Nik at Nite

Once Upon a Time: Dreamy

2012-03-04T21:01:00.006-05:00

What an episode! I’d heard that Amy Acker was going to be on Once Upon a Time this week and I was definitely looking forward to it, and while she was great, Lee Arenberg as Dreamy/Grumpy was truly extraordinary. We’ve seen him throughout the season, grumbling about one thing or another, but nothing could have prepared us for the backstory and performance we saw this week. I’m going to focus on the Dreamy/Grumpy story and leave the Katharine/Emma/David story behind this week. We’ll be able to pick it up next week when it becomes more focal again.

This episode was wonderfully written by Kitsis & Horowitz, and it showed (it’s like when you used to see the “written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse” tag at the beginning of Lost, or saw Joss Whedon’s name at the beginning of Buffy). Not only did it create a great standalone story about Grumpy, but it tied in other stories (Belle and Rumpelstiltskin, Snow and Charming, the Blue Fairy who we’d previously seen talking to Jiminy Cricket) and pulled in the key symbols of the series.

As I mentioned several weeks back, one of those symbols is stars. Emma has a star on her keychain, you can always see stars on buildings or painted onto walls or made of construction paper. Until now the episode that had the most prominent display was the Jiminy Cricket one, which is still one of my faves, but this week outdid that one. For this episode was about dreams. And if a dream is a wish, you make it upon a star.

In the fairytale world, we meet Nova (Amy Acker, who has not aged a day since Angel), who is a fairy godmother wannabe who is currently schlepping around fairy dust for the other fairy godmothers, but she’s a klutz who tends to make a mess of things. And what is fairy dust? It’s ground-up diamonds. And where do the diamonds come from? The diamond mines where the dwarfs work, happily because they believe they have no other purpose in life. And where do dwarfs come from? Eggs.

Didn’t see that one coming. Brilliant.

But one egg is different; one egg accidentally had fairy dust spilled on it (by Nova) and therefore the dwarf inside it isn’t like the other kids. One of these kids is doin’ his own thing. And that thing is dreaming; dreaming of a life outside the mines, desiring more than what is his purpose in life.

And so, when he picks up his axe and watches the handle for his name, it comes as no surprise that he’s Dreamy. The axe, we’re told, never lies, making it a dwarf version of a Sorting Hat. (But seriously… poor Dopey! Then again, he doesn’t seem to mind… because, you know, the dopiness and all…) And with that he begins longing for something more.

When he crosses paths with Nova he recognizes her instantly as the one he’d seen before his hatching, and she tells him to come up on the hill to watch fireflies. That scene was written and shot just for the dreamers in the audience. Who among us wouldn’t want to sit on a hill at midnight, with the moon lighting our way as the lights of the kingdom twinkle below us as fireflies light up the skies around us? That image was glorious. I’m sure other people will call it cheesy; I loved it.

On that hill, he and Nova declare their love for one another, and both decide to follow their dreams: they’ll find a boat and sail around the world together, finding it and being together.

And just as that happened in the fairy tale world, over in Storybrooke we find Leroy, the town drunk who long ago gave up on his dreams and found solace at the bottom of a glass of scotch. He has no time for anyone… until he meets Astrid, a nun prone to mistakes that have cost the convent dearly, and who, for some reason even he can’t explain, brings out the best in him. (Notice that both “Nova” and “Astrid” are named related to stars; they make one think of supernova or astral.) He falls for her, and tells her about his pipe dream of sailing around the world in a boat. Astrid giddily replies, “You can do anything as long as you can dream it,” the very same thing Dreamy had said to Nova in the fairytale world (FTW) when she said she wanted to be a fairy godmother. So, in order to find a way to be close to her, he agrees to sell candles… which happen to be sources of light, little twinkling stars/fireflies/diamonds of light. He does this with Mary Margaret, the other town pariah. And, of course, they don’t sell a single thing. (Interestingly, the candle stand is part of a fair to support local miners, and not only was Leroy a diamond miner in the FTW, but Mary Margaret lived with… seven of them.)

Storybrooke is a very, VERY judgmental place. They have no time for Leroy, but that’s because he’s been biting their heads off for the past who-knows-how-many years. But now they have no time for Mary Margaret, despite the fact she was the town sweetheart for so many years. It seems a little cruel, but then again, we can’t forget these are fairytale creatures, and in the FTW, there are good guys and bad guys, and very few in between. In the Grimm fairytales, there were no uncertain characters with complex backstories that made you think. They were either evil or pure. So, these people have no middle ground. Mary Margaret was pure a few days ago. Now she’s not, and since they don’t understand anything that’s not black and white, she is evil. But looking at the actual FTW, we’re starting to see there was a lot more grey there than in the storybooks we read as kids.

For just as Dreamy is sneaking off, the other dwarfs catch him, and remind him that he has a responsibility. Then the Blue Fairy tells him that if Nova leaves with him, she’ll lose her wings. Together, they’ll be happy, but separately, they’ll do a lot of good for the world. And so, he tells Nova he can’t be with her, sending her off to a life of sadness, as he returns to the mines. Where, when he’s handed a new axe, it reads Grumpy. And with that, his fate is sealed.

As I mentioned, this episode brought in other stories that didn’t at first seem connected to Grumpy’s backstory, but actually fit in perfectly. We get a surprise reappearance of Belle, still wearing the same dress she’d been in when she said goodbye to Rumpelstiltskin. She’s either stopped at a tavern on her way home (probably just before the queen kidnapped her), or she’s working as a bar wench. She acts as the catalyst for Dreamy, urging him to go find Nova, and it’s because of her that he had his moment on the hill. She’s loved (Rumpel) and lost, and doesn’t want him to make the same mistake. Over in Storybrooke, it’s Gold — the other half of that couple — who refuses to buy Leroy’s boat and help him make the money for the nuns. Of course, if Gold hadn’t done that, Leroy wouldn’t have been forced to take matters into his own hands.

This episode was about dreams, and showed the two sides of a dream: the good kind – the kind where you wish upon a star and set a goal and go for it, living out your dream and becoming a happier person for it; and the negative kind, the “pipe dream” that it outside your reach, a goal that’s created a false hope you can never quite reach. Dreamy has wonderful dreams, as does Nova, but the reality of the world won’t allow them to live them out. Dreams are things that you can wish upon a star for; it’s other people who usually tell you what you’re following is nothing better than a useless pipe dream. People try to hold them down, but in Storybrooke they fight back.

When Leroy can’t sell his candles, he takes matters into his own hands, finding a way to make candles a necessity. And just as he fulfills his promise to Astrid, once again becoming her hero as he’d been in the FTW, the camera pulls back to reveal the town walking around with their candles, lights twinkling against the sky the same way they had one magical night in the fairytale world.

Dreams can come true, after all. You can do whatever you want, if you can just dream it.

Awake

2012-03-01T23:34:00.001-05:00

Tonight was the premiere of the new midseason show, Awake. I was a little worried – it was the show with all the buzz, the one the critics were saying was THE must-see, and it was written by Kyle Killen, the guy who created the similarly buzzed, must-see show Lone Star… which was cancelled after its second episode.

But this show really delivered. And even if you didn’t enjoy the premise, you could simply play the “Name the show where you saw that actor last” game, since it seemed every person in the show was from something else.

The basic premise is this: Detective Michael (~~Lucius Malfoy~~ Jason Isaacs) has been in a terrible car accident, where his son has died. His wife, Lily from The 4400 ... Katie from Terriers Hannah is repainting the house and looking for a fresh start, and he’s seeing a shrink, ~~Father Ray from Oz~~ Dr. Lee. His partner is ~~Fez~~ ... ~~Handy Manny~~ Detective Vega, only recently called up after Michael’s previous partner was moved away. While mourning his son, he’s investigating the murder of a cab driver…

Except… that’s a dream. His wife is dead. His son, David Shephard on Lost Rex, is still very much alive. His shrink is ~~President Taylor from 24~~ Dr. Evans, who is trying to convince him that the other world is a dream. His partner, Jess’s dad on Friday Night Lights ... Eugene on The Practice Isaiah, is still with him, and Vega is just a cop. They’re investigating a child abduction where the parents were murdered in cold blood. His son is grieving, sullen, and won’t talk to his dad. If only his wife were here…

But she is. Because his son is dead. That’s just a dream. His wife is alive. Dr. Lee tries to explain that the other world is a dream, and the sooner he comes to terms with that, the easier it will be for him to move on.

It’s a fantastic premise. And the art direction is rather marvelous, too, shooting the scenes in the wife’s world in warm yellows, and the boy’s world in cold blues, as quick shorthand to remind us which world we’re in. The big catch that shows this is more than just a dreamscape where we have to figure out which is real is that the killer in one world helps them catch the killer in the other. Clues that lead him to the discovery in one – 611 Waverly – are key to catching the baddie in the other. How could either world be fake if he is doing this? How could either world be real if he is doing this?

The idea is great, and I loved the dialogue. In fact, my husband and I both laughed out loud when Isaiah commented on the coffeemaker in the deceased’s house: “I told my ex-wife if she wanted a $600 coffeemaker, she shouldn’t have married a police. Eventually, she agreed with me.” That sounded like something right out of The Wire.

Jason Isaacs is wonderful, and only occasionally belies that British accent. He plays a man caught between two worlds, not sure which one is real, and reluctant to come to terms with which one may be real. For, if he finally chooses one, the other person must die. And he simply can’t do that. In fact, when Dr. Evans tries to “prove” that her world (where Rex is alive) is the real one, Michael almost has a nervous breakdown when he returns to his wife’s world and can’t immediately find her in it. As he says at the end of the episode, if making progress means permanently leaving one of these worlds behind and believing that one of them is absolutely dead, then he has no desire to move forward.

Of course (and you know all of us Lost fans were thinking it!) it’s quite possible that neither world is real, that they all actually died in the car accident and because there was alcohol found in his system – a detail he’s vehemently denying in therapy – he’s now trapped in a purgatory where he has to live with the memories and losses of both these people forever, never able to come to terms with the accident, and never able to move forward.

But for now, I’m interested to see how they keep things moving, and what the coming weeks will bring. If you haven’t watched the pilot episode, find a way to do so before next week. This is a brilliant new show.

The Walking Dead: Triggerfinger and 18 Miles Out

2012-02-29T20:58:00.005-05:00

Why yes, I WAS trying to gross you out. I don't think my Walking Dead pics that accompany our reviews have been gory enough.

Welcome to two weeks of The Walking Dead. Why, it’s two weeks! Two weeks! Two weeks in one!

Okay, it’s not really that exciting, more like my co-host, Josh Winstead and I have both been so insanely busy lately that we just haven’t found time to do this. That and fatigue sets in for both of us around, oh, just after lunchtime, so doing these recaps back and forth in the evenings is a little…zzzzzzzzz….

Gah! Wha? Oh, sorry, I’m awake again. So the last two weeks’ episodes of The Walking Dead will be brought to you by… the walking dead.

Nikki: We complained a lot in the first half of the season that this show had become The Talking Dead, with very little action and too much yammering. I have no such complaints anymore. Yes, there’s still talk and philosophy, but it’s balanced with equal parts awesomeness.

First, “Triggerfinger.” It’s hard to look at these two episodes separately now, because “Triggerfinger” set up a few things that came to a head in “18 Miles Out,” but let’s do a quick recap. In this episode, Lori wakes up in her crashed car to find she’s almost zombie food, but she deals with the zombie, gets away, Shane picks her up and promises Rick and the others have returned (he’s lying) and finally he tells her that he believes the baby is his. Meanwhile Glen, Rick, and Hershel discover that the two guys they got rid of in the bar had friends, and there’s an old-fashioned shoot ‘em up at the OK Corral, with the guys making it out okay, bringing back one of the other guys who’d been left behind when his leg was impaled on an iron fence. (Gah.) Meanwhile, Daryl has moved out to a tent in the woods (because THAT’S safe) and Carol goes out to try to talk to him and he berates her, projecting his own guilt over Sophia’s death onto Carol. Andrea sticks up for Shane and the way he’s been doing things, and finally in a bit of a Lady Macbeth moment, Lori literally wraps herself around Rick’s body as she whispers into his ear that Shane believes the baby is his, and that he could take better care of her and Carl than Rick can. Zoom in on Rick’s threatened face.

While there’s a lot of stuff that we can definitely talk about in this week’s episode, I wanted to mention the scene between Daryl and Carol (did they rhyme them on purpose?) They don’t appear in this week’s episode at all, but in that scene in the woods last week, it was sizzling. Daryl is just plain cruel, but the meanness of his words belie the pain he’s feeling himself. What I loved is the performances between the two. The entire time he was standing there berating her, I kept thinking, “Dude, that woman has skin so thick you can’t get to her… don’t you remember what her husband did to her?” As long as Daryl isn’t pummeling her with his fists, he can’t hurt her.

And then… THEN… he tells her that Sophia is dead because she didn’t keep her safe, that she didn’t care enough about her, and Carol’s head reels back as if he’d physically punched her in the face. It was an extraordinary moment, but even though he’d just emotionally shot her in the gut, she brings her head back to centre and keeps staring right at him. You know, I didn’t think much of Carol in the first half of this season, but the performance between these two actors was electric. The writers have found the perfect pairing in these two.

Only downside of “Triggerfinger”? Lori’s still alive. Sigh. Your thoughts?

Josh: Ha! You know, this episode had several great exchanges in it, and all of them involved one character trying unsuccessfully to coerce another. In the first, we saw Daryl pushing Carol away (and failing spectacularly, for all the reasons you mentioned above, a wonderful moment that comes full circle when we see Daryl sort-of participating with the group in the dining room meeting at the end of the episode, albeit grudgingly so). Then we had Lori pushing Shane away (and failing every bit as spectacularly) in an incredible show of talent from Jon Bernthal, who was riveting here to me even in his reaction shots, playing a lot more depth than I've seen from him recently (though, to his credit, the dialogue here was better than usual too).

And finally, we got that creepy devil-on-your-shoulder heart-to-heart between Lori and Rick in the tent, with the strong suggestion that her husband resolve the escalating Shane problem with a bit of frontier justice. As little as I like her, I never would have expected Lori to go all Atia of the Julii on us, and I kind of loved it. I thought it was a great wrap for the episode and did a good job of transitioning into the beginning of the next, where the timeline jumps a week (unlike the direct chronological abutment to which we're accustomed with this show).

There were certainly parts of this episode that fell flat for me – the entirety of the Maggie/Glenn story, for example, which felt manufactured, particularly in the moment when she runs past Hershel to embrace Glenn once they finally get back to the farm – but in general, I thought it was a well-plotted and engrossing hour. It also featured some terrific camerawork as well, with the disorientation and horror of that great opening sequence and any number of other examples (the overhead shot wherein Rick is rounding the dumpster behind the bar, a gun in each hand, leaps to mind).

However, I have neglected to mention one of the most significant aspects of this particular episode: namely, that it might be the single goriest one of the series thus far. As that first zombie at the crash site pushed its head through the windshield, peeling its face off in the process, I said out loud, “Wow, that's the most awful thing I've ever seen on this show.” And then the miserable gunshot guy behind the bar had his face discounted by 50%, and I said, “Wait, no...” But before five more minutes had passed, young Randall was stuck on the fence, and suddenly Rick turned into the Batman of leg yankers, and I elected to stop making grand statements.

Nikki: Atia of the Julii, NICE!! And a perfect analogy.

And SO agreed on the gore. You forgot the pickax through the back of the head and out the forehead. Geeeeaaaaahhhhh….. This week’s episode, “18 Miles Out,” certainly ramped up the gore as well, as Shane and Rick got caught up in a total zompocalypse and had to stab, shoot, and brain explode their way out of it. The ick factor is certainly strong with this one.

So with that, let’s move to this week. Last week a lot of tension was built up, and in this week it all came to a head. What an emotionally gutting week this was. The episode opened with Shane and Rick, literally at a crossroads (the symbolism was a little obvious there, but I’ll give it to them), discussing everything that’s happened between them that’s gone unspoken – Shane moving in on Lori when Rick was presumed dead; Shane’s possible murder of Otis; who’s the alpha male who’s better equipped to take care of everyone. I thought Shane was humanized a bit in this scene: he has the chance to be perfectly honest, and he is, saying that if he could take things back, he would have. That he never looked at Lori before he thought Rick was dead, and he’s sorry. Of course, talk is cheap, and this open dialogue eventually becomes something else completely when Rick and Shane are down to brass tacks, “discussing” whether or not they should leave the kid behind for zombie food or just put him out of his misery to ensure he doesn’t come to Maggie’s farm (I’m only now realizing the Dylan reference) and put all their lives in jeopardy.

For me, the best part of the Rick/Shane showdown was, again, the symbolism, but done a little more subtly this time around. As they fight, it gets sloppy and tired, and notice how they’re growling like zombies, they’re flopping around like zombies, they’re bleeding from several orifices like zombies… As Shane throws something at Rick and it goes through the window, you see Shane reflected in the glass, just as a walker is shuffling up to the window, as if there’s very little difference between Shane and the creature on the other side of the glass. But at this point, there really isn’t. They’re all just fighting for survival, following their animal instincts. Just like the walker they show stumbling through the field at the beginning and end of the episode, these survivors are all just stumbling along, completely lost.

Josh: Maggie's Farm! How have I never made that connection either? Must be slipping in my old age.

But on to “18 Miles Out,” or as I've been calling it, “Knife To The Head(s).”

This show features a good deal of recycling what are essentially the same conversations over and over – understandably, as the issues and concerns that provoke them are ever present. And this All-The-Rules-Have-Changed-Now debate is one we've seen several times already, but for me, I don't think it has ever been as effective or concise as it is in this instance, as Shane and Rick finally, FINALLY battle it out.

The heart of the argument lies in two statements: first, at the crossroads, Shane says of Otis, “Reality is, he had no business being here. There. Wherever.” Telling Rick beyond a shadow of a doubt that he thinks he gets to make those decisions, that he believes he has the right to determine who lives and dies, who is fit and who is fodder. Confirming that he is every bit as dangerous as Lori said he is.

And later, right before the fists start to fly, Rick answers him, finally says what he's been thinking ever since: “Stop acting like you know the way ahead! Like you know the rules!” Because, of course, there aren't any, not any more. There are the rules by which they choose to govern themselves, their own behavior, but even that is purely by choice and only works if no one else is around (as Tony and Dave's pals proved out). Rick may say he's “not the good guy any more,” but he's honorable, and he's steadfast, and in the narrow strip of shoulder they occupy on the side of the road to hell, that's as good as it gets.

I loved that shot of Shane too, looking just like a walker in the broken glass after trying to kill Rick with the giant wrench, but my favorite symbolism of the episode came as the two of them drove down the road on the way to the town. Rick is talking about plans for winter – precautions that need to be taken, ways the walkers' behavior might change in the cold – while Shane stares at that wandering zombie out in the field. What a great encapsulation of the difference between them, with Rick looking toward the future and Shane able to think of nothing but the immediacy of what's right in front of him. And that undoubtedly means this fight between them isn't over yet.

As incendiary as was this ongoing battle between our two male leads this week, however, the part of this episode that really did me in was that crushing speech Beth made to Maggie explaining why she wants to take her own life. Everything about their arguments (and the actors' performances) was perfect to me, and by the time Beth says, “I don't want to be gutted. I want to go,” I was sort of a basket case.

What about you?

Nikki: Nice interpretation of the walker in the field! I’ll admit, the nitpicker was awake in me, as I thought to myself, “We’re supposed to see the same zombie wandering the same field, but technically, if Shane and Rick were driving west on the way in, they would have been driving east on the way out and the zombie would have been seen out of the other side of the car.” But it’s less poetic that way. So let’s just assume the zombie crossed the road. Cue “Why did the zombie cross the road” jokes. (To eat the chicken’s brains?)

As you say, while the Shane/Rick smackdown was clearly the central scene of the episode, what was happening with the womenfolk over at the homestead was clearly just as important. The scenes with Beth/Maggie, Lori/Andrea, and Andrea/Beth (culminating in Lori-Maggie/Andrea) were not clear-cut, and definitely had my emotions flip-flopping all over the place. So we have, on the one hand, Beth becoming suicidal and Maggie and Lori hovering over her, with Andrea saying she needs space. But both the way Beth obviously took the knife and handed it back over, then made a few shallow cuts on her arm, it was clear she was doing these things as a cry for help and didn’t actually want to die, deep down. So Andrea’s idea that maybe she needs to work through her shit on her own were rather apt.

But, by that same token, any one of us who has ever known someone who’s just lost someone very close to them – or who have actually lost someone close to us ourselves – knows the overwhelming depression that follows, the idea that absolutely nothing will ever be right again, that the sun is shining just to mock you and the world has effectively ended and nothing – NOTHING – is worth living for. The days and weeks following the loss of a loved one are crucial, where the grief-stricken person needs all the emotional support he or she can get. Without it, we’d have far more suicides than anyone would like to imagine. So Lori and Maggie absolutely have a point, too, saying that Beth needs to be watched.

In the first half of the season, when Andrea told Dale what she thought of him taking away her decision to end her life, I thought that scene was emotionally devastating, true, and amazing. But the point was made. Now I feel like Andrea’s projecting her own emotions onto everyone else and acting like she’s the only person who’s ever lost anyone. Look around, Andrea. Maggie’s just lost her mom and you’re trying to tell her what it’s like to lose someone. Lori thought Rick was dead, but she held on to Carl and Shane as her buoys during that period to keep herself going. This is a freakin’ apocalypse… stop thinking you’re the only person in pain.

Of course, as I mentioned, in the end Andrea’s way was right. Stay close, but let Beth make her own choice. You can’t convince someone else to live; only they can make that choice. Andrea didn’t choose to live, she was forced into it.

And, despite being a little annoyed with Andrea, I did love the verbal smackdown between her and Lori. She tries to move Lori’s thinking into the 21st century and reminds her that women don’t necessarily have to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and just because Andrea’s acting sentry and doing what Lori thinks a man should do doesn’t mean she’s not pulling her weight. She basically tells Lori that she thinks she’s all that because both alpha males are hers. Again, it’s interesting how, in the same way Rick and Shane are reduced to their base animal instincts, Lori seems to have regressed to a caveman mentality where she’s automatically in charge because she’s with the strong men of the tribe. In many ways, Andrea’s words were unfair for the reasons I outlined above, but I still enjoyed this scene muchly.

OK, final thoughts over to you, Josh!

Josh: Final summation: two thumbs up from me. I loved how tense and action-packed these episodes were, and the writing was more consistent than usual. I am thoroughly enjoying the way our core characters are finding themselves increasingly pitted against one another in matters as plain as how best to love one another. The sky is growing ever darker for these folks, and something tells me that by the time we reach the finale, that storm will be all-encompassing.

Bits & Bobs:

• This speech: “Let me make this perfectly clear once and for all: this is MY farm. I wanted you gone. Rick talked me out of it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. So do us both a favor. Keep your mouth shut.” This may come to a head even before Rick and Shane duel again. And I cannot wait.

• The knife-through-the-fence tactic is a detail lifted out of the comics (and about the only such thing in either of these two episodes). And speaking of which, there was a big casting announcement made this week for a character that will be all too familiar to those of you who have also read the comics. I have purposefully avoided talking about it here so as to sidestep any possible spoilers, and I would recommend anyone wishing to remain unspoiled to stay away from any articles discussing it. However, for the folks already in the know, I offer my unvarnished opinion: waiting until Halloween to see this stuff is going to be almost as torturous as watching it.

• When Randall (who we didn't discuss at all somehow but about whose motivations I am still very much on the fence, can I get a rimshot) stabbed his zombie crawler in the head about thirty times with that filthy knife, I couldn't (and still can't) make up my mind whether they were implying he's just venting or actually psychotic. But I'm leaning toward psychotic. But at least he's capable, I guess.

• My nitpick of the episode: again with the blood all over Shane & Rick's faces, which also have open wounds from their throwdown. Did we not already establish this can infect you? Rules check.

• Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie, grew up primarily in England and so shares Andrew Lincoln's British accent. He's improved over the course of the show, but as a general rule, I think she kind of kicks his ass at the Southern one.

And that's it, folks. Be safe out there, and we'll see you next week.

Nikki: Always looking for the last word, but I just wanted to say, wow, I didn’t know Lauren Cohan was British, that’s amazing. And secondly, I TOTALLY agree about the open wounds and why aren’t they infected? The reason I didn’t say anything is I’m wondering if they’re going with the “zombies can only infect through saliva” thing… but then again, if a scratch can do it, then… can’t getting zombie goobers in the giant slice in your hand give it to you?

We’ll see you all next week!

Fringe: "The End of Everything"

2012-02-26T13:40:00.007-05:00

In Slaughterhouse-Five — the book every Lost fan has a responsibility to read — we met the Tralfamadorians, an alien race that can see across all points of time, present, past, and future, and who knows exactly when all of time will end. The problem? They can do absolutely nothing to prevent it. The protagonist of the novel, Billy Pilgrim, is cursed when he begins to be able to do the same thing, and can jump to various events in his own life, but, like the Tralfamadorians, is unable to do anything. He gets on a plane for the umpteenth time that he knows will crash into the side of a mountain, killing everyone but himself, but he just does it, because he's a fatalist who believes that whatever happened, happened.

Until now, the Observers on Fringe have been thought to be an alien race that were like the Tralfamadorians, with a little bit of Adjustment Bureau thrown into the mix. But what has set them apart from that alien race was the fact that they HAVE manipulated time (against Observer regulations, mind you) when September plunged his hand into the water and stopped Peter from drowning. He only did that because he believed it was his fault Peter had fallen into the lake in the first place. They are Observers, not Participants, and they were only supposed to watch people, not engage with them or do anything to actually change history.

And now, after this week's stunning episode, we know why. As always, when something is revealed in an Abrams show, it's not out of this world, and usually has that "why didn't I think of that?" feeling to it. I'm sure many of us suspected that the Observers were from somewhere in the far-off future, and now we find that they're the ultimate descendants of the human race. So, of COURSE they don't want to alter time; by doing so, they could effectively wipe themselves out of existence.

I haven't posted on Fringe for a while, and that's because I'd simply fallen behind. Over the past couple of evenings I caught up on the past four episodes, and it's amazing to watch them all together (to be honest, I felt like it was worth not watching them separately so I could watch it all unfold as one long story). All of them bring together that beautiful underlying message of Fringe: that beyond all the science and understanding of things lies something far more important: human connections and love. In "Making Angels," Alt-Astrid crosses over after the death of her father leaves her grief-stricken and looking for answers. Jasika Nicole, who plays Astrid, has long been a fan favourite, and I've really enjoyed watching her come to the fore more this season (at the end, where Astrid tells Alt-Astrid that her father is a difficult and distant man, only for us to find out she was lying to her to make her feel better, brought tears to my eyes). In this episode, the gang tries to get to the bottom of why certain people are being found dead, having bled out from the eyes. Turns out this guy, who grew up on Raiden Lake (where the cataclysmic episode with Peter being pulled out of the lake in 1985 happened), found September's glowstick and has become like an Observer himself. He uses his powers for what he sees as good -- finding people who will die slow, horrible deaths, and killing them painlessly and instantly before they begin their downward spiral. It was an interesting episode, with the euthanasia argument blending with a Minority Report premise, where this man believed he wasn't committing genocide, but giving people genesis into an afterlife and happier existence.

That episode was followed by "Westfield," the beginning of the three-part series that culminated this week, where Peter, Olivia, and Walter travel to a small town that's been wiped out by David Robert Jones, who pulled both dimensions together in this one spot, overlapping people with their other selves and causing immediate onset schizophrenic outbreaks and violence. In this episode, the cortexiphan that Olivia had been shot up with a couple of episodes earlier began having different effects, and this Olivia began having the memories of our Olivia. She suddenly believed she was her, Peter was her Peter, and she knew everything about their lives together.

In the next episode, "A Better Human Being," the gang investigated people with a hive mentality who had all been genetically modified as embryos, and all had the same biological father. As such they connected by speaking to each other telepathically. The episode tied in to what Olivia was undergoing, where she could hear the other Olivia in her head to such an extent that it wasn't just a voice, it was her entire consciousness. As she pleaded with Peter to believe her that she really WAS Olivia, and had remembered utterly everything about their life together and who she was, Peter was torn. Walter had seen the change in her and growled at Peter that he was somehow projecting his own consciousness onto her, much like he could do with the machine, and that he had to stop it, and accept that what he was doing was projecting what he wanted onto an innocent person who had been caught in the crossfire of Peter's dire need to return to the home he once knew. At the end of the episode, Olivia looks into Peter's eyes and tells him how much she loves him, and what he sees is his own Olivia looking back at him. Caught up in the moment, he kisses her, and we swoon (albeit cautiously) because it seems they're finally reunited.

