Just found this thread!
You are reminding me of why I loved BTVS and Angel so much. Gotta pull out those DVDs and watch 'em again.
Please do! More the merrier!
Prophecy Girl
The Good;
Buffy's unjustified (but very human) rant at Giles, the wonderful slow motion fight with the vamp whilst Cordy is parking with a guy. Buffy accepting her fate for the sake of her friends and family.The Buffy/Master confrontation and her final battle with him. Xander listening to country music, the white man's blues. Xander practicing on Willow and Willow consequently turning him down. Cordy and Will finding the bodies. Cordy's car trick and the girls fleeing in terror. The Buffy/Joyce scene. Love Buffy's dress.
The Bad;
The tentacles from the Hellmouth look pretty weak. Also I thought the boy who get's killed is the same one as in the last ep but it's not, Cordy seems to have a new guy every week. I always think that's lame on TV, characters get boyfriends/girlfriends one week who mean the world to them then they're forgotten about the next ep.
Best line;
Angel; I like your dress
Buffy; Big hit with everyone
Kinky dinky; is what happens between the Master and Buffy rape? Or even semi-consensual. He obviously derives pleasure from penetrating her body with his fangs and mauling her and she gasps and trembles like a porn star faking it (we'll later learn in 'Get it Done 'why Slayers have this dark sexual side). It would explain Buffy's actions in 'When she was bad' a lot better if she's a sexual assault victim?
Questions and observations;
Buffy dies for the first time and is bitten by a vampire for the first but by no means the last time. Giles get's knocked out for the first time (by Buffy!). Jenny's back, yay! Presumably the reason Cordy is being so nice to Will and isn't mad at her boyfriend du jour is that it's one of the signs of the apocalypse?
So if Buffy had died for real what would have happened? Presumably Angel would have defeated the Master? Or the Initiative? No offence to Kendra but I figure this would have meant that Faith would be the Slayer and consequently Dawn would be HER sister. Faith would never have gone bad and Joyce would get over her grief by adopting Faith and Dawn as her foster children. Even so, in the Buffyverse death isn't necessarily for ever...?
Note that when Buffy comes back from the dead they play the show's theme full blast. According to Joss the theme starts off like a conventional horror theme but then kicks into rock and roll thrash because it signifies that Buffy and co won't conform to the horror stereotype, they won't take it any more. So we have Buffy dying just as the prophecy says, like all the Slayers before her but she rebels and comes back. If you wanted to see a feminist subtext, she refuses to be the victim, to accept the gender role assigned to her. I don't know if Joss intended it but someone at The Bronze once pointed out that the Scoobies are actually the cliched victims you'd find in any horror film, the sexy blonde, the athletic hunk, the bitchy cheerleader, the hapless nerd, the wiseass jerk and the stuffy authority figure. But in Joss' show the victim's fight back and win.
Angel has a phone and Giles' know's his number.
Buffy actually says she feels stronger after Xander brings her back. She shouldn't of course, she should be weak as a kitten so maybe this is God's/the PTB's doing?
Now of course, at the end of this we see the characters walk off into the sunset and we have no idea if there will ever be a second season? If the series had stopped there it would have been a good ending and fondly remembered, we'd assume the Hellmouth was closed and that our characters would go on to leave fairly ordinary lives. Except for Angel, of course?
Couple of interesting lines. Xander says that if Willow is interested in Buffy she's playing it close to her chest. Cordy remarks that she doesn't know why she and Willow bother with boys and Willow agrees 'I hear you'
5/5 even with the stupid tentacles
