30 Days of Buffy: Day 30

Day 30: What You Think Made Buffy So Great

The best thing about Buffy, the thing that kept me coming back week after week and has me continuing to watch the show, is the characters.  There are so many wonderful, three-dimensional characters.  All of them are people, with hopes and dreams and strengths and flaws.  They make good decisions and bad decisions. And have to deal with the consequences.

The characters on Buffy are people I would like to hang out with.  And I think that interesting characters are the key to any successful show.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 29

Day 29: Episode You Hate That Everyone Else Loves

This is especially tough.  There aren't that many episodes that I hate.  I guess I'm a bit of a Buffy apologist.  There are episodes that aren't as good.  But I tend to be in agreement with the critics about those.  So I went and found a site that gave each episode a grade, and grabbed one that had received an 'A' that I felt was undeserved.

And that episode is Revelations.

It's not that this is a bad episode.  But it's not one of my favorites.  Faith and Xander are a bit too willing to kill Angel.  This feels out of character for Faith, at least to me.  Xander catching Buffy and Angel making out is a bit too convenient.

I don't know.  I guess I'd consider this an average Buffy episode (and even bad Buffy episodes are pretty good).  I'd probably give it a B- instead of an A.  So there you go.

I'm such a bad hater.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 28

Day 28: Character You Love To Hate

I adore Angelus.  He is so much cooler than Angel.  His complete lack on conscious.  His twisted obsession with Buffy.  His leather pants.  We'll just ignore that thing he calls an Irish accent.

Angelus is a great villain.  As a character, he's far more interesting than Angel.  That Angel could revert back to his soulless self at any point adds to the intrigue.  Really, he's just a wonderful character.  I love pretty much any episode he's in

30 Days of Buffy: Day 27

Day 27: Cutest Moment

The first episode of the second season opens with Willow and Xander walking through the cemetery, eating ice cream and playing "guess the movie".  Xander eventually dabs Willow's nose with ice cream and feeds her a line from Witness.  She guesses correctly of course and gives him the most adorable look as she informs him that her nose his cold.  He goes to lick it off, she dodges and giggles and they lean in for a kiss.

It gets ruined by the appearance of a vampire and Buffy.  But up until then, it's completely adorable.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 26

Day 26: Favorite Scooby Moment

This one's tough because there are so many good ones.  The Scoobies hanging out are, like, half the show.  I think my favorite might be when they're all hanging out watching the musical soap opera because they don't have enough money to go to the Bronze.  It's so sweet and one of the few times they aren't worried about saving the world from evil

30 Days of Buffy: Day 25

Day 25: Favorite Buffyverse Saying

I can't pick one. Instead, I shall list a whole bunch of my favorite quotes.

Giles: God, every day here is the same 

Buffy: Bright, sunny, beautiful. However can we escape this torment? 

~Teacher's Pet

Buffy: If the apocalypse comes, beep me.
~Never Kill a Boy on the First Date

Willow: I mean, why else would she be acting like such a b-i-t-c-h?
Giles: Willow, I think we're all a little too old to be spelling things out.
Xander: A bitca?
~When She Was Bad

Spike: I was actually at Woodstock. That was a weird gig. I fed off a flower person, and then I spent the next six hours watching my hand move
~School Hard

Buffy: Does it ever get easy?
Giles: You mean life?
Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?
Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy:Lie to me.
Giles: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar
~Lie To Me

Whistler: Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that count. That's when you find out who you are.
~Becoming

Buffy: I hate you
Spike: And I'm all you've got
~Becoming

Angelus: No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away, and what's left?
Buffy: Me
~Becoming

Spike: You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood -- blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.
~Lover's Walk

Willow: Bored now
~The Wish, Doppelgangland, Villain

Willow: ...And I think I'm kinda gay
~Dopplelgangland, Tabula Rasa

Buffy: You had sex with Giles? You had sex with Giles?! On the hood of a police car? Twice?
~Earshot

Willow: What are you doing?
Oz: Panicking.
~Graduation Day

Xander: Who's a little fear demon? Come on! Who's a little fear demon?
Giles: Don't taunt the fear demon
Xander: Why? Can he hurt me?
Giles: No, it's just tacky
~Fear, Itself

Anya: To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It's a ritual sacrifice... with pie.
 ~Pangs

Spike: I just can't take all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians.
Willow: Uh, the preferred term is-
Spike: You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That's what conquering nations do. That's what Caesar did, and he's not going around saying, "I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it." The history of the world is not people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story.
~Pangs

Giles: It's the end of the world.
Buffy, Willow, Xander: Again?
~Doomed

Faith as Buffy: You can't do that. It's wrong.
~Who Are You?

