Willow Where

I seem to be at a time in my life when I can appreciate Jane Espenson's writing more. "Same Time, Same Place" is a really good episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 2002. Willow comes home from England after some amateur therapy to fix her from being evil and finds her friends seem to be absent. In fact, Buffy, Xander, and Dawn were there for her, but somehow neither party is able to see the other. Espenson's premise is a nice way of using supernatural elements to explore the emotional fallout of Willow's situation. The episode's monster, a Gollum-ish creature that paralyses and feeds off of living victims, is one of the few genuinely creepy demons in the series.

The episode also has one of the best "Crazy Spike" moments when Spike talks to Willow and Buffy at the same time and assumes one of them is a hallucination. Though it's kind of awkward that, after the conclusion of the previous episode, that Spike has ended up back in the high school basement somehow. You'd have thought Buffy would've done something for him.

It's also kind of odd how much the demon's paralysis is played for laughs. Buffy and Anya have fun posing a paralysed Dawn even after reading the paralysis may be permanent. Buffy takes a moment to remark on a can of nuts Anya brought back from Brazil.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+ in most countries.

Against Judgement

This week I've started watching season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and season four of Angel, which originally aired simultaneously. I'm two episodes in on the Buffy season, which is the series' final season. Spike's back after reclaiming his soul. I always liked how he didn't announce it right away, that of course it was driving him mad and he seemed kind of ashamed of it.

It's also the most Christian the show ever gets with the second episode actually concluding in a church and Spike making direct reference to the God that presumably ordained that crucifixes should scald vampires on touch. It leads to a cool moment that underlines the fact that getting his soul back doesn't mean Spike has earned salvation or even forgiveness from Buffy.

He went to all that trouble and they never get back together. But it's not half as sexy now that he has a soul anyway, is it? Somehow Buffy and soulless Spike had better chemistry than any other couple in the Buffyverse. I put it down to the mystery of perversity. I'm often reminded of this bit from "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe:

PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart -- one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

I might point out that, for all its lust, this is just what was missing from Poor Things. Bella always weighed her relationships by rational justification. Human beings aren't wholly rational.

Meanwhile, on Angel

Since I always watch Angel alongside Buffy, I watched the season three finale of Angel last night after watching the season six finale of Buffy a few days earlier (the Angel episode aired on May 20, 2002, while the Buffy episode aired on May 21, 2002). Written by series co-creator David Greenwalt, the Angel finale is a little more suspenseful than the Buffy finale, with tighter writing, though the annoying kid character is a little more annoying.

Connor is Angel's answer to Buffy's Dawn. Dawn works slightly better when the writers are giving her realistic sibling banter with Buffy but Connor's just ornery, his vague backstory involving life growing up in an ill-defined Hell dimension. Maybe the best thing about the episode is that it's the last one with the increasingly dull Cordelia.

She and Angel realise they have feelings for each other and she calls him on the phone to arrange an appointment with him at a scenic location where she can confess her love. It's funny she didn't just come straight to the hotel but, naturally, one doesn't want to have such a conversation over the phone. I thought, what a charmingly dated plot element. Yes, people used to feel it was better to conduct such matters in person. Now I think people prefer to do it via texting and online communication. Why is that more acceptable than phone conversations? I suppose it's because people now feel more like they're their true selves on the internet and via text. It leaves out all that messy biological stuff like blushing, stuttering, and the possibility of exposing unflattering or politically inconvenient instincts.

This episode also features a Pogues song when Lilah goes to meet Wesley at a bar where he's drinking alone. This was the phase when Wesley really becomes the grim hardass, following his attempt to kidnap Angel's son because he was afraid Angel would kill the child. He has a sex scene with Lilah with dialogue that feels like it came from a noir.

LILAH: Don't go making more of this than it is. I'm not one of the doey-eyed girls of Angel Investigations. Don't be thinking about me when I'm gone.

WESLEY: I wasn't thinking about you when you were here.

Angel is available on Disney+ or Hulu in various countries. I had to use my VPN to watch it on the UK's Disney+. It was on Japan's Disney+ for a while but then it was removed, though Buffy's still on.

Willow the Almighty

I finished watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer season six last night, with the finale episode "Grave". Now Willow, driven initially by vengeance and fury, essentially becomes another of Joss Whedon's godlike characters (though the episode was written by David Fury). It's a decent episode though, in a season filled with several strong episodes, it's not among the best.

