#btvs-weekly-group-rewatch

[mikimeiko]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Scooby Trio in every episode | Season 2 - Part 2

[coraniaid]

Random things I have learned recently from digging around in the surviving archives of the Usenet Buffy discussion group alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer crrca 1997:

In general the episodes of Season 1 / early Season 2 that are considered bad now (Teachers Pet, The Pack, I Robot You Jane, Some Assembly Required, Reptile Boy) wee also considered to be bad then. And -- surprising nobody -- people liked Prophecy Girl and School Hard and Lie To Me.

Nobody refers to Season 1 Episode 11 as anything other than Invisible Girl. In fact I find myself wondering if it was actually called that somewhere at least semi-official, honestly (they know and use all the other episode names...).

While trying to fit robot!Ted into the lore of the show, a group of people tied him back into the government agents we saw recruit Marcie in Season 1 (obviously the government knows something is happening in Sunnydale and maybe original!Ted was a scientist they sent to investigate...) and more or less invented the idea of the Initiative.

People really did use the term "Slayerettes" to refer to Wllow, Xander and Giles (and eventually Cordelia). As of Ted, nobody seems to have picked up on the alternative "Scooby Gang" yet.

Liking Season 1 Cordelia was not a popular take. By Reptile Boy people were warming up to her but also complaining about how many "Cordelia needs to be rescued" plots there had been lately.

There was a vocal group of people who got quite angry when the show contradicted facts established in the movie (or at least those facts which they had unilaterally decided were part of Whedon's original script). Apparently it is a plot hole that the show implies there could be another Watcher than Giles, or that all the previous and future Slayers weren't literal, physically identical resurrections of Buffy Summers. One user sarcastically suggested that there could be a whole "secret society" of Watchers guiding "Slayers in training". Yeah, right, as if.

Many people were convinced Buffy had become a vampire after watching Prophecy Girl. Despite Whedon insisting she hadn't on the official message board (which is, I fear, no longer readable). Other popular theories included the idea that Hank Summers was secretly a Watcher. (And yes, this annoyed the movie purists.)

As early as the end of Season 1, some people were already asking what would happen when Buffy finished high school and predicting that the show would move away from having vampires as the central villains of the show.

People hated Kendra's accent, but in general they liked her character and were pleased she wasn't perfunctorily killed off, and hoped to see more of her later ( :( ). One user very confidently explained that Kendra's accent proved she was "from Africa" because "I have a friend from Guyana who sounds just like her". (Some things about the Buffy fandom have not changed very much in thirty years...)

[lesbvffy]

BTVS: faith, hope & trick (3.03)

[sideartblog999]

Another screenshot redraw from Faith, Hope and Trick this time starring the titular Faith.

[btvsfemslashenjoyer]

Thoughts on Rewatching S3E06, “Band Candy” (1/3): You want to slay stuff and I’m not allowed to do anything about it

Ok I like Band Candy; I don’t think it’s one of my favourite episodes but it does a bunch of fun stuff. I’m going to do a post of miscellaneous thoughts and reactions, and a post about our four (four!) villains in this episode, but first I want to talk about Joyce and Giles.

Obviously getting to see their sexy younger versions is very fun. I think for the timeline to add up we have to assume this is pre-actual-dark-magic, like “Ripper” started out as an aspirational teenage act that only later becomes real, (or: maybe Ethan’s candy just makes people revert to whatever age they felt most ‘chaotic’ at?). Young Joyce being a bit like Buffy is nice (especially the parallels between her and Giles here and Buffy and Faith in “Bad Girls”). The handcuffs might just be from the police officer but after watching season 6 I think we can also surmise that kinkiness is hereditary.

But I actually want to talk about the versions of Joyce and Giles that we see before and after the Band Candy’s effects - and who, I think we have to assume, are broadly representative of how they’re operating, and how they relate to Buffy and to each other, for most of the rest of the season.

There’s this exchange right after confronting Buffy together where the two of them sit down on a couch, and Joyce says oh I just want to protect her but it’s so hard, and Giles nods along sympathetically and says yeah, as though they’re on the same side here. It’s very “here’s Buffy’s mom and dad” coded.

And yet. A moment’s thought makes this exchange distinctly weird. One way to put it is that they both have good cause to give the other a hard time here.