Until Olivia goes into the gas station to pee and never returns.

And that brings us to "The End of All Things," where Olivia has been captured by David Robert Jones' people (along with Nina) so they can channel her abilities, and see if she can light up the little lights in the box the same way she did way back in season 1. Written by David Fury (who was responsible for much of Buffy and Lost's first season), this episode brings so many things full circle, including Olivia's abilities coming out through her empathy. Jones mistakenly believes she'll be triggered by Nina, so he tortures her in front of Olivia to make her do what he needs her to. Problem is, she now has the memories of our Olivia (or she might BE our Olivia) and that Olivia wasn't raised by Nina. She reveals that Peter is the only person who she feels strongly for, and so they capture him and bring him to her. And when she thinks they're going to hurt him, she goes all Carrie on them and nearly brings down the entire building in an amazing sequence.

But how Peter actually manages to get over to her is the key part of the episode. For September, who'd been shot a long time ago and showed himself to Olivia (did he see that coming?) has reappeared, and he's dying and collapses when he's with them. Walter connects Peter to September's unconscious mind the same way Olivia had connected to John's dead mind and where Peter had mindwalked through Olivia and Walter's cartoonlike consciousness. (I always love a good mindwalk.) In this one, we see how September can see all timelines at once, in a glorious SFX sequence where Peter sees the Big Bang, followed by the universe massively expanding and creating itself, as September stands and talks to him about what he'd actually done.

And here, we discover that these hairless men in fedoras and Don Draper suits are actually human, but what humans will ultimately become. And, as mentioned earlier, he's risked wiping out his own timeline by what he did with Peter already, and needs to right things. And *just* as we were beginning to hope maybe Peter had found his Olivia, and that all these people need is the memory of him to break through so they can become the people he once loved, September says he needs to get to his Olivia still, and only then can he create the child that will be essential to the existence of the human race. And, more importantly to September, to his race.

The key line September utters is that he exists in "one of countless possible futures for humanity." If humanity takes a different turn, then he no longer exists. No wonder the other suited bald men have been trying to stop September from effing up everything. No wonder he's been shot. But who shot him? He won't say. That's not important to him. What is important is that he fix this, and he tells Peter to go back home so Peter can find his way to Olivia. And when Peter does go back home (literally), he's captured by David Robert Jones's men, who bring him before Olivia and cause the chaos I'd mentioned earlier.

And when it's all over, Peter looks at this Olivia and tells her that he's sorry for kissing her outside the gas station, but she's not really his Olivia. Despite the heartbroken look in her eyes (and the devastating effect his speech clearly has on her), he assures her that when he was in September's head, he saw his Olivia, and there was no mistaking that was her. He needs to get back to her, and he can't be tricked again. As Peter turns to walk away, he leaves in his wake a woman who, as Walter predicted, has been caught in the cross-storm, who now carries the memories of a love that is so real it hurts — but a love that doesn't belong to her.

September has told Olivia ominously that in every timeline, in every possible future, she must die. We all must die at some point, so here's hoping that Peter's Olivia will die a natural death at a very old age. But there's a possibility that this Olivia will die much sooner, perhaps at her own hand. Who, after knowing and feeling a love at their very core that's been taken from them and will always remain unrequited, could possibly continue?

I posted a few weeks ago that the problem with this season is that they've created a new set of characters that seemed temporary, and that we couldn't actually feel close to. But I also mentioned that I had faith in the writers and hoped things would turn soon. And they did. My heart sank for this Olivia as much as if she'd been any of our Olivias. She's as human as any of them, and as real as any of them. But for Peter, there's only one Olivia in all the universes that is his. And that has got to be one of the most beautiful, romantic ideas I've ever seen on television.

There was talk this week that Fringe might actually be renewed for a fifth and final season, giving them 15 episodes to wrap up the story. Either the writers couldn't wrap it up in S4, or the new sponsorship of Nissan has helped things along immeasurably (no one could have missed the scene in "Making Angels" where Olivia obviously unplugged her new Nissan electric car and drove away quietly, making everyone in the audience want one of those — or maybe that was just me...). But where I'd originally said I'd be happy with four seasons, this crop of episodes really made me hope for a fifth, so that the answers could be given, and then the show could play out for a few more episodes as we see the repercussions of everything we've learned. Peter will find Olivia, he just has to. And the commercial break glyphs this week — which spelled UNITE — are more than hinting that we will see them together again.

Angel S5: Not Fade Away

2012-02-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, my all-time favourite series finale is Six Feet Under, as I know it is with many of you. But that's mostly for the last five minutes, which I've watched so many times I've lost count. I couldn't honestly tell you what happens in the rest of the episode that preceded it. That last five minutes, though? SUBLIME.

But my second-favourite series finale of all time is Angel's. And I love it for the entire episode, so in some ways that pushes it right to the top. Every character arc was beautifully realized, every moment was wonderfully written and acted. I adore this episode, and what it says.

I went back to check my entry on it in my Angel guide, Once Bitten, and honestly, to sound REALLY immodest here, I was really quite delighted with what I'd written there, and couldn't possibly add anything to it. (It was that long entry for the Angel finale that inspired all my long entries in the Finding Lost books that followed.) For anyone who has held off reading the exclusive and spoilery Alexis Denisof interview in the book, feel free to finally read it, where he reveals that the decision to kill off his character was a direct result of the show being cancelled. He was absolutely lovely, and perhaps that's part of the reason why I love his character as much as I do. But I think it's mostly because of this episode.

Instead, I'll just say three things, and leave the rest of the talking to you.

Why I loved this episode:

Because "effulgent" made me laugh. ♥♥♥

Because "Would you like me to lie to you now?" made me cry. A lot.

And because "I kind of want to slay the dragon" made me cheer. It doesn't matter what happens at the end of that alley; in my mind, our heroes will always be racing into battle, willing to die to save the world.

Thank you to everyone who stuck around for Angel S5, and who have been with the Great Buffy Rewatch from the beginning. It's been a blast rewatching the Buffyverse with all of you.

Once Upon a Time: "What Happened to Frederick"

2012-02-20T21:22:00.002-05:00

When we last left Prince Charming, he was leaving the castle on the morn of his wedding, determined to find Snow White and convince her that he’s the one for her. What he doesn’t know is that she already believes that, but the king had threatened to hurt Charming if she didn’t tell him to buzz off and convince him that she didn’t love him. And so, with Abigail on her way to marry a prince, we begin this week’s story.

I’m not sure if it was always the writers’ intention to make Katherine/Abigail a really good person, or if the fan reaction to her was so positive they had to turn Abigail around, but I’m thinking the former. Katherine was always likeable from the start, but Abigail came off as cold and distant. Now we know why: she was in love with Frederick, who died saving her father’s life and was turned into a gold statue. I was a little worried that she was actually tricking Charming somehow, asking him to complete an impossible task knowing he would die doing it, but it was good to see that she wasn’t tricking him at all.

The Guardian of the Lake was a cross between the Lady of the Lake of King Arthur legend (a woman that would rise up out of the lake, although she was a good entity in that story, if I recall correctly, and was usually just an arm holding a sword aloft), and a Siren, which is what Charming eventually surmises she is. But he defeats her by knowing that her fake love isn’t the real thing, and only a man who has experienced true love can spot the phony one.

Over in Storybrooke, the same thing is happening. Katherine is at first upset that David has been with Mary behind her back, until she looks hard at the photo of the two of them together. Like Charming, she can spot true love, and knows that hers was the fake one. She wants the real thing, and is willing to let him go. Just as Abigail wished Charming the best, she wishes David the best… but the mayor won’t have THAT, and steals the letter that she leaves behind. But when Regina burns the letter, what exactly does that do? Did it actually erase Katherine somehow? When Storybrooke Frederick reaches the car (which, expectedly, had ended up in a ditch just short of the town sign), she’s gone. What happened?

Meanwhile, we see the new stranger in town a little more. He manages to put Henry’s book back together and get it back over to him, and he has a name: August W. Booth. (The W = Wayne.) I checked the Brothers Grimm page on Wikipedia and did a quick search for August, thinking that was a secret name for one of them, and while it wasn’t, there was indeed an August connection: The Brothers Grimm had collected up the various stories for their legendary collection from local oral histories and stories, and were helped along by their friend, August von Hauxthausen, with whom Jacob Grimm had gone to law school. Fans speculated when he first showed up that perhaps he was actually one of the Grimm brothers, but perhaps he’s someone who simply helps the process along by collecting the stories and seeing that it stays in one piece, without actually being the author of the tales. I know I’m intrigued. In his scene with Emma at the wishing well he expounded on the magical properties of water, and how the water will always lead you back to what you’d lost. Interestingly, we saw him washing the pages of Henry’s book… was he dousing each page in the water of the well that appears to be drawn from the fairytale world itself?

And then there’s poor David and Mary Margaret. That particular storyline was heartbreaking (my 7-year-old daughter, new to such things, gasped audibly when Mary said, “We can’t be together” and said, “I’m gonna die, Mummy, I’m gonna die…” as she clutched her chest dramatically). I was so sad to see it happen that way, but we know they will find their way back to one another. (But honestly, GRANNY telling her she should be ashamed of herself? Harsh… and so sad…)

Another great episode. What I love most about Once Upon a Time is that it’s slowly putting the fairytale world story together, but trusts that we’re willing to be patient and wait it out (hence the Belle story being introduced and then left, as they do every week). We know where the Snow White/Charming story ends up – they get married and live happily ever after… for a year – so we know he won’t be killed by the king. Knowing that, we can simply sit back and enjoy the story as it unfolds.

But as for Storybrooke, that’s not a story that’s been told in the pages of a book; it’s still unfolding. OUAT continues to be a show that gives us stories of the week, but ones that are inextricably linked to one another.

Life's Too Short

2012-02-19T09:00:00.001-05:00

Tonight HBO's new series Life's Too Short premieres on HBO and HBO Canada, and I can say without any hesitation that it's the funniest thing I've seen in months, and the funniest sitcom in years.

I know Ricky Gervais has fallen out of favour with a lot of people in recent years. He's lost a lot of weight, so aw... he's not big and cuddly and easy to poke fun at anymore. It's hard to laugh along with the self-deprecating Ricky when he's now looking rather hot right now. His stand-up comedy isn't as funny as it once was, and last year he was searingly cruel at the Golden Globes, and this year he wasn't funny at all, so watered-down that Seth Rogen stole the show when he uttered the single funniest line of the evening.

But when it comes to TV series, the team of Gervais and Merchant really can't be beat. The Office, Extras, and An Idiot Abroad are brilliant, and even the animated Ricky Gervais Show, which is a series of cartoons using the soundtrack of his podcasts with Stephen Merchant and the always hilariously doddering Karl Pilkington, is laugh-out-loud funny.

Enter Life Is Short. Another faux-documentary like the others, this one stars Warwick Davis, star of Willow and the guy who plays Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter films, Marvin in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and got his start at age 11 playing Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi. Or, as he says in Life's Too Short numerous times, "Warwick Davis? I was the star of Star Wars?"

In this show he plays an outrageously exaggerated version of himself, a guy whose life is falling apart because he can't find work, his wife has left him and he's going through the divorce proceedings now, and his incompetent account effed up so badly on his tax returns for the past 20 years that he now owes £250,000 to the government. Crikey.

And so, he's desperate to find work. But he's "England's go-to dwarf," as he puts it, so there's GOT to be work out there. Every day he wanders over to the offices of Gervais and Merchant, who always seem to be wearing exactly the same outfits, sitting behind a large glass desk and not actually doing anything at all, and they roll their eyes and pray he'll go away and make small talk with him that goes nowhere.

In the meantime, he's running his own little people talent firm called "Dwarves for Hire," (I can't even type that without giggling) and he's trying to get work for many other actors of small stature in the UK. But whenever the phone rings and someone is looking for a dwarf, he takes the job himself.

This is far more self-deprecating than Ricky Gervais's David Brent ever was, and is screamingly hilarious. I won't spoil anything, but in the first episode when Warwick is in Gervais and Merchant's office, Liam Neeson comes in and announces he wants to attempt a stand-up act. What follows, watching the world's Most Serious Actor attempt stand-up, made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe, and my husband and I struggled to reach the remote to pause it so we could finish laughing, back it up to see what we'd missed, and then laugh so hard again that we had to repeat this about 4 times. Neeson is genius in this scene.

In the second episode, Johnny Depp hires Warwick so he can learn how a dwarf spends his days because he's studying for a role in Tim Burton's next film, an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin. Again, Depp plays an exaggerated version of himself (more Hunter S. Thompson Johnny than Johnny Johnny) and the two eventually end up in Gervais and Merchant's office again. Remember Ricky ribbing Johnny at the Golden Globes? Yep, so does Johnny. Hilarious.

And in the third episode, Warwick gets the opportunity to "star" opposite Helena Bonham Carter in a period movie, but the part wasn't what he expected.

Along the way, we see him at Britain's Comic-Con and trying to make money in odd jobs (seeing him dressed as an "Ewok" for a quick £500 had me on the floor), and he is SUCH a genius. Davis is sublime in this, from his arrogant lines to his flustered reaction shots when terrible things happen around him and he has no idea how to get out of the situation.

Check it out tonight at 10:30 and let me know what you think. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Alcatraz: Guy Hastings and Paxton Petty

2012-02-18T14:00:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote up a blog post with a menu of what I'd like to see in the next couple of weeks on Alcatraz. And oh so happily, that very same night the writers delivered with the fantastic "Guy Hastings" episode, about a guard from Alcatraz (played by Hoyt Fortenberry!) who lived right on the island with his wife and beloved daughter, and comes back to life and wants to know why the hell he's back. It was a stunner of an episode, and my favourite up to that point. The backstory began to be filled in. Earlier we'd seen Ray Archer (played by Robert Forster), the man who had raised Rebecca because she'd lost her parents, and in this episode we see when he went to Alcatraz to become a guard. But the more interesting twist was that he did so because his BROTHER, Madsen, had been thrown in prison and he refused to let him rot in there alone. Which means... her "uncle" was actually her uncle, for Madsen is her grandfather. (OK, great-uncle if you want to get technical.) Hastings was the guard charged with training Ray, and he suspected there was something going on between the two of them, but couldn't put his finger on it.

I'd mentioned in my previous post that I was tired of them always telling us that we're now in ALCATRAZ, 1960, and happily, in this episode they only did it a couple of times, and assumed we could tell the difference the rest of the time. Also, by pulling Tommy Madsen and Archer's stories back in, we're linking this flashback to the earlier ones, and beginning to create some continuity, which was EXACTLY what I was hoping for. And... I finally learned Rebecca's name. ;)

I'm noticing JJ Abram's lucky number 47 is beginning to pop up a lot more in this. It was the key number in Alias (the number of Rambaldi artefacts she had to find) and it's interesting to find it here. I remember pointing it out in the pilot, and it popped up again in this episode as the address on Ray's bar. What will become of Madsen now that Ray's kicked him out? And if Hauser actually asked Ray to come on board 16 years ago, what does that say about how much he's known all this time?

This week's episode was "Paxton Petty," a unibomber who, suffering from PTSD after returning from Korea, began planting landmines around San Francisco. The episode opens with a landmine slaughter in a public park that is horrific and shocking, and Doc and Rebecca have to get to the bottom of things. But in a twist, Hauser, who is increasingly frustrated and melancholy over what's happened to Lucy, the former Alcatraz psychiatrist and what surprisingly appears to have been his girlfriend, tracks down Petty at a beach... and steps on a landmine. Luckily they're able to get him off it, only just before it blows up the head of the bomb squad. (Unfortunately, his demise was rather predictable. As soon as we met someone from Rebecca's past who was loveable and friendly, I said to my husband, "He's toast.")

Again, a great episode that once again reached into the backstory and didn't just give us a one-off backstory about the inmate-of-the-week, but one that involved Lucy, deepened her character arc and also pulled Hauser into it, making him a far richer and more meaningful character in the past. Oh, that and lots of Billie Holiday. ♥♥♥

This episode finally made some of our questions going forward a little clearer, things that we can watch out for and begin building the pieces of the new mysteries:

- What force brought these people back? Why? How?
- Why do some of them repeat their crimes, while others perpetrate new ones? Who is controlling them?
- Can the Alcatraz doc that Hauser has in his bunker actually reanimate dead people? He brought his third inmate, child killer Kit Nelson (whom they'd accidentally killed) to the doctor, and now he brings Lucy to him, demanding that he fix her. What does that mean?
- Paxton doesn't seem to know why he's here. Do any of them?
- We know that Cobb woke up on Alcatraz, and Paxton woke up in a tomb. Where did the rest of them wake up? Do they awake with the knowledge of what they're expected to do, or do they have some instruction? Or are they just going on instinct?
- Why, in 1960, was the doctor taking so much of Madsen's blood? Did his blood have something to do with all of them disappearing and time traveling?
- How much did I love that Hauser kept talking about the landmine "lickations"? ;) (Oh, how I love when that Kiwi accent sneaks through, Sam Neill.)

I think a few people misread my meaning in my last blog post, thinking I'd somehow given up on the show. Not at all; quite the opposite, in fact. It was because of how much I liked this show that I was demanding more from it, mostly because I knew it was in the hands of people who were capable of delivering it. And, in the last two weeks, deliver it they have. This has become must-see TV in my house, week after week.

Are You Watching The River?

2012-02-17T19:39:00.003-05:00

If not, you should be.

ABC's new midseason replacement, "The River," first came across my radar when a friend of mine saw an advance of the first two episodes and said he hadn't been so drawn in by a show since Lost ended (and this is a guy who works in television, so he watches a LOT of it). So, of course, I was intrigued.

And boy, was he right.

Three episodes have now aired, and it's the story of a man named Emmet Cole, an explorer whose TV show, The Undiscovered Country (snicker) has been airing on TV for the past couple of decades, and all of America has watched him explore nature all over the world, with his lovely wife and adorable son by his side.

But now, the son has grown up and has become hostile to a father who put his family on display for so long and then abandoned them when he continued the show on his own; the wife has found solace with another but still pines for her husband; and Emmet, in a last trip up the Amazon, has gone missing and is presumed dead. And so, the network has decided to pay the wife handsomely if she can convince her son to take their film crew deep into the Amazon and film, documentary-style, a reluctant widow and her angry son as they search for a man who most of the world thinks is dead.

The result is absolutely stunning, edge-of-your-seat television. For the Amazon is full of the supernatural, magic, voodoo, curses, and things that go bump in the night.

In the first episode they actually find Emmet's boat, The Magus, and a sealed room in the bottom of it, which they weld open, thinking they can hear him pounding the walls inside. He's not in there, but something pretty nasty (that Emmet had presumably trapped in there for good reason) is. In the second episode, you will feel the hairs on your arm stand up as they come across one of the CREEPIEST things I've ever seen on television. Remember back in the pilot of Lost when fans coined the online phrase WTFPOLARBEAR?! That is NOTHING compare to the WTFDOLLTREE you will see.

A frickin'... DOLL. TREE. Like, little dolls with blackened eyes and little dirty bodies just hanging from a bamboo tree (from the second episode on the show was filmed in Hawaii). That MOVE of their own volition like little lost souls waiting for someone to haunt. And haunt they do. Go here to see a quick gif of the doll moving in the tree.

And in the third episode... yeesh. I remember my dad showing me the Audrey Hepburn film, Wait Until Dark, where she plays a blind woman whose apartment is broken into by Alan Arkin, and he quickly surmises she can't see anything and sneaks around the apartment, looming over her while she is unaware he is there. It was terrifying, and he told me that when it first came out, people were passing out in the theatres because of the suspense. Well, now imagine everyone on a boat going blind from some curse and these hoodoo undead people with no eyes boarding the boat and walking around silently. Geeeaaaaahhhh... (Although THAT actually wasn't nearly as jump-out-of-your-skin as the earlier scene in the episode, where they are hiding from these creepy voodoo guys in the bush and all these GIGANTIC millepedes come out and begin running over their arms, legs, torsos, and faces. I was FREAKING. OUT.)

The entire show is filmed documentary style, and unlike The Office or Modern Family, it's actually realistic. Two cameramen walk around with cameras. The people in the show wear small cameras mounted on their arms. When they go deep into the jungle one of the cameramen brings small cameras that he mounts in trees and in bushes to capture everything if they stop overnight. (That's how we see the little doll's head turning to listen; from one of the mounted cameras.) Presumably the producer will be reviewing the tapes later when they get back, but every little thing is captured, often things only we can see and the characters can't, which heightens the suspense and horror.

Leslie Hope plays the mother. I last remember her as Jack Bauer's wife, being blown away in the S1 finale, and she's great in this. Bruce Greenwood, a big star in Canada, plays Emmet, a rather small role given that he's billed as the star of the show, but you only see him in flashback "film footage" of his show from years ago. Joe Anderson plays Lincoln. I remember him from Across the Universe and playing Peter Hook in Control (the film about Joy Division), and he was great in both. He puts on an American accent in this one, and you can tell he's putting one on (his language is very carefully spoken and his r's are a little too harsh) but he does a fantastic job. He's joined by Eloise Mumford, who plays Lena, his childhood friend and the daughter of his dad's cameraman, who has gone missing along with Emmet. She is the last person Emmet was in contact with (and why he contacted her instead of the others is a mystery that's been building).

They're joined by the producer, two (oops, make that one) cameramen, the ship's mechanic and his Spanish-only-speaking daughter, and a creepy bodyguard/security guy (Thomas Kretschmann, who is absolutely fantastic) who seems to have ulterior motives for being there.

Is Emmet alive? Has he just Kurtzed all of them and gone up the river to go native? Or is he dead? Either way, the journey these people are taking isn't just a physical one -- with each step, they're discovering more about themselves, their relationship with those around them, and the "magic" of Emmet Cole's show.

The River airs on Tuesday nights, and will only be 8 episodes long (unless they sign up a second season). Definitely check it out; it's amazing.

The Walking Dead: Nebraska

2012-02-16T14:03:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the weekly Walking Dead recap that I’ll be doing alongside my co-host, Josh Winstead.

This week’s Walking Dead returned with a bang, continuing season 2’s storyline seconds after the mid-season ended, with a record-breaking 8.1 million people watching (despite the Grammy Awards offering lackluster competition).

In the opening moments of the episode we pick up right after the shocking mid-season ender, where a zombified Sophia had lumbered out of the barn and devastated us all, and as the rest of the survivors looked on in horror, grief, and shock, only Rick had the nerve to step up and put a bullet between her eyes. This week we are reunited with the survivors as they continue to reel from the shock of the revelation that one of their own was turned into a walker, while Carol quietly grieves the girl she lost a long time ago, not the thing that had emerged hissing from the barn. Daryl is angry that he’d wasted so much time in the woods looking for her (at least, that’s what he said, but it’s clear he’s sad that the girl he’d placed so many of his hopes in is now gone), Lori is shocked by Carl’s admission that he would have shot her if he’d seen her like that, and Shane continues to see Dale as his annoying, Tilley-hat-wearin’ conscience.

Meanwhile, Shane attacks Hershel and his family on their front porch, asking them how they could have kept this from them, and Herschel insists that he didn’t know Sophia was in there, that Otis had been the one rounding them up and putting them in there. It begs the question: if Maggie was going in there with the slop bucket and dumping the stuff, didn’t she notice a little girl in there? Is it possible that steeped in their own grief over losing their mother to this “disease,” they simply never put two and two together to realize that the little girl in the barn may have been the same one those other people in the RV were looking for?

It’s a tough scene, watching Hershel and his girls stand there full of their own shock and sadness, being attacked by others who are equally mourning having lost one of their own. We now know the reason that Hershel always has that pall of sadness about him, but in this episode the actor takes that look even deeper. We see a man who is utterly bereft, with no hope and no more belief in miracles.

What did you think of the Walking Dead return, Josh?

Joshua: Hi, Nikki! Boy, were the holidays bo-ring. I don't know what things were like at your house, but we had no running or screaming at all that didn't involve joyful children. And where's the fun in that? It's great to be back where none of the dangers to my sanity require I act with restraint. Or help them in the bathroom.

I thought the midseason premiere started strong, flagged in the middle, and then ended HUGE with a terrific reminder that this show is much less about the flesh-rotten walkers and much more about the soul-rotten ones. But before we jump straight to the last act, I did want to touch on that opening scene that picks up right where we left off in the barnyard. I think it's widely debatable whether or not Hershel and his family knew that the little girl in the barn was the same one for whom Rick and the quarry crew had been searching, but I have a feeling that the writers have no intention of offering a definitive answer. And that's fine by me – anything that adds to the tension is a plus, right? But the most significant thing about the whole sequence, more so than Maggie slapping Shane's raging face or Hershel demanding those pesky kids get off his lawn, was the fact that FINALLY this show has killed someone with a sickle.

Nikki: I’d like to believe that they didn’t know, that they simply were either too stressed or upset or in shock to realize that was Sophia, and perhaps Hershel hadn’t taken a look at all, and had no idea there was a little girl in there. I believe him when he says that. I don’t think he’s lied to them yet, has he? He’s certainly, um, eliminated a few things deliberately from conversation, but when confronted, he comes out with it.

But yes, let’s jump to the end scene because it’s the one I’ve been talking about endlessly with other friends who watch TWD. First, it was driving me absolutely batty that I knew the one actor from something else and I simply couldn’t place him, and then he sat down at one point and slurred something, and as soon as he spoke like that I said to my husband, “Ah! It’s the Cajun guy from True Blood!” Leave it to me to take an eternity to place a person. The non-accent threw me.

But the scene is rife with tension from the moment they walk in. Again, my husband actually thought they should have tried to befriend these two, and that Rick simply pushed them too far, too fast, and it was inevitable that things would go south really quickly. REALLY quickly. But why does Rick shoot them? What I love about the scene is that there’s no simple answer, but many possibilities, all of which are probably a little bit correct and help build new layers onto an already complex character:
• He’s snapped. He just shot Sophia in the head and has now emerged as a new, take-no-shit kind of guy who sees a problem and deals with it instantly.
• He’s still Rick, but he’s realized in arguing with Shane that maybe Shane is NOT completely right, and when he heard the guy say that on his way down from Nebraska he had to do a lot of things that were necessary, he saw these two as Shane times ten and decided to eliminate them before they became a danger to his family.
• In the aftermath of what happened at the barn, and the tension that’s been building with Lori and Shane and Hershel and Glenn and realizing that by leaving the farmhouse they could be walking away from their last chance at normalcy and domesticity, seeing Tony pissing in the corner just sent him over the edge and reminded him of everything he’s about to lose, and what the world has become.
• All of the above.

I loved the way it was handled and the questions that will arise from it. What did you think?

Joshua: Well, I recognized Michael Raymond-James right away, not only from his excellent stint as Rene on True Blood (perhaps my favorite character from season 1) but also from the co-lead role in FX's critically acclaimed ratings casualty Terriers (the only season of which may not ever see proper dvd release but is available via iTunes and Amazon and Netflix instant streaming right now; I promise it's one of the best shows you've never seen, right hand skyward, so go check it out for yourself). He's a terrific actor, and like fellow 3-name cannon fodder Pruitt Taylor Vince before him, I hated to see him dispatched so quickly, because he would have been a great addition to the cast. I don't think he had more than ten minutes of total screen time, but there's no denying it was an electrifying ten minutes.

Then again, Dave did not exactly seem like the kind of guy you'd want watching your back. Those ten minutes were also enough to prove to Rick beyond a shadow of a doubt that his family and the rest of the group he has sworn to protect were going to be safer if they didn't have to worry about running into these two guys again. As you mentioned, though, all their creepiness was relatively subjective. Neither of them said or did anything too horrid or damning; even Tony's bad-dog micturation, when taken in the context of a ruined bar in a ruined town on a ruined planet, and occupied only by men, is just uncouth and overly familiar. Worthy of execution? Not even close.

But that's judging the situation using old world rules, and the old rules no longer apply. Given your previous choices for murder justification, I'd go with 'All of the Above,' and then some. It's cumulative, and the longer Rick stared into this guy's eyes and listened to the matter-of-fact account of his survival and its all-too-familiar ambiguities and rationalizations, the more certain he became that the safest choice of action did not allow for the luxury of innocence until proven guilty. Dave said it himself: “Ain't nobody's hands clean in what's left of this world. We're all the same.” Much too close to home for poor besieged Officer Grimes, I think. And with Shane's admonition that “you're just as delusional as that guy” still ringing in his ears, not to mention the unshakable sight of the girl he couldn't keep safe staring back at him from down the barrel of a gun, the choice was almost made for him.