Willow gains the ability to sense the pain of everyone in the world and decides to end it by killing them all. Next, on Angel, we'll get Gina Torres as a godlike entity who wants to take away humanity's free will, a motivation Whedon will transfer to Loki in The Avengers and which was Loki's motivation once again in the recently concluded second season of his Disney+ series. Maybe this is the inevitable outcome of a series of stories that began as a supernatural teen dramedy. The recurring problem the characters face could be boiled down to, "How do you deal with a world filled with unpredictable pain?"

Buffy herself is kind of benched throughout the episode, stuck in a sinkhole with Dawn at the graveyard. And, of course, Giles returns after leaving earlier in the season.

No more tweeds for him. I feel like Anthony Head really disliked Giles' initial look.

This was an interesting story for Willow and, overall, I'd say the show is better by this point than it was in the earlier seasons, but for some reason I feel like there was something more fundamentally attractive about her in season three. I'm not sure what happened, maybe Alyson Hannigan and Whedon became too conscious of how charming she was?

Buffy the Vampie Slayer is available on Disney+.

The Unstable Hell Mouth

I sure am enjoying Buffy season six a lot more than I used to. Over the weekend, I watched "Seeing Red" and "Villains", and what an absolute delight those two are. "Villains" is an e-ticket ride while "Seeing Red" is a fascinating specimen of television production.

"Seeing Red" pissed a lot of people off. Arguably, it's a jarring tonal shift for anyone used to Buffy as safe and cosy weekly viewing, where every problem our heroes encountered was a surmountable cheap special effect. But it's not like there hadn't been character deaths before. It's as though, with season six, Joss Whedon deliberately lulled the audience into a world of weaker stakes. The trio of nerds didn't seem like very serious or threatening villains and most of the drama revolved around Willow's magic addiction and the relationship between Xander and Anya.

Oh, yeah, and Spike and Buffy. The other controversial scene in "Seeing Red" is Spike attempting to rape Buffy. Logistically, I've always had a problem with the scene because the first time Spike and Buffy had sex it was a fight scene in which the two brought a building down around them. So how could Spike, on any level, really expect to overpower Buffy? So the scene feels a little forced. I think we're meant to think Buffy's been weakened by a recent fight but that's never clearly put across. If they really wanted it to make sense they should have had Buffy visibly restrained in some way. Anyway, I like the idea of reminding the audience that Spike had no soul. James Marsters is just so damned charming in the role, it's easy to forget. Of course, a vampire taking a victim's blood is already a kind of rape so maybe it would have been better if he'd done that instead.

After that, Willow's single-minded mission of revenge in "Villains" is just terrific, especially after all the dull moralising of the addiction episodes. In "Villains", she may as well be singing "Let It Go". Alyson Hannigan is interesting in ways she hadn't been since season three. And when she finally gets her revenge it's just delicious.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Where Do Vampires Go?

In the lead up to Halloween, I've also been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel again. I'm nearing the end of season six of the former and season three of the latter. I always watch the two together if I do a rewatch as they seem two halves of a whole to me. Yesterday, I was surprised to see Honest Trailers had released a new video for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I'm not fond of Honest Trailers. I find one out of fifty of their jokes funny, most of them are just regurgitations of popular opinions without any real punchline. This video is a good example, ending by calling Buffy "Quippy". Which is surely ironic coming from a quippy YouTube channel. They've also edited together a lot of shots of guys pinning girls to the ground on the show, which is a cheap shot and makes no substantial comment on the show's sexual morals. He also calls the Hellmouth a "literal plot hole" because it provides Buffy with monsters to fight. That's kind of like calling the Enterprise a plot hole because it allows the characters on Star Trek to travel in space.

Of course, Honest Trailers must feel compelled to be palatable to those who approve of Joss Whedon's cancellation. Of all cancellations, Whedon's may be the most thorough since much of his fanbase now are people who lead the charges in cancel culture. He is, to borrow a term from the Honest Trailers video, condemned for being "mean".

He did make one public appearance recently, at the wedding of J. August Richards, who played Gunn on Angel.

