Tag Archives: Buffy

August 5, 2011 · 8:30 am

Cultural Catchup Project: “Once More, With Feeling” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“Once More, With Feeling”

August 5th, 2011

My memory is generally pretty good when it comes to small details about my life, but I truly have no idea what possessed me to watch “Once More, With Feeling” in my dorm room about four or five years ago.

I wasn’t watching it with someone else, and I hadn’t borrowed someone’s DVDs. As far as I can remember, no one suggested that I watch it, and this was well before Dr. Horrible was a thing (although I think my memory wants to tell me that there was some relationship between the two things, if only to make sense of the abstract nature of the experience). Looking back, timeline wise, it’s possible that the Scrubs musical was what pushed me in its direction, but that’s at best an educated guess.

As I’ve discussed throughout this project, there are moments from pivotal episodes that have been floating around in my head from occasional experiences with the series. One was Riley crawling through a tight space in the climax of “Hush,” gleamed from a Buffy marathon my brother was recording, and the other was this random late night viewing of an episode for which I had almost zero context. Given that I was watching the episode exclusively as a musical, my memory is hazy: when I started watching the show in earnest last summer, I remember being convinced that Xander and Cordelia were going to get together because I had seen them in “Once More, With Feeling,” at which point you were quick to point out that my memory was even hazier than I realized.

Watching it this week really did feel like watching it for the first time, even if there were those brief moments of déjà vu. I remembered more about the episode than I thought, but the nature of those memories varied, reflecting the multi-faceted nature of the episode’s success. You can’t remember what you’ve never known, and returning to the episode in the context of the sixth season gave me a much greater understanding for why “Once More, With Feeling” holds such an important place in the history of this show.

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Tagged as Alyson Hannigan, Amber Benson, Analysis, Anthony Stewart Head, Anya, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bunnies, CCP, Cultural Catchup, Emma Caulfield, Episode 7, Heaven, Hell, Joss Whedon, Musical, OMWF, Once More With Feeling, Review, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Season 6, Spike, Sweet, Tara, Television, TV, UPN, Willow

June 15, 2011 · 12:25 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: “Flooded” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“Flooded”

June 13th, 2011

Thus far, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season has been strikingly “realistic.” It sort of reminds me of the fourth season, in that Buffy spent the first set of episodes battling “real world” forces as much as demonic ones. There, the traditional college experience was framed through the eyes of the Slayer, while here Buffy’s resurrection from heaven is almost being framed as the transition into the adult realities of parenting, home ownership, and everything in between. Whereas Buffy’s role has more often than not been framed in terms of general responsibility, a task that she has always been able to live up to, the show is reframing that role in the context of financial responsibility.

While “After Life” very much focused on the ways in which reality itself has become a burden for Buffy in light of her ordeal, “Flooded” makes reality a bit less philosophical and a bit more…well, real. We could argue the same for the season itself, actually, given how the episode uses a fairly typical Monster-of-the-Week and a number of private conversations to set a pretty clear foundation for the season that follows. It’s too early to pass judgment on The Trio, and on the direction the season seems to be heading in, but the best thing I can say about “Flooded” is that it never gave me pause. Burdened by exposition, the episode nonetheless found a fair deal of poignancy in what could be considered a mundane premise, and created a great deal of interest (and a moderate amount of excitement) for what is to come.

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Tagged as Analysis, Andrew, Angel, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Catchup, Danny Strong, Episode 4, Flooded, Giles, Jonathan, M'Fashnik, Reality, Review, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Season 6, Spike, Sunnydale, Television, The Trio, TV, Warren, Willow

May 27, 2011 · 11:26 am

Cultural Catchup Project: “After Life” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“After Life”

May 27th, 2011

The term “Cultural Catchup” really has two meanings.

The first is the broad notion of catching up on television shows which have proven to be important cultural touchstones but which have escaped my gaze.

The second, however, has been the experience of witnessing the conversation on a post and then quickly “catching up” with the context that informs the conversation. This is not to say that anyone has been spoiling the show, but it’s a basic fact that those of you commenting know what’s ahead, and so as I watch through a season I often find myself rereading (or at least thinking about) previous comments and putting two and two together.

