Listener’s Buffy/Angel Rewatch (A1.08)

Angel 1.08: I Will Remember You

• Angel gets really close to the sunlight sometimes in these episodes. It’s annoying.
• “You have so much to learn, little Irish man.”
• It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I hope Buffy doesn’t have any early classes Monday because she’s going to have to get back to Sunnydale somehow and we all know she doesn’t have a car and is a terrible driver.
• She’s coming to see her dad on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Um… right. Okay.
• “Okay. Maybe not that long.” Nice callback.
• Angel’s hair is just AWFUL in this episode.
• The big fight was last night. But Angel got back three days ago. That doesn’t make ANY sense. Or was I listening wrong?
• She feels him inside, huh… Giggity.
• The whole first act of this episode is rife with foreshadowing.
• Yes, Buffy, change into something WHITE. When you’re going into the sewers. Really intelligent.
• This scene in the sewer went on a bit too long.
• I get the feeling this episode was done on Angel to get people to watch that show, because it didn’t have the following that Buffy did at the time. That’s my guess, anyway.
• That demon had a very specific power in his blood, didn’t he.
• There was the whole thing about Angel and food in this one… but vampires were always able to eat. And Spike loves Bloomin’ Onions.
• Okay, that explains it — they can eat and taste, but it tastes different when they’re vampires.
• Sometimes David Boreanaz can be a really good comic actor.
• The AI offices are pretty sunlit. Just now Angel’s getting in the sun, but all those other episodes the sun just “ignored” him?
• The oracles were really interesting characters. Too bad they didn’t come back that many times.
• Though the girl oracle played it a little to blithely and not quite mystically enough.
• Santa Monica is a nice place. The beach, anyway. I’ve been there.
• I’m glad this episode happened before Buffy really started dating Riley. Things could’ve gotten messy.
• First instance of the word “groiny”. I think.
• Guess what, Cordy? They’re having tea and crackers.
• Well, tea, anyway.
• So when this episode first aired, my very dear friend Jenni told me the sex scene “with the refrigerator” was one of the hottest things she’d ever seen. I don’t know about that, but I will say that it was made stronger for not having any music. And the height differential made it really work when she jumped on him.
• Angel was bitching a few episodes ago about peanut butter in the bed. Well, he’s got peanut butter now, which means he may have had it then, and he would’ve eaten it in bed, and then he was unnecessarily bitching at Cordy.
• Ew. Yuck. The licking of food off the chest is just NOT my thing.
• That was a very sexual thing to say — “pleasantly numb”. Clearly they had a LOT of sex, and good for them because sex between consenting adults is a positive thing, but that was just a TOUCH cruder than Buffy usually is.
• Sorry, Buffy, but no normal girl has teeth THAT white.
• Did we ever find out why the Mohra demon came after Angel and/or Buffy? I don’t recall.
• Doyle, YOU are a little supernatural. But I knew what you meant.
• Angel, remember what happened to Buffy the last time she woke up without you there? She’s going to be worried sick that you’re Angelus again, or that it was all some sort of dream. You should’ve just brought her along.
• I realize the Mohra demon is much stronger than your average foe, but Angel has decades of training. Yeah, he’s no MMA fighter, but even a decently-in-shape martial artist would be doing better than that.
• I feel like this Thunderdome-like well where Angel fought the demon is also where Kate discovered he was a vampire.
• Now I remember — I think the demon was sent by W&H.
• That prop sword looks SUPER fake.
• I get that Buffy is strong, but that backbreaker move should’ve hurt her a LOT more, even though she took it mostly on her pelvis.
• And Buffy never did get around to seeing her dad — at least, not in this sub-reality.
• And in that moment, when Angel sacrificed his humanity and took on the pain of knowing what he gave up, this show became something more than it was.
• I was just wondering why Christophe Beck didn’t use the music cues from Buffy Season Three… and then he did.
• It might have been stronger if Angel hadn’t said he’d remember. But I guess we’ll never know.
• All that sunlight on the reset really should’ve killed Angel, or at least seriously inconvenienced him.

