PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A SPOILER-RICH ZONE

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A SPOILER-RICH ZONE. If your diet requires you to dine on television spoiler-free ... good luck with that.

REVIEW ARCHIVES

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Why Couldn't You Be Dealing Drugs Like Normal People?



Episode 3.19: Choices. Original Airdate 5.4.99


"The Mayor takes Willow prisoner after Buffy and her friends steal away a box containing demonic energy needed for Ascension Day."




Daniel's Thoughts:


  • Mayor, I want a cookie! I bet he bakes well.
  • So I love this father/daughter relationship that the Mayor & Faith have.  Because it’s not just about being close.  He disciplines her like a dad too.  A kind of deranged dad…but still.
  • And that is the coolest knife I've ever seen.
Eat your heart out, Crocodile Dundee

  • They really like leather on this show.  Also, hey!  A female vamp.  They’re kinda rare in opening vamp-fighting scenes. But of course, it’s Angel fighting her.
  • Give it up, Joyce. Buffy isn't going to Northwestern.
  • Yay! Snyder!

  • “Go ahead mock me.”// ”I think she just did.”
  • Cordy’s not going to college.  She’s going to LA.  And will eventually become evil, stupidly. And eventually die, also stupidly.
  • "This conversation is reserved for people who actually have a future." Way Harsh, Tai.
  • Yes, Buffy – ‘Cause vamps and demons just attack during school breaks.
  • Now Faith stole Buffy’s red leather pants.
  • I actually like Willow’s shirt-dress – it’s also a bit witchy.
  • I love Willow’s drawing!
  • The fight choreography in the Mayor's conference room is awesome.  Good job, fight choreographer. 
  • Nice job, Willow!  Those pencil-floating skills are really coming along!
  • I like Willow's speech to Faith. It doesn't help much but...it's still good. And Alyson nails it.
  • You can tell what the Mayor is saying is getting through to Angel & Buffy. 
  • And it’s kind of amazing how much he knows about Angel.
  • Those spider thingies are so creepy!
Hey! It’s general redhead from Chuck!
General Redhead started as a boutique manager


Zelda's Thoughts:

  • She's smelling the knife. Why is she smelling the knife?
  • Buffy's feeling like she and Angel are in a rut ... in their slaying times. Buffy, you're like 18. This is a talk for when you're 28. Oh god. I'm 28. I'm old. And all I do is watch Buffy and look for funny gifs to post. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE. [I...have you beat. *sigh* :( - Daniel]
  • Buffy got into Northwestern. Northwestern rejected me. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE.
  • Random Snyder driveby.
  • Buffy's feeling her lack of choices about her future. Sure she got into Northwestern, but is she also glued to the Hellmouth?
  • WTF IS THAT HAND GESTURE WESLEY.
By the power invested in me by the Council, I forbid it.
Also I can turn into a mushroom if I do this three times.

  • Shenanigans! Faith's new knife is not for sawing of bone. It's for stabbing. Look at the internal cutting of it. It's made to do visceral damage - while stabbing. Sawing would dull its edges too much.
  • Harry Groener, you are the best. I wish we had scenes of you and Armin Shimerman being the best together.
  • Shenanigans! Cordy hands her acceptance letters to Xander, but they're all small envelopes. That's how I could tell my rejections - small envelopes. The acceptance letters came with big thick packets. Also why is she just carrying them around? Is that a thing people do?
  • It's Mission: Impossible time!
  • Oops alarm.
  • The fight scenes are in general much better this season.
  • Oh shit. Mayor Wilkins is angry.
  • Also oh shit Willow's a hostage.
  • "I need a volunteer to hit Wesley." Everyone everywhere raises hands.
  • "Buffy's like a dog." Just the light casual way he says it. Harry Groener, still the best.
  • I love that Willow uses her hostage time to spy more on the Mayor and the Books of Ascension. I love it. She's not willing to be a girl waiting to be rescued, she's gonna be useful, dammit!
  • I also love her interaction with Faith: "It's way too late. You know, it didn't have to be this way, but you made your choice. I know you had a tough life. I know that some people think you had a lot of bad breaks. Well, boo hoo! Poor you. You know, you had a lot more in your life than some people. I mean, you had friends in your life like Buffy. Now you have no one. You were a Slayer and now you're nothing."
  • Angel: "Yeah, well, what can I say, I like 'em sane." LIES LIES LIES
  • Aww, the Mayor pointing out - correctly - that there are issues of longevity for Angel's and Buffy's relationship. We'll see this bear fruit next week.
  • I love that this is how he spends his evil monologue time - tearing into their insecurities, rather than any blustering about his intentions of Evil Domination and Power.
  • HAHAHAHA and Snyder busts up the trade, thinking it's drugs.
  • Yay! Thank you, show, for giving me HG and AS in a scene together. That was awesome of you.
  • Aw, the Gavrok spider thing killed a deeply stupid policeman. For the record.
  • Yeeeeeah, Snyder's gonna have a hard time blocking this from his memory.
  • And there's Faith's requisite one moment of possible redemption per episode - throwing her fancy knife to save Wesley from the Gavrok spider. And then leaving the knife behind.
  • YAY WILLOW RIPPED OUT PAGES FOR GILES FROM THE BOOK. Love it.
  • Awwwwwwwww Willow's gonna go to UC Sunnydale too. Best friends! (fyi, UC stands for University of Convenience.)
  • I'm glad Willow clarifies that she's not staying for Buffy - because that would be a bad choice - but for herself - she wants to continue the good fight with Buffy. "I want in."
  • And tah-wist, Cordy is working at the dress shop.
  • "I'm hoping mom will let me live there. It's too far to come home every night." I thought you didn't have a whole lot of town, Sunnydale!


