Once More, With Feeling: my big Buffy/Angel canon rewatch/reread/read

[DevilEyes]

Now we’re going to take a look at the differences between the script/the movie on one hand, and the show on the other. While the huge difference in tone is all due to the execution and script changes, there are a few things that don’t match with the show because Joss later changed his mind. Of course, the discontinuity doesn’t matter, since neither the movie nor the script are canon.

Discontinuity between the movie/the script and canon

Several things from the script and the movie that Joss changed for the TV show:

• Vampires don’t dust when staked – except, for some reason, Lothos (maybe because he’s 800 to 900 years old). This is something that Joss decided for the TV show, in order not to have Buffy leaving a bunch of dead bodies around.
• Vampires can float.
• Vampires don’t show in photos.
• Buffy doesn’t burn down the gym during the big showdown with the vampires.
• A lot is made of Buffy’s need to preserve her secret identity – Merrick insists that vampires mustn’t know who she is, or they would he hunting her rather than the other way round. Which, come to think of it, makes sense – but was completely different on the show, where every vampire and demon knew who she is and, with rare exceptions (like Spike or Mr. Trick and the participants of his Slayer Fest ’99), it only made most of them want to stay away from her. That’s actually one change that I’m not sure the show ever properly justified. It’s almost unbelievable that no vampire or demon ever targeted Buffy’s family and friends in order to get to her, except briefly Angelus (who nevertheless didn’t do much on that front). There is a reason why Bruce Wayne thinks he needs to wear the mask to protect those he loves. See my comments on The Origin.
• Buffy’s parents are portrayed as neglectful and almost always absent; her mom pays so little attention to her that she mis-remembers her boyfriend’s name. (This is more like the family background Willow has on the show – except that her parents are also stricter. Willow’s mother Sheila seems to constantly ignore her, and can’t properly remember the name of her best friend Buffy.)
• (More in the script than in the movie) Buffy’s family also seems richer, more in Cordelia’s league (at least this is my impression – for instance, at one point she mentions a trust fund from her grandfather that she spent on shoes) than on the show, where they’re firmly middle-class types.
• (Script element; not mentioned in the movie, IIRC) Merrick says that the Watchers are all from one coven in a small English village. This is very different from the powerful (but really incompetent and stuck up their own arse) organization we first see in season 3.
• (Script element; not mentioned in the movie) Slayers have superpowers even before they are called: Buffy is mentioned to have had amazing gymnastic skills as a younger girl.
• (Script element; ignored or changed for movie) Script!Buffy is not a virgin. Her boyfriend Jeffrey is spending the night with her – he’s by her side when she wakes up from a nightmare; and during a school football game, one of the students starts talking to Merrick (and annoying the hell out of him) and gossiping about Buffy, saying that people are talking that „She’s had sex“. This was probably a part of Whedon’s idea to subvert the cliche of the blonde who dies in the alley – in movies, teenagers who have sex usually die. But this didn’t make it to the movie (Buffy is waking from her nightmare alone), I assume as a part of the overall removal of any reference to teen sex; and of course, it also isn’t in The Origin (where Buffy also wakes in her bed alone), for a different reason – because it would clash with canon, since canon!Buffy only lost her virginity in season 2.
• Merrick first approaches Buffy in the football field (script) or in the school gym (movie). In the flashback in Becoming I, he approaches her right in front of the school.
• Buffy is dating a school jock called Jeffrey, until he dumps her because she’s been busy with other things and he’s „got needs“in his own words (but she has other things to worry about, and has been falling for Pike anyway, so it’s no tragedy). But, in the flashback in Becoming I, Buffy is talking to her friends about a boy called Tyler and saying he’d have to beg her on his hands and knees to go with him to the dance... which he’s supposed to do after practice, so she’ll wait. (See my comments about The Origin below.)

