The double hour update and other news
Mar. 10th, 2003 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lathanyAs ever, a Buffy and an Angel review. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bateleur and I finally got around to watching them on Saturday.
Sleeper
Sleeper follows directly on from Conversations With Dead People and is a "Spike" episode (after a fairly Spike-light season). It also marks the reappearance of Giles (hurray !); although I haven't missed him as much this year as I did in season six. I thought it was quite nicely done with a few more welcome hints about the Big Bad. Additionally, the England scenes worked not just as a "Giles" reappearance, but as a way of generally suggesting that world-scale trouble was well on its way. However, I doubt it will appear in my "favourites of the season" list.
Apocalypse, Nowish
Similarly Apocalypse, Nowish was also a decent episode. Nice to see that the Big Bad appeared before they over-did the "signs and portents" bit. Additionally, linking it to Connor was a good move. I wasn't impressed with the Cordelia-Connor development, though. It was just, so obviously, a completely stupid move on her part. However, Lilah's "Fred" impression was great - reminding me of Spike's "Angel" at the start of In the Dark. Again, a good episode without being outstanding.
As planned, we went to the cinema and watched Solaris on Thursday night.bateleur enjoyed it, but I was rather less entertained by it. Embarrassingly enough, I am not entirely sure why I didn't enjoy it much. Possibly I just wasn't in the mood for it (certainly I was hoping for something lighter). Oh, and we both spotted that the female lead was also in The Truman Show.
Friday was the day of shopping and lovely food. I now have a dark brown top (which I love) and some light brown trousers (which I'm less sure about) thatbateleur bought for me. In exchange he has a new pair of dark blue trousers and a cream-beige top. Just to complete the set, Beatrice now has some purple jeans and a white top and Ryan has some dark blue trousers and a dark blue top. These last two outfits might make an appearance at Saturday's Monde game.
The Thai meal was great. The food was good, the wine was good (despitetriskellian's comments about Thai being "beer" food) and the company was really, really good. Admittedly sitting in the middle gave me a great advantage, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Topics of conversation included Ex Nihilo, tattoos, Brockwood, Final Fantasy, frax's payrise success (hurrah !) and The Vagina Monologues. The company was (starting on the opposite side at the far left) smiorgan, onebyone, frax, cardinalsin, ao_lai, John (wot no LJ account ?!), myself, bateleur and triskellian.
We looked at the menu and decided to share dishes. This was partly prompted by the temptation of being able to say "We want all the starters from numbers 1-9, please" and partly by the fact that we were keen to try most of the menu. The starters were all pretty good, although I'm still not sure we were supposed to eat the leaves of that lemon one. The main courses were also very yummy. The venison was a bit of a shock to those of us less keen on hot foods, but the duck and lamb were great.onebyone abstained from dessert, but everyone else was tempted by the varieties of icecream (including "bitter-sweet chocolate" and "cinnamon" if I remember correctly) and the Thai desserts ("Thai custard with cream" and "Sticky rice").
Yesterday marked the end of an excellent week, when we drove back up to Cambridge to collect our much-indulged offspring. Whereuponbateleur's mother made my day by offering to have them for a week every other month. I suspect it will be slightly less frequent than that (although their next Cambridge visit will be May time), but the idea of 5-6 weeks "holiday" for me really appeals. Plus the stories of Ryan's dislike of swimming (he hates the lack of control) and Beatrice's ability to eat anything ("she finished her breadstick, then grabbed Ryan's and ate it as well") are very entertaining. As of today, the twins seem to be well and happy and have been fairly quiet this morning (once Ryan had got his five-thirty start out of his system). They want more batteries for the snail, though.
Ah well, just sixty-seven days left to go... ;-)
bateleur and I finally got around to watching them on Saturday.Sleeper
Sleeper follows directly on from Conversations With Dead People and is a "Spike" episode (after a fairly Spike-light season). It also marks the reappearance of Giles (hurray !); although I haven't missed him as much this year as I did in season six. I thought it was quite nicely done with a few more welcome hints about the Big Bad. Additionally, the England scenes worked not just as a "Giles" reappearance, but as a way of generally suggesting that world-scale trouble was well on its way. However, I doubt it will appear in my "favourites of the season" list.
