Current mood:

silly

Lots of television - lots of Buffy under the cut
I've been watching massive amounts of television, lately. I've especially been OD-ing on the Buffy. Between Saturday and today, I watched 15 episodes of the Buffy. Plus re-watched four of them with the commentary on, and watched several interviews and featurettes. I finished season three and got through the first disc of season four. I've decided that now that Buffy and Angel have split off, I'm going to switch back and forth by disc - one of Buffy, one of Angel, etc.

Surprisingly, after all of that Buffy? I had Days of Our Lives dreams all morning today!

Anyway, yesterday Angie came over and she watched the last three season three eps with me and then I watched the last two season one eps of SPN with her and then we somehow managed to squeeze in an episode of Alias, too. I think it was the fifth episode of season four?
It was kinda hard to switch gears after all of that Buffy and SPN to non-sci-fi stuff (although an argument can certainly me made that there are sci-fi elements in Alias). I kept expecting the bad guys to have horns on their heads or throw people up against walls with their minds or something.

Anyway, commentary on Buffy:



Helpless: scariest episode I'd seen so far, I think. The villain, Zachary, was great at the crazy homicidal guy turned vampire - super freaky with a bit of funny throw in. And then to have Buffy be powerless and feeling betrayed by the person she trusts most in the world and in that creepy dark house playing cat and mouse? Yea, I felt the blood pumping!
I liked the comparisons between Buffy and Zachary - she was having father issues and he has serious mother issues. She was helpless due to her powers being stripped and he was helpless when his headaches came on if he didn't get his pills.
And the tricking him into drinking holy water bit? Fantastic!

The Zeppo: funniest episode I'd seen so far! Following Xander around on his personal adventure, all the while having the Scooby Gang dealing with the impending apocalypse as a sub-plot was just too good.

Bad Girls: I'm not the only one who wanted to see Buffy and Faith get it on, right?!
Balthazar was the ickiest demon yet. I could barely stand to look at him! I prefer Belthazor on Charmed. Way Sexier.

Consequences: Starting to think Faith would be a sexy and amazing vampire.
Loved Angel saving Xander from Faith!

Dopplegangland: best line ever? Willow about her vampire self: "I think I'm kinda gay!"

Enemies: Faith to Angel - "Just keeping her warm for you." Hawt. I loved that Angel was just pretending to be turned. I really didn't see it coming and it made me SO excited (and not just because I thought a threesome with them would be so nice)!

Earshot: The school paper has obits! Too funny!
I love that Cordelia says *everything* that she thinks. No censoring.
Xander being right about the lunch lady AND being the one to catch her is just fantastic.
Jericho fans - I noticed in the school paper room that they had the yellow "Don't tread on me" flag with the snake in a frame!!!

Choices: Willow using the magical floating pencil to kill a vampire!
When the mayor starts giving Angel shit about Buffy, you know it's sinking in and is what starts him on his path to leaving town.

Prom: Buffy and Angel becoming so settled cannot be a good thing, and of course, isn't.
Love the idea of Anya being actually stuck in a teenage body and feeling and thinking like a teenager - not just still being like a demon but stuck in the body - but actually *becoming* a teenager!
I also love when Angel says to Joyce "I'm old enough to be her ancestor!"

Graduation Day: Mostly what I have to say about this two-parter is - !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still not coherent enough to say much more about it. May have to rewatch a few times to be more critical.

The Freshman: Of course all of the creatures and things will now be on the college campus instead of hanging around the high school. Unless they've always been on both and Buffy only notices the ones wherever she happens to be??
(BTW - do you think they rebuilt the high school?)
Best line? "Are we gonna fight? Or is there just gonna be a Monster Sarcasm Rally?"

Living Conditions: I kinda hoped Kathy would get to stick around. Evil as she was, I felt bad for her being forced to go back when she wanted to go to college.

The Harsh Light of Day: Spike!! Spike and Harmony!!! Just as messed up as Spike and Dru! Buffy, in Angel's absence, torments Spike about Dru!
Parker is a jerky jerk boy.
Xander and Anya are adorable. Poor Xander is kinda scared to get close to someone again after what happened with Faith.

Fear Itself: felt a lot like Barbas on Charmed. I find it interesting that Fear Itself on Buffy and Barbas's first appearance on Charmed aired in the same year. I loved Barbas, btw, so this was a fun episode for me.

Looking forward to starting Angel (I've seen the pilot already, but will re-watch it again anyway), and going further with Buffy.

