Friday 24 August 2018

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Potential

"You're not special. You're extraordinary."

Not all Buffy episodes can stand out. Yes, Buffy is an extraordinary series, but you can't fill 22 episodes a year without pausing for breath. This episode pretty much admits that, as Buffy tells us the First is in temporary, plot-convenient "remission" So we get a somewhat going-through-the motions in which Buffy teaches the potentials how to fight, Dawn thinks that for a moment she might be a potential, and Anya gets some cracking lines.

It's not an episode, in contrast to usual, which lingers in the memory or adds many memorable scenes, that wonderful moment at the end excepted where Xander and Dawn get this wonderful scene together about being the only two Scoobies without superpowers. It adds nothing to the arc either, really, although it's obvious that Andrew is gradually shifting as a character from threat to comic relief.

Still, even an eminently skippable episode is never actively bad, and certainly kept me entertained. I still worry that the presence of the potentials means we spend a bit less time with the characters we know and love, yes, but I'm very much warming to this season.

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