“I am Kendra. The Vampire Slayer.”
--Kendra
Disclaimer: this is a bitchy review. This episode doesn’t
deserve the amount of shit I’m about to heap upon it; it’s actually a rather
good episode in fact. I’m not quite certain at this moment why I’m bitching so
much about this episode, though I do have a theory, which I’ll elaborate on at
the end. Anyway, bear with me...
Reviewing a television series that you’re already a fan of
and which you know by heart has advantages and disadvantages. I think it can be
helpful that I know how all these characters will evolve, the people they will
be by the end; that I can see the whole grand sweep of the story as all the
pieces fall into place and the series finally chooses its path. I can comment
on these things as they’re happening, put the puzzle pieces together, make the
connections and provide the proper context. I can see the episodes with a
perspective a first-time viewer wouldn’t have. These are all good things, but
the trade-off is that I can’t ever be surprised. A moment such as the big
revelation of a second Slayer at the end of this episode has no impact on me
because I’ve seen it before, multiple times. I’m always aware when watching
these episodes for review that there is a part of me that can’t help but be
jaded: even when I’m watching one of the truly great episodes, I’ve seen it
before and that means some of its power to move me must necessarily be
dissipated after all those repeat viewings. I’m also cognizant of the fact that
as a fanfic writer I am particularly sensitive to the flaws inherent in these
characters, the choices they made, and the paths the writers did not choose to
explore with them. And, finally, living with all these characters and these
actors for seven seasons has led me to form very strong opinions of each of
them, and those opinions affect my thinking when I set out to write the
reviews: whether I like it or not, the person Buffy became by the end of season
seven colors my perception of her now, in season two. The fact that I simply
became tired of Nicholas Brendon’s Xander by the end of the series (actually
long before that) colors my perception of Xander now. Hindsight is always
20/20: and when it comes to Buffy the Vampire Slayer I can’t help but have
perfect hindsight. I’m reviewing these season two episodes from the perspective
of a fan, certainly, but also from the perspective of a fan who was bitterly
disappointed with the way this series ended. I really do think Buffy, the
series and the character, would have been better off staying dead at the end of
season five.
I bring all this up now because “What’s My Line?” Part One,
is one of those seminal episodes that really moves the series arc along: we
have Kendra, the second Slayer and the first evidence that Buffy’s death and
resurrection really did throw a monkey wrench into the works, and we have Buffy
and Angel inching closer to consummating their relationship as Buffy shows
Angel that even when he’s wearing his vampire face, she still thinks he’s
beautiful. We have Buffy on the run from powerful new foes, and also, while
taking a career aptitude test at school, reflecting upon the fact that she
doesn’t have any options. She doesn’t get to have a career, a normal life.
She’s been depressed about it before but in this episode Buffy is shown, for
the first time, that the Slayer doesn’t really belong to her. When Kendra
arrives, it’s as if fate is saying to Buffy, You don’t like what you got? Fine.
Then I’m taking it back. The world doesn’t revolve around you. You want to be
ordinary so bad? There’s the door. Go be ordinary. And those are all important
things, but this episode suffers in part because I’ve seen it before.
The first time I saw it I thought it was pretty neat; now,
in hindsight, after multiple viewings and after having seen how all these
events will eventually play out and shape Buffy and her friends’ lives for
better or worse, the episode just kind of lays there for me. To a degree this
is because it’s the first of a two-parter: it’s mostly set-up. But a big part
of my indifference toward this episode now is that I know a lot of the stuff
explored in this hour will end up going nowhere in future seasons, or going
places I wish it wouldn’t have. Buffy will eventually learn to live with being
the Slayer and she’ll stop trying to have a normal life. She’ll have sex with
not one but two vampires while distancing herself from her friends. Kendra
isn’t the last new Slayer we’ll see and even though her scenes at the end of
the hour provide a good dose of shock (because we are led to believe at first
that she’s one of the assassins who has come after Buffy) and plenty of thrills
(because she hands Angel his ass--but he was pansy season two Angel so I’m not
sure how much that should count) I know Kendra will end up fizzling out in
future episodes, because she just won’t turn out to be very compelling, certainly
nowhere near as compelling as Faith will be. (And then there’s that accent. I
don’t care how accurate or inaccurate to Jamaican Kendra’s accent is; it’s off-putting,
it takes the viewer out of every scene she’s in and it was a mistake on the
part of the producers to insist upon it.) I will say that I do like Bianca Lawson’s
chemistry with Sarah Michelle Gellar, though, and I think more could have been
done with Kendra. If Eliza Dushku hadn’t shown up and set everyone’s world on
fire, maybe Kendra could have really gone somewhere. But it wasn’t meant to be.
