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tori_reviewsBuffy the Vampire Slayer: 3x16 – Dopplegangland
So it was at this point that I took a much longer than expected break between episodes. Meaning that I expect that a lot of the more thematic and resonant things that I was commenting on are now going to be more distant from my mind. Also because I’m pretty sure this episode doesn’t have a lot of that stuff that needs commenting on.
This episode basically ends up being a gimmick. It feels like what I highly suspect it was given its place in the season, a ratings stunt for sweeps. Whether they marketed it as Willow becomes a vampire or the mystery of a vampire Willow or what, it seems…false.
It pays lip service to the ongoing plots surrounding everyone, but it doesn’t do anything with them. And in a way that could be fine, letting the Faith stuff simmer on the back burner for an episode is fine for showing that she’s able to be a double agent for a bit and that some events are contained to a couple of days in these people’s lives. I just wish this was a better episode.
It’s not even a very good follow up to The Wish; and I already thought Wish was an under-realized concept. And it almost seems to revel in that fact, since vamp-Willow goes back and is promptly killed so nobody learned anything. Vamp-Will doesn’t know what caused her world, she doesn’t know what collapsed her timeline, she didn’t make any choices that had affected that timeline in the past and can’t make any going forward (even if that world still exists, which I’m not sure it does).
Depending on how you view The Wish, it’s either a Cordelia or Giles episode (plus the intro of Anya), but neither them have anything much to do in this episode. Cordelia still doesn’t learn the power that her wish could have had (if anyone gets that part of Anya’s story it’s never brought up); there would in fact have been a tragic irony if she had somehow died because of her wish, it just had to take a roundabout way to bite her in the ass. We don’t get the resolution of Wish-Giles knowing that his potential destruction of his world was worth it, because there is a better world because of his choice.
Or, you know, any characters that would actually communicate with our main versions of the characters. As is…it’s just some stuff that happens. And if you’re not that into it, there’s not a lot of deeper meaning to latch onto.
It pays a little bit of lip service to some of the things brought up in Wish. Buffy talks about how she could have been like Faith, but we don’t see Wish-Buffy here to remind us that she probably could have. And when it does call to ‘but for the grace of…” it really only references the person Willow could have become as a vampire, not how the whole world could have been different for want of one choice.
Also, I am not sure how anyone thought Anya should become a regular member of this cast, or when they thought that up, because…so far she is not someone I want to see any more of. She’s just mean and unpleasant, somehow without having any discernable personality traits besides being mean and unpleasant. I’m not even sure she’d be a very good recurring villain at this point.
It probably doesn’t help that I don’t remember ever being all that fond of Anya. At her best she’s just kind of there. And she doesn’t start at her best.
On a not entirely disconnected note; damn, this show no idea what to do with Cordy after the breakup, did they? Basically ever since then, she shows up for a scene or two an episode, and her scenes are never about her; they’re about contractual obligation and whatever the plot of the week is about. Had there been an idea to kill her off in Lover’s Walk when they did what turned out to be a death fake-out? Had they decided to put her in the spin off so they’re keeping her around here even though they don’t have any use for her right now?
This mid-season run has developed something of a bad habit of reducing the characters to more stock versions of themselves. Not out of character, but playing up an aspect or two for the sake of the plot of the week, without taking the characters as a whole. I’d say Willow sort of gets off light compared to Xander in Zeppo or even Buffy in parts of Bad Girls; but they do clearly go out of their way to make Willow-prime seem clean and quirky and spineless to contrast her with vamp-Willow.
In a way this is a parallel to some stuff I noted in Zeppo, about how the Scoobies have grown a lot and gained a lot of skills and confidence when it comes to dealing with the supernatural, but when faced with regular world threats and concerns they haven’t had the same development. But as flawed as that episode was, I would say it did a better job with that than we get here (if it was even supposed to be doing that idea) because…Willow doesn’t grow from this experience. They pull back her character development to make this episode work, but the plot isn’t even restoring the depth they took away from her.
All told…this episode worries me. Because something in my head tells me that we’re going to keep losing character depth as the seasons continue; that we’ll get in a whole lot of one step forward and two back, the way we kind of do here. I don’t think it gets bad yet, but I have concerns.
And look, I don’t comment on it often, but the effects here have not aged well.
There is something a little wonky here when the most thought I have about character development is how it makes sense that Oz has less issues with Angel than most of the Scoobies do. There’s not a lot of history there, so they can just be a vampire and werewolf with some shared friends of friends.
What am I shipping?
Surprisingly very little. Although I might be persuaded into a Scooby quad-ple (in the sense that I would usually say thruple, but I don’t want to leave Giles out this time).
