some top fives!
So I started this in a post that is locked way the hell down because it was me WHINING EVEN MORE THAN USUAL but: Ask me about my fannish top fives! Any top fives. At least one other post is forthcoming.
5. I could watch Tracy Does Conan (30 Rock) every day for a week and still think it was funny. Perfection.
4. The Trial/Reunion/Redefinition (Angel: the Series) is kind of cheating, but I consider it one mega-episode. Of AWESOME. I re-watched The Trial a couple of weeks ago and had this whole theory about how it was like, a whole meditation on the nature of LIFE, YOU GUIZ, but all I can remember of it now sounds kind of trite and obvious, but anyway, IT TOTALLY IS and there is Angel/Darla EPICNESS and the last airless gasp of an Angel I can like until a fleeting couple of episodes during the Jasmine arc, and then the end rips your heart out, and then we get the powerful emotional drama of Reunion, and the emphasized BDH-ness of Cordelia, Gunn, and Wes in Redefinition.
3. 33 (BSG) is brilliant. I have a soft spot for it because it was the first episode of BSG that I watched, but dude, it works that way, which is saying something. It introduces all of the characters (no mean feat, considering how many there are) and forces you to feel the premise. The structure, with the jumps punctuating the acts, is perfect. And it has Laura Roslin. This is a shocking statistic: no other episode on this list has any Laura Roslin at all. (Um, spoiler alert?) EVERYONE, I AM DISAPPOINT.
2. Two Cathedrals (The West Wing) is a beautiful episode from top to bottom, but quite enough is the sheer power behind:
1. Man on the Street (Dollhouse). I have never seen a show throw down like this before, rapidly and skillfully spinning a yarn made of equal and inseparable parts fantasy and reality, and I can't imagine anything will live up to it for me. Everything thoughtful and political about Dollhouse - everything I love about it, everything that made it special - coiled into 50 minutes that also managed to give good character development and phenomenal suspense. Guess who's not qualified to be my rabbi? Sierra is beautiful. You put her under some fat old emir, and it's okay because she thinks she's in love? There are three flowers in a vase. Everybody's complicit, nowhere is safe, and our fantasies are nightmares, because the Dollhouse is real.
BUFFY EPISODES BE SEPARATE and also I would probably come up with a different list tomorrow but whatever.
5. Villains, because of the awesometasticness that is Dark Willow.
4. FFL, natch.
3. Hush would be on the list even if it did not introduce my girl Tara, though it's the perfect debut for her. A daring idea, brilliantly executed.
2. It's not entirely unheard of for me to tear up a bit at fiction, particularly finales, but the only episode that forces the waterworks is Chosen. This is how the series has to end. Can stand up, will stand up. Not, should stand up. Not, might stand up. Not, will have the chair yanked out from under her and have to fight and bleed and gasp for breath until she hits the ground alone all too soon. Will stand up.
Buffy, Kendra, and Faith were chosen. The Potentials have chosen.
That's pretty radical. I think it's bloody brilliant.
I love so much that the series made it clear that power isn't her problem, so much as being forced to be defined by that power and channel it in one way. Power itself isn't about right or wrong. Buffy's problems aren't from having Slayer power, they're from being the only thing between the world and its total destruction, because the things that go bump in the night are going to be there whether you can fight them or not so you might as well be able to fight them, and the series closes out with Buffy really at peace with her power, enough that she wants to share it with us.
Are you ready to be strong?
1. So, here's the deal with my huge love of Surprise/Innocence. (It edges out Chosen though not by much because I can watch it without being a giant weepy mess, so I watch it OVER AND OVER.) When I first watched the show a few years ago, I had somehow managed to be completely unspoiled for anything on BtVS or AtS. No, I knew that Angel was a vampire with a soul when I first watched S1; I may have seen Willow cited somewhere as a lesbian character. That's it; past the seventh episode of the series I was unspoiled for anything resembling a long-arc twist. So when Angel vamped out and ate the hooker, I had as big an emotional jolt as anyone who watched in real time did, maybe more, as I was promo-free and so fully engaged with Spike and Dru as villains that I wasn't expecting a Big Bad game-changer to the season. As much as the series starts playing for keeps with Prophecy Girl, this is where BtVS became something special for me. Holy Mother of God. There is nothing and no one you can trust, there's a demon in every Angel, the answer is not just among you but nipping at your neck with a sadistic smile on its face.
I'm going to be predictable and pick Wesley, if only to challenge myself to narrow it down to five moments (IT IS SO HAAAAAAAAARD), one from each season. In chronological order, because I AM NOT MADE OF STONE, PEOPLE.
S1: OH MY GOD, PARTING GIFTS, HE'S LIKE A STRAY PUPPY. CAN WE KEEP HIM??? Though dancing Wesley is a close second. *dies of cute*
S2: Angel's walked away from his duty. We're not going to. (Redefinition) It's a duty, a calling, beyond sacred and straight on into a fact of life.
