Er... Probably better not to think about this one too much.
Elisi
Coffin?
Elisi
George W Harris wrote:
> :I think that more than anything it's an Andrew thing. As usual he lives
> :in a fantasy world, and in the movies and tv shows there's always
> :something about prison rape, hence his worry.
>
> Absolutely. Except, of course, that it's Jonathon
> who's worried about prison rape.
Really? Damn. Goes to show how long it's been since I watched these eps.
lili...@gmail.com
Opus the Penguin schreef:
That video reminds me of something a certain VJ at TMF once said when
they were discussing video's sponsored with taxmoney. That certain
people could make videoclips all they wanted, but that that didn't
mean, that they would have to play them....
Lore
One Bit Shy
news:1156867352.8...@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> What would appear to be the season-ending arc essentially began in
> "Entropy," although some might say it didn't totally start until
> "Seeing Red" set things up.
I always think of the final run starting with the shooting in Seeing Red.
But anyone's fancy is OK.
> ...complete with the murder of Osiris
I don't think it's murder, but I'm sure it hurt.
> Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
> bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
> child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
> deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
> before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
Yes. Go with it. The nose bleeds are kind of a bitch, but nothing comes
free.
I liked the Warren scenes this episode. Actually, I've appreciated his
character more this run-through than usual. Even so, I don't care for the
character so much through most of the season. I don't think it's because
he's disgusting evil. I think it was just overplayed at the start. He
seemed too nasty from the get go for his development - sort of parallel to
Willow - to work quite right. It's not that important now. What he becomes
works well here. This was a fun scene - all jazzed at making the big time.
I also liked the undercurrent of disdain he had for Rack, and maintaining
his air of contempt even as Willow tied him up. A genuinely bad guy. It
makes his breaking before Willow more delicious. "You're, you're not a bad
person. Not like me." Which I guess makes me evil and glowy too. But I
think going with Willow is the way to follow what's happening here. And I
think she's already passed avenging Tara's death to appreciating the
vengeance deeds for themselves.
> Someone please tell the writes to stop trying to do hospital-talk
> scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
> okay?
Yeah, that may be the weakest part. The episode gets kind of talky too for
such an action one.
> Warren's new enemy looks nice and dark with the jet-black hair dye,
> and plays around with a lot of spells, some of which are quite cool and
> some of which are just cheesy. The very fake energy bolts she throws
> around to keep Buffy and Xander at arm's length ate a good example of
> the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> her skin, which is deeply cool.
This, of course, recalls Willow storming into the Magic Box in Tough Love
after Glory brain sucked Tara. That older scene (and the whole situation)
does a nice job of establishing how Willow would act now, but one small
problem for me is that the emotional impact of her entering the Magic Box
now to load up her power is reduced a little since I've already seen her do
that once.
None the less, this is beautifully staged. Sucking up the text is
definitely cool. I also liked the way they filmed Willow stalking through
the shop with a concerned Anya paralleling her in the background. Imagining
what Willow must look like then to Anya - her growing sense of disaster in
the works as she paces along with Willow - really adds to the scene's
tension.
> Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
> I think her character arc holds together wonderfully.
You don't have an argument with me here. You made a nice assessment.
> To
> the end, both Dawn and Xander go so far as to basically recommend
> giving her a carte blanche where Warren is concerned. Buffy is
> otherwise fairly passive in this episode (do we give her a break on
> account of having been shot?), letting Willow basically dominate and
> drive the action, but she's the one voice of moderation who gets the
> others to follow her.
And she mainly succeeds I think, even if she gets kind of preachy. I think
the convincer is eventually switching from what Warren deserves to saving
Willow from herself.
> Resurrecting an argument that's probably
> already been talked to death, our hero makes a big out of the statement
> that "we don't kill humans." It'd be more accurate, as some
> have pointed out, to say that Buffy kills only in self-defense, and
> only in the most literal immediate-danger kind of way. The notable
> exception, of course, came when she went after the human who'd almost
> killed her own lover. Whether opposing Willow doing something similar
> represents guilt or hypocrisy is left as an exercise to the responder.
Or it could mean Buffy understands the danger Willow is in better than most.
> Oh, while we're speaking of little recurring elements, Dawn gets to
> see Tara's corpse and stare in shock for an indeterminate amount of
> time. Does this series love its little recurring elements or what?
> Remember who kept Dawn company in "Real Me" when the gang didn't
> want her to be around a dead person?
I hadn't thought of the Tara connection - good catch - but I sure did think
of Buffy trying to protect Dawn from seeing stuff like that. I guess Dawn
always had a genuine point about Buffy's over protectiveness.
This is the simple sad part of the episode for me. Dawn really loved Tara.
> The argument about what to do about Willow is compounded by a few
> sub-discussions. Xander continues to be baffled by Buffy's tolerance
> for Spike given the previous episode, and I'm... well, I don't know
> whether to be impressed or not that he's able to set this aside and
> take her at her word on this one, at least for now.
I think he probably knows it's not an easy choice for Buffy to make. But
Dawn feels safe with Spike... And these are the kind of times that Xander's
well learned that he's just got to trust Buffy.
> The Spike fans will demand that I mention
> his blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance too. Again the monster in
> question has a silly voice, but the rest is all right; the place seems
> out of the way and the spirit seems hard to deal with, so I didn't
> spend excess time worrying about why Spike didn't go here two and a
> half years ago. It's mostly moving him from points A to B, although
> what exactly B turns out to be is still up in the air. Last time he
> admitted how thoroughly changed he was, now I imagine the next step is
> to see that the new Spike isn't totally tied to the silicon.
I always felt this scene was out of place in the episode, especially since
it doesn't actually say much that's discernable. But I guess you have to
take it on faith that it's moving somewhere.
> And Anya would seem to be back
> in the game on a provisional basis, attachments to old friends who
> aren't Xander intact. As is typical of the series, there's plenty
> of angst to maybe be mined more extensively for them later, but right
> now, there're things to do.
I don't know that it's significant, but what stands out to me about their
conversation is that she settles on saying that she's doing it for Willow.
Considering her history with Willow, I don't know that I should entirely
believe that. Not that she wouldn't help Willow. It just sounds kind of
like an excuse for helping Xander.
I also get a little kick out of how Buffy's reaction to the news of Anya
having her vengeance on again is limited to, "Oh." Hey, after all that's
happened this year, what's a little thing like that?
> Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
> worthless core,
And hopefully bring a little closure to that story element - which I seem to
recall you saying felt left open back in Dead Things. Did this do the
trick?
> One-sentence summary: Exciting.
>
> AOQ rating: Good
The one moment in the episode that felt really harrowing to me is when
Willow said she isn't coming back. It's not just rage. She seems to be
giving up too. Sort of Willow's version of Buffy's dance in OMWF.
Good review. I'd rate it Good too.
OBS
One Bit Shy
> The joke isn't about the idea of prison rape so much as, like everyone
> has said, the characters as creatures of the media parroting what
> they've seen on TV. And it turns out the guy is in for traffic
> tickets. It's the turning of a cliche into absurdity that's funny,
> especially Jonathan's hilarious attempt to "ominously" intone that "the
> joint changes you."
Exactly. It's that punchline that makes me laugh.
Arbitrar Of Quality
rrh...@acme.com wrote:
> Opus the Penguin wrote:
> > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
> >
> > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > > the globe (might also explain your query?).
Huh. I feel like if they were going for "some time after the other
stuff," they didn't make that at all clear. Other than setting it in
what looked like Africa, or some kind of tribal commune, or something.
> > How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
> > flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
> > windows shut?
>
> I always assumed he drove there in the car with the blackened windows.
>
> Er... Probably better not to think about this one too much.
"Did you explain to him about the separate-continent thing?"
"Oh, he seemed so determined."
-AOQ
Don Sample
Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> writes:
>
> >BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> >Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> >(or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> >ambiguously dark?")
>
> >The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
> >a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
> >is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> >some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
> >goofy melodramatic pronouncements.
>
> By referring to the 'murder of Osiris' - you do realise that this
> means Willow is powerful enough now to kill a God? Scary stuff...
>
> (Although my own opinion is that wasn't Osiris himself, but his
> messenger. Still powerful, but not divine).
Nothing on screen indicates that she actually killed him. Just caused
him great pain.
lili...@gmail.com
I always thought he slipped into the baggage area, like Kendra did in
s2
Ng yrnfg V qvq hagvy f5 bs Natry, jura Fcvxr fhqqrayl gbyq Natry ur'q
arire sybja orsber jura gurl jrer va gung cynar ba gur jnl gb gur
Qrrcre Jryy...
Ohg V thrff ur whfg gbbx n fuvc, be fbzr xvaq bs zntvpny cbegny.
Lore
Don Sample
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> rrh...@acme.com wrote:
> > Opus the Penguin wrote:
> > > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
> > >
> > > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > > > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > > > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > > > the globe (might also explain your query?).
>
> Huh. I feel like if they were going for "some time after the other
> stuff," they didn't make that at all clear. Other than setting it in
> what looked like Africa, or some kind of tribal commune, or something.
The language being spoken was Luganda,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luganda_language>
which is one of the languages spoken in Uganda.
Maybe he rode his motorcycle down to L.A. where he bought a magical
teleport to Africa.
Rincewind
Excellent. Now.
Do we suspect there may be some kind of connection between prison and rape?
(Ok, I know I shouldn't have done that, but hey, it's certailnly funnier
than anything in this episode...).
Rincewind.
--
What I have learned from Buffy:
If you hear someone say "Bored now", run. Fast.
BTR1701
> On 29.08.2006 18:02, Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> > A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> > threads.
> >
>
> > This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
> > - "That guy's been looking at me. I think he wants to make me his
> > butt monkey." "Don't flatter yourself. I heard him talking to the
> > guard. He's in here for parking tickets." "That doesn't mean
> > anything. The joint changes you"
>
> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
> rape jokes are fun.
Because they're funny.
> Do Americans live in a constant fear of being put in jail for,
> well, just anything, and then being raped?
No.
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
> a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
> is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
hes the god of the dead
even set was unable to kill him
i doubt willow can
> before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
yes
bad doggie
> Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
> I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
> logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
> from the events of "Wrecked." I've pretty much been seeing her
all the angst about whether drug addiction is valid metaphor is misplaced
its about after a childhood of being kicked in the face
willows need to control
(welcome to the hellmouth when alpha cordy chases her for the water fountain
or restless where she is forced to wear her real clothes)
> Of course it's always a slippery slope. Warren's the villain,
> right? A dangerous killer, attempted rapist, and basically someone who
- im not coming back
remember from as you were when sam was talking about shamans
who lost their personalities in dark magic
> admitted how thoroughly changed he was, now I imagine the next step is
> to see that the new Spike isn't totally tied to the silicon. Will
are you saying buffy has implants?
> worthless core, before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
> "bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
hope you remembered that from doppelgangland
weve had six years of willow pushing a little too hard
and now we see where that ends up
meow arf meow - they are performing horrible experiments in space
major grubert is watching you - beware the bakalite
there can only be one or two
vague disclaimer
> (Although my own opinion is that wasn't Osiris himself, but his
> messenger. Still powerful, but not divine).