I raise this point in part because the unique nature of this viewing experience is something I like theorizing and because this sort of retroactive sense making is at the heart of “After Life,” an episode that serves as a sort of Rosetta Stone for the season premiere and the season as a whole. In many ways, this is the start of the season: whereas “Bargaining” was saddled with the task of getting from Point A to Point B, “After Life” is allowed more space to breathe and more time to explore the magical and psychological consequences of that transition.

While I don’t think the result is particularly subtle on the level of plot, coming in the form of a metaphor-turned-monster-of-the-week, the strength of that metaphor is confirmed by the unbearable weight of Buffy’s return on her friends, the audience, and more importantly Buffy herself.

And although I don’t think it retroactively solves my issues with “Bargaining,” it certainly gives the title greater meaning and establishes a tragic and poetic frame to the show’s sixth season.

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Tagged as After Life, Analysis, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cultural Catchup, Episode 2, Heaven, Hell, James Marsters, Jane Espenson, Joss Whedon, Review, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Season 6, Spike, Television, TV, Willow

May 18, 2011 · 6:42 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: Angel – “Heartthrob”

“Heartthrob”

May 18th, 2011

There’s a bit of whiplash in covering “Bargaining” and “Heartthrob” back-to-back. Whereas Buffy seems to be heading into a period of intense transition, dealing with a whole lot of plot development that necessitates an eventful and complicated premiere, Angel is in a far more stable place without any of the same broad upheaval.

This may be considered a viable reason to watch the two series entirely separately, but for me it offers a nice juxtaposition that does much to highlight the strengths of both series, and the strengths of Angel in particular. While “Heartthrob” ends up being pretty simple, and more than a bit on the nose in regards to its central theme, I think there’s an economy to the storytelling that is equally matched with a certain swagger (which was understandably absent in “Bargaining”). While Greenwalt has to deal with questions of grief after the conclusion of Buffy’s fifth season, he’s far enough removed to be able to have a bit of fun at the same time.

Although “Heartthrob” may not have the same emotional resonance of “Bargaining,” it also feels more finely tuned in its shorter running time and in its thematically (rather than narratively) convenient standalone storyline which also proves a stealth transition into the budding mythology introduced at episode’s end. “Heartthrob” is in no position to become an all-time great episode of the series, at least based on what I’ve seen of the series thus far, but it quite comfortably lives in this particular moment while laying the groundwork for the season that comes.

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Tagged as Amy Acker, Analysis, Angel, Buffy, Charisma Carpenter, Cordelia, Darla, David Boreanaz, Dennis, Elisabeth, Episode 1, Gunn, Heartthrob, James, Pregnancy, Premiere, Review, Season 1, Season 3, Season Premiere, Television, The Host, TV, Wesley

October 12, 2010 · 12:30 am

Cultural Catchup Project: “The Gift” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“The Gift”

October 12th, 2010

As you may well have noticed, the conclusion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fifth season within the Cultural Catchup Project has been a bit of an anti-climax, if only because of the long delays as we moved towards the finale. In fact, it was a good thing that the Netflix episodes had the “Previously On” segments intact, because I think there would have been some details (like, for example, the “Knights that say Key”) which would have been initially befuddling.

I think, though, that it’s also partially the fact that the fifth season doesn’t exactly follow a logical narrative pattern. I want to talk about both “Spiral” and “The Weight of the World,” but I will likely spend more time on “The Gift” due to its climactic qualities, or its somewhat sudden climactic qualities. I like Glory just fine, and think the season as a whole was quite effective, but we cannot deny that the overarching plot of the season sort of sat still for the back nine or so. Mind you, that was the period where Buffy was preoccupied with her mother’s death, so it’s not as if the show was boring or uninteresting during that period, but it sort of made the conclusion seem a bit sudden (although it does develop over the course of the last few episodes).