From left to right is Richards, Whedon, Heather Horton (Whedon's wife), and Richards' new husband. Several other Angel cast members were present as apparently the group have remained tight despite any meanness on Whedon's part.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+ in most countries. Angel is on Disney+ but in fewer countries.

X Sonnet #1785

The moon was orange, attempting rosy gold.
The second floor contains a wooden box.
With lunar dimes, the bank is growing old.
The stars are only holes in giant socks.
The only squid at home was eating men.
For trust abused was dice to waiting gods.
As Job attests beyond official sin.
The clutching claw depends on weighted odds.
For spider skulls, the clouds of web unlink.
With candied time, the fates'll snack 'til late.
Colliding bears with trains'll seldom blink.
A jagged story's writ on luckless pate.
Returning cheers were muffled blank in sport.
Condemning sneers were surely bank at court.

Magic and Soul

What once was fun, sexy, and romantic has become painful, violent addiction in "Wrecked", a 2001 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the episode where Buffy and Spike finally have sex and Willow's compulsion to use magic becomes a full blown After School Special.

Willow's Magic Addiction is a sterling example of how bad allegory can be. Willow meets a dealer, she starts losing track of time when she gets high--in this case, literally getting stuck to the ceiling.

She loses her sense of priorities and gets Dawn in danger just to get a fix. It all ends with a car crash and a summoned demon. Magic, which just last year was the symbol of Willow's bond with Tara, has now just become drugs. Tara no longer has anything positive to say for magic, she's basically a different character. Wouldn't this all work better if they'd made Willow literally a drug addict? Yes, it would.

However, I quite like the Buffy/Spike plot. I heard the network insisted on the pairing but I think this actually works to the show's benefit. You can sense the writers trying to justify it as they go and they struggle as much as Buffy does--which makes her dialogue much more natural. Life isn't often a neat and tidy allegory, people do things that fly in the face of their self-perception, things that contradict how other people perceive them. Though, actually, it's not so out of character for Buffy who for several seasons has been built up as having a carnal side, and as having increasing trouble forming and maintaining emotional attachments.

It's also another interesting route for the show's premise of vampires not having souls. We can't help sympathising with Spike a little, even when he's being a jerk. It's almost like the concept is propaganda designed to make the Slayer more comfortable with genocide.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1703

A watching ghost arranged a sheet to walk.
By just a beard the being was spotted late.
For here the restless dead at times may talk.
Such pretty spectres want a special gate.
Another place displays her face for me.
Projected thoughts or maybe flesh and bone.
The forest hides beneath the fossil tree.
A treasure's safe beneath the mossy stone.
"The Devil's Way"'s a song of darkened frames.
Disordered art was pushed at ev'ry side.
In hasty blood, his claw records the names.
A budget movie set's a place to hide.
Another bug absorbs the sugar sky.
Another wing's tattooed with how to fly.

Once More, Once Again

Okay, after all these years, I can finally join everyone else in admiring "Once More, with Feeling". Wait, where did everyone go?

Actually, this year they did still have the annual screening of the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Comic Con, despite Joss Whedon, the former king of what he himself dubbed "nerd prom", being now persona non grata. Watching the episode is one of those glimpses of the past that reveals some of the horror of to-day. Listening to the unabashedly erotic lyrics Tara sings about Willow in this episode watched by millions in 2001, it seems odd that to-day controversy erupts over the hint of a lesbian relationship in a genre film or TV series.

That scene, of Tara starting to levitate while singing that she's "spread beneath my Willow tree", still comes off as a little awkward, though it's kind of meant to because it abruptly cuts to Xander commenting on how Willow and Tara probably aren't actually doing research. On the whole, though, Whedon's lyrics actually seem terrific to me now. They're pleasingly clever and also genuinely serve to develop each characters' issues. The thread about Giles needing to leave Sunnydale because Buffy must stand on her own still doesn't make sense but the song isn't bad, and I like how Whedon blends it with the reprise of "Under Your Spell" as both Giles and Tara--played by the two strongest singers in the episode, Anthony Head and Amber Benson--contemplate leaving.

