#rav's watching log

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Welcome to the Hellmouth, S01E01

My 2024 Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch starts NOW!

Before I jump in, here’s some quick housekeeping:

I’ll endeavour to do this on a weekly basis; watching an episode on Saturday night and writing up a post on Sunday.

I’m not going to worry about spoilers. This show was as good as it was because of how interconnected the themes and storylines were, so if something in season one reminds me of something in season seven, I’m going to mention it.

This is the first time I’ve watched this show (probably) since high school, and it’s almost certainly the first time I’ve watched it from start to finish. It’s actually rather dizzying in this age of eight episode shows that get cancelled after two seasons to consider there are one hundred and forty-four episodes of Buffy that span seven years.

Obviously I am not unaware of Joss Whedon’s mistreatment of others on the set of Buffy, and where it seems relevant I’ll bring it up. But I also don’t think it’s fair to the rest of the cast and crew to throw the entire show under the bus because of one person, especially when it had such a huge (positive) impact on so many lives.

For the record, my favourite ships are Willow/Oz, Giles/Jenny and Spike/Drusilla. My purpose in pointing this out is to make clear that I don’t watch this show to see what true love looks like, but to watch a close-knit band of social misfits fight the forces of evil together. To me, the heart of this show is the friendship between Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles. The show is always at its strongest when it’s focusing on the four of them, and most of the love stories just don’t interest me that much.

Once season three is over, I’ll start alternating between Buffy and Angel episodes.

Okay, let’s get to it.

First of all, I was not prepared for how dated everything looks and sounds. Naturally my most recent memories of Buffy are watching the later seasons, when there’s cellphones and internet access and fashion choices that wouldn’t seem out of place today – but season one looks like a different era entirely.

There are some references that have dated amusingly (Cordelia and Buffy bond over their shared appreciation for James Spader), some that I didn’t get at all (who’s John Tesh? What’s Debarge?) and a few synthesized musical cues that are straight out of the nineties.

I had forgotten that the Cold Open involves Julie Benz as Darla, and that show-defining twist when it turns out that she’s the vampire and not her predatory date. Ah, Red Shirt #1 played by Carmine Giovinazzo – you have the distinction of being this show’s first victim. I salute you.

Also, it’s amusing to think that we had no idea just how important Darla would end up being to the franchise’s lore. She’s just a standard vampire minion at this early stage, though I do like the fact that she was presumably cast to look a bit like Buffy.

And of course, it all starts at good old Sunnydale High.

Our first glimpse of Buffy Summers begins with her in the middle of a nightmare, which... girl, get used to this plot device. This one is a bit more muddled than her later dreams, made up of a bunch of clips that’ll be used in later episodes that culminate in the Master, the season’s Big Bad.

I had to smile at the sight of those yellow school buses pulling up at the front of Sunnydale High. Buffy may not arrive at school in one of these things, but seven years later, she’s sure as hell going to leave in one.

Joyce – and later on, Angel – are both perfect examples of Characterization Marches On regarding the fact the writers’ room hasn’t quite settled on their personalities yet. In Joyce’s case, she comes across as a lot more flaky than in later appearances.

Oh, and here’s Xander, riding in on a skateboard that we’ll never see him use again across the entire run of the series. I get that he’s a very contentious character in the annals of the show, and though I’m certainly not going to let him off the hook for his occasional (frequent?) shitty behaviour, I also think I’m fonder of him than the average fan.

Honestly, I think Joss Whedon doomed him a little when he stated that Xander was the character most based on him in high school. Suddenly all his entitled, chauvinist behaviour was re-evaluated through the lens of knowing that Whedon was a pretty awful person – but I hope we can all agree that even at his worst, Xander is a MUCH better human being than Whedon.

We’ll see how we go.

Interesting that Willow’s history with Xander is established well before she meets Buffy. Not surprising, since they’ve known each other since early childhood, but interesting. Buffy is the protagonist, but Xander/Willow’s relationship with each other takes precedence when it comes to introducing the gang’s dynamics.

And hey, it’s Eric Balfour as Jesse! Oh man, they really dropped the ball on this character, didn’t they. It’s the one aspect of this two-part premiere that really doesn’t work... but I’ll get to that in good time.

Principle Flutie! Something else I’d totally forgotten; I honestly thought this show started with Snyder.

Also, that initial on his desk plaque is B. Does that mean his name is actually Bob (which is what he tells Buffy to call him)? Not Robert? Weird.

Buffy and Xander’s meetcute involves him helping her pick up some of the spilled contents of her bag, and accidentally saying: “can I have you?” instead of “can I help you?” Oof. Yeah, that’s not an auspicious start.

Buffy meets Cordelia before she meets Willow, and Cordelia comes across as surprisingly nice when she shares her textbook with Buffy and invites her into Sunnydale's popular clique. Then of course, the second relatively big twist of the episode occurs: Cordelia reverts into absolute bitchiness when they come across Willow at the drinking fountain.

Willow scarpers and Buffy looks deeply uncomfortable. There’s a nice subtext across this episode that suggests Buffy was once just like Cordelia, only for her calling to make her more sympathetic to social “losers” like Xander and Willow.

Cordelia also describes the Bronze as being in “the bad part of town”. Huh? I’m going to chalk that one down to more Early Instalment Weirdness, since I don’t think it ever comes up again. (Later Sunnydale is described as a “one Starbucks town”, which is also funny since it’s later revealed to contain a zoo, a shopping mall, several lakes and parks, a military base, and a university).

Buffy enters the library for the first time, and the first thing she sees is a newspaper with an article titled “local boys still missing” outlined in red. The plurality of “boys” means that this isn’t referring to Darla’s kill, which probably only happened the night before anyway. Instead, it’s an indication that there are ongoing problems of a supernatural nature in Sunnydale.

And here’s Giles! The most interesting thing about this interaction is that Giles has clearly been waiting for Buffy. As in, he knows that the Slayer is scheduled to appear in Sunnydale, and that she’s going to be enrolled in its local high school. As Willow says later on, he’s also a newcomer, having only recently taken the position of school librarian.

The show never goes into any more detail than this, but I have so many questions. Clearly Buffy was under surveillance from the Watchers Council, who knew she was coming and made sure Giles had a cover story and a position to fill at Sunnydale High so that he could more easily sidle himself into her life, but a part of me wonders they pulled similar strings for Joyce to get her that job at the art gallery in order to bring Buffy to Sunnydale in the first place.

Evidence for this is that Giles already knows it’s a hotbed for supernatural activity in his discussions with her, though I suppose his dialogue suggests it’s more fate (or the Powers That Be?) rather than the Watchers Council that had a hand in Buffy’s arrival at the Hellmouth (“there’s a reason you’re here and a reason why it’s now”). Still, it’s an interesting theory to ponder, and I always felt it was a shame that the show never delved too deeply into Buffy’s life after she became a Slayer but before she moved to Sunnydale.

(Though I suppose that had to do with the spectre of the 1992 Buffy movie, who’s relationship with this show is a bit tenuous. But now I’m getting off-track).

Buffy flees from Giles and strikes up a conversation with Willow instead. Willow’s eagerness and earnestness is very cute, and though she probably has the most profound development of any other character on this show, I’ll always miss this early dorky version of her.

In describing the library, Buffy says it gives her “the wiggins”. HAH! Remember that word? Remember how it didn’t exist anywhere except this show? Remember how it was essentially Whedon’s attempt to make fetch happen? Aw, man. What a delightful throwback.

On hearing that a body has been found stuffed in a locker, Buffy naturally cannot help but investigate – though I suppose we can chalk it down just as much to her wanting confirmation on whether or not vampires are in town than to any personal sense of responsibility.

Our first glimpse of her super strength comes when she busts through the locked door into the changing room, and she gives a weary “oh great” on seeing the bitemarks in the victim’s neck.

But then of course, she follows this up by sharing her discovery with Giles, who is quick to point out that she’s doing something about it. I have a soft spot for heroes who simply cannot walk away from danger and/or a situation that needs their intervention, regardless of how loudly they grumble about it.

Turns out Xander has heard their entire conversation about vampires and Watchers and Slayers from behind the stacks... which is an elegant not-coincidence since it was established earlier in the episode (in his conversation with Willow) that he was going to the library for a trigonometry book.

Giles is still jabbering about how Sunnydale is a centre of mystical energy that attracts all kinds of supernatural beings, and Buffy’s skepticism naturally gives way to a panning shot of an underground cave where a formidable-looking vampire is intoning “the Sleeper will wake” over a pool of blood.

As villains go, the Master is obviously not particularly inspired, especially since he spends most of this season as a quintessential Orcus on His Throne, but it was also way too early in the game to have a complex or personal Big Bad. You can’t come out the gate with a Glory or an Angelus, and I think he serves his purpose just fine as a Nosferatu-esque spectre that a sixteen-year-old girl would understandably be intimidated by.

Ditto Luke as the show’s Starter Villain: a physical threat to Buffy without being all that interesting.

On Buffy’s way to the Bronze we get our first Angel sighting, and much like Joyce, his characterization is a bit off. He’s way too smarmy and negging, but also... kind of upbeat? It’s amusing to reflect that the writers room knew very little about him at this point, including the fact that he was a vampire (making his “I don’t bite” comment deeply ironic) so it’s lucky that they never filmed any of his scenes in daylight before the truth comes out six episodes later.

In any case, his role in this episode is to namedrop things like “the Mouth of Hell” and “the Harvest” (which Giles will start researching as soon as Buffy passes them on to him) and give Buffy the silver crucifix which... becomes important at some stage? I remember the claddagh ring in season three, but have no recollection of this necklace.

Also intriguing is this dialogue between them: Angel – “I’m a friend.” Buffy – “Maybe I don’t want a friend.” Angel – “I didn’t say I was yours.”

I mean, I know it’s just meaningless banter, but Buffy assumes the “friend” he’s talking about is Giles, who soon confirms that he’s never met him before. So was Angel actually referring to The Powers That Be? Whistler, maybe? Again, I know that this was just filler dialogue with no established context, but I’d be interested to see if it fits in with season two’s flashbacks where he’s introduced to Buffy from a distance.

There’s a very sweet interaction between Buffy and Willow at the Bronze, in which the former gives the latter some advice (“seize the day, because tomorrow you might be dead”) and assures her she’s coming back – despite Willow’s expectation that she won’t – when she spots Giles on an overhead balcony.

The staging of the scene between her and Giles is a bit sus – did he really have to stand behind her and lean over her like that? – but at his insistence she spots a vampire in the crowd, though not because of her preternatural senses, but because of his dated fashion sense. And uh-oh, he’s chatting up Willow, who is unfortunately taking Buffy’s “seize the day” advice.

A throwaway line from Cordelia down on the dance floor is telling: apparently her mother never gets out of bed. Our resident Alpha Bitch clearly doesn’t have a great home life.

Poor Jesse gets the brush-off from Cordelia and runs straight into Darla instead. The reveal is wonderfully corny, in which she swivels around in her hanging basket chair with a smile that wouldn’t melt butter.

We’re heading into the third act cliff-hanger now: Willow is being ushered through a graveyard by her vampiric date, Jesse is clearly also in danger, the Master has risen and sent out his minions to bring him fresh blood, and Xander’s skepticism over Buffy’s Slayer status quickly turns to concern when he learns that Willow is in trouble.

They all converge in a graveyard crypt, and – bless her – Buffy is bantering right off the bat. It’s actually a pretty good tactic, as the vampires are caught off-guard by her confidence. Though... shouldn’t Darla clock the fact that she’s a Slayer? We learn later that she’s familiar with the concept, though this is obviously another case of not having figured out the character’s background at this early stage.

A point in Xander’s favour: Buffy tells him to “go” and instead he enters the crypt to help Jesse and Willow. You have to admit, that’s classic Xander.

And we end with Xander/Willow/Jesse being threatened by more vampires outside, as Luke lowers himself onto Buffy after he’s thrown her into an open tomb. To be continued...

Miscellaneous Observations:

Do we ever get an explanation for the force field that’s keeping the Master trapped underground? It’s obviously magic, so who put it in place?

How did Angel know about the Harvest? Who sent him? I know the answers are still to come, but the question is deliberately left dangling in this episode.

Giles mentions incubus and succubus in his litany of monsters that are attracted to Sunnydale, but I think they’re the only two creatures that never actually appear in the show.

I love the little glimpses of non-main characters going about their business in Sunnydale, namely Aphrodesia and Aura gossiping about Buffy before the dead guy falls out of the latter’s locker. I wonder if those girls made it to Graduation Day...

Watching this episode, the most eye-opening character is Cordelia, who has quite the epic journey ahead of her. It’s almost funny to see her in a role that requires her to be little more than Buffy’s antagonist and foil – essentially what Buffy would have been without her calling. I’m taking a moment to think about where all these characters end up, and it’s pretty dizzying.

Giles gives the famous Slayer mantra: “Into every generation a Slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a Chosen One. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer.” This is repeated in the show’s very final episode, and not only forms the crux of Buffy’s entire identity crisis, but also serves as the inspiration for her solution to it. Damn, I love this show.

But who the heck is the guy who speaks these lines in the opening introduction?? It’s later taken over by Anthony Stewart Head, but in season one at least we get a completely unfamiliar narrator.

As excited as I am to embark on this rewatch, I know that after the third season the show loses its centre a bit as the main trio form relationships that are ostensibly more important than the one they have with each other. I love these early seasons because their friendship is clearly the focus of the show – the thing not only protecting them against the forces of evil, but getting them through the hell that is high school.

The show loses its lustre when it loses sight of their bond, but I have three whole seasons to enjoy before that happens. Let’s do this.

Best Line: Cordelia (after Buffy has accidentally slammed her against a wall, thinking she’s a vampire): “Excuse me, I have to call EVERYONE I have EVER met, RIGHT NOW.”

Best Scene: The climatic fight in the crypt, not for the fight itself, but for the shock on Xander and Willow’s faces as the world (and their lives) irrevocably change.

Best Subversion: Obviously when the vulnerable and demure little blonde in the Cold Open reveals herself to be the real danger in the room.

Death Toll: Darla's date in the cold open. Thomas, the vampire that Buffy dusts in the crypt. Also, the newspaper in the library mentioned "local boys still missing" but since we never see them on-screen, the toll stands at TWO.

Grand Total: One civilian, one villain.

[transingthoseformers]

(Still a sniplet logs of SGAU1)

+SG!Decepticons on Nemesis, looking for the lost crew.

History log by Frenzy

Private Local CommLink Number : 876209837

Admin : Ratbat of Kaon

[Ravage] I am a Jaguar!

[Ravage] I running across the desert and sneak around a huge insect

[Ravage] I am a Jaguar!

[Ravage] I watch the sky, i sniff the land. Its all only has sand.

[Ravage] I am a Jaguar!

[Ravage] I call my friend with a roar, *Vroom* *Vroom*. Nobody answering.

[Ravage] I am Jaguar!

[Ravage] Why am i a Jaguar? Could i save my friend for just by being a Jaguar?

[Ravage] I am a Jaguar but.... oh i hope to be other than Jaguar...

[Ravage] If i were a seeker i would have help the fight on the Ark.

[Ravage] If i were a tankor, i would  offlined on the day we lost our bark.

[Ravage] And if i were a mech with tire i would have been fought against Black Zarak.

[Ravage] I am a Jaguar because... I am a Jaguar. And that is.. just that.

[Rumble] 14 cycle on this SAVAGE planet, and someone already have existensial crisis?!?

[Razorclaw] Aww, cheer up Ravage, Shockwave may not as good as Constructicons on fixing things, but i bet he can fix some generator so we can watch some movies.

[Ravage] But all our movies are with SKYWARP, how can we watch movies if he isnt here?!

