Buffy the Vampire Slayer

That poor actor; those horns are just ick.

Just started ep 16, "The Body."

The Buffy show just did a clever thing- they ended the last one w/ Buffy finding her mom dead. So I bet at the time watchers were wondering if it was for real. This episode begins with a replay of that ending. I take this to mean she's totally dead for realz. Roll title credits.

Yes, Joyce Summers is dead.

Emmys! They should get Emmys! Did they get Emmys or something?
Emmys for acting, natch. Emmys for direction. Emmys for... um.. sound editing (no really, it reminded me of that movie In the Bedroom, which was also about grief, and used silence to magnify the focus of intense emotion this way, and you all should see it it's amazing).

My one quibble- unless something is revealed, it feels a bit like a cop-out right now that they went with an aneurism instead of Glory as the cause of death.

TV logic- when Joyce is sick or dead, it's Buffy's friends that are around to help and console, none of her own.

Nothing to be revealed: it was an aneurism.

And a tip of the hat to you noticing the lack of music (with the exception of the background Christmas carols at the beginning). I never noticed it when I first saw the episode.

So, the next Buffy episode gives some follow-up to this one, and then thereafter it's all arc through the end of the season.

The lack of music in film (and TV) is something I've been a big fan of for a long time. Actually, probably since In the Bedroom. Really that movie changed the way I look at drama.

The Wire also used lack of music, and that's a show I love as dearly as B5.

So yeah, I was certainly in a head-space to notice that right away. And other things they did like the quick cuts from fantasy to reality, focusing on the raw physical sensations of sound, worrying about how one appears to look or act at this time, being excessively polite... I'll put it this way- I've been fortunate enough to see some amazing film that have used these techniques and unfortunate enough to live through the death of loved ones (as I'm sure we all have) to catch all of the details. Even though I sometimes watch Buffy/Angel with, admittedly, less than full attention (which is how I'm able to run through it so fast), I wasn't going to dick around with an episode that starts with Buffy's mom's death.

Here's a weird that happened: a few days I'm conducting a training seminar for a few young engineers, strangers to me, and one of the young women in the class was named Joy. At one point I accidentally called her Joyce. I'm pretty bad with names, so I blamed it on the fact that I'm watching Buffy and I was at the part where Buffy's mom has a tumor. One guy in the room goes, "I haven't seen season 5."

"Angel's lame. His hair goes straight up and he's bloody stupid."
- robot Buffy

I love robot Buffy. Lots of funny there.

The quote you posted makes me think of, I think it was, the third episode of the first season of Angel with Spike standing off a bit watching Angel and this woman that Angel just saved from a vampire, and Spike's providing both sides of the conversation. Part of Spike's substituted convo is about Angel and hair gel.

vacantlook said:

The quote you posted makes me think of, I think it was, the third episode of the first season of Angel with Spike standing off a bit watching Angel and this woman that Angel just saved from a vampire, and Spike's providing both sides of the conversation. Part of Spike's substituted convo is about Angel and hair gel.

Click to expand...

Best Spike lines ever. Well, second best.

No cop-out with the aneurysm; the plan was always to kill Joyce by natural causes, force Buffy to face the fact she can't really stop death, and to do it by surprise. It may be Joss's greatest hour of television ever in terms of sheer craftsmanship... but it's almost never mentioned in the favorites lists because it's so painful to watch.

But yes. They should have won Emmys for that one.

And so Buffy goes out in a blaze of glory, after finally finding some peace with her place in the world. A very heroic and poetic end to the story.

Well that was a fun series to watch.

At this point in the Buffy series, the show ceased to be broadcast by the WB and was picked up for its last two seasons by UPN. Meanwhile, Angel remained on the WB, which led to some really weird schedules for the two shows crossing over. I'm trying to remember, but I can't really remember much if any crossovers during the Buffy6/Angel3 season, so the strange scheduling isn't as big of a deal now as it is for Buffy7/Angel4.

At this point, if you want to watch the episodes in the order they were broadcast, you really need a list. Of course, I just so happen to have such lists. Here's the broadcast order for Buffy6/Angel3.