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Listener’s Buffy/Angel Rewatch (B4.08)

Buffy 4.08: Pangs

• Chapter 22 of my novel is called “Pangs”. It takes place partially in the Georgia Dome.
• Looks like Buffy’s spider-sense is tingling. I wonder who could be setting that off. Maybe it’s…
• …oh, I don’t know, the vampire from the spin-off show whose buddy had a vision at the end of the last episode?
• Hey, it’s Anya! Hi, Anya!
• Buffy talks about cowboy stuff and yet she’s wearing a cowboy hat that makes no sense.
• Xander is working in construction now. How nice for him.
• Is this the “funny syphillis” episode? Or is that the next one?
• They’re spending way too much time on Professor Gerhardt. She’s going to die.
• “I love a ritual sacrifice.”
• “It’s a ritual sacrifice… with pie.”
• There, Anya. Xander’s digging. How nice for you.
• “Imaginary Xander is quite the machine.” Until he falls through the ground.
• This was a pretty good open, although I’m not feeling Xander’s shirt.
• I never, EVER sat in my dorm with the door open. Do people really do that?
• “It’s a sham with yams. It’s a yam sham.”
• “Well, I suppose there could be slight yams.”
• Why is a professor in charge of a military group again?
• Lest we forget that Anya was a demon, she’ll just go ahead and remind us.
• Lady, you work in Sunnydale. When this stuff happens, you RUN. Before you get your throat slit.
• “There’s some great spells that work much better with an ear in the mix.”
• The Chumash tribe. Yup. This is the one with the bear.
• Probably because that set’s being used by another show today.
• Hey, shut up, Giles, uncooked raw cranberries are good. I love ‘em.
• So my friend called just during the time when Angel and Willow faced off in the Espresso Pump, and I paused the show for like 45 minutes and Angel had the derpiest face. If I’d been watching somewhere that I could’ve taken a screenshot and shown it to you. C’est la vie.
• Here’s where Riley grew up.
• Y’know, I appreciate that Harmony is standing up to Spike, and I appreciate the storytelling of Spike being all manly and stuff, but the consent-crusader in me hates it.
• I’m not sure, but I think the church exterior set where Father Gabriel was hanged is the same set they used for the exterior of the fraternity house in “Fear, Itself”.
• Of course Giles would like mushy peas. He’s British.
• That said, mushy peas aren’t bad.
• “I have to baste.”
• Those mashed potatoes are going to get runny if you keep mushing them like that, Buffy.
• I guess they’re not potatoes, then.
• Not to talk bad about the Chumash people, but the names of their gods and locations… kinda silly sounding.
• Once again Spike cuts to the heart of the matter.
• Where the hell did Giles hide a dining table?
• Giles is never going to get his security deposit back with all these arrow holes in the walls.
• Anya never met Angel last year? Did I miss that?
• Spike being full of arrows is rather amusing.
• The cavalry is coming. On bicycles. I feel like I’m watching ET.
• The arrow flying past Hus looked either badly shot, badly composited, or badly CGd. Not sure which.
• Xander’s doing pretty well for the guy with the funny syphillis.
• “What’s he like when he IS evil?”
• I’ll buy that Angel can throw a knife. He’s been alive for more than 200 years and has had plenty of time to practice.
• “You made a bear!”
• “I didn’t mean to!”
• “Undo it! Undo it!”
• Lucky thing that Buffy didn’t look out the window at just the right moment and see Angel standing there.
• Spike’s got one hell of a smirk at the end there. I guess he could sense that Angel was there and just didn’t say anything.

