Friday Review

[lathany]

Well, one really awful Buffy episode and one better Angel episode.

Touched

bateleur has a theory : that the writers leave lots of space towards the end of each season which they'll "need" to build up tension before the finale and then discover that they have no plot for it. This episode completely justified him. Dull, dull, dull. Lots of "couples" scenes and not much else.

The last ten minutes were pretty good though.

Magic Bullet

I spent the last part of the episode convinced that Connor would escape before they infected him. After all - I reasoned - Connor was never going to be on the same side as the rest of the gang. I was wrong and I was right. Poor boy - destined never to be on the side of the good guys.

Otherwise a great episode, the "magic bullet" worked very well and the gang were rescued from their raptures before I got too sick of watching their devotions. The "church" scenes were well done (although I felt I had seen this sort of thing before on Angel) and Fred continued to hold interest. One question - are they ever going to look into ways of returning Lorne's powers to him ? He seems remarkably unbothered by his loss.



In other news, the babies had an early breakfast. Why ? Because I was woken up by one of them crying. This is not unusual in itself, what worried me was that the baby in question was Bea. It turned out that she had got her leg stuck in the cot bars.

Comments

Connor

[wimble.livejournal.com]

My theory is that it's because he's a Daddy, and there's already a blood bond. Although, in theory, that ought to apply to Angel too.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

The last ten minutes were pretty good though.

The Caleb-dodging scene made up for the rest of the episode, if not for the whole sorry mess of the series.

I started to think that season 7 was where JW redeemed himself after the steady spiral from season 4 to 6. I was wrong - there are a few juicy plot hooks in 7 but there is an awful lot of daytime soap style filler of the sort that made season 6 interminable. Oh, and for all those people who cite Once More With Feeling as the redeeming feature of 6, I say this: a turd with a cherry on top is still a turd.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I love OMWF, but nothing can make up for the wedding episode, or the return of Riley episode, or the Doublemeat Palace episode or... oh, all of them really.

Season 6 stank to high heaven. I do quite like what I've seen of 7, but this may be just because Season 6 left me with the lowest possible expectations.

Re: Connor

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

The whole blood-breaks-illusion metaphysic is broken anyway. If Gunn, Lorne, and Wesley were able to break the illusion shortly after getting blood-contact, without looking at Jasmine, how come Fred needed to look at her first?

Re: Connor

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I came across an interesting answer to this one on a website. The site claimed that the blood starts by breaking the "happiness" link. Fred was in tears before she saw Jasmine but claimed it was because "Jasmine wasn't around" whilst Angel's experience was whilst he was upset with Fred for the shooting.

Warning : Possible Spoiler !

There is also a theory about Connor - that the blood did work, but this meant he would then have to take responsibility for bringing Jasmine-the-bad into the world (including killing a virgin). Instead he decided that he still regarded her as "good" and "right" even without the blood bond (so to speak). (This wasn't listed as a spoiler, but will probably be proved/disaproved by the next episode).

End of Spoiler

I've no idea if either theory is right, but the first one is reasonably plausible.

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

It's not that surprising that a show with over 100 episodes has a few bum episodes, is it? Add that to the fact that the series writers have to cater for the allegedly fickle Average American cable viewer, and that many of these viewers *like* cliches..
Buffy and Angel provide eye-candy, and for that they get my vote. Some episodes are more than that, but there will always be new to replace the old. In 3 years time, it'll have gone the way of Babylon 5. (Remember mass B5 viewings at Bosnia? That was fun up to the season 5 fiasco when they suddenly ran out of story with a whole series in which to flounder)
In the meantime, enjoy with munchies and try not to get too disappointed (hopefully, they'll actually kill her properly this time)