Re: SPOILERS: Episodes 7.3, 7.1, 7.4

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

Hmm, interesting.

I'm

trying 

to 

wean

myself

from

Spoilers

even though

I still doubt I'm going 

to watch much of the season

but...


This does seem interesting in light of Joss's comments about how this
season is about getting back to "the joy of female power, having it and
SHARING IT." [Emphasis added]

If Buffy and Willow somehow bond in a power-sharing way, that would not
only be large with the subtext, but also keep alive our hopes that
Willow could be part of Buffy's storyline this year (instead of shoved
into a dark corner of the plot, as looks most likely), and thus our
hopes for further happy developments.

Certainly, this seems more pleasant than the original thoughts about
Joss's "sharing power" line, which seemed to translate "guiding Dawn and
setting up Shiny-the-Slayer" (blecch!). Heck, I still have delusional
hopes that Joss has planted fake spoilers for "Lessons" and that Kit and
Carlos will be disemboweled by the halfway mark. (Because if the
"Scrappy Gang" survives, the show probably won't, IMO.) So this spin
makes me happier.

That said, I still think the spoiler for ep 4, with Xander taking Willow
to Tara's grave, pretty much kills any thought of an important B/W
storyline. If Buffy was going to be a part of Willow's life this year,
surely she'd be there for Will's most important emotional moment of the
early season, no? To try and imagine the Season 1-3 Buffy not being
there in one of the Slayerettes' moments of pain is absurd (see "IR,YJ"
and "Prophecy Girl" for Buffy comforting Willow, "Inca Mummy Girl" for
her soothing Xander, and "The Dark Age" and "Passion" for her standing
by Giles, for example), but now I guess she'll be too busy trying to
figure out what's so different about Spike to bother being there for
Willow while her "best friend" says goodbye to the woman she shared a
life with.

(Which makes perfect sense, because watching characters trying to puzzle
out stuff the audience **already knows** is just so darn
dramatic--yawn!)

So overall, unless something changes in ep 7.4, I guess this is really a
*bad* development, because now the B/W scene in "Same Time, Same Place"
is just about showing off Buffy's new healing power, or whatever, and
not about a deeper bond or anything, since Buffy has apparently
forgotten that Willow exists by the next week. So, not only won't we
get a B/W arc building off of that scene, in the scene itself we won't
even get the emotional resonance of a normal reconciliation scene, like
in "Dead Man's Party".

Buffy guides Dawn and pants for Spike and meanwhile Xander and Willow go
stand in their little "we're contractually obligated to these people, so
here's three minutes that don't mean a thing to the story otherwise"
section in the back. Yep, still seems that way.

Dan

terminally bitter.