"You want to kill her? Don't you think you could just switch rooms or something?"
This suddenly feels weird, going back to Buffy after an episode of Angel. Still, I'll be doing this for a long, long time. I'm sure I'll get used to it.
I don't know about you but, looking back from this age of horrible, cynical, talent show dirges where Autotune is ubiquitous, I've become rather fond of Cher's Believe. She's not using Autotune to cheat, but to sound deliberately weird, and to draw attention to the weirdness. It's exactly the sort of playfully creative sort of thing that you never see in chart pop these days.
So, er, I'm actually with Kathy on the Cher issue. Although not playing the same song all the time. Also, "Lite FM! Love songs! Nothing but love songs!" definitely sounds like my personal Hell. Or possibly Heart FM, which has caused more human suffering than anything I can think of. "Love songs" are just full of generic platitudes. They have all the passion of a crappy poem in a greetings card and are the least romantic thing ever. I hate them. Just thought I'd get that off my chest.
This is a bit of a comedy episode, obviously (expect imminent heartbreak), and the metaphor here is nice and light: Kathy stands for those really annoying people we all know who are all the more annoying for being nice with it, so you can't even tell them to piss of without guilt tripping yourself. I'm sure we've all come across a Kathy. Probably the worst thing is the lack of understanding of personal privacy: you don't have to be "secret identity girl" to find the line "I figure we're almost like sisters now, living together and everything" the scariest thing that's been in Buffy for a good while. People like that absolutely have to be demons.
This episode is well funny, and a lot of that is down to a combination of Sarah Michelle Gellar's facial acting and some nice little directorial touches. In fact, the funniest scene (toenails vs. pencil drumming!) is just an extended riff of camera cuts and sound effects. And I also love the brief glimpses we also get of the wild parties going on in Willow's room! Also, the misdirection early on is well done: it really works as a twist that the hooded demons, who speak to each other in Jabba about "the one", are after Kathy, not Buffy. It's a nice touch that Kathy finds Buffy's slaying kit- and doesn't bat an eyelid! And it seems that conversations between fathers and errant daughters are the same in every dimension.
It all ends for the best, though, with Willow as Buffy's new roommate. That certainly gives the writers an easier job, what with Buffy being "secret identity girl" again.
As for the rest of the Scooby Gang (Xander actually uses the phrase here for, I think, the first time ever! Anyone know if this is indeed the first time?), stuff is brewing. Who's that girl briefly noticed by Oz? Giles is beginning to look increasingly as though he's entering a bit of a mid-life crisis, like many middle-aged men who find themselves suddenly unemployed. And will anything happen between Buffy and "random adorableness" Parker Abrams?
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