Spike? Come here, hon, I'm gonna help you out.

It's spelled F-U-C-K.

I have two words for that- Un. and Earned.

Is it just me, or did every scene just go on forever and ever...8757 minutes into the Spuffy scene my mother and I just gave up and started discussing weekend plans.

My sister-in-law came in at the end and asked what happened. My summary went like this.

"Buffy saved the SiT's from uebervamps. The SiT's felt bad but she validated them, heroic music played, and she ended it on a quip. Then Buffy spoke to Xander. She validated him, heroic music played, and it ended on a quip. Then she spoke to Faith. She validated her, heroic music played, and it ended on a quip. Then she spoke to Spike. She validated him, heroic music played, and it ended on a quip. Then she spoke to some old lady, who validated her, heroic music played, and quips were exchanged but it didn't end with one, so that was new.

Xander made horrible cringeworthy eye jokes, and then chloroformed Dawn. I wish he'd done that last year. Anya and Andrew like humans. Never mind that Anya made the same "Before I left but now I stay" speech two years ago in The Gift and it was a hell of a lot better written.

Willow is still afraid to do magic, and Giles is the descendant of mystical mist rapists."

That scene with Angel was so unbelievably awkward and weird. Badly staged. Badly written- but then the entire episode was so badly written I kept going, "This was the final draft? Really? Seriously? This wasn't the rough copy?"

I can't believe that ME subjected me to 28 episodes of Mopey Buffy followed by 20 episodes of Buffy the Queen Bitch and expect me to just accept Happy Quippy Heroic Buffy now.

I was just so happy that I didn't hate Buffy the character that I kind of liked it. Except the Spuffy scene that dragged on and on and on and on and ... said nothing new. There was fighting, that was good. Buffy and Xander had a conversation in the first time in forever, that was good. Xander chloroformed Dawn, that was good. Dawn tasering Xander? That was bad. Dawn sucks and is whiny and selfish. That's not new. Andrew and Anya played nicely off of each other - I liked Anya agreeing that she always thought she was the perfect woman. I was afraid that Andrew was going to switch teams and kiss Anya. That would have been bad. Glad that didn't happen. Giles seemed quite off, esp. in his scene with Willow in the bedroom. Glad to see them actually talking. I'm still hoping his weirdness is part of the plot and not just ASH completely not giving a damn anymore. Angel seemed really off - like a whole different character kind of off - but I did like seeing Buffy light up at the sight of him and I like Spike being all jealous and angry watching him. That's the Spike I liked - the one who is angry and jealous of Angel. I'm actually looking forward to next week.

For an old, ancient, pre-historic weapon, that scythe looked pretty new and shiny.

Eh.

So not caring.

I think I liked the Anya/Andrew banter. And the ancient woman. But man, even the Buffy/Faith scene was for crap--if they've been doing the job right all along, you *know* that stuff about how Faith feels about Buffy without her coming out and saying it.

If Spike falls for the First's spiel I'll just roll my eyes. Too apathetic to react more strongly.

Angel better be in a good fight scene next week or he'll be wasted. Because he's been gone too long for character-based scenes with him to really be worthwhile.

Eh. They're really not going to pull a cool ending out of their asses, are they? This sucks.

Blah blah long scenes blah. Drag. Flat quips. Bore. Pulled an old woman out of my ass tonight. Angel boring. Buffy's perfect lip gloss and horrendously obvious hair extensions. Xander's fuckup of a useless "abduction" of Dawn.

I did like Anya and Andrew.

Buffy tells Spike that the night meant something deep to her, and she french kisses Angel the instant she sees him? Shit or get off the pot, Buffy. Bleurgh.

Ooh, Smallville's on! I guess the night's not a total loss.

Someone want to explain to me how so many freaking Potentials managed to survive the explosion? That’s all of them. Now it turns out they left an equal number back at the house. Dude, they’ve doubled. Are they like earthworms? At the very least, that stupid explosion was supposed to clean house, and leave us with just the core gang again. At the very least, Kennedy was supposed to die. Only Faith should have lived. But no, every single freaking one.