What I find myself anticipating most are the reactions from Glenn and Hershel after the fact. Glenn tends to be a pretty pragmatic guy, so I'm sure he'll take it relatively in stride. As for Hershel, maybe this encounter will serve to shake him of the delusional belief that he doesn't need people around who can pull the trigger like that, looking out for the few loved ones he has left.

Nikki: Well said! And I agree on Rick listening to Dave yammer on while everything that had just happened to him was running through his brain. This is a Brave New Destroyed World he’s in, where Nebraska is a wasteland where you pick up guns, where you can take guns off a dead cop’s body with no repercussions (and have no remorse about doing so), where people just assume they have the right to your house and you don’t have the right to say no. And he thought, this world needs some order in it. And I’m a cop. Under new rules. Bang.

And you’re right about Hershel; I wondered the same thing. If Rick can protect Hershel’s homestead from afar like that, maybe he should keep him around. But I don’t know if Rick wants to stay around.

I’ll leave the final word to you, but I just wanted to mention two more things:

Dale blaming Shane for Otis’s murder and threatening him when Shane was getting in the truck. Oh wait… no… that only happened in Shane’s head. For what I LOVED about that scene was the fact that Shane did ALL the talking, and other than one brief flinch, Dale neither moved nor uttered a single word. Shane’s guilt is so huge he’s simply imagining every word Dale would say, as if Dale’s an evil Jiminy Cricket conscience. Of course, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you, and sure enough, Dale truly thought every word Shane said, because he repeats it to Lori (though much of his accusation was likely gleaned from what Shane all but admitted to).

And speaking of Lori, I hope the zombies break into the car and eat her. She’s the ONLY CAR ON THE ROAD and she manages to get into an accident. What a dumbass. She honestly drives me batty.

OK, take us home, Josh!

Joshua: Something I neglected to mention about the encounter in the bar, and a factor that I am sure played a part in Rick's decision to shoot first and ask questions never, was Dave's mention of a group with which they were traveling. He didn't go into any sort of detail, but “group” in this environment could mean anything at all. I'm sure the scenarios Rick imagined in his head ran the gamut from a ragtag impromptu militia to a full-scale cannibalistic concentration camp, not unreasonably so. And if Dave and Tony were just scouts, then no doubt we haven't seen the last of whoever they are.

Bits & Bobs:

- The way Sophia's funeral played out was one of the saddest things I've seen on this show so far, from Carol's speech about how “Sophia died a long time ago” to the perfunctory way everyone just walks away from the gravesite without a word being spoken, as depicted by that great overhead shot before the commercial break. Quiet, deliberate awfulness, perfectly portrayed.

- Speaking of Carol, I thought the scene where she stumbles shellshocked out of the woods and Shane cleans her scratched arms was perfectly placed within the episode, as I was getting pretty sick of Shane's fuming and stomping around by then. But he makes his half-confession to her about worrying how everyone else in the group thinks he's coming unglued (possibly because of how often he acts like he's totally coming unglued), and then... nothing. End of scene. Huh? What a missed opportunity to provide more depth for our increasingly one-note deputy.

- And speaking of the funeral, the big 'I Cry B.S.' moment of the episode for me was when we saw the gravedigging crew as they finished their work, and NOBODY WAS WEARING GLOVES. If any one of them wasn't bleeding from the palms at that moment, then they must do a heckuva lot more shoveling than anyone I know. Sure, it's a nitpicky complaint, but really – it's a farm, people. Use your brains for something besides zombie bait.

- Bye, Nice Guy Daryl; we hardly knew ye. Sigh. I know he made that bitter speech to Lori about how he was “done lookin' for people,” but like you mentioned earlier, I'm not so sure the façade has crumbled away, or that it's actually a façade at all, for that matter. And since no one else even knows Lori left, I wonder if Daryl will end up being the one that goes to look for her by default, possibly even saving her life. Rick & Glenn & Hershel could always find her on the way back to the farm, but I love the idea that Rick and his family might be beholden to Daryl like that. (Then again, like you, I also kind of love the idea that Lori doesn't come back at all, so maybe it's best to ignore me.)

- Dale, regarding Shane: “I knew guys like him. And sooner or later, he's gonna kill someone else.” Yeah – probably you, dude. But am I reading too much into it, or does that phrasing seem to imply that Dale has combat experience, likely in Vietnam? And if so, will that end up meaning more than the simple fact that Dale has been somewhat disingenuous about his familiarity with guns?

- Rick: “She's smart enough to know what she feels.” Glenn: “No, no, no.” Hahahahaha!

- One final note about the bar scene... I think Dave's awesome toast needs to be in every TWD commercial for the rest of the season. “To better days and new friends. 'Til we're dead.” (After which, in my viewing notes, I prophetically jotted: “In about 5 minutes.”)

Thanks, Nikki! Have a great week, everyone.

Angel S5: Eps 19, 20, 21

2012-02-14T21:24:00.003-05:00

5.19 Time Bomb
5.20 The Girl in Question
5.21 Power Play

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

Late again, sorry! I've always been a fan of "The Girl in Question," which appears in the middle of this week's episodes, although it's not typically a fan favourite, mostly because of the very fake Buffy in it (fans had been led to believe SMG was going to make an appearance in the episode, and rumour had it she was supposed to, and then they couldn't get her to come back to film the scene). Oh, and about that Buffy being there? Um... actually, no, I won't spoil it for you, but there's a whole other side to that story that's unveiled in the Buffy Season 8 comics. Including what was up with the Immortal.

Cynthea Masson, who was involved in our Buffy Rewatch, gave a paper at the 2008 Slayage on The Girl in Question that ended up winning the award for best paper of the conference, so she could probably say a lot more on it, but all I wanted to point out was the very quick black and white scene of the painfully hip Dru and Spike in 1950s Italy going, "Ciao, ciao..." Joss Whedon was a huge fan of British comic Eddie Izzard, and that scene (and the HILARIOUS scene of Spike and Angel on the scooter) was an homage to this clip from Izzard's extended European history bit in Dressed to Kill:

Also, I meant to mention this a few weeks ago, but it was during "You're Welcome" filming that the cast and crew got the news from the WB that Angel had been cancelled, and the writers were already working on story lines for Season 6. One of those crucial story lines was the Black Thorn, which was supposed to be set up at the end of S5 and then compose much of what S6 would be (at least, that's what Alexis Denisof told me during a long interview I did with him). But then they found out they were going to be cancelled. So they pretty much introduced it in "Power Play" and resolved it in the next episode. Sigh.

Which brings me to the very sad news that this is the penultimate week of the Buffyverse rewatch, for next week is the finale. And while I won't spoil a darn thing for you, I will say that where I liked "Chosen," I LOVED "Not Fade Away." It's definitely in my top 3 series finales, after those for Lost and Six Feet Under. So I'm looking forward to next week and what y'all thought about it.

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5 Eps 19, 20, 21

2012-02-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

As always, here is the Buffy/Angel spoiler forum for this week's episodes.

Once Upon a Time: "Skin Deep"

2012-02-13T19:53:00.002-05:00

In this week’s wonderful episode, “Skin Deep,” we get the long-awaited appearance of Emilie de Ravin, still curiously using her Australian accent (but considering the vast number of accents in the fairytale world, perhaps it’s appropriate she should bring a new one to the mix). In case you’re thinking she can’t actually do an American accent, check out Roswell, where she played the annoying Tess, who spoke with a perfect American accent, if I recall correctly.

Written by Jane Espenson, “Skin Deep” was a very well-wrought retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Originally a French fairytale, in the original a young girl lives with her father and two wicked sisters, and the father loses his wealth to bad debts, until he hears that one of his ships has returned and he might still have some assets on it. He travels to find the ship, and his two older daughters tell him they want lavish gifts, but Belle, his youngest, only wants a single rose. The ship isn’t what he thought it was, and he stays at a castle on the way home and picks a rose from a garden that belongs to the Beast. The Beast says he can give the rose to Belle, but he must return as the Beast’s servant. The man goes home, and his daughter decides to go to the castle in his place. She loves the Beast as a friend, but dreams at night of a handsome prince. Eventually the Beast lets her go home to her family to visit them but when she returns, he’s lying near death from grief over losing her, and as she cries over him, her tears fall on him and he’s transformed into the handsome prince. In the Disney version many of us are familiar with, the story is altered to remove the sisters and add a jealous suitor, Gaston, who tries to kill the Beast.

This version pays homage to the others. The father’s name is originally Maurice. In this one, in Storybrooke, he’s Moe French (Moe being short for Maurice, and French alluding to the language it was originally written in). He sells roses, which is what got him into trouble in the first place (just as it gets him into trouble here), and Gaston is turned into a rose when he dares to challenge Rumpelstiltskin.

~~Claire Bear~~ Belle delivers a wonderful speech about how she sacrificed herself because it’s so rare in the fairytale world that any woman is given the opportunity to be the hero (which is the case), where Mr. Gold tells Emma that bad things happen to bad people, also something that’s common in fairytales but more ambiguous in Storybrooke.

In this episode we get the revelation many of us have suspected since Mr Gold first walked into the mayor’s apple orchard – that he knows exactly who he is, and like the mayor, remembers the fairytale world. Where he’s wrong is in thinking he’s the one with all the power, for once again, despite him being the man who can find a price for everything, she is the one who knows everything, and is keeping Belle captive in Storybrooke when he thinks she’s actually dead.

Robert Carlyle put in a brilliant performance, both as the grieving Mr Gold who shows up the mayor, beats the local florist, deals out of anguish, and then finally reveals himself to get back his one token to remember Belle; and as Rumpelstiltskin, who starts off as his gleefully mischievous and evil self and begins to fall under the thrall of the lovely Belle, finding love where he didn’t expect to, and then going mad with fury when he thinks she’s betrayed him. The scene where she defiantly tells him that all he’ll end up with is an empty heart and a chipped cup (which is actually the case now) is beautifully done, both by de Ravin and Carlyle. This is the second episode where the writers have humanized Rumpelstiltskin, and both have been highlights of the season.

Highlight: Belle: “Why do you spin so much?”
Rumpel: “I like to watch the wheel. Helps me forget.”
Belle: “Forget what?”
Rumpel: “Guess it worked.”
LOL!

Did You Notice:
• The homage to Game of Thrones? Not only does the episode open with the camera panning over maps of the kingdom and music that’s very similar to GoT’s opening theme, but it immediately cuts to Storybrooke, where the florist is called Game of Thorns. Haha!
• David is reading Anna Karenina, which [spoiler alert] not only plays into his own situation – Anna is torn between two men and eventually one of them convinces him to leave her husband and run away with him, a twist on what’s happening with David and Mary Margaret – but it also plays into the story the Queen tells Rumpel at the end, since when Anna runs away with the Count she is shunned by society (the way the queen says Belle’s father shunned her), and she kills herself, just as the queen says Belle did.
• At the beginning when Belle’s father was scared of the ogre, was anyone expecting Shrek to be standing on the other side of the door? No? Just me?
• Just as Rumpelstiltskin takes Belle (which means beauty) away from her father in the fairytale world, he takes away Mr French’s beautiful things (his roses) in Storybrooke.
• Geppetto’s parents hang in Rumpelstiltskin’s dining room.
• I couldn’t help but wonder if Mr French’s roses were the offspring of Gaston.
• I also can’t help looking around scenes like where Ruby, Mary, and Ashley go to the bar and wonder who the fairytale creatures are around them.
• Sneezy is running the convenience store. We last saw him busting Henry when Hansel and Gretel set him up.
• The queen’s umbrella is divine. Seriously, I want to know the Goth clothing and accessories website she uses. It was like a creepy spiderweb.
• The rectangular windows in the jail were like the ones in the castle.
• The queen refers to “a certain mermaid,” hinting at an Ariel story to come.
• I loved the title of this episode, and the play on words it created.

Angel S5: Eps 16, 17, 18

2012-02-07T21:07:00.003-05:00

5.16 Shells
5.17 Underneath
5.18 Origin

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

Whoops! Big thanks to Marebabe for sending me a note to nudge me into remembering this week's post!! I was just telling someone earlier today that this week, for the first time since 2005, I don't have a project on the go. And I guess I just slacked off SO much for the past 2 days after working my butt off for 7 years that I completely forgot to do anything. Yikes.

OK, so in order to get this post up as quickly as possible I won't say much other than I LOVE Amy Acker as Illyria (while I was devastated to lose Fred, I think as Illyria she shows serious acting chops I wasn't aware she had, and I thought it suddenly unveiled her as a quite remarkable actress.

Complete sidenote: A friend of mine had her first daughter after three boys, and gave her the middle name Illyria. Yes, I do surround myself with awesomeness.

And... poor Wesley. Fred's not the only character who is just a shell of who she once was. Compare the dark, broken, destroyed Wesley of this week's episodes to the slapstick Giles wannabe from season 3 of Buffy, and it's like they're two different people entirely. I think Alexis Denisof is just extraordinary. And I won't stop saying that until the finale. (I lie... I won't stop saying that even after the finale.)

And... is that Jayne?? ;)

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 16, 17, 18

2012-02-07T21:05:00.000-05:00

As always, here is the Buffy/Angel spoiler forum for this week's episodes.

Alcatraz: The Story So Far...

2012-02-06T13:06:00.001-05:00

Alcatraz’s fifth episode airs tonight, and the series started off with a bang, and ratings are still strong (it’s winning Monday nights, even against the Bachelor). But I’m really hoping to see something pick up this week, because while there are a lot of things I really like about this show, I’m starting to find a lot of things I don’t like. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for up to the fourth episode, which aired last week.)

If you’re not watching it yet, here’s what you need to know:
• In March 1963, two guards went to Alcatraz on the eve of its closing to escort the prisoners off the island and remove them to various other prisons. When they got there, the prisoners were all gone. They'd disappeared without a trace.
• Sam Neill’s character, Emerson, was the young guard, and has apparently devoted his life to following why they’re here.
• Suddenly, in 2012, they’re showing up in San Francisco (looking like they did in 1963), committing crimes similar to their original rap sheets.
• Sam Neill has put together a team of a blonde cop whose name I can never remember, and Doc, played by Jorge Garcia, who has written several books about Alcatraz, has two PhDs, and runs a comic book store.
• Before he met the blonde and Garcia, he was already working with Parminder Nagra’s character, who was revealed in the second episode to be a psychologist at Alcatraz back in the 1960s, which means not just the inmates, but the workers in the prison will be time-travelling to the present day.
• When they catch the inmates, Emerson puts them into a cell in a replica Alcatraz he’s built.
• The blonde detective discovered in the first episode that her grandfather was an inmate, so she knows he’ll be one of the ones they’ll be finding, and she spotted him in an early episode when he caused the death of her partner.
• In the first episode we saw Jack Sylvane, an inmate who was mostly innocent and just in the wrong place at the wrong time, who is now on a killing spree. During one of his kills, he goes to a man’s place and takes a key from him.
• Week two was Ernest Cobb, a Giovanni Ribisi lookalike sniper who takes people out with an Asperger’s precision, usually killing three or four to cover up his main target, a teenage girl. Before they caught him, he shot Nagra’s character, and she’s still in a coma.
• Week three was Kit Nelson, a child kidnapper who would take the kids home, treat them to his favourite things (outings, cherry pie), and then remove them to a bunker where he’d kill them 48 hours after kidnapping them. They found him before he killed the kid he’d kidnapped, but they had to kill him in order to do it. Emerson took him to his underground replica house and handed him off to a doctor with instructions to do what he does best. Reanimation? Not sure yet.
• Week four was Cal Sweeney, a bank robber who romances the bank tellers so they’ll turn off security cameras and get him into the back, where he pulls out people’s safety deposit boxes and steals personal belongings. However, unlike his original crimes, he now goes to the home of one person he’s stolen from to find out exactly why their one object was so important, and then kills them. He obtains a key and Emerson now has two of them.

What I love about Alcatraz:
• The flashbacks relating to the present day are building up a mystery about the warden, caretakers, and the prison itself.
• Jorge. He was great as Hurley, but he’s playing a different character here and has risen to the occasion.
• The Alcatraz replica. Brightly lit like the cells the Initiative had on Buffy to house the “hostiles,” it’s a creepy place where the inmates just stand around like little dolls in a dollhouse, waiting to find out what they’ll be doing next.
• The inmates of the week. Most of the stories have been pretty interesting, although Ernest Cobb is still my favourite. I like the idea of Doc tracking them down using his research of their past.
• Geri Jewell. Geri showed up last week as the sister of EB Tiller, the nasty deputy warden. I spent over a year working with Geri on her memoir, and she was delightful, hilarious, and wonderful. This is the first major role she’s had since then, so it’s awesome watching her on it.

What I don’t like:
• Abrams said this is going to be a non-serialized show, like Alias became in the fourth season, which made me unhappy. But that’s not the case. However, the problem with just adding a few serialized elements, which is what they’ve done with it, is that they’re making them seem insignificant and not worthy of exposition, and instead it just comes off as weird. They HAVE to start giving us something here, or it’s going to lose interest. And the inmate-of-the-week thing was fine for the first three weeks, but by now I really thought we’d have something.
• Those DAMN subtitles. Seriously, if they’re in Alcatraz, and the prison is actually running, I GET they’re in Alcatraz. Don’t tell me. And if the scene right before this was set in 1960, odds are it’s still 1960. And if they’re doing laundry, I bet I’m smart enough to grasp they’re in the laundry room. Showing me ALCATRAZ – LAUNDRY ROOM – 1960 is just condescending. Stop with the subtitles. For god’s sakes, we didn’t need them on Lost, and we don’t need them now. For a guy who helmed a show that demanded a LOT from its viewers, he doesn’t seem to be demanding two brain cells of the viewers of Alcatraz.
• The wooden dialogue, mostly the tough-cop crap that comes out of the blonde cop’s mouth. She’s all, “Listen, I know you’re having it rough, but the best thing we can do for her right now is to find this guy now!” No, actually… finding the sniper will not magically bring the coma patient to life.
• I get that Doc has two PhDs. And that he’s super smart. But here are two things my husband and I have been mocking: one, the way he can pull up anything on the giant underground headquarters computer. Blonde cop says, “Pull up the security footage of the bank” and boom, he not only pulls it up, he zooms in on what we need to see. AND… he does it all with two keystrokes. Genius!
• The second thing, and this goes for the whole show, is I hate how conveniently (and implausibly) they wrap up everything near the end. Last week he was all, “I lived in a building once that had air conditioning vents that came in from either side and if we go in through the vents I bet we could get into the bank and I bet the vents go out to” OH MY GOD ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Insane. I’ve lived in a lot of apartment buildings, too. I couldn’t tell you how the damn vent systems worked. But I guess if you have a PhD in history, that makes you an expert in electrical and heating systems.

I haven’t recognized many of the writers of the weekly episodes, and I’m thinking if you’re going to launch a big new series, you’d pull out some big guns at the beginning. I’m hoping Abrams is about to do just that. Remember David Fury’s fourth episode of Lost? We were already hooked, but when that one happened (I’m referring to “Walkabout”) there was no changing the channel.

Do that, JJ. Give me one of THOSE episodes. Let’s improve this dialogue, show me some more interaction of the inmates we’ve already met (I want to see Cobb and Sylvane talking, or the warden trying to pit Sweeney against Nelson). I get what you’re doing, and it’s very good, but now let me see what’s going on in Alcatraz. You’ve built up four baddies, and now it’s time to show them interacting.

And clearly, in the present, there’s something going on with the inmates that’s not consistent. Cobb and Nelson committed crimes they’d done the first time around. But Sylvane, this guy who was supposed to be innocent, is going on a murderous rampage that’s completely unlike him. He stole a key and didn’t know why. He was killing people and practically apologizing, like he was being controlled. Same with Sweeney. He was a bank robber; now he’s a mass murder who revels in the kill, and again is led to a person with a key. Why? Who is compelling these people? Are you just going to build up a mystery and not give us anything at all? People complained about Lost not giving answers, but they hadn’t begun dropping hints of a mystery this early in the game (at least, not obvious ones at that time). But this is getting a little frustrating.

After all, they disappeared in 1963, and the action has all been set in 1960. Clearly something big is going to happen in that interim three years, and that’s where the story is beginning. So let’s start showing us where it’s going to go.

HBO's Luck

2012-02-05T14:02:00.003-05:00

If, like me, you're not going to be watching the Super Bowl tonight (I can't even watch it for the commercials, since in Canada they pre-empt the American cool ones with Canadian boring ones) I'd like to recommend HBO's new series, Luck. It just started last week, and I know many of you are watching it already, but if not, it's worth changing the channel for.

The series, created by Deadwood creator David Milch and directed by the always amazing Michael Mann, follows three key storylines. In the main one, Chester Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman in his first TV role), a mobbed-up gambler, money launderer, casino operator (name that money-based crime, he's probably done it), has just gotten out of prison, and with the only person he trusts, his chauffeur Gus (Dennis Farina), he puts together a new scheme involving the Santa Anita racetrack. Using Gus as his frontman, he buys a horse from a trainer, Turo Escalante, and thus begins their entry into this world.

Meanwhile, Nick Nolte, in the most poignant story, plays Walter Smith, a sad trainer who's been around the block many times, trying to trap lightning in a bottle one last time with a young horse whose father Nolte had trained, loved, and lost.

And on the frontlines of the races are four guys, led by Kevin Dunn, who have scored HUGE and are now trying to find a way to circumvent the IRS while finding an even bigger payday (of these, my favourite character is Renzo, played wonderfully by Richie Coster). On the edges of these stories you have the stuttering Joey Rathburn, played by Richard Kind (who I still think of as the lame grasshopper in Bug's Life), an agent for the jockeys, and one of those jockeys, Rosie (Kerry Condon), trying to convince the trainers to use her full time.

As is typical of any David Milch show, the dialogue can be complicated and very long. Don't pick up a magazine or check the internet during an episode or you'll be lost in about two minutes. There are times where the dialogue felt a little wooden and stilted, but necessary, such as when Dustin Hoffman relates, in a long monologue, exactly why he went to prison in the first place, to his friend Gus, who knows EXACTLY why he went to prison. But the audience needed to know, and Milch uses this scene as shorthand to convey to us some background. Often (and occasionally unfortunately), Milch never subscribed to the "Show, don't tell" theory of writing.

Also, unless you know something about horse-racing, there are details in here that can be a little over the average viewer's head. In the first episode, the foursome at the races attempt a gambling strategy that made no sense to me, and partway through the episode my husband and I were looking at each other, saying, "Uh... are you following this?" In the second episode, the plot revolves around a tournament that I didn't understand, either. BUT... in both cases, about 2/3 of the way through the episode, one of the characters finally explains what is happening. Milch clearly realized that his audience wouldn't necessarily know about horse-racing, so he provides the explanations through his characters (usually one person acts as the spokesperson for the audience, saying they don't understand what's happening, and another explains).

The acting, which comes as no surprise, is stellar. The actual horse races will have you on the edge of your seats, and the edits between the closeups of the jockeys and the faraway shots is so seamless I was convinced Kerry Condon had been trained as an actual jockey, before I read an article about her real-life award-winning jockey stand-in. As with most HBO series, the first couple of episodes contain a lot of set-up. It's hard to name a single HBO series that had such an amazing pilot I was hooked from the first episode. But, as with most HBO series, once you get past that first or second episode, what remains is a stunning series that only HBO has proven to deliver for so many years. What other series could pull a cast like this together... for television? Luck is proof that television has finally surpassed movies as being the superior form of storytelling.

Luck airs on HBO and HBO Canada at 9 p.m. on Sunday nights.

Angel S5: Eps 13, 14, 15

2012-01-31T20:00:00.001-05:00

5.13 Why We Fight
5.14 Smile Time
5.15 A Hole in the World

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

While last week's episodes were stellar, THIS is the week I've been waiting for. Because after "Why We Fight," we're treated to the single funniest Angel episode of all time, followed by the single saddest. Only a Joss Whedon show could take you on such highs and such lows. First we get "Smile Time," an episode that didn't just elicit laughter from me, but full-bodied guffaws. I mean, the PUPPET is brooding, for goodness sakes. HILARIOUS. Oh, how I love that little puppet man. And Spike's response? Sends me into giggle fits every time I see it.

And then... the laughter is over. For Wesley has FINALLY been united with his true love, only to have her ripped from him in the most horrible way.

"There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known."

I remember interviewing Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, separately, and both talked about how difficult those final scenes of Fred were to film. Apparently they begged Joss to do the episode, and he wasn't originally slated to, but he eventually got things switched around, and then pushed both Alexis and Amy to the ends of what they could handle, making them do the scene over and over again until it was so utterly painful to watch. And of course, that's when Joss is happily finished. Could anyone but Joss have written this scene?:

FRED
Will you kiss me?

Wesley kisses Fred on the lips tenderly and passionately.

FRED
(pulls back, looks down)
Would you have loved me?

WESLEY
I've loved you since I've known you. No, that's not—I think maybe even before.

FRED
(leans her forehead against his)
I'm so sorry.

WESLEY
No, no, no.

FRED
(chokes on her coughs, crying)
I need you to talk to my parents. They have to know I wasn't scared, that it was quick. That I wasn't scared.
(starts convulsing)
Oh, God.

WESLEY
(grabs her, looks into her eyes)
You have to fight. You don't have to talk, just concentrate on fighting. Just hold on.

FRED
(holding onto Wes's shoulders, looks into his eyes, quivering)
I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm not scared.
(her grip softens, she can't hold herself up)
Please, Wesley, why can't I stay?
(she goes still as Wes holds her in his arms)

WESLEY
(looks at her limp body in his arms)
Please...
(hugs her)
Please...

I will never forget the first time I saw this episode. When Wesley first takes Fred back to her place and she asks him to read to her, I quickly looked at my husband and said that if I came down to my final moments and could have any book read to me, it would be Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess.

And then... that's exactly what he's reading to her a few moments later. I've never had a moment of television feel like it was speaking directly -- and only -- to me, like that one did. I began crying right there, and didn't stop until long after the episode had ended.

Goodbye, Fred. And for anyone who thinks losing Fred is the deepest pain Wesley could ever feel, keep watching.

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 13, 14, 15

2012-01-31T19:59:00.000-05:00

For all the wibbly wobbly, spoiley woiley Angel stuff. (Yes, I've been watching too much Doctor Who.)

Ferris Bueller's Second Day Off

2012-01-30T10:14:00.003-05:00

So. Awesome. Last week a video of a middle-aged Ferris Bueller opening the curtains and saying, "How can I handle work on a day like today?" went viral, with people suggesting it was the beginning of an extended commercial that would appear during the Super Bowl. For what product? Turns out... Honda. And despite the tagline at the end touting the full video would be out on February 5, apparently Honda was so excited by the pre-buzz they put it out early. And here it is. LOVE this.

"Broderick... Broderick..."

Once Upon a Time: "7:15 AM" and "Food of the Poisonous Tree"

2012-01-29T21:33:00.005-05:00

I feel like I start every blog with an apology these days, but this week has been a particular whirlwind, and I've sort of taken the week off. Hence nothing on Once Upon a Time, Alcatraz, or Fringe (the Angel posts were something I did altogether at the beginning of January and just post-dated them to go live one at a time). I've been out of town for part of this week, and then returned home and my husband went away (we actually just missed each other at the airport) so it's been a very busy week for me.

But this afternoon I sat down and caught up on Once Upon a Time with my daughter (she hadn't seen the Hansel and Gretel one, so I showed her, and at the beginning I said, "I can't figure out why the shopkeeper who busts Henry is sneezing like that's significant, yet they never say why..." and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized, "It's Sneezy!" How did I not catch that the first time around?)

We both loved "7:15 AM." It's the first time we watched one together where I hadn't seen it in advance (I like to vet them first) and so both of us were chanting, "Kiss him... kiss him..." every time Mary saw David, and when they finally DID kiss, we were cheering like hopeless romantics on the couch. You know, I've said this before, but for as much as we all loved the mysteries and science of Lost, every time there was a tragically romantic scene on that show (think Penny and Desmond) I was head over heels in love with the show. It just hits you in a different spot. We can follow all the twists and turns of Season 6, but nothing touched me like Ab Aeterno, where we saw Richard Alpert's backstory. The Constant was a mindbending work of genius, but my favourite part was the phone call at the end.

So watching this episode was so much fun, so joyful, and so rewarding because of how much heart it had, I truly loved it. We were both excited to see Red in the other world (that's the first time we've seen her over there) and can I just say that without the Amy Winehouse hair and makeup, she's quite beautiful. And Stealthy the dwarf! As soon as Grumpy said, "Stealthy!" I thought, "Uh oh... that's not one we know..." To think, Snow White was almost living with eight of them. Seven always did seem like a strange number.

But then there's that stranger in town. That mysterious, writerly stranger. As soon as he opened his wooden box to reveal an old manual typewriter, I was smitten. A man who carries a typewriter everywhere with him? Swoon...

