Tonight's Buffy

[truepenny]

My Spuffy little heart melted like butter.

That's the most important thing that came out of this episode: Buffy rescues Spike, and the moment is extraordinarily sweet and restrained. As H.L. said, if they'd gone into the passionate clench, we would have puked (and, really, Spike would have howled with pain). But this was, for me, beautiful and perfect. I realize that the anti-Spike/Buffy faction most likely has an extremely different take on it, but this is mine: I went all gooey and loved them both.

I have a theory, which is probably wrong, that which Buffy 'ship you imprint on depends on where in the show's now 7 season arc you start watching. (Please, post and shoot me down.) See, I started watching with "Dead Things" (6.13) and therefore totally imprinted on Spike as The Boyfriend. My opinion of Angel is best expressed by Buffybot: "Angel's lame. His hair goes straight up and he's bloody stupid." And I really truly love Riley for one episode: "The Initiative" (4.7). It's all downhill from there for me with Riley Finn, and by the time he leaves Sunnydale in "Into the Woods" (5.10), I hate him. I loathe him. I want Buffy to lay him out cold and leave his sorry ass.

Ahem. Where was I?

Anyway, I love the end of "Showtime" because of the gender reversal. Spike is the damsel in distress--all he can do is repeat his mantra: She will come for me. (V. much like Buttercup to Humperdinck in The Princess Bride.) It's Buffy who gets to be the knight in shining armor and rescue her damsel. And they both accept those roles so naturally, so easily.

(There's a Spike paper already in the works with H.L. I think it just got longer.)

Other than that, this wasn't one of the season's outstanding episodes. They clearly didn't have enough plot to go around, and (H.L. again) they didn't have their various bits of plot well integrated. The Junior Slayers desperately need to grow a collective spine--although I'm heartened by the fact that they're a multicultural group and the ones who have died thus far are the blue-eyed blondes. Andrew is still the Annoying Virgin, but Tom Lenk cracks me up. The pop culture references are seriously getting out of control, even for BtVS, but I do and forever will love Buffy saying, "Welcome to Thunderdome."

And I am exceptionally pleased that the consequences of bringing Buffy back at the beginning of Season 6 aren't over. I wish the show would admit that Buffy's heroic self-sacrifice at the end of Season 5 is also a big stupid piece of self-pity, but I can get by with the fact that bringing her back from the dead is continuing to reverberate down the episodes. That kind of continuity makes me happy.

I'm not very critical about BtVS; I am infinitely willing to forgive its flaws. So my opinion here is probably light years more favorable than most. But that's fine. You knew it was nothing more than my opinion when you started reading.