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Episode title: Three's Company.

(Just kidding. It's really "Ted.")

I don't have strong feelings about this episode, though it was done steadily enough, no one out of character, no false shifts in tone. And Gellar was excellent going from suspicion and petulance to remorse, so the moments when she gets to let loose and fight come as a strong relief, as if they really take her back to herself. The episode nicely makes us a little uneasy about Buffy's apparent license to kill, without sloshing us in the uneasiness. John Ritter, as Buffy's mom's suitor, is good at seeming a bit off in his goodness; so we're with Buffy in her suspicions (and we would be anyway, given that the episode is called "Ted," and no one else in it seems a candidate for monster). We also eventually get an explanation for why none of the others join Buffy in her early suspicions (they're all eating the feel-good food).

I did enjoy watching, of course. My relative noninvolvement is probably because there was no real tension between Buffy and her friends. They're fundamentally with her even before they're with her, and anything else would have been out of character. The Cordy-Xander soap opera and the Rupert-Jenny soap opera feel alluded to more than deeply embodied.

Date: 2009-10-26 01:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skyecaptain.livejournal.com
Liked Ritter's performance in this episode, but it sort of points to a problem that I think the series learns quickly to resolve, which is that they aren't "allowed" to do a full-blown "this is a metaphor for yr abusive step-dad" real-world connection, but in suggesting it they have an equally preposterous monster reveal. That is, the "realness" of the metaphor just makes the fantasy seem "fake" by comparison.

The magic of Buffy, which starts to become clear, I think, as this season goes on, is that it puts its characters in a kind of psychology-space that's more compelling than the "real" space (single mom! step-dad! etc.!) OR the "fantasy" space (vampires! demons! etc.!). The middle-ground, a kind of internal world that doesn't cleanly connect back to Real-World but also doesn't quite make it wholesale into a Sci Fi world. It starts to ride on pure character, and on pure(r?) emulation of a sort of teenaged mind-state (in this case junior year of high school -- senior year is VERY "senior year" feeling, tho, because the show's voice is more assured).

Kendra might be the moment where the show starts owning and embracing its own flaws and inconsistencies: rather than ripping a whole in the mythology, acknowledgment of gaps adds a new layer to the mythology, all moves become legal in the show's game. It's as if the show has given itself permission to take its chances, and by doing so those chances feel riskier and have much bigger pay-offs. Again, they're not there yet, but I think "Ted" is both a last gasp of the show not quite knowing what it wants to be and also in some ways a finger pointing to the future. "You can see that if this really worked, it would have been amazing." I'm not sure if, at this point in my watching the series a few months ago, I would have claimed I had a "favorite episode" yet, even if comparatively this would have to be technically true. I hadn't bought into the world yet.

Date: 2009-10-26 01:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skyecaptain.livejournal.com
That's "ripping a hole," plus I'm not sure quite what I'm getting at here but am still thinking about it. I need to read some Buffy Lit, of which I have a sense there is a ton, but I'm wondering if anyone has really written the good paper about why the show's imperfections have given it the space to do some truly wild and memorable things -- and not even in "gimmick episodes," but in the basic fabric of the show.

Date: 2009-10-26 01:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skyecaptain.livejournal.com
So far your analysis of how the courtyard at the high school works is the best parallel to what I'm talking about here, though. The film uses careful details and a game-plan for how conversations move (literally and figuratively) through the space to bring us in to just about anything they talk about there. (And of course good dialogue does a lot of heavy lifting, but there IS something about the logic of the space itself, something weirdly subtextual and yet totally in your face at all times, that gives those conversations their kineticism and draw you into them.)

Date: 2009-10-26 01:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] skyecaptain.livejournal.com
Uh, the film = the show. I've been grading a ton of film analysis essays.

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Frank Kogan

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