Which brings us to this week's episode, and WHY is that guy here? How could someone outside have found out about Storybrooke? He's somehow obtained Henry's book, and he's not of the world of Storybrooke, yet seems to know something about the other world. Emma escaped that world as a baby; is it possible someone else escaped it, too? Is there another portal in another story where he perhaps made it out of the fairytale land before the curse was enacted, but he was given some memory of it? Something has brought this man here, and he seems to have glommed onto Henry right away.

In the other world, we watch a replay of Aladdin, one of my kids' favourite films. This genie runs through all the same rules as Robin Williams' genie does, though much quicker and with less pizzazz and rhyming. (I would have loved to see him break out into, "You ain't never had a friend like me!") And just as [spoiler alert for the one person who hasn't seen it] Aladdin grants his final wish to the genie by freeing him, this king does the same thing.

This, of course, is a much darker story. This genie doesn't grab a travel bag, honk the king's nose and head off to great adventures, but sticks around and becomes part of a much larger master plan. He tells the king when he first meets him that he's granted 1001 wishes, and watched 1001 of them go wrong, and that happens again here. First, the king frees him, and in doing so secures his own death. Second, he wishes that the third wish could be transferred to the genie, and thus allows the genie to make the horrible mistake with the third wish, trapping himself in something much worse than a gold lamp. It was a fantastic story, melding together two parts, and I didn't see any of that coming.

As Sidney and Emma work together in Storybrooke to "find who [the mayor] really is], looking for the crack in the mirror, as they put it, once again we're being tricked into thinking this is Sidney finding revenge in this world (albeit subconsciously) for what happened to him in the fairytale world, but instead he's as much in the thrall of the queen here as he is there (notice above the Mayor's door it says MAGISTER, which sounds a lot like MAJESTY, a nice touch). I love that the breakfast finer doubles as a pub -- there are no nighttime bars in Storybrooke (is there a curfew there or something?) It seems that while the Mayor sleeps, NOTHING happens.

But back over in the fairytale world, I was very intrigued by the pain the Queen was in (even if some of it was put on). It was a hint of why stepmothers are always evil in the books -- maybe they didn't want to be, but they could never live up to the perfection of the first wife. They lived under the constant judgment of their husband, who married them out of convenience so they could be around in bed and to help raise a child, and when their husband died, they finally were free, and had very little sympathy for this rugrat who was the apple of their husband's eye, and who clearly paid them no attention (did Snow actually have any relationship with her stepmother? She doesn't seem to think anything her father says is out of line as he's addressing her at his birthday party). We're to believe the king is benevolent, but he says thoughtless things in front of a crowd, doesn't notice his wife's presence, and READS HER DIARY. (??) Which, of course, we know she meant for him to read, but still... I loved the little details of this episode, like the genie *almost* eating the apple but not (is the tree poisonous?) or the skeleton key of the queen's literally being a skeleton key, complete with skull (does the mayor's key ring open every little lock in the kingdom?)

I think this show is getting better and better every week.

The Ecstacy of Breaking Bad

2012-01-28T10:03:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Ensley Guffey for directing me to this AMAZING tribute video to the first 4 seasons of Breaking Bad (warning: you must have seen everything so far, for there are spoilers right up to the end of S4). Incidentally, Ensley and his wife Dale will be penning a Breaking Bad book for release in 2013! Watch this space for more information.

Angel S5: Eps 10, 11, 12

2012-01-24T20:00:00.001-05:00

5.10 Soul Purpose
5.11 Damage
5.12 You're Welcome

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

"Soul Purpose" and "Damage" are both good episodes, but thank the writers for "You're Welcome." For all of us who were immensely upset with the way Cordelia's character ended in S4, this gave her the send-off she deserved (and by the way, she looks FANTASTIC). We not only followed her through four seasons of Angel, but three seasons of Buffy before that, and her character arc deserved much better than to become some pseudo-incestuous mommy end of Connor's Oedipal issues. I remember crying for ages after the end of the episode, and it still chokes me up.

Next week: Two episodes that are a big part of why we babble incessantly about our love of S5.
5.13 Why We Fight
5.14 Smile Time ♥♥♥
5.15 A Hole in the World ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 10, 11, 12

2012-01-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

And here is the place where you can discuss this week's episodes in light of the rest of S5 of Angel.

Fringe: Enemy of My Enemy

2012-01-20T23:24:00.004-05:00

The message hidden in the commercial break glyphs on tonight's episode of Fringe was DEATH. Pretty ominous... But while I've enjoyed so much of this season (as you can tell from my posts every week) I must admit, as I hinted at last week with the multi-verses that have been built up this season, I'm starting to feel a detachment from it. I didn't realize it at first, but two things triggered that realization.

1. People have begun the "Will there be a season 5?" chatter now that it's the new year and we know many networks begin making their decisions in February and March. I thought, season 5? We were damn lucky to get season 4, and most of us were surprised we got a season 3. I just assumed all along that this was the final season and the writers were going to wrap things up. Apparently that's exactly what they're planning to do, and if FOX picks it up for a fifth season they'll keep something open so they can go in a new direction. But I'm thinking a fifth season will be one too many. I want them to wind it down and come up with a hell of a finisher this year. EW quoted someone from FOX saying that if the show remains this expensive, they simply can't afford it. Fans think otherwise, and want it to continue. But my reaction was different.

2. Olivia about to go through the portal and Peter shouting into his walkie that she'll die if it closes. Last year, I would have been on the edge of my seat. This week I thought, "Yeah, but... if she dies you'll just go to another universe and find the other Olivia who's still alive because you were always in her life and she's not this Olivia."

I don't KNOW who this Olivia is. I just don't feel like I know who anyone is except Peter anymore. These aren't the characters I've grown to love for the past three years. I was very intrigued by the premise earlier in season 4, but this week I noticed that Anna Torv, when playing Olivia, is using a similar swagger that she uses for Alt-Olivia. Last year she was able to separate the two (AND play a version of Leonard Nimoy) with very subtle differences. She could play Olivia and Alt-Olivia. She could play Alt-Olivia pretending to be Olivia, and vice versa. Her performance was staggering. But this year, Olivia isn't our Olivia. She SHOULD be, since Olivia only met Peter a few years ago, and therefore should be a similar person to the one we knew. But she has too many elements of Alt-Olivia, like Torv has forgotten the way she originally played the role.

I really liked the scene between Walter and the alternate world version of his wife. But that wasn't our Walter, who still had Peter, who was broken but back together and loved that boy more than anything. This was a different Walter. I wished I could have seen that scene with our Walter. (That sad, I adored the line, "You should know that your mother was a wonderful woman. Every version of her.") I was happy when this Walter showed up to see Peter, because now maybe he'll start to feel more like ours. But he really isn't.

What I did love about this episode was the two universes working TOGETHER against a common enemy, instead of against one another. There's so much potential with that idea I don't even know where to begin. Too bad neither universe remembers Peter...

And the "Nina, WHAT?!" moment was undercut by me thinking, Which Nina is this? It's getting near impossible to keep track of everything. I feel like I need a whiteboard permanently attached to the wall.

Don't get me wrong, this is still a show I look forward to week after week. But my emotional investment is slipping away, and that worries me. What I've always loved about Fringe is that it's sci-fi that favours love and the power of the human heart over science and technology. But this season? It's about science, technology, cleverness, and a bunch of people who look like the ones I love, but aren't really them.

So I guess I just have to sit back and continue to love Seth Gabel. Which, to be honest, is not a difficult thing to do.

Alcatraz

2012-01-18T21:11:00.001-05:00

As mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to post something on Alcatraz on Monday night, but I've been very sick this week. Sadly, I didn't even watch it on Monday night. You know things are bad when... but I finally got to watch both episodes last night, and I'm happy to say, I was absolutely hooked about 20 minutes in. Lost ended in May 2010, and since then we Losties -- who just won't let it go -- have been searching for the new Lost. Is it Person of Interest? It's got the numbers and the Abrams stamp and Michael Emerson... no, it's not Person of Interest. Is it Once Upon a Time? Created by Kitsis and Horowitz, it's full of little Lost references and numbers, and the fairytale stories serve as the flashbacks from Lost. Perhaps, but it's really its own show, quite removed from the more reality-based Lost.

And now we get Alcatraz. Produced by Abrams, directed and executive produced by Jack Bender, with several Lost writers on board, starring our beloved Jorge Garcia, this show's first episode (called "Pilot"... sound familiar?) features a supernatural event that happens on an island, where the survivors of a particular accident have time traveled to re-emerge in the real world and through flashbacks we find out who they are. They're being hunted and watched by people in a secret organization. All set against the instantly recognizable score by Michael Giacchino. And did I mention the lead survivor's name is Jack?

Oh, and it's brilliant. Compelling writing, a great ensemble cast, Giacchino's screechy violins that take us to every climactic break, twists we didn't see coming, backstories that fill in who these people are, and fast-paced direction. Oh my gosh, I think I've found my new Lost.

Now, being the spoilerphobe that I am, this is what I knew about Alcatraz: It was about Alcatraz. It starred Jorge Garcia as a comic-book store guy with some sort of expertise the cops could use. (I didn't even know exactly what that expertise was.) JJ Abrams produced it. Sam Neill was in it. And... that concludes what Nikki knew. So I was coming to this absolutely cold, knowing nothing, and they were going to have to pull me in. And they did so, IMMEDIATELY. I love the sci-fi element of it, the X-Files feel of the underground replica of Alcatraz where Hauser keeps his captures much like the Initiative kept hostiles in season 4 of Buffy. It's like his own personal adult dollhouse, where he pops the little soldier into their slots until he gets the full set. It's like one of the aspects of Lost has been flipped -- where on that show, the Dharma Initiative and the Others were aware of the survivors on the island, but the survivors knew little about them and neither did we, now we, the viewer, are watching from the perspective of the Others, tracking the survivors and watching the ~~good guys~~ ~~bad guys~~ Hauser's team pounce.

My husband and I are considering doing a podcast, just because we had very different views of the show. While he, like me, really liked it, he thought the Lost stuff was annoying, and that the music was overbearing and far too Lost-like, that the silly references to numbers are getting tired (I made the mistake of noticing the room key in the building next to Cobb's was Room 423, and when I said it, he groaned and said, "When will they MOVE ON?!" I will admit, the references nine episodes in on Once Upon a Time are getting a little overdone).

But I don't know, maybe it's the Lostie in me, but hearing that music, seeing the dark stormy set, moving back and forth through time, watching the questions build up with no answers, seeing Jorge Garcia play a character who is at once useful yet unsure of himself, it just had a warm familiarity to it. And it felt like home.

I promise that in the weeks to come I'll be switching this to a more Lost-like post format. Next week I'm actually away, so it'll have to start with the fourth episode, but I wanted to let you all know that I watched this, LOVED it, and if you watched Lost, you really must be watching this show, too. Don't miss it. If you did miss it, Fox will be airing the Pilot episode (this week they played the first two eps, "Pilot" and "Ernest Cobb") on Saturday night at 11pm again.

Once Upon a Time: True North

2012-01-18T20:31:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned on my Facebook wall earlier today, I've been really sick this past week, and in between not sleeping because of the cold and not sleeping because my kids have decided to suddenly start routinely getting up at 2am for an hour or two (how do children always manage to know exactly when you need sleep the most and THAT is when they decide you can't have it?) and also working until late every night on a paper I'm giving at Wesleyan University in Nebraska next Tuesday, I didn't manage to post on either Once Upon a Time or Alcatraz. But I want to post on both, so I'm going to write up two very quick posts tonight.

First, Once Upon a Time (which I actually watched TWICE before it had even finished airing in the US and STILL didn't manage to get a post up!) I loved this episode. I don't know what others thought, but I've always loved the Hansel and Gretel story, and from that gorgeous gingerbread house set to the great acting from Gretel especially, this episode was a lot of fun to watch.

And I know I've mentioned it before, but I really do adore the Evil Queen's wardrobe? How fabulous was that black hat?!

In the original story, the part that's always bugged me most is that the pathetic father leaves the children in the woods (in some versions of the story; in others he's let off the hook when the stepmother leaves them) and then when they eventually find their way back he hugs them and apologizes and says She made me do it! How spineless can one person be? (Unless he'd been really ill and maybe the kids were waking up for a couple of hours every night; in that case perhaps leaving them in the woods is justified... hehehe...) So I felt that in this episode they paid homage to that useless excuse for fatherhood through Michael, the mechanic who is the biological father of the two kids, and the way he looks at the compass, sees that those are definitely his kids, and says, "Nope, sorry, can't do it." Like the father of the fairytale, he doesn't have the guts or strength to fight for his kids.

But... he does. Unlike the father in the story, this guy eventually steps up and decides to give these two kids a chance. Who could watch that final scene of the father slowly walking toward the two confused children in the car, knowing the huge responsibility he is walking towards? I do hope we see more of this family and how it works out.

I hope everyone who joined in the Buffy Rewatch immediately recognized our Anya in the Blind Witch! I shrieked when I realized who it was; my husband, on the other hand, despite my, "Oh come ON you have to know who that is" prodding, had no clue. I promptly took away his Buffy fandom card.

I was amused that one thing this episode seemed to suggest is that fairytales are not just full of evil stepmothers, but annoying younger siblings. How useless was Hansel, really?? However, it's actually flipped the original story, where Hansel is the older sibling (the one who leaves the trail that helps them find their way home), the one who outsmarts the witch, and Gretel, though younger, is still helpful and does what he says. She's the one outside the cage who helps get Hansel out, and Hansel is the one who pushes the witch into the fire. Interesting they did a gender switch on these two.

I thought the Storybrooke story was good, too. At first, when Emma left the kids on the doorstep I thought, "What kind of detective IS she? Everyone knows you never pull away until the kids are in the house." So I was very happy she immediately redeemed herself in the next episode.

What did you think?

Angel S5: Eps 7, 8, 9

2012-01-17T20:00:00.001-05:00

5.7 Lineage
5.8 Destiny
5.9 Harm's Way

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

This week marks a turn in the events, with "Lineage" and "Destiny," two great episodes. As I've mentioned, Wesley is my favourite character in the Whedonverse, and every time the writers throw Wesley for another loop, my heart sinks for him, but soars for me as a television viewer, watching the extraordinary Alexis Denisof sink Wesley deeper and deeper into himself. The torment he endures in "Lineage" shows us that Dark Wesley wasn't a new thing, and perhaps was inevitable if that was really his upbringing. The Wesley we were first introduced to in S3 of Buffy was covering a lot of pain. (Despite the sadness of the end of this episode, we get that fantastic line from Spike where he mentions the events from "Lies My Parents Told Me.")

In "Destiny" Angel realizes he's got some competition for greatness, and of all creatures to pose a threat to him... it's SPIKE. I love the race for the Cup of Perpetual Torment.

"Harm's Way" is ok, but it distracts from the overall building tension of the season.

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 7, 8, 9

2012-01-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

As always, here is the place where you can talk about this week's episode within the context of the rest of S5 of Angel.

Fringe: Back to Where You've Never Been

2012-01-13T23:55:00.003-05:00

I only just got to watch this week's return to season 4 of Fringe, and it's midnight, so I'm going to make this very quick. What a great return to the show! It was fast-paced, pulled in a lot of the mythology of not only this season, but all of them that preceded it, and ended on a whopper.

I'd actually been tracking the glyphs throughout the show, so when it got to JONE I turned to my husband and said, "Oh my god, it's going to be JONES." "So?" "You know, that guy from season 1 that Jared Harris played?" Sure enough... I haven't watched it closely enough to catch little things (other than did you notice in the bus terminal the mom was reading a copy of American Geographic?) but I'm sure lots were there.

But back to the ep. Great storyline, and it's been hard to juggle some of the mythology. We have World 1, which we watched in the first couple of seasons, and that led to World 2, the alternate world. But Peter was erased from those and plopped into a World 3 of sorts, which is actually a World 1 where he doesn't exist, and now he's back in the alternate world (World 2) but it's not quite the same World 2 because Peter was erased from it, so it's kind of like a World 4. Yeesh. And yet... it makes perfect sense. Peter doesn't need to necessarily get back to a place, per se, but an ontology... a world in which he exists and always did exist, where he's something more than a bad memory or someone who's not supposed to be there. I loved the scene this week where his mother looked into his eyes and immediately saw that it was him. Beautiful.

And then... that ending. First, we see David Robert Jones, who we last saw being chopped in half when he was going to the other universe (he's the guy Peter was referring to when he told Lincoln that he once saw a guy get chopped in half, "But he was a bad guy." He had connections to ZFT and had been trying to get to the other side.

And then we see the Observer, who has been shot (can you shoot an Observer?!) telling Olivia that no matter how many different outcomes he's seen in the future, it all ends the same: Olivia has to die.

Who shot the Observer? What did he mean? How is Jones still alive?

Well, I don't know about you, but I can't wait for next week!

Memorial for a Lady

2012-01-11T10:00:00.003-05:00

For anyone out there who’s ever lost a beloved pet, for anyone who’s ever had to say goodbye too soon, for anyone who’s had to make a terrible decision to put that pet out of his or her pain, this one is for you. I experienced my own loss a month ago, and it’s taken me that long to write this. I know there are a lot of people who don’t understand the importance of a pet’s death, that you feel like you’ve lost a member of the family (people tried to be kind, but a few said things to me afterwards that no one would ever dream of saying if I’d lost a human), but here’s hoping there are a lot of animal lovers out there who get this. I wanted to memorialize my girl in a special way. So here goes.

The moment we locked eyes, I knew she was mine. And I was hers.

I came from a one-cat family, and my fiancé came from a multi-cat household. When we moved in together after dating for several years, we decided to compromise with two cats. A woman who lived near my future mother-in-law’s house had a cat who had recently given birth to kittens – two were solid (one orange, one black) and three were calicos. I wanted males – the cat I’d grown up with, who would live to be almost 19, was an orange male. We decided we’d get the orange one, and one of the calicos. Then we went over to meet them.

She was standing in the box, and the other four were crouched. She was the orange one (we thought she was a he). But while the three calicos were all huddled together on the right, this orange tabby stood on the left, and had one arm protectively hugging the black one, who was huddled below her. She stared at us without moving, as if to say, “I don’t go, unless he comes, too.” That was it: we were taking the two tabbies.

We named her Oscar. I always wanted a cat named Oscar. A couple of weeks after they came home with us, we took them in for their first shots. The vet flipped her upside-down and said, “Uh… this is a girl.” A girl? We had to change her name. But despite the dignity of her new name, we called her The Girl. And eventually that became The Lady.

She was a little skittish, and where her brother was the friendly tabby, she was the one who hung back a little, eyeing strangers and hiding while watching them from afar. Her tubby little brother would try to jump up on our bed at night, but he was too small and could never make it. She, on the other hand, found other places to sleep. Often curled up with her brother. I remember just a few months ago my husband nudging me and pointing, and there they were, two senior tabbies still curled up together, just like when they were kittens.

If something could go wrong with a cat, it went wrong with her. When we had them both fixed, her stitches came out – we don’t know if she pulled them out or her brother managed it, but suddenly that little incision was gaping open. Luckily, the vet was across the street. I ran over, and they stitched her back up, but put one of those little plastic collars around her head, and we had to separate them. I still remember her shooting backwards like a crayfish through the room, desperate to get it off. That night, I slept in the bedroom with her, while my fiancé slept out in the living room with the other cat. Just as I was dozing off, she suddenly jumped up, nudged my head with hers (almost poking my eye out with her plastic cone), and snuggled up next to me. She was scared. She was never scared, but tonight, things were weird, and she didn’t know what to do. So she turned to me. I remember hesitantly lifting up the covers and she crawled under, turned around, and slept lengthwise against me, with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her. She slept with me like that all night. She never did it since, but that night we bonded.

I know you shouldn’t choose a favourite cat when you have more than one… but she was mine.

My boyfriend and I got married, and we moved – twice – and then on a routine vet visit they said she needed to have her teeth cleaned. I was eight months pregnant at the time and I remember lying awake all night because she was staying overnight at the vet’s, and I couldn’t imagine her being there all alone (and yes, that anxiety foreshadowed my often-worrying mothering style). When I went to pick her up the next day – waiting outside the vet’s office when they opened – she practically leapt into my arms.

Our first baby was born, and while her brother decided he was having NONE of this, she was the one who did that creeping thing cats do when they’re testing the waters – she’d move toward the basket on the floor, jerking her body backwards slightly, then stepping forward two tentative steps, jerk back, two more steps, etc. – and she circled that basket like a shark, with her nose sniffing every corner of it. A couple of days later, the baby was napping (something she almost NEVER did) and I ran downstairs to throw a load of laundry into the washing machine, and when I came back up, there was The Lady sleeping in the bottom of the basket, next to the baby’s feet. I was shocked. From that point on she was always rather interested in the kids, although there were times when even she appeared to think, “Good god, why did you decide to bring these yowling cats to my house?!” and she’d disappear to the basement. Here's a pic of her with my son.

A couple of years after that she was diagnosed with hyperthyroid, something that happens often with cats, and it involves a lifetime of medication, or surgery, or a radioactive iodine treatment. The latter was the most expensive, but it had the highest success rate. She was only 11, and we figured we had a lot of years left, so we chose that option. They put a radioactive iodine in the cat, it runs through her system while they monitor her for a week, and then you separate her from the household for the next month, carefully putting her litter elsewhere and monitoring what she did. She was great, and we’d bring her upstairs at night, snuggling with her and joking about how our radioactive cat could be used as a nightlight, or perhaps could power our TV.

She was always thin, while her brother was fat, but he knew he should NOT mess with his sister. She always gave as good as she got, and when we got a four-storey six-foot cat tree, she immediately claimed the penthouse suite at the top, where she could roost and bat at her brother as he sat on the level below her.

She chirped. When she was in a happy mood, purring and sitting next to me, if I coughed she would make a chirping noise with her eyes half-closed. We would talk back and forth like that for ages. My husband thought it was hilarious. “Cough, make her chirp,” he’d say.

She hated the vet. Whenever I took her, they assumed she was the male (orange tabbies are typically male) and they’d try to do the checkup but her pulse would race and one time she drove her body temperature up almost 8 degrees. It was insane. I’d have to sit with her and calm her down in another room before they could come in and give her the annual shots. But considering how many other treatments the poor little girl had had, I don’t blame her for not liking that place.

She was my circus cat. She’d come into the bathroom as I would come out of the shower, and I’d hold my hand in the air and snap my fingers, and she’d stand straight up and stretch her body out completely as if she were bipedal, and she’d grab my wrist with her front paws and rub her cheek against my hand. I loved when she did that.

We got a new kitten in May, much to my childrens’ delight. She was yet another orange tabby-cat girl. My original orange tabby-cat girl began growling more than I’d ever heard, and she found new and inventive ways to hiss, but eventually there was a begrudging tolerance of the new little beast. Everything seemed to be fine, and we were now a three-cat household. And then…

It happened on a Saturday.

Just this past December, I was away in NY on business, and on Friday night my husband took the kids to his parents’ house because he was playing a show in town there. The next day they swung by the airport to pick me up on their way home, and when we got home she didn’t seem right. She slowly picked her head up and looked at me a little dazed, and I asked my husband if she’d been eating. He said she’d seemed off the day before, but nothing too unusual. Just a week earlier I’d been saying to him that we should monitor their food intake, because she looked a little skinny and I was wondering if the new little kitten was stealing all the food. That night instead of putting her down with the other cats, I gave her her own bedroom, with her own litter, water, and food. She jumped up on the bed in the room and curled up, glancing at me as I left.

I wish I’d stayed. How I wish I’d stayed.

The next morning the litterbox was untouched, and so was the food. Of course it was a Sunday, so the vet was closed. My husband decided to take her up to the animal emergency hospital. They charged him $1000 to admit her and put her on emergency fluids, and when they looked her over they found a lot of sores in her mouth. No one knows where they came from, but we suspect that’s why she’d stopped eating. Just after midnight they called our house and said they were transferring her to the ICU, and that she was in stage 4 kidney disease, and it was unlikely there was anything more they could do for her. My husband came across the landing and into the bedroom and delivered the news, and I crumpled into a sobbing mess. My girl was all alone, in an ICU, and we were going to have to put her to sleep the following day. I should be there. I told him I really should be there. He called the ER back and they said she was comfortable, and there was no reason we should come up. I said if we have to euthanize her on Monday, I don’t want her to be alone on her last night. They said to be honest, they didn’t think she was aware of anything around her, and she was sleeping. I decided I’d wait.

Next morning, I was back up there first thing. A vet took me into another room and talked to me, and said he’s not allowed to recommend euthanasia, but if that was what we wanted to do, he said, “You’re not making the wrong choice in this case.” He said they’d put a catheter in her arm to administer the IV fluids, and they could leave it in there so when we euthanized her they could just inject her in the catheter and not have to invade her body any further. I opted to keep it there. But, he added, it would only be good for about six hours. I now had a time limit with her.

I sat in the waiting room for what felt like an eternity while they disconnected her from countless machines. I watched the clock, thinking, “Come on come on COME ON…” I didn’t have much time with her, and I didn’t want to be separated from her. I began reasoning. If she comes out and seems happy to see me, then maybe I won’t do this today. Maybe she’ll get better.

They brought her out and I chirped her name as happily as I could, with a lump in my throat the size of a basketball and desperate to get out of that place. She looked at me and meowed back. She knew me. Would she be OK?

We got out to the car and I opened the front of the cage and put my hand in. She began purring. I began crying. I was sobbing so hard the whole drive home I could barely see the road at times. I brought her into the house and carried her upstairs to my bedroom, where I assumed she’d want to be. I opened the cage, and she got out of it and walked away, her front arm in a splint and walking very wobbly, and she slowly went down the stairs. I followed her, a little perplexed, and we got to the main floor, she turned and went down to the basement, and right to the kitty litter. Of course. They’d had her on IVs and the poor thing had to pee. But she’s peeing… that’s good, right?

I carried her back upstairs and put her down. She walked in a zigzag. That wasn’t like her. She stopped every few steps to give her front arm a shake as if to get that damn splint off, and that made me chuckle through my tears, but she walked to the back patio door, where she loved to sleep in the sun. (Pathetic fallacy was in full swing that day; there was no sun, only a downpour.) She stood for a minute, and then just fell sideways. She couldn’t even ease herself down. She lay there, and I laid flat on my stomach on the floor, petting her head and talking to her and crying.

And crying.

I eventually decided to leave her alone, but that resolve only lasted a few minutes at a time before I’d be back over with her. After about an hour, I left her alone again, and she got up and went back upstairs, where she managed to jump up onto my daughter’s bed. I began wondering if maybe she might be OK. We got a call from the vet’s office saying they had the paperwork back from the ER, did we have any questions? Yes… do we have to euthanize her today?

The vet got on the phone and said her kidneys were at such high levels, he’d never seen a cat come back from it. He said we could put her on some aggressive fluids and we’d probably get some more time with her. “How much time?” we asked, suddenly so hopeful. “Four… maybe five days.”

Oh.

When should we come in?

How does 3:20 sound?

A quick look at the clock said it was just after 2:30. There’s no time. How do you thank this wonderful little creature for bringing so much joy to your life? How do you take your last few moments with her and make them last forever? How do you let her know it’s going to be OK?

How do you say goodbye?

All day when I’d been sitting next to her, I kept giving her a little cough. Chirp for me, I thought. Just chirp for me this one last time. She didn’t. I whispered her name. Nothing. At one point I put my hand on her head and she sat up, and nudged my hand with her head the way she used to. It was more feeble than she used to, but she did it.

Now she just lay there, curled up in a ball, and we pet her and pet her and cried and cried together. She had come into our lives two weeks after we moved in together. She was an essential part of our lives. We couldn’t imagine our world without her in it. But we were going to have to. This is the last photo I took of her.

We went over to the vet at 3:20. They’re only a couple of blocks from our house (we always manage to live close to vets, for some reason) so I didn’t put her in the cat carrier. God, she hated that thing. Instead, I wrapped her in a towel and held her in my arms as we drove through the pouring rain. We walked in, and sat and listened to another couple talk about their sick dog. You can take your dog home, I thought. “Can you put her on the scale?” they asked me. Why? This isn’t a routine check. “Um… we need to weigh her to estimate how much the ashes will weigh, so we can charge you accordingly.” Of course you can. (The $500 bill for her euthanasia and return of the ashes came later. I love vets, but it’s hard not to feel gouged when it cost us $1500 to basically watch her die.)

Then the vet called us in.

