[buffy@pylduck.com]

[9:43:59 AM]

During the Buffy hiatus, Joss Whedon and [Dark Horse Comics] have been wise enough to give us [Fray]. Not happy that the WB network has taken down the Buffy web site. At least there's always the incomparable, encylopedic [Buffy Guide].

o0o

[2:12:02 PM]

Buffy:

I don't understand. I don't know how to live in this world . . . if these are the choices . . . if everything just gets stripped away. I don't see the point.

. . .

Tell Giles . . . tell Giles I figured it out and I'm okay. And give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now. You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me.

It seems so sappy when you're not watching it (and maybe even when). But these questions, these feelings about life and living, are definitely ones that I find myself struggling with all the time. Because sometimes things seem so pointless, attempts to shore up meaning in one's life futile. Maybe that's why I like the fantastic world of Buffy so much -- things have meaning. Things have purpose. Things are prophesied. And yet, they're not. And Buffy is also very aware of this paradox between a world in which The Powers That Be exist (and control) and one in which we can determine what happens. It's never a question completely of one or the other, of fatalism or free will.

But it always returns, always has, to the central existential quandry: why live? What's the purpose? Buffy's story has always been interesting in that respect because she lives for many reasons (as we all should), always trying to reconcile these sometimes (or always) contradictory modes of being and acting. And she has been successful in negotiating the push and pull of events around her. But always there must be something more than the mere need to survive. Saving the world from apocalypses is great. But why bother if the world is a "sorry world" (in Giles's words)? Is it simply avoidance of pain and suffering (that collapsed dimensional barriers inevitably threaten)? Or is there something we actually invest in life?

I'm not sure Buffy has exactly answered this question definitively, nor that it suggests there is such an answer. But Buffy's injunction to her sister, to live bravely, is something powerful resisting the spiralling into nothingness of a purpose-less world.

I think the next season and the future of Buffy will take a turn towards what it means to create a life. In the past, it's been about saving lives, averting the apocalypse time and again. But in all the hullabaloo, Buffy has repeatedly seen her attempts at creating a life for herself wrenched from her hands. Everything is stripped away from her. And in the end, she sees her role as The Slayer, her one true gift to the world and her friends, as simply death. It is the constant deferral of The End for others, even at the cost of her own living and her own life. But this all still leaves unanswered the much more difficult task of living. Of what it means to be brave and to make a life that counts. How do you decide the criteria? How do you make things matter?

I think Joss has suggested that at the center of meaning is an understanding of desire. Desire for others. Desire for happiness. Desire for contact. Desire for fulfillment. Desire for going on. And how we characterize this desire, how we negotiate it in relation to other desires (our own and others') is the demand of life.

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[10:31:34 AM]

R.I.P. I need to watch the season finale again. So much in it. I should've seen the ending coming, and I guess I did in a way. But it did work for me. It made sense. It was painful.

I guess in a way Buffy does defeat Glory not by beating her up (though there was the extended fight sequence on the crane-thing), but
by doing something different. Death is her gift, but not slaying. She takes action, but in some ways it's action antithetical to what she usually does. She sacrifices herself. It's the whole idea of the ultimate sacrifice of love. I'm always amazed at how Joss can take very conventional, even trite, stories and make them immediate and viscerally appealing.

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[11:56:36 AM]

Ah, so they finally explain why Dawn didn't say anything about Ben being Glory. That's a nice little detail, the separation of the two beings accompanied by forced forgetting by humans who would see evidence of their unity. I like this sense of things breaking down, the barriers between memories, identities, collapsing. Emotions, feelings, flooding Glory's otherwise ruthless and unfeeling actions. One of the better scenes this season, I think, when Ben and Glory had their argument in the alley with Dawn watching in confusion and fear.

I'm intrigued by what Willow's become, what she is capable of now. She is fully telekinetic now, able to throw Spike and Xander apart. Before, she could barely lift a pencil. How things change. But as we keep hearing, powerful magics never come without powerful consequences. I'm excited to see what stories we will see with Willow in the next season, how she will cope with these increasingly greater transgressions against the order of things.