[Buzzsaw] 11010011 10010100010 1010010? :)

[Rumble] Cybertron!

[Rampage] That should be ilegal.

[Lazerbeak] Seriously Buzzsaw, how low can you glide..

[Rumble] Frenzy i dare you to save this history log in your ember storage.

[Frenzy] Why me?

[Rumble] Cause i am red.

[Ratbat] I am just off for 3 breem, and suddenly my notification were bombarded by INDOLENT trying ESCAPES from their duty!?

[Soundwave] Dude... what did just i read?!

( I just stumble on this video at youtube about a fish having existensial crisis, and cant help my brainworming that it was sooo in character with SG!Ravage)

Sshdhfhfj

Ah yes! Red Rumble!

of course rav of course

SG Rav actually has beautiful beautiful colors imo

Zhxhjc

Ratbat and Soundwave are so damn confused with them

[soap-brain]

holy shit guys i love janeway and i love b’elanna and i love chakotay and tuvok and harry kim and even paris and i love kes!!! kes is so cute omg

but seriously i’m so here for janeway and b’elanna friendship like whoa

[borderlandscast]

what happens when you let a bunch of vault hunters loose in digart (aka, virtual reality minecraft)

vox downloaded the game at the request of panda, who needed to prove to teep that the game has undergone massive updates and is now capable of supporting custom mods and excessive cheating.

within an hour, the two broke the server from spawning far too many bosses so that they could do a nonstop boss rush and update teep’s achievements.

vox rebooted the server and put a restriction on the amount of bosses that could be spawned in a single world and space.

this didn’t stop panda and teep from making pocket dimensions and fighting the bosses one by one, making the game lag horribly, and vox gave up on stopping them because they kept finding loopholes.

this leads into vox making their own avatar and joining the two on their never-ending quest to subjugate each world. if they can’t stop them, then join them.

panda and teep generally explore brand new worlds, and are usually the first to chart said worlds since they cheated in all their equipment and skills. vox shrugged and let it happen so they could explore with them faster. the two rock up into town to drop off maps, loot and materials before heading off again. they’re considered founding figures.

honeydew joins (from the grass room) to put down his roots, and begins a miniature spawn hub town. he names it ‘digfarts’ and it becomes a permanent fixture on the server. he’s the mayor thanks to self voting.

curious about why honeydew is spending so much time in the grass room instead of making them coffee, xephos logs in and begins a bee factory on the outskirts of digfarts. they accidentally breed a type of extreme killer bee which kills players and has to be confined in a massive sphere. otherwise, the bees produce honey, beeswax and other assorted products used in the market, magic or as trading.

players who break the rules are subjected to the ‘bee farts’ (xephos was against the naming but honeydew won by majority vote). the bees cause hallucinations, tingles and the heebee jeebies. remember that this is in vr. good, now wonder why nobody ever breaks the rules.

the bridge and frigate crews start a town market, and run their own supply chain and exploration crews. each of them have their own gangs, motifs and specialities. they’re all very into the game, and plan their shifts accordingly so they can log in.

daltos starts a cheese cult, ‘the cheesers’, monopolizing all production and selling of cheese. weirdly, he and his cult encourage the consumption of cheese. all registered, owned and named cows must pay a milk tax to the cult so that more cheese can be made. people who break this law have their whole house filled with cheese.

zylus and rythian become tower wizards. they look after the tainted zones and research magic; rythian eventually goes ‘insane’ and constantly needs guarding against the phantoms and weirdness that happens to him whenever he logs in. zylus can cast almost every single spell and is undefeated in pvp. his only weakness is ironically, cheese, thanks to shenanigans. touching cheese robs him of his powers. he has a deal with daltos so daltos doesn’t take advantage of this. in return, zylus has to buy weekly cheese from him or daltos will tell everyone and zylus has to reset to get a different weakness. and no, zylus hasn’t realised.

nanosounds and ravs become the ‘buff hooligans’ (a rejected nickname for the foursome ravs was previously involved in), and run around killing things for the wizards, people, and protect the wizards from themselves.

nilesy runs a cat museum. he collects anything cat related, and also cats. it took him two weeks to build the whole thing, and it’s always expanding. minecarts are needed to tour all fifteen sections. he also runs a fishing business.

hatfilms run an honest exploration and needs club (‘the thumb of truth’), and provide a lot of the fuel from oil, grease and energy deposits found all over the world. they have a contract with the cheesers, wizards, digfart’s mayor, etc. you name it, they’ll get it, for a price. the only thing they don’t traffic is bees. that’s...a sore topic for them. each of them specialise in certain areas, trott being the engineer, contractor and main cultist, alsmiffy in beasts, magic and tomfoolery and ross in materials and building. hollie is the ever patient receptionist of this venture.

will strife and parvis manufacture weapons, guns, somehow, and also, missile launchers. after accidentally nuking digfarts twice on two separate occasions, honeydew forces the two to put everything that could wipe the server into a secure and hidden vault. needless to say, strife installed an emergency backdoor, just in case the server ever needs to ensure a winning side. parvis is the key. he doesn’t know it.

zoeya and saberial logged in briefly to build an island as a monument to their eternal love. it has since become a protected zone for unicorns, neutral and friendly mobs. nobody is allowed to touch it or risk bee farts. the island is shaped like ravs the rooster. it’s also populated by special chickens. said chickens lay precious metals and materials. only a few parties have a permit gather the goods. there’s a real art to breeding the chickens; zoeya and saberial did not wisely pass this knowledge on to anyone. except for one person: arsenal.

chicken smuggling is a real crime in digfarts. the fine is a in-game week’s confinement in the bee fart sphere, plus a handwritten letter of apology to every single other player on the server for disappointing them and a pledge of loyalty to the poor chicken/s to protect them for life from any harm and neglect. killing a chicken results in a softban and a townwide funeral procession. killing multiple chickens is a permanent ban.

lalna and lalnable dabble in mad science, and for once, the two get along. they accidentally clone one another, forget to lock the doors and have to slaughter their runaway clones. the scene caused an investigation done by the thumb of truth and an official hearing. cloning isn’t against digfart’s laws, so lalna and lalnable clone everyone and preserve the bodies underground posed in entertaining dioramas. they charge five gold ingots for the tour, and a chest full of diamonds for a specific one to be constructed.

vox and their siblings build a giant monument to bebopvox. it goes as high as the sky and is perfectly symmetrical from top to bottom. they harvested materials and built it without hiring anyone, a testament to their diligence and determination. they even applied early for the building and statue permit. honeydew was unsettled when they all visited at once to seek the permit. this was because they all wore the same skin, just in different colours. only larry robert spoke. the rest stared at honeydew. it’s hard to say ‘no’ to that.

fyreuk run a history tavern, which charts the development and founding of digfarts and notable town achivements. they keep it up to date, and in exchange for music discs, will write ballads to honour said achievements.

lomadia logs in when nobody is on the server, and moves a single object to the left by one space, or switches items around, or leaves signs saying ‘i know what you did’, etc. so far, everyone is convinced that the server is haunted. vox pretends not to know about it.

martyn and minty run law enforcement, and swagger around town keeping the whole place in order. they have their fingers in every pie. their motto is ‘you do the crime, you do the time’ which is cheesy as hell but they’re actually pretty good at their job. they talk to vox to arrange trials and how long a ban should last if someone breaks the law multiple times.

sherlock refuses to join the server because he knows that people will bully him into playing their secretary, treasurer, errand boy, etc. he has a secret identity though, and logs in as ‘hulmes’. people play along with his pretend investigations since he actually writes pretty good newspaper articles as a result. fyreuk collect said articles too.

larry robert and their siblings are builders; the thumb of truth usually hires them to build things. the reason why larry robert and co can’t be left alone to build is beause they’ll keep building and never stop until it’s done. they crafted the entire road and railway system in one night, which sparked riots and fights due to everything needing names, all at once. honeydew put the permits into place as a result, which states that ‘only one party can build at any given time, and it can be completed at one’s leisure and has to be realistic so that fyreuk doesn’t cry over piecing the timeline together’.

bebopvox isn’t allowed on the server due to their irl identity but that doesn’t stop their kids sending them updates. the street surrounding te statue of them is called ‘ridge avenue.’

arsenal has to have someone watching him whenever he logs in since he has ‘the devil’s hands’. he runs a monthly auction house. he auctions off especially rare materials and custom goods needing a new owner. more importantly though, he’s the only official party who can sell the special chickens, which means that his auctions are a big event that nobody wants to miss.

the bloody bandits operate as blacksmiths attached to strife and parvis’ business. they’re expert miners, and for some reason, also operate the local cemetary. they note down how many times someone has died, and update the headstones. the cloning business caused a real hang-up as none of them could agree what to name the clones of lalna and lalnable.

i know i left some people out but the server is limited to frigate peeps to stop breaches into vox’s systems since the whole server relies so heavily on vox. there’s been jokes that they’re all playing in vox’s brain...which isn’t actually that far off the mark.

vox devotes quite a bit of processing power into maintaining and keeping the whole thing running smoothly. they’re unusually fond of what the frigate created, which possibly explains why any henious world breakage is treated as a in-game crime and punished accordingly.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I Robot, You Jane, S01E08

So, back when I started this project I said that I’d watch an episode every Saturday and then post my thoughts on Sunday. Yeah, that was wildly optimistic. The new plan is that I’ll just post when I have time.

This is our first Willow-centric episode, and just like our first Xander-centric episode (“Teacher’s Pet”) it’s not very good. But I still have a soft spot for it, and if nothing else the introduction of Jenny Calendar (hurray!) prevents it from being complete filler, even though none of the events of this episode are ever mentioned afterwards. At least, I’m pretty sure no one ever brings up the demon-on-the-internet again.

The cold open takes place in 1480. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the only flashback that predates this one in the show’s entire chronology is Aud/Anya’s backstory, which won’t be seen until season seven. So, this is a big swing for what is only the show’s eighth episode.

A guy called Carlos steps out of the shadows and is promptly killed after confessing his love to a horned demon called Moloch the Corruptor. Farewell Carlos, we knew you not at all. This is followed by a number of monks frantically chanting a spell which causes Moloch to dissipate and reappear as letters in an old book. As the finishing touch, his face appears on the cover.

Random comment: Despite crucifixes repelling vampires, Christianity isn’t exactly treated with a lot of reverence on this show. But if the religion is going to be represented, I’ve noticed that priests will invariably be bad guys, and monks (like these ones, or the ones that made Dawn) will always be good guys.

Also, the makeup/prosthetics on Moloch is really good, so I don’t blame the editors for putting him in both the opening credits of the show and Buffy’s nightmare sequence from the pilot episode.

The cold open ends with the monks sealing the book away, and portentously stating that nobody must ever read it again. That’s our cue to skip forward over five hundred years, to where it’s inevitably being removed from its storage crate by Buffy in the library.

The Scoobies are helping Giles scan his ancient tomes into the computer, and the whole thing is our first glimpse of a recurring theme throughout the show: modern tech meets old-school medievalism. It’s not my favourite aspect of the series, though I suspect it was one of Joss Whedon’s, since it comes up fairly regularly (think the Frankenstein’s Monster episode, or season four’s Adam. Occasionally it does provide some great scenes, like Xander giving Buffy the rocket launcher to take out the Judge in “Innocence” or Buffy and Riley coming face-to-face with a crossbow and rifle respectively in “Hush,” but for the most part I prefer the archaic tools that the Scoobies use).

In any case, this at least is a neat idea for an episode: a demon is given access to the internet after a scanner “reads” the book and uploads it into virtual reality. There’s a lot you can do with that premise.

This scene also introduces us to three new characters: some rando called Dave is helping them with the scanning, along with another student called Fritz, who is introduced with this line: “The printed page is obsolete. Information isn't bound up anymore. It's an entity. The only reality is virtual. If you're not jacked in, you're not alive.” Just in case you were wondering whether he was going to be a good guy or not.

But also on hand is... Jenny Calendar, the computer science teacher! Yes! She’s one of my favs. I always forget she was introduced this early, and she’s awesome right off the bat. The banter between her and Giles is quintessential Belligerent Sexual Tension. From their first exchange, you know it’s only a matter of time before they jump each other.

Willow, our poor darling nerd, is enjoying herself. Seeing at her at this early stage, I’m struck by the fact that she’s the character (with the possible exception of Cordelia) who will go through the most profound changes across the course of the show. At this point, she’s simply trying to find something that makes her special – right now, she makes it the subject she’s most interested in: books and knowledge (which feeds into her contribution to the good fight) but which also is the starting point of her dabbling-in-magic-to-become-powerful-witch-pipeline.

With that in mind, it’s interesting that techno-pagan Jenny is also introduced in this episode, as she’s an important stepping stone on Willow’s journey into witchhood.

My take on Willow is that although it’s never spelt out, she knows on some level that her friendship with Buffy is what makes her special, and she’s subconsciously railing against that (and will continue to do so long after this episode). She’s bullied at school, she’s thwarted in love by Xander, she’s perpetually in Buffy’s shadow – she wants SOMETHING to assure her she’s enough on her own terms.

In this episode, that mentality makes her an easy mark for Moloch’s manipulation, as she’s all-in on the romance not just for its own sake, but because it makes her feel chosen. Moloch obviously had some mind-control powers at work here, but Willow is also an easy target based on the insecurities she has about herself. Seven years later, she’d never fall for this so easily.

The next day she’s walking on air, as she spent the night talking to a guy called Malcolm Black on-line. And it’s soon apparent that Dave and Fritz are communicating with someone through the internet as well.

Oh man, look at these monitors!

Buffy is a little unsure about Willow’s story, and the computer camera zooms in on Buffy’s face, electronically goes through her personal files, and then sends them to Fritz with a missive to “watch her.”

Xander is suddenly not keen on the idea of Willow having a boyfriend, and Buffy calls him out on jealousy. She’s right – not because he’s attracted to Willow at this point, but because he “d’wants” her. That is, he doesn’t want Willow himself, but he doesn’t want anyone else having her either.

Shots demonstrate that Willow, Fritz and Dave are getting sucked further into Malcolm’s thrall, and during a discussion with Dave to try and ascertain how she can track down someone on-line, Buffy comes to the not-unreasonable conclusion (based on his reaction) that Dave is Malcolm. He’s not, and he clams up uncomfortably when she presses him. Fritz glowers in the corner.

Giles isn’t sure what to do (he’s computer illiterate) and advises Buffy to tail Dave. We get a vastly underrated gag in which Buffy asks: “Follow Dave? What, in dark glasses and a trench coat? Please. I can work this out myself,” which cuts immediately to her following Dave in a trench coat and sunglasses. Superb.

They end up at a massive computer factory called CRD, where we get the POV of a security camera noting Buffy’s arrival. Xander surprisingly ends up being a font of knowledge on the subject, as his uncle once worked there as a janitor. Before its closure several years ago, it was the third-largest employer in Sunnydale. (What are the first two? Got to be the funeral parlours and the cemetery caretakers, right?)

In an on-line conversation, Malcolm tries to drive a wedge between Willow and Buffy by citing the latter's school records (namely that she got kicked out of her old school) but Willow isn’t so far gone that she can’t spot a red flag when she sees it. She logs off pretty quickly.

Back in the library, the flirt-fight between Jenny and Giles over the relevance of computers continues, until she notices Moloch’s book and points out that the pages are all blank. This occurs concurrently with Dave telling Buffy that Willow wants to see her in the locker room, and Buffy very nearly getting electrocuted to death by exposed wiring left in a running shower. She survives only because Dave gets cold feet at the last second and warns her before making a run for it.