Although it’s not discontinuity, I wonder why the show and later canon comics never mentioned Buffy dreaming about the lives of the previous Slayers. The only Slayers who seem to pop up in her dreams are the First Slayer and Faith. A lot more was made of the Slayer dream connection to the previous Slayers in Dana’s story in AtS Damage, in the Tales of the Slayers, in Fray, and in season 8 issue The Chain, but none of those are about Buffy. How interesting would it be if Buffy ever had Slayer dreams of being Nikki Wood, for instance?

And now let’s look at how this is resolved in The Origin.

The Origin comic revisted: canon version of Buffy’s origin story

This 3-part comic, written by Christopher Golden and Brereton based on Whedon’s script for the movie, restores most of Whedon’s original script, attempts (for the most part, successfully, though there are a few problematic spots) to reconcile it with the show canon, and – unlike the movie, is very close to the tone and spirit of the TV show.

I reviewed The Origin comic before – in the very first post on this thread. A few words in addition to this:

The only big problem I have with the comic is with the artist drawing green, pointy-eared vampires. That aside, the art by Joe Bennett is very good. They obviously wanted to make a complete break with the movie, so none of the characters look like their movie counterparts. Of course, Buffy looks like Sarah Michelle Gellar rather than Kristy Swanson, Joyce and Hank look like they do on the show (in the movie, Buffy’s parents both have dark hair and look ridiculously tanned and a bit trashy) while Merrick looks like Richard Riehle, who played him in the show flashback. But the other characters, who never appeared on the show, are all given a new look: Pike has white hair and a goatee and doesn’t look like Luke Perry (in later, non-canon Dark Horse comics, he looked different and had brownish hair, but didn’t look like Perry either); Lothos has long red hair and looks nothing like Rutger Hauer; Jeffrey is blond, while movie Jeffrey was dark-haired, each one of Buffy’s friends has different hair color and hairstyle than their movie counterparts, etc.

I really like the way they portrayed Merrick in the comic – he is passionate, stern and determined, a very strong figure – completely different from Donald Sutherland’s bland, sleepwalking through the role version. Pike is also a lot more animated and likeable. The vampires are scary and the fights are well drawn.

The comic restores most of Joss’ best lines and moments from the script, and adds some new ones (Buffy: „Don’t think of me as late – think of me as time-impaired!“) though, unfortunately, they also added a really dumb joke (when Amilyn has his arm ripped off, he seems more concerned about his jacket – „This was real leather“). There’s also one screw-up: the inscription on the newly sired vampire reads „1972-1990“, even though it should be taking place in 1996. But this is nitpicking now.

Let’s see what the writers of the comic did about the continuity issues:

• Buffy burns the gym down. She does it because it’s the only way to kill a bunch of vampires that have attacked the school: she tricks them into the gym, locks the door with a bike chain and sets the gym on fire.
• Most of the aspects of the script that don’t fit with canon are left out.
• Merrick warning Buffy about her secret identity is still a part of the story, but Buffy basically says „Ah, screw that“ (not in those words) after Merrick’s death.
• A brief scene with Buffy’s parents is included here as well – and Buffy seems to be unsatisfied and to think that they aren’t spending enough time with her (which we only see in her bitter comment to herself that they’re „real quality timers“), but there are no moments of Joyce being clueless, and we don’t know if Buffy’s parents are really neglectful, or if Buffy is seeing her parents as more neglectful than they really are. On the show, it was established that the problem with her parents was that they didn’t get along and argued a lot for years – but never that they ignored Buffy.
• The scenes from the Becoming I flashback are included: Merrick approaching Buffy in front of the school, and their conversation is word for word taken from the show.
• The Tyler/Jeffrey issue: they tried to solve this, and I’m not sure if it works. To reconcile it, they changed the dialogue for a part of Buffy’s conversation with her friends. She says she got over Tyler long time ago, and one of the girls adds that nobody would pick Tyler over Jeffrey anyway, and it’s Jeffrey that Buffy says she is waiting for after the practice, not Tyler. But this creates a bit of discontinuity with the show, what about that? There is a way to fanwank it:
• The entire comic is framed as Buffy’s narration – so one could say that her memory may not be entirely accurate. (Maybe she and Jeffrey were over before she met Merrick, but she conflated two different timelines and thought he was still her boyfriend and that it was the night of the vampire attack that they broke up.) Buffy is telling Xander and Willow about her days in Hemery High and how she became a Slayer.
• The last LA scenes we see are taken from the script, but with some changes: Buffy’s gossiping ex-friends mention that she was expelled from school. We also see Buffy and Pike going to the castle. However, it’s actually a castle in Las Vegas – a change I don’t like, since it’s just Dark Horse’s blatant attempt to set up one of their later (non-canon) comics, Viva Las Buffy, which is about the adventures of Buffy and Pike in Las Vegas.