I've heard the relationship between Spike and Buffy was something the network demanded but Whedon was reluctant to do. Yet it's the most effective part of this episode with many effective parts. Buffy's need to feel something to make her feel genuinely alive again coupled with Spike's impossible situation provide ample fodder for clever lyrics. The episode doesn't hit Willow's season arc about addiction too hard because Alyson Hannigan didn't want to sing. But this proves a blessing since switching magic from a metaphor for lesbian love to a metaphor for drug addiction was too abrupt and never really came off in the season. Buffy finally getting with Spike works so much better as a portrayal of self-destructive behaviour.

I even like Xander and Anya's song and I generally find Anya insufferable by this point in the series. But she's as cute as she's intended to be in their musical numbers.

Whedon spent a lot of extra time working on this episode and pushing to get it made. It's an admirable example of artistic integrity.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Disney+.

Buffy Bucks

My respect for Jane Espenson as a writer has increased with each viewing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but I still think her work on season six is a low point in the series. I watched "Flooded" last night, the fourth episode of the season, in which Jane Espenson and Douglas Petrie's teleplay unwisely delves into Buffy's financial situation.

Apparently, though, all the writers were involved with this idea. This quote from Marti Noxon is from the Buffyverse wiki:

So I guess we started toying with adult responsibilities and then decided we'd have to go the way of nasty sex instead. We had been asking in script meetings, 'What are adult responsibilities?'

One is left with the peculiar feeling the writers didn't know the answer to that question, despite presumably being adults themselves. It's hard to decide where to begin criticising the web of problems underlying this aspect of Buffy's story. They're all interconnected and work together to make the whole thing insubstantial.

So Buffy's been resurrected by Willow, or Willow leading a group composed of herself, Tara, Xander, and Anya. Spike and Dawn are left out of the loop and Giles has gone off to England. While Buffy's been gone, Willow and Tara have moved into the Summers household and become surrogate guardians for Dawn. The reason Dawn doesn't go to live with her father isn't clearly explained and is hand-waved away. I don't remember if we ever actually get a scene between Dawn and her father. I assume they couldn't get the same actor from season two or three or whenever it was he appeared and they didn't consider the plot thread important enough to recast. Willow's parents haven't appeared since season three and Tara appeared to be dramatically disowned by her family.

These things become important when they're giving Buffy the hard talk about how the inheritance from Buffy and Dawn's deceased mother is running out. Willow and Tara, despite living in the house and presumably using the utilities, never mention if they've been contributing financially or how they would be able to. Buffy will eventually be forced to drop out of college so she can work to support Dawn and herself. Why wouldn't Willow and Tara do the same? Where does their money come from? Willow's parents? How do they feel about the fact that Willow has become head of a household with her girlfriend and is presumably using her parents' money to do it?

There's lots of comedy about Anya being obsessed with money but how much money can she make from that magic shop? How much does it cost for her to pay merchandise suppliers--who are those suppliers? How much money could Giles possibly have at this point? With him it becomes a particularly important question when he starts to shame Buffy for not tackling financial responsibilities herself. Even if he's not her Watcher officially anymore, he's still her friend and father figure and she's still often enough the only person standing in the way of the apocalypse, a full time, frequently overnight job with no pay. If he can help her and Dawn financially, surely he's morally obligated to. And if he can't, why is it even a discussion?

These characters and their situations have gone on too long without considering financial realities for the show to start leaning on them for dramatic purposes now. It's like putting a hippopotamus in a shopping cart. The episode ends with Buffy rushing off to a rendezvous with Angel who, of course, owns a hotel . . .

Twitter Sonnet #1595

A query drifted north to meet the snow.
For ev'ry egg we never hatched a plan.
Remembered briefings help the yoghurt grow.
The noble pudding's sweeter now than flan.
If true or false the scene was very weird.
The eye was never right when brown or blue.
A million little snakes create a beard.
A station girl could stop a murder crew.
Where singing gulls were caught to nab a crab.
The puzzle gathered strength on castle walls.
The dark's as good a place as Hell to stab.
We figured odds the Lotto's got the balls.
The broken pot was something all forgot.
We packed the mind behind the vacant lot.

Grand Vampire Hotel

Now that I've finished with The Defenders, I've gone back to watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I've just started season six of Buffy and season three of Angel. Buffy's a little better at this point but I still feel sentimental about that hotel on Angel.

Last night I watched the second episode of Angel season three, "That Vision-Thing", in which Cordelia's visions have started to manifest with physical wounds. Charisma Carpenter's hair has started to grow back from the unflattering short haircut she'd apparently gotten in the middle of a scene back in season two.

