Angel: Darla

“Now it’s time for you to return the favour.

“Favour? Is that what you think?”

It’s clever: this episode, like the corresponding episode of Buffy, is extremely flashback-heavy, so the flashbacks for both shows were obviously filmed back to back. There are one or two scenes which are used in both shows, but the clever thing is how both shows, with their very different perspectives, provide a very different context to what we’re seeing. It’s a brilliant idea for a crossover.

Obviously, this episode gives us a thorough deconstruction of the relationship between Angel and Darla. We open with Angel sleeping loads while Darla is suddenly plagued by the massive dump of guilt that has caught up with her, now that she has a soul and that.

The episode is framed by the apparent reveal of what Wolfram and Hart have been up to all this time regarding Darla. It seems the idea was to get Angel to sire her, thus becoming his own mother’s farther, sort of, and giving Wolfram and Hart a shiny new evil vampire for their nefarious schemes. At least, I think that’s what’s going on. It’s deliciously evil of Holland Manners to manipulate Lindsay’s conscience so cynically, but that’s Wolfram and Hart for you.

The climax of the episode, Angel being such a goody goody, of course revolves around the fact that he refuses to sire Darla, cue much emoting. But the meat of the episode is all those juicy flashbacks.

We see Darla, waaaaay back in Virginia, 1609, getting sired by the Master, a real blast from the past, with your actual Mark Metcalfe.  After this, though, we see flashbacks which echo those we’ve just seen in the most recent episode of Buffy, although this time from the perspective of different characters, and it’s fascinating how the same scenes can appear so different in a different context. There are some interesting titbits, of course: we see yet again that Drusilla is so very, very kinky. And we get a juicy few scenes of the recently ensouled Angel facing an inevitable dumping by Darla, what with her being evil and all.

We end, though, with Darla running away, we know not where. What happens next?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Wish

"I have to believe in a better world."

Well, we certainly needed a rather less heavy episode at this point and we certainly got one. This episode is pure fun, plus it has Evil Willow in it. Mmm… Evil Willow…

But before we get to the alternate universe stuff (which manages to pack an awful lot into not very much screen time in an impressive piece of structuring), there's a lot of fascinating character stuff. Xander is the more self-indulgent of the two, but both he and Willow spend their time obsessing on their own need to do something about their guilt, without considering that, actually, it's the needs of the people they betrayed that count. Oz rightly calls Willow out on this; her need to feel better about herself is indeed not his problem. Nor should we have much sympathy for them not being able to be as innocently tactile with each other as they once were.

Cordelia doesn't take things anywhere near as well as Oz does, though; not only has she lost her boyfriend, she's lost her place in the school hierarchy. Harmony (how long has it been since we last saw her?) tries to set her up with Jonathan, and the mockery just continues. The worst moment comes when she's knocked into a pile of rubbish as Buffy fights a vampire, just before Harmony walks along with her gang and a cruel quip. Obviously this is all ultimately Buffy's fault and it would be better if she'd never come to Sunnydale.

Unfortunately, Cordelia's new friend Anya (no doubt a one-off character, right?) turns out to be a vengeance demon who acts on behalf of women scorned. As you do. And a Sunnydale without Buffy is a dark, dangerous place, ruled by the Master from Season One, where the classes are half-empty from those who have died and the streets are not safe after dark. Only the desperate "white hats", consisting of Giles, Oz, Larry(!), and Redshirt Girl, stand in the way of the undead, although not very convincingly. It's all very bleak. Buffy, meanwhile, is in Cleveland, which apparently has a huge demon problem. Undead Xander and Evil Willow, interestingly, are two of the Master's most prominent lieutenants, and both of them are clearly, somehow, the same people. Angel is kept chained up as a "puppy" to be regularly tortured by Evil Willow. Er, part of me wishes I was him. Did I really just type that?

This is an alternate reality, so naturally Cordelia dies pretty soon, as Giles watches, horrified. Of course, pretty much everyone dies- why waste a good alternate reality? But we'll come to that; by far the most interesting character in this reality is Buffy, scarred, brusque, cynical, humourless, battle-hardened and played extraordinarily, and so very differently, by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Faith may not be in this episode (interestingly, there's an early line about her going AWOL), but symbolically she isn't needed, as she pretty much symbolised what Buffy would be like without the support network of her family, her friends and her life. Here, we have the real thing, and she's harsh, withdrawn, without hope, and as inwardly dead as any vampire. Without hope, or anything to live for, she embarks on a kamikaze mission, with no plan, and dies.

