kevin k watches "buffy the vampire slayer" and no one talks about episodes he hasn't seen yet

as per request. relevant discussion starts here or especially here for when shit starts getting real for me

ok so i just finished "the prom" (s3e20). said it a million times before but UGHHHHHHHH joyce! bothers me so much that buffy and angel resign to her vision of buffy's fate - i get that it in some ways might be the best thing for buffy to do, and that they may have eventually arrived at the decision independently, but why can't buffy decide for herself? of course this'll probably all play out in a way i approve of but especially like for a show that for the most part is so pro-feminist, that bugged me.

"the prom" was another one of those movie-of-the-weekers but was better than most of those: xander is still my least favorite character by a long shot but i kinda loved him for a split second when cordi finds out that he's paid for the prom dress she wants (btw cordi as a character gets better every freaking episode - i thought i hated her season 1 and now she's like 3rd best!). and though it was like the corniest shit ever i thought the thing where the class gave buffy that umbrella (!?) was adorable, got to me a little. i thought for sure cordi and xander would dance but lol wesley got there first, hate that british btw.

that episode makes me sob and sob, btw

"Class Protector"!!!!!!!!!

ha kev I had been wondering what you thought of WESLEY WYNDHAM-PRYCE.

world's greatest name imo

more like WEASLEY

k3v (first of all, I'm glad you made this thread), please keep in mind your opinions about some of these most-hated characters. I guarantee your mind will change about some of them, perhaps even radically so. There is one you have mentioned thus far whose arc is maybe my favorite in the Buffyverse.

oh i know i'm totally expecting that and hoping for it - like i said i've done a complete 180 on cordi. willow i was just lukewarm on in season 1 and i love her now

I need to give this another shot one of these days.

ditto

Kevin what did you think of "Earshot"??

The bit in "The Prom" where Buffy is crying on the bed with Willow saying "I feel like I can't breathe" made me ;_; for days.

movie-of-the-weekers

btw the m in motw stood for monster of the week.

Kev- what's yr thoughts on Oz? Are you able to not associate him with Seth Green being fucking annoying post-Buffy?

I'm never going to be obsessed with Buffy the way I am with Doctor Who and Torchwood. I recognize that it's good and I enjoy it when I watch it, but it never makes a lasting impression with me (aside from one specific instance).

Firefly, OTOH, is totally my shit.

this was a rad show. k3v you are in for many enjoyable hours.

that episode makes me sob and sob, btw

Oh, me too. Even if I hear the Sundays version of Wild Horses, it will remind me of this episode and I will tear up.

i know! i don't even like Angel, really, but still.

I like making fun of Angel more than I genuinely like Angel, but it's still very affecting.

I like making fun of Angel more than I genuinely like Angel, but it's still very affecting.

― ô_o (Nicole), Thursday, 11 February 2010 16:35 (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think writers of the Angel show felt this way as well after a while.

david boreanaz was not meant to mope, is the thing.

dude what he is such a good moper!

He was meant to BROOD.

He was meant to BROOD while other people JOKED about his BROOODINESS. And, yes, this is a train that I'm glad the Angel writers hitched themselves to.

guys, sometimes i watch this bones show (shut up) where boreanaz is basically playing himself afaict and he's all smiley and jokey and dim and it just suits him better! i enjoy his acting a lot more when he's angelus, but still.

tbf i haven't seen much of Angel, i do think it's funny when other characters mock him, but you should not put a charisma void at the center of a show imo

a charisma carpenter on the other hand

guys, sometimes i watch this bones show (shut up) where boreanaz is basically playing himself afaict and he's all smiley and jokey and dim and it just suits him better! i enjoy his acting a lot more when he's angelus, but still.

― horseshoe, Friday, 12 February 2010 17:11 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is what he is for half of angel!

i don't believe u; fine, i'll watch it some day

can i just admit that "the good vampire" is not a supercompelling character to me

also isn't there an ep in the third season (i believe you've seen it by now, kev) where Angel's all lecturing Buffy about how she shouldn't play games with him and it's like THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T DATE SIXTEEN YEAR OLDS YOU SIMP ugh

sorry this is a terrible way to behave. i still find the season 2 betrayal stuff really affecting, but he's no sarah michelle gellar is all i'm saying

i dunno i always found smg to be the single #1 least interesting thing about Buffy ymmv

:(

WHAAAAAAAT

lol that was in re: rogermexico

HAVE YOU SEEN GRADUATION DAY PT 1 YET AND IF YOU HAVE, WHY YOU ARE YOU NOT GOING MENTAL AT HOW UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME IT IS?

