A reminder: To these threads, Buffy seems like a good leader. Her
hair is shiny.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
Season Seven, Episode 9: "Never Leave Me"
Writer: Drew Goddard
Director: David Solomon
This is better. Even if, as was argued in some parts last time, the
Spike portions cover a lot of the same ground as "Sleeper," they cover
it in a much more fulfilling way. I feel like I had a healthy amount
of skepticism about the way the relationship between Buffy and Spike
would develop during Season Seven, but scenes like the second basement
argument got me on the show's page. It's layered, intense, and
heartfelt, not to mention one of our only looks at how Spike thinks
about the stuff he tries to avoid thinking about. In the meantime,
dialogue crackles, and the fight scene is pretty creative with its use
of human props. The cast gels here, working as a team and keeping
their worries subdued but unmistakable - I especially like the Buffy/
Willow "how're you doing in there?" exchange, Rational Xander, and
Xander/Anya as interrogation team. My deepest love, of course, has to
be reserved for Willow and Andrew trying to out-evil each other.
"Humor with a point" isn't exactly uncommon on this show, but I made
an effort to mention it in the reviews whenever I thought it nailed
that balance. Not so wild about the ending, but otherwise NLM is a
clear highlight of the mid-season period. When I watch "The Girl In
Question," or read "Wolves At The Gate," I try to protect myself by
chanting Drew Goddard's Buffyverse accomplishments as a mantra, and
this is one of them.
Rating: Good
Season Seven, Episode 10: "Bring On The Night"
Writers: Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie
Director: David Grossman
I think we all felt there was something a little awry here.
Everyone's taking the First Evil, a rather silly video game style one-
off from S3 like a serious villain. Giles returns from his
cliffhanger to immediately be marginalized while the show continues to
go about tearing down his integrity whilst setting up the most drawn
out joke ever. The house is filling with characters who seem designed
to make us tune them out, and it won't stop. Random characters like
Joyce make cameos for no apparent reason, or as it turns out in this
example, none that ever becomes apparent. One can really see the
issues that the second half of the season will have being traced out
here. I originally called "Bring On The Night" one of the rare
episodes where the action scenes were great and the stuff with people
talking weren't. It's not quite that dichotomous, really. It's more
that the episode has some really great scenes and a bunch of stuff in
between. I'll continue to hold up the first fight with the =DCbervamp
as a classic in making an impressive monster, and an example of
vintage horror-movie tropes used well in BTVS. Moments like that
exist in the talky parts too. Willow stands out, not only for the
impressively filmed attack on her but also for how she reacts. And
for big moments, can't go without mentioning "... and it'll choke on
me." At times like that, I want to like BOTN better than I do, but
they're just too fleeting. In addition, I should mention that this
episode has one of my absolute favorite lines this time around, my
favorite Andrew non sequitur (see the heading).
Rating: Decent
Season Seven, Episode 11: "Showtime"
Writer: David Fury
Director: Michael Grossman
Has there ever been more of an Act Four episode? Building to the
arena sequence is the point of everything that's done. (Well, there's
also the visit to the Eye, which is both enjoyable and important. But
I'm reluctant to mention it for fear that it will re-start the tedious
disagreements about which Buffy resurrection was the problem, despite
the fact that it's blindingly obvious to me.) Really, this one comes
down to Buffy tearing a monster's head off and saving the he-damsel in
distress. If that sort of thing didn't make for good TV, we wouldn't
be watching _Buffy The Vampire Slayer_. Buffy overcomes a difficult
foe through sheer stubborn persistence, and her ability to find new
things to try anywhere until something works. She also tries to
reduce everything into a show in which she solves everything, despite
her lack of an actual plan, with a one-on-one pummeling while everyone
else shuts the hell up and watches. I'd say the writers are making a
few points at once here. I thought that the way Buffy's being set up
for a bit of a fall was quite clear and noticeable as a first-time
viewer too, but that time I was a little more caught up in the fact
that it's also a stirring feel-good moment, more so than her speech at
the end of the previous show. (Not that I think they're redundant.
You kinda need both.)
Rating: Good
Additional comments on S7D3: I'm still enjoying _Buffy_, but at this
point (the four-episode run from "Sleeper" to "Showtime" - although
they're separated by a winter hiatus, they go together), I don't know
how much I'm feeling it, NLM excepted. S7 is much the same way, where
the individual episodes get rated well but I don't feel so good about
it. In my opinion, ATS S4, despite also being quite messy, has a
"more than the sum of its parts" momentum that BTVS S7 doesn't manage
so often. OBS called these four episodes of S7 the least rewarding
part of the series last time through. I wonder if the fact that the
show is spending way more time than it used to on sorting out its
mythology and elaborate, sprawling storylines has finally caught up
with it. Or, as best summarized by Ian G., "this is actually why I
don't think the group of 4 episodes ending in this one are
particularly good, they're too plot driven and not particularly
resonant emotionally or thematically."
It's weird remembering how late in the series it is that BTVS starts
laying down the rules and explanations about how the Slayer line
works. Before that, I really didn't think much about the ancient
forces behind Buffy ending up as One Girl In All The World, because it
didn't seem very important. Even the capitalizable term "Potential"
hadn't firmly taken root yet at this point in the series. It's also
weird remembering when Kennedy of the winged house didn't stand out so
much, or annoy me at all. Even the overdone flirting doesn't really
bother me pre-TKIM.
I wasn't just poking fun at my favorite form of televised
entertainment when I called the First "video game style." I've read
that the player actually does fight against it in one of the BTVS
video games, made pre-S7.
Thoughts?
-AOQ
|