And the Potentials doubly deserve to die for the whole “we’re being punished for following Faith” trip. Idiot ingrates. It isn’t possible to be more stupid and fickle. Oh, and of course Buffy didn’t lead you into a trap a mere three weeks ago. Ask Xander’s eye about traps. I hate them all.

I likeded the Luxor Casino joke, but that axe is so not Egyptian that they should just shut up.

SNeaker, I'm with you on the horror of them, as things draw to a close, completely destroying and crapping all over Giles and Wesley's calling. They are noble too, they had a destiny too... but nooooo, since women are the only ones who have power or a right to it, these mere men can only be sexist perpetrators and hindrances in the fight for good.

Some nice acting from Nicholas Brendon in the kitchen scene. And he looked hot, and tall, for the first time in a long time. Gellar, on the other hand — same flat expression, same strangely literal dialogue. “Xander, who is wearing denim in my kitchen, you are my strength and you mean so very much to me.”

Although literal worked for “If you die, I’ll just bring you back to life. It’s what I do.” Heh.

When I heard “crazy monks messing with forces they didn’t understand,” I had a fleeting hope that it would mean Dawn’s undoing. And then I could tell that Xander was planning to abduct Dawn, and I hoped that it had something to do with destroying the Key rather than just to get her out of the way because Dawn is the one person in the whole world who Buffy values so much that she can’t put in harm’s way (ptooey, not enough bile, must get a transfusion). I’m a fool. And come on, how did Dawn have a stun gun? Stunning Xander — that’s just not cool.

Character Assassination 101: Giles would never make fun of Xander being maimed. Hello, writer jerks. Nor would he ever take the position that book learning is useless and magic is the solution.

Surprise, Tom Lenk is a powerful dramatic actor as well as a gifted comedic one. I did like those last few sentences in which he prodded Anya about loving humanity and quietly faced the fact that he wouldn't be okay.

Faith and Buffy’s discussion seesawed wildly from bad to good. I loved that Faith felt that the axe thing was hers, because it is, and because that’s something that the writers could easily have forgotten in their mad Buffy Is All rush. Similarly liked Faith making the point that the two of them were never supposed to exist together (very sexily and sweetly delivered, too), and the discussions of how they shared the power. Bad was hearing Buffy give Faith preachy lessons about leadership and responsibility, and really bad was hearing Buffy established as so Noble and Alone, leadership means feeling alone every day blah blah… that’s crap, and it’s not true of Buffy historically. Why is Buffy explaining to Faith what a Slayer is, when Faith’s been one for more than four years?

Spike’s confession in the kitchen was sad and nice… on the condition that I assume that, given who Spike is, he’s likely to be very in the moment with the love he’s in and forget about the past one. Because, here I go saying it, he was as close to Dru as it is possible to be for 100-plus years; they were two sides of one coin. It can also be read in the same way that Angel told Darla he hadn’t loved her because, as vampires, they couldn’t. I think they love in a vampire way, but then souled beings (at least the two souled beings who are in a position to compare) understand that souled love is something else. Anyway, back to Spike. It was sad because it was pathetic, and because even if he had been a less evil and rapey guy than he was, he knows that it can’t have been the best night of Buffy’s life, because she’s loved as a human before, and because there was Angel.

Still and all, I was hoping that when Angel arrived he would find Buffy and Spike together and administer the jealous righteous ass-whupping that Riley was too gentlemanly to. I like the idea of one ex finishing what the other started. Although I didn’t hate Spike walking in on Angel and Buffy instead of vice-versa. Wheeee! Angel and Buffy still have it… in fact, his mere presence gives some of it back to her. And I kinda loved the worshipful music and camera zoom that heralded Angel’s arrival. Aww. Angel! Oddly, it was like I hadn’t seen him in years and was so excited.

Yeah, I did find myself thinking "you know, when was the last time we saw Buffy light up like that?" So not over him. But yeah, Angel was completely off. To be fair, neither Petrie nor Espenson have written him since... what, S2 Angel?

Admittedly, I live in fear of the final message here being that Adult Love is complicated and messy and hurtful, unlike Adolescent Love, and thus Spike is Buffy's True Love. (This has nothing to do with feeling that Angel needs to be her True Love, mind you, because I don't. Though I won't pretend it wasn't nice to see her happy.)