i have seen it :o

i saw it the same night i started this thread, but didn't want to start talking about it at the time because i wanted to stretch this thread out more! plus i wanted to watch again. mindblowing, yes

willow and oz did it! there were a couple of great gags in this episode, one was after oz said "everything feels different" (a perfect line for the situation) and willow gets the phone call and says they have to go to the school...everything's the same. the other one was the four page spread of the demon in giles' reference book, lol.

anyway HOLY SHIT! faith's death is super complex for me - on one hand i guess the show made an effort to try to make me dislike her w/ her cold-blooded killing of that professor, that made me squirm a little. but then all the times when she made me like her at the end! her relationship with the mayor is actually really interesting - his paternal affection for her is both creepy and kind of affecting, and the look on his face when he hears that she's in trouble was really something. i don't know if i can really accept that this is the end of her, i feel cheated in a way - don't tell me if she ends up living tho, lol.

another great sequence was the one where buffy had to tell her mom to skip town so she could fight the mayor. totally deliberate mirror to last season's finale, i think, where joyce wouldn't accept buffy being a slayer and buffy ended up running away after defeating angel. the season 2 one was definitely more of a tear-jerker - it was a much tenser situation, though - but this is great for showing how joyce has opened up to buffy and accepted who she is. score one for her. plus as a reformed film geek i loved that long take in the beginning

after THE BATTLE AT FAITH'S the best part of the episode to me was buffy telling wesley off. i try not to get too heavy-handed with the feminist readings of the show and all, but i've always admired buffy's position as essentially a soldier who ostensibly answers to her watcher, be it giles or wesley; BUT, anyone who knows buffy knows of her pretty total autonomy - this includes giles and us in the audience too. wesley couldn't get with that, and buffy telling him to fuck off was really cathartic

faith - mayor::buffy - giles

non?

yeah, iv noticed that long shots in the opening scenes are a big thing for whedon

faith - mayor::buffy - giles

non?

― 80085 (a hoy hoy), Friday, February 12, 2010 5:00 PM (Yesterday)

hmmm i can see that, and it could explain why she crossed over - she felt she wasn't getting recognition/whatever from giles & co, but the mayor really seemed to like her. but she decided to work for him before the two actually had a relationship, so idk. can't remember if faith mentions anything about her father to the mayor near the end of graduation pt. 1, but i'd imagine she at least on some maybe subconscious level wanted a father figure?

btw

wesley: "this is mutiny"
buffy: "i like to think of it as...graduation"

<3

faith - mayor::buffy - giles

Faith's previous watcher only a failure in staying alive.

Considering the job description, pretty big failure! And being impersonated probably didn't help Faith's... confidence in the system.

Kev- what's yr thoughts on Oz? Are you able to not associate him with Seth Green being fucking annoying post-Buffy?

― 80085 (a hoy hoy), Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:58 AM (4 days ago)

i really love oz tbh, but he's kinda one-sided? besides the lolwerewolf thing he's just like an awesome dude, doesn't look like a motherfucker with some dark secrets or anything. glad he and will are getting more screen time lately because i love the two of them together

btw i have watched the finale! but i wanna watch again before posting about it. and my mom hinted today that she sent me season 4 in the mail, sweet

yay your mom!

oz is the best btw

yay your mom!

― horseshoe, Monday, 15 February 2010 05:35 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

How did the finale make you feel, kevin?

well damn!

the finale was objectively epic, satisfying in some ways and kinda difficult in others. loved the hospital scenes, pretty much killed it as far as faith-mayor and faith/mayor/buffy/angel relationships go - the mayor was a pretty great character actually, too bad he didn't have as much face time as spike did in season 2. the part where angel tells everyone how he was cured was really complex, i really didn't know whether to side with angel (buffy made him do it!) or xander, though his reliably annoying joke made it a little easier. i guess that's sort of the point - angel's absoultely invauable when he's "normal", but idk if he can ever be 100% trusted, whether he can help it or not. still feel like i was cheated out of cathartic closure to that whole situation though. i sobbed a little the first time i watched the "silent in-the-distance farewell" but it kinda didn't do anything for me the second time (compare this to the end of season 2, where i basically can't help but cry for the entire episode).

loool @ the whole cordi-wesley ending - what a useless character, i hope he never comes back. loved when cordi staked that vamp in the battle though, her face was perfect! also thought it was great that snyder got killed (i think?), it was pretty hard to take him seriously. the whole battle was pretty epic and getting all the students involved was cool - thought it was hilarious when wilkins ascended and the parents just ran for it w/out worrying about their kids. screw olds!

