Wrecked at the Doublemeat Palace
Feb. 28th, 2006 07:56 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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I've been following![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thalia_seawood 's excellent first-time-viewer commentaries on BtVS and been inspired to cobble together some old notes on two of the less popular episodes of S6.
Wrecked
Love or loath Marti Noxon her writing has a distinctive quality, a forward narrative drive that draws every scene into it and Wrecked is no exception. The previous episode Smashed had the opposite tendency and threw every thing into the mix, Amy, the trio, Tara, all the available regulars until it reached critical mass and exploded. In Wrecked the nerds get relegated to a passing reference in Anya and Xander's one scene, while Tara stays just long enough to symbolically abandon Dawn's pancakes. The stage is cleared for the all singing, all dancing Buffy and Willow show, with Spike and Amy the monkeys on their shoulders. Or their backs.
Begin at the beginning. Dawn and Tara are watching cartoons, how cute? Camera pans back to show that they're not actually watching although no blood on the screen, sleeping not dead this time. TV animation always seems an evil omen. I had a friend whose childhood trauma was Steamboat Willie. Evil, evil three-fingered evil.
Nobody home, so cut to Tom and Jerry or rather Spike and Buffy waking in the ruins. "Oh. Oh my god."
And the problem is voyeuristically apparent right there in the opening sequence. While Spike is luxuriating in the memory of a bloody revelation, now he knows what kind of girl she really is, Buffy only knows the truth of what he told her at the beginning. She’s come back wrong. Wrong to conflate sex and death and love and pain and the vampire she hates. Wrong to let herself be used, another notch on a killer’s bedpost. Spike sees he's hit home with that one but is pitiless following the initial strike with another jibe about her taste in unmen. But she gives as good as she gets. Neither one is the innocent recipient of abuse in this relationship.
Tara makes pancakes. Willow and Amy turn up, strung out and hyper. Buffy limps home, she's tangoed till she’s sore. The abandoned pancakes begin to burn. Dawn is left alone.
Martha Stewart’s pancakes never burn but then she’s a witch. Don’t judge a book by its cover pleads Buffy, but what if there really is a copy of Bride hidden inside the responsible grown up exterior?
Thus begins the final temptation of Willow with Amy, playing on the ex-nerd's self-image as still softer side of Sears girl and offering her cool danger, double dare you. Cool turns out to be the seedier type of dentist's waiting room and Rack the seedier type of dentist but strangely sexy. OK maybe that's just me. Willow stutters like a good girl and loses her strawberry. Then it's all psychedelia pretty until she falls. No Dark Phoenix this one, just another junkie passed out on the bedroom floor. Now she knows. Shower scene. Tara in negative space, forgive me my trespasses but she's not there.
The next part is where the main weakness of the episode lies. The motivation for Willow's return to Rack's with Dawn in tow is obscure. Unlike the first time she knows what she is now, so why so weak so soon and why drag Dawn into it? I suspect the intention was to have Willow go out actually meaning to take Dawn to the movies and then be overcome by temptation when talking about Tara. But her affect during this discussion is quite flat and according to the dialogue she's already taken them astray. So the viewer is left with Amy's afterschool junkie explanation that she 'needs' that stuff, as in "one hit and you're hooked." Which is actually funny when Amy says it, Elizabeth Ann Allen manages to give the dialogue a deliciously world-weary, ironically knowing twist. But Willow plays it straight.
Too many of the scenes in this part of the episode are a pale echo of their equivalents in the first. The Buffy/Spike re-match is a brattish squabble and Willow's breakdown an exercise in TV junkie histrionics compared with the silent pain of her shower scene. Even the psychedelia is less groovy. Still much can be forgiven for that final confession to Buffy. SuperWillow indeed.
Wrecked is a flawed episode that tries to fly too high and gets burnt on the way. For that sin, however, it attracts a quite disproportionate degree of opprobrium. There's the criticism that it’s basically an afterschool special with slightly more expensive effects. I agree that might seem the case if you were to view it in isolation as a standalone, but Wrecked has arciness coming out of its bottom. Everything that happens in it has consequences and even Rack makes a comeback at the end of the season.
