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Feb. 14th, 2026 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatFinished my Buffy Rewatch finally - and forgot how good the finale was, all things considered. They had a lot of character plot threads to juggle and somehow managed to land most of them. That and a lot of unnecessary back stage drama, burned out writers and exhausted actors.
Weird tid-bit? The "I Love You/No You Don't" exchange between Buffy and Spike in Chosen, isn't repeated in the flashback of it on Angelin S5 Episode 2. Near as I can figure - they edited it out because it's not relevant to Angel, or Spike didn't really focus on it. While in Buffy - it was important to Buffy and shown through Buffy's point of view.
Re-watching it - it's kind of obvious to me that she's telling him that she really loves him, while he's saying - hey, don't do that again, go live your life. Proving that he actually does love her and cares about someone other than himself. Evidence he is redeemable. It's the exact opposite of the death scene in Becoming Part Two - where she tells Angel to close his eyes, she tells him she loves him, and kills him to save the world, plunging into darkness and closing the void with him. I think that's intentional. The writers/creators of the series like to do book end's.
You can kind of tell where things are heading, and which characters will end up where by what's going on in the beginning of the season, and what happens in the previous one. Noticed that as a pattern on both series.
Anya - actually isn't completely forgotten - Xander looks for her, and he asks Andrew what happened to her, and Andrew tells him that Anya fought valiantly and saved him. Her character also gets a sense of closure - in that she and Andrew kind of bond, and Anya is showing bonding with guy, without sex being in the offing.
The writers do a good job of wrapping up all of the characters arcs neatly.
Even Faith and Wood. And they didn't kill off all of the potentials with speaking parts. It is interesting that it is only Dawn looking out of the back of the bus for Buffy. And Buffy says barely anything at the very end.
She jumps off the bus and looks back out over the crater, which she watched as she rode the top of the bus out of town and away from the carnage.
Giles (looking at the crater): I don't understand. What happened?
Buffy (with a slight smile): Spike.
And after a little while, a grin, when the Sunnydale Sign falls into the crater, and everyone has asked her what she plans on doing next ...
Faith: What now, B? You're no longer the chosen one, the only slayer - you can do whatever you want, be whomever you want - you're finally free.
And Buffy grins. (I think the actress was grinning because she was finally free of the television series.)
I liked the ending, better than when I originally watched it. Because it wasn't about defeating the vampires - or slaying them, it was about defeating evil or the idea of it, at any rate - of overcoming the evil in ourselves, and sharing the power. In sharing her power, Buffy lifts up Willow, Spike, Faith, everyone around her - it's what Spike told her in Fool for Love - what keeps her tied to this world is her connections to it, those around her, the potentials, her friends, her family, etc. The moment she lets go of that - the vampires and the First Evil win. By believing in Spike, loving Spike, Empowering him - Spike takes out the vampires for her along with the decaying and rotting town housing them.
I enjoyed S7 far more than I remembered. It's main flaw was too many characters and group scenes. But I'm not sure how they could have fixed it without losing track of the theme. Also, it fell into comic book plotting and comic book plot devices here and there. The Scythe is very comic bookish as is the Guardian who pops up out of nowhere. Both are connections to Whedon's comic book Fray - which he wrote and published around the same time S7 aired, and was clearly attempting (poorly) to connect the two. He continues to attempt to connect the two with the Buffy comics (which doesn't quite work). Fray was NOT that good a comic. But they kind of needed the Scythe to get out of the corner they'd written themselves into.
Angel S4 in comparison - kind of lays there like a limp noodle. (The actors on Angel didn't get paid as much as they did on Buffy - by the way. Nor did they make anywhere near the amount the folks on Bones were making.)
If Buffy had a lot of unnecessary back stage drama - Angel had it too, in spades. Whatever was going on between the show-runners, the studio, and Charisma/David Greenwalt - was affecting moral on set. VK states the series felt like a job that no one was really invested in and kind of tired of. The difficulty with Angel S4 was Connor and Cordelia. Mainly Cordelia. It does work thematically as a counterpoint to Buffy. Angel unlike Buffy - has to be the one to save the world, and doesn't necessarily share how. The series is neo-noir in nature, and in that type of series - the hero always inadvertently falls into the abyss while attempting to escape from it, and often pulls the world in after him. The gang is brought briefly together, then broken apart. At the end of the season - they don't trust each other, and are only still together because they have no where else to go. Angle unlike Buffy, doesn't inspire or empower anyone, and clearly cares mainly about Connor. (Kind of annoyingly, actually. The rest of the characters are clearly fed up with it and wish Connor would just go away.)
The Jasmine speech in Peace Out is boiler plate noir. And plays out well.
Connor snapping - less so. Angel sacrificing his friends to save Connor - works and fits the character. It also gives the story somewhere to go.
