On season 4 of Buffy...should I be watching Angel?

[Thestral]

So they have Spike killing people again. Don't know if it's an expectation reversal like he chooses to be evil even with the soul or if it's some kind of doppleganger misdirect.

Is the First the same villain who appeared in season three and wasn't followed up? The one who tried to get Angel to kill Buffy and then try to sun burn himself?

These particular things, or rather some characters' reactions to them, are part of why I find Buffy S7 to have the most appalling moments in the entire show.

Not so much

Spoiler: Late Buffy S7 spoilers

them turning on Buffy and choosing Fath, CC. In that context and considering what had been happening and her obsessive plan of failure, it made sense - but of course Plot determined they had to come crawling back.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think they justified the Spike thing. It's not a gigantic stretch to say the Initiative planned on making a controllable vampire army, and if so, it makes total sense for this villain to know how to manipulate it.

And as for The First suddenly showing back up, better late than never. I'm wondering if they were planning on making it big in season three then liked the Mayor too much to split his screen time. I'm enjoying season seven so far, but what seems odd to me is that it goes to all these manipulation tactics when it already has this army of assassins working for it.

Why does it seem on Angel it takes every little to make characters act like petty asshats? On Buffy almost any transgression is instantly forgiven if you're nice now. On Angel, not instantly being completely forgiven for kidnapping or having sex with somebody else gets you on non-speaking terms.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

You know I'm starting to question if Giles really survived that axe. I guess he would have had to pick something up and interact with physical objects to take a plane flight.

I'm also starting to see some big similarities between the First Evil and the black smoke monster. I looked up some of the writers on Buffy and a lot of them also worked on Lost.

Is Dawn a potential? That would seem to follow from the 'Blood is life' thing only nobody has said anything about it.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

You know I'm starting to question if Giles really survived that axe. I guess he would have had to pick something up and interact with physical objects to take a plane flight.

I'm also starting to see some big similarities between the First Evil and the black smoke monster. I looked up some of the writers on Buffy and a lot of them also worked on Lost.

Well, has Giles touched anyone since his return?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Given this happened in 2003, if he took an airplane, he would have been touched. So if this is some kind of twist it would require a whole lot of handwaving.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

Well, Tony Head did ask Joss if he could be the First, so I guess you will soon find out if he got his wish.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

And FYI, the First doesn't travel by plane.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

He would have had to travel by plane to bring those potentials over from the UK. It was pretty clear they traveled with him.

That'd be interesting if Giles were Locke, but it would involve a whole lot of handwaving with what we've seen him do to this point.

When you notice the writers that Buffy and Lost have in common, you start to notice that the two series have a whole lot of logic in common.

 

[Forbin]

The "is Giles the First" thing was done on purpose. Drove us all crazy until we found out.

 

[Thestral]

Spoiler: Giles as First

It always seemed to me - not watching first-run, to be fair - to be a particularly silly attempt to raise tension and sow suspicion, coming out of left field as it did. Though it did give me one of my favorite Awkward Giles quotes (the irony of an older man going camping with teenage girls and their guardians being afraid he wouldn't touch them) so that was nice.

Is Dawn a potential? That would seem to follow from the 'Blood is life' thing only nobody has said anything about it.

That'd be nice. Like a lot of the main cast Dawn really falls by the wayside when the Spotlight-Stealing Squad arrives.

Spoiler: Later S7

Though unlike poor Xander, Willow, and especially Anya (who may as well have stayed dead after her throw-down early in the season with Buffy) she at least got something good when Buffy tried to have her sent away.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It's also a bit of a contrivance that when all the squad was sitting shoulder to shoulder nobody even brushed up against Eve. Or that nobody hugged Giles when he showed.

Looks like the writers that Buffy and Lost have in common also worked on Alias. Should I watch that next?

And, does Alias have any roots of all evil who take the form of dead people to manipulate people into killing each other because it can't do it on its own?

 

[Christopher]

Looks like the writers that Buffy and Lost have in common also worked on Alias. Should I watch that next?

Ooh, that's a tough one. Alias is a very inconsistent series, thanks to repeated network-mandated retools and actors' real-life issues affecting their availability. It has some great stuff, especially in the first season and a half and much of the final season, but it's a roller coaster in between, and there's some really dreadful stuff in there too, and it pretty much falls apart in the last few episodes. There's a point -- the transition between seasons 3 & 4 -- where there's a painfully obvious and inconsistent retcon and a completely contrived and ridiculous swerve in the show's direction... and yet the new direction is much better than what came before it, even though it makes no damn sense as a continuation of what came before it.

