"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsmtsm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:56612ddd-a1d5-4d08-8e97-65c90acae3fe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> A reminder: These threads are delicate and toylike.
>
>
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
> Season Seven, Episode 5: "Selfless"
> Writer: Drew Goddard
> Director: David Solomon
>
> Rating: SUPERLATIVE
The highlights for me are the two flashbacks, to ancient Sweden and to
OMWF - and then of course there is the astoni****ng cruelty of D'Hoffryn's
punishment of his favourite demon who broke his heart - not Head of
Vengeance for nothing. But it only works as as very high Good for me. Of
course, I've mentioned in the past that I calibrated my rankings to yours
during your reviews of seasons 1 & 2, and since it turned out that you
liked
those seasons much less than me, that turned out to impose a very high
standard for an episode to be called Excellent. In the end, there are only
17 episodes that reach that standard, and Selfless is No. 19, and best in
season 7 (unchanged from last time).
> Season Seven, Episode 6: "Him"
> Writer: Drew Z. Greenberg
> Director: Michael Gershman
>
> What is it that drives a person or people to come up with something
> like Dawn's cheerleading scene? Is there someone who's actually
> amused by the ritual humiliation of theoretically beloved characters?
Yo!
Personally I think it is much more mean-spirited to be amused by the
humiliation of unsympathetic characters. When characters we identify with
take a ride on a banana skin, it is analogous to it happening to
ourselves.
Much of the humour is of course in the fact that the spell victims are all
still acting in character, albeit remotivated (remotivated quite a way in
the case of Willow). Buffy & Spike outside principal Wood's office are
classic.
> Rating: Bad
Good for me. An inferior remake of BBB, but sometimes a little is enough.
It's my 61st favourite BtVS episode, 6th best in season 7 (last time was
73rd and 6th).
> Season Seven, Episode 7: "Conversations With Dead People"
> Writers: Jane Espenson and Drew Goddard
> Director: Nick Marck
>
> telling stories we've already heard. The Buffy/Holden thing is the
> big part that doesn't quite do what it's meant to, being simply an
> entertaining conversation and not the introspective (super)human drama
> that's needed to be the base of a mood-piece episode. I don't think
> the superiority/inferiority complex thing, which is apparently the big
> punchline of that part of the story, is particularly revealing or even
> lays much foundation for Buffy's future actions. The result is that
> Holden mainly exists as a font of one-liners and a mechanism to reveal
> the plot point about Spike.
Groucho Marx couldn't even claim to be a mechanism to reveal a plot point
about Spike, but he did OK.
> them balance each other out. One would think the screechiness of the
> Dawn part in particular would clash horrifically with the pensive
> Buffy and Willow sequences, but as some people have pointed out, the
> haunted house provides the episode with an infusion of action. That's
> then able to spill over to make the other stories feel like they, too,
> are ramping up to something big. The mix of longing (yeah, I really
> like longing), confusion, and simple weeknight evening listlessness is
> a part of everything, which is the right place for everyone to be in
> order to get hit with a surprise that changes everything. CWDP is
> indeed a mood-piece, one that's much more cohesive than you'd expect
> from the orgy-child of a comedy act, a ghost story, a manifesto of
> evil, and a graveside chat.
> Rating: Good
Good for me too, but pretty close to Excellent. The more I watch it, the
less enamoured I am with the Dawn and Willow segments, but the Buffy and
Nerd Trio segments are enough to keep it in 20th place amongst all BtVS
episodes, 2nd best in season 7.
> Season Seven, Episode 8: "Sleeper"
> Writers: David Fury and Jane Espenson
> Director: Alan J. Levi
>
> As much analysis as I throw at it, it mostly just comes down to Mrs.
> Quality's summary on re-watching: "this is kind of a boring episode,
> isn't it?" It kinda is. Also, we run into a bit of a trap that comes
> with throwing out shock endings like Spike snacking at the end of
> "Conversations." When you (as a writer/plot-designer, I mean) do
> something that extreme and don't actually "mean" it, the explanation
> will always be something of a let-down. I know of no way to avoid
> that.
> Rating: Decent
Decent for me too, and yes it is kind of boring. I probably wouldn't have
rewatched it if it hadn't been on the star disk of the season. But it does
continue to inch its way up in my rankings, now up to 92nd best in BtVS,
11th best in season 7 (last time was 97th and 12th).
I am falling a bit behind in my comments. But on the bright side, you are
now getting into sections of both series that I am not much interested in
rewatching and commenting on, with the dark cloud of the potentials about
to
descend on BtVS, and AtS taking half a season off for the characters to
run
around doing nothing to any purpose, so I should be able to keep up with
commenting on the episodes that are worth another look - and how many of
them can there be?
--
Apteryx
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