still have a bunch of questions obviously, but i guess that's what the point of a season-ending cliffhanger is. curious to see what's gonna go down with faith and angel, assuming they'll both come back. where the hell are spike and dru, really surprised they didn't make an appearance at all, though once i started really liking faith and the mayor as villains it didn't matter quite as much.

it was a little cheesy but loved oz's line at the end "we survived...[chatter about yeah we kicked the mayor's ass (willow said 'ass' btw!)]...no, high school"

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5towpEe6R1qkbybho1_1280.jpg

Excellent.

(rest of thread restricted to those who always have kept their ILX refreshing below 100/day)

Ha Ha, no, but I lied, I also remember Ms Calender/Giles interplay. Something about smelly books.

Love that speech! "Knowledge should be smelly". I fell for the series there & knew I would be stuck in front of it every single week.

Dialogue in the first few seasons was so amazingly good. I know it was easier when the storylines were more teen angsty and kept relatively light--I just rewatched all of S7 last fall and everyone's delivery seemed wooden and arbitrary except Anya's! I never realized before that she was prob the best actress on the whole show.

Would be embarrassed if a higher power could tot up the number of times I've said "the subtext is rapidly becoming...well, text" irl with a totally straight face.

Anya snarfing down popcorn and twirling her finger in the air to let Giles know he's put the slides the wrong way into the projector as he tries to explain 'The Gentlemen' is one of my favourite little moments in the show.

Another is Xander and others digging up graves during the episode where some students have been apparently constructing girls

Willow: Are we hoping to find a body, or no body?
Xander: Call me an optimist, but I'm hopin' to find a fortune in gold doubloons.

i'm halfway through s6 and should have a better month coming up in terms of workload, so i think i'm gonna finish this! i see you all have ignored the thread title >:|

the line i remember from I ROBOT YOU JANE is "he doesn't type like someone with a hairy back"

omg sorry kev! i paused last night to think about it but i thought you were all the way through s6 and i didn't open the whole thread to check cuz yknow that would have been responsible.

well that's just great, now we need a whole new thread and kev has to get a mindwipe and well this just a mess

:)

my bad, the thread had been dormant for so long i assumed kev had already finished, sorry kev

i'm halfway through s6 and should have a better month coming up in terms of workload, so i think i'm gonna finish this! i see you all have ignored the thread title >:|

― manti 乒乓 (k3vin k.), Thursday, January 31, 2013 9:39 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well i've finished season 6 - am heading out for the night but feel free to keep the awesome posts coming

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Friday, June 1, 2012 6:59 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah ha! i'm not a jerk! :D

we may need to initiate trial proceedings

the plot thickens! dun dun DUN

http://www.authentichistory.com/1961-1974/6-nixon/3-watergate/timeline/19730600_John_Dean_Testifies_Before_Senate_Committee.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/nixon01600_zpsbbab5581.jpg

haha!

DOWN. AND TO THE LEFT.
DOWN. AND TO THE LEFT.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2009/09/kevin-costner-jfk.jpg

ha i guess i finished it! it's been so long. i saw tim say "season 7" and was sure i hadn't started that yet and was like lalalalala

i'm not actually mad obv and i'm gonna start s7 asap

ah yes reading the s6 recap i distinctly remember bawling at the end when willow gives up and collapses into...is it xander? suuuper moody season, i can't remember going back and forth between "this kinda sucks" and "this is amazing" like i did with this season. the Buffy/spike relationship i recall being particularly vexing

well well well

:)

but yeah s6 was way emo

can't remember *going back and forth*

Yeah I think we've all just been making vague references to s 7 so as to not spoil plot lines. Watch it kev! I want final episode reax.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-robin-sachs-of-buffy-the-vampire-slayer,92070/

aw RIP ethan

I was watching Doppelgangland through The Prom again over the last few days. A really flawless run of episode (obv. Graduation Parts 1 and 2 are as well but I haven't got to them yet) - consistently funny/dark/rousing/thoughtful, with the consistent theme of "what is the difference between good and bad" explored in a more subtle* way than often was the case later on in the show.

* Not "subtle" in the ordinary sense - Good Willow vs Bad Willow, or Faith vs Buffy, or the implied contrast of Giles vs the Mayor are pretty heavy-handed oppositions - but they're so successfully submerged within the universe of the show that they never feel like they're trying to make a point.