Spike: My heart expands. Tis grown a bulge in it. Inspired by your beauty effulgent
~Fool For Love

Anya: But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I knew her, and then she's— there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead... anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And... and Xander's crying and not talking, and... and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn, or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why!
~The Body

Buffy: The hardest thing in this world is to live in it
~The Gift

Spike: Every night I save you
~After Life

Andrew: Timothy Dalton should win an Oscar and beat Sean Connery over the head with it!
~Life Serial

There are probably some I missed, but that's ok.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 24

Day 24: Favorite Example of 90s Special Effects

There were so many snake monsters over the course of Buffy.  And all of them managed to be more funny than scary.  Mostly due to CGI that didn't age particularly well.  Oh the early days of CGI.

First there was Machida in Reptile Boy.  Machida was actually a dude in makeup, not a CGI monster.  He was still a failure of a snake.  He was supposed to come out of the pit and eat the girls chained up in the basement/dungeon.  But it didn't look like he could even open his mouth wide enough to gnaw on someone's arm.  He probably would have been scarier if he'd remained off screen.

Machida is followed by Lurconis in Band Candy.  They add terror to this demon by making him a baby eater.  But he's basically some bad CGI trapped in a sewer.  And handily dispatched with fire.

Post-ascension Mayor was kind of awesome.  One of the better uses of CGI on the show.

But then they completely failed with the snake-demon Glory raises to track the key.  Honestly, it's the most fake-looking monster that ever appeared on the screen.

Any Buffy episode with a snake is guaranteed laughs.  CGI just dates the show so much.


Note:  Work just got really busy.  I may have to pause this meme briefly.  It will pick back up again.  As soon as things calm down

30 Days of Buffy: Day 23

Day 23: Two Characters You Wanted To Get Together That Never Did

I always secretly hoped that Joyce and Giles would figure out a way to make it work.  They seemed like a good match, and Giles was basically Buffy's father already.  So it made perfect sense.  We'll just ignore the fact that technically, they did get together.

On the hood of a police car.

Twice.

Okay, I picked them just so I could make that joke.  And it was kind of lame.  Honestly, I'm pretty happy to let the creators of the show do what they want with their characters.  Almost all of my shipping tends to be canon.  So at the time, I may have hoped that two characters would get together.  But in retrospect, everything basically made sense.  Even Xander and Willow got together for a few episodes.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 22

Day 22: Best Xander-centric Episode

The Zeppo is an amazing episode.  The way it's framed is so unique.  We get a day in the life of Xander, who is trying so hard to be cool it hurts.  He borrows his uncle's car, picks up a girl and ends up on a bad date, falls in with a group of bad boys who turn out to be zombies, loses his virginity, realizes that the zombies are planning to blow up the school, and saves the day.  Over the course of this, he discovers that cool is more a state of mind, an ability to be comfortable in your own skin.  If you're confident, other people will pick up on that.

The best part is that in the background of Xander's wacky adventure, the world is coming to an end.  The rest of the Scoobies are actively fighting the apocalypse (and trying to keep Xander at minimum safe distance).  Honestly, I didn't even pick up on this until the third or fourth time I saw this episode.  I can be fairly thick sometimes.

I really like Xander's growth in this episode.  I like the humor that's born out of him constantly interrupting the important work of the others.  And I like that he never tells anyone about that time he saved them all.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 21

Day 21: Best Willow-centric Episode

Boyfriend and I spent all day touring vineyards and drinking wine.  The answer is Dopplegangland

30 Days of Buffy: Day 20

Day 20: Best Spike-centric Episode

Oh Spike.  My love for Spike knows almost no bounds (except for that one episode in season 6).  But which episode best showcases him?  Is it School Hard, when he is first introduced and throws out the old traditions in favor of a more modern style?  Is it What's My Line? when he calls in the Order of Taraka to distract Buffy so he can heal Drusilla?  What about Lover's Walk when, freshly dumped, he screams into town and manages to destroy everyone else's relationships in the process of fixing his own?  Perhaps The Harsh Light of Day, when he briefly becomes invincible and torments Buffy?  Or Pangs, which isn't really about Spike at all, but sees him tied to a chair getting shot with arrows for a large portion.

So many episodes to choose from, but really, it always has been and always will be Fool For Love.  In Fool For Love we finally get Spike's back story.  How could I not pick the episode where I find out more about Spike's past and what makes him who he is?