I found that I had to put some effort into saying "you know, I want to enjoy this, so I'm going to let the writers manipulate me." Once I did that, I was mostly fine, with some residual irritation from past events. I did figure out where they lost me with Buffy - it was her "you all suck" speech back in, what, Showtime? Anyway, whether or not that kind of smackdown can be a valid motivational tool, I can tell you that I would've lost any sense of personal loyalty to her right there had I been in that room, and I've never gotten it back. I can make it work so long as I don't think too hard, though.

Anya and Andrew worked fine for me until the wheelchair fight - come on, people.



That would explain a lot. </Oz>



God yes. Well, no, actually given enough time I can imagine that if Xander sent out clear signals that he wanted to joke about it other people would. (Maybe not Giles, but I could be induced to believe it.) Problem is that he lost his eye something like four days ago. So, you know, not so much.

Dear Buffy: Get over yourself. Love, Katie. No, really, love, because you're acting vaguely like yourself again and I've decided I want to leave this show liking you. I mean, damn, girl, you're Alone In Leadership because you want to be. You want to have the power? You want to claim it? Fine - but don't whine about how much it sucks to have it once you've got it. You're making your own choices. The mystical target on your chest that is your Slayerhood doesn't actually extend to forcing you to be the boss.



Yeah, that's what I thought of immediately, and thus it worked for me in a way that last week's spiel about never having been sure of anything else didn't. He was sure that he loved Drusilla - but he knows now that what he was feeling wasn't the kind of love a souled being can experience.

Oh, I forgot to point out that Dawn is dead stupid for stun-gunning the person who was driving the vehicle they were both in. It's also a horrible and callous thing to do to someone who was hospitalized a week ago. Evil fake twit.

I don't think it's a horrible thing to do to the person who chloroformed and kidnapped you, though. I'm really a bit surprised Xander agreed to do that. Or, you know, would be if his character hadn't long since been assassinated.

Just on the face of it, from what we saw, Spike was as in love with Drusilla as he could be, as close as anyone could be, so to say he's never been that close before - Feh. The whole scene felt forced to me. I was all into the Spuffy thing last season, but this season they've done everything they can do stomp my Spuffy love into the ground.

As for Angel, seeing him was a shock only in that seeing him with SMG brings back the memory of the sexy, lean, eye-liner wearing beast he was in Season Two, and all I can think is "Jeebus, is it possible to change that much in 5 years?" I guess that what a steady paycheck will do to you. Don't get me wrong he's dead sexy, but he's filled out a bit since the lean years, like normal agin people do. Not undead vampires. plus, he sauntered around the room with no real emotion, not the kind you would expect when seeing someone you care for fight to the death. He was like Frank Sinatra, I half expected a whiskey glass and a cigarette.

Reagrding Faith, I really didn't need the "Good thing we are hot chicks with super powers" quip, just too Meta for me. Sometimes I feel the entire season is a shout out to everything the posters have said over the last few years.

Well, yeah. Except that chloroforming Dawn didn't put her at any physical risk.

Also, I think there's an argument to be made that, since Xander was just a tool (what else is new?), it was Buffy who deserved the stun-gunning.

Which brings me to yet another unthought-of point of plot stupidity. Why would Xander have to chloroform a "normal," "powerless" teenager who weighs about a third of what he does to get her out of the way? Come to think of it, could he not have used the "let's go for ice cream" excuse? Or, even better, why didn't he and/or Buffy concoct some fake long-distance mission that the two of them needed to go on? Because of mere "shock" "value," that's why.

If this "show" were continuing much longer, I'd run out of my stock of ironic quote marks.

I'm a bit taken aback here. Is this just because of Dawn-hatred, or would you think this if it had been someone else who was treated this way?

Because while abducting someone like that doesn't leave bruises, I still think of it as essentially a violent act, and again I'd be appalled except that I'm up to my appall quota.

No, I'd say it of anyone. What he did was a violation, but he didn't risk physical damage to her or to himself when he did it. And he did it at the behest of her own sister — so, yeah, it was a ghastly idea, but it wasn't his ghastly idea, and he didn't want to do it. All these being factors, I can't help thinking about the fact that a mere week ago he could barely stand up, was heavily medicated, and presumably had had some major surgery. But of course these are all real-world concerns that the stupid show doesn't care about.

