'Bring on the Night'. So it's Sting songs now,
is it? Well, all's fair in love and war I suppose. Speaking
of love, have you heard that Sting is Mr. Tantric Sex
God and can get it on for upwards of ten hours solid?
An interesting little tidbit that begs the question
– does anyone actually WANT that? (If
it's with Sting then yes please -Bec) I'm in agreement
with Paul Tatara on this one (Keep your in-jokes to
yourself. –Ed).
So while we could continue to discuss Sting's powers
of sustained tumescence, I suspect that some of you
want to hear what I thought of Buffy 7.10.
Are you sure? Better hit the back
button if you loved this one, because I fear I have
more darts than laurels.
Giles is back! Sort of. What are we supposed to take
from all this no-touchy no-feely stuff? We haven't seen
the end result of that Harbinger swinging his axe at
Giles' head in London, so it's awfully conspicuous that
we don't know how (or IF) he got out of that. At this
point I see three likely scenarios:
- Giles is dead and what showed up with the three
Slayers-in-training is a manifestation of the First.
- Giles is dead and he arrived in Sunnydale as Giles
The Friendly Ghost.
- Giles is alive and well (but how?) and Joss, Marti
and Doug are just messing with us by making it appear
that he's incorporeal.
Here's where we get into the griping. All three of
these possibilities STINK. For either of the first two,
how did a totally intangible Rupert manage to gather
the girls and get them all the way to Sunnydale without
any of them noticing and freaking out? And for that
matter, are we really supposed to believe that none
of the Scoobs would notice either? This is Giles! Beloved
friend, mentor, and the closest thing to a father figure
that any of them have (don't write me to point out whose
fathers are still alive – that's not my point).
He just flew across the Atlantic to aid them in their
struggle, and no one's even going to give him a hug?
A handshake? A manly slap on the back from Big Poppa
Harris? Ridiculous. I've mentioned this to people who've
said, "I think we're maybe to assume that touching
happened offscreen." Poppycock! Balderdash! The
writers consciously had Giles refrain from physical
contact with anything and anyone for a reason. But if
he's really the First, shouldn't he have been a little
less helpful and supportive? And if he's something else
(like a ghost), why wouldn't he tell them? Oh yeah –
because no one in this "family" tells each
other anything. If it's the third option and he's alive
and well, then M.E. are still in big trouble because
it's preposterous to think that he'd go through a whole
episode without touching anything just to confuse us.
While we're on the subject of things that didn't make
any sense, what exactly did the First hope to achieve
by holding Spike's head underwater? We all know perfectly
well that vampires don't breathe, so what was with the
frantic gasping and choking when they'd pull him back
up? Angel just spent three months underwater, and he
was nowhere near drowning. But he's a vamp that can
father a child, hence not the best example of undead
canon. Someone wrote me after my 'Him' review to bust
me for not pointing out that we saw Spike's reflection
in a store window as he & Xander ran up to RJ to
steal his jacket. I replied that I considered it a funny
mistake, and I'm sure we'll someday hear Joss chuckling
about the gaffe in a DVD commentary, but it wasn't a
conscious element of the story, so it didn't really
bother me. But this is something that Marti & Doug
thought about and wrote into their episode, and Joss
read it over and approved it. As a result, I find the
whole thing a bit harder to swallow.
Next on my (s)hit list is the ongoing whateverness
of Principal Robin Wood. Enough is enough already! There's
obviously something going on with him. He's either good
or evil, but has the time not come for him to do something
one way or the other? My hunch still remains that he's
a good guy, and I like the theory people have put forth
that he might be a Watchers Council plant. But if that's
the case, and he's up to speed enough to go down and
remove Jonathan's body from the mouth of the Hellmouth's
mouth, why is he still playing goofy mind games with
Buffy? If he knows she's the Slayer and he knows the
evil that's afoot, why would he be making creepy comments
about how coming face to face with darkness can change
you, and then staring at her through her office window
as she nurses her bruises? I suppose he could be evil.
This would explain why he's still holding his cards
so close to his chest and taunting her with riddles.
But when he first showed up in 7.1 and knew too much
about Buffy, lots of people were saying, "I bet
he's evil." If they turn out to be correct on this,
wouldn't it imply that his role in the season's arc
has been a little too obvious and predictable? I'm not
going to jump to any conclusions yet, as I'm sure Joss
& Co still have some tricks up their sleeve. His
comment to Buffy about how he likes mysteries where
you don't find out what's going on until the very end
has me a bit worried that we're going to have to wait
all season to find out who and what he is. Note to Joss:
Drag it out too long and we're coming after you.
While we're on the subject of who's naughty and who's
nice, I haven't made my mind up yet about this apparition
of Joyce. Her comments are fuzzy enough that I still
think it could be the real mommy. She's showing legitimate
concern for Buffy's aches and pains, and what have her
main points been so far? That Buffy should get some
rest (she hasn't hit the sheets in three days, so this
is fair advice), and that she can't fight the First.
Is that such an inappropriate thing to say? Maybe it's
really Joyce, and knowing what she knows from being
all angelic (and I love Joyce so much that if anyone's
an angel now, it's her), she might just be the bearer
of tragic news: This time it's the real apocalypse,
and there's nothing her daughter can do to stop it.
