Grimm: The End

"I want the people I love to live again!"

I.m sad to see the back of Grimm, satisfying it is to finally complete a series what with all the different telly shows I'm currently juggling. This is an improvement from last week's awfulness, which is a relief, but in spite of a few nice touches it's hardly a worthy finale for the series, which is a shame.

Hank and Wu are confirmed to have died. And slowly Eve, Monroe, Rosalie and Sean are killed by this great big Zerstorer, a big bad we haven't even known for that long. Then there's some guff about the staff of Moses and the ghosts of Nick's late mum Kelly and Aunt Marie help him Trubel to kill Zerstorer in an epic battle... and then a big red sodding reset button is pushed meaning that no one died, including Wu and Hank, and all that we have seen is rendered meaningless. It's a crashing disappointment, however cool the coda with a young adult Kelly and Diana may be.

Still, the epic blood spell is pretty cool. The deaths are dramatic when they happen. But the fact that we had a final episode like this goes to show that a programme that, episode by episode and arc by arc, was rather good, was perhaps not that great at world building in the end.

Grimm: The Beginning of the End- Part 1

"You better get used to it. Because this is a position you can't quit..."

Nearly there now...

I think there's an interesting subtext going on here. Adalind has no choice; she is being forced to undertake the role of trophy wife and mother to show Sean to be a "family values" politician while he carries out whatever policies Black Claw wants him to. This is the episode where the threats get truly explicit; Bonaparte (any relation?) is a very sinister personification of the patriarchy as he makes clear to Adalind that she is to marry Renard and that is that. Men have spoken.

All of this is writ large as Black Claw seek to infiltrate political positions everywhere, a sort of Wesen Militant tendency. And they really are suddenly  everywhere, especially in the previously unseen Portland North Precinct. Much of the episode consists of Hank being framed and set up but this quickly unravels into chaos; none of this is done by the book. The targeting and kidnapping of Hank is done purely to distract Nick, Trubel and especially Eve away from HW so Black Claw can attack and carry out one of their signature massacres, and there are no survivors. Not even Meisner. This is shocking, and clearly means war.

After a clearly miffed Diana has Rachel suffocated to death (what a lovely child!), we end with a furious fight between Nick and Renard which ends up with Nick being arrested. And there are Black Claw marks on his cell...

This is awesome stuff, finally getting to pay off various arcs in a season which has had a particularly good season arc even if some individual episodes have been variable. More please...

Angel: Heartthrob

"Don't say the "B" word."

My wife could go into labour any week now, and becoming a new father is unavoidably going to curtail my blogging time. What better time to start a new season of Angel?

Excellent opening episode, this. Time has passed, the team has bonded in the absence of the brooding, the bereaved Angel is in retreat in Sri Lanka, Fred still won't come out of her room, and Cordy's visions are even more painful. By the time of Angel's return (touchingly, he's missed his friends and they all hug) we have a happy and bonded team. It's all, for the moment, very lovey-dovey.

And that's appropriate, because this whole episode examines the phenomenon of love and grief in the wake of Buffy's, ahem, "death". Flashbacks remind us of Angel's kinky yet easy-going relationship with Darla, but contest them with the much more passionate love between their fellow vampires Elizabeth and James- introducing a certain Holtz while doing so. We will be hearing more of him.

Flash forward, and Elizabeth is at large in present day LA being evil. Her evil is thematically sound, though; she taunts a male student by forcing to choose whether she kills him or the girl he professes to love. He breaks down and begs her to kill her and spare himself... and then Angel saves them. That's one couple who will be having an awkward conversation.

However, after Angel kills Elizabeth, James is not happy about the death of his beloved, and by "not happy" I mean like something out of Romantic poetruunable to live without his beloved, he accepts death as the inevitable price of attempting to avenge her. He dies happy, having failed to kill Angel but done the right thing by his loved one. 

We learn at the end- via, of course, Cordy- that Angel is troubled; does the fact that he is able to live, albeit in mourning, after Buffy's death mean that their love was never real, as James tied believing?

A solid opener, although I bet we never hear of either Elizabeth or James again. Quite the cliffhanger, too, as we learn that Darla is impossibly pregnant...

Angel: Dead End

"Back in the '50s we all thought life would be like The Jetsons now..."

I'm rather enjoying this ongoing and deadly competition for corporate advancement between Lila and Lindsey. Pity it ends today, and Lindsey seems to have some kind of epiphany and buggers off just when it seems he's won, but it was fun while it lasted, this episode included.

The early scenes, using ready- tied ties to emphase Lindsey's reduced mobility with his hand gone, also emphasise both his alienation and the awfulness of fashion in 2001. But the stakes soon rise as we realise that one of either he or Lila will be confirmed on post and the other one "cut", which sounds ominous.