For instance, Faith gets blowed up, and the result is that she has to swoon around in bed, with absolutely no burns or visible injuries.

Best. Ending. EVAH!

Take that Schmoopy Spike! Hahahahahahaha!

I mean, not really and all. But still: HAHAHAHA Spikey!

Later ... well, okay, it was kinda daft. And I'm really not a 'Bufy & Angle 4 Eva' type. But look what they've driven me to!

I enjoyed this one, mostly. It was indeed awful talky. And a lot of these conversations should have been had long before - for instance, it's a little late to make something of 'Willow is too scared to do magic'. But I appreciated the effort to at least try and have these people connecting. Giles didn't seem that off to me and while I'm a little irked that the Council are now being presented as unambiguously evil, it's not as if they haven't been presented as a bad thing before and he did, after all, rebel and leave their ranks.

I fell for the 'what is Xander doing, is he evil?!' bit because I am dumb. Then, much as I could do without Dawn at the end, I was outraged at the idea of him not being there. So I have to say I'm in favour of her bringing him back.

Did you know he was coming? (Did you bake a cake?)

Angel? Well, I spotted David Boreanaz in the credits. However, although I didn't specifically know he was coming, I expected it, because I've always known he had to be there at the end. If they couldn't have got the actor, they'd have written in a reference. It's not that I think they'll skip off together into the sunset, but there had to be something.

But mostly I'm just pleased that it annoyed Spike!

Other stuff I liked: Jaffa Cakes! Happy Giles guzzling them! That was nice. Do you have Jaffa Cakes in America? If not, I suppose that was why he looked so delighted. Although, maybe he was just in the mood for them, I know I often am.

More later, it's the Angel ad-breaks.

Okay, back, and read the above comments. Nan's comment about Sinatra!Angel really cracked me up! Oh, loved the swoony Angel music too. Liked Andrew and Anya a lot (not so much the wheelchairs, but okay). Don't really care about the Dawn/Xander stuff except that if Xander hadn't been around for the finale I would have yelled the house down.

My god, the last ever Buffy is next week ...

I loved the gleeful 'Jaffa cakes?' and the lunge for the packet. Cracked me up. Mmm Jaffa cakes. I could just eat one now, but don't have any.
Have the writers been watching Monty Python recently? We had the 'Comfy chair' reference last week and 'Holy handgrenade' this week. Which I completed with 'of Antioch'.

I have to admit to sheepishly laughing at the 'Scythe matters' joke. But then bad puns amuse me.

Missed that, what was it? I dislike the axe, it is far too shiny and modern looking. Okay, I know it's never been used and has been mystically preserved etc, but I would have liked it better if it looked a bit rough. A bit like how in Indiana Jones the Grail is the crap wooden cup, not the fancy ones.

Got the holy handgrenade joke though!

Forgot to say how much I hate Caleb and am glad he's gone. He just never worked. I don't mind SMG as FirstBuffy though.

And as for the Potentials, wow, it's a disgrace that they've been around all season and even rabid watchers like us aren't able to tell them apart (apart from four of them: Millie, Rona, awful Kennedy and scared girl).

When Spike's in the house with Buffy, angling towards sharing the bed,

One of the Fringedwellers pointed that out.

Makes me giggle, but not one I picked up on immeadiately, to be honest.

No, I meant, what was the Scythe Matters bit?

Sadly, I can always recognise Monty Python. I used to go out with a guy who was semi-obsessed, to the point of quoting it in kitchens at parties.

They're talking about the weapon. - Giles, Willow and Buffy, just after sh'e arrived with it. Willow says 'So it's true what they say?' Giles & Buffy looked bemused at her, 'Scythe matters!' Giles rolls his eyes in a amused yet exasperated fashion (I think, it might have been me), and Buffy tries desperately not to snigger out loud.

It amused me somewhat.

Ah! Heh. Although, odd given the whole thrown her out/walking back in scenario. I must say, the whole plot of her being so terribly, terribly divorced from the Scoobies (for all of one episode) was a bit lame.

