Here it is. Initially I’d had the goal of posting a detailed review for each of the 254 episodes, and I got as far as the middle of season three before losing the energy and focus, but not the OCD need to catalogue and compare. So even as I gave up the ghost on 254 blog entries, I continued to jot down impressions of episodes and rank them within seasons. My re-watch ended up taking over three years! This summer, I dug everything up, and several hundred index cards and a spread sheet later, I have the complete list.

I waffled on whether to start at the bottom of or the top, eventually settling on the former, mostly because I believe in the old adage of saving the best for last, though I hadn’t realized how negative my takes on the lower end wound up. In my heart, though, I love both series through and through and can find something of worth in every episode.

The spread sheet is embedded at the end of the list with episodes listed in alphabetical order. The 44 episode posts that I did a few years ago are linked at the bottom of each capsule review here.

Thanks to Mr. Lousy and Doris W. for introducing me to the Buffyverse!

#254: The Girl in Question (Angel 5.20)

written by Steven S. DeKnight and Drew Goddard

directed by David Greenwalt

Egregiously tone-deaf, sorely misplaced comedy episode that derails the building momentum toward the series finale. As everyone reels from the death of Fred and the impending apocalypse, Angel and Spike go on a goofball mission to Italy and match wits with a never-seen, never-before-mentioned nemesis. It’s a trip filled with one thudding joke after another, like a disastrous pilot for a sitcom spin-off. Worse yet, it’s a deflated goodbye to Buffy, shown only briefly by a body double and referenced by the unfunny, unwelcome Andrew. And worst of all, the flashbacks flop miserably, making our series farewell to Darla and Cordelia a footnote begging to be expunged from the show’s lore. All of this stands in jarring contrast to the B-story, a surprise visit from Fred’s parents and Illyria’s impromptu impersonation of the deceased. These potentially powerful, tragic scenes lose most of their impact from the inane Abbott (Angel) & Costello (Spike) bickering that they’re thoughtlessly sandwiched between. A mind-numbing misstep torpedoed into one of the Buffyverse’s greatest arcs.

#253: Inside Out (Angel 4.17)

written by Steven S. DeKnight

directed by Steven S. DeKnight

Season four accelerates its downhill slide with evil Cordy giving birth to Jasmine. The return of Darla as a benevolent spirit sent by The Powers That Be would almost be welcomed, but there’s very little recognizable in her, save for a single comment about the fear she inspired and sensed in all the people she’d murdered as a vampire. Unfortunately, even a sympathetic, maternal Darla can’t stave off the virgin sacrifice and the resultant hasty birth of Jasmine. Back at the hotel, Skip is interrogated under duress and reveals that nearly all the events of the series have been orchestrated to bring about the moment of Jasmine’s birth, which I find appallingly insulting as a viewer. Not only is this the absolute shittiest seasonal arc of the Buffyverse, we are now expected to accept that it has retroactively infected every plot point to date. It’s a fat fuck-you from the writers, who don’t seem to know yet what a morass they’ve created.

#252: Him (BtVS 7.6)

written by Drew Z. Greenberg

directed by Michael Gershman

A standalone waste of space. I suppose it’s the last shot at humor in the season before it descends into full-on grimness, but the recycled plot from Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (which receives a tip of the hat with a clip of Xander besieged by spellbound admirers) doesn’t add anything new to any characters or show any novel cleverness with an old story. And any episode centering on Dawn can be hard to get down, but when it’s as derivative, out of place, and boring as this one, it’s pretty rough going just to see it through to the end. They don’t even bother explaining the origin of the stupid letter jacket. If they wanted to go the route of cursed objects, they should have been studying Friday the 13th: The Series. They had this shit down pat.

#251: Tomorrow (Angel 3.22)

written by David Greenwalt

directed by David Greenwalt

It’s difficult for me to parse out how much I dislike this episode and how much I hate where it’s taking the series. For all sentimental purposes, it’s the end of the Cordelia character as she ascends to the heavens in one of the stupidest bits the series has ever brought forth. It’s not that I’m opposed to Cordy’s continued development toward benevolence and selflessness. I think her evolution from the starting point on BtVS to now has been one of the great character journeys, along with Willow and Wes, that the Buffyverse has pulled off, and moving her closer to an almost Mother Theresa-like state isn’t out of the question, but I mean the earthly Mother Theresa, not an actual saint floating around in the clouds. In addition to Cordelia’s departure, there’s more of Connor, collaborating with Justine to wreak vengeance on Angel that must involve mindreading so that Justine can inexplicably have her boat at Angel and Cordy’s rendezvous point. It’s lazy writing indicative of Whedon running too many series simultaneously. Even after Firefly flames out (and I’m sad about that), the damage ushered in by this finale will take an entire season to rectify.

#250: Benediction (Angel 3.21)

written by Tim Minear

directed by Tim Minear

On top of Connor continuing to establish himself as an petulant imposition to be suffered through, the aged version of Holtz (now resembling Rocky Dennis from Mask), who never achieved much merit as a character (as much a fault of the writing as the actor), hatches a suicide plan to frame Angel for his murder. A more powerful story might have been finding some solace in forgiveness, as his letter to Angel would suggest, but instead he sticks to his guns and enlists Justine to stab his neck. This is the same Justine who we last saw saving Angel and trapping Sahjhan (now there was a good villain!) in an urn, presumably after seeing the futility of an endless revenge plot. Yet now she’s inexplicably back on the same track, character development be damned, killing her former superior to turn Connor against his father. Oh, and Cordy’s warm and fuzzy white glowing power gets another go. It’s still ill defined and we won’t be subjected to it again, but it manages to soothe Connor after one of his annoying rages. Too bad she couldn’t put that in pill form and dose him every two hours, but instead of thinking up practical applications to her newfound glow, she’s mulling over her withering relationship with Groo, something I never enjoyed to begin with. But on the subject of relationships, I’m all for the one growing between Wesley and Lilah. Their scenes are the one bright spot in this growing mess of a story.

#249: All the Way (BtVS 6.6)

written by Steven S. DeKnight

directed by David Solomon

Dawn-centric and not as disappointing as I’d remembered, but still underwhelming, especially as a Halloween episode. The one undeniably good scene is when Dawn’s randy suitor turns out to be a vampire and kills the presumed threat, the creepy old man, in the kitchen, a startling reversal of (mis)fortune. After that surprise, it’s slow deflation till the finish. What’s more, I have a qualm with the established lore of the holiday: Aren’t vampires supposed to stay in on Halloween? There are a whole mess of them at the make-out point in the climactic showdown.

#248: Players (Angel 4.16)

written by Jeffrey Bell and Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain

directed by Michael Grossman

Gwen, in (thankfully) her final appearance, enlists Gunn under false pretenses to assist in a heist, letting him show off his strategizing mind, as opposed to the “muscle” he’s referred to as by Angel. Gunn’s tenuous place in the organization and the limits placed on him could be turned into an interesting episode, but this isn’t it. When Gunn asks why he is committed to this caper in the middle of an apocalypse, the writers seem to be winking at the audience, but instead of winking back, I’m wondering why they didn’t attempt to giving Gunn a better shot earlier in the season. In other news, evil Cordelia is exposed as the master behind The Beast, and her character enters its final, abysmal stage.

#247: Shiny Happy People (Angel 4.18)

written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

directed by Marita Grabiak

Whedon likes to toy a bit with us, introducing an incomprehensible element to his shows and then ask us to bear with him as it slowly plays out (cf: Dawn in BtVS). He does this on a smaller scale here, with everyone, human and demon alike, falling to their knees on first sight of Jasmine for no discernible reason. I guess it’s a cult allegory, where everyone lines up for duping except the occasional true seer, who ends up branded insane and dangerous. But Jasmine isn’t frightening, and if I want to see inexplicable adoration turn to terror, I can find a considerably scarier cult quite easily. Jasmine’s New Age message of love and communion doesn’t even get at the appeal or the power of a cult of personality, which I feel the weight of greatly in 2017.

#246: Touched (BtVS 7.20)

written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

directed by David Solomon

Four couplings followed by two battles. The couplings, or fucking, as is the case for three, are all preceded by tedious pillow talk. I supposed 15 years ago, the sex scene between Willow and Kennedy was groundbreaking, but now it seems unremarkable – both in the sense that same-sex sex has become more or less normalized and in the sense that it contains no real passion, a result of poor chemistry between the two performers and poor characterization for Kennedy, who never seems a suitable fit for Willow. I think my very tepid reaction to this ante-penultimate episode speaks to my impression of the season as a whole. I’m not feeling it.

#245: A New World (Angel 3.20)

written by Jeffrey Bell

directed by Tim Minear

Connor is the worst character in the Buffyverse. And I am including the Potentials. I honestly cannot comprehend how Whedon could initially conceive of a teenage line-up like the Scoobies, each one distinct and charming in some fashion, and then poop out Dawn and Connor in two successive years. They’re both terrible, but I’m giving the bottom-of-the-barrel award to Connor because one, did they learn nothing from Dawn, whose primary character trait is pouting, and two, because Connor will go on to fuck and fuck up Cordelia’s character. At least Dawn didn’t actually damage BtVS beyond her own irritating presence. While I think the episodes leading up to Connor’s (sort of) birth and his infancy are some of the best in the series, the teenaged version back from the hell dimension stinks from the get-go. As much as I like Vincent Kartheiser as Pete in Mad Men, he’s terrible here, endlessly peevish, looking sort of like a young, dirtied-down David Cassidy with none of the latter’s sexy charm. Connor’s introduction to this dimension, rumbling with drug dealers and befriending a doomed junkie, keep him from interacting with the regular cast too much, but he’ll soon enough be integrated into the main story, and for that, I am eternally resentful. On the meager plus side of this episode, Lilah has begun to ensnare Wes with a copy of Dante’s Inferno. Say this for her, she can be straight up when she’s negotiating.

#244: Happy Anniversary (Angel 2.13)

written by David Greenwalt

directed by Bill L. Norton

An awkward entry that serves as a placeholder during the schism between Angel and his associates. Lorne coaxes the champion into stopping something apocalyptic and then serves as a sounding board (the gay best friend cliché) to Angel, who confesses the trough he’s found himself in, which really we could have gauged without the amateur talk therapy. I had no investment in the physics–sex-freezing experiment, but my curiosity was certainly piqued by the drawing room murder mystery transpiring in the threadbare B-story. David Greenwalt had his money on the wrong horse in this episode. Imagine an episode completely devoted to a whodunit, complete with a wealthy, aristocratic family and a demon hitman! I suppose my real fantasy is for Angela Lansbury to walk on as Wesley’s sleuthing auntie from Maine, but I’ll have to file that Murder, She Wrote gem of an idea under future fan-fic.