Meanwhile, Fred (Amy Acker) is in this episode taking on a more prominent role, still recovering from the trauma of living in another dimension. She's just barely willing to come out of her hotel room, compulsively hiding under desks whenever she can. But still Angel (David Boreanaz) asks her to "take Cordelia home" when he notices Cordelia isn't feeling well. There are lots of continuity problems in this episode. It also begins the subplot of Wolfram and Hart trying to take down Angel with building code violations for the hotel. Gunn (J. August Richards) encounters a crew unexpectedly fumigating the hotel in one scene but then we never see them again nor get an explanation as to how Gunn dealt with them.

There's also the subplot about Darla (Julie Benz) being pregnant with Angel's child, a subplot I never liked, before or after the kid is actually born. It's amazing how much I overlook on this show to still enjoy it.

Angel is available on Disney+ in Australia.

Immortal Teen Drama

As I make my way through Buffy the Vampire Slayer season five and the show becomes more and more about Spike, I keep finding myself thinking about this recent interview with James Marsters:

Yeah, apparently Michael Rosenbaum, Lex Luther from Smallville, has a podcast. Anyway, I love how he and Marsters seem to be tuned into two different realities on the interview. Rosenbaum clearly wants Marsters to divulge juicy details about Joss Whedon terrorising women and Marsters either doesn't see this or quite convincingly pretends not to. He's stuck on talking about Joss the Genius and laughing about what a hardass Joss could be. This is a follow up interview, too, in which Rosenbaum is trying to get clear on Marsters' earlier statements about Joss pushing him up against a wall, angry about the fan reaction to Spike. Rosenbaum keeps trying different ways to ask, "But was it real?" and Marsters keeps laughing and saying, "Yeah!" And you can see the smoke starting to come out of Rosenbaum's ears, probably because he knows exactly the situation Marsters is talking about but is trying to decide if he's supposed to be morally outraged about it now.

But I've been thinking about it because I've been trying to decide if Whedon's idea of the vampires as an allegory for teen problems really works. In the first couple seasons, yeah, I can see it in some moments, especially when Buffy was keeping her identity as a Slayer secret. All the dialogue she and her mother had about Buffy dealing with issues her mother couldn't help with did work a bit that way. A teenager watching who, like most teenagers, sees their individual problems to be about the size of the whole world would probably be quite ready to accept the Vampire Slayer drama as relatable. But I would say it operates most obviously in terms of Angel and Buffy's relationship, the relationship Whedon apparently only established reluctantly. It makes me wonder if he planned for Angel never to return from Hell in season three.

Frankly, if things had panned out in the way it seems Whedon originally wanted, according to Marsters, it would've been a deeply unsatisfying show, maybe even a slightly creepy one. So the world is divided between good people and soulless, irredeemable wanderers? That's pretty puritanical for someone who calls himself an atheist.

I suspect Whedon grew a lot as a writer over the course of the series, though, so maybe he abandoned the allegory idea as it made less and less sense. Allegories do, generally, have very limited utility.

The Spike Show

There's so much going on in season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but, no matter what's happening, I'm mostly waiting for Spike to return to the screen. I do kind of like how the Big Bad in this season is Glory, basically Buffy's Buffy. And I hate Dawn less than I used to and Willow and Tara are nice when they're not being too precious. Last night I watched "Listening to Fear", in which Buffy's mother needs brain surgery and there's effective drama in how her tumour causes her to say strange and cruel things to her daughters, especially in how it's mixed up with Dawn's supernatural status. But the climax of the episode depends on Spike randomly showing up so he can first repulse us by stealing photos of Buffy before endearingly tossing her a knife in the fight scene.

It all really starts a few episodes earlier with "Fool for Love", an episode that builds a bedrock of sympathy for Spike. Revealing him to have been a pathetic, lovesick poet in his human life, the episode has a pretty brilliant recurrence of a line of rejection as two women tell Spike, "You're beneath me." In one case it seems outright, petty cruelty, but in the second case it seems completely justified. Which is a nice way of giving the viewer some complicated feelings.

