AOQ Review 7-10: "Bring On The Night"
Arbitrar Of Quality
threads.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
(or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
criticism.")
Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
Director: David Grossman
Lots of guests are coming to Sunnydale. First there's Joyce: dream,
First, or something else, trying to get Buffy to sleep. If it's the
second (by which I mean First), which seems most likely, it's an
unnerving look at how well it can get into even our hero's head. In
any case, there's a rather effectively disturbing quality to all
these visions, since it blurs the line between reality and not at a
time when it's important to stay grounded in the former. She shows
up again in the rather depressing "professional life falling apart"
bit.
The other visitors are Giles and his mixed-accented charges, quickly
making the house seem quite crowded. Apparently "he escaped" is
all the explanation the show intends to provide for how he survived
"Sleeper." Unless this is a hint that Not All Is As It Seems with
him, although right now I see no benefit to going that route. One of
the ways this episode tries to set this season's threat apart from
past ones is to not even suggest that Giles will provide some sort of
special insight. He shows up, and within minutes he's mostly saying
"I don't know" and hoping that Buffy will be better prepared than
everyone else.
So the First has decided to take out the Watchers and the proto-Slayers
before going for Buffy (and Faith, getting a mention)... From a
writing perspective there's a bit of a Catch-22 here. If the Watcher
organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
tried this. Having the Watchers so quickly written out of the story
seems a little too neat, but since I didn't like them anyway, maybe
it'll make the rest of the year less cluttered. On the whole, with
regards to the First Evil, I'm still cold (as I was in "Amends")
on the notion that before we've seen evil, but now this is *really
bad* evil. This is mitigated somewhat by how well it takes on the
personalities of its chosen avatars, but still has the danger of
getting old. On the other hand, if the writers stick with the notion
that the First can never take physical form, only influence, it emerges
as a unique kind of enemy unlike anything else on the show. How do you
fight an abstract?
Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
vampires as often as possible. And the First spends most of that time
as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
effect? One can posit an explanation about how he's used to seeing
First/Buffy and this would throw him off his guard more, or about how
Drusilla is a better representation of the appeal to get back to his
past darkness. One suspects that the real reason is just tat the
writers wanted to change things up a little. Nothing hugely exciting,
but Landau is almost always fun to watch, and the delivery is great on
"get bent." But has Spike ever been Dru's "daddy" before?
Not much to say about... not much to say about the whole episode,
really. But resuming the original sentence, not much to say about the
attack on Willow except that I like the way the scene is put together,
both for the special effects and for Hannigan's performance of being
so badly smacked down. The visual is a little reminiscent of the
glowballs from "Fear Itself." Not much to say about the encounters
with Wood - he likes mysteries, huh? A bit obvious, but still a nice
line. And not much to say about Andrew except that he's funny,
especially when he keeps almost getting Xander under his spell. Since
the Trio were vaguely parallels of the central players last season, any
parallel-lovers want to make a case for his quest for redemption as a
parody of Spike's?
This is an odd show in that the character moments are mostly just okay,
but the fight scenes are top-notch, a real high point. It's usually
the other way 'round. The first encounter between Slayer and
Übervamp (I'm giving it the umlaut, even if the show doesn't) is
the better of the two, and it's wonderfully choreographed. There's
a lot of hard hitting but a lot of quick movements and dodging too,
resembling a martial arts boxing match. Buffy's comprehension that
this isn't a normal vampire comes in increments, as not only does
staking it not work, but it hits harder then we're used to, and keeps
coming, and only gradually reveals just how quick and mobile it is.
Gellar sells the panic to make that vintage monster-movie scene work,
in which someone's trying to climb away from something and gets their
ankle grabbed. And it's a relief to the viewer to know that at least
sunlight still works on this thing. A later rematch has more of Buffy
never giving up, and more of the Übervamp getting a chance to show
just how strong it is.
Seriously, no one ever eats anything but pizza and dessert on this
show.
By luck or by design, the writers get some anthropology right. Current
(and 2002) evidence points to the conclusion that Neanderthals were not
some type of primordial version of or ancestor of modern humans, as
previously believed, but appear to have been a dead-end evolutionary
offshoot from the "main" Homo lineage. So, like the Turok-Han, an
entirely different race.
This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
- "Found it!"
- Running a search engine for "evil"
- "You think I'm a super-villain like Dr. Doom or Apocalypse or-or
The Riddler. But I admit I went over to the dark side, but just to
pick up a few things, a-and now I'm back. I've learned. I'm good
again." "And when were you good before?" "OK, technically,
never. Touché. But I'm like Vader in the last 5 minutes of _Jedi_
with redemptive powers minus a redemptive struggle of epic redemption
which chronicles... These ropes itch"
- "Here before with the magic going all 'aah' and me going all
'eeee' and everything getting all 'rrrr'"
Just to show how this series gets into one's head, my first response
to Buffy suddenly in her bed, hearing people asking questions like
"how is she?" was to assume that she was still unconscious on the
pavement with others around her, and the room was a dreamworld. She
comes downstairs to join in the chat and go into speechmaking mode. At
first it seems like it's going to be a "this is a hopeless cause"
bit like she used to give in S5, but to everyone's relief, this time
her conclusion is that it's time to fight back with the army they
have. There are a few things that can always be expected to win me
over no matter how well or badly done, no matter how often. A bloodied
Buffy giving this kind of pep talk is one of them. What's
interesting comparing the scripts is that her general plan is a lot
like Quentin's, lack of specifics and all. Don't know quite what
that means - Buffy rising to fill the role of the old guardians
against evil? Or doomed to the same kind of failure as they were?
¿Quién sabe? Hopefully someone checked the house for terrorists
before letting her start talking.
More questions about how this "being called" thing works - how do
the watchers tell a potential Slayer from just some girl? Do they have
all of the potentials under wraps, or do some elude them? Is Buffy
unique in having not been raised by a Watcher? These kinds of concerns
never seemed important to me before, and I don't remember definitive
answers from the discussions in the S2/3 threads about it, but now with
all these Slayers running around, it's worth knowing how the
Buffyverse ticks.
So...
One-sentence summary: A potentially good story told slowly.
AOQ rating: Decent
[Season Seven so far:
1) "Lessons" - Good
2) "Beneath You" - Decent
3) "Same Time, Same Place" - Excellent
4) "Help" - Good
5) "Selfless" - SUPERLATIVE
6) "Him" - Bad
7) "Conversations With Dead People" - Good
8) "Sleeper" - Decent
9) "Never Leave Me" - Good
10) "Bring On The Night" - Decent]
Elisi
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> (or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
> criticism.")
> Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
> Director: David Grossman
I'm so glad that I decided to do a S7 re-watch along with you, because
I don't think I've actually watched this one since it first aired. It's
an odd sort of episode, that seems very jumpy - but pondering this, it
might have been intentional. Buffy spends the whole episode getting
more and more worn down, more obligations dumped on her at every turn,
and the episode reflects that.
There's a lot of talk about sleep, tiredness, and time passing. I've
not counted, but there are more references to sunset than I remember in
any other episode. The night is suddenly a place of fear again for
Buffy, and I think it works very well in hammering home how this is a
worse situation than before. Towards the end, when Buffy finds
Annabelle's body, she's seriously worn down, physically and emotionally
- and she runs away from the monster. (Also, when was the last time a
vampire was actually scary? It might not look all that impressive, but
it sure is strong.)
But - lets just count what's on Buffy's shoulders at this point:
- Get Spike back.
- No magic help - Willow freaks out.
- Keep Potentials safe.
- Fight ubervamp.
- Go to work.
- Plan a war.
As Giles says at the end:
"We could make plans as we always do, but the truth is, Buffy was our
plan. There is no back up."
But Buffy's tough. She shoulders all the new responsibilities at the
end. Picks up the Weight of the World, and gets ready to fight.
But she needs the others to be an army. Can they?
I love the speech at the end - she's so small, and yet...
"I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of
hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me."
*cheers*
I need to run, so I'll just mention that she script says that Kennedy
is 19 - so a bit older than your average Potential.
Don Sample
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> (or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
> criticism.")
> Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
> Director: David Grossman
>
> Lots of guests are coming to Sunnydale. First there's Joyce: dream,
> First, or something else, trying to get Buffy to sleep. If it's the
> second (by which I mean First), which seems most likely, it's an
> unnerving look at how well it can get into even our hero's head. In
> any case, there's a rather effectively disturbing quality to all
> these visions, since it blurs the line between reality and not at a
> time when it's important to stay grounded in the former. She shows
> up again in the rather depressing "professional life falling apart"
> bit.
I'm inclined to believe that the first appearance of Joyce was just a
dream. Buffy *is* tired, and in need of sleep. And what Joyce tells
her here is actually good advice.
> Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
> tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
> vampires as often as possible. And the First spends most of that time
> as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
> effect? One can posit an explanation about how he's used to seeing
> First/Buffy and this would throw him off his guard more, or about how
> Drusilla is a better representation of the appeal to get back to his
> past darkness. One suspects that the real reason is just tat the
> writers wanted to change things up a little. Nothing hugely exciting,
> but Landau is almost always fun to watch, and the delivery is great on
> "get bent." But has Spike ever been Dru's "daddy" before?
No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its head
under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
>
> Seriously, no one ever eats anything but pizza and dessert on this
> show.
Dawn tried making Mac and Cheese.
> This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
> - Running a search engine for "evil"
A search for "evil" in Google now gets 273,000,000 hits. I tried it out
back when this episode first ran, and got 10,600,000 hits, still ten
times more hits than Buffy got.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
> making the house seem quite crowded. Apparently "he escaped" is
> all the explanation the show intends to provide for how he survived
> "Sleeper." Unless this is a hint that Not All Is As It Seems with
or just that he has lot of other things to deal with at the moment
and doesnt want to stop to be long boring exposition guy
and of course poor xander has to put together the house again
good thing buffy has a carpenter friend or her house wouldve fallen to pieces
> So the First has decided to take out the Watchers and the proto-Slayers
> before going for Buffy (and Faith, getting a mention)... From a
> writing perspective there's a bit of a Catch-22 here. If the Watcher
> organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
-bringers- short for -harbringers-
the show has been fuzzy on watchers organization and slayer succession
so its hard for us to independently judge how effective bringers have been
we prrety much have to go on what giles and others tell us
also the first can appear as buffy because buffy has been dead
> getting old. On the other hand, if the writers stick with the notion
> that the First can never take physical form, only influence, it emerges
> as a unique kind of enemy unlike anything else on the show. How do you
> fight an abstract?
also while fe can only daunt or persuade humans
it has complete control over the turok-han
so its possible that holden was a puppet of the first
and that that entire conversation with buffy was equivalent to willows
> as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
> effect? One can posit an explanation about how he's used to seeing
> First/Buffy and this would throw him off his guard more, or about how
at one point where fake dru is hiking up her skirts
from where spike is laying and looking up
he almost gets to answer what does first evil wear under its kilt
it may be trying to seduce spike sexually
in games he and dru played but buffy did not
> really. But resuming the original sentence, not much to say about the
> attack on Willow except that I like the way the scene is put together,
> both for the special effects and for Hannigan's performance of being
> so badly smacked down. The visual is a little reminiscent of the
unless willow can control her magics
shes not going to be much use in the apocalyupse
> Seriously, no one ever eats anything but pizza and dessert on this
> show.
teenagers without adult supervision
> over no matter how well or badly done, no matter how often. A bloodied
> Buffy giving this kind of pep talk is one of them. What's
not often we see buffy this badly beaten up
> More questions about how this "being called" thing works - how do
> the watchers tell a potential Slayer from just some girl? Do they have
> all of the potentials under wraps, or do some elude them? Is Buffy
in the movie merrick chides himself for finding buffy so late
as in kendras case watchers have some way if identifying potentials
and finding the slayer which has not yet been explicated
its not clear what faiths relation with her original watcher
or how long they had been together
as far as we know buffy is the first slayer who was activated
without a having a watcher beforehand
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 - the airtight garage has you neo
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
> No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its head
> under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
waterboarding
if the vampires body still has human reflexes
this is going to trigger a nasty gag reflex
reports are the cia can break someone in just a few minutes
by triggering their gag reflex
in spikes case since theres no danger of drowning
they can do it over and over and over
and far more aggressively than against humans
Don Sample
<mair_fheal-E6121...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
<mair_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > If the Watcher
> > organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> > their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> > world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
>
> -bringers- short for -harbringers-
That would be "Harbingers."
>
> also while fe can only daunt or persuade humans
> it has complete control over the turok-han
How do you know that it has complete control over it? Maybe it's doing
her bidding because that suits its own purposes, for the moment. If its
purposes change, or the First's agenda changes from what Ubie wants, it
might stop following its lead.
> > over no matter how well or badly done, no matter how often. A bloodied
> > Buffy giving this kind of pep talk is one of them. What's
>
> not often we see buffy this badly beaten up
I think that this is the worst we've seen her to date.
hayes62
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> (or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
> criticism.")
> Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
> Director: David Grossman
>
> Lots of guests are coming to Sunnydale. First there's Joyce: dream,
> First, or something else, trying to get Buffy to sleep. If it's the
> second (by which I mean First), which seems most likely, it's an
> unnerving look at how well it can get into even our hero's head. In
> any case, there's a rather effectively disturbing quality to all
> these visions, since it blurs the line between reality and not at a
> time when it's important to stay grounded in the former. She shows
> up again in the rather depressing "professional life falling apart"
> bit.
>
purpose is to slowly push its victims over the edge into isolationism
and despair by telling them what sound like hard truths:
JOYCE: Well, they do that, and I'm sorry, Buffy, but these friends of
yours put too much pressure on you. They always have.
BUFFY: Something evil is coming.
JOYCE: Buffy, evil isn't coming, it's already here. Evil is always
here. Don't you know? It's everywhere.
> The other visitors are Giles and his mixed-accented charges, quickly
> making the house seem quite crowded. Apparently "he escaped" is
> all the explanation the show intends to provide for how he survived
> "Sleeper." Unless this is a hint that Not All Is As It Seems with
> him, although right now I see no benefit to going that route. One of
> the ways this episode tries to set this season's threat apart from
> past ones is to not even suggest that Giles will provide some sort of
> special insight. He shows up, and within minutes he's mostly saying
> "I don't know" and hoping that Buffy will be better prepared than
> everyone else.
>
I think before long someone will point out that he's not touching but
there's something very drawn in about his body language that makes it
seem deeper than a physical affectation. He's even avoiding eye
contact.
> So the First has decided to take out the Watchers and the proto-Slayers
> before going for Buffy (and Faith, getting a mention)... From a
> writing perspective there's a bit of a Catch-22 here. If the Watcher
> organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
> smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
> tried this. Having the Watchers so quickly written out of the story
> seems a little too neat, but since I didn't like them anyway, maybe
> it'll make the rest of the year less cluttered. On the whole, with
> regards to the First Evil, I'm still cold (as I was in "Amends")
> on the notion that before we've seen evil, but now this is *really
> bad* evil. This is mitigated somewhat by how well it takes on the
> personalities of its chosen avatars, but still has the danger of
> getting old. On the other hand, if the writers stick with the notion
> that the First can never take physical form, only influence, it emerges
> as a unique kind of enemy unlike anything else on the show. How do you
> fight an abstract?