So it was at this point that I took a much longer than expected break between episodes. Meaning that I expect that a lot of the more thematic and resonant things that I was commenting on are now going to be more distant from my mind. Also because I’m pretty sure this episode doesn’t have a lot of that stuff that needs commenting on.
This episode basically ends up being a gimmick. It feels like what I highly suspect it was given its place in the season, a ratings stunt for sweeps. Whether they marketed it as Willow becomes a vampire or the mystery of a vampire Willow or what, it seems…false.
It pays lip service to the ongoing plots surrounding everyone, but it doesn’t do anything with them. And in a way that could be fine, letting the Faith stuff simmer on the back burner for an episode is fine for showing that she’s able to be a double agent for a bit and that some events are contained to a couple of days in these people’s lives. I just wish this was a better episode.
It’s not even a very good follow up to The Wish; and I already thought Wish was an under-realized concept. And it almost seems to revel in that fact, since vamp-Willow goes back and is promptly killed so nobody learned anything. Vamp-Will doesn’t know what caused her world, she doesn’t know what collapsed her timeline, she didn’t make any choices that had affected that timeline in the past and can’t make any going forward (even if that world still exists, which I’m not sure it does).
Depending on how you view The Wish, it’s either a Cordelia or Giles episode (plus the intro of Anya), but neither them have anything much to do in this episode. Cordelia still doesn’t learn the power that her wish could have had (if anyone gets that part of Anya’s story it’s never brought up); there would in fact have been a tragic irony if she had somehow died because of her wish, it just had to take a roundabout way to bite her in the ass. We don’t get the resolution of Wish-Giles knowing that his potential destruction of his world was worth it, because there is a better world because of his choice.
Or, you know, any characters that would actually communicate with our main versions of the characters. As is…it’s just some stuff that happens. And if you’re not that into it, there’s not a lot of deeper meaning to latch onto.
It pays a little bit of lip service to some of the things brought up in Wish. Buffy talks about how she could have been like Faith, but we don’t see Wish-Buffy here to remind us that she probably could have. And when it does call to ‘but for the grace of…” it really only references the person Willow could have become as a vampire, not how the whole world could have been different for want of one choice.
Also, I am not sure how anyone thought Anya should become a regular member of this cast, or when they thought that up, because…so far she is not someone I want to see any more of. She’s just mean and unpleasant, somehow without having any discernable personality traits besides being mean and unpleasant. I’m not even sure she’d be a very good recurring villain at this point.
It probably doesn’t help that I don’t remember ever being all that fond of Anya. At her best she’s just kind of there. And she doesn’t start at her best.
On a not entirely disconnected note; damn, this show no idea what to do with Cordy after the breakup, did they? Basically ever since then, she shows up for a scene or two an episode, and her scenes are never about her; they’re about contractual obligation and whatever the plot of the week is about. Had there been an idea to kill her off in Lover’s Walk when they did what turned out to be a death fake-out? Had they decided to put her in the spin off so they’re keeping her around here even though they don’t have any use for her right now?
This mid-season run has developed something of a bad habit of reducing the characters to more stock versions of themselves. Not out of character, but playing up an aspect or two for the sake of the plot of the week, without taking the characters as a whole. I’d say Willow sort of gets off light compared to Xander in Zeppo or even Buffy in parts of Bad Girls; but they do clearly go out of their way to make Willow-prime seem clean and quirky and spineless to contrast her with vamp-Willow.
In a way this is a parallel to some stuff I noted in Zeppo, about how the Scoobies have grown a lot and gained a lot of skills and confidence when it comes to dealing with the supernatural, but when faced with regular world threats and concerns they haven’t had the same development. But as flawed as that episode was, I would say it did a better job with that than we get here (if it was even supposed to be doing that idea) because…Willow doesn’t grow from this experience. They pull back her character development to make this episode work, but the plot isn’t even restoring the depth they took away from her.
All told…this episode worries me. Because something in my head tells me that we’re going to keep losing character depth as the seasons continue; that we’ll get in a whole lot of one step forward and two back, the way we kind of do here. I don’t think it gets bad yet, but I have concerns.
And look, I don’t comment on it often, but the effects here have not aged well.
There is something a little wonky here when the most thought I have about character development is how it makes sense that Oz has less issues with Angel than most of the Scoobies do. There’s not a lot of history there, so they can just be a vampire and werewolf with some shared friends of friends.
What am I shipping?
Surprisingly very little. Although I might be persuaded into a Scooby quad-ple (in the sense that I would usually say thruple, but I don’t want to leave Giles out this time).