The comic doesn’t explain what happened to Pike and why he and Buffy went separate ways; when Xander asks Buffy about it (he even says that Pike seemed like a good match, which is really unlike season 2 Xander! Though I guess he might have said it just because he’d prefer anyone to Angel - and Pike does seem like a guy Xander might like),
she just says it’s a story for another time.

Pike was clearly created as something of a Whedonian perfect guy – he’s the only teenage boy in the movie/script/comic who isn’t sexist (Pike’s friend Benny is just as bad in that regard as the jocks Andy and a rather good fighter for someone with no superpowers, he has no problem accepting Buffy’s strength and leadership – in fact, he accepts it and likes it much more readily than Buffy herself, which is a source of strife for a while. (Canon says nothing about the reasons why he and Buffy split, but in the comic Viva Las Buffy, he leaves because he realizes he’s just a liability for Buffy. In another non-canon comic, Note from the Underground, he finds Buffy in Sunnydale a few years later, he helps her but is confused with all the things that have happened to Buffy since, and ends up telling her friends stories about Buffy’s LA past.)

In my earlier review, I gave the comic 3-, which might have been too harsh – I now think it’s closer to 3.5. One thing I really like about this early Buffy story is that the Slayer was still clearly portrayed as the underdog.The feelings that the Slayers were up against the odds was much stronger in the script and The Origin, when the vampires were not established as being weaker than Slayers. This kind of got lost as the show increasingly started making the Slayers look like almost invincible, unbeatable superwomen (culminating in the utterly ridiculous „Troll Hammer“ moment in season 5) that almost all vampires (except for trill seekers) run from, which doesn’t fit with the idea that they all die very young. And, it also takes something away from Buffy’s heroism and the gravity of her story, IMO, if her task is portrayed as not being incredibly difficult and dangerous.

[DevilEyes]

I can’t remember, did anyone on the show ever use a pencil to stake a vampire? This is how Buffy finally manages to surprise and kill Lothos in the script version of their confrontation, after he’s cornered her in the school corridor; script direction says that there’s almost something like respect in his eyes as he’s turning to dust (and Lothos, up to that point, has been very contemptuous and dismissive of Buffy and other Slayers).

I got the answer from mefistopheles on LJ - there were two times when someone staked a vampire with a pencil: Willow in Choices (season 3) and Dawn in All the Way (season 6). That explains why I didn't remember it, I haven't seen either of those episodes in quite a while. I had a feeling Joss wouldn't pass the chance to use such a great idea.

[Wereghost]

^ There's a pencil-staking in Band Candy, too. Excellent reason to rewatch it.

[DevilEyes]

Scrawny71 wrote:

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^ There's a pencil-staking in Band Candy, too. Excellent reason to rewatch it.

I rewatched it a few months ago but I don't remember the pencil staking. When did it happen?

[Ethros]

^ It's from Season 3's Choices IIRC, when Willow is snooping round the Mayor's office and levitates a pencil behind a vamp's back, and stakes him with it

[Wereghost]

DevilEyes wrote:

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I rewatched it a few months ago but I don't remember the pencil staking. When did it happen?

