[buffy@pylduck.com]

[4:33:36 PM]

Sooooo good. There is such a marked difference between Joss Whedon-written episodes and others. I like a lot of the ideas of most episodes, but the episodes Whedon writes are just as a whole astonishing. His narrative style is so cool. I like the dialogue. I like the camera perspectives. I especially like the SILENCES. I was just telling Patrick the other day that my favorite episode ever is probably ["Hush"] from the fourth season. Now I think this latest episode is my favorite.

Joss Whedon does more than just tell a story. He really brings it to life by making each action, each word, each shot significant in the production of meaning for the narrative. I liked the memory/vision flashes that Buffy has at the beginning, the hopeful futures, the happy pasts. The sudden, violent return to the body. The EMS person telling Buffy that there's nothing left to do but call the coroner -- the top half of his face cut off. A distracting feeling about what Buffy's mind must be going through, unable to focus.

IT WAS SO GOOD!!

I liked Dawn's art class. The juxtaposition of her successful engagement with the boy and the tragedy of finding out about her mother's death. And the negative space idea -- so completely fitting and yet subtly inflecting the narrative to focus our attention on all that is not said, all that we don't usually see because of all the other stuff we do see. Anya's breakdown was maybe the most touching scene of the episode. The questioning of what death means. Is it absence? What does it mean that Joyce will never drink fruit punch again? And the ultimate realization on the part of the gang that there is perhaps no greater purpose to life that would save us from the emptiness of death (or was that in Angel?).

In any case, I loved it!

The awkwardness of providing sympathy, the sadness of everyone, the need to be supportive of Buffy and Dawn, yet feeling so weak yourself. The need to get things "right" -- Willow's obessesion with what to wear, Anya's utter loss as to what she/they are supposed to do in this situation. What are the rules? How does one cope with death?

The first scence with Dawn crying in the bathroom -- so intriguing and not at all gratuitous. Leading the viewer to think she has just heard about Joyce's death when in fact she's crying over what another girl has said about her cutting herself (the pain, realness). The sudden shift from pedestrian to tragic, life to death.

The missing soundtrack, little to no background music that swells in sympathetic pain or sadness. Nothing to run that interference between you and the actors' projected emotions. A strange closeness.

And still, at times the dialogue reminded me so much of theatrical (live theater) dialogue, a quality I can't figure out but is distinct from usual TV dialogue or even movie dialogue and especially conversational dialogue as I experience it in my life.

I'm going to watch the episode again tonight after I do some work and have dinner. Yup. :)

o0o

[8:46:23 PM]

Yup yup yup. It is very interesting how the Buffy episode addressed this concept of a perfect girlfriend (for a man) as one who not only serves sexually, but pleases in all other aspects of the man's life and interests AS AN ENLIGHTENED VIEW OF RELATIONSHIPS. I think it points out that when people think the only problem between the sexes is sex, they're missing the whole point of feminist critique of the removal of women's agency in most social interactions.

The ending was really sad because the robot never really understood that her creator didn't love her. That whole bit about waiting as a test of her love was eerie. I'm also intrigued by this whole concept of manufacturing the perfect girlfriend. Didn't Frankenstein's monster want Dr. F to make him a mate? I guess that was a different situation, but there are some important similarities. For both, the manufacturing of a mate automatically meant the total devotion of that mate to HIM. And in this episode, that robot was completely devoted. But the problem became the guy's loss of interest in her. That's something I have difficulty with, actually. Why is it "common sense" that a man will lose interest in his partner once he has that partner's love and devotion? It plays into that idea of a male instinct to roam free and be promiscuous whereas female instinct is to settle down, have kids, etc. Ick. But it's really strange how infrequently people really question this idea of men's losing interest in things they HAVE (in that ownership way). Is it related to that whole idea of always needing to acquire, to expand, in a capitalistic sense?

And the robot's reaction to the guy's other girlfriend....why the need to silence her? Given the parameters of her programming to love and serve the guy completely, why couldn't she assimilate the idea of another woman being his girlfriend (too)? Wouldn't it be within this sort of "guy fantasy" to have multiple women serve him?