Yeah, I couldn't shake the niggling feeling that I must have missed an episode, the one where Buffy apologised to, or at least made her peace with, her friends. Apart from the "good guys not communicating much" line there didn't seem to be too much acknowledgement of the fact that she's been chucked out of her house in a major huff just, what, two days previously?

I liked the episode, but it felt like three or four from the end, a pace-picking-up episode rather than the last but one. I now realise there are going to be a million and one things that the writers don't confront and on my deathbed I'll still be wondering how Anya reacted to Xander's eye loss, who called Angel, why Willow can't safely do magic in Sunnydale when she clearly can in LA (I'll fanwank it's the hellmouth's baleful influence), why Sunnydale's population left, why Giles was been acting so weird, why the First chose to act through Caleb rather than, I don't know, D'Hoffryn.

While I'm on a roll, it also seems to me that the writers have (a) been squandering adrenaline-producing moments like there's no tomorrow, but with no real payoff (the Faith go boom cliffhanger being a prime example) and (b) introducing lots of random plot elements that have in no way served to take the story forward (the guardian woman; Spike and Andrew's trip).

I've been giving some thought to what Pandrea said a week or so back, about what the season's metaphor was and how we were supposed to identify with it. I haven't figured it out, but it struck me that one wasted possibility was that Buffy's sense of responsibility for the SITs could have chimed as a nice metaphor for parenthood. Ok, so not aiming at the show's core demographic, but it could have been a nice extra layer. Perhaps they felt they'd already explored that with Dawn though.

All that said (and while there was an element of consciously putting aside criticism in order to enjoy the penultimate episode of the only tv show I have ever been remotely as obsessed with as this) there were some real heart-in-mouth moments. I jumped when Xander seemed momentarily eeevil, laughed at "scythe does matter", sniffled at Andrew's poignant moment, laughed some more when Xander was tasered in the middle of the cheesy voiceover (sometimes I'm callous and strange ...). I liked Buffy, and her hair (did she have a fake ponytail?).

And obviously Caleb dying was a plus.

But I'm still in denial that there's only one more to go. And poor Miss Kitty Fantastico ...

Yeah, at least now we know what happened to that cat. Poor Tara - first her cat gets killed, then she gets Glory-zapped, then mind-raped, then shot to death. What a life!

Wordy word to all your unanswered questions (most particularly on the guardian woman: what on EARTH was that about?). I suppose I see what you mean about the parenthood metaphor, though they would have had to go some to make it work. I think the whole issue of Giles feeling he had to let Buffy make her own mistakes was a better parenthood parallel. There have been so many mentions of leadership and being a general and so on this season that I can only conclude that that's what they were going for as the metaphor. If last year's was 'oh, grow up' then was this 'and take charge'? There are possibilities in that, but it seems to me that by surrounding it in a storyline about war and about how 'not all of them are going to survive', it becomes quite hard to identify with.

I'm getting more and more sad at the prospect of it all ending. I know we'll see Buffy again as she's bound to turn up in Angel, as Faith might, but it's the thought that we'll never see Xander again ("And you, scarecrow ... I think I'll miss you most of all") or Anya or Giles ... well, I still have desperate hope that one day we'll see Giles again. Or Oz: we're never, ever going to see him return from Tibet (or wherever). We're never going to see that cemetery again or the Summers house.

My one hope for the finale - not a plot thing, even - is that it ends with a moment for all our core Scoobies. I still very much want them to all walk away together. I think it will probably just be a Buffy moment, but I'd like the last shot to just be them - no Potentials, no lovers, no random demons, just our four that we started out with.

Silly Pandrea, don't you know it's about Womyn Power? And how women are the all and everything and men like those nasty Watchers are all rapists trying to keep womyn down?

Men! With their manliness, and their penises, and their...sales!

This is made clear in the Angel finale, FWIW.

I think that weird noise I heard at the aged crone’s entrance was the sound of the writers rapidly backing away from the position they found themselves after “Get it done”—in which they effectively took away the Slayers’ power and handed it to the protoWatchers (why is there no female equivalent of emasculation?). Possibly they didn’t realise that this was making the First Slayer a victim rather than a hero? So this is their eleventh hour attempt to redress the balance.