He asked us if we wanted to see the records from the ER. No. Did we want to hear anything more about the renal failure? No. He’d already explained to my upset husband on the phone that despite the $500 or so we’d spent only four months ago on a full bloodwork set for her, often things like this don’t show up. At this point, we didn’t want to delay this anymore. He asked me to lay her down. I kept her in the towel and carefully placed her on the table, still keeping my arms wrapped around her. She looked at me strangely as he pulled out her arm.

“She’s not going to close her eyes,” he told us. “And it’s going to be really quick, OK?” OK. He prepared the syringe. He put it into her catheter. I leaned down and whispered, “I love you so much, my girl. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Are you ready?”

No. No, I’m not ready. She’s only 14. She was supposed to live for five or six more years. I went away to NY five days ago and didn’t give her a second thought and now we’re “putting her to sleep.” I should have let her sleep with us more often. I should have cuddled with her a couple of weeks ago when she nudged me with her head on the couch when I was sitting there typing a blog post about Once Upon a Time. I should have noticed she was frail. But the vet said this had the signs of a sudden failure, not something that had happened over time.

No, I’m not ready. Don’t do it. Please don’t do this to her. Please.

“Yes,” I said.

He slowly depressed the plunger. She looked up and growled at him, and then dropped her head. And that was it. I thought by “quick” he meant a minute or something. But it was maybe three seconds. And my lady was gone. The vet quickly checked her heart, whispered, “She’s gone,” and quietly slipped out of the room to leave my husband and I sobbing and grief-stricken. I draped myself over her body and cried and cried into her fur, smelling it for the last time, petting her, and reassuring her that she was OK. I noticed one of her hairs was in her eye, so I swiped it out. And then it left a mark on her eyeball. I can still picture that mark. I shouldn’t have touched her eye.

“Why do you call her The Lady?” my daughter had asked my husband only a few weeks earlier.

“Because she’s a lady,” he said. “She’s dignified and graceful. She’s our lady.”

And our lady was gone. Her last act had been to growl at a stranger who was doing something she didn’t like. Just as she’d stared at me knowingly the first time I looked at her, with one strong arm around her brother and making our decision for us, she left this world as defiant and strong-willed as she’d always been. And god, I love her for doing that.

Fate could have landed her in any family, and I'm so endlessly appreciative and honoured that it gave her to us, and allowed me to share that wonderful life of hers.

Goodbye, my girl. My lady. My sweet, sweet lady.

Angel S5: Eps 4, 5, 6

2012-01-10T20:00:00.002-05:00

5.4 Hell Bound
5.5 Life of the Party
5.6 The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco

For my lengthy analyses of these episodes, follow along in Once Bitten.

Last week you guys seemed to take the reins of watching Angel really well, so once again I'll provide the forum, and I really enjoyed what you guys said. Just a note that I think the rewatchers might enjoy these episodes more than first-timers, simply because we know what's coming, and these episodes seemed a little odd the first time through, but once you realize how the season ends, they make more sense. Keep at it... you won't be disappointed. :)

Next week:
5.7 Lineage
5.8 Destiny
5.9 Harm's Way

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 4, 5, 6

2012-01-10T19:59:00.000-05:00

Here's the spoiler forum, where you can talk about these episodes in the context of the remainder of S5 of Angel.

Amazing Video!

2012-01-09T19:47:00.002-05:00

My husband showed this to me on the weekend. I hadn't heard of Gotye (apparently he's huge in Australia) but I love this song. First, watch this stunning video:

Pretty amazing... but nothing compared to the jaw-dropping achievement of this next video. This is a Burlington-based band called Walk Off the Earth (Burlington is about 45 minutes outside of Toronto) doing the same song, with five people playing the same guitar. Their voices are stunning, and you won't believe what five people can do with a single instrument.

Once Upon a Time Ep 8: Desperate Souls

2012-01-08T22:06:00.001-05:00

Before I begin this week’s writeup, I just wanted to mention a book I read in the fall called The Book of Lost Things. If you enjoy fairytale stories for adults (the same way OUAT is twisting the stories) I think you’ll really like this. A boy crawls through a hole in his garden and enters a fairytale world, where he is met with familiar creatures from the storybooks (and followed everywhere by the person who is the main character of this OUAT episode) only to find they’re not what they seemed in his books. Definitely check it out… it’s a great story.

The writers of Once Upon a Time have said one of their missions with this show is to show the other side of fairytales, to lead us along with the notion that what we’ve always known to be true (bad guys are bad, good guys are good, happy endings are always forthcoming and evil gets it in the end) is true, only to pull the carpet out from under us and show us the opposite. Evil can prevail, good guys aren’t all good, but bad guys are actually sympathetic. What made the Evil Queen evil? What turned Rumpelstiltskin into a trickster? Why are there so many people in storybook land who have a bug up their arse and are always plotting other people’s revenge?

And so, in the 2012 return of the show, we go back to the origins of Rumpelstiltskin, the man who is quick to make a bargain, and just as quick to turn it around on people and trick them into having to hand over more than they thought they’d bargained for. Rumpelstiltskin was a loving father who would do anything to keep his son out of the hands of the conscriptors who mercilessly pulled children into the ogre war when they turned 14. His boy is a couple of days away from that fateful birthday, so he attempts to escape from the men, until they’re caught on the road. The men taunt Rumpelstiltskin and tell the boy that his father was a coward who ran away from the ogre war and left the others behind to be slaughtered, and his wife couldn’t bear the sight of him when he returned from the war. He humiliates Rumpelstiltskin in front of his son, no doubt making him son see him as less than he once thought, and another man, disguised as a poor man looking for alms, takes him under his wing. He convinces him to go after the Dark One, and once he discovers that man’s name, he would be able to control him. He tells Rumpelstiltskin to steal the Dark One’s dagger, which has the Dark One’s name written on it, and he will call him forth by saying his name, and then he has to kill him. Rumpelstiltskin does that, and when he kills the Dark One he realizes he’s been tricked… the Dark One is in fact the poor man, and now Rumpelstiltskin will succeed him. Upon the man’s death, Rumpel’s skin begins to turn greenish-gold, his teeth rot, and he is all-powerful. He returns to his home to slaughter the men who threatened him, but instead of awe in the eyes of his son, he sees nothing but fear.

Meanwhile back in Storybrooke, another succession is taking place – Graham is died and Emma assumes she’ll take the mantle of sheriff. But, no surprise, Regina has other ideas and puts Sidney in place of Emma, until Emma challenges the appointment and demands an election. Mr. Gold tells Emma he’s on her side, and burns down the mayor’s office. Emma realizes what he’s done, and announces at the debate that he’s committed a crime on her behalf, but everyone in Storybrooke is thrilled that they have someone in town who’s actually honest, and Emma wins. In the storybook world, Rumpelstiltskin has had a role thrust upon him; in Storybrooke, Emma has reached for that role and earned it. But in both cases, they have taken on a dangerous power that, on the one hand, should make everyone respect them, but instead, they’ve adopted a whole new crop of enemies.

Highlights:
• Emma yelling to find out if Mr. Gold is in the store, and him muttering, It IS my store…
• Emma telling Henry to read something more reliable, like the Internet.
• Regina asking if Henry now knows that Emma cut his cord with a shiv. Haha!
• Archie’s stammering introduction of Glass… Swan…

Did You Notice?:
• Emma’s actually not one of my favourite characters on the show – she’s unnecessarily harsh at times and I just don’t like her that much – but I’ll have to rethink that after hearing her blaring Sonic Youth’s Kool Thing.
• In Mr. Gold’s shop, you can always prominently see a mobile of glass unicorns hanging near the cash register. I wonder if those unicorns were magically turned to glass. I don’t trust anything in that shop – I’m assuming everything in it is a result of dark magic.
• There’s a Mickey Mouse figurine in Mr. Gold’s cabinet. OMG, did he attack Mickey Mouse, too?
• There’s also a chess set… I’ve wondered if that’s a subtle Alice in Wonderland reference.
• When Mr. Gold said, “I don’t know… be a hero in a fire?” he flicks his fingers in the air the same way Rumpelstiltskin always did.
• The talks between Emma and Mary Margaret are very mother-daughter.
• When he sees his name on the dagger, it’s misspelled as Rumplestiltskin. (Rumple instead of the far more common Rumpel…) Rumplestiltskin is used on occasion, but Rumpelstiltskin is the far more acceptable spelling of the name.

Lost references:
• Emma still drinks the McCutcheon.

Ruby Red:
• Mr. Gold wears all black except for a tie patterned with red.
• Henry’s scarf has red stripes.

Any Questions?:
• I’m still wondering what Rumpelstiltskin had been gardening in the forest in the previous episode…
• How did Rumpelstiltskin go from being a fearsome Dark One to a cackling crazy person who hopped around and taunted everyone around him with an odd shake of his head and a flourish of his fingers whenever he talked?
• In the original fairytale, no one knew Rumpelstiltskin’s name – that was his power (just as the Dark One in this episode has a secret name, and the way to get power over him is to find it out). But in previous episodes, everyone knows Rumpelstiltskin’s name… he doesn’t try to hide it at all. Why the change? Especially when Rumpelstiltskin is still caught up in knowing names (remember him asking Snow White what her baby will be named?)

One Year Ends, Another Begins

2012-01-07T21:40:00.007-05:00

I’ve been remiss at keeping this blog updated over the holidays. The end of the Buffy Rewatch took up a lot of time, and then there was turkey… and more turkey… and more turkey… and more turkey (yes, four turkey dinners)… and Pizza Hut (that was the Christmas dinner that I hosted, ha!) And then, as I’ve mentioned on my FB page and on here, I’m preparing for a talk at Wesleyan University in Nebraska at the end of January on Twilight, so I spent a lot of the holidays reading those books. My comments to come on all of that post-discussion, which I’m actually really looking forward to.

But as usual, I’m hoping to contribute more to this blog this year, mostly because I don’t have new Lost episodes or a Buffy Rewatch to keep you guys tuning in. The reviews and entries might be a little shorter (with kids getting older, I find they’re up later… no longer does my evening solitary time begin at 8) but I won’t forget you guys if you don’t forget me.

However, as usual I often say one thing and do another, so this blog post will be my usual lengthy rambling. This is my review of my favourite things this year.

Favourite Book: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
It all started back in the summer when Tim, who comments here occasionally as Tim Alan and is on Facebook under another name, sent me a FB message and asked if I’d heard of this book. He told me I should check it out, because he’d just read it and thought I’d really like it. I began seeing it in stores and I picked it up a few times, but I didn’t have time to read it until the fall. And then I read it like a fiend.

Ready Player One is set in the not-so-distant future of 2040. Just thirty years ahead of us, it’s enough to make you think, “That’s not so far out… I could see the world moving in the direction Cline suggests” but far enough that you also think, “Oh my god, I’m going to be HOW OLD in 2040?!” Sigh. In this future, we’ve all moved from social networking and RPGs to the OASIS, which is what the playground of the internet is now called. But it’s more than just the internet – it’s an entirely immersive experience, where people suit up with virtual reality goggles and suits and can feel physical blows and see other people. The world has become so vastly overpopulated that people now stay at home (in tiny apartments or trailer parks, where the trailers are literally stacked a couple of dozen cars high) and go to work, attend school, and the amenities that we currently enjoy all exist only virtually, with human beings jacking in to an OASIS that consists of hundreds of planets and limitless possibility.

The OASIS was created by James Halliday, a Bill Gates type who is worth billions when he dies. Turns out he’s only a year older than I am, and a huge fan of 80s pop culture. And the moment he dies, a message goes out everywhere on the OASIS: that he’s left behind no heirs, and instead has hidden three easter eggs somewhere on the OASIS, and whoever finds all the easter eggs first will inherit his fortune, worth about $360 billion.

The key to finding them? You have to know everything a kid in the 1980s would know. EVERYTHING about it. You have to know how to play Pac-man to the last level; you have to be able to quote Monty Python’s Holy Grail (FINALLY… all my hours of learning it were worth something, I thought to myself, forgetting I wasn’t actually IN THE BOOK).

What follows is a race against time, seen mostly through the eyes of the guy who finds the first easter egg (he reveals himself as such on the first couple of pages, so I’m not spoiling anything here), and the novel is as fast-paced as the top level of Space Invaders. There were videogames in there that I wasn’t familiar with, but my husband, only two years older than I, knew all of them. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, and was begging my eyes and brain to GO FASTER because I needed to keep up. It…. is… AMAZING. I have recommended this book to countless people, and now I recommend it to you. Go here to get a copy from Amazon. If you spent way too many hours playing Centipede in the basement, and thought Alex P. Keaton was dorky and Duran Duran videos were the shit, this book is for you.

Favourite movies: The Descendants and Hugo
I saw both of these films over the Christmas break, and was astounded by both of them, for different reasons.

I’ve always been a fan of Alexander Payne films: About Schmidt and Election are two of my all-time favourite movies. I tend to think of him as tackling serious issues in our lives, but in a humorous way. The Descendants was no exception… well, for the serious part anyway. Don’t go to this movie if you’re looking for Payne’s trademark funny, because while it is there in dribs and drabs, it’s a really heartbreaking film. This is a movie about a man (George Clooney) whose wife has been in a boating accident and is now in a coma. Because he’s always been a hard worker who hasn’t been around much, he now has to collect up his broken family (a younger daughter who is sassy and hilarious, and an older daughter who’s in a special boarding school after various drug and alcohol problems) and bring them to see their mother, who probably won’t last much longer. And then… he discovers that his wife had been having an affair and was planning to leave him, and thus begins the mystery caper where he must find out WHO she was sleeping with, and more importantly to him, WHY. But the second part can only come from his wife, and she’s not exactly available right now. In addition to that madness, Clooney’s character is part of one of the founding families of the area (hence the title of the film) and they’re being forced to decide what to do with a large piece of land that’s been in the family trust for years, and Clooney is the decision-maker who must choose whether to sell the land or keep it, with his great-grandparents’ legacy hanging in the balance. What follows is an emotional rollercoaster, which isn’t as depressing as it sounds (it never is in Payne’s hands) but will still elicit tears from you by the end. And it’s all set against a backdrop of Hawaii, but not the Hawaii we’re used to seeing in Lost or Hawaii Five-0… this is the residential area of Hawaii, which you almost never see in film, and it’s gorgeous. I’ve never wanted to live in Hawaii as much as I did when I saw this movie. This is the movie with the best performances of the year.

The most magical film I saw this year is Hugo. I was talking to my friend Richard Crouse yesterday, who is a film critic here in Canada (for NewsTalk 1010 and Canada AM) and he and I both agreed that this film is extraordinary and had a trailer that really let it down. I went into this thinking it was a movie about a little boy who was hiding in a train station and had a mechanical toy named Hugo. In fact, it’s about a little boy named Hugo who runs the clocks in the Montparnasse train station in Paris, who has inherited an automaton that doesn’t work. When he steals from a man who runs the toy shop in the station, the man takes Hugo’s diary, which has sketchings of the automaton, and the look on the man’s face indicates he’s seeing a ghost from the past. Why is the man so shaken by the sketches? What did he just see and why did it upset him so much? THAT is what the rest of this movie is about.

Without giving away the rest of the film, this is a tribute to the earliest silent films, when moving pictures were magic in a way that today’s society can’t appreciate. There was a time when a moving picture of a train hurtling toward the viewer was enough to make people dive under their seats in fear that they were going to be run over. Now even the most spectacular special effects can make people yawn and ask for more. We need 3-D to make us happy, apparently, and we go to films not for the magical element of it, but for the storytelling and acting. Hugo takes you back to the films of one particular director, who was a pioneer when it came to ushering us to our seats and unveiling a world of wonder before our eyes. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous film (some of the cityscapes of Paris will take your breath away, and I have no words for how thrilled I was when the boy was running through the clocks – I wanted to go live there), and I want to go back and see it again. I sat in the theatre with my 7-year-old daughter, and both of us were as transfixed and caught up in the magic as if it were 1896 and we could see a train hurtling towards us on the screen for the very first time.

Biggest Movie Disappointment: The Muppets
Don’t yell at me. I was actually hesitant to write this, and didn’t say anything at the time, but I was really disappointed in The Muppets. I love them. I love everything about them. I was DYING to see this movie and went the day it opened with my kids. My four-year-old asked me when we could go about 30 minutes in. My seven-year-old liked it. But the premise is this: Everyone has forgotten about the Muppets, and they’ve split up and gone to live separate lives and have even forgotten each other. What?! That’s not what the Muppets are all about. Now, I know my view is not a popular one. A friend disagreed with me and said someone she knew was born in the mid-80s, and had no clue who the Muppets were, and that that’s probably pretty typical. I don’t know if that’s the case (what about Sesame Street – which features Kermit – wasn’t Tickle-Me-Elmo the omnipresent toy through the 90s? Or the Christmas specials, or Muppets Tonight, or the ongoing YouTube Muppet parodies… I mean, are these people living in caves if they don’t know who the Muppets are?) To me, that’s like saying, “Gee, I wonder what Mickey Mouse is up to these days? Haven’t heard from him in years…”

But more importantly than us remembering the Muppets are them remembering each other. Would Kermit really live in a decaying mansion and have Fozzie Bear living in an alleyway? Miss Piggy and Kermit were married, last time I checked, but that’s never stated outright in the film (instead they show a wedding photo ripped in half as the subtle reminder they were once Mr and Mrs Piggy) and she now lives in Paris in a Devil Wears Prada parody (complete with Emily Blunt as the receptionist) and hasn’t spoken to any of the others. Gonzo is too stuck up to speak to anyone anymore, Sweetums is back at the car dealership where he started in The Muppet Movie, etc. etc. It just, I don’t know… hurt to think my beloved Muppets would treat each other like that. (To which my movie critic friend said, “You, um… know they’re not real, right?”) ;)

I went out with a friend of mine who also disliked the movie immensely (and he loves the Muppets as much as I do) and I asked him if he thought Miss Piggy’s voice sounded weird, and he said it did, because Frank Oz didn’t do it. I said, “What? He DIED?!” He said no, he didn’t, but he read the script and said this wasn’t true to what the Muppets were all about, and refused to participate. So, I guess I’m not the only one who feels this way.

That said, there are definitely great things in the movie. Unfortunately, it’s when the Muppets decide to mount their own fundraising show, and we see rehashes of Muppet sketches, and they sing the songs from The Muppet Movie. Apparently the best things about this movie are retreads from what the Muppets already did best. BUT, while I would argue that no original song from this movie is as good as “The Rainbow Connection” (which they do here again, and which will still bring you to tears) my daughter was in her room the next day and as I walked by I heard her singing, “Am I a Muppet, or am I a man?” so clearly they had an impact on her. Who knows… maybe my parents thought The Muppet Movie was crap (actually, I know they didn’t, but let’s just be theoretical) and I just don’t see this the same way. But if you’ve seen their YouTube parodies of The Green Lantern and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trailers, or seen them do “Bohemian Rhapsody” or any number of songs, you realize they are capable of sheer brilliance. And this movie has very little of that. (Though, watch for a moment where a barbershop quartet sings “Smells Like Teen Spirit”… in that moment, I had a lot of hope for the future of The Muppets.)

Favourite Ongoing TV Show: Breaking Bad
You already know why I think this. In my review of Breaking Bad’s stunning season 4, I talked about how this show is one of those things where you feel like it’s YOUR show, that it’s talking directly to you. It has the best ensemble cast on television right now, and I think in every episode (or at least every other episode), there’s a scene that is so sublime you realize you were holding your breath throughout. The suspense is painful at times, the actions the characters take are never predictable, and the series is basically the journey of one man’s descent into the Dark Side, and the people around him who are forced to either follow him down, or get left behind. Season 5 is going to be 16 episodes (jury’s still out on whether it’ll be in one long go or split into two) and I cannot wait.

Favourite New Show: Homeland
Sorry to disappoint anyone who thought it might be Once Upon a Time. I love OUAT but Homeland is that special kind of show that, like Breaking Bad, has you glued to your seat, wondering what the writers could possibly throw at you this week. This is a show about a CIA agent, Carrie (Claire Danes), who has some mental health issues – you see her popping pills throughout the season – and who has never forgiven herself for missing something before 9/11 and allowing those events to transpire. An American POW in Iraq, Brody (Damien Lewis from Life), has just been discovered alive after 8 years, and he’s coming home. Carrie is convinced he has been turned and will be a traitor to the country, despite the protestations of her mentor and protector, Saul (Mandy Patinkin). Danes is phenomenal. NO ONE has given a performance like her this year, not Bryan Cranston, not anyone. They need to invent a new award just for her and give it to her. She is mesmerizing in every frame, and in the last two episodes she will actually make you forget about every scene she’d done beforehand. Damien Lewis is the perfect mouse to her cat (or is it the other way around?) and the way they play off each other in every scene will have you on the edge of your seat.

Is Brody a traitor? Is Carrie crazy? Is Saul so used to Carrie’s erratic behavior that he’s missing obvious things? I don’t want to say too much because I want you to check out this show and be as amazed and surprised as I was in every scene, but I will say that what eventually unfolds made me shocked that a show like this would ever be okayed for American television. Homeland is astounding, and if you’re not watching it, find a way to do so. It won’t disappoint.

Least-Favourite Television Event of the Year: The finale of The Killing
Oh COME ON. Seriously? Bah. They promised that we’d find out who the killer was at the end of the season, then backpedalled when they imagined they could pull in more viewers to S2 if they didn’t reveal it. You know what? I loved this show until you did that. Sure, it had its issues (I hate a show that is so covered in red herrings and wrong pathways in a single season that you feel like you were constantly so misled the main plot no longer interests you) but I was going to follow through. Now you can have S2 without me. I’m outta here.

Biggest TV Disappointment: Dexter
I haven’t even finished the most recent season, but I’m just SO bored with this season of Dexter, and that’s coming from someone who loved this show SO MUCH I was actually involved in a bid a couple of years ago to do the show’s official book. Thank god they ran out of steam before going ahead with it, because I’d hate to have to do it now. There’s an episode where Dexter drives around with his brother and dad in the car that was abysmal. Just terrible. And knowing the behind-the-scenes drama (that Jennifer Carpenter and Michael C. Hall have split because he was allegedly unfaithful, leading to such hostility that most of their scenes are filmed apart or over a phone) has become really distracting. The storyline is lame, Colin Hanks is terrible (seriously, the guy was really good on Roswell but if I were his dad, I’d be asking him to use another surname), and James Edward Olmos is the most annoying villain yet. It’s just gory for gory’s sake, and I’m tired of it.

Biggest TV Pleasant Surprise: Boardwalk Empire
I really enjoyed S1 of Boardwalk Empire but season 2 is jaw-droppingly good. If not disturbing (who can watch a scene where a mother tells her son that when he was a baby and she’d change his diaper she would “kiss his winkie” and not be haunted by that line for the rest of the season?!) But the various storylines were great and characters that were interesting in the first season are astonishing now. Unfortunately, stupid EW spoiled me for the huge surprise in the S2 finale only a week after it had actually happened, and since I watched all of S2 over the holiday, I knew what was coming right from the beginning. But it actually created more suspense for me, and I noticed things I might not have noticed just by waiting for this monumental event to happen.

Biggest TV Shock EVER: Game of Thrones
You know the scene I mean. You remember how I reacted. Holy. Crap. I still haven’t recovered from that. Here’s hoping George RR Martin has more wicked surprises up his sleeve.

Favourite TV Comic Episode: “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” on Community
I might be wrong; it’s possible this was from last year, but I saw it this year. This is HYSTERICALLY funny, especially in the open when a voiceover sets up every character as if they’re about to go into an epic battle. The game play had me in stitches from beginning to end.

Things I’m Most Looking Forward to in 2012:
• The Hunger Games movie
• The return of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad
• Alcatraz (starts January 16… set those PVRs!)
• The Joss Whedon Triple Threat: Avengers, Cabin in the Woods, and Much Ado About Nothing
• The Slayage conference in Vancouver (I hope some of the Rewatchers join us!)
• The Dark Knight Rises

OK, your turn. What are your favourite things from 2011?

Angel S5: Eps 1, 2, 3

2012-01-03T20:00:00.000-05:00

5.1 Conviction
5.2 Just Rewards
5.3 Unleashed

Well, I really intended to write a few words for this first of the Angel S5 episodes, even though I said I'd basically just be posting these to be forums. But it's been a crazy week with holidays and all, and I've read been spending most spare moments reading the Twilight series (I'm just finishing Breaking Dawn right now, and I really want someone to put a stake in me). It's research. No, really it is. I'm going to be giving a paper in Nebraska at the end of January on Twilight, and I'm reading all the books so I really know what I'm talking about. It hasn't been all bad. I mean, I have had the joy of seeing Bella in extreme pain on a few occasions, so that was fun.

But back to Angel. He and the Angel Investigations team is... working for Wolfram & Hart? Wait, they RUN Wolfram & Hart?

Don't worry, it'll make sense soon. ;) Until then, these are a fun group of episodes. I especially love the very opening of "Conviction" when we see a repeat of the Angel premiere, with Angel saving a girl from the alleyway. But... it's a little different this time. He's not quite so alone, as much as he wants to be.

I know there was something else I was going to mention... blonde, vampire with a soul or something... but it escapes me. So I'll let you guys discuss it. ;)

Spoiler Forum: Angel S5, Eps 1, 2, 3

2012-01-03T19:59:00.000-05:00

And just in case anyone wants to discuss this week's Angel eps in relation to the end of S5 or the comics, here is the spoiler forum.

The Great Buffy Rewatch Archive

2011-12-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: With the Buffy Rewatch over, I wanted to pull this archive post (which originally appeared in March) up to the top, for anyone who wanted a quick reference guide of where to find what episode, and also for anyone who is now finished and wanted to go back to see the spoiler posts. Quick word of caution: there's some Angel S5 talk in there, but it's mostly near the end.

At the behest of many people jumping in partway (and wanting to quickly catch up), here's your one-stop clickthrough guide to the Buffy Rewatch so far. I'll update this weekly so you can go back to any of the previous entries you may have missed. For first-time watchers, this will be a handy guide if you'd like to go back to the beginning when you're done and check out some of the spoilery comments on the other boards (or check out what I've been hiding under the invisible ink!).

For each week I'll provide the link to both the main post and the spoiler post (in some weeks, there's a large post on the spoiler board). An asterisk (*) indicates the names of the guest hosts for that week.