Apocalypse, Nowish
Similarly Apocalypse, Nowish was also a decent episode. Nice to see that the Big Bad appeared before they over-did the "signs and portents" bit. Additionally, linking it to Connor was a good move. I wasn't impressed with the Cordelia-Connor development, though. It was just, so obviously, a completely stupid move on her part. However, Lilah's "Fred" impression was great - reminding me of Spike's "Angel" at the start of In the Dark. Again, a good episode without being outstanding.
As planned, we went to the cinema and watched Solaris on Thursday night.
bateleur enjoyed it, but I was rather less entertained by it. Embarrassingly enough, I am not entirely sure why I didn't enjoy it much. Possibly I just wasn't in the mood for it (certainly I was hoping for something lighter). Oh, and we both spotted that the female lead was also in The Truman Show.Friday was the day of shopping and lovely food. I now have a dark brown top (which I love) and some light brown trousers (which I'm less sure about) that
bateleur bought for me. In exchange he has a new pair of dark blue trousers and a cream-beige top. Just to complete the set, Beatrice now has some purple jeans and a white top and Ryan has some dark blue trousers and a dark blue top. These last two outfits might make an appearance at Saturday's Monde game.The Thai meal was great. The food was good, the wine was good (despite
triskellian's comments about Thai being "beer" food) and the company was really, really good. Admittedly sitting in the middle gave me a great advantage, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Topics of conversation included Ex Nihilo, tattoos, Brockwood, Final Fantasy, frax's payrise success (hurrah !) and The Vagina Monologues. The company was (starting on the opposite side at the far left) smiorgan, onebyone, frax, cardinalsin, ao_lai, John (wot no LJ account ?!), myself, bateleur and triskellian. We looked at the menu and decided to share dishes. This was partly prompted by the temptation of being able to say "We want all the starters from numbers 1-9, please" and partly by the fact that we were keen to try most of the menu. The starters were all pretty good, although I'm still not sure we were supposed to eat the leaves of that lemon one. The main courses were also very yummy. The venison was a bit of a shock to those of us less keen on hot foods, but the duck and lamb were great.
onebyone abstained from dessert, but everyone else was tempted by the varieties of icecream (including "bitter-sweet chocolate" and "cinnamon" if I remember correctly) and the Thai desserts ("Thai custard with cream" and "Sticky rice").Yesterday marked the end of an excellent week, when we drove back up to Cambridge to collect our much-indulged offspring. Whereupon
bateleur's mother made my day by offering to have them for a week every other month. I suspect it will be slightly less frequent than that (although their next Cambridge visit will be May time), but the idea of 5-6 weeks "holiday" for me really appeals. Plus the stories of Ryan's dislike of swimming (he hates the lack of control) and Beatrice's ability to eat anything ("she finished her breadstick, then grabbed Ryan's and ate it as well") are very entertaining. As of today, the twins seem to be well and happy and have been fairly quiet this morning (once Ryan had got his five-thirty start out of his system). They want more batteries for the snail, though.Ah well, just sixty-seven days left to go... ;-)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Lemon curry ?
Of course ! Very yummy they were too !
Buffy & Angel
Date: 2003-03-10 03:43 am (UTC)Buffy, as far as I can tell, is just pretending Angel* doesn't exist, apart from increasingly-rare references to old relationships. Presumably Angel is doing the same, but if the Buffy Big Bad is really a global nasty, as the Buffy writers are telling us, it would be nice if the writers of Angel could bring it in somewhere, too.
I was going to write something about maybe the viewers will just have to believe that the worlds have diverged, but then I remembered that Faith is apparently going to appear in both shows at the end of the current season. I'll be interested to see how they deal with that.
* Damn them for having the names of the shows the same as the names of the lead characters. I mean the show in each case here, and am trying to enforce on myself a convention of using italics when I mean the show.
Re: Buffy & Angel
Date: 2003-03-10 03:56 am (UTC)Re: Buffy & Angel
Re: Buffy & Angel
Date: 2003-03-10 05:50 am (UTC)Of course I watch them both religiously, but only Angel has been any cop for at least a couple of seasons now. Maybe Buffy will regain some momentum now that the end is (thankfully) night. I don't really have faith (pun intended?) that the current writing team will be able to do justice to the end of Buffy though.