In the pre-credits sequence in the graveyard, when a generic vamp interrupts Giles and Buffy's study session.

[DevilEyes]

Buffy season 1 revisited


So, I’ve finished my re-rewatch (!) of season 1. I expected it to go faster, but there were a lot of distractions – from unexpected work, to the fact that, well, it was hot summer weather and most days were being spent on a beach, and a lot of nights out in the city. My impressions were mostly the same as the last time, which is no surprise since the last rewatch was just over a year ago. I took notes of the few things I didn’t notice before or didn’t include in my previous reviews, but most of it were fun minor things, from fashion choices to various details to mistakes you only notice after you’ve watched the show a few times.

You can check my previously posted reviews and ratings (out of 5 stars):

1.01. Welcome to the Hellmouth (3.5)
1.02. The Harvest (2.5)
1.03. Witch (3)
1.04. Teacher’s Pet (1.5)
1.05. Never Kill a Boy on the First Date (3)
1.06. The Pack (3.5)
1.07. Angel (4)
1.08. I, Robot, You Jane (2)*
1.09. The Puppet Show (3)
1.10. Nightmares (4)
1.11. Out of Mind, Out of Sight (4)
1.12 Prophecy Girl (4.5)
Season 1 overview (3.21)*revised rating


It’s the weakest season of BtVS, but it’s still pretty good on its own and better than many people give it credit for. The two-part pilot is pretty strong, except for the very unsatisfying ending to The Harvest, with the lighthearted upbeat scene that’s completely out of place since Xander has just lost out of his best friends. I still think that failing to ever reference the Jesse storyline and how it affected Xander was one of the show’s biggest failings. The good news is that the comic season 9 has recently had a Jesse reference, with

Xander telling someone in a similar situation about the time he had to stake his best friend

– which is one of the best things the otherwise unimpressive season 9 has done so far. Although it’s worth mentioning that Xander never actually brought himself to do it and stake Jesse – he was spared that moment of decision since someone accidentally pushed Jesse onto his stake. We’ll never know if Xander actually would’ve been able to go through with it on his own.

There is a lot of cheesiness early on, and if someone saw episodes like Teacher’s Pet, they might have decided that BtVS is just a crappy, silly show and moved on. But the show gets notably better midway, with The Pack and Angel, and ends strongly with Nightmares, Out of Mind, Out of Sight, and the show’s first great episode, the season finale Prophecy Girl. Sarah Michelle Gellar is really amazing in that episode, particularly in the very emotional scene in the library right after Buffy learns that she’s supposed to face the Master and die. (“I quit!... Giles, I’m 16 years old. I don’t wanna die.”) (Such a difference to The Gift, when she… well, I wouldn’t go as far to say she wants to die, but she doesn’t exactly not want to die.) I don’t think I’ve noticed before that Joyce even more explicitly, and unwittingly, inspires Buffy to fight the destiny when she says: “Is it written somewhere that you can’t go (to the school dance)?”

One of the things I somehow used to miss before is a bit of personal info about Giles (there isn't a lot of that in the show), that he has a friend who went insane while researching the praying mantises from Teacher’s Pet, and that he calls to a lunatic asylum for advice. I wonder how common it is for Watchers to go insane.

It’s almost painful to see how downtrodden and without confidence and self-belief Willow is these early episodes – she often seems like she really feels she should get someone’s permission to exist, as Cordelia would say (“Excuse me? Who gave you permission to exist?”) This kind of inferiority complex doesn’t happen just because you’re bullied at school, it has to stem from the relationship with the parents; when we see her mother in season 3 and learn how much Willow’s parents actually ignore her (while at the same time being very strict about following the rules), it explains a lot. There’s a very telling moment in Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest, when Giles asks “Buffy?” as someone is entering the library, and Willow answers– “It’s just me”. She slowly starts gaining more confidence, but at first she seems only able to stand up to people when they speak ill of Buffy, as if she doesn’t feel she has the right to protest when someone is disparaging and insulting her personally. An early sign of non-superpowered badassery happens in The Harvest, when Willow fights at the Bronze and actually confronts Darla to save Giles. She also shows hidden strengths in I Robot, You Jane, The Pack and Prophecy Girl – but the biggest growth comes not in her fighting the vampires or confronting Moloch, but in rejecting Xander’s offer to be his substitute date for the dance after Buffy turned him down, because it’s the first time she actually stands up for herself.