It's the same with Dawn's visit from Joyce. Saying that
a time will come where the two daughters will be on
opposite sides doesn't make her evil. Does it? And really,
what's she going to say to Buffy to earn her trust?
The First has already demonstrated that it knows everything
about them, so reminiscing about Buffy's childhood illnesses
probably won't cut it.
"Gather them…", Hobson urged Giles,
and gather them he did. Instead of three wise men, this
holiday tale had three wiseass teenage girls (four if
you count Dawn, but she's OUR wiseass). Three of the
last potential Slayers, with the others on the way.
Since there are more, I'll hold off on bitching that
with S.I.T's all over the world, the three we ended
up with are white & English-speaking. We'll wait
and see who gets off the plane next. For now, though,
it's Kennedy, Molly, and Annabelle. Accepting Joss'
fondness for naming his characters after things (Faith,
Willow, Dawn, Book, River, Trick, Glory, Harmony, Sunday,
Gunn, Fray, Angel, Spike, Sunday, etc), if any of these
girls had a name like Desk or Perspiration, I'd think
we had a new main character. As it is, they're probably
all expendable.
But could Marti & Doug not have come up with a
slightly more clever way to dispose of one of them?
I get it – let's have the Turok-Han kill someone
so we can up the emotional stakes and make it seem even
scarier. I'm with you. But one minute Annabelle is telling
Kennedy & Molly that they're safest in the house
and that Buffy knows what she's doing, and the next
she's tearing up the street in a panic. Headed…
where? Oh, of course – to her simplistic and poorly
thought-out demise. Chris said yesterday that she might
have been spooked by her own visit by the First and
we just didn't see it. That's possible, but it seems
to me that we're doing our best to explain all the holes
in this episode, and maybe we should just admit that
it was flawed and inconsistent.
Before I get to what I liked about 'Bring on the Night',
I just want to address this one last quibble. Why couldn't
anyone in this episode speak clearly? I don't think
it was my hearing, but it had the highest quotient yet
of lines that I had to rewind to hear again because
I couldn't make out what people were saying. I ended
up deciphering most of it, but as of this writing I
still have no idea what the First-as-Drusilla said to
Spike about the Turok-Han early in the episode, but
it sounded like, "He's been waiting for his mommy
since before Bulworth." The Warren Beatty movie?!?
That was almost five years ago, so he's been waiting
for his mommy for a long time. No wonder he's so cranky.
Cranky & TOUGH!! Wow! Not since Glory has Buffy
squared off against a foe that isn't just her equal
(as Dark Willow almost was), but someone who can easily
trounce her and have fun doing it. Is Olaf's hammer
still handy? At least we know she's still got the rocket
launcher, and it might be required as a stake through
the heart did nothing, and it jumped up from that pile
of steel pipes like a stripper from a cake. Buffy's
two fights with the Turok-Han were exciting and well
choreographed, and the whole sequence at the construction
site had a very cinematic feel (I love the Terminator-esque
"GUNG! GUNG! GUNG!" theme). I was hoping that
it would turn out to be intellectually fierce as well,
but you can't have everything. At least it seems to
be afraid of daylight. Or, based on that P.O.V shot
as it crawled out of the whole briefly, was it GILES
that scared it off?
Also worth noting is the pronounced flirtage that
Kennedy laid on Willow when they were discussing the
sleeping arrangements. It would add an interesting element
to the plot if these two got romantically involved,
so hopefully that little aside wasn't all we're going
to get (not to mention that it's cool when girls kiss).
And that was some sly dialogue as Kennedy gave Willow
the wink-wink and Dawn walked up to say, "Do you
think she wants to eat?" Willow's wide-eyed doubletake
was priceless. Well, Will? Do you?
Tom Lenk continues to kick my ass with his brilliant
comedic work. He manages his dialogue with excellent
subtlety and style, and his facial expressions are hysterical.
There weren't many laughs in this episode, but most
of the ones that surfaced revolved around him ("AND
IT COST THEM THEIR LIVES!!", "Anya gets to
hit him", "So how long have you followed Buffy?",
etc). I really can't see that he has a future where
he'll redeem himself and become a full-fledged member
of the team, but for now I love that they've got such
a hilarious character tied to a chair that they can
slap or gag as the need arises.
The two moments that affected me the most in 7.10
were the same ones that Julie said made her gag. When
Spike told the First (in Drusilla form, no less) that
he was able to resist the torture because Buffy believed
in him, it was pretty touching. A real tug at the old
man's heart strings, and I know that the B/S shippers
out there probably did backflips upon receiving such
a juicy gift. And what matched it in the Emotionally
Stirring department?
Buffy's speech at the end. Okay, I admit it was hokey,
but has a hokey monologue never brought an audience
to tears before? I also admit that it could be dismissed
as meaningless, since they still have no idea where
or how to fight the First. This apocalypse is as inevitable
as it was before Buffy addressed the troops, and they
don't even look like much of an army. But it's the pathetic
futility of her anger that made it all the more touching.
Despite the insurmountable odds they're facing, for
the first time in the show's history, and against the
Biggest Bad ever, they're not going to hide out and
wait for the climax to crash down around them. The Scoobies
are at war.
Any questions?
Take care, everybody, and enjoy whatever holiday you
partake in.
Ron
PS – Note to the person whose email addy begins
cjsdarock@: I answered, but it got returned as undeliverable.
Sorry. |