We’re then treated to the most harrowing scene of the episode, in which Dave confronts Malcolm (or at least a computer) and tells him he refuses to be complicit in his plans. Then, the computer writes him a suicide note. Just imagine how horrifying this would be, to realize not only that your death is imminent, but that everyone believes it’ll be at your own hands.

Fritz is lurking in the shadows of the room... He went dark side very quickly.

Back again at the library, Giles gives Buffy the English remedy to everything (tea) before offering a solution to strange events of the week: Moloch the Corruptor has been released from his book!prison by someone reading the words that held him there.

There’s a nice bit of back-and-forth as the gang piece together all the clues to reach a logical conclusion: Moloch has gone from the book, and yet no one has seen a giant demon wandering around. Buffy questions why Moloch is going through middle-men like Dave and the factory-workers at CDR instead of doing all the work himself. And how did someone manage to speak the words in the book anyway, as they’re not in English?

All the disparities point to one thing: Moloch is in the computer, and got there via the scanner. Like I said before, this is a neat idea and was backed up by the establishing dialogue at the start of the episode that laid out what the internet was capable of (‘cos back in the nineties, not everyone knew).

Buffy goes searching for Willow, and instead finds Dave in the computer lab... hanging from the rafters.

And, wow do I have a lot of questions in the wake of this scene. Does Buffy just leave him hanging there? Does no one call the authorities? If not, then who found him next? Do they let the suicide note stand? Are his parents forced to live the rest of their lives believing their son killed himself? And isn’t it crazy that everyone keeps on using this room in future episodes? (Though I suppose in Sunnydale, citizens would run out of places to exist if they stopped entering places that people had been murdered in).

Willow’s house! Why is it so exciting to see Willow’s house? In any case, her parents aren’t home (and her father never will be) and she’s spooked by her computer telling her she’s got mail... from Malcolm. Then she foolishly opens the front door and is grabbed by Fritz.

Giles takes the plunge and tells Jenny that a demon is on the loose on the internet, to which she says: “I know.” Robia Scott delivers that line a little oddly, in that she makes it seem like Jenny is the one responsible for releasing Moloch, but apparently it’s just meant to be a surprise that she takes Giles’s revelation in her stride. Turns out that she’s what’s called a “technopagan” who is well-aware of all the weirdness that goes on in Sunnydale.

(It’s obvious that the writers’ room had not yet decided on Jenny’s backstory at this point, which posits her as a member of the Roma clan which laid the curse on Angel – in fact, she was specifically sent to Sunnydale by her people in order to keep an eye on him – but they got lucky in giving her this link with magic right off the bat, as it fits in nicely with what we learn about her later. A bit like Aunt Beru’s “he’s too much like his father” comment in Star Wars, which was just a line in the first movie, but paid off dividends in the next two – entirely serendipitously).

Willow wakes up in CRD to discover that the reason it’s been swarming with scientists and workers lately is because Moloch has had them build a robot version of himself. He demonstrates its power by promptly snapping Fritz’s neck.

Buffy and Xander arrive on the scene (she leaps neatly over the fence, he trips and lands on his face) and make their way into the building. I love this shot, in which Buffy punches a receptionist in the face without breaking her stride:

The two of them try to make their way to Willow as Moloch delivers his pitch to her (she’s not buying it) and Giles and Jenny remotely perform the incantation that trapped him in that book all those centuries ago. Giles chants and Jenny types, with the help of her “on-line coven.” We learn nothing more about these people, either in this episode or any other – but in hindsight, they’ve got to be the rest of the Romani clan, no?

Willow is genuinely upset at Moloch’s betrayal. Xander punches out a technician and is super excited about it. Buffy realizes that Moloch isn’t back in the book, but rather trapped inside his robot body, and it takes only a little taunting for him to throw a punch at her and end up electrocuting himself on the contents of the circuit box behind her.

And this here, this shot:

...is why I love this show, specifically in its earliest seasons. At the end of the day, this is a story about three teenagers who are completely in over their heads, facing down the weirdest and most dangerous shit imaginable, but who are still in it together, no matter what. I can draw a direct correlation between the quality of any given episode and how far it adheres to/strays from this focus on the trio of Buffy, Willow and Xander as a team of misfits facing down the unimaginable.

And so, the wrap-up. Giles goes to thank Jenny for her contribution, and makes his case for books: they have texture and scent and history. She seems to get it, and then thanks him for returning her earring in a very odd moment that has her inform him: "[my ear] isn’t where I dangle it."

This, except he's saying: "is she going to dangle it from her vagina?"

And then, one of my favourite ending scenes of the entire show. Xander and Buffy try to cheer up Willow by commiserating with her on their equally terrible string of crushes and relationships. “We’re doomed!” they conclude. And they are. They realize it themselves a second later. All of them will end the show single.

But it’s okay, because they’ll always have each other.

***

Like I said, I’m fond of this episode despite its silliness. The plot itself is pretty thin, and generally speaking I don’t love the Buffy episodes that employ “weird science”. The show always falters a little when it leans into this vibe: see the Frankenstein/Ted/Human-Fish episodes, plus the entirety of the Initiative arc. Give me old-school vampires and demons, every time.

But I stand by the fact that a demon getting loose in the internet and causing havoc is a solid premise, and the script also managed to tap into our collective fear of catfishing and online predators WELL before its time. It also has some great dialogue and one-liners, provides some insight on Willow’s psyche that will be built on later, and introduces the one-and-only Jenny Calendar. You can’t skip it in the same way you can skip “Teacher’s Pet.”

Miscellaneous Observations:

I’ve already talked about Willow, but this episode really is fascinating if you treat it as the starting point of her arc. She’s shy and unassuming, she genuinely loves “nerdy” pastimes like scanning old books and talking on-line, and her insecurities make her an easy target for Malcolm’s manipulation. You can draw a straight line between this early characterization and where she ends up at the end of season six: glutted with power, resentment and destructive rage.

Dark Willow wasn’t just about Tara, it was about the deep-seated hostilities inside Willow from the very beginning... but we’ll get there. For now, I’ll just say that I’ve always felt Willow harbours the tiniest little seed of resentment toward Buffy for their social standing. As much as Willow loves her, in this episode she actually verbalizes the envy she feels at Buffy’s ability to attract male attention. That’s very funny in post-season four hindsight, and given where she ends up I’m inclined to believe it’s not just about boys. Willow wants to be special for her own sake, and at this point she’s envisioning that as someone liking her for who she is.

It's a type of insecurity that’s subtly different from what Xander feels. His is all about his masculinity in the presence of people who are far more powerful than himself, which paradoxically requires him to cleave even tighter to the women who upstage him (see his immediate anxiety about Willow prioritizing someone other than himself). For Willow, it’s about herself and how she measures up, which requires a degree of distance from those who make her feel inadequate.

Xander needs to have Buffy and Willow in his life – they make him special by association, and he eventually comes to accept his role as “the one who isn’t chosen.” Willow, on the other hand, is a little resentful of the importance that Buffy bestows on her existence, and wants something outside the constraints of the friend-group to validate her own specialness, something that’s hers alone. She’ll get there eventually.

While Buffy and the gang were investigating Moloch, there were a number of fun little second-long vignettes that demonstrated the chaos being strewn across the rest of the world: a guy whose essay is changed into a pro-Nazi manifesto, a school nurse insisting that a student’s record had no mention of his allergies, and a radio broadcast that announces financial discrepancies in the church coffers (so... that last one may not have been Moloch).

It's always a bit weird when the Monster of the Week ends up causing a lot of wide-spread harm, only to never be mentioned again – even in a place like Sunnydale. In this case, Moloch clearly managed to do a lot of damage before his death, not to mention taking over a factory and creating dozens of drone workers. Are there any long-term ramifications to any of this? Not that we ever see!

By later seasons, this show almost exclusively took place in Buffy’s house, various graveyards, the Magic Box, and the Bronze, so I was inordinately excited to see locations like the inside of Willow’s house and the CRD factory. Show me more of Sunnydale! The writers were under no obligation to do so, but they never really gave the place a sense of history or personality; a place that was worth protecting for its own sake.

No Angel or Cordelia this time around.

It’s always mildly amusing when an important character is introduced to the show alongside inconsequential ones. This episode gave us Ms Calendar, who will be an intrinsic part of the show going forward... but also Dave and Fritz, who won’t be. Kind of like how Sheila was introduced in the same episode as Spike, or Scott Hope in the same episode as Faith. Crazy!

It’s also rather startling just how much she stands out compared to other guest stars; she’s so vividly rendered in comparison to the likes of Blayne or Owen. Whether Robia Scott was brought back on the strength of her performance here, or was always intended to be a recurring guest star and so given more characterization is unclear, but you can tell just by watching this episode that she’ll be back.

Speaking of, I looked up the actors for Fritz and Dave on IMDB. Jamison Ryan (Fritz) only ever had three acting jobs in a single year of his life, while Chad Lindberg (Dave) has been working regularly for years: most recently in Star Trek: Picard, but also in other genre shows like Agents of SHIELD, Supernatural and The X-Files.

Dave is the first Sunnydale student since Jesse to be killed during the course of an episode, and I ended up feeling really sorry for the guy. He gets in over his head but tries to do the right thing, and that gets him killed. I’m still genuinely curious over the fallout of his death. Surely the Scoobies did something to convince his parents it wasn’t suicide?

There are plenty of minor details about Xander and Willow in this episode: we see the latter’s house and bedroom for the first time, and learn that her parents do in fact exist (though we’ll never see her father on-screen at any point during the course of the show) while Xander has an uncle that once worked at CRD as a janitor. None of it is hugely relevant, but when you think about it, we learn so little about their home lives that these little scraps are fascinating.

I’m always left wondering how Moloch’s book ended up in Sunnydale. I mean, of course it does, but where did it come from? Did Giles order it? Did the Watchers Council send it?

Jenny makes an interesting comment when Giles asks her if she’s a witch and she responds: “no, I don’t have that kind of power.” I mean, she and Giles had enough power to force Moloch into his robot form. What exactly is a witch’s power by comparison?

I wish the script had delved more deeply into exactly what Moloch’s feelings were for his followers. What exactly was he getting out of the interactions? (Beyond their obedience, obviously). At times he seemed genuinely fond of Willow and then distraught when she rejected him, which was in marked contrast to the indifference with which he killed Fritz and Carlos. I don’t expect much characterization for a Monster of the Week, but it felt like there was something there that will echo other portrayals of toxic love that become so prevalent in episodes to come.

Best Line: Jenny: “you kids really dig the library.” Xander: “to read makes us speak English good.”

Most dated line: Willow: “I met him online.” Buffy: “On line for what?”

Most Random Scene: There’s a moment in which Moloch is bragging about his powers to Willow and he tells her: “I can control the world! Right now a man in Beijing is transferring money to a Swiss bank account for a contract on his mother's life. Good for him!” Er... okay. What an oddly specific anecdote.

Worst Visual Effect: The infamous Robo!Moloch:

Best Scene: My darling trio sitting by the fountain, commiserating with each other on their doomed love lives. It’s funny, heartwarming and – in hindsight – very bittersweet.

Death Toll: Dave, strangled by Fritz. Fritz, neck snapped by Moloch. And Carlos too, I suppose, though I won’t count him because that was way back in 1480. Moloch, electrocuted by Buffy.

Grand Total: Thirteen civilians, fourteen villains (I’m counting Fritz as a villain as he was clearly the most gung-ho about killing people on Moloch’s orders. It didn’t take much to corrupt him). Still feel bad for Dave though.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Harvest, S01E02

Here we go, the second half of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s two-part premiere episode, picking up right where the cliff-hanger left off...

Despite having Buffy pinned down in a crypt, Luke is fended off by the cross around her neck. I knew it would come in handy at some point. She rushes outside and saves Willow and Xander, but the vampires manage to drag Jesse away.

Sorry Jesse, but you’re the only character in this scene not to feature in the opening credits, and you know what that means. (Whedon actually wanted to get Eric Balfour included in these credits, just to make his death more of a shock, but there are all sorts of legal issues concerning who gets to be in such things and who doesn’t).

Back at the library, Giles has accepted the presence of Xander and Willow in the Slayer’s inner circle remarkably well, and is filling them in on the show’s mythos. Whedon has commented in the past how surprised he was to get away with the line: “contrary to popular mythology, [this world] did not begin as a paradise,” which is obviously a direct refutation to what the Good Book says, and Giles goes on to describe it as a place where demons roamed the earth – at least until the rise of humans.

We actually learn very little about how/why they left, only that the last demon (or Old One) to leave this reality fed off a human and mixed their blood together, resulting in the first vampire: a human body infected by a demon’s soul.

Again, we don’t exactly learn why the demon did this, though that explanation very much tracks with how vampirism works throughout the course of the entire show. When a person is turned, their body remains but their personality (through their lack of a soul/possession by a demon) is drastically different.

Now vampires drink the blood of humans, occasionally creating more of their kind, waiting for the Old Ones to return.

Okay, I’m going to be a complete nerd about all this, so bear with me. I love trying to parse through rudimentary world-building and pulling questions/possible fanfic scenarios out of it.

If the Earth originally belonged to demons, only to be overcome by humans, does that mean that a war between them took place at some stage? Every decent fantasy story needs a Great Offscreen War in its distant past, right? Think the Battle for the Dawn, the Butlerian Jihad, the War of Power, the War of Wrath, the Great Hyperspace War...

Maybe something similar happened in the Buffyverse: a war for supremacy between demons and humans. Was it the reason the Slayer was created, which (as we find out much later) occurred very early in humanity’s history. Did she have something to do with the demons leaving this reality for a hell dimension, or to wherever they are now?

And who was this unidentified demon that made the very first vampire? And why? It’s not hard to imagine it was intended as a final “fuck you” to humanity if we assume that the demons were forcibly banished from this dimension... but perhaps even as a contingency plan considering this particular band of vampires are trying to bring the Old Ones back by opening the Hellmouth.

In the seven years of this show, none of this ever gets elaborated on. They even move away from the concept that demons are attempting to return to this earthly plane – the Mayor was trying to ascend into a demon, and Glory was trying to get back to her hell dimension by whatever means necessary, though I suppose any attempts (of which there were several) to open the Hellmouth came with the objective of unleashing demons back into the world.

Poor Jesse; he’s completely bewildered by whatever the heck’s going on, even after he’s been “upgraded to bait.” I did, however, appreciate the intelligence of the Master when he points out that the Slayer will come to rescue her friend. No Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, here. This guy is smart enough to understand that heroes are the ones who help other people.

It turns out the Master is trapped in an underground church (more on this later) and I had to chuckle when he mentions his “ascension” out of it. The writers obviously enjoyed that word, as it essentially becomes the Arc Word of season three.

The issue of the existence of a police force within a show that incorporates supernatural elements is raised and just as quickly discarded when Willow suggests calling them, only for Giles to point out that no one will believe their story. Moving on. (That said, I’ll have a LOT to say about how the police – what little we see of them – are portrayed in later episodes/seasons, why they’re such a hassle to deal with in these types of shows, and how they’re connected to the failure of the Initiative as a concept. Stay tuned).

In trying to figure out where Jesse may have been taken, Willow shows off her hacking skills by bringing up a map of Sunnydale’s sewage system – completely illegally of course, making this our first glimpse of Willow demonstrating some hidden depths behind that nerdy exterior.

Then we get a fun deconstruction of Behind the Black. This is a trope in which a character doesn’t notice something obvious because it’s not visible to the camera. It’s usually used when villains need to sneak up on our hero, or for comic effect when a character talks about someone even through they’re standing right there.  

In this case, the average viewer will be forgiven for thinking that Luke sneaking up on Buffy at the end of the last episode was a case of Behind the Black. She didn’t notice him until he grabbed her neck because it’s just more dramatic that way. It’s such a prevalent trick that most probably wouldn't have even questioned it.