Like, Joyce should give Giles a hard time because he’s not actually on her side, trying to protect Buffy. He’s the thing she needs protecting from! I mean, obviously he does care about her and want her to be safe, but it’s secondary: he wants to keep her as safe as possible while also shoving her directly into the path of every monster that comes through. The single line “I blame you” ended up being about the sum total of Joyce’s anger at the guy who, more than anyone else, is responsible for putting Buffy into the firing line of everything that endangers her.

Yet at the same time, Giles might reasonably point out that Joyce is going about “protecting” Buffy in a completely wrong-headed (though understandable) way. She doesn’t want her driving - and when explaining why she brings up the summer in LA. She doesn’t want her going to the Bronze without them knowing where she is - and again, when arguing about why, she brings up the summer in LA. It seems clear that the lesson she’s internalised is that Buffy did something irresponsible because she had too much freedom, so to protect her Joyce needs to limit and monitor and restrict her more. Limited modes of transportation, more oversight, etc. “I want you here.”

Which is just obviously not actually what’s going on: Buffy ran away to LA because of being under unbearable pressure, not because she’s a flighty fun-loving kid who can’t “be trusted”. More rules and restrictions will do the opposite of help. And Giles, to his credit, seems like the only member of the cast who really gets this - unlike both Joyce and her friends, he never gives her a hard time about running away, he seems to recognise the extent to which she is burdened and obligated out of all proportion to her peers, he even devises clever schemes to get her to open up about what happened with Angel.

So the fact that they’re here slumping down together is a bit odd. I think probably the best reading is that they’re both, on some level, aware that they don’t really have a good handle on things, that their way of relating to Buffy isn’t really what it should be, and moreover that they’re not really on the same side. But they don’t have a better option, and they’re don’t want to be pushing all alone. So they overlook their differences and humour each other’s unworkable approaches for the sake of having someone they can think of as an ally.

(And also, maybe, because they’re horny for each other, and/or lonely - Joyce next season says she hasn’t made many friends, Giles is probably not over Jenny yet…)

Ok but I want to say a bit more about Joyce, because Giles here is not that different from how he’s been for two prior seasons, and the conflict between his role as Watcher and his feelings towards Buffy is pretty clear and straightforward (and will come to a head in six episodes’ time). But this is a new stage in Joyce’s reckoning with all of this.

As I noted above, I think Joyce seems to have taken somewhat the wrong lesson from the summer. And I think we get more insight from something she says while Band Candy’d:

“Screw you! I want candy! You want to slay stuff and I’m not allowed to do anything about it. Well, this is what I wanna do, so get off my back!”

This is pretty funny, but it also expresses the same misreading of Buffy’s situation that I’ve been suggesting: that the basic problem is Buffy acting on her desires, being too free, doing what she wants.

(Of course the Band Candy has altered her, but mostly to remove inhibitions: I think the rest of the time she still feels this way, but doesn’t say it.)

This amounts to saying that Joyce has only partially shifted from her viewpoint last year. Back then she thought that Buffy was involved in some unknown sort of persistent misbehaviour, for unknown reasons, which kept interfering with her schooling and getting her in trouble, and which Joyce was trying her best to get Buffy to quit, but which she kept choosing not to quit for reasons that might turn out to be sympathetic (because she’s not a bad kid) but are still ultimately bad reasons.

Now Joyce has found out what sort of trouble it is: fighting monsters. And she’s accepted that this is a fact of life that she can’t change: she’s no longer trying to Buffy her to quit, she’s determined to be supportive and “cool about it”. But she still sees it as fundamentally something coming from Buffy rather than something imposed onto her. It’s like a sort of eccentric extra-curricular activity that Buffy insists on choosing despite its dangers.

(And just to link this to some of what I’ve been saying about Xander, Willow, et al., I think on some level they also see slaying this way, as something fun and exciting and sexy. They do in fact keep choosing it despite its dangers, and there’s definitely something admirable in that but it does contribute to the disconnect between them and Buffy that we see in episodes like “Dead Man’s Party” and “Faith, Hope, and Trick”.)