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Listener’s Buffy/Angel Rewatch (A1.07)

Angel 1.07: The Bachelor Party

• I remember thinking this episode was, overall, pretty lame the first time I saw it. Let’s see if it’s different upon reflection.
• Pierce looks exceedingly dull.
• I noticed that this show in general never made mention of the fact that both Angel and Doyle are Irish, even though Angel clearly doesn’t have his accent anymore, given that he’s lived primarily in the U.S. for a century.
• Kinda getting tired of the whole “I’m Doyle, poor me, I’ll never get with Cordy no matter how hard I try” thing. Glad that won’t last much longer.
• Fun fact: Carlos Jacott (Doyle’s ex-wife’s new fiancee) wrote a recent — and rather good — episode of Psych.
• All of a vampire’s clothes disintegrate along with it when it dies… so why didn’t the keg disintegrate too? That just doesn’t make any sense.
• Where’d Cordy get that shawl? She didn’t have it when she left the office.
• The fact that they use tipped arrows in the Buffyverse indicates that it’s the presence of wood touching the heart that kills the vampires, not the piercing of said heart. Interesting.
• Why do so many women on this show have generally-male nicknames? Fred, Will, Harry.
• Not to pee on your parade, Doyle, but when you’ve got a perfectly good name like Allen, why would you go by Francis?
• Generally a wedding episode in the first season isn’t a great move, but technically this is the fourth season because Angel and Cordy have been around for three years, but still. Blargh.
• Glenn Quinn did an excellent job looking like he was trying not to cry.
• I wonder how late it is, given that the restaurant isn’t open. Or perhaps how early.
• Ethnodemonology is a thing? Really? How do you get a degree in that?
• Richard’s brothers look like giant d-bags.
• Richard’s uncle is played by one of those guys who’s in, like, EVERYTHING.
• One of Richard’s friends looks kind of like my boss.
• Pornographic pictionary? Is that a thing?
• “Their ways are not our ways.”
• Okay, that woman? The stripper? Not really what I pictured. I could imagine seeing her in a restaurant or something and maybe dating her, but seeing her dance like that is just CREEEEEEEEPY.
• Might as well make use of the kitchen set for more than one or two scenes, right?
• 818 is the San Fernando Valley. You have been informed.
• No glass in that window. Lucky for Angel, I guess.
• “I’d be honored to eat your brains.”
• The first cut is the deepest, after all.
• Hey, there’s the scene from the credits when Angel kicks open a door in game-face.
• For non-violent demons, these guys are pretty decent fighters.
• What kind of evolution would lead to a demon who only had spikes on his face? Wouldn’t they be all over his body, if he had them?
• “Who wants a wife whose knees only bend the one way?”
• Clearly this episode didn’t interest me enough this time around to write more than 30 comments about it. That’s disappointing.

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The 7 Jeopardy! Categories of My Weekend (v.1.23)

• last of the beans
• lack of accomplishment
• more buffy than the pan can handle
• blandest pesto in the west
• the little gymnast
• crispy loaf
• 1083 items

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“7 Jeopardy! Categories” inspired by my friend ennuipartie…

purgatorystuck:

Mi papá tiene 47 años= my dad is 47 years old

Mi papa tiene 47 anos= my potato has 47 assholes

I love spanish

(via littlegirlinwaiting)

Listener’s Buffy/Angel Rewatch (B4.07)