The problem is that for many viewers the arc of Wrecked is the magic=crack arc of badness when what they were hoping for was a fuller examination of Willow's power issues. The question is what kind of power is Willow interested in. Political power, the power to make the world a better place? There's a brief hint of that in Pangs but it never really surfaces again, she really was just parroting her mother. Power over other people, the power to wreak the revenge her geekish roots denied her? Definitely a possibility in the high school seasons but more recently she's been backing away from that kind of power as fast as she can paddle. She doesn't want to be the big gun in The Gift and while Buffy's resurrection was performed for many reasons one side effect that Willow takes full advantage of is that she no longer has to be the boss of us. She knows too well that power of that type equals responsibility, she's seen that with Buffy all too clearly. So the problem with trying to fit her into a standard fantasy 'power corrupts' type of arc is that Willow is neither blindly selfish nor stupid/terminally immature. She's basically more of a Jonathon than a Warren or an Andrew.
William Burroughs once said that, "a junkie always knows how he's going to feel." Or maybe it was Matt Dillon. In any case, afterschool specials aside, I don't believe drug addiction is simply a matter of physiology. I think the power Willow wants is exactly that, power over how she feels. Power without responsibility, the power of the great American artist to piss his talent away, to squander her gift on a room full of disposable wedding decorations. SuperWillow indeed.
Doublemeat Palace
This episode also has its detractors but to me it's always seemed classic Jane Espensen. Funny in that giddy, off-the-wall way she has. Possessing a melancholic edge alongside the hilarity, thought provoking and subtly subversive but also showing the clear sighted affection she has for the characters , their strengths, their foibles and their flaws.
It's a very S6 departure for Buffy, foregrounding everyday evils over mythological ones. All too clearly the horror lies in the fluorescent-lit hell of fast food employment, while the monster is reduced to an (apparently) accidental dick joke. The teaser acts as slightly clumsy foreshadowing of the punchline to said joke, getting Buffy to admit she feels like a tool. It's redeemed by Xander's reaction to the pictures of Vulcan women and Willow's casually viscious twisting of the knife as he jokes about hearing the daily edition of "Go Money Go." Still, the meat of the special begins with Act 1 proper.
Corporate infotainment is always funny and the DMP induction video is perfect from the mistimed and unnecessarily complicated transitions to the relentlessly cheap 'n' cheerful voiceover. Moving into the belly of the beast, a sadly authentic air of unreality is created by the combination of Wanker's repetitive score and the oddly autistic camerawork. Faces are kept at mid-distance and close-ups reserved for inanimate objects like Manny the Manager's lifer badge and identical chicken slices. Buffy resists at first, quipping manfully (although not Mannyfully), but by the time the scoobies arrive to observe her subsistence level employment the perkiness has devolved into mild paranoia and when Spike turns up in a very strange shirt she's ready to break. Jibes about monstrosity she can handle but hope is what kills. She's only just decided she wants to live, she's not ready for reminders of how she used to do more than that. Later she follows him into the alley and her thousand yard stare while waiting, tramp-like, for orgasm is a very Peggy Lee moment. All sing "If that's all there is to life…."
A highlight of the episode and possibly one of the most subversive moments in the entire series is Dawn and Xander's deconstruction of the American dream. Some girls are fated never to achieve it and it falls to those lasses who can be lawyers to support them. This idea of people finding that reality doesn't match up could be the theme for the episode. Xander and Anya have their martial hopes undermined by the arrival of Hallie my favourite evil bitch enabler. Her and Amy together could destabilise the conviction of a God-King. The active vengeance demon's physical appearance is sufficient to make Xander wonder what he's letting himself in for and she plays a masterful game of "I was just curious" with Anya as they sip tea in semi-darkness (is that a VD thing?).
Willow's struggles to shake off the shakes, grappling with the mundane reality of junkiehood, are annoyingly predictable until her final scene. Stinky Amy takes her revenge,
Were you on the debate team?
She's good. Points for bringing up high school and then following through with the rat thing. But Willow's better:
Willow:If you really are my friend ... you better stay away from me. And if you really aren't... (meaningfully) ...you *better* stay away from me.
That's my black-eyed girl.
Buffy's final scene asking for her job back is equally well played. Thing is with epiphanies, there's usually a reason for not having them in the first place. Deciding to live is one step forward but living is very far from being all hugs and puppies. Living means having to take crappy jobs seriously because you and yours need the money. This epiphany sticks until Riley comes to town and it gets upgraded.