(I don’t know how far the queer metaphor can really be pushed but I think this does map pretty well onto a certain sort of still-latently-homophobic parent: they’ve accepted that their kid being queer isn’t a tragedy or a sin or a terrible sick perversion they need to fight to save them from. But on some level they still feel like: why did my kid have to be like this, why did they have to pick the life that’s //bad and scary// complicated and dangerous?)

I mean, Joyce doesn’t seem like someone who’s internalised that if Buffy had listened to her and done what she wanted in their fight in Becoming, then Joyce and everyone else in town (and maybe the world) would be dead. I suspect she might intellectually accept that sort of claim - that Buffy going off to do her Slayer-activities is necessary to save lives, including Joyce’s life and those of her friends - but she might not even do that. She might nod and sort of humour it while thinking it must be exaggerated somehow.

More broadly: she doesn’t really seem to accept that Buffy handles higher-stakes responsibilities than she does, is under greater pressure than she is, has more serious things to worry about than she does. That Buffy could make a reasonable case for being the more adult one of them, in some respects.

Which, you know, isn’t completely unreasonable - it’s a lot to take in, and it’s sort of just the fantasy premise of the show that this is true. It’s reasonable to default to thinking that a teenager is probably being immature and exaggerating the significance of their struggles and is liable to mess things up if given free rein. It’s just that in the actual events of the show, that’s not the case. The reason Buffy is sneaking around and hiding it is because she’s tending to an otherwise helpless person’s psychological and physical wounds. As soon as she registers that something has gone wrong in the town, she immediately takes responsibility for identifying and fixing the problem.

Anyway, this is all to say: I like Joyce and I think she’s expressing a flawed outlook here in a very relatable and compelling way. Specifically, she’s unwilling to give up on the basic framework she’s got entrenched in, unwilling to fully adjust to how weird and bizarre Slayerhood makes things between her and Buffy. Because if she did, she’d have to accept that she 1) can’t really protect Buffy from violence or death, 2) can’t really keep herself safe either because these damn vampires are everywhere.

But the result is that the burdens of Slayerhood are still, as often as not, something that Joyce holds against Buffy rather than something she helps her manage. Which means that if last year Buffy had the ambient feeling that she was always always disappointing someone and had no way to satisfy the people in her life no matter how hard she tried, she might still be feeling that this year. Not great.

A final observation: to a certain extent Joyce has to be this way for the show’s premise. The mundane world has to be uncomprehending and obstructive so that we can televise the struggle of both living in it and defending it. Joyce is, after all, one of the few remaining characters who hasn’t gotten enmeshed in the supernatural one way or another. And so you might read this as simply an artefact of the show’s genre set-up, with little symbolic resonance in and of itself.

(After all, if Buffy’s monsters are symbols of everyday teenage problems, then Joyce not taking them as seriously as Buffy does is, like, out-of-universe-appropriate: it’s a mistake if taken literally, but it’s an appropriate attitude to the things they symbolise.)

But you could also read it as symbolic in itself, if we think of Buffy’s monster problems not just as symbolising “teenage problems” like SATS and homecoming dances, but as symbolising real life-crippling problems that sometimes befall teenagers, like drug overdoses or sexual violence or poverty or domestic abuse. Because teenagers do sometimes find themselves dealing with those things in contexts where the adults around them turn a blind eye and powerful institutions mostly function to protect themselves and nobody will cut you a break even on things that really are matters of life and death. And sometimes that’s because adults who could help are too attached to their mental models of the world to see how dangerous reality can be, and end up perceiving the teenagers (or others) who do respond to those problems as being themselves the problem, as histrionic or trouble-makers or just as naive kids who need to grow up and reconcile themselves to how the world works.

To be clear, I don’t think “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is primarily written with that dynamic in mind. It’s much more conscious of conjoining supernatural horror with relatively minor problems (like SATs and Homecoming dances), and when it tries to tackle things like domestic violence it often trips over its own feet (as in “Beauty and the Beasts”). I’m just saying that this other sort of symbolic resonance is available, and can add to the texture of it.

[red-umbrella-811]

Iconic aspect of Drusilla I didn't notice until this rewatch: she seems to have two distinct white flowy gowns, one for daywear, which is the one we're used to,

and a totally separate one that's a nightgown

and I just think it’s neat that she has day pjs and night pjs

[btvs-weekly-group-rewatch]

Season 3 Rewatch Schedule (Part 1)

The weekly group rewatch will resume at the end of May.