It's hinted that Lindsey is indeed the golden boy, however, getting a hand transplants, no less, and that poor Lila is utterly buggered. After all, Wolfram & Hart are investing a lot of money and dark magic into Lindsey. 

It's a bit of a plodder, this one, and yes, it's hard to take an evil hand seriously. It's also hard to emphatjose with Lindsey's rebellion, which is too little, too late and motivated by self- indulgence rather than conscience.

In other news, it's becoming increasingly clear that Cordelia, not being half demon, sinky can't handle the visions for much longer. But how can the gang help the helpless without her?

Grimm: Bears Will Be Bears

"The only stains we've come across are wine and whoopee..."

This episode is based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, obviously, and the thought occurs to me: surely there are only so many Grimm's fairy tales, and just a handful of well-known ones? How will they avoid running out soon? It'll be interesting to follow this line of thought as the series goes on, methinks.

This episode is relatively meh; the couple's three teenage biker bear sons remind me of the wolf pack from Twilight: New Moon, especially with the Native American angle, and that's not a film I'm fond of. This is also the point where I'm beginning to notice the suspiciously large amount of product placement that there is for Apple stuff; the place seems to be drowning in iPods and iPhones.

The CGI bears are... interesting. The special effects in Grimm are nicely restrained and budget-friendly, though, with people's faces only briefly shown with CGI so we get the message about what they are, but that's it.

The backstory is interesting, though: Aunt Marie dies in only the second one. Our Luke Skywalker seems to have lost his Obi-Wan. And things are afoot: the police captain (American police ranks are so very military!) is plotting with the nasty woman from last episode. Two episodes in and we already have an arc.

Grimm: Pilot

"The misfortune of our family is already passing to you..."

Why Grimm? Well, basically it's my girlfriend's favourite programme, it's something to watch together, and the premise is pretty cool. Also, intriguingly, there's a Buffy connection in the person of David Greenwalt; this gives grounds for optimism. I'm going into this programme blind; I have no idea what the critics think and I intend to keep that way for as long as I realistically can. The only research I plan to do is to make sure I'm aware which Grimm fairy tale is being referenced by each episode.

Oh, and btw this isn't replacing Buffy and Angel; there are episodes in the pipeline. Watch this space.

Anyway...  to start with, a gripe: the DVD for Season One has no subtitles. This is a very basic failing and people might want to boycott it until, you know, it gets re-released in an acceptable form. But as for the content, I'm intrigued. I'm a little alarmed by David Giuntoli as Nick; so far he seems rather wooden. But the quote at the start, and the fact that the story seems to be based on Red Riding Hood, are both intriguing; I understand that each episode is adapted from a Brothers Grimm story. This leads to certain questions, of course: Nick comes from a long line of "Grimms", but did the Brothers Grimm exist in this universe? If so, presumably people within the narrative will soon become aware that they are reliving the fairytales. Things could get very, very metatextual, very, very soon. Good.

The mix of genres is interesting; a police procedural crossed with fairytale fantasy. The visual style, with its deep colours (especially greens) and dreamlike quality, evokes the same "fairytale" mood that was established in the 2011 season of Doctor Who, which had a very similar look. On the other hand we have a very promising "buddy buddy" cop dynamic, with the excellent Russell Hornsby as Hank. Frankly, I much prefer him to Nick as a character at this point. I can't help noticing, though, that Portland has the most palatial police station I've ever seen.

Obviously, this is a pilot, so we can excuse the amount of exposition we get here, especially from Nick's dying Aunt Marie. A fair amount of exposition comes from Monroe, our friendly "vegetarian" Blüdbad (the superb Silas Weir Mitchell), though, and he's cool. Very, very cool. My lovely girlfriend has compared him to Spike off of Buffy, and I can see what she means. I think I'm going to like this character.

The cliffhanger ending is well cool, too. I particularly like the musical contrast: the episode ends with Eurythmics' version of "Sweet Dreams" but the episode ends to Marilyn Manson's version. Cool. So far this looks as though it's going to be my sort of series.

Angel: Judgement

"Are we tracking a real tunnel, or symbolic?"

The first thing we see in this new season is the face of a nasty looking demon, accompanied by a sinister musical cue… then he starts singing and giving of vibes of being rather camp, and a thoroughly nice chap. A nice bit of misdirection, although it probably works better on first viewing, as I immediately recognised Lorne, as we shouldn't yet be calling him, and having sad thoughts about Andy Hallett's untimely death. It'll be interesting to see how often he appears during the first part of the season and when we can start thinking of him as a regular.

Speaking of new regulars… J. August Richards has been promoted to the opening titles, and gets to meet Cordelia and Wesley in a splendidly awkward scene that speaks volumes about the sort of instinctive racial stereotyping that sometimes happens even amongst the most liberal of us. But the opening sequence of this semi-relaunch episode also re-establishes the existing trio. Cordelia, after last season, is now so committed to the cause that she abandons a very promising audition at the beep of a pager (how quaint!), while Wesley is, er, good at darts, and by now a very different character from the klutz he used to be.