But as it turns out, it wasn’t just a standard use of this trope, but a plot-point. Buffy thinks about how she was facing the mausoleum door and realizes that Luke came up behind her – which means that the vampires must have doubled-back with Jesse and gone through a secret passage located in the building. Nicely played, Whedon.

Xander wants to go with Buffy and when she shoots him down he commends: “I’m less than a man.” Urgh. I realize that Xander coming to terms with his perceived emasculation in the face of Buffy’s strength is a significant part of his character arc, but in this case it was enough for him to just be disappointed that he can’t help his friend. Make Jesse his motivation, not a desire to protect his manhood.

In my last review I observed that the writers got lucky when they only shot scenes of Angel at night (having not yet decided that he was a vampire), a comment I may have to retract considering he’s clearly standing in sunlight in this next scene. Muted sunlight, but sunlight nonetheless.

And his personality is still so weird. David Boreanaz is playing Angel as that “smarmy know-it-all smartass” character type, not the wounded, broody soul who was so moved by Buffy’s plight that he decided to join the good fight after a single glimpse of her through a window. He actually reminds me of Whistler here. 

Buffy says to Angel: “I’ve got a friend down there – or a potential friend. Do you know what it’s like to have a friend?” He’s stumped by this question. Oh Angel, just you wait...

Ah, the Absurdly Spacious Sewer, another classic of the genre.

Back at school in the computer lab, Willow does research for Giles while Cordelia struggles with the assignment. And look – it’s Harmony! At this early stage she’s depicted as a complete airhead (okay, I suppose that never truly changes) and a sycophantic member of Cordelia’s girl-posse (a dynamic that does change – quite profoundly). 

Fun fact: if we count this premiere as a single episode (they did originally air together on the same night) then David Boreanaz and Mercedes McNab are the only two actors to appear in the very first episode of Buffy and the very last episode of Angel.

This scene is mostly filler, were it not for the aforementioned introduction of Harmony, and that fact that Willow stands up for Buffy in the face of Cordelia’s malicious gossip. Already she’s starting to grow a backbone and not just scurry away.

Buffy and Xander finds Jesse, and one of them (I forget who) utters that most beloved line of all screenwriters: “we’ve gotta get outta here.” We already know it’s a trap, so it’s no big surprise when vampires start to emerge from the shadows to cut off their escape route – but to this day it’s a considerable gut-punch when Jesse reveals his new vampiric state.

They fend him off with a crucifix and manage to escape through a manhole to the surface. I love the scene when Xander tries to pull Buffy away from the vampire that’s grabbed her ankle, only for the sunlight to burn its skin and drive it back underground.

More filler when the Master hears of Buffy’s escape and pokes out a minion’s eye.

Giles and Willow compare notes, and Willow has come up with some pertinent information: in 1937 there were a rash of murders in Sunnydale that match the profile of vampiric activity, only for them to cease when an earthquake hit the town. When Buffy and Xander return, Giles hypothesizes that sixty years ago the Master tried to open a mystical portal that the Spanish called “Boca del Infierno,” the Mouth of Hell. Or more colloquially, the Hellmouth. His goal: to bring about the apocalypse.

Yay, more mythos! I just love made-up supernatural history.

But I have more questions, because CLEARLY this isn’t the whole story. Obviously, the Master failed in his attempt to open the Hellmouth, because now he’s trapped in a buried church behind a mystical barrier after an earthquake prevented him from going through with his plan. So there’s no way that earthquake was a coincidental natural occurrence. And that invisible barrier is magical, dammit! That means someone had to have put it there.

Surely the Watchers Council would have had records if a Slayer had been involved in all this, so if it wasn’t her, who was behind the Master’s entrapment back in 1937? Honestly, I don’t think Whedon ever had it mapped out; at this stage the point was simply to set up the mechanics and get on with the story at hand. That’s fair enough, but it’s still interesting to ponder these gaps in the history.

Giles has also figured out how the Master plans to escape his prison: by making one of his disciples the Vessel, which will allow him to draw enough strength from the blood that his servant drinks to break through the magic that keeps him trapped underground. We’ve already seen the first stage of this ritual take place: Luke drinks from the Master’s wrist and gets a three-pointed star rendered in blood on his forehead.

Xander realizes that the most obvious locale for the second stage of the ritual to take place is the Bronze, filled with all those fresh young bodies, and the gang heads out as a team for the first time. However, Buffy takes a short detour home to grab some supplies, and Joyce confronts her with the fact Principal Flutie called her to say she’d missed some classes.

Joyce tries her hand at discipline but the moment she’s out of the room Buffy promptly grabs her bag of weapons and slips out the bedroom window. This is kind of cute actually, since Buffy having to sneak out of the house without her mother knowing is a reasonably big part of these early episodes, but not a factor at all in the later ones. (Also, the episode never returns to this development – as far as we know, Joyce never realizes that Buffy left the house).

Vampire!Jesse approaches Cordelia at the Bronze, and she’s immediately struck by his more assertive persona. This is a fascinating first glimpse at the allure of vampires: as a human, Jesse was a complete loser, now all he has to do is stare at Cordelia and she turns to deferential pudding.

Yeah, you can feel the nasty subtext of Whedon’s “nice guys finish last” mentality at work here (especially since Jesse gets Cordelia to dance with him by telling her to shut up) but it’s also consistent with how vampires will be portrayed in episodes to come. In many ways, they serve as an unsubtle allegory for sexual predators: attractive and magnetic on the surface, only to reveal their monstrous true faces when they attack.

I love the slow-motion approach of the vampires to the Bronze, especially with Darla merrily skipping as she leads the way.

Just in case Buffy wasn’t able to notice the symbol etched on Luke’s forehead that identifies him as the Vessel, he helps out by taking the stage and making a speech in which he will not shut up about this fact. Warm bodies are brought to him and he starts to drink, though just before he bites into Cordelia, Buffy makes her presence known.

The rest of the team help the civilians escape, and then it’s Buffy versus Luke, Xander versus Jesse, and Giles versus Darla – at least until Willow comes along and throws the vial of holy water that Buffy gave her into her face. Darla rushes off – screaming in pain, but with the opportunity to return another night.

The same can’t be said for Jesse, who is mocking Xander on his inability to kill him, only to be pushed into Xander’s stake and dusted by a panic-stricken girl rushing to escape the building. It’s a deliberately anti-climactic, killed-in-mid-sentence death that sets the tone for how characters (even the beloved ones) are going to be dispatched across the course of this show. Get used to it.

Buffy distracts Luke by making him believe it’s sunrise and breaking a window behind him, then stakes him as he tries to figure out what’s going on. The other vampires gather round only to flee at this zoom-in:

Oh yeah.

Outside, Angel watches the vampires run for it, and says “she did it – I’ll be damned,” the most serendipitous line since Uncle Owen said “that’s what worries me” to Beru’s “he’s too much like his father” in the first Star Wars movie, well before anyone working on the production knew that Vader would turn out to be Luke’s father. (In this case, the writers had not yet realized that Angel was a vampire himself, and therefore already literally “damned”).

Giles takes off his glasses and cleans them for the first time, and the following day Buffy is bemused to hear Cordelia pass off the situation as gang warfare, while her friend declares: “I wish I’d been there.” Xander expresses his disbelief at how people have rationalized everything, and the phrase "Sunnydale Syndrome" is born – at least in the fandom. I don’t think it’s ever uttered on the show.

Giles is excited about what they might face next (again, I’m mildly astonished that he puts up no protest at all that Willow and Xander are involved in this) and the trio walk off, jabbering nonsense to each other.

The last line is Giles muttering: “the Earth is doomed” and my mind flashforwards to the reiteration of this scene in the show’s very final episode. I take a deep breath. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us, but it’s going to be these three friends who’ll be standing there at the finish line.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Jesse is a perfect example of a Forgotten Fallen Friend, even though he should have been a huge part of the show going forward. And I don’t mean in the sense he should have been spared (though I can also envision an arc in which Xander spends the entirety of the season gearing himself up to killing his former friend) but that he could have been touchstone on the brutal nature of death in this show; a reminder that no one is safe, whatever their proximity to the Core Four.

He should have been the ongoing source of Xander’s hatred for vampires; a sobering reminder that Buffy can’t save everyone; someone who was mentioned frequently as the “first one down.” Did this kid have parents? Was there a funeral? Everything is swept under the rug instead of mined for maximum angst potential.

Apparently there were plans to have Eric Balfour return in season seven as an aspect that the First took in "Conversations with Dead People", though as cool as that could have been, it also had the potential to be completely baffling since – as stated – no one ever speaks about this guy after his death.

And at this point it occurs to me that Buffy essentially comes along and takes Jesse’s place in that particular triad of friends.

For a hot second I considered the possibility that the demon who created the first vampire was meant to be the Master, but no – supplementary material makes it very clear he was once a human called Heinrich Joseph Nest who was turned into a vampire six hundred years ago. And that’s all the background we ever get on him. Makes you wonder who turned him into a vampire all those centuries ago, especially when you consider that he’s the “grandsire” of Darla, Angel, Drusilla and Spike – the four most famous vampires in this entire franchise.

Whedon is quite clever in giving the Master two separate goals, which allows him to be defeated in this episode, while still keeping him around as the season’s Big Bad. The Harvest is designed to free him from the underground church, but the opening of the Hellmouth is something else entirely, and won’t be attempted until the final episode. Nicely done.

Towards the end, we get the vague implication that killing a Slayer is considered a great trophy for vampires, and that her blood is particularly powerful. These hints will certainly become more explicit plot-points later on in the show.

A quick theory on how crucifixes work on this show: they’re regularly used to ward off vampires, even when used by people who aren’t affiliated with Christianity. In fact, the concept of Christ and Christianity is never explored – or even discussed – in any detail at any point during the show’s run.

This is unsurprising given Joss Whedon’s lack of faith, and I can only assume he simply felt obliged to keep that specific bit of vampire lore in. I’ve always supposed that in this context the crucifixes work a bit like metaphysical negatively-charged magnets in how they can deflect vamps. They symbolize the fact that many people believe Christ died and came back to life by the grace of God as a living, breathing human being. Vampires on the other hand, die and come back to life as members of the undead; soulless and filled with demon blood. The same process, but fundamentally different. As such, a crucifix repels them because they symbolize the complete inversion of what they went through.

Or something, I don’t know.

Best Shot: This wide shot of Buffy and Xander on the ground, having just escaped the sewer system:

Best Line: Giles telling Xander: “Jesse is dead. You have to remember that if you see him. You’re not looking at your friend, you’re looking at the thing that killed him.”

Most Random Scene: This surfer dude who pops up out of nowhere and the fact that Cordelia seems friendly with him:

Best Subversion: Even if you had Jesse pegged for death, you probably didn’t see his accidentally-get-pushed-into-Xander’s-stake real death coming.

Death Toll: Jesse as a human, and then Jesse as a vampire. The bouncer at the Bronze, and another clubber. Two vampires at the Bronze. Luke.

Grand Total: Four civilians, five villains.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, S01E05

I’ve always enjoyed this episode; it’s an important one in the Story Arc, but it also grapples with the whole superhero-esque “double life” drama that Buffy has to deal with.

It kicks off in a cemetery, in which Giles monitors Buffy’s slaying of what seems like a random vampire, but one that leaves a ring behind. This is not something that happens very often (or perhaps, ever again...?) since usually all garments and jewellery on a vampire turn to dust along with the vampire itself. But today it’s an important plot-point, so we’re going with it!

The ring has three stars and a sun on it (which Buffy finds familiar, how...?) and Giles identifies it as belonging to a vampire sect known as the Order of Aurelius.

Meanwhile, the Master is reading a prophecy from a book down in his underground prison. As an aside, I LOVE prophecies and all their permeations: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Self-Defeating Prophecies, Prophecy Pile-Ups, Twist Prophecies, Twisting the Prophecies, Either/Or Prophecies... if there’s a prophecy, I’m ready to find out how it’s going to trick the audience and mess up the characters’ lives.

So here’s this one: “And there will be a time of crisis, of worlds hanging in the balance. And in this time shall come the Anointed, the Master's great warrior. And the Slayer will not know him, will not stop him, and he will lead her into Hell.' As it is written, so shall it be. Five will die, and from their ashes the Anointed shall rise. The Brethren of Aurelius shall greet him and usher him to his immortal destiny. As it is written, so shall it be.”

Okay, I have some questions. And if you’re going to be reading these reviews, you need to know that I delve insanely deep into bits of world-building that absolutely none of these writers gave a moment’s thought about beyond using them to crack the story into gear.

First of all, who or what was Aurelius? A vampire prophet? And this sect of his is essentially all of the Master’s followers? Who are committed to standard doomsday shenanigans? And who wrote this prophesy? I’m assuming Aurelius himself. Somehow the Master and Giles both have copies of his work, though the latter is without some crucial pieces of information – namely that the five prophesied to die won’t just happen, but be specifically targeted by members of the Order.

Which is why Buffy and Giles are left sitting in a cemetery, waiting for the Anointed One to rise from a grave, instead of realizing that the brethren have to make the Chosen One they’ve been waiting for.

But then, how did the Master know that he had to deliberately seek out the Anointed One and self-direct the circumstances required to bring about his rise? How’d they know how many people were in the van? Was the little boy deliberately targeted, or could the Anointed One have been anyone on the bus? When a person becomes a vampire they’re infected by a demon soul, so did the Anointed One choose the vessel he was going to be reborn in? In which case, did he deliberately pick the body that the Slayer was likely to overlook?

Because I dig the idea that the vampires turned Andrew Borba as a deliberate red herring, tricking the Slayer into believing he was the Anointed One while they spirited the real one away.

(For the record, I don’t actually expect any answers to these questions, I just like pondering them. If you find it annoying, then definitely don’t read any more of these reviews, because I LOVE doing this).

The other plot that’s going on during all this is that Buffy is approached by Owen Thurman, a guy we’ve never seen or heard of before, but who she’s apparently had her eye on for a while. It was early days of the show – just go with it.

Owen seems to get a lot of flak from fandom, but I think he’s a fairly decent guy, which reflects well on Buffy. This could have easily been an episode about her crushing on an unworthy jock character who proves himself to be a complete coward after that run-in with the vamps at the funeral home, but the story is more bittersweet if he’s not just a cute cardboard cut-out that Buffy can project her desire for normality on.

That Owen is more than that is a credit to Buffy herself, and it’s interesting to see what she finds attractive in a guy: intellectualism, sensitivity, perceptivity... Later on, Willow describes him as “solitary, mysterious, broody” which is hilarious – because who else does that describe? Buffy is an intelligent and observant person, but she’s definitely not a scholar or a poet, so that she finds that appealing in a potential partner reveals a well of romanticism beneath her pragmatism. (Yeah, she was never going to be able to resist Angel, was she).

In a gag I wish they’d used more, Owen comes into the library looking for a book, and Giles is initially baffled that the library can be used for more than just a Slayer/Watcher homebase. In fairness to him, this is the first time any character has walked into this place who isn’t Buffy, Xander, Willow or himself. I was kinda disconcerted as well.

Owen invites Buffy to the Bronze that evening, which sets up our internal conflict for the episode: Duty to the World versus Longing for a Normal Life. Giles also throws in the added issue of “if you tell anyone else about your true identity, you’ll make them a target and endanger their lives” which is kind of funny because neither he nor Buffy factor Willow and Xander into this equation. Seriously, Giles has no worries about either of them whatsoever.