>
The Watchers have always seemed a weirdly centralised and hierachical
organisation and as Giles says bureaucratic to an extreme. If
proto-slayers are spread around the world attached loosely to field
agents it just might have taken too long for Quentin and Co to get
their act together while someone put a fire under the one basket all
the top eggs were in. As for other Big Bads not taking out the watchers
most of them (apart from Angelus of course) have looked on the Slayer
and presumably her potential replacements as a minor irritation not
worth their trouble to do more than swat aside when the time came.
> Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
> tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
> vampires as often as possible. And the First spends most of that time
> as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
> effect? One can posit an explanation about how he's used to seeing
> First/Buffy and this would throw him off his guard more, or about how
> Drusilla is a better representation of the appeal to get back to his
> past darkness. One suspects that the real reason is just tat the
> writers wanted to change things up a little. Nothing hugely exciting,
> but Landau is almost always fun to watch, and the delivery is great on
> "get bent." But has Spike ever been Dru's "daddy" before?
>
This episode has a musical feel to me. Spike's beatings, come at
regular intervals like the chorus of a song, while Buffy gets ground
down a little more in every verse. He did call himself Daddy in one of
the S2 epidosdes maybe Dru is the girl with two Daddies, there's a
book isn't there?
> Not much to say about... not much to say about the whole episode,
> really. But resuming the original sentence, not much to say about the
> attack on Willow except that I like the way the scene is put together,
> both for the special effects and for Hannigan's performance of being
> so badly smacked down. The visual is a little reminiscent of the
> glowballs from "Fear Itself."
>
The episode includes several interesting visual quotes: Spike's
baptism resembles Buffy's in Bad Girls; Buffy struggling out from the
First's underground lair recalls the time she escaped from the
Master's in The Harvest and, most striking of all, the Scoobies
finding her broken body on a pile of rubble is similar to the ending of
The Gift. Buffy's distant past coming back to haunt her along with
the Vampire-that-time-forgot.
>Not much to say about the encounters
> with Wood - he likes mysteries, huh? A bit obvious, but still a nice
> line. And not much to say about Andrew except that he's funny,
> especially when he keeps almost getting Xander under his spell. Since
> the Trio were vaguely parallels of the central players last season, any
> parallel-lovers want to make a case for his quest for redemption as a
> parody of Spike's?
I'm sure Andrew would be all over that one. Although not as a parody.
Mel
Elisi wrote:
Since when does the gang (who regularly go on patrol with her to kill
"normal" vampires) let Buffy fight the big bad evil creature by herself
with no weapons??? If a stake doesn't work, get a bigger stake (Kakistos
anyone?) or a giant axe, or hey, flaming arrows are always a favorite.
I hate this episode just for that reason (well, plus Kennedy, bleh)
which why I've put off rewatching it. But now I guess I have to if I
want to keep up :-)
Mel
Mike Zeares
Elisi wrote:
>
> There's a lot of talk about sleep, tiredness, and time passing. I've
> not counted, but there are more references to sunset than I remember in
> any other episode. The night is suddenly a place of fear again for
> Buffy, and I think it works very well in hammering home how this is a
> worse situation than before. Towards the end, when Buffy finds
> Annabelle's body, she's seriously worn down, physically and emotionally
> - and she runs away from the monster. (Also, when was the last time a
> vampire was actually scary? It might not look all that impressive, but
> it sure is strong.)
It was his speed that made him scary for me. I was unimpressed at
first, because I was expecting a Uruk-hai but got Candem Toy instead.
He's not that much taller than Sarah, and slender. But when the
Ubervamp started fighting her, I was like, holy crap, he's faster than
she is! I'd run away too. Crying. And probably wetting myself.
You know how you know that the lead character will never actually die?
I totally forgot that watching this ep the first time. I was afraid
for a minute that she was permanently damaged.
> But - lets just count what's on Buffy's shoulders at this point:
>
> - Get Spike back.
> - No magic help - Willow freaks out.
> - Keep Potentials safe.
> - Fight ubervamp.
> - Go to work.
> - Plan a war.
I'm sure she was thinking, can I add "become invincible" to the list?
Please?
> I love the speech at the end - she's so small, and yet...
>
> "I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of
> hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me."
>
> *cheers*
Yeah. Sarah really brought it. One of the best Buffy Moments of the
series. I really liked Robert Duncan's score underneath her speech,
too.
-- Mike Zeares
John Briggs
Well, no - the point is that we don't *see* him touch anything in the scenes
on screen. Only the characters can tell us whether or not he actually
touches anything.
--
John Briggs
Malsperanza
Yes.
*sigh*
Not to mention why Big Bad didn't plant a whacking great bomb under the
Summers' house ages ago.
>Having the Watchers so quickly written out of the story
> seems a little too neat, but since I didn't like them anyway, maybe
> it'll make the rest of the year less cluttered.
The Watchers Council has always struck me as one of the few real TV
cliches in BtVS--or rather, one of the few cliches used without irony.
They're like the wicked IA bureau or police commissioners in a cop
show, or the wicked DA in a lawyers show, or the wicked school board in
a high-school show: authority figures who are always wrong,
narrow-minded, full of evil rules and tests for no particular reason--a
dysfunctional, inept bunch of power-hungry burocrats. Boring, down to
the inevitable Brit accents and meetings in book-lined studies,
signalling useless effeteness. The show should have dumped the idea
back in s3, when Buffy fired them.
> On the whole, with
> regards to the First Evil, I'm still cold (as I was in "Amends")
> on the notion that before we've seen evil, but now this is *really
> bad* evil. This is mitigated somewhat by how well it takes on the
> personalities of its chosen avatars, but still has the danger of
> getting old. On the other hand, if the writers stick with the notion
> that the First can never take physical form, only influence, it emerges
> as a unique kind of enemy unlike anything else on the show. How do you
> fight an abstract?
>
> Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
> tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
> vampires as often as possible.
No, the torture is ancillary; the show's main purpose is to get souled
vampires shirtless as often as possible. Think of it as the equivalent
of finding reasons for Baywatch actresses to wear bikinis.
> And the First spends most of that time
> as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
> effect?
Perhaps because Dru reminds Spike of how corrupted and debased his love
was before, when he loved a maniacal, delusional sociopath--and an
unfaithful one at that.
snip
> And not much to say about Andrew except that he's funny,
> especially when he keeps almost getting Xander under his spell. Since
> the Trio were vaguely parallels of the central players last season, any
> parallel-lovers want to make a case for his quest for redemption as a
> parody of Spike's?
Oo! Oo! *waves hand* Andrew is marked out as Spike-for-amateurs from
the moment he shows up in a leather duster. It's kind of cute. Not much
to say about it, though.
> More questions about how this "being called" thing works - how do
> the watchers tell a potential Slayer from just some girl? Do they have
> all of the potentials under wraps, or do some elude them? Is Buffy
> unique in having not been raised by a Watcher? These kinds of concerns
> never seemed important to me before, and I don't remember definitive
> answers from the discussions in the S2/3 threads about it, but now with
> all these Slayers running around, it's worth knowing how the Buffyverse ticks.
A lot of questions of mechanics and backstory are suddenly surfacing,
rather late in the day. I'm not sure it would add much pleasure or
interest to have all this stuff nailed down, though--at least not at
this point. Like the question of why another Slayer wasn't called by
Kendra's death or Buffy's second death, it makes my brain hurt to try
to sort it out, for not too much payoff.
~Mal
JJ Karhu
>by triggering their gag reflex
Rocco Siffredi probably works for the CIA, then.
// JJ
peachy ashie passion
> Like the question of why another Slayer wasn't called by
> Kendra's death?
>
> ~Mal
>
Apparently this really does make your brain hurt too much to think
on it.
Faith???
You DO remember Faith, right?
Apteryx
news:1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
>threads.
>The other visitors are Giles and his mixed-accented charges, quickly
>making the house seem quite crowded. Apparently "he escaped" is
>all the explanation the show intends to provide for how he survived
>"Sleeper." Unless this is a hint that Not All Is As It Seems with
>him, although right now I see no benefit to going that route. One of
>the ways this episode tries to set this season's threat apart from
>past ones is to not even suggest that Giles will provide some sort of
>special insight. He shows up, and within minutes he's mostly saying
>"I don't know" and hoping that Buffy will be better prepared than
>everyone else.
Clearly he is Not As He Was. Too early to tell whether that's diabolical
machinations or diabolical writing.
>So the First has decided to take out the Watchers and the proto-Slayers
>before going for Buffy (and Faith, getting a mention)... From a
>writing perspective there's a bit of a Catch-22 here. If the Watcher
>organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
>their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
>world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
>smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
>tried this.
Worse than a Catch 22. There seems to be an amazing lack of robustness in
the way the Slayer line is constructed. The First's plan is only capable of
working if a Slayer can only be called if there is a living potential slayer
alive at the time the Slayer dies. The potential all seem to be teens (we
have seen a number by now, and there are none younger than that). So there
must also be a group of younger girls who are um, potential potentials (or
perhaps all pre-teen girls are potential potentials). But they apparently
can never become potential slayers and ultimately slayers if they weren't
already potentials when a Slayer dies. Why would you set up the line like
that, unless it was to give the First a fighting chance in season 7?
>Having the Watchers so quickly written out of the story
>seems a little too neat, but since I didn't like them anyway, maybe
>it'll make the rest of the year less cluttered. On the whole, with
>regards to the First Evil, I'm still cold (as I was in "Amends")
>on the notion that before we've seen evil, but now this is *really
>bad* evil.
I don't mind the idea of the First, but this episode's lameness extends its
evil hand to it. We are told that little is written about the First because
it pre-dates the written record. Hello? Lots of things pre-date the written
record, lions, wine and Mt Fuji to name but three. If you pre-date the
written record it means that as soon as writing is invented people can start
writing about you, and there will be lots of stuff written. Aren't the
writers even reading over what they've written at this point in the series
to see that it makes sense?
>the Trio were vaguely parallels of the central players last season, any
>parallel-lovers want to make a case for his quest for redemption as a
>parody of Spike's?
Certainly he seems to be the girls substitute bondage victim when they can't
get their hands on Spike.
This is an odd show in that the character moments are mostly just okay,
but the fight scenes are top-notch, a real high point. It's usually
the other way 'round. The first encounter between Slayer and
Übervamp (I'm giving it the umlaut, even if the show doesn't) is
the better of the two, and it's wonderfully choreographed.
The Ubervamp is a harmless enough fellow on his own, but again Giles's
explanation makes me join him in going Grr. A different sub species of
vampires? Like Neanderthals? How do you get a seperate sub species of a
creature made by fusing a demon and a human. Did they fuse with actual
neanderthals? But since Neanderthals died out, obviously having a weakness
our ancestors didn't, wouldn't that make vamps based on them Untervamps? The
Master also had the Nosferatu thing going for him, but he wasn't said to be
a different kind of vampire, just older. And his linquisitic skills weren't
restricted to "Grr"
>ankle grabbed. And it's a relief to the viewer to know that at least
>sunlight still works on this thing.
And that he's too dumb to lift the sheet of metal covering the victim he's
knocked out.
>One-sentence summary: A potentially good story told slowly.
>AOQ rating: Decent
Weak for me. The season started very well for me, slowed somewhat in the
last couple of episodes, and now seems at the point of stalling. It's my
133rd favourite BtVS episode, 17th best in season 7
--
Apteryx
vague disclaimer
"Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> why another Slayer wasn't called by
> Kendra's death
Huh?
--
Wikipedia: like Usenet, moderated by trolls
jil...@hotmail.com
"The forces protecting the Slayer line have become unstable." So the
Potentials are shielded, at least partially, from such an easy
hunt-down. While some can reasonably assume that Buffy is unique in
not having had a Watcher, there's no evidence that Faith had a Watcher
before she was called, either. It IS clear that Faith's Watcher surely
wasn't around for most of her life. Further responses are suspiciously
close to spoilers for coming episodes.
As a minor point, I know that The First, being able to be everywhere
and having access to the personality/memories of everyone who dies
(including vampires), certainly can track Potentials by tracking
Watchers. "How's Fred Lenick doing with that girl? Last I heard he
can't stand her and hopes she's never chosen." The First goes: Ah,
Fred Lenick!
I conclude that the Potentials the Watchers have not located will have
the longest life expectancy.
vague disclaimer
Insightful stuff. Only a couple of observations:
Giles is one of two things:
* Already evil in a non-touchy-feely way, which could make for some
truly nasty stuff, or
* Deeply in shock and withdrawn because he cared a lot more about the
Council than he has ever really let on. Evidently Robson was a friend,
and it is hard to believe that his animosity towards QT extended to
everybody he shared a calling with.
Then there's Buffy's speech, which was a corker. But it seems to me that
it wrote an awfully big cheque. They don't even have a platoon, never
mind an army. How's is she going to cash it?
Quentin was using the rhetoric of war too, and look where it got him.
Incidentally, in Molly the Cockney (potential) Slayer they finally found
someone with a worse accent than Dru van Dyke.
Oh yeah:
> If the Watcher
> organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
> smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
> tried this.
I thought the end of NLM pretty well established that the WC was victim
to a massively co-ordinated attack: "We're crippled" said Lydia. It is a
big organisation under an all out assault by someone with vast
resources. Only the allegory isn't quite as laboured as in BSG.
lili...@gmail.com
Since s6 actually. The scoobs stopped patrolling almost as soon as
Buffy crawled out of her grave.
Lore
Mel
Malsperanza wrote:
>
>
> A lot of questions of mechanics and backstory are suddenly surfacing,
> rather late in the day. I'm not sure it would add much pleasure or
> interest to have all this stuff nailed down, though--at least not at
> this point. Like the question of why another Slayer wasn't called by
> Kendra's death or Buffy's second death, it makes my brain hurt to try
> to sort it out, for not too much payoff.
>
> ~Mal
>
Um, another Slayer *was* called after Kendra's death...her name is Faith.
Mel
Mel
lili...@gmail.com wrote:
Xander went with her to hunt the giant spider and find Gnarl. He
couldn't go now armed to the teeth??? I guess not, since neither Willow
nor Anya were in peril at the time. Sheesh! It's OMWF all over again,
except they don't change their minds at the last minute this time.
Mel
Don Sample
"hayes62" <hay...@tesco.net> wrote:
> The Watchers have always seemed a weirdly centralised and hierachical
> organisation and as Giles says bureaucratic to an extreme. If
> proto-slayers are spread around the world attached loosely to field
> agents it just might have taken too long for Quentin and Co to get
> their act together while someone put a fire under the one basket all
> the top eggs were in. As for other Big Bads not taking out the watchers
> most of them (apart from Angelus of course) have looked on the Slayer
> and presumably her potential replacements as a minor irritation not
> worth their trouble to do more than swat aside when the time came.
There is also mention of the Council having its offices attacked, all
around the world. We don't know how many survived, but whatever
organization they had has been completely disrupted.
One Bit Shy
news:1159052190.6...@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> The Watchers Council has always struck me as one of the few real TV
> cliches in BtVS--or rather, one of the few cliches used without irony.