After this episode, the writers seem to be trying to figure out what it means for a man without a soul to be in love. In that light, it makes sense he sneaks into Buffy's house to sniff her sweater. It feels a little dopey nonetheless after how cool Spike has been built up to be. But it does add fuel to the fire. Even though I know where it's all going, I still feel some of the excitement of wondering where this can all end up.

Twitter Sonnet #1474

The missing tea was found beneath the foot.
The open case was shut before a can.
The kettle popped the beaker hot with soot.
And so the public house of bitter man.
A vision froze before the blinking cast.
A creepy heart was waiting years from then.
He nailed another coin abaft the mast.
And so the private ship of restless men.
Again the poisoned peach invites the doll.
The drifting dream's as slow as living souls.
For ev'ry heart's a crowded picture hall.
And ev'ry space is black with hidden holes.
Selection shrank in banquet town to cake.
A talking moth described an ancient wake.

The Beaming Dead

2000 was the year Spike turned pink on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The same year, Kate turned pink on Angel.

I guess pale was out of fashion in the Buffyverse, for vampires as well as humans.

The Kate screenshot comes from "Dear Boy", an episode of Angel in which Darla, the vampire who turned Angel originally, newly resurrected as a human, poses as an ordinary human to make Angel's friends think he's crazy. I suspect it continues the influence of Vertigo seen more directly a few episodes earlier in "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been". Vertigo references always make me happy (and aren't going out of style since WandaVision ended with one). But I also like the Darla plot in Angel season two for how it starts to bridge the gap between Angel and Angelus, his evil self. It can seem like kind of a cheat, the ideal of souls on the two series. Why should Angel feel guilty now for things he did when he was essentially possessed by a demon? 2000 was the year lines started to blur a little.

On Buffy as well. This was the year Spike realised he was lusting for Buffy. Or the year he realised he was in love with her, depending on how you interpret it. What does it mean for him to love without a soul? It certainly seemed like his relationship with Drusilla was more than lust all along.

I kind of like that the shows never really explored their implicit Christian rulebook. We never find out why crosses hurt vampires. We never find out exactly what having a soul means. The ambiguity tortures the characters in a pretty credible way.

Vampires Turn Up

I'm still watching Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, now into season two of one and five of the other. The two shows deepen their fantasy cost of living in California--On Buffy, Xander is easily able to get a huge, beautiful apartment using himself as a reference in "The Replacement" while Angel just appropriates a 68 room hotel on Angel in "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been".

Just two episodes earlier, Angel had expressed concern for Gunn's current living situation and Gunn had told him a property owner was allowing his crew to stay there in exchange for keeping the area safe from vampires. Meanwhile, a whole hotel with working utilities just falls into Angel's hands. I know there's a small arc about Wolfram and Hart buying the building under Angel's nose but that elaborate bit of lampshading kind of highlighted the issue more than alleviated it.

I might take a cheap shot at the show's internal logic but, the truth is, that hotel is a big part of why I love Angel. It is a fantasy, but that's not a bad thing. I'd love to live in my own hotel. Few people not named Howard Hughes ever know that luxury. But I think this hotel ties into my love of stories about groups of people trapped in large haunted houses. Which reminds me, of the three boxes of my old books my grandmother sent me before she died, I found my copy of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski that Caitlin gave me. Maybe I should read it again.

Currently I'm rereading Interview with the Vampire, though. The old paperback I bought in high school, the first copy of the book I ever read, was also in one of those boxes. It's funny, I bought a nicer hardback copy a few years ago but I think I ended up selling it. I find myself marvelling at what things manage to stick around in my life.

I started reading Interview with the Vampire again after my grandmother died because I think it's one of the great books about death. Unlike the rest of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, something about Interview really captures a consciousness of death. A few days ago, I was watching Carl Dreyer's Vampyr on The Criterion Channel and it was only then it struck me how, between that, Angel, and Interview with the Vampire, I seem to be circling a lot of vampire fiction lately. I really don't know why. I sought out Vampyr because I wanted something soothing.

I talked to one of the students in art club a couple weeks ago about a manga she's reading called Vampire and Rose, a series about which I can find little information on the internet--a google search turns up a couple different series with a similar title but only a few images of the one my student was reading. I wonder if it's any good.

