Killed By Death

Hey Guys Laurel here...So this episode was another "filler" so nothing really epic happened but it was still pretty good.  It was sort or Freddy Kruger esque, except the killer was someone who only took children, and could only be seen by children who had come down with a specific sickness, a Sunnydale fever if you will.   So we don't know how but somehow Buffy got the fever (maybe because she is a young adult?) and saw him briefly in a fever dream...enough to convince her that this villain was real but not enough to fight him aside from in her fever dream state.  Anyway the gang figures out that this villain is going after kids with the fever and sucking the life out of them in order to keep himself alive.  After Buffy gets well and the gang learns more about the death villain she chooses to go back into the hospital and get the fever again (by drinking a vial of a fever sample out of the hospital fridge, how she got access to that is beyond me.)  Anyway she is about to down the whole vial, but thankfully Willow, ever the science nerd, is there to warn her that she should dilute it and only do a few drops.

Mark here.. so basically the episode is as Laurel described...  Buffy is fighting at the beginning of the episode, contracts a disease, sees demons and re-contracts herself with said disease to kill the demons.  Its not a classic episode but its sort of amusing.  We sort of kept referring to  future episode.  Suffice to say the writers and costumers were going to get way better.  Honestly, I liked this episode even though it was filler.  It's a bit cheesy Freddy Krueger B movie-esque, but whatever...

In any case, we give this episode 3 stakes...

Passion

Mark here...so we're on to the next episode of Buffy, "Passion"... this was a good episode but with a some caveats.  I know we are watching this episode years later so I have to temper my opinion....

First let me describe what happened...  Essentially this episode, we see Jenny Calendar trying to make up for her gypsy past.  We see her at the beginning of the episode trying to recreate the magic spell that gave Angel his soul. Unfortunately, psychic Drusilla sees this and Angel is on to Jenny.  He ends up cornering her in the school and breaking her neck.  What we see is that Jenny has found the spell and stored it on a floppy disk.  A disk that by the end of the episode has fallen between the desk and a file cabinet.  So the big drama of the episode is Angel killing Jenny!

On to my thoughts... So this episode was very dramatic when it aired.  A presumably major character just got killed by Angel.  Also it reveals that Angel is not going to just be "talked down" from being evil.  At the time I understand the drama of the episode. Watching it now... I hate Jenny Calendar, so good riddance.  Also, evil Angel is annoying.  Evil Angel on the show Angel serves a purpose.  Here,  he's also kind of annoying and given that I never bought the Buffy-Angel romance, I'm not so invested.  Honestly, the most dramatic moment comes at the end when Buffy rescues a vengeful Giles from attacking Angel.  I'll let Laurel go into that.

Essentially, I liked the episode but I also like getting rid of Jenny Calendar.  I recognize the drama of the episode in that it upped the stakes going forward for the series.  Unfortunately, watching it now, it didn't have the dramatic umph...

Hey Laurel here...I agree!  I would have been so much more into this episode if I gave any fucks about Jenny Calendar.  I know we are supposed to like her and we are supposed to be super effected by her death but neither me or Mark care about her at all...so good riddance!   Mark remembers everything that is coming up but I don't, so I am just hoping that her leaving the show makes room for somebody way more awesome.

Like Mark said the best moment of this episode is a small interaction between Buffy and Giles...Giles is no where to be found after Jenny's death, but the gang suspects that he has gone to "the factory" to exact revenge on Angelus for killing Jenny.  Buffy goes to check it out and low and behold, Giles is unconscious, about to die in a fire that has broken out there after a fist fight with Angel.  She kicks Angel's ass (just enough to distract him, of course) then drags Giles out of the fire.  Giles gets upset because Buffy put herself in danger for him but Buffy gets even more upset and slaps Giles in the face for going to the factory alone and putting himself in danger.  She tells him he can't put himself in danger like that because "she can't do this (be a slayer) without him".  It's a very tender moment where we realize how much these two care about each other.  We loved it, but it also made it even more crystal clear that we don't care at all about Jenny C because we were invested so much more in this 30 second clip than we were about any of the rest of this pivotal episode.

3 stakes!  Would have been more but we just can't muster any concern for Jenny C!

Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered

Hey guys Laurel here...so This episode was a little boring, especially compared with the last two, but still way better than any of the 90210 filler...

