A reminder: These threads would like to test that theory.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
Season Six, Episode 19: "Villains"
Writer: Marti Noxon
Director: David Solomon
"Villains" is almost one of the all-time classics. Hannigan's
monotone take on "running on pure fury" used to bother me more, but as
part of a three-episode cycle, I enjoy the look at the different
facets of darkness in Willow. This episode is the one that
efficiently moves us from Willow as a scary x-factor to Willow as a
villain, without ever taking a step that doesn't seem like her. Plus,
revenge is fun, and I love the look at Warren as things start to not
go his way and he gets to die painfully in full awareness of how
pathetic he is. But you know how some episodes just teem with
quotables? Along with its great lines, or at least great deliveries
of lines like "I'm not coming back," "Villains" is also teeming with
non-quotables, leaden chunks of ponderous abstract statements that
make for the opposite of a crackling conversation. If anyone wants to
make a list, I'll start with "there are limits to what we can do.
There should be. Willow doesn't want to believe that. And now she's
messing with forces that want to hurt her." It's like if one were to
take a plot on the level of, say, "Consequences" and randomly drop in
dialogue left over from "Spiral." This griping is mainly to justify
not giving this one (Marti's final solo writing credit, for those of
you into trivia) an Excellent, since it's exciting enough to almost
deserve one, especially once you throw in that mind-blowing ending
sequence. Now that I've seen the whole series, Willow soaking up the
writing remains my favorite special effect of BTVS - uniqueness goes a
long way with me.
Rating: Good
Season Six, Episode 20: "Two To Go"
Writer: Douglas Petrie
Director: Bill Norton
What was that about crackling dialogue? William called TTG "an
absolute wonderland of quotability, perhaps second only to
Doppelgangland in that respect" last time around. It's strange
trading the depression and high drama of much of S6 for what's
basically a live-action comic book, but I certainly won't complain if
it reminds me why I've gotten so much enjoyment out of a few fast-
paced movies and comics in my time. Now that she's taken out Tara's
killer, a more Willowish sense of fun emerges from our favorite black-
eyed girl; she's enjoying being the star of the show even more than I
enjoy watching it. Why is evil so much fun? But let's not forget
Buffy, our actual star. She becomes as a champion of life and non-
destruction, with the cred (I feel like Fred using unacceptable words)
that can only come from first-hand experience. Also one of the few
(only?) times _Buffy_ goes for a surprise character appearance at the
end; that's normally more ATS's territory. It's a good one, though,
somehow making me even more excited about this arc after what was
already a thrilling standoff... makes me glad I got to watch TTG and
"Grave" as individual chapters, as Joss intended.
Rating: Excellent
Season Six, Episode 21: "Grave"
Writer: David Fury
Director: James A. Contner
It's always a little disappointing that, like S3 before it, S6 closes
on something less than the perfect bang it seems to deserve. "Grave"
has a knack for coming up with things that're unexpected yet seem to
fit, and then executing them in a decent but flawed manner. Giles's
reaction to Buffy telling him about her life caught me off guard but
makes sense as something they both needed; from there, the
interactions are intriguing in where there's healing and where there's
still distance (also, Anya vying for attention always kills me).
Sadly it brings back all my issues about Giles abandoning her, reduced
to a brief brushed-off apology, like the show's letting him off the
hook - granted, it's the season finale, we don't have time to sort
through every emotional reaction anyone's ever had. The plotting
certainly has its moments: particularly, Willow becoming more of a
threat to the world the more she gets focused on fixing people's
problems is too perfect to pass up. Unfortunately, there's enough of
the plot that involves outside forces being brought in out of nowhere,
is relayed to us by Giles lying on the floor and slowly mumbling bits
of exposition, and only the bits that the script has arbitrarily given
him permission to reveal. The climax featuring a carpenter saving
humanity through his love (there's a reason it's a classic, I guess)
is pretty sappy and heavy-handed, but damned if it doesn't work great,
even on re-watch. And Buffy summing up the season is also sappy and
heavy-handed, the difference being that it's not such great TV. I'm
not so convinced that the symbolism needs to be spelled out so
bluntly, but even if we take it as a given that it does, everything
from the underwhelming special effects to the clunky staging to the
soppy speech falls substantially flat, leaving one's last impression
of the amazing S6 as something less than amazing.
Willow's head-rush isn't as excruciating as I'd expected it to be on
re-watching, if you care.
Rating: Good
Additional comments on S6D6: I managed to make it through the thread
without mentioning (except elliptically here) a certain character who
dominates all the discussions despite appearing for a grand total of
maybe four minutes on this disc (a few seconds of which are really
really important, but still)...
On the decision to hold off on Dark Willow until the very end of the
year, I'm very much in favor. The Willow-centric parts of "Villains"
through "Grave" are tightly, tightly plotted. Each episode leaves one
little time for unnatural breaks in the action, because the writers
seem to have correctly deduced that three hours (with commercials) is
exactly the right length to spend on this particular story. In other
Darth Rosenberg related controversies, I don't hesitate in the
slightest to say that Dark Willow is leaps and bounds beyond the one-
note vampire Willow of S3 (to whom she's often compared). She's
almost more interesting than the normal version, except of course that
everything's grounded in Just Willow, as with all the best Buffyverse
"dark" versions of people. (Is there a non-Buffy major character that
doesn't go evil or at least highly ambiguous at some point?) Also, if
nothing else, pre-veiny jet-black Willow is incredibly hot.
Sarah Michelle then-Gellar makes her only featurette appearance in the
retrospective about the show; it must've been something that was
originally for TV. Interesting that it gets into parts of the pitch/
development story that aren't touched anywhere else on the DVD sets.
My ratings ticked upward for a couple episodes, but otherwise stayed
the same on re-watching. I'm not showing my numerical work, because I
don't think anyone else cares, but in terms of both mean and
proportion of good episodes, the numbers agree with my gut feeling
that S6 is pretty clearly the second-best season so far, behind Season
Three. Both finish ahead of any season of _Angel_.
I give you back... your free time. Well, till next season. For your
reference, I'm still going to try to vaguely approximate airdate order
during S7/S4, so the _Buffy_ threads will be posted first through disc
4 or 5, then we'll switch it up.
-AOQ
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