The one person who refuses, stubbornly, to lose hope, and the true hero of this reality, is Giles. He saves the world with hope. And yet this is juxtaposed with slow-motion shots of all the characters we know and love- Willow, Xander, Angel and, finally, Buffy, dying pointlessly. Hope and despair are side by side. Not a bad metaphor for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Prophecy Girl

“I may be dead, but I’m still pretty.”

Let’s talk about first seasons, shall we? Because I’m well aware that this season doesn’t have too good a reputation among fans, and I don’t think this is fair. First seasons are different, and they’re not quite doing the same job as subsequent seasons. The show’s premise has to be established, we have to get to know the characters, and everything which we will later take for granted has to be set up. This season does all of that brilliantly.

It’s very obvious, watching this season finale, that all the stuff about the Master, the prophecy, the Anointed One, etc, is more than a little perfunctory and predictable- as the show will cheerfully admit in about three episodes’ time. But it would be a mistake to see this as a problem. It’s actually a wise move for the season arc to take a back seat while we learn about this show, its rules and its tropes, and get to know and love these brilliant characters.

So yes, the Master is an off-the-shelf villain, but he’s supposed to be. And, wonderfully, he knows he is, as the end of this episode’s teaser makes clear. And yes, the nature of his plan is a bit ho-hum, but it’s supposed to be. Because this series finale is essentially about the characters- pulling them apart from each other and then finishing off with the gang as strong as before.

One by one they all alienate each other. Xander asks Buffy to the “Spring Thing” (another of these traditional events which seem to punctuate life in an American High School!) and she turns him down. He takes it badly. He’s unreasonable, of course, but rejection is a lot more crushing when you’re a teenage boy. I know; I was one. As I keep saying, being a teenager is horrible.

Things now get even worse as Xander unthinkingly asks Willow to go with him instead as an obvious second choice. Oops. And, just to ensure that all the Scoobies are alienated from each other completely, Buffy overhears Giles and Angel discussing the prophecy of her imminent death. She, er, doesn’t take the news at all well.

We get a nice scene with Joyce here which makes it clear what the metaphor is; stress about who to go to the prom with is, like, the end of the world if you’re a teenager. Er, how subtle. But it was right that Joyce should appear (all the other semi-regulars are present and correct; Jenny Callendar gets her second appearance and is seemingly integrated properly into the team), and this is probably the best way to do it.

It’s Willow’s upset at seeing the world of the vampires invade her own sanctuary, killing two boys she knows in a place she knows well, that leads Buffy to snap out of her state of denial and decide to go ahead and do the hero thing. Giles, bless him, insists in going in her place, but there was only one person who was going to win that argument.

It’s fascinating that Xander and Angel, rivals for Buffy’s affections, should be thrust together and should find Buffy’s body once she’s been killed by the Master. Interesting, too that Angel as a vampire is unable to perform CPR and that Xander has to do it. I can’t help thinking that there are… other things… that a vampire may not be able to do and that they might not quite be able to cut it as sexual partners. There are things like, er, blood circulation to consider…

Anyway, Buffy is revived. Which is a bit of a problem, really. If she can be revived by CPR then she was never actually dead and it’s a bit of a cop-out to treat this as the fulfilment of the prophecy. She didn’t die, simple as.

We get a nice, epic finale, though, with loads of vampires and the school library under siege from a Muppet Hellmouth. The Master is dead and everyone is off to the Bronze. Including Jenny (who clearly has something going with Giles) and Cordelia, who is now definitely a full semi-member of the gang.

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…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel

“The most vicious creature I ever met…”

It’s somewhat alienating to watch an episode which relies entirely on big twists and revelations which you not only know but have taken for granted for such a long time. I’m not sure this is a review blog, strictly speaking- I meander far too much for that- but it’s impossible to judge this episode. I have no idea whether it’s any good or not.

We begin with two firsts, though. I believe this is our first “Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer…”, and we also get the first appearance of that “Into every generation a Slayer is born” spiel. Meh. It seems my prediction that I’ll have moved on from discussing the first this and the first that by this episode were a bit wrong.