When Buffy mentions Giles to Willow in the pilot, Willow starts gushing about how cool and great he is, which, together with the fact she has a photo of herself and Giles in her locker door, gives credence to her revelation in season 4 that she used to have crush on him. Speaking of little details you notice only after seeing the episode a few times: Props on Willow’s locker door include a big logo of Nerf Herder, the band that provided the theme song for the show. Buffy’s locker door has a picture of Michelangelo’s David, a big picture of a smiley and a red rose. The funniest detail is that the “text” in Marcie’s textbook under the headline “Chapter 1: Assassination and Infiltration – Case Example 1: Radical Cult Leader as Intended Target” actually consists of the lyrics to “Happiness is a Warm Gun” by The Beatles, written as prose. I usually don’t notice mistakes in the show (such as boom mikes in the shot) but I notice this time that in Angel you can see the reflection of Darla’s face on the bookshelf. Then there's Buffy's school file in I Robot, You Jane, which not only gives a different birth date than the one later displayed on her gravestone in Nightmares and The Gift, but lists her as a senior.

Anti-smoking moments abound (this seems to have been a thing in the 90s, think of The X-Files). In Nightmares, a girl goes to the boiler room to smoke, and gets attacked by the Ugly Man – with the camera zooming on the poster “Smoking kills”. Fortunately, there’s also some subversion in the same episode with Snyder’s line “There are three things I I find it funny that the poster Buffy was using for target practice in Angel, when she was planning to kill Angel, was one with a hot, cool-looking dark-haired guy who smokes and an incription “Smoking sucks”. That must be the worst anti-smoking poster ever – the message one is likely to get seems more like “Smoking makes you cool, look at this guy!”

Last year when I rewatched season 1, I was surprised to recognize Marcie Ross as Clea Duvall. This time, when I watched The Pack, I thought “Hey, that’s August from Once Upon a Time!” Eion Bailey played Kyle, one of the group of bullies.

Some of the lines worth a mention:

“For I am the king of cretins - all the lesser cretins bow before me!” – Xander in Witch (This line is, incidentally, the source of the username of one of the prominent members of Buffyforums.)

“Can you vague it up for me?” “You’re like a textbook with legs” – Buffy snarking at Giles

“What’s your childhood trauma?” – Cordelia to Buffy

“Excuse you.” – Cordelia when she Buffy when they bump into each other.

“Well, I know that I'll miss thee intellectual thrill of spelling words with my arms." - Amy on cheerleading

“He’s gone binary on us.” – Buffy about Moloch the Destroyer in I, Robot, You Jane.

Buffy even uses the term “pop culture reference”:

Buffy: My spider sense is tingling.
Giles: Your… spider sense?
Buffy: Pop culture reference, sorry.

Something I haven’t noticed before is that Giles used the term “Slayerettes” as a nickname for the non-Buffy Scoobies. The term “Fang Gang” is also used – but it’s Buffy referring to the Three (the vampires sent by the Master to kill her in Angel.) Buffy makes up a couple of ironic nicknames for herself: “That’s me, Destructo Girl”, “What am I, Knowledge Girl?” Buffy also ironically asks if she should make “I’m a Slayer, ask me how” buttons. I wonder if there was ever such a button either as official or fanmade merchandise? :-)

Xander’s and Angel’s “You were totally checking my neck!” conversation in Prophecy Girl wasn’t the only subtextual/funny slashy moment in season 1: it almost made me laugh to see how much the scene with Luke kneeling and sucking the Master’s blood from his hand in The Harvest looked like a blow job – even Joss commented on it in his DVD commentary.