S3: Of course, right? You like your Uncle Wes. I mean, I've done flogged this horse to death. But I love it.
S4: No contest.
FAITH: You okay?
WES: Five by five.
Not yet, maybe, but he will be, soon and until the universe delivers its coup de grace, because he and Faith heal each other in their flawed and painful way; however red and ugly, scar tissue is the strongest.
S5: Oh, God. I've never gotten past the first eight or ten minutes of Lineage it since the first time I watched it. Early in the episode, there's this shot of Wesley and the Roger-bot walking down the lobby staircase, and it is visual perfection. It's easy to forget how tall Denisof is, as he's just spent five years next to JAR and DB, but really, Wes is not a small guy, whereas RWP is a little smaller than average. Wes should loom over him, but instead, Denisof does this beautiful thing which just makes me gasp for air, he folds his shoulders in and puts his hands in his pockets and is a flawless snapshot of what it's like to be crushed by shame and try to make yourself disappear because the cause of it is everything you are.
It's an awful moment, probably an odd one to have in a list of favorites, especially as the end of the episode is what stands out for most people, but this is the one I think of when I'm trying to explain my idea of Wesley. Not least because:
ANGEL: You know, if they had access to the Watchers Council's old files, they'd have your background information, character assessments...
WESLEY: Psychological profiles. Everything they'd need.
And you know what? It didn't work. They had Angel for what, a few minutes? before Wes put a stop to it, in what was probably the most traumatic way possible. There's so much Wesley doesn't get to choose, so many battles he loses, so many pieces of him that die along the way, but he fights this demon every day of his life, and we get to see him beat it. What matters most about that moment on the stairs isn't that he wants to disappear. It's that he doesn't.
SPOILERS STOP NOW IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ALL OF DOLLHOUSE. GO WATCH IT ALL AND THEN COME BACK. LATER. This could actually be my MotS list up there, but MOAR DOLLHOUSE:
5. Did you think I would show you rage? Or mercy?....right on through do it.
4. Oh shit, that jump to the Epitaph era at the end of THM.
3. Ballard getting Dollified. I love it. I love taking this character and rebuilding him from the ground up, turning him into what he's objectified, and for that to be the thing that makes him the good man he's tried so hard to be.
2. The Perrin and Boyd reveals. Can't pick. Won't pick. Yes. Just....yes.
1. The Claire/Topher confrontation in Vows. Aren't you the Lord my God?
5. I could watch Tracy Does Conan (30 Rock) every day for a week and still think it was funny. Perfection.
4. The Trial/Reunion/Redefinition (Angel: the Series) is kind of cheating, but I consider it one mega-episode. Of AWESOME. I re-watched The Trial a couple of weeks ago and had this whole theory about how it was like, a whole meditation on the nature of LIFE, YOU GUIZ, but all I can remember of it now sounds kind of trite and obvious, but anyway, IT TOTALLY IS and there is Angel/Darla EPICNESS and the last airless gasp of an Angel I can like until a fleeting couple of episodes during the Jasmine arc, and then the end rips your heart out, and then we get the powerful emotional drama of Reunion, and the emphasized BDH-ness of Cordelia, Gunn, and Wes in Redefinition.
3. 33 (BSG) is brilliant. I have a soft spot for it because it was the first episode of BSG that I watched, but dude, it works that way, which is saying something. It introduces all of the characters (no mean feat, considering how many there are) and forces you to feel the premise. The structure, with the jumps punctuating the acts, is perfect. And it has Laura Roslin. This is a shocking statistic: no other episode on this list has any Laura Roslin at all. (Um, spoiler alert?) EVERYONE, I AM DISAPPOINT.
2. Two Cathedrals (The West Wing) is a beautiful episode from top to bottom, but quite enough is the sheer power behind:
1. Man on the Street (Dollhouse). I have never seen a show throw down like this before, rapidly and skillfully spinning a yarn made of equal and inseparable parts fantasy and reality, and I can't imagine anything will live up to it for me. Everything thoughtful and political about Dollhouse - everything I love about it, everything that made it special - coiled into 50 minutes that also managed to give good character development and phenomenal suspense. Guess who's not qualified to be my rabbi? Sierra is beautiful. You put her under some fat old emir, and it's okay because she thinks she's in love? There are three flowers in a vase. Everybody's complicit, nowhere is safe, and our fantasies are nightmares, because the Dollhouse is real.
Click to viewBUFFY EPISODES BE SEPARATE and also I would probably come up with a different list tomorrow but whatever.
5. Villains, because of the awesometasticness that is Dark Willow.
4. FFL, natch.
3. Hush would be on the list even if it did not introduce my girl Tara, though it's the perfect debut for her. A daring idea, brilliantly executed.