Despite the fact that Cordelia is dating Xander, she still thinks he is super annoying and geeky which she has no problem expressing to him at every turn.  And not afraid of doing it publicly.  So this episode she goes so far as to break up with him because the popular girls don't want to hang out with her anymore because she is dating such a geek.  Cut to Amy, a beginner teen witch that Mark had to remind me we met in the first season (because as you guys know I have a very bad short term memory.  And long term memory actually also).  Anyway he enlists the help of Amy to cast a spell to make Cordelia love him more, but since Amy is a just a beginning witch she botches the spell and instead it turns out every woman in Sunnydale EXCEPT for Cordelia falls madly in love with him, including Buffy and Willow which leads to some awkward moments.  The women of Sunnydale are so obsessed with him that his life is actually in danger because these women would rather see him dead that see him with someone else.  But Giles saves the day in the nick of time, he helps Amy reverse the spell just as the women of Sunnydale are closing in, and all's well that ends well.  In a way the backfired spell actually works because it makes Cordelia realize that she actually likes Xander.  At the end of the episode she ends up telling off the popular girls she had been trying to coddle to fuck off because they make fun of Xander.

Mark here... Laurel did a great job of summing up the episode.  It was certainly a fun and inoffensive episode, but a little blah. I think we got distracted a few times after we saw where it was going.  Yeah, Xander casts a love spell which includes Joyce and Drusilla.  So there's some humor there.  It's nice to see Amy again, I can't remember if we've seen her since her appearance last season, but I think not much if so.  We find out she's still dabbling in witchcraft.

We'd give this episode 2 stakes....not terrible but a little predictable.

Phases

Mark here... we're back after a long break!  It's been a while for us due to work and other commitments but here we are on to Buffy Season 2!  Laurel and I have just had the first part of our meal, Artichokes with butter and parmesan, yum!!

This episode is sort of Buffy's ode to "I was a teenage werewolf" and "teen wolf" and whatever other teen werewolf b-movie stories there are out there.  It was a good episode!  Any episode with more Seth Green is great and in this episode we find out Oz has become a werewolf.  I really like the way it's written.  He's not savagely attacked, instead his infant cousin has bitten him and he comes to find out the infant is a werewolf.  As he realizes this it's played against his burgeoning romance with Willow.  Willow herself is showing much more strength as a character, despite still being dressed like she's in elementary school.  Seriously at one point she is wearing bright yellow overalls.  Everyone else is appropriately 90s fashion but yeeesh, Willow's outfits are atrocious!

Anyway, there's a series of werewolf attacks, a random werewolf hunter and high school hijinks but it's pretty good over all.  There's a subplot with Larry, the school jock, coming out as gay to Xander when Xander questions him about being a werewolf (he's not).  It's pretty edgy stuff for the time and Laurel and I discussed how the show could get away with this stuff because it flew under the radar, being just a show for teenagers that adults didn't care about.  It's also nice to see that the gay stuff didn't make it "A Very Special Episode" and instead was treated like nothing.  The show will obviously delve deeper into gay subtext and text in the future without making a big deal of it.

Hey Laurel here...Mark did a pretty good job of wrapping it up, I'll just second his comment about coming out.  I didn't make any note of it watching it the first time as a "young adult" because it just seemed like the way it was supposed to be, but in hindsight the show was pretty groundbreaking in terms of how they include LGBT issues without making a huge thing out of it.  I guess if you extrapolate the show is making a comment on diversity in general, because you are allowed to be a werewolf, a vampire, a witch, a nerd, a cheerleader, etc and still just be part of the gang, but I especially appreciate the inclusion of LGBT characters when I'm rewatching the show as a grown adult.  Pretty forward thinking stuff for the time.

Also just wanted to give Cordelia some props because she did some serious stunt driving this episode!  We first meet the werewolf when Cordelia and Xander are making out in her car.  The werewolf pounces on top of the car and punches through the roof to try and eat them.  Cordelia has the where-with-all to throw the car in reverse, slam on the brakes to hurl the werewolf off the roof, and makes a clean getaway.  Way to go Cordelia!  You are not my favorite but I was not ready for you to die just yet!


In conclusion, we give this one 4 stakes!