A final epiphany…
Doublemeat Palace is Angel S5! Both deal with getting a job in a big corporation. Buffy applies to the McPalace to get money and be seen as a responsible parent figure for Dawn. Angel signs up with W&H to buy a new life for his son. On her first day Buffy optimistically opines that Manny can “bite her”. Angel gives the troops a rousing speech about how they can make a difference. Soon both are overwhelmed by the pervading sense of hopelessness engendered by their very different corporate environments. The Scoobies turn up at the DMP, take advantage of the resources (Xander gets a free burger) and leave. Andrew, acting as Giles et al.’s representative, arrives at W&H, takes advantage of their resources and leaves (with Dana). Buffy gets a sign, a disembodied finger, that she believes is a clue to the true nature of the Palace. Angel, or so we learn in Power Play, receives a vision from a briefly embodied Cordelia that forms the basis for a plan of attack. So superficially similar.
However, at the end of Angel S5 we learn that all the evil in the world is controlled by a secret cabal of demons and that by joining with the Man you can uncover his covert identity and attack him on his own terms. Doublemeat Palace on the other hand has a darker and much more disturbing message. Here the great corporate conspiracy turns out to be vegetables and the all-consuming source of paralyzing evil turns out to be the customer. To be us.
Alternatively in Angel S6 we’d have found out that the Black Thorn were really rutabaga and the Senior Partners had been living in Harmony’s brain all along.
I've been following
thalia_seawood 's excellent first-time-viewer commentaries on BtVS and been inspired to cobble together some old notes on two of the less popular episodes of S6.Wrecked
Love or loath Marti Noxon her writing has a distinctive quality, a forward narrative drive that draws every scene into it and Wrecked is no exception. The previous episode Smashed had the opposite tendency and threw every thing into the mix, Amy, the trio, Tara, all the available regulars until it reached critical mass and exploded. In Wrecked the nerds get relegated to a passing reference in Anya and Xander's one scene, while Tara stays just long enough to symbolically abandon Dawn's pancakes. The stage is cleared for the all singing, all dancing Buffy and Willow show, with Spike and Amy the monkeys on their shoulders. Or their backs.
Begin at the beginning. Dawn and Tara are watching cartoons, how cute? Camera pans back to show that they're not actually watching although no blood on the screen, sleeping not dead this time. TV animation always seems an evil omen. I had a friend whose childhood trauma was Steamboat Willie. Evil, evil three-fingered evil.
Nobody home, so cut to Tom and Jerry or rather Spike and Buffy waking in the ruins. "Oh. Oh my god."
And the problem is voyeuristically apparent right there in the opening sequence. While Spike is luxuriating in the memory of a bloody revelation, now he knows what kind of girl she really is, Buffy only knows the truth of what he told her at the beginning. She’s come back wrong. Wrong to conflate sex and death and love and pain and the vampire she hates. Wrong to let herself be used, another notch on a killer’s bedpost. Spike sees he's hit home with that one but is pitiless following the initial strike with another jibe about her taste in unmen. But she gives as good as she gets. Neither one is the innocent recipient of abuse in this relationship.
Tara makes pancakes. Willow and Amy turn up, strung out and hyper. Buffy limps home, she's tangoed till she’s sore. The abandoned pancakes begin to burn. Dawn is left alone.
Martha Stewart’s pancakes never burn but then she’s a witch. Don’t judge a book by its cover pleads Buffy, but what if there really is a copy of Bride hidden inside the responsible grown up exterior?
Thus begins the final temptation of Willow with Amy, playing on the ex-nerd's self-image as still softer side of Sears girl and offering her cool danger, double dare you. Cool turns out to be the seedier type of dentist's waiting room and Rack the seedier type of dentist but strangely sexy. OK maybe that's just me. Willow stutters like a good girl and loses her strawberry. Then it's all psychedelia pretty until she falls. No Dark Phoenix this one, just another junkie passed out on the bedroom floor. Now she knows. Shower scene. Tara in negative space, forgive me my trespasses but she's not there.
