Everybody has issues
Nov. 12th, 2002 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynThe usual spoiler warnings for Buffy! Conversations with Dead People, 11/12 -- beware!
We don't usually get thunder and lightning storms in Seattle. My friends from other parts of the country whine ceaselessly about this and how much they miss them. Unless you live in the foothills of the Cascades or over on the peninsula or the islands in the Sound, you won't see a lot of them. So tonight, while I'm getting tenser and tenser over the last 15 minutes of Buffy, suddenly I hear rain pounding against my house like I'm in the freaking Perfect Storm, and flashes of lightning followed by thunder so loud and so close that my walls were rattling. The storm was right over my house, and I'm sitting there watching Dawn trying to expel the eeeevil and being tormented by her "mother", Buffy finding out about Spike and Spike biting the woman he was with, Jonathan being killed, and Willow getting the 411 on evil from Cassie, and all the time I've got explosions of light and sound adding heinous effects to make my already pounding heart pound harder. Too much for me.
I can't remember ever seeing a Buffy that affected me so much that I was less concerned with losing my power than with the denouement at hand. And I almost don't want to read people's responses to this episode, because if it's flawed and awful and I just didn't see it, I'm not sure I wanna know. I also don't remember an episode going *so fast* before -- every time the commercial break came, I was shocked it had been nearly 15 minutes. I was spoiler lite as I've been this season; I had a vague idea what was coming up but nothing specific, and yet it left me feeling socked in the stomach. As far as setting up the rest of the season goes, this was a doozy; as far as a single episode with character development, this thing stands head and shoulders above some of the show's most famous episodes.
A lot of times the "different" eps seem stagey or showy, and you know you're watching something special, something apart from other eps and the tone of the program in general. This isn't necessarily bad, it's just how it is. From the beginning, we're alerted to the differentness of this ep, with the title and the date, and it continued on from there. I almost don't even know how to highlight everything I was amazed by here, because I'm sure I'll forget something. But I'll try.
1. Dawn. How the hell they made my most hated character next to Faith into someone I admire and like, I can't even imagine, but this kid is starting to awe me. She took it on the chin, she kept her wits, she did what she had to do, and she showed she's got the right stuff. She might still have a shriek that could deafen dogs, but boy, was she good here. I really hope, though, that she won't keep what "Joyce" said to her to herself; the only way they'll be able to figure this out is if they have this info, and I'm hoping she won't pull a pout-fest and not give it up when needed.
2. The speechless Spike bits. Normally I'd be cranky and feel they wasted Spike, but when he was shown in contrast with what Buffy was saying about her relationship with him, and then with what's happening with the evil at the end, it was brilliant to keep him silent. We're locked into this not-knowing about him, and we can't hear or understand anything about what he's up to -- and whether it's really him doing this, or more of this evil. What an interesting and amazing choice, especially for a character who's known for his verbal sparring and quick wit.
3. Buffy finally admitting how she felt about Spike and what she did to him, and that she was responsible for "letting" him do those things to her, and that whatever happened happened because of what she wanted and felt. That Spike loved her, and she knew it, and she took advantage of it. There's no way she (and he) can heal and fight whatever is coming if she hadn't admitted it, and this was long overdue. So was her admittance, at last, that she felt apart from her friends, above and beneath them, because she's chosen. I don't know if Jane or Drew wrote this, but whoever did, they not only made me happy, but they blew me away with *how* they did it. It would be easy to just throw it away in a big dramatic speech; how they threaded this into the conversation was just brilliant.
4. I knew almost from the start that Jonathan was going to die, you could pretty much tell the moment they got to Sunnydale (let's face it -- Andrew hasn't got the capacity to care for others and save the world), but they worked into it amazingly well considering how telegraphed it was. His quiet statements about his friends from high school was such a tragic farewell. I love Jonathan, unabashedly, and I'm horribly sad he was killed, but how they did it not only moved the story forward, it gave us the pain and terror we need to believe this really is an evil thing. In the same way that Angel had to kill Jenny in order for us to believe he really was evil and capable of such horror, Jonathan's death confirms that this thing they've been casually blabbing about all season really is something to fear.
5. The funny bits. That the vamp knows the "martial arts skills they inevitably seem to have" because he took tae kwon do before he was vamped was priceless. The fighting conversation. Dawn blowing up marshmallows. Andrew and Jonathan's conversation in the car (and the Mexican car). The thing I've always loved about Buffy is finding humor even in the dark spaces.
6. The lighting. Everything's dark, except the library with Willow. There's something telling in that, and that Willow is the one who figures it out, among all of them. She knows (sees the light) when the evil went too far, and I can't help thinking that her being in the only bright light in the episode is a sign of what kind of role she'll play. (I also really liked how her story played out -- so many people think Will hasn't suffered or learned anything; I liked that this was addressed and that we saw just how much she has suffered and changed, and what's eating at her and causing her downward spiral.)
7. The wisdom of leaving out Xander and Anya. I know that makes me sound like a Xander basher, and I'm not trying to be. It's just that right now, the evil thingie has a lot more ability to divide and conquer through Buffy, Will, Dawn, and Spike, than it would through Xander or Anya. Leaving them out of this story for now, and folding them back in soon, really makes a lot of sense. Xander will go off his nut when he finds out about Spike, and there's plenty of room for his divisiveness later, and how it will serve the purpose of the evil succeeding.
