Buffy Episodes

[hazelk]

Finally older son’s obsession with learning the entire electronic TV guide schedule for weeks in advance by heart pays off.

“Mummy, Buffy’s on five!”

I guess they must have bought the rights from the BBC



I was reading a review of Gone comparing it with various previous episodes so this is my two p’worth.

Gone and Band Candy are both essentially screwball episodes in which a spell releases characters from social constraints allowing them to act irresponsibly and wackiness to ensue. Trouble is, while in Band Candy this concept is the source of some fast paced comedy gold, Gone just isn’t very funny. Buffy’s invisible adventures include only one (in)decent joke (Xander catching Spike exercising) and the whole section is paced like the ‘funny’ interludes in a 1930’s musical when comic timing seemed to involve waiting 5 minutes for the more challenged members of the audience to work out the punchline.

Another problem is that SMG just isn’t a great radio actress, at least on the evidence of this outing. I’ve heard her do voiceover work in one other context, a kids film called Small Soldiers, where she plays an army of souped up Barbie dolls applying lethal force to Kirsten Dunst and there wasn’t really a lot of difference.

Still there are good points to the episode. Spike is horribly cute in the opening scenes, more of Warren’s essential sociopathy is subtly revealed and there’s a nifty tracking shot circling round Spike when Buffy first invades his crypt, which gets effective use in lots of vids.

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I think Gone is fundamentally a rather grim episode dressed up as a comedy, or at least with comic interludes. It focuses on Buffy's suicidal yearnings more intensely than pretty much any other ep (if you take the central idea of being invisible, being "gone", as a metaphor for death, which it's pretty easy to do given that the long-term consequence of being hit by the invisibility ray is to turn into a puddle of dead goo). The key thing about "going", of course, is that Buffy loves it - she feels happy for the first time since TR, and she seems to like it because it liberates her from being herself. Not only does she head straight to Spike's crypt to indulge in some guilt-free shagging, she also pulls a really nasty stunt on the social worker (who for all that she reads Buffy wrong does seem to have Dawn's welfare genuinely at heart). It's as if she can only be happy by giving up *good* aspects of herself, like her conscience.

[spacedoutlooney.livejournal.com]

I agree with azdak. I find Gone to be rather serious. Just compare what Buffy did to what The Nerds were planning to do. What she did to the Social Worker and Spike and the random bystanders was pretty cruel. Aside from Buffy identifying herself as the Hero and The Nerds identifying themselves as SuperVillians, how different are they really at this point?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Hmm…The theme is black but should that preclude a form of sick hilarity? Band Candy, according to Jane E, is based on the fundamentally scary concept of the adult population losing all sense of responsibility and the town descending into anarchy. And Bringing up Baby is a story about a man falling in love with his stalker.

Still scary is different from sad. Would the episode have worked better if the screwball elements had fallen less flat? If I think about it, maybe what the episode lacks, that true screwball needs, is any sense of Buffy’s invisibility causing things to spiral into chaos. Pacing problems and the stuff she does has no consequences. Maybe her Social worker prank could have made probation more likely rather than less and she could have rendered things yet worse trying to counteract that possibility. I mean they try to signal things falling apart with the threat of Buffy’s dissolution but I found it hard to take seriously.

As to being happy about losing her *good* aspects when no-one is watching her, I think its more a temporary relief that she doesn’t have to keep up what now feels like just an act. From Buffy’s point of view, her last real effort to be good was sabotaged by having to confess about having been in Heaven and the whole “going through the motions” thing has been an enormous part of why she’s hated herself all season. She remembers killing monsters to save people, even if by the time of her death ‘people’ had narrowed down to Dawn. I think she really misses that ability to care. Well that’s my take.

What she did to the Social Worker and Spike and the random bystanders was pretty cruel.

I think Buffy can be cruel, forcing that vampire to swallow the cross in WSWB showed that. Here I think she’s more heartless than cruel – she’s not thinking about how her victims feel at all. More Spike than Angelus and more Jonathon/Andrew than Warren. Hairsplitting, I know.

[spacedoutlooney.livejournal.com]

If I think about it, maybe what the episode lacks, that true screwball needs, is any sense of Buffy’s invisibility causing things to spiral into chaos. Pacing problems and the stuff she does has no consequences. Maybe her Social worker prank could have made probation more likely rather than less and she could have rendered things yet worse trying to counteract that possibility. I mean they try to signal things falling apart with the threat of Buffy’s dissolution but I found it hard to take seriously.

Yeah, that is the main criticism I have of the episode. I'm not so much disappointed that it wasn't the impetus of her life spiraling out of the control, but there was no follow-up except for Buffy to say at the end she has to make amends with Dawn (and freaking Dawn out was hardly the worst thing she did). Obviously a social worker came back at some point and Buffy was found fit, and I like to think that Buffy followed up at some point to make sure that poor woman didn't get fired, but we don't know.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Here I think she’s more heartless than cruel – she’s not thinking about how her victims feel at all.

Except that she knows what she's doing is Wrong - as the Spike incident shows. He knows damn well that she wouldn't be behaving that way if she weren't invisible - so she knows she's behaving badly but she feels liberated from, well, her conscience, I guess. But you're absolutely right that this implies there's been a large element of performance in her behaviour up to now - once she becomes invisible, she's freed from having to perform. I still feel, though, that what she's being freed from, the performance she's no longer having to give, is that of being the Slayer - and the only way she can ever stop being the Slayer is to die. So for me it's still all about death (but then I have to admit that for me most things are about death. Or sex. Or both.)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Spiffy new icon?

Did she stop being the Slayer when she became just a Slayer? Still that’s a whole other debate and she’s not there yet.

Spike is death and death won’t dance. Sex then. You know this could have been a really fine episode but it would have been Dead Things and you can have too often of a good thing.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Spike is death and death won’t dance

Yes, yes, yes! And I love the way ME always, always treats Spike as a person in S6, in spite of his whacking great metaphorical function. That moment when he tells Buffy to piss off is so unexpected. He never gets reduced to a mere thematic function.