Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Giles' replacement from the Watcher's Council, Wesley Wyndham-Price, has arrived in town and immediately rubbed everyone up the wrong way. During an alleyway confrontation, Faith accidentally kills the Deputy Mayor, Alan Finch, dumping the body and telling Buffy she doesn't care about what happened.
The sombre mood that closed the last episode continues here as Buffy and Faith must deal with the consequences of their actions (apt title alert!). At first attempting to keep it a secret, Buffy and Faith are forced to investigate Finch's murder by Wesley; naturally Buffy isn't so comfortable with it. She also has to deal with the strain that has been put on her relationship with Willow, given the time she's spent with the other Slayer recently. Soon, she feels compelled to spill her secret and the core Scoobies unite to try and get Faith back on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, Wesley isn't on the same page and makes the situation considerably worse.
Unlike a lot of other Buffy episodes, Consequences has lost some of its impact since it first aired. The tension arose out of wondering whether Buffy and Faith were going to get away with it and the shock of finding out how far Faith had fallen was definitely in the extreme. Like the earlier and much better episode, Innocence, the Consequences of the title don't just apply to Buffy and are instead felt and caused by many of the characters. Part of the reason it doesn't quite work as well as Innocence is that it feels a little repetitive; one of the gang turns evil, Willow discovers something about Xander's lovelife that doesn't involve her, Giles discovers something about Buffy who in turn is feeling guilty about something she feels she's to blame for.
All that really changes is the addition of a meddling watcher and Faith in the bad guy role instead of Angel. Innocence worked far better because it struck right to the core of a relationship we'd been rooting for since the beginning of the series. Faith is too recent an arrival for her betrayal to cut as keenly. It still carries a reasonable amount of emotional heft, largely thanks to the excellent performances of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan. Anthony Head too does some sterling work in the scene in which he comforts Buffy, their trust having been repaired more since Helpless.
That being said, it's still an extremely important episode for ongoing character arcs, most obviously the relationship between Faith and Angel. As someone who's been to the dark side and back again twice, Angel knows the slippery slope that Faith is on and feels he is the one to be able to bring her back. It's largely working too until the Watcher's Council shows up to drag her away. That one scene sets up a key partnership that's essential to Faith's redemption, also setting up a minor arc within the third season (to be continued in Enemies) between the two characters.
There are a few moments of levity in what is otherwise a dark episode. Cordelia's introduction to Wesley is a particular highlight, first of all because of his reaction to finding out she's a student is brilliant and secondly, knowing their eventual collaboration and friendship makes it that bit sweeter. The other is the Mayor trying to cheer himself up by using the shredder and concluding that 'it's going to take more than this to turn [his] frown upside down.' The trivial nature of the Mayor's concerns is one of the things that make him so scary; he's incredibly human and one of those obsequious humans that just get right on your nerves.
None of this stops Consequences feeling a mythology-arc based filler episode, designed to put the pieces in place for the latter half of the season. Faith is now with the Mayor, leaving both good and evil with one Slayer each and varying levels of awareness about what the other's up to.
Quote of the Week:
Wesley: Does everyone know you?
Buffy: She's a friend.
Cordelia: Let's not get carried away.
Let's Get Trivial: Although credited, Seth Green doesn't appear in the episode as he was away filming Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Inventive Kill: Not particularly inventive, but this is the episode in which we say goodbye to Mr Trick after Faith dusts him
- Becky
You can read Becky's look at previous episode Bad Girls here.
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There's all sorts of romantic entanglements going on at Downton this episode. We've got Lady Mary off gallivanting with Tony Gillingham, Charles Blake turns back up to throw a spanner in the works and then there's Cora flirting with Withnail, I mean Mr Bricker (this was the one I was rooting for - Cora needs a plot of her own goddammit! Also RICHARD E. GRANT). Then Bricker starts flirting with Isis the dog. God forbid! Oh and then there's Molesley and the thieving ladies' maid whose name I've not learnt yet, but I'm struggling to retain interest in that particular plot line.
And with love comes war, more specifically, Lord Grantham arguing with just about everyone he can reach with a booming voice and a shake of his head. The tone was set in an early mealtime which was less a luncheon, more a battle ground before dinner that evening became the dining room equivalent of the Western Front. Amongst the more trivial stuff is resisting Rose's attempts to get a wireless for Downton, but that soon gave way to the Lord and Branson going at it about whose politics were better. Everyone bristled beautifully when Branson mentioned the killing of Charles I in response to Lord Grantham's repeated accusations about the atrocities occurring in Russia. It's all delightfully polite but shots were most definitely fired.
I think Fellowes is missing a trick by not adopting the Hero versus Big Bad approach for a series. It may just be my liberal politics, but Branson is the unsung hero of the piece, fighting for justice and an end to the oppressive social class system that he has managed through the convenience of marriage to rise through. Clearly in opposition, the Big Bad could be Lord Grantham. I want to see Hugh Bonneville in full villain mode, tearing down any threat to the establishment and bellowing "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CRICKET?!" in the faces of bewildered villagers.