So Angel. Yeah, I didn't really buy the effects of the episode. I thought it was unbelievable that Wolfram & Hart convinced Angel that hell is within because that's something Angel knows first-hand (HEY -- that's something that's in Milton's Paradise Lost! we just read Book 1 of the poem and in it Satan goes on about how hell is in the mind, etc. -- and all along Joss has made efforts to draw that connection between Satan and Angel as fallen angels). I also don't think that Angel really turns into Angelus. I also wonder what Darla wanted with the glove and ring. She seemed to have been at the raising of the Senior Partner somewhat surreptitiously. It seemed that Lindsey snuck her in. So yeah....what's up with that? Unfortunately, while the episode did raise some possibly interesting directions for the show, it just wasn't done well so I'm not even interested so much in speculating about what will happen. I am somewhat eager to see the next episode, though.

Oh, and the idea of a parallel universe. Yeah, that seems possible. It's definitely stupid for Angel to think that the world's the same just because it looks the same. But why are we to believe that Angel has lost all faith in battling the forces of darkness just because he finally seems to understand that evil is not just literal demons? Wasn't that the entire thrust of the series, to understand evil as something that we all deal with in our lives, not just superheroes like Angel and Buffy?

Yeah, stuff.

o0o

[8:25:59 PM]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about Angel. Of course they want us to think that Angel might've turned Angelus, but I don't think that they have the guts to do that. All I can say is, PARALLEL UNIVERSE! He sleeps with Darla in HELL (Home Office)! It's not the "real" world. So even if he becomes Angelus there, he's not in the real world. The question is, why does Darla want the glove and perhaps ring? I'm so glad that Angel is finally becoming callous, vengeful, unlike his old wholesome, superhero, moraler than thou , knightly self.

o0o

[8:09:15 PM]

I liked the episode pretty ok, unlike the last Valentine one. I've always loved the idea of Spike obssessing with Buffy - actually, any slayer. But I felt like the Valentine episode made his complex obssession comical and light. He went from crazy self-destructive Romantic to goofy high school loser. He's way too sophisticated for that! Luckily, in this new episode, he seems to have recovered to his bad old self. Maybe I'm also unfairly prejudiced against proclamations of the L-word. But my take on Spike's "love" is that it's OBSESSION more than love, whatever that may be. He's always been obssessed with killing Slayers. He talks about dancing with them in that episode when Spike shows the Slayer the idea of being drawn to destruction/death - I guess, to use the Freudian term, the death drive. So when he shows Buffy that Slayers eventually are seduced by death, he really is also talking about himself. And now that he has a chip in his head, his libidnal energy transmutates from desire to kill to desire to ravish, same difference, really.

But yes, about the most recent episode: It was pretty good in how it was executed and lots of little things were worked in, but the major narrative was just ok (seems like something I've heard of before). What I do like about the allegorical plot of the woman defined by her man, someone who exists solely to serve and please him, is that it is a model to hold others, esp. Buffy up to. I remember being on the Buffy.com bulletin board when this hot discussion went on and on about Buffy's supposed empowered feminism and yet her need to be with a man at all time. It's something I'm glad they are addressing. I like esp how Warren really felt like he created a girl-friend, not just a sex-bot - and it's all about her sharing his interests, supporting him, etc. I love how some men think that they are so enlightened when they are sooooo obviously not.

So what is the Ben/Gloria entity? I love Ben in strapless red satin dress. Are they two gods inhabiting the same human body?

I can't believe they are offing Joyce! Tear jerkers coming our way... So this is what Joss means when he talks about the Scooby gang "making-up" this season after the Yoko Factor, eh?

o0o

[5:14:18 PM]

(Also posted at [BuffyLog].)