Cordelia should have died in S4, I'm not quite sure why they left the door open for a return. Maybe Whedon didn't feel he'd done the character justice with the coma, and felt the need to maybe provide a bit more? Maybe he thought he could convince the network to let her come back for more episodes? It's not clear and probably doesn't matter.
I couldn't remember if Wes and Fred were on board with joining WRH prior to Angel's decision to join and the Connor memory wipe or after. It was definitely after. And they really aren't.
Gunn: No matter what anyone else does? I'm in.
Lorne: me too.
Wes: eh, I'm not sure - while I'll admit there's a lot we can do with -
Fred: Exactly, while I love the lab and all - this feels kind of wrong, maybe?
Angel: Sorry, I already made the decision. It was an executive decision. We're joining WRH. I just made it.
Wes and Fred look at each other - and at Angel.
Then Angel and Lilah talk to each other as if the others aren't there. And Angel says - he has to see Connor one last time.
Fred et al: Who's Connor.
So, yeah, Wes and Fred were kind of roped into joining WRH or pushed into it, to save Connor, who they didn't remember, and even if they had - they'd have refused.
Watching S5 - my favorite season of Angel, now.
****
It's gray, and bleak - February, and all I want to do is sleep. (Didn't sleep well). Sinuses are bugging me - probably because I handled a lot of dust yesterday - installing a new little stand in the bathroom, and throwing out old makeup.
Weird tid-bit? The "I Love You/No You Don't" exchange between Buffy and Spike in Chosen, isn't repeated in the flashback of it on Angelin S5 Episode 2. Near as I can figure - they edited it out because it's not relevant to Angel, or Spike didn't really focus on it. While in Buffy - it was important to Buffy and shown through Buffy's point of view.
Re-watching it - it's kind of obvious to me that she's telling him that she really loves him, while he's saying - hey, don't do that again, go live your life. Proving that he actually does love her and cares about someone other than himself. Evidence he is redeemable. It's the exact opposite of the death scene in Becoming Part Two - where she tells Angel to close his eyes, she tells him she loves him, and kills him to save the world, plunging into darkness and closing the void with him. I think that's intentional. The writers/creators of the series like to do book end's.
You can kind of tell where things are heading, and which characters will end up where by what's going on in the beginning of the season, and what happens in the previous one. Noticed that as a pattern on both series.
Anya - actually isn't completely forgotten - Xander looks for her, and he asks Andrew what happened to her, and Andrew tells him that Anya fought valiantly and saved him. Her character also gets a sense of closure - in that she and Andrew kind of bond, and Anya is showing bonding with guy, without sex being in the offing.
The writers do a good job of wrapping up all of the characters arcs neatly.
Even Faith and Wood. And they didn't kill off all of the potentials with speaking parts. It is interesting that it is only Dawn looking out of the back of the bus for Buffy. And Buffy says barely anything at the very end.
She jumps off the bus and looks back out over the crater, which she watched as she rode the top of the bus out of town and away from the carnage.
Giles (looking at the crater): I don't understand. What happened?
Buffy (with a slight smile): Spike.
And after a little while, a grin, when the Sunnydale Sign falls into the crater, and everyone has asked her what she plans on doing next ...
Faith: What now, B? You're no longer the chosen one, the only slayer - you can do whatever you want, be whomever you want - you're finally free.
And Buffy grins. (I think the actress was grinning because she was finally free of the television series.)
I liked the ending, better than when I originally watched it. Because it wasn't about defeating the vampires - or slaying them, it was about defeating evil or the idea of it, at any rate - of overcoming the evil in ourselves, and sharing the power. In sharing her power, Buffy lifts up Willow, Spike, Faith, everyone around her - it's what Spike told her in Fool for Love - what keeps her tied to this world is her connections to it, those around her, the potentials, her friends, her family, etc. The moment she lets go of that - the vampires and the First Evil win. By believing in Spike, loving Spike, Empowering him - Spike takes out the vampires for her along with the decaying and rotting town housing them.
I enjoyed S7 far more than I remembered. It's main flaw was too many characters and group scenes. But I'm not sure how they could have fixed it without losing track of the theme. Also, it fell into comic book plotting and comic book plot devices here and there. The Scythe is very comic bookish as is the Guardian who pops up out of nowhere. Both are connections to Whedon's comic book Fray - which he wrote and published around the same time S7 aired, and was clearly attempting (poorly) to connect the two. He continues to attempt to connect the two with the Buffy comics (which doesn't quite work). Fray was NOT that good a comic. But they kind of needed the Scythe to get out of the corner they'd written themselves into.
Angel S4 in comparison - kind of lays there like a limp noodle. (The actors on Angel didn't get paid as much as they did on Buffy - by the way. Nor did they make anywhere near the amount the folks on Bones were making.)
