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Wacky Watches: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

This Year's Girl - This is when Buffy and Faith have a dream about making the bed in Buffy's spare room and Faith says something like "got to get it done before little sis arrives." I'm going to go out on a limb and say they'd definitely planned Dawn now! This episode is good and Joyce is used well in the closing minutes, but it still has some Riley/Initiative stuff that isn't very interesting (Adam mutilating demons is fine though!) But the next part is the main event.

Who Are You? - Yep, I skipped watching Angel in between. And I can live with it. This is written and directed by Joss Whedon. It's very good. SMG is a lot of fun as Faith. There's that great scene with Spike. And she's nasty about Tara which is sad but it's a good scene! And she wants to be good really! I like Faith. Dushku does a good job playing Buffy too (better than she is Dollhouse!) I like the vampire church stuff too. There isn't much to not like here!
 
Those episodes have good acting and good everything else.

I think they may also be related to the season's theme of Identity somehow but I can't quite put my finger on it.
 
CaptainWacky said:
This Year's Girl - This is when Buffy and Faith have a dream about making the bed in Buffy's spare room and Faith says something like "got to get it done before little sis arrives." I'm going to go out on a limb and say they'd definitely planned Dawn now!
Click to expand...

Oh that's the dream I was thinking of.
 
Prodigal - Flashbacks to Angel's human life with bad Irish accents and special guest bad Irish accent Christina Hendricks! Kate's dad is working with demons who are smuggling demon drugs but he's thinks they're auto parts, somehow! Despite these two things this episode is actually pretty good!

The Ring - This one was a pleasant surprise too because it's a fight club episode (every fucking genre show does a fight club episode) and it does follow the usual fight club tropes with the veteran fighter who refuses to help at first but does the right thing at the end and everything and it doesn't even have The Rock giving Seven Of Nine a Rock Bottom. But actually the episode is fine! There's nothing too bad in it, everyone's in character, Wesley actually gets to be a bit more competent in action and Angel has nice character moments. Lilah makes her first appearance and offers to help Angel if he'll just turn a blind eye to the evil that's going on and not get in Wolfram and Hart's way. That's like a recurring theme throughout the series!

Superstar - It's the Jonathan episode! It's good. Jane Espenson is the funniest Buffy writer. She writes the funniest parts. Like the memorable shrimp scene here! Actually this is the best Anya's been for a while too. Danny Strong is likable even though what Jonathan did was really pretty creepy. The only problem here is that you still have to be invested in the Buffy/Riley relationship for some scenes and I'm really not. Maybe they thought having Jonathan give Riley his blessing would make him more popular with viewers or something.
 
Eternity - Angel protects a famous actress who fears getting old. She eventually drugs Angel in an attempt to get him to turn her into a vampire, but it turns him evil because he thinks he's feeling perfect happiness. I don't really like the idea that Angel can turn evil just becuase of taking drugs. And Wesley says it's not even real anyway so I don't know if he "officially" loses his soul here. That whole thing's a bit weird and best forgotten really. Rest of the episode is okay.

Where the Wild Things Are -SEX. Buffy and Riley have sex a lot and it wakes up the ghosts of some repressed children. Because no one has had sex in this house before apparently? Xander and Anya have a fight but save the day in the end when the house is all overgrown with vines(?) because of the crystal clear metaphorical link between sex and vines. Giles sings and that means the episode isn't totally worthless!
 
Where The Wild Things Are is a strong contender for Worst Episode of the Season in a season that has Beer Bad in it.
 
Five By Five - Faith's in town! She's dancing and punching people! Wolfram and Hart want her to kill Angel. Don't they have bigger plans for him? Or maybe it's just Lilah, Lindsey and Lee acting alone. I'll try to keep track of Wolfram and Hart's position on Angel. I like that it's Wesley who wants to help Faith (probably out of guilt for being such a crappy Watcher.) Then he gets tortured because of it. Faith breaks down at the end and it's sad. I still like Faith a lot. There's also more flashbacks with Angel and Daral with less horrible accents. This is good.