But
I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s open this episode
up and take a look under the hood. “What’s My Line?”
Part One is by no means a
clunker and there are some pretty nice bits sprinkled throughout but it
suffers from the usual weak writing and contrivances. Ah, sometimes I
pine for
the days when Buffy was new and I was only a casual fan and I
didn’t notice all
the damned contrivances. But those days are gone. Like the old saying
goes:
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child,
I watched
television as a child and did not pay heed to weak writing: but when I
became a
reviewer, I put away childish things.” So I’ll just grit my
teeth through the
contrivances and move on. Actually, no. I’ll bitch about the
contrivances,
which will make me feel better. Cool. Okay, where was I? Spike is trying to restore Drusilla’s health and he
has managed to find a Magic Contrivance Object which will enable him to do it.
Magic Contrivance Objects are always easy to find, because they’re always
located in Sunnydale. Another neat thing about them is that only the bad guys
seem to have access to them: Giles never bothers to look for any of them and
never realizes what they mean until it’s too late. The Magic Contrivance Object
Spike is currently occupied with is a book he had one of his vampires steal from
Giles’ collection awhile back--the collection of books which Giles never
actually reads and also never bothers to keep locked up even though vampires
have invaded the library before. That inexplicable library cage, another
contrivance object though not a magical one, would seem a good place to keep
the books. But, nope. Giles never bothers. This particular book was written by
a Bad Person named Du Lac, but Spike’s nerd vamp lackey can’t read it--it needs
a decoder. So Spike sends some vamps to Du Lac’s tomb--which also of course is
located in Sunnydale--to find yet another, even more contrived Magic
Contrivance Object, a cross which (somehow, because it’s like, magic?) can
decode the writing. Also,
Spike is tired of Buffy and he has apparently gotten over his need to kill her
himself in order to show everyone how awesome he is: now he’s
willing to just subcontract Buffy’s death out. He’s decided to bring in the
big guns, a league of assassins called The Order of Taraka, who are apparently
quite the bad asses, so much so that Spike’s nerd lackey vampire is visibly
disconcerted at the prospect of them coming to town: “The Order of Taraka, I
mean...isn't that overkill?” the poor put-upon lackey squeaks. Spike replies, in a
wonderfully written bit of snark (contrivances might be strewn across this
episode like potholes but the dialogue at least shines): “No, I think it's just
enough kill.” I very much liked the fact that Spike was willing to subcontract
the responsibility for dealing with Buffy; it’s another demonstration of the
fact that Spike really is different. He has a completely different sensibility
from a typical villain, a modern sensibility. He’s able to look past petty
vendettas and see the big picture. The idea of leaving Buffy’s death to a bunch
of freelance mercenaries simply wouldn’t ever occur to Angelus, for instance.
