The #BuffyRewatch is all lies, lies, lies…

slayer
I am up to “Lies my Parents Told Me,” this week on Buffy. This leaves me with three S7 episodes left. It has been a lot of fun, but I’ll be glad to change gears a little, and write about some other things for awhile. Perhaps even books! Or other shows. I have been enjoying Black Sails very much, for example. Toby Stephens! Pirates! Adventure on the high seas!

Andrew verges on interesting in the #Buffyrewatch

slayerThis week’s rewatch covers “Storyteller,” which is the season seven Buffy episode where Andrew attempts to impose his own narrative on the killing of Jonathan Levinson, and Buffy eventually makes him cry. As he so richly deserves. Here’s my essay.

A number of the folks who comment on these columns directly (on the Tor.com site, I mean) have expressed the opinion that Andrew’s redemption arc would have made more sense and been more satisfying if it had been Jonathan’s–if he was the one who committed murder, and had to make up for it. I’m pretty much with them on this; I think Danny Strong is wonderful, and find Tom Lenk’s Andrew really hard to take.

That said, it’s a funny script in a season notable for its lack of jolly, and sometimes you just gotta take what you can get. Enjoy!

Latest Buffy Rewatch, and a fun fact about me

The latest Buffy Rewatch is up at Tor.com – it covers “Conversations with Dead People,” which I suspect you’ll all agree is one of the better S7 episodes.

I am at home cooking and working on the next Buffy essay (I’m on “Potential”) and I have my Schmaltz playlist on. The dictionary definition of schmaltzy is “excessively sentimental,” and I don’t know if all of my choices qualify, but I will admit, publicly, that Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” is on it. Essentially they’re songs that make me feel sentimental.

So, I’m puttering around chopping veggies and the Eagles come on, with “New Kid in Town,” a song that’s been making me emo since the Seventies. And it occurred to me, in a distant way, that the lion’s share of my listening brain takes the one lyric: “Great expectations/everybody’s watching you,” literally. It’s as if in mid-song the narrator breaks off to personally address a Masterpiece Theater version of Great Expectations, to say “Hey, there. We’re tuning in. All of us. Just FYI.”

Yeah, so that happened.

Another thing that’s happened, as some of you may have heard, was that we got some freezing rain in Toronto. Here’s a picture:

It’s all about Him on the #BuffyRewatch. (Him Who?)

slayerThis week’s rewatch is up to “Him,” the S7 episode where a magic coat makes an allegedly unremarkable young man graceful, attractive, and an all ’round tasty morsel.

Here in Toronto, we got a dumping of the white stuff: nineteen centimeters of snow, or so somebody told me. Kelly and I promptly went out and got proper boots. This should be, I think, the last of the official moving expenses. The boots are waterproof and toasty and pretty clompy, and I’ve done my usual stomping about in them for the past couple of days with satisfactory results. I’ve been taking pictures, and they’ll end up here as I continue to sift through them.

The #BuffyRewatch is feeling Selfless @tordotcom.

slayerI’m up to “Selfless” on the Buffy rewatch. Anya! I love her so. Here’s the essay.

At least one person in the comment threads has already called this the best episode of season 7. I’d say that’s “Chosen,” because I loved how the series closed. But then there’s “Storyteller, too.

Still, Anya! So complicated, so smart, and so darned strange!

Since we are now supposed to be living in a land of snow, I have been uncharacteristically keen to have some. And we have, but it hasn’t been very visually impressive. It falls, it slushes, it goes away. There have been a few good holiday trees though, especially in the financial district. I thought this one, for example, was pretty nice:

Shiny LED trees in a Toronto park. Still no snow.