I like, too, how Willow took charge in the episode. Shows how much she has come into a sense of herself as an actor rather than merely a follower.

I even liked Anya this episode, the "good luck" bit -- although her coming into a sense of humanness has been largely a comic-relief endeavor, there are moments that slip through (like this, and when she cried about Joyce's passing) that reveal the depths of what meaning is, what life is.

And Glory's guilt, her questioning of what good life is with all its pain and suffering. Though a bit hokey and trite, still strikes a chord with me. Because sometimes it does seem easier just to be carefree, to trample over things and people in that pursuit of pure pleasure, power, fun. But always the check, the ties to affect, to consideration, to wanting to be a part of others' lives.

I'm not sure I understand the whole "your gift is death" thing for Buffy, though. It seems a little too simplistic for the crisis of Buffy's life to be realizing that Dawn needs to be killed to save the world(s) from dimensional collapse. But I'm equally sure that Dawn will survive as her human self. So how will Buffy stop Glory? Will we see a move entirely away from physical combat and to some sort of mental / emotional showdown in stopping Glory? That would be quite an interesting twist to Buffy as Slayer. Maybe Glory will go the way of reclaimed Faith? (And when is Faith showing up again, anyways?)

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[9:33:07 PM]

Not sure why this past week's Buffy was slightly disappointing. I did like Willow's wicca power. Poor Tara is still loco. Spike was wonderful. Burning hand, oh it's okay it's not even smoking anymore. Grabbing the sword. He's better than Angel was in the first two seasons of Buffy. Weird how I love that kind of self-sacrificing, hopelessly in unrequited love kind of character. Hmmm . . . .

I guess we know more about Ben/Glory now. Ben is human. His body got taken over by / inhabited Glory. She manages to manifest through him every once in awhile. Why does she turn back? Because she doesn't feed off a mind quickly enough? Fun whenever Glory turns into Ben. Seeing Ben in those skimpy dresses. Hee hee.

Dawn is awesome as usual. So much conflict in her mind. So wonderfully played by the actor.

Poor Giles. Stabbed by the jousting spear. It was a strange episode, I suppose, because all the things that could go wrong in every situation did. There was that sense of inevitability, but it didn't feel quite organic enough. Maybe because Buffy, Dawn, and the Scooby gang jumped from situation to completely novel situation so quickly that the writers didn't have time to build the inevitability, the tension and conflict. Two more episodes this season. Wow. Somehow the big evil of the season (Glory) doesn't seem as daunting. Even with the whole Key thing. If we had a sense of how the Key could cause really HELL, maybe it would be more tense. The Key just remained so vague for the whole season. Sure, the "unknown" can be quite a freaky thing. But it wasn't built up enough to signal big BAD.

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[4:21:26 PM]

Watching Buffy makes me happy. Especially when [other stuff] in the world sucks. And even when Tara gets brain-drained by Glory, I can't help but enjoy the show.

Poor Tara. I was so very sad when Glory stuck her hands into Tara's head. Tara, the good witch; the strong, centered person; Willow's lover. But we all knew Glory would get to at least one of the Scooby Gang sooner or later (Spike was just an appetizer). Though Willow's vengeance attack on Glory was, in my mind, a bit out of character (though I suppose it was to show just how much Tara matters to her -- that she would do something so unlike herself), I loved her resoluteness, the marshalling of powers beyond her ability to control or invoke without dire consequences (and there will be consequences, no doubt).

I'm dying to find out what the deal is with Glory/Ben. Are they sister/brother? The same kind of god? Where do they come from? Why are they stuck in the same body? Who controls whom? Can Ben take over Glory's body like she seems to do with his?

o0o

[11:42:04 PM]

Spike was good in this week's episode. If only for the helplessness of his unrequited love. But the desert scene with Buffy and the guide was rather flat. The guide's words stereotypically enigmatic without any real depth. Although, being told that she is love was interesting for Buffy. That whole "gift is death" thing seems like such a contrived oracle-like misleading prophecy thing. Hmmmm....