Lady Mary's impending sexpedition with Tony Gillingham led to some beautiful comedy moments, both with Anna and Charles Blake who turns up all charming and mentioning sex to get her a bit flustered. But still, Gillingham's got his allotted week to prove he's the man for Mary. Contraception according to Lady Mary is wonderful; read a book and send your maid out for condoms. It's like the equivalent of your mate asking you to pop to the pharmacy for you because her parents are wandering around town, but with enforced societal servitude instead. I also loved the judgemental pharmacist; things haven't changed all that much apparently.
The much-anticipated meeting of Gillingham and Lady Mary was all awkward and not at all romantic. Doing the gentlemanly thing, Gillingham gets separate rooms connected by an adjoining door and allowing Mary to stay under her own name to not attract any suspicion. But this struck me as a little silly really. The manager's in on the arrangement and it's hardly going to take investigative skills to find out Gillingham was staying next door, put two and two together and get 'illicit sexual affair'. Apparently a scrumptious dinner was the going rate for a whole week of 'making love' in those days, so clearly interest rates in that respect haven't changed all that much either.
I could talk about Lady Edith's struggle to gain control over daughter Marigold, but I kept being distracted at those points. I am obviously sympathetic to her plight, but she needs a bit of spark about her. Bring back Gregson I say! Yes, I know he's likely dead at the hands of some proto-Nazis, but still, she was much more interesting when he was around (which goes entirely against my usual rage about women characters who are only defined by the men around them, I know).
- Becky
Catch Becky's review of the previous episode here.
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It’s
often tricky to keep the pace going in the middle of a series (unless you’re Game of Thrones and you can just kill
off six or seven key characters largely on a whim), and unfortunately ‘The
Caretaker’ did little to disprove this of Doctor
Who.
This
rather bland and slow-paced episode was Earth-centric, set almost entirely in
the school that Clara (Jenna Coleman) and Danny (Samuel Anderson) teach in.
Dismissing Clara for a few days, The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) goes into “deep
cover”, disguising himself as the new school caretaker named, of course, John
Smith. Refusing to explain himself, he proceeds to crop up at inappropriate and
awkward moments, fiddling with the electrics and generally being quite
mysterious. Eventually, after a fairly amusing case of mistaken identity as The
Doctor tries to guess who Clara’s boyfriend is, we learn that there is an alien
residing in the local area, and, naturally, it plans to take over the world.
Incidentally,
said alien is a brand new monster for the show. Named the Skovox Blitzer, it is
one of many things in this episode which just doesn’t quite hit the high mark
so many other shows in this series have achieved. Quite Dalek like in
appearance and attitude (“Problem, solution – destroy!”), it came off as a bit
of a budget version of them. It wasn’t really anything we hadn’t seen before,
and didn’t feel particularly imaginative. It was also wheeled back off into
space and time without much of an explanation of what it was doing in an East
London comprehensive in the first place.
This neatly summarises my main issue with it. Much as I love a character
episode, and believe me I do, ‘The Caretaker’ felt far too caught up in the
triangle between The Doctor, Clara and Danny and not nearly enough on the
nearby alien killing machine. We were left feeling distinctly underwhelmed and
unsatisfied when the credits rolled, as if we’d missed the scene where we found
out about the alien and where it came from and what it was doing and, actually
come to think of it, anything at all beyond its name and catchphrase. It seemed
particularly unfair and strange to entirely gloss over this extra-terrestrial
being when other areas of the episode, such as the argument between The Doctor
and Danny, felt so arduous and over-done.
On
the positive side of the spectrum, whilst a bit too much time was spent on it,
The Doctor and Clara’s relationship does indeed continue to flourish, and the
episode was genuinely laugh out loud amusing in places, such as the discussion
about Clara looking nice because she’s had a wash, or the two of them looking
the same age. Their dynamic really is working very well, much as the show
should now leave it alone as a job well done and show us less of Clara’s, I
assume entirely Topshop sponsored, wardrobe, and more aliens. Although that
said, I did enjoy the reference to both mine and Jenna Coleman’s home town.
Admittedly there perhaps wouldn’t have been the opportunity for an “I thought
you said you were from Blackpool?” conversation if they’d been running around a
far-off planet dodging lasers instead of all standing around having a chat in a
school hall.
Whilst we’re over here on the bright side, we were also treated to another
sighting of Missy (Michelle Gomez) – our first in quite a few episodes now.
Even more significantly than that, we were introduced to another new character
in Chris Addison’s Seb. He seems to be some sort of afterlife-based
receptionist, or perhaps secretary to Missy. Either way, he provided another
darkly comic element, explaining to one of the Skovox Blitzer’s victims,
confused as to how he’d survived, "I was coming to that. I'm afraid you
really, rather didn't”.
Ultimately, however, and it seems only fair to quote The Doctor at this point,
the show all felt a little too focused on “Boring little humans”, and not
nearly enough on all the exciting stuff.
Never fear though, it looks like next week’s is set on the moon! Moons are
cool.
Jen
@jenniferklarge
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can check out Becky’s thoughts on Time Heist here.