#243: Unleashed (Angel 5.3)

written by Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain

directed by Marita Grabiak

An awful episode introducing werewolvery into the series with the least charismatic actress in the Buffyverse as the wolf in question; she’s like Patricia Arquette on too much Valium. But they make the most of her vulnerable blonde sexuality by chaining, stripping, and hosing her down before tying her up to be eaten alive. It’s quite an appeal to the horny fanboys, but the entire setup is unforgivably ludicrous. The only saving grace may be John Billingsley as the traitorous Wolfram & Hart scientist, though we have to bid him farewell in a stupidly contradictory conclusion: he’s set to be the next main course in the coming month’s werewolf feast… but then they announce the werewolf-eating society has been closed down for good. Worse yet, we’re more or less promised the blasé werewolf as a potential love interest for Angel. They’ve already bombed miserably with Kate and Gwen. The listless lycanthrope makes 0 for 3, leaving me to keep pining for the far superior blondness of Darla.

#242: Beer Bad (BtVS 4.5)

written by Tracey Forbes

directed by David Solomon

Not as atrocious as I found it on my first run but still far below standard. It doesn’t work as broad comedy or as class commentary, but it does offer a fair finale with the coffee shop fire after a savvy Willow rebuffs the slimy Parker Finn. Perhaps Beer Bad doesn’t deserve its notoriety, and at least Buffy’s regression to Neanderthalism gets capped in the conclusion. Imagine this as a multi-episode arc!

#241: Bachelor Party (Angel 1.7)

written by Tracey Stern

directed by David Straiton

A misfired attempt at comedy. Doyle’s bland ex-wife is instantly forgettable and the series feels like it’s in a holding pattern. I would argue for a better back story for the appealing Doyle, but since he’s on the verge of his exit, I’ll chalk this episode up to the series’ freshman awkwardness and look ahead.

#240: The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco (Angel 5.6)

written by Jeffrey Bell

directed by Jeffrey Bell

Last week’s Halloween episode was jokey enough; at this point, the season is veering dangerously into sitcom territory. I’m not against the Mexican-wrestler-as-demon-fighter premise in theory, but this one’s a bust. It brushes against the themes of living a life unrecognized by dominant culture as well as living into old age as a forgotten and unappreciated part of history, but does neither justice. The mask as metaphor in both cases comes closer to these ideas than the script ever does.

#239: Ground State (Angel 4.2)

written by Mere Smith

directed by Michael Grossman

A preposterous superhero-esque figure gets shoehorned into what will soon shape up as a very messy season. (Alexa Davalos as the electrified cat burglar will get a much better character and give a much better performance over a decade later in The Man in the High Castle.) Was this part of Whedon’s warm-up for The Avengers? It’s ill fitting not just in the season but in the tone of the series.

#238: Get It Done (BtVS 7.15)

written by Douglas Petrie

directed by Douglas Petrie

Another portal, this time to the creators of the Slayer line. The visit is a serious letdown, especially considering it borders on an origin story, something that Whedon has done in the past with panache time and again. In a season full of debate about power, Buffy denies herself another infusion of it, and instead is granted knowledge: a veritable army of Turok-Han über-vamps lies in her near future. What an opportunity for the series to show the genesis of the Slayer line, but it’s completely dismissed and sadly exchanged for Buffy’s petulance in the face of patriarchy. The original Slayer deserves better.

#237: Where the Wild Things Are (BtVS 4.18)

written by Tracey Forbes

directed by David Solomon

Was the late Maurice Sendak honored to have his most beloved work as the namesake of this awful episode about Riley and Buffy nearly frat-house-fucking each other to death after falling under the sway of the poltergeists of abused children? It’s actually not quite as bad as that synopsis suggests, but not a damn sight better either. On the plus side, Giles covers The Who.

#236: Killed by Death (BtVS 2.18)

written by Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali

directed by Deren Serafian

A potentially terrifying villain, der Kindestod, can’t make up for a very weak ending, poor performances from the regular cast, nearly pointless flashbacks, and some children in peril so irritating that I started rooting for the Freddy Krueger-ish scary monster. In the plus column, Buffy battles with Angelus and it’s the biggest beat-down she’s received so far. If we weren’t on high alert already, we are now.

full review

#235: Dead Man’s Party (BtVS 3.2)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by James Whitmore, Jr.

I discovered my personal list of worst BtVS episodes from my first viewing, and the very first episode in the series to make an appearance is Dead Man’s Party. However, I’m now calling that judgment into question. This is not a great episode by any means, but it does rescue the story from becoming all about Buffy brooding over Angel and wallowing in her guilt. Teenagers so often think that the world revolves around them, only to discover that it doesn’t – and that their choices have impacts on others that they might never have considered. Buffy, who’s already proven her personal strength with self-abnegation and acceptance of burdensome responsibility, still has more to learn about herself in relation to the lives of others. That she does so against the backdrop of a particularly ludicrous zombie story doesn’t ruin it for me, and perhaps the looniness of the zombie attack (I admit to enjoying the mayhem with Oz and Cordy emerging from the basement to defend themselves with ski poles) and the death mask possession of poor, ingratiating, highly dispatchable Pat comes as a tonal taste of what’s to come in s3, which will be far more playful and comical than s2. It will also be much tighter in terms of the seasonal story arc, which begins in earnest next week with the introduction of Faith. I think before making that (great!) leap forward, we needed to tie up the mess that Buffy left behind.

full review

#234: Lessons (BtVS 7.1)

written by Joss Whedon

directed by David Solomon

Surprisingly clunky season-seven opener written by Whedon. Buffy’s return to high school seems a bit contrived in order to keep the teenaged demographic interested, but it does bring the series full circle. Across the Atlantic, we find Willow in recovery, guided by Giles in the bucolic English countryside, which, along with Anya’s half-hearted demonic efforts, feels like the only real carryover from last season. A creepy encounter in the school basement allows for a greatest-hits medley of Big Bads as The First reveals itself to crazy Spike, which is a fun exercise and a strong way to open the final year of the series, though it introduces a serious problem: Can the season really succeed with an incorporeal villain?

#233: The House Always Wins (Angel 4.3)

written by David Fury

directed by Marita Grabiak

One of the sillier entries that never loses its road trip trappings, and even Angel’s Rat Pack reminiscences can’t save the script. I like Lorne’s reading ability far better when he’s using it to diagnose the underlying emotional state of the singer. Using it to tell futures reduces him to crystal-ball hokery and seems a bad fit for a character who could then presumably be using this power to bail Angel and company out of the numerous pitfalls they land in.

#232: Double or Nothing (Angel 3.18)

written by David H. Goodman

directed by David Grossman

Poor Gunn. He gets saddled with some of the series dumbest episodes. This one, complete with flashbacks, tells the story of how he mortgaged his soul in exchange for something unexplained years before. Spoiler alert: it’s his fucking truck. If we are supposed to imagine Gunn as the epitome of a street-smart survivalist, this torpedoes that character trait in one fell swoop. The episode conclusion is played for light laughs as the series attempts to steer its way out of the tragic mood following the Connor kidnapping, and I suppose it works to a degree, but the silliness doesn’t fit this point in the season. What’s more, Cordelia’s (and Groo’s, ugh) return mean she has to catch up on the turn of events, and when she visits Wesley in the hospital, her aura of empathy evaporates, which I find hard to swallow considering how much they’ve been pushing her selflessness with the visions this season. The episode is by turns too melodramatic (Gunn being cruel to Fred to save her soul), jokey (Angel’s card-table wagering and decapitating), and birdbrained (the soul/truck exchange).

#231: Storyteller (BtVS 7.16)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by Marita Grabiak

Andrew, for me, works best in small doses, and thankfully the episode strays from its original set-up: our resident nelly hostage creating his own story around the current arc with a video camera. Instead, we get more time at Sunnydale High, where the Hellmouth has begun exercising nefarious influence on the student body, including converting a few unlucky teenagers into new Bringers. Unfortunately, the creeping chaos at school gets the joke treatment, hitting its nadir when a student’s head actually explodes from test stress. It’s a low moment not just because it’s unfunny, but because the showrunners don’t seem in control of what is happening, neither in tone nor in narrative.

#230: Triangle (BtVS 5.11)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by Christopher Hibler

Another comedy entry that falls flat for me. In all honesty, I have never been that big a fan of Anya. In terms of unfiltered speech, I prefer the self-aware Cordelia to the Aspbergery ex-vengeance demon (though I suppose Anya grows on me a bit in season seven). This episode is too broadly acted by the entire cast, and the story does little to move the seasonal arc forward until the very end, when Dawn eavesdrops on a conversation to learn that she is not who she thinks she is. As far as Anya back stories go, this doesn’t hold a candle to s7’s Selfless.

#229: First Impressions (Angel 2.3)

written by Shawn Ryan

directed by James A. Contner

An episode primarily dedicated to bringing Gunn closer into the fold and secondarily to showing Darla infiltrating Angel’s mind, First Impressions plays with the notion of deceit and identity, from the main villain Deepak masquerading as human Jameel right down to an extra fleeing the chaos at a party, who turns out to be a vampire running for cover. (I wish they’d used Angel’s detection of vampires more often.) It’s also about the impressions that Gunn has of the associates and they have of him. A sizable chunk of the dialogue in this episode is wretched, but I appreciate how Gunn gets eased gradually into the group rather than parachuted in out of nowhere.

#228: Dead End (Angel 2.18)

written by David Greenwalt

directed by James A. Contner

For me, Lindsey was always an also-ran next to Lilah. While I enjoy their rivalry, which gives new meaning to the idea of cutthroat corporate competition, there was never any contest as to who was smarter – or funnier. Lindsey strikes me as more of a dumb, overaged surfer boy than a snaky attorney, which makes his very slight back story about rising from poverty to the upper echelons of Wolfram & Hart a bit of a wash. His own epiphany, hot on the heels of Angel’s, about benevolence – or at least neutrality – and purpose strikes me as hollow since he’s previously shown no sympathy or empathy, save for Darla, whom he condemns to a second soulless existence by arranging for Drusilla to sire her. (He’s not even good boyfriend material!) So when it dawns on him that Wolfram & Hart might be too evil for his skill set, I don’t buy it, but I’m also okay to see him make an exit. And I won’t be particularly surprised to see him back in s5.

#227: Expecting (Angel 1.12)

written by Howard Gordon

directed by David Semel

Cordelia’s first demonic pregnancy. That I have to use an ordinal number in that sentence points to a fixation the series has on impregnating Cordelia with demon spawn. It’s a weak episode, though I am squarely in favor of the friendly ghost Dennis crushing on Cordy. Note: Ken Marino as one of the nefarious suitors is seriously underused!