In the meantime, Buffy is once again moping about the fact
that being the Slayer doesn’t really leave her any options. It’s Career Week at
school, professionals from various industries are setting up booths at
Sunnydale High, interviewing students after they take career aptitude tests,
and as Buffy takes her test she finds herself dreading the results, and also wondering
why she should even bother since being the Slayer means she’ll never get to
have a career. Unlike Xander though, Buffy’s character arc does actually move
in a forward direction, so even though we’ve all heard this tune before, Buffy
will once again make progress toward realizing that her life as the Slayer
maybe isn’t quite the road with no turns that she thinks it is, and in fact
she’s making fair progress already. After she fails to stop Spike’s vampires from
stealing the cross/decoder thingamabob, Buffy drags her ass home to discover
Angel in her room and they have a charming little exchange which warmed my
heart, partly because the dialogue zips and partly because Gellar and Boreanaz
always had chemistry to burn. She confides in him, lets him see that her life
as the Slayer is a burden, tells him straight out that she wants to be a normal
girl, to have the kind of life she had before. “Before me,” Angel says. “No,
Angel,” Buffy replies, and takes his hand, and caresses his cheek. "It’s not you. You're the one freaky thing in
my freaky world that still makes sense to me. I just get messed sometimes. I
wish we could be regular kids.” When Angel points out that he’ll never be a
kid, Buffy shows how much she’s already changed during the past few months by
simply joking about the absurdity of the fact that she’s a teenage girl dating
a centuries-old vampire: “Okay, then a regular kid and her cradle robbing,
creature-of-the-night boyfriend,” she replies. It wasn’t just a warm, typically
well-acted moment between these two, but also a testament to the fact that
Buffy is growing, that she is adjusting to her role as the Slayer, and, even
though she occasionally feels overwhelmed by it, she’s beginning to learn to
adapt. Maybe she can’t have a normal life, a normal boyfriend, a normal career,
but she has friends who care about her and she has Angel, who loves her. And
he’s an attentive and thoughtful boyfriend, too: when he notices a framed photo
of Buffy as a little girl ice-skating, Buffy admits that she wanted to be
Dorothy Hamill, right down to the hairstyle. So Angel offers to take her
ice-skating the next night. “Angel ice skating,” Willow says the next day at
school, trying to wrap her head around the strange concept when Buffy tells her
about the date she and Angel are planning for that night. “I know,” Buffy
replies. “Two worlds collide.”
The results of the career aptitude tests are in and Xander
is not happy that he seems destined to become a prison guard (actually, now
that I think of it, Xander does somehow seem strangely suited for that. Not that
he ever showed any particular aptitude for that sort of work on the show--or
any sort of work, really, until he got his shit together and started in
construction--but somehow I can just picture him being a prison guard.) And
Buffy’s especially not happy to learn that, based on the results of her
aptitude test, she has been assigned to visit the booth for law enforcement
professionals. “As in police?” she says, her worst nightmare apparently
confirmed. “As in polyester, doughnuts and brutality,” Xander replies. “But, donuts!”
Willow chimes in with a hopeful smile, trying to help Buffy find the silver
lining. “Well, I'll just jump off that bridge when I come to it,” Buffy
decides. This episode still sort of lays there for me--I wonder if my opinion
of it will increase after watching part two, since this installment is
basically all set-up--but I have to give credit where credit is due: the
dialogue is neat. Moments like this are a big part of what we watch Buffy for,
a big part of why the show was always so much fun (until season seven, when all
dialogue became Buffy making speeches about "sacrifice"). While not losing sight of the
characters and not reducing the terrible situations they often found themselves
in to parody, the Buffy writers, nine times out of ten, managed to create
breezy, fun stories with an air of whimsy and crackling good dialogue that just
compelled you to sit there and watch and not flip the channel. That was how I
discovered the show, in fact: I found a repeat while flipping through channels
and I just got caught up in a scene because the dialogue was so entertaining.
But all is not breezy and whimsical in Sunnydale for Giles
has decided to actually read his books. Whenever Giles actually deigns to get
up off his ass and read his books like he was supposed to have been doing all
along we all know a rotten time is about to be had by all, because it always
means he has discovered some kind of diabolical badness. It also often means
that he’s about to make one of those speeches to Buffy about how she should be
more proactive that make me want to strangle him, since she always does her
job--slays the bad guys--while he almost never does his--adequately preparing
for the bad guys. He made just such a speech to Buffy after she failed to stop
Spike’s vampire from stealing Du Lac’s decoder cross, berating her for not
making an effort to find out what was taken (which she could have done how,
exactly?) and then bitching that she should have been more thorough in her
observations. This from the guy who’s supposed to be doing the research and
making sure Buffy is prepared for whatever the Hellmouth is about to throw at
her next and instead, he’s nearly always caught flat-footed. This time is no
exception, and once he and Buffy visit the tomb the vampires broke into and
they discover that it’s Du Lac’s tomb, Giles is forced to sheepishly admit that
he had forgotten--whoops!--that the book Spike’s vampires had managed to steal
from the library, because Giles never frigging locks them up, was written by Du
Lac. (It slipped Giles' mind with all the excitement.) Du Lac, a Bad Person. Du
Lac, whose book “was said to contain rituals and spells that reap unspeakable
evil,” according to Giles. Way to go, Giles!