In other words, the challenge of “The Gift” (and the episodes before it) was bringing the seasonal arc to its conclusion in a way which ties it to the characters’ personal journeys over the course of that season, overcoming the sense that Glory’s story arc did not necessarily follow a traditional rising action pattern. And while I think that it lacks the sense of climax prevalent in “Becoming” or “Graduation Day,” I think the fifth season finale lives up to this task: it may not be the perfect conclusion to the season, or the perfect note for these characters, but it delivers a meaningful hour of television which demonstrates the complexity (or, depending on your point of view, the flaws) of the series’post-high school structure.

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Tagged as Analysis, Anya, Ben, Buffy, Catchup, Dawn, Death, Episode 20, Episode 21, Episode 22, Giles, Glory, Joss Whedon, Knights, Review, Sacrifice, Season 5, Season Finale, Spike, Spiral, Tara, Television, The Gift, The Weight of the World, TV, Willow, Xander

September 5, 2010 · 4:18 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: “Tough Love” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“Tough Love”

September 5th, 2010

If Adam was a philosophical character with no functional use within Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fourth season, Glory is a functional character without any real philosophical purpose in the series’ fifth.

“Tough Love” really drives this point home for me: the character is more fun than she is interesting, existing sort of as a by-product of Dawn’s arrival despite the fact that Dawn is technically the by-product of the situation. This isn’t so much a criticism as an observation: I like Glory, and like what role she plays within this story, but it isn’t a particularly complex role. Instead, all of the complexity is on the protagonists’ side of the story, which is expressly clear when this episode becomes far more about Willow and Tara’s relationship and far less about Glory herself.

Which is only fitting as Glory’s arc appears to be reaching its end.

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Tagged as Television, TV, Review, Analysis, Alyson Hannigan, Season 5, Catchup, Episode 19, Ben, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy, Willow, Spike, Glory, Dawn, Arc

September 4, 2010 · 10:26 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: “Intervention” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“Intervention”

September 4th, 2010

Marti Noxon faced certain challenges in “Forever,” transitioning from the tragedy of “The Body” into the season’s conclusion, but Jane Espenson faces more substantial obstacles with “Intervention.” She’s given the task of bringing back the series’ sense of fun and its second of humour, qualities that seem particularly incongruous with the grieving process still unfolding. The episode is going to be awkward no matter what you do with it, which is what makes it a difficult task for any writer.

However, Jane Espenson does awkward pretty damn well: her episodes are always strong at mixing the dramatic with the comic, and here she adds the tragic into the mix with little difficulty. “Intervention” picks up the story where “I Was Made To Love You” left off, comfortably settling into the path which will lead the season to its end and delivering some meaningful laughs along the way

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Tagged as Analysis, Angel, Anya, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawn, Episode 18, First Slayer, Glory, Intervention, Jane Espenson, Joyce, Quest, Review, Robot, Season 5, Spike, Television, Torture, TV, Willow, Xander

September 3, 2010 · 11:13 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: “Forever” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“Forever”

September 3rd, 2010

When I reviewed “Into the Woods” earlier this summer, I was admittedly somewhat hard on Marti Noxon, which was probably a bit of bandwagon hopping: I’m aware, perhaps too aware, of the criticisms which face Noxon in regards to the later seasons of the series, and I think that I held her accountable for my issue with the way that episode was structured and executed in a way which was probably unfair. Now, mind you, this isn’t to say that I don’t still have issues with the episodes, nor is it to say that I still don’t find some of Noxon’s writing to be a bit (and often a lot) romantically heavy-handed. Rather, Noxon was but one part of a larger team, and holding her personally accountable is reductive to the collective effort involved.

I raise this point because while watching “Forever,” I realized why Noxon’s somewhat divisive qualities actually work to help this post-tragedy episode feel just the right level of uncomfortable. I have some issues with the way the episode unfolds, and the lack of subtlety across the board is still somewhat unsettling, but the conflict between an emotional explosion waiting to happen and the attempts to carry on with one’s life feels natural. In other words, while I felt as if Noxon was attempting to rewrite Riley and Buffy’s relationship to create a heartwrenching moment, here she is drawing from a situation so filled with heartbreak that her poetry feels purposeful, desired.