Oh, and the Buffy robot was I guess amusing a little. Though the construction of these robot girlfriends that satisfy a guy's needs entirely and live entirely for that guy is strange to me. I mean, the seeming obsession with this idea on the part of the writers puzzles me. It would seem that there could be something more interestingly done with the concept of man creating a most obedient and pleasing woman. But that very idea remains uninterrogated. It's just simply assumed to be "gross" and wacky. But then why are the writers insistent on it as a fantasy for (some of) the men of the show?

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[8:08:13 AM]

Glad Buffy is back. I'm not sure this recent turn to the dramatic-tragic mode has been entirely successful for the show. The last new episode was amazing not for the acting but for the way it was shot. This episode lacked the frustrating (in an appropriate way) camera angles and narrative fracturing. And the acting was kinda iffy. (Did we ever say SMG could act well?) Dawn was awesome, though. The actor who plays her plays the emotions to a T. Willow was just neurotic (with no good reason?). Tara was cool and level-headed in that way she always is -- I like that kind of inner strength.

I guess Dawn has maybe sacrificed her soul or something of paramount importance in her seeking advice from that old man? I just want the good people at Buffy to get on with the whole Key and Glory thing.

Still disgusted for the most part by Anya as a character. Though she in some ways stands in as a satire of "traditional values" (especially in terms of her fascination and "fondling" of money), she also reinforces them in this strange way in her more serious moments. The whole bit about sex and the creation of life -- total repro-narrativity (that term I picked up from discussion in class . . . I think it was Michael Warner in Fear of a Queer Planet?).

I did think it important for the Buffy people to address the difficulties of dealing with the death of a loved one, but will Buffy ever grow or change? She always reacts in the same way, and she is always ultimately WEAK in the sense of not being able to imagine her future with such losses (hmm...sounds familiar....). I loved how Tara explained dealing with loss to Dawn, though. The incorporation of the deceased into yourself. It's very a very Freudian understanding of grief (mourning vs. melancholia).

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[4:33:36 PM]

Sooooo good. There is such a marked difference between Joss Whedon-written episodes and others. I like a lot of the ideas of most episodes, but the episodes Whedon writes are just as a whole astonishing. His narrative style is so cool. I like the dialogue. I like the camera perspectives. I especially like the SILENCES. I was just telling Patrick the other day that my favorite episode ever is probably ["Hush"] from the fourth season. Now I think this latest episode is my favorite.

Joss Whedon does more than just tell a story. He really brings it to life by making each action, each word, each shot significant in the production of meaning for the narrative. I liked the memory/vision flashes that Buffy has at the beginning, the hopeful futures, the happy pasts. The sudden, violent return to the body. The EMS person telling Buffy that there's nothing left to do but call the coroner -- the top half of his face cut off. A distracting feeling about what Buffy's mind must be going through, unable to focus.

IT WAS SO GOOD!!

I liked Dawn's art class. The juxtaposition of her successful engagement with the boy and the tragedy of finding out about her mother's death. And the negative space idea -- so completely fitting and yet subtly inflecting the narrative to focus our attention on all that is not said, all that we don't usually see because of all the other stuff we do see. Anya's breakdown was maybe the most touching scene of the episode. The questioning of what death means. Is it absence? What does it mean that Joyce will never drink fruit punch again? And the ultimate realization on the part of the gang that there is perhaps no greater purpose to life that would save us from the emptiness of death (or was that in Angel?).

In any case, I loved it!

The awkwardness of providing sympathy, the sadness of everyone, the need to be supportive of Buffy and Dawn, yet feeling so weak yourself. The need to get things "right" -- Willow's obessesion with what to wear, Anya's utter loss as to what she/they are supposed to do in this situation. What are the rules? How does one cope with death?