If Buffy had a lot of unnecessary back stage drama - Angel had it too, in spades. Whatever was going on between the show-runners, the studio, and Charisma/David Greenwalt - was affecting moral on set. VK states the series felt like a job that no one was really invested in and kind of tired of. The difficulty with Angel S4 was Connor and Cordelia. Mainly Cordelia. It does work thematically as a counterpoint to Buffy. Angel unlike Buffy - has to be the one to save the world, and doesn't necessarily share how. The series is neo-noir in nature, and in that type of series - the hero always inadvertently falls into the abyss while attempting to escape from it, and often pulls the world in after him. The gang is brought briefly together, then broken apart. At the end of the season - they don't trust each other, and are only still together because they have no where else to go. Angle unlike Buffy, doesn't inspire or empower anyone, and clearly cares mainly about Connor. (Kind of annoyingly, actually. The rest of the characters are clearly fed up with it and wish Connor would just go away.)
The Jasmine speech in Peace Out is boiler plate noir. And plays out well.
Connor snapping - less so. Angel sacrificing his friends to save Connor - works and fits the character. It also gives the story somewhere to go.
Cordelia should have died in S4, I'm not quite sure why they left the door open for a return. Maybe Whedon didn't feel he'd done the character justice with the coma, and felt the need to maybe provide a bit more? Maybe he thought he could convince the network to let her come back for more episodes? It's not clear and probably doesn't matter.
I couldn't remember if Wes and Fred were on board with joining WRH prior to Angel's decision to join and the Connor memory wipe or after. It was definitely after. And they really aren't.
Gunn: No matter what anyone else does? I'm in.
Lorne: me too.
Wes: eh, I'm not sure - while I'll admit there's a lot we can do with -
Fred: Exactly, while I love the lab and all - this feels kind of wrong, maybe?
Angel: Sorry, I already made the decision. It was an executive decision. We're joining WRH. I just made it.
Wes and Fred look at each other - and at Angel.
Then Angel and Lilah talk to each other as if the others aren't there. And Angel says - he has to see Connor one last time.
Fred et al: Who's Connor.
So, yeah, Wes and Fred were kind of roped into joining WRH or pushed into it, to save Connor, who they didn't remember, and even if they had - they'd have refused.
Watching S5 - my favorite season of Angel, now.
****
It's gray, and bleak - February, and all I want to do is sleep. (Didn't sleep well). Sinuses are bugging me - probably because I handled a lot of dust yesterday - installing a new little stand in the bathroom, and throwing out old makeup.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-16 01:50 pm (UTC)I think it may have been because the order came from the WB and the Studio? And it may have been hazy at that? In that I think it was more along the lines of ...so and so is costing us money with production delays, etc, and can you please do something about this or else? In short, I think they were complaining about the production delays. From what I understand - Greenwalt and Carpenter were responsible for a lot of costly production delays. (They weren't alone though - Boreanze also was responsible for delays in production. Boreanze at one point - shut down the studio lights as a prank, and did something else. He was a notorious prankster. And tended to break down laughing a lot - disrupting production. This came from various cast members. The puppeteers who did Smile Time reported this in an email about their time on set to a friend of mine at the time, as did the guy who played Adam in a commentary. Except I don't think DB's antics cost them as much as Carpenters, and DB had more power and clout.)
Also, from reports back then and in the 25 years between, it's clear Whedon didn't handle the situation professionally or well? And CC may have threatened to sue them for terminating her contract because she was pregnant. It would have worked better if Whedon had fired her at the end of S3. But Greenwalt wrote her character out as a higher being - and that didn't work story-wise or thematically or character wise for Whedon. (Whedon: "Cordelia? A higher being? Really?" - Minear quoted him as saying this on the Angel Boards in 2003.) So, instead he wrote (well in the writers heads) a great story arc about Cordy being the big bad, with Connor being the one to kill off Cordy at the end, much like Connor kills Jasmine. But, Charisma told him that she was pregnant, and there went that great plan. He must have been beside himself? I mean he'd found a way to serve the story in his head, the character arc, get a dig at Greenwalt, and fire Charisma without any issues - and stick to the neo-noir theme. Then Charisma got pregnant and the plan went down the tubes.
Add to all of that? Firefly got cancelled.
I think that's why they couldn't kill her off in S4, and were ambivalent about it later? She wasn't supposed to come back at all in S5. Gellar was supposed to be in the 100th episode. But Sarah told them she couldn't make it due to scheduling conflicts. (Her Aunt's funeral).
no subject
Date: 2026-02-16 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-16 11:42 pm (UTC)It's hard to know. Except I agree - the whole making Cordy a higher being arc doesn't work. That's kind of when her arc goes off the rails? I really despised Cordy pretty much from Birthday through and including Inside Out. It's odd, they had no clue what to do with Wes's character - and he has the best arc, and they knew what to do with Cordy's and she has the worst arc.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-16 11:58 pm (UTC)