But it doesn’t work because the guardians are so utterly useless. Where were they during all the other apocalypses? Why did they hide away their weapon for “centuries”? Was the First unearthing it part of their plan, and if not what were they going to do about it? My head hurts because none of it makes sense.

Yeah, and was that woman around for centuries, or was it handed down a line like the Watchers? I don't so much mind them bringing such a thing in, but it seems pointless to do it so abruptly. Wouldn't it have been easier to have Buffy find, instead of the woman, a mystic scroll saying 'this axe was forged to defeat the First Evil long ago'? We don't need more than that, really; I doubt anyone would have been bothered by its vagueness. After all, did we care why Acathla needed Angel's blood to close it?

And it's just one more pagan temple too many in Sunnydale. Those Chumash must have been busy, in between the syphillis.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more cheated I feel that in a season where the First Evil, the most basic source of all badness, is the villain, the ongoing theme hasn't actually used that. This would have been the perfect time to explore why not only Buffy but Willow, Anya, Andrew, Spike, Giles and Faith have all given into their dark side at various times. Why didn't Xander and Dawn? How do you recover from it? Is it inevitable that in dedicating your life to fighting evil, you will at one point succumb? It's the redemption thing, yet again, but I think they could have tied it all together better, looking at temptation and evil and its attractions and how the First Evil works on people. More relevant than 'how to be a good leader in wartime', anyway.

I wish you were writing the season ...

Probably the First Evil was an unwise choice for Big Bad. The “okay, I get it … you’re evil” line in “Amends” was the perfect treatment for it—bringing the First out as the villain for a whole season hasn’t really worked. If it is indeed the source of all evil, it needs to appear significantly more effective, malevolent, frightening and yes, eeeeevil, than every other baddie the show has seen. I don’t think the writers have managed to come to grips with the challenge. They started well with the incredible morphing scene and even the demons getting scared, but they haven’t followed through. Why is the First attempting to take over now, at a time when there are two Slayers, one of whom is apparently the most successful ever? Why is it working through Caleb and not someone more powerful? Why have its attempts at manipulation—of a group of people who as you say have had their brushes with the dark side—been so lame and ineffectual? Apart from murdering a whole bunch of girls and mysteriously scaring away Sunnydale’s population, what has it actually done?

To be fair you could have asked the last question of Adam or Glory. There are always going to be problems sustaining a Big Bad’s campaign over 22 episodes and the seasons have been more or less successful at attributing plausible motives for delay. However in other seasons the arcs or metaphors have at least attracted attention away from the plothole; and maybe when I get the videos and watch the whole season again I’ll figure out what the arc actually is.

And how thoroughly pointless for that woman, to hang around in a crypt for centuries or perhaps millennia, vaguely "guarding" a big rock, and then being unable to offer any constructive advice or assistance to the Slayer before being killed. Maybe it'll all be explained in the finale - but I actually don't want it to be, because that would seem like a waste of the last ever episode.

That would be my plan. If I get time this summer, I'll do it.

I still think the First could have been a terrific villain. I like the idea of something evil which cannot act directly - thus avoiding the usual 'but why is Glory just sitting around?' problems - but must influence others to evil. It's all very reminiscent of (don't laugh) my favourite, sinister Agatha Christie book Curtain, in which (spoiler, if you care) the bad guy actually just manipulates other people into murder through insinuation, sly remarks, goading, etc and therefore, even though morally he is to blame, the law can't touch him (and so Poirot has to kill him, and thus he makes Poirot a murderer too). So I've always been interested in the idea that without actually doing direct evil, one can still be party to it. There are all sorts of other parallels too, like the idea of 'for evil to succeed, good people need only do nothing'.

So, HAD I been writing this season, I would have made the First more a baleful influence, basically the source of all evil, like the Devil. The First D'Evil. That's where I thought they were going in Conversations With Dead People and the ep where the Hellmouth was influencing people to fight at the high school, but they never really built on that, though I still think it was what they intended. So, in that scenario, the reason people are fleeing the town would be the chaos caused by the First tempting them into whatever variant of evil fitted their own personalities - ie, the cops going vigilante. Also, the delay over the season could be better attributed to the First's influence over people either succeeding or being driven back by Buffy and co, winning little victories as they went along. As for why now ... it could have been precisely because of Buffy's success that the First had to step up its usual operations. Or, they could have inserted some lame prophecy: "It says here that one day a Slayer with shiny hair will defeat the First Evil, I must therefore mobilise all my forces to kill her."