The first scence with Dawn crying in the bathroom -- so intriguing and not at all gratuitous. Leading the viewer to think she has just heard about Joyce's death when in fact she's crying over what another girl has said about her cutting herself (the pain, realness). The sudden shift from pedestrian to tragic, life to death.

The missing soundtrack, little to no background music that swells in sympathetic pain or sadness. Nothing to run that interference between you and the actors' projected emotions. A strange closeness.

And still, at times the dialogue reminded me so much of theatrical (live theater) dialogue, a quality I can't figure out but is distinct from usual TV dialogue or even movie dialogue and especially conversational dialogue as I experience it in my life.

I'm going to watch the episode again tonight after I do some work and have dinner. Yup. :)

o0o

[8:46:23 PM]

Yup yup yup. It is very interesting how the Buffy episode addressed this concept of a perfect girlfriend (for a man) as one who not only serves sexually, but pleases in all other aspects of the man's life and interests AS AN ENLIGHTENED VIEW OF RELATIONSHIPS. I think it points out that when people think the only problem between the sexes is sex, they're missing the whole point of feminist critique of the removal of women's agency in most social interactions.

The ending was really sad because the robot never really understood that her creator didn't love her. That whole bit about waiting as a test of her love was eerie. I'm also intrigued by this whole concept of manufacturing the perfect girlfriend. Didn't Frankenstein's monster want Dr. F to make him a mate? I guess that was a different situation, but there are some important similarities. For both, the manufacturing of a mate automatically meant the total devotion of that mate to HIM. And in this episode, that robot was completely devoted. But the problem became the guy's loss of interest in her. That's something I have difficulty with, actually. Why is it "common sense" that a man will lose interest in his partner once he has that partner's love and devotion? It plays into that idea of a male instinct to roam free and be promiscuous whereas female instinct is to settle down, have kids, etc. Ick. But it's really strange how infrequently people really question this idea of men's losing interest in things they HAVE (in that ownership way). Is it related to that whole idea of always needing to acquire, to expand, in a capitalistic sense?

And the robot's reaction to the guy's other girlfriend....why the need to silence her? Given the parameters of her programming to love and serve the guy completely, why couldn't she assimilate the idea of another woman being his girlfriend (too)? Wouldn't it be within this sort of "guy fantasy" to have multiple women serve him?

So Angel. Yeah, I didn't really buy the effects of the episode. I thought it was unbelievable that Wolfram & Hart convinced Angel that hell is within because that's something Angel knows first-hand (HEY -- that's something that's in Milton's Paradise Lost! we just read Book 1 of the poem and in it Satan goes on about how hell is in the mind, etc. -- and all along Joss has made efforts to draw that connection between Satan and Angel as fallen angels). I also don't think that Angel really turns into Angelus. I also wonder what Darla wanted with the glove and ring. She seemed to have been at the raising of the Senior Partner somewhat surreptitiously. It seemed that Lindsey snuck her in. So yeah....what's up with that? Unfortunately, while the episode did raise some possibly interesting directions for the show, it just wasn't done well so I'm not even interested so much in speculating about what will happen. I am somewhat eager to see the next episode, though.

Oh, and the idea of a parallel universe. Yeah, that seems possible. It's definitely stupid for Angel to think that the world's the same just because it looks the same. But why are we to believe that Angel has lost all faith in battling the forces of darkness just because he finally seems to understand that evil is not just literal demons? Wasn't that the entire thrust of the series, to understand evil as something that we all deal with in our lives, not just superheroes like Angel and Buffy?

Yeah, stuff.

o0o

[8:25:59 PM]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about Angel. Of course they want us to think that Angel might've turned Angelus, but I don't think that they have the guts to do that. All I can say is, PARALLEL UNIVERSE! He sleeps with Darla in HELL (Home Office)! It's not the "real" world. So even if he becomes Angelus there, he's not in the real world. The question is, why does Darla want the glove and perhaps ring? I'm so glad that Angel is finally becoming callous, vengeful, unlike his old wholesome, superhero, moraler than thou , knightly self.

