posted 11-22-2000 12:06 EST (US)
I see I'm going to be alone on this one...but I liked the Riley stuff last night. He didn't whine! Instead, other people pointed out to him, much in the way a fan walking off the street might, the differences between B/him and B/Angel. The awareness that maybe "a nice guy who's good for Buffy" isn't actually what she might subliminally want hurts, and I thought Marc did a good job showing the hopeless frustration when he can't be what he thinks (and what other people are telling him) Buffy needs. And I thought the scene with him and Sandy was one of the more genuinely creepy things I've seen on the show lately. People on various boards have talked about Riley being stupid here. It's not, IMO, exactly being stupid (like running into a nest of vampires alone is stupid).
Instead, its a good examination of the way in which Vampires benefit from human despair, and thier desire to connect to something, to embrace something, even death and damnantion.
An emotionally vulnerable young man, forced to confront the fact that he lacks qualities the woman he loves admires, meets the wrong wrong woman in an alley and...stakes her and gets called stupid, as opposed to letting her finish him and maybe or maybe not vamping him and making him kewlin the eyes of fans like Spike. I think it's fascinating stuff psychologically.
I also thought the scenes between Riley and Dawn were sweet and touching and sad. Manipulative? Sure. But I don't mind a scene which is set up to make Riley look sympathetic (not perfect or invulnerable or whatever, merely sympathetic), when I happily accept scenes that are set up to make me feel sadness for Joyce and Buffy, or affection for the sheer adorableness of W/T. The show is brazenly emotionally manipulative, occasionally clumsily so.
And, though I forgive her because she's going through a lot right now, even more than usual, if Buffy could see the way she sometimes treats Riley, I'd like to think she would have the emotional sensitivity and honesty to wince.
Anyway, enough Riley related ranting. And alliteration. Thought the snake monster was bad in an absolute technical sense, but tremendous fun in a Ray Harryhausen mythology momnster movie kind of way. (Good grief, the alliteration, I'm not doing this on purpose I swear)
I don't quite understand why you'd need a giant nasty cobra monster to find something, I would have thought you could get the job done more subtly with a little infernal fly in the wall, or a demonic coon hound perhaps. (anyone remember the roach spy cam from Fifth Element?)
Or maybe Glory could get together with her sweetie, and try to cast a Key Finding spell on a little map of Sunnydale, and then her sweetie might botch the spell, you know, toss the virgin blood under the bed, and then all the demon fans of the show could speculate for months ("Oh, Glory's girlfriend is good, horribly stinking good I say, I predict you'll find out she's not a demon, she's actually there to secretly help out the scoobies, and I bet she's really Glory's great granduncle from an alternate dimension! Glory should totally go back to that stoic yet cute Chaos demon.")
Or maybe not.
Um, liked that Xander called Riley on the solo work last week. Liked the general Scooby-age with Tara! Yay! Wished that Tara and Willow had been sitting together in the second scene, but I did notice the lean in the first one. (Insert vote for lighter, up off the neck hair for Tara, or the old Hush-style hair)
My jury is still out on Glory, though her assistant is a riot. Not a great episode overall, but nothing really annoyed me, and the plot moved forward.
-len