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Get off the boy
Nov. 5th, 2002 09:50 pmSpoilers for Buffy episode 11/5, Him, and for Angel, SuperSymmetry, 11/2 -- Beware!!
I'm in such a foul mood that I'm not sure I should be saying anything about anything. I got back from vacation to find out that our office is being moved soon to the most disgusting, dangerous, repulsive, scary, horrible, and frightening part of town. Every night I'll get to walk about 8 looong blocks to my bus stop through no man's land, because my nice bus doesn't go down that far, in the rain and the dark and the cold. I could take a different slooow bus, but it has drunks and pervs and gangbangers on it, and no thanks. Since Washington has the highest unemployment in the country, I'm not excited about the prospects of another job (and editors aren't in high demand), I'm trying to switch into a scary new career, and my life feels in such flux and misery right now that it's a good thing they don't have mood icons for Current Mood: Suicidal. Bleh. I hate being filled with self-pity, because that's boring, but there you are.
So it's hard for me to connect to Buffy tonight, although it was at times diverting enough. I'm sure the S/X slashers who weren't spoiled were apoplectic over the development of Spike moving in. I felt a little hopeful about Buffy's treatment of Spike based on her conversation with Dawn, and it was nice to see that they were at least trying to find some solution to the problem, despite Xander's dismay. My favorite moment was Spike turning the angels around to face away when they were visiting Lance. Priceless.
I also loved the total anti-drama of the two "heroes" being heroic by just running up to a guy and stealing his jacket. The parodic humor of it was genuinely hilarious, and a really nice matchup to the mimed fight between Buffy and Spike out behind the principal's window as he steals her bazooka (would love to know where she got that) and she tries to get it back. For some reason, that reminded me of the Friends ep where Ross fights off the cat on the balcony. It's been a long time since I had a laugh out loud funny moment on Buffy.
The thing I keep puzzling over with this and with Angel, though, is this strange thing Mutant Enemy suddenly seems to have about adults macking on teenagers. Considering the lengths they went to to separate Buffy and Giles in the early days, it's odd that on both shows at once, they've got young adult women in positions of trust misusing their positions. Admittedly on both shows, the boys want it, but... boys always want it. And yes, there was a spell, but it might have been better if things hadn't gone quite so far with Buffy and the kid, slightly less graphic. I was glad that Cordelia pulled away from Connor on Angel, but she was still the one who kissed him initially, and I'm just not certain why now both shows are doing this. (That whole sordid Mary K. LeTourneau thing about her having sex with the student took place in my old school, so maybe I just notice this too much.) Are they trying to remind us that Buffy and Cordy are both young women, not matronly? I don't think that was ever in question (and when Joyce and Jenny went after Xander on BB&B, they were careful to keep Jenny physically apart from him and Joyce much less graphic; same thing in Restless). I don't feel disapproving, exactly, just... mildly disturbed by the peculiarly adjunct timing of it all and wondering why.
I have a hard time (read: conniption fits on the couch) watching characters make idiots of themselves, so the beginning of this ep will always, always be fast forwarded through for sure. I'm not hating Dawn this year, and it's interesting to see her struggle with what she wants and trying to view these bizarre characters in her life without dangerous naivete or harsh and selfish expectations. They'll never make me want a Dawn the Slayer character, but she is definitely coming into her own, which is lovely to see.
Angel this week was also a mostly empty episode. They faked a lot of people out, apparently, by having the professor actually be the bad guy, rather than the TA, but otherwise I thought a lot of it was rote except for the Wesley and Fred/Gunn stuff. If Buffy was all about illusions of "love" created by someone else, Angel was all about the illusions of love that we create, and how those shape who we are.
Cordy comes to Angel after realizing there's something inside of her that cares for him, and figuring out, inchoately, that there's more with him than she understood. (Never mind that I never found them much of a couple or giving off much of a couple spark.) Fred is faced with two illusions -- one, the one Gunn has for her -- that she is someone to be protected and babied; and two, the illusion she has about the choices she made and that maybe Gunn isn't right for her after all. She reacts visibly when Wes describes his interest in her paper. Gunn doesn't understand her science at all, Wes does, and Gunn emptily there-theres her in her distress, while Wes understands her enough and respects her enough to let her go after the prof alone. So not only was she confronted by this terrible truth about what happened to her, she has to go to someone she rejected to find real understanding.
Which makes Gunn's sacrifice even greater. He is terrified of losing the girl he fell in love with, which she will no longer be if she kills a human, so he sacrifices the new person he is with her to save the illusory girl he loves. Even if she didn't want saving, again, he makes the choice for her. That's both heart wrenching and also kind of annoying, because he's once again trying to force her into the mold he wants, but he's also giving up so much and risking everything by killing a human. I thought this was a pretty cool dichotomy. Neither choice would have worked out in the long run -- they'll have just as much baggage now as they would have if Fred had killed him. All their illusions of love, that they forged last year and over the summer when Angel and Cordy were gone, are shattered, and they have to now become different people, and they may not survive.