> They're like the wicked IA bureau or police commissioners in a cop
> show, or the wicked DA in a lawyers show, or the wicked school board in
> a high-school show: authority figures who are always wrong,
> narrow-minded, full of evil rules and tests for no particular reason--a
> dysfunctional, inept bunch of power-hungry burocrats. Boring, down to
> the inevitable Brit accents and meetings in book-lined studies,
> signalling useless effeteness. The show should have dumped the idea
> back in s3, when Buffy fired them.
I liked the Council in Helpless. And that's about it. A squandered idea
IMO. The idea of a powerful bureaucracy like that could have been useful to
the series, but they relentlessly went after the stereotype and made them
just an annoyance - ultimately to the audience.
At least they managed to generate Wesley out of it - though it took a while
for that to be particularly good.
OBS
Jeff Jacoby
[nsip]
> Just to show how this series gets into one's head, my first response
> to Buffy suddenly in her bed, hearing people asking questions like
> "how is she?" was to assume that she was still unconscious on the
> pavement with others around her, and the room was a dreamworld. She
> comes downstairs to join in the chat and go into speechmaking mode. At
> first it seems like it's going to be a "this is a hopeless cause"
> bit like she used to give in S5, but to everyone's relief, this time
> her conclusion is that it's time to fight back with the army they
> have. There are a few things that can always be expected to win me
> over no matter how well or badly done, no matter how often. A bloodied
> Buffy giving this kind of pep talk is one of them.
Nal orgf nbd punatrf uvf ivrj ba Ohssl'f crc gnyxf va gur
abg-gb-qvfgnag shgher?
> What's
> interesting comparing the scripts is that her general plan is a lot
> like Quentin's, lack of specifics and all. Don't know quite what
> that means - Buffy rising to fill the role of the old guardians
> against evil? Or doomed to the same kind of failure as they were?
> ¿Quién sabe? Hopefully someone checked the house for terrorists
> before letting her start talking.
Nygubhtu crbcyr fb bsgra pbzcynva gung Tvyrf vf zvfgnxra
va uvf rssbegf gb ghea Ohssl vagb n trareny, vg'f vagrerfgvat
fur vf svefg gb fcrnx bs nezvrf (naq vzcyvpvgyl gurve fgevpg
uvrenepuvpny yrnqrefuvc fgehpgher).
Jeff
Ken from Chicago
<jil...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1159055750.7...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> I'll give it a try:
>
> "The forces protecting the Slayer line have become unstable." So the
> Potentials are shielded, at least partially, from such an easy
> hunt-down. While some can reasonably assume that Buffy is unique in
> not having had a Watcher, there's no evidence that Faith had a Watcher
> before she was called, either. It IS clear that Faith's Watcher surely
> wasn't around for most of her life. Further responses are suspiciously
> close to spoilers for coming episodes.
Faith's watcher went all evil.
> As a minor point, I know that The First, being able to be everywhere
> and having access to the personality/memories of everyone who dies
> (including vampires), certainly can track Potentials by tracking
> Watchers. "How's Fred Lenick doing with that girl? Last I heard he
> can't stand her and hopes she's never chosen." The First goes: Ah,
> Fred Lenick!
Aw, po po Fred.
> I conclude that the Potentials the Watchers have not located will have
> the longest life expectancy.
Sydney Bristow got married with kids--including a proto-slayer.
-- Ken from Chicago
Wes <>
<tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>Gellar sells the panic to make that vintage monster-movie scene work,
>in which someone's trying to climb away from something and gets their
>ankle grabbed. And it's a relief to the viewer to know that at least
>sunlight still works on this thing.
Note that it only took about 30 seconds for Buffy to stake it (in line
with a typical slaying) but when it doesn't turn to dust, seeing the
confidence simply drain out of Buffy's face, well that's just a great
reaction shot.
> There are a few things that can always be expected to win me
>over no matter how well or badly done, no matter how often. A bloodied
>Buffy giving this kind of pep talk is one of them.
I think this is one of her best too. It seems like her lack of
confidence didn't last long which is good since: "... the truth is,
One Bit Shy
news:1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> Lots of guests are coming to Sunnydale. First there's Joyce: dream,
> First, or something else, trying to get Buffy to sleep.
Then why did she turn around and say she has to wake up? Presumably her
words at that point are merging into Xander's words waking Buffy up. But it
makes for a lot of confusion - not necessarily bad. She starts by handing
Buffy a book - so corporeal? Well, maybe not, since it ends up looking like
a dream. Ah, a dream, therefore not a manifestation by The First? Not
necessarily. Back in Amends, Buffy met The First in dreamland. (Shared
with Angel's dreams.) So Joyce tells her to get some sleep, but Buffy's
already sleeping, and then Joyce says wake up. Wonderful. When I first saw
this I decided she must be evil just to be so confusing. But I continued to
hedge my bets anyway. ;-)
The first thing I observe in the episode is the sleep question. Why won't
Buffy sleep? Why does The First (if that's who Joyce is) want Buffy to
sleep? I don't have a good answer. The best I can come up with now is that
maybe The First can reach her better in her dreams than awake - and Buffy
knows that (possibly subconsciously).
> The other visitors are Giles and his mixed-accented charges, quickly
> making the house seem quite crowded.
Yeah, they barge right in don't they. Poor Giles can't even get a hug from
Buffy.
Don't have much to say about them now except to note Kennedy's idea of
sleeping arrangements.
> Having the Watchers so quickly written out of the story
> seems a little too neat, but since I didn't like them anyway, maybe
> it'll make the rest of the year less cluttered.
You wish. Let's see. Three new Potentials. (Thank heavens one was offed.)
And more promised on the way. We seem to have added Andrew to the mix. And
then there's that new principal we're still wondering about. Plus whoever
the First feels like being - oh, look, it's Dru.
Do you remember commenting (twice I think) a few episodes back about how
they were played just with the regular cast?
Maybe it's just me, but there sure seems to be a lot of new cast to
incorporate halfway through the series' final season.
> On the whole, with
> regards to the First Evil, I'm still cold (as I was in "Amends")
> on the notion that before we've seen evil, but now this is *really
> bad* evil.
There's one thing I get a kick out of in Amends that I would have loved to
have seen here. Flashback:
Jenny/The First: Hmm. You think you can fight me? I'm not a demon, little
girl. I am something that you can't even conceive. The First Evil. Beyond
sin, beyond death. I am the thing the darkness fears. You'll never see me,
but I am everywhere. Every being, every thought, every drop of hate.
Buffy: (loses her patience) Alright, I get it. You're evil. Do we have to
chat about it all day?
Jenny/The First: (unimpressed) Angel will be dead by sunrise. Your
Christmas... will be his wake.
Buffy: No.
Jenny/The First: You have no idea what you're dealing with.
Buffy: (dripping with sarcasm) Lemme guess. Is it... evil?
> Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
> tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
> vampires as often as possible.
By drowning?
> And the First spends most of that time as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of
> Buffy, which would have more of an
> effect?
Because it's the last season and they want to bring back old characters to
say goodbye to?
I don't know a particularly good story reason. I didn't find Dru's lines
terribly informative. She wants Spike to choose sides. But he won't
because Buffy believes in him. Though it's nice to hear that from his own
mouth, I think we get that message by now. And as far as I could tell,
fake-Spike's reaction to Buffy helping Spike back in Sleeper suggested to me
that The First already knew that it wasn't going to win Spike voluntarily.
So I guess we're left with the dripping with portent, but totally
uninformative answer to what it has in mind being that it's not done with
Spike yet.
Honestly, I have no idea what these scenes really are for, but I'll give
cred to Marsters for selling his part anyway. And it is fun seeing Dru.
> not much to say about the
> attack on Willow except that I like the way the scene is put together,
> both for the special effects and for Hannigan's performance of being
> so badly smacked down. The visual is a little reminiscent of the
> glowballs from "Fear Itself."
This may be my favorite scene of the episode. It did succeed in making me
jump. The effects are good, as is Willow's immediate and later response to
it. And the implications... This seems to go beyond Willow's already
existing fear of using magic. Here The First directly affected that magic -
seemed to try to consume her with it until Xander saved the day breaking the
spell. I think this is a new power - the most tangible so far from our
beastie of all beasties. Does this mean that Willow really can't do magic?
Or is the power more limited than it might appear? Will this question be
answered?
> And not much to say about Andrew except that he's funny,
> especially when he keeps almost getting Xander under his spell.
I loved it when he burst out with, "And it cost them their lives!" and then
seemed eager for Giles to continue the story. Now there's a guy with an
appreciation for the melodrama of it all.
> Since
> the Trio were vaguely parallels of the central players last season, any
> parallel-lovers want to make a case for his quest for redemption as a
> parody of Spike's?
Malsperanza beat me to the leather coat reference. Andrew... oh, I can't
really tell you what's going to happen with him... Except that it might
involve Buffy dressed as Princess Leia.
> This is an odd show in that the character moments are mostly just okay,
> but the fight scenes are top-notch, a real high point. It's usually
> the other way 'round. The first encounter between Slayer and
> Übervamp (I'm giving it the umlaut, even if the show doesn't) is
> the better of the two, and it's wonderfully choreographed.
I mostly like the Ubervamp. Liked it when it first appeared. Like how it
looks like Joss's sketched monster that we've watch end the show for seven
years. It's a pretty tough hombre. A bit small, but fast and strong. The
first fight, as you say, is pretty good.
The second one... A little iffier. I think they overdid it with the
crashing sled of pipes. That would have squashed most anything organic of
that size and confuses a bit what the extent of its power is. Buffy did,
after all, succeed in staking it in the first fight. (Even if it didn't do
any good.) I also wasn't too fond of the speeded up film in the close of
the fight. Seemed cheesy to me.
The real question is why is Buffy alive. She was completely at its mercy at
the end. The scene cut that occurs then suggests that she's alive because
The First isn't done with her yet. What's that supposed to mean? The First
has a use for Buffy other than killing her?
> She
> comes downstairs to join in the chat and go into speechmaking mode. At
> first it seems like it's going to be a "this is a hopeless cause"
> bit like she used to give in S5, but to everyone's relief, this time
> her conclusion is that it's time to fight back with the army they
> have.
"I'm standing on the mouth of hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And
it'll choke on me."
That was an outstanding transition - played just right by SMG. She slips in
the, "It'll choke on me," like it's a continuation of the doom and gloom
she'd been saying. So it's not a big bang reversal, but rather something
people have to absorb and blink their eyes at. Then we get the big bang
finish. It's not a bad little speech from a rally the troops point of view.
> There are a few things that can always be expected to win me
> over no matter how well or badly done, no matter how often. A bloodied
> Buffy giving this kind of pep talk is one of them.
Hmmm. I wonder if the troops would feel the same way.
> What's
> interesting comparing the scripts is that her general plan is a lot
> like Quentin's, lack of specifics and all. Don't know quite what
> that means - Buffy rising to fill the role of the old guardians
> against evil? Or doomed to the same kind of failure as they were?
Excellent observation. You get a big kudo for that one.
I'll simply add that for all the morale building of that speech, how in the
heck is she going to back it up?
> More questions about how this "being called" thing works - how do
> the watchers tell a potential Slayer from just some girl? Do they have
> all of the potentials under wraps, or do some elude them? Is Buffy
> unique in having not been raised by a Watcher? These kinds of concerns
> never seemed important to me before, and I don't remember definitive
> answers from the discussions in the S2/3 threads about it, but now with
> all these Slayers running around, it's worth knowing how the
> Buffyverse ticks.
A part of me wants to scream, "You really don't want to go there!" But
somehow I sense the show is sending us that kind of direction anyway.
> So...
> One-sentence summary: A potentially good story told slowly.
> AOQ rating: Decent
Let's see... what's left? Oh, yeah. What's up with the beating on Andrew?
Anya, the "reformed" ex-vengeance demon getting her kicks that way. And now
Dawn wanting to join in. And Buffy interrupts only because she wants Dawn
doing research instead. Does that mean anything? Or is it just comic
relief?
This one gets a Decent from me, but it's not too far from Weak. The speech
from beat-up Buffy at the end saves it. Still not much in it moves me.
Leaves me too conscious of the elements that annoy.
OBS
Daniel Damouth
news:mair_fheal-131C4...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net:
> In article <dsample-36A335...@news.giganews.com>,
> Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
>
>> No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its
>> head under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
>
> waterboarding
>
> if the vampires body still has human reflexes
> this is going to trigger a nasty gag reflex
>
> reports are the cia can break someone in just a few minutes
> by triggering their gag reflex
Reports are that it is the fear of death that causes people to "break",
and by the studies say the victims will say whatever they think the
torturer wants to hear. No particular relationship to the truth.
> in spikes case since theres no danger of drowning
> they can do it over and over and over
> and far more aggressively than against humans
Spike's been through so much torture that it's old hat for him.
The gag reflex doesn't even scare me.
-Dan Damouth
Elisi
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
"One Bit Shy" <O...@nomail.sorry> wrote:
> "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1159052190.6...@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > The Watchers Council has always struck me as one of the few real TV
> > cliches in BtVS--or rather, one of the few cliches used without irony.
> > They're like the wicked IA bureau or police commissioners in a cop
> > show, or the wicked DA in a lawyers show, or the wicked school board in
> > a high-school show: authority figures who are always wrong,
> > narrow-minded, full of evil rules and tests for no particular reason--a
> > dysfunctional, inept bunch of power-hungry burocrats. Boring, down to
> > the inevitable Brit accents and meetings in book-lined studies,
> > signalling useless effeteness. The show should have dumped the idea
> > back in s3, when Buffy fired them.
>
> I liked the Council in Helpless. And that's about it. A squandered idea
> IMO. The idea of a powerful bureaucracy like that could have been useful to
> the series, but they relentlessly went after the stereotype and made them
> just an annoyance - ultimately to the audience.
a couple of points when wesley talks about thwe watchers oath
its not about be good be moral be nice its protect the innocent
we see that when giles kills ben
ben did not deserve it and it was dirty thing for the watcher to do
but it was necessary to protect the innocents of the world from glory
you get the pentagon during peacetime (presumable mod as well)
its stifling bureacracy full officious twerps so full of rules
its in danger of rigor mortis
then again the military isnt designed for peacetime but for war
and all that bureacracy gives the organization strength to continue
even as people are sufferiing horrible deaths at your side
the cruciaturem really only makes sense
to force a distance between watcher and slayer
consider what happens if slayer has her arms chopped off but lives
she is now useles to the fight but she is also preventing succession
perhaps the watchers duty at that point is to kill the slayer
that he raised and trained so the next slayer can continue the fight
so when quentin travers was talking about a nightly war against evil
we see him through the eyes of buffy and giles as cruel and excessive
but travers might himself see it as the same grim reality
that compelled giles to kill ben or buffy to put a sword through anyas breast
i think the watchers council was too full of itself
and too caught up in its tradition to flexibly deal with new situations
(france lost in 1940 not due to cowardice
but because french generals were fighting 1940 combined air armor and infantry
with the 1915 concepts of cavalry and mass infantry)
but underneath is very knowledgable and skilled organization
resilient and tenacious
and with the backbone to charge into that valley to do -and- die
note that buffy has the number to call and the oomph to get travers to answer
there wasnt much need of the council the previous year
but there mightve been more of connection
between them and buffy then we see on the screen
the council is dead
but i doubt the watchers are destroyed
just temporarily out of action as they reorganize
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Daniel Damouth <dam...@san.rr.com> wrote:
> mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
> <mair_...@yahoo.com> wrote in
> news:mair_fheal-131C4...@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net:
>
> > In article <dsample-36A335...@news.giganews.com>,
> > Don Sample <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote:
> >
> >> No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its
> >> head under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
> >
> > waterboarding
> >
> > if the vampires body still has human reflexes
> > this is going to trigger a nasty gag reflex
> >
> > reports are the cia can break someone in just a few minutes
> > by triggering their gag reflex
>
> Reports are that it is the fear of death that causes people to "break",
> and by the studies say the victims will say whatever they think the
> torturer wants to hear. No particular relationship to the truth.
yes but you can use what they say as evidence for war
whether its true or not
> > in spikes case since theres no danger of drowning
> > they can do it over and over and over
> > and far more aggressively than against humans
>
> Spike's been through so much torture that it's old hat for him.