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Tagged as Television, TV, Review, Analysis, Episode 17, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Buffy, Giles, Spike, Marti Noxon, Joyce, Dawn Summers, The Body, Forever, Joel Grey, Doc

August 2, 2010 · 10:30 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: “Into the Woods,” Caught in the Weeds (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

“Into the Woods,” Caught in the Weeds

August 2nd, 2010

As the Slayer, Buffy has always had to balance various parts of her life: with great power comes great responsibility, and so there were times when her friends and her studies suffered as a result of the time she had to spend patrolling and keeping Sunnydale from falling into the abyss.

However, in previous seasons the consequences of an imbalanced life were fairly minimal: it created tension between friends which could be smoothed over without much difficulty, and it led to conflicts with principals which were ultimately inconsequential – even Season Four, as Buffy graduated to the college life, it still seemed as if the challenge of balancing her various commitments (to slaying, to the Initiative, to school work) was still pretty easy to overcome (especially when you consider that they went most of the season without exploring her distance from her mother).

But in the fifth season’s absence of an omnipresent story arc – with Glory sitting on the bench for extended periods, biding her time before making her next move – the series has delved further into decidedly human drama: after it becomes clear that Joyce’s condition is not related to Dawn’s arrival (except that the tumour gave her the ability to see Dawn for what she was), Buffy’s life becomes infinitely more complicated, and so she starts to let that balance fade. And while ignoring her studies is something the show cares little about, and ignoring Spike’s advances is not a particularly challenging thing for Buffy to do, ignoring Riley’s descent into a dark place is a consequence she had not prepared for.

It is, however, a consequence which I’ve been preparing for since the season began: while “Family” established that Tara is part of this family, and “Triangle” went out of its way to answer any lingering doubts about Anya’s connection with the group, “Into the Woods” seems like it should pick up on the season’s gradual argument that there is no worse outlet for Riley Finn’s psychological struggles than his efforts to make Buffy feel for him as she felt for Angel.

Unfortunately, all “Into the Woods” proves is that Marti Noxon might as well face that she’s addicted to love, to the detriment of Riley’s swan song.

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Tagged as Analysis, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawn, Entertainment, Into the Woods, Joyce, Listening to Fear, Marc Blucas, Marti Noxon, Review, Riley, Riley Finn, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Season 5, Shadow, Television, Triangle, TV

July 26, 2010 · 9:56 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: One Past, Two Perspectives (Buffy and Angel)

One Past, Two Perspectives

July 26th, 2010

Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter has said that he has no intention of ever using flashbacks for the FX series, which some might find odd considering how much of the series is based on an earlier generation of conflict regarding SAMCRO’s founder, John Teller. However, each season of the series has a tightly constructed arc, and so much of its drama depends on capturing the intensity of the Sons’ daily lives that flashing back would likely disrupt any sense of momentum.

And yet, for network series with similarly complex backstories, flashback episodes are almost a necessity: with 22 episodes to deliver each year, as opposed to the 13 offered on cable, flashbacks are a good way to kill some time between major story arcs, or fill in some necessary exposition heading into a new story arc, or to simply have some fun by featuring a character who everyone seems to enjoy. “Fool to Love” and “Darla” are both flashback episodes, and even flash back to the same scenes in two instances, but they represent two distinct types of flashback episodes, which becomes clear when watched together (as they would have originally aired).

I want to talk a bit about how each series uses its respective flashback episode as a standalone piece, but I also want to look at how they work as parts of their respective seasons: while “Darla” is very clearly part of the series’ narrative arc, “Fool for Love” has a unique relationship with the momentum built by “No Place Like Home” and “Family” which offers a different take on the potential function of flashbacks.

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Tagged as Amber Benson, Amy Adams, Analysis, Angel, Anya, Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Catchup, China, Crossover, Darla, Dawn, Drusilla, Family, Flashback, Fool for Love, Giles, Glory, James Marsters, Joss Whedon, Julie Benz, Kevin Rankin, Lindsey, No Place Like Home, Review, Riley, Season 2, Season 5, Sons of Anarchy, Spike, Tara, Television, The Magic Box, Tim Minear, TV, William the Bloody, Willow, Wolfram & Hart