There's a little Wolfram and Hart stuff, with a bit of Darla and an introduction to Lindsey's new hand, but this episode is focused more on a weird, extra-dimensional mediaeval court. Interestingly, Angel seems to be moving away from straight horror fantasy to magical, extra-dimensional weirdness with demons that might as well be aliens. It's a distinctive style, very different from Buffy, and I like it, in spite of the occasionally dodgy costumes.

This brings us rather nicely to Lorne's karaoke bar, with its extremely diverse clientele, and the interesting conceit that Lorne can read the emotions and, up to a point, the fate of people when they sing. Already, on his first appearance, he's a great character. Also, we get to see Angel massacre Barry Manilow although, sadly, I don't mean that literally.

Most interesting, of coursed, is Angel. He's brought down from the highs, and possible hubris, of the Shanshu prophecy when he makes a mistake. And yet he redeems himself by literally taking on the role of a modern day knight errant to make amends. A deeply chivalrous man in twentieth century California… again, echoes of Raymond Chandler.

It's deeply satisfying, too, and deeply thematic, to see Angel bonding so well with Faith, in prison. The two of them have so much in common. It's the perfect place to end.

Angel: To Shanshu in LA

"It's just a prophecy. It's not like it came from on high!"

Interesting parallel, isn't it? The fourth season of Buffy ends with an epilogue, while the first season of Angel ends with a prologue. All sorts of stuff for next season is being set up here. Obviously we have the resurrection of Darla by Wolfram and Hart, who are not clearly the Big Bad of the series, but Cordelia has learned empathy, the Oracles are dead, Gunn is looking more and more like a series regular, and…. Angel is apparently going to become human.

It's impressive how confidently this episode judges such a jumble of characters and tones. One moment Angel and co are having an hilariously awkward conversation with billionaire nerd David Nabbitt (although I have to wag a finger at the negative stereotyping of tabletop role-players here!), another moment Angel's home has been blown up and both Cordelia and Wesley are in hospital. There are some nice short scenes, too. I like the confrontation between Angel and Kate, where he finally lets her have a piece of his mind. Kate's aversion to demons because of her father was understandable up to a point, but there comes a point where we have to say that a line has been crossed and she's being racist. I'm not sure if the subtext is intended, but this made me think of people who live in poverty and vote for far right parties out of misdirected rage. Here's hoping Kate gets back over the line. Signs are not good, though; she's become a subject of mockery because of her obsession with the supernatural.

Lindsey, meanwhile, is now a junior partner with Wolfram and Hart, with a massive salary; he's chosen his side and taken his "thirty pieces of silver." His general competence is still somewhat questionable, mind; I'm not sure why sacrificing a hand is quite able to atone for that, but I suppose he does ensure that the spell to resurrect Darla is completed. Still, all he actually achieves is to clear up after his own mess. And the delightfully evil Lyla and Holland Manners are much cooler as baddies. Cooler still is this week's disposable baddie, Vocah, whose metal mask conceals a face halfway through the process of being eaten by maggots…!

Cordelia's realisation that there's so much pain in the world is sort of a return to a perennial theme dating back to when she first got her visions; it'll be interesting to see how long this newer, nicer Cordelia lasts. Wesley is once again shown to be conscientious, loyal, and rejuvenated with a real sense of purpose. He's grown so much since he first joined Angel.

But the main revelation concerns Angel. When it seems that the prophecy foretells his death, he's unbothered; he has no desires, no pleasures, no prospect of reward. Life for him is nothing but atonement. He's detached from the world, and has no stake in it, as we learn rather hilariously through a rather brilliant sequence of exposition through comedy. Indeed, there's something nicely meta in the suggestion that his problem is an inability to develop as a character.

But, once we learn that the prophecy ion fact foretells his one day, after many quests and trials, becoming human, suddenly there is hope for him. It seems, perhaps, that he has something to live for, and a real prospect of some rather interesting character development…

Angel: She

"I was so glad you came. You know how parties are? You're always worried that no one's gonna suck the energy out of the room like a giant black hole of boring despair. But, there you were in the clinch!"

Well, that was mostly rubbish. A rather pointless riff on the whole Stepford Wives trope. The whole concept feels out of place in this show, grounded as it is in vampires, demons and other such elements of the horror genre. This episode felt like science fiction, and that jarred.

Worse, it didn't seem to have anything to say. The concept- a race where men enslave their women by, in effect, lobotomising them, symbolically amputating the seat of their sexuality. At first I thought there might be something of a subtext about female genital mutilation, but on balance I'm not sure there's a subtext at all. And that's a problem. Without some kind of authorial message about gender roles, feminism or the like, a concept like this is pretty much pointless.