>
> The gag reflex doesn't even scare me.
my dentist has to be careful what he touches in my mouth
if he doesnt want full body convulsions
Elisi
That is a very good point. And I think Giles is not as much of a rebel
as people like to think. He went along with the Cruciamentum, and
didn't do a thing to stop it until he realised it had gone awry and the
big insane vamp had escaped. And he would have killed Dawn, to save the
world... there is a core of ruthlessness underneath the friendly
fatherly visage.
Daniel Damouth
@sn-ip.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net:
>> The gag reflex doesn't even scare me.
>
> my dentist has to be careful what he touches in my mouth
> if he doesnt want full body convulsions
I've done it to myself. Supposedly, thousands of women do it every day!
-Dan Damouth
(Harmony) Watcher
"Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
news:dsample-36A335...@news.giganews.com...
> In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> > threads.
> >
> >
> > Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> > criticism.")
> > Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
> > Director: David Grossman
> >
> > second (by which I mean First), which seems most likely, it's an
> > unnerving look at how well it can get into even our hero's head. In
> > any case, there's a rather effectively disturbing quality to all
> > these visions, since it blurs the line between reality and not at a
> > time when it's important to stay grounded in the former. She shows
> > up again in the rather depressing "professional life falling apart"
> > bit.
>
> dream. Buffy *is* tired, and in need of sleep. And what Joyce tells
> her here is actually good advice.
>
>
> > Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
> > tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
> > as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
> > First/Buffy and this would throw him off his guard more, or about how
> > Drusilla is a better representation of the appeal to get back to his
> > past darkness. One suspects that the real reason is just tat the
> > writers wanted to change things up a little. Nothing hugely exciting,
> > but Landau is almost always fun to watch, and the delivery is great on
> > "get bent." But has Spike ever been Dru's "daddy" before?
>
> No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its head
> under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
>
water.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
hayes62
> >So the First has decided to take out the Watchers and the proto-Slayers
> >before going for Buffy (and Faith, getting a mention)... From a
> >writing perspective there's a bit of a Catch-22 here. If the Watcher
> >organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> >their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> >world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
> >smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
> >tried this.
>
> Worse than a Catch 22. There seems to be an amazing lack of robustness in
> the way the Slayer line is constructed. The First's plan is only capable of
> working if a Slayer can only be called if there is a living potential slayer
> alive at the time the Slayer dies. The potential all seem to be teens (we
> have seen a number by now, and there are none younger than that). So there
> must also be a group of younger girls who are um, potential potentials (or
> perhaps all pre-teen girls are potential potentials). But they apparently
> can never become potential slayers and ultimately slayers if they weren't
> already potentials when a Slayer dies. Why would you set up the line like
> that, unless it was to give the First a fighting chance in season 7?
>
Maybe that was the best whoever did it could do at the time? It would
explain why there used to be all the secrecy about the Slayer's
identity (and presumably that of the potential slayers as well when
they could find them). But I wonder if Giles and co really have figured
out everything that the First is trying to achieve through its attacks
on the strangely accented ones.
>
> >Having the Watchers so quickly written out of the story
> >seems a little too neat, but since I didn't like them anyway, maybe
> >it'll make the rest of the year less cluttered. On the whole, with
> >regards to the First Evil, I'm still cold (as I was in "Amends")
> >on the notion that before we've seen evil, but now this is *really
> >bad* evil.
>
> I don't mind the idea of the First, but this episode's lameness extends its
> evil hand to it. We are told that little is written about the First because
> it pre-dates the written record. Hello? Lots of things pre-date the written
> record, lions, wine and Mt Fuji to name but three. If you pre-date the
> written record it means that as soon as writing is invented people can start
> writing about you, and there will be lots of stuff written. Aren't the
> writers even reading over what they've written at this point in the series
> to see that it makes sense?
>
If you're still around in a recognisble form by then. I thought Giles
just meant that originally the First wasn't as subtle as it has been
until quite recently.
>> This is an odd show in that the character moments are mostly just okay,
>> but the fight scenes are top-notch, a real high point. It's usually
>> the other way 'round. The first encounter between Slayer and
>> Übervamp (I'm giving it the umlaut, even if the show doesn't) is
>> the better of the two, and it's wonderfully choreographed.
>
> The Ubervamp is a harmless enough fellow on his own, but again Giles's
> explanation makes me join him in going Grr. A different sub species of
> vampires? Like Neanderthals? How do you get a seperate sub species of a
> creature made by fusing a demon and a human. Did they fuse with actual
> neanderthals? But since Neanderthals died out, obviously having a weakness
> our ancestors didn't, wouldn't that make vamps based on them Untervamps? The
> Master also had the Nosferatu thing going for him, but he wasn't said to be
> a different kind of vampire, just older. And his linquisitic skills weren't
> restricted to "Grr"
>
Maybe the Neanderthal comparison was just to point out that Ubervamps
weren't the ancestors of vampvamps. Giles calls them a different race
not a different sub-species, which is a much looser term. From what's
been shown, Ubies share dietary preference and an intolerance for
sunlight with Spike and co but might reproduce by binary fission for
all we know otherwise.
> >ankle grabbed. And it's a relief to the viewer to know that at least
> >sunlight still works on this thing.
>
> And that he's too dumb to lift the sheet of metal covering the victim he's
> knocked out.
>
Or that his master/mistress isn't done with her yet.
hayes62
Daniel Damouth wrote:
> Reports are that it is the fear of death that causes people to "break",
> and by the studies say the victims will say whatever they think the
> torturer wants to hear. No particular relationship to the truth.
>
> > in spikes case since theres no danger of drowning
> > they can do it over and over and over
> > and far more aggressively than against humans
>
> Spike's been through so much torture that it's old hat for him.
>
> The gag reflex doesn't even scare me.
Spike's gag reflex doesn't seem to be working anyway, as it look like
he swallowed a whole bunch of water while he was down. If some of that
went into his lungs it might not be too pleasant. The dunking also
wakes him up to feel the effect of less soggy tortures and I think the
religious symbolism of a reverse baptism wouldn't be lost on him either
if the endings of Beneath You and NLM are anything to go by.
hayes62
One Bit Shy wrote:
> > And the First spends most of that time as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of
> > Buffy, which would have more of an
> > effect?
>
> Because it's the last season and they want to bring back old characters to
> say goodbye to?
>
> I don't know a particularly good story reason. I didn't find Dru's lines
> terribly informative. She wants Spike to choose sides. But he won't
> because Buffy believes in him. Though it's nice to hear that from his own
> mouth, I think we get that message by now. And as far as I could tell,
> fake-Spike's reaction to Buffy helping Spike back in Sleeper suggested to me
> that The First already knew that it wasn't going to win Spike voluntarily.
>
> So I guess we're left with the dripping with portent, but totally
> uninformative answer to what it has in mind being that it's not done with
> Spike yet.
>
> Honestly, I have no idea what these scenes really are for, but I'll give
> cred to Marsters for selling his part anyway. And it is fun seeing Dru.
The last one at least really underlines the horror of those immediately
prececeding and following it. Buffy's body being found cuts to Dru
asking if Spike knows why he's alive and Spike's uplifting declaration
that she believes in him cuts to a battered down Buffy with the
appearance of no longer believing in herself. If Spike's resistence is
so dependent on Buffy what happens if she falls? He's not out of the
woods yet.
Rincewind
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> (or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
> criticism.")
> Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
> Director: David Grossman
>
> the ways this episode tries to set this season's threat apart from
> past ones is to not even suggest that Giles will provide some sort of
> special insight. He shows up, and within minutes he's mostly saying
> "I don't know" and hoping that Buffy will be better prepared than
> everyone else.
No special insight?
How about:
BUFFY: Oh. Yeah, I'm okay. I just got into a fight is all. (to Giles) You
want to tell me with what?
GILES: What you fought was a vampire but it was something more than that. It
was a Turok-han.
... An ancient and entirely different race and, until this morning, I
thought they were a myth.
So he has a glimpse of a being which looks very much like the Master and he
immediately recognizes it as a Turok-han, a creature that he has never seen
before and certainly has never been described in detail since it's supposed
to be extinct (and vampires don't leave fossil records).
And then we have this:
GILES: If the Slayer line is eliminated, then the Hellmouth has no guardian.
The balance is destroyed.
Balance?
What balance?
We have never heard anything about any balance before. Have we been dropped
by mistake into a Star Wars episode? Has Giles turned into Yoda?
Sometimes I wonder what the writers where smoking in season 7...
> Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
> tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
> vampires as often as possible.
Only if they are shirtless...
So we have 4 repetitions of the "shirtless Spike is being tortured" scene
for a grand total of almost 6 minutes of screen time, and since he is still
prisoner we can expect more in the next episode.
And by the way, why exactly does The First want Spike to choose sides?
There is a hypnotic trigger that The First can use, remember? No need for
Spike to make a choice.
What's the point of these 6 minutes of filler in a 40 minutes episode?
> This is an odd show in that the character moments are mostly just okay,
> but the fight scenes are top-notch, a real high point.
Yes, the fight scenes are good, but there are also some very funny moments:
DAWN: Maybe if you threw hot water on him?
ANYA (excited): Good thinking.
For me Dawn, Anya and Andrew are the saviours of the season from now on.
> So...
>
> One-sentence summary: A potentially good story told slowly.
>
> AOQ rating: Decent
For me it's basically a Weak episode that becomes Decent because of the
Andrew, Dawn and Anya fun stuff.
One last note: directors and editors are becoming increasingly sloppy,
leaving a lot of very visible mistakes in the finished product. It started
with Him, became very obvious with CwDP and now it's become the norm.
The noticeable mistake of the week: Dawn's hair changing style between shots
while she is in the school basement pointing at the thing from which Spike
had been hanging during the seal opening ritual. When they enter the
basement her hair is straight as it has always been, it's still straight
while she approaches the torture wheel and then the camera angle changes and
all of a sudden her hair has curls (and will have them for the remaining of
the episode).
Rincewind.
--
Lines you'll never hear on Buffy:
S2 DRUSILLA: The Slayer. I can't see her! (wailing) It's dark where she is!
(turns to Spike). Kill, Spike.
SPIKE: It's done, luv.
DRUSILLA: Kill her for Princess?
SPIKE: I'll chop her into messes. Unless she's, y'know, hot or something.
DRUSILLA: (groans)
SPIKE: What? She's hot, isn't she? (jumping up and down, excited) Oooh,
yeah, the Slayer's a hottie!!
DRUSILLA: Bloody hell.
Rincewind
>
> really tell you what's going to happen with him... Except that it might
> involve Buffy dressed as Princess Leia.
LOL.
Rincewind.
--
What I have learned from Buffy:
You can find almost anything on the internet. Except for the stuff you
really need to know, like how to defeat the First Evil.
Michael Ikeda
news:1159082804.7...@d34g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>> then again the military isnt designed for peacetime but for war
>> and all that bureacracy gives the organization strength to
>> continue even as people are sufferiing horrible deaths at your
>> side
>
> That is a very good point. And I think Giles is not as much of a
> rebel as people like to think. He went along with the
> Cruciamentum, and didn't do a thing to stop it until he realised
> it had gone awry and the big insane vamp had escaped. And he
> would have killed Dawn, to save the world... there is a core of
> ruthlessness underneath the friendly fatherly visage.
>
Two other points:
1) Giles is on unfamiliar ground here just as much as Buffy is.
He's been a Watcher to one Slayer (briefly two) but now there are a
bunch of Potentials on their way. To some extent, it's going to be
natural to fall back on anything that seems applicable in his
training. And on ingrained attitudes about what a Watcher "should"
be like.
(Somewhat modified by experience, of course. He knows that Buffy is
going to take charge eventually once she recovers from her own shock,
so he almost conspicuously avoids doing anything that looks like
trying to take command.)
2) Also Giles used to be just a somewhat rebellious Watcher. In a
lot of ways he now IS the Watcher's Council. And one of the last
guardians of its traditions.
--
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
Michael Ikeda
news:G4tRg.2023$Xm....@tornado.fastwebnet.it:
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these
>> review threads.
>>
>>
>> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
>> Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
>> (or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
>> criticism.")
>> Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
>> Director: David Grossman
>>
>
> And then we have this:
> GILES: If the Slayer line is eliminated, then the Hellmouth has
> no guardian. The balance is destroyed.
>
> Balance?
> What balance?
> We have never heard anything about any balance before. Have we
> been dropped by mistake into a Star Wars episode? Has Giles
> turned into Yoda?
>
From "Becoming II"
Buffy: (exhales) You don't have anything useful to tell me, do
you? What are you, just some immortal demon sent down to even the
score between good and evil?
Whistler: (impressed) Wow. Good guess. (grins)
Stephen Tempest
>Boring, down to
>the inevitable Brit accents and meetings in book-lined studies,
>signalling useless effeteness.
Spike has a British accent too. does that make him sound useless and
effete? Rupert 'Ripper' Giles has the accent *and* the book-lined
study, and he has his moments of non-effeteness...
Stephen
Stephen Tempest
>Worse than a Catch 22. There seems to be an amazing lack of robustness in
>the way the Slayer line is constructed. The First's plan is only capable of
>working if a Slayer can only be called if there is a living potential slayer
>alive at the time the Slayer dies.
But we're told specifically (in a later episode) that gung guvf vf n
bar-bss fvghngvba, hacynaarq sbe jura gur Fynlre flfgrz jnf svefg frg
hc, pnhfrq ol Ohssl'f erfheerpgvba.
Snajnax: n ynetr cebcbegvba bs gur zntvpny Fynlre raretl abeznyyl
qribgrq gb perngvat arj Cbgragvnyf jura bar vf xvyyrq, unf vafgrnq
orra punaaryrq vagb znvagnvavat Ohssl nf na npghny Fynlre jura fur
fubhyq or qrnq.
>I don't mind the idea of the First, but this episode's lameness extends its
>evil hand to it. We are told that little is written about the First because
>it pre-dates the written record. Hello? Lots of things pre-date the written
>record, lions, wine and Mt Fuji to name but three.
To me, that was a whimsical (and funny) joke, not really something to
take seriously.
>How do you get a seperate sub species of a
>creature made by fusing a demon and a human.
You use a different species of demon? You vary the mix, by using more
demon per human?
>And that he's too dumb to lift the sheet of metal covering the victim he's
>knocked out.