I’ll not spell out the big revelation; we all know it, and for anyone who doesn’t, it’s a spoiler. It’s odd to listen to that conversation between Darla and Angel, though; from Darla’s dialogue it’s clear that the fine print of Angel’s backstory is not quite all written yet. Speaking of Darla, it’s great to see this episode again having seen the whole of both series before; the first time I saw this I had no inkling that she would go on to be important (she dies, after all!), and so I’d completely forgotten about her by her next appearance, whenever that will be.

Oh, and this is where the simmering sexual tension between Buffy and Angel reaches the stage where both of them admit their feelings, and there is actual kissing. This is TV kissing, mind; a bit too full-on and aggressive for my taste. Why don’t they just relax and slow down…?

We have more scenes of Giles rather implausibly trying to teach the still relatively inexperienced Buffy how to fight but by now, at last, it’s been realised that the absurdity of this is best played for laughs. Well done, David Greenwalt. Incidentally, this is a much better script from him than Teacher’s Pet.

Joyce gets to meet Angel- interesting. I’m sure this is going to simmer, although I’m surprised it doesn’t explode right here; her daughter is sixteen and Angel is clearly a much older man, although he doesn’t exactly look all of his 240-odd years. In less dramatic news, she also meets Giles. She will of course, eventually come to, er, “know” him quite well.

It’s surprising how much backstory we get here: Angelus’ Irish origins, the gypsy curse, his relationship with Darla (there’s even a claim that she “made” him), and Darla’s origins in colonial America- it would be really cool if there was a bit of fanfic somewhere which established that she had first been turned undead by a vampire called Croatoan.

We end with another kiss, and this one looks much nicer. That simmering sexual tension is going to stay on the hob for a good while yet…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Never Kill a Boy on a First Date

“Wow! I never knew being a teenager was so full of possibilities!”

…And the first bad episode is succeeded by a good one. That’s a relief. It’s still somewhat lacking in that extra Whedon polish, but this is a solid episode which develops the characters and themes while also moving on the season arc another notch. Although I must protest that being bookish as a teenage boy doesn’t actually work quite as well in attracting girls as this episode seems to imply…!

We begin with Buffy, in that graveyard, fighting a vampire; only four episodes in and this type of scene has already become iconic. But then we get the rather odd sight of Giles training her. Is it just me who wonders why this rather bookish chap should be considered at all suited to teaching Buffy how to fight? He certainly seems to have difficulty in handing himself later in the episode.

Still, Buffy, Giles and the Master’s plan to bring about the “Anointed One” are the B plot of the episode. This is there to contrast thematically with the teenage allegorical stuff of the A plot, to accomplish a bit of stuff for the season arc (we end with the discovery that the Master has succeeded, and the “Anointed One” is the little boy we saw in the bus earlier), and, I suppose, to provide this episode with its quota of vampire-slaying.

But this episode is basically about Owen and the normal life he represents. Buffy can never date a “civilian” without putting him in danger; her status as the Slayer means she can’t quite be normal. Admittedly, the insistence that Willow and Xander aren’t imperilled in the same way because they “know the score” and are “careful” is a bit shaky, but I’ll let that slide as I really like them both.

The way we gradually learn more about Owen is really quite clever in an impressive debut script from Rob Des Hotel and Dean Batadi. At first he seems a nice, shy, bookish, deep, brooding(!), very handsome boy who is ogled at by all the girls, and Buffy is amazed and delighted to have caught him in her net. He seems to be intellectual, reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson, although the first alarm bells start ringing quite early in the date as he explains that he likes Dickinson because she’s “morbid”. Still, he seems mature, and Buffy is obviously overjoyed to see him giving Cordelia the brush-off.

There are massive tensions between Buffy’s normal life and her Slayer life, though. Both of her attempts at dating Owen clash with Slayer stuff she has to do, and Giles is insistent, however much Buffy may protest that “Clark Kent has a job”. But this is more that the clichéd old superhero / secret identity stuff; there’s a feminist subtext. Buffy, here, is the woman who Does It All, just as many women have to balance a full time career with all the childcare and domestic chores as lots of men, and I say this as a fully qualified possessor of a “y” chromosome, are useless arses.

In a surprising twist, it’s Buffy who dumps Owen; the earlier hints pay off with the revelation that he’s a danger junkie, far less mature than he appears (hey, he’s a teenage boy!) and far too much trouble. Perhaps this is a little convenient as an excuse to dump him from the show (which had to happen) without killing him (which obviously couldn’t happen as the title implies it too heavily), but it’s a nice pay-off of all the hints we’ve been getting.