On the other hand, though, everything about the episode that wasn't the actual plot was pretty darned good. I loved Cordelia's party, although there's nothing like a party scene to graphically show how awful the fashions were back then. Was it really only twelve years ago?

I'm with Angel, I have to say. Parties are generally not fun. They're full of endless small talk , and endless small talk is not my idea of a good time. I think that's what we were supposed to conclude, interestingly; Angel's conversation with the woman who has a Masters in Fine Arts but is running a sandwich shop pretty much highlights the desperation and loneliness of life in the big city, a running theme of Angel. I think we're supposed to see the party as essentially this in microcosm. Alas, only Angel and Dennis seem to understand this basic truth.

Also, Wesley is now officially an employee of Angel Investigations, after a surprisingly long time. All three of our leads continue to be great, with the three characters having a fantastic dynamic together. Angel gets the best moments, though. I love his hatred of mobile phones, although the phone he's using looks absolutely prehistoric in 2012. And his brief stint as a guide in the art gallery is the coolest thing ever. I'm not sure it makes much sense that the cruel and evil Angelus would have been so pally with Baudelaire, but the whole thing is so cool that I'm going to overlook that.

Also, of course, I love what they do with the closing titles. Otherwise, though, this is a plodding, pointless and eminently skippable episode.

Angel: I Will Remember You

"They get groiny with one another- the world, as we know it, falls apart."

This is a brilliant episode. Brilliant. Intense, heartbreaking, and brilliantly acted. And yet… I'm not sure it should have been done. Yes, it was brilliant (there will be gushing shortly), but it ends with a great big reset button. It never happened, and is therefore robbed of its meaning. It would have been much better as a one-off piece of fanfic, and I don't mean to denigrate the episode in any way; the distinction between fanfic and "official" stuff, in these days of serialised television drama, has nothing to do with quality or anything like that, just the kind of stories that can be told. And this episode is exactly the sort of story that doesn't work as part of a bigger, serialised narrative. The reset button pretty much admits that.

Right. Now that's been said, let the gushing commence. Both Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz are amazing here, both of them really, really giving us the simmering sexual tension that threatens to boil over for so much of this episode. It's fantastic, if completely unreal, to see them both being so blissfully post-coital with each other, and these scenes are really, really well-shot, too, deliberately going for a dreamlike quality. There's delicious comedy, too; I love the gradual change from tea and awkwardness to shagging on the table. All this is good.

Also good is Angel's reaction to being alive (with reservations, which I'll come to), and the various sensual pleasures it brings, not just sex but food and, um, both sex and food together. This is also good. Cordelia's reaction to this joyous moment for Angel's life is good, too. Naturally, it's all about her and her rapidly diminished future prospects. Doyle is more optimistic; no doubt he has a bright future ahead of him.

Much as I dislike the use of the reset button, I have to admit that this is well-handled, too. It's a typically noble gesture of Angel (although also, and just as typically, a little narcissistic) to give up the prospect of happiness so that the End of Days is averted, mainly because this would also mean the End of Buffy. Aaaah. Even one of the Oracles is impressed.

The Oracles are cool, too- Greek, enigmatic, and a nice development of the infant show's mythology. We haven't heard much about the Powers That Be since City Of, but we're reminded of their importance to Angel's mission. They're also kept mysterious, though; the Oracles are a nice way of keeping the powers at arm's length so they can remain enigmatic. Of course, whether it's the Powers or their Oracle underlings, we're essentially looking at a great big metaphor for the godlike power of the Writer on this fictional world. Metatextuality can be such fun sometimes.

Reset button aside, there are a couple of little plot problems. Why does Angel being human mean the End of Days is coming? I don't think that's explained. And Angel seems rather more self-flagellating about being human than he did back in In the Dark. These things aside, though, I actually love this episode. It was brilliant. It was done well. But it's still an idea that probably shouldn't have been done at all.

Angel: I Fall to Pieces

"What is stalking now? Like, the third most popular sport among men?"

"Fourth, after luge."

Is it just me, or does this episode's title mean that the song by Velvet Revolver is going through your head too?

It's interesting how much more coherent Angel feels when not crossing over with the parent show. There's a different directorial style, of sunsets, cityscapes and jump cuts. And the format of the show is different, with a much smaller ensemble of regular characters and a greater focus on the client of the week. This show pushes the private investigator angle much further; when Melissa visits the office it begins to feel more like Sherlock than Buffy. Angel's attitude to charging clients seems rather similar to Sherlock Holmes', too. Sherlock could probably do with a Cordelia.

This episode is very evocative of the late '90s, not only in the horrible office fashions but in the focus on stalking, an issue which had only recently started attracting media attention at the time. Here in the UK, certainly, it was only defined as a a specific criminal offence shortly before the 1997 election; I assume the concept was also quite zeitgeisty in the US. And this is a proper exploration of the subject; both Kate and Angel are given powerful and effective dialogue explaining the psychology of the stalker and the effect on the victim.