New Moon Rising - Oz is back and he smells Willow on Tara! Uh oh! I find this episode a bit disappointing because after the initial return of Oz it devolves into another "we have to sneak into the Initiative!" story. I feel like that's been done enough times already. Riley finally leaves them anyway so that's a thing. Spike and Adam together are amusing. Oz and Willow talk and it's a good scene. Then Willow goes to be with the one she l...l...loves (Tara.) I seem to remember there was a huge "WILLOW IS BI AND NOT A FULL LESBIAN" debate at the time? Like if you just watched season four I can see Willow being bi but then in season five she starts saying things like "hello, gay now!" all the time. I think probably when I first watched it I thought "BUT SHE ENJOYED SEX WITH OZ" but I know it's perfectly possible she could have enjoyed sex with a man in the past before realising she's actually gay. Anyway, Tara is hotter than Oz.

Sanctuary - Wesley isn't as keen on helping Faith after the torture thing. Angel helps her and they have good scenes. Buffy's in town and she's angry! The Watcher pricks are being pricks with guns and stuff but Welsey defeats one of them by throwing a needle like a dart and it's a good moment. Plus the lawyers and Kate are running around with their own motivations. This episode is good too. Angel's become a good show!
 
People who are bi call themselves gay all the time.

I think the impulse behind insisting Willow is bi is that it legitimises her relationship with Oz as real. Willoz shippers need her to be bi, or else Oz is just a pit stop on the road to Sapphos.
 
'Bisexual Invisibility' was the working title of that episode, yes.

The Yoko Factor - This episode has that really brilliant scene at the end with drunk Giles and "Tara's your GIRLFRIEND?"/"Bloody Hell!" and also Giles is drunk and "I guess that's why there's no propechy about the Chosen One AND HER FRIENDS" and also I think Giles might have been drinking. It's a very good scene. The rest of the episde is good too. Giles sings again. Everyone is struggling with IDENTITY issues of some kind and Spike takes advantage of that. Also Giles gets drunk.

War Zone - Gunn is introduced (and that computer billionaire guy who is in it a few more times I think?) It's a decent episode. Not much to say really.

Primeval - And so the Initiative story ends and it...wasn't very compelling. They're trying to use technology to fight and control demons and you can't do that because demons are old and mystical. I get that. I don't think it needed to be a season long arc? Adam is an okay character and the actor does a pretty good job, but he doesn't hold up at all to previous big bads. He has no personal issue with Buffy at all. She's just trying to kill him because he's bad. And okay he represents fusing demons with technology or whatever and that's the opposite of a Slayer. His only real backstory is with Riley but Riley is stuck fighting Zombie Forest here (but at least we see Forest's head explode!) Adam's big plan is just "kill lots of people and demons and then make an army out of them." He probably could have done that without the whole tricking Buffy thing. And again it's silly that they don't just stake Spike after he betrays them but I guess they just find him too pathetic to even stake at this point. ANYWAY despite my MANY COMPLAINTS this is a good, exciting episode with good character scenes for the core four. They combine their IDENTITIES to beat Adam by making things go bullet time (the Matrix came out the previous year) and turn a rocket into doves.
 
Blind Date - Bernard from Lost (his real name) appears for the first time as Holland and he's a good actor and good at playing this character. Lindsey gets some depth! Lee dies! There's an evil Daredevil lady and she's kind of hot? Angel steals the Shanshu scroll and that'll be important! This is a good episode.

Restless - I always get annoyed when tv shows do lazy dreams sequences and they're not actually anything like real dreams. This episode is the opposite of that. Joss really goes all out in actually depicting dreams that resemble real dreams people have while also telling a story and telling us a lot about the characters. And foreshadowing, but it's the good kind of foreshadowing that doesn't draw attention to itself and you only get it when it pays off rather than the "WHY IS LIBBY IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL DRAMATIC MUSIC" type foreshadowing. But yeah mostly what it makes it so great is how it caputres the weirdness of dream and dream logic and we get stuff like Willow's play (with Cowboy Guy Riley who is the best Riley ever) and the way Xander like runs between different locations in his dream and Giles singing the exposition song (FORESHADOWING ONCE MORE WITH FEELING?) and Buffy's amazing speech to the First Slayer. And the cheese guy. This is really great and one of the best episode of this tv show Buffy!

