10:34:03 AM : [link]

(Also posted at [BuffyLog].)

Isn't Lindsey just such an interesting character? I'd agree, Lee, that he does have feelings for Darla. I think bringing back Dru was probably not his idea (the other lawyers of Wolfram & Hart seemed to have this whole thing planned out from the start), but he definitely wanted Darla to be turned into a vampire so that she can "live." It's amazing how much he does for that final scene. He is soooo vindictive towards Angel, bursting in the door and striking him down like that. "How did you think this would end?" And it sounded so much like he was feeling triumphant about saving Darla, even as he knew that Angel was the one who succeeded where he had failed--in saving Darla's "soul" (by showing her that she could accept her life as it is).

In Buffy, I liked the Ben revelation at the end, too. Of course, his relationship to Glory is still very vague. Are they enemies? Are they evil-good counterparts? Does he know about Buffy? Why did he feel like he needed to "clean up" the insane people? (Maybe because they could see Dawn for what she is, he was afraid Glory might use these crazy people as bloodhounds of sorts?)

Madness as clarity is a fun concept, too. It's kind of like the Cassandra-complex: being a prophetess/someone who can see the terrible future, but not being able to convince anyone that you're right. When will the people on Buffy finally realize that the outbreak of insanity means something important?

10:18:04 AM : [link]

Now for Angel which I partially liked, partially detested. I must say I am glad the writers did bring back Drusilla to make Darla a vampire. It was inevitable, given the systematic way in which the lawyers at Wolfram & Hart were driving Darla repeatedly into Angel's arms as a pitiful victim. And it worked for me as a terrible moment of inevitable doom. It had to happen, as much as I didn't want it to happen. I was finally sympathetic to Darla, if only because I could sympathize with that moment in which she finally realized that there is humanity in human relations, that there is such thing as caring and love and genuine interest in another's well-being.

And though I have to admit that that final moment worked because of the narrative preceding it, I also found that narrative of redemption and sacrifice to be too over-the-top and melodramatic. It worked too well, I suppose. And I wanted something more subtle. Alternating shots of Angel in his trials and Darla (who without-thinking asks to be able to see Angel) with tears on her face just made me want to gag. I hate that Angel is always the emblem of virtue and sacrifice. He's supposed to be suffering, damnit! There's just this way in which Angel as a whole relies on the idea of Angel as a knight-in-shining-armor who is himself not-entirely-pure yet strives with all his being for "purity," whatever that may be. (Reminds me of Camelot tales and Lancelot, that bravest of all knights who has indiscreet affairs with others--in some versions, with Guinevere, in others, with King Arthur himself as well.)

Although, in the end, I cannot help but like a more general model of the hero as one who is selfless, is willing to put herself through trials and tribulations to give others a chance at life.

10:04:29 AM : [link]

Extraterrestrials in Buffy? I was a little anxious about how they would deal with ETs, but as it turns out, the alien had a mystical/magical origin anyways. But now that the Buffy people have broached the subject, what about life forms from other planets? Seems quite possible, given the many "demon" dimensions that exist in their multiverse.

The Queller Demon. A being summoned to rid the area of crazy people. What an interesting concept. I love the way Buffy reads historical events such as when they correlated meteor-hits and outbreaks of insanity. And the whole concept of insanity is always a can of playful worms. As we've been seeing, it's Glory who's been causing so many people to go "crazy." And this particular form of craziness seems to walk that fine line between genius/clarity and insanity as detachment-from-reality. That the crazy people are able to see Dawn for who she is makes them not-so-crazy, really.

And making Joyce temporarily crazy at times? Intriguing. You can tell the writers are conscious of physiological/physical/chemical explanations for insanity and thus the brain tumor impinging on Joyce's brain causes temporary insanity.

I must say I am now not so annoyed with Riley. Perhaps it's because he's clearly at a crisis point and something is going to happen to the stupid man. Will he be reclaimed by the Initiative people?

