Buffy Season Two Episode Six

[koganbot]

"Do the demons just hate how commercial it's become?" (On why demons take Halloween off.)

Episode takes half a show's worth of clumsy exposition to get going, and even then falls into cliché, but nonetheless interesting threads are spun. On Halloween the kids turn for real into whatever they're dressed as. Earlier clumsy exposition is about how for one night you get to be who you aren't (but might want to be?). So this confirms that Buffy really, actually wants to be Buffy, not some simpering girly-girl 18th-century noble woman. Ah, but Willow is unformed, so she gets to find new aspects of herself; also shows that she's got the character to take command when Buffy flakes out - which we already knew, but Willow might not have.

So:

Willow takes over.
Giles has secrets.*
Buffy gets laid? (After almost getting slayed.)

OK, I've got a definite complaint. Show is cheating in that, if Buffy feels frazzled and harried and maybe unattractive, you've got to make her look askew, and frazzled, not just give her a tasteful bit of dishevelment.

Spike... it's not really his episode, but you wonder about his taste in women, saddled as he is with pale goopy sickly babe. Just what does he see in her? I guess vampires can't be choosers, but...

Cordelia watch: She's not all that unresourceful herself, when it comes to battle. She's taken aback when Angel only has eyes for Buffy, but Xander has useful advice: "Give it up, Cordy. You're never going to get between those two. Believe me. I know." (Is Xander the only one who ever calls her Cordy? Or does Willow do so occasionally, too?)

*Similarities between Giles and Magnum, P.I.'s Higgins. Both are in a nanny/caretaker role, slightly demasculinized, but Higgins had a past as a sergeant major in the British army and iirc did some work with the British equivalent of the Special Forces, and Giles, as we know, can be a fighter.

Comments

[koganbot]

It is claimed that people in Appalachia speak much the way the Elizabethans had in southern England. (Not sure who claims this, actually; I heard it from an Appalachian.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

was s/he 400 years old?

[koganbot]

Well, my point isn't in regard to Drucilla (who perhaps has Transylvanian heritage), just confirming your point that the present doesn't get to define "English accent" - if Whedon wants to he can justify any old thing by pointing out that vampire accents are defined by movies not by locale, and anachronism is well-established in the genre anyway.