I can see that they wanted to end the show with a big battle and high stakes. I think it would have been more satisfying if, instead of the Potentials whom nobody likes, we had seen various ordinary Sunnydale residents resist the First and flock around the Scoobs, a bit like Graduation Day but developed over a longer time with more varied people (old, young, a love interest for Giles, etc - something like V or The Stand). Buffy could then still have done the leadership thing, if that was important to the writers/Joss. It would have been nice to end the show with the people of the town finally getting a clue.
And I have now hi-jacked this into the realm of fanfiction, so I'll desist.

Yeah. The platonic ideal of S7 is wonderful, I think. They could've done so many creepy things with the First. Even the weirdly truncated Buffy Gets Kicked Out arc could've been great, if they'd just thrown us a couple of bones.

What S7 reminds me of most strongly is S4, actually. Same kind of blown arc. Not as many good standalones, of course.

That's a very nice idea, Pandrea. And, jeez, even if people as generals in a war had been a good theme for a season, it would have helped if the characters hadn't kept saying "I'm a general" and "We're in a war." I'm looking around, and, no, you're not. You're sitting on the couch eating popcorn, while some orcs are hanging out underground, and the whole population of town has fled for absolutely no reason.

I fear that the exercise of sitting down and trying to find a decent theme in Season Seven is a time-waster. Like trying to find a brain cell in Tom Green's head. Reason tells you that there must be one there, and yet...

I chose to believe that the guardian woman was overstating her importance in that whole speech. Like, she saw herself and her kind as central to the Slayers and their mythology, when really they were just a slightly nutty bunch like any of the other weird cults Buffy has come across over the five years. Knights of Byzantium types. "Woo, we're all with the power! Really and truly! We protect this thing that needs protecting, and, um, you might have needed it, but we were protecting it..."

This position may have something to do with the fact that I didn't feel that the Watcher origin story made the Slayers into victims. That's pretty much how I always assumed it had happened. And I didn't agree with Buffy's take on the whole experience. Ancient dudes imbue you with supernatural power in a time too ancient and mystical for you to understand, and you get pissy because it violates your 20th century notions of personhood?

Fair enough on that last point. But whatever half-formed theories I had on Slayer origins derived from Giles's "you never had a Watcher" to the First Slayer in "Restless".

I imagined the Watchers' Council to have developed to assist the Slayer line, rather than having created it, and I think I prefer my original take. It makes the modern day Council's views and proprietorial feelings about the Slayers more interesting (to me anyway). I can imagine a secret organisation like the Council developing a kind of groupthink in which it protects and enhances its power by trying to dominate the wielders of the true power, and thinks it is doing the right thing. The Council isn't evil, it's just human and subject to human failings.

Yes, I'd have preferred that too. I guess you could put a favorable spin on it by thinking that the Watchers were destined to channel that power into the Slayers, that they were no more the agents of that destiny than the Slayers — that they were both called. Which is what Giles said, and what I've always believed. I don't think the Council was trying to dominate or co-opt the Slayers. I think they had a calling, too, but in modern day they had become too clueless and rule-bound... and possibly too British. Maybe they should have situated the headquarters in Fort Lauderdale or St. Croix, to loosen them all up.

They wanted to help, and they were in the good fight... and we've seen how being in the good fight can make people haughty and high-and-mighty at times. E.G., Buffy "I'm A General" Summers.

I definitely took the same thing as Mirren from Giles's line in Restless.

But it's still not clear to me that the Watcher's Council in England is the descendant of African wisemen hundreds of thousands of years earlier. It could be, but it might not be. So nothing is really contradicted here... it's just narratively weaker than it could be.

There is the possibility that some Victorian explorer (hi, H Rider Haggard) discovered an ancient African sect and brought their wisdom to Britain, where he founded the WC as we know it*. Or, the Council grew out of the tribal elders, but not directly - maybe the line was broken a few times, rediscovered, broken, rediscovered, when it was needed.