The next part is where the main weakness of the episode lies. The motivation for Willow's return to Rack's with Dawn in tow is obscure. Unlike the first time she knows what she is now, so why so weak so soon and why drag Dawn into it? I suspect the intention was to have Willow go out actually meaning to take Dawn to the movies and then be overcome by temptation when talking about Tara. But her affect during this discussion is quite flat and according to the dialogue she's already taken them astray. So the viewer is left with Amy's afterschool junkie explanation that she 'needs' that stuff, as in "one hit and you're hooked." Which is actually funny when Amy says it, Elizabeth Ann Allen manages to give the dialogue a deliciously world-weary, ironically knowing twist. But Willow plays it straight.
Too many of the scenes in this part of the episode are a pale echo of their equivalents in the first. The Buffy/Spike re-match is a brattish squabble and Willow's breakdown an exercise in TV junkie histrionics compared with the silent pain of her shower scene. Even the psychedelia is less groovy. Still much can be forgiven for that final confession to Buffy. SuperWillow indeed.
Wrecked is a flawed episode that tries to fly too high and gets burnt on the way. For that sin, however, it attracts a quite disproportionate degree of opprobrium. There's the criticism that it’s basically an afterschool special with slightly more expensive effects. I agree that might seem the case if you were to view it in isolation as a standalone, but Wrecked has arciness coming out of its bottom. Everything that happens in it has consequences and even Rack makes a comeback at the end of the season.
The problem is that for many viewers the arc of Wrecked is the magic=crack arc of badness when what they were hoping for was a fuller examination of Willow's power issues. The question is what kind of power is Willow interested in. Political power, the power to make the world a better place? There's a brief hint of that in Pangs but it never really surfaces again, she really was just parroting her mother. Power over other people, the power to wreak the revenge her geekish roots denied her? Definitely a possibility in the high school seasons but more recently she's been backing away from that kind of power as fast as she can paddle. She doesn't want to be the big gun in The Gift and while Buffy's resurrection was performed for many reasons one side effect that Willow takes full advantage of is that she no longer has to be the boss of us. She knows too well that power of that type equals responsibility, she's seen that with Buffy all too clearly. So the problem with trying to fit her into a standard fantasy 'power corrupts' type of arc is that Willow is neither blindly selfish nor stupid/terminally immature. She's basically more of a Jonathon than a Warren or an Andrew.
William Burroughs once said that, "a junkie always knows how he's going to feel." Or maybe it was Matt Dillon. In any case, afterschool specials aside, I don't believe drug addiction is simply a matter of physiology. I think the power Willow wants is exactly that, power over how she feels. Power without responsibility, the power of the great American artist to piss his talent away, to squander her gift on a room full of disposable wedding decorations. SuperWillow indeed.
Doublemeat Palace
This episode also has its detractors but to me it's always seemed classic Jane Espensen. Funny in that giddy, off-the-wall way she has. Possessing a melancholic edge alongside the hilarity, thought provoking and subtly subversive but also showing the clear sighted affection she has for the characters , their strengths, their foibles and their flaws.
It's a very S6 departure for Buffy, foregrounding everyday evils over mythological ones. All too clearly the horror lies in the fluorescent-lit hell of fast food employment, while the monster is reduced to an (apparently) accidental dick joke. The teaser acts as slightly clumsy foreshadowing of the punchline to said joke, getting Buffy to admit she feels like a tool. It's redeemed by Xander's reaction to the pictures of Vulcan women and Willow's casually viscious twisting of the knife as he jokes about hearing the daily edition of "Go Money Go." Still, the meat of the special begins with Act 1 proper.
Corporate infotainment is always funny and the DMP induction video is perfect from the mistimed and unnecessarily complicated transitions to the relentlessly cheap 'n' cheerful voiceover. Moving into the belly of the beast, a sadly authentic air of unreality is created by the combination of Wanker's repetitive score and the oddly autistic camerawork. Faces are kept at mid-distance and close-ups reserved for inanimate objects like Manny the Manager's lifer badge and identical chicken slices. Buffy resists at first, quipping manfully (although not Mannyfully), but by the time the scoobies arrive to observe her subsistence level employment the perkiness has devolved into mild paranoia and when Spike turns up in a very strange shirt she's ready to break. Jibes about monstrosity she can handle but hope is what kills. She's only just decided she wants to live, she's not ready for reminders of how she used to do more than that. Later she follows him into the alley and her thousand yard stare while waiting, tramp-like, for orgasm is a very Peggy Lee moment. All sing "If that's all there is to life…."
