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maharet83 I would do a rec post but thought I'd go with this first. I'm going to pick my favourite episode from each season of my favourite shows including the following
Buffy
Supernatural
TSCC
Angel
SGA
X Files
and discuss why I love it so much and hopefully find out what you guys loved and hated too :)
Starting with my first ever true fan obsession Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Buffy - Season One
Although this season was FULL of some pretty amazing episodes, the commentery on life in high school for the less popular in Invisible Girl. The wonderful mix of comedy and angst in Never Kill a Boy on the first date, the story of peer pressure in The Pack and the power of the reveal in Angel when we learned the truth about Buffy's drink of tall dark and deadly.
But without a doubt my hands down favourite was Prophecy Girl from the return of ~Angel to advise Giles, the rising of The Master, Buffy's total denial of what was coming coupled with the futility she felt and her eventual resolution. This episode was supposed to be a show closer, just in case they didn't get renewed and it worked. this was an episode of growth, of everyone taking that first step away from what they had known and embracing something new.
Xander: "That's okay. I don't wanna go. I'm just gonna go home, lie down and listen to country music. The music of pain".
Xander finally opened up to his crush and bit the bullet asking Buffy to the prom. Of course we all knew where this was going from the introduction of Angel but it was still hard watching my boy get hurt :( but he rallied as son as he knew buffy was in trouble, taking his life and pride literally into his own hands and going to Angel. I also like the fact that at the end of the day it was Xander who saved her. This was the start of us beginning to see another side of Xander than just the comic relief. We started to see the man who would always be there, no matter what, who would stand by his friends in every scenario. It's no surprise he went on to save the world a couple of times :P Likem Dawn said several years later, it was Xander's lack of powers that allowed him to be what he was.
"When I walked in there it wasn't our world anymore, they made it their's, and they had fun"
It wasn't just Xander who grew in this episode, we watched Willow turn down her crush, a lot harder than turning down someone you don't want. But Willow's true growth came after her discovery with Cordelia of the murdered kids. She had spent all year fighting evil, learning about monsters, battling demons. But this was her first true look at how that evil corrupts and destroys. she saw how evil can turn her world upside down and change everything. this evil was different as it wasn't at night, in a creepy forest or a graveyard, but in her space in her school, one place she felt truly safe. There wasn't as much of Willow in this episode as I would have liked but I did love the scene with her and Buffy on the bed, something that was to become a recurring theme as each of them faced their worst nightmares and heartbreaks over the next few years. I also loved how this was Willow just discovering this world but that she still retained a distance, a beautiful parallel to Buffy who was so immersed in this world it was going to kill her, one day at least.
"As the soon to be purple area on my jaw will attest I did not LET her go"
Giles came into his own in this episode, for the first time we saw the watcher disappear and the father figure emerge. In this he had to face up to what being the Watcher of a Slayer actually meant. that this girl, under his charge, under his protection, was one day going to die and that there was nothing he could do about it. Buffy was the one facing her mortality in this episode but Giles also had to face the effects of mortality and what it would mean. It was this episode that turned the tide and gave us the Giles we came to love.
"I don't care! I don't care. Giles I'm 16 years old, I don't wanna die"
As much as I loved everybody elses growth in this episode, it was Buffy (and of course Sarah who BLEW ME AWAY. For the first time we got to see under that shell of smart, tough wise cracking Slayer girl to the tired, frightened little girl she actually was. She was told at the age of FIFTEEN that she had to spend her (short) life saving the world. This episode brought home to her how thin that line she walked was, one misstep, one drop of concentration, one second of error and she falls. What makes Buffy the character she was, is even knowing all this, even knowing what it would cost her, she did it all anyway. Because she had to in her own words.....
"It's not how it goes. I'm the Slayer."
In regards to the actual cinematography for this episode, there were some gorgeous moments. As joss's first directorial début for the show, you saw him reiterate in the opening scene what he always tried to show through Buffy, that it was turning the genre on its head. Taking the commonplace victim, the small girl running away from the monster before turning round and kicking the crap out of it. Another scene I loved was the deaths at the school. The three little pigs cartoon being a wonderful parallel to the wolf at their own doors blowing down their houses and killing them.
