![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsBuffy the Vampire Slayer: 2x07 – Lie to Me
If I had really stopped to think about this episode before watching it, I might have recalled that it sits in kind of a weird place in my remembered opinion. When I remember it, it’s usually positively, but there’s a lot here that I didn’t remember. Or only kind of remembered at least.
And rewatching it, I think I know why it had such an odd place in my memory. This episode is lovely, tragic, sweet, well written and acted, and definitely goes on the good side of things. But it’s also deeply flawed in a couple of ways that make it more messy than I’d like it to be when the story is so good in so many ways.
Weirdly, it’s not that Ford comes out of nowhere and I don’t think is ever mentioned again. That’s not great and gets close to being the new poor forgotten Jesse (which…this is the first time I’ve brought him up this season), but it’s not the problem with the character. Ford is half a brilliant character study, and half a plot contrivance. We’re still not told how he found out Buffy was the Slayer, unless he saw Buffy in action back at Hemery but they never talked about it (and even then would he know about being the Slayer?). And where are his parents (or at least his dad, he only mentions his dad) in all this? His parents have to know about his diagnosis and they’re just letting him wander like this?
I guess I could invent a scenario where he said he wanted to go visit Buffy before he got any sicker and his parents let him. Unlike the puppet guy in season 1, he’s not going to school with brain cancer, because that’s rather unfair and his parents are giving him some space to deal with how he’s feeling. It’s not great, because I don’t quite buy that something like that would be parents’ reaction to what’s going on. Then again, maybe they’re like Buffy’s parents in the movie and completely detached from their son’s life and impending death. It’s still a stretch though.
In the same vein there are a few other times this episode when I’m reminded that these people are supposed to be teenagers in high school, and yet they only seem to have the limitations of being kids in high school when it suits them. Willow may have rules about not having boys in her room, but Buffy and Ford were planning to meet at nine for their evening out?
Along the same lines, the vampire death cult is kind of a good idea of something that might happen in this world where all of that is real; and half just creates a lot of questions. Do people in the cult look to set up in places with high potential vampire activity? Or are they perhaps drawn by something of the Hellmouth? If people are connecting the dots on there being something weird going down in Sunnydale (in spite of the attempt to suppress it), then these probably aren’t the only people making connection. Who started this cult? If it’s Ford then that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but who else seems to have much leadership in the cult? If it’s Diego, how did Ford find out about it happening?
The other problem I have with this episode is actually the directing. Joss gets excellent performances from the actors as usual, but some of his choices for how to film scenes is wonky. It’s usually harmless aside from me wondering why the camera is at a certain angle that doesn’t seem like a good fit in my mind, or the camera movement insists upon itself a bit too hard. But then there are a couple times when I really can’t tell what they were going for. One is when Willow, Xander, and Angel are leaving the club, there’s a lingering shot like Diego overheard them talking about the Slayer and that was going to be a problem somewhere in the plan…but it never comes up. The other time is at the end of the Buffy and Angel scene in the dining room when the camera is looking through the window; which would usually imply someone was watching/listening to them, but we’re not shown that anyone was (unless I missed something?).
Barring my distracting issues with Ford, he’s also a really well done character. He’s annoying at times when it comes to the vampire stuff, but it makes a kind of sense. Knowing that he’s dying, he’s retreated into this fantasy, that he wants to enact according to the script in his head. Because it’s a script where he gets to live and have this cool second life, where he’ll be the one making grandiose speeches over the centuries about all the great things he’s done and seen, where presumably the things he has to do to get there won’t bother him. He knows that he’s the bad guy, even as he tries to gain sympathy. It’s part of why he’s drawn to vampires, both as a fan of and want to be them; he feels powerful pulling off this scheme and he’ll be more powerful once he’s a vampire.
This is the kind of episode that makes me kind of regret this style of reviewing. Both because I’ve had a couple days where I just wanted to watch this episode instead of set aside time to review it; and because I kind of want to something more in the recap vein, because there are a lot of good scenes, but I was just going with what the story was doing and so nothing jumped out at me as needing to be commented on.
