Buffy - Season 6 impressions (episode 15)

[thalia_seawood]

I haven't posted any Jossverse reviews in ages due to a very busy RL which resulted in a lack of fannish motivation.
Then I spend an evening showing Buffy to my oldest friend hopefully winning another fan. (She liked the show and took season 1 with her for further watching

Comments

[selenak]

Re: As You Were in general - mediocre episode, absolutely, but what cracks me up about it is something meta: until this episode, Doug Petrie was revered as as demi god among (some) Spike fans because he wrote Fool For Love. Afterwards, there was much "how can he write Riley Superstar, the traitor", and apparantly it hadn't occured to people until then Doug Petrie also wrote The Initiative and spend a good deal of his Fool For Love commentary praising good old Riley. *veg*

More seriously: I saw the episode as basically from Buffy's pov and about her self perception, absolutely. Regarding her calling Spike William, I always liked that and the scene, because she spent a good deal of her sexual relationship with Spike trying NOT to see him as someone other than a demon. Here, she changes that, and it goes back to their pre-sex relationship and Spike telling her, in The Gift that he is a monster, but she treats him as a man. So she tries to give him that again when leaving him. Hence William.

[spikendru]

And now one wonders exactly *how* much of FFL Petrie actually wrote. It seems that most of the best scenes in favorite episodes were tweaked by Joss, and sometimes entire scenes re-rwitten (the church scene in "Beneath You" comes immediately to mind), and there were many others I remember reading about at the time. It almost suspends belief to think that the same person wrote "Something Blue" and "Beer Bad", without some Joss help on the former.

[thalia_seawood]

I think I really have to check out which author wrote which episodes because I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to this.

"Beer Bad" was an episode a lot of fans disliked, wasn't it. (I found it very funny, though. Have to rewatch it; SMG's performance alone is worth it.)

I just read the alternate version of the church scene in "Beneath You", however, and was not impressed. It lacks subtlety.

[selenak]

Here I have to jump at the chance to defend my favourite hated underdog among the writers - no, not Tracy M. of "Something Blue" and "Beer Bad" fame, but Marti Noxon, because she, like Joss, did a lot of uncredited rewrites of crucial scenes. For example, Jane Espendson and Ultimate Drew are credited as writers for Conversations with Dead People in s7, but we know via interviews the episode had actually four writers - Joss wrote all the Buffy scenes, Marti wrote all the Willow scenes, Jane wrote the Dawn scenes (to everyone's surprise when she revealed this, because we all had thought she wrote the geeks!), and Drew Goddard wrote Andrew & Jonathan.

Marti also did uncredited rewrites of the occasional Angel episode, like, famously, Dear Boy in s2. David Greenwalt's original scene between Darla and Angel at the climax wasn't nearly as good and very unsubtle (it was online for a while, when all the shooting scripts were), whereas the Marti-penned broadcast scene is one of my favourites on either show, containing one of my all time

[thalia_seawood]

and it goes back to their pre-sex relationship and Spike telling her, in The Gift that he is a monster, but she treats him as a man.

Yes, this explanation works for me. Thanks for sharing.

Reg. Doug Petrie:
Has he ever said what his intention were in "As You Were", i.e. was it supposed to be a subtle glimpse into Buffy's state of mind, was it supposed to be an ode to Riley? :-)
Has Joss given any insight into this episode?

[selenak]

Nope, can't recall anything, beyond the one obvious point that Buffy needed to finally do something about her awareness that she was using Spike and that the relationship wasn't good for either of them. (Which it wasn't at that stage; they both needed to change for it to become different.)