5:14:28 PM : [link]

Of note is that this week's episode was in fact titled "Shadow." And I think, like something that is "outside language," shadows are "outside light" and therefore outside of sight and fixedness in visual reality. There's also that interesting ambiguity between shadows, things in shadows, and things that cause shadows. (I'm reminded here of drawing class and the lessons on paying attention to shadows as they define figures.) Joyce's tumor is a shadow. Riley perhaps feels that he is a shadow to Buffy's brilliance as the Slayer. Dawn is a shadow in that she is not really a material being, but a transmuted form of energy (walking that line between energy and matter that Einstein theorized so famously).

11:16:52 PM : [link]

(Also at [BuffyLog].)

I'm loving the Joyce story-line, like everyone else. While Buffy is on the whole a show that really empowers (women, especially), I think Joss &c are finally getting around to dealing with that sticky subject of powerlessness in human life. And its great that Buffy isn't automatically all cool about it all, knowing when she can do something and when she can't (although I guess she's always been action girl, asking Giles when she can go beat up something). I guess Joss &c are going to take the Slayer to "a really dark place" and that would be exciting. But how dark can she really get?

On the subject of Slayers and darkness, has anyone else picked up on any more allusions to the "first" Slayer and her admonitions? I only noted something in one of the earlier episodes this season--someone repeated verbatim to Buffy that phrase "you think you know, but you don't." Eerie.

I'm still not liking the Riley-side of things. Why can't he be the cool guy who can take care of Buffy's unmentioned needs (love, being there, etc.)? He's a jerk right now, as far as I'm concerned. All whiny and moping about not being the center of Buffy's attention (even though so much is happening to her).

10:38:13 PM : [link]

What's not to love?

A thing before language. The Slayer dealing with an all-too-human lack of control over the world. Transmogrification. Shadows. Ambiguities.

In describing "the thing without a name," now named "Glory" (how cheeky), as a thing that is old, exisiting before the written word, Tara brings up the possibility of the unknowability and hence undefeatability of this new foe. How can they defeat something that hasn't been named, pinned down, described? It seems that Joss Whedon and the Buffy people are working with this idea of language as domination over the material world. Without the knowledge in books, the writings of ancient magicians, sorcerers, and other mystics, Giles and the Scooby Gang can't even imagine what to do against this thing-without-a-name. They're in new territory here, as if they are encountering a thing for the first time in humankind. And as such, they have next-to-no-control over their situation.

Last season's arch enemy, the hybrid monster-human-machine Adam, explicitly took on the role of being the first of his kind. He was to complete Professor Walsh's project of creating others like him, a race of super-soldiers. Although he kills his creator, Professor Walsh, this Adam takes on the role of the Biblical Adam as the superior creation of his God, given the right of life and death over other beings, and certainly the command to name them. Oddly, he could not reproduce himself without the parts of these lesser creatures, and thus his downfall.

But to return to Glory as before-language, it seems as if she would be a creation even before Adam. What is she, then? Can Buffy and her friends figure her out without the help of the books?

On another level, the move towards exploring Buffy's limits of control over her own life is very interesting, too. Here, we have doctors who can name the problem with Buffy's mom. Although they call it at first a "shadow," a biopsy reveals that it is in fact a brain tumor. The doctor even names the clinical terms for the tumor. But as the helpful hospital intern Ben notes, life isn't all about the clinical terms. Does knowing what's wrong with Joyce help Buffy deal with the possibility of losing her mother? Is medical knowledge's reach like that of language that can create and thus control reality? It certainly tries to claim such control, but it obviously doesn't have it.

10:02:31 AM : [link]

A question I have from the episodes last week: When did Spike and Dru find out that Angel had regained his soul? The scenes from the Boxer Rebellion were a little confusing because it seemed like Angel was returning to Darla for the first time after regaining his soul a couple of decades earlier. Yet, when Darla and Angel met up with Spike and Dru, neither Spike nor Dru seemed particularly surprised that Angel was back (sure, Spike was drunk on his recent Slayer-kill, but . . .). It's clear that Darla kept the knowledge from Spike and Dru at the gypsy camp when she first found out that Angel had been cursed. I'm just really intrigued by the dynamics of the Darla-Angel-Drusilla-Spike group. It's only been given in the past that there was an Angel-Drusilla-Spike group that terrorized the world. How long was Darla part of the group and how close was she to Drusilla and Spike? (Possible?: Human Darla finds Drusilla to make her a vampire again.)

11:20:37 PM : [link]

(Also posted at [BuffyLog].)