The shooting script has him as IMPOSING DEMON.
vague disclaimer
Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
Although the shooting script is unambiguous:
"The scream unleashes a terrible energy. Suddenly the demon is engulfed
in a blaze of white light and heat - HE CRIES OUT IN HORRIBLE AGONY,
DYING."
vague disclaimer
Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> vague disclaimer wrote:
> > In article <ed1psr$84n$1...@readme.uio.no>,
> > Espen Schjønberg <ess...@excite.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
> >> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
> >> rape jokes are fun.
> >
> > It is called gallows humour and it is far far from just an American
> > thing.
>
> I've noticed that for certain non-Americans, no matter how often
> something is done in European films, do the same thing *once* in
> Hollywood and it's an "American thing"...
Heh.
Try living with a nurse for an extended course in gallows humour.
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
>
> > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > the globe (might also explain your query?).
>
> How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
> flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
> windows shut?
a heavy divers belt
and he can walk across the atlantic
did you notice one the primitive huts had a tv aerial?
vague disclaimer
<mair_fheal-C7CE1...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
<mair_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In article <Xns982E85281AD70op...@127.0.0.1>,
> Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
> >
> > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > > the globe (might also explain your query?).
> >
> > How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
> > flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
> > windows shut?
>
> a heavy divers belt
> and he can walk across the atlantic
>
> did you notice one the primitive huts had a tv aerial?
Those Africans. What will they think of next.
Rowan Hawthorn
> In article <Gcydnfr2lohQ6WnZ...@giganews.com>,
> Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> vague disclaimer wrote:
>>> In article <ed1psr$84n$1...@readme.uio.no>,
>>> Espen Schjønberg <ess...@excite.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
>>>> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
>>>> rape jokes are fun.
>>> It is called gallows humour and it is far far from just an American
>>> thing.
>> I've noticed that for certain non-Americans, no matter how often
>> something is done in European films, do the same thing *once* in
>> Hollywood and it's an "American thing"...
>
> Heh.
>
> Try living with a nurse for an extended course in gallows humour.
Tell me about it. Three of cousins are nurse, my FIL worked with the
local volunteer fire department for years, one of the guys I used to
work with was an EMT, my ex-drummer was a cop...
Anyone with no sense of black humor doesn't need to be hanging around
people in the medical and emergency services line of work.
--
Rowan Hawthorn
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer"
Rowan Hawthorn
> In article <sru8f2dth64jkda9i...@4ax.com>,
> Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> (Although my own opinion is that wasn't Osiris himself, but his
>> messenger. Still powerful, but not divine).
>
> The shooting script has him as IMPOSING DEMON.
...later known as DE-composing demon...
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
in the conversation with doc a year ago
teleportation was presented as not entirely unreasonable
but perhaps more impractical
are there any examples in the series of people teleporting across the atlantic
Stephen Tempest
>In article <1156867352.8...@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
>> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>> threads.
>>
>>
>> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
>> (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
>> ambiguously dark?")
>
>Thanks for the coffee/ screen interface.
>
>(It was one of Osiris's minion's she offed, apparently.)
>
>For sheer coolness I think there is only one effect in the series (still
>to come) to challenge the book-sucking.
Pbzr ba gura, qba'g gbezrag hf nyy...
Stephen
Stephen Tempest
>did you notice one the primitive huts had a tv aerial?
I've never been to Africa, but I did once visit a village near Manaus
in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. The guide explained that
because they had to ship fuel in by boat from the nearest town, they
could only run their generator for a few hours per night, so were
quite limited in which TV programmes they could watch...
A similar phenomenon why people in Third World countries use mobile
phones so much - it's much, much cheaper to put up a few cellphone
masts than to lay copper wires all over the country.
Stephen
Don Sample
<mair_fheal-037BB...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Jr'er tbvat gb frr bar ng gur raq bs gur arkg rcvfbqr.
Stephen Tempest
>This, of course, recalls Willow storming into the Magic Box in Tough Love
>after Glory brain sucked Tara. That older scene (and the whole situation)
>does a nice job of establishing how Willow would act now, but one small
>problem for me is that the emotional impact of her entering the Magic Box
>now to load up her power is reduced a little since I've already seen her do
>that once.
In 'Tough Love', she opened ONE dark magic book and then went
toe-to-toe with a Hellgod.
Now she's just sucked all the power from every book in the store....
In this case, I think familiarity just intensifies the dread of what
she's turning herself into...
>I don't know that it's significant, but what stands out to me about their
>conversation is that she settles on saying that she's doing it for Willow.
>Considering her history with Willow, I don't know that I should entirely
>believe that. Not that she wouldn't help Willow. It just sounds kind of
>like an excuse for helping Xander.
I do think Anya's searching for an excuse to justify wanting to help -
since as a Vengeance Demon, she's *supposed* to be all about causing
suffering and pain - even though her heart doesn't really seem to be
in it.
But her personal raison d'être as a Vengeance Demon was helping
wronged women, and Willow clearly falls into that category; so helping
her is part of her job description.
Even if D'Hoffryn would certainly disapprove of helping her by talking
her *out* of wreaking bloody vengeance...
>The one moment in the episode that felt really harrowing to me is when
>Willow said she isn't coming back. It's not just rage. She seems to be
>giving up too. Sort of Willow's version of Buffy's dance in OMWF.
Definitely chilling.
Stephen
chr...@removethistoreply.gwu.edu
> threads.
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> ambiguously dark?")
> Director: David Solomon
.
> Doing the kind of thing that I'd actually kind of hoped for earlier,
> the show sticks with the themes of S6 by dispensing with its nasty but
> dorky standard villain in favor of exploring the darkness that's been
> inside certain regular cast members for a long time.
Just goes to show that it pays to be patient when watching BtVS and AtS.
> The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
> a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
> is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
> goofy melodramatic pronouncements.
Yeah, the Osiris thing was a rather overdone. (I think it was actually a
servant of Osiris, since Willow summons him by saying "By Osiris I command
you.") It would have been better if it wasn't so wordy -- in particular,
the idea that Willow can't raise Tara because she died by physical rather
than mystical means could be conveyed in one sentence instead of four or
five. Not a big problem though. A nice detail is the way the demon is
reflected in the mirror behind Willow. On first viewing, I thought Willow
sucked the demon's power when she attacked him, but maybe I was seeing
more than is actually there.
> Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
> bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
> child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
> deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
> before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
If that makes you evil and glowy, I say you should run with it. We'll all
be with you.
> the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> her skin, which is deeply cool.
That is cool indeed. I also like Anya's side of the scene, and the way
her Vengeance Demon powers tell her what happened without Willow having to
say anything. Having Willow ask where the dark arts books are is a
slightly heavy-handed way of telling the audience what she's doing; by the
look of things Willow already knows, or her spell does.
I really liked your whole paragraph on Willow's arc and motivations. Very
well said.
> others to follow her. Resurrecting an argument that's probably
> already been talked to death, our hero makes a big out of the statement
> that "we don't kill humans." It'd be more accurate, as some
> have pointed out, to say that Buffy kills only in self-defense, and
> only in the most literal immediate-danger kind of way.
I look at it this way: Buffy does not believe she should not kill humans.
She will break with that ideal *if* it's absolutely necessary, to save
someone else's life or her own. Revenge by itself is not necessary, it
doesn't save anyone's life, so for Buffy it's beyond the pale. (But if
Warren was about to shoot someone else, and killing him was the only way
to stop it, Buffy would do so without hesitation.)
> Oh, while we're speaking of little recurring elements, Dawn gets to
> see Tara's corpse and stare in shock for an indeterminate amount of
> time. Does this series love its little recurring elements or what?
> Remember who kept Dawn company in "Real Me" when the gang didn't
> want her to be around a dead person?
Nice catch. And Tara had become something like a surrogate mother to
Dawn, so Dawn is experiencing an echo of her own mother's death.
I really liked Rack in this episode. The way he considers Warren, looking
at him as if he's a mildly interesting exhibit in the Museum of Fools, is
both creepy and kind of amusing. The tiny smile he gets after saying "The
girl is running on pure fury. I've never felt anything like it" is just
plain creepy. BTW, Rack's magical powers seem to go well beyond just
getting people high.
In the living room conversation, Buffy's hairstyle reminds me of Joyce's.
Something about the way it curls at the bottom, I think. I don't know if
it was deliberate or not, but it struck me very strongly when I rewatched
Villains the other day. It actually felt like I was seeing the family
resemblance between the Buffy and Joyce.
On a very minor note, Xander has changed out of his bloody clothes by that
point. Given their sometimes messy Scoobying activities, it would make
sense for Xander to keep a spare change of clothes at Buffy's house (and
for the others to have some at his place). But I wouldn't be surprised if
Xander has also been making use of Buffy's house to do his laundry for
free.
> The argument about what to do about Willow is compounded by a few
> sub-discussions. Xander continues to be baffled by Buffy's tolerance
> for Spike given the previous episode, and I'm... well, I don't know
> whether to be impressed or not that he's able to set this aside and
> take her at her word on this one, at least for now. Dawn tries one
> more time to get through her need to get involved, not be protected,
> and she has that personal connection with Willow; she can't convince
> her sister any more than Buffy can convey how out of her league she'd
> be, but everything's said with a minimum of screaming.
This is a really good discussion, no wasted lines, everyone acting
rationally even when they disagree. It's sad to see the Scooby gang cut
down to three members, though. Everyone (later including Anya) agrees
that they want to stop Willow for Willow's own sake, not Warren's. Buffy
says that Willow is messing with forces that aren't just dangerous but
*want* to hurt her: black magic is the gift that makes things worse.
(Kinda like a Vengeance wish.) She reassures Dawn that she will be part
of the team, just not during the catching phase. She also stops Xander
from revealing what Spike did to Buffy, which seems a little ruthless.
Even though Spike can't hurt Dawn (and would have no motive to), if she
knew Dawn certainly wouldn't want to stay at his place, and Buffy has
already realized that they're out of other options for Dawn-sitters. So
it's a sound practical decision, but would Dawn appreciate her sister
keeping this little detail under wraps?
I always wonder what Buffy would have said to Spike, if he had been there
instead of Clem.
> Other characters... the brief prison scene is presumably designed to
> try to persuade the viewer to kinda like Jonathan and The Other One,
Or at least feel sorry for them. They're too pathetic to merit black
magicky revenge, and at least one of them realizes how badly he screwed up
and feels bad for it.
> talk more when the show gives me more. And Anya would seem to be back
> in the game on a provisional basis, attachments to old friends who
> aren't Xander intact. As is typical of the series, there's plenty
> of angst to maybe be mined more extensively for them later, but right
> now, there're things to do.
Anya seems a little uncomfortable admitting that she's a VD again. To me
it seemed like more than just worrying that Buffy might slay her now.
