Becoming Parts 1 and 2

Mark here... well we made it!  The season finale of Buffy Season 2!  This was a really good episode!  It starts out kind of slow but sort of sums up the best of this season.  The season as a whole was a bit off and on for us watching again.  On the one hand there's some great stuff with exploring the history of the slayer and the introduction of Spike.  On the other hand, there's still Jenny Calendar and the awkward romance between Buffy and Angel.  It just felt off in retrospect.  I know this was the season Buffy became a thing based on that romance, but it still lacked chemistry for me and the age difference was unavoidable.  So you're 200 years old and your attracted to a 16 year old girl.  I get the appeal if you are 16, but now...yeeesh.

Anyway, Angel, Drusilla and Spike are plotting to unleash this awful hell demon and the gang must stop them.  But lo and behold, Spike is sick of evil Angel and doesn't want the end of the world.  So he strikes a bargain with Buffy.  In the meantime though, Drusilla attacks the Scoobies while Angel distracts Buffy. She captures Giles, wounds Willow and Xander, and kills a visiting Kendra the Vampire Slayer.  Kendra pretty much shows up to get knocked off, being an awful character and making way for a better one...next season!  Willow ends up hospitalized but pulls herself together to attempt re-ensouling Angel with a spell they found from Jenny Calendar.  Witch Willow is very much apparent and we get to see her finally taking charge and moving from the mousy friend to the tough character she will become.  Now if only she would dress better!  Seriously, coming out for Willow isn't just about admitting she's gay, it's about not dressing like someone who hates herself!

Buffy confronts Angel at his ritual and Spike betrays him and carts Drusilla off.  After a big fight, Buffy is forced to kill Angel to reverse the spell he started...but Willow has succeeded in re-ensouling him! It's a touching scene even as she's forced to stab him with a sword.

In the end Buffy is forced to leave town.  The police think she's killed Kendra because she's found with the body.  Also, Joyce throws her out after Buffy confesses to being the Slayer and tells her she has to leave.  Another great scene!  Buffy basically tells Joyce she's been in denial about everything that's been going on.

One final point...we get a hint of something bigger as Principal Synder calls the Mayor *who we've not seen) to express joy at Buffy leaving town and being expelled from school...

Hey Laurel here...I second Mark's emotion about Willow, it's nice to see her step up to the plate, now please stop dressing like you hate yourself!

The other thing I thought was interesting about this episode is that Joyce finally gets a clue, sort of.  She realizes she's been missing a huge issue that has been going on in her daughter's life for the last few years but she reacts so poorly when she discovers it.  She finally starts to understand that something profound is going on when Spike shows up at the house with Buffy, and Buffy evaporates a vampire right in front of her, but her reaction is like "young lady, you are grounded!"  and Buffy is like "I don't have time to be grounded I have to save the world!  Don't you get it by now you clueless woman!"  I am paraphrasing of course, but you get the jist.  Hopefully Joyce will get it together in the next season.

The episode ends with Buffy running away.  Where will she go?  What or who brings her back?  What will Angel be like now that he has a soul again?  Will Willow ever start dressing better?  Only time will tell...

We give this double episode a rare 5 stakes!  Good one Joss.

Go Fish

Hey guys Laurel here...I liked this episode too.  Like the last one it had a heavy 50s B movie quality that I think works well for the show, and it's a nice departure from all of the Vampire stuff, which at the time was new and interesting but now we are inundated with because of twilight...

SO the swim team is all of a sudden hot stuff at Sunnydale, the first athletic team there that has been any good in years and years.  It turns out they are good because the whole team is slowly actually turning into fishes!  Fish type monsters anyway.  Originally the gang thinks that the swim team boys are being eaten by a demon because they keep finding the boys' skins laying around, but it turns out they are actually turning into demons, and their skin is what's left behind.  All thanks to the glory hungry swim coach, who is dosing them with steroids via the steam room.

One of the things I like about this episode is that Xander actually gets to be kind of a stud.  He tries out for the swim team and makes it, because the good swimmers keep "disappearing".  When he first shows up in his speedo the girls are gaga for him (until they realize it's him).  But the cat's out of the bag...Xander is secretly hot!  He also gets to be the hero, pulling Buffy out the of depths of the sewer with one arm, just in time to keep her from being raped by all the fish dudes that are swimming around down there.  I'm sure his super strength is due to the steroids he was unknowingly inhaling in the steam room, but still...heroic nonetheless.  Way to go Xander!

Mark here... I agree with Laurel, this episode had a "Creature of the Black Lagoon" slash "I Was a Teenage Swamp Thing" B-movie vibe which worked well for it.  Also, we got to see Prison Break hottie Wentworth Miller in an early role.  He can't act his was out of a shoe but he's easy on the eyes! There's not too much else to say about the episode, it's clearly a filler episode in between the main season arc story of Buffy and Angel, but it's actually refreshing because we again get to see the core Scooby Gang in action and not worry about all the Buffy Angel drama, which is wearing thin on both of us, to be honest.

Overall, 3 stakes.  We'd say 3 and a half, but we're not doing halves...:)

I Only Have Eyes For You

Mark here...Laurel and I are checking in for another episode of Buffy, Season 2.  This episode is called, "I Only Have Eyes For You".  We kind of intentionally flaked on a meal and are ordering take out because it's 900 degrees here in LA!

Anyway, I liked this episode.  It's sort of a cheesy, cliche idea but done well in the way Buffy does B-movie so well.  The premise is that Sunnydale High is being haunted by a poltergeist,  That being the ghost of a teenager who died in the 50s after killing his lover/teacher and then himself.  This ghost is possessing people in the school and causing all sorts of supernatural mayhem.  The gang decides to exorcise him and we gets to see more hints of Willow going witchy.  She leads the team and researches whats needed.  Giles is distracted by thinking, wishfully, that this is the ghost of Jenny Calendar.  In fact he and Buffy both have issues with this particular ghost and misidentifying.  Buffy claims to identify with the murdered woman and yet in the end is possessed herself by the male ghost who identifies with her.

Angel is drawn into the mix too to give us a final but of Buffy/Angel drama, although it feels a little forced.  The best parts of the episode are the scoobies playing ghostbusters in Sunnydale High.

Hey guys Laurel here. I liked this one too, it was fun and something a little different.  The poltergeist kept trying to re-enact the night of his death through other people, first a male student and his girlfriend, then a male janitor and a lady teacher.  So we think that Buffy is going in to get killed by some dude, but really she ends up playing the killer (the "dude" part) which I thought was a good twist.  Kind of bored by the angel part but whatevs.  I feel like it may have been more interesting if it was a normal high school boy that had been flirting with her or something.

4 stakes from us for this one!