Arbitrar Of Quality <tsmtsm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:a1bad5f4-8477-4684-9270-0262824a8fd4@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Season Seven, Episode 13: "The Killer In Me"
> Writer: Drew Z. Greenberg
> Director: David Solomon
>
> I don't think of myself (or any of the regulars on a.t.b-v-s,
> for that matter) as being hotheaded about it like some in the
> lunatic fringe of fandumb, but I don't particularly like the
> character of Kennedy. At all. I feel like the annoyance factor
> is magnified when one has to view her as suddenly the most
> im****tant person in Willow's life
She IS an im****tant person in Willow's life, but not the most
im****tant person, not at any time during Season 7.
, despite the fact that they
> have little in common and are handed largely excruciating
> dialogue. [From Rincewind: "So now it appears that Willow is
> ready to date anyone without a ***** who will hit on her."] The
> fact that Hannigan and Limon have no chemistry at all helps seal
> the deal. Mangling Willow's new romance isn't enough, though -
> this episode is much more ambitious in its failure. I continue
> to like the play of the Willow-as-Warren scene in the living
> room with the chaos and the bad touching and such, but even
> there, it's dragged down a little by the weakness of the
> Hannigan/Busch mixing. As I originally commented, they don't
> seem like they're even reading for the same scene, let alone the
> same character, and this problem becomes more and more obvious
> throughout the hour. This is part of a misconceived faux-clever
> attempt to trick us into thinking we're getting into a big
> cathartic redemption episode, when the twist at the end is that
> healing and moving on after Tara are what triggered and will
> solve this crisis. Scythe Matters summed it up most accurately
> with his *****sment of how the show's bait-and-switch backfires.
> To paraphrase, introducing Warren means introducing all the
> associations that come with him, which the show doesn't actually
> address (since that's not what TKIM is about), leaving them
> hovering unsatisfyingly and drowning out anything TKIM might
> have to say about Willow/Tara/Kennedy.
I didn't see there as being any "bait-and-switch". It was just
picking one of several logical ways for the story to go.
>
> Meanwhile, the plot is driven largely by characters improbably
> happening to wander into the right places at the right time. Oh
> yeah, Amy's a pure black-hat villain now, and I enjoy her
> dialogue and Allen's reli****ng of it as much as I bemoan her
> lack of an arc or any real coherency to her ****trayal. Oh, and
> this is the one where Spike gets his chip out, which for some
> reason requires a bunch of scenes that don't say much of
> anything and a "climactic" fight scene that's drowned in
> near-total darkness. (David says it's one of his favorite
> things he shot in the commentary, making me wonder if everyone's
> head was just on wrong that week.) It's kinda sweet that
> Riley's learned a few things from his time with Buffy. And we
> finally tell that Giles joke, which is okay, although now I can
> be annoyed since I know that the original final punchline to the
> scene was axed. In summary, TKIM is loaded with ideas that have
> potential, and there are enough good lines and good scenes
> scattered throughout that on the one hand I do want to properly
> credit the show for it. But at the same time, it also deserves
> special consideration for failing so miserably at everything it
> attempts. Rating: Bad (down from Weak)
I, on the other hand, liked this episode a lot. I liked the
beginnings of the Willow/Kennedy romance. I think they click well
together and that Kennedy is very much (just as Oz and Tara were
before her) the sort of person Willow needs at this particular time.
I liked the banter between Willow and Buffy (and Buffy and Giles
before that), and the interaction between Buffy and Spike. I liked
the Willow/Warren switch and how it played out. And the plotline
leading up to the decision to remove Spike's chip. And while the
Giles-may-be-the-First joke had long outlived its welcome I did like
the immediate prelude to the punchline (starting with Anya, Xander,
and Dawn feeding off of each's other's panic). In short, I thought
just about everything in this episode worked well. A solid good for
me.
>
>
> Season Seven, Episode 14: "First Date"
> Writer: Jane Espenson
> Director: David Grossman
>
> The series has decided to give Giles what I find to be a
> thoroughly unsatisfying story this season (see OBS's response to
> the S7D3 post for more). In this particular episode, it's not
> pleasant viewing for someone who's always liked the character
> (who's never been a saint or anything to begin with) to see him
> as alternately a bumbling idiot and a bumbling guy la****ng out
> in frustration.
Not really. What's happening to Giles is that (between suddenly
going from a somewhat rebellious Watcher to BEING the Watcher's
Council and also being in a situation outside all of his experience)
is that he's tending to fall back on his training in most matters
EXCEPT for his relation****p with Buffy. Most of what Giles is doing
follows naturally from this.
--
Michael Ikeda mmikeda@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Telling a statistician not to use sampling is like telling an
astronomer they can't say there is a moon and stars"
Lynne Billard, past president American Statistical Association
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