#226: Empty Places (BtVS 7.19)

written by Drew Z. Greenberg

directed by James A. Contner

In a season all about power, Buffy is stripped of hers, at least in terms of leadership. While she’s never held any formal title other than Slayer, her role as head of the Scoobies has always been assumed. Now, after the arrival of the Potentials, she’s become something of a general and a den mother, discovering resentment on both counts from her unruly subordinates. Losing the confidence of the Scoobies, plus the already alienated Giles, means she’s really on her own, save for the absent Spike. But then, we knew from s2’s finale, Becoming Part II, when Angel tried to completely isolate her and break her down mentally, she could always count on herself. I just wish this episode were a shadow of that one, since rather than vaulting to those heights of tension or even darkness, we’re in the throes of glumness, which doesn’t equate to good drama.

#225: Judgment (Angel 2.1)

written by David Greenwalt and Joss Whedon

directed by Michael Lange

The trial at the end of the episode is a bit nonsensical (Angel is jousting!), but the judgment here extends beyond the legal proceedings into the personal. Demons are much more a part of the regular Angel than BtVS, at least the non-vampire variety. Doyle and Lorne are part of the regular team of associates, unlike the all-human Scoobies (Angel and Spike never really counted, and Anya reverted back to humanity), just as the line between right and wrong – or friend and enemy – is more blurry in L.A. than in Sunnydale. Wesley’s visit to Faith at the end shows that judgment might be more of a process than an end point, with characters making terrible mistakes and struggling for salvation thereafter. Aside from the somewhat mundane pregnant-woman-in-jeopardy (played by Justina Machado from the 2017 reboot of One Day at a Time), there is plenty else going on in this episode: a dazed Darla is now ensconced at Wolfram & Hart, the Hyperion Hotel gets rediscovered, the ceaselessly stupendous Lorne makes his initial appearance, and Angel’s affinity for Barry Manilow goes public. Not a great episode, but one that sets up for a strong season ahead.

#224: Untouched (Angel 2.4)

written by Mere Smith

directed by Joss Whedon

The series Angel has a thing for young women with X-Men-like powers. I like the X-Men, but the mutant angle doesn’t gel with the occult and supernatural very well, so I’m distracted by characters like this one, a runaway who can move things with her mind under great stress. Maybe I should think of her as a Carrie type; after all, she’s a redhead with an abusive parent (a dad in place of Carrie’s magnificently monstrous mother) and a heap semi-controlled telekinesis. Unlike Carrie, however, this girl has an Angel in her corner, keeping her from being led astray by that Wolfram & Hart wonder, Lilah. Angel wins out, and the visiting girl-in-peril gets sent off to safety in the end, meaning we’ll have a reprieve from mutant chicks until the truly terrible Gwen character arrives shooting electricity out of her hands in season four and has the nerve to become recurring. I’m happy the telekinetic character here is one-and-done… but I appreciate all the extra time we got to spend in Lilah’s apartment for all her psychological manipulation. Lilah works hard for the money and she’s worth every penny.

#223: Bring on the Night (BtVS 7.10)

written by Marti Noxon and David Petrie

directed by David Grossman

Spike’s seemingly endless cycle of torture directed by The First actually started at the end of the previous episode, but here it begins in earnest, presided over primarily by the apparition of Drusilla and assisted corporeally by the über-vamp, who also kills a runaway Potential and kicks Buffy’s ass in battle. Buffy gives the first of her season-seven long-winded speeches, which steers the arc directly into its grim battle against hopelessness, which, let’s face it, can be a slog to endure, either in real life or on the screen. Sometimes I think the entirety of season seven is a metaphor for depression.

#222: Damage (Angel 5.11)

written by Steven S. DeKnight & Drew Goddard

directed by Jefferson Kibbee

A promising premise with a psychotic Slayer bearing the memories of past Slayers, including the two killed by Spike. Alas, Goddard focuses his attentions on loads of fight/slashing scenes and a backstory of kidnapping and torture rather than opening the door to flashbacks centered on Slayers rather than vampires. We’ve already seen an unbalanced Slayer (the truly fabulous Faith), so why not use the craziness in a more novel, less destructive way – as a device to peer into Slayer history, which is oddly neglected in the series. Perhaps such a perspective would have been more appropriate to BtVS, but if we’re to understand Spike as a reformed villain, we need to feel the lives that he’s extinguished. His guilt gets a brief nod at the end, but the weight could have been increased exponentially by giving us an extended look at the two slain Slayers beyond their battles. Slayer lore would not be out of line since this was, after all, a BtVS crossover episode (even though that series had ended its run) with the appearance of Andrew, whose schtick (cf: the pretentious pronunciation of “vampire”) has long grown stale for me. His best use here comes at the end, when he expresses complete distrust in Angel for his association with Wolfram & Hart, the episode’s only substantinal contribution to the season’s arc.

#221: Goodbye Iowa (BtVS 4.14)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by David Solomon

Adam seemed rushed into Big Bad status, though this episode shows he did have some possibilities, especially after the homage to Frankenstein with his murder of an innocent child. In the meantime, Riley gets more screen time, experiencing withdrawal symptoms after missing the late Professor Walsh’s doses of super-soldier drugs. Marc Blucas comes off as so relentlessly blah that even this souped-up storyline for his character doesn’t work. They needed to cast an actor with the capacity to show a darker side underneath the Ken-doll veneer; Blucas is just rubbery plastic all the way through.

#220: Gone (BtVS 6.11)

written by David Fury

directed by David Fury

Character-based comedy works very well for BtVS, but sitcom-level zaniness does not; this episode wanders too far into the territory of the latter. Buffy’s invisibility could have made for a deeper exploration of her sense of self as a young adult and resurrected being, but most of the concept goes for cheap laughs like juggling floating objects and invisi-sex with Spike. The Trio’s animosity with Buffy gets a bump as they are finally exposed as her nemeses thanks to Willow’s detective work, so the season’s arc pushes forward, but the episode could have been much more. Bonus point for the throwback mention of Marcie (from s1’s Out of Mind, Out of Sight), though.

#219: Doublemeat Palace (BtVS 6.12)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by Nick Marck

Another episode that I found simply terrible the first time around, but I’ve warmed to on the second spin. The surreality of the overlit fast food restaurant, corporate conformity, and meat-related nausea work for me far better now that I have settled into Buffy’s rough transition out of heaven and into the grind of adult responsibility. The seasonal arc doesn’t go anywhere, save for Xander’s first serious doubts as his wedding day approaches, but that is the point: the gang, especially Buffy, is in a holding pattern, and it’s a blindingly vacuous place to be. Side note: Anya’s demon friend Halfrek is a most welcome comic treat.

#218: Beneath You (BtVS 7.2)

written by Douglas Petrie

directed by Nick Marck

Xander’s post-dating life after leaving Anya at the altar does not inspire much interest in me, though I liked the twist of his first crush turning out to be one of Anya’s unwitting new clients. The CGI worm pursuing Xander’s new lady friend is just awful; the series does far better with hokey demon costumes than it does with digital monsters. Many people are fans of the final scene between Buffy and a broken Spike in the church, when she discovers that he now has a soul, though I far prefer Anya’s earlier realization at the Bronze. In contrast to Buffy’s worried confusion about the regained soul, Anya reacts with a bubbly, almost giddy curiosity, leaving her completely uninterested in the disastrous monster-situation that she herself created and that everyone but her is attempting to rectify.

#217: City Of (Angel 1.1)

written by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt

directed by Joss Whedon

Everyone seems to love this series debut episode, but I find it lacking. A cast of only three regulars is too meager for an hour-long drama, which helps explain why the show will depend on guest turns from BtVS to get through the first season. The darker tone does get firmly established when Angel fails to save the blonde in distress, though he comes through for Cordelia, who’s learning humility as a failing actress. The most successful idea comes in the shape of a law firm serving the despicable. Wolfram & Hart won’t fully qualify as any season’s Big Bad until the very end but it pays great dividends along the way.

#216: Somnambulist (Angel 1.11)

written by Tim Minear

directed by Winrich Kolbe

Our first Angel flashbacks don’t reveal much, perhaps just whetting our appetite for the lavish feasts to come. The major development occurs as Kate Lockley discovers Angel is a vampire – from investigative research! (Where does she do her demon research? Did she contact the ethnodemonologist ex-wife of Doyle?) Jeremy Renner plays the daddy-fixated vampire – and Angel is the daddy! I have never understood how Renner became a star. He doesn’t stand out here any more than a hundred other visiting vampires. However unremarkable he may be, his Angelus-sired character does serve as reminder that Angelus is still in Angel. Cordelia clearly doesn’t need the reminder as she’s already on guard: “You stake him and I’ll cut his head off!” Cordy’s practicality is one of her most enduring charms.

#215: The Replacement (BtVS 5.3)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by James A. Contner

A mighty comedown from s3’s The Zeppo in terms of exploring Xander’s persona. The episode flags in energy and the resolution is too pat; however, it does offer some great jokes about cat piss and the general state of Xander’s parent-basement lifestyle.

#214: Ted (BtVS 2.11)

written by David Greenwalt & Joss Whedon

directed by Bruce Seth Green

Here’s one that I genuinely wish I could like more than I do, but I see Ted as just another robot replacement story, a trope that I usually enjoy, but one that BtVS should have made more of. I suppose we can read into the locked-up ladies scenario: the long-dead scientist’s identity was dependent on his relationship with/subjugation of a woman, which is why Robot Ted must cycle through cellar-imprisoned housewives in order to keep himself (itself? – no, Ted is a boy) going. A wife (or succession of wives) anchors Ted to his former humanity and to his current self as make-believe-man. John Ritter is a high-profile guest star, and I enjoy seeing him in fun horror (catch him in Bride of Chucky!), but even with Jack Tripper, the episode never quite hits the mark. I don’t always appreciate when the supernatural collides with science fiction since I see the genres in a sense as diametrically opposed. I’d say s1’s I, Robot… You, Jane and the Trio from s6 are more successful since there is more of a meld with heavy emphasis on magic over machine. The Initiative from s4 is an also-ran in the same category.

full review

#213: Buffy vs. Dracula (BtVS 5.1)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by David Solomon

Season openers don’t seem to be foremost in Whedon’s vision and this is no exception The Dracula is surprisingly uncharismatic and unsexy, despite constant claims to the contrary from the script. Comic highlights include Giles in the cellar with the sexy vampire sisters and Xander’s bug-eating behavior under the thrall of the count. Otherwise, that most famous of vampires deserves a far better episode than this.

#212: Family (BtVS 5.6)

written by Joss Whedon

directed by Joss Whedon

The first (and only) truly Tara-centric episode. We get the revelation of misogyny at the heart of her childhood – spearheaded by the father, enforced by the brother, and perpetuated by the cousin, a pre-fame Amy Adams. They’re such an obviously dastardly bunch; a bit of nuance beyond the good/bad dichotomy would have worked better to build some genuine conflict in Tara about returning home. It wants to be an important episode, but it’s kind of a bore, like, dare I say it, the rather milquetoast Tara.