Twitter Sonnet #1465

The ladles wait for soup surpassing pea.
American, the ties were dollars less.
The train derailed to catch some time for tea.
Barbarian, the hordes would fain profess.
The missing tracks reduced the disk to grammes.
The loyal horse advanced on flame and frost.
An icy sabre cut the winter dams.
A heavy tender spread at dire cost.
An extra thirty minutes bought the bread.
With harm we relish nothing less than time.
Replenish pencils, stubs adorn the head.
Extract the lemon, leaving only lime.
The extra rooms were magic gratis fruit.
A streaming service dripped a lotus root.

Faith in Four and One

Season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was juggling quite a few ongoing plots yet still had room for great standalone episodes like "Hush" and "Superstar". Season four had Buffy's new boyfriend, Riley, the U.S. military demon hunting unit called The Initiative, former demon Anya's development as a human and Xander's love interest, a neutered Spike's evolving position among the Scooby Gang, the end of Willow's relationship with Oz and the beginning of her relationship with Tara, and the return of Faith. Plus a few bits about Giles' midlife crisis. It all flows together remarkably well, everything feels organic. And the first season of Angel was running at the same time and the plots of both shows were seamlessly interwoven, particularly when it comes to Faith.

Actually, I felt the conclusion of Faith's story, which season four Buffy and season one Angel essentially present, would have been better dragged out a bit longer. Her character was by far the most interesting thing about season three but when she wakes up from her coma more than halfway through season four there are a lot more irons in the fire. But "Who Are You?", written and directed by Joss Whedon, turns out to be one of the all time great body-swapping episodes for how perfectly it advanced Faith's story. It forces Faith to realise that if she could hit the reset button on all her bad deeds, and be seen as a good Slayer again, she'd actually like her life a whole lot better. Eliza Dushku shows she's better at playing Buffy than Sarah Michelle Gellar is at playing Faith but Gellar still manages to show some subtlety as she digests the fact that someone like Riley (Marc Blucas) is capable of having true affection for someone else, something Faith had lost, well, faith in.

Except she'd seemed to have a genuine, mutually affectionate relationship with the deceased mayor. That's a story that could have been fleshed out further, and maybe it was in the comics. It would be interesting to see her, after her reformation, face the one loving relationship she had during the period when she felt the mission of the Scooby Gang was a lie predicated on what she considered to be the false idea that the lives of strangers were worth saving. Her point of view on this isn't reversed until she goes to rescue the hostages in "What Are You?" It's so credible. I've known people who compulsively purge things and people out of their lives and I wonder sometimes if something could make them see that they tend to throw a few babies out with the bathwater. It might also be a good story for people to-day who are routinely taught by an electronic world that they don't need a long attention span. So often people don't understand their own hearts.

Faith's story really ends in the season one episode of Angel called "Sanctuary" when Angel (David Boreanaz) decides to take her in to rehabilitate her. But the episode becomes much more about the relationship between Angel and Buffy as they pull different aspects of their own experience to argue about why Faith is or isn't worth saving. We get some good stuff about Faith struggling with the weight of her crimes, the seeming impossibility of atoning for what she's done. It's a story that could have been drawn out much longer.

In the middle of all the Faith drama, Buffy also gives us "New Moon Rising", a tour de force episode written by Marti Noxon. Oz (Seth Green) returns to town, apparently having cured his lycanthropy, and his arrival simultaneously makes Riley confront his and the Initiative's bigotry regarding demons and also makes Willow (Alyson Hannigan) realise the nature of her affection for Tara (Amber Benson).

My friend Brian thinks Willow was in fact bisexual and this episode works much better if you assume she is. We as an audience at this point genuinely like both Oz and Tara and Willow in a relationship with either one is an appealing prospect. Sometimes I find Willow/Tara a little too gooey, there's something a little too sweet about all their stuttering and chagrin. I really don't like how the recaps constantly repeat Tara's "I am, you know--yours" line. But Amber Benson's vulnerability in this episode is great as she politely extricates herself from the Scooby meeting when Oz shows up. You can see she clearly thinks she's succeeded in being discreet when in reality it's practically like she's told everyone, "I can't be here if Willow is into someone else."

It kind of makes most of the other characters' slowness to perceive the Willow/Tara relationship a bit implausible, particularly Buffy's. But on the whole, I find the plotline more interesting than I did the last time I watched through the show.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are available on Amazon Prime.