The episode being with Buffy getting staked by a vampire.  Worried that she's losing her slayer abilities, she seeks Spike out to find out how he killed two slayers.  And so we get to meet William the Bloody.  The reveal that William was actually a dorky poet who didn't fit in with society is fantastic.  This character is so very far from the Spike that was introduced in School Hard. (Holy crap, I just realized that's a riff on Die Hard.  How did I not notice that before?) Cecily's rejection of him (you're beneath me) is heartbreaking.

The scene where William is turned into a vampire is hilarious.  His "ow"s simply become more insistent until they finally turn into a scream.  Then he begins picking up all the little traits that make him Spike.

First the name and the accent, then the obsession with slayers.  The first slayer gives him his sexy eyebrow scar.  He acquires his signature trench coat from the second slayer.  Watching his transformation is wonderful.  Each scene shows him a little bit less like William the Bloody, a little bit more like Spike.

The cross cutting of his fights with Nikki and Buffy is a work of art.  Buffy's rejection at the end of it (you're beneath me) hits so hard.  She throws the money at him and walks away while he just weeps in the alley.  It's perfect and heartbreaking.

Everything about this episode is just so good.  It's really one of my top-ten episodes of the series.  There is so much back story that gets filled in.  So much gets revealed and advanced in the Spike/Buffy relationship.  Spike neatly foreshadows the finale when he tells Buffy that "Every Slayer has a death wish".  Joyce heads back to the hospital.  Riley's recklessness increases.

If you watch it paired with the Angel episode Darla, it only gets better.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 19

Day 19: Character You Like That Everyone Else Hates

Dawn seems to be hated more than any other character in the Buffy-verse (with the possibly exception of Riley).  But I really liked her, and thought she was a good addition to the show.  She wasn't perfect, but I do think the good outweighs the bad.  I definitely don't think she deserved all the hate she got.

Part of this might be my intense love of Michelle Trachtenberg.  I was a devout fan of Pete and Pete and spent hours watching and re-watching Harriet the Spy.  I even watched the short-lived NBC drama Mercy because Ms. Trachtenberg was on it.  But I digress.

I liked Dawn.  Yes, she was a whiny teenager, but I don't really blame her for that.  She's been living in the shadow of her sister the slayer for her entire life, which she just found out is almost six months.  And she's not quite human.  And a god wants to kill her.  And her mom died.  I'd whine, too.

But Dawn has some good qualities, too.  She really does want to help Buffy.  As soon as she's allowed, she's hanging out doing research.  And she's good with the languages.  She may not be all that interested in school, but she does want to learn.

Dawn is also proactive, which is probably a Summers trait.  When everyone finds out that Dawn is the key and starts acting weird, she sneaks out and learns that she's the key.  She may not always make the best decisions, but that's part of being in high school.  Buffy made some pretty stupid decisions when she was Dawn's age, too.

In the seventh season, she finally matures and really comes into her own.  I love her arc in Potential.  And I like that, despite not having any superpowers, she steps up and joins the fight.  When Xander kidnaps her to get her away from it, she heads straight back to Sunnydale.

So yes, she could be annoying at times.  But I think that she was an interesting character who added a lot to the show.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 18

Day 18: Character Who Didn’t Get Enough Screen Time

So I'm going to delve into Angel a bit for this post.  Because the character I want to talk about appeared on both Buffy and Angel and I still wish I had seen more of her.

She first shows up in the season 2 episode Lie to Me, going by the name Chanterelle. Chanterelle is lonely and desperate for acceptance. She has joined up with a cult of vampire worshipers, convinced that becoming a vampire is the key to fixing her unhappiness. Little does she know that Spike and his gang have no intention of turning her (or the other cult members). They just want an easy meal. Fortunately Buffy saves her.

When next we meet Chanterelle, she has changed her name to Lily. Lily is broke, homeless, hungry. She's completely dependent on her boyfriend, Ricky. Ricky even went so far as picking her new name for her.  She runs into Buffy in a diner in LA, when Buffy is living and working there under the guise of Anne.  The two of them help each other reclaim control over their lives.

Buffy is too late to save Ricky, so Lily must face the prospect of life on her own. Buffy helps her see that she is worthwhile, and that she can take care of herself. Lily asks if she can have the name Anne. For her, it symbolizes self-reliance, courage, and strength, which are qualities Lily has come to value and wants to find in herself.

The next time we run into Anne is in the second season episode of Angel, Blood Money. She has faced the demons and decided that there are scarier things. Upon discovering that she could take care of herself, Anne turned around and started giving back. On Angel, Anne has opened a homeless shelter. It's a wonderful success. Anne and her shelter appear on Angel a few more times, including the season finale. And she shows that she does possess the strength and self-reliance she wanted so badly in the third season of Buffy.