The main supernatural concept is gloriously creepy; a "psychic surgeon" who can detach and reattach parts of his body including, most disgustingly, his eyeball, which for some reason is also able to levitate. And then there are the disembodied hands under Melissa's bedcovers!!!  Most of all, I'm sure the idea of being watched all the time by a disembodied eyeball must be exactly what stalking feels like, and that's the point. It's just a slight pity that the in-universe explanation for this relies on a load of new agey bollocks, including that tired old false belief that 80% of our brains go unused.

Angel's handling of the case is clever and impressive, and its interesting how much psychological insight he seems to have, not only in his understanding of the stalker's thinking but also in his rather clever little deception. I'm not sure how well this squares with him not being much of a "people person", but perhaps this is an example of how "helping the helpless" is affecting him for the better. Then again, it might be inconsistent characterisation.

It's a good episode, well paced, and it deals with the issue of the week rather well. But I'd like to see a larger cast and more of an arc; one-off episodes are fine in themselves but characters need development. I find myself in the paradoxical position of liking the episode itself but disliking the concept of a series made up of one-off episodes like this one. Yes, there's a slight mention of Wolfram and Hart. But I'd like a bit more story arc.

Angel: City Of

"Look, high school's over, bud."

Spin-offs are always a bit awkward, and this has the potential to be more than most. Unlike Buffy, who's witty and cool, Angel is brooding, fairly humourless and definitely not a people person. Worse, Buffy has established itself as an ensemble show, whereas the theme music to Angel (which rocks, by the way, and so does the tune) features only three regulars. Still, one of them is Cordelia (yay!) and she's outgoing, self-centred, funny and definitely a people person. And, going by the first episode, this really, really works. Even the fact that we begin in a bar, with the title character drinking alcohol, is something that has never so far happened in Buffy.

I love the title, although I must admit I've always had a penchant for terrible puns. It highlights the fact that there's a fourth regular character for this show: Los Angeles. Whereas Buffy has just started to explore the experience of moving from high school to university and the adjustment to a much bigger and more uncaring world, Angel expands these themes to an older demographic and the biggest possible scale: a city notorious for attracting people with hope and dreams and then cruelly disillusioning them.

Everything in the episode is about this. The fact that Russell, the baddie here, is a vampire acts as a rather neat metaphor for the way that this city, with its mirages of stardom and its uncaring harshness, sucks all the hope and life out of people. These themes are brought home all the more by the fact that they're happening to Cordelia, whom we all know and love, or bloody well ought to. We saw her lose all her money in the last season of Buffy, and so here she is, in the big city, desperate for some very unlikely success, living in a dump and wasting her time with some very Californian self-help twaddle. This is a great use of the character. Frankly, the new season of Buffy, being all about a new and unfamiliar environment, has no need of a secondary character originally designed as a queen bee type. But putting her in different circumstances, in a different show, as a primary character seems a great and promising move. It helps that Charisma Carpenter is amazing.

Then again, it may be great that Cordelia's an old friend of ours, and that she knows right away that Russell's a vampire and is blasé about it because, hey, she's from Sunnydale, but we know that no real harm or tragedy is going to befall her, at least not in the first episode. So enter Tina, who isn't so lucky, and who is so, so tragic. Unlike the slightly heightened character of Cordelia she feels like a real, brave, frightened person and we see enough of her to be devastated at her death.

She's also the catalyst for Angel, of course. He's withdrawn into himself, and just wants to help the occasional person and be left alone to mope in his mysteriously acquired Batcave. But the Powers That Be (mentioned in the very first episode, and it's already tempting to see them as the fictionalised alter ego of the writers, or basically Joss Whedon, which is fun and metatextual) have other ideas. So up pops Doyle who, aside from the facts that he's half-demon, has painful visions and is played by someone with a genuine Irish accent (the late Glenn Quinn), which has a real potential to embarrass the otherwise excellent David Boreanaz in flashback sequences, is still a complete mystery at this point. Suffice to say he's been called forth by the Powers That Be, and his first task is to recite Angel's backstory for the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen Buffy. I believe that over on TV tropes they refer to this sort of thing as "As You Know, Bob". Still, at least the script has the grace to give Angel a line that admits this. And it's all good ammunition for my "Powers That Be=Joss Whedon" theory.

Angel has to get out there and mix with people, is the message.  He needs to start caring about people, so that he can do good for its own sake rather than for the sake of his own tortured conscience. The Powers That Be / Joss Whedon definitely have a plan for him. And it gives him a character arc.

Angel is a little off-guard in the big city, interestingly. At first he doesn't manage to defeat Russell, but retreats. He simply isn't the big shot in LA that he is in Sunnydale. He's still a somebody, though, a "new player in town", and he wins out in the end, in a rather cool manner.