Week 1 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 1 Spoiler Post
1.1 Welcome to the Hellmouth
1.2 The Harvest
1.3 The Witch
*Nikki

Week 2 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 2 Spoiler Post
1.4 Teacher’s Pet
1.5 Never Kill a Boy on the First Date
1.6 The Pack
*David Lavery

Week 3 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 3 Spoiler Post
1.7 Angel
1.8 I Robot, You Jane
1.9 The Puppet Show
*Matthew Pateman

Week 4 Non-Spoiler Post, Part 1
Week 4 Non-Spoiler Post, Part 2
Week 4 Spoiler Post
1.10 Nightmares
1.11 Out of Mind, Out of Sight
1.12 Prophecy Girl
*David Kociemba, Jennifer Stuller

Week 5 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 5 Spoiler Post
2.1 When She Was Bad
2.2 Some Assembly Required
2.3 School Hard
*Becca Wilcott

Week 6 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 6 Spoiler Post
2.4 Inca Mummy Girl
2.5 Reptile Boy
2.6 Halloween
*Chris Lockett

Week 7 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 7 Spoiler Post
2.7 Lie to Me
2.8 The Dark Age
*Cynthea Masson

Week 8 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 8 Spoiler Post
2.9 What’s My Line? Part One
2.10 What’s My Line? Part Two
2.11 Ted
*Evan Munday

Week 9 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 9 Spoiler Post
2.12 Bad Eggs
2.13 Surprise
2.14 Innocence
*Tanya Cochran, Stacey Abbott

Week 10 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 10 Spoiler Post
2.15 Phases
2.16 Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
2.17 Passion
*David Kociemba, Rhonda Wilcox, Janet Halfyard

Week 11 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 11 Spoiler Post
2.18 Killed By Death
2.19 I Only Have Eyes for You
2.20 Go Fish
*Ian Klein

Week 12 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 12 Spoiler Post
2.21 Becoming, Part One
2.22 Becoming, Part Two
*Nikki, Janet Halfyard

Week 13 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 13 Spoiler Post
3.1 Anne
3.2 Dead Man’s Party
3.3 Faith, Hope and Trick
*Cynthia Burkhead

Week 14 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 14 Spoiler Post
3.4 Beauty and the Beasts
3.5 Homecoming
3.6 Band Candy
*Jennifer Knoch

Week 15 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 15 Spoiler Post
3.7 Revelations
3.8 Lover’s Walk
3.9 The Wish
*Suzie Gardner, Stacey Abbott

Week 16 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 16 Spoiler Post
3.10 Amends
3.11 Gingerbread
3.12 Helpless
*Rob Wiersema, Janet Halfyard

Week 17 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 17 Spoiler Post
3.13 The Zeppo
3.14 Bad Girls
3.15 Consequences
*Ensley Guffey, Michael Holland

Week 18 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 18 Spoiler Post
3.16 Doppelgängland
3.17 Enemies
3.18 Earshot
*Suzie Gardner, Tanya Cochran

Week 19 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 19 Spoiler Post
3.19 Choices
3.20 The Prom
*Kristen Romanelli

Week 20 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 20 Spoiler Post
3.21 Graduation Day, Part One
3.22 Graduation Day, Part Two
*Jennifer Stuller, Janet Halfyard

Week 21 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 21 Spoiler Post
4.1 The Freshman
4.2 Living Conditions
4.3 The Harsh Light of Day
*Nikki

Week 22 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 22 Spoiler Post
4.4 Fear, Itself
4.5 Beer Bad
4.6 Wild at Heart
*Janet Halfyard
*Beer Bad Battle: David Lavery, Crissy Calhoun, Stacey May Fowles, Matthew Pateman, Evan Munday, Elizabeth Rambo, Cynthea Masson, Jennifer K. Stuller, Ensley Guffey, Dale Koontz, Kristen Romanelli, Ian Klein

Week 23 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 23 Spoiler Post
4.7 The Initiative
4.8 Pangs
4.9 Something Blue
*Michael Holland

Week 24 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 24 Spoiler Post
4.10 Hush
4.11 Doomed
4.12 A New Man
*Evan Munday

Week 25 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 25 Spoiler Post
4.13 The I in Team
4.14 Goodbye Iowa
4.15 This Year’s Girl
*Elizabeth Rambo, Lorna Jowett

Week 26 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 26 Spoiler Post
4.16 Who Are You?
4.17 Superstar
4.18 Where the Wild Things Are
*David Kociemba, Cynthea Masson, Tanya Cochran

Week 27 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 27 Spoiler Post
4.19 New Moon Rising
4.20 The Yoko Factor
4.21 Primeval
*Christopher Lockett

Week 28 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 28 Spoiler Post
4.22 Restless
*Matthew Pateman

Week 29 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 29 Spoiler Post
5.1 Buffy vs. Dracula
5.2 Real Me
5.3 The Replacement
*Cynthea Masson, Stacey Abbott

Week 30 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 30 Spoiler Post
5.4 Out of My Mind
5.5 No Place Like Home
5.6 Family
*Tanya Cochran

Week 31 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 31 Spoiler Post
5.7 Fool for Love
5.8 Shadow
5.9 Listening to Fear
*Rhonda Wilcox

Week 32 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 32 Spoiler Post
5.10 Into the Woods
5.11 Triangle
5.12 Checkpoint
*Bryan Curry, Lorna Jowett

Week 33 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 33 Spoiler Post
5.13 Blood Ties
5.14 Crush
5.15 I Was Made to Love You
*Kristen Romanelli, Tanya Cochran

Week 34 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 34 Spoiler Post
5.16 The Body
*Ensley Guffey and Dale Koontz-Guffey, Suzanne Kingshott

Week 35 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 35 Spoiler Post
5.17 Forever
5.18 Intervention
5.19 Tough Love
*Nikki Stafford and Nikki Fuller

Week 36 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 36 Spoiler Post
5.20 Spiral
5.21 The Weight of the World
5.22 The Gift
*Rob Wiersema, Tanya Cochran

Week 37 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 37 Spoiler Post
6.1 Bargaining, Part One
6.2 Bargaining, Part Two
6.3 After Life
*Elizabeth Rambo

Week 38 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 38 Spoiler Post
6.4 Flooded
6.5 Life Serial
6.6 All the Way
*Graham F. Scott

Week 39 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 39 Spoiler Post
6.7 Once More, With Feeling
*Janet Halfyard (analysis)
*Group singalong!:
Going Through the Motions (Nikki Stafford)
I’ve Got a Theory (Nikki Stafford’s family)
They Got the Mustard Out (Matthew Pateman)
I’ll Never Tell (Ensley Guffey and Dale Koontz-Guffey)
Parking Ticket (Rhonda Wilcox)
Rest in Peace (Cynthea Masson et al)
What You Feel (Nikki Stafford)
Standing in the Way (Robert Thompson)
Walk Through the Fire (Tony Burgess)
Life’s a Show (Nikki Stafford)
Where Do We Go From Here (Nikki Stafford’s action figures)

Week 40 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 40 Spoiler Post
6.8 Tabula Rasa
6.9 Smashed
6.10 Wrecked
*Dale Koontz-Guffey

Week 41 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 41 Spoiler Post
6.11 Gone
6.12 Doublemeat Palace
6.13 Dead Things
*Stacey May Fowles

Week 42 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 42 Spoiler Post
6.14 Older and Far Away
6.15 As You Were
6.16 Hell’s Bells
*Graham F. Scott, Lorna Jowett

Week 43 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 43 Spoiler Post
6.17 Normal Again
6.18 Entropy
6.19 Seeing Red
*Alyson Buckman, Cynthea Masson

Week 44 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 44 Spoiler Post
6.20 Villains
6.21 Two to Go
6.22 Grave
*Nikki and Robert Thompson

Week 45 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 45 Spoiler Post
7.1 Lessons
7.2 Beneath You
7.3 Same Time, Same Place
*Elizabeth Rambo

Week 46 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 46 Spoiler Post
7.4 Help
7.5 Selfless
7.6 Him
*Nikki Stafford

Week 47 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 47 Spoiler Post
7.7 Conversations with Dead People
7.8 Sleeper
7.9 Never Leave Me
*Crissy Calhoun

Week 48 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 48 Spoiler Post
7.10 Bring on the Night
7.11 Showtime
7.12 Potential
*Jennifer Stuller

Week 49 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 49 Spoiler Post
7.13 The Killer in Me
7.14 First Date
7.15 Get It Done
*Elizabeth Rambo

Week 50 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 50 Spoiler Post
7.16 Storyteller
7.17 Lies My Parents Told Me
7.18 Dirty Girls
*David Lavery, Lorna Jowett

Week 51 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 51 Spoiler Post
7.19 Empty Places
7.20 Touched
7.21 End of Days
*Cynthea Masson

Week 52 Non-Spoiler Post
Week 52 Spoiler Post
7.22 Chosen
*Nikki Stafford

Great Buffy Rewatch: ChristinaB

2011-12-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

And for our final post of the night, I saved this wonderful, heartfelt post from the last of our commenters who I'm pulling up on stage. ChristinaB only recently discovered Buffy and watched the series for the first time right before the rewatch began, so she followed along as someone who'd seen the show already, but was still new to Buffy fandom. We'd chatted a lot back and forth on Facebook, and then I finally met her face-to-face this past August at Fan Expo. I was at a booth, and suddenly I saw a flash of a Tom Baker multi-coloured wool scarf, and this woman appeared in front of me, dumped a bunch of knitted Daleks onto the table in front of me and said, "Your choice!" and I looked at her, recognized her instantly and said, "Christina!!" It was wonderful to put a voice to the face and name that I knew so well.

A couple of weeks ago she left a comment on one of my posts (where I was talking about extending the Buffy Rewatch into Angel S5) and it surprised and touched many of us, where she mentioned she'd been wary of fandom because of dealing with anxiety, but that through this Rewatch and the generosity of the people here, she's come out of her shell.

Well, not only has she come out of her shell by typing up her comments, but here she is in VIDEO (!) with an amazing poem she wrote. As I said to her, I've seen people try to sum up BtVS in 10 minutes or less, but I've never seen anyone actually accomplish it as well as she has. I hope you enjoy her summary as much as I did. Thank you, Christina!

And thank you to all of you. Here endeth the Rewatch.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Kristen Romanelli

2011-12-28T21:00:00.001-05:00

A Haiku for Anya

Vengeance, money, love...

She falls swiftly in battle,

Centuries crumbled.

An abrupt poem for an abrupt death of someone who spoke... abruptly. ;)

Next up: The final post of the rewatch!

Great Buffy Rewatch: Lorna Jowett

2011-12-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

This seriously made me laugh out loud (and I also had to look up the word "stotious").

MacChosen

Lorna Jowett

One thing I was always kind of glad about was that they never tried to do a Scot in Buffy. So when I lacked inspiration for the final Buffy Rewatch I thought of this…

If Giles were Scottish.
BUFFY: You don’t think it’s a good idea?
FAITH: It’s pretty radical, B.
GILES: Better no’ mess wi’ us, by the way - it’s pure dead brilliant!

If Xander were Scottish.
XANDER: Pairty n ma ee-socket n youse ur a’ invitit.

If Buffy were Scottish.
DAWN: Yeah, Buffy. What are we going to do now?
Buffy looks off into the future, a smile spreading across her face.
BUFFY: Get stotious.

Here’s tae us, Buffy fans, wha’s like us? Damn few, an’ they’re a’ deid!

Great Buffy Rewatch: Dale Koontz

2011-12-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

WHY BUFFY MATTERS

(with apologies to Rhonda Wilcox for nicking the title of her book!)

It’s not going too far to say that Buffy changed my life. Really, it did – and no one was more surprised at that development than I was. Through a show that I at first resisted watching due to the silly title and ridiculous premise (I was a heathen back then), entire worlds have opened up to me. I’ve written blog posts, articles, chapters, and a book devoted to the creations of Joss Whedon and that all started with Buffy. I’ve talked about Whedon’s work in locations ranging from map-dot-small university towns to the metropolis of Istanbul. I’ve signed books and asked for autographs. I’ve met people whose intellect, kindness, and creativity could power the space station if you could figure out a way to harness it. Moreover, I met my husband through Buffy and for that alone, I should send Whedon a fruit basket.

In addition, through Buffy I’ve learned a few things. Among the lessons:

• Darkness can be fought, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll win. That’s why you fight in the first place.
• Family matters – and that family extends far beyond the one we’re born into.
• Courage is found on battlefields, but it can also be found in high school hallways.
• Libraries matter.
• We’re better off not knowing what other people think.
• Love is stronger than death.
• Souls are pesky things, but life without one isn’t really life.
• Humans can be worse than demons and better than angels.
• Everyone – always – is dealing with their own pain and that’s why sometimes they don’t notice yours.
• Sometimes, no matter how hard you try and how skilled you are, you lose.
• And sometimes, despite the odds and the prophecies, you win.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Nikki Fuller

2011-12-28T18:00:00.001-05:00

An Ode to Anya

Whenever I think of “Chosen,” I see that final smile on Buffy’s face. It makes me smile. However, we die-hards know it doesn’t end there. I won’t spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t cracked open the comics yet, but the truth is we didn’t really have to say goodbye to our beloved Slayer, Giles, or the core Scoobies. We didn’t even have to say goodbye to Andrew. There’s only one character we really had to say goodbye to, and because there was no time to grieve for her in the final battle, I wanted to write about Anya. I think she was one of the strongest characters in the series, and she was amazingly well-written. While it may have seemed at first that she was a plug-in for killer one-liners after Cordy went to work for Angel Investigations, Anya had more depth than even Joss had imagined when he originally created her for a stand-alone episode. She bravely portrayed some key human struggles we all face from time to time: mortality and insecurity. She tapped into the very heart of the human condition and was not afraid to ask questions and express what was on her mind. She was bold, she was beautiful, and she was brave. Xander was proud of her in the end, and so are we. May you never look at bunnies in the same way!

Great Buffy Rewatch: David Kociemba

2011-12-28T17:00:00.000-05:00

Understanding How “Chosen” Went Right When So Many Series Finales Go Horribly Wrong

David Kociemba, Emerson College

Jason Mittell’s influential article, “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television,” suggests that the past two decades of television has seen a new approach arise: narrative complexity. This approach spans network hits (ranging from Seinfeld to LOST to West Wing to The X-Files), premium cable breakouts (The Wire, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Battlestar: Galactica, Mad Men), and cult hits (Veronica Mars, Arrested Development, Firefly, Angel, and, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) This shift was sparked by shrinking audience sizes sparking an appreciation for boutique audiences, DVD and download sales providing an economic incentive for Most Repeatable Programming, a talent influx of writers fleeing the empty-headed blockbuster-dominated film industry of the last 30 years, and the internet permitting audiences’ to work together to document and critique the narrative’s evolution, convolution, and involution. The spectacle that stuns the audience in TV is increasingly the narrative, as more narrative lines are more intricately woven together than the classical A-B storyline structure. A complex narrative series’ range of genres, rebellion against episodic conventionality, and evolving and deep ‘verse demands more out of its audience, who must not only be invested emotionally but analytically to fully understand the program.

So why do so many finales to these shows stink? Is there something about this narrative form that makes it more difficult to end these complex shows than, say, M*A*S*H? And does “Chosen” stick the dismount where others failed?

The classic example of a series being unable to rise to the narrative challenge posed by the long-form series is Battlestar: Galactica, which never had a plan, according to series re-creator Ronald D. Moore. The last half season provided a variety of disappointing dénouements, culminating in a finale that managed to combine moral ickiness, an incredibly underwhelming resolution to a central prophecy, wholesale betrayal of social psychology, and a late pair of smugly-delivered nonsensical revelations. Other examples of audience betrayal finales include Roseanne and St. Elsewhere.

Networks not understanding how narrative complexity works is another cause. The X-Files and Babylon 5 got unexpected extra seasons, which meant either stretching out mythology long past its expiration date or coming up with a season-long coda. Some aren’t given the chance to develop an audience, such as Firefly, My So-Called Life, and Wonderfalls. If an excellent finale isn’t aired, does it make a sound? Dollhouse clearly went into hyper-drive to cram everything in its last season, somewhat successfully albeit haunted by the what-if scenario of what the show could have been on a better network.

Sometimes, it’s the loss of a key artist. The only thing the last half-season of Twin Peaks did right was its surreal finale after network meddling caused David Lynch to petulantly abandon the show until the last episode. (That last line still haunts me.) The loss of Larry David’s guiding pathology doomed Seinfeld to repudiate everything we loved about its characters in its prosecution of them for violating Good Samaritan laws.

But schadenfreude is bad for the soul. Let’s think about how to successfully end a show built on narrative complexity.

LOST’s solution was to make one of the most heavily-promoted clip shows of all time. This was not an uncontroversial choice, as what surrounded the clips was not well received. Hopefully future series will learn not to have the protagonists blindly follow a god-like jerk who ruins the lives of children and lets a woman get run over by a car. The fact that its underwhelming final fight consists of a 37-year old man punching a 48 year-old man (as played by a 59 year-old actor) means that the flashbacks take center stage. Surprisingly, the clip show stirred viewer emotion so well that the genre’s appeal to memory might be a viable model for future TV series dabbling in narrative complexity. Think of LOST as the shipper’s solution to the problem of narrative complexity: an audience sobbing over Sun-Jin, Sawyer-Juliet, and Jack-Vincent will forgive a lot.

Another solution is insanity. That’s really the only way to describe the finale of The Prisoner (and several of its other episodes too.) Steeped in symbolism and theatricality, the finale crams more surrealism into one hour than had ever been aired on the networks. You thought LOST fans wanted answers? Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof didn’t need to leave the USA to escape irked viewers, unlike Patrick McGoohan after The Prisoner aired in the UK. McGoohan’s bravery in creating such a difficult, complex finale at a time before VCRs throws the gauntlet down to today’s producers and audiences. Could this be the path taken by Community? Or Mad Men, if it lasts until LSD becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist? If the show’s based on complex plotting, characterization, visuals, and symbolism, perhaps the finale should be the most difficult one of all.

Which brings us back to good, old Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Honestly, I was just hoping for a dignified death when I watched the seventh season finale in broadcast, because its acting and writing had been so uniformly bad. (Seriously, how do you get a bad performance out of Nathan Fillion?! “Conversations with Dead People” and “Storyteller” are really the only two good episodes, and it’s not a coincidence that they both depend on meta-narrative rather than originality for their excellence.)

Yet, Mutant Enemy came up with a stunning series finale that provides a great model for how to end a complex narrative. There’s a final battle that’s epic in scale and while still having a small enough scope for us to mourn the soldiers lost. There’s two layers of trickery complicating the war against the First Evil: Willow evens the odds, tucked away from the melee, and The Senior Partners from Another Network provide Spike with a handy amulet because they’re working on their own apocalypse, thank you very much. There’s something nice about the script doctor of Speed having the great escape portion of the final fight consist of the protagonist literally leaping onto the last bus out of town. When it comes to romance, both warring parties in the biggest shipping debate in the series have scenes to warm their hearts, while the writers carefully refuse to ruin the fun with closure. They fill a major hole in the Buffyverse, just a few episodes after finally revealing the origin story of the Slayer line. Willow’s spell shows there’s genuine divinity in the Buffyverse, as it references the Wiccan drawing down ritual that channels divinity directly into the supplicant. That’s a pretty nifty payoff after they got so much wrong about the religion. Best of all, the protagonists change the world rather than saving the status quo, which every blockbuster would tell you is sacrosanct. Who doesn’t cry at the montage of women and girls empowered? And that final shot that goes straight into the TV canon of image-making: that enigmatic expression on Gellar’s face, which suggests everything from “It is finished” to “We are not alone.”

What “Chosen” shows future creators is that a series ends best that doesn’t end at all. Characters grow and the world evolves even as the show dies, which means that it never really does.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Steve Halfyard

2011-12-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

The wonderful Steve/Janet Halfyard is back to talk about the music of Buffy in "Chosen," after I asked her if she wanted to comment on that beautiful music that played when Buffy stood up after we thought she was done for.

I have been a very bad Rewatch contributor since the start of the summer (life caught up, alas) but the lovely Nikki is very forgiving! She sent me a message and wondered if I had any comments about the music we hear in the final fight scene in "Chosen". "I was rewatching it last week” she said, “and the scene where Buffy stands up after we think she's dying is amazing, and the music is unlike anything else I've heard on Buffy". Hmm, thought I. Unlikely to be new...if it's cropped up before, where would it be? And there was one really obvious place to look for it and that is the fight with the ubervamp at the end of "Showtime". Go have a listen sometime: after she has killed the ubervamp, as Buffy makes her speech to the Potentials, there is a slow theme low in the cellos, the first five notes of which are hopefully shown below if Nikki has worked her HTML magic.

Cut to "Chosen": as we flashback to Buffy telling the Potentials her plan to make them all Slayers, the same theme comes back, develops, transforms and continues in the underscore as we flashforward again and the final battle begins. We loose it when it looks like Buffy is going to die; but when she gets up and resumes the fight there is it again, gloriously triumphant. The reason it sounds new at this point is because of some fantastically film-music-ish orchestration, a grand old ultra-emotive trick in creating ideas of heroic powerwhere you have a steady, controlled melodic line against a furiously energetic, higher pitched accompaniment (Danny Elfman does it all the time in Batman, but he's not the only one): it juxtaposes something controlled and powerful against something that's making your heart race at the same time, and in this case the wonderfully Riverdancey feel of the accompaniment turns it into something joyful as well as powerful: we know they are going to win now. It only stops when Spike goes nuclear (oh, how I wept when I thought he was dead!) but we get the theme back (slower now, battle over) at the end when they get off the bus and look at the crater. Robert Duncan, scorer or the final series only, loves his film music borrowings: he uses lots of ideas and gestures from The Matrix and Lord of the Rings (well, Turok-han does rather obviously rhyme with Uruk-hai, if you see what I mean), and he poaches a motif from Gladiator for the Buffy/Spike relationship in the last few episodes, but that final battle orchestration of the Slayer Power theme is a little moment of musical genius, a final big theme to unite all the Slayers - note the way the camera does not focus on Buffy in the Riverdance bit, but cuts from one Slayer in action to the next - at the series' close.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Matthew Pateman

2011-12-28T15:00:00.003-05:00

Great Buffy Rewatch: Colleen aka redeem

2011-12-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

Another of the commenters who was loyal all the way through is Colleen aka redeem, who I first met probably over 10 years ago now as part of Buffy fandom, when we were in the same group, OBAVA (Ontario Buffy/Angel Viewers Association). Since then we see each other a couple of times a year and she's always delightful, as were her posts and comments throughout the year. I asked if she'd like to contribute something, and she said yes: a bit of fanfic!

After discovering Buffy I joined some message boards, but found I was having trouble expressing what I tried to say about the show. I found that if I put the points I wanted to make in the form of fiction, people seemed more receptive to what I was saying. While not new to fan fiction, Buffy inspired me to a whole new level of involvement and in one year I wrote a fic, or chapter of a fic, every day. Later in the series I discovered drabbles, and while they have a few different definitions, I prefer the one that states a drabble is a one hundred word story, no more, no less.

Though fan fiction I made some very close friendships, both with other writers and readers. In 2004 I was proud to be a committee member for the first Whedonverse fan fiction convention, Writercon, held in Las Vegas.

Nikki asked me to write a little something about the finale and I did it my favourite way, in the form of a drabble.

If anyone would like to read any of my other fan fiction, you can find it under redeem147 here.

Thank you for the rewatch Nikki. It's been a truly wonderful experience.

Colleen, waiting to see what Joss gives us next.

She almost couldn't believe it was over. Buffy knew things could have been so much worse. Her sister was safe. Her best friends, not only unscathed, but joking. Relieved. Happy. She had transportation and a bus full of newly-minted Slayers to carry the load. She looked out over the crater that had once been her home. The town had emptied before the devastation so very few lives were lost. But she thought about the sacrifices. So many young women. Amanda. Friends. Anya. More than friends. “Spike.” Yes, she thought, we can rest now. We can rest. And she smiled.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Rhonda Wilcox

2011-12-28T13:00:00.000-05:00

When I threw out the idea for people to make a video or write an essay or a poem or even a haiku, the wonderful Rhonda Wilcox took me up on that last one. ;)

Like a Sneeze

By Rhonda Wilcox

By the crater a

Smile in the sun; our bus rides

With the Chosen ones.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Evan Munday

2011-12-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

My only response to the end of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer is a short and ridiculous one: to one day hope they would make a Grosse Pointe Blank type movie, where Buffy Summers returns to Sunnydale High for a ten-year high school reunion. Though she's just there to meet up with Xander Harris again, she ends up having to slay a bunch of vampires and demons. And the reunion movie/episode would replace the songs of The English Beat and Violent Femmes with K's Choice, Rasputina and Nerfherder. As in this poster.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Elizabeth Rambo

2011-12-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

Buffy Flashback

Since 2001 I’ve been co-moderator of a YahooGroup that started out discussing Buffy and Angel. With the ending of Buffy season 7, May 2003 saw the highest number of postings ever on that list. With minor editing for clarity, this is what I wrote the day after “Chosen” aired at SunnydaleU.

Wednesday May 21, 2003:
I'm posting this before I even try to read the 104 postings since last night, most of which seem to be replies to "Hated it, hated it, hated it." [People hated that Buffy & Spike didn’t end up happily ever after somehow, or that Anya died, or that Andrew survived, or…many, many things.]

I can just imagine. As for me, I was very pleased with "Chosen." Bittersweet that it's all ending, of course, but I came to the final episode with very few expectations, and I wasn't disappointed, mostly. I'd invited three of my friends--Gina & Donna, fellow English profs., and Donna's husband Peter, and Jacki, a history prof., to watch with me. We had dinner together before and talked about how we discovered the series, favorite characters, etc. They all started watching within the past two years, more or less by chance & got sucked in (the "whole big sucking thing" Buffy the Vampire Slayer effect that some of us are familiar with). It helped a lot to have friends to laugh with, sigh, discuss the fine points during the commercials. No one actually cried. They commented that the writing seemed snappier than almost any other episode this season--before I pointed out that Joss Whedon had written it.

Peter claimed to like Spike best, but Donna insisted that he really has a crush on Willow. Jacki, it turned out, was most distressed by Spike's disintegration. We're all sure he'll be returned to this dimension somehow, though--perhaps resurrected by Angel Investigations using info provided by Wolfram & Hart (similar to the spell used to bring back Darla, but hopefully not so dark), sent back as a reward by the Powers That Be, or by the power of the amulet--or by some other arcane method dreamed up by Whedon. It seemed to me a good ending, one he chose for himself, and I'm not sure I believe him when he says Buffy doesn't love him--he may be saying that to get her out. Telling the truth with lies, lying with the truth has been an interesting thread throughout this season.

In fact, almost everything the First Evil says is, in some way, a lie.

Other things I really liked about "Chosen":

Angel's petulance about Spike's soul and Buffy's involvement with Spike--"going all Dawson"--"What are you? Twelve?" She is so over him. They'll always have Paris, but she's her own woman. Yay!

Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz made the dorky cookie-dough metaphor work. Very typical of season 1-2 BtVS style--deep thought, goofy words.

Angel disappearing into the night with exactly the same turn as in “Graduation Day” 2. "I'm not getting any older" was nice touch.

Anya stroking Xander's hair in the kitchen--she so loves him--reinforcing my contention that their kitchen floor passion was not meaningless.

Buffy reaching out to Spike, reiterating his reaching out to her from 7.1"Lessons" and 7.20 "Touched"

Giles doesn't take off his glasses when Willow refers to her girlfriend's pierced tongue--evidently he's grown up a bit too.

Wood--"That's bleak" echoing Sweet, "That's gloomy." Taking Faith down a peg--just what she needs to keep her interested. Again--their encounter was not meaningless.

Loved Andrew, Giles, Xander, and Amanda playing D&D. Giles seemed to speak for Joss?--"I used to be a highly respected Watcher. Now I'm a wounded dwarf with the mystical strength of a doily." [Whedon made many comments in interviews that season about being tired. He was running three shows and wearing himself out.]

[Robin Wood’s ] "Welcome to Sunnydale High"--back to the beginning with a vengeance, both back to 7.1, and back to 1.1--very, very nice.

Absolutely beautiful: Scoobies "So, what do you want to do tomorrow?" discussion, leading up to Giles "The earth is definitely doomed" echoing the conclusion of 1.2 "The Harvest", Giles "The earth is doomed."

My one quibble: when the girls open the seal, how do they know ubervamps won't start popping right up immediately? If this was explained, I missed it both times I watched. I'm willing to let it pass, however.

Spike's hand flames--as in 3.8 "Lover's Walk"--and at last Buffy touches the fire and it doesn't freeze her. As I said above, I'm not sure that Spike doesn't believe her when she tells him she loves him. He wants her out of there. There are more ways than one to love someone.

Andrew tells his best story, one that's not quite all about him, about Anya--"She was incredible. She died saving my life." Xander's "That's my girl." is the important part of his response, not "Always doing the stupid thing." What does he mean, not what does he say? It's Xander--and although Xander's been known to make the heartfelt speech, it's just as typical for him to say something dumb because his real feelings are impossible to express. What was stupid? It's stupid that Anya's not alive, that's all. Compare Anya's speech about Joyce's death in "The Body."

And finally, one last echo from “Once More with Feeling,” "Where do we go from here?"

When I turned on FX this morning [FX ran daily Buffy reruns for several years] and found it was "Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest"--interrupting what had been season 4--I almost did cry. All that innocence. Then I picked up what might be one more echo from 7.22--Spike's "weird dream" in which he's "Drowning in footwear!"--possibly a little wave to Cordelia's greeting to Buffy: "I would kill to live in LA--that close to that many shoes!" Could this be prophetic? [It had already been announced that James Marsters would join the cast of Angel season 5.]

Great Buffy Rewatch: Marebabe

2011-12-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

I wanted to include some voices from the commentators -- those readers who followed the Great Buffy Rewatch from beginning to end. One of my favourites was Marebabe, who was actually watching the series for the first time all the way through with us, and through whose eyes I was able to see many things for the first time again. Every week she gave us great posts (she was usually the first one up!) and so I asked if she might be interested in writing something for us. And happily, she was! Take it away, Marebabe!

My First Time
By Mary everything-reminds-me-of-something-else Evans

Thank you, Nikki, esteemed Buffy scholars, fellow n00bs, loyal minions of the Nikkiverse, and honored lurkers. *adjusting glasses, glancing at notes*

Back in November, I did sort of a marathon, zooming through the last dozen-or-so episodes of Buffy S7 and Angel S4, well ahead of our rewatch schedule, so that I could prepare my comments and “hand them in” to Nikki, giving her plenty of time to arrange and format everything for this huge finale event. It was only AFTER I’d watched “ Chosen ” for the first time that I discovered I really should’ve seen “Home” first, in order to make sense of the amulet and Angel’s trip to Sunnydale. I looked up the original broadcast dates and found that, back in 2003, fans got to see “Home” TWO WEEKS before “ Chosen ”. Oh, well. I soon got straightened out and became less confused.