What exactly is it that Giles does all day? Let’s take a
moment to actually consider this. He’s a school librarian in a school where no
one uses the library. He doesn’t have to teach any classes, so basically his
workday consists of going to school in the morning and then doing nothing for
eight hours. He trades mildly flirty banter with Jenny Calendar while looking
like he might faint, then he checks in with Buffy. He harangues Buffy about
training, and once every couple of weeks or so Buffy spends an hour training
with him and kicks his ass to prove to him that she doesn’t actually need to
train. I suppose maybe he sends the occasional report to the Watchers Council.
Other than that, he does nothing, nothing at all. He’s surrounded by this
collection of rare/occult/cursed/magical/demon-containing/scary books, all of which have been
shown to have very useful tidbits of information in them. Does he read them? Is
he completely versed in everything all those books contain so that he can spot
threats coming in advance, or at the very least recognize the threats for what
they are once they do arrive? Well, no. He just sort of refers to the books--by
dragooning a few high school kids to help him--when the badness is already upon
them and Buffy’s in it up to her neck. (He also takes no precautions whatsoever
to secure the books so they can be conveniently stolen.) This isn’t a knock on
the character of Giles, it’s a knock on the writers. Because if you’re going to
have Giles swishing around drinking tea and making asshole speeches to Buffy
about how she needs to get her head in the game, maybe he could actually, I
don’t know, do the job he is ostensibly there to be doing? But if Giles did
that job even passably well, Buffy would actually be prepared for some of the
threats that arise and the writers would therefore have a harder time coming up
with thrilling adventures for her to trip over. And I get that. I understand
that if Giles actually did his job the way common sense dictates he should, then
one of the very first things he should have done is grab Buffy and Willow and
Xander on a sunny Saturday morning and take them on an expedition to all the
various tombs in Sunnydale where the various evil magic objects are located,
scoop all the objects up, and either destroy the lot of them or store them in a
vault. Which would of course limit the opportunities for drama. But that’s the
problem with the premise of this show: the fact that they use magic as a
catch-all explanation for every single thing any viewer might ever question
meant that from day one the writers decided they had a license to do whatever
they wanted to do no matter how ridiculously contrived it seems. So, are you a
Buffy writer and you need a Buffy plot?
Here’s one: an evil magic artifact just happens to be located in
Sunnydale and Giles is just finding out about it now because he never bothers
to read his books. Unfortunately, the bad guys got to it first and now Buffy
has to clean up the mess. Plus maybe Xander is worried that he doesn’t have
anything to contribute to the gang and is jealous of Angel.
Anyway,
where was I? Right. Things are going from bad to
worse for Buffy, though she doesn’t know it yet. While Giles is
busy dragooning
Willow and Xander into helping him research this Du Lac business, the
aforementioned Order of Taraka has arrived in town to kill Buffy. We
see three apparent assassins arriving: a very big, very
mean-looking redneck type guy with a scar steps off a bus, a
dumpy little guy who looks like a salesman approaches Buffy’s
house, and a Caribbean
girl has stowed away aboard a plane. The salesman guy really is a
salesman, or
at least that’s the front he uses to get into people’s
houses. Once he gets in,
it turns out he’s sort of comprised of millions of worms. Gross.
Still, better
than snakes. I could maybe handle being hunted by a worm guy, but if it
was a
snake guy coming after me I’d probably just pack my things and
head to Mexico.