She was genuinely ambivalent about that choice and worried about how her
friends would take the news.
Another little bit I liked was the capture spell Warren threw at Willow,
or rather our view of Willow's eyes burning through it.
> Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
> worthless core, before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
> "bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
> pretty monotone thoughout "Villains," as perhaps befits the
> material, but that line is killer.
Her monotone breaks during the bullet torture, and real emotion
creeps back into her voice when talking about how one tiny piece of metal
took Tara's light away. At this point the audience is going to expect
Willow to come back to herself and stop before killing Warren, but ... not
so much. The flaying is a great shock. And then Willow says "One down"
and magics herself away, we get that patented Really Big Villain music.
> This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
"You guys were totally going to fly off and leave me holding the bag." "We
were not! I was ... going to carry you."
> AOQ rating: Good
I'd call it a very high Good, maybe even Excellent (though I thought
Seeing Red was excellenter). It's very hard to watch Villains without
continuing on immediately to Two to Go and Grave. Did you manage it?
--Chris
______________________________________________________________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.
William George Ferguson
wrote:
>A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>threads.
>
>
>BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
>(or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
>ambiguously dark?")
>Writer: Marti Noxon
>Director: David Solomon
>
>What would appear to be the season-ending arc essentially began in
>"Entropy," although some might say it didn't totally start until
>"Seeing Red" set things up. And others would say that it's all
>so connected that we're dealing with unprecedented levels of
>serialized storytelling on the show. But in any case, "Villains"
>is the one that kicks things into high gear, with the adjustment in
>direction that launches us towards the presumably explosive finale.
>Doing the kind of thing that I'd actually kind of hoped for earlier,
>the show sticks with the themes of S6 by dispensing with its nasty but
>dorky standard villain in favor of exploring the darkness that's been
>inside certain regular cast members for a long time.
>
>The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
>a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
>is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
>some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
>goofy melodramatic pronouncements. Amber Benson gets paid and credited
>to lie around looking dead, which may or may not have been nice for
>her. Given that she's a dead character in the Buffyverse, though,
>it'd be nice if she gets one last speaking appearance.
>
>Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
>bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
>he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
>child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
>deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
>before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
>make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
And the fun thing is that, until he visits Rack, he still doesn't know how
totally screwed he is.
>Warren's new enemy looks nice and dark with the jet-black hair dye,
>and plays around with a lot of spells, some of which are quite cool and
>some of which are just cheesy. The very fake energy bolts she throws
>around to keep Buffy and Xander at arm's length ate a good example of
>the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
>magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
>them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
>her skin, which is deeply cool.
>
>Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
>I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
>logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
>from the events of "Wrecked." I've pretty much been seeing her
>as a time bomb waiting to explode since then. Treating magic as a drug
>addiction somewhat absolves her of guilt - falsely. By internalizing
>her problems with magic abuse and paying less attention to the morality
>issues that have led her to hurt others, Willow accepts that magic is a
>problem only when it threatens her personally, and particularly her
>all-consuming need to be in control of things. That selfish view of
>things is an okay starting point, but not a full recovery. Ironically,
>a "selfless" act can make her dangerous again, since under that
>construction, if Willow finds something that she cares about more than
>herself, enough that she's willing to not come back from it, she's
>right back to the dark arts. Something like, say, resurrecting Tara,
>or failing that, hunting down her killer.
>
>Of course it's always a slippery slope. Warren's the villain,
>right? A dangerous killer, attempted rapist, and basically someone who
>needs to be stopped. Upon learning of Tara's death, the others
>don't have much time to internalize it and come up with a coherent
>argument for why Willow shouldn't let vengeance be her master. To
>the end, both Dawn and Xander go so far as to basically recommend
>giving her a carte blanche where Warren is concerned.
"I'd do it myself if I could."
And I don't think Buffy ever convinced Dawn she was wrong, Dawn just
stopped arguing it.
>I talked about enjoying seeing Warren get put in his place, and clearly
>so does Dark Willow. She's out to hurt, not just kill. I always
>like Badass Willow, but the action sequences do go on a tad long...
>maybe Buffy could've gotten there in time to stop things if she
>hadn't kept walking through the same bit of woods over and over.
>Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
>worthless core, before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
>"bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
>pretty monotone thoughout "Villains," as perhaps befits the
>material, but that line is killer.
I tend to think of Willow in Tough Love as the Willownator W-800 and Dark
Willow here as the Willownator W-1000.
Behind the scenes stuff that can be discussed now. Amber Benson revealed
that in the middle of season 5, Whedon had told her that Tara was going to
be killed, to set up the Willow-as-Big-Bad storyline. The original plan
was for it to happen at the end of season five, in the episode that became
Tough Love. Glory would kill Tara, Willow would kill Glory, then the
others would have to stop Willow. Whedon decided he wanted to write more
Willow/Tara however, so Tara survived Tough Love, but Benson still knew
Tara was going to die.
Stephen DeKnight, who wrote Seeing Red, said that the first day of the
writers breaking season 6 in June of 2001, Whedon brought in the script of
Tara's death scene. Over the course of the season, some details were
changed (it was going to be in Wrecked, but they decided that didn't want
Dark Willow as the Big Bad that early, the location of the shooting changed
a couple of times), but the basic set up of the scene, looking over Tara's
shoulder as blood spatters on Willow, Tara saying "Your shirt..." and then
the reveal that Tara had been shot, was there before the first scenes of
Bargaining were written.
--
"Timothy Dalton should get an Oscar and
beat Sean Connery over the head with it!"
-The Other Guy (you know, Tucker's brother)
Jeff Jacoby
[snip]
> think going with Willow is the way to follow what's happening here. And I
> think she's already passed avenging Tara's death to appreciating the
> vengeance deeds for themselves.
Once addicted to magic, could she now be addicted to violence
and vengeance?
Jeff
One Bit Shy
news:0r79f2hnv04a45l69...@4ax.com...
> "One Bit Shy" <O...@nomail.sorry> writes:
>
>>This, of course, recalls Willow storming into the Magic Box in Tough Love
>>after Glory brain sucked Tara. That older scene (and the whole situation)
>>does a nice job of establishing how Willow would act now, but one small
>>problem for me is that the emotional impact of her entering the Magic Box
>>now to load up her power is reduced a little since I've already seen her
>>do
>>that once.
>
> In 'Tough Love', she opened ONE dark magic book and then went
> toe-to-toe with a Hellgod.
>
> Now she's just sucked all the power from every book in the store....
>
> In this case, I think familiarity just intensifies the dread of what
> she's turning herself into...
Yeah, I get that the stakes are raised and all. And what happens in the
store is way bigger. It's just that when she charged into the Magic Box in
Tough Love - before she ever made it to the back to get the spell book - I
knew right then that she was defying Buffy and going after Glory. That
moment is my biggest chill. I don't get quite the same thing here because
I'm pretty much expecting it.
Or maybe I've just seen the scene too many times now. It's not all that
important. Shows how I have to stretch to complain about the action.
OBS
Elisi
Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> rrh...@acme.com wrote:
> > Opus the Penguin wrote:
> > > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
> > >
> > > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > > > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > > > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > > > the globe (might also explain your query?).
>
> Huh. I feel like if they were going for "some time after the other
> stuff," they didn't make that at all clear. Other than setting it in
> what looked like Africa, or some kind of tribal commune, or something.
To be honest it doesn't matter much. What's important is to show that
he's far away and his story is completely divorced from the Scoobies'
at this point.
> > > How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
> > > flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
> > > windows shut?
> >
> > I always assumed he drove there in the car with the blackened windows.
> >
> > Er... Probably better not to think about this one too much.
>
> "Did you explain to him about the separate-continent thing?"
> "Oh, he seemed so determined."
Bwahahahahaha! :D
burt...@hotmail.com
> In article <ed1psr$84n$1...@readme.uio.no>,
> Espen Schjønberg <ess...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > On 29.08.2006 18:02, Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> > > A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> > > threads.
> > >
> >
> > > This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
> > > - "That guy's been looking at me. I think he wants to make me his
> > > butt monkey." "Don't flatter yourself. I heard him talking to the
> > > guard. He's in here for parking tickets." "That doesn't mean
> > > anything. The joint changes you"
> >
> > I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
> > problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
> > rape jokes are fun.
>
> Because they're funny.
Don't you see any problem with prisons and jails acting as de facto
rape camps for the state?
burt...@hotmail.com
> In article <Xns982E85281AD70op...@127.0.0.1>,
> Opus the Penguin <opusthepen...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
> >
> > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > > the globe (might also explain your query?).
> >
> > How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
> > flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
> > windows shut?
>
> a heavy divers belt
> and he can walk across the atlantic
The pressure on the ocean floor would crush him like an eggshell.
And even if it wouldn't, do you have any idea how long it would take?
BTR1701
burt...@hotmail.com wrote:
What does any of the possible answers to that question have to do with
whether or not there was humor in that scene in "Villains"?
One Bit Shy
news:na69f25fbeiu1n4tg...@4ax.com...
> Behind the scenes stuff that can be discussed now. Amber Benson revealed
> that in the middle of season 5, Whedon had told her that Tara was going to
> be killed, to set up the Willow-as-Big-Bad storyline. The original plan
> was for it to happen at the end of season five, in the episode that became
> Tough Love. Glory would kill Tara, Willow would kill Glory, then the
> others would have to stop Willow. Whedon decided he wanted to write more
> Willow/Tara however, so Tara survived Tough Love, but Benson still knew
> Tara was going to die.
I don't think it had really been earned in S5 anyway. I think more needed
to be done with Willow emotionally and in magic ability first. And the
lesser Tough Love version helps set up what eventually comes. So I'm happy
with the choice.
OBS
Don Sample
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
> Someone please tell the writes to stop trying to do hospital-talk
> scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
> okay?
One thing about that hospital scene: A lot of people think that Buffy
died again, and Willow revived her, because of the machine that goes
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, but the ECG screen is visible in the background the
whole time, and Buffy's heart keeps beating regularly through the entire
scene. It was some other alarm going off, possibly because of the power
interruption that Willow caused.
burt...@hotmail.com
It looked to me like you were answering the point about prison rape
jokes in general and not the scene in "Villains" in specific. If that
wasn't the case, then never mind.
vague disclaimer
Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> vague disclaimer wrote:
> > In article <Gcydnfr2lohQ6WnZ...@giganews.com>,
> > Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> vague disclaimer wrote:
> >>> In article <ed1psr$84n$1...@readme.uio.no>,
> >>> Espen Schjønberg <ess...@excite.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I think this "prison rape-jokes are fun" are a part of MN episodes
> >>>> problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
> >>>> rape jokes are fun.
> >>> It is called gallows humour and it is far far from just an American
> >>> thing.
> >> I've noticed that for certain non-Americans, no matter how often
> >> something is done in European films, do the same thing *once* in
> >> Hollywood and it's an "American thing"...
> >
> > Heh.
> >
> > Try living with a nurse for an extended course in gallows humour.