Speaking of things that sound suspiciously like double entendres… Giles lectures Buffy about slaying: “You’re wasting too much time and energy. You should plunge and move on, plunge and move on…” Sounds like something Faith might say. Slaying really does seem phallic, what with the sharp stakes and penetration, which is an inversion since Slayers are women. Until Buffy gets hot for certain vampires and lets them penetrate her in a different way – inversion of an inversion?

It’s incredible how thin David Boreanaz was back then. SMG looked great with a more natural hair color than the uber-blondeness of seasons 2 and 3, and had a fuller figure compared to how thin she became in later seasons – pretty much the opposite of Nicholas Brendon. Only Alyson Hannigan remained the same, except for her ever-changing hairstyles. During Xander's first shirtless scene, I was thinking that he's way too buff for a 16-year old geek... Not surprising, since the actor was 26 at the time. I wonder if a lot of fandom animosity towards Xander and anger at his immature behavior wouldn’t be there if he had been played by a skinny, pimply teenager; it's easy of forget just how young he’s supposed to be. Although all the actors are older than their character's age, as it's usually the case on teen shows, I think Brendon and Charisma Carpenter (both 26) are less convincing as 16-year olds than SMG (20 at the time) and Alyson Hannigan (who looked much younger than 23.

What particularly strikes me while watching season 1 is that and Buffy she seems much more mature than the Buffy we see in the current comics, which is largely because of Georges Jeanty’s habit of drawing her as a child-woman, but also to the current writing which makes her look like a pale shadow of Buffy, without her strength and spunk. Season 1 can switch between being a bubbly, ditzy-looking teenager one moment and being remarkably mature the next moment.

Fashion watch: They were sure trying to attract male viewers with those really short skirts and long boots Buffy is wearing in every episode. Her outfits certainly changed a lot throughout the seasons, whether it was the decision of Joss and co. or just SMG insisting on wearing less revealing clothes. But, to be fair, though I don't know Californian schools, I don't find those outfits outrageous as some fans do, since I remember how a lot of girls (me included) used to dress in my high school. It's still funny that she's always wearing those very short skirts and nothing underneath while Willow wears sweaters and tights. Makes you wonder, what season and what temperature is it supposed to be? However, Buffy’s outfits while slaying are practical - we don't get the ridiculous sight of her slaying in skirts and high heels, which tends to happen with many action heroines.
Xander and Willow tend to wear shirts with weird designs, such as Willow’s duck shirt, Xander’s shirt with mushrooms and Xander’s hypopothamus shirt. At one point, Willow wears a Scooby-Doo T-shirt. Buffy herself has a couple of T-shirt with what looks like cartoon drawings of women with 1950s hairstyles . Amy goes from standard valley girl clothes to a hippy look, with a baggy shirt with a peace sigh, by the end of Witch, when she’s free of her mother’s influence; she’ll switch to a Goth look by season 3.

Altered states: Buffy and Cordelia under Catherine’s spell in Witch; Catherine swapping her body with her daughter Amy in the same episode (the first body swap in the show – the second one will lead to a much better storyline in season 4); Xander possessed by the hyena in The Pack; Buffy hypnotized by the Master in Prophecy Girl.

Noncon/dubcon/sexual assault: 2 so far – and both involve Xander, but the first time as a victim and the second one as the perpetuator: the Insect Lady trying to “mate” with Xander (and having “mated” with others; Hyena!Xander’s attempted rape of Buffy. Some even consider the Master biting Buffy as a metaphorical sexual assault, but I will stick just to non-metaphorical ones (or else we’d have to count every vampire attack as sexual assault).