"Do you know why you're alive? You're alive for one reason, and one
reason only. Because I wish it. Do you know why I wish it? Because I'm
not done with you."
Nominally The First is talking to Spike there, but the fact that Its
words pre-lap over the scene of Buffy being lifted from the rubble
make it pretty clear that they apply to her too...
Stephen
David E. Milligan
"Mike Zeares" <mze...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1159050916....@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Elisi wrote:
>>
>> There's a lot of talk about sleep, tiredness, and time passing. I've
>> not counted, but there are more references to sunset than I remember in
>> any other episode. The night is suddenly a place of fear again for
>> Buffy, and I think it works very well in hammering home how this is a
>> worse situation than before. Towards the end, when Buffy finds
>> Annabelle's body, she's seriously worn down, physically and emotionally
>> - and she runs away from the monster. (Also, when was the last time a
>> vampire was actually scary? It might not look all that impressive, but
>> it sure is strong.)
>
> first, because I was expecting a Uruk-hai but got Candem Toy instead.
> He's not that much taller than Sarah, and slender. But when the
> Ubervamp started fighting her, I was like, holy crap, he's faster than
> she is! I'd run away too. Crying. And probably wetting myself.
>
> You know how you know that the lead character will never actually die?
> I totally forgot that watching this ep the first time. I was afraid
> for a minute that she was permanently damaged.
>
>> But - lets just count what's on Buffy's shoulders at this point:
>>
>> - Get Spike back.
>> - No magic help - Willow freaks out.
>> - Keep Potentials safe.
>> - Fight ubervamp.
>> - Go to work.
>> - Plan a war.
>
> Please?
>
>> I love the speech at the end - she's so small, and yet...
>>
>> "I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of
>> hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me."
>>
>
> Yeah. Sarah really brought it. One of the best Buffy Moments of the
> series. I really liked Robert Duncan's score underneath her speech,
> too.
>
> -- Mike Zeares
>
I remember when the ep first aired there was so much criticism about
the speech. I don't remember the specific complaints, but I thought it was
great. And it gets better every time I hear it.
David
Stephen Tempest
>First there's Joyce: dream,
>First, or something else, trying to get Buffy to sleep. If it's the
>second (by which I mean First), which seems most likely, it's an
>unnerving look at how well it can get into even our hero's head.
This first/First/second business could get deeply silly by the end of
the season, if you let it...
In one of the dreams Joyce hands Buffy a book, which immediately said
to me "It's not The First, since It can't take corporeal form" - but
then we see Buffy start awake... do we actually see the book? Or did
she just dream it, in which case Joyce could still be The First?
alternatively: this episode is something of a milestone for me, since
it was once of the first I watched when originally brroadcast and then
posted to a newsgroup about immediately after... so I get to re-visit
my own immediate and spoiler-free reactions. This was my thought about
Buffy's dream:
____
My guess (and that's all it is) is misdirection. Buffy's terrified
that The First will appear to her in this form, and so she is putting
her own fears and doubts into the shape of her mother.
____
>The other visitors are Giles and his mixed-accented charges, quickly
>making the house seem quite crowded.
Oh, those accents were truly dreadful. No comments on our new
additions to the cast? Again, this was my own immediate unspoiled
reaction to their introduction:
___
Molly and Annabelle were obviously supposed to be British, but what
nationality is Kennedy? She was the only one of the three who seemed
like a fully-fledged person instead of a caricature, so I was betting
she'd be the only one left alive in a couple of episodes' time, even
before Annabelle ran off and got herself killed.
Incidentally, I loved the little touch of one of the Potentials taking
out a pad and making notes as Giles did his exposition scene...
___
(The 'Kennedy's nationality' question was sort-of answered in a later
episode, so no need to go there again now)
> If the Watcher
>organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
>their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
>world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
>smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
>tried this.
FORREST: Well, the way I got it figured, Slayer's like some kind of
Bogeyman for the Sub-Terrestrials. Something they tell their little
spawn to get them to eat their vegetables and clean up their slime
pits.
RILEY: You're telling me she doesn't exist.
FORREST: Oh, wait a sec. Am I bursting somebody's bubble here? Maybe
this is a bad time to tell you about Lara Croft. And the Easter bunny.
Previous Big Bads haven't really taken the Slayer seriously, even if
they knew she existed.
Besides, for most of recent history (the last millennium at least)
Lothos and his minions were doing a pretty good job of keeping the
Slayer line trimmed down, by hunting and killing each new Slayer as
soon as she was Called...
>But has Spike ever been Dru's "daddy" before?
Nope, that was Angel. Possibly, The First wants to draw some kind of
parallel in Spike's mind between himself and Angelus; or maybe The
First just isn't as good at imitating Drusilla as it likes to think it
is.
>Not much to say about the encounters
>with Wood - he likes mysteries, huh?
And he likes to discover "what's beneath it all". Does that phrase
remind you of anything?
>Buffy's comprehension that
>this isn't a normal vampire comes in increments, as not only does
>staking it not work,
Or she needs a bigger stake (think Kakistos...)
>A later rematch has more of Buffy
>never giving up, and more of the Übervamp getting a chance to show
>just how strong it is.
That scene in the factory just screams "we're doing a homage to
Terminator here!"
>Seriously, no one ever eats anything but pizza and dessert on this
>show.
And biscuits. Don't forget biscuits - they're brill!
>She
>comes downstairs to join in the chat and go into speechmaking mode. At
>first it seems like it's going to be a "this is a hopeless cause"
>bit like she used to give in S5, but to everyone's relief, this time
>her conclusion is that it's time to fight back with the army they
>have. There are a few things that can always be expected to win me
>over no matter how well or badly done, no matter how often. A bloodied
>Buffy giving this kind of pep talk is one of them.
Loved that moment. Another initial-reaction quote:
___
As she sat there motionless, overhearing Giles' attempt to ruin
everyone's morale, that was another strong reminder of 'Spiral'. Then
she starts her speech, seeming all depressed-y, and suddenly we get
the line "and it will choke on me"... and everything was different.
Plus was it just my imagination (or the lighting) or did her cuts and
bruises actually seem to fade away as she made her speech? Slayer
healing powers at their finest... :)
___
>Don't know quite what
>that means - Buffy rising to fill the role of the old guardians
>against evil? Or doomed to the same kind of failure as they were?
Yes. No. Maybe.
>More questions about how this "being called" thing works - how do
>the watchers tell a potential Slayer from just some girl? Do they have
>all of the potentials under wraps, or do some elude them? Is Buffy
>unique in having not been raised by a Watcher?
According to the film, all potential Slayers are born with a
birthmark, and Buffy had hers surgically removed as a baby so the
Watcher never found her. While the TV show didn't continue that
specific idea, I always assumed that the Watchers had some means of
telling who'd be the next Slayer, but that it wasn't 100% reliable. It
almost certainly involved magic.
(In fact, in later episodes we learn that gurer'f n pbira pncnoyr bs
ybpngvat Cbgragvnyf, ng yrnfg gb na npphenpl bs 10 zvyrf be fb: naq
Jvyybj unfn fcryy gung qbrf gur fnzr, ohg vg'f abg shyyl eryvnoyr
rvgure)
Kendra was identified as a young child, and given over to the Watchers
by her parents to raise. Faith also had a Watcher - the one killed by
Kakistos - but we don't know how long for. Buffy slipped through the
net, and it's generally assumed that she was highly unusual in not
being raised by her Watcher, but in a normal family. Maybe not unique,
but very different.
>One-sentence summary: A potentially good story told slowly.
>
>AOQ rating: Decent
It had its jarring moments - especially those accents! but also some
scary and stirring scenes. A particularly disturbing idea is that the
Übervamp, for all its unstoppable power, was just playing with Buffy -
shown by the fact that it knocks her through a wall and leaves her
unconscious but doesn't finish her off.
"Do you know why you're alive? You're alive for one reason, and one
reason only. Because I wish it. Do you know why I wish it? Because I'm
not done with you."
And then there's this:
There's only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil.
And that's us.
Stephen
mariposas rand mair fheal greykitten tomys des anges
Stephen Tempest <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Not much to say about the encounters
> >with Wood - he likes mysteries, huh?
>
> And he likes to discover "what's beneath it all". Does that phrase
> remind you of anything?
ill come back from the dead and bite you in the butt
wouldnt be the first time
Malsperanza
peachy ashie passion wrote:
> Malsperanza wrote:
>
> > Like the question of why another Slayer wasn't called by
> > Kendra's death?
> >
> > ~Mal
> >
>
> Apparently this really does make your brain hurt too much to think
> on it.
>
> Faith???
>
> You DO remember Faith, right?
Sorry--I do forget the details of early seasons and can't check
transcripts when I post from work. Was mixing up Faith being called by
Kendra's death and Kendra being called by Buffy's death #1. But the
point still stands.
~Mal
Ken from Chicago
"Daniel Damouth" <dam...@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9848AC2F8E21...@66.75.164.119...
Dan, maybe that's NOT how you wanna phrase that--online.
-- Ken from Chicago
Ken from Chicago
"Michael Ikeda" <mmi...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:w96dnVh0yfna_ovY...@rcn.net...
> "Elisi" <eli...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:1159082804.7...@d34g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>
>>> then again the military isnt designed for peacetime but for war
>>> and all that bureacracy gives the organization strength to
>>> continue even as people are sufferiing horrible deaths at your
>>> side
>>
>> That is a very good point. And I think Giles is not as much of a
>> rebel as people like to think. He went along with the
>> Cruciamentum, and didn't do a thing to stop it until he realised
>> it had gone awry and the big insane vamp had escaped. And he
>> would have killed Dawn, to save the world... there is a core of
>> ruthlessness underneath the friendly fatherly visage.
>>
>
> Two other points:
>
> 1) Giles is on unfamiliar ground here just as much as Buffy is.
> He's been a Watcher to one Slayer (briefly two) but now there are a
> bunch of Potentials on their way. To some extent, it's going to be
> natural to fall back on anything that seems applicable in his
> training. And on ingrained attitudes about what a Watcher "should"
> be like.
"For 8 years have I trained slayers. My own counsel will I keep on who is to
be trained."
> (Somewhat modified by experience, of course. He knows that Buffy is
> going to take charge eventually once she recovers from her own shock,
> so he almost conspicuously avoids doing anything that looks like
> trying to take command.)
"The Ben, remember the Ben you must."
> 2) Also Giles used to be just a somewhat rebellious Watcher. In a
> lot of ways he now IS the Watcher's Council. And one of the last
> guardians of its traditions.
Or the first of a new breed of jedi-er watcher.
> --
> 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
-- Ken from Chicagobah
Elisi
Michael Ikeda wrote:
> "Elisi" <eli...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:1159082804.7...@d34g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>
> >> then again the military isnt designed for peacetime but for war
> >> and all that bureacracy gives the organization strength to
> >> continue even as people are sufferiing horrible deaths at your
> >> side
> >
> > That is a very good point. And I think Giles is not as much of a
> > rebel as people like to think. He went along with the
> > Cruciamentum, and didn't do a thing to stop it until he realised
> > it had gone awry and the big insane vamp had escaped. And he
> > would have killed Dawn, to save the world... there is a core of
> > ruthlessness underneath the friendly fatherly visage.
> >
>
> Two other points:
>
> 1) Giles is on unfamiliar ground here just as much as Buffy is.
> He's been a Watcher to one Slayer (briefly two) but now there are a
> bunch of Potentials on their way. To some extent, it's going to be
> natural to fall back on anything that seems applicable in his
> training. And on ingrained attitudes about what a Watcher "should"
> be like.
>
> (Somewhat modified by experience, of course. He knows that Buffy is
> going to take charge eventually once she recovers from her own shock,
> so he almost conspicuously avoids doing anything that looks like
> trying to take command.)
A very good point. He knows that Buffy always does things her own way,
but I think he is also more than ever aware of her weaknesses, which
might be why is so very detached. In 'Choices' when Willow gets
captured by the Mayor and the Scoobies want to trade her for the box,
Wesley takes the hard Watcher line and says they should destroy the box
- and Giles does lean that way too:
Wesley: You're the one who said take the fight to the Mayor. You were
right. This is the town's best hope of survival. It's your chance to
get out.
Buffy: You think I care about that? Are you made of human parts?
Giles: Alright! Let's deal with this rationally.
Buffy: Why are you taking his side?
I think the Watcher in Giles is far more ingrained than even he himself
likes to admit. He trusts Buffy's fighting abilities, and her
intuition, but he also knows what lines she won't cross. And
considering what sort of fight they've got on their hands it's not
surprising that he's distant.
> 2) Also Giles used to be just a somewhat rebellious Watcher. In a
> lot of ways he now IS the Watcher's Council. And one of the last
> guardians of its traditions.
*nods* And as mariposas pointed out, the Council was set up for
warfare...
Malsperanza
One Bit Shy wrote:
> "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1159052190.6...@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > The Watchers Council has always struck me as one of the few real TV
> > cliches in BtVS--or rather, one of the few cliches used without irony.
> > They're like the wicked IA bureau or police commissioners in a cop
> > show, or the wicked DA in a lawyers show, or the wicked school board in
> > a high-school show: authority figures who are always wrong,
> > narrow-minded, full of evil rules and tests for no particular reason--a
> > the inevitable Brit accents and meetings in book-lined studies,
> > back in s3, when Buffy fired them.
>
> I liked the Council in Helpless. And that's about it. A squandered idea
> IMO. The idea of a powerful bureaucracy like that could have been useful to
> the series
A staple of espionage stories--like Q in Bond and Mr Waverly in The Man
from UNCLE and so on. The Sekrit Council of Wise Men in Tweed Suits is
turned into something fascinating and problematic in John Le Carre
novels...
> but they relentlessly went after the stereotype and made them
> just an annoyance - ultimately to the audience.
>
> At least they managed to generate Wesley out of it - though it took a while
> for that to be particularly good.
I keep waiting for the Council to do something positive that would
justify Giles's long loyalty to it. We're told that they spent many
generations being the main bulwark against the Dark Side, but we don't
see it, which is the source of much of the frustration. I'm not sure
the Council is completely out of the picture, but it has certainly been
removed from the chessboard for a while--the show makes that as clear
as possible.
One thing I did like was the emphasis on study and research being an
important part of defeating evil. Too often on TV shows school and
study are depicted as dorky and pointless. That's a cliche BtVS starts
with (geeky stuttering priggish librarian with glasses, etc.), and then
turns inside out when it turns out that without the books and the
knowledge of history the Slayer and Scoobies wouldn't get far. The
Council could have played a more positive role there, but at the time,
the show wanted us to wonder if they were goodguys or badguys, so it
kept them offscreen and mysterious.
It's striking that the Council is nearly all men, and is *not*
connected with the Devon Coven that rehabs Willow. Not as much is made
of that as might br, but given the gender and power dynamics of the
show, I think that's perhaps one reason they haven't been so useful and
smart--at least, not so far. I just wish that had been explored a bit
more, over the course of the show.
Poor Harris Yulin, a fine actor, has made a career of playing
English-accented, tweed-3-piece-suit-wearing evil badguys. As the Movie
Cliche List says,
~ The bad guy is the foreigner.