>
> Tell me about it. Three of cousins are nurse, my FIL worked with the
> local volunteer fire department for years, one of the guys I used to
> work with was an EMT, my ex-drummer was a cop...
>
> Anyone with no sense of black humor doesn't need to be hanging around
> people in the medical and emergency services line of work.
You know, I can't for the life of me figure out why, but there is
something....hinky...about the phrase "my ex-drummer was a cop".
It just seems...wrong.
But I digress.
There's a type of cardiac by-pass operation that abbreviates to
something that can be pronounced "cabbage" (can't recall the specifics).
So anyway, it never occurred to poor sweet Kath that referring to a
patient about to have one of these ops as a cabbage might be a tad
insensitive - when the patient in question was my dad.
Malsperanza
Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
Another nice, thought-provoking review, thanks!
> The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
> a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
> is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
> goofy melodramatic pronouncements.
Just to be clear, I don't think the Arbitrar is suggesting that Willow
killed Osiris. The Death of Osiris is one of those Major Mythic Moments
in ancient mythology, like the Death of Orpheus. Osiris is the Egyptian
god of the dead
who was murdered and then resurrected and therefore is the god of
Egyptian resurrection. It's natural that of all gods, Willow should
call upon him. I gotta say, though, the CGI cartoon graphics looked
more like a Marvel Comix version of Thglog, the God of Cumulus Clouds
than Osiris.
> Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
> bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
> child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
> deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
> before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
Yes. It makes you unethical, immoral, and probably communist. Because
as we know, the moral rules that apply in the real world must also
apply in TV entertainment.
Aside from that, though, it's fine to root for Warren to suffer
bigtime, because he isn't just Evol, he is also Dorky and Whiny, which
in TV!Evolness makes it ok to despise him. If he were good-lookin and
Evol and blond and stylish, we would probably see his suffering as
kinda noble and elevating... oh, wait, that *does* happen, only later
in the episode. Silly me.
> A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> her skin, which is deeply cool.
It taps into something really mythic, doesn't it? Such as Ezekiel
3:1-3:
"And he said to me: Son of man, eat all that thou shalt find: eat this
book, and go speak to the children of Israel. And I opened my mouth,
and he caused me to eat that book. And he said to me: Son of man, thy
belly shall eat, and thy bowels shall be filled with this book, which I
give thee, and I did eat it: and it was sweet as honey in my mouth."
Thus is prophecy made.
> Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
> I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
> logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
> from the events of "Wrecked."
It isn't just "Wrecked"--she does a version of the same thing as early
as season 4, when she uses the "My Will Be Done" spell after Oz walks
out on her. This is one reason why I agree with OBS that the debate
about whether magic addiction = drug addiction or not is kind of beside
the point. What's interesting is not so much the addition metaphor, but
Willow's tendency to use magic for personal (especially
romance-related) purposes. She uses magic to make her love affair with
Tara a little less troublesome and complex, just as she used magic in
s4 to get over being dumped.
You'd think she would have learned from that experience, which blinded
Giles (really that's quite terrible, when you think about it, though he
kind of laughed it off, and so did we). I didn't notice how bad her
behavior then was, because a) no one in the show seemed all that bent
about it; b) the Buffy/Spike Betrothal was so bloody funny I would have
paid Willow myself to do it again.
You'd think she would have learned. But she learns the opposite lesson:
by the time of "Wrecked" she isn't just using magic to get over a
problem in a love affair; she's using magic to alter the direction of
the affair. That's not so much a parallel to drug addiction as to
dysfunctional romance--the kind where an abusive spouse justifies
walloping the partner with a breadboard because she deserved it.
So yeah, there's a lot of consistency in Willow's fall from grace here.
Again, the fact that Warren is unprepossessing, nerdy, unattractive,
and himself an abusive boyfriend (and worse), tends to mitigate
Willow's response in our eyes--and in the eyes of everyone except
Buffy, who is Moral Rectitude Personified. (Buffy herself has a vested
interest in maintaining a very clear line between Killings That Are OK
and Killings That Are Not OK, for reasons of her own.)
> others to follow her. Resurrecting an argument that's probably
> already been talked to death, our hero makes a big out of the statement
> that "we don't kill humans." It'd be more accurate, as some
> have pointed out, to say that Buffy kills only in self-defense, and
> only in the most literal immediate-danger kind of way. The notable
> exception, of course, came when she went after the human who'd almost
> killed her own lover. Whether opposing Willow doing something similar
> represents guilt or hypocrisy is left as an exercise to the responder.
I think it's useful, with Buffy, to consider her actions in these last
few episodes of s6 in the context of her struggle throughout s6 to come
back from the dead herself. She was brought back out of heaven to
hell-on-earth. She was no longer dead, but not really alive either. She
was (at best) suicidal, depressed, and had lost the ability to feel any
empathy for others. For her, the rule that Killing Demons Is The Job;
Killing Humans Is Immoral has become a rule that she obeys
mechanically, without the inner feelings that would make sense of the
activity.
Whatever we may think of Spike, he's the one who has been helping her
sort that out, so that by the time "Villains" comes round, she's gotten
a handle on it. She learns a lot from Spike, who went through exactly
the same learning curve in s4 and s5 (albeit working toward the
solution from the opposite starting point: Killing Demons Is a
Betrayal of My Kind; Killing Humans Is Dinner and a Show). So
Spike/Buffy in s6 wasn't just sex, it was learning the value of life
from someone who had long since learned to devalue it, and was coming
full circle to valuing it again. Spike learned that from Buffy and then
gave the lesson back to her, in spades. (Heh: literally.)
All of which is by way of saying, Buffy has only very recently
re-learned to value life--her own and others. Having won back that
ground the hard way, she's not gonna cede it again--not even to avenge
Tara or punish Warren. No more slippery slope for Buffy.
> The argument about what to do about Willow is compounded by a few
> sub-discussions. Xander continues to be baffled by Buffy's tolerance
> for Spike given the previous episode, and I'm... well, I don't know
> whether to be impressed or not that he's able to set this aside and
> take her at her word on this one, at least for now.
Xander does best when he doesn't try to think too much. When he simply
relies on his instincts, he generally does ok. (Unless you are of the
school that believes he should have married Anya despite his
misgivings.)
> The Spike fans will demand that I mention
> his blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance too. Again the monster in
> question has a silly voice, but the rest is all right; the place seems
> out of the way and the spirit seems hard to deal with, so I didn't
> spend excess time worrying about why Spike didn't go here two and a
> half years ago. It's mostly moving him from points A to B, although
> what exactly B turns out to be is still up in the air.
It does feel like a cheat, though. Too easy, too fast: Just another
glowing-eyed scaly monster in a cave, intoning blahblah. A friend of
mine has tried to convince me that the cave, with its
quasi-palaeolithic wall paintings, is somehow a model of Plato's Cave,
or some sort of ur-Underworld, the cradle of rebirth or the rediscovery
of the self, or something, but I'm not buyin. I don't necessarily want
to see more of Spike undergoing his classic Hero Torture; but I would
have liked the show to come up with something a bit less mundane in the
way of a Darkest Daimon From the Deepest Pit of Unselfhood or whatever.
Come to think of it, being myself a Spike fan, I wouldn't have minded
seeing a bit more hero torture. This is the stuff that movies do to
make a character earn his stature. Errol Flynn in "Captain Blood," tied
to the stake and whipped by Evol!Slave-owning Badguy. (For that matter,
pretty much every pirate movie since Douglas Fairbanks has has a scene
of the Hero getting his ass kicked.) Plus, Spike has had it coming for
a long time.
And I think there is an intended parallel being drawn between Spike
getting clobbered for reasons that he himself has chosen, and which he
seems to recognize he deserves--and even welcomes, vs. Warren getting
clobbered out of a messy mixture of Willow's righteous justifyin' wrath
and Willow's not-so-righteous desire for revenge. Whatever Spike's
motives for wanting to be free of the chip, he takes the punishment
like a man; Warren does not: he pleads and excuses and whines. Until
he's caught, he boasts and brags. I think the comparison is an
interesting one, and could have been presented a little more clearly.
> - Clem being critical of his physique
I am fond of Clem but he comes to the show a bit too late to fit in. He
is all too clearly The Spirit of Comic Relief.
~Mal
BTR1701
burt...@hotmail.com wrote:
Well, Espen was taking Americans to task over prison jokes based on
Abitrar laughing at that scene so that's what I assumed we were talking
about.
Malsperanza
William George Ferguson wrote:
> >Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
> >bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> >he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half. This is a
> >child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
> >deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
> >before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> >make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
>
> And the fun thing is that, until he visits Rack, he still doesn't know how
> totally screwed he is.
But does anyone else besides me think that at this point Rack is
channeling one of Willem Dafoe's less interesting villains? Like maybe
that guy in "Speed 2"? (OK, yeah, I saw it; well, half of it. I was on
a *plane*--I had no choice.)
~Mal
vague disclaimer
Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Oh, sorry. Meant to add it.
Gur Funqbj Ynagrea va Trg Vg Qbar. Ybir vg jura gur funqbjf pbzr gb yvsr.
Much like the book-suck: very simple in concept, but proper
old-fashioned spooky.
Michael Ikeda
news:1156884195....@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com:
>
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>> rrh...@acme.com wrote:
>> > Opus the Penguin wrote:
>> > > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes
>> > > > are supposed to be taking place sometime after the other
>> > > > stuff we see happening. What with it not being all that
>> > > > quick and easy going half-way around the globe (might
>> > > > also explain your query?).
>>
>> Huh. I feel like if they were going for "some time after the
>> other stuff," they didn't make that at all clear. Other than
>> setting it in what looked like Africa, or some kind of tribal
>> commune, or something.
>
> To be honest it doesn't matter much. What's important is to show
> that he's far away and his story is completely divorced from the
> Scoobies' at this point.
>
Although not completely disconnected. The drawings near the entrance
to the cave bear a certain resemblance to what happens to Warren.
--
Michael Ikeda mmi...@erols.com
"Telling a statistician not to use sampling is like telling an
astronomer they can't say there is a moon and stars"
Lynne Billard, past president American Statistical Association
Rowan Hawthorn
That was kinda the way I felt, too...
>
> But I digress.
>
> There's a type of cardiac by-pass operation that abbreviates to
> something that can be pronounced "cabbage" (can't recall the specifics).
> So anyway, it never occurred to poor sweet Kath that referring to a
> patient about to have one of these ops as a cabbage might be a tad
> insensitive - when the patient in question was my dad.
LOL! You should have heard my cousin telling about the time one of her
patients was left hooked up to an air pump too long (don't remember
*what* he was having done, don't *even* *wanna* *know* what he was
having done,) and inflated his scrotum to the size of a football. Of
course, she was telling all about "blowing this guy's balls up" during
Thanksgiving dinner...
One Bit Shy
news:1156888077.0...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
>> I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
>> logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
>> from the events of "Wrecked."