I liked how Angel called the scythe “that real cool axe thing”. It’s fortunate that Buffy got the scythe when she did, because Caleb seemed totally unstoppable and unkillable. But then Buffy’s line, referring to dead Caleb, “He had to split” was SUCH a groaner in my book. I could see it coming, and I was actually wincing, thinking, “Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it.” That’s exactly the kind of punny, wink-wink line that Arnold Schwarzenegger was always saying in his 1980s action movies. It seems to me that lines like that should be followed by a Groucho Marx eyebrow-waggle. It just didn’t work for me in Buffy. A minor nitpick, but there it is.

Moving on. My theory is that Joss had Dawn kick Buffy in the shin and call her “Dumb-ass” in order to demonstrate to the Dawn-haters that they were correct to hate Dawn.

I loved EVERYTHING about the Dungeons & Dragons scene, even though I didn’t immediately know it was D&D. (I’ve never played it or even seen anyone play it.) And Giles is this week’s winner in the best line competition: “Could it possibly get uglier? I used to be a highly respected Watcher. Now I’m a wounded dwarf with the mystical strength of a doily.”

I like to think that this D&D scene was the inspiration for the Risk scene in LOST: “ Australia is the key to the whole game.” In both stories, they did a very elegant fake-out, making us think the characters were having a real-life strategic summit conference when they were actually just taking a game-break.

I know it served to ratchet up the dramatic tension, but I kept wondering why they waited so late – until the last possible second – to have Willow do the spell that turned all the Potentials into Slayers. Was that necessary, for some reason I missed? (Seems to me that it could’ve easily been done that morning, or even the night before.) The massive army of Orcs, er, Turok-han, was already charging at them before the spell was complete. (Shoot. I just noticed how similar Turok-han is to Uruk-hai. They’re really, REALLY similar.)

I think White Willow was one of the most beautiful images of the entire series. It was “nifty”.

Let’s talk about the awesome, powerful music in this finale. That beautiful piano theme I’ve been enjoying all season long on the “language selection” screen of my DVDs played ever so softly over the end of Buffy and Angel’s farewell scene in the cemetery, as he backed into the shadows. It was exquisite, and I was delighted. Then when Buffy was wounded and handed the scythe to Faith, saying, “Hold the line”, we heard the start of that great battle music, which has been playing on the menu screen for S7. It reminded me of some of Howard Shore ’s fabulous score for “The Lord of the Rings”, and that is high praise! I hope to hear more of Robert Duncan’s compositions in the future. I’m a fan.

I had heard that the series finale of Buffy was very divisive, that some fans absolutely HATED it. Before watching “ Chosen ”, I guessed that it had to do with some character deaths, or about the destruction of Sunnydale. (Yeah, that’s one of the major plot points that got spoiled ages ago.) My first time watching the finale, I failed to notice Willow running out of the school, and until the moment when everyone exited the bus, I thought maybe Willow had died. Wouldn’t THAT have sent the fans into an enraged snit, complete with torches and pitchforks, tar and feathers!

Regarding Spike’s heroic death, I used to think that only latter-day fans like myself would’ve been spoiled about it, because of Angel cast pictures that included Spike, and because Nikki’s book has a picture of Angel and Spike on the cover. So I knew that, no matter what happened to Spike in the Buffy finale, he was going to eventually show up in Los Angeles . THEN I learned that the stupid WB suits ruined it for everyone by loudly announcing that Spike was moving over to Angel in the next season. I’m sure it was an extremely rare first-run Buffy fan who went into the finale completely unspoiled about Spike’s fate. But can you IMAGINE the impact of seeing Spike disintegrate/burn up, believing that his death was final?! That would’ve been such a powerful, emotional moment, and the network boneheads robbed everyone of that. I am offended on behalf of all you first-run fans!

The Mutant Enemy monster looked out into the audience, as if in a farewell salute. That was very nice. “See ya, Monster!”

At the end of my first viewing of “ Chosen ”, I was pleased to realize that I could now listen to Joss Whedon’s commentary on it. Nothing is off limits now! There’s no more getting spoiled on anything in Buffy seasons 1-7. And eventually, after a break (Nikki isn’t the only one who wants/needs a break), it will be fun to listen to the DVD commentaries and watch all the Special Features. But the thing I’m most looking forward to is reading all of the spoilery comments that y’all have made this past year. When I do my own private rewatch, those comments will be most enlightening.

Here’s an afterthought, one we can file under Things That Don’t Matter Anymore. Back when we were discussing “Get It Done”, I mentioned how burying dead Potentials in the backyard could really backfire. No worries. ALL of Sunnydale’s backyards were completely obliterated when Sunnydale became a gaping crater.

This week in Angel news, we have Lilah as the mysterious and very surprising “messenger”. So, was she Ghost Lilah? Reanimated Lilah? Or (my favorite), Nearly Headless Lilah? Thankfully, Tim Minear knew the fans would be scratching their heads over that one, and he addressed it with full writerly authority in the episode commentary. She’s not “back from the dead”. She’s just “back”. Good, I’m glad we got that cleared up. :/

Technically, I shouldn’t have listened to the commentary on “Home”. There’s a whole ‘nother season of Angel to go! (Duh.) The freedom I was feeling about having open access to all things Buffy accidentally spilled over into the Angel corner of my brain. So, it was an Oops! on my part. But fortunately, there were no shocking revelations about S5. Just a few things I had mostly figured out on my own.

Fred: “We ended a nefarious global domination scheme. Not world peace. [long beat] Right?”

The snappy chorus of “Good morning, Mr. Angel” at Wolfram & Hart reminded me very much of “Trading Places”. Remember at Duke & Duke? First we had, “Good morning, Mr. Winthorp”, and later, “Mr. Valentine”. (I love the classics!)

This was the moment. With the appearance of the shiny amulet and the file on Sunnydale, I realized that I was watching these final episodes in the wrong order.

I liked that Wesley tried to release Lilah from her Standard Perpetuity Clause. A very convincing sign that he really, truly loved her. (I was dead wrong, several weeks ago, when I theorized that Wesley was only getting close to Lilah because he was a spy, after secret info or forbidden access.) And Lilah was so right: “It means something that you tried.”

I’m left with several questions at the end of Angel S4. First, what was the meaning of Gunn’s encounter with the beautiful black panther? (Then I said to myself, said I: “Whoa! Back in his gang days, was he a Black Panther?!”) The episode commentary was most informative. Tim Minear said, without spoiling, that more interesting stuff happened to Gunn on his tour of W&H, which we haven’t seen yet. We’ll find out about it in S5. Also, about the big, black kitty, they originally wanted a regular spotted leopard, but none were available. So they thought a black cat would look cool in the all-white room. And it most certainly did! (Didn’tcha love its great big FEET?) There was nothing political about it, however. Gunn was never a Black Panther.

Why did Connor decide to become a terrorist/hostage-taker? Was it despair over losing Jasmine? I mean, was that the last straw that finally pushed him over the edge?

Here’s another choice item from the commentary: Charisma Carpenter had just given birth, but she agreed to come in and lie on the floor for the scene in the sporting goods store. I knew she was pregnant, but not THAT pregnant!

What exactly happened in that white-flashy moment between Angel and Connor? It sure LOOKED like the fulfillment of the prophecy, “The father will kill the son.” According to the commentary, Angel struck a deal with Lilah, and there’s “some sort of blood magic going on.” OK. That’s sufficiently vague.

Seeing happy, well-adjusted, family-oriented, college-bound Connor at the end reminded me of the sideways world on LOST. That is to say, I did not understand it one bit. So, I relied on my fallback strategy: just go with it. Ours is not to question supernatural wheeling and dealing.

Fred’s exit line was a doozy: “Who’s Connor?” Hoooowee! I’ll bet that made a lot of fans mad! This was first shown the year before LOST came along to teach us the true meaning of freaky and mysterious.

Well, I’d better wrap this up. I hope x infinity that I will continue to see all of you lovely people around Nik at Niteland. I will certainly be here. And if you’re on Facebook, do look me up! I’ve already connected with many of you on Facebook, and we’re having such fun! My email address is Marebabe1@aol.com.

Grrr! Argh! ~ M

Great Buffy Rewatch: Stacey Abbott

2011-12-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

‘Chosen’ – Goodbye to Buffy

Stacey Abbott

I am a professional film snob. I have been a film buff all my life and began studying film when I started college in Montreal when I was 17. I have been studying and teaching film ever since. My undergraduate degree in Film Studies at Concordia University taught film, all film popular and art-cinema, as a form of Fine Art. I have been trained to see film as second to none. As a result, while I have always watched TV, I never really took television seriously. I watched loads of silly action series while growing up, and loved Star Trek more then any other show but that was my inner geek speaking – or so I thought. Like every good film student in 1991, I stopped and basked in the brilliance of Twin Peaks but that was ok because it was made by a film director, David Lynch. So when I heard that the film of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was being made into a television series, I was bemused and dubious. I watched because I was writing my PhD thesis on vampire films so it seemed necessary. I didn’t think it would amount to much more then an interesting footnote – how wrong could I be? It was this little show with a rather silly name, adapted from an unsuccessful teen-horror-comedy, that taught me that television could not only be equal to film but in some ways could exceed film as a narrative and art form. That is not to say that television is better then film but simply that there are certain things that can only really be done in television.

Buffy taught me not to judge a series on one or two episodes, or even an entire season, but to let a show unfold and slowly reveal its secrets and complexities. It taught me that sometimes you need to earn those wonderful dramatic revelations or disturbing moments, like Angel losing his soul after sleeping with Buffy or Angelus murdering Jenny and leaving her body for Giles to find. The horror of these moments is so overwhelming because we have the spent time watching these characters grow, watching their relationships develop, and learning to love them so we feel the loss almost as poignantly as Buffy and Giles.

Buffy taught me that within the narrative drive of commercial television and despite the budget and production constraints that are unavoidable when making twenty-two episodes of television a year, there was space for some of the most audacious experiments in style and narrative. It showed that audiences who become invested in a series and its characters will be more than willing to accept playful experiments like the fairy-tale silence of ‘Hush’, the narrative poetry of ‘Conversations with the Dead’, or the dream logic of ‘Restless’. While it might be fair to say that Twin Peaks paved the way for Buffy, it is equally fair to say that we would not have had Lost, Supernatural, or Fringe without Buffy.

Buffy taught me that television could be multi-layered, complicated and wonderful to discuss and analyse. The textual analysis skills I learned as a film student were put to the test with Buffy, a show that continues to invite analysis (as evidenced by this Rewatch).

Buffy taught me that in the darkest of moments, there is a space of tenderness – Tara sharing her own experiences of bereavement when Buffy loses her Mom in ‘The Body’ – and humour – Angel and Spike’s school boy jealousy in ‘Chosen’ (I love, love, love, Spike’s drawing of Angel pinned to his punching bag).

The season finale for a show like Buffy was always going to be a tall order and it has its weaknesses – the special effects in the final battle especially. It is, however, an immensely satisfying, if open, conclusion (at least until the comics) to the story of the Slayer. The series that begins with the narrative voice over explaining the Slayer myth ends with the rewriting of that myth by turning all potential into slayers, showing the epic narrative vision that encapsulates the series (and who doesn’t feel a surge of power when all of the potentials are activated – especially the girl at bat – what a wonderfully knowing smile she gives). The finale begins with humour – Spike and Angel – includes anguish – Anya’s death – and warmth – Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles sharing a moment together before launching into battle – and concludes with hope – Buffy’s smile. In effect, it brings together the best the series had to offer and leaves you wanting more.

Buffy taught me to love and appreciate television, and to take it seriously. I began writing about television after Buffy completed its fourth season and I wrote my first Buffy article for Slayage. Since that moment, I haven’t stopped writing about television (Angel, Firefly, Alias, Lost, Supernatural, True Blood).

Thank you Buffy.

Great Buffy Rewatch: Buffy Book Club

2011-12-28T08:00:00.001-05:00

As promised, today will be a day of our Great Buffy Rewatch contributors (and a few new faces!) talking about "Chosen," Buffy the Vampire Slayer in general, and/or the Rewatch itself. To start things off, I wanted to pay tribute to the many authors we had involved in the yearlong Rewatch by discussing the Buffy-centric books that many of them wrote (see below for links to most of them). So here is a VERY long video... you can zip ahead to see if I cover your book. (I think my voice actually goes out of synch at one point, but I haven't watched it back all the way through...) Enjoy! And please stay tuned to this blog, for throughout the day, every hour on the hour (the last one will go live at 10pm!), we'll have another post from someone talking about our favourite Slayer.

Bite Me! The Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Chosen Edition
by Nikki Stafford

Once Bitten: An Unofficial Guide to the World of Angel
by Nikki Stafford

Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier
Edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran

Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery

Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
by Rhonda Wilcox

The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
by Matthew Pateman

Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology
by Jennifer K. Stuller

Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan
Lorna Jowett

Buffy Goes Dark: Essays on the Final Two Seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Television
Edited by Lynne Y. Edwards, Elizabeth L. Rambo and James B. South

Faith and Choice in the Works of Joss Whedon
by K. Dale Koontz

Inside Joss's Dollhouse: From Alpha to Rossum
Edited by Jane Espenson

Joss Whedon: Conversations
Edited by David Lavery and Cynthia Burkhead

Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Edited by Paul Attinello, Janet K. Halfyard and Vanessa Knights

Buffy Rewatch Week 52: THE END

2011-12-27T20:00:00.003-05:00

7.22 Chosen

Follow along in Bite Me!

And if you’re watching Angel, this week’s episode is the season 4 finale, “Home.” Follow along in Once Bitten.

And with the Sunnydale sign finally giving up and falling over for the last time, and Buffy smiling the most sincere, genuine, and relieved smile she’s ever given… our romps with the Scoobies come to an end. (Well, in live-action form, anyway.)

Now, I’m going to be up front about something in this episode, and I know a LOT of people will disagree with me. But I really hate the cookie dough speech. As I said in Bite Me!, it came off like Joss trying too hard to be cute. “See, I’m cookie dough…” Ugh. Even the memory of it irks me. And I hear Buffy fans quote that all the time, or even just roll with the metaphor. “Well, maybe you’re not done baking yet!” I can live with it, though, because there’s just too much else to love about this episode.

The ongoing friction between Angel and Spike is one of the key ones. From Angel calling Spike “Captain Peroxide” to Spike punching a bag that has a caricature of Angel drawn on it, the little bitchy asides from these two about the other are always hilarious. (In the commentary, Joss admits that he drew the picture of Angel and that a crew member saw it and said, “Why does he hate Butthead?” HAHA!!)

I also love the D&D game, and the idea that in the face of impending doom where these people are going to stride into the fight of their lives, they’re still not above role-playing games where you just pretend to stride into the fight of your life. In fact, if you think about it, they probably welcome RPGs because it’s nice to imagine that the apocalypse is just fantasy. But for them, it’s not. (Note that Andrew is wearing Buffy’s red riding hood outfit from “Fear Itself.”)

I love the roundtable scene in the school where the gang all talks about what they’ll do after they avert the Apocalypse. Giles’s comment, “The earth is definitely doomed” is a continuation of his “The earth is doomed” comment that he made way back in the second part of the show’s pilot. Joss wanted this season to go back to the beginning, and so much in this episode does.

Of course, there are the things in there I didn't like the first time, and no matter how much I can explain them in my head or try to reason with the plot, my heart still doesn't like it. Like Anya's death. I know it's meant to be shocking and we see what happens in the heat of battle -- sometimes there is no time for mourning, and people just die. But I think it's Xander's flip response, and the fact he's joking about the Sunnydale mall afterwards, that has always bothered me. Yes, this is Xander covering up, and we can assume he'll go off and mourn somewhere else, but if this weren't the final episode, we would have watched him crumple and then sit in a basement with a bottle of something strong, thinking of everything he might have done to change things. He wouldn't have been joking about Toys R Us.

And to put you in the context of May 20, 2003, the date of the actual finale, the WB did the really cruel and dumbass thing of issuing a press release about one week before the finale, announcing that a certain star of Buffy was going to be joining the cast of Angel in its fifth season. Joss Whedon was immediately on the warpath, but he waited until after the finale to announce how angry and upset he was that they couldn't have waited one week, because by knowing this character was coming back, it rendered his death in this finale almost meaningless. I had a finale party that night, and the room was filled with fans, and it was interesting to look around the room at the end of the episode and see the faces. To a person, those who had read the press release were dry-eyed and thought the episode was okay. Those who knew nothing about the press release were bawling and declaring it one of the best endings of all time. Stupid WB.

And so, I write the next part as if I didn't know what was happening next, because within the context of Joss's arc, Angel notwithstanding, it was beautifully done.

“Chosen” isn’t my favourite Buffy episode, and doesn’t come close to being my favourite television series finale, but I like it a lot. It’s epic, and brings so many stories full circle:
• Willow began by dabbling in magicks and soon became a powerful witch, but when she let the magicks take her over she was no longer a help to her friends she was a serious danger, and now she lives with a constant terror that she will be the one who will doom all of them.
• Buffy has resisted being the Chosen One from the beginning of the series, seeing her mantle as a curse rather than as a gift. She’s died, she’s been brought back, she’s faced things no one has had to face, and no matter how many times she saves the world, she’s not thanked by anyone, and is just expected to do it again and again. It’s the most thankless of thankless tasks, and it keeps getting bigger. She runs on no sleep, and when she does sleep her rest is filled with nightmares. She’s unable to have a relationship with a “normal” guy, but the undead guys are both dangerous and fill her with guilt and remorse that she’s in bed with the dark side. She is the first Slayer to be completely surrounded by friends, yet she’s always alone. Way back in “Prophecy Girl” she discovered that her destiny was to die, and that death would simply signal the next girl to step up in her place.
• Spike came on the scene as the Big Bad in S2, the stronger of the Sid & Nancy co-dependent vampires, but soon was usurped in power by Drusilla when we realized he was almost powerless around her. He had a soft spot from the get-go, and was unlike the other vampires. Angel was cursed with a soul – Spike never seemed to have lost his. He was turned by Drusilla, and remained true and loyal to her always. And when she finally walked out on him after 120 years of dating, he realized he was in love with Buffy, something that filled him with more self-loathing than Buffy’s feelings for Spike did her. When he gave in to those feelings, he realized he might be dead, but perhaps this undead existence holds more in it for him if he stops pretending to be the Big Bad and actually embraces the softer side within him. But Buffy refused to let the relationship continue, and he was lost. Ultimately, we saw that Buffy means more to him than anyone ever has, and when it comes down to the final, total end of the world, he will still fight by her side.

With these three key stories as the ones most in need of resolution, “Chosen” weaves them all together into one beautiful ending: Willow finds a greater power within herself that can perform powerful magicks for good, and in doing so she empowers women around the world to no longer be Potentials, but Actuals. Slayers everywhere are born, and at the moment where Willow no longer lives in fear of her power and stops being a wallflower and becomes the goddess, Buffy is no longer alone. And moments later, Spike proves himself to be the worthiest of friends when he channels the sunlight through his amulet and immolates himself in the process. With Buffy holding his hand and saying she loves him, he looks at her and says, “No you don’t, but thanks for saying so.” She smiles a smile of agreement and leaves. And yet, in that moment I really do believe she loves him. Maybe not in a lusty, throwdown, passionate kind of way, but a much deeper, richer, appreciative way.

So I see all of these stories coming to a wonderful close. Now, there’s been a lot of criticism of the idea that all of the Slayers would be empowered. For one, Buffy and all Slayers before her were logged by the Watcher’s Council, and the moment they were imbued with the power they had Watchers standing by to tell them exactly how to use it. They had their calling explained to them, and rather than live with the confusion of “what the hell is happening to me,” or worse, the danger of seriously hurting someone with this new power (what’s to stop a girl from accidentally killing a bully at school, or a younger sibling?) they had someone there to guide them through it and train them. These girls will no longer have training available to them. So in many ways, the idea of all girls being empowered is more attractive than the actual execution of it.

And so that’s what I’ve always gone with: the idea. I love the idea that Buffy was a show that was about women being empowered. At the time, it was a strange thing to see this young girl with powers on television. Women (well, most women, not Xena…) were damsels in distress, supposed to be saved by male superheroes. Even female superheroes (including Xena) could be one-upped by men who had to save them. But not Buffy. She was more powerful than anyone or anything. She could always rise to the top. It wasn’t always pretty, and she had a lot of Dark Knight–type issues to deal with, but she did what she had to do. And since Buffy I’ve noticed how much stronger and more powerful women seem to be in popular culture. Not just superhero strong, but mentally, emotionally, strong.

We see a montage of women becoming strong, but imagine that in a broader sense, of the television landscape changing as Buffy’s voiceover happens.

“From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer…”

Kate Austen strides into the woods and refuses to listen to Jack telling her to stay behind. She lets the men chase after her (Jack = Angel; Sawyer = Spike) and she won’t choose one, but keeps her options open. In the end, she doesn’t allow her life to be controlled by the men, but makes her own decision.

“…will be a Slayer.”

Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights is a strong, independently minded woman who fiercely loves her husband and family and will do anything she can to maintain order within her household and throughout her friends, but even her husband can find himself on the wrong side of Tami if he pushes too hard.

“Every girl who could have the power…”

Skyler on Breaking Bad…

“…will have the power...”

Gemma on Sons of Anarchy (no really, do NOT mess with her)…

“…can stand up…”

Zoe on Firefly…

“…will stand up…”

Margaret on Boardwalk Empire…

“Slayers…”

Laura Roslin on Battlestar Galactica…

“…every one of us…”

Donna on Doctor Who…

“Make your choice…”

Kima on The Wire…

“Are you ready to be strong?”

Yes. Women have always been ready to be strong, and the television landscape was utterly changed because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sure, if you think about it too hard you’ll realize the dangers of activating a bunch of unwitting women, but the idea that Joss was trying to get across – that women everywhere are powerful and strong and capable and they just need to be given the opportunities to show these things – was far more important.

Buffy changed television. It changed lives, regardless of how corny that sounds. It changed my life, and because of Buffy I have become a discerning viewer of television. It’s made me demand far more of the storytelling that TV shows offer. It’s made me love television. Believe it or not, before Buffy I really didn’t watch much television. (No, really, it’s true.) I watched Xena and The Simpsons and King of the Hill and reruns of Roseanne and that’s about it. Going through university, my main distraction was movies. I watched half a dozen films a week, and I wasn’t in the film studies program. And then Buffy came along and showed me what television was truly capable of. And since then I’ve seen so many shows that are vastly superior to anything in the movie theatres, shows that have stretched my imagination, introduced me to new ideas, and have given me characters that I’ve completely fallen in love with.

I spent six years writing about Lost, and through my blog and books probably published over a million words on the subject. And yet despite my deep love for that show, Buffy will always be #1 in my heart.

And now, because of this Rewatch, I hope I’ve demonstrated to the newcomers exactly why that is. Thank you to everyone who has watched and commented along the way, and who have contributed to make this Rewatch what it is.

I have so many thank-yous to give out, and many of those will happen tomorrow when I roll out a lot of final words from many of our longstanding contributors and even a few new ones. I can’t thank the following people enough:

Cynthea Masson
Tanya Cochran
Rhonda Wilcox
Lorna Jowett
Steve Halfyard
Michael Holland
Alyson Buckman
Matthew Pateman
Elizabeth Rambo
David Kociemba
Ensley F. Guffey
Dale Koontz-Guffey
Kristen Romanelli
Evan Munday
Cynthia Burkhead
Stacey Abbott
Jennifer K. Stuller
Chris Lockett
Nikki Fuller
David Lavery
Graham F. Scott
Stacey May Fowles
Bryan Curry
Robert Thompson
Tony Burgess
Suzie Gardner
Ian Klein
Becca Wilcott
Crissy Calhoun
Jen Knoch
Rob Wiersema

Thank you for giving us your time, for showing us Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a new and exciting ways, making the Rewatch valuable not just for the new viewers, but for those of us who have watched it again and again. I’ve written two books on the subject, and I learned so many things from those of you who contributed.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in week after week, who contributed their own comments and who made all of us know we were doing this for a reason, who gave positive feedback to the guest hosts and who stuck with us all the way through, offering your insight and allowing US to see the show with your eyes.

It really seems like it was just a couple of weeks ago that I called the first person on my contributor list and said, “What do you think of this idea?” I figured I ran a Lost Rewatch in 2009 and it was a lot of work, but if I had a bunch of other people running this with me, it would be a breeze. I was wrong. In the Lost Rewatch, I only wrote a paragraph or so per episode, but I not only had three episodes per post to comment on, I wanted to offer something different than my guests. So this Rewatch turned out to be a big undertaking, and I’m REALLY looking forward to getting several hours of my weeks back (wow, think of all the new shows I’ll watch!) and yet I can’t help but think, “Hm, what rewatch could I take on next?”

The thing is, if I do another one, it’ll probably be alone. And it’s not because I didn’t enjoy doing it this way – like Buffy, I knew I really couldn’t do this alone, and instead called upon all the other tough Slayage kids I knew who stepped up and helped me. But it’s because I don’t think there’s another show on television, now or before, that has this kind of scholarship backing it up, that has an academic conference devoted to it with so many people who come back again and again. I LOVE going to Slayage (it’s in Vancouver in 2012 and I hope to see some of you first-timers there!) so I can talk about my favourite show with so many brilliant people. I’ve met some people who have become very close friends, and I’m so thrilled to have been asked to come to it back in 2008.

As I’ll mention again tomorrow (watch for my Buffy Book Club video!) there’s an award given out at Slayage called the Mr. Pointy, given to the best book and the best article in the Whedonverse. I am THRILLED to have had on this Rewatch so many people who not only qualify, but who have been nominated and have won. And many of them will be nominated again. I’m so blessed to have had so many of these fine academics join me.

But I’m also thrilled to have had so many non-academic writers join me on this, with both novellists and companion guide writers like myself, and bloggers and journalists, coming on here to talk about the show with as much insight as those who give university lectures.

I had several reasons for doing this Rewatch:
1) I wanted to rewatch Buffy myself
2) I wanted to introduce Buffy to all of you who have watched Lost along with me and who have heard me going on and on about the superiority of Joss Whedon
3) I wanted to show my pop culture savvy readers that pop culture academia is neither dry nor stuffy, and is in fact exciting and fun to read
4) I wanted to show that bloggers and non-academic writers could go toe to toe with the academics, and together we could form a large conversation from many walks of life, various voices, different points of view and differing opinions

It took a show like Buffy to make those last two things happen. Buffy ended in 2003 and the discussion now is as dynamic as it ever was; more so, in fact. I hope the Great Buffy Rewatch of 2011 contributed to that discussion and brought it back to life, and introduced it in just the right way to so many of you new viewers. Thank you to whoever it was early on who suggested we offer a spoiler forum away from the new viewers; it was an inspired suggestion, and one that has kept people from finding out things that are going to happen, while still allowing us seasoned viewers to discuss those upcoming episodes in light of what we were watching.

Thank you to all of you. This has been an extraordinary task and I owe all of that to the guest contributors and to everyone out there reading along with all of us. Please do check out the books written by the contributors (again, watch my video tomorrow for some recommendations!) and keep talking about Buffy. Just think: maybe YOU can introduce someone to this fabulous show.

So, Buffy… what are we gonna do now?

Buffy Rewatch Week 52: Spoiler Forum

2011-12-27T19:59:00.000-05:00

Yes indeedy, we still have a spoiler forum in case anyone needed to discuss S5 of Angel in light of anything that we saw in this week's episodes.

Live Buffy Rewatch

2011-12-25T21:42:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note that there is going to be a live Twitter Buffy Rewatch of "Chosen" Monday, December 26 at 7pm EST. Go to Twitter and while you're watching you can comment on "Chosen" using the hashtag #gbrfinale. I won't be able to make it (I'm having family holiday dinner #5!) but I hope many of you will be able to join in the fun!

Twelve Days of Buffymas

2011-12-24T19:46:00.004-05:00

To honour the soon-to-be end of the Buffy Rewatch, I offer the Twelve Days of a Buffy-filled Christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone!

On the twelfth day of Buffymas my true love gave to me,

Twelve Watchful Gileses
Eleven Heartfelt Xanders
Ten Goddess Willows
Nine Wolfy Ozes
Eight Bitchy Cordys
Seven Wiccan Taras
Six Snarky Anyas
FIVE… SOULFUL SPIKES!!!
Four Angry Faiths
Three Crazy Drus
Two Brooding Angels...

And a Slayer who is named Buffy!!

Buffy Rewatch: Week 51

2011-12-20T20:00:00.000-05:00

7.19 Empty Places
7.20 Touched
7.21 End of Days

Follow along in Bite Me!

If you’re watching Angel, this week’s episodes are:

4.19 The Magic Bullet
4.20 Sacrifice
4.21 Peace Out

Follow along in Once Bitten.

