Buffy Babbling

[thebratqueen]

Most everybody has said what I would say about last night's ep. Personally I thought it was okay. As in "this was an episode". It neither sucked, nor soared. It was merely there.

The director, though, needs to be shot. Everybody had a flat line reading last night and when you've got everybody pulling in a bad performance like that your fault lies with the director.

Plus, who wants to go in with me on chipping in five bucks to help out the F/X department? Because apparently they need it.

The ubervamp was ridiculous. WTF was that overly hammy acting about? (See above re: bad director). Also at one point I swear he started to go in the wrong direction then corrected himself off camera.

The plot had holes you could drive a mack truck through (of many: what was Buffy going to do if the ubervamp managed to kill one of the SiTs while doing this overly elaborate setup for a final smackdown? does Buffy maybe need a refresher course on the evil overlord list?) but I'm fine for ignoring them as part and parcel of "This ep needed to show a few points of exposition and we had some action around that" So there we are.

And, natch, many of the plot holes can be blamed on Fury's newfound love of ignoring all common sense so that he can get a scene he thinks has payoff. I've learned to go with the flow or else get gray hairs.

My feelings for Kennedy can be summed up with: "Kay". As mpoetess said they're trying so hard to force us to like her that automatically I don't. But on top of that you've got the fact that she has no personality. She's this close to being a Mary Sue. The only thing that keeps her from tripping the scale is that none of her abilities have been that good. But, honestly, have we seen her fail at a task yet? She's relentlessly average. I'd like some peaks and valleys please. Instead she's nothing but "Look! Look at how non-offensive she is!!" To which I say "Yes, but also dull."

Word to whoever pointed out that Xander should've smacked down the SiTs by pointing out that he's got no special skills and he's been fighting the big bads for years.

But, still, all in all it was a fine ep for a January.

Also

I was reading the shooting script for Bring on the Night and boy was that amusing in light of the whole "Is he or isn't he dead?" thing. Early on in the script is a big, huge, don't you dare ignore it stage direction that Giles may touch nothing - NOTHING do you hear me???

Except later on we get not one but two stage directions about Giles handing out weapons to the SiTs. Um - whoops!

Now BotN was written by Marti and Doug P, so obviously one of them wrote the first stage direction and the other one the second set, but still - miss an all staff meeting, guys? Didn't even think to scoot some emails back and forth?

I just find the whole thing interesting in terms of how the whole Giles not touching anything thing was either so last minute or so irrelevant that whoever thought of it didn't think to let the other writer know about it.

My guess on who thought of it? Marti. But we shall see.

Finally - 24 totally rocked last night. KICK ASS episode. Squee!!!