#211: Bargaining Part I (BtVS 6.1)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by David Grossman

Willow’s descent had really started at the end of last season when she opened herself up to the possibilities offered by dark magic in steering Dawn toward reanimating her mother and in taking revenge on Glory to save Tara. Here she goes straight to this ominous point of power in a plot to resurrect Buffy. Her unwavering sense of certainty and casual dismissal of danger combines with a willingness to compromise her sense of right and wrong, as when she kills the fawn without hesitation or remorse. This isn’t the Willow we know! It’s not that she’s at the bargaining stage of grief, she’s bargaining away her very self. The season opener isn’t fantastic, but the steady emergence of Willow as a potentially dangerous force will be one of the great character arcs of the Buffyverse.

#210: Crush (BtVS 5.14)

written by David Fury

directed by Dan Attias

Spike’s early crush on Buffy still seems vaguely incomprehensible to me. I could see a hatefuck-type of sexual attraction more easily than the emotional attachment, and it saddens me slightly to see Spike softened further, but the cuddlier version does mean more screen time. More interesting to me here is Dawn’s schoolgirl crush on Spike, existing alongside her matter-of-fact recognition of Spike’s crush on Buffy.

#209: That Old Gang of Mine (Angel 3.3)

written by Tim Minear

directed by Fred Keller

Some of the Gunn-centric episodes try to allegorize race relations, this being the prime example, but the clumsiness of the attempt stands out most here with the arrival of a rival vampire-killer, who, it is suggested but never followed up on, is running from his own metaphorical demons. Had this character been granted any purpose other than to generate internal conflict with Gunn, the attempted allegory might have played out better; instead, the episode winds up more an excuse to nearly demolish Lorne’s club. Point in the episode’s favor: the three flirty Furies, with whom, I infer, Angel has engaged in a four-way.

#208: Inca Mummy Girl (BtVS 2.4)

written by Matt Kiene & Joe Reinkemeyer

directed by Ellen S. Pressman

After injecting the series with the adrenalin rush of Spike and Drusilla, the momentum gets stalled for another monster-of-the-week story, this time a mummy who sucks the life force from her ardent male admirers, Xander naturally included. It’s a generally clumsy episode from both narrative and cultural standpoints (though it’s an equal opportunity offender), yet Ampata in her human form can be compelling at times. Like Buffy, she just wants to have some teenage fun and be with a boy. Unlike Buffy, though, she needs to absorb that boy’s life force and leave him a desicated carcass in order to maintain her non-rotting-bandages state.

full review

#207: The Thin Dead Line (Angel 2.14)

written by Jim Kouf and Shawn Ryan

directed by Scott McGinnis

Angel will do far, far better with zombies later on down the line, when they run amok through the Wolfram & Hart building in s4’s Habeas Corpses. I’m not sure if this episode is supposed to be allegorical, with overzealous, killing machine zombie cops standing in for real cops committing police brutality. If that was the aim, they needed to work much harder; the messy script, awkward dialogue, and wholly unconvincing youth shelter teens under Anne’s auspices render this story almost as DOA as the zombies. And more cops means more Kate, who ranks as one of the most dull Buffyverse characters this side of Joyce Summers. The bright spot in this episode might be the minor subplot about girl with an eye growing in the back of her head, a story frustratingly truncated in the end, though we’ll get an extension shortly. The conclusion does offer a good scene of Angel attempting to visit Wes in the hospital – but cut off cold by Cordelia. It’s a deserved rebuff, and it also serves as foreshadowy reversal of what’s to come in s3, when Angel visits an ailing Wes in the hospital yet again, but this time to kill him. Better, darker things to come.

#206: Teacher’s Pet (BtVS 1.4)

written by David Greenwalt

directed by Bruce Seth Green

I’d remembered this one from my first viewing as dreadful, but now I rather appreciate the schlocky B-movie feel, and I see that the Buffyverse obsession with impregnating Cordelia with demon spawn has at least one parallel with Xander, who’s on tap to create a brood of baby insect demons. His teenage horniness and the shaming status of virginity play well into the ridiculous but fun hot-teacher-as-praying-mantis-monster story. My favorite moment: when a vampire on the run from Buffy balks at encountering Miss French! Runner up: Miss French spending her lunch break eating a sandwich of grubs.

full review

#205: Lonely Heart (Angel 1.2)

written by David Fury

directed by James A. Contner

The police procedural is simply too pedestrian a genre for Angel, and the last thing our vampire hero needs is “a buddy in the precinct” or someone akin to Chief O’Hara on Batman. I don’t like the direction the show wants to head, but I did immensely enjoy the body-hopping demon intriguing, and it was fun figuring out what on earth was happening with the hook-ups followed by host-hops.

#204: Some Assembly Required (BtVS 2.2)

written by Ty King

directed by Bruce Seth Green

Another entry placing geeky boys as the agents of malice. We’ve seen tech geeks in s1 from I, Robot… You, Jane, and now we’ve got them from the yearbook club and science fair. Are the writers attempting to communicate something about themselves with all of these geeky boy villains? The Cordy-kidnapping, re-animating flunkies here are a far cry from s6’s far more humorous and dangerous Trio, but they do give Charisma Carpenter the opportunity to a whole lot of screaming.

full review

#203: Sense & Sensitivity (Angel 1.6)

written by Tim Minear

directed by James A. Contner

An episode dedicated to bringing Kate Lockley into limelight, which doesn’t bode well as she’s played by a weak actress and the police procedural is entirely the wrong format. That said, the hyper-sensitivity among cops is extremely entertaining.

#202: Out of Sight, Out of Mind (BtVS 1.11)

written by Joss Whedon; Ashley Gable, Thomas A. Swydon

directed by Reza Badiyi

The high school allegory is too heavy for me here, but part of me recognizes the impetus behind the violence that the invisible Marcie visits on the boy in the locker room using a baseball bat – and later on Cordelia, who we’ve seen wield her status like a weapon time and again, but here shows glimmers of humanity. They save the best for last, with a still deranged but under control Marcie enrolled in some sort of government black ops school for mutants/future assassins. Too bad we didn’t get to meet up with Marcie again when the Initiative storyline rolled out in s4. And too bad this episode didn’t fall earlier in the season. We needed a stronger run-up to the showdown with The Master in the finale.

full review

#201: The Pack (BtVS 1.7)

written by Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer

directed by Bruce Seth Green

The Pack gives us much more Xander development – his sexual lust for Buffy, the ease with which he falls into a clique, and his reveling in newfound alpha status. This is the one where Xander gets to show off the dark side of the teenage boy – and in the end he even pretends not to remember any of it. Giles, himself a former teenage boy who knows better, doesn’t buy it but colludes with Xander to hide the truth. They know what lies beneath, as Giles suggested to Buffy earlier: “It’s devastating. He’s turned into a sixteen-year-old boy. Of course you’ll have to kill him.”

full review

#200: Flooded (BtVS 6.4)

written by Jane Espenson & Douglas Petrie

directed by Douglas Petrie

No respite from reality as Buffy’s finances become a greater, more immediate threat than a demon or even the Trio – Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew – now established as geek-boy culture in the extreme. Their demonic assassin is a dud, though his destruction of the Summers’ home accompanied by Buffy’s exasperation at the economics of replacing tables, lamps, and doors is humorous. She’s itemizing demon damage as it’s incurred! Flooded doesn’t stand out on its own; it’s another unexceptional episode with a most exceptional scene: Giles calling out Willow’s arrogance and stupidity for tampering with a force as powerful as death. Giles has never directed such ire at a Scooby, and no Scooby has ever challenged/threatened Giles as Willow does in return. It’s youth in revolt, but we’re wary about the revolution. And this exchange will get one hell of a callback in the season finale.

#199: Potential (BtVS 7.12)

written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

directed by James A. Contner

Episodes centering on Dawn are difficult for me. I absolutely hated her the first time I watched the series, but on the second go-round, have softened considerably, provided that she be limited to a supporting role. Whenever she steps front and center, I return to my initial experience of her: she’s conceived as a bratty foil and never rises above said conception, and in truth, Michelle Trachtenberg too often has a grating onscreen presence. So while I disliked this episode on the Dawn count, I did enjoy the newly revealed Potential, Amanda, played by Sarah Hagan, probably my favorite of the group. Her gangly awkwardness and unique voice could almost fill the void that Willow left after she came into her own after high school.

#198: Out of My Mind (BtVS 5.4)

written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

directed by David Grossman

Ostensibly a Riley-centered episode, but my attention goes all to Spike, desperate to remove his chip and return to his unfettered violent state. Riley’s weakened medical state would have been an ideal opportunity to kill him off, but Buffy’s mother’s death is in the works, so that really wasn’t in the cards. Still, I am endlessly bored by Riley and the flavorless Marc Blucas and would have welcomed a quick exit for him. No matter, this episode belongs to James Marsters with some choice comic support via the hapless Harmony.

#197: Blind Date (Angel 1.21)

written by Jeannine Renshaw

directed by Thomas J. Wright

Inverse moral temptation (struggling for evil over good) for Lindsay as he draws the line at assassinating children, but then in the end reverts to his amoral corporate power position, pointing to the series’ success with noir elements. Alas, the blind assassin has no charisma or inherent menace, which sinks the tension considerably. It’s an oddly unaffecting episode considering its penultimate status, but the season finale will succeed even without a lead-up. Most noteworthy for me is the first appearance of Holland Manners. His voice drips with corporate seduction! I’ll enjoy Holland from here up right until his murder, and then at his very best post-mortem in s3’s Reprise.

#196: Nightmares (BtVS 1.10)

written by Joss Whedon; David Greenwalt

directed by Bruce Seth Green

I’m just not as big a fan of the dream episodes as everyone else. I find s4’s Restless overrated and the Soul Purpose episode in Angel rather uninvolving. Nightmares isn’t so ambitious, visiting mostly mundane bad dreams on its cast. For me this uneven episode is really all about Buffy, whose nightmares capture her soon-to-be longstanding dualistic dilemma of being both a teenage girl (with a more typical nightmare about wrecking her family) as well as a Slayer (losing to a vampire in the worst possible way). Buffy sired and rising from her grave a vampire not only lets us glimpse a Slayer with a game face, it also reveals that the character has a dread greater than death: transforming into that which she battles ceaselessly. It’s not only a horror to behold, it’s the ultimate defeat to experience. Almost as awful but more immediately relatable is Buffy’s father’s appearance in the waking nightmare, confessing with an air of smiling malice that Buffy herself was the cause of her parents’ divorce. This is my favorite Sarah Michelle Gellar moment thus far in the series – Buffy’s steeliness and sassiness crumble during the cruel admission, garnering my sympathy and marking a turning point for me in better appreciating the actress and her character.

full review

#195: Blood Ties (BtVS 5.13)

written by Steven S. DeKnight

directed by Michael Gershman

Dawn discovers that she is The Key – and I’m surprised at my sympathy for her character this time around. She’s still tremendously annoying, but the situation of a teenager forging an identity and then finding out there’s no there there, or there’s no me underneath it all, does fascinate. Whedon’s exploration of the realness of existence and identity gets its prime kickoff with Dawn, but he’ll build an entire series around the question in Dollhouse. I’m enjoying the beginnings here.