I wish we had seen more of her journey. I would have liked to witness Lily's transformation into Anne. I like to think that she stayed in touch with Buffy, at least for a few months. I really wish there had been an episode, or even a series of flashbacks, to show how she found her strength and why she decided to open a shelter.  It is undoubtedly an interesting story, and one I wish more time had been devoted to.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 17

Day 17: Character You Relate To The Most

It's the computer age, nerds are in.  They're still in, right?

I definitely relate to Willow more than any other character.  In high school I practically was (2nd season) Willow.  I shared the shyness, the quirkiness, the nerdiness.  I even kind of looked like her.  (I also got compared to Alyson Hannigan's character from American Pie.  The horny band geek.  Clearly she will have to play me if they ever make a movie about my life.)  I have a similar love of knowledge.  I'm also fairly skilled with computers.  I can at least usually figure out what I want to do.

Like Willow, I was always a big fan of school.  I didn't like chemistry as much as her, opting for the physics route.  Maybe if I could have made some magic potions, I would have changed my mind about that.  But it is what it is.  I also loved history, and spent some time in high school tutoring my fellow classmates.  I was asked to teach our physics class when the teacher was put on probation.  That wasn't exactly successful, though.

I even find myself occasionally comparing my boyfriend to Oz.  In the "I, too, know the love of a taciturn man, and you have to look at their actions" sense.  Because Boyfriend's actions certainly speak louder than his words.  In a good way.

I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone who knows me.  I always identify more with the geekier girls in Whedon's shows (Fred and Kaylee).  And BtVS is no exception; I am definitely Willow.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 16

Day 16: Episode You Like That Everyone Else Hates

There was a whole lot of backlash against the season 6 episode Normal Again.  In this episode, Buffy is stung by demon and the venom causes her to hallucinate.  In her hallucinations, Buffy is a patient in a mental institution.  Her parents are alive and together.  Dawn was never born.  Nothing that happened in Sunnydale is real.

Back in Sunnydale, Buffy's friends are trying to find the antidote for the poison.  But Buffy herself isn't sure what's real.  I mean, a girl in a mental hospital does make a lot more sense than a girl with superpowers battling demons.  So, with the help of her doctor, Buffy starts taking steps to break ties with the Sunnydale world by rounding up her friends and locking them in the basement with a demon.

Of course, Buffy ultimately chooses Sunnydale, drinks the antidote, and is cured.  But the last shot of the episode is Buffy in the hospital, catatonic in the corner.  The doctor is shining a light in her eye, saying "we lost her" and Joyce and Hank are holding each other, grieving.

The choice to make this the final shot, along with the hint that when Buffy died she actually awoke and lived in this "normal" world, angered a whole lot of fans.  They claimed that it destroyed the past six seasons by implying that everything happened in Buffy's head.  A lot of people simply choose to ignore that this episode even happened.  Which is a shame, because it really is a great episode.

This is the episode where Buffy stops complaining about how life was so much better when she was dead and decides to get back to the business of living.  In the midst of the incredibly depressing sixth season, things finally start to look up.

I had a slightly different reading of the ending of this episode than most of the fans.  Why can't both worlds be real?  BtVS has played with the idea of alternate dimensions before, in both The Wish and Superstar.  So there's no need for one reality to be true and the other to be nothing more than a hallucination.  I like to think that when Buffy finally does die once and for all (third time's the charm), she'll wake up back in the mental hospital, magically cured of everything.  She'll get the one thing she's always wanted more than anything: a normal life.  She'll get to hang out with her family and shop and date.  She'll be warm and loved.  And she'll be done trying to save the world.

And I think that's why I love this episode so much.  It lets me give Buffy the happy ending she'll never really get as the slayer.  Because as long as she's the slayer, she has to fight and lead and inspire and save the world.  But after she dies, she gets a happy, normal life.  We'll just skip over the whole part where she'll have spent her late teens and twenties in a mental institution.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 15

Day 15: Favorite Male Villain

The Mayor may actually be my favorite of all the villains Buffy encounters over seven years. He's proper and kind (except for that whole evil thing) and a total smooth talked.  He truly believes that the children are the future, he just has a slightly different concept of the future.  His relationship with Faith is a thing of beauty.

Honestly, the mayor his just a lot of fun.  His glee is contagious.  And I love the truth he drops on Angel and Buffy in Choices: that his immortality will make their relationship problematic at best.