Sunnydale High body count: 10 students (Jesse [The Harvest], Dave and Fritz [I, Robot, You Jane], Emily and Morgan [The Puppet Show], Kevin and 4 other students [Prophecy Girl]; 1 teacher (Dr Gregory, the likeable biology teacher killed by the Insect Lady); 1 former student (the Extreme Dead Guy in the locker in the pilot). Out of these, Dave’s death was listed as suicide, and Jesse is probably listed under missing persons.

Giles gets knocked out: 3 times - Witch, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, Prophecy Girl

Buffy figures it all out: The Harvest, Witch, Teacher's Pet, The Pack (where she’s sure that something’s wrong with Xander long before Giles recognizes it), Nightmares. The only time Giles figures it out is in Out of Mind, Out of Sight.I’ve noticed before that Buffy is most often the one that figures out the mystery or the solution, despite the commonly held view that Giles and Willow are supposed to be the clever ones (which even the characters in the show hold, see The Puppet Show where knowing the square root or other is regarded as the ultimate proof of intelligence); in fact, Giles mostly just provides knowledge and exposition.

Cordelia in distress: Welcome to the Hellmouth (saved by Buffy), The Harvest (saved by Xander), Witch (saved by Buffy), Out of Mind, Out of Sight (saved by Buffy again). It’s only in Prophecy Girl that Cordy gets to be the savior for once – saving Jenny and Willow by driving them in her car to the library. She and Willow do scream a lot in that episode, but they also kick ass when they need to. Bets Cordelia moment from season 1 is when she bites the vampire’s hand, saying: “Let’s see how you like it!”

Bands at the Bronze: Dashboard Prophets in Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest, and Velvet Chain in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date.

The opening voiceover (“In every generation, a Slayer is born…”) made its debut in Angel, spoken by an unknown, cheesy-sounding male voice. I liked it much better when it was replaced with Giles’ voice in season 2, and even better than that when it was scrapped altogether. The picture quality isn’t that great early on, and those early episode are incredibly dark – literally. As the show got metaphorically darker as it went on, it also got literally lighter.

[DevilEyes]

Finally, some musings on the show’s portrayal of high school. I’ve recently discussed it with a friend on LJ how realistic, or not, is the portrayal of high school life on BtVS. As someone who’s not an American and didn’t go to a US school, there are a lot of things in BtVS Sunnydale High that are completely alien to me, or that I only know about from US teen shows/movies, so I can’t really judge how accurate it is. We didn’t have the US school sports culture, since there are no organized competitive school sports (just physical exercise classes where you get to play basketball or volleyball or something) or official popularity contests (Homecoming Queen etc.) and all those school dances: there’s just the prom, after graduation, and that’s all; and the idea that everyone has to have a date at prom is also something alien to me. There are also other differences related to the school system. A line like "We had four classes with her last summer" is a weird one for me to hear; in my school, we didn't pick and choose different classes to go to; you're in a class, which comprises about 35-40 students, and you have all the classes that this class has. (The only difference between the classes is, however, in the foreign language classes you get to attend.) I also wonder if the school principals really interact with students so much in US high schools; ours were barely ever seen. On the other hand, class has one teacher assigned to them as the "head of the class" (a rough translation) who interacts with students the most, talks on their behalf with the other teachers, deals with things like student conduct, absences and students that are failing classes – something that US schools don’t seem to have.