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[8:09:15 PM]

I liked the episode pretty ok, unlike the last Valentine one. I've always loved the idea of Spike obssessing with Buffy - actually, any slayer. But I felt like the Valentine episode made his complex obssession comical and light. He went from crazy self-destructive Romantic to goofy high school loser. He's way too sophisticated for that! Luckily, in this new episode, he seems to have recovered to his bad old self. Maybe I'm also unfairly prejudiced against proclamations of the L-word. But my take on Spike's "love" is that it's OBSESSION more than love, whatever that may be. He's always been obssessed with killing Slayers. He talks about dancing with them in that episode when Spike shows the Slayer the idea of being drawn to destruction/death - I guess, to use the Freudian term, the death drive. So when he shows Buffy that Slayers eventually are seduced by death, he really is also talking about himself. And now that he has a chip in his head, his libidnal energy transmutates from desire to kill to desire to ravish, same difference, really.

But yes, about the most recent episode: It was pretty good in how it was executed and lots of little things were worked in, but the major narrative was just ok (seems like something I've heard of before). What I do like about the allegorical plot of the woman defined by her man, someone who exists solely to serve and please him, is that it is a model to hold others, esp. Buffy up to. I remember being on the Buffy.com bulletin board when this hot discussion went on and on about Buffy's supposed empowered feminism and yet her need to be with a man at all time. It's something I'm glad they are addressing. I like esp how Warren really felt like he created a girl-friend, not just a sex-bot - and it's all about her sharing his interests, supporting him, etc. I love how some men think that they are so enlightened when they are sooooo obviously not.

So what is the Ben/Gloria entity? I love Ben in strapless red satin dress. Are they two gods inhabiting the same human body?

I can't believe they are offing Joyce! Tear jerkers coming our way... So this is what Joss means when he talks about the Scooby gang "making-up" this season after the Yoko Factor, eh?

o0o

[5:14:18 PM]

(Also posted at [BuffyLog].)

The cool thing about Spike is that he is full of contradictions. His transformation via the chip in his head is exactly what makes his infatuation with Buffy now so funny and even appropriate. Yes, WQ, everything you say about what Spike is is true, but that's exactly why the fact that he is no longer able to kill at whim, to terrorize humans and stalk Slayers, is reason enough to re-evaluate who he is. Spike's defining purposes in life were taken away from him by the Initiative. How does he reinvent himself? And I think Joss et al have done a marvelous job in imagining how Spike adapts. I think it's irrelevant to argue that to keep James Marsters around, we have to keep Spike in Sunnydale as a neutered vampire. There are plenty of other ways to keep Marsters in the show. Spike doesn't even have to be around. The producers could just as easily have taken the chip out of his brain to re-animate him as a threat to the Slayer (and she definitely wouldn't just be able to snap her fingers and stake him). They could've brought in a demon who has taken on the form of a departed Spike. Plenty of opportunities. But I am glad they have come up with this delicious story-line about Spike in love with Buffy.

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[5:02:38 PM]

Oh Buffy. I think Spike is so cool. Torturing him with unrequited love for the Slayer is even more "poetic" (as Giles once said of Angel's crush on Buffy) than the mere fact of a vampire being in love with the Slayer. And I'm still fascinated by the show's conception of souls and consciences and the "chip" in Spike's brain as some sort of amalgamation of the two.

Finally Dru comes back to Buffy! The situation was perfect, although the mechanics of it all were maybe a little implausible (I'm sure Drusilla would've been able to kill tied-up Buffy). It's also interesting to see her reaction to Spike's betrayal. She knew for a long time that Spike was strangely attracted to Buffy. But it still didn't make the revelation any easier.

How is Spike going to deal with this newest blow to his attempt to earn Buffy's love? I think it's hilarious that his "morals" are still vampire-based -- he thinks that if he kills Dru for Buffy, B will love him. Ah, the pathetic value of his thinking.