It's only the first episode, but already we're introduced to evil and mysterious law firm Wolfram and Hart, and also to Christian Kane, whose character is as yet unnamed. Even the "Senior Partners" get a mention, which surprises me. Already the format is taking shape, and we end with the formation of Angel Investigations and Cordelia, naturally, employing herself.

This first episode is much better than I remembered. I'll be honest and admit that I didn't really get into Angel until Season Three, but this is certainly a great start.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith, Hope and Trick

"Admittedly, it's not a haven for the brothers. Strictly the Caucasian persuasion here today."

That quote is obviously an admission by Whedon & co; there haven't exactly been… well, any significant black characters in Buffy so far, and that's more than a little awkward. So at least it's nice that the attempt to start making amends for this is considered important enough to be worth a little breakage of the old fourth wall.

Trick is very much a character in the mould of Spike: quirky, individual, unusually modern for a vampire, intelligent, and with little respect for boring, traditional vampiric hierarchy. His abandonment of Kakistos is a direct parallel with Spike's abandonment of the Annoying One.

But of course the more significant new character to be introduced here is Faith. She's a fantastic, charismatic yet nuanced character from the very start. Plus, Eliza Dushku is extremely hot, which is, er, a plus. She has all the attractive qualities you'd expect from a "bad girl"- she's very friendly, fun to be with, has great stories, and she gets "hungry and horny" after a bit of slayage. Five by five.

But Buffy feels as though she's been replaced by someone who threatens to be cooler than her. Everyone likes Faith, even her mother, and they even end up competing, sort of, over a boy. This isn't quite Kendra Mark II; Faith is confident, flirty and tattooed.

Except that it soon becomes clear that there's something dark behind the over-the-top cheeriness. Faith is running away from the traumatic sight of seeing her Watcher being killed by Kakistos after he did some unspecified but unspeakable things to her, and she's genuinely terrified; Dushku is superb at showing this. Far from being the confident "bad girl" that we see on the surface, Faith is clearly shell-shocked and running away from her demons, and not just the literal kind. Worryingly, everyone acts as though, with Kakistos dead, she'll be fine. But she clearly isn't.

Still, Faith's newly revealed vulnerable side allows her and Buffy to bond a little, and the conflict between them abates somewhat. It's obvious that the situation isn't permanent, though. It's very noticeable that the Scoobies are portrayed as a tightly knit bunch until Faith arrived. This is obviously intended as contrast for the dissent to be spread by this cuckoo in the nest. There will be more.

Oh, and both Faith and Dushku are from Boston, right? I thought I knew what a Boston accent sounded like, but she pronounces "about" rather Scottishly. I thought that was just a Canadian thing?

Faith faces her demons, and Buffy now feels able to do what she needs to do, too. She finally admits to Willow and Giles that it was Angel, not Angelus, that she sent to Hell. That needed to be said. And at last she feels able to symbolically get rid of the clanagh ring. She has closure, of sorts. So, naturally, Angel chooses now to suddenly return, and he's all naked too.

It's a strong episode, if perhaps a little arc-y to be properly considered in its own right. There are some nice touches to further the season; Snyder briefly shows apprehension at the prospect of speaking to the mysterious Mayor. Giles hints that Willow's dabbling in magic may not be entirely healthy. It's a brilliant episode for Joyce, too, perhaps above all else. She's a wonderful mother. She gets a fab scene of Snyder-mockery ("I think what my daughter is trying to say is… nah nah nah nah nah!"), to show us firmly that the troll has lost his bite. But her tears at the prospect that her daughter might die are heartbreakingly real.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Bad Eggs

“As far as punishments go, this is fairly abstract.”

I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a notoriously bad episode. In fact, I was rather looking forward to it for that very reason. There’s a certain kind of perverse glee to be found in watching something you know to be bad in the full knowledge that you’re going to be mocking it on your blog before long. Except… this episode is bloody brilliant. Why the bad reputation? This is possibly the best comedy episode we’ve had yet.

Oh, the concept’s a bit blah- a massive subterranean parasite uses nasty little eggs which hatch creepy-crawly things to control people so it can use them for, er, egg mining, and this all sprawls out of a school assignment to look after eggs as though they’re babies. Unusually for Buffy, there’s not really a great deal happening in the shape of a big, central metaphor; I did ponder the idea of the parasite being a metaphor for Joyce, who makes Buffy’s life particularly difficult, but I don’t think so. I certainly hope not; I really like Joyce. And the fun little conversation between the two of them at the start shows that they can be great together when they’re not being confrontational.

