Buffy! BUFFY BUFFY BUFFY!

[annathepiper]

Well, that was fun.

Very fun to see the old high school back again, and rather gigglesome to see Buffy reacting to the new principal. And Buffy getting a reason to actually hang out at the school on camera. ;)

Thumbs up on Xander being actually boss-like and construction-y ("Contracty goodness!"), and helping out with the elimination of the nastybad spirits.

Less Willow angst than I was expecting, though this is actually a bit of a good thing. She got plenty of angst at the tail end of last season, and I can buy her spending some healing time in England with Giles. Besides, excuse to have Giles on camera s'more. Yay!

Of course, though, what I was waiting for was SPIKE!

And the poor boy appears to have flipped now that he has a soul back in him. Not surprised by this; I was suspecting some level of flippage was going to happen. I didn't see coming him trying to cut the soul out, but I could totally buy that. spazzkat does not this new pathetic incarnation of Spike -- but me, I am not surprised they're taking this angle if nothing else because it's going to delay Buffy finding out he has a soul if he's too bonkers to tell her. Which makes complete and total sense.

Paul also doesn't like Spike's new hair... but again, I'm not surprised, if it's growing back in his original color. Though this also suggests that vamps actually do grow new hair. ;) Or else that Spike had been regularly dying it or something.

The sequence of Spike hallucinations at the end was pretty keen and I am wondering, given the Master's dialogue about going back to the beginning, whether the suspicion I had that Spike was going to revert to his William self has any basis in what's to come.

The one thing I don't get is, what the fuck was the business in Istanbul at the beginning, and the Spike-like briefly glimpseable figure there?

Comments

[avram]

Interesting that (1) Willow seems to be using magic again (with Giles telling her that it isn't an addiction, and she's going to have to learn to deal with it), and (2) that they aren't bringing her back to the main crowd yet, implying (3) that we're going to see a few plots soon that magic-using Willow would be able to solve quick-like if she were around. Or maybe that there'll be an England Willow-and-Giles plot. Or both.

I didn't like Spike's hair either. I wasn't sure what the heck he was doing there. He shouldn't have a strong emotional attachment to the school, he should be at the factory or at that other place he and Dru and Angel used to hang out in. It just seemed overly coincidental to me.

I like the new principal. Looks like they are getting back to basics. I can see this season not sucking.

I was wondering about the three undead folks -- are these actual people we saw getting killed in the earlier seasons? It's been too long for me, I don't remember.

I didn't think that thing at the end was a hallucination, I thought it was the Big Bad for this season. If it can change shape, I predict it'll be turning into Tara at some point to play with Willow's head.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I liked the episode also, even though I'm not as much of a Buffy buff as the folks I saw it with. I liked Dawn's getting a gang together, and I liked the principal.

Did you notice just before the previews the splash screen said "Buffy the Guidance Counselor"? Funny!

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

I will go on record as not liking the mini-scooby gang. I don't think that Dawn is too whiny to stay interesting with a lot of screen time. No ideal about Istanbul, kepted expected to see Spike there.

[princessheacock.livejournal.com]

"spazzkat does not this new pathetic incarnation of Spike"

I assume the missing word is like?

I didn't much like Spike either but I wasn't a big fan either. I really feel they were trying to do too many different things in the episode and could have left Spike out of this one to be introduced in a later one.

...And was anyone else bothered by how everyone kept assuming Buffy was Dawn's mom? She doesn't NEAR look old enough!

"The notion occured to me over the summer that Spike might be the vampire with the soul that is so important and that Angel is a complete waste of time for the law firm."

This is a BIG fear on the Angel board I frequent (Stranger Things (http://www.stranger-things.net/forum/)) -- That they will use Spike being souled as an excuse to say all these prophecies, etc are for Spike (a character NOT on the show) not Angel -- and an assurance they keep trying to pull is that Spike isn't on the show. There ARE people that haven't even seen Buffy and if the big shan-shu prophecy was for a character they hadn't even seen/cared about it would be a big cheat on ME's part. However, we don't exactly trust ME to care about THAT either...

"Obviously, people in the Buffy universe are rather better educated on ancient tongues than we are."

Wouldn't you be better educated in ancient languages if the tomes of your trade were likely to BE in that language? Not that many years ago, children (high class at least) were regularly taught both Greek and Latin so they could read the ancient manuscripts themselves. Giles and WEsley are Watchers, who have to do research on the supernatural, etc. Jonathan dealt with witchcraft -- and maybe of the manuscripts of spells are OLD and in odd languages. In games I have played in, people go out of their way to learn the languages that will make it easier to research and learn new spells for their characters.

Even today, in other countries, many children grow up learning English as well as their native language because that is now the language of trade.

"And oh yeah -- the kicker of all of this is, Spike never asked for his soul back."

I think they were too cute by half in trying to keep secret what Spike was asking for in that scene.

"...I note for the record that I referred to them as the Scrappy Doo gang before the episode was over."

Everyone on the net is scalling them the Scrappy Gang since we first heard that Dawn was getting friends in the first episode. I think it's a no-brainer.

I liked Dawn/the Dawn plotline much more after this episode than before. She seems to be going somewhere now. (Although I want to know what happened to Janice, her friend from last year. They did somewhat try to make her an outcast that she wasn't, really, from before.)