>
> It isn't just "Wrecked"--she does a version of the same thing as early
> as season 4, when she uses the "My Will Be Done" spell after Oz walks
> out on her. This is one reason why I agree with OBS that the debate
> about whether magic addiction = drug addiction or not is kind of beside
> the point.
I don't remember saying exactly that, though heaven knows I've said more
than I can remember. I agree with it though. To me, the addiction is
something she runs into - a consequence - not the thing itself. It's a
consequence that suits the risks she was taking and her trend towards self
indulgant use. But it could have been a different consequence too. She was
running head down through the woods and that's the tree she headed.
I don't think this contradicts AOQ though. He's always been skeptical of
the significance of the addiction part.
> What's interesting is not so much the addition metaphor, but
> Willow's tendency to use magic for personal (especially
> romance-related) purposes. She uses magic to make her love affair with
> Tara a little less troublesome and complex, just as she used magic in
> s4 to get over being dumped.
Further back than that. She attempted to use magic to deal with "The Fluke"
in S3, but was interrupted by Spike.
OBS
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
> In article <1156867352.8...@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Someone please tell the writes to stop trying to do hospital-talk
> > scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
> > okay?
>
> One thing about that hospital scene: A lot of people think that Buffy
> died again, and Willow revived her, because of the machine that goes
> BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, but the ECG screen is visible in the background the
> whole time, and Buffy's heart keeps beating regularly through the entire
> scene. It was some other alarm going off, possibly because of the power
> interruption that Willow caused.
next time i end up in icu i want one of those ecgs
that dont have sticky pads all over me and behind the knee
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
v xabj v xabj
vz rivy
BTR1701
<mair_fheal-23A27...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
> In article <dsample-C9D8B8...@news.giganews.com>,
> Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <1156867352.8...@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
> > "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Someone please tell the writes to stop trying to do hospital-talk
> > > scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
> > > okay?
> >
> > One thing about that hospital scene: A lot of people think that Buffy
> > died again, and Willow revived her, because of the machine that goes
> > BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, but the ECG screen is visible in the background the
> > whole time, and Buffy's heart keeps beating regularly through the entire
> > scene. It was some other alarm going off, possibly because of the power
> > interruption that Willow caused.
>
> next time i end up in icu i want one of those ecgs
> that dont have sticky pads all over me and behind the knee
Don't even bother with the ICU. After all, what's the point? If your
goal is to keep yourself alive, you'll fail, 'cuz everyone dies and the
universe is doomed to expire from heat death anyway...
jil...@hotmail.com
Warren say he'd shot the slayer.
"Metal meets propulsion, yeah. But you still better be a good shot! It
was just on the news. Girl was shot."
"In her back yard."
"She survived. She's in the hospital. Slayers heal fast. Real fast."
And on the stopping Willow front Buffy points out: "We can't control
the universe. If we were supposed to ... then the magic wouldn't change
Willow the way it does. And ... we'd be able to bring Tara back.
DAWN: (very quietly) And Mom.
BUFFY: There are limits to what we can do. There should be. Willow
doesn't want to believe that. And now she's messing with forces that
want to hurt her. All of us.
XANDER: I just ... I've had blood on my hands all day. (looks Buffy in
the eye) Blood from people I love.
BUFFY: I know. And now it has to stop. Warren's going to get what he
deserves. I promise . But I will *not* let Willow destroy herself.
On the Vengeance Demon front:
XANDER: So, Willow's all wrathy ... why don't you go to her? Isn't that
your gig?
ANYA: (defensively) Normally, I'd have to ... but she doesn't want me.
She'd have to. We've noticed gradually the Vengeance Demons a) can be
summoned b) will come if they're attracted by someone's inner torment.
And we've noticed that they are limited. They can't grant their own
wishes, presumably can't grant each other's wishes. Brings me back to
my earlier premise. D'Hoffryn isn't about empowering girls to take
vengeance, he's about getting them under control.
Arbitrar Of Quality
> died again, and Willow revived her, because of the machine that goes
> BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, but the ECG screen is visible in the background the
> whole time, and Buffy's heart keeps beating regularly through the entire
> scene.
Any other explanation never even occurred to me.
-AOQ
~good thing they didn't have to bust out the machine that goes "ping"~
Arbitrar Of Quality
> > It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> > make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
>
> Yes. Go with it. The nose bleeds are kind of a bitch, but nothing comes
> free.
That's what they're all saying.
> I liked the Warren scenes this episode. Actually, I've appreciated his
> character more this run-through than usual. Even so, I don't care for the
> character so much through most of the season. I don't think it's because
> he's disgusting evil. I think it was just overplayed at the start. He
> seemed too nasty from the get go for his development - sort of parallel to
> Willow - to work quite right.
Given that the parallels to Willow are way too vague to come through
except to those really thinking a lot about it, that's a problem if
that's what the writers were going for.
> It's not that important now. What he becomes
> works well here.
Agreed.
> The one moment in the episode that felt really harrowing to me is when
> Willow said she isn't coming back. It's not just rage. She seems to be
> giving up too. Sort of Willow's version of Buffy's dance in OMWF.
Yes, although not so sure about the OMWF analogy. It's a
straightforward and effective way of showing her giving up her
identity, so to speak, for this calling.
-AOQ
Arbitrar Of Quality
One Bit Shy wrote:
> > Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
> > worthless core,
>
> And hopefully bring a little closure to that story element - which I seem to
> recall you saying felt left open back in Dead Things. Did this do the
> trick?
I don't think I ever said that, unless by "closure" you mean having his
motivations make sense.
-AOQ
George W Harris
wrote:
:> What's interesting is not so much the addition metaphor, but
:> Willow's tendency to use magic for personal (especially
:> romance-related) purposes. She uses magic to make her love affair with
:> Tara a little less troublesome and complex, just as she used magic in
:> s4 to get over being dumped.
:
:Further back than that. She attempted to use magic to deal with "The Fluke"
:in S3, but was interrupted by Spike.
And vis a vis vengeance, she nearly cursed Oz in
"Wild At Heart".
:
:
:OBS
--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste more like
prunes than rhubarb does" -Groucho Marx
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Arbitrar Of Quality
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> Another nice, thought-provoking review, thanks!
And thank you.
> > while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> > some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
> > goofy melodramatic pronouncements.
>
> Just to be clear, I don't think the Arbitrar is suggesting that Willow
> killed Osiris. The Death of Osiris is one of those Major Mythic Moments
> in ancient mythology, like the Death of Orpheus.
Yeah, you're seemingly the only person that got it (except maybe
mariposas), but I just wanted to use the phrase "The Murder Of Osiris."
> > A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> > magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> > them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> > her skin, which is deeply cool.
>
> It taps into something really mythic, doesn't it? Such as Ezekiel
> 3:1-3:
>
> "And he said to me: Son of man, eat all that thou shalt find: eat this
> book, and go speak to the children of Israel. And I opened my mouth,
> and he caused me to eat that book. And he said to me: Son of man, thy
> belly shall eat, and thy bowels shall be filled with this book, which I
> give thee, and I did eat it: and it was sweet as honey in my mouth."
>
> Thus is prophecy made.
Huh. Interesting.
>From OBS's response:
> It isn't just "Wrecked"--she does a version of the same thing as early
> as season 4, when she uses the "My Will Be Done" spell after Oz walks
> out on her. This is one reason why I agree with OBS that the debate
> about whether magic addiction = drug addiction or not is kind of beside
> the point.
"I don't remember saying exactly that, though heaven knows I've said
more
than I can remember. I agree with it though. To me, the addiction is
something she runs into - a consequence - not the thing itself. It's a
consequence that suits the risks she was taking and her trend towards
self
indulgant use. But it could have been a different consequence too.
She was
running head down through the woods and that's the tree she headed.
I don't think this contradicts AOQ though. He's always been skeptical
of
the significance of the addiction part."
And again, what could have been a major turning point becomes a
distraction, a side-trip. Certainly an interesting one, but the way
the addiction metaphor itself is played does tend to get forced and
heavy-handed, causing it to be a distraction from the real story for
the audience too. That'd be one of my few complaints with the shape of
the season as a whole.
> What's interesting is not so much the addition metaphor, but
> Willow's tendency to use magic for personal (especially
> romance-related) purposes. She uses magic to make her love affair with
> Tara a little less troublesome and complex, just as she used magic in
> s4 to get over being dumped.
"Further back than that. She attempted to use magic to deal with "The
Fluke"
in S3, but was interrupted by Spike."
It's quite a history, going back to the beginnings of her
experimentation with magic. And as someone else, I forget who, pointed
out, Willow has always had a thing for revenge, going all the way back
to the "deliver" scene from "The Harvest."
-AOQ
Arbitrar Of Quality
Elisi wrote:
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> >
> > Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> > (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> > ambiguously dark?")
>
BTW, all of your recent pretending that I have a sense of humor has
been good for the ego.
> And how 'different' Vamp!Willow seemed from Real!Willow back in S3...
The writers have gotten a lot of milage out of comparisons to
Vamp!Willow, more so than I could've imagined. They're good that way.
> Now I want to go re-watch all these episodes...
Don't let anyone here stop you.
-AOQ
Arbitrar Of Quality
> Rincewind.
> --
> What I have learned from Buffy:
> If you hear someone say "Bored now", run. Fast.
But what if the bored person has you tied up?
-AOQ
Rowan Hawthorn
Pray?
drifter
> rrh...@acme.com wrote:
>> Opus the Penguin wrote:
>>> Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
>>>
>>>> Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are
>>>> supposed to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see
>>>> happening. What with it not being all that quick and easy going
>>>> half-way around the globe (might also explain your query?).
>
> Huh. I feel like if they were going for "some time after the other
> stuff," they didn't make that at all clear. Other than setting it in
> what looked like Africa, or some kind of tribal commune, or something.
Well, there's a Jamaica in New York. It's on Lawn Guyland.
>>> How does Spike even *get* to Africa? Do they have special vampire
>>> flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
>>> windows shut?
>>
>> I always assumed he drove there in the car with the blackened
>> windows.
>>
>> Er... Probably better not to think about this one too much.
>
> "Did you explain to him about the separate-continent thing?"
> "Oh, he seemed so determined."
He doesn't need to breathe. Maybe he walked?
--
Kel
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own."
One Bit Shy
news:1156895944....@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
It may have been someone else. A lot of talk that thread.
(Harmony) Watcher
"mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges"
news:mair_fheal-037BB...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
> In article <dsample-D74C00...@news.giganews.com>,
> Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <1156875809....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
> > "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > rrh...@acme.com wrote:
> > > > Opus the Penguin wrote:
> > > > > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are
supposed
> > > > > > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see
happening.
> > > > > > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way
around
> > > > > > the globe (might also explain your query?).
> > >
> > > Huh. I feel like if they were going for "some time after the other
> > > stuff," they didn't make that at all clear. Other than setting it in
> > > what looked like Africa, or some kind of tribal commune, or something.
> >
> >
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luganda_language>
> >
> > which is one of the languages spoken in Uganda.
> >
> > Maybe he rode his motorcycle down to L.A. where he bought a magical
> > teleport to Africa.