Before we move on to this week’s episode, I said in a recent post that I would continue on with S5 of Angel for everyone who has been watching and wants a forum in which to chat with other Angel fans about the episodes. And because S5 is my favourite of the Angel seasons, I’m not going to leave you hanging. So I suggest this as the schedule:

January 3
5.1 Conviction
5.2 Just Rewards
5.3 Unleashed

January 10
5.4 Hell Bound
5.5 Life of the Party
5.6 The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco

January 17
5.7 Lineage
5.8 Destiny
5.9 Harm’s Way

January 24
5.10 Soul Purpose
5.11 Damage
5.12 You’re Welcome

January 31 (aka the Emotional Rollercoaster Week!)
5.13 Why We Fight
5.14 Smile Time
5.15 A Hole in the World

February 7
5.16 Shells
5.17 Underneath
5.18 Origin

February 14
5.19 Time Bomb
5.20 The Girl in Question
5.21 Power Play

February 21
5.22 Not Fade Away

As I mentioned in that post, I won’t be commenting each week because unfortunately I’ve made other commitments at the beginning of the year that prevent me from doing so, but I hope to make a comment or two and just open the floor to all of you. (And if there’s any Buffy Rewatch contributor out there reading who wanted to write anything for one of those weeks, please let me know!)

But now on to this week’s trio of episodes, containing the top moment of the season for me, and the lowest. We start with “Empty Places,” where Sunnydale clears out and leaves only our Scoobies, the Slayer, and the Potentials behind. As if Buffy weren’t lonely enough already… This is a wonderfully written episode by Drew Z. Greenberg, filled with great dialogue, lots of sight gags, and then… that ending.

Things I loved:
• Clem!! Oh Clem. This is the last time we’ll see him, and James C. Leary, who plays him, is just wonderful. I haven’t talked about him enough in this rewatch, but from the Dorito taste test to kitten poker, every scene in the series with this guy is gold. I remember several years ago being at some fan convention at a signing table, and I was seated between Harry Groener (The Mayor) and James Leary. They were lovely, and between autographs they were flipping through a copy of my book (this was the second edition with Buffy and Angel on the cover) and they flipped to the colour photos in the middle, and began snickering at the photo of David Boreanaz. “He looks like he’s in a boy band!!” they laughed. Leary just kept going on about how he couldn’t believe his name was in a book. I think the guy is brilliant, especially in this episode:

Clem: “We've seen some bad stuff in this town before but, you know, this time, it's like it just seems different, more powerful. (shakes his head) I don't think anyone's gonna be able to stop it. (catches himself) I mean, I'm sure you'll do fine. Complete confidence in you. Heh. Uh, if anyone can do it, you can, because you...rock! If you save the world, I'll come back, we'll have drinks. When! When, I mean. When you save the world. (Buffy nods) It's gonna be great with all the... rocking. Maybe... maybe you should just get out of town this time.

• The hospital scene between Willow and Xander. Every time I think of Xander losing his eye, I picture this scene, and Willow desperately trying not to cry while wringing Xander’s hand, and joking about parrots and peg-legs while Xander begs her not to cry. It breaks my heart every time. I love that this close to the end of the series, we come to the friendship that was there before anything else was.
• Anya and Andrew conducting the tutorial for the Potentials, especially Andrew writing “breakup sex” on the whiteboard, haha!

And now for the thing I don’t love: that end scene. The first time I saw it, it infuriated me. The second time, same thing. Same thing the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh… In this rewatch, many scenes have felt different to me. I’ve felt sympathy for characters who grated on me the first time through, I’ve changed my mind about certain character decisions, plot points, arcs, even entire episodes. But my feelings the first time I saw this episode have not changed. I hate all of them for doing what they did. Willow, how could you go along with it? Xander?! You’re the one who gave the speech in the previous episode about why we need to trust Buffy. She’s always saved you, you guys freakin’ pulled her out of Heaven and she forgave you and came back to save your asses AGAIN (oh yeah, I’m THAT guy in this scene, “Oh really? You want to rag on my speeches and say I effed up? YOU PULLED ME OUT OF HEAVEN, dillweed.”) and yes, she made a mistake, but she turned out to be RIGHT as we discover at the end of the next episode. You ungrateful, lousy S.O.B.s. I’ve always hated the scene of them ganging up on her in “Dead Man’s Party” and even that didn’t seem quite as bad this time around, but this? Nope. I can’t forgive a single person in the room for what they do to her. YES her speeches have been grating (honestly, I know a lot of people found them rousing but I just hated them, and I really disliked Buffy whenever she gave one because they were always overly dramatic and annoying) and yes, a lot of people were hurt and killed when you went to the winery. Caleb is terrifying and he is going to kick your asses. So yeah. Go ahead and kick out the one person who might be able to save you. I mean, who needs HER?

And BTW, while I’m on this rant, here’s my fantasy stage direction:

DAWN: I need you to leave. This is my house, too.
[Buffy punches Dawn in the throat.]

Ah. That would have helped a bit. Like, REALLY Dawn? This is your house, too? What after-school job are you working to help pay the bills? Buffy should be spending all of her time planning a way to avert the apocalypse but she’s down at the school working a full-time job on top of being a Slayer all night long (like, seriously, the writers never built SLEEP into her schedule) so she can keep all of you in cutesie pajamas and cereal. Anya? Willow? Dawn? NONE of you are working, just Buffy. So no, Dawn. No. This is NOT your house, too. SHUT UP.

OK, rant over. (I would recommend to all that this is an episode you should NOT watch with me. My poor husband has seen me freak out on the television one too many times with this one. SO ANGRY.)

OK! On to better things. Because guess what? Spike totes agrees with me. (Of course he does. He’s my boyfriend.) “Touched” is one of my favourite episodes in the final season, and this time through, despite being an Angel/Buffy shipper (yes, fine, I said it) for many, many years, every time I see this episode I’m instantly a Spuffy. Forget Angel, Buffy: SPIKE is the guy you need in your corner. He’s wonderful and amazing and sticks up for you when the rest of your Benedict Scoobies are turning their backs on you. (Sorry, there I go again.) In fact, let’s just look at that scene in all its glory:

WILLOW  (walks toward Spike, wringing her hands, nervously) Uh...while you were gone, we all got together and t-talked out some disagreements that we were having. Um... and eventually, after much discussion, Buffy decided that it would be best for all of us if she took a little time off, a little breather.
SPIKE  (stares in disbelief) Uh-huh. I see. Been practicing that little speech long, have you? (Willow looks hurt and walks away) So, uh, Buffy took some time off right in the middle of the apocalypse, and it was her decision?
XANDER  Well, we all decided.
SPIKE  Oh, yeah. You all decided. (chuckles) You sad, sad, ungrateful traitors. Who do you think you are?
WILLOW  We're her friends. We just want—
SPIKE  Oh, that's ballsy of you. You're her friends, and you betray her like this?
GILES  You don't understand—
SPIKE  You know, I think I do... (disdainfully) Rupert. You used to be the big man, didn't you? The teacher all full of wisdom. Now she's surpassed you, and you can't handle it. She has saved your lives again and again. (the others roll their eyes and avoid eye contact with Spike) She's died for you. And this is how you thank—
FAITH  Hey. Why don't you take it down a notch or two? The time for speech-giving is over, bat boy.
SPIKE  (crosses his arms) Oh, is that right?
FAITH  Yeah, that's right. Save your lack of breath.
SPIKE  (shrugs) All right. (punches Faith)

YES!!!! You Go, Spike! Pffffft on the rest of you. I hope the First finds you and eats all of you.

Ok. Breathe. Rant officially over. Let’s instead look at the other brilliant Spike speech, which for me is my favourite moment of the entire season. Buffy has hit her lowest, and she’s beginning to believe what everyone is saying about her. And then Spike comes to remind her who she really is.

SPIKE  You listen to me. I've been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that. I've seen things you couldn't imagine, and done things I prefer you didn't. I don't exactly have a reputation for being a thinker. I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes, a lot of wrong bloody calls. A hundred-plus years, and there's only one thing I've ever been sure of: you… I'm not asking you for anything. When I say, "I love you," it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman. You're the one, Buffy.
BUFFY I don't wanna be the one.
SPIKE  I don't wanna be this good looking and athletic. We all have crosses to bear.

Tears!! Just reading that makes me well up. Marsters pulls it off beautifully, as does Gellar, who has to sit there and react, and she’s a master of letting that one big tear well up in her eyes for the longest time before letting it drop at exactly the right moment.

“Touched” is a brilliant episode, where Spike touches Faith’s face by punching it (hehe), and touches Buffy’s heart by telling her what she means to him. The First laments to Caleb that it’s not able to touch things, and Buffy realizes that touching is exactly what allows Caleb to get the upper hand – don’t let him touch her, and she wins.

The end, where she sees the scythe (which was introduced in Joss Whedon’s Fray comic as the weapon used by Fray, a vampire slayer from 500 years into the future), is epic.

Did I mention I ♥ Spike?

And then we come to “End of Days,” with Buffy prying the scythe out of the stone like it’s Excalibur and Anya’s terrible bedside manner with the wounded Potentials (oh yeah, I forgot to mention the ingrates got blowed up real good) and Buffy telling Xander he is her strength despite him turning on her so recently (seriously, Nikki, LET IT GO) and we finally discover what happened to Miss Kitty Fantastico (a comment I’ve always despised… NOT funny, writers) and the wheelchair fight and the Guardians… and the return of Angel.

Remember how I told you about the party I had for the S6 finale and everyone cheering and screaming when Giles showed up? When you hear, “Hey!” behind Caleb, I still remember my husband going, “YEEEAHHH!!” and leaping off the couch. I’ve NEVER seen him do that since (if you know him, you know he’s a super low-key guy). So that’s a highlight for me, just because of his reaction to it.

And now, we prepare for… the end.

The last featured guest host of the entire Rewatch (sniff… I can’t believe I’m typing that!) is Cynthea Masson, who has brought us a lot of gems throughout the rewatch with her comments on “Lie to Me,” “The Dark Age,” “Beer Bad,” “Who Are You?,” “Superstar,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Buffy Vs. Dracula,” “Real Me,” “The Replacement,” “Normal Again,” “Entropy,” and “Seeing Red.” I’ve always loved her insight on these episodes, and I was very touched (ah!) when I read her comments on this week’s episodes. Thank you, Cynthea. I don’t think I could have possibly gotten a better compliment than this one.

Take it away!

The Great Buffy Rewatch and the “End of Days”
Cynthea Masson

We are nearing our own “end of days” here at the Great Buffy Rewatch. What an extraordinary task and remarkable achievement this has been for Nikki Stafford! And what a pleasure it has been for all of us—fans and scholars who were given an opportunity through Nikki’s generosity of time and exuberance to discuss at length one of the most intellectually engaging television shows of all time. Several years ago, I told my brother I would never watch a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “Buffy”—the name I had opposed—evokes a mere “girly girl,” as Caleb calls her in “End of Days” (7.21). Even the Guardian (one of the women who forged the ancient scythe), upon learning Buffy’s name, responds with “No, really” —a splendid moment in which Whedon and company remind us of our own early prejudice against the series’ title. But, as Caleb discovers, this “girly girl” can “King Arthur” ancient weaponry “from solid rock” (“End of Days”). Time and again, from “Welcome to the Hellmouth” (1.1) to “Chosen” (7.22), Buffy consistently defies expectations. The entire series certainly defied my expectations. After watching a few episodes, I became a Buffy fan; after a few seasons, I was en route to becoming a Buffy scholar. Who could have predicted a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer would inspire dozens of academic books and hundreds of articles? Who would have predicted, eight years after the series ended, a community of Buffy fans and scholars would participate in a year-long forum for critique and discussion? Thank you to Joss Whedon and his creative team for Buffy. Thank you to Nikki Stafford and her creative team for the Rewatch. Thank you to all the contributors and to all the followers who have posted comments and responses week after week. None of us could have created the breadth of the Great Buffy Rewatch alone.

In “Empty Places” (7.19), a monk shows Spike and Andrew an inscription once hidden within the walls of the mission: “It is for her alone to wield.” For her alone—these words about the scythe and the Slayer hearken back to the beginning of the series: “Into every generation a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world. She alone will….” Alone—this word reverberates through the final episodes. In “End of Days,” Faith tells Buffy, “I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life.” She is referring to her role as leader of the Potentials, the role she assumed during Buffy’s imposed absence. As Buffy emphasizes in her response to Faith, being alone is “the price of being a Slayer”: “I guess everyone’s alone. But being a Slayer, there’s a burden we can’t share.” Buffy’s conversation with Faith may best be remembered for Faith’s clever retort (“Thank God we’re hot chicks with superpowers”). However, in view of thematic concerns of the final episodes of the series, the repeated focus on “alone” is arguably the more significant aspect of their conversation. Buffy is not alone, not really—but this is what she must come to understand. Faith’s existence as a Slayer confirms that the precept “one girl in all the world” is not, as the saying goes, written in stone. I would contend (though not in detail here because of spoiler concerns), this brief conversation between the Slayers is a critical juncture on the path leading to Buffy’s primary choice in the series’ final episode, “Chosen.” To me, the title “Chosen” refers not to Buffy as the “chosen one” but instead to the decision Buffy chooses to make despite her prescribed role. By the end of the series, Buffy challenges what she has repeatedly been told and repeatedly believed— [spoiler]:Buffy chooses not to remain alone as a Slayer.

The three episodes leading up to “Chosen” deal on various levels with the concepts of being alone and being together. “Empty Places” opens with a shot of a man adjusting the “closed” sign on a door. Vehicles are lined up; residents are slowly making their way out of Sunnydale. The Scooby gang (and their growing band of Potentials) will be left alone to conquer the hoard from the Hellmouth. While briefly alone in her office at the deserted high school, Buffy picks up a framed photo of Xander, Willow, and herself; they are several years younger and appear to be happy together. The shot of Buffy holding the picture is poignant; it epitomizes the problem that will lead to her expulsion from the group—Buffy believes she is alone; being happily together with her friends is an image within her grasp but a reality currently outside her reach. She has been friends with these people for years, yet by the end of this episode they will abandon her. Indeed, even before she is forced to leave her companions and home, Buffy complains that others are not supporting her. Having learned that Spike has been sent away, Buffy protests to Giles, “You sent away the one person that’s been watching my back—again.” Though Giles assures her, “We’re all watching your back,” Buffy responds, “Funny, that’s not really what it feels like.” Buffy feels alone, and that feeling is about to become manifest.

When everyone, including Giles, Willow, and Dawn, gang up on Buffy and challenge her leadership, Buffy replies, “I don’t understand this. For seven years, I’ve kept us safe by doing this—exactly this. Making the hard decisions. And now, what, suddenly you’re acting like you can’t trust me?” (“Empty Places”). When I first saw this episode, I agreed with Buffy completely. What are they thinking? I still find the scene difficult to watch because, for me, the decision to oust Buffy lacks any sort of logic. But I am now also willing to accept the scene on a symbolic level—that is, pushing Buffy away, forcing her to be alone in a different way than she has ever been before, helps her to begin her journey toward [spoiler]: her choice not to remain alone. “We have to be together on this, or we will fail again,” asserts Buffy (“Empty Places”). Giles responds, “We are clearly demonstrating that we are not together on this.” Buffy is right—they must be together, but first she needs to be alone in order to fully understand what it means to stand together in the final showdown.

For one thing, Buffy needs to realize that part of her loneliness stems not from the behaviour of others but from her own attitude and choices. When speaking about the Potentials to Spike (who has searched for and found Buffy alone in a stranger’s home), Buffy says, “I cut myself off from them. All of them. I knew I was gonna lose some of them, and I didn’t—You know what? I’m still making excuses. I’ve always cut myself off. I’ve always—Being the Slayer made me different. But it’s my fault I stayed that way. People are always trying to connect to me. And I just—slip away” (“Touched” 7.20). Equally as important as this admission is Buffy’s choice not to be alone on this particular night. She asks Spike to stay with her and then adds, “Will you just hold me?” In this moment Buffy reaches out for someone rather than cutting herself off once again.

Meanwhile, the concept of being “alone” is likewise emphasized with Faith. When the First visits Faith in the guise of Mayor Wilkins, he tells her, “nobody will ever love you” (“Touched”). In other words, she too will be alone. Shortly thereafter, when Robin Wood enters the room to speak with her, Faith rebuffs him at first. He responds, “I'm gonna leave you alone,” at which point she immediately admits that the First had visited her. In other words, when he offers to leave, she invites him to stay. As they talk, he sympathizes with her: “Listen, nobody wants to be alone, Faith. We all want someone who cares, to be touched that way.” The scene eventually evolves to include sexual intimacy between the two of them. Thus in both the scene with Buffy and the scene with Faith, we watch a Slayer who feels alone reach out to and be comforted by someone else. Add to this mix the sexual couplings of both Willow/Kennedy and Xander/Anya, and a focus on being alone is gradually replaced with a focus on being together.

In “End of Days,” when Buffy meets the Guardian and asks who she is, the Guardian replies, “One of many. Well—time was. Now I’m alone in the world.” This ancient woman despite surviving hundreds (thousands?) of years, dies “alone in the world.” Like the scene in which Faith and Buffy discuss being alone as Slayers, this scene presents Buffy with another opportunity to think about what it truly means to be alone. Will the Slayer, like the Guardian, die alone? Is being alone the destiny of the Slayer? Or is being alone a choice? “End of Days” provides a counterpoint to being alone through an emphasis on Buffy’s connection with others. For example, Spike confesses to Buffy, “All I did was hold you and watch you sleep, and it was the best night of my life.” “Were you there with me?” he asks her. “I was,” Buffy confirms. Xander also speaks of his connection with Buffy: “I just always thought that I would—I would be there with you, you know, for the end.” These relationships with others, emphasized through the dialogue, help Buffy to understand that, unlike the Guardian, she does not have to be alone. Next week, in “Chosen,” Buffy will make her choice—one from which we can all glean a moral lesson.

In “Empty Places,” Caleb says to Buffy, “History’s gonna look back at you, at me, at this place, and they’re gonna see the glory.” I read these as metafictional words—that is, as an expression of Whedon and company’s faith in the series rather than merely a vaunted expression of Caleb’s plans under the First. The people who look back on the Rewatch will see something that I consider glorious: an extended text that academics and non-academics chose to create together. As both a fan and a scholar, I believe we need more such projects in this world. Thank you again, Nikki Stafford, for helping us to make this choice. You did what Buffy would do.

Aw. Blushing. Thanks again, Cynthea.

Next week: We come to the finale. As I mentioned last week, next Tuesday night I’ll be posting my own thoughts on the finale and the rewatch and the entire series of Buffy. That will be followed by several guest posts, poems, haikus, videos, and artwork by many of our contributors. I’ll be rolling those out on December 28 starting at 9 a.m., one every hour at the top of the hour. You are in for some amazing treats, I can tell you. I LOVE what people have done! Unfortunately, poor Angel’s finale will get short shrift. Join us here next week for our final Buffy chat. Sniffle.

Buffy Rewatch Week 51: Spoiler Forum

2011-12-20T19:59:00.000-05:00

And here is the spoiler forum for all of you who want to discuss the finale and S5 of Angel without fear of spoilage.

We Wish You a Zombie Christmas!

2011-12-14T20:00:00.011-05:00

During last week's rundown of the midseason finale of The Walking Dead, my co-author Josh Winstead promised he'd put together a Christmas shopping list for that zombie fan on your list. And sure enough, this morning he came through with this brilliant post. Thank you, Josh! I hope it helps some of you finish buying for that person who is always impossible to buy for. ;) And first, I just wanted to post my little zombie present to all of you: a brilliant short film my friend Chris sent me ages ago, where you see the sadness of a man who is turned into a zombie... while wearing a penguin suit.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the First Annual Last Minute Nik at Nite Holiday Gift Guide of the Scrambling, Shambling Undead. Apparently some moron promised you guys that we would take time out of our schedules during the very busiest and most stressful time of the year to comb the internet collecting items you could easily find for yourselves if you'd just Google the words “zombie crap.” And, well, apparently this moron is me. So at long last, and with perhaps another whole day or two of online shopping left, we finally give you... this. Thing.

I would love to begin with some kind of astute observation regarding the appeal of zombie-themed material, and apocalyptic literature in general, as symptoms of our global instability, reflections of a worldwide popular fear that the whole of civilization could suddenly go off the rails at any moment, but the truth is I don't really believe that. The truth is, I think people like zombies. They're a perfect adversary for the era of the video game, really – a mindless, guilt-free disposable human. One of the reasons I enjoy The Walking Dead so much, both on television and the page, is because the writers always seem to be looking for new ways to challenge that complacency and remind us of the person that came before the bite. Most of us could do with a little reminding of the humanity in our fellow roamers, and never more so than around the holidays, when many of them turn into such hideous ravening beasts.

Of course, you could always do all of your shopping online and avoid the hideous ravening beasts altogether. And that is exactly what this guide is all about! There is a glut of zombie-themed merchandise out there, but we have searched long and hard to bring you only the very best. Looking. Pictures. Of things we've never actually seen. (Or touched. And cannot verify the craftsmanship thereof.) Let's get to it!

First up, we have two pieces of “official” The Walking Dead merchandise. AMC.com has a number of items available in their web shop, but my favorite of them is the Daryl Dixon action figure. Produced by the always excellent MacFarlane Toys (the same folks that did the LOST figures), Daryl comes complete with a miniature replica of his signature crossbow and even a little plastic string of dead squirrels to sling over his shoulder. Which may be the best thing anyone ever made out of plastic. Whose desk wouldn't be all classed up by one of those?

Next up is the incredibly cool-sounding The Walking Dead board game from Cryptozoic Entertainment. You take on the role of one of the group as they move through Atlanta, collecting supplies and dodging undead shenanigans. The best part is that if you die during gameplay, you get to come back and menace the living players as a walker! What an irresistible addition to family game night.

And since we're talking about officially licensed merchandise, I cannot resist pointing you guys to this link. Gerber Legendary Blades is the official gigantic ass-whipping knife sponsor of The Walking Dead and have dedicated this section of their website to the implements of destruction as featured in the show and available for purchase. Yes, now you can practice your end-of-the-world backhand in the privacy of your own home! Included are Daryl's serrated machete, Lori's monster parang and Glenn's skull-pummeling Gator machete with the wicked hook. Definitely check out the site, as even the sales copy on each item is entertaining.

There's also some crazy stuff going on here, but I'm not sure what these guys do is completely legal. Entertaining, sure, but legal? Well, maybe – this is America, after all... Anyway, the braver among you should check it out. It's kind of like being a fly on the wall in Daryl and Merle's garage.

The more trigger-happy among you can visit O.F. Mossberg &Sons to get full specs on Shane's mean Mossberg 500 Tactical Persuader pump shotgun. The site also includes a store finder to help you locate a sporting goods store, gun dealer, pawn shop or armory near you, just in case you're ready to carry your imaginative play to the next level and actually spend hundreds of dollars on a real functioning firearm. And if you're seriously assembling an outbreak preparedness kit, perhaps I can interest you in Zombie Boot Camp. There is a fantasy zombie-themed day camp now in operation in the lyrically named Droitwich, England where, for 60 quid, you can spend four hours receiving weapons and survival training from ex-military personnel before being thrown into a warehouse full of squibbed-up pretend zombies ready for a thrashing. Sounds like fun to me.

The Center for Disease Control, seizing upon the popularity of the show, have also dedicated an area of their Foundation website to what they are calling the CDC Zombie Task Force. It's really just a clever way to get folks to consider gathering a legitimate emergency preparedness kit for their own home in case of hurricanes or whatever else might be somewhat more likely than a global zombification pandemic, but it's a fun way to do it. They have great Zombie Task Force t-shirts for sale at $12 apiece, too, so go get yours and be official.

The great Teefury.com has been doing some cool zombie-themed t-shirts in recent months, but because their site only sells each design for one day, we have no way of recommending them to you until it's too late to buy them. Fortunately, however, the artists that contribute Teefury designs also continue to sell the same after the fact, albeit at a higher price, if you know where to look for them. My two recent favorites are the mock Zombie Walk tee by designer rubyred, an awesome homage to George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, and the terrific Walking Dead comic/show coat of arms style logo on this shirt by WinterArtwork. (For those of you who haven't read the comics, I understand that the presence of the samurai sword in this design doesn't mean anything to you yet. But it will. Oh how it will.)

The dynamite British graphic designer Olly Moss, creator of several posters from the vaunted LOST limited edition runs (including the very best of them, in my opinion, which was the green Saul Bass-inspired Locke wheelchair design), created the following t-shirt that's on sale super cheap at Threadless.com right now.

And, more importantly, it's highly informative. It isn't every day you can buy a t-shirt that might save your life or the lives of others waiting in line with you at the DMV. And, if all else fails, you can always tear it into strips and use it for tourniquets. Reducing blood flow slows the rate of infection, you know.

You can also find a ton of zombie apparel and designs by searching sites like Zazzle and CafePress for keyword 'zombie.' And when I say “a ton,” I mean hundreds, possibly thousands of designs, far too many to sort through for all of the best stuff. So, dear reader, like a true Gen Xer, I've left that step to you.

While we're on the subject of laziness, let's talk about those old-fashioned episodic television shows called books. Perhaps the most fruitful outlet for zombie fans over the past decade has been in print. I would have thought zombie fiction an unlikely genre for mainstream success, but after landslide bestsellers like Max Brooks' 'World War Z' and Seth Grahame-Smith's 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' it would seem obvious that I'd have thought completely wrong. Now there are countless such tomes on the market in a huge variety, encompassing everything from novels to travel guides, phrase books, survival manuals and even a couple of cookbooks. Yes: cookbooks. I have not had the opportunity to read even a fraction of what's available, but two of my picks from recent years are 'The Passage' by Justin Cronin and 'Boneshaker' by Cheri Priest. Neither are the typical zombie fare, and both will have you reading well past bedtime with extra lights on, I promise.

Also, for the comic-read among us, TWD creator Robert Kirkman has just co-authored its first official novel, titled 'The Walking Dead: Rise of The Governor.' Obviously this is meant to build on the world established in the comics, not just read separately, so those of you who haven't dived into the comics yet have nothing to see here. But for those of you already familiar with The Governor, this is a fun, fun read and provides interesting insight into how he became one of the most twisted villains in comics history.

And with that, we reach what is almost the end of this list. However, we really can't dismiss without at least a few Christmas-themed zombie gifts, right? Well, you may not be aware of this, but despite what would seem to be the perfect marriage of green and red, zombie Christmas stuff is really hard to find. But lucky for you, not impossible. I give you... mistle-toe!

Unfortunately these are completely sold out now, but go ahead and put one on back order for next year. It isn't like you have to worry about it going bad. And if you're desperate for a gift this year, the same shop has these righteous zombie back scratchers.

Fun for the kids! And speaking of kids, it occurs to me that we have failed to include anything for children here. Negligence, begone! Try these on for size:

The “Dismember Me” plush zombie has pull-apart construction so your toy is torn up before the kids even open the package. Comes with extra brain.

The plush zombie monkey is just that – a zombie monkey. For those youngsters who cut their flesh-chomping teeth on the likes of 28 Days Later or are just looking to mix things up a bit with the dichotomy of zombification and cuteness. Well, cute to kids like mine, anyway.

For example, and in closing, I offer the following anecdote:

Several weeks ago, my wife and I started helping our own kids (Jeremy, 7, and Ella, 5) put together their Christmas lists. Last year's lists were instant classics (my personal favorite being Jeremy's order for “a dirt bike that explodes fire”), but what I found most surprising about this year was that once they finished assembling their own individual lists, the two cretins put their heads together and also created a COMBINED list of things that they could both agree everyone wants. This twofold list only had a few items, all circled in a catalog to illustrate: a trampoline (aka “The Splintmaker”), some kind of large bore Nerf-type foam riflery set (with special fragile tchotchke radar), and the pièce de résistance ... wait, let me go get the catalog so I know I have this exactly right. Ok, here it is – it's called the Doctor Dreadful Zombie Lab, and it appears to be a gross-out candy science kit. “Eat bubbling brains,” the box reads, “drink zombie barf,” (seriously, dude), “slurp slimey bugs, plus zombie skin,” with a picture of an eager kid pouring some kind of flaky green stuff into his open mouth. Watch it in action:

I couldn't quite believe that some high-level corporate toy manufacturer thought this would be a viable marketable product until I went to the store to buy one. Much to my surprise, I had to go to six different stores before I found somewhere that wasn't sold out. Guess there's no accounting for taste, even when it comes to zombies.

Happy holidays, everyone! We'll see you in February.

PS – Here's a bonus gift for you. Make one of these to wear Christmas morning, and your kids will let you sleep in for sure!