I hate snakes. (I’m like Indiana Jones that way.) Anyway, Worm
Guy camps out in
the house next door to Buffy’s, instead of camping out in
Buffy’s house while she
isn’t there, which maybe would’ve made more sense. But
Joyce is out of town and
maybe Worm Guy needs someone to let him in? Even though he
could’ve just turned
into worms and crawled under the door? Actually the reason he decided
to camp
out in the house next door to Buffy’s was so the writers could
hint at him
killing Buffy's neighbor horribly. He could’ve just entered
Buffy’s house, turned into a
bunch of worms, hid under her bed and then waited until she came home
and went
to sleep. Scratch one Slayer, I would think. But, no. He camps out next
door
and sort of just smirks and looks evil while the mean-looking redneck
guy finds Buffy
and Angel at the skating rink and attacks. He tosses Angel around
because Angel
still doesn’t have his own show yet, but luckily Buffy is there
to leap up and slit his
throat with her ice skates. Nice move! Really, I was impressed, not
just
because it was fun to watch but because it shows once again how
resourceful
Buffy is. Ah, but what about the third
new arrival? The Caribbean girl from the plane? What’s she up to? Well, she’s
been following Buffy apparently and she arrives at the rink just in time to see
Buffy and Angel kiss. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except for the fact that she’s
actually not an assassin but Kendra the Vampire Slayer, and when she sees Buffy
and Angel kissing, Angel’s face is still in vamp mode.
And once again, we have entered contrivance land. I know I
must sound like a broken record with this stuff but it really does seem to me
at times that the writers simply don’t care how sloppy their work is, and
frankly as a viewer I find that insulting. The contrivance is that Angel’s face
went into vamp mode when he attacked the Taraka guy but then Angel kept it in
vamp mode afterwards even though we all know he has the ability to change it
back once he’s calmed down. He and Buffy share a tender moment--a nicely
written one, too, other than the fact that its reason for existing is
nonsensical--in which Angel doesn’t want her to see his vampire face but Buffy
turns him toward her and kisses him, not at all disgusted by what she sees. The
writers wanted Kendra to see Buffy kissing a vampire and they didn’t much care
how they pulled it off. Par for the course. So on the one hand: nicely written
scene, nicely acted by Gellar and Boreanaz. On the other hand: the usual
disdain for story logic that I’ve come to expect from these writers. For all
the Buffy fans out there who keep on proclaiming on message boards that Buffy
is the greatest show in the history of television? No. It really isn’t. I’m a
fan of this show, obviously, but I’m a fan of the characters (and especially,
I’m a fan of many of the actors) more than I’m a fan of the actual plots these
characters found themselves in, and if a TV show is really going to contend for
best ever, or even be a serious part of the discussion, then it needs to have
some discipline and consistency in its writing. The writers can’t willfully cut
corners because it’s more convenient for them. The Sopranos, The Shield, The
West Wing: these shows deserve to be part of the “best ever” discussion. Buffy
doesn’t. And it’s too bad, because if the writers had knuckled down and tried
harder, maybe it could have been. I know some of you are probably thinking,
“The Buffy/Angel scene you just described was wonderful and I can’t believe
you’re getting hung up on Angel staying in vamp face, it’s just obsessing over
unnecessary details. All that really matters is that the scene was a great
character moment for Buffy and Angel.” And that’s what the writers say to
themselves too, whenever they cut these corners; in fact Whedon himself said it
in an interview after the series finale when he was questioned about the
ridiculous plot hole of the uber-vamps, who were so powerful in the middle of
season seven that one of them nearly beat Buffy to death, suddenly becoming so
weak that hundreds, probably thousands, of them could be dispatched by thirty
Slayers (not to mention, for God’s sake, Xander and Anya and Giles.) “I was
more interested in showing the empowerment than I was in the continuity,”
Whedon said. Well you know what, Mr. Whedon? I don’t want half a story, I want
the empowerment and the continuity and if you can’t provide both then you
didn’t do your job as a writer. If this scene with Angel remaining in vamp face
long enough for Kendra to conveniently see him was a rare occurrence I would’ve
let it slide, but it’s not rare at all, in fact it’s typical. Cutting corners
isn’t something that just some Buffy writers do: it’s a philosophy of convenience,
and, frankly, laziness, that comes from the top down, from Whedon himself.