In other news, I believe we get our first “Bite me”.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Harvest

“Oh, I need to sit down.”

“You are sitting down.”

“Oh, good for me.”

Let’s just gloss over the fact that this is excellent, first class television, with a flawless main cast (well, the bloke who plays Jesse isn’t as stellar as the others but… you know), a script of, well, Joss Whedon levels of wit and nice little metatextual moments, yadda yadda yadda. You knew that and I’ll have plenty of time to gush later. Instead, let’s talk about how the building blocks of the show are starting to assemble themselves, and also point out some other fun stuff.

So… we begin, after a rather perfunctory cliffhanger resolution, with our first real scene of Buffy walking across a graveyard. I suspect this is going to develop into a full-blown trope. And, once the rescues are out of the way, the proto-Scoobies immediately end up in Giles’ library together for the first of many times. Already it’s clear that Willow and Xander are going to be a crucial part of what Buffy does; her reliance on her friends is going to develop into one of the key themes, however much she may insist that “There’s no we, ok? I’m the Slayer and you’re not.”

Oh, and we get our first few burst of Giles exposition, here. It’s always an awkward thing to ask of an actor, but Anthony Head manages to get the right balance between making it sound interesting and keeping it all in character- not an easy thing at all. Meanwhile, Alyson Hannigan and Nicholas Brendon are just extraordinary- both of them have amazing comic timing but also manage to be hugely sympathetic and real. Sarah Michelle Gellar is all these things too, but also manages to fill the role of the star while making it seem light and easy- again, not an easy thing at all. Still, I said I wouldn’t gush.

We get a bit of basic continuity, anyway; in the beginning there were demons, or Old Ones (how very Lovecraftian!), until one day us humans came along and replaced them for some reason. Then the last demon to bugger off bit a human, who became a vampire. Since then, vampires have been trying to replace us with their demon selves until one day there are just Old Ones again. Brr. Also, we learn that vampires are often quite old; Luke last received a good kicking in “Madrid, 1843”. Oh, and there are more signs of continuity being different from the film- the Master has been dormant for sixty years, and doesn’t seem to have been involved with Buffy in Los Angeles. Also, I don’t remember that beheading scene…

There’s an amusing recurring theme of adult rules not being a real obstacle to Buffy. Principal Flutie locks the door and forbids her from leaving school grounds so she…. jumps over the fence. She’s grounded by her mother, but fortunately bedrooms have windows. For the moment this is a nice undercutting of what could be an annoying and frustrating area, but I hope this doesn’t descend into actual annoying scenes of Buffy being frustratingly thwarted by authority figures.

I love Cordelia. She gets all the best lines (“Excuse me, who gave you permission to exist?”), but there are actually signs of a deeper character, too. She’s clearly a lot more intelligent than any of her acolytes (Harmony is so endearingly thick!), and this gives her power and a place within the hierarchy, but she’s also playing a part. And this implies an inner insecurity; she desperately craves popularity and status to feel validated. And yes, that’s something I vaguely remember from much later in the series. But I don’t think I’m retconning at all; it’s clearly implied here.

We end with our big set piece fight, echoing the ending of the movie but, importantly, all of the proto-Scoobies have a role to play. Also, the mysterious Angel (who now has a name) is secretly but seriously impressed. Importantly, it’s also established that Sunnydale has a collective attitude of denial in the face of blatant facts. Still, we end with the gang all together, and Giles gets the last line. It’s perfect: “The Earth is doomed!”

So, yeah, about as good as television gets, really. It’s just a shame they missed a trick and didn’t put Jesse in the opening credits!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Welcome to the Hellmouth

“Oh I would kill to live in LA. That close to so many shoes…!”

Three years ago today, on 22^nd November 2008, myself and a bunch of other people on the Doctor Who Forum (as it was at the time) set out on the Gap Year Marathon, in which we would watch all of Doctor Who, from the unbroadcast pilot from 1963 to the very end of David Tennant’s tenure, in time to start Season Thirty-One in April 2010. Not all of us kept up with the schedule (some of us overshot by a year!) but it was an amazing communal experience.

For me, it was also addictive. I started this blog (and the Word documents that act as back-up!), six months into the Marathon because Internet forums can be ephemeral and I didn’t want to lose the many hundreds of pages of reviews that I was writing. But when the Marathon ended I still had a craving to continue, and I still do. I kept on reviewing Doctor Who and spinoffs as they aired (and I always will!), but also fed my cravings with Blake’s 7, Sherlock, The Nightmare Man and movies.