Starting on Tuesday May 26, we’ll be watching the first ten episodes of the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As before, we’ll be watching one episode each week, at the exact same pace that the show originally aired back in 1998. Whenever a week passed with no Buffy episode twenty-eight years ago, we'll take a break as well.

The planned schedule for these first ten episodes is:

May 26: Anne [originally aired September 29 1998]

June 2: Dead Man's Party [originally aired October 6 1998]

June 9: Faith, Hope & Trick [originally aired October 13 1998]

June 16: Beauty & The Beasts [originally aired October 20 1998]

June 23: [break // no new episode this week]

June 30: Homecoming [originally aired November 3 1998]

July 7: Band Candy [originally aired November 10 1998]

July 14: Revelations [originally aired November 17 1998]

July 21: Lovers Walk [originally aired November 24 1998]

July 28: [break // no new episode this week]

August 4: The Wish [originally aired December 8 1998]

August 11: Amends [originally aired December 15 1998]

You are very welcome to join in with the Season 3 rewatch, whether or not you were following along with the rewatch before now. There is no obligation to rewatch or to comment on every episode (or to go back and watch earlier episodes from previous seasons), but this is a rewatch and not something I'd recommend for first-time viewers of the show. There will be spoilers and there will not be explicit spoiler warnings.

A few more details below the cut.

As of now there are no plans to watch the episodes live as a group (but if you want to organize something like that yourself you're free to do so). Instead, you should think of the official “airing” of the episode (Tuesday at 8pm ET (UTC -5)) as the deadline we all agree to wait for until we start talking about the next episode. Once an episode “airs”, everybody is free to share their thoughts about it (and, remember, these thoughts can include spoilers for upcoming episodes). In practice, most people seem to wait a day or two before posting but you can post sooner (or wait longer) than that if you want to.

Remember as ever to tag your posts as #btvs-weekly-group-rewatch so that other people can find them. Please don’t post about an episode in the group rewatch tag until after that episode has aired. If that isn’t clear, or if you have any further questions about how this works, check here or send me an ask.

If, for any reason, the schedule at the top of this post ever changes then I will make a new post to announce this change (and also edit this post).

[badwolfwho1]

Revelations is such a banger. Foundational episode for Faith I gotta say. Faith, Hope and Trick was a great introduction yeah, but for my money this is perhaps the definitive early Faith episode. This is the blueprint for her going forwards, it feels like the entire latter half of s3 plotline of joining up with the Mayor starts here in miniature.

I'm pretty sure Gwendolyn Post is my favourite one episode character and I don't think it's particularly close. I mean I guess partly who else really fits into one episode character who I'm particularly fond of category? Billy Ford is good but he doesn't live rent free in my brain the way Post does. Moloch and April all do to a greater extent than Billy but I can't lie at least half of that is down to my fondness for the inexplicably good robot episodes (ironically Ted is probably objectively better than those two and yet) but still they pale compared to Post.

Gwendolyn Post, she has a lasting impact. Not textually. I think at most she's alluded to once when Wesley shows up as a this guy was actually sent by the council unlike Post. But she's Faith's first evil mentor figure, the Mayor will later take up this baton. She, if not being the one to drive that big wedge in between Faith and Buffy that we'll linger on in the final moments of the episode, is certainly the one to press into with all her might and widen it. Similarly even after her betrayal and tossing Faith aside we see how Faith has still internalised Post's opinion of her with her "Yeah, it's real Spartan." comment she uses to deflect the first of Buffy's overtures to patching things up between them. It's great stuff. Honestly really sad we don't get to see Faith again until they patch things back up in Amends, I'd love to see them on the outs with each other, brief bad breakup style before they get back together for Christmas.

And yet her whole deal is sorta under baked post reveal. She's exiled from the Watcher's Council two years ago. Despite this she knows about Faith by name, that there's two Slayers and that Faith needs a new Watcher. She has all this info and then gives up her head start on finding the artefact she's after that is so poorly hidden that Giles with his meagre library and Angel just inherently knows where its at. At the first chance she gets she drops her ruse and starts handing out concussions at the drop at the hat. All for a glove that gives her a fist fulla loightning that she'll die within maybe a minute of putting on.