I'm just awe-struck by this episode. When they want to go for the drama and move the story along, boy, do they. This is going in the top episodes pile for me.
We don't usually get thunder and lightning storms in Seattle. My friends from other parts of the country whine ceaselessly about this and how much they miss them. Unless you live in the foothills of the Cascades or over on the peninsula or the islands in the Sound, you won't see a lot of them. So tonight, while I'm getting tenser and tenser over the last 15 minutes of Buffy, suddenly I hear rain pounding against my house like I'm in the freaking Perfect Storm, and flashes of lightning followed by thunder so loud and so close that my walls were rattling. The storm was right over my house, and I'm sitting there watching Dawn trying to expel the eeeevil and being tormented by her "mother", Buffy finding out about Spike and Spike biting the woman he was with, Jonathan being killed, and Willow getting the 411 on evil from Cassie, and all the time I've got explosions of light and sound adding heinous effects to make my already pounding heart pound harder. Too much for me.
I can't remember ever seeing a Buffy that affected me so much that I was less concerned with losing my power than with the denouement at hand. And I almost don't want to read people's responses to this episode, because if it's flawed and awful and I just didn't see it, I'm not sure I wanna know. I also don't remember an episode going *so fast* before -- every time the commercial break came, I was shocked it had been nearly 15 minutes. I was spoiler lite as I've been this season; I had a vague idea what was coming up but nothing specific, and yet it left me feeling socked in the stomach. As far as setting up the rest of the season goes, this was a doozy; as far as a single episode with character development, this thing stands head and shoulders above some of the show's most famous episodes.
A lot of times the "different" eps seem stagey or showy, and you know you're watching something special, something apart from other eps and the tone of the program in general. This isn't necessarily bad, it's just how it is. From the beginning, we're alerted to the differentness of this ep, with the title and the date, and it continued on from there. I almost don't even know how to highlight everything I was amazed by here, because I'm sure I'll forget something. But I'll try.
1. Dawn. How the hell they made my most hated character next to Faith into someone I admire and like, I can't even imagine, but this kid is starting to awe me. She took it on the chin, she kept her wits, she did what she had to do, and she showed she's got the right stuff. She might still have a shriek that could deafen dogs, but boy, was she good here. I really hope, though, that she won't keep what "Joyce" said to her to herself; the only way they'll be able to figure this out is if they have this info, and I'm hoping she won't pull a pout-fest and not give it up when needed.
2. The speechless Spike bits. Normally I'd be cranky and feel they wasted Spike, but when he was shown in contrast with what Buffy was saying about her relationship with him, and then with what's happening with the evil at the end, it was brilliant to keep him silent. We're locked into this not-knowing about him, and we can't hear or understand anything about what he's up to -- and whether it's really him doing this, or more of this evil. What an interesting and amazing choice, especially for a character who's known for his verbal sparring and quick wit.
3. Buffy finally admitting how she felt about Spike and what she did to him, and that she was responsible for "letting" him do those things to her, and that whatever happened happened because of what she wanted and felt. That Spike loved her, and she knew it, and she took advantage of it. There's no way she (and he) can heal and fight whatever is coming if she hadn't admitted it, and this was long overdue. So was her admittance, at last, that she felt apart from her friends, above and beneath them, because she's chosen. I don't know if Jane or Drew wrote this, but whoever did, they not only made me happy, but they blew me away with *how* they did it. It would be easy to just throw it away in a big dramatic speech; how they threaded this into the conversation was just brilliant.
4. I knew almost from the start that Jonathan was going to die, you could pretty much tell the moment they got to Sunnydale (let's face it -- Andrew hasn't got the capacity to care for others and save the world), but they worked into it amazingly well considering how telegraphed it was. His quiet statements about his friends from high school was such a tragic farewell. I love Jonathan, unabashedly, and I'm horribly sad he was killed, but how they did it not only moved the story forward, it gave us the pain and terror we need to believe this really is an evil thing. In the same way that Angel had to kill Jenny in order for us to believe he really was evil and capable of such horror, Jonathan's death confirms that this thing they've been casually blabbing about all season really is something to fear.
5. The funny bits. That the vamp knows the "martial arts skills they inevitably seem to have" because he took tae kwon do before he was vamped was priceless. The fighting conversation. Dawn blowing up marshmallows. Andrew and Jonathan's conversation in the car (and the Mexican car). The thing I've always loved about Buffy is finding humor even in the dark spaces.
6. The lighting. Everything's dark, except the library with Willow. There's something telling in that, and that Willow is the one who figures it out, among all of them. She knows (sees the light) when the evil went too far, and I can't help thinking that her being in the only bright light in the episode is a sign of what kind of role she'll play. (I also really liked how her story played out -- so many people think Will hasn't suffered or learned anything; I liked that this was addressed and that we saw just how much she has suffered and changed, and what's eating at her and causing her downward spiral.)
7. The wisdom of leaving out Xander and Anya. I know that makes me sound like a Xander basher, and I'm not trying to be. It's just that right now, the evil thingie has a lot more ability to divide and conquer through Buffy, Will, Dawn, and Spike, than it would through Xander or Anya. Leaving them out of this story for now, and folding them back in soon, really makes a lot of sense. Xander will go off his nut when he finds out about Spike, and there's plenty of room for his divisiveness later, and how it will serve the purpose of the evil succeeding.
I'm just awe-struck by this episode. When they want to go for the drama and move the story along, boy, do they. This is going in the top episodes pile for me.