Angel -- Heartthrob
Angel -- That Vision Thing
Buffy -- Bargaining Part One
Buffy -- Bargaining Part Two
Angel -- That Old Gang of Mine
Buffy -- Afterlife
Angel -- Carpe Noctem
Buffy -- Flooded
Angel -- Fredless
Buffy -- Life Serial
Angel -- Billy
Buffy -- All The Way
Angel -- Offspring
Buffy -- Once More With Feeling
Angel -- Quickening
Buffy -- Tabula Rasa
Angel -- Lullaby
Buffy -- Smashed
Buffy -- Wrecked
Angel -- Dad
Buffy -- Gone
Angel -- Birthday
Angel -- Provider
Buffy -- Doublemeat Palace
Angel -- Waiting In The Wings
Buffy -- Dead Things
Buffy -- Older And Far Away
Angel -- Couplet
Angel -- Loyalty
Buffy -- As You Were
Angel -- Sleep Tight
Buffy -- Hell's Bells
Buffy -- Normal Again
Angel -- Forgiving
Angel -- Double or Nothing
Angel -- The Price
Buffy -- Entropy
Angel -- A New World
Buffy -- Seeing Red
Angel -- Benediction
Buffy -- Villains
Angel -- Tomorrow
Buffy -- Two To Go
Buffy -- Grave

The last two seasons of Buffy definitely have a slightly different feel to them. One, UPN let them do things that I don't think the WB would have ever let them do. Two, Joss eventually let other executive producers he'd been working with on the shows have a bit more control of the show as when Buffy7/Angel4 were being done, so too was Firefly, and Firefly took up a lot of Joss's time.

Buffy6 evokes a lot of feelings within the fandom; some fans really don't like the season. Like all seasons, really though, 6 has some really good moments and some not so good moments. As a whole, I think 6 is the darkest season when it comes to the tone of the story.

Don't be silly, VL, Buffy's dead, there can't possibly be any more episodes.

...And Babylon 5 had such a great ending in "Into the Fire." Fantastic finish, watching the Shadows and Vorlons leave!

KoshFan said:

...And Babylon 5 had such a great ending in "Into the Fire." Fantastic finish, watching the Shadows and Vorlons leave!

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But those aren't main chartacters! No, this would be like if, say, John Sheridan died at the end of a season, and the show kept going. I mean, that would be ridiculous.



By the way can I just point out how awesome the whole thing with putting the book on the shelf is? I mean the whole Willow-in-Buffy's-coma thing was great, but that little detail of how it was this mundane moment where Buffy had this moment of doubt that she focuses on... brilliant.

GKarsEye said:

KoshFan said:

...And Babylon 5 had such a great ending in "Into the Fire." Fantastic finish, watching the Shadows and Vorlons leave!

Click to expand...

But those aren't main chartacters! No, this would be like if, say, John Sheridan died at the end of a season, and the show kept going. I mean, that would be ridiculous.

Click to expand...

"Jump...Jump Now"

GKarsEye said:

By the way can I just point out how awesome the whole thing with putting the book on the shelf is? I mean the whole Willow-in-Buffy's-coma thing was great, but that little detail of how it was this mundane moment where Buffy had this moment of doubt that she focuses on... brilliant.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I love that. It's such an otherwise simple moment, but freaked up by having it repeated, and repeated in an uneven, unrhythmic manner.

I also love a couple episodes before that when Willow goes all superwitch on Glory. It's hard to not cheer at the "I owe you pain!" line. And I love how concerned beaten-up Spike is over Dawn feeling like it's all her fault.

And I love how many aspects come back from earlier in the season for the final battle against Glory: like that glowing orb, the troll's hammer, and the Buffy bot.

So now that the show moved to another network did they have to re-record the theme song? Sounds like a different performance.

The theme was rerecorded at some point, but I thought it was back for season three; they logo of the show was changed for season three as well. If it was rerecorded for season six, I don't remember it.

Marathon viewing of the first chunk of season 6 last night while working/on-call.

I know this gets slammed by some fans but except for one part of it, it seems like the strongest beginning of a season yet So far it seems this show's seasons start off weak and end strong, making this the best opening batch of episodes yet.

The one part I don't like (at least yet) is the evil nerd triumvirate. This is the kind of idea that seems funny on paper- let's take 3 losers from previous story lines and make them Lex Luthor-like. Maybe it's even the only logical place to go- I mean, where can you after a god? You go with comedy, you scale it down at first, I get it. But it's just not working for me. Maybe it's the actors, I don't know.

Other than that. I love everything else. Willow becoming scary-powerful- finally she has something important to do again. And Buffy having been in what she interprets as heaven- this is probably the only way to make her 2nd resurrection in the show interesting instead of retarded.

By 1am I was done with the 6th episode and instead of wisely going to bed, I saw the next episode was called "Once More With Feeling," knew that was the famous musical, and ended up watching it. For now I'll simply say I was blown away by it. Will post more later, and probably re-watch it this week.

I was underwhelmed with Sixth season, but "Once More, With Feeling", and it's follow-up "Tabula Rasa" are two of Buffy's finest episodes.