Come to think of it, I actually did have something to say about the opening scene of the episode between Angel and Dru. I don’t know if we’re still working on the thought that Angel is also Spike’s sire at this point, but whether or not that’s supposed to be the case, he clearly has a lot of *feelings* when it comes to Drucilla. Him trying to send them away instead of dealing with them says a lot about Angel, both good and bad (mostly bad; so more like a bad and interesting contrast). We have seen Angel stake vampires (I think, I can’t remember a specific instance unless he staked Darla…which he might have) and at minimum make life difficult for them, but he kind of ignores the threat of Spike and Dru. If they’re not here, they’re someone else’s problem; he doesn’t really think about the people they could be killing in other towns where there’s no Slayer protecting people. But I also do get why he feels a measure of responsibility for Dru (and to some extent Spike) given that she is one of the things he most blames himself for. And Angel seems to have a very odd standing towards vampires at the moment; he’s not on the vampires’ side, but he’s not on the humans’ side either. His loyalties are very personal based, and while he’s loyal to Buffy, he’s also loyal to Dru in a different way.
What am I shipping?
There are several…flashes of interest in things here. Angel/Willow feels like something that could grow on me; Xander/Willow are maybe a bit more shippable than they have been so far; Buffy/Willow continue to read very coupley to me at times; it’s not a great episode for Giles/Jenny, but it’s a good check in on them; as usual there’s at least a hint of my Buffy/Giles tendencies.
But I’m going to talk about Spike and Dru. In my head, I remember that I used to ship these two, but I’m not sure I do right now, and I don’t see how I’m going to like it more as this season progresses (maybe it will and I’m jumping the gun). We end up seeing very little of them just tearing shit up together, which is somehow the way I think of them working best. I’m pretty sure I even remember that the point of them was to show vampires in a loving relationship and…I’m not buying it. He’s a controlling asshole who infantilizes her most of the time. In a weird way, that could work for them, if we saw more aspects of their relationship; either that she is mentally unstable and Spike has experience with her when she’s in a bad spell, or if it was clear that this is unusual because she’s so weak right now. But that’s not what I’m getting from them so far; even when it’s what I expected to find.
Maybe I just hate Spike too much. I’ve actually been thinking that since School Hard I haven’t hated him as much as I did or expected to. But it could be more subconsciously poisoning my view of everything he does.
Oh, and I also cannot get on board with Buffy/Angel. They’re not comfortable with each other, he basically forces her to say that she loves him when he hadn’t exactly said that yet, and her saying that she loves him…the most charitable way I’ll look at it is it being very high school. To my ear, it doesn’t even seem like Buffy quite believes it, especially when she follows it up with how she doesn’t trust him.
If I had really stopped to think about this episode before watching it, I might have recalled that it sits in kind of a weird place in my remembered opinion. When I remember it, it’s usually positively, but there’s a lot here that I didn’t remember. Or only kind of remembered at least.
And rewatching it, I think I know why it had such an odd place in my memory. This episode is lovely, tragic, sweet, well written and acted, and definitely goes on the good side of things. But it’s also deeply flawed in a couple of ways that make it more messy than I’d like it to be when the story is so good in so many ways.
Weirdly, it’s not that Ford comes out of nowhere and I don’t think is ever mentioned again. That’s not great and gets close to being the new poor forgotten Jesse (which…this is the first time I’ve brought him up this season), but it’s not the problem with the character. Ford is half a brilliant character study, and half a plot contrivance. We’re still not told how he found out Buffy was the Slayer, unless he saw Buffy in action back at Hemery but they never talked about it (and even then would he know about being the Slayer?). And where are his parents (or at least his dad, he only mentions his dad) in all this? His parents have to know about his diagnosis and they’re just letting him wander like this?
I guess I could invent a scenario where he said he wanted to go visit Buffy before he got any sicker and his parents let him. Unlike the puppet guy in season 1, he’s not going to school with brain cancer, because that’s rather unfair and his parents are giving him some space to deal with how he’s feeling. It’s not great, because I don’t quite buy that something like that would be parents’ reaction to what’s going on. Then again, maybe they’re like Buffy’s parents in the movie and completely detached from their son’s life and impending death. It’s still a stretch though.
In the same vein there are a few other times this episode when I’m reminded that these people are supposed to be teenagers in high school, and yet they only seem to have the limitations of being kids in high school when it suits them. Willow may have rules about not having boys in her room, but Buffy and Ford were planning to meet at nine for their evening out?
Along the same lines, the vampire death cult is kind of a good idea of something that might happen in this world where all of that is real; and half just creates a lot of questions. Do people in the cult look to set up in places with high potential vampire activity? Or are they perhaps drawn by something of the Hellmouth? If people are connecting the dots on there being something weird going down in Sunnydale (in spite of the attempt to suppress it), then these probably aren’t the only people making connection. Who started this cult? If it’s Ford then that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but who else seems to have much leadership in the cult? If it’s Diego, how did Ford find out about it happening?
