Re: 'Villians' Thoughts *Spoilers for Ep*

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

In response to Cas's points,

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to hang on to...

We never saw anything that really followed up on her sucking down
Osiris's Receptionist. She needed the books for the dark power, so
maybe the Receptionist was guiding her, using her for vengeance rather
than the restoration she had asked for Tara? You could argue that she's
all weepy and enraged before this, and then shockingly bland and icy the
rest of the ep, so maybe it's that guy. This theory works nicely if you
ignore the fact that they gave no indication anything like this was
going on (nor any background on "that guy"), and that Anya's "demon
sense" seemed to be there mostly to prove to us that it was in fact
Willow doing these things.

BTW, the B/W text we both picked up in Anya's initial awareness of
Willow's grief was, I guess, wrong. Her veiny self felt Willow crying
out for Vengeance, so she knew it was all about Tara, not Buffy, all
along.

On the first scene after the credits, nice catch in the B/X nature of
Xand's non-reaction to Willow in blood; I was too caught up in Will's
non-reaction to Buffy nearly dying. (Die, Marti!)

I think David Solomon bobbled the ball here; if we needed this scene at
all, it would have worked much better as a Willow's pov shot, with a
barely focused hand-held wandering around in shock. There's Xander
(who from the pov camera we can see isn't really looking at Willow, so
we excuse his blindness), there's an ambulance, there's Buffy (the
non-reaction would still be godawful, but at least we wouldn't have to
watch Aly's face go "Buffy's shot? Who cares?") and Willow wanders off
in a daze.

But I still think I just start the act with Willow busting into the Box.

Tara really did get stiffed, didn't she? Joyce got a whole episode
about "Joyce is dead, what do we do?" Jenny and Doyle got to die
heroically in eps that were all about them and had long-lasting fallout.
Here, Tara gets nothing (not even the flashbacks and fantasies we got
with Joyce in "The Body") and "Tara's dead and we kind of miss her,
although we don't bother to ask where she is when we see that Willow's
back on the magic pipe, even though we know that Tara would be very
upset about that" is about the FOURTH-most important theme of the ep,
behind "Oh, no! Willow's going eee-vil!", "Boy, Warren sure is scum,
what should we do?" and "OMG, Buffy might die!". Man, even she deserved
better than that.

Rack was good, but I can't believe they brought Jeff Kober back and only
used him in one scene. If they were going to do stuff like this, they
would have done better to have used him in a lot of eps and let Rack be
a presence even when he's not a prime mover. If you didn't see
"Wrecked", you would have no idea who this guy is or why Warren went to
him. Could just as well have had any random guest warlock be who Warren
went to. Heck, you could have had the demons at the bar give him a few
things, just to make the fight more interesting, for their own
amusement. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Rack/Warren scene, but it
didn't need to be there, and it didn't need to be Rack, either. Poor
use of an entertaining guest actor.

Warren's "essence" in the robot. Possibly some blood and a spell?
Could have been explained in a line or two, and maybe those lines were
in the shooting script; we'll see.

Don't think Willow was giving Buffy permission to take her out, but it
was nice that she said her "goodbye" directly to Buffy.

Didn't really get a "family" feeling in the B/D/X scene, possibly
because Xander was rather severely blocked away from the girls. OTOH,
Buffy is wearing Joyce's hair, and we know Joyce and Xand had some
something running, soooo... :)

The should have broken the scene right after the "I'm not going to let
Willow destroy herself" bit. That's the perfect time to cut to Will and
the map, right? Then they could have been heading out the door when the
"Dawn wants to go to Spike's" situation came up.

Man, the Clem scene was a waste. Moral objections and the slow pace of
the scene aside, the only purpose it seemed to serve was to let Buffy
know Spike's out of town. Whole thing could have been dealt with in a
couple of lines when Buffy rejoins Xander at the Box. 

Xander (snidely): So, Dawn's settled in with Spike? Cause that makes
so much sense.

Buffy (almost sadly): I, I left her with Clem. He's watching the place
while Spike's out of town.

Xander: Really? Gee, I hope he writes.

Of the rest of the ep, the less said the better, much though I liked the
winged box. I was looking at the transcript of "Consequences" to get
the Angel quote I used in my fb to inell, and just reading the
bare-bones description of Willow sobbing in the bathroom was enough to
make me tear up. How can the show think that this characterization is a
logical outgrowth of that one? I didn't see her going after Faith with
spells (or a shotgun), not even when Faith nearly killed Xander later in
the ep. And Giles had the black magic books then, and Willow had read
them (as revealed in "Enemies"), so she would only have had to have used
the spell. But of course she didn't, because it wasn't Saint Tara who'd
been hurt... :(

Oh, and I have no idea what Marti was up to with making Warren such a
total creep. She can't really be trying to justify the murder so Willow
can be "redeemed", can she? Not after the whole sofa scene where she
pointed out that doing exactly what Will does later in the ep is wrong
and insane and self-destructive. And if Warren deserves to die, why is
Buffy protecting his co-murderers (of Katrina) next week? No logical
sense, at all.

Come to think of it, why is Willow going after Gay Loser and Tiny Loser,
at all? They had nothing to do with Tara's death. Just because they
knew Warren? If Katrina was still alive, would Willow kill her for
having dated Warren? The whole thing is silly.

Arrgh.

Dan