Thanksgiving in June

"Pangs" is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that has either aged very well or terribly depending on your politics. The drama in this Thanksgiving episode from 1999 hinges on a spirit of California's native Chumash people rising from the grave to murder various people of European descent. Writer Jane Espenson constructs the story as a vehicle for philosophical argument in a way that feels very natural for the characters and organic overall.

Willow (Alyson Hannigan) has started to inherent some of her mother's ideological attitudes which Espenson had mocked in the episode "Gingerbread" from the previous season. Now Willow, in college, condemns the idea of even celebrating Thanksgiving as reinforcing the values of European settlers who violently appropriated territory. Once a Native American spirit (Tod Thawley) starts committing race based assassinations, Willow and Giles (Anthony Head) take up opposite positions. Willow thinks maybe they should help the spirit while Giles feels its madness to help the spirit murder innocent people. At the time the episode aired, Espenson's own position would hardly have been subtle, but to-day, when people commonly argue for the idea of racially inherited malevolence (now often called "whiteness"), Willow's position is entirely plausible.

I really like how Espenson uses the supporting characters of Spike (James Marsters) and Anya (Emma Caufield) to bring complexity to the argument in ways that are both funny and meaningful. Xander (Nicholas Brendon), who's been infected with syphilis and various other diseases by the ghost, doesn't hesitate to side with Giles and makes a sweeping statement about the irredeemably of "vengence demons", forgetting that the woman tenderly wiping his brow, Anya, is herself a former vengeance demon.

It's been very amusing that the former mass murderer has been accepted into the Scooby Gang but in this moment we're compelled to question our own sympathies. We can apply that to the argument at hand in two ways--either to realise that a person (or a group occupying the conceptual space more suited for an individual person) can be redeemed of even the most horrific of past sins or that its habit for the person/group mind to selectively forgive past transgressions based on the convenience of circumstance. Looking at it either way compels us to probe the validity of either position.

It takes a villain, Spike, to finally clear things up and point out the spirit is trying to kill them so that, whatever the history, now it's a matter of kill or be killed. Spike now takes up an interesting position on the series as a neutered villain who essentially becomes an amoral chorus. It's not unlike the idea behind Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, a story in which ideas normally impermissible in public discourse can be engaged in because the people expressing them are all understood to be villains.

It's episodes like this that make it seem little wonder the modern Left wants to disassociate itself from this former cornerstone of Internet liberal culture.

Fortunately for humanity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available on Amazon Prime.

A Shared Buffyverse

Just three episodes in and already there was a crossover event with Buffy the Vampire Slayer season four and Angel season one. One of the strongest examples of why it's best to watch these shows together.

These episodes both feature the return of Buffy season two villain Spike (James Marsters), though he'd made one, brief appearance in season three. This time he's trying to recover something called the Gem of Amara that makes vampires totally invulnerable--until someone grabs the ring off their finger, which seems to happen pretty easily with the first three vampires to put it on.

The Buffy episode is the stronger of the two here. Written by Jane Espensen, "The Harsh Light of Day" is a more interesting rumination on what makes a good, messy relationship and what makes a bad, comfortable one. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) deals with the heartbreak of finding what she thought was the start of a relationship with Parker (Adam Kaufman) was what he considered a one night stand. Meanwhile, Anya (Emma Caufield) returns, intending to have a one night stand with Xander (Nicholas Brendon) only to find having sex with him isn't the best way to get closure after all. And this episode reintroduces the newly vampified Harmony (Mercedes McNab), whose relationship with Spike, based on his open hatred for her somehow making both of them horny, is at turns funny and sad. It's an interesting example of the storytelling potential in two characters who have no souls. The episode ends with a nice shot of Buffy, Anya, and Harmony sadly strolling around the park.

The Angel episode suffers a bit from the first season designs to make Angel a bit more like a realistic LA crime drama. Angel (David Boreanaz) is busy trying to counsel a young woman in a somewhat cliched abusive relationship when the Gem of Amara problem rolls into the town. The Angel counselor subplot feels more like a hasty thumbnail than anything in itself worth screentime, except for a scene when Spike amusingly mocks the situation when he watches Angel and the young woman in secret. The episode becomes an entertaining enough fight between good and bad.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are available on Amazon Prime.