Buffy makes it late to the Bronze due to aforementioned Slayer duties, and spots Owen dancing with Cordelia, who is all over him. Buffy leaves in a funk, and – come on, girl – you didn’t need binoculars to notice that Owen looked very uncomfortable.

That night, a van full of exactly five people (the driver, a mother and son, another passenger, and a guy called Andrew Borba) is attacked by a gang of vampires. It’s a pretty unsettling scene, and Borba throws up a lot of questions. Obviously, his purpose in this episode is to serve as a red herring to the Anointed One’s real identity, but you can’t really blame the Scoobies for targeting him. He’s physically intimidating and even before his turn he’s ranting fire-and-brimstone nonsense about the end of the world.

When Giles brings the news to Buffy, showing her a newspaper that reports five died in a van accident and one of them was wanted for questioning by the police regarding a double-murder, it once again coincides with Buffy attempting to go on a date with Owen. Hilariously, Giles tells her all this at her house, just when Owen turns up to collect her for their date, and Buffy has to hastily cover for his presence by promising to bring back her overdue library books.

Also, Willow and Xander are there. Also also, Joyce is not there, which is kind of weird. Where is she while all these people are having an extended semi-argument at her front door at night?

If your eyes are good enough to read this text, you'll discover it's amusingly incoherent. Five cent refundable deposit? Huh?

Owen and Buffy head to the Bronze, Giles decides to investigate the funeral home by himself, and Willow and Xander are torn on who to follow – naturally Xander wants to sabotage Buffy’s date, while Willow is worried about Giles.

Buffy is enjoying her date with Owen, but who should turn up at the Bronze but Angel, who essentially scolds her for not being out on the streets, doing her job as a Slayer. (As he informs a bewildered Owen, he and Buffy know each other from work). It’s his one scene in this episode, so he has to make the most of it – and it’s probably a good thing Angel is now aware Buffy isn’t just sitting around by herself daydreaming about him.

Giles makes it to the funeral home and in a cool shot, the camera pans from him to the ominous sight of the cemetery across the road, then back to him with a vampire standing right beside him. Followed quickly by another one behind him. He makes a dash for the doors of the funeral home, but unfortunately this isn’t a place of residence, and the vampires can follow him inside.

Like I said earlier, my head-canon is that the reason they don’t just kill him is because they’re here to collect the real Anointed One, and want the Slayer and her Watcher distracted from that objective.

Giles manages to barricade himself in the morgue, and it never fails to crack me up when Xander and Willow give him the fright of his life when they appear at the barred window. Apparently Willow won that argument, and the two of them head off to fetch Buffy. Giles is left trapped in what is a genuinely fraught situation. At any point the vamps could break into the room and finish him off.

Xander and Willow crash Buffy’s date and float the possibility of everyone heading for the funeral home (Willow: “I’ve always wanted to go THERE.”) Owen is surprisingly up for it, but Buffy manages to extricate herself... though not before doubling back and kissing him, right in front of Angel. Her first on-screen kiss – congratulations, Owen!

(Also, is there a reason Angel doesn’t accompany Buffy to the funeral home? I suppose he hasn’t really gotten involved in any physical altercations so far, and there’s a chance the writers still don’t know he’s actually a vampire, but if that’s the case then his reaction to Buffy’s “bite me!” comment is up there with his “I’ll be damned” one in the pilot in terms of unintentional irony.

But I feel that the name “Angel” was chosen for this character as a nod to being someone’s guardian angel, as opposed to the irony of it being applied to a vampire – which as I’ve said, the writers’ room didn’t know yet – in which case, he should be doing some more overt guarding).

Owen tags along to the funeral home anyway, and you can almost hear the Benny Hill music as the gang duck in and out of rooms and down corridors, with Buffy desperately trying to keep her date out of danger and in the dark. She finally manages to corral him into an office while Xander and Willow barricade the door (which hilariously includes a lampshade) only for Owen to notice that they’re in a viewing room, and the dead body on the other side of the glass is moving. The safe room is the opposite of safe.

Buffy finds Giles hiding with a cadaver in a body drawer in the morgue, and it’s almost funny how utterly clueless Giles is about what’s actually going on: “I don't know what these brethren mean to do exactly. Find the Anointed, or, or, or, or give him something perhaps, uh, it's all, all very vague! And the Anointed may be long gone!” Honestly, the vampires kinda deserve to win this one.

Buffy rushes back to the others when she hears the newly-risen Andrew Borba smash the glass between the two rooms (there is some top-tier comedy going on in the background as Willow and Xander immediately start unbarricading the door again) and Owen gets his first eyeful of a vampire.

There’s some running and fighting – which includes Buffy doing a completely pointless backflip off the top of a gurney – but ultimately everyone ends up back in the morgue, where the fires in the crematory accidentally get turned on in the scuffle. Owen attempts to come to Buffy’s aid, only for Borba to smash a body-drawer door into the back of his head, knocking him out.

Thinking he’s dead, Buffy is galvanized into fighting Borba with full Slayer-strength, and eventually manages to throw him onto a gurney, using his momentum to slide him straight into the crematory chamber. Owen comes to, but much to Buffy’s disappointment, decides not to continue their date. Willow and Xander offer to get him home safely. (Aren’t the rest of the vampires still outside? Or did they just grab the Anointed One and hustle?)

But there’s a couple more surprises on the table: the next day at school, Owen approaches Buffy and wants to give it another go! Turns out he loved the danger and excitement of their time together, and is looking forward to more adventures with her. Realizing that this attitude will only get him killed, Buffy commits her first act of noble sacrifice and breaks off their budding relationship.

Giles tries to console her with the story about when his father informed him it was his destiny to become a Watcher, like his father and (interestingly) his grandmother before him. Um... can we learn more about Giles’s grandmother the Watcher? Because that sounds super-interesting.

But it’s cold comfort for Buffy, who only cheers up a little when Giles points out that at least she killed the Anointed One – which is of course, our cue to cut straight to the underground church where the Master is welcoming the very not-dead (undead, in fact) Anointed One into the ranks of his brethren... and it’s the little boy. Dun, dun, DUUUUUN.

Every superhero must sooner or later grapple with the fact that their loved ones are in constant danger if their proximity to super-heroics were to ever be discovered, and this was Buffy’s episode to go through that particular learning curve. It showcases her early frustration with the double life she has to lead, and in seasons to come, it doesn’t get any better – not when it comes to her dating life, her continuing education, or her career opportunities. In the last three or so seasons, she has no life outside fighting evil at all.

Which is why this early interaction with Owen is so interesting. He’s a little condescending to her at times (like when he gives her his watch and points out where the big and little hands are) but it makes a kind-of sense that the otherwise utterly self-sufficient Buffy would respond to something like this. She’s been designated as the tough, weird one by her peers, and this kind of baby-talk flirting probably takes her back to her pre-Slayer days, when she was just a normal (perhaps somewhat vapid) teenage girl.

And I like that Owen is a worthy crush for her to have. Sure he’s a little pretentious, but he’s also completely sincere about what he’s into, puts his foot down when Cordelia keeps trying to interrupt their date, and is brave enough to double-back into the funeral home when he thinks Buffy is in trouble, even decking Borba with a metal tray in her defence. He’s perceptive enough to describe Buffy as being like “two people”, and I think Buffy responds to that – the fact he’s not so clueless that he can’t observe there’s something different about her (and is attracted to her because of that). Heck, he was practically a baby version of Angel. In another life, they would have been good together.

But there were always some cracks in the potentiality of the relationship, from his off-handed comment in the Bronze (“there’s a lot more important stuff than dating”)* to the way he freaks out after getting knocked unconscious at the morgue.

* Buffy has a visible reaction to this, because dating IS important to her as it represents her shot at a normal life. That he’s dismissive of it is ironically reminding her that she’s shirking her duties

I give the writers infinite credit for not taking the easy option and giving him Easy Amnesia after this bonk on the head, as well as avoiding the “it’s all too much for him” cliché. Turns out he’s up for more danger with Buffy... but that only means that she has to be the one to end it for his own safety. She’s just learned the hard way that ignoring her calling puts people like Giles in danger, and (as the audience already knows) she was so distracted by his presence at the morgue that she failed to destroy the real Anointed One.

Avoiding her responsibilities can cost others their lives, and she’s more resigned to her fate than she was at the episode’s beginning. (Which means it’s also beautiful setup for the show’s very last episode. We’ll get there).

Owen could have been a halfway decent member of the Scoobies, but in the end he doesn’t realize that none of what Buffy does is for thrills or fun. The “dating life” that he dismissed is a luxury he’s lucky to have. Real depth is doing what’s required of you, not going out looking for trouble.

So Buffy pulls the “let’s be friends” speech and Owen walks off and out of the show forever. Still, I head-canon him as a guy who is eventually part of the school committee that rewards Buffy with her “Class Protector” award at the prom. Think about it: he got close to Buffy, he saw some weird shit that night, he probably went on to share some stories with the other students... I like to think he figured out some of what was going on and pitched the idea (or at least helped with the presentation) of that umbrella award.

See also: Xander loudly mentions slaying in the school cafeteria and no one cares. In hindsight, this episode neatly encapsulates the idea that people will brush off weird comments and/or occurrences... but like Owen, might well be paying more attention than we the viewers initially give them credit for.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Things get so much more complicated and harrowing with the bad guys later, so in these early days it’s actually rather refreshing to see Buffy just take on some old-school vampires who just want to eat people.

This is one of the rare times in which a vampire leaves behind an article of clothing (or technically, a ring) even though this is something that logically should be happening all the time. I mean, why are jackets and pants and t-shirts turning into dust along with vampire flesh? Obviously, the answer is “budgetary reasons,” though it would have made more sense (and been kinda cool) if a vampire’s clothes were left behind when they were dusted.

In fact, my next-tier head-canon is that on being staked, vamps revert back to whatever stage of decomposition their corpses would have been at if they hadn’t been turned – so the older ones would burst into dust, but the newborns would leave a body to be deposed of. (Again, I can see why the show didn’t go with this).

On the subject of prophesies, the Anointed One is referred to as “a great warrior” and “a mighty ally” and “the greatest weapon against the Slayer”, which... is really not the case in the end. They get the “five will die” and “the Slayer will not know him” bits right, but he’s definitely not a great warrior and ultimately doesn’t even “lead [the Slayer] into hell”, unless that’s just a fancy way of describing “an underground church.” Having him be a child was a good twist, but all things considered, he’s way overhyped.

The show’s other important One-Shot Character was Andrew Borba, who leaves behind some lingering questions. For instance, was he really responsible for that double murder? Who did he kill and why? We’ll never know, but the reason I bring it up is because if it’s true, this guy was more deadly as a human than as a vampire.

He also had some interesting things to say once he’s arisen as a vampire, such as: “He is risen in me! He fills my head with song!” and “I'll suck the blood from your hearts, he says I may!” and “They told me about you while I was sleeping.” Er, so who is this “he” and “they” he refers to? God? The demon that now inhabits him? The Master, somehow? Obviously this guy was crazy-pants well BEFORE he became a vampire, but it’s still something to ponder. That last line in particular, “they told me about you while I was sleeping” fits into my theory that he was deliberately turned in order to provide a distraction for the real Anointed One’s escape, and so knows that Buffy and Giles are coming for him.

Another great moment was when Giles repels him with the crucifix, something this religiously-affiliated guy is visibly shocked by. It’s a shame this sort of thing wasn’t explored further, as the idea of a fire-and-brimstone preacher becoming a vampire and then realizing that his old identity/belief system and his new existence are completely incompatible is a very interesting conundrum to delve into. I’d love to see more religious characters react like this, and it’s kind of an echo to the fact the Master (who has his own twisted religion) is trapped in a church.

There is a strange and pointless scene in which we get a close-up of Xander’s watch, revealing that it’s a Tweety Bird watch from the Looney Tunes. Is it meant to indicate how immature he is, maybe?

It wasn’t a great episode for Xander, who spends most of it just being jealous and trying to perve at Buffy while she’s changing. Though honestly, why was he even THERE while Buffy was getting ready for her date with Owen? Not just in her room, but in her HOUSE? Why would anyone invite him to that??

Cordelia’s first look at Angel is just... wow. She calls him “salty goodness” and then watches in disbelief as he ignores her and approaches Buffy. I know this sounds mean, but in hindsight this simple scene pretty much encapsulates the dynamic of how Whedon will treat all three of these characters when it comes to their romantic entanglements with each other.

This episode is also wonderfully dated, whether it’s Buffy flat-out saying: “this is the nineties, the nineteen-nineties!” or her iconic line: “if the apocalypse comes, beep me.” That grainy, rather cheap aesthetic? I love it.

So, the Anointed One is a vampire, right? I only ask because we never actually see this character with “vamp-face” though I suppose that’s understandable since he was played by a child. Those prosthetics would have been a nightmare to get on him.

Odd that Darla isn't in this episode. As a high-ranking favourite of the Master, you'd think she'd be leading the attack on the bus.

This episode also made me realize that the show in its entirety spends remarkably little time at funeral homes. I mean, you’d think Buffy going straight there would be more convenient than wandering around cemeteries all night, and since Andrew Borba rose well before he was committed to the ground, I imagine that those morgue workers must see a LOT of shit. Surely an arrangement could have been worked about between them and the Slayer...

In short, a solid episode with crucial plot-points, a worthy if not disposable love interest, a couple of good twists and a chance for Buffy to make a difficult, important and thematically resonate decision.

Best Line: Owen to Willow and Xander at the Bronze: “You show up everywhere. Interesting.” He’s trying so hard to understand.

Best Scene: Buffy making the call to break up with Owen. It’s the first of many, many, many difficult decisions she’ll have to make over the years.

Best Subversion: Not the Anointed One reveal, but that they took the hard route with Owen and had him open to a continuing relationship with Buffy... leading to her decision to end things.

Best One-Shot Character: He gets mocked a lot in fandom, but I can mount a reasonable defence of Owen – he’s certainly a better romantic option for Buffy than other temporary love interests like Parker or Scott Hope.

Most Ironic Scene: Cordelia’s first glimpse of Angel. Whew.

Death Toll: The vampire Buffy stakes in the cold open. The five passengers on the bus, including Andrew Borba twice (as a human then a vampire).

Grand Total: Eleven civilians, nine villains. Which means that this episode tips the balance in the bad guys’ favour for the first time.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Witch, S01E03

Sorry, this one's a bit late as I had to work Sunday.

The second episode of any long-running series is always interesting to watch, as well as a tricky thing to achieve. The writers are still setting up the character beats, the story-arcs, the rules of the world – basically, the general FEEL of the show. It’s easy to get things wrong, as you can’t take any big swings this early on, but you also don’t want to get so bogged down in set-up that you neglect to tell a story.

Even more so than the pilot, the second episode should clue the viewer in on what exactly they'll be tuning in for very week. If the pilot is the hook, then the sophomore episode has to reel you in; has to be a textbook example of what the show actually is.

(Also, a lot of the money shots will have already been spent on the first episode in order to get everyone’s attention, so you’re probably going to be working with a smaller budget as well).

And yes, I realize this is technically the show’s third episode, but Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest originally aired on the same night and are two halves of a single story. For all intents and purposes, Witch is the show’s sophomore episode.

For what it’s worth, I think Witch nails it. The episode introduces the Monster of the Week format, letting the audience know that Buffy won’t just be fighting vampires. It shows us what exactly Giles’s role as Buffy’s Watcher encompasses, and demonstrates that Willow and Xander are committing themselves to Buffy’s fight against evil – partly because they’re good people who know it’s the right thing to do, and partly because they’re invested in Buffy herself.

It even introduces a fairly important recurring character: Amy Madison, who will appear in almost every season of the show henceforth (season five is the only one she sits out).