Also, he eats the principal.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 14

Day 14: Favorite Female Villain

Glory is fabulous.  She's honestly one of the best things about the fifth season, which is an incredible season.  She kicks ass and doesn't bother to take names because she really doesn't give a fuck.  Honestly, I adore her attitude so much.  All she wants to go is get home, and look fabulous in the meantime.

When Glory finds out who Buffy is, her attitude is unique from any other villains we've encountered.  She's disgusted: "I fought a slayer? How unbelievably common!"  This attitude along with her entrance, which involves breaking down most of a wall, makes her far scarier than any villain Buffy's faced yet.

She's motivated by a pretty basic desire.  Like Dorothy, all Glory wants to do is go home.  The problem, of course, is that this would end the world.  But Glory doesn't care.  And she sees Buffy as little more than an annoyance, something to be swatted when it gets in the way.

Both her wardrobe and her minions are pretty fabulous, too.  The leper hobbits are constantly coming up with new and inventive ways to revere the former god and provide constant comic relief.

Glory's end, which reveals Giles' darker side, is pretty fantastic, too.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 13

Day 13: Favorite Potential Slayer

This is tough.  They are a ton of potential slayers, but they really only show up in the second half of the last season.  We don't get a whole lot of time with any of them.  Amanda and Kennedy got decent story lines.  Annabelle, Molly, Rhona, Vi, and Chao-Ann at least had names and personalities; though Annabelle gets herself killed awfully quickly.  There are a few more girls with names (Chloe, Eve, etc).  And the rest are just filler, adding to the body count.

Based on what little information we get about these girls, I have to say that Molly stands out as my favorite.  And not just because she shares a name with my first and favorite doll.  She has a quirky sense of style and humor that I'm attracted to.  And she manages to be upbeat in the face of a whole lot of scary things.  Not to mention her accent, which is a completely shallow reason to like a character but totally works on me anyway.  I mostly chose her because she's the most memorable of the potentials (the only one besides Kennedy whose name I didn't have to look up).  So maybe she is my favorite simply because I used to have a doll with the same name.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 12

Day 12: Least Favorite Episode

I don't know what it is about Bad Eggs, but I almost never actually want to rewatch this episode.

It's a bit dull. There are two main story lines - the Gorch Brothers and the Bezoar - that don't really get tied together in the best way.  Having to carry eggs around and pretend they're babies is kind of idiotic, especially when you have a partner.  Buffy complains about being a "single mom", but Xander, Willow, and Cordelia all seem to have full responsibility of their eggs, too.

I guess the whole Bezoar plot never made that much sense to me.  And the Gorch Brothers fail to seem like an actual threat.  They're idiots who only get the upper hand on Buffy because she's too busy making out with Angel to even notice them.  Neither of these villains is strong enough to carry an entire episode, which is probably why they share one.  Like I said, the two story lines don't seem to work together, or get tied up particularly satisfactorily.  That may just be me.

And take this with a grain of salt, because whenever I do sit down and watch this episode, I enjoy it.  There are plenty of little scenes that make me happy.  But I'll rarely put it on voluntarily.

30 Days of Buffy: Day 11

Day 11: Least Favorite Romance

There were quite a few romances over the course of Buffy's seven seasons.  None of them worked out.  It's a little depressing to think about.  No one gets a happy ending.  But they did spell that out in the very first season after Willow's failed relationship with Malcolm/Moloch.

Not only do none of the romances end well, but they all have serious problems.  And those problems escalate as the series progresses.  Giles and Jenny both have shady pasts and end up hurting one another with the secrets they are trying to keep.  Buffy kills Angel.  Xander and Willow cheat on Cordy and Oz.  Then Oz cheats on Willow with a werewolf.  Riley can't handle having a strong independent girlfriend and his feelings of emasculation lead him to seek out vampires to bite him and then abandon Buffy.  Spike takes all his self-loathing out on Harmony.  Spike tries to rape Buffy.  Xander leaves Anya at the alter. Willow alters Tara's memory to make her forget their fights.  They're all completely fucked.  I guess I can chalk it up to the drama of TV land.

The point is, all of these people hurt each other.  A lot.

I think my least favorite instance is the Spike/Harmony relationship.  It was just so one-sided.  Spike hates himself and takes it out on Harmony.  And like an idiot, she keeps coming back for more.  Harmony can be a ditz, but she mostly means well.  Sort of.  She certainly didn't deserve the way Spike treated her.  That can be said for a lot of these couples, but the field was just so uneven in this particular relationship.  Harmony never really hurt Spike.  She burned his Sex Pistols cassette, but she was never as hostile to him as he constantly was to her.