There is, perhaps, a bit of a theme developing with regards to pleasures distracting us from our responsibilities. Ironically, neglect of her responsibilities is what Joyce finds so upsetting about her daughter, even though the reason for her apparent misbehaviour is the awesome responsibility of the Slayer. But there’s a second layer of irony here, as Buffy is in fact spending most of her time snogging her boyfriend instead of hunting vampires as she’s supposed to; perhaps she isn’t being too unfairly punished, after all. Alarm bells are beginning to ring about this relationship; I’m reminded of Kendra’s admonition that Angel, whatever his virtues, is a vampire, and “He should die”. Gosh, you don’t think something really, really bad could be about to happen between those two, do you?

As for the comedy parallel to this couple of snoggers, namely Cordelia and Xander, whose kissing / insulting sessions are such fun to watch, they’re beginning to get less and less careful. It’s rather obvious that the others (particularly Willow) are going to find out, very, very soon, and the laughter is going to stop.

Lyle Gorch (I love the hat!) is another great thing about this episode, and I’m delighted that he survives, obviously to prepare for another appearance. The first season gave us the Master and some rather ritual-heavy vampires who did what they were told, but this season’s vampires are much more fun. Spike is the character who announced this new direction, of course, but Lyle shows us that we can expect a lot more of this sort of thing- quirky vampires with fun personalities. I love the Lenny George thing he has going on with his brother.

There are other cool touches, though- the long scene with Buffy looking for the creature is shot and soundtracked like a horror film, and it’s really, really scary. Plus there’s that nice frisson of nostalgia at Buffy’s mention of a Giga Pet- remember those? But this kind of fun episode usually means only one thing: this is our last chance to sit back and feel comfortable for a while, because things are probably about to get very, very dark…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Ted

“Hey, Freud would have said the exact same thing. Except he might not have done that little dance.”

Wow. That was a beautifully done piece of television, packing so much subtext about patriarchal attitudes and abusive relationships (parental and spousal) in to forty-two minutes. We’re looking here at something so finely crafted that it features the perfect ending: a mother / daughter viewing of Thelma and Louise. Take that, patriarchy. This episode filled me with a sense of feminist fellow-feeling, and I have a y-chromosome. And not only that: we have wit too. Aren’t Joss Whedon scripts great?

The clever thing is how the episode starts by showing Ted as a charming, nice, likeable guy who cooks, and is therefore symbolically in touch with his feminine side, and only gradually reveals his nasty, authoritarian tendencies. First he seduces Joyce, a vulnerable single mother, by turning on the charm, and then he charms all of Buffy’s friends. At first it’s only Buffy who’s the target of his abuse, but the final scenes between him and Joyce show him in all of his violent, controlling ways. He is- literally, as it turns out- a man from the 1950s as far as gender roles are concerned.

Of course, there’s a deliberate contrast with Giles, Buffy’s real father figure, who is shown as being particularly understanding here. His reconciliation with Jenny is incredibly sweet, and very fitting for this episode as his behaviour endorses a very different kind of masculinity. Guys may wear the tweed, but he’s not too old-fashioned to let Jenny wear the trousers. He also gets one of the best lines in all of television, ever: “Er, Buffy… I believe the subtext here is rapidly becoming a… a text.”

This episode is very noticeably lacking in the supernatural element, other than the occasional perfunctory vampire, but it’s great how that gets used. At the moment where Buffy is most alone, with everyone liking Ted except her, she desperately wants some vampires to use as punchbags. But none appear.

The apparent climax comes as Ted discovers Buffy’s slaying paraphernalia, and is clearly just about to completely ruin her life. Buffy snaps, and kills him. What’s nice is that Buffy’s moral responsibility for what’s happened- and what she’s done to her mother- isn’t ducked, but the metaphor here seems to be the homicide of an abusive partner, which leads to many women being controversially imprisoned.

There’s a nice bit of contrast at this point, though. Buffy may have lied earlier about the frivolous matter of her hole-in-one at miniature golf. But when it comes to important matters, she’s honest. She confesses to the killing in spite of her mother offering her a way out. This is terrible for Joyce; she has a boyfriend to mourn and a daughter who may be going to prison.

Kristine Sutherland is simply extraordinary here, and the silent scene of her driving Buffy home is very, very powerful. Now it’s her life that’s potentially ruined, yet never is she anything other than a loving and well-meaning parent.

There’s another metaphor, I suppose, in the fact that the embodiment of 1950’s masculinity should turn out to be a robot: without feelings or any true empathy, and probably not the greatest of sexual partners because of this. Normally, I’d protest at the use of a kind of science fiction which, unlike in the case of Some Assembly Required, doesn’t belong to the horror aesthetic, but the subtext is so powerful that it hardly matters.

Oh, and aren’t Cordy and Xander adorable? Their relationship is great fun, which means that very serious things must be about to happen. And that kiss between Giles and Jenny… aaah!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Reptile Boy

“Some guy’s attacking Buffy with a sword. Also, there’s a really big snake.”