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[7:56:33 AM]

Hmm....this is interesting. Actually some stuff we talked about in class is like this idea of hurting oneself to feel real. (Pinch me, I think I'm dreaming...) There's a weird way in which pain is thought of as a circuit breaker for dreaming / imagination / unconsciousness. (Wittgenstein actually has a whole bit on pain. I'm still not entirely sure what he's saying. But you should look at Philosophical Investigations.) Language can be artificial, etc., but pain somehow is beyond linguistic knowledge, something outside of conceptual perception? What do you think?

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[9:33:49 AM]

If it feels real, then it is real. Almost phenomenologist, but instead of truth being what your senses tell you, it's memories, memories of emotions. Reminds me of people who have temporal lobe seizures...and of course, Blade Runner. What is really interesting to me about Dawn is this feeling (knowledge) that she is not real, that she is empty, that she is not Dawn. A lot of people do feel that way about themselves and deal with it by cutting themselves to feel like they are real, which Dawn does.

Are Ben and Glory different sides of the same being? Or are they brother and sister gods who inhabit the same human body to get to this dimension? They certainly don't have the same consciousness. Does Ben need to eat brains too?

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[7:50:00 PM]

Some quick thoughts:

Wish they had done more with Buffy's birthday in this episode. They used to do really interesting things with the idea of marking time, age, etc. The parallel presentation of birthday / party in the second season (with Drusilla) also made for some thought-provoking connections between Buffy and Dru.

Dawn is superb. She plays the little sister to a T. Having her world pulled out from under her -- the revelation of her current existence as new and epiphenomenal -- only made her more intriguing. If she is just a key, this energy thing, what do her memories, feelings, etc. mean? The episode was a little heavy on the ooey-gooey side of family-bloodness, but I like the spirit of what Buffy and Joyce were trying to communicate to Dawn -- that whether or not she is "real," she is an important and cared-for entity in their lives.

Can't wait to see what they do with Buffy and Spike. Buffy is finally seeing that she has been using Spike as a whipping boy.

Glory-Ben: very interesting. Reminds me of Ranma 1/2, a cartoon in which the main character is a single body that alternates between male and female forms (change occurs when s/he comes in contact with water, I think). The split personality-like presentation of Glory and Ben is perfect. I had been wondering why we'd never seen Glory and Ben together, even though both knew they were in town.

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[7:48:23 AM]

Just found this really good site for [Angel].

o0o

[7:19:15 PM]

I watched Buffy a few days ago again. The council suits were really uptight and obnoxious. I guess that I wish that they hadn't been - that instead, this age-old institution with its accrution of knowledge, experience, etc. would be something parallel, analogous to the Slayer, the institution of the Slayer - something with more depth and mystery. Making the struggle between the Slayer and the council unfold the way that it did makes it just into that of a child struggling to get free from oppressive parents. And that's just not that interesting to me.

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[10:04:03 AM]

I really love thinking about the mind-body thing in Buffy. A few weeks ago at lunch some people I was eating with started talking about the many-Slayers thing. How does it work? There's something Romantic about the idea of The One Slayer in every generation. I think it means that there is this discrete life force / entity thing known as The Slayer that inhabits various human women in sequence. But then how did the doubling of Slayers happen? When Buffy died in the first season, did The Slayer spirit leave her (and go to Kendra)? What if Buffy has been The Slayer, but without The Slayer force?

That seems unlikely, but I guess we're to think that The Slayer force split somehow, or it perhaps draws on an infinite power. (Reminds me of the Phoenix force in the X-Men comics.) Anyways, if we think of the spirit having been split, it's still interesting to think about how the structure of the Watchers and Slayers relationship exists. It's clear that there are many Watchers out there. And to some extent, there are many Slayers-in-training, too. We found out from Kendra and Faith that they'd been Slayers-in-training for a long time. So does it mean that they are without the Slayer spirit until they are "called"? It's sort of assumed that they're weaker, not true Slayers, until they are called. But as Buffy has shown, being The Slayer is not so much about being a particular thing as it is about becoming.

Hmmm....

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