It's almost comical how much potential she throws away. But regardless I love her. We were robbed of several episodes of this dynamic. Whether that's have her finish the same way in Revelations and have her show up earlier (I'd probably nominate replacing Beauty and the Beasts with one where she could show up), have her realise wait having a Slayer who'll do whatever I say no questions asked might be better in the long run than a lightning glove and she lasts until Wesley shows up who perhaps did get the memo, manages to get her sent off to Watcher jail and removing Faith's beloved Watcher who doesn't even really care about her but feeds her enough scraps of this is what's best for you that that doesn't matter feeds into her whole turning to the Mayor's side decision.

Some quick not talking about Post I guess. Willow/Xander is still not good but credit where is due it does at least sort of justify itself in being Bangel in miniature with the whole secret relationship know they shouldn't but still can't resist (though with Willow/Xander the reasons they can't resist are ... kinda unclear?). The Angel intervention scene is so much better than the Dead Man's Party everyone gang up on Buffy scene. Everyone has a pretty valid point of view that's not particularly expressed in the best way, it's a fun snarl between them.

I think it's fun that the Glove of Myhnegon is told to us that it can never be removed once put on in the scene with Angel and Buffy a couple who despite their best efforts appear to be locked together forever.

Lagos is kinda nothing, right? Just some guy with an axe. Our first Fork Vampire in a while and he's not even a vampire. For shame. I guess maybe the randoms in Homecoming could be classed as Fork Vampires.

Live notes below.

"But I am going out with somebody. Tonight as a matter of fact," Iconic. Faith's reaction to "Really we're just good friends," is also incredibly strong. The level of disappointment on her face.

Oh wow Giles actually in his role as Faith's Watcher here.

Gwendolyn Post, my beloved.

I love Buffy's bomb hat.

Giles getting buried by Post is a fun dynamic.

Does Angel own a shirt right now?

As always doing a great job of you shouldn't be together guys.

I say that but Bangel are doing a better job controlling themselves than Xander and Willow are.

Oh he does own a shirt.

Giles delegating to Xander is why he needs oversight.

Faith demonstrating her greatest combat ability of taking hits.

Bold move for Xander to try to solo Angel. But he is meant to be weak right no so maybe he could handle it.

Never mind they're not doing a better job than Willow and Xander

If not for Angel that could be Faith making out with Buffy I'm sure.

I am fond of the Glove of Mhnegon. I do find it hard to believe that Angel just happened to know where it was/could figure it out.

"He was way more interested in killing her friends," I dunno if that's true Cordy, he killed Willow's fish and Jenny Calendar. And some random students. Her friends were pretty safe.

"I didn't know why he came back," And you never will

The Angel Intervention is way better than the Dead Man's Party one

I love how easy it is for Post to get Faith on side. She's so susceptible to an evil parental figure to slot into her life.

The double tap on Giles, incredible.

Ah ze Axe

The Baseball Bat (???) with a hook strapped to it is such a choice.

Angel knows how to destroy the glove as well? How?

Nothing but respect for Faith's Watcher. Shovel to Angel's head, he gets up, she takes it completely in stride and just snaps it over her knee for a stake.

"She's blinded by love," Laser targeted by Post here. Doesn't need to know who Angel is, just needs to say exactly what she needs to say to get Faith mad at Buffy.

Of course they went through that window

Post is on a rampage. Three knockout blows on three main cast who does it better?

I'm counting that as a kill for Buffy. Like what was she expecting? Even if she didn't explode she'd have bled out right?

Good booking for Buffy/Faith 1, no decisive winner builds heat for the climactic showdown.

So like Buffy is skipping school to go see Faith right?

"Yeah, it's real Spartan," Yeah! Incorporate that scrap from that evil authority figure into your world view, Faith. This is a foundational episode for her problems!

The last second "Buffy", the eager turn around from Buffy, she so wants things to be okay between them, the "Nothing," Faith can't be open emotionally enough to work through it, Buffy's face falling as she turns. Love it!

Banger episode. 5/5 for Five by Five.

Oh huh I left the DVD on after this and I did not know the menu music ends on an evil Muahahaha before that's incredible.

Gonna be honest I do not particularly have something that I'd have Amy doing in this episode if she was in it. Tragic I know. She does not know that Angel is back I guess.