#194: I Robot… You Jane (BtVS 1.8)

Ashley Gable & Thomas Swyden

directed by Steven Posey

I gather this episode gets little love from most fans, but I’m not opposed to it at all. Willow’s tech know-how and her naivety lead her into terrible trouble, but it’s not just the demon Moloch at work; two pasty-faced computer-nerd teenage boys are behind some of the manipulation. They’re forerunners to the Trio, Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew, who become Willow’s nemeses (and near downfall) in s6. This episode also introduces Miss Calendar, a techno-pagan (!) who lends her first assist to the Scoobies. She’s a good (recurring) addition to the cast, though her status as a staff member at the high school doesn’t bode well for her longevity. We’ve already seen Dr. Gregory decapitated by a lady praying mantis and Principal Flutie devoured alive by a pack of human hyenas. I have to enjoy Jenny Calendar as long as she’s around.

full review

#193: Wrecked (BtVS 6.10)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by David Solomon

Willow’s addiction allegory gets too heavy here. While Marti Noxon did much better with the partner violence allegory in s3’s Beauty and the Beasts, this episode flirts with after-school special territory. Magic dealer/warlock Rack goes over the top, and Dawn-in-jeopardy comes off as contrived. Hannigan does her best, but the addiction storyline leans toward hokeyness. More intriguing is the parallel between Willow’s addiction behavior and Buffy’s secret sex with Spike. Both Buffy and Willow feel drawn to something counter to their characters and possibly self-destructive. The series started off positing that high school is hell, but young adulthood can be even scarier, especially when the darkest threats come from within.

#192: Shadow (BtVS 5.8)

written by David Fury

directed by Dan Attias

It’s a shadow that will cast over the rest of the season. Glory comes off as mostly silly and unthreatening to me here, and Riley’s descent into vampire-adjacency would have been better with a convincing actor, but the weight of Joyce’s crisis balances the weaknesses of the script and performances. Also, the snake was kind of fun!

#191: First Date (BtVS 7.14)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by David Grossman

Principal Wood finally gets his back story, and in the end, via a visit from The First in the guise of his slayer mother, he has a new wrench to throw into the team: vengeance against Spike. I like this twist quite a bit, considerably more than the predictable b-story of the Xander’s killer demon date. (Even Xander bemoans the frequency of his assignations with demons and half-jokingly begs to be made gay.) Nevertheless, Ashanti makes for an entertaining villain. (Maybe the show could have garnered higher ratings with more guest demons from the music world!) In other news, Andrew establishes himself as “good,” even wearing a wire to inform on The First. The scene is howlingly preposterous, but turns quite sinister when the apparition of Jonathan re-appears disfigured and putrified to issue the worst threats yet. Amidst the silliness, the series can still deliver scares.

#190: The Weight of the World (BtVS 5.21)

written by Douglas Petrie

directed by David Solomon

A lull between the non-stop action of Spiral and the season finale, the episode finds Buffy catatonic, frozen in replaying a moment where she interprets the meaning of the Original Slayer’s cryptic “your gift is death” message. The loop is okay, but I’m more drawn to that rascal Doc, the tailed, deceitful demon who turns out to be one of Glory’s deepest devotees. Casting Joel Grey in this minor role shows an ingenuity they might have repeated. How many former Best Supporting Actor Oscar winners could they have cast as lower order demons? George Kennedy, Louise Fletcher, Louis Gossett Jr. weren’t really doing anything at the turn of the millennium, and I’d really like to see any or all of them earn a paycheck wearing horns or a mucous-dripping chin prosthetic.

#189: Sleeper (BtVS 7.8)

written by David Fury & Jane Espenson

directed by Alan J. Levi

Spike as a sleeper serial sirer. It’s not particularly purposeful, but it does make for a weirdly fascinating confrontation at the Bronze between him and one of his recent victims whom he doesn’t recall. The ensuing battle very briefly interrupts the set by Aimee Mann, who gets the only line afforded to a musical guest – about how she hates playing vampire towns. And on the topic of music, Buffy claims that Spike inspired Billy Idol’s look, rather than vice-versa. Extra point for that post-punk kernel of history.

#188: Heartthrob (Angel 3.1)

written by David Greenwalt

directed by David Greenwalt

An awkward return for Angel. The show has to contend with the death of Buffy from a distance, not just from Sunnydale to L.A., but from the once-removed vantage point of a spinoff, and the story here is almost as stilted as the acting of the visiting vampire, a figure from Angel’s Darla days of creating mayhem across Europe. The flashbacks allow for a prime scene with Darla in which she abandons him to Holtz, another great Darla moment, where Julie Benz makes her character’s contemptible actions completely comprehensible. Alas, the rest of the episode isn’t nearly as strong, save for the final scene, another featuring Darla, this time with the whopping revelation that she is hugely pregnant, the best twist that the series ever drops.

#187: Soul Purpose (Angel 5.10)

written by Brent Fletcher

directed by David Boreanaz

The tagline champion has become a bit irritating by season five, at which point the writers seem to have fixated on tying it to Angel’s quest for purpose. Here, it’s presented more as a role that is more subject to disappointment than to destiny. Angel’s sub-conscious, parasite-driven dream state casts doubt on his champion qualities, suggesting a vulnerability and not entirely unsurprising egocentrism in his character. Much of this anxiety relates to the re-emergence of Spike as a rival for the fulfiller of the Shanshu Prophecy, yet the reality of Spike’s new existence – living in squalor, spending time in strip clubs alone, being duped by Lindsey, and pining for Buffy – stands in strong contrast to Angel’s nightmares of being superseded. It’s a fair dream episode, considerably more literal than Restless from BtVS, not exceptional, but central to the season’s theme of finding meaning in action.

#186: Listening to Fear (BtVS 5.9)

written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

directed by David Solomon

A marauding monster is conjured by Ben to offset the chaos created by Glory’s sanity-sapping refueling. But, ugh, Ben is even worse than Riley in terms of blandness, like a lower-order daytime soap actor. Whedon needs some help in casting hunks. While he struck gold with David Boreanaz and James Marsters, thereafter it’s slim pickin’s. The alien killer of crazies, however, is suitably scary as it slithers and scales along ceilings, even stopping by at 1630 Revello Drive to drop in on Joyce.

#185: Supersymmetry (Angel 4.5)

written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

directed by Bill L. Norton

Fred’s thirst for vengeance and Gunn’s role in blocking it until he becomes complicit really merit a better episode than this. We deserve to see Fred’s darker side with greater depth, which we know the showrunners are capable of pulling off after Wesley’s continued spiral. The final confrontation might have carried more heft had Fred and Professor Seidel had more of an exchange of words. Gunn’s stepping in to carry out the murder to was a logical twist, however, and one with repercussions, as it would eventually lead to the end of the romantic relationship with Fred.

#184: The Freshman (BtVS 4.1)

written by Joss Whedon

directed by Joss Whedon

Whedon seems to purposefully underwhelm in a number of BtVS season debuts, and Buffy’s introduction to college life is no exception. We get a tiny taste of the Initiative at the very end, but most of the episode centers on Buffy trying to find her place in a new environment with bullying professors and a terrible (but terribly entertaining) dorm roommate. A highlight is the showdown between Buffy and the leader of the college vamp gang, Sunday, who mercilessly critiques the fashion and musical tastes of her victims after she loots their belongings.

#183: Gingerbread (BtVS 3.11)

written by Thania John and Jane Espenson

directed by James Whitmore, Jr.

This one is a hoot!: widespread hysteria over unquestioned and manufactured tragedy leading to mob mentality justice powered by a self-righteous sense of infallibility. The kids should have been creepier, but the literal witch hunt culminating in Buffy, Willow, and Amy being burned at the stake wins a prize for taking scapegoating all the way to its worst possible end point. And the finale is funny to boot: Buffy’s ungainly but stupendous slaying of the demon; Xander and Oz’s failed rescue arrival crashing through the air duct; and of course, Amy’s transmogrification into a rat, which will pay off as a running joke for seasons to come.

#182: Go Fish (BtVS 2.20)

written by David Fury & Elin Hampton

directed by David Semel

An extremely dippy monster-of-the-week episode sadly sandwiched between the masterful I Only Have Eyes for You and the two-part s2 finale, disrupting the flow and tension of the Angelus storyline. I didn’t hate it as a stand-alone, but it really leeches from the build-up to the season’s end, much in the way that Out of Mind, Out of Sight did right before Prophecy Girl in s1. I wish that Whedon and his showrunners had kept a closer eye on the story arcs, especially as they rounded into their completions. Despite its dumb plot and the preachiness about steroid abuse, I found fair enjoyment from Go Fish with its Creature from the Black Lagoon swim team. Note: Wentworth Miller is the series’ first of the before-they-were-stars guest actors, here playing a swim team member before morphing into a sea monster. And two more casualties from the Sunnydale High staff: the school nurse and the swim coach. Here’s hoping their benefits package includes good life insurance.

full review

#181: I Was Made to Love You (BtVS 5.15)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by James A. Contner

The smart script gets hidden a bit by very broad performances. Buffy’s frustration with failed relationships combined with her horror at the subservient sexbot is overplayed, but an undercurrent of what constitutes consciousness, being, and non-existence has a tighter connection to the season, especially with Dawn, and later with Joyce’s death. And Warren’s misogyny and villainy are on full view; we just just don’t know how deep it goes yet.

#180: Pangs (BtVS 4.8)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by Michael Lange

A vengeful Indian spirit crashes Thanksgiving at Giles’ to wreck the holiday and throw American history into the grey with a muddying of good and evil. The secret star is Spike, surreptitiously falling into the role of the Pilgrim, taking refuge from the Initiative in the shelter of the others. And like the Pilgrims, he may harbor ill intent, but he’s taken in anyway. Angel’s first visit from his own series seems particularly contrived: he got a message from Doyle that Buffy’s life was in grave danger? Shouldn’t he have been getting that message weekly? The Turkey Day siege isn’t really any worse than the usual.

