Memories of slayage
Just been reminded about a post I was going to write after discovering Rullsenburg Rules via Troubled Diva. The other night on IrishTVChannel 6 I caught an old episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (”Earshot”, 3:18) and it reminded me how long it was since I’d watched any Buffy and how much I missed it.
It was always absolutely compulsive viewing for me although the high point was when Angel went bad in Season 2 after doing the jiggy jiggy with Buffy. (Did I spoil it for you? Tough - it was 10 years ago give or take! Keep up!) The scripts were always fantastic and even in the later series, there were some exceptional episodes. Why Joss Whedon didn’t win an Emmy for his writing on the series I’ll never know - he only ever got nominated for the fantastic episode “Hush” (the episode with little to no dialogue at all).
Buffy did go down hill from about season 5 onwards in my opinion. Season 6 was struggling to tread water and season 7 was entirely unmemorable. Still, when Buffy began to fade, its spinoff, Angel, just kept getting better. I get the impression that I’m in a minority but I do confess to preferring Angel over Buffy after Buffy Season 4. It was darker for the most part but it was also funnier and kept going strong all the way to the end. The final season, with the return of Spike and Angel Investigations in charge of Wolfram Hart, had some of the funniest and most gripping episodes, particularly Smile Time when Angel gets turned into a puppet. (I saw one of these on sale in Forbidden Planet the other day and was very tempted to get one.) Plus Illyria was hot.
I’d almost say that they don’t make ‘em like they used to but that wouldn’t really be true. BSG and 24* keep me going as well as a healthy dose of Scrubs. But I have a distinct feeling that I might dig out the dvds when I get home and indulge my nostalgia with a Buffython weekend.
*(Trivia time: while watching 24 series 5 the other week, I clocked a geeky bit of trivia when Audrey gave the false name of “Jane Espenson” who was one of the regular writers on Buffy. Probably not something to be proud of but I felt chuffed with myself for noticing.)
Nice to be discovered and ta for the cross reference. I’m probably someone who is more sympathetic to seasons 5 onward than most, although I’m not going to say they were flawless. Rather that, like the West Wing, it had its very best points early on and then had intermittent highs thereafter. Shamefully, I only know season 5 of Angel by reputation as it was on Sky AFTER I lost digital TV (we hit a financial rough patch as they say and have as yet not been financially tempted back to digital TV enough over getting our house sorted). But yeah, Smile Time - shouldn’t work but it does!
And the Jane Espenson reference: with ya. I would have SOOO spotted that!
Cheers: nice to find your site!
Comment by Rullsenberg — January 25, 2007 @ 6:49 pm