~ Corollary: the foreigner is the guy who speaks English with an
English accent
http://www.moviecliches.com/
I suppose the Angel Corollary would be: The good guy is the guy who
can't do a foreign accent to save his life ;-)
~Mal
Arbitrar Of Quality
> A search for "evil" in Google now gets 273,000,000 hits. I tried it out
> back when this episode first ran, and got 10,600,000 hits, still ten
> times more hits than Buffy got.
You frighten me.
-AOQ
Elisi
Stephen Tempest wrote:
> "Apteryx" <apt...@xtra.co.nz> writes:
>
> >Worse than a Catch 22. There seems to be an amazing lack of robustness in
> >the way the Slayer line is constructed. The First's plan is only capable of
> >working if a Slayer can only be called if there is a living potential slayer
> >alive at the time the Slayer dies.
>
> But we're told specifically (in a later episode) that gung guvf vf n
> bar-bss fvghngvba, hacynaarq sbe jura gur Fynlre flfgrz jnf svefg frg
> hc, pnhfrq ol Ohssl'f erfheerpgvba.
>
> Snajnax: n ynetr cebcbegvba bs gur zntvpny Fynlre raretl abeznyyl
> qribgrq gb perngvat arj Cbgragvnyf jura bar vf xvyyrq, unf vafgrnq
> orra punaaryrq vagb znvagnvavat Ohssl nf na npghny Fynlre jura fur
> fubhyq or qrnq.
Sebz gur fubbgvat fpevcg sbe Pubfra:
"Vg'f gehr abar bs lbh unf gur cbjre Snvgu naq V unir. V guvax obgu
bs hf jbhyq unir gb qvr sbe n arj Fynlre gb or pnyyrq, naq jr pna'g
rira or fher gung tvey vf va guvf ebbz."
V guvax gur fynlre yvar ehaf guebhtu obgu Ohssl *naq* Snvgu, juvpu
jbhyq or n *ovt* vafgnovyvgl. Gjb pnaqvqngrf sbe rirel cebcurpl s.rk.
Pbhyq guebj gur havirefr bhg bs junpx be fbzrguvat...
Malsperanza
Exactly: Giles is set up as a classic movie cliche, which is then
deliberately reversed by the show. It's one of the things I really love
about BtVS. It takes one of the most shopworn cliche characters around
and makes something of it. Giles doesn't always thrill me as a
character, and I think there are some frustrating things about how he's
written, but he is the person who teaches Buffy the most--and he does
it the way actual teachers do: by insisting that she study as well as
train.
TV shows, especially those set in high schools, relentlessly make smart
people and people who study look like geeks, dorks, and losers.
Teachers who use Big Words are bad, dumb, or mean. Kids who use Big
Words and read books are thereby marked with the signs of Not Getting
It. It's not surprising, considering that if we all sat around reading
books and learning stuff, we'd probably watch less TV. But it's also
part of a hostility to education that seems to permeate American pop
culture. It grates on my nerves. Giles and Willow present an
alternative, though both first are shown as losers and terminal geeks.
Spike... Spike's Englishness also starts out as a marker of a classic
movie cliche villain: he is indeed effete and fey and not a real manly
man. (Many Dracula movies depict the Count as quasi-gay--too effete,
too fancy, not manly.) As I understand it, Spike started out as a
disposable badguy. When he stayed on the show, his character quickly
shed a lot of its cliches, but the English accent wasn't something that
could be ditched. Nor are all characters in American TV and movies with
English accents necessarily effete badguys, but it's incredibly common.
Wesley--as he appears in BtVS--is another example.
~Mal
Malsperanza
That's a key point, isn't it? The chessboard is set, the pieces are
being aligned, Giles is back, but he is alone. No more late-night phone
calls to England for advice. The compendia of books and records are
gone. In the coming fignt, for the first time, Giles has to rely on his
own knowledge and his own judgment. Kinda like Buffy.
~Mal
Arbitrar Of Quality
> The Watchers Council has always struck me as one of the few real TV
> cliches in BtVS--or rather, one of the few cliches used without irony.
> They're like the wicked IA bureau or police commissioners in a cop
> show, or the wicked DA in a lawyers show, or the wicked school board in
> a high-school show: authority figures who are always wrong,
> narrow-minded, full of evil rules and tests for no particular reason--a
> dysfunctional, inept bunch of power-hungry burocrats. Boring, down to
> the inevitable Brit accents and meetings in book-lined studies,
> signalling useless effeteness. The show should have dumped the idea
> back in s3, when Buffy fired them.
That's very well said, and basically encapsulates my problems with the
WC too. People have talked about the idea of Watcher ruthlessness and
tradition coming out in an interesting manner in Giles and (eventually)
Wesley. Well, yeah; they're actual characters, unlike the WC as a
whle. I kinda like the thought of adapting an idea from the LDM of
encapsulating all the Watcher traits into one similarly "Chosen"
Watcher for each Slayer - that might have played better. And now I'm
twisting my head around trying to think of how to do that without
losing "Helpless," which'd be a shame.
> No, the torture is ancillary; the show's main purpose is to get souled
> vampires shirtless as often as possible. Think of it as the equivalent
> of finding reasons for Baywatch actresses to wear bikinis.
True, I suppose.
> A lot of questions of mechanics and backstory are suddenly surfacing,
> rather late in the day. I'm not sure it would add much pleasure or
> interest to have all this stuff nailed down, though--at least not at
> this point. Like the question of why another Slayer wasn't called by
> Kendra's death or Buffy's second death, it makes my brain hurt to try
> to sort it out, for not too much payoff.
My favorite fanwank so far (unless it gets contradicted later) is that
the succession passed from Buffy to Kendra to Faith after "Prophecy
Girl." That'd mean the next new Slayer is called when Faith dies, and
Buffy lives out the rest of her life/lives as an anomaly outside the
Slayer line. Another way in which she's not like other Chosen girls.
That doesn't explain why characters still seem to think killing Buffy
would call a new Slayer (except that the creators probably didn't think
it through completely), but hey, they could just be wrong. Or
guessing, since having two Slayers has maybe never happened before.
-AOQ
Arbitrar Of Quality
Apteryx wrote:
> There seems to be an amazing lack of robustness in
> the way the Slayer line is constructed. The First's plan is only capable of
> working if a Slayer can only be called if there is a living potential slayer
> alive at the time the Slayer dies. The potential all seem to be teens (we
> have seen a number by now, and there are none younger than that). So there
> must also be a group of younger girls who are um, potential potentials (or
> perhaps all pre-teen girls are potential potentials). But they apparently
> can never become potential slayers and ultimately slayers if they weren't
> already potentials when a Slayer dies. Why would you set up the line like
> that, unless it was to give the First a fighting chance in season 7?
Limitations to the original magics or whatever? Whoever or whatever
created the Slayer may not have been omnipotent. It's true that the
logic doesn't entirely hold together, and I don't know if it ever has.
-AOQ
Arbitrar Of Quality
vague disclaimer wrote:
> In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> Oh yeah:
>
> > If the Watcher
> > organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> > their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> > world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
> > smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
> > tried this.
>
> I thought the end of NLM pretty well established that the WC was victim
> to a massively co-ordinated attack: "We're crippled" said Lydia. It is a
> big organisation under an all out assault by someone with vast
> resources.
Okay, I can run with that.
>Only the allegory isn't quite as laboured as in BSG.
What would BSG (nuBSG, anyway) be without vague allegory that makes one
think without itself saying much of anything?
-AOQ
Malsperanza
Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> > A lot of questions of mechanics and backstory are suddenly surfacing,
> > rather late in the day. I'm not sure it would add much pleasure or
> > interest to have all this stuff nailed down, though--at least not at
> > this point. Like the question of why another Slayer wasn't called by
> > Kendra's death or Buffy's second death, it makes my brain hurt to try
> > to sort it out, for not too much payoff.
>
> My favorite fanwank so far (unless it gets contradicted later) is that
> the succession passed from Buffy to Kendra to Faith after "Prophecy
> Girl." That'd mean the next new Slayer is called when Faith dies, and
> Buffy lives out the rest of her life/lives as an anomaly outside the
> Slayer line. Another way in which she's not like other Chosen girls.
> That doesn't explain why characters still seem to think killing Buffy
> would call a new Slayer (except that the creators probably didn't think
> it through completely), but hey, they could just be wrong. Or
> guessing, since having two Slayers has maybe never happened before.
Yes, a number of other NG members have kindly corrected my error on
this. I can't help suspecting that the writers on the show did not
entirely work out the mechanics of this, but merely cooked up a
plausible reason why Kendra and then Faith might be written into the
show, because they needed a Kendra and a Faith, and then conveniently
ignored the idea when Buffy died a second time.
I was way way more impressed with the way they brought Dawn into the
show. Introducing a kid sister in s5 took guts; making it plausible was
almost impossible, but they pulled it off admirably.
~Mal
Malsperanza
Ken from Chicago wrote:
> <jil...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1159055750.7...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> > I'll give it a try:
> >
> > "The forces protecting the Slayer line have become unstable." So the
> > Potentials are shielded, at least partially, from such an easy
> > hunt-down. While some can reasonably assume that Buffy is unique in
> > not having had a Watcher, there's no evidence that Faith had a Watcher
> > before she was called, either. It IS clear that Faith's Watcher surely
> > wasn't around for most of her life. Further responses are suspiciously
> > close to spoilers for coming episodes.
>
> Faith's watcher went all evil.
>
> > As a minor point, I know that The First, being able to be everywhere
> > and having access to the personality/memories of everyone who dies
> > (including vampires), certainly can track Potentials by tracking
> > Watchers. "How's Fred Lenick doing with that girl? Last I heard he
> > can't stand her and hopes she's never chosen." The First goes: Ah,
> > Fred Lenick!
>
> Aw, po po Fred.
>
> > I conclude that the Potentials the Watchers have not located will have
> > the longest life expectancy.
>
> Sydney Bristow got married with kids--including a proto-slayer.
Aaaauuuughh!!!
*performs self-lobotomy with spork*
~Mal
Michael Ikeda
news:1159106772.6...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com:
>
> Spike... Spike's Englishness also starts out as a marker of a
> classic movie cliche villain: he is indeed effete and fey and
> not a real manly man.
Spike is very much NOT portrayed as "effete and fey and not a real
manly man" the first time we see him in Season 3.
Malsperanza
The implication, I think, is that if Buffy falls, perhaps Spike will be
left to carry on and finish the job. There's a growing hint that the
show has dual heroes: the Grrl!Power Slayer and the Ex!Evil Vampire. Is
there room for two, or will they cancel each other out?
This episode, for all its weaknesses, does draw a clear parallel to
Buffy and Spike, through the hero-torture both are subjected to.
I also pause to note that even in a feeble episode, we get this
exchange:
DRUSILLA/FIRST to TORTURED SPIKE: Do you know why you're alive?
TORTURED SPIKE: Never figured you for existential thought, luv. I mean,
you hated Paris.
~Mal
Malsperanza
I loved Whistler, and wish he had returned. So much possibility
there...
But it's not clear that Buffy's guess is correct, is it?
~Mal
Mel
(Harmony) Watcher wrote:
> "Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
> news:dsample-36A335...@news.giganews.com...
>
>>In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.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 Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
>>>(or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
>>>criticism.")
>>>Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
>>>Director: David Grossman
>>>
>>>Lots of guests are coming to Sunnydale. First there's Joyce: dream,
>>>First, or something else, trying to get Buffy to sleep. If it's the
>>>second (by which I mean First), which seems most likely, it's an
>>>unnerving look at how well it can get into even our hero's head. In
>>>any case, there's a rather effectively disturbing quality to all
>>>these visions, since it blurs the line between reality and not at a
>>>time when it's important to stay grounded in the former. She shows
>>>up again in the rather depressing "professional life falling apart"
>>>bit.
>>
>>I'm inclined to believe that the first appearance of Joyce was just a
>>dream. Buffy *is* tired, and in need of sleep. And what Joyce tells
>>her here is actually good advice.
>>
>>
>>
>>>Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
>>>tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
>>>vampires as often as possible. And the First spends most of that time
>>>as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
>>>effect? One can posit an explanation about how he's used to seeing
>>>First/Buffy and this would throw him off his guard more, or about how
>>>Drusilla is a better representation of the appeal to get back to his
>>>past darkness. One suspects that the real reason is just tat the
>>>writers wanted to change things up a little. Nothing hugely exciting,
>>>but Landau is almost always fun to watch, and the delivery is great on
>>>"get bent." But has Spike ever been Dru's "daddy" before?
>>
>>No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its head
>>under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
>>
>
> Like you or someone else suggested a long while back, it must have been holy
> water.
> --
> ==Harmony Watcher==
>
>
>
>
Holy water would have done way more damage. It acts like acid on
vampires. It even hurt Ubie a little bit.
Mel
vague disclaimer
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
> vague disclaimer wrote:
> > In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
> > "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Oh yeah:
> >
> > > If the Watcher
> > > organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> > > their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> > > world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
> > > smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
> > > tried this.
> >
> > I thought the end of NLM pretty well established that the WC was victim
> > to a massively co-ordinated attack: "We're crippled" said Lydia. It is a
> > big organisation under an all out assault by someone with vast
> > resources.
>
> Okay, I can run with that.
It's always worth remembering that the show is trying to make big points
on a small budget (relatively speaking).
> >Only the allegory isn't quite as laboured as in BSG.
>
> What would BSG (nuBSG, anyway) be without vague allegory that makes one
> think without itself saying much of anything?
>
> -AOQ
"Made" rather than "makes". I was cheerfully watching when suddenly I
realised (about half way through S2) that I didn't especially care what
happened next.
--
Wikipedia: like Usenet, moderated by trolls
Elisi
> A reminder: Please avoid spoilers for later episodes in these review
> threads.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> (or "This isn't just a review. It's the thing that invented
> criticism.")
> Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
> Director: David Grossman
>
> Lots of guests are coming to Sunnydale. First there's Joyce: dream,
> First, or something else, trying to get Buffy to sleep. If it's the
> second (by which I mean First), which seems most likely, it's an
> unnerving look at how well it can get into even our hero's head. In
> any case, there's a rather effectively disturbing quality to all
> these visions, since it blurs the line between reality and not at a
> time when it's important to stay grounded in the former. She shows
> up again in the rather depressing "professional life falling apart"
> bit.
The Joyce dreams are very, very good. And we know that The First got
Buffy into Angel's dreams in Amends, and that Jonathan and Andrew had
v. scary dreams (which is what sent them back to Sunnydale). So who
knows?
Npghnyyl gur fubbgvat fpevcg unf n avpr yvggyr rkgen ovg, gung V thrff
gurl phg fb nf gb or zber nzovthbhf:
WBLPR: Ner lbh jbeevrq nobhg gur fha tbvat qbja? Orpnhfr fbzr guvatf
lbh pna'g pbageby. Gur fha nyjnlf tbrf qbja. Gur fha nyjnlf pbzrf hc.
(orng)
Rkprcg va Y.N., whfg bs yngr.
> The other visitors are Giles and his mixed-accented charges, quickly
> making the house seem quite crowded. Apparently "he escaped" is
> all the explanation the show intends to provide for how he survived
> "Sleeper." Unless this is a hint that Not All Is As It Seems with
> him, although right now I see no benefit to going that route. One of
> the ways this episode tries to set this season's threat apart from
> past ones is to not even suggest that Giles will provide some sort of
> special insight. He shows up, and within minutes he's mostly saying
> "I don't know" and hoping that Buffy will be better prepared than
> everyone else.