Earshot in particular is such a perfect episode, it delivers right up until the final frame.

Timely revival—I watched Buffy as it aired, but lost track of it after season five. I've begun watching it again, thanks to its appearance on Netflix. I had been warned by obsessed friends that season six was bad, but I am actually quite enjoying it, or at least, more than all that Initiative nonsense. I like it for the same reasons they dislike it: the bleakness and 'mundane' situations. I've always liked when the show tilts more toward horror than superhero. (That said, 'loan shark who is actually a shark' is one of the lowest points of the show for me.)

Though, as always, what keeps me from completely loving the show is that I often admire the ideas it presents but don't care for the execution. As much I like the idea of Buffy having to 'make it' in real world/be an adult wrt getting a job and worrying about bills, it struck me as odd that the show never explained why the Watchers Council would provide for Giles but not the Slayer, their most valuable asset and sole reason for existence, if for no other reason that flipping burgers distracts her from her mission—which they clearly care about, considering that was their reason for being displeased with Buffy having companions. That also crops up every time the 'Buffy faces jail' scenario crops up: surely the Council would pull strings to prevent the world's one true champion from serving time for anything less than mass murder or killing the president?

man, you know what you do NOT wanna do, is read the buffy wiki

Though, as always, what keeps me from completely loving the show is that I often admire the ideas it presents but don't care for the execution. As much I like the idea of Buffy having to 'make it' in real world/be an adult wrt getting a job and worrying about bills, it struck me as odd that the show never explained why the Watchers Council would provide for Giles but not the Slayer, their most valuable asset and sole reason for existence, if for no other reason that flipping burgers distracts her from her mission—which they clearly care about, considering that was their reason for being displeased with Buffy having companions. That also crops up every time the 'Buffy faces jail' scenario crops up: surely the Council would pull strings to prevent the world's one true champion from serving time for anything less than mass murder or killing the president?

― blatherskite, Friday, February 8, 2013 6:30 AM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

minds blown over herre

the watchers council is ridiculous, but i never think about them in episodes they aren't in - it's also not too realistic that they morph from weak Old Guard patriarchs to hard-ass commandos when they show up on Angel.

the real question is, where do they get their funding?

Doesn't Buffy choose to have nothing to do with the Watcher's Council at some point? Also, I thought the Watcher's Council was destroyed at some point. Or was that season 7?

>:(

i assumed the council saw buffy as expendable because in a sense she was - when the slayer dies a new one takes her place.

Yeah also there are some story parts that make it clear that the orig watchers really didn't care about the original woman they forced to be a Slayer.

And that dynamic is kind of still in play, the Council cares about itself and its research/records/scholarship but the individual slayers are not a priority.

It only struck me when she re-joins the Council on the condition that Giles gets reinstated with back pay—perhaps she should have put a word in for herself!

I figured she was just relying on Faith's "See > Want > Take" philosophy, but quietly.

Chaos has befallen your thread, K3vin. No-one cares about the rules :(

I've been reading the thread as slowly as you've been watching Buffy, and decided a couple of months ago to re-watch everything. Watched the last 3 episodes of season 7 last night. But I won't talk about them yet, cos them's the rules. Hope you find time to power through the final series soon!

i'm over halfway through s7 now, it definitely has its ups and downs.

I've just reached 'Storyteller'—I think Andrew might be one of my favorite characters on television.

"Becoming Pt 2".

;_; forever and then ;_; some more.

I haven't watched that one in a long time, but I have cried every time I've seen it.

i fell so fucking in love with that sarah mclachlan song

Tim F otm

;_;

i'm done with s7 now, btw. i thought it was the weakest season but i still enjoyed it a lot, the end was pretty good, i particularly enjoyed willow's part in it.

http://img2-2.timeinc.net/people/i/2014/news/141103/nicolas-brendan-2-435.jpg

oh, xander.

http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/styles/tout_image_612x380/public/i/2015/10/01/nicholas-brendon.jpg?itok=iMDhVTjm

At this point maybe his twin brother should just kill him and take over his life, get shit back on track.

A demon attempts to divide Buffy into two, but accidentally gets Xander instead, splitting him into two Xanders — one with his strongest qualities and one with his weakest. Lame Xander thinks Suave Xander is a demon who's stolen his face, and is hurt when he sees that the "demon" lives his life better than he does. Meanwhile, Xander gets a new apartment, Anya is confronted with her own mortality, and Riley realizes that Buffy doesn't return the love he has for her.