#179: The Harsh Light of Day (BtVS 4.3)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by James A. Contner

Buffy’s dalliance with Parker doesn’t really hold my attention. It’s a bit like a faint tracing of the catastrophe that followed when she awakened Angel’s perfect happiness and lifted his curse. This time, though, she simply learns that some guys have slick lines and that deep emotion and sex are not always linked, despite the effect said slick lines may work. Far better is the surprise return of Harmony – and the bigger surprise of her new boyfriend, Spike. Harmony’s her dumb-blonde vapidity merged with vampirism makes a wickedly funny combination, especially playing off Spike’s constant exasperation. The Ring of Amarra is a solid plot device, though it gets better play in the crossover Angel episode, In the Dark. Also, the closing of Buffy, Anya, and Harmony, all lovelorn and wandering alone, stands as one of the series’ best dovetailing exercises. Espenson has a gift for weaving together multiple plots, even when we don’t know what she’s up to until the final shot.

#178: Living Conditions (BtVS 4.2)

written by Martin Noxon

directed by David Grossman

I almost wish that Buffy had logged a couple more episodes with roommate Kathy Newman before her Cher-loving dorm mate was exposed as a runaway soul-sucking demon from another dimension. Buffy’s (rightly) founded paranoia and hysteria show how successful the series can be with a comedic episode. What’s more, it doesn’t interrupt the arc (messy as it is), coming appropriately before any of the Initiative intrigue commences.

#177: Checkpoint (BtVS 5.12)

written by Doulas Petrie & Jane Espenson

directed by Nick Marck

The return of the Watchers’ Council: Buffy the iconoclast vs. the Old Guard yet again, with Buffy gaining the upper hand. The solidarity of the Scoobies presiding over the final statements by Buffy and the Council is too feel-goody, but I enjoy seeing that loft at The Magic Box put to use. The Knights of the Byzantium promise a new element to the Glory intrigue, though it never adequately pans out. And Glory as a god introduces the Superman problem. It’s hard to sustain tension when one figure is nearly all-powerful. Nevertheless, Buffy’s maturation and ability to see through the Council’s manipulations reminds us how far she has come since her high school face-off with them in s3’s Helpless.

#176: Into the Woods (BtVS 5.10)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by Martin Noxon

The potentially intriguing darkness of Riley’s character is rendered near blank by the actor playing him, but Noxon’s script offers a fascinating perspective on the psychology of need in relationships: perceived, implied, and desired. Whedon and company must have known that Riley needed to be sent packing as the show cannot bear the dragging weight of both him and Dawn simultaneously. I haven’t been this engaged in seeing a helicopter depart since I was a child watching Nixon leave the Presidency from the White House grounds.

#175: End of Days (BtVS 7.21)

written by Doug Petrie & Jane Espenson

directed by Marita Grabiak

A very flawed run-up to the series finale. The ancient lady sword-creator/Watcher of Watchers who appears from behind the curtain is simply nonsensical and an unwanted last-minute intrusion on the series’ lore. Perhaps they sensed this halfway through writing the scene and added Nathan Fillion in to kill her off in mid-sentence. The battle with Fillion is good, but Angel is an unnecessary addition. I understand he is central to the series’ lore – and his return is coming full circle like the return to the high school Hellmouth – but everything from his surprise appearance to his dialogue is forced. I welcome a visit from Angel, but not one so predictable and awkwardly wedged into the action. On the plus side, the episode does set up nicely for the far better finale.

#174: Showtime (BtVS 7.11)

written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

directed by James A. Contner

Buffy as George S. Patton before an assembled audience of Potentials. I’m not a big fan of the final fight, but I enjoyed the chaotic flight from the house getting there. Even better is The First’s infiltration of the Potentials, replacing the most irritating one who’d been murdered by Bringers a day earlier. It’s a wicked twist, and once she’s revealed and begins taunting everyone with a monologue spitting out all the secrets and weaknesses she’s learned, she’s really scary. I’ve got to admit it, The First gives better speeches than Buffy.

#173: Belonging (Angel 2.19)

written by Shawn Ryan

directed by Turi Meyer

Our first peek into Pylea and the point at which Lorne stops being merely The Host and gets a regular slot with the associates (though he’ll have to wait a while before appearing in the opening credits). There are some gratuitous shots of Charisma Carpenter in a bikini – to be contrasted in a couple weeks with even more gratuitous shots of her in a hell-dimension royalty bikini, which I imagine may have come about as a means of increasing viewers. Belonging is an okay entry, mostly serving as set-up for the trip to Pylea and the introduction to Fred, but it’s at its best when Lorne is dissimulating his familiarity with the Drokken monster and his kinsman Landok. Lorne is like the fabulous gay living the life of sophistication in the big city – until his small-town past comes back to haunt him. You can never shake that off entirely no matter where you end up. I know.

#172: Real Me (BtVS 5.2)

written by David Fury

directed by David Grossman

Continuing the mindfuck introduction of Dawn, who asserts herself as a horrible character from the get-go. Nevertheless, it’s a supremely ballsy move for Whedon to plunk her down and let the viewer experience the interloper with incredulity. We only get glimpses that something may be off, as with her encounter with the mentally ill man outside the magic shop. Also, Harmony goes rogue and is delightfully inept.

#171: Redefinition (Angel 2.11)

written by Mere Smith

directed by Michael Grossman

The prior episode, Reunion, is pretty much an impossible act to follow, so I cut this one some slack for its slightly disappointing end to Darla and Drusilla’s rampage through Los Angeles. They’re recruiting minions from the demon underworld, but Angel’s on their trail while his former associates try to process their recent firing through karaoke at Caritas. I knew that Darla and Drusilla’s spree couldn’t be sustained at the pace they’d set and that the massacre in Holland Manners’ wine cellar had to be the crescendo of their mayhem, but still, I’m sorry to see it all end. Redefinition ends up feeling like having to clean up the next morning after an out-of-control party.

#170: The Dark Age (BtVS 2.8)

written by Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali

directed by Bruce Seth Green

Ethan Rayne returns and we get the backstory on Ripper. I should revel in this because I really like Ethan Rayne and absolutely love Buffy‘s backstories, but I’m fairly lukewarm on this one; while the episode delivers on Rayne, it stumbles on Ripper. I welcome a Giles-centric story, but one that draws me in with a stronger script than this. For once, all the exposition felt too talky, maybe because it isn’t delivered by Darla at The Bronze while she battles Buffy and Angel, which is how Angel’s siring and curse came clear to us.

Would a flashback work for Giles? He’s integral to the series but more as a paternal figure than a peer to the protagonist. His past doesn’t provide much in the way of building mythology, and it doesn’t tie into any other characters other than Ethan Rayne, who barely qualifies as recurring. What’s more, Giles is no ageless vampire and Anthony Stewart Head is too old to be convincing as a 1977 university student. (Yet they could have cast some round-faced, bespectacled British hunk for this!) So I understand how they wouldn’t want to devote a full episode to a Ripper flashback, but sadly, this one communicating everything via dialogue to carry the history just doesn’t quite work. The big finish with a series of demonic possessions, however, makes up for the lost opportunity to flesh out Giles’ racy past. (And I can relax: we’ll get to see Ripper presented ingeniously in s3’s Band Candy.)

full review

#169: Tough Love (BtVS 5.19)

written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

directed by David Grossman

This is more about what’s to come than what it is. I have never really been a huge Tara fan; her stammering sweetness never quite won me over, and once Glory sucks the sanity out of her brain, I don’t really find her presence substantially altered. She’s good for Willow, to be sure, but not a particularly fascinating character on her own, sort of like a benign growth on the show and I don’t mind her one way or the other. We get a nice peek at Dark Willow when she discovers Tara babbling incoherencies like the rest of the growing population of Sunnydale crazies. The dark magic is not sufficient to defeat Glory, but enough to temporarily wipe the smirk off her face. And I love that Tara ends up Glory’s key to the Key!

#168: Slouching Toward Bethlehem (Angel 4.4)

written by Jeffrey Bell

directed by Skip Schoolnik

The growing mystery surrounding Cordelia and a budding chemistry between Cordy and Connor, plus mayhem from Wolfram & Hart. All this, and yet, for me, it’s all about Wesley and Lilah, whose twisted relationship brings me such jaded pleasure. Maybe I’ve now been around long enough and lived through some dark patches to appreciate how strangely gratifying it can be to discover someone else mired in the deep grey. There’s an enclosed world that Wes and Lilah inhabit. It’s dark, a little scary, and intensely wrong. I have been there. And despite better efforts, I love it there.

#167: Reptile Boy (BtVS 2.5)

written by David Greenwalt

directed by David Greenwalt

I’m not so harsh on this episode as I’ve read elsewhere, but I’m not so forgiving either. We’re continuing our detour away from Spike and Drusilla that began with last week’s Inca Mummy Girl, frustrating me to no end since I really crave that continuity. The monster-of-the-week episodes really need to allot five minutes to the season’s story arc. As I ponder the overall merit of this episode, which at times feels like an after-school special about date rape, and at others a twisted peek at the misogynistic, homoerotic bonding of frat boy scions who submit their morals to extend the privilege they were born into, I’m less enthused by the former and considerably more intrigued by the possibilities of the latter. The Delta Zeta Kappa brothers would have fit perfectly into the misogynistic tail end of s7, but we won’t hear from them – or Machida, the astonishingly phallic demon – ever again.

full review

#166: Room w/a Vu (Angel 1.5)

written by Jane Espenson and David Greenwalt

directed by Scott McGinnis

Fun Cordelia-centered episode with a good twist at the end and an entertaining turn by Beth Grant as the surprise villain. It’s a nice but brief respite from Doyle’s visions and the police procedural format that had been shaping the show. I really like the invisible, protective, Cordy-crushing Phantom Dennis as a recurring character and felt let down seasons later when Cordy left and he was never again addressed. He’ll never get another roommate as good as Cordelia!

#165: The Ring (Angel 1.16)

written by Howard Gordon

directed by Nick Marck

The demonic fight club episode, most noteworthy to me for the introduction of Lilah Morgan from Wolfram & Hart. Also, we get the first signs of Wes being a badass as he and Cordelia plot to rescue Angel from slavery in the underground fight ring. The demons in this episode have surprisingly good make-up and prosthetics, and the actors make more of an impression than most, engendering a strange sympathy that Cordelia questions after the trio congratulate themselves on their heroism in liberating the fight club slaves: “Well, actually, didn’t we set a bunch of demons free?” Cordy has a noteworthy clarity of mind even without the visions.

