Tuesday 19 June 2007

5x16 The Body

Ezzy and I are working through Buffy courtesy of Lynne.

The first season is scary and cool. By the second we're involved in the characters ("Grr, I need a hug") and the third season gets all dark with Faith and the Mayor.

Season Four really gets into the pop culture laughs and brings together literary device, horror and fun in the award-winning Hush. Some great quotes from that episode.

I'm in Season Five (although Ezzy has pushed on ahead) and the one that brings it home for me is Anya's blunt innocence:

"But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."

2 comments:

James said...

That is so bizarre. Kato has also been aboard the Buffy train and I have been participating by being the guy who she tells about the good episodes like Hush and the one that's a musical.

But just last week, Kato was telling me about this confronting episode about death and she brought up that very quote.

You guys may live in different cities, but you're on the same wavelength/buffy train.

Kato said...

It has taken me a long time to get on the Buffy train (have really only gotten into it in the last year or so post-Firefly) but I am a devotee.

I have now gotten into Season 8 in comic form, kindly given to me by James for my birthday.

http://www.amazon.com/Buffy-Vampire-Slayer-Season-Issues/dp/B000RQTRYW/ref=pd_bbs_6/104-1711826-8770335?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188562599&sr=8-6

Alas another obsession forms.

One of the things I am most fond of in the Buffy/Angel mythology is the way in which the writing constantly sets up challenges which it's then able to meet. Even Anya's crazy English which seems to be part of her "I-used-to-be-a-demon-but-now-I'm-human" problem is set up and then undermined in the episode which shows her being just as strange in her pre-demon life. (Her name is Aud, which is Odd in Americanese.)