Buffy 4.07: The Initiative

• Chapter 12 of my novel is called “The Initiative”.
• First appearance of Forrest. Yay Forrest.
• I like how Forrest said she had a nice face, as opposed to commenting on her body. That was nice.
• Hey, it’s Graham!
• Is UCSD so small that they all know Parker? Not sure I buy that.
• Hi Spike.
• The lack of toilets in the cell indicates once and for all that vampires don’t poop.
• Is it just me or was the werewolf sound effect on the title card louder/more prominent than usual in this episode?
• Spike is now in the credits. I suppose that’s a good thing.
• Why is it that everyone in the Buffyverse is a good artist? Or at least not a bad one?
• Funny that Xander suggested summoning evil when that’s exactly what he did in Season Six.
• Hey, it’s lunch!
• This vamp extra looks vaguely familiar, although it may just be reused makeup.
• Oh, right, THAT’S why I recognized him.
• There’s a party tonight, but they have to read four chapters for tomorrow? That doesn’t make a ton of sense.
• Also, most larger college classes don’t take roll.
• Be nice, Buffy. This woman controls 25 percent of your grade this term.
• I don’t think Xander was a marine, but good try.
• Starship Troopers reference.
• Why are Riley, Forrest, and Graham hanging out in the residence hall? Doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense when they have their own house.
• I’m not sure I understand why we needed to have Parker be such a giant dick YET AGAIN. And the scene went on a tad too long too.
• That slap to the back of Riley’s head felt fake.
• I could’ve lived without the saccahrine music.
• Pretty sure we all knew Spike was faking at this point. Time and again he’s proven how intelligent he is.
• I realize that vamping out probably feels good, but it doesn’t increase a vampire’s strength in the same way that flying with fists forward does make Superman fly faster.
• Sad Willow is sad.
• “Gee”? That’s what we’re going with? “Gee”?
• Riley likes the Broncos, huh?
• I wonder if the writer of the episode where Riley left remembered Willow’s little litany when s/he wrote that one.
• “Gee” and “courted”? WHAT? Seriously? We WANT viewers to think he’s that old-fashioned.
• “I’ve seen honest faces before. They usually come attached to liars.” Excellent call, Willow, especially vis-a-vis Riley.
• “She likes cheese.” Who doesn’t?
• Did I completely zone out on Mercedes McNab’s name in the credits? Or was she not in them?
• Oh, Spike, this is a big, big mistake.
• I wouldn’t say Buffy is dressed in a slutty fashion, despite her statement to the contrary earlier.
• Who are “the guys”, Buffy? Your “the guys” are Willow and Xander.
• SHOVEL SPEECH!

• “A vague disclaimer is nobody’s friend.”
• I adored Willow’s little smile in that scene.
• I also loved how self-confident Buffy looked when Riley was talking to her.
• What the hell is wrong with Xander’s hair?
• Slap fight!
• It takes a lot for actors to fight badly because it’s hard enough to fake a GOOD fight without hurting each other. Impressive.
• That girl dancing behind Buffy is not that good of a dancer. It’s kind of sad.
• “Well, you failed extremely well.”
• Lost in all the anti-Riley stuff in fanfic is how well he and Willow worked as friends.
• I get that Willow is a witch, but she should know better than to walk home alone.
• And now the big reveal.
• Oh, Riley, how little you know.
• I still don’t understand why the floor and walls of the work area are covered in tinfoil.
• Like we DIDN’T know she was going to be the Medium Bad. She was getting too much airplay.
• So here’s the big problem with doing “government intervention” in a supernatural show like this: once you win, the government knows you exist, no matter if they sweep everything under the rug or not.
• “Riley’s a doof.” True.
• Literal Chekhov’s gun.
• Because the audience now knows who the Initiative is, we can see them without masks. Le sigh. Televised storytelling at its… um… finest. Yeah.
• Now that Riley is in commando mode, he’s suddenly standing a lot taller than at the party.
• 12A9 is not a valid heading. Headings are points on a 360-degree circle.
• Damn it, Willow, HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING FROM ANGELUS???
• Spike just hurt Willow. Not intentionally, but he did. Shouldn’t it have hurt him?
• This is possibly the worst fight-scene music I’ve heard since the fight in the rain in Macross Plus, and at least that wasn’t intended to be played as funny.
• Oh, ha ha, the “vampire biting as erectile dysfunction” joke that goes on way too long.
• Apropos of nothing, but my floor smells like reconstituted sausages. It’s distracting.
• “You know, this doesn’t make you any less terrifying.”
• “Don’t patronize me.”
• No college student keeps the room at 62.3 degrees. Not even I did, and I love the cold.
• First explicit mention of Spike’s age.
• The Initiative wired the school to have electronic locks on all the doors? My, that’s convenient.
• Why would Spike attempt to bite Graham at that point? Wouldn’t it have been faster to just knock his ass out?
• Okay, Buffy, that punching attack was just overkill.
• “You’re a little peculiar.”

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