Obviously, witches will soon become a huge part of the show’s lore – second only to demons and vampires – and the episode establishes a few key traits about them, from the use of potions and spell books to the fact that the really evil witches get a case of Black Eyes of Evil when they're mad.

(We will see this identical eye-colour on another witch further down the track, and if you can’t guess who it is, just follow the link to the TV Tropes page...)

Most importantly, it cements the central theme of “high school is hell,” with various supernatural threats being elaborate metaphors for the trials and tribulations that teenagers have to go through – in this case, overbearing parents trying to live vicariously through their children. In the real world, Catherine would be a stage mum. In Sunnydale, she’s a witch that can magically switch bodies with her daughter. Such is life on the Hellmouth.

It kicks off with Buffy wanting to join the cheerleading squad and Giles being singularly unimpressed. But Buffy’s reasoning kind of breaks my heart – she used to do it before her calling to vampire-slaying, and she wants to start up again because she just wants something normal and safe in her life. She looks so young and perky! Sarah Michelle Gellar still has baby fat in her cheeks!

Of course, that’s the cue to cut to a witch’s lair filled with bubbling cauldron and Barbie voodoo dolls.

During try-outs, Buffy is introduced to Amy Madison, and it’s established that she and Willow have been friends for a long time. I like that the two of them have this history together, and Willow shares some pertinent details about their friendship – most importantly that the two of them used to sneak brownies when Amy’s calorie-counting mother wasn’t looking.

(This is something that Buffy will use to clock what’s really going on towards the end of the episode, and even though I’ve probably watched Witch a dozen times, I’ve only just realized this detail is deliberately planted early on).

Amy comes across as pretty nice in this scene, so it’s odd to recall that she’s already Catherine.

There’s an amusing moment when Willow states that a cheerleader called “Amber” trained with someone called “Benson.” Later an actual Amber Benson will join the cast. But that’s not nearly as funny as Xander being given the line: “no need to drive it into my head like a railroad spike”. Just... wow.

During try-outs, the star performer Amber spontaneously combusts, and the best part is that Buffy tackles her to the (very hard gym) floor before dousing the flames. Seriously Buffy, was the full-body tackle necessary?

Two good character beats: Giles is extremely chipper about all the fascinating (and deadly) supernatural threats they’re likely to face thanks to living on a Hellmouth, while Willow and Xander eagerly volunteer to help in the investigation. They dub themselves the Slayerettes, a term that I don’t think ever comes up again across the entire course of the show. Perhaps it’s just as well.

Buffy is cautious about their enthusiasm and delivers a basic warning, but then pretty much gives them the green light to get involved. I like that Buffy’s defining attribute as a Slayer (that she has a network of friends that contribute their own skills) is introduced in such a low-key way. Hey civilians, you want to help me fight witches and vampires? Sure, why not!

In hindsight, Amy talking up her mother, trash-talking her dad, and complaining that “I can’t get my body to move like [my mother’s]” are hints as to what’s actually going on here.

There’s a red herring scene with Amy hearing spooky noises in the locker room and then getting threatened by Cordelia, nicely setting her up as a victim and not a culprit.

Neither Buffy or Amy made the squad and the former is genuinely empathetic towards the latter. That’s Buffy’s other great strength – she makes friends easily because she truly cares about people.

Ah, Sunnydale faculty members! I always love seeing glimpses of the high school staff on this show, whether it’s Mr Pole (driving instructor) or Dr Gregory (the biology teacher who gets decapitated in the very next episode). Just imagine having a fulltime job that gives you a front-row seat to all the weird shit the Hellmouth can spit out – and that’s on top of having to teach a bunch of teenagers high school curriculum.  It can’t be a coincidence that all of these actors chose to play their characters as So Very Weary.

In this episode alone Mr Pole is nearly killed by Cordelia during driver’s ed, and Dr Gregory is witness to a student having her mouth magically sealed shut. How did Sunnydale Syndrome account for that?

The gang are attempting to concoct a potion in a beaker that will reveal whether or not Amy is a witch, and not doing a particularly subtle job of it as they gather ingredients from biology class – though it is interesting to note that Willow is the one doing most of the brewing. We’re looking at her first brush with witchcraft.

Buffy “accidentally” spills the potion on Amy’s arm and it turns blue, indicating that she is a witch – right at the same time another cheerleader starts panicking because her mouth has disappeared. It's a horrifying thing to witness, but Buffy notices that Amy looks just as freaked out as everyone else.

This is a bit of an odd red herring, as the gang are now working with the hypothesis that Amy is the witch, but unaware of what she’s actually doing – even though the very next scene demonstrates (to the audience at least) that she’s completely in control of events, going home and ordering her cowed “mother” to do her homework for her. I suppose we have to chalk her reaction in biology class down to Catherine’s acting skills.

In any case, she also knows that Buffy is onto her, and reveals that she’s nabbed her bracelet. So Buffy is next on Catherine’s hitlist.

Buffy’s response to the spell is to go hyperactive, then collapse. Giles identifies the “bloodstone vengeance” spell pretty quickly and accurately (which feels like it could be a hint as to the darker proclivities of his past BUT belies his statement later on that he’s never cast a spell before. Hey – it's the second episode. They’re still figuring things out).

While Xander and Willow watch Amy cheer at the basketball game, Buffy and Giles just leave the school grounds for Amy’s house. It’s kind of funny that this happens all the time, and Giles never got in trouble for it. Nobody ever noticed that the school librarian was spending an inordinate amount of time with a student?

As Giles confronts who he thinks is Catherine, Buffy notices a plate of cookies on the floor and realizes that she’s Amy. In doing this, she’s clearly recalling Willow’s story about how they used to eat brownies together, but this is the first time I’ve noticed that link. Until now, I always just assumed that a grown woman curling up with a plate of brownies struck Buffy as more of a teenage girl thing to do.  

At the same time, Catherine is stuttering: “dad... her dad left...” and I love her hysterical little laugh when she says: “you know, kids these days!” All this is a tip-off that Catherine has switched bodies with her daughter, and poor Amy soon crumbles. About a month ago she woke up in her mother’s bed and realized her body had been stolen, which is a genuinely terrifying scenario. I’ve always been creeped out by Body Snatching stories.

Giles investigates the attic and finds that it’s a witch’s lair filled with clichés: a cauldron, magical tomes, and the inevitable Cat Scare. I’m pretty sure that last one was included just so they could have a cool clip to use in the opening credits.

While all this is happening, Willow and Xander are keeping eyes on Amy during the basketball game, and there’s a pretty neat pan from the action of the cheerleaders and crowd to the stillness of the Slayerettes. (Okay, I’ll stop calling them that. But they are taking their new role seriously).

Giles, Buffy and Amy-in-Catherine head back to the school and the biology lab, where Giles begins the spell to reverse all of Catherine’s magic (stupidly, they do not tie up Amy despite knowing that the plan is to put Catherine back in this body). Over in the gym, Catherine-in-Amy can feel the spell start to work, and after toppling off the pyramid, she gives the rest of the cheerleaders a pretty lethal death glare and makes a feral run for the door.

Willow and Xander attempt to stall her, and are taken out immediately. Still, I wonder if Willow was a little impressed by Catherine disabling Xander with only a hand gesture. That’s real power right there.

Some tension builds once Amy and Catherine are transported back into their own bodies, but Buffy is also back to full-health and uses the old “use a giant mirror to bounce a witch’s spell back upon her” trick. Why is there a giant mirror hanging from the ceiling of the Sunnydale biology lab? It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that Catherine has disappeared and Giles informs Buffy that this was “his first casting.” LIAR. Okay, so we can head-canon that he’s just trying to keep his past as Ripper from her for as long as possible, but the truth is the writers just hadn’t conceived of that backstory for him yet. And that’s okay. A few little continuity flaws give a show flavour and the fans something to argue about.

In the wrap-up scene we see that Amy is happy living with her father (I would have liked to see him on-screen, especially in later seasons when Amy takes a downward spiral) and she and Buffy gaze for a moment at Catherine’s cheerleader trophy displayed in the hallway cabinet... both missing the fact that its eyes are moving. Yes, Catherine is the cheerleader trophy, now doomed to relive her glory years in perpetuity. Great ending!

Miscellaneous Observations:

Joyce and Buffy are clearly set up as a foil to Catherine and Amy, and it occurs to me that this is a rare show that spotlights a mother/daughter relationship. More than that, a good mother/daughter relationship, especially for this genre. I’m wracking my brains and I can’t think of another one. Adults have to be useless, absent or antagonistic in these types of shows (if they’re targeted towards a slightly younger target audience, you can bet they’ll just make the protagonist an orphan).

In any case, Joyce and Buffy aren’t exactly on the same page, but clearly their rapport involves nothing like the outright abuse inflicted on Amy.

An early scene shows Joyce in the capacity of an art gallery curator, opening crates in the kitchen. It made me realize that we never, ever see Joyce’s place of work. Not once! And it’s a bit strange in a way, as that setting had a lot of potential to be filled with cursed artefacts and paintings, like how Charmed used the Auction House in season one for a similar purpose.

The plotting of the episode interests me, as it comes up with three possible scenarios the writers could have gone with: that Amy is trying to please her mother by making the cheerleading squad and not realizing she’s picking off the other girls with magic, that Amy is deliberately using witchcraft to take out the competition and is terrorizing her mother on top of it, or (the one they went with) that a body-swap between mother and daughter has occurred. It’s such a rich premise that any of these three scenarios could have made for a good story.

That said, they kind of lose the original premise of a child being so pressured to live up to a parent’s exacting standards that she’s driven to desperation, replacing it to one of a parent being envious of a child’s youth and vicariously attempting to relive their glory years through them.

I’ve always wondered a little about Catherine’s backstory. Was she a hereditary witch, or self-taught like Willow? Because we know that Amy will manifest magical abilities as well, and even ends up with a streak of jealousy like her mother (though it’s directed at Willow).

Also, Giles removes Catherine’s spellbook from her house in order to reverse all her witchcraft. What happened to it afterwards? Come to think of it, we never see that Vampyr book from the first episode again either.

This episode establishes that the Sunnydale basketball team is called the Razorbacks and their mascot is a pig. We’ll be seeing more of this later down the track...

Great casting on Elizabeth Anne Allen and Robin Riker as mother/daughter. They looked very similar, and channelled each other’s inflection and body language while they were playing each other’s character.

Also, I love this demon on the gate that leads to Amy's house:

To sum up, I really love this episode, and is possibly my favourite season one episode after The Puppet Show. Maybe a bit too much time was spent on the cheerleaders falling prey to Catherine’s magic (the stuff with the driver’s ed lesson was clearly just to give Charisma Carpenter enough screentime to justify her placement in the opening credits) and it’s a Clueless Mystery in the sense that the audience is given no chance to figure out what’s going on before Buffy does (who gets the clues she needs in the same scene that she realizes what’s actually happening), but I still love it as a concentrated case study of what the show is offering us.

Best Scene: When Buffy drunkenly tells Xander that he’s “one of the girls” and we get this expression on Willow’s face:

Best Line: Freed from the bloodstone vengeance spell, Buffy leaps to her feet behind Catherine and says: “Guess what? I feel better.” It’s more in the delivery than in the words as-written, but is just the perfect blend of menace and perk. Buffy doesn’t doubt that she’s a threat, and subsequently tosses Catherine across the room.

Best Subversion: Amy wasn’t the witch after all, it was her mother using her body all along! What a tweest!

Death Toll: No one died in this episode! I suppose that makes sense, as otherwise Buffy and Amy would have been permanent members of the cheerleading team. Which means...

Grand Total: Four civilians, five villains.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Pack, S01E06

Tonight’s episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is brought to you by the metaphor: peer pressure and bullying. I’m actually rather fond of “The Pack”, even though it’s a middling episode, simply because I had the novelization of it as a pre-teen. My parents would buy me those cheap Buffy and Charmed tie-in paperbacks to keep me occupied on summer camping trips, and I’ve fond memories of reading them in the sun.

But are we really getting two Xander-centric episodes before we get even one of Willow? At least this one’s better than “Teacher’s Pet.”

It opens at Sunnydale Zoo. Who knew that Sunnydale had a zoo? It’s a place that we’ll never visit again, so try not to think about the fact that all these animals were probably killed when the town gets fully destroyed in six years.

The high school is on a field-trip, and Buffy is approached by four mean kids who bully her in the bizarre sort of way that only fictional bullies do. I mean, “careful – she might beat you up!” Dude, what?

According to the script (and my novelization) this quartet of troublemakers are known as Kyle, Heidi, Tor and Rhonda, though I think only Kyle is called by name on-screen. Of more interest is the fact that Kyle is played by Eion Bailey, who is still working regularly and is probably best known to genre fans as August/Pinocchio in Once Upon a Time. Jennifer Sky is also present, someone who is not working regularly, but who you might recognize as Amarice from Xena Warrior Princess.

The bullies move on to torturing another student called Lance Lincoln, who is makes the difficult call not to snitch on his tormentors when Principal Flutie turns up. Kyle pretends to be impressed by this and they drag poor Lance into the hyena house, which has been cordoned off. Buffy, Xander and Willow see them at it, and Xander takes the lead in going to the rescue of a fellow perceived-loser.

Buffy and Willow are about to follow when they’re stopped by a zookeeper (he’s never named either, but his nametag identifies him as Doctor Weirick) who gives the girls some creepy exposition on why exactly the hyena house has been fenced off. They’re fresh from Africa and are in quarantine, but are said to have the ability to understand human speech. They’ve been known to call out a person’s name to lure them away from the safety of their campfires, at which point, their unlucky victim is devoured.

Yeah, this episode has some “darkest Africa” vibes that haven’t aged particularly well, but it’s not too bad. The person doing the most cultural appropriation is the bad guy, after all.

Inside the enclosure, some very dodgy-looking hyena animatronics (?) note the arrival of the bullies, Lance and (soon after) Xander.  A scuffle unfolds as Xander comes to Lance’s defence, and as he makes a run for it, the hyenas seem to entrance everyone that remains, a green light glowing in each pair of eyes – including Xander’s.

That night at the Bronze he’s acting agitated and mildly aggressive, much to the confusion of Willow and Buffy. As soon as Kyle and the rest of the Pack arrives, the stare-a-thon begins (and honestly, I’m a little surprised more slash fiction wasn’t written about these two) though the girls aren’t remotely impressed when Xander chuckles along at a joke made at the expense of another student.

The next day at school we’re introduced to poor doomed Herbert the school mascot: a piglet that’s dressed up as a Razorback (established as the basketball team back in “Witch”). Principal Flutie is pretty excited about it, and we’re treated to him giving a lecture on the lack of school spirit in his students to Buffy, the girl who saves people’s lives on a daily basis. The main purpose of the scene seems to be establishing that something is up with Xander when he strolls by and Herbert reacts with squealing terror.

Ah, the dodgeball scene. Once again it serves to showcase Xander’s increasingly aggressive tendencies (as well as Buffy’s physical prowess since she’s the only one left standing on her own team) but the whole thing is stolen by Coach Harrold, who (as far as I know) only appears in this single episode, but gets three of its funniest lines (see below).

After some hyena-esque giggling at having turned on their own teammate and pounding him with dodgeballs (it’s poor Lance again), the Pack go on a slow-motion prowl through the Sunnydale courtyards, which culminates in them finding poor defensive Herbert in his cage. And they’re hungry...

Giles is rather uncharacteristically brushing off Buffy’s concerns about Xander by telling her that he’s behaving like a typical sixteen-year-old boy, though he comes around when Willow arrives with news that Herbert has been found eaten. Buffy twigs that all this started when Xander and the bullies entered the hyena enclosure, and the research party begins.