Back to Buffy after my Christmas break, and the sheer Nineties-ness of the whole thing hits me immediately. It’s not the most fashionable of decades at the moment, is it? It’s old enough to be dated but not old enough to gain any of that retro cool. One day, perhaps, there will be Nineties-themes parties where we all wear faded jeans, lumberjack shirts and terrible hair. That day, alas, is yet to come.

Meanwhile, in the actual episode, we have one of the more obvious metaphors as a fraternity club is pretty much directly equivocated with those nasty, cowled, virgin-sacrificing cults that the horror genre seems to love so much. This leads to much subtext in which points are made regarding gender, age, social class and (in a rather puritanical way) alcohol.

…All of which leads to an abiding theme of these reviews, namely that I, a foreigner, know nothing about the many rituals of school and college life aside from what I’ve gleaned from popular culture. It’s all quite exotic to me. So, these fraternity things… they seem quite elitist, laddish and, well, uncool to me. Are they really such an elite thing as this episode seems to be saying? We seem to be literally told that they’re a disturbing cult and, while they may not literally sacrifice girls to an unconvincing-looking snake man, this is an obvious metaphor for their laddish abuse of women. God, I hate lad culture. I hate it almost as much as I love being old enough to ignore it and not care what anyone thinks. I’m a man, not a lad.

Er, anyway, ranting aside, there’s also an obvious class subtext here. First it pops up humorously, in pretty much all of the interactions between Cordelia and Buffy, but the way the frat boys abuse Xander, the most unambiguously working-class character, is downright sinister, and almost enough to drive one to Marxism. All the same, though, is this damning view of frat boy culture widely held in the US? There are times here where the imagery and subtext seem to border on conspiracy theory.

Oh, and isn’t there an excessively and disturbingly puritanical subtext to alcohol here? Buffy only symbolically “falls” once she drinks a cocktail (although, yes, there’s also a simultaneous rohypnol analogy here), and all the characters (who are sixteen or seventeen) speak of it as something utterly taboo. When I was sixteen my parents would let me have some wine or beer with a meal quite often, although admittedly this had a lot to do with my Dad’s ultimately successful campaign to impart his taste in beer unto the next generation. Oh, and there was also the underage drinking, but let’s gloss over that, shall we?

In other news, I completely adore the opening, as Buffy, Willow and Xander comment on a Bollywood musical. They should force them all to record a DVD commentary for every Bollywood film ever made. The campaign starts here. Also, Willow’s lecture to Giles and Angel on their treatment of Buffy (and her reaction afterwards!) is the best thing ever. I love Alyson Hannigan.

Jonathan gets an appearance, too. And this time he has a name!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Nightmares

“Anyone can make a giraffe!”

Well, er… meh. There’s nothing particularly awful about this one, but nothing particularly memorable or significant. I suppose it pads out the season arc a bit (Buffy meets the Master above ground, sort of), but it’s a very skippable episode.

It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with it, though, aside from the rushed subtext about the abusive baseball coach being a bit awkward and a disappointing lack of witty lines. The plot makes sense. Everyone’s in character. It works. The initial worries that Buffy’s dad arriving at 3.30pm to spend the weekend with her might cause some sort of tiresome scheduling drama with slaying activities doesn’t materialise, mercifully. It’s just that there’s little to say about it. Perhaps it was a last minute filler, with Joss Whedon providing the story and the script provided by David Greenwalt? So I think I’ll spend the rest of this review just making some random observations.

Characters’ fears being made manifest is a bit of a standard trope, unfortunately, and things like spiders and being naked are par for the course- although I’m amused by the fact that Xander wasn’t quite naked, which rather spoiled the, er, realism (which we’ll come back to) and the fun for many viewers, I’m sure. Giles’ sudden ability to read is in-character, I suppose, but is it really a fear, as the others are? Still, Buffy’s fear of being the cause of her parents’ divorce and her father leaving is by far the most powerful.

Oh, and clowns- at what point did the primary function of clowns stop being “trying to be funny” and start being “utterly terrifying”? Was it around the time of Stephen King’s It? I remember this question coming up in a Doctor Who story I reviewed many moons ago. The best fear is Cordelia’s, though; being dragged into the chess club by two ridiculous nerdy stereotypes. This moment sees the story departing from the pretence of realism and starting to endanger the fourth wall, if only for a moment. I love this sort of thing!

In fact, we end with an increasingly absurd fracturing of reality, which almost seems designed to foreground the power of the omnipotent writer over the fictional universe. Giant wasps are attacking Sunnydale, while over the road is a new cemetery. And it’s nice. There’s even a few scenes, where Buffy is following Billy, where there are a couple of jump cuts, one of them from day to night, which really are happening in real time; the director is omnipotent, too!

Metatextual fun aside, though (and I’m exaggerating just a tad!), roll on the next one…