>
> in the conversation with doc a year ago
> teleportation was presented as not entirely unreasonable
> but perhaps more impractical
>
> are there any examples in the series of people teleporting across the
atlantic
>
One Bit Shy
news:1156895857....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> One Bit Shy wrote:
>> I liked the Warren scenes this episode. Actually, I've appreciated his
>> character more this run-through than usual. Even so, I don't care for
>> the
>> character so much through most of the season. I don't think it's because
>> he's disgusting evil. I think it was just overplayed at the start. He
>> seemed too nasty from the get go for his development - sort of parallel
>> to
>> Willow - to work quite right.
>
> Given that the parallels to Willow are way too vague to come through
> except to those really thinking a lot about it, that's a problem if
> that's what the writers were going for.
The series was so into parallels this season that it did get confusing. I
sometimes think Warren was parallel of the week. But broadly speaking I
always saw him as a nerd wrecklessly reaching for power as Willow had -
albeit down a different path. And the culmination has him acting as the
agent for her fall, and her acting as the agent for his demise.
>> The one moment in the episode that felt really harrowing to me is when
>> Willow said she isn't coming back. It's not just rage. She seems to be
>> giving up too. Sort of Willow's version of Buffy's dance in OMWF.
>
> Yes, although not so sure about the OMWF analogy. It's a
> straightforward and effective way of showing her giving up her
> identity, so to speak, for this calling.
It's a loose analogy. Both manifest as a paroxysm of action. Buffy with a
wild dance. Willow with wild magic. I don't know if its intentional or
not, but they both lose control, so it strikes me as akin.
OBS
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> Elisi wrote:
> > Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> > >
> > > BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> > > Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> > > (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> > > ambiguously dark?")
> >
> > Love your alternative title...
>
> BTW, all of your recent pretending that I have a sense of humor has
> been good for the ego.
>
> > And how 'different' Vamp!Willow seemed from Real!Willow back in S3...
>
> The writers have gotten a lot of milage out of comparisons to
> Vamp!Willow, more so than I could've imagined. They're good that way.
so i was like this real cool vampire in your world?
alright
One Bit Shy
news:385Jg.385$v_5...@newsfe04.lga...
I think he used the money from his international arms dealing to hire a
private jet - no questions asked.
OBS
Rowan Hawthorn
That would be me. That casual, without-missing-a-beat payback is when I
fell in love with Ms. Rosenberg (Okay, so I like to live dangerously...)
peachy ashie passion
> In article <ed1psr$84n$1...@readme.uio.no>,
> Espen Schjønberg <ess...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>>A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>>>threads.
>>>
>>
>>>- "That guy's been looking at me. I think he wants to make me his
>>>butt monkey." "Don't flatter yourself. I heard him talking to the
>>>guard. He's in here for parking tickets." "That doesn't mean
>>>anything. The joint changes you"
>>
>>problem. I have never figured out why Americans (obviously) think prison
>>rape jokes are fun.
>
>
>
>
>>Do Americans live in a constant fear of being put in jail for,
>>well, just anything, and then being raped?
>
>
> No.
Humor is frequently a tool for dealing with fear, which makes the
jokes funny.
Sexuality in general and homosexuality in specific are topics that
Americans are not easy with. Culturally, we tend not to be very
sophisticated sexually. We tend to the puritan, sex is bad mindset.
It makes many things more troublesome than they need to be.
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
onq qbttvr
(Harmony) Watcher
"Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
news:dsample-D74C00...@news.giganews.com...
> In article <1156875809....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
> > rrh...@acme.com wrote:
> > > Opus the Penguin wrote:
> > > > Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are
supposed
> > > > > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see
happening.
> > > > > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way
around
> > > > > the globe (might also explain your query?).
> >
> > Huh. I feel like if they were going for "some time after the other
> > stuff," they didn't make that at all clear. Other than setting it in
> > what looked like Africa, or some kind of tribal commune, or something.
>
> The language being spoken was Luganda,
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luganda_language>
>
> which is one of the languages spoken in Uganda.
>
> Maybe he rode his motorcycle down to L.A. where he bought a magical
> teleport to Africa.
>
Sunnydale after his departure at the end of "Seeing Red".
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Ian Galbraith
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> ambiguously dark?")
> Writer: Marti Noxon
> Director: David Solomon
> What would appear to be the season-ending arc essentially began in
> "Entropy," although some might say it didn't totally start until
> "Seeing Red" set things up. And others would say that it's all
> so connected that we're dealing with unprecedented levels of
> serialized storytelling on the show. But in any case, "Villains"
> is the one that kicks things into high gear, with the adjustment in
> direction that launches us towards the presumably explosive finale.
This serialisation is why I find it hard to rate any of the final 4
episodes (perhaps even Entropy) individually. Individually this probably
rates a Good as you have rated it. I'll discuss a collective rating when
you've finished the season.
[snip]
> Someone please tell the writes to stop trying to do hospital-talk
> scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
> okay?
Heh, writers really should learn how to research better.
[snip]
> Here, as I expected I would if Willow ever fell off the no-magic wagon,
> I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
> logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
> from the events of "Wrecked." I've pretty much been seeing her
> as a time bomb waiting to explode since then. Treating magic as a drug
> addiction somewhat absolves her of guilt - falsely.
IOW a bait and switch.
> By internalizing
> her problems with magic abuse and paying less attention to the morality
> issues that have led her to hurt others, Willow accepts that magic is a
> problem only when it threatens her personally, and particularly her
> all-consuming need to be in control of things. That selfish view of
> things is an okay starting point, but not a full recovery. Ironically,
> a "selfless" act can make her dangerous again, since under that
> construction, if Willow finds something that she cares about more than
> herself, enough that she's willing to not come back from it, she's
> right back to the dark arts. Something like, say, resurrecting Tara,
> or failing that, hunting down her killer.
Yep, well said, you've said it far more eloquently than I've managed to
whenever I've argued this point over the years since this first aired.
> Of course it's always a slippery slope. Warren's the villain,
> right? A dangerous killer, attempted rapist, and basically someone who
> needs to be stopped. Upon learning of Tara's death, the others
> don't have much time to internalize it and come up with a coherent
> argument for why Willow shouldn't let vengeance be her master. To
> the end, both Dawn and Xander go so far as to basically recommend
> giving her a carte blanche where Warren is concerned. Buffy is
> otherwise fairly passive in this episode (do we give her a break on
> account of having been shot?), letting Willow basically dominate and
> drive the action, but she's the one voice of moderation who gets the
> others to follow her. Resurrecting an argument that's probably
> already been talked to death, our hero makes a big out of the statement
> that "we don't kill humans." It'd be more accurate, as some
> have pointed out, to say that Buffy kills only in self-defense, and
> only in the most literal immediate-danger kind of way. The notable
> exception, of course, came when she went after the human who'd almost
> killed her own lover. Whether opposing Willow doing something similar
> represents guilt or hypocrisy is left as an exercise to the responder.
I think its a way Buffy protects her essential self from being corrupted.
Although I guess there's an element of hypocrisy.
[snip]
> One-sentence summary: Exciting.
> AOQ rating: Good
As I said above as an individual episode I'd rate it good as well.
[snip]
--
You can't stop the signal
Ian Galbraith
> "William George Ferguson" <wmgf...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
> news:na69f25fbeiu1n4tg...@4ax.com...
>> Behind the scenes stuff that can be discussed now. Amber Benson revealed
>> that in the middle of season 5, Whedon had told her that Tara was going to
>> be killed, to set up the Willow-as-Big-Bad storyline. The original plan
>> was for it to happen at the end of season five, in the episode that became
>> Tough Love. Glory would kill Tara, Willow would kill Glory, then the
>> others would have to stop Willow. Whedon decided he wanted to write more
>> Willow/Tara however, so Tara survived Tough Love, but Benson still knew
>> Tara was going to die.
> I don't think it had really been earned in S5 anyway. I think more needed
> to be done with Willow emotionally and in magic ability first. And the
> lesser Tough Love version helps set up what eventually comes. So I'm happy
> with the choice.
AOL. One thing Buffy has done really well is provide a great foundation
for all the changes in the characters. IMHO Angel always suffered in
comparison with its character development arcs being rushed and not
having enough foundation for the changes its characters went through.
Ian Galbraith
> On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:16:30 -0400, One <O...@nomail.sorry> wrote:
>> think going with Willow is the way to follow what's happening here. And I
>> think she's already passed avenging Tara's death to appreciating the
>> vengeance deeds for themselves.
> Once addicted to magic, could she now be addicted to violence
> and vengeance?
Or the power she now has over others.
Apteryx
Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> "Entropy," although some might say it didn't totally start until
> "Seeing Red" set things up. And others would say that it's all
> so connected that we're dealing with unprecedented levels of
> serialized storytelling on the show. But in any case, "Villains"
> is the one that kicks things into high gear, with the adjustment in
> direction that launches us towards the presumably explosive finale.
I think it would have worked better earlier - although thats not saying
it would have worked well...
> the show sticks with the themes of S6 by dispensing with its nasty but
> dorky standard villain in favor of exploring the darkness that's been
> inside certain regular cast members for a long time.
Sort of. Certainly darkness has been hovering about Willow all season,
but I'm not sure its all been inside her. Even Sunnydale High Willow
would have been capable of violent acts of revenge, but what I don't
think Willow would ever have been capable of is maintaining focus on a
single objective (good or bad) for a whole episode. I think what we see
here is what is said to have happened to Sam's shamans in AYW -
Willow's rage has pushed her over the edge and the "dark magics" have
possessed her. This isn't meant to be "our" Willow anymore.
> The dramatic music at the opening made me briefly think I was watching
> a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
> is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
> goofy melodramatic pronouncements.
Yeah, but he's used to it. And now that we are showing classical gods,
the scene has been set for Ares and his good friend Caesar to walk in
anytime now.
>
> Warren's new enemy looks nice and dark with the jet-black hair dye,
> and plays around with a lot of spells, some of which are quite cool and
> some of which are just cheesy. The very fake energy bolts she throws
> around to keep Buffy and Xander at arm's length ate a good example of
> the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> her skin, which is deeply cool.
Cool as a visual element. But deeply silly from a conceptual view.
Books no longer give power by teaching stuff - they just provide
magical hit points.
>
> One-sentence summary: Exciting.
>
> AOQ rating: Good
Weak for me. Mainly because there is very little here to interest me,
since I lost interest in Willow's story in Smashed, and there's not
much else going on here. Buffy's all distant (reasonably enough after
being shot). Actually only the scenes with Anya and to a lesser extent
Spike and the Nerd Duo, are worth watching in this. And that's what, a
couple of minutes? So "Bored Now" would be my one-sentence summary.
It's my 137th favourite BtVS episode, 22nd best in season 6.
Apteryx
Apteryx
Opus the Penguin wrote:
> Elisi (eli...@gmail.com) wrote:
>
> > Nothing much to say except he's in Africa and his scenes are supposed
> > to be taking place sometime after the other stuff we see happening.