This next scene is... a lot. Blaming the Pack for poor Herbert’s death, a furious Principal Flutie calls Kyle, Heidi, Rhonda and Tor into his office, where he quickly loses control of the situation. We’re at least spared the sight of him being cannibalized on-screen, but I feel desperately sorry for the poor guy as the now-feral bullies advance on him. Being literally eaten is an extremely gruesome and terrifying way to die, and is quite possibly one of the cruelest deaths on the show.

Xander isn’t present when this goes down, which is a bit of a cheat – but then, I can’t say I’m sorry that they spared one of our main characters from committing murder and cannibalism, even if he was possessed at the time. And it’s not like he’s peacefully sleeping under a tree during all this either; rather, he corners Buffy in an empty classroom and assaults her.

As with the attack on Flutie, the act isn’t shown in any great detail, and I suspect Buffy got the drop on him pretty quickly after the scene cuts away, as she doesn’t seem to be particularly rattled over what she explicitly describes as “felony sexual assault.” (Then again, this was shot in the nineties, an era of television which was in no way equipped to handle this kind of subject matter. Heck, it still isn’t more often than not).

Giles has narrowed the most likely explanation for Xander’s behaviour down to a sect of animal worshippers known as the Primals, who can draw the spirits of certain predatory animals into themselves. Somehow Xander and the rest of the bullies seem to have undergone this ritual, so after locking him up in the book cage (the book cage! Being used as a holding cell for the first time!) Buffy and Giles head out to question the zookeeper on what he knows. Willow is left behind to guard Xander.

We get to see Willow’s steely side when Xander tries his hand at manipulation and plays the “us against the world” card, leaning on their shared history together – but Willow doesn’t fall for it and Xander remains where he is.

Unfortunately, Buffy and Giles are in the midst of hearing from Doctor Weirick that if the Pack are separated, it’s only a matter of time before they try to find each other again. They come up with a hasty plan: to lure the Pack back to the school, where they’ll all attempt to restage the trans-possession ritual and get the hyena spirts back into the hyenas.

There’s an effective scene when the bullies advance on the library and start softly calling Willow’s name (ah, a chase through the Sunnydale High hallways in the afterhours – another staple of the show in its early years) and Buffy lures the Pack away, acting as bait while Giles and Willow rush back to the zoo to help prepare the ritual.

There’s a lot of backwards and forwarding in this episode, not to mention splitting up. Willow stays outside to wait for Buffy, which conveniently leaves Giles vulnerable when he goes into the enclosure and notices that the ritualistic symbol has already been painted on the floor – and has evidently been there for some time. The zookeeper has been trying to draw the hyena spirits into himself, only he missed one crucial step: a predatory act.

So Giles gets knocked out (not for the first, nor for the last time) and Willow rushes in when she hears Buffy coming, somewhat naively letting herself get tied up by Weirick with a knife held to her throat as “part of the ritual.” But she’s not so dumb that she doesn’t shout a warning to Buffy when she comes in, and in a pretty perfect case of Hoisted by His Own Petard, the zookeeper shouts the incantation, draws the hyena spirits out from the teenagers and into himself, and then drops the knife to attack Willow with his bare teeth.

Xander, now himself again, rushes to her rescue, and after a brief tussle, Buffy throws the zookeeper into the hyena enclosure. As he said earlier, they haven’t been fed.

This is actually rather funny, as in later episodes/seasons Buffy will make a HUGE deal out of how wrong it is to take human lives, but here has no qualms about essentially throwing this guy to his death. She does lunge after him in an attempt to save him, but hey – no biggie that she failed. The hyenas chow down and nobody ever mentions him again.

Also never mentioned again? The bullies and the fact they’ll presumably have memories of killing and eating a man. That’s going to require some serious counselling.

Xander feigns memory loss of the whole ordeal, and if the girls suspect that he’s fibbing, they take pity on him and let it go. Giles isn’t fooled at all, but also promises to keep schtum. For the record, I very much think that apologies are necessary when wrong-doings are committed, but I’m lenient when it comes to matters of brainwashing, outer body experiences, demonic possession, losing one’s soul or exposure to red kryptonite – in other words, things that people aren’t truly responsible for.   

My point is, Xander isn’t himself when he assaults Buffy, and is clearly so mortified at everything he did while under the hyena’s sway that he tries to get himself off the hook with the amnesia fib... so I’ll give him a pass on this particular fabrication, as  ultimately it’s pretty low on his seven-year list of transgressions. He’s way more culpable when it comes to that stupid love spell in season two.

Plus, we get a nice Giles/Xander scene out of it. It’s clear that Giles is now becoming just as fond of Buffy’s friends as he is of Buffy herself.

This was a very simple story and a rather middling Monster of the Week episode, which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t really do anything significant besides kill off Principal Flutie so that Snyder can take his place. The high school/teen drama metaphor was a bit obvious and there was so much padding (the slow-motion prowling, the extended dodgeball game, the completely extraneous scene of the young woman with her baby chancing upon the Pack at night before she just... turns and walks away) but it gave Nicholas Brendon a chance to stretch his acting muscles, and I liked the logistics of the spell (the comparison to demonic possession, the need for a predatory act to take place) and the zookeeper twist.

I feel like it’s a story that knew what it wanted to do, and ends up being precisely what it wanted to be – no more, no less.

Miscellaneous Observations:

This episode vibed with “Teacher’s Pet” not just because it was Xander-centric, but because it’s a story that really could have taken place anywhere (that is, it didn’t need the proximity of the Hellmouth to happen). Unless of course the She-Mantis and the hyenas were deliberately drawn to the mystical energy of the township. Perhaps the zookeeper fully intended to use its power to supplement his ritual, and had the hyenas shipped there on purpose.

RIP Principal Flutie. You were clueless, but not evil – especially when compared to your replacement. And no one deserves to go out like that. Sheesh, I think victims of vampires die quicker and less painfully than Flutie did.

We never see the bullies or Lance again, though I like to believe they all made it to Graduation Day (with the likes of Blayne and Owen) and fought in the battle against the Mayor. Though I have to say Lance was a bit of an odd character. They set him up to be fairly important and then he just disappears halfway through the episode, when his role could have probably been filled by Willow.

I also enjoyed James Stephens as Doctor Weirick. He only had a couple of scenes, but he had an unassuming, helpful manner which effectively concealed his true nature. I remember watching this as a teenager and actually being disappointed that he was evil.

Also, this doesn't come up a lot, but Doctor Weirick is one of the few villains on the show that isn't a demonic or supernatural creature - just a human being trying to accumulate power.

During their research, Buffy mentions that Noah didn’t want the hyenas on the Ark because he considered them an impure blend of cat and dog. This piqued my interest, and some basic Googling tells me this little factoid seems to have come from Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1614 History of the World, where he also mentions that hyenas didn’t need to be on the Ark, since the species could easily be reconstituted after the flood by breeding cats with dogs.

That guy who questions Xander about a guitarist at Sunnydale High (right before the Pack steal his lunch) looked familiar, and sure enough – it was the same guy who talked to Cordelia in the computer lab in “The Harvest.”

Xander’s genuine attraction to Buffy and (somewhat) understandable disappointment that she doesn’t reciprocate once again turns eye-roll-y when he brings up Angel again. And this time it doesn’t even make much sense when he says: “Dangerous and mean, right? Like Angel. Your mystery guy.” Um, since when has Angel been mean? Jealousy does not look good on anyone, and it’s these moments where I most strongly hear Joss Whedon’s “why won’t girls date nice guys?” complaining.

However, I did like the fact that Buffy was initially the only one who really felt something was off about Xander. Willow has known him longer, but her lack of self-esteem makes her certain that she’s the problem, while Giles handwaves the whole thing away with testosterone levels. (A part of me wonders if he was recalling his own delinquent youth). But in realizing that it’s something external, Buffy proves that she knows Xander quite well by this point. Or maybe her Slayer-sense is just tingling.

Poor Principal Flutie didn’t get much of an obituary – just Giles looking sombre and Willow sitting down suddenly. Also, they’re going to blame his death on wild dogs? That’s rough. And Giles is almost chipper when the girls point out that Xander wasn’t involved, though I suppose it’s hard to know how on earth people would actually respond to the news that a man has just been eaten alive by highschoolers.

No Angel or Cordelia this time around, which isn’t so surprising in the former’s case since he’s still being credited as a guest star, but the latter is in the opening credits!

As far as audio effects go, I appreciated the high-pitched laughter and the growls in the back of the Pack’s throats. That was very effective.

Best Line: Coach Harrod scores a hat trick: “it's raining, all regular gym classes have been postponed, so you know what that means: dodgeball,” “for those of you that may have forgotten, the rules are as follows: you dodge” and “God, this game is brutal. I love it!” It’s all in the delivery. And as I’ve said before, the Sunnydale faculty must see some shit.

Best Scene: Willow showing her mettle when she faces down Xander in the book cage. There are hidden depths to her, just waiting to be plumbed.

Most Random Scene: When the Pack are out hunting and come across the Anderson family just leaving a party. The parents are arguing about whether or not Mr Anderson insulted his wife by paying his hostess a compliment, and little Joey is being instructed to chew before he swallows. Then they get attacked by hyena people.

We never see this family again, but like the real Miss French in “Teacher’s Pet,” I love seeing little glimpses of ordinary people living out their lives on the Hellmouth.

Death Toll: Herbert the pig (sorry animal lovers, but I’m not going to count him in the grand total). Principal Bob Flutie. Doctor Weirick.

Grand Total: Twelve civilians, ten villains.

[ravenya003]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Teacher's Pet, S01E04

It’s our first Xander-centric episode and... it’s not great.

The episode starts off with what is clearly Xander’s daydream, evidenced by the fact that Buffy is suddenly helpless in the face of an aggressive vampire. Xander saves her and then leaps up on the stage to finish his guitar solo. I guess the nicest thing I can say is... it could have been worse?

Back in reality, the Scoobies are in biology class and Dr Gregory (who we glimpsed briefly in the previous episode) targets Buffy for an on-the-spot question about how ants communicate. Willow does her best to give her the answer from behind his back, but Buffy has a ditzy moment and says “B.O.” instead of “smell.” C’mon Buffy, that was an easy one!

The writers have an extremely limited window of opportunity to make us feel sad about Dr Gregory’s imminent death, and for my money, do a pretty good job when he approaches Buffy after class and gives her unexpected words of encouragement instead of the expected scolding. It culminates with him saying: “let’s make them eat that permanent record.” Aww.

So when he inevitably gets dragged off by a giant tentacle two seconds later, it’s a bummer.

The whole thing also sets up the moral of the episode: do your homework. This is quickly followed by its central theme: the sexual prowess of teenage boys (or rather, their anxiety over the lack of it). Xander is at the Bronze, trying and failing to look cool, and overhearing fellow student Blayne bragging about his conquests in such a way that makes it clear he’s never had any.

(Most of the season one episodes are heavy-handed metaphors for teenage dramas, but this one’s even heavier than usual).

Xander’s masculinity is in trouble, so he takes advantage of Buffy and Willow’s arrival to put his arms around them – Willow is all for this, but Buffy is distracted by the arrival of Angel.

And hey! This is the first time Xander and Willow see him! I’d forgotten all about this scene. There’s no interaction between them so far, but Xander definitely clocks him as a handsome threat, especially when he gives his jacket to Buffy on noticing that she’s cold.

Though that might just be a ploy to get her to notice the wound on his arm, and he warns her about a vampire she nicknames “Fork Guy.”

The following day, a new teacher arrives to take Dr Gregory’s place. As befits her attractiveness, she walks up in slow motion while sexy music plays, and both Xander and Blayne are rendered helpless.

This episode very much frames Blayne as a male Cordelia (jock instead of a cheerleader, but with the same undercutting, dismissive attitude toward the Scoobies) and specifically a foil to Xander as Cordelia is to Buffy. It’s a shame we don’t see him again after this, though I like to imagine he made it to Graduation Day and fought in the battle there.

Natalie French is played by the very beautiful Musetta Vander, and glancing over her IMDB she’s still working – though during the late nineties/early noughties she was in a lot of genre stuff: Xena Warrior Princess, Babylon 5, Highlander, Star Trek, Star Gate...

Her first lesson to the class is some straight-up exposition about how the praying mantis lays eggs (way to give your secret away!) though I find it interesting that she argues the insect (and by extension, her) is not evil – just acting according to nature’s design. As far as I recall, this particular Monster of the Week isn’t technically a demon... just a big bug.

In the cafeteria, the Scoobies are handed lunch trays by someone off-screen – I only mention this because... do you think this is the lunch-lady who goes nuts in “Earshot” and tries to poison everyone?

Cordelia marches into the kitchen to make a special dietary lunch for herself and opens the fridge to reveal Dr Gregory’s headless corpse. Charisma Carpenter does a good job with Cordelia’s hysteria in this moment, though I have to wonder why the She-Mantis kept Gregory’s body on-campus. It doesn’t fit the MO of her other three victims, who she lures to the privacy of her house. And wouldn't she want to lay her eggs in a safe place?

I suppose she simply doesn’t think anyone would believe a giant insect is on the loose and that she’s entirely above suspicion (which I suppose would also explain her casualness in giving the class a lecture on praying mantises).

Regrouping in the library, the Scoobies discuss the murder. Buffy has tears on her cheeks and Giles says that he liked Dr Gregory too. Aww. Also, it intrigues me that Giles probably does have to interact with the Sunnydale High facility on a regular basis – little chats in the staffroom and so on. That’s a glimpse of his life (and his relationships with other adults) that we never get to see.

Detective Buffy points out Gregory was wearing the same clothes – specifically his lab coat – from the last time she saw him, which suggests he was killed at school. Skipping ahead, she's also observant enough to notice that Miss French was carrying groceries when she sees her outside Weatherly Park, suggesting that she lives nearby.

The gang floats the possibility that this death has something to do with the enigmatic warning Angel delivered about “Fork Guy” the other night – are they connected? (They’re not, but I like it when characters are wrong about things in logical ways).

Giles has heard of a vampire such as the one Angel described, stating that he works for the Master and cut off his hand in penance for displeasing him. The gang are smart enough to realize that what happened to Gregory doesn’t really fit this MO... so could it be there are two monsters out there? (Yes).

Their only lead is that a drunk was killed the other night in Weatherly Park, so naturally Buffy goes to investigate despite Giles ordering her not to. Which is a little weird come to think of it. Isn’t it her job to investigate these types of things? But still very telling that she went of her own accord.

She bumps into a drunk who tells her to go home (it’s kind of unclear, but I think this is actually an undercover cop) who is swiftly followed by a pretty big vampire with a claw in place of a hand. Buffy tussles with him for a bit, only for him to scarper when – holy shit, the police arrive! This is one of... I dunno, four times the police force appear in the entire series?

It makes sense the writers chose to keep them on the periphery (I have an explanation for this, but it’ll keep) so it always comes as a shock whenever you see them actually doing their job.

The Claw makes a run for it with Buffy in pursuit, only for her to witness a strange scene: the vampire is spooked by a woman walking home with her groceries, and when she turns around – it’s Miss French.

Giles is cross that Buffy disobeyed him, then interested when she tells the story of a big scary vampire being driven off by the mere presence of a substitute biology teacher. I love that Giles immediately believes her story without question (Merlin still leaves its scars) and promises to research more.

We get something of a filler scene, in which Principal Flutie waylays Buffy on her way to class and forcibly escorts her to the crisis councillor’s office. Cordelia is already inside, getting her second scene of the episode in which she tries to argue that at least Dr Gregory’s death has been good for her diet. Buffy’s face is priceless:

Late to class, Buffy looks through the window in the door and sees Miss French perform a “full Exorcist twist” of her head in order to look behind her. Willow is computer hacking and informs them that Blayne has been missing since the previous night. Did his parents call the cops? Probably not, since parents – like the police – barely exist in this show.