However, there are lots of things in BtVS portrayal of high school that are universal and do resonate a lot and make me think of my high school experience. The bullying, for starters; the way that certain students form cliques, and groups of students who bully others, like those in The Pack. Someone like Cordelia is also instantly recognizable (even though she's an exaggerated version, a lot of things she says are way OTT), the "cool" people ("popular" would be a misleading word - in fact, most people hate them, but they act like they're in charge) who are usually rich, dress up in expensive clothes and are considered sexy (partly due to looking older than their years - this is something that teenagers find appealing) and who have their cliques of friends/sycophants, and spend a lot of time mocking other people. There are also people like Willow, who could be called "nerds", though it's not the same stereotype - e.g. we don't have the cliche that liking SF or comics makes you a nerd - but people who are bookish, shy and tend to dress conservatively, like their parents are choosing their clothes (which they might be); boys who cover their insecurity with jokes and try to act the role of the class clown, since they don't think they can be the hot manly men; students that nobody notices (the "invisible" ones); and there are those that are considered crazy, weird or freaky due to their personality or attitude. When people assign a certain role to you, it's generally hard to get rid of it. And though there aren't any official popularity contest, you always knew that there was an unofficial hierarchy, such as, who are considered the hottest girls, or hottest boys. On my first week of high school (that's when we were 15-16), the boys in my class even had a vote between themselves for the Hottest Girl in Class, and one of them (the "class clown" boy) announced the results to the class during the break. There was a lot of competitiveness and jealousy between girls - things like Cordelia being jealous of Buffy and frustrated when boys would be more into Buffy (as in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date) because a "weirdo" isn't supposed to challenge and best her in hotness stakes, is something that mirrors my "relationship" with the Cordelia of my class, though in our cases it lasted much longer and was much worse and never got better.


Finally, here's a couple of songs used in BtVS season 1. See you next when I re-rewatch the first 11 episodes of season 2.



Dashboard Prophets - "Ballad for Dead Friends" (from The Harvest)






Velvet Chain - "Strong" (from Never Kill a Boy on the First Date)

[Ethros]

I've just dipped in this thread, but out of interest, why are you rewatching Season 1 when you're only half way through Season 3?

No offence but it's taken you 19 months to get that far?


If as you say in the opening post that you intend to watch all 144 eps of Buffy and 110 of Angel, at that rate you'll be done around... 2019?

[DevilEyes]

Ethros wrote:

---

I've just dipped in this thread, but out of interest, why are you rewatching Season 1 when you're only half way through Season 3?

No offence but it's taken you 19 months to get that far?


If as you say in the opening post that you intend to watch all 144 eps of Buffy and 110 of Angel, at that rate you'll be done around... 2019?

LOL I certainly hope it won't be at that rate...

I've already explained why I'm rewatching it again from the start. It's exactly because it's been so long and it feels like I've seen those season 1 and 2 episodes ages ago. I'm going to try to marathon season 2 and the first part of season 3 in the next weeks and then continue with the regular reviews. I'm hoping it will be at least 2 episodes a week.

DevilEyes wrote:

---

Boy, it's been a while - I bet a lot of you don't even remember I was doing this rewatch. I had really good reason for this hiatus this time, due to having been extremely busy these last 3 months with work - I had a huge translation job with strict deadlines, so lots of things got put on hold (frak, I didn't even go to the beach once this summer, despite the scorching heat). I finally finished it yesterday morning (on the deadline date!) so now I'm getting back to "normal".

However, since there have been such big breaks in my rewatch (I can't believe I started it last February and didn't get further than mid-season 3 ) due to various circumstances, I've decided that over the next couple of weeks I'm going to do a marathon of the Buffy episodes I've already reviewed - to remind myself and get a bit of continuity before continuing with the rewatch.

(...)

And then of course, I'll continue with reviews as usual, starting with 3.11. Gingerbread. Hopefully on a more regular basis than I've been posting so far.

Sure, it would be great if I could watch 5 episodes a week, like Mark from Mark Watches blog, but he doesn't do anything else for a living and makes money out of his "reviews" which mostly consist of "OMG WTF WHAT IS THIS SHOW DOING TO ME", "I'VE GOT ALL THE FEELS" exclamations.

[D Man]

^^^Oh man, thanks for posting that! I like Mark's site, but it's not a place to go for serious reviews. He basically refuses to be critical about anything at all these days. The phrase "But that's OK!!!!!!" pops up way too often. Anyways, looking forward to seeing you back in this thread!

[Wereghost]

Limerick intermission.

Some of those are really good.