2. It's not entirely unheard of for me to tear up a bit at fiction, particularly finales, but the only episode that forces the waterworks is Chosen. This is how the series has to end. Can stand up, will stand up. Not, should stand up. Not, might stand up. Not, will have the chair yanked out from under her and have to fight and bleed and gasp for breath until she hits the ground alone all too soon. Will stand up.
Buffy, Kendra, and Faith were chosen. The Potentials have chosen.
That's pretty radical. I think it's bloody brilliant.
I love so much that the series made it clear that power isn't her problem, so much as being forced to be defined by that power and channel it in one way. Power itself isn't about right or wrong. Buffy's problems aren't from having Slayer power, they're from being the only thing between the world and its total destruction, because the things that go bump in the night are going to be there whether you can fight them or not so you might as well be able to fight them, and the series closes out with Buffy really at peace with her power, enough that she wants to share it with us.
Are you ready to be strong?
1. So, here's the deal with my huge love of Surprise/Innocence. (It edges out Chosen though not by much because I can watch it without being a giant weepy mess, so I watch it OVER AND OVER.) When I first watched the show a few years ago, I had somehow managed to be completely unspoiled for anything on BtVS or AtS. No, I knew that Angel was a vampire with a soul when I first watched S1; I may have seen Willow cited somewhere as a lesbian character. That's it; past the seventh episode of the series I was unspoiled for anything resembling a long-arc twist. So when Angel vamped out and ate the hooker, I had as big an emotional jolt as anyone who watched in real time did, maybe more, as I was promo-free and so fully engaged with Spike and Dru as villains that I wasn't expecting a Big Bad game-changer to the season. As much as the series starts playing for keeps with Prophecy Girl, this is where BtVS became something special for me. Holy Mother of God. There is nothing and no one you can trust, there's a demon in every Angel, the answer is not just among you but nipping at your neck with a sadistic smile on its face.
I'm going to be predictable and pick Wesley, if only to challenge myself to narrow it down to five moments (IT IS SO HAAAAAAAAARD), one from each season. In chronological order, because I AM NOT MADE OF STONE, PEOPLE.
S1: OH MY GOD, PARTING GIFTS, HE'S LIKE A STRAY PUPPY. CAN WE KEEP HIM??? Though dancing Wesley is a close second. *dies of cute*
S2: Angel's walked away from his duty. We're not going to. (Redefinition) It's a duty, a calling, beyond sacred and straight on into a fact of life.
S3: Of course, right? You like your Uncle Wes. I mean, I've done flogged this horse to death. But I love it.
S4: No contest.
FAITH: You okay?
WES: Five by five.
Not yet, maybe, but he will be, soon and until the universe delivers its coup de grace, because he and Faith heal each other in their flawed and painful way; however red and ugly, scar tissue is the strongest.
S5: Oh, God. I've never gotten past the first eight or ten minutes of Lineage it since the first time I watched it. Early in the episode, there's this shot of Wesley and the Roger-bot walking down the lobby staircase, and it is visual perfection. It's easy to forget how tall Denisof is, as he's just spent five years next to JAR and DB, but really, Wes is not a small guy, whereas RWP is a little smaller than average. Wes should loom over him, but instead, Denisof does this beautiful thing which just makes me gasp for air, he folds his shoulders in and puts his hands in his pockets and is a flawless snapshot of what it's like to be crushed by shame and try to make yourself disappear because the cause of it is everything you are.
It's an awful moment, probably an odd one to have in a list of favorites, especially as the end of the episode is what stands out for most people, but this is the one I think of when I'm trying to explain my idea of Wesley. Not least because:
ANGEL: You know, if they had access to the Watchers Council's old files, they'd have your background information, character assessments...
WESLEY: Psychological profiles. Everything they'd need.
And you know what? It didn't work. They had Angel for what, a few minutes? before Wes put a stop to it, in what was probably the most traumatic way possible. There's so much Wesley doesn't get to choose, so many battles he loses, so many pieces of him that die along the way, but he fights this demon every day of his life, and we get to see him beat it. What matters most about that moment on the stairs isn't that he wants to disappear. It's that he doesn't.
SPOILERS STOP NOW IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ALL OF DOLLHOUSE. GO WATCH IT ALL AND THEN COME BACK. LATER. This could actually be my MotS list up there, but MOAR DOLLHOUSE:
5. Did you think I would show you rage? Or mercy?....right on through do it.
4. Oh shit, that jump to the Epitaph era at the end of THM.
3. Ballard getting Dollified. I love it. I love taking this character and rebuilding him from the ground up, turning him into what he's objectified, and for that to be the thing that makes him the good man he's tried so hard to be.
2. The Perrin and Boyd reveals. Can't pick. Won't pick. Yes. Just....yes.
1. The Claire/Topher confrontation in Vows. Aren't you the Lord my God?