Wes is there already, which Fred seems to know, and he still clearly cares for her, and that adds a nice frisson of pain and misery to the whole thing. Could be quite interesting.
I'm in such a foul mood that I'm not sure I should be saying anything about anything. I got back from vacation to find out that our office is being moved soon to the most disgusting, dangerous, repulsive, scary, horrible, and frightening part of town. Every night I'll get to walk about 8 looong blocks to my bus stop through no man's land, because my nice bus doesn't go down that far, in the rain and the dark and the cold. I could take a different slooow bus, but it has drunks and pervs and gangbangers on it, and no thanks. Since Washington has the highest unemployment in the country, I'm not excited about the prospects of another job (and editors aren't in high demand), I'm trying to switch into a scary new career, and my life feels in such flux and misery right now that it's a good thing they don't have mood icons for Current Mood: Suicidal. Bleh. I hate being filled with self-pity, because that's boring, but there you are.
So it's hard for me to connect to Buffy tonight, although it was at times diverting enough. I'm sure the S/X slashers who weren't spoiled were apoplectic over the development of Spike moving in. I felt a little hopeful about Buffy's treatment of Spike based on her conversation with Dawn, and it was nice to see that they were at least trying to find some solution to the problem, despite Xander's dismay. My favorite moment was Spike turning the angels around to face away when they were visiting Lance. Priceless.
I also loved the total anti-drama of the two "heroes" being heroic by just running up to a guy and stealing his jacket. The parodic humor of it was genuinely hilarious, and a really nice matchup to the mimed fight between Buffy and Spike out behind the principal's window as he steals her bazooka (would love to know where she got that) and she tries to get it back. For some reason, that reminded me of the Friends ep where Ross fights off the cat on the balcony. It's been a long time since I had a laugh out loud funny moment on Buffy.
The thing I keep puzzling over with this and with Angel, though, is this strange thing Mutant Enemy suddenly seems to have about adults macking on teenagers. Considering the lengths they went to to separate Buffy and Giles in the early days, it's odd that on both shows at once, they've got young adult women in positions of trust misusing their positions. Admittedly on both shows, the boys want it, but... boys always want it. And yes, there was a spell, but it might have been better if things hadn't gone quite so far with Buffy and the kid, slightly less graphic. I was glad that Cordelia pulled away from Connor on Angel, but she was still the one who kissed him initially, and I'm just not certain why now both shows are doing this. (That whole sordid Mary K. LeTourneau thing about her having sex with the student took place in my old school, so maybe I just notice this too much.) Are they trying to remind us that Buffy and Cordy are both young women, not matronly? I don't think that was ever in question (and when Joyce and Jenny went after Xander on BB&B, they were careful to keep Jenny physically apart from him and Joyce much less graphic; same thing in Restless). I don't feel disapproving, exactly, just... mildly disturbed by the peculiarly adjunct timing of it all and wondering why.
I have a hard time (read: conniption fits on the couch) watching characters make idiots of themselves, so the beginning of this ep will always, always be fast forwarded through for sure. I'm not hating Dawn this year, and it's interesting to see her struggle with what she wants and trying to view these bizarre characters in her life without dangerous naivete or harsh and selfish expectations. They'll never make me want a Dawn the Slayer character, but she is definitely coming into her own, which is lovely to see.
Angel this week was also a mostly empty episode. They faked a lot of people out, apparently, by having the professor actually be the bad guy, rather than the TA, but otherwise I thought a lot of it was rote except for the Wesley and Fred/Gunn stuff. If Buffy was all about illusions of "love" created by someone else, Angel was all about the illusions of love that we create, and how those shape who we are.
Cordy comes to Angel after realizing there's something inside of her that cares for him, and figuring out, inchoately, that there's more with him than she understood. (Never mind that I never found them much of a couple or giving off much of a couple spark.) Fred is faced with two illusions -- one, the one Gunn has for her -- that she is someone to be protected and babied; and two, the illusion she has about the choices she made and that maybe Gunn isn't right for her after all. She reacts visibly when Wes describes his interest in her paper. Gunn doesn't understand her science at all, Wes does, and Gunn emptily there-theres her in her distress, while Wes understands her enough and respects her enough to let her go after the prof alone. So not only was she confronted by this terrible truth about what happened to her, she has to go to someone she rejected to find real understanding.
Which makes Gunn's sacrifice even greater. He is terrified of losing the girl he fell in love with, which she will no longer be if she kills a human, so he sacrifices the new person he is with her to save the illusory girl he loves. Even if she didn't want saving, again, he makes the choice for her. That's both heart wrenching and also kind of annoying, because he's once again trying to force her into the mold he wants, but he's also giving up so much and risking everything by killing a human. I thought this was a pretty cool dichotomy. Neither choice would have worked out in the long run -- they'll have just as much baggage now as they would have if Fred had killed him. All their illusions of love, that they forged last year and over the summer when Angel and Cordy were gone, are shattered, and they have to now become different people, and they may not survive.
Wes is there already, which Fred seems to know, and he still clearly cares for her, and that adds a nice frisson of pain and misery to the whole thing. Could be quite interesting.