Lots of good thoughts about Giles above. And I think he must be in deep
shock still. He might not have like the Council, but it had shaped his
entire life and he must be more bewildered now than after Buffy's
death.
> So the First has decided to take out the Watchers and the proto-Slayers
> before going for Buffy (and Faith, getting a mention)... From a
> writing perspective there's a bit of a Catch-22 here. If the Watcher
> organization is widespread, it's hard to imagine the 'Bearers doing
> their job so perfectly such that they've taken out almost all the
> world's proto-Slayers without anyone responding, but if it's a
> smaller operation, it's harder to see why no previous Big Bad has
> tried this.
There is apparently a tie-in novel where Spike (and Dru?) try to do
this. Haven't read it, but the idea has been around.
Having the Watchers so quickly written out of the story
> seems a little too neat, but since I didn't like them anyway, maybe
> it'll make the rest of the year less cluttered.
It also makes Buffy completely alone, with all the responsibility on
her shoulders. (I have more thoughts on Slayers & Watchers etc. but
will save them for another time)
On the whole, with
> regards to the First Evil, I'm still cold (as I was in "Amends")
> on the notion that before we've seen evil, but now this is *really
> bad* evil. This is mitigated somewhat by how well it takes on the
> personalities of its chosen avatars, but still has the danger of
> getting old. On the other hand, if the writers stick with the notion
> that the First can never take physical form, only influence, it emerges
> as a unique kind of enemy unlike anything else on the show. How do you
> fight an abstract?
That's the reason I love it. Buffy _can't_ fight it. There is a
complete divide between the physical power (bringers, ubervamp) and the
mind that controls them, and that means that Buffy cannot win (as far
as we can see). Glory was very, very powerful, but the power was tied
up in _her_. The First's real power is more Angelus-like, in that it
loves to mentally torture its victims, but nothing as simple as a sword
will get rid of it.
> Speaking of which, Spike spends the bulk of the episode getting
> tortured - based on n=2, the Buffyerse is out to torture souled
> vampires as often as possible. And the First spends most of that time
> as Drusilla. Why Dru instead of Buffy, which would have more of an
> effect? One can posit an explanation about how he's used to seeing
> First/Buffy and this would throw him off his guard more, or about how
> Drusilla is a better representation of the appeal to get back to his
> past darkness.
I think that's it - The First is trying to lure him back to evil. If it
can get him to become a willing player for the wrong side, that would
be excellent (all of which of course calls back to the Shanshu and the
fact that it's not known if the vampire with a soul will be fighting
for good or evil.). It has also just occurred to me, that this might
have been the reason why it make him kill (& sire) so many people.
("He's fed on human blood - that's got to do something.") The First
tried to get him back in touch with the monster inside, showing that he
*could* be all monster, by somehow bypassing the chip. Of course it
doesn't work, but I have to love it just for the lines:
First!Dru: Do you know why you're alive?
Spike: Never figured you for... existential thought, love. I mean, you
hated Paris.
One suspects that the real reason is just tat the
> writers wanted to change things up a little. Nothing hugely exciting,
> but Landau is almost always fun to watch, and the delivery is great on
> "get bent." But has Spike ever been Dru's "daddy" before?
Halloween.
> Not much to say about... not much to say about the whole episode,
> really. But resuming the original sentence, not much to say about the
> attack on Willow except that I like the way the scene is put together,
> both for the special effects and for Hannigan's performance of being
> so badly smacked down. The visual is a little reminiscent of the
> glowballs from "Fear Itself." Not much to say about the encounters
> with Wood - he likes mysteries, huh? A bit obvious, but still a nice
> line.
Ah, but the lines before are just as important, if not more so:
PRINCIPAL WOOD: Yeah, yeah... I'm only saying that once you see true
Evil, it can have
some serious afterburn. And then you can't unsee what you saw. Ever.
Hmmmmm. What has he seen? Or is he evil and is this a warning?
And not much to say about Andrew except that he's funny,
> especially when he keeps almost getting Xander under his spell.
I wouldn't say it's a spell, just that the two of them come from the
same geek infested background.
Since
> the Trio were vaguely parallels of the central players last season, any
> parallel-lovers want to make a case for his quest for redemption as a
> parody of Spike's?
Well currently Andrew is somewhere around 'Crush':
"Buffy, I've changed!"
Andrew is currently all talk, but he seems to have no concept of what
either good nor evil _is_. He's wittering on about redemption because
currently he's stuck at the good guys place, but what if he got away?
Would any of it stick at all? We see how childishly superficial his
view is of the world when he says:
"She seems like a good leader. Her hair is shiny."
We see Spike and Willow and Xander and Buffy struggle with being good,
with doing the right thing in a world of grey. Andrew just jumps
between good and evil, seeing the difference as nothing more than
names. In a way he knows very little about evil, because he's just
always caved in to pressure (there's that word again). You want to test
something, put it under pressure. Spike is doing just fine as we can
see. What will happen next time Evil puts pressure on Andrew? Will he
cave again? Or is he actually absorbing something from the good guys?
(I love Andrew btw, he's very, very funny and wonderfully entertaining.
*pets him*)
> This is an odd show in that the character moments are mostly just okay,
> but the fight scenes are top-notch, a real high point. It's usually
> the other way 'round. The first encounter between Slayer and
> Übervamp (I'm giving it the umlaut, even if the show doesn't) is
> the better of the two, and it's wonderfully choreographed. There's
> a lot of hard hitting but a lot of quick movements and dodging too,
> resembling a martial arts boxing match. Buffy's comprehension that
> this isn't a normal vampire comes in increments, as not only does
> staking it not work, but it hits harder then we're used to, and keeps
> coming, and only gradually reveals just how quick and mobile it is.
> Gellar sells the panic to make that vintage monster-movie scene work,
> in which someone's trying to climb away from something and gets their
> ankle grabbed. And it's a relief to the viewer to know that at least
> sunlight still works on this thing. A later rematch has more of Buffy
> never giving up, and more of the Übervamp getting a chance to show
> just how strong it is.
He might not look like much, but looks aren't everything.
> More questions about how this "being called" thing works - how do
> the watchers tell a potential Slayer from just some girl?
Magic.
Do they have
> all of the potentials under wraps, or do some elude them?
More in the next few eps.
Horace LaBadie
wrote:
>
> I don't mind the idea of the First, but this episode's lameness extends its
> evil hand to it. We are told that little is written about the First because
> it pre-dates the written record. Hello? Lots of things pre-date the written
> record, lions, wine and Mt Fuji to name but three. If you pre-date the
> written record it means that as soon as writing is invented people can start
> writing about you, and there will be lots of stuff written. Aren't the
> writers even reading over what they've written at this point in the series
> to see that it makes sense?
Considering how much written material, and the knowledge that it
contained, has vanished in the last 2,000 years, it should not be a
controversial statement that much that was known in pre-literate
cultures also could have been lost.
It has been estimated that as little as 5 per cent of Classical Greek
and Latin literature is extant, despite that there were hundreds or
thousands of copies of most works scattered over a wide geographical
area. All that it takes to erase knowledge in a pre-literate society is
to kill the few people who are relied upon to retain and transmit it.
And some knowledge is considered too important to write down. The
messenger is the message.
It's not as if one can go out on expedition and rediscover the FE, who,
after all, might not want to be rediscovered just then.
And, of course, the FE might have had destroyed anything truly
revelatory that had been written about it.
SNIP
> The Ubervamp is a harmless enough fellow on his own, but again Giles's
> explanation makes me join him in going Grr. A different sub species of
> vampires? Like Neanderthals? How do you get a seperate sub species of a
> creature made by fusing a demon and a human. Did they fuse with actual
> neanderthals? But since Neanderthals died out, obviously having a weakness
> our ancestors didn't, wouldn't that make vamps based on them Untervamps? The
> Master also had the Nosferatu thing going for him, but he wasn't said to be
> a different kind of vampire, just older. And his linquisitic skills weren't
> restricted to "Grr"
Who says that the Turok-Han ever fused with anything? It's merely a pure
demon of a different species (not sub-species). The original vampire
that mixed its blood with human was also a pure demon, and we have seen
its natural form in Pylea.
HWL
Arbitrar Of Quality
> Since
> > the Trio were vaguely parallels of the central players last season, any
> > parallel-lovers want to make a case for his quest for redemption as a
> > parody of Spike's?
>
> Well currently Andrew is somewhere around 'Crush':
>
> "Buffy, I've changed!"
>
> Andrew is currently all talk, but he seems to have no concept of what
> either good nor evil _is_. He's wittering on about redemption because
> currently he's stuck at the good guys place, but what if he got away?
> Would any of it stick at all? We see how childishly superficial his
> view is of the world when he says:
>
> "She seems like a good leader. Her hair is shiny."
>
> We see Spike and Willow and Xander and Buffy struggle with being good,
> with doing the right thing in a world of grey. Andrew just jumps
> between good and evil, seeing the difference as nothing more than
> names. In a way he knows very little about evil, because he's just
> always caved in to pressure (there's that word again). You want to test
> something, put it under pressure. Spike is doing just fine as we can
> see. What will happen next time Evil puts pressure on Andrew? Will he
> cave again? Or is he actually absorbing something from the good guys?
>
> (I love Andrew btw, he's very, very funny and wonderfully entertaining.
> *pets him*)
Well, I did make the request. That's good paralleling. If one wants
to extend the metaphor, that vapid childish dichotomy perspective is
his equivalent of Spike's demon nature. Unsouled Spike had a way of
doing good for the wrong reasons, or doing evil when trying to do good
because there were certain things he couldn't comprehend. Unlike
Spike, Andrew isn't fundamentally evil in a way that'd require a
soul-quest to fix, but maybe the right comic-relief version of a big
trauma or a symbolic gesture could help him change, if that's what he
wants.
-AOQ
Arbitrar Of Quality
> >Seriously, no one ever eats anything but pizza and dessert on this
> >show.
>
> And biscuits. Don't forget biscuits - they're brill!
Well, maybe that's how they do things in *Britain* - they've got that
royal family and all kinds of
problems - but here in AOQ-world, that falls under the classification
of "dessert."
-AOQ
Don Sample
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
>
> My favorite fanwank so far (unless it gets contradicted later) is that
> the succession passed from Buffy to Kendra to Faith after "Prophecy
> Girl." That'd mean the next new Slayer is called when Faith dies, and
> Buffy lives out the rest of her life/lives as an anomaly outside the
> Slayer line. Another way in which she's not like other Chosen girls.
> That doesn't explain why characters still seem to think killing Buffy
> would call a new Slayer (except that the creators probably didn't think
> it through completely), but hey, they could just be wrong. Or
> guessing, since having two Slayers has maybe never happened before.
>
> -AOQ
I think they thought it through, and decided to keep their options open.
As soon as Kendra died, people were asking "are we going to see another
Slayer to replace her?" and Joss was thinking about it enough that he
lied when people asked him the question. He spent the whole summer of
1998 telling people that Buffy was the only Slayer now, when he'd
already hired Eliza to play Faith.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
Don Sample
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote:
We also have no idea how large the pool of Potential Slayers really is.
At this point we've seen six (three killed and the three that came with
Giles) but we've been told that there are a lot more. There could be
dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of them scattered around the world.
The Council doesn't have a foolproof method of identifying them all
(they missed Buffy completely.) We don't know if the First can do so
either. The likelihood that *all* Potentials could be located and
killed seems very slight.
(Harmony) Watcher
"Mel" <melb...@uci.net> wrote in message
news:Sv2dnT4xOtPdOIvY...@uci.net...
Not necessarily. Ubie has a thick hide. :)
The degree of "holiness" of a blessed water mass is a function of the degree
of faith of the priest who does the blessing, as well as a function of the
mass of the water, among many other variables. And holy water does not age
well: it may not be exponential decay, but the "holiness" degree is
inversely proportional to time.
It could have been a kegger of holy water stolen from the Vatican. By the
time it reached Sunnydale, it would have already aged a lot, so much so that
it hurts a vamp very much but it would be just a soft tickle for the
ubervamp. :)
--
==Harmony Watcher
(Harmony) Watcher
"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@wildmail.com> wrote in message
news:1159107099.4...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
"hyperbolae") for Slayer activation: it's all about the density of those
mystical "midichlorians" present in each Slayer[1]. As long as a Slayer
carries enough of those critters in her blood at the time of death, they
will trigger the mystical process of activating the potential in closest
proximity to the dead Slayer.
End result? Potentially multiple Slayer lines in the family tree of Slayers.
Straightlining a family tree is a bit boring. Running into a Slayer line
unknown to the Watchers' Council would make interesting stories too.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
<rot13>
[1]Zber cerpvfryl, FI-zvqvpuybevnaf (FI sbe "Fynlre bs gur Inzclerf").
</rot13>
Don Sample
"\(Harmony\) Watcher" <nob...@nonesuch.com> wrote:
> The degree of "holiness" of a blessed water mass is a function of the degree
> of faith of the priest who does the blessing, as well as a function of the
> mass of the water, among many other variables. And holy water does not age
> well: it may not be exponential decay, but the "holiness" degree is
> inversely proportional to time.
>
> It could have been a kegger of holy water stolen from the Vatican. By the
> time it reached Sunnydale, it would have already aged a lot, so much so that
> it hurts a vamp very much but it would be just a soft tickle for the
> ubervamp. :)
Not according to the Catholic Church. Water is either holy, or it's
not. There are no gradations of its holiness.
Adding regular water to holy water does not dilute it. It makes more
holy water.
(Harmony) Watcher
mystical midichlorians there are in the girl's blood. Most are born with an
insignificant amount of those critters all living dormant. A few "chosen"
ones amongst a hundred thousands girls have high enough density of those
critters to qualify as a "potential", waiting for the right moment to be
activated if a Slayer died in closest proximity to her.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
(Harmony) Watcher
> In article <vQBRg.20175$5R2.18716@pd7urf3no>,
> "\(Harmony\) Watcher" <nob...@nonesuch.com> wrote:
>
> > The degree of "holiness" of a blessed water mass is a function of the
degree
> > of faith of the priest who does the blessing, as well as a function of
the
> > mass of the water, among many other variables. And holy water does not
age
> > well: it may not be exponential decay, but the "holiness" degree is
> > inversely proportional to time.
> >
> > It could have been a kegger of holy water stolen from the Vatican. By
the
> > time it reached Sunnydale, it would have already aged a lot, so much so
that
> > it hurts a vamp very much but it would be just a soft tickle for the
> > ubervamp. :)
>
> Not according to the Catholic Church. Water is either holy, or it's
> not. There are no gradations of its holiness.
>
> Adding regular water to holy water does not dilute it. It makes more
> holy water.
>
the blessing. If I add a drop of holy water into the Indian Ocean, would
that make the entire Indian Ocean holy forever and ever? No holy drops of
water blessed by *man* should and could have that property. If it was JC
himself, maybe it would be a different story.
--
==Harmony Watcher
(Harmony) Watcher
"Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1159109390....@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>
> <snip>
>
> I also pause to note that even in a feeble episode, we get this
> exchange:
>
> DRUSILLA/FIRST to TORTURED SPIKE: Do you know why you're alive?