Yay for Buffy! I thought the Spike-subway scene was veeeeeery interesting, too. It's almost as if the Slayers really are all interchangeable as Slayers and so Spike was, while narrating to Buffy the Slayer his past, killing the Slayer in the subway car. There's this whole thing with linking the Slayers that is eerie, like history repeating itself over and over again. So what does it all mean in the end? Is there any progress in the Slayer's war against evil?

And what about Riley? Joss, &c. are definitely plotting his downfall. I can see that they are making Riley into an emasculated ex-hero and all, but it's getting kind of boring. I want to know why it's so important for him to be all macho and stuff. And why he has to prove to Buffy that he can still keep up with her, given that they've had a talk about his demotion in superhero-ness.

Oh, and it was great how the writers gave us the real origin of "William the Bloody" (he writes bloody bad poetry!) and "Spike" (listening to his poetry is like having a railroad spike driven through your head!). Hee hee.

11:05:56 PM : [link]

Buffy! Whee!

The "special" two-hour Buffy-Angel event was okay. As much as I like seeing scenes from the pasts of these wonderfully detailed characters, I am not particularly fond of period pieces and costumes. While the scenes are revealing, I think they (the producers of Buffy and Angel) are overdoing these views-into-the-past. Part of my dissatisfaction, it just leaves so little to the imagination. (And I like my imagination, thank you very much.) I like the opacity of characters and their motivations when you don't have such an omniscient view into their life's/lives' experience.

The Buffy episode had a surprisingly poignant ending. Sappy, maybe, but utterly confounding in that real-life-inscrutability kind of way. Buffy finds out that her mom might have cancer. Faced with death in this context, Buffy is completely at a loss for words. As she is sitting outside the house, crying, Spike comes up intending to kill her (or be killed--either way, to end the tortuous limbo in which he lives). What is it that makes Spike such a lovelorn fool? Does it make sense to translate as follows?: Chip in Spike's head that causes pain when he intends harm functions like conscience/the soul does in Angel. We could then make a parallel between Angel and Spike and their falling in love with Buffy, the indominable soul, struggling in its humanity towards a sense of purity of purpose as much as they once strove for utter depravaity.

I didn't really understand the "lesson" that Spike was teaching Buffy, though. I mean, I took the whole episode to be more of a setup of the importance of "family and friends" in Buffy's life that separates her from the host of other Slayers who have come and gone before her. But I didn't really understand how Spike's stories of how he killed two Slayers really explained that. (It was very interesting, however, to get Drusilla's side of the break up--she could tell how much Buffy was always still on Spike's mind and in his aura. When are they going to bring Drusilla back in the present?)

Angel was on the whole a bearable episode (I generally am not too fond of the show). There's this constant back-and-forth with Darla and the whole issue of souls/conscience/demon-hood/humanness. Just when I think they're finally going to pierce that too-neat conception of soul-makes-goodness-in-humanity balloon, they always seem to step back from it. Having a soul for the now-human Darla means suffering for her past evils. She describes it (the soul) as something eating away at her from inside (like cancer?) It is a pain that she wants to destroy, by killing herself, becoming once-again a vampire, or something. But why is it that the soul must make people suffer? That seems to be the common idea behind the two shows. Is it all just a justification for the suffering in this world?

8:29:24 AM : [link]

Excited? Yes. How Spike met Drusilla. A boy meets girl story that I wanna know.

8:24:28 AM : [link]

(Also posted at [BuffyLog].)

I liked the episode. Always cool to see TV shows deal with "family secrets." And we all know they are so important to everyone's lives.

I, too, had a brief moment of disappointment when we discovered that Tara was not a demon. But then I began to see how ingenious the whole thing is. This is probably the first example we've gotten in the show where the demon is a metaphor for social anxieties as opposed to a literalization of such anxieties. And there's still so much more they can do with Tara and her family. Tara has taken an important first step in disobeying her father, but it by no means solves their conflict. What exactly is it that the men in the family are so afraid of? Is it just the empowerment of women? Is it lesbianism? Witchcraft? Plus, what about Tara's relationship with her mom? Is the mom a sort of Jane Eyre-like "madwoman in the attic" who must be squirreled away by the men in the family?