The other problem I have with this episode is actually the directing. Joss gets excellent performances from the actors as usual, but some of his choices for how to film scenes is wonky. It’s usually harmless aside from me wondering why the camera is at a certain angle that doesn’t seem like a good fit in my mind, or the camera movement insists upon itself a bit too hard. But then there are a couple times when I really can’t tell what they were going for. One is when Willow, Xander, and Angel are leaving the club, there’s a lingering shot like Diego overheard them talking about the Slayer and that was going to be a problem somewhere in the plan…but it never comes up. The other time is at the end of the Buffy and Angel scene in the dining room when the camera is looking through the window; which would usually imply someone was watching/listening to them, but we’re not shown that anyone was (unless I missed something?).
Barring my distracting issues with Ford, he’s also a really well done character. He’s annoying at times when it comes to the vampire stuff, but it makes a kind of sense. Knowing that he’s dying, he’s retreated into this fantasy, that he wants to enact according to the script in his head. Because it’s a script where he gets to live and have this cool second life, where he’ll be the one making grandiose speeches over the centuries about all the great things he’s done and seen, where presumably the things he has to do to get there won’t bother him. He knows that he’s the bad guy, even as he tries to gain sympathy. It’s part of why he’s drawn to vampires, both as a fan of and want to be them; he feels powerful pulling off this scheme and he’ll be more powerful once he’s a vampire.
This is the kind of episode that makes me kind of regret this style of reviewing. Both because I’ve had a couple days where I just wanted to watch this episode instead of set aside time to review it; and because I kind of want to something more in the recap vein, because there are a lot of good scenes, but I was just going with what the story was doing and so nothing jumped out at me as needing to be commented on.
Come to think of it, I actually did have something to say about the opening scene of the episode between Angel and Dru. I don’t know if we’re still working on the thought that Angel is also Spike’s sire at this point, but whether or not that’s supposed to be the case, he clearly has a lot of *feelings* when it comes to Drucilla. Him trying to send them away instead of dealing with them says a lot about Angel, both good and bad (mostly bad; so more like a bad and interesting contrast). We have seen Angel stake vampires (I think, I can’t remember a specific instance unless he staked Darla…which he might have) and at minimum make life difficult for them, but he kind of ignores the threat of Spike and Dru. If they’re not here, they’re someone else’s problem; he doesn’t really think about the people they could be killing in other towns where there’s no Slayer protecting people. But I also do get why he feels a measure of responsibility for Dru (and to some extent Spike) given that she is one of the things he most blames himself for. And Angel seems to have a very odd standing towards vampires at the moment; he’s not on the vampires’ side, but he’s not on the humans’ side either. His loyalties are very personal based, and while he’s loyal to Buffy, he’s also loyal to Dru in a different way.
What am I shipping?
There are several…flashes of interest in things here. Angel/Willow feels like something that could grow on me; Xander/Willow are maybe a bit more shippable than they have been so far; Buffy/Willow continue to read very coupley to me at times; it’s not a great episode for Giles/Jenny, but it’s a good check in on them; as usual there’s at least a hint of my Buffy/Giles tendencies.
But I’m going to talk about Spike and Dru. In my head, I remember that I used to ship these two, but I’m not sure I do right now, and I don’t see how I’m going to like it more as this season progresses (maybe it will and I’m jumping the gun). We end up seeing very little of them just tearing shit up together, which is somehow the way I think of them working best. I’m pretty sure I even remember that the point of them was to show vampires in a loving relationship and…I’m not buying it. He’s a controlling asshole who infantilizes her most of the time. In a weird way, that could work for them, if we saw more aspects of their relationship; either that she is mentally unstable and Spike has experience with her when she’s in a bad spell, or if it was clear that this is unusual because she’s so weak right now. But that’s not what I’m getting from them so far; even when it’s what I expected to find.
Maybe I just hate Spike too much. I’ve actually been thinking that since School Hard I haven’t hated him as much as I did or expected to. But it could be more subconsciously poisoning my view of everything he does.
Oh, and I also cannot get on board with Buffy/Angel. They’re not comfortable with each other, he basically forces her to say that she loves him when he hadn’t exactly said that yet, and her saying that she loves him…the most charitable way I’ll look at it is it being very high school. To my ear, it doesn’t even seem like Buffy quite believes it, especially when she follows it up with how she doesn’t trust him.
