Buffy Season Two Episode Seventeen
Oct. 30th, 2009 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbot"Are you insane? We're supposed to kill the bitch, not leave gag gifts in their friends' beds."
Only have time for a few quick notes. The first half of the episode seemed very clumsy in its exposition. I wonder if I were to watch it again if I would find it less clumsy and more appropriate, since the payoff turned it into a good episode. Still maybe a little wet and obvious, and now we maybe have too good an idea of what's next for Angel's state of mind.
What pulls the episode together is the scene that's actually least essential to the plot, the one where Buffy and her mom have The Serious Talk about Buffy's sex life. It's what brings the show to emotional reality, establishes that at the deepest level Buffy and her mom can trust each other, and we maybe can trust Whedon et al. (I'm still not there yet.)
Joyce watch: As if right on cue, they raise the issue of why can't the kids let Buffy's mom in on the secret, Buffy questioning Giles in front of Xander and Willow, and in effect the show tells us that there isn't a good reason, we just have to accept it. Xander (hard to read if he's being sarcastic or not)(which is in character, since he himself doesn't always know): "Yeah, the more people who know the secret, the more it cheapens it for the rest of us."
Cordelia watch: The stuff where she's being inappropriately self-centered, e.g., when she worries that Angel has access to her car, though it's more significant that he has access to Buffy's and Willow's houses, I just treat as noise, the scriptwriters writing in gags that aren't grounded in anything, except that the show's treatment says the gags belong and that they represent what Cordelia is like. I think I've said this before: irl people (e.g., me) shift from selfless to self-involved and back all the time. But the show hasn't built the reversion into the character of the warm Cordelia that we've come to know. The scripts aren't taking time to motivate her moments of self-involvement, as they have with Xander's, Buffy's, Willow's, and Giles', but actually they need to. The show still doesn't quite know what to do with her.
Angel watch: The cursed and brooding Angel had gotten to be a big bore, so the switchover came just in time. Presumably he gets his soul back (otherwise they wouldn't have had him rip the pages and smash the globe and the computer but overlook the floppy disk), but his interlude back in demon land might give him the ability to go undercover, so that he can act evil in front of Spike and Drusilla. I wouldn't say it's certain that getting his soul back will restore the curse. If it doesn't, maybe some of the strut from his demon days will accompany him in his days of revival. I hope so.
Only have time for a few quick notes. The first half of the episode seemed very clumsy in its exposition. I wonder if I were to watch it again if I would find it less clumsy and more appropriate, since the payoff turned it into a good episode. Still maybe a little wet and obvious, and now we maybe have too good an idea of what's next for Angel's state of mind.
What pulls the episode together is the scene that's actually least essential to the plot, the one where Buffy and her mom have The Serious Talk about Buffy's sex life. It's what brings the show to emotional reality, establishes that at the deepest level Buffy and her mom can trust each other, and we maybe can trust Whedon et al. (I'm still not there yet.)
Joyce watch: As if right on cue, they raise the issue of why can't the kids let Buffy's mom in on the secret, Buffy questioning Giles in front of Xander and Willow, and in effect the show tells us that there isn't a good reason, we just have to accept it. Xander (hard to read if he's being sarcastic or not)(which is in character, since he himself doesn't always know): "Yeah, the more people who know the secret, the more it cheapens it for the rest of us."
Cordelia watch: The stuff where she's being inappropriately self-centered, e.g., when she worries that Angel has access to her car, though it's more significant that he has access to Buffy's and Willow's houses, I just treat as noise, the scriptwriters writing in gags that aren't grounded in anything, except that the show's treatment says the gags belong and that they represent what Cordelia is like. I think I've said this before: irl people (e.g., me) shift from selfless to self-involved and back all the time. But the show hasn't built the reversion into the character of the warm Cordelia that we've come to know. The scripts aren't taking time to motivate her moments of self-involvement, as they have with Xander's, Buffy's, Willow's, and Giles', but actually they need to. The show still doesn't quite know what to do with her.
Angel watch: The cursed and brooding Angel had gotten to be a big bore, so the switchover came just in time. Presumably he gets his soul back (otherwise they wouldn't have had him rip the pages and smash the globe and the computer but overlook the floppy disk), but his interlude back in demon land might give him the ability to go undercover, so that he can act evil in front of Spike and Drusilla. I wouldn't say it's certain that getting his soul back will restore the curse. If it doesn't, maybe some of the strut from his demon days will accompany him in his days of revival. I hope so.