There wasn't much for Angel and Cordy here, so not much to talk about, although I did like the small Buffy/Angel nuances but that is the shipper in me :P
All in beautiful episode that took us away from the simpleness of season one and took on a sharper, darker far more sexual and adult edge for Season 2.
maharet83 I would do a rec post but thought I'd go with this first. I'm going to pick my favourite episode from each season of my favourite shows including the followingBuffy
Supernatural
TSCC
Angel
SGA
X Files
and discuss why I love it so much and hopefully find out what you guys loved and hated too :)
Starting with my first ever true fan obsession Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Buffy - Season One
Although this season was FULL of some pretty amazing episodes, the commentery on life in high school for the less popular in Invisible Girl. The wonderful mix of comedy and angst in Never Kill a Boy on the first date, the story of peer pressure in The Pack and the power of the reveal in Angel when we learned the truth about Buffy's drink of tall dark and deadly.
But without a doubt my hands down favourite was Prophecy Girl from the return of ~Angel to advise Giles, the rising of The Master, Buffy's total denial of what was coming coupled with the futility she felt and her eventual resolution. This episode was supposed to be a show closer, just in case they didn't get renewed and it worked. this was an episode of growth, of everyone taking that first step away from what they had known and embracing something new.
Xander: "That's okay. I don't wanna go. I'm just gonna go home, lie down and listen to country music. The music of pain".
Xander finally opened up to his crush and bit the bullet asking Buffy to the prom. Of course we all knew where this was going from the introduction of Angel but it was still hard watching my boy get hurt :( but he rallied as son as he knew buffy was in trouble, taking his life and pride literally into his own hands and going to Angel. I also like the fact that at the end of the day it was Xander who saved her. This was the start of us beginning to see another side of Xander than just the comic relief. We started to see the man who would always be there, no matter what, who would stand by his friends in every scenario. It's no surprise he went on to save the world a couple of times :P Likem Dawn said several years later, it was Xander's lack of powers that allowed him to be what he was.
"When I walked in there it wasn't our world anymore, they made it their's, and they had fun"
It wasn't just Xander who grew in this episode, we watched Willow turn down her crush, a lot harder than turning down someone you don't want. But Willow's true growth came after her discovery with Cordelia of the murdered kids. She had spent all year fighting evil, learning about monsters, battling demons. But this was her first true look at how that evil corrupts and destroys. she saw how evil can turn her world upside down and change everything. this evil was different as it wasn't at night, in a creepy forest or a graveyard, but in her space in her school, one place she felt truly safe. There wasn't as much of Willow in this episode as I would have liked but I did love the scene with her and Buffy on the bed, something that was to become a recurring theme as each of them faced their worst nightmares and heartbreaks over the next few years. I also loved how this was Willow just discovering this world but that she still retained a distance, a beautiful parallel to Buffy who was so immersed in this world it was going to kill her, one day at least.
"As the soon to be purple area on my jaw will attest I did not LET her go"
Giles came into his own in this episode, for the first time we saw the watcher disappear and the father figure emerge. In this he had to face up to what being the Watcher of a Slayer actually meant. that this girl, under his charge, under his protection, was one day going to die and that there was nothing he could do about it. Buffy was the one facing her mortality in this episode but Giles also had to face the effects of mortality and what it would mean. It was this episode that turned the tide and gave us the Giles we came to love.
"I don't care! I don't care. Giles I'm 16 years old, I don't wanna die"
As much as I loved everybody elses growth in this episode, it was Buffy (and of course Sarah who BLEW ME AWAY. For the first time we got to see under that shell of smart, tough wise cracking Slayer girl to the tired, frightened little girl she actually was. She was told at the age of FIFTEEN that she had to spend her (short) life saving the world. This episode brought home to her how thin that line she walked was, one misstep, one drop of concentration, one second of error and she falls. What makes Buffy the character she was, is even knowing all this, even knowing what it would cost her, she did it all anyway. Because she had to in her own words.....
"It's not how it goes. I'm the Slayer."
In regards to the actual cinematography for this episode, there were some gorgeous moments. As joss's first directorial début for the show, you saw him reiterate in the opening scene what he always tried to show through Buffy, that it was turning the genre on its head. Taking the commonplace victim, the small girl running away from the monster before turning round and kicking the crap out of it. Another scene I loved was the deaths at the school. The three little pigs cartoon being a wonderful parallel to the wolf at their own doors blowing down their houses and killing them.
There wasn't much for Angel and Cordy here, so not much to talk about, although I did like the small Buffy/Angel nuances but that is the shipper in me :P
All in beautiful episode that took us away from the simpleness of season one and took on a sharper, darker far more sexual and adult edge for Season 2.