I sort of understood Buffy's position in that if that's the way the Slayer was called - and it didn't contradict anything for me, because I'd never considered how the first one had begun, except vaguely through TPTB - it was kind of a cop-out on the part of everyone else. Like they gave her this grim, brutal existence of fighting, responsibility, isolation and early death, in return for their own security and comfortable life. A bit like that Ursula LeGuin story someone mentioned recently, about the child whose misery sustains the city. Buffy's anger was, to me, a development of her resentment of the Council and a more grown-up version of "I'm sixteen, I don't want to die!" I-hate-destinycakes.


Probably true and yet I can't help it. Partly so that I can get some enjoyment out of it and partly because it's an interesting creative writing exercise. Like studying someone else's faults so that you hopefully don't follow them.

(*and if I wasn't so lazy, I'd be tempted to write a fanfic about this, starring great-great-grandfather 'Roland' Giles or somebody)

Yeah, sorry, I didn't express myself very well there. I don't think the Council consciously aimed to dominate the Slayers, simply that its policies and traditions had grown up to create that effect - although the only real example of that I can come up with is the test in "Helpless".

It certainly makes sense, given the mayfly-like lifespans of most Slayers, for there to be an organisation which values and provides continuity and the corollary to that is that said organisation will be prone to stultification and, to an extent, inertia. I don't think it's a British thing though I can see that Britishness is a convenient shorthand for American tv audiences. ;)

Personally I have a magic ability to ignore things that don't accord with the Canon of Mirren. In "Restless" the First Slayer existed before speech so I don't buy what the Swahili-speaking elders said about Slayer origins. La, la, la, it was a trick, or a trap, or a lie.

On another note, although I'm not a B/A shipper I was disappointed by their pretty flat kiss at the end of this episode. I'm slightly appeased by a rewatch - it's a single tracking shot from Buffy and Angel across to Spike and the First as Buffy - so whoever's kissing David Boreanaz is clearly not SMG. What a weird job: Buffy kissing double.

Ok, Willow doesn't know what a glottal stop is? Shenanigans!

Also, it occurs to me that Buffy getting kicked out of the Scooby Gang would have been kind of a neat place to go, if it had lasted for more than one day, and if Spike was not a character on this show.

Speaking of Spike, an interesting thing happened while I was watching that scene with Spike and Buffy in the kitchen. It was like I was suddenly watching the show with Season 2 Spike. We were sitting there together, eating popcorn, him ashing on my couch and drinking heavily. And he's watching this guy with his face and voice and memories, and just getting so pissed off. He's breaking things and not apologizing. It's very hairy. He's so disgusted by the pitiful, boring geek he's become. And then I comfort...err, I mean, banish him from my apartment. yeah.

I was really happy to see Buffy's look of joy when Angel arrived though. I have a little confession. I'm a Buffy/Angel shipper. If I had bookcovers for my textsbooks, they would say Buffy and Angel 4Eva in pink magic marker. As much as I basically can't stand her now, that's how much I still, despite all reason, want them to live happily ever after. Don't judge me, please. I'm weak, and they're so pretty.

Yeah, I can imagine that Old Spike (nearly wrote Old Spice there) seeing New Spike (like New Coke! Sugary!) would be similar to Angelus having to watch Angel grooving on Mandy and saving puppies. Except that the change didn't even come with the soul, but before, somebloodyhow. Bandwagon jumper.

It occurs to me that Willow's got a cheek saying Buffy's not too bright if she doesn't even know that.

We won't judge. They are. But, for me, only together - I don't feel that way about him in his own show, much as I enjoy it.

Yeah, I didn't believe that Willow didn't know what a glottal stop was either. I mean, I have a glottal stop - not so much any more, after 20 years in England, but certainly when, say, I'm drunk. Plenty of Americans must use glottal stops, too.

Maybe she was just trying to make Giles feel valued and wise.

Old Spice should so be his current nickname. "Say, here comes Old Spice."



It just means, sad to say, that your heart's not made of stone.

As for the other thing, you didn't happen to take a buncha drugs, didja?