One thing I really did like about this episode--yes, there
were things I liked--was Buffy’s reaction upon hearing about the Order of
Taraka: specifically, the part about how they never stop once they get an assignment.
Once they are hired to eliminate someone they keep on sending people until the
job is done. Angel recognizes the assassin at the skating rink by the ring he
wears and tells Buffy she needs to get someplace safe and hunker down, and
Giles tells her the same thing. Because these assassins are not ever going to
stop coming. (I don’t remember exactly how they were convinced to stop in part
two; if it turns out that they just sort of stop with no explanation--a sloppy shortcut
I wouldn’t put past these writers at all--I’m going to throw something at the TV.) Buffy
is being hunted and she feels it. She’s limping around after her fight at the
rink--she dispatched the assassin, but he was tough--and she has nowhere to go,
nowhere she can feel safe. Her mother isn’t even in town right now to comfort
her. (And, oh yes, Xander is making stupid jokes: when Giles inspects the ring
and informs the gang in the library that it’s only worn by members of the Order
of Taraka and that they’re a society of assassins dating back to King Solomon,
Xander, whom I often want to strangle, replies, “And didn't they beat the Elks
this year in the Sunnydale adult bowling league championships?” These are
assassins who are trying to kill Buffy, mind you. “Their credo is to sow
discord and kill the unwary,” Giles adds, ignoring Xander as best he can just
like I am. “Bowling is a vicious game,” Xander snarks. Giles tells him to shut
the fuck up and leave if he can’t do anything more than sit there being an ass
while the rest of them are working on saving Buffy’s skin--okay, fine, he tells
Xander “that’s enough”, but at least he says it in a pissy way and causes
Xander some much-needed embarrassment.) Buffy takes off and wanders around in a
sort of adrenaline haze, still limping, sick with fear, and practically
climbing out of her skin because she knows that anyone she sees might be an
assassin. She nearly takes Oz’s head off at school for looking at her funny.
Like her fated encounter with the Master at the end of season one, this
situation has Buffy feeling trapped, and Sarah Michelle Gellar conveys it
wonderfully. Like I said before: I’m in this for the actors (but not Xander, or
Nicholas Brendon) and on that level the show was consistently rewarding. After
wandering for awhile, Buffy stops in front of her house but doesn’t go
in...even in her own home, she can’t feel safe. Finally she wanders to Angel’s
place--not his mansion, he doesn’t have that yet, but he has a faboo little pad
down there in the electrical tunnels. Angel isn’t home, and Buffy takes a
moment to look around at the little apartment. It’s a silent scene. She’s
alone, and there’s no one to talk to, no quips to make. She loves Angel, but
he’s lived centuries; she wants to know him better. Finally, tired, hurt, exhausted,
she curls up in his unmade bed, and goes to sleep. These are the kinds of
moments this show excelled at, and they’re the kind of moments that kept me
coming back.
And then here comes that mysterious Caribbean girl: as Angel
is pushing Willy the bartender around looking for information and also looking for all the world like the
Angel we’re going to get when he starts his own series, Kendra sneaks in, takes
him by surprise, fights him to a standstill, and locks him in a cage in Willy’s
storage room. (I will ignore the fact that the cage is flimsy and that the
padlock is the chintziest-looking thing ever; it’s a low-budget show and I
think I read somewhere that the producers couldn’t find a better lock in time
to shoot the scene. This show never did have time or money.) Angel is caged, and
Kendra is looking for Buffy. And it gets worse: Xander and Cordelia are looking
for Buffy too, at Giles’ behest, because no one can find her; they manage to
get into Buffy’s house through the window, and then Cordy opens the door for
our second assassin, Worm Guy, who entices her with his free cosmetics shtick.