The cool thing about Spike is that he is full of contradictions. His transformation via the chip in his head is exactly what makes his infatuation with Buffy now so funny and even appropriate. Yes, WQ, everything you say about what Spike is is true, but that's exactly why the fact that he is no longer able to kill at whim, to terrorize humans and stalk Slayers, is reason enough to re-evaluate who he is. Spike's defining purposes in life were taken away from him by the Initiative. How does he reinvent himself? And I think Joss et al have done a marvelous job in imagining how Spike adapts. I think it's irrelevant to argue that to keep James Marsters around, we have to keep Spike in Sunnydale as a neutered vampire. There are plenty of other ways to keep Marsters in the show. Spike doesn't even have to be around. The producers could just as easily have taken the chip out of his brain to re-animate him as a threat to the Slayer (and she definitely wouldn't just be able to snap her fingers and stake him). They could've brought in a demon who has taken on the form of a departed Spike. Plenty of opportunities. But I am glad they have come up with this delicious story-line about Spike in love with Buffy.

o0o

[5:02:38 PM]

Oh Buffy. I think Spike is so cool. Torturing him with unrequited love for the Slayer is even more "poetic" (as Giles once said of Angel's crush on Buffy) than the mere fact of a vampire being in love with the Slayer. And I'm still fascinated by the show's conception of souls and consciences and the "chip" in Spike's brain as some sort of amalgamation of the two.

Finally Dru comes back to Buffy! The situation was perfect, although the mechanics of it all were maybe a little implausible (I'm sure Drusilla would've been able to kill tied-up Buffy). It's also interesting to see her reaction to Spike's betrayal. She knew for a long time that Spike was strangely attracted to Buffy. But it still didn't make the revelation any easier.

How is Spike going to deal with this newest blow to his attempt to earn Buffy's love? I think it's hilarious that his "morals" are still vampire-based -- he thinks that if he kills Dru for Buffy, B will love him. Ah, the pathetic value of his thinking.

o0o

[7:56:33 AM]

Hmm....this is interesting. Actually some stuff we talked about in class is like this idea of hurting oneself to feel real. (Pinch me, I think I'm dreaming...) There's a weird way in which pain is thought of as a circuit breaker for dreaming / imagination / unconsciousness. (Wittgenstein actually has a whole bit on pain. I'm still not entirely sure what he's saying. But you should look at Philosophical Investigations.) Language can be artificial, etc., but pain somehow is beyond linguistic knowledge, something outside of conceptual perception? What do you think?

o0o

[9:33:49 AM]

If it feels real, then it is real. Almost phenomenologist, but instead of truth being what your senses tell you, it's memories, memories of emotions. Reminds me of people who have temporal lobe seizures...and of course, Blade Runner. What is really interesting to me about Dawn is this feeling (knowledge) that she is not real, that she is empty, that she is not Dawn. A lot of people do feel that way about themselves and deal with it by cutting themselves to feel like they are real, which Dawn does.

Are Ben and Glory different sides of the same being? Or are they brother and sister gods who inhabit the same human body to get to this dimension? They certainly don't have the same consciousness. Does Ben need to eat brains too?

o0o

[7:50:00 PM]

Some quick thoughts:

Wish they had done more with Buffy's birthday in this episode. They used to do really interesting things with the idea of marking time, age, etc. The parallel presentation of birthday / party in the second season (with Drusilla) also made for some thought-provoking connections between Buffy and Dru.

Dawn is superb. She plays the little sister to a T. Having her world pulled out from under her -- the revelation of her current existence as new and epiphenomenal -- only made her more intriguing. If she is just a key, this energy thing, what do her memories, feelings, etc. mean? The episode was a little heavy on the ooey-gooey side of family-bloodness, but I like the spirit of what Buffy and Joyce were trying to communicate to Dawn -- that whether or not she is "real," she is an important and cared-for entity in their lives.

Can't wait to see what they do with Buffy and Spike. Buffy is finally seeing that she has been using Spike as a whipping boy.

Glory-Ben: very interesting. Reminds me of Ranma 1/2, a cartoon in which the main character is a single body that alternates between male and female forms (change occurs when s/he comes in contact with water, I think). The split personality-like presentation of Glory and Ben is perfect. I had been wondering why we'd never seen Glory and Ben together, even though both knew they were in town.

o0o

[7:48:23 AM]

Just found this really good site for [Angel].

o0o

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