A highlight of the episode and possibly one of the most subversive moments in the entire series is Dawn and Xander's deconstruction of the American dream. Some girls are fated never to achieve it and it falls to those lasses who can be lawyers to support them. This idea of people finding that reality doesn't match up could be the theme for the episode. Xander and Anya have their martial hopes undermined by the arrival of Hallie my favourite evil bitch enabler. Her and Amy together could destabilise the conviction of a God-King. The active vengeance demon's physical appearance is sufficient to make Xander wonder what he's letting himself in for and she plays a masterful game of "I was just curious" with Anya as they sip tea in semi-darkness (is that a VD thing?).
Willow's struggles to shake off the shakes, grappling with the mundane reality of junkiehood, are annoyingly predictable until her final scene. Stinky Amy takes her revenge,
Were you on the debate team?
She's good. Points for bringing up high school and then following through with the rat thing. But Willow's better:
Willow:If you really are my friend ... you better stay away from me. And if you really aren't... (meaningfully) ...you *better* stay away from me.
That's my black-eyed girl.
Buffy's final scene asking for her job back is equally well played. Thing is with epiphanies, there's usually a reason for not having them in the first place. Deciding to live is one step forward but living is very far from being all hugs and puppies. Living means having to take crappy jobs seriously because you and yours need the money. This epiphany sticks until Riley comes to town and it gets upgraded.
A final epiphany…
Doublemeat Palace is Angel S5! Both deal with getting a job in a big corporation. Buffy applies to the McPalace to get money and be seen as a responsible parent figure for Dawn. Angel signs up with W&H to buy a new life for his son. On her first day Buffy optimistically opines that Manny can “bite her”. Angel gives the troops a rousing speech about how they can make a difference. Soon both are overwhelmed by the pervading sense of hopelessness engendered by their very different corporate environments. The Scoobies turn up at the DMP, take advantage of the resources (Xander gets a free burger) and leave. Andrew, acting as Giles et al.’s representative, arrives at W&H, takes advantage of their resources and leaves (with Dana). Buffy gets a sign, a disembodied finger, that she believes is a clue to the true nature of the Palace. Angel, or so we learn in Power Play, receives a vision from a briefly embodied Cordelia that forms the basis for a plan of attack. So superficially similar.
However, at the end of Angel S5 we learn that all the evil in the world is controlled by a secret cabal of demons and that by joining with the Man you can uncover his covert identity and attack him on his own terms. Doublemeat Palace on the other hand has a darker and much more disturbing message. Here the great corporate conspiracy turns out to be vegetables and the all-consuming source of paralyzing evil turns out to be the customer. To be us.
Alternatively in Angel S6 we’d have found out that the Black Thorn were really rutabaga and the Senior Partners had been living in Harmony’s brain all along.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 08:40 pm (UTC)...Does this mean the final shot of Angel S6 would have been Harmony Kendall in a hospital gown, with stringy hair and vancat look as we pull back and see Buffy in the room next door?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 08:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 08:47 pm (UTC)And I see the flaws, but IMO Wrecked is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be. So pretty much agree with all that you just wrote. And Rack was totally sexy, "let's take a little tour" *g*
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 08:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 08:54 pm (UTC)I always liked Doublemeat Palace. That nasty alley sex scene? Teh hot. And the whole fast food = evil theme, great. Also, the fact that Buffy, who supported herself as a diner waitress in LA, would instead go for a brainless job in a soulless burger joint in Sunnydale speaks to the depth of her depression.
I had a harder time with Wrecked when it first aired. But when I watched it for the second time, I saw a lot of things I liked in it. Late in the episode there's some great Spike/Buffy interaction. I still hate the Willow Magic = Crack thing, though.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 08:58 am (UTC)I think things must be different in the UK, I used to waitress in the summer holidays and alway wished I'd gotten a job in McDonalds. The take home pay was slightly less but I could have just signed in, switched off and signed out instead of all the exhausting Pavlovian tail wagging you had to go through for tips. It's possible there was some depression speaking there.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 09:11 pm (UTC)Yeah, this. It's so true. I think just writing off S6 with a quick "They wasted the exploration of Willow's power issues" is way too simple of a soundbite and ignores all of the points you made above. Do we know that Willow really wants power? Isn't there more evidence that actually supports Willow acting irresponsibly and with her own feelings and interests at the forefront of her mind? I can agree that it ventured into cheese, but as far as motivation goes, I've never really seen what was out of character in showing Willow attempting the quick fix in relation to her own turmoil.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 08:59 am (UTC)Good stuff
Date: 2006-02-28 09:15 pm (UTC)I think she was still frightened by what she realized she was doing and Dawn was a very weak anchor for her to who she once was. Dawn as youthful vibrant Willow. She took Dawn because Dawn was the only one she *could* take. She knew she had to pick the most vulnerable of the Scoobies and did. This contrasting to the vulnerability of Tara, yet again the mother figure, feeding Dawn in a healthy way, as opposed to Willow feeding herself evil magic. And like the pancake, they are all about to be burned.
