Rewatching Stuff

[shipperx]

For the first time in ages I rewatched "Touched", parts of "End of Days," and "Chosen" (basically to remind myself for fanfic purposes, because it has been ages since I watched them.)

What did I discover?

* The parts of these episodes that I deeply, earnestly disliked, I still deeply, earnestly dislike.
* I still don't know what in the fuck Buffy meant by telling Spike that he sent "mixed signals" (or messages, or whatever). Even if I squint very, very hard, I still don't see it. Look, Spike is not that difficult to read!
* By this point of Season 7, watching Spike breaks my heart. Pain resides in this ending for me because I don't care what other explanations I've seen or read or heard, it still plays for me as resigned acceptance of a lost dream, which still pisses me off and breaks my heart at the exact same time.
* I like to pretend that Angel is on drugs or very, very drunk because even though Joss seemed to forget that Cordy was mostly dead and that Connor was lost to Angel (for what Angel thought would be forever) I don't forget. Okay, so maybe Angel wasn't on drugs, but it's either drugs or believing that Angel is being utterly fake as he smiles and tosses off quips and petty jealousies, because the vampire I know was heart broken over Cordy and Connor because he loved them and tragic, horrific things had just happened to them. And EoD and Chosen had not the tiniest hint of that.
* Listening to Joss's commentary still makes me want to grab his shoulders and shake him.

So, um, what did I discover?

Nothing has changed.

(Not that I expected DVDs to change. It's just that it's a bit of a surprise to me that even after all this time, watching these episodes can dig up the old indignation and hurt.)

Comments

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that my warm fuzzies for NF in no way relate to anything remotely Whedonverse. In fact Whedonverse detracts from NF love. My warm and fuzzies for NF is that I watched him grow up as Joey Buchanan on the soap "One Life to Live" and he's forever Joey Buch to me. As meh as I got over NF through the Whedonverse, he won it again by being humble enough to return to "One Life to Live" last winter for the death of his on-screen grampa Asa (the character. The actor retired, he didn't die). Fillion had a movie out, a tv series coming up on Fox, and crazy ass fans from Firefly and yet he still agreed to show up on a dinky soap opera for the final episodes of an 80 year old man, and he didn't phone it in. That Fillion did that, endeared him to me all over again.

... As an actor, though, I think he's overrated (and I never cared for Firefly).

As for watching Season 7 without Spike... I cannot imagine what would inspire anyone to do such a thing. :)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Aw, that's a lovely story about Fillion - okay, I agree, the actor gets a pass. He's certainly not to blame here for bad associations I hold for his face.

As for watching Season 7 without Spike... I cannot imagine what would inspire anyone to do such a thing. :)

Neither could I but, y'know, I could see the value of such an experiment. For educational purposes.

And this is NOT, of course, to say that I think Buffy has no arc of her own, or shouldn't have had one. Just that I was disappointed by how relatively thin that arc ended up being.

At the end of the day, I'm kind of a big Buffy fan, and I remain annoyed that I still don't really know what I was meant to think of her by the end of that show. Or the comics. Gah.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

And this is NOT, of course, to say that I think Buffy has no arc of her own, or shouldn't have had one. Just that I was disappointed by how relatively thin that arc ended up being.

Thin and somewhat incoherent. There's this gap between seeing and telling. I understand what I'm being told about Buffy in Season 7, but do I actually see it?

Not so much.