Plus, I don't believe that Tara is ever going to be just a regular girl. And I don't want her to be, either. There is so much left for the people in Buffy to explore regarding good and evil within humans. While the general thrust of the show seems to place demons in the category of evil and humans in that of good, there are obviously many slippery cases (Angel, demon with a soul; Darla, returned as human; Ethan Rayne, chaos worshipper). And it would be nice for Joss Whedon finally to explore these grey areas in human intentions.

8:08:22 AM : [link]

Big looming question from the episode: Why didn't "unnameable evil" pursue Buffy herself? Why did she rely on those weird looking creatures? Couldn't she just as well have followed them and joined in the fray?

8:04:51 AM : [link]

FOUL PLAY! That was my first reaction to the Tara-family revelation. I don't know whether I wanted there to be physical demons in her family or not, though. In a way, it's quite ingenious for the makers of Buffy to trot out an instance of the metaphoricization of an anxiety as demon. In this case, it would be the Tara-family (did they get a paternal surname?) fear of their women's autonomy. Or, a stronger reading would push it as far as to say that the men fear lesbianism in their women, although that would call for a strongly essentialist/genetic reading of homosexuality that I am loathe to pursue.

In any case, I am glad in the end that Tara is not a "demon." I do hope that we haven't seen the last of her family, though, because in the real world (hah), we never get rid of our family-issues so easily, even with absolute separation. Whether or not Joss Whedon decides to bring back the family, I think they should keep them in the back of Tara's mind at all times. And I'm interested in hearing more about Tara's cousin (Beth?). Is she a witch? She is obviously invested in the subjugation/demonization of the women in their family, but does she herself feel the pull of "evil" (whether it be witchcraft, lesbianism, or more generally feminist empowerment)?

I would write a bit about Angel, but I fell asleep about half way through it. Eep. Sleepy-head me.

1:20:00 AM : [link]

Oh yay yay yay. Buffy this week will delve deeper into the Tara mystery and the Dawn stuff. I really hope they do something interesting with Tara, though, and don't make her out to be some strange freak-with-an-agenda (i.e. she made her way into the Buffy circle to get at her or Willow or someone).

9:18:34 AM : [link]

Ah, haven't blogged Buffy in awhile. And this past week's episode(s) was old stuff. But the first episode shown, "Fear, Itself," is one of my favorites. It's one of those episodes that most transparently addresses the anxieties of Buffy (and her friends) as a superhero. I was reading somewhere in the last couple of weeks about the shift in superhero mentality/morality that occurred sometime after the heyday of US nationalism/anti-Communism in the 1950s. Basically, superheroes like Superman from the first part of the century were mostly unproblematically heroes. They were superpowered beings who had to save the ordinary world from the evils of superpowered villains. The distinction between good and evil was straightforward (and simplistic). Good people helped ordinary people out. Evil people wanted to destroy people/things and/or take over the world.

The shift in mentality/morality involved first a problematization of this split between good and evil. What really distinguishes good acts from bad if you're not always just concerned with alien invaders out to decimate the world? In many ways, this blurring of the line between good and evil involved an exploration of the subjectivities of the "evil." What makes them do what they do? Is it always with the intent to harm? And even if so, why? As may be clear, popular accounts of psychoanalysis, trauma theory, and even social evolution theory (survival of the fittest) are popular in these stories.

The second shift seems to stem from this first blurring of the good and evil. This shift explores the psyche of the superhero herself. How does she approach saving the world? Buffy has met this question head on from the start of the series. Buffy is "the chosen one," and has been without her original consent been conscripted into this battle between the living and the undead. The progression of the series has often traced her comfort/discomfort with her role. At times, she is the Slayer, and at others, she refuses to be the Slayer (most explicitly when she runs away from Sunnydale between seasons two and three). I have many high hopes for this season because the proposed journey for Buffy is that of discovering what being "the Slayer" really means--in fact, exploring what "the Slayer" is.

It's definitely in my opinion that these new questions in the realm of superheroes makes the stories much more interesting. No longer is the battle simply between a good and an evil, but it involves also a negotiation with those supposedly static/natural concepts. And more than that, it is the analogous exploration of how the superheroes (and by extension, how we the audience) all situate themselves within that dialectic.