#164: Lovers Walk (BtVS 3.8)

written by Dan Vebber

directed by David Semel

It’s a Spike-centric episode on the surface, but he’s the device, not the story, which really lies in the three couples whose relationships begin to unravel or combust. I appreciate romantic rift delivered in triplicate, though it’s not as deftly balanced as when Marti Noxon explored three relationships in Beauty and the Beasts. While I prefer Spike sharp and swaggering, not a drunken, pathetic mess, I still enjoyed the episode. The moments with Spike that do work – spilling his heart to a confused but compassionate Joyce in the kitchen, then cutting zany vampire faces behind her back to taunt Angel – make his return most welcome and keeps the character a valuable iron in the fire for next season.

full review

#163: I Will Remember You (Angel 1.8)

written by David Greenwalt and Jeannine Renshaw

directed by David Grossman

And once again, I find myself in the minority, feeling slightly guilty but nevertheless somewhat unimpressed with a much-beloved episode. I love the BtVS crossovers, but this is my least favorite of the Angel bunch. It feels shoehorned into the season to give the ratings a jolt, and I object to the rather cheap “like it never happened” gimmick, which allow crossover without contamination, as Buffy can go back to Sunnydale none the wiser – or sadder. I’m buoyed along by Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz’s performances far more than the script. And I’m against time resets in general. (As evidenced by my loud protestations at the 1978 Christmas Day showing of Superman, which I loved beyond reason, except for the stupid bit at the end when Superman flew around the earth to reverse its rotation and turn back time. I imagine the other patrons in the audience were not so interested in my angry conjectures of the full-scale calamities that such a reverse rotation would wreak, none of which involved time travel.) But hey, at least we get some good characters out of it: The Oracles! They’re wonderfully arrogant, pompous, and condescending and I’ll miss their semi-deified snottiness when I see them go at the end of the season.

#162: War Zone (Angel 1.20)

written by Gary Campbell

directed by David Straiton

Enter Gunn, as he and his sister form part of a street crew fighting vampires. It’s a missed opportunity to draw starker contrast to the Sunnydale Scoobies with the urban guerrillas engaging in a far more open warfare with demons. Cordelia keeps calling them “kids” even though she is supposed to be about 19, though she’s starting to look and act much older. The side plot with tech billionaire is uninteresting and presents another missed opportunity with the Madame Anita’s demon brothel, which is mostly there was titillation with sexy demons and suggested non-standard body parts/sexual positions. Why not go deeper and explore demon desire? The best scene in War Zone is with Gunn’s sister, post-conversion, teasing before attempting to sire him, which never transpires as he stakes her instead. Gunn won’t get this good a scene again until s5.

#161: Primeval (BtVS 4.21)

written by David Fury

directed by James A. Contner

For all intents and purposes, this penultimate episode is the finale to season four, leaving Restless as a curious coda. Primeval wraps up the Initiative story line that never quite took off with psyche-melding magic that results in a glowing-eyed Super-Buffy and manages to re-unify the Scoobies on a spiritual plane after Spike had fractured their complex relationships with some cunningly delivered hard truths in The Yoko Factor. It’s not a particularly stirring ending, but it wasn’t a particularly stirring season, either.

#160: Conviction (Angel 5.1)

written by Joss Whedon

directed by Joss Whedon

Continuing the reset from the season four finale, Angel moves to his third, final, and very unlikely headquarters, the L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart. Cordy and Connor are gone, but Spike and Harmony are back, now as regulars. Harmony works perfectly as comic relief without disrupting the existing cast’s chemistry. Lilah has departed for good, which makes me a bit wistful, but unlike many viewers, I rather like Eve, the seductive, teasing, openly untrustworthy connection to the firm’s senior partners. The episode’s lawsuit and the dangerous client it presents suggest that the show may veer from the weekly detective drama of Angel’s first season to legal one in its last, a move that thankfully never transpires. Gunn, however, does get to make his debut as lead counsel endowed by the cat in the White Room with deep knowledge of both human and demon law. It’s a good shift for his character after drifting too long as the endlessly described “muscle” at Angel Investigations. And I like the new set!

#159: Doomed (BtVS 4.11)

written by Marti Noxon, David Fury, and Jane Espenson

directed by James A. Contner

Strong mid-season apocalypse episode in which Spike comically attempts suicide while wearing Xander’s most undignified Hawaiian tourist attire. Also, Spike discovers that his chip does not preclude violence against other demons, even as he discovers the pleasures of non-physical malice by way of psychological warfare against Willow and Xander. And Spike desperately adopts a magnificently terrible American accent to evade identification by Riley. It’s not all Spike, however, as an earthquake portends yet another apocalyptic event, once again centered on the Hellmouth amidst the ruins of the high school, which is now largely rubble littered with “Mayor meat.” The visit to Sunnydale High is preceded by Willow’s sad encounter with her former tutee Percy, and I love a callback to a minor character. How quickly they forget how they fought arm in arm on Graduation Day!

#158: Fear, Itself (BtVS 4.4)

written by David Fury

directed by Tucker Gates

Ripe with foreshadowing in the fears of the gang, this year’s Halloween entry offers a fairly even mix of horror and comedy, notably ending on a strong note of the latter with the tiny, irascible demon Gachnar being squished like a bug. Note: Anya’s adorable rabbit costume and her leporiphobia will grace both the opening credits and various scripts for the rest of the series.

#157: Anne (BtVS 3.1)

written by Joss Whedon

directed by Joss Whedon

I rather enjoyed this episode. I don’t believe that season openers are BtVS‘s strong suit, but I don’t think they’re a weak link either. This one, like s2’s When She Was Bad, takes us back to the previous season finale and jumps us through the summer into the start of the new school year. Whedon knows what he is doing even when he’s not doing it at his best, and here, he’s giving Buffy her space after the trauma of killing Angel, letting her slip out of Slayerhood and into anonymity, which leads her to cross paths once again with Chanterelle from Lie to Me, now going by Lily. She’s the anti-Buffy – desperately dependent and eternally grasping, and in this episode, infuriating in her almost cloying helplessness. While Buffy has an established identity, The Slayer, which she consistently struggles with and now runs from, Lily/Anne has none, shifting from one persona to the next, hoping to find one with meat on it, one that will fill in the interior of the ever-changing shell she wears. Rather than forging her own identity, she passively slips into that of others.

Meanwhile, the demons featured in this episode aim to rob her of any hint of self such that she has no name to identify with at all. “I am nothing,” is the mantra repeated by the elderly who roam the (presumably) LA. streets, cast off out of enslavement in the underworld/hell dimension once they’re too old and frail for hard labor. Buffy defeats them with a hammer and sickle, leaving me to wonder if Whedon is trying his hand at political commentary and the erasure of identity. If so, I can’t tell where he and the demon horde stand on the communist-capitalist continuum, so I’ll simply appreciate Buffy’s victory and her return to Slayerdom and Sunnydale for one of the series’ best seasons.

full review

#156: Amends (BtVS 3.10)

written by Joss Whedon

directed by Joss Whedon

As close as BtVS ever gets to a Christmas episode, or a Hanukkah-adjacent one for Willow, and who wouldn’t want to spend the Yuletide with The First and his little elves, the Bringers? Whedon establishes The First quite well considering the season-long revisiting it gets at the end of the series. Taking the form of only the dead, it haunts Angel’s dreams and then his waking moments, as the script alternates between flashbacks and the present to show first Angelus killing his victims and then Angel confronted by their First-formulated versions, of whom Miss Calendar has the greatest effect of seduction and sheer malice. (Though I was intrigued by the man in a business suit who described finding his dead family arranged beautifully. His contemporary attire suggests that he and his family were killed by Angelus during his s2 comeback. I never gave that much thought to his reign of terror off the screen!)

Whedon also uses the episode to explain Angel’s return from the hell dimension, which isn’t terribly satisfying, but it’s a narrative box that needs checking off. Angel can never make amends for Angelus (and we’ll have entire series centered on that attempt!), but he’s not the only trying to make good on a past bad. Willow, trying to make up for the events of Lovers Walk, offers herself up to Oz with candles and Barry White, only to receive the sweetest sexual rejection ever in return, and Xander steps up to help Angel, conveniently forgetting to explain the misdeed (allowing Buffy to kill Angel in Becoming Part 2) that he’s atoning for. It’s all solid, but the Christmas miracle, a record snow in the midst of a SoCal heat wave, is one of the worst endings the series ever slapped on. Since when did snowfall = a total eclipse? We’d already had enough seasonal cheer with Faith showing up for Christmas dinner and Willy giving Xander some encouragement after a rather unconvincing tough-guy act. Even I sometimes want Whedon to reel it in a little.

#155: Earshot (BtVS 3.18)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by Regis Kimble

The after-school special aspects of this episode weigh it down more than they did in Beauty and the Beasts and even Go Fish, but outside of the school-shooting theme, the mind-reading infection that Buffy suffers allows for some fun discoveries, ranging from unsurprising (Xander thinking about sex constantly), to surprising (Oz mired in existential thought), to confirming (Giles and Joyce’s Band Candy sex on a police car hood – twice), to comical (Cordelia speaking her mind to an extreme degree).

However, I think Espenson missed the opportunity for Buffy to find out something deeply personal that might change her, and our, perspectives on other characters. Instead, we get a too timely story about a mass killing at the high school, which presents the problem I can’t work past: why would Jonathan commit suicide using a sniper rifle in the school clock tower? I will readily swallow a red herring, but this one cheats with its explanation, though it does make Jonathan’s spell in s4’s Superstar more understandable. And I did enjoy the jokey ending with the lunch lady attempting to poison an entire cafeteria full of students with rat poison. Plus, we get another sight of her chasing down Xander, though unlike in Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, where she was love-struck and ready for romance, now she seems to have his dismemberment as an immediate goal.

#154: Bad Eggs (BtVS 2.12)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by David Greenwalt

I love Body Snatchers movies in all their incarnations, so it’s no shock that even though Bad Eggs seems to be consistently ranked near the bottom, and sometimes at the very bottom, of all the Buffy episodes, I find its premise a slightly guilty thrill, one marks a breezy break before we enter into a very grim chapter in the series. I won’t quibble with the critique that the episode is silly, but considering what’s coming in the next few episodes, especially for Buffy, I argue we have to take a last stand in foolish romps before taking the sex plunge for real and finding out it’s a deeper and darker descent than we’d feared.

full review

#153: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (BtVS 2.16)

written by Martin Noxon

directed by James A. Contner

More mirthful shenanigans! I had imagined the descent into darkness would be a constant following Angel’s reversion to soulless vampire in Innocence, but instead the showrunners planted two more lighthearted episodes into the framework of the season before returning with a vengeance to the grim nightmare they’d promised with Angelus. Last week’s Phases gave us a diversion from vampirism nearly altogether, with the introduction of werewolfery via the nascent character of Oz. Now for Valentine’s Day, still mostly skirting vampires, we’re back to witchery, with Xander exerting a mystical romantic appeal over all females (save for Cordelia, but including the lunch lady). While this episode mostly belongs to Xander, it’s Cordy who carries the theme of individualism vs. groupthink. She has to work through her attachment to social status, largely determined by her coterie (led by a mean-spirited Harmony), first appeasing them through sacrificing Xander, then repudiating them publicly by taking him back. I found the latter scene a bit exhilarating – as if Cordy really learned something from witnessing the mob mentality from the outside when she was the only one not afflicted by Amy’s spell. She sees herself for the first time as socially independent and all the better for it.

full review

#152: I Fall to Pieces (Angel 1.4)

written by Josh Whedon and David Greenwalt

directed by Vern Gillum

I like this rather stupid episode far, far more than I should. I find the villain highly enjoyable and the concept of floating and crawly detachable body parts superbly creepy. (The wandering eyeball takes Peeping Tom ickiness to a whole new level.) Angel‘s first season, like BtVS‘s, leans a little heavy on the monster-of-the-week scripts, but I’m often a fan of these hokier episodes, which belies my deep appreciation for low-budget 1960s science fiction and horror, and with I Fall to Pieces, I’m grinning squarely in the schlock camp.