> > What with it not being all that quick and easy going half-way around
> > the globe (might also explain your query?).
>
> flights that only go by night or where everyone agrees to keep the
> windows shut?
We don't know it's Africa. It could just be a commune of African
Californian hippies. That would make it much easier to explain the
trip. He could have just gone there that night on his motorbike (an odd
choice of transport in itself for a vampire).
Apteryx
George W Harris
:> Warren's new enemy looks nice and dark with the jet-black hair dye,
:> and plays around with a lot of spells, some of which are quite cool and
:> some of which are just cheesy. The very fake energy bolts she throws
:> around to keep Buffy and Xander at arm's length ate a good example of
:> the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
:> magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
:> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
:> her skin, which is deeply cool.
:
:Cool as a visual element. But deeply silly from a conceptual view.
:Books no longer give power by teaching stuff - they just provide
:magical hit points.
I don't see where you get that. She
internalized all the knowledge in those books -
literally.
--
Real men don't need macho posturing to bolster their egos.
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
Don Sample
"Apteryx" <Apte...@gmail.com> wrote:
Va "Arire Yrnir Zr" Fcvxr fnlf gung ur "Geniryrq gb gur bgure fvqr bs
gur jbeyq, znqr n qrny jvgu n qrzba." gb trg uvf fbhy.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
Rincewind
>> What I have learned from Buffy:
>> If you hear someone say "Bored now", run. Fast.
>
> But what if the bored person has you tied up?
You can try: "Er... Miss Rosenberg, can I interest you in a game of Mistress
of Pain? I hear you and Oz used to play it every night..."
(did anyone else just go to a scary visual place?).
Rincewind.
--
Lines you'll never hear on Buffy:
OZ: Willow, I want to break up.
WILLOW: What? Why?
OZ: I want to date Harmony.
WILLOW: Harmony?
OZ: Yeah, it's kind of like Buffy and Angel's slayer/vampire deal. I'm a
wolf, she's a sheep, it's a whole destiny thing.
Elisi
> It's quite a history, going back to the beginnings of her
> experimentation with magic. And as someone else, I forget who, pointed
> out, Willow has always had a thing for revenge, going all the way back
> to the "deliver" scene from "The Harvest."
>
> -AOQ
The foundations for her magical meltdown was put down in 'Becoming I':
*******************
Willow: Well, I've been going through her files and, and researching
the black arts, for fun, or educational fun, and I may be able to work
this.
Giles: (very concerned) W-Willow... channeling... such potent magicks
through yourself, it could open a door that you may not be able to
close.
******************
Looks like Giles was right all along...
Ian Galbraith
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
>> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>> threads.
>> What would appear to be the season-ending arc essentially began in
>> "Entropy," although some might say it didn't totally start until
>> "Seeing Red" set things up. And others would say that it's all
>> so connected that we're dealing with unprecedented levels of
>> serialized storytelling on the show. But in any case, "Villains"
>> is the one that kicks things into high gear, with the adjustment in
>> direction that launches us towards the presumably explosive finale.
>> Doing the kind of thing that I'd actually kind of hoped for earlier,
> I think it would have worked better earlier - although thats not saying
> it would have worked well...
V qba'g frr ubj Jvyybj pbhyq unir orra n fhfgnvarq ivyynva sbe n crevbq
bs gvzr hayrff gurl qvq ure nep qvssreragyl (naq cbffvoyl jrer cercnerq
gb trg evq bs ure creznaragyl). Guvf rkcybfvba nyjnlf unq gb or oebhtug
ba ol entr naq gung oheaf vgfrys bhg dhvpxyl. Gur bevtvany cyna fbhaqf
fvzvyne gb jung jr tbg whfg qenja bhg bire n ybatre crevbq, gung jbhyqa'g
unir jbexrq VZUB.
[snip]
Rincewind
>A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
> (or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
> ambiguously dark?")
> Writer: Marti Noxon
> Director: David Solomon
>
> bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> he's up shit creek and has snapped his own paddle in half.
One of the only two things in this episode I really liked.
> Warren's new enemy looks nice and dark with the jet-black hair dye,
> and plays around with a lot of spells, some of which are quite cool and
> some of which are just cheesy. The very fake energy bolts she throws
> around to keep Buffy and Xander at arm's length ate a good example of
> the latter. A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> her skin, which is deeply cool.
The other thing I liked and the coolest special effect in the entire series.
> Resurrecting an argument that's probably
> already been talked to death, our hero makes a big out of the statement
> that "we don't kill humans." It'd be more accurate, as some
> have pointed out, to say that Buffy kills only in self-defense, and
> only in the most literal immediate-danger kind of way. The notable
> exception, of course, came when she went after the human who'd almost
> killed her own lover. Whether opposing Willow doing something similar
> represents guilt or hypocrisy is left as an exercise to the responder.
May I suggest a third option: character retcon?
Maybe at the end of season 5 Joss realized that sending an attempted
murderer to heaaaven would cause too many eyebrows to raise, so he wrote the
"she couldn't take a human life" speech and now the writers are stuck with
Saint Buffy.
> Oh, while we're speaking of little recurring elements, Dawn gets to
> see Tara's corpse and stare in shock for an indeterminate amount of
> time. Does this series love its little recurring elements or what?
> Remember who kept Dawn company in "Real Me" when the gang didn't
> want her to be around a dead person?
I hadn't noticed that, but yes, it's a nice little detail.
> I talked about enjoying seeing Warren get put in his place, and clearly
> so does Dark Willow. She's out to hurt, not just kill. I always
> like Badass Willow, but the action sequences do go on a tad long...
> maybe Buffy could've gotten there in time to stop things if she
> hadn't kept walking through the same bit of woods over and over.
> Eventually she has to have Kat verbally smack him down, and reveal his
> worthless core, before the perfectly timed and delivered return of
> "bored now" and the subsequent flaying. Hannigan's delivery is
> pretty monotone thoughout "Villains," as perhaps befits the
> material, but that line is killer.
After waiting for an entire season to see Dark Willow I really expected
something more than Monotone Willow.
Besides, according to Rack, "Girl's runnin' on pure fury": isn't fury
supposed to be a little more furious than that?
> AOQ rating: Good
None of the episodes in the second half of the season (with the exception of
Normal Again) gets more than Decent from me, mostly because I lost interest
in the characters arcs.
My rating: Decent.
Rincewind.
--
Lines you'll never hear on Buffy:
OZ: Is that her sweater?
TARA: (looks down) I just, I just hope that you guys'll be very ... happy.
OZ: (moves closer) You smell like her. (Tara still doesn't look at him)
She's all over you, do you know that?
TARA: I-uh-I-
OZ: Man, that turns me on! Wanna have a quickie while Willow's at class?
Ken from Chicago
"William George Ferguson" <wmgf...@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:na69f25fbeiu1n4tg...@4ax.com...
> wrote:
>
>>A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>>threads.
>>
>>
>>BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>>Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
>>(or "I'm sorry. I nodded off. Did you get to the part where you're
>>ambiguously dark?")
>>Writer: Marti Noxon
>>Director: David Solomon
<snip>
> Behind the scenes stuff that can be discussed now. Amber Benson revealed
> that in the middle of season 5, Whedon had told her that Tara was going to
> be killed, to set up the Willow-as-Big-Bad storyline. The original plan
> was for it to happen at the end of season five, in the episode that became
> Tough Love. Glory would kill Tara, Willow would kill Glory, then the
> others would have to stop Willow. Whedon decided he wanted to write more
> Willow/Tara however, so Tara survived Tough Love, but Benson still knew
> Tara was going to die.
>
> Stephen DeKnight, who wrote Seeing Red, said that the first day of the
> writers breaking season 6 in June of 2001, Whedon brought in the script of
> Tara's death scene. Over the course of the season, some details were
> changed (it was going to be in Wrecked, but they decided that didn't want
> Dark Willow as the Big Bad that early, the location of the shooting
> changed
> a couple of times), but the basic set up of the scene, looking over Tara's
> shoulder as blood spatters on Willow, Tara saying "Your shirt..." and then
> the reveal that Tara had been shot, was there before the first scenes of
> Bargaining were written.
>
> --
> "Timothy Dalton should get an Oscar and
> beat Sean Connery over the head with it!"
> -The Other Guy (you know, Tucker's brother)
Bummer. Half a season of Dark Willow as the Big Bad would have been way
cool--especially if she had ... MINIONS.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"BTR1701" <btr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:btr1702-1DE8D2...@news.giganews.com...
> In article
> <mair_fheal-23A27...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
> mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
>
>> In article <dsample-C9D8B8...@news.giganews.com>,
>> Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
>>
>> > In article <1156867352.8...@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
>> > > scenes with doctors and such. Stick with the vampires and witches,
>> > > okay?
>> >
>> > died again, and Willow revived her, because of the machine that goes
>> > BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, but the ECG screen is visible in the background the
>> > whole time, and Buffy's heart keeps beating regularly through the
>> > entire
>> > scene. It was some other alarm going off, possibly because of the
>> > power
>> > interruption that Willow caused.
>>
>> next time i end up in icu i want one of those ecgs
>> that dont have sticky pads all over me and behind the knee
>
> Don't even bother with the ICU. After all, what's the point? If your
> goal is to keep yourself alive, you'll fail, 'cuz everyone dies and the
> universe is doomed to expire from heat death anyway...
Don't be silly. The sun will go supergiant and expand beyond's Earth's orbit
waaaay before that! As if we had all the time in the universe for heat
death.
Unless we got off this lump of rock, then ... what you said.
-- Ken from Chicago
(Harmony) Watcher
"Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1156888077.0...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> >
> > BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> > Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
>
>
> > a cop show, or as the ambulence was revealed, a medical drama. Buffy
> > is taken away while Willow interferes with a touching moment by working
> > some pretty silly magic, complete with the murder of Osiris and his
> > goofy melodramatic pronouncements.
>
>
> killed Osiris. The Death of Osiris is one of those Major Mythic Moments
> god of the dead
>
>
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/d/dying_and_resurrected_gods_archetypal_manifestation_of_psychological_need.html
>
> who was murdered and then resurrected and therefore is the god of
> Egyptian resurrection. It's natural that of all gods, Willow should
> call upon him. I gotta say, though, the CGI cartoon graphics looked
> more like a Marvel Comix version of Thglog, the God of Cumulus Clouds
> than Osiris.
>
>
> > Despite the predictability, I get a kick out of Warren's scene in the
> > bar in which the monsters laugh at him and he starts to realize that
> > child trying to be an adult show's villain, so if the show wants to
> > deal out justice, part of it is to make him realize how pathetic he is
> > before killing him. It's fun watching him suffer. Does saying that
> > make me evil and glowy with dark energy?
>
> Yes. It makes you unethical, immoral, and probably communist. Because
> as we know, the moral rules that apply in the real world must also
> apply in TV entertainment.
