Buffy Season One Episode Three: Walter Brennan

[koganbot]

What's working for me through three episodes: the banter. That's the show, really. The high school world is referred to rather than actually created. The vampires/witches so far are so what. The relationship between Buffy and her mom is played for laughs (Mom thinks Buffy is a typically inscrutable teen, whereas Buffy can't let Mom in on what's happening since it's all about vampires and witches and dead people); it's potentially touching but isn't something I feel yet.

The banter, done with a light touch, is developing a theme: Buffy needs more help from others than she's willing to admit. But whether the "help" that Willow and Xander provide actually helps her more than harms her is going to be a question for a while. As Episode One - and several hundred westerns, detective stories, and action-adventure movies - have already determined, friends make you vulnerable, friends can be used by your enemies as bait. But your concern for your friends also commits you to the world, commits you to the fight. And friends can actually help you, at times. See To Have And Have Not and Rio Bravo for the relationship between Humphrey Bogart and Walter Brennan in the first and John Wayne and Walter Brennan in the second (and the gang of losers they hook up with in each). And The Far Country with Jimmy Stewart and Walter Brennan.

Of course, Xander and Willow need to help Buffy. Their psyches demand it. Helping Buffy gives them purpose. This is mostly communicated through wisecracks. In the wisecracks, Buffy tends to denigrate her situation, Xander and Willow tend to denigrate themselves.

Potential danger: if she rejects their help, they'll want to help someone, 'cause they need to.

(No spoilers, please.)

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

superb upside to yr newfound interest

i realised i hadn't had any of my subscription buffy complete-set dvds for ages, and i called them and realised a debit card had expired and my sub had lapsed a month ago w/o me noticing

plainly this happens a lot as the woman on the phone sorted it out in no time at all hurrah!

[koganbot]

What does "subscription" mean? Weren't all seasons on DVD since 2004? (Hmmmm. Denver Public Library seems to think that there was an eighth season, too. I wonder what that is.)(All seven seasons are in the Denver Public Library system in multiple copies but most are checked out. I see that one is allowed to reserve DVDs just as one can reserve most books.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

it means i get to own a complete set of buffy and angel gradually -- month by month -- for a lot less than if i bought them in one go, by paying monthly

"eighth season" is the name for the comicbook -- or rather, a very specific storyline of the comicbook (since there was a comicbook in parallel with the TV series also)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i have a ton of them on decaying videotape but this way i get to watch buffy-and-angel as a dyad, as they were broadcast in the US but not in the UK (where they were picked up by difft channels)

[koganbot]

I had no idea there was an Angel-related-to-Buffy series until I looked at the DPL catalog a few minutes ago. Did Angel go all seven seasons too? Did it start at the same time, or did it spin off?

those requested spoilers

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Did Angel go all seven seasons too? No (five I think)
Did it start at the same time? No
Did it spin off? Yes

Even this much is a bit of a giveaway of something, but I felt you'd already intuited what mattered. (ie that angel matters)

(one of the interesting things about having to write a synopsis for S&S is thinking hard about giving a storyline for future researchers -- which is the mandated purpose -- which won't wreck it for them if they ever see it! It's often quite a conundrum... )

Re: those requested spoilers

[koganbot]

Angel matters

Well, the series Angel turning up on a "Buffy" search gives that away. But also the line in Episode Two where Buffy asks him something about his relationship with friends ("Haven't you ever had a friend who....?" or something of the sort), Angel pauses, and Buffy says, "That's not a stumper," we and she probably realizing that "friends" is a very problematic term for Angel. They're not going to do that if Angel weren't going to matter.

Re: those requested spoilers

[koganbot]

Got a friend down there, or at least a potential friend. Do you know what it's like to have a friend?

[Pause]

That wasn't supposed to be a stumper.

Re: those requested spoilers

[koganbot]

Don't know if you saw: at the end of the Episode Two thread I mentioned that Angel brings to mind Tchéky Karyo in La Femme Nikita (movie version). Secretly, without her knowing it, Angel is grooming Buffy; secretly, he cares about her; secretly, he's proud of her. (Perhaps.) (Though unlike Bob-Nikita, there's not going to be a Pygmalion-Galatea relation in Buffy, at least I don't think so.)

Re: those requested spoilers

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i saw that, yes -- i am currently listing between the buffy musical and my fair lady

Re: those requested spoilers

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

listing similarities i mean

Re: those requested spoilers

[koganbot]

as opposed to tilting back and forth between one and the other, as a ship

Re: those requested spoilers

[koganbot]

I paused about telling you there was a Pygmalion-Galatea relationship in La Femme Nikita, until I realized that if you can't figure out a few minutes into the movie that that's going to be at least a subtheme, you have no business going to the movies.

Re: those requested spoilers

[koganbot]

There are two stunning surprises near the start of the Harrison Ford film Witness, except neither will be a surprise to anyone who's read a review or seen a trailer (i.e., 99% of anyone who's likely to see the film), since there's no way to say what the film is about without giving them away.

Re: those requested spoilers

[koganbot]

Three surprises, actually, and the trailer gives them all away (and most of the film).

[koganbot]

More time-efficient doing a search for "Buffy" than for "Angel." Latter seems to start a couple of years after Buffy, though I don't necessarily trust DPL catalog info. DPL has Angel, though in many fewer copies than Buffy. But, as with Buffy, most are checked out.

[koganbot]

I idly looked at the TV series DVDs whenever I popped by my local branch (about once every couple of weeks), and they seemed to have the same stuff most of the time, and never Buffy, though it was one of the ones I knew I wanted - but I never actually determined if I could reserve Buffy and have it shipped from another branch, [though I assumed I could, but that there would be a long wait]. I was actually shocked to see it sitting on the shelf on Saturday, and that it was Season One. My local branch seems to stock a lot of Season Five of popular series.

They have Season One of Sanford And Son, which just sits there. I've been meaning to check it out, since I've never seen the show and know little about Redd Foxx.

The local branch has the complete My So-Called Life, though it's rarely on the shelf. Given that I did see all episodes one or more time on MTV back in the day, I restrain myself from checking it out.

So far Buffy hasn't tried to do what My So-Called Life did effortlessly from the start: created a sense of a school that would exist even if the six main teen characters didn't. Ditto for creating a relationship between Angela and family that seemed to have an ongoing existence rather than just showing up for gags and plot complications.

The reason I think of Howard Hawks and Buffy is that, though Hawks was fine at giving the sense that there's a world beyond the edge of the screen, he's really only interested in relations among the five or so main characters, and often in how groups pull together or don't. All is usually shot at eye-level, for the psychological interplay. (Not surprisingly, I was tipped off by your Voice piece to keep my eye on intragroup psychology.)