Home and hearth, entertainment, work are all trashed in this episode. Every anchor people use to see who they are is removed.
Re: Good stuff
Date: 2006-03-01 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 11:21 pm (UTC)Moving into the belly of the beast,
I liked very much how you foreshadowed your final epiphany. And certainly it's extremely interesting that for all the NC-17 sex scenes that went on in Season 6, the episode that caused them the most problems in terms of corporate reaction was DMP.
I think the power Willow wants is exactly that, power over how she feels. Power without responsibility, the power of the great American artist to piss his talent away, to squander her gift on a room full of disposable wedding decorations.
Yes, and this makes for an interesting extrapolation of why Willow is so afraid of using her power in Season 7, because in S7 it has become something Important, something necessary and by the end something that aids very much in winning the war (battle) because she has not been allowed to squander it.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 05:35 am (UTC)I'm actually really glad you did Wrecked. While I don't despise it or anything, it is my least favorite BtVS episode. I enjoyed reading your defense of it, and it makes me so happy to think that for every single episode there's someone out there who finds goodness in it and will defend it's honour! :D
I love DMP. I always enjoyed silly episodes like DMP, Beer Bad, and Him, that I think a lot of people were pretty much disgusted with. ::shrugs:: To each their own.
Anyway, thank you so much for sharing your wonderful thoughts with us. Really fun read!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 09:11 am (UTC)Silliness is much underated. And how can people not love Cave!Buffy?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 01:58 pm (UTC)Alternatively in Angel S6 we’d have found out that the Black Thorn were really rutabaga and the Senior Partners had been living in Harmony’s brain all along.
Because I realised that it would make the whole thing into The Usual Suspects, with Harmony as Keyser Soze! And she'd be walking down the road as Angel fought Hamilton, and her girly wiggle would turn into a self-assured walk and then this big limo would pull up and... OMG!!! ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-03 03:53 am (UTC)I think the power Willow wants is exactly that, power over how she feels. Power without responsibility, the power of the great American artist to piss his talent away, to squander her gift on a room full of disposable wedding decorations. That's a great point, and I totally agree! That actually makes the magic=crack less annoying.
My biggest issue with "Wrecked" is that 2 nights pass for Willow but only one for Buffy & Spike. (I've re-watched carefully and a whole night passes before Willow takes Dawn to Rack, but when Buffy wakes Spike up they refer to having sex as "last night".) I'm a big stickler for correct timelines, so this is the kind of thing that bothers me! /rant
A highlight of the episode and possibly one of the most subversive moments in the entire series is Dawn and Xander's deconstruction of the American dream. Some girls are fated never to achieve it and it falls to those lasses who can be lawyers to support them. This idea of people finding that reality doesn't match up could be the theme for the episode. Another excellent point, and one of my favourite moments of the episode! No wonder this was the episode the advertisers hated the most. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-03 07:24 pm (UTC)I admit to having to turn my brain off so la la la can't hear the timeline cock up. The one that bothers me most is Willow saying she's tried to stop but she can't. Like when Willow?
It's a curate's egg of an episode and an arc but where it's good it's very good. Plus psychedelia pretty and monster go bang!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-03 06:23 pm (UTC)cut to Tom and Jerry or rather Spike and Buffy waking in the ruins.
Heh. Indeed, writers may be highlighting that we should give allowances to Buffy and Spike when they fought in the previous episode - that it should be regarded as a foreplay of two super-strong partners?
no subject
Date: 2006-03-03 07:25 pm (UTC)And now I will never let my children watch cartoons again:-)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-05 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-05 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-22 11:09 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMzgVshG6CI