And Spike’s nerd vamp lackey has finally deciphered the Du Lac book, so Spike
now knows how to cure Drusilla. “The key to your cure, ducks!” Spike exclaims with
a smile. “The missing bloody link! It was--” But Drusilla finishes his thought
for him. “Right in front of us,” she whispers, as she looks down at one of her
tarot cards, this one illustrated with a painting of a fallen angel. (She’s
been looking at her tarot cards for the entire episode and all the cards she’s
looked at are cards whose illustrations perfectly fit whatever she happens to
be thinking about, but unfortunately none of them actually exists in a real
tarot deck. But she’s Drusilla--maybe she has magic cards. And they do look
nifty, and Dru looks nifty looking at them. See? I’m not that much of a
tight-ass.)
Finally, the shocker: Kendra takes Buffy by surprise at
Angel’s apartment, attacking her while she sleeps and trying to kill her, and
in the middle of the fight she reveals who she really is: the next Slayer. I
really must point out that Bianca Lawson does a very good job of looking evil;
she has a wonderful little self-satisfied smirk. And I do recall that I was
completely fooled and I thought she was one of the Order of Taraka’s assassins
the first time I saw this episode, not only because she attacked Angel and then
actually tried to kill Buffy in this scene (which I don’t have any qualms with,
by the way--sure, Kendra is supposed to be one of the good guys, but as far as
Kendra is concerned, Buffy is a Slayer who consorts with vampires and who knows
what kind of evil she might be up to) but also because Bianca Lawson plays it
so well.
If only she wasn’t saddled with having to use that accent...
To be continued! But will it be continued satisfactorily?
Will I get empowerment and continuity? Will Xander shut the hell up? (No.) We’ll
see...
Reading over this review, I’m realizing that it’s not really
about this episode. Instead it has turned out to be about where I am as a fan
of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This episode has sort of crystallized my current
feelings about Buffy for
me, because it’s a pretty good
episode with some nice moments but I had a hard time focusing on
anything but
the problems. And really, there weren’t very many problems at
all. But the few
there were are the same problems it seems every episode has: the
hackneyed contrivance built into the premise of the show itself, the
laziness on the part of the writers as they cut any corner to get to
where they
want to be, and also one major character, Xander, who simply annoys the
hell
out of me now. (And it isn’t just Xander, it’s Nicholas
Brendon himself.
Nothing against the man personally but I just don’t like watching
him. Some
of that is the character as written but some of it is Brendon’s
portrayal: I
simply find him grating. While it might have been interesting to see a
different Giles as I mentioned in the previous review, I definitely without a
doubt wish someone else had been cast to play Xander.) When I decided to write
these reviews it had been a good while since I had watched any of the episodes
and I had very pleasant memories of them. But now that I’m rewatching them in
order with a critical eye, now that I’m writing my own versions of these
characters and their intertwining stories in my own fanfiction, I’m finding that
the bloom has gone off the rose to a degree. An episode like this, which I
should have solidly enjoyed, just sort of alternately laid there and annoyed
me, and that’s shocked me, frankly. It has me tempted to stop reviewing because
if it’s all going to be like this--if I know this show so well now, if I’m so
invested in my own alternate mythology through my fanfiction that I can’t help
but see the flaws in the original work every time I try to watch--well, that
sounds like a drag. Watching these early episodes now, watching this story
unfold in these still early days, I can’t really feel satisfied because I know
how the story ends, and it ends badly. Season seven is like a weight dragging me down as I’m trying to stay above water
here in season two.
But I’m going to soldier on. There are certainly flaws, and
some significant ones too, but it’s the characters and the actors who keep me
coming back and Buffy, Willow, Angel, Spike and Dru are a barrel of angsty fun right now, Oz
has just arrived, and Faith is on the way. And then it gets even better with Tara.
Xander’s the rotten apple for me, but he can’t spoil the whole bunch. And the
writing could be sloppy a lot of the time but they got the emotions right at
least: I feel Buffy’s pain every step of the way. So I’ll be seeing you all for
part two of “What’s My Line”, and if there’s any justice in this world the
writers will actually explain why the Order of Taraka stops trying to hunt
Buffy. Maybe Spike never bothered paying them. Works for me.