To Shanshu In L.A. - Angel season one suffered in the first half with too many really standard, uninteresting standalones, but the quality of the standalones imporved as it went on and they introduced more arc stuff and this is a very good finale. I was sad the Oracles died they were kind of cool. Angel has a lot of good stuff in it but also Cordy. And Lindsey's made his choice and he proves his loyalty to Wolfram and Hart by raising...Darla!?
 
Before there were memes, there was the Buffy Cheese Guy.

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Buffy Vs. Dracula - I never really got what this episode is supposed to be. It kind of seems like a comedy episode but it has serious stuff going on with Buffy. She's been going out patrolling (hunting as Dracula calls it) killing vampires every night and she wants to understand the darkness inside her and what it means to be a Slayer. Dracula pushes her to this by revealing the darknes in her...the problem is that Dracula is really really lame. Like maybe he's supposed to be, but the characters all take him seriously and talk about how sexy and cool he is. But he isn't? Is that the joke? Or it just that the episode doesn't quite work. It was written by Marti Noxon so I'm going with the second option. What's that bit where Buffy just keeps warning the Dracula dust to not reform again and it scuttles away? Is he still alive? If he is shouldn't Buffy but concerned? It does have Xander's awesome "buttmonkey" scene and good wank jokes and the shock "Buffy has a sister!?" ending.

Judgement - Lorne appears for the first time (and Merle the snitch demon!) This episode starts well and all the characters and their relationships are well defined and there's interesting scenes with Darla. And Angel sings "Mandy" because he thinks it's pretty. So this episode is pretty good. It's just that the main plot with the pregnant woman and the protector demon and Angel riding a horse isn't super interesting. But there's nothing much to complain about here really! Good Faith cameo at the end with frizzy prison hair. A fine season opener.

Real Me - Dawn. It's Dawn. It's a Dawn episode. About Dawn. A lot of people instantly hated Dawn because she was an "annoying little sister" (even though that's what she's supposed to be at this point.) I don't know how you can hate Michelle Trachtenberg's performance though. I mean I'm obviously biased as I'm the second biggest Michelle Trachtenberg fan IN THE WORLD but I think she does a good job right away and does some really great face acting. I think one of the reasons people found Dawn annoying is that they were used to twenty somethings playing teenagers on tv and here they had an actual 14 year old playing a 14 year old so she felt too young even though she was literally the right age. Anyway this episode is good as it also has a lot of fun Harmony stuff. She's trying to be a better vampire and do evil things and even though it's supposed to mirror Dawn's but it also mirrors Buffy's quest to discover the true nature of the Slayer? Maybe identity is the theme of this season too! (I think the theme of the seaso is probably death though.)
 
Season 5 has a lot of dual identity/dark side stuff going on. Ben/Glory, Slayer/demon, Dawn/key, Xander/Xander, Tara/demon, Willow/Willow except black eyes and knifes.
 
Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been - This is the one where we have flashbacks to Angel in the fifties living in the Hyperion hotel. I don't think we've seen anything of Angel in the hundred years between losing his soul and perving on fifteen year old Buffy before this. It does a good job capturing a 1952 feeling. It's a decent episode. The demon at the end has kind of a silly voice? It says Wesley is highly paranoid and that does tie-in with what he does in season 3. They move into the Hyperion at th end. Did that old woman's dead body remain in her room throughout the rest of the series?

The Replacement - It's a Xander episode! But it's one where he doesn't do anything problematic! It's just an amusing (Jane Espenson wrote it!) and good character episode for Xander. Actually Anya gets the best scene she had so far as well. This is a very good episode. ALSO I should mention that I've totally droped the "Giles gets knocked out" count because I forgot about it after season 3. I think they actually drastically reduced the number of times he's knocked out after Cordy's "wake up in a coma" line. And Giles owns the Magic Box now (actually from the last episode) and it's REALLY big inside now. Like probably the biggest magic shop in the world (magic isn't real!) But it makes sense Sunnydale would have such a huge magic shop actually. And Spike hangs around the dump like a wacky neighbour sitcom character now.
 
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