Commentary: TD1.17 Life of Reilly

[starryniteshade]

It’s taken sometime to get back to TD1 commentaries. Yes, commentaries. I have been calling them reviews, but they’re reviews….just my comments as related to the story of the episode.

The Life of Reilly Commentary

Comments

[masqthephlsphr]

Indeed it’s a lot; and no matter how well Vail’s team did the job, the result is not going to be a rich personality, but a cartoon character.This is so true, and I don't think the writers gave it sufficient thought (so what else is new). Even if Vail "borrowed" memories of a real person's actual life so he'd have 18 years (9,460,800 minutes) worth of memories (including sleep and dreams), they still had to fit those memories to the Reillys' life and circumstances. I fudged this a bit by giving the Reillys a real son whose memories were passed onto Connor, but even then, that son was screwed up and so not all his memories were usable in giving Connor a memory of a happy childhood

[starryniteshade]

you captured the essence of that theme well here

thanks.

And now we'll get the behind the scenes stuff, if you can remember that. do we need a spell to help you out?

[masqthephlsphr]

I very well might, considering I posted it three years ago! But let me think it through a bit.

[masqthephlsphr]

One thing I did in season 2 was write another flashback to that summer after Connor was transplanted to the Reillys' house but didn't have his memories back yet. I implied in that flashback that Connor was starting to feel detached from his own "memories" (the false ones, the only ones he had), because they didn't reflect his own personality; they didn't feel like "him". That is another aspect of the "cartoonishness" of the memories. Only with his real memories can he be a truly authentic person.

[starryniteshade]

Something I never asked you, but...what is your view about the Dawn memory alteration?

[masqthephlsphr]

Weren't Dawn's memories fabricated completely, since a green ball of energy doesn't have memories of her own?

I guess you mean the alterations to everyone else's memories of seasons 1-4. It doesn't bother me as much because Dawn was not as integral to the events of those seasons as Connor was to seasons 3-4 of Angel. Especially when it comes to say, Wesley understanding his own situation and how he got into it. The Connor kidnapping, Jasmine--so much turned on Connor in those seasons. One has to imagine that Dawn's artificial presence in alterno-memory seasons 1-4 didn't change much.

[starryniteshade]

Yes, sorry...I didn't mean the alteration of Dawn's memory but the alteration of other's memories to include Dawn.

doesn't bother me as much because Dawn was not as integral to the events of those seasons as Connor was to seasons 3-4 of Angel. That's certainly true for Ats and Connor. When it comes to Dawn, it's obviously true that Dawn, who didn't exist in Btvs S1-4, cannot be integral to the events of those seasons *as we saw the events of those seasons*. However, we have only a sketchy idea of how the memories of Btvs characters have been changed to include Dawn. It may be equally true that those memories don't or do change things a lot. In fact, it could be argued that Buffy's sacrifice at the end of S5 is entirely due to her emotional attachment to Dawn, which is based upon fabricated memories as compared to shared experiences. Of course, much of the events of S6 and S7 are part of a sequence linked all the way back to memory alterations to provide Buffy with enough emotional attachment to protect Dawn. What would have

[masqthephlsphr]

Well, I do make the very likely assumption that a tag-along kid sister under the age of 14 was not integral in the new memories, for just being what she was--she was rarely involved. They just needed memories altered to have her *there*--at home, etc., but probably not involved in many of the events we witnessed.

[masqthephlsphr]

I have some more things to say about this ep, but I'm down to the wire with 214. Give me a few days.

[starryniteshade]

No pushing from my side. Take your time.