We get a real clunker of a line in which Willow asks Buffy: “what are you going to do?” and she dramatically announces: “my homework.” Look, it’s early days. Moral anvils are going to be dropped.

Conveniently, Xander is not here to share in all this important research and moralizing about how homework helps you learn stuff, and accepts Miss French’s invitation to her house that night.

We get another kinda-filler scene in which Miss French prepares a sandwich full of bugs for herself, and it’s worth noting because it’s very cute the way the close-up on her hands demonstrates that the actress hated touching those bugs. She does it so quickly and yet so carefully, with as little physical contact as possible.

Buffy has done her homework and reached her conclusion: Miss French is a praying mantis. All the evidence puts to it – the headless corpse, the rotating head, the fear she instilled in the Claw... and of course, her fashion sense.

Her conclusion inspires Giles to make a call to a contact called Carlyle Ferris who specialized in fairy tales and bugs (before he went mad) while Buffy rushes to warn Xander.

It does not go well. Granted, her insistence that a woman he’s being somewhat chemically induced by is actually “a big old bug” isn’t the most convincing argument in the world, but it soon veers into Xander’s personal insecurity and jealousy when he brings up Angel. Dude. Come on.

I obviously don’t have a problem with characters having flaws (the showrunners of the live-action Avatar the Last Airbender have recently stated they’re toning down Sokka’s chauvinism, which is eye-rolling since one of the central tenants of that character is he grows OUT of it) but in this case it’s difficult to separate “accurate depiction of teenage boy” from “still not cool behaviour though” from “how cognizant is Joss Whedon to the fact that this level of entitlement IS bad behaviour?” from “he nearly gets eaten a few scenes later, so clearly we’re meant to be on Buffy’s side here.”

It's an entanglement of authorial intent and dated nineties concepts and Watsonian/Doylist interpretations of the material – so let’s just go with: Xander is wrong to let his insecurities about women guide his behaviour in this instance, and his arc will eventually culminate in a really lovely scene with Dawn in season seven in which he admits that being the one without superpowers is tough but he sticks around anyway because he loves his friends.

This scene is his first step on the way to that self-actualization.

Xander reaches Natalie French’s house, who opens the door in a suggestive dress and offers him a martini. It does not cross his mind that there’s anything wrong with this, though he starts to get a clue when he overhears Blayne yelling for help from the basement.

Giles is having a hilarious one-sided conversation with Carlyle Ferris on the phone, assuring him that he was right about everything “except for your mother coming back as a Pekinese.” It’s a tragedy that we never meet this character in-person.

In any case, Giles fills them in: that there is precedence to the existence of a giant She-Mantis, who he explicitly compares to creatures like the Greek sirens and the Celtic sea-maidens – I like it when the wider reaches of human mythologies are integrated into the world-building. (Also, maybe this was the show’s nod to the succubus, a creature mentioned in the pilot episode and then never actually seen in the show itself).

Buffy orders some recordings of bat sonar from the “video library” (that was a thing that existed in the nineties) and they all head for Natalie French’s house. Turns out that the inhabitant is a little old lady and retired teacher in her nineties whose identity the She-Mantis has stolen.

She’s a very funny character, who takes the opportunity to overshare details of her life with the three complete strangers on her doorstep – though I like the implication that some residents of Sunnydale manage to have a perfectly nice little life while living atop the Hellmouth. This Miss French has probably had a few brushes with the weird and supernatural during her time, but clearly made it to retirement age intact.

In another of this episode’s most grating scenes, Willow suggests they start knocking on doors, only for Buffy to insist that they don’t have time. But what they DO have time for is Buffy to leap into the sewers, find the Claw, and walk him like a dog around the neighbourhood until he reacts badly to one of the houses, thereby demonstrating that the She-Mantis is inside. Suuuure.

(I’m guessing that this early on, and after the vampire-free episode “Witch”, the writers’ room decided they just really needed to shoehorn a vampire into the mix somehow).

Xander wakes up in a cage in the She-Mantis’s cellar, only to find a panic-stricken Blayne jabbering about what the creature is about to do to them. It involves eggs, “throbbing,” rape and beheading.

However, in a classic Xander move, he’s managed to force out one of the bars in the cage and plays along with the She-Mantis beckoning to him... before whacking her with his makeshift weapon and making a run for it. He doesn’t get far, and the worst is about to happen when Buffy bursts through the window.

She starts with insect spray and then the recording of the bat sonar. In another clunker, she feels the need to spell it out: “Bat sonar makes your whole nervous system go to hell.” Yes, I’m sure that the She-Mantis writhing in pain is AWARE of this fact, Buffy.

The monster is finished off with a machete, and the boys are saved. In a nice moment, Blayne genuinely thanks Buffy for the save, and then disappears into the darkness of one-shot characters.

Motor-mouth Willow feels the need to point out that the She-Mantis only targeted virgins, and I get the feeling this isn’t an innocent slip of the tongue, but something that Willow wanted to make sure that Buffy knew. She can be a sly one, sometimes.

With Buffy’s machete, Xander takes out the rest of the Mantis eggs.

Much like Cordelia, Angel only gets two scenes this episode, but Buffy confirms the death of the Claw (she staked him with a picket fence) and gives a quiet “oh boy” as he walks away. Yeah, she’s in trouble.

The following day, we meet Dr Gregory’s less-inspiring replacement, but Buffy gets a nice little moment to honour the teacher who believed in her (and whose “do your homework” reminder saved the day) by gently putting his glasses back in his lab coat hanging in the cupboard.

We then pan down to a remaining clutch of eggs concealed at the back of the cupboard – one of which is already hatching. But don’t worry, we never see or hear about this ever again. For such a continuity-heavy show, it’s a bit weird.

This episode stands out because the monster is so different from practically every other villain in the show’s seven-year run. The She-Mantis has more in common with the more sci-fi tinged elements of the show (the internet demon, the resurrected Frankenstein-like jock, the fish boys, the various evil robots) than the old school vampires, demons, witches and werewolves, but it still feels more like something out of a cheesy black-and-white serial called “Attack of the Giant Insects” or something. Nothing like the She-Mantis ever comes up again – something that’s not demonic in nature, nor attracted to the magic of the Hellmouth, but just a creature acting according to its own nature.

It's not unwatchable, but it’s safe to say that this episode is the weakest of season one – and for that reason, not one that gets referenced very often (if at all) in future episodes.

Miscellaneous Observation:

The lore surrounding the She-Mantis suggests that Dr Gregory... was also a virgin? I mean, it’s not out of the question, especially if he was asexual or something. But there was an easy alternative to this odd implication, and that’s having the She-Mantis kill him in order to take his place as a substitute teacher (which she needed to get into closer proximity with the actual virgins).

That said, this would have denied Buffy some of the necessary clues she needed to identify Miss French for who she really was (namely, the lack of a head on Dr Gregory’s corpse).

So, did everyone learn that the moral of this story was to do your homework? It was pretty vague, I’m not sure they mentioned it enough times.

The episode does much better with the metaphor of predatory adults around minors, and the show was rather ahead of its time in demonstrating that a woman making sexual advances on teenage boys is just as dodgy as visa-versa.

Xander’s middle name is established as Lavelle, something that I’m pretty sure is never mentioned again.

Giles mentioned that the Claw cut off his own hand after displeasing the Master – I kind of want to know the story behind that. Of course, knowing the Master, it was probably something frivolous. He talked out of turn or something.

Giles calls what Buffy did at Weatherly Park “hunting” instead of “patrolling.” Heh. 

For a guy constantly worrying about his masculinity, Xander is man enough to tell Buffy to her face that she was right and he was wrong. Too many dudes don’t realize that this sort of thing is what REALLY makes you a man.

The writers clearly still haven’t figured out Angel’s deal, and so play it safe by having him appear, spout some cryptic warnings, and then disappear again. The chemistry between him and Buffy is stirring up though...

Best Line: Buffy: “She could be anywhere!” Miss French: “No dear, I’m right here.” I don’t know why it’s funny, but it is.

Best Subversion: Dr Gregory is nice and supportive, instead of a big meanie. Then he dies.

Minor Character I’d Most Like to See In-Person: Carlyle Ferris. He sounded hilarious!

Death Toll: Dr Gregory. The drunk at Weatherly Park. One off-screen individual that Blayne saw getting killed by the She-Mantis, so I won’t count it. The Claw. The She-Mantis.

Grand Total: Six civilians, seven villains.

[ravenya003]

His Dark Materials: The Clouded Mountain

I suppose they did the end of Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter justice, though (like pretty much everything else in this show) it felt so much more visceral and intense in the book. And I’m kind of annoyed that it was Stelmaria and not Mrs Coulter who gave the struggle its last final push over the precipice.

Great casting on Metatron – he really did look ominous and otherworldly. A bit like Tom Sturridge as the Sandman. He looks human, but you can tell he’s definitely not human.

The one undisputed thing the show has done right this season is give more material to Serafina. In the book, she’s pretty much MIA for the entire page-count, showing up only at the very beginning and very end of the story. Here she’s tasked with finding Will and Lyra’s daemons, and in lieu of having the children escorted across the battlefield by Iorek, Scoresby, John Parry and the Gallivespians, she made for a decent replacement.

This episode adapted four chapters in the book, and did so reasonably faithfully, albeit with some restructuring as to the order in which events take place. They’ve taken such leaps in the past, it was almost surprising to see things play about more-or-less as they do on the page.

Longer review on blog...

[ravenya003]

His Dark Materials: No Way Out

Back to it!

We finally, finally get to the mulefa, and naturally all the details of their culture are sped through as quickly as possible. I realize it would have been difficult to depict some of this material, but these chapters encompass the entirety of Pullman’s worldview – and by the looks of things, we’re not even going to get the titular amber spyglass! At least the baby mulefa are adorable.

Lyra and Will’s journey to the land of the dead has been chopped and changed a little bit: everything that happens in the book happens, but not necessarily in the same order and with the same level of importance. Though I do find it amusing that the Gallivespians are completely absent, demonstrating that they were rather superfluous in the book as well.  

I have to admit that the whole “journey to the underworld” was my least favourite part of the book (though it’s a staple part of any fantasy epic that has ever existed) so I’m glad we’re nearly at the end of it.

It was the right call to just grit their teeth and keep on Lewin Lloyd as Roger even though he’s now several inches taller than Dafne Keene, but best-case scenario would have been to shoot these scenes three years ago when they were still filming seasons one and two. Ah well.

Father Gomez is finally on track with his book counterpart, though I do think expanding his role here was a solid idea.

More details on blog...

[ravenya003]

His Dark Materials: Lyra and Her Death

This has been the best episode so far, and it was a genuinely clever choice to parallel Lyra and Mrs Coulter’s separate journeys at this point. Mother and daughter each do a lot of waiting, a lot of manipulating, and a bit of treason (accidental or otherwise).

A mulefa! Finally! But, where’s the diamond-framed skeleton? The oiled claws? The seed-pods? Isn’t that the entire point of these beings?

As usual, the show misses the ball on a lot of emotional torque – in this case, the separation of Lyra and Pan. It should be an act of absolute pain and trauma, and instead comes across as a bit sad and uncomfortable.

The concept of Lyra’s Death is as strange here as it was in the book.

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[ravenya003]

His Dark Materials: The Break

My takeaway from this episode: this story can never be a movie, but desperately needs a movie budget. Even with all the innovations that modern technology can bring to a television adaptation, this still doesn’t even come close to capturing the full width and breadth of Pullman’s vision. The lack of dragonflies for the Gallivespians, the angels being depicted by people in heavy makeup, the obvious stalling before Mary gets to the mulefa – you can tell it’s all to do with budgetary reasons.

Any undertaking of this trilogy needs the space and time that a television show can give it, but also the finances of a film.

There’s an interesting change from the book in how the subtle knife is broken. In the book, it’s almost an accident, when Will sees Mrs Coulter and is reminded of his own mother. Here, Mrs Coulter deliberately goads him, but it’s unclear why exactly. She didn’t want the knife broken any more than she did, whereas the book leaves the situation far more ambiguous.

The conversations between Ogunwe and Asriel make it very clear that the latter has absolutely no clear plan when it comes to defeating the Authority. They establish that his army has gathered in order to draw out the Authority’s forces – but then what? He has no idea how to proceed until learning that Will has Æsahættr. This is when Pullman’s philosophy of “only tell the reader what they need to know” crashing against viewing audience’s assumption that the blanks will be drawn in.

Hey, that angel was played by Wade Briggs, a.k.a. Benvolio from Still Star-Crossed! Damn, I miss that show.

I don’t think Balthamos made enough of an impression given his role as a Chekhov’s Gunman. A casual viewer will probably forget who he is by the end of the season.

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[ravenya003]

His Dark Materials: The Enchanted Sleeper

I’m finally watching the third and final season of His Dark Materials! The Amber Spyglass is the book where everything finally comes together, though there are some elements that were anti-climactic or a little clumsily put-together – I’m interested in seeing how the show deals with certain scenes in comparison.

As the season premiere, it’s obviously going to be something of a table-setter: Asriel is collecting allies, Mrs Coulter is keeping Lyra prisoner, Will is hunting her down, and the Magisterium is plotting their next move.

I like the casting for Balthamos and Baruch, and I can’t help but be reminded of Crowley and Aziraphale (even though both are angels here).

Most random moment was a toss-up between the sudden arrival of the Gallivespians (where are their dragonflies?) and Asriel’s first on-screen line of dialogue being “for goodness’ sake.” Come on, would he really say that?

Lyra was also infuriatingly passive in the first quarter of the book (hard not to be when you’re in an enchanted sleep) so I could at least appreciate the show depicting her trying to escape, even if it was immediately thwarted.

I feel that Asriel has been white-washed a little, particularly in his empathy for the plight of Ogunwe’s eldest daughter. He states that what was done with her was the work of the Magisterium, but um... have we forgotten that he did this exact same thing to Roger? (To be fair, the book trilogy glosses over it pretty hard as well).

No Iorek talking with Serafina, no cliff-ghasts or Arctic foxes, no Semyon Borisovitch – not that I missed that last one. We’re already cracking through this material, and there’s plenty to go.

Longer review on blog...

[ravenya003]

His Dark Materials: The Botanic Gardens

And... done.

It’s not a secret that I wasn’t hugely impressed with this adaptation of His Dark Materials, though I’m glad it exists and it’s probably going to be our definitive take on the books for a very long time. The casting was solid, they didn’t stint on the controversial themes or content, and most everything looked and felt the way it should.

But there was some indescribable X-factor that was just missing, and I couldn’t get past just how much more visceral and urgent everything seemed on the page. I mean, the confrontation between Gomez and Balthamos in Pullman’s words is heartrending and nail-biting and supremely satisfying. In the show, the latter just squishes a spider and dissolves for no apparent reason.

This has been a problem throughout the entire duration of the show: scenes which are so fraught and emotional and weighty are stripped of all passion and conviction in the translation of them to the screen. How does that happen?

Still, they got me with the goodbyes between Lyra and Will, and I say that as someone who was never truly sold on their love story. That split-screen at the end with the two of them on the bench was very well done. Also, I’m glad they put Will’s reunion with his mother on-screen – I always felt that was a failing of the book after establishing how much he loved her.

The best scene had to be the revelation that the person who triggered Mary’s spiritual epiphany was another woman. That was a perfect change from the book, and I bet Pullman wishes he’d done it himself.

Amusing that there was no amber spyglass in an adaptation of a book called The Amber Spyglass.

Longer review on blog...