One of those movies was the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And one of those TV shows was Joss Whedon’s very own Firefly. This is a natural moment to start on another massive Marathon of Buffy and Angel, and I admit I’ve put it off for a couple of days just so I can start it three years after the last one! I’ll still be reviewing movies, generally on Saturdays, and I might punctuate things with a short TV show that’s non-Buffy related between seasons, but it starts here…

So, Welcome to the Hellmouth. I watched this on a DVD I bought back in 2004 and thereabouts, and the price tag tells me I paid an eye-watering £34.99 for twelve episodes. I was robbed! I have, of course, seen the whole thing before, but only once for most episodes. So I know in broad terms what’s going to happen plot-wise, but it was all a long time ago.

There are a couple of things I have to get out of the way at this point. Number One (as alluded to in my review of the movie) concerns the American High School. To many, it’s a rite of passage and the focal point of one’s adolescence, but to this foreigner it’s a genre of popular culture. All the tropes of the American High School- those yellow buses, Homecoming Queens (whatever they are), Senior Prom, etc… I know very little about such things and I hope some of my American readers might enlighten me on these things as they come up.

Thing Two is… didn’t the late ‘90s look awful? I may be showing my age here (I was born in 1977 and I was into Grunge as a teenager) but I seem to recall that music, fashion, aesthetics in general all took a distinct turn for the worse around 1996-ish and stayed generally rubbish until the Strokes came along and saved us all. You can see the change in the music videos- in the mid-90s they were all brightly coloured, with lots of sunshine and light blue jeans, but then they suddenly became dark, drab and awful, with people wearing dull clothes in dark, dull colours. And Buffy begins in the middle of this Dark Age. Just sayin’.

Anyway… Welcome to the Hellmouth. What’s it like, then? Well, it’s outstandingly good; you can instantly tell that the characters are all going to be great, the cast is universally superb, and the dialogue is as witty as you might expect. The pre-titles sequence is a brilliant statement of intent, reversing gender roles and our expectations as it’s the girl who turns out to be the vampire.

It’s fun to see Buffy trying to figure out these characters she and we will come to know so well. Xander is the klutz with a heart of gold, Willow is much nerdier at this early stage than we might expect although, of course, Alyson Hannigan is suspiciously gorgeous and adorable to be playing a character like that, brilliant actress though she is, and Jesse… well, there’s no need to say a lot about him, is there? Cordelia, though; the character is comedy gold. Her dialogue is priceless- the coolness interview, the Valley Girl talk, everything!

Giles and Angel (whose name we don’t know yet) share the exposition between them. At this stage their only known character traits are worried and furrowed-browed (Giles) and “dark, gorgeous in an annoying sort of way (Angel), although we’re told about the Harvest and made privy to the apparent return of the apparently resurrected Master. It is of course unclear to what extent, if any, things have been retconned since Buffy was Kristy Swanson, but I’m guessing the Master being alive is one indication that reality has shifted a bit. Still, Sarah Michelle Gellar is a much better Buffy, and Anthony Head, in a subdued performance, really shows us just how much Donald Sutherland was phoning in his performance.

Of course, it’s obligatory when doing this sort of thing to mention as a fairly early stage how vampires and monsters are of course all a metaphor for how horrible it is to be a teenager. And being a teenager is horrible; you have responsibilities that seem to cripple you but with no rights and no money, forever at the mercy of authority figures and told that your future depends on everything you do. You’re a raging mass of hormones, you’re afraid to talk to the opposite (or same) sex, emotional pain hurts so much more, and you just don’t have the experience to feel confident about anything. It’s only years later that it dawn on you just how horrible it was. And yes, there are plenty of obvious metaphors here. Buffy has to choose between her responsibilities and any hope of social popularity. I suppose in a way her stake really is a type of pepper spray. And Willow finally finds the courage to talk to a boy and he turns out to be a monster- a metaphor if ever there was one.

At the end the whole thing switches gear from witty teen comedy to non-stop action; the genre has changed, and so have the rules. Buffy, at this early stage, doesn’t look anything like as confident in fighting bog standard vampires as we’d expect, although her coolness is all there. Combat mixed with witty quips- it’s all very Spider-Man.