#151: New Moon Rising (BtVS 4.19)

written by Marti Noxon

directed by James A. Contner

Oz returns for a some tears and a final goodbye (save for a dream in Restless). His absence hasn’t really hurt the show, but he’s still a welcome presence, even though in this appearance, there is little of his trademark laconic wit. Instead, he’s first emotionally wounded by Willow and then slapped onto a slab for some apparent vivisection in the Initiative. No wonder he’s on the road out of Sunnydale. Willow, in the meantime, moves on with Tara more decidedly, confessing the relationship to a slightly bewildered Buffy and affirming her love privately at the close. If we’re looking at watershed moments in lesbian/bi television, this one stands far above season seven’s stupid sex scene with Kennedy. It’s heartfelt and genuine and follows perfectly from the goodbye to Oz, ending the episode on a slightly bittersweet note, with more emphasis on the sweet.

#150: The Killer in Me (BtVS 7.13)

written by Drew Z. Greenberg

directed by David Solomon

Some believe that killing off Tara was unnecessarily cruel, breaking up one of the few same-sex romantic relationships ever shown in episodic television, but Whedon almost never lets his characters find lasting romantic happiness, not here, not in Angel, nor in Firefly/Serenity, and only through quasi-AI in Dollhouse. He’s granting Willow another shot, but Kennedy seems especially forced. It’s not just that her character is imposing almost to the point of yuckiness; she seems wedged into the story to give Willow a second shot at happiness and to absolve Whedon from his decision to write a tragic end for the first serious lesbian love stories in prime time. More bothersome for me is that Kennedy is all wrong for Willow – a trust-fund kid with an cocky attitude. We know who warms Willow’s heart. Oz, yes. Tara, yes. Kennedy, no, never.

And yet this episode does admirably in addressing Willow’s double sense of guilt: one, for moving on after Tara’s death; and two, for murdering Warren. Amy’s engineering of Willow’s transformation into Warren, through a hex leaving the subject’s sub-conscious to select its own torment, is truly hateful but somewhat understandable. My first time around, I couldn’t believe Amy’s ingratitude for Willow’s keeping her in a Habitrail for years, but now I see that she really does have a point. As Amy says, it’s all about power, echoing Willow’s own speech as she destroys the Magic Box at the end of season six and the First’s speech to Spike at the outset of season seven. Willow has power and Amy resents it. In BtVS, power may be held, coveted, clung to, stolen, regained, and lost, but it is never ignored.

#149: Destiny (Angel 5.8)

written by David Fury and Steven S. DeKnight

directed by Skip Schoolnik

The tense rivalry between Angel and Spike comes to a head in a protracted battle over a golden cup purportedly connected to the Shanshu Prophecy. It’s a strong fight scene, fueled largely by the flashbacks of the two vampires with Drusilla, when a recently sired William the Bloody still held onto the naive romantic feelings he expressed as a human in his saccharine poetry. Angel quashes that sentiment by engineering a tryst with Drusilla to bluntly prove to Spike that as a vampire he lives without restriction, but possesses nothing, a nod to the sense/fear of emptiness in the season. Even the promise of the cup turns out null – or almost. Rather than a libation of eternal torment, it’s just Mountain Dew.

#148: Help (BtVS 7.4)

written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner

directed by Rick Rosenthal

Azura Skye makes such a remarkable impression as Cassie that I’m frustrated Whedon didn’t look to someone like her to play Dawn and then craft that character around the actress. She’s quite touching as the depressive, hopeless teenager, fully resigned to her doom but still forlorn about everything ending. That Buffy does prevent her murder and then Cassie dies anyway speaks to the tone of the seventh season and the Sisyphus aspect of Slayerdom. Bonus: Buffy’s Trojan Horse infiltration of the sacrificial ritual, which is my favorite heroic surprise entrance since Giles shows up at the Magic Box to take on Dark Willow in Two to Go.

#147: Superstar (BtVS 4.17)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by David Grossman

A riff on the alternate reality of The Wish with a dash of purposefully misdirected focus as in The Zeppo, though Superstar never comes close to the greatness of either episode. Jonathan creates his own alternate reality (without the help of a vengeance demon!) to place himself at the center of the universe, turning the episode into a narcissistic fantasy for a minor character. The nebbishy Jonathan’s need for recognition and admiration magnifies into a quest for absolute worship, leading to some impossibly exaggerated feats and improbably devoted fans. As much as I like the concept, the episode comes up short as it never transcends the jokey premise, though it does provide s4’s best callback to the spirit of first three seasons: some high school wounds may never fully heal. NB: five stars for the opening credits!

#146: The I in Team (BtVS 4.13)

written by David Fury

directed by James A. Contner

A very solid episode with a very disappointing conclusion. Professor Walsh would have made a dynamite Big Bad as a human foil to Giles and an military-grade organized threat to the Slayer – with an army of soldiers and a basement full of demons at her disposal, not to mention a Frankenstein-like monster of her own creation. Plus, there’s the Oedipal tension with Riley, which might have made his character bearable. But for whatever reason, Lindsay Crouse makes an exit and Adam takes the center stage, which he cannot fill no matter how they step up his demonic/tech capabilities. What happens in The I in Team should have ideally transpired over the course of several episodes, with Maggie Walsh growing increasingly uncomfortable working alongside an independent-minded occult-fueled semi-superhero who is sleeping with the prize soldier/son-figure. The scene of Prof. Walsh watching Buffy and Riley have sex on closed-circuit surveillance is a moment of delicious depravity and obsession that shows how truly great an antagonist she could have been! So while I enjoy this episode and the attempted demon hit on Buffy’s life, I lament that the seasonal arc will now lapse into a lull that it never pulls out of. When Adam slices into the professor in a shocking game-changer, for once I’m resentful of the twist.

#145: Same Place, Same Time (BtVS 7.3)

written by Jane Espenson

directed by James A. Contner

A good transitional episode, with Willow anxiously making her return to Sunnydale from her recovery England. The mystery of Willow’s arrival gets a disappointing explanation (Willow’s anxiety leading to a magical, inadvertent invisibility, rather than a duality of realities hatched by a nefarious entity, which is what I would have liked), but the odd and unpredictable road to denouement means the journey supersedes the destination. Best is the scene with Spike rambling nonsense to Buffy and Xander in the school basement, which is then shot again to reveal far a far more coherent conversation with Willow. Also, the paralyzing, skin-stripping/slurping demon Gnarl is one of the series’ best ever!

#144: Lineage (Angel 5.7)

written by Drew Goddard

directed by Jefferson Kibbee

Lineage has all the makings of a great episode and then trashes it with a stupid Stepford Wives conclusion. Wesley shoots his belittling, hectoring father to death to save the life of Fred, only to discover that the dying figure on the rooftop is a just an uncannily accurate robot impersonation. Nearly all the weight of the action dissipates in the moment, and we are left with no new knowledge, already aware that Wesley continues to be, as we saw from seasons three and four, a ruthless badass, but here he’s free of any terrible consequences. Perhaps Whedon figured Wes had already been through the wringer enough, and with what’s to come, he didn’t need patricide as yet another burden to carry. Neutered though the ending may be, finally getting to meet Wesley’s father (albeit in simulated robotic form) more than met my expectations for his disparaging and detrimental dad.

#143: Phases (BtVS 2.15)

written by Rob Des Hotel & Dean Batali

directed by Bruce Seth Green

After the sturm und drang of Innocence, Whedon grants us a bit of levity with Phases. I hadn’t remembered taking this brief semi-break from tragedy, but it’s well timed. The show must go on, even though Buffy’s heart has been broken, Angelus is unleashed on Sunnydale, and pervasive doom hangs overhead. We’ve got Oz in the gang now, in a newly compromised capacity, and this introduction to his werewolfism is great fun. (That damn Gordy!) Buffy also gets a bit of a break, ceding the spotlight to Willow and Oz. She’s in mourning, and though not cloistered, she’s stepped off to the side enough to let other characters develop while pushing the story forward. Smart move for the series, and I could use a little break after the exhausting last week as well.

full review

#142: When She Was Bad (BtVS 2.1)

written by Joss Whedon

directed by Joss Whedon

The first show of s2 accomplishes two goals. First, the episode uses the summer gap to temporarily divorce Buffy from Sunnydale and from us, making the change in her – from victorious, celebratory Slayer to callous, cruel Slayer – believable and understandable. Second, despite the three months off, the story manages to pick up right where we ended: in the library with Giles, Miss Carpenter, Cordelia, and Willow standing over the freshly staked skeleton of The Master, though in short order they are suspended upside down above those same ancient bones. The architect of said suspension is one of the series better vampires, Absalom, who speaks and motivates the Order of Aurelius like a Black revivalist preacher quoting scripture for a downtrodden congregation, who may have lost their savior-like figure, The Master, but Absalom promises his glorious return, just like that of Jesus, if they can mount an elaborate resurrection ceremony, which necessitates digging up The Master’s skeleton and drenching it in the blood of those who oversaw his obliteration. The battle over Buffy’s buddies and The Master’s bones is one of the best yet, a creative fight involving fire and (alas) the end of Absalom. And while Buffy’s furious, cathartic sledgehammering of the skeleton denies us any future visits from The Master, on my second viewing I know not to fret, for one of the series’ greatest hallmarks, the flashback (!), will return this great character to me in full glory.

full review

#141: I’ve Got You Under My Skin (Angel 1.14)

written by Jeannine Renshaw and David Greenwalt

directed by R.D. Price

Two-thirds in, I would have placed this as the worst Angel so far, as it was playing out like a fourth-rate knock-off of The Exorcist, but the episode is saved in the final act by a surprisingly suspenseful exorcism led first by Wes, and then by Angel, with a cross burning into his hand. The demon revealing secrets in Wes’s mind (recurrent failure in life beginning with a cruel father) and in Angel’s (