Season Three stuff:
I rather like, in general, how this season is exploring the dark and light sides of the characters - how our identities are not necessarily solid and how we can change.
At the start of the season, Buffy and Lily are exploring other sides of their identities in Anne.
When Faith comes along, she's begins to play a foil for Buffy right away.
In Beauty and the Beasts, we see three different male characters with their various dark sides.
In Homecoming, Buffy plays with her old, lighter identity, when she faces off against Cordelia for Homecoming Queen.
In Band Candy, all of the grown ups get all chaotic, and Giles gets back in touch with his Ripper identity.
We also start seeing more of the mayor around here, and his character plays with the light and dark sides of identity a lot - he's a big cheeseball who believes in family and the mythical American way, and yet he's pure evil and trying to ascend as a demon.
Giles gets more mirroring and foiling with the new watcher who isn't the new watcher in Revelations, and then with the actual new watcher who replaces him - Wesley.
We get Xander and Willow playing with their dark sides as they cheat on the people they love, and then even more so in The Wish when we see them as vampires. In The Wish, we also see Buffy being more like Faith.
In Gingerbread, the whole town's dark sides come out, especially Joyce.
In Bad Girls and Consequences, we get hit over the head a little bit with the light/dark contrasts between Buffy and Faith.
Dopplegangland brings alternate reality Willow the Vampire into this dimension, which is a fun play on the similar theme.
Enemies has us seeing Angel pretending to go dark. And we start seeing the light side of evil Faith and the mayor in their relationship with each other.
Through the rest of the season we get more and more of the Faith/Buffy stuff.
We also see Anya, a demon, becoming more human and light.

Not to mention, in Earshot, the classroom discussion is about Othello and the dark/light dichotomy between Othello and Iago.



I just also want to say that, re-watching the season one finale of Supernatural, having seen all three seasons of the show and becoming more involved with the characters, it all made me cry even more than the first time I watched it. Because I really GOT what was tangling them all up inside even more and it was just all that more emotional.

I'm also just going to say that the episode of Alias we watched last night - Welcome To Liberty Village - was really cool.


And now, I've successfully wasted enough time that it's too late to make the businessey phone calls I meant to make today. All of that will have to get pushed ahead to another day, once again. I don't know what's up with me and the procrastination lately!

I suppose I ought to get some food in my tummy and then get cleaned up and do some stretches and if I can manage it before I collapse for the day - do the stuff I originally planned to do tomorrow so that tomorrow I can just focus on making those damned calls.
And then watch some TV. But probably take a break from the Buffy/Angel for awhile and watch the stuff piling up on my DVR. Got new Army Wives (finally saw last season's finale, btw, and can't wait to see this season's premiere now!), new In Plain Sight, new Criminal Intent, Million Dollar Password with Rosie O'Donnell, have to re-watch Charlie Jade to see if it makes any sense the second time around, and then lots of soaps.

The Mole has it's second ep of the season tonight. Not sure if I'll get sucked in or not. Sometimes with reality shows it takes awhile to get interested in the people.

Also this week, NBC will be airing the last episode of Men in Trees, and My Boys starts back up on TBS.

30 Days has come back and Dave and I really liked the first episode of the season - Morgan Spurlock goes to work in a coal mine for a month, and it's pretty amazing. This week's episode? Former NFL player Ray Crockett is confined to a wheelchair for 30 days. I'm interested to see how someone who is sort if the epitome of able bodied does in this situation. I'm not sure how anyone could go about making someone able bodied live with an invisible disability, but this should at least shed some light on how different it is to live with disability in general.
Further on in the season, Spurlock puts a hunter with a PETA member and gets him to work at an animal rescue center. Other issues dealt with? Same sex parenting (a mother - probably at least slightly homophobic? - goes to live with a gay couple parenting adopted kids), gun control (a gun control advocate living with gun enthusiasts and learning how to use guns), and then the final episode will have Spurlock living on an Indian reservation for 30 days.

Fear Itself started off with a bang, I thought. The Sacrifice was very scary and intriguing. This week's episode looks very different, but still interesting.

Coming soon (and I post this because I've added new shows since the last time I did this - but will only elaborate on the new ones):
June 16 - Middleman on ABC Family
June 17 - America's Got Talent comes back
June 20 - The Daytime Emmy's will air, along with the start of a new original Soapnet primetime show - MVP. The show was originally set to air on Canada's CBC but got canceled before it could start. Soapnet decided to pick it up and it will be starting up in conjunction with the big Emmy hoopla. The show is basely loosely off of the British show Footballer's Wives. It stars Matthew Bennett (Battlestar Galactica's Aaron Donal) and all kinds of other pretty people who have only briefly appeared on various US TV show eps so naming them won't likely help anyone.
June 22 - The Two Coreys comes back. Why? I don't know. It helps fill my drama quotient.
July 1 - Secret Life of the American Teenager
July 8 - General Hospital: Night Shift (prime time spinoff of the daytime soap) starts it's second season on Soapnet
July 10 - Burn Notice back
July 11 - Flashpoint starts
July 13 - Big Brother back
July 14 - The Closer back
July 15 - The Cleaner starts
July 18 - Psych and Monk back
July 29 - Eureka back

And then I think that's it until September. And let's not get me started on September.

OMG, seriously, need food. I've been working on this for three hours now. The hell is wrong with me anyway?