>
> TORTURED SPIKE: Never figured you for existential thought, luv. I mean,
> you hated Paris.
>
>
example to show that the "William" perona inside Spike was very much alive.
It influenced the monster to have at least a passing interest to academic
stuffs. I'll go out on a limb to hazard a guess that Spike the monster was
pretty much still the poet all his undead life, and in his secret drawers,
there were tons of poems written about Dru before he met Buffy.
--
==Harmony Watcher
Stephen Tempest
>
>"Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
>> Adding regular water to holy water does not dilute it. It makes more
>> holy water.
>>
>... which is demonstrably false, of course, if it was *man* himself who did
>the blessing. If I add a drop of holy water into the Indian Ocean, would
>that make the entire Indian Ocean holy forever and ever?
'Demonstrably' false? What special properties does holy water have
compared to regular water, that would allow you to prove to an
unbiased observer that adding it to the Indian Ocean does, or does
not, turn it into holy water as well?
Unless you actually have a vampire available, and could push it into
the ocean as part of the experiment...
Stephen
Apteryx
> In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
>> show.
>
>
>> This Is Really Stupid But I Laughed Anyway moment(s):
>> - Running a search engine for "evil"
>
> A search for "evil" in Google now gets 273,000,000 hits. I tried it out
> back when this episode first ran, and got 10,600,000 hits, still ten
> times more hits than Buffy got.
A 27 times increase in evil in 3 years? Is that a sign of the Apocalypse?
--
Apteryx
jil...@hotmail.com
Ken from Chicago wrote:
> Faith's watcher went all evil.
No. Faith's Watcher was killed by Kakistos in some horrible way that
traumatised Faith.
The evil woman had been kicked out of the Watchers when they caught on
that she was evil.
Malsperanza
Don Sample wrote:
> In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.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 Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its head
> under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
Since vampires have physical sensation, and near-drowning is very
painful, I suppose it's just a way of inflicting intense pain, over and
over. The demons doing the torturing, and the First, don't seem to
realize that Spike can handle the discomfort because he has been
through much worse tortures in Lurky Demon's cave, which leads me to
wonder exactly how much info the First has about the dead people it
inhabits. Does it know Spike has his soul back? Surely yes. Does it
know how he got it back? I should think so.
~Mal
(Harmony) Watcher
"Stephen Tempest" <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:2k5eh296lf9ka09ea...@4ax.com...
big mass of water), according to that claim that "adding holy water to water
make more holy water", pretty soon the entire face of the earth will be
covered by holy water. See the flaw in that theory? Demonstrably false
because it leads to an absurd conclusion.
Oh, wait a minute. I'm obviously wrong. The Ganges water is indeed holy.
That's why many people bathe in it. :)
http://www.karlgrobl.com/Ganges/index.htm
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Don Sample
"Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Don Sample wrote:
> > In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.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 Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
>
>
> > No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its head
> > under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
>
>
> Since vampires have physical sensation, and near-drowning is very
> painful, I suppose it's just a way of inflicting intense pain, over and
> over.
Near drowning is only painful because people have to breathe. Spike can
hold his breath for hours if he wants to.
(Harmony) Watcher
> In article <1159143287....@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> "Malsperanza" <malsp...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Don Sample wrote:
> > > In article <1159039590....@m7g2000cwm.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 Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
> >
> >
> > > No comments on the silliness of torturing a vamp by ducking its head
> > > under water? What's that supposed to do to it?
> >
> >
> > Since vampires have physical sensation, and near-drowning is very
> > painful, I suppose it's just a way of inflicting intense pain, over and
> > over.
>
> Near drowning is only painful because people have to breathe. Spike can
> hold his breath for hours if he wants to.
>
forgetting that vamps in Buffyverse don't breathe.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Apteryx
news:hwlabadiejr-62B9...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
> In article <ef4g8p$tcu$1...@emma.aioe.org>, "Apteryx" <apt...@xtra.co.nz>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't mind the idea of the First, but this episode's lameness extends
>> its
>> evil hand to it. We are told that little is written about the First
>> because
>> it pre-dates the written record. Hello? Lots of things pre-date the
>> written
>> record, lions, wine and Mt Fuji to name but three. If you pre-date the
>> written record it means that as soon as writing is invented people can
>> start
>> writing about you, and there will be lots of stuff written. Aren't the
>> writers even reading over what they've written at this point in the
>> series
>> to see that it makes sense?
>
>
> Considering how much written material, and the knowledge that it
> contained, has vanished in the last 2,000 years, it should not be a
> controversial statement that much that was known in pre-literate
> cultures also could have been lost.
>
No, that's not a controversial statement. It's also not the statement Giles
makes. He says that there is no documentation on the First BECAUSE it
predates written history. That makes no sense. It is one of two reasons he
gives for the lack of doucmentation (the other, that the First rarely shows
its true face is at least a reason supporting that lack; the predating
business is not)
> And some knowledge is considered too important to write down. The
> messenger is the message.
Possibly, in some circles. But its not a reason Giles gives
> And, of course, the FE might have had destroyed anything truly
> revelatory that had been written about it.
Possibly. But its not a reason Giles gives.
--
Apteryx
Don Sample
"\(Harmony\) Watcher" <nob...@nonesuch.com> wrote:
> "Stephen Tempest" <ste...@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:2k5eh296lf9ka09ea...@4ax.com...
> > "\(Harmony\) Watcher" <nob...@nonesuch.com> writes:
> >
> > >
> > >"Don Sample" <dsa...@synapse.net> wrote in message
> > >> Adding regular water to holy water does not dilute it. It makes more
> > >> holy water.
> > >>
> > >... which is demonstrably false, of course, if it was *man*
> > >himself who did the blessing. If I add a drop of holy water into
> > >the Indian Ocean, would that make the entire Indian Ocean holy
> > >forever and ever?
> >
> > 'Demonstrably' false? What special properties does holy water have
> > compared to regular water, that would allow you to prove to an
> > unbiased observer that adding it to the Indian Ocean does, or does
> > not, turn it into holy water as well?
> >
> > Unless you actually have a vampire available, and could push it into
> > the ocean as part of the experiment...
> >
> If tomorrow I add a single drop of holy water to the Indian Ocean (or any
> big mass of water), according to that claim that "adding holy water to water
> make more holy water", pretty soon the entire face of the earth will be
> covered by holy water. See the flaw in that theory? Demonstrably false
> because it leads to an absurd conclusion.
No more absurd than most of the other things the Church asks people to
believe.
Though I would point out that it's regular water that you have to add to
the holy water to make it all holy, not the other way around. If you
could arrange to pour an ocean into your drop of holy water, you could
make an ocean of holy water.
Malsperanza
I've wondered about that, because they keep mentioning it, but then we
actually see vampires panting, out of breath, gasping, catching their
breath, etc. It's a bit like the fact that vampires are supposedly room
temperature, but when Spike is feeling ill, we see him shivering and
huddled in a blanket, clearly chilled. So I suppose we can imagine a
separation between necessary bodily functions (which vampires don't
have) and bodily sensations, which vampires do have (including feeling
sexual pleasure). Otherwise, it's hard to see how any torture of
vampires other than burning them with crosses and holy water could be
understood as torture at all. Yet the punishments Spike endures in
Lurky Demon's cave clearly cause him to suffer. The bug up his nose is
obviously no more lethal than having his head held under water, but
both cause him pain.
~Mal
(Harmony) Watcher
LOL. Introducing asymmetry into the problem will only complicate how it
could be accomplished, but does not render it impossible, old wise one. :)
Fill a bucket half-full with sea water, and pour it into a bucket half-full
of holy water. Now you have a bucket full of holy water. Now, empty half of
the bucket of holy water into the ocean. Still have half a bucket full of
holy water left over. Repeat the process ad infinitum. And use a machine to
automate the process for the impatient ones.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
(Harmony) Watcher
One could chalk it up to the fact that Joss couldn't find any undead actors
to play the parts.
The bugs in Lurky's cave remind me of similar looking bugs in "The Mummy"
and "The Mummy Returns". If those bugs crawl inside the nose or underneath
the skin, it sure would be extremely painful assuming they bite as they move
about. And vamps in Buffyverse do feel pain. And if those bugs eat up enough
of the internal organs still remaining in the vamp, it might even destroy
the vamp. For all we know, vamps lack a functioning heart, but all other
organs may still be functioning via some kind of mystical life force. That's
my Andrew-ish explanation/hyperbolae.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Ian Galbraith
[snip re nuBSG]
> "Made" rather than "makes". I was cheerfully watching when suddenly I
> realised (about half way through S2) that I didn't especially care what
> happened next.
Yeah well making the characters completely unlikeable will do that. They
wanted flawed characters and went too far. Not to mention the
inconsistent characterisation that totally undercut the S2 finale.
--
You can't stop the signal
Don Sample
Doing it that way, you'd never have more than a bucket full of holy
water.
--
Mel
If there is _no_ documentation, what did Giles bring with him in those
files and books? There is a real big lack of documentation now because
the Watcher library go boom. What Giles brought is all that's left.
However, as the trip to Beljoxa's Eye tells us, there may be other
sources of information that are *not* written down. It may be that TF
was most active *before* written history (the time of myth, etc) so most
available information will be oral tradition type stuff which is not as
easily accessed.
Mel
Mauro
"(Harmony) Watcher" <nob...@nonesuch.com> wrote in message
news:rUFRg.23930$R63.376@pd7urf1no...
> Indeed. And I don't think any writer of ME's calibre are capable of
> forgetting that vamps in Buffyverse don't breathe.
Wasn't there a second season episode, maybe somewhere near the end of the
second season, perhaps, where a certain vampire grabs another vampire by the
throat and holds her until she becomes unconscious? The episode title was
something like, "Changing Into," or "Converting," or "Evolving Into," or
some such? I think it was part two of a two-parter...
--
Mauro Diotallevi
"Hey, Harry, you haven't done anything useful for a while -- you be the god
of jello now." -- Patricia Wrede, 8/16/2006 on rasfc
(Harmony) Watcher
holy water stays as a holy mass of water even though the surrounding water
may be unholy. By your theory, the surrounding water will not be able to
diminish the holiness of that tiny mass of holy water.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
(Harmony) Watcher
"Mauro" <Spam...@spamblock.com> wrote in message
news:7_HRg.1158$8_5...@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>
> "(Harmony) Watcher" <nob...@nonesuch.com> wrote in message
> news:rUFRg.23930$R63.376@pd7urf1no...
>
> > Indeed. And I don't think any writer of ME's calibre are capable of
> > forgetting that vamps in Buffyverse don't breathe.
>
> Wasn't there a second season episode, maybe somewhere near the end of the
> second season, perhaps, where a certain vampire grabs another vampire by
the
> throat and holds her until she becomes unconscious? The episode title was
> something like, "Changing Into," or "Converting," or "Evolving Into," or
> some such? I think it was part two of a two-parter...
>
title is "Into the Woods" of Season 5: http://bdb.vrya.net/bdb/ep.php
Season Two has two two-parters: "What's My Line, Part 1 and 2" and
"Becoming, Part 1 and 2": http://bdb.vrya.net/bdb/ep.php#season2
Perhaps a vamp can be choked unconscious by keeping its mystical life force
from circulating. If it's not blood circulating to keep the organs
functioning, something else could still be circulating.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Rowan Hawthorn
> "Mauro" <Spam...@spamblock.com> wrote in message
> news:7_HRg.1158$8_5...@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>> "(Harmony) Watcher" <nob...@nonesuch.com> wrote in message
>> news:rUFRg.23930$R63.376@pd7urf1no...
>>
>>> Indeed. And I don't think any writer of ME's calibre are capable of
>>> forgetting that vamps in Buffyverse don't breathe.
>> Wasn't there a second season episode, maybe somewhere near the end of the
>> second season, perhaps, where a certain vampire grabs another vampire by
> the
>> throat and holds her until she becomes unconscious? The episode title was
>> something like, "Changing Into," or "Converting," or "Evolving Into," or
>> some such? I think it was part two of a two-parter...
>>
> You lost me there. The only BtVS title with the word "into" as part of the
> title is "Into the Woods" of Season 5: http://bdb.vrya.net/bdb/ep.php
>
> Season Two has two two-parters: "What's My Line, Part 1 and 2" and
> "Becoming, Part 1 and 2": http://bdb.vrya.net/bdb/ep.php#season2
>
"Becoming" is the one (s)he is referring to (Spike choking Dru unconscious.)
--
Rowan Hawthorn
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer"
Don Sample
No. The holy water that gets dumped out loses its holiness. Adding
holy water to regular water makes regular water. [1] Adding regular
water to holy water only makes more regular water.
[1] In some belief systems you can work it the other way, but you have
to keep the ratio below a certain threshold. 10% HW to 90% RW makes 100%
HW, but 9% HW to 91% RW makes 100% RW.
Don Sample
Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
In "Becoming" Spike renders Dru unconscious by using a sleeper hold on
her. But the sleeper isn't a choke hold. It works by restricting the
flow of blood to the brain, not air to the lungs.
It takes some time to knock someone out by choking. Give it a try.
Exhale now, and then see how long it takes before you have to inhale
again. Nearly everyone can go 20 seconds. If you're in good shape you
might last a minute. And that's just the time it takes to start feeling
like you really need to breath again. It takes even longer to really
pass out.
Don Sample
Mel <melb...@uci.net> wrote:
> Apteryx wrote:
> > No, that's not a controversial statement. It's also not the statement Giles
> > makes. He says that there is no documentation on the First BECAUSE it
> > predates written history. That makes no sense. It is one of two reasons he
> > gives for the lack of doucmentation (the other, that the First rarely shows
> > its true face is at least a reason supporting that lack; the predating
> > business is not)
>
>
> If there is _no_ documentation, what did Giles bring with him in those
> files and books? There is a real big lack of documentation now because
> the Watcher library go boom. What Giles brought is all that's left.
The implication was that Giles removed everything that was relevant to
the First before the Watcher's HQ blew up real good. They never had
much information about it.
(Harmony) Watcher
diluted earlier. Granted, according to "your" theory, adding HW to RW would
not make more HW, but the claim that adding HW to RW will ruin the potency
of the HW makes no sense.
> Adding holy water to regular water makes regular water. [1]
> Adding regular water to holy water only makes more regular water.
>
Your last sentence makes no sense. I thought you said (RW->HW) gives more
HW.
Anyway, I don't care about the make the oceans holy. I now know how to make
me a full bathtub full of Holy Water by your theory. :)
> [1] In some belief systems you can work it the other way, but you have
> to keep the ratio below a certain threshold. 10% HW to 90% RW makes 100%
> HW, but 9% HW to 91% RW makes 100% RW.
>
Now you tell me. You made this up, didn't you? :p
I'd still imagine that it was a kegger of HW that the First used to tortue
Spike.
--
==Harmony Watcher==
Dwayne Johnson
Give it a try. Exhale now, and then see how long it takes before you
have to inhale again. Nearly everyone can go 20 seconds. If you're in
good shape you might last a minute. And that's just the time it takes to
start feeling like you really need to breath again. It takes even longer
to really pass
i tried that. i lasted 1 minute 8 seconds... (i think i could of lasted
even longer)