>
> Aside from that, though, it's fine to root for Warren to suffer
> bigtime, because he isn't just Evol, he is also Dorky and Whiny, which
> in TV!Evolness makes it ok to despise him. If he were good-lookin and
> Evol and blond and stylish, we would probably see his suffering as
> kinda noble and elevating... oh, wait, that *does* happen, only later
> in the episode. Silly me.
>
>
> > A more unique and impressive scene is when she raids the
> > magic shop. Shooting a bunch of books across the room only to have
> > them land neatly is a good start, but then she sucks up the text into
> > her skin, which is deeply cool.
>
> 3:1-3:
>
> "And he said to me: Son of man, eat all that thou shalt find: eat this
> book, and go speak to the children of Israel. And I opened my mouth,
> and he caused me to eat that book. And he said to me: Son of man, thy
> belly shall eat, and thy bowels shall be filled with this book, which I
> give thee, and I did eat it: and it was sweet as honey in my mouth."
>
> Thus is prophecy made.
>
> > I think her character arc holds together wonderfully. This is a
> > logical extension of the fact that she only learned limited lessons
> > from the events of "Wrecked."
>
> as season 4, when she uses the "My Will Be Done" spell after Oz walks
> out on her. This is one reason why I agree with OBS that the debate
> about whether magic addiction = drug addiction or not is kind of beside
> Willow's tendency to use magic for personal (especially
> romance-related) purposes. She uses magic to make her love affair with
> Tara a little less troublesome and complex, just as she used magic in
> s4 to get over being dumped.
>
> Giles (really that's quite terrible, when you think about it, though he
> kind of laughed it off, and so did we). I didn't notice how bad her
> behavior then was, because a) no one in the show seemed all that bent
> about it; b) the Buffy/Spike Betrothal was so bloody funny I would have
> paid Willow myself to do it again.
>
> You'd think she would have learned. But she learns the opposite lesson:
> by the time of "Wrecked" she isn't just using magic to get over a
> problem in a love affair; she's using magic to alter the direction of
> the affair. That's not so much a parallel to drug addiction as to
> dysfunctional romance--the kind where an abusive spouse justifies
> walloping the partner with a breadboard because she deserved it.
>
> So yeah, there's a lot of consistency in Willow's fall from grace here.
> Again, the fact that Warren is unprepossessing, nerdy, unattractive,
> and himself an abusive boyfriend (and worse), tends to mitigate
> Willow's response in our eyes--and in the eyes of everyone except
> Buffy, who is Moral Rectitude Personified. (Buffy herself has a vested
> interest in maintaining a very clear line between Killings That Are OK
> and Killings That Are Not OK, for reasons of her own.)
>
>
> > others to follow her. Resurrecting an argument that's probably
> > already been talked to death, our hero makes a big out of the statement
> > that "we don't kill humans." It'd be more accurate, as some
> > have pointed out, to say that Buffy kills only in self-defense, and
> > only in the most literal immediate-danger kind of way. The notable
> > exception, of course, came when she went after the human who'd almost
> > killed her own lover. Whether opposing Willow doing something similar
> > represents guilt or hypocrisy is left as an exercise to the responder.
>
> few episodes of s6 in the context of her struggle throughout s6 to come
> back from the dead herself. She was brought back out of heaven to
> hell-on-earth. She was no longer dead, but not really alive either. She
> was (at best) suicidal, depressed, and had lost the ability to feel any
> empathy for others. For her, the rule that Killing Demons Is The Job;
> Killing Humans Is Immoral has become a rule that she obeys
> mechanically, without the inner feelings that would make sense of the
> activity.
>
> Whatever we may think of Spike, he's the one who has been helping her
> sort that out, so that by the time "Villains" comes round, she's gotten
> a handle on it. She learns a lot from Spike, who went through exactly
> the same learning curve in s4 and s5 (albeit working toward the
> solution from the opposite starting point: Killing Demons Is a
> Betrayal of My Kind; Killing Humans Is Dinner and a Show). So
> Spike/Buffy in s6 wasn't just sex, it was learning the value of life
> from someone who had long since learned to devalue it, and was coming
> full circle to valuing it again. Spike learned that from Buffy and then
> gave the lesson back to her, in spades. (Heh: literally.)
>
> All of which is by way of saying, Buffy has only very recently
> re-learned to value life--her own and others. Having won back that
> ground the hard way, she's not gonna cede it again--not even to avenge
> Tara or punish Warren. No more slippery slope for Buffy.
>
>
I won't be so sure that Buffy--or any one of the main characters--wouldn't
go off the deep end herself if it had been Dawn or Joyce who got killed by
Warren's bullet. Buffy went catatonic herself when Glory snatched Dawn from
her. That's going off the deep end in the other direction.
In fact, the lack of visible anger at a personal level on the part of Buffy
bothers me a bit. After all, Buffy would likely have died had Willow not
bothered taking the time to save Buffy before going after Warren. And Warren
killed Tara. I just don't think Buffy's emotional response (or the lack
thereof) on Warren's evil acts was commensurable with the degree of the
crime.
Silly naive Buffy for her to think that Warren should be a human problem out
of her jurisdiction. I seriously doubt that Buffy would stand idly by and
let human authorities take charge of the situation if Warren had killed Dawn
instead of Tara.
> > The argument about what to do about Willow is compounded by a few
> > sub-discussions. Xander continues to be baffled by Buffy's tolerance
> > for Spike given the previous episode, and I'm... well, I don't know
> > whether to be impressed or not that he's able to set this aside and
> > take her at her word on this one, at least for now.
>
> Xander does best when he doesn't try to think too much. When he simply
> relies on his instincts, he generally does ok. (Unless you are of the
> school that believes he should have married Anya despite his
> misgivings.)
>
> > The Spike fans will demand that I mention
> > his blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance too. Again the monster in
> > question has a silly voice, but the rest is all right; the place seems
> > out of the way and the spirit seems hard to deal with, so I didn't
> > spend excess time worrying about why Spike didn't go here two and a
> > half years ago. It's mostly moving him from points A to B, although
> > what exactly B turns out to be is still up in the air.
>
> It does feel like a cheat, though. Too easy, too fast: Just another
> glowing-eyed scaly monster in a cave, intoning blahblah. A friend of
> mine has tried to convince me that the cave, with its
> quasi-palaeolithic wall paintings, is somehow a model of Plato's Cave,
> or some sort of ur-Underworld, the cradle of rebirth or the rediscovery
> of the self, or something, but I'm not buyin. I don't necessarily want
> to see more of Spike undergoing his classic Hero Torture; but I would
> have liked the show to come up with something a bit less mundane in the
> way of a Darkest Daimon From the Deepest Pit of Unselfhood or whatever.
>
>
> Come to think of it, being myself a Spike fan, I wouldn't have minded
> seeing a bit more hero torture. This is the stuff that movies do to
> make a character earn his stature. Errol Flynn in "Captain Blood," tied
> to the stake and whipped by Evol!Slave-owning Badguy. (For that matter,
> pretty much every pirate movie since Douglas Fairbanks has has a scene
> of the Hero getting his ass kicked.) Plus, Spike has had it coming for
> a long time.
>
> And I think there is an intended parallel being drawn between Spike
> getting clobbered for reasons that he himself has chosen, and which he
> seems to recognize he deserves--and even welcomes, vs. Warren getting
> clobbered out of a messy mixture of Willow's righteous justifyin' wrath
> and Willow's not-so-righteous desire for revenge.
>
Willow's response is totally commensurable with the magnitude of Warren's
crime, and Willow's deep emotional connection with Tara. Even Dawn felt the
same way. Buffy comes off as strangely "aloof" to me in the whole portrayal.
I don't see many arguing that Willow was being particularly bad when she
tried to attack Glory also out of revenge.
Revenge may or may not be a good thing, and most people would think it is a
bad thing because it can easily consume a person like the fires of hell, but
honestly ask oneself: Would one have done otherwise if one's own loved one
was killed, and one had the magical power to exact a quick and decisive
revenge (way before any human authorities can be involved)?
> Whatever Spike's
> motives for wanting to be free of the chip, he takes the punishment
> like a man; Warren does not: he pleads and excuses and whines. Until
> he's caught, he boasts and brags. I think the comparison is an
> interesting one, and could have been presented a little more clearly.
>
Yes, it is an interesting contrast; thanks for pointing that out.
>
> > - Clem being critical of his physique
>
> I am fond of Clem but he comes to the show a bit too late to fit in. He
> is all too clearly The Spirit of Comic Relief.
>
Oh, I think he's more than just comic relief.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Ken from Chicago
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote in message
news:1156895481....@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
>> died again, and Willow revived her, because of the machine that goes
>> BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, but the ECG screen is visible in the background the
>> whole time, and Buffy's heart keeps beating regularly through the entire
>> scene.
>
>
> -AOQ
> ~good thing they didn't have to bust out the machine that goes "ping"~
>
Buffy died thrice. Two clinical, one mystical.
-- Ken from Chicago
(Harmony) Watcher
<jil...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1156895195.0...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> I liked the assorted responses of the demons in the bar to hearing
> Warren say he'd shot the slayer.
>
> "Metal meets propulsion, yeah. But you still better be a good shot! It
> was just on the news. Girl was shot."
> "In her back yard."
> "She survived. She's in the hospital. Slayers heal fast. Real fast."
>
> And on the stopping Willow front Buffy points out: "We can't control
> the universe. If we were supposed to ... then the magic wouldn't change
> Willow the way it does. And ... we'd be able to bring Tara back.
> DAWN: (very quietly) And Mom.
> BUFFY: There are limits to what we can do. There should be. Willow
> doesn't want to believe that. And now she's messing with forces that
> want to hurt her. All of us.
> XANDER: I just ... I've had blood on my hands all day. (looks Buffy in
> the eye) Blood from people I love.
> BUFFY: I know. And now it has to stop. Warren's going to get what he
> deserves. I promise . But I will *not* let Willow destroy herself.
>
> On the Vengeance Demon front:
> XANDER: So, Willow's all wrathy ... why don't you go to her? Isn't that
> your gig?
> ANYA: (defensively) Normally, I'd have to ... but she doesn't want me.
>
> She'd have to. We've noticed gradually the Vengeance Demons a) can be
> summoned b) will come if they're attracted by someone's inner torment.
> And we've noticed that they are limited. They can't grant their own
> wishes, presumably can't grant each other's wishes. Brings me back to
> my earlier premise. D'Hoffryn isn't about empowering girls to take
> vengeance, he's about getting them under control.
>
>
Sometimes I do wonder what would happen if D'Hoffrin had taken advantage of
the intense grief of Willow, and successfully recruited Willow this time.
That would certainly increase Willow's power at least a hundredfold. Evil
Willow could make a nice spin-off series. Has it ever been done that a
series spins off an evil character?
--
==Harmony Watcher==
(Harmony) Watcher
"Rincewind" <rincewi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:939Jg.3210$wD1....@tornado.fastwebnet.it...
That's a bit perverse: a wolf, a female ram, and a creature without a heart.
--
==Harmony Watcher==