A quick post to say how much better this ep was than some of the previous ones.

There is still hope

Anya was great in this ep, and a big woohoo for Willow for being so adamant not to use her magic

Boring boring boring boring boring.

I didn't catch much of this episode. But what little I did get I thought that Willow was good (Way to go on the cold turkey), good to see Tara again as well. But it looks like this was a low budget ep, with it all being pretty much filmed in the house.

(Edited by Desire 06/04/2002 15:05)

Yep, definitely smacked of a money saving ep to me too.

And how jealous was Spike?? Bless 'im.

An enjoyable episode

I really enjoyed this - it had so much going on.

I did think we were dealing with a rehash of Stormbringer at first (and got a little worried when Xander and the new guy got cut), but obviously there was a tie between the sword and demon. The "release" spell gaffe was clever, and so was the vengeance (justice?) demon being caught in her own wish...

And I thought that counsellor looked familiar!

Much better than previous epidodes, but still not brilliant.

It made me feel a claustrophobic thinking of them being trapped like that, and reminded me a bit of the film "the hole"

I really thought Willow was going to do the spell as well, and I'm glad that there is more trust between Willow and Tara.

Not to be mean, but did Xander look a bit chubby to anyone else??

A pretty good ep from me

okay i may be wrong..but i think Halfrek is palyed by the same woman who plays Cecily, 'Kali Roacha' or something like that...and she recognizes spike so do you think shes meant to be cecily..the woman that spike wrote all his poetry for???

i've just watched it again and i'm pretty sure she's the same woman. If you looked closely and imagine her hair pulled up on her head. It does look a lot like Cecily did in Fool For Love. I thought she looked familar when i saw her un-demonized and thought it might have been her.

on a seperate note...is it just me or are Spike's eyebrows getting blacker? he's also had more costumes changes this season than ever before...nott hat i'm complaning...i especially like the open/no shirt look

(Edited by Rae 05/04/2002 21:31)

(Edited by Rae 05/04/2002 23:53)

Thought this was good.I like clem. Felt really sorry for Dawn though.

Another one I enjoyed - the last few weeks I've caught myself thinking 'Why is Dawn being such a pain? Doesn't she understand that Buffy has to be the Slayer before anything else?' It was nice to see it from Dawn's point of view: she's still a kid surrounded by young adults who are too preoccupied with their own lives to give her the time and attention she needs.

I think Spike was right though - why on earth does Buffy keep celebrating her birthday? It's always a disaster!

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by Rae
okay i may be wrong..but i think Halfrek is palyed by the same woman who plays Cecily, 'Kali Roacha' or something like that...and she recognizes spike so do you think shes meant to be cecily..the woman that spike wrote all his poetry for???

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You're right, although I hadn't noticed it at the time. I checked on Buffyguide and Kali Rocha was definitely Cecily. I'm sure it couldn't be coincidence, especially with the knowing Spike. And we know that vengeance demons were once humans who were granted the power of the wish. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this...

Dawn's just being a brat. No wonder she has no friends her own age (like she did last series....)

(Edited by Yally 08/04/2002 20:53)

i don't particularly like dawn. MT is an okay actor but the character is too annoying. We've bee to the 16 year old stuff wiht buffy/willow/xnder a coupla seasons ago. it's just odd that shes never been in it before...but they all think she has, even though they know she hasn't...did i make any sense?

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by Yally
Dawn's just being a brat. No wonder she has no friends her own age (like she did last series....)

(Edited by Yally 08/04/2002 20:53)

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Well, there's Janice, plus there's a few scenes that are in some of the shooting scripts but seem to have been cut for time which show that Dawn does have some friends.

However, from Season 5, it looks very much as though she was one of those kids who spends a lot of time hanging out with her older sibling's friends, because they just seemed cooler and smarter than people her own age. She was very close to Willow, because she was a real bookworm before she started skipping classes, and had the big crush on Xander. If they've all moved on now to their big adult jobs, and have far less time to hang out with Dawnie, it is going to come as a rip to her.

And as for bratty...Well, she's a brat. She's precisely at the brat age.

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by Rae
i don't particularly like dawn. MT is an okay actor but the character is too annoying. We've bee to the 16 year old stuff wiht buffy/willow/xnder a coupla seasons ago. it's just odd that shes never been in it before...but they all think she has, even though they know she hasn't...did i make any sense?

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What I still think is interesting about Dawn is that we hit the mid-teen traumas from the other side. When Buffy was sixteen, she was already the Slayer, so we knew she had an excuse for being difficult. Her mother truly did not understand what she had to deal with, and thus the restrictions placed on her were unreasonable. Willow and Xander meanwhile might as well not have had parents, because they just never entered into events.

Buffy was also the focus of the series, so everything we saw was from her viewpoint. If someone was off base, it was largely because they were off in relation to her. To take an example, Xander's attitude to Angelus.

While his antagonism with Angel came down in the end to simple jealousy, was he really so unreasonable to suggest that restoring the curse - now known to have a really major design flaw - was not the best thing to do? he always seemed unreasonable, but largely because we saw things from Buffy's perspective. If it's such a reasonable thing to do, why did they not try to restore William's soul back when Willow was still the uber-wicca?

Anyway, with Dawn, we get to see that Buffy was not exceptional in her teenage behaviour, but we also get to see her and the other Scoobies trying to grasp the other side of the relationship. I think it works most of the time, and gives an good shift in the perspective.

As for the disjointedness of Dawn just suddenly being there...I know what you mean, but I don't really feel it. It gets a little weird when she talks about stuff that happened in Seasons 1-4, but other than that, it doesn't bother me.

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by The Prophet
As for the disjointedness of Dawn just suddenly being there...I know what you mean, but I don't really feel it. It gets a little weird when she talks about stuff that happened in Seasons 1-4, but other than that, it doesn't bother me.

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That actually makes the whole thing work for me! I just love the whole business about the back story being slightly different from the one we saw. It would be interesting to speculate on what Dawn's role in a number of stories would have been.

Incidentally, I don't recall if it was mentioned in the episode, but wasn't this Buffy's twenty-first? It explains why she'd risk celebrating it anyway...