Favorite Lines:

Daniel: “Of the two people here, who is the boss of me?” - Willow
Zelda: As the Scoobies debate whether to go after Willow or perform the ritual to destroy the Box of Gavrok, Oz wordlessly destroys the spell stuff so that they have to trade the box for Willow. BECAUSE HE LOVES HER AND THIS IS NOT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST FOR HIM.

Arc/Continuity Stuff:

  • Recurring: Mayor, Faith, Joyce, Snyder
  • The Mayor gives Faith her fancy knife which will be used in many dream sequences. She leaves it behind with the Scoobies after the showdown.
  • First mention of the conveniently-located UC Sunnydale. Also first mention of Sunnydale having an airport.
  • Xander announces his plan of a post-graduation road trip.
  • Mr. Pointy gets name-dropped.
  • Willow's pencil levitation skills from Enemies comes into play as she stakes a vampire with a floating pencil.
  • First time Buffy and the Mayor have officially met.
Retraction: (as published in our review of Graduation Day: Part 1) We would like to retract our previous stats/scoffs of Choices where we mocked Sunnydale's sudden acquisition of both an airport and a university. Sunnydale's airport first reared its implausible head in What's My Line: Part 1 (when Kendra arrived), and Sunnydale's Crestwood College's Frat House o Penises (Delta Zeta Kappa) made an appearance in Reptile Boy. But for the record, Crestwood is not UC Sunnydale, so ... snap.

Stats:

Oz's Hair - blonde
Dead Humans - 2
Dead Undeads - 3
Giles Unconscious - 0
Giles Cleans His Glasses - 0
Buffy Breaks a Door - 0
Evil Reveal - 0
Unevil Reveal - 0 
Shenanigans Called - 2
Apocalypse Called - 0

15 comments:

  1. Zelda you're 28? No worries that's young, granted I'm 10 years younger than you but.... you're young! It's not like you're 30! :) (was that helpful... It was meant to be helpful.....)

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    1. yeeeeeeeeah that was incredibly not helpful :P

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  2. I love the scene where the Mayor was telling Buffy and Angel that their relationship had an expiry date. I was so cheering him on in that moment. :D Yay, Buffy/Angel breakup!

    But booo for her future love interests. :-/

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    Replies
    1. What, you don't like Parker? :|

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    2. I don't like how Buffy, a supposedly feminist icon, becomes so freaking dependent on her boyfriends. Parker was nothing, Spike and Angel were the worst for making Buffy needy and dependent and a bit frustratingly annoying to me.

      Riley was freaking boring as a character but, at least, Buffy didn't seem to depend on him for every little thing. She could think on her own and fight for herself and he often let her...until season five when he becomes needy and Buffy's independence became a problem in their relationship.

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    3. I think that feeling is part of why she didn't have a love interest for half of S5, and how minimal the romance was played for her in S7. We'll get to her Spike relationship later :P

      I'm willing to forgive some of the Angel-dependence on teenage first love and how overwhelming those feelings can be.

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    4. Ugh, season 5 was the beginning of things with Spike. I hated his crush on her and did not want it to develop at all. He was gross and old and creepy. Yet she's all "I need Spike! He's the strongest person we have!" "He's the only one who can protect Dawn!"

      Go shove it up your ass whoever wrote or came up with the idea of the Spike/Buffy relationship and her weird obsession with keeping him around because she NEEDS him even though he's an evil fuck who's a danger to everyone around her who was with her and had her back from the start. (Empty Places never happened! :P ).

      Sorry, I have strong feels about her vampire relationships...anti-feels...ragey-feels. :|

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    5. Yeah you and me are gonna have battles when we get to S5. I like redemption stories, and I find the Spike stuff fascinating.

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  3. Hey I'm 30 and I couldn't care less. Buffy was a great part of my life when it first aired and it still is! I do have to admit though, that my love for Willow is very disturbing since she's way younger than I am right now AND a lesbian AND a fictional character...Oh and I also love Tara. F***k me, Right?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm mostly just glad that you said "couldn't care less" instead of "could care less." Yay grammar!

      And I'm not actually having a crisis about my age, guys ... mostly because I usually don't remember how old I am.

      But yeah I'm so glad you got the grammar right, I'll even overlook that Tara thing.

      Delete
  4. Plot twist: English isn't even my native language.

    Mayor Wilkins is awesome! If my town and Sunnydale decided to trade Mayors, we would be the ones trading up.

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  5. If you are referring to that Jasmine thing, then yes it was stupid. However, I think her death in "You're Welcome" was handled very well.

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  6. Love how Oz is so cool that Angel listens to him. Especially as he would NEVER do this for xander. He does it when Angel is starting to get angry at the Mayor in the Willow swap and also when he thinks Willow has been vamped and tells Angel to "get Buffy" even though Angel wanted to stay at the Bronze. And then Angel does it.
    Love Oz
    CL

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    Replies
    1. Agreed, CL, I loved that moment when all he had to say was "Angel" to get him to stop trying to smacktalk the Mayor and Faith while Willow was still in danger.

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  7. I somehow missed this entry until now, so I was like "yay new blog entry for me!". University of Convenience made me crack up, I like that. I think Sunnydale being a tiny town clashed with them not wanting Buffy and the other characters to leave it for university or to have to go somewhere else like LA when they need an airport, docks, a beach and whatever else they gave Sunnydale that I can't remember off the top of my head. But then you only ever see one main street because that's all they made, and then really the only other streets you see are residential. So it's certainly a small town like no other in more ways than one. It grows and shrinks at the whim of the writers!

    And good point about Oz and Angel. I think that's both because Oz never fancied Buffy so there was no jealousy conflict, and also because Oz isn't petty and immature like Xander was so he's someone you just take more seriously.

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