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@AssortedBuffery on Twitter
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Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: After the death of Kendra, Faith is called to Sunnydale and brings a unique brand of insanity to the proceedings. Giles is fired from the Watcher's Council for caring too much about Buffy and the last representative of the Council turned out to be evil.
Buffy and Faith face off against a vampire with jewelled swords and a natty uniform in one of Sunnydale's many graveyards. The Mayor takes an interest because the arrival of these uniformed vampires happens to coincide with his Dedication, a key ritual in the run up to his Ascension (something the gang aren't quite aware of just yet). Meanwhile, the Watcher's Council have sent a new Watcher to look after Buffy and Faith, the oh-so-terribly repressed and uncool Wesley Wyndham-Price. The three events conspire together to bring about a big confrontation with flabby, weakened demon Balthazar and his cult, The Eliminati. However, it all goes a bit wrong when Finch, the Mayor's assistant, tries to find Buffy to warn her about the Mayor.
I have a real soft spot for this episode. In the days before Netflix, owning the lightly mocking Twilight edition of the Buffy boxset or even completing my hard-won VHS collection, I used to have to tape Buffy episodes off the TV (usually the lengthier unedited versions that aired late on a Friday night). Bad Girls is one of those episodes and one (along with Enemies) that I watched religiously as a result, so keen was I to get a Buffy fix. As a result, I know the ins and outs of this episode rather well and it contains some of my favourite lines and moments (Giles and Wesley cleaning their glasses at the same time. Perfect - Does anyone else have a problem when Alexis Denisof speaks in his natural American accent now?). Also, this is the episode that also inspired my brief dark lipstick thing. I so wanted to be Faith. Well, right up until she stabbed a guy.
It's always been clear that Faith was a couple of cherry tomatoes short of a garden salad since her arrival on the show, but it's this episode that finally confirms just how unhinged the latest Slayer is. The concept of a rogue Slayer is one of the best that the show introduces, a thread that carries on throughout Buffy and into Angel too. With Buffy such a shining example of a white knight, there was always a question of 'but what happens if it goes wrong?'. It's something we got a glimpse of in The Wish with Buffy's more militaristic state, but Faith offers a window into how bad it can get if a person with superpowers goes to the dark side in this universe. In this episode, it's framed as Faith acting as the friend that tempts the good teen into taking a walk on the wild side which goes badly, badly wrong when Faith stakes a human, the Mayor's aid to be precise.
And in that one moment, the whole tone of the third season shifts into something that feels a lot darker than what had gone before. The rest of the episode is a much lighter affair; the arrival of Wesley leads to some big laughs, particularly in Giles and Buffy's attempts to undermine him ("You're not helping." "I know. I feel just sick about it..."). The broad comedy of the script means that when the stabbing occurs, the shift feels ultra-extreme, jolting you out of your comfort zone as the alleys of Sunnydale get that bit more threatening. When the final quiet of the scene between Buffy and Faith at the end, it's almost as if a chill has set in.
That combination of light and dark builds into the doubling going on elsewhere in the episode; the Mayor has his two aides, the cautious Mr Finch and the more gung-ho Mr Trick (who is more underused in the season than I remember him being). Wesley and Giles are both paralleled and opposed to each other. They share some of the same tics, but largely, Wesley's arrival serves to show how much Giles has developed since his first meeting with Buffy. He's the one facing down his would-be torturers with a pithy one liner and not getting knocked out. Faith and Buffy have been set in opposition during pretty much every scene they've had together up until now, but soon find their paths diverging once more in the wake of Finch's murder. It's a nifty way of showing their respective character developments, highlighting further the character traits that make us love these people in the first place.
In other areas, Angel gets a properly badass entrance to the big battle, all vamped out and leather-jacketed and the make-up effects team knock it out of the park once again with Balthazar's design. He's so disgusting. When he dies, he gives the warning 'when he rises, you'll wish I'd killed you all', referring, of course, to the Mayor. The gang don't know about it yet, but it's clear that we're into the home stretch of the season now as the over-arching Big Bad begins to come to the fore. It's cemented in his last appearance in this episode during which the Dedication takes place. Said Dedication? A ritual rendering him impervious to harm. R'uh r'oh Shaggy.
Bad Girls is the third episode in what is possibly Buffy's best and most consistent run of episodes, but is perhaps the most important now in terms of the developing narrative. With Faith on the downward slope to homicidal maniac and Buffy left in disbelief at the turn of events, the Mayor is about to gain a foothold in Sunnydale that looks strong enough to defeat the gang entirely. We may now know he doesn't, but that final scene of Bad Girls has lost none of its power in making us think everything is about to go badly wrong indeed.
Quote of the Week (this was a tough one!):
Wesley: Are you not used to being given orders?
Buffy: Whenever Giles sends me on a mission, he always says please. And then afterwards, I get a cookie.
Let's Get Trivial: The original plan for that final scene was to have Buffy visit the motel room only to find that Faith had committed suicide. Thankfully, the potential of the character was realised and Faith stayed standing.
Inventive Kill: Buffy uses an electric cable to electrocute Balthazar in his own personal hot tub.
- Becky
You can find Becky's review of previous episode The Zeppo here.
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