But then, if you could survive the conceptual swerves that Lost underwent, you could probably handle Alias. Heck, it's worth it for Michael Giacchino's score if nothing else, although the first three seasons tend to rely too heavily on pop songs. I'd recommend it, but with caveats. There will be rough patches, but I think the good stuff marginally outweighs them.

And, does Alias have any roots of all evil who take the form of dead people to manipulate people into killing each other because it can't do it on its own?

No, it just has a lot of evil or morally compromised parental figures, and a 15th-century prophet/inventor that every key villain in the show is obsessed with.

 

[Forbin]

I did enjoy Alias, but I agree with an assessment I read here years ago: "Season three is ass." Jennifer was always enjoyable. And it also gave us the young and spectacularly beautiful Rachel Nichols, subbing while Jennifer was preggers.

 

[Christopher]

I did enjoy Alias, but I agree with an assessment I read here years ago: "Season three is ass."

Well, season 3 was quite weak, but it did bring us the stunningly lovely and dulcet-voiced Melissa George, as well as the charming Mia Maestro.

Jennifer was always enjoyable.

Honestly, I always found her the show's weakest link. She wasn't nearly as versatile an actress as her master-of-disguise character required (Anna Torv on Abrams's later series Fringe was enormously better as a chameleon, rivaling Tatiana Maslany's work on Orphan Black). And in the early episodes, she was ridiculously broad and overemotional in a way that no experienced professional would ever be — so much so that they actually did an episode midway through season 1 in which her CIA handler taught her to control her emotions to pass a lie-detector test, after which she was more believably restrained. And while Garner was reasonably nice-looking and definitely in good shape, I never found her as lovely or compelling as most of her female co-stars.

And it also gave us the young and spectacularly beautiful Rachel Nichols, subbing while Jennifer was preggers.

Oh, yes, she was utterly luminous and charming. I would've loved to see her take over permanently. But the back end of the season was delayed for months to coincide with Garner’s maternity leave, so Nichols ended up getting sidelined in the final episodes.

 

[JD]

Well, at least now we have Continuum if we want more Rachel Nichols.

 

[Forbin]

Oh yes, I'd forgotten Melissa George!

Well, at least now we have Continuum if we want more Rachel Nichols.

Alas, no more.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I'm not liking this 'Cordelia as big bad' thing. Much of this season has felt like twist for the sake of twist. Like they're putting jerking the audience around before interesting story. And I don't get how nobody has suspected Cordelia or ever questioned whether it is really her. Every wrong decision they made has been based on information supplied by her and she is on a short list of people who knew the safe combination.

I'm interested to find out whether this is not Cordelia, whether she is possessed, or whether she has genuinely turned evil.

 

[JD]

Oh yes, I'd forgotten Melissa George!

Well, at least now we have Continuum if we want more Rachel Nichols.

Alas, no more.

Sure it's over, but it's streaming on the US Netflix, and 3 out of 4 seasons are on DVD/Blu-Ray (with 4 coming out next month), so you watch it easily.

 

[gblews]

I'm not liking this 'Cordelia as big bad' thing. Much of this season has felt like twist for the sake of twist. Like they're putting jerking the audience around before interesting story. And I don't get how nobody has suspected Cordelia or ever questioned whether it is really her. Every wrong decision they made has been based on information supplied by her and she is on a short list of people who knew the safe combination.

I'm interested to find out whether this is not Cordelia, whether she is possessed, or whether she has genuinely turned evil.

Would you have preferred that very straightforward and pedestrian ending to the storyline expressed in Angel's dream just prior to his soul being removed? It's almost like the writers give us a tease with the kind of predictable story they could tell and then snap us back to the reality of the "Whedonesque" where nothing seems to go the way you think it will or should.

I'd forgotten how interesting season 4 actually was, aside from the Connor/Cordy ugliness. They did go too far with that one. But all the other stuff, and there was a LOT of other stuff, I found very interesting.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I wouldn't prefer the idyllic ending to that episode, no. The way they did it was kind of cool but since they've been going to the same well of teasing the happy ending followed by reversal so often, it loses some of its impact.

I think that would have been a better episode if they hadn't been doing it to resolve every single arc lately.