Buffy - Season 4 impressions (episode 14)
Nov. 24th, 2005 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thalia_seawoodGoodbye Iowa
For a summary click here.
This is the episode that completely turns Riley's world upside down. It's a tour-de-force for his character.
I don't understand why Riley isn't more popular: I love character arcs where you take a character and then shake up his world and he has to revise his views of the world and change. Not something that's nice to experience in real life, but observing character arcs like this in books or on TV is a treat.
Anyway, confusing things that happen to Riley:
- Riley sets out to find Buffy with the realisation that Walsh apparently wanted to kill Buffy.
- When he finds Buffy at Giles' house he encounters hostile 17 aka Spike.
I love their little meeting:
Buffy: This is Spike. He's um.. It's a really long story b-but he' not bad anymore.
Spike jumps up.
Spike: Hey! What am I, a bleeding broken record? I'm bad it's just I can't bite anymore. Thanks to you wankers.
Spike indicates Riley with a head movement.
Riley: We've been looking all over the place for him - but you've known where's he's been all along.
Buffy: It's not like that.
Riley: Then what is it like?... What's he doing here?
Spike: Leaving you swabs to your dramatics, thanks. I've got my stories on the telly for that.
Spike puts on his black leather coat.
Spike: By the by. If you're trying to kill her.
Spike leans back with a big grin and two thumbs up.
Must be really odd for Riley to finally *meet* a demon, not just set out to kill one or watch experiments taking place. From what I've seen so far all demons are the same to the Iniative. They've never noticed that they all have different personalities.
- Next in line is that Riley has an argument with his best friend, Forrest, about Walsh and Buffy. Forrest thinks that Walsh may have had good reasons to kill Buffy. Riley is understandably upset.
- Another commandoe bursts in with bad news: Walsh has been murdered.
- Right afterwards Forrest thinks Buffy might have killed Walsh which does not make things easier for Riley.
- Riley disobeys orders for the first time - well, second time if you consider that he walked out on Walsh in the last episode. He gathers a troup to fight against the Polgara demon.
- Riley gets even more confused when he enters Willy's bar and realises demons hang out there even though the barkeeper is human. He starts to have a breakdown which is aided big time by the fact that he's suffering from withdrawal symptons. Seems he forgot to take his "vitamins".
- More withdrawal pain for Riley.
- He has to find out that Walsh saw him as her creation and that Adam considers him as his brother. (Not exactly the family you would want to have.)
- Riley gets stabbed by Adam.
- He gets then taken to a military hospital. Buffy is not allowed to come along.
- At least he still got Buffy's scarf, but all in all it's safe to say that this must have been his worst day ever.
Other things I noted:
- Adam killing the little boy. I was surprised they went ahead with this; it doesn't happen very often that children die in a TV show. Small wonder the death takes place off screen and we learn about it when Buffy watches TV.
- Buffy and her friends camping out in Xander's basement is funny.
- Buffy and her boyfriends:
Anya: And after everything you've been through with Angel. You really should get yourself a boring boyfriend. Like Xander. You can't have Xander!
Buffy: That was the idea. Riley was supposed to be Mr. "Joe Guy". We were going to do dumb things like hold hands walking through the daisies going tra-la-la.
- I like Willy, the barkeeper of the demon bar.
- Tara's way of refusing to help Willow with her spell is interesting. Like Willow she avoids an open confrontation. Instead she sabotages the spell secretly.
- Whedon has a particular love for philosophical villains. Adam reminded me a bit of Jubal Early in Firefly.
- Spike becomes even more of an outsider. He's refusing to ally himself with Giles, Buffy and co, but at the same times has no friends in the demon world.
- I get the feeling that even way back in season 4, Spike is interested in Buffy. When he moves out from Xander he wonders why she didn't show up to say good bye. In this episode, he mentions quite gleefully that he thinks Riley was in on Walsh's plot.
For a summary click here.
This is the episode that completely turns Riley's world upside down. It's a tour-de-force for his character.
I don't understand why Riley isn't more popular: I love character arcs where you take a character and then shake up his world and he has to revise his views of the world and change. Not something that's nice to experience in real life, but observing character arcs like this in books or on TV is a treat.
Anyway, confusing things that happen to Riley:
- Riley sets out to find Buffy with the realisation that Walsh apparently wanted to kill Buffy.
- When he finds Buffy at Giles' house he encounters hostile 17 aka Spike.
I love their little meeting:
Buffy: This is Spike. He's um.. It's a really long story b-but he' not bad anymore.
Spike jumps up.
Spike: Hey! What am I, a bleeding broken record? I'm bad it's just I can't bite anymore. Thanks to you wankers.
Spike indicates Riley with a head movement.
Riley: We've been looking all over the place for him - but you've known where's he's been all along.
Buffy: It's not like that.
Riley: Then what is it like?... What's he doing here?
Spike: Leaving you swabs to your dramatics, thanks. I've got my stories on the telly for that.
Spike puts on his black leather coat.
Spike: By the by. If you're trying to kill her.
Spike leans back with a big grin and two thumbs up.
Must be really odd for Riley to finally *meet* a demon, not just set out to kill one or watch experiments taking place. From what I've seen so far all demons are the same to the Iniative. They've never noticed that they all have different personalities.
- Next in line is that Riley has an argument with his best friend, Forrest, about Walsh and Buffy. Forrest thinks that Walsh may have had good reasons to kill Buffy. Riley is understandably upset.
- Another commandoe bursts in with bad news: Walsh has been murdered.
- Right afterwards Forrest thinks Buffy might have killed Walsh which does not make things easier for Riley.
- Riley disobeys orders for the first time - well, second time if you consider that he walked out on Walsh in the last episode. He gathers a troup to fight against the Polgara demon.
- Riley gets even more confused when he enters Willy's bar and realises demons hang out there even though the barkeeper is human. He starts to have a breakdown which is aided big time by the fact that he's suffering from withdrawal symptons. Seems he forgot to take his "vitamins".
- More withdrawal pain for Riley.
- He has to find out that Walsh saw him as her creation and that Adam considers him as his brother. (Not exactly the family you would want to have.)
- Riley gets stabbed by Adam.
- He gets then taken to a military hospital. Buffy is not allowed to come along.
- At least he still got Buffy's scarf, but all in all it's safe to say that this must have been his worst day ever.
Other things I noted:
- Adam killing the little boy. I was surprised they went ahead with this; it doesn't happen very often that children die in a TV show. Small wonder the death takes place off screen and we learn about it when Buffy watches TV.
- Buffy and her friends camping out in Xander's basement is funny.
- Buffy and her boyfriends:
Anya: And after everything you've been through with Angel. You really should get yourself a boring boyfriend. Like Xander. You can't have Xander!
Buffy: That was the idea. Riley was supposed to be Mr. "Joe Guy". We were going to do dumb things like hold hands walking through the daisies going tra-la-la.
- I like Willy, the barkeeper of the demon bar.
- Tara's way of refusing to help Willow with her spell is interesting. Like Willow she avoids an open confrontation. Instead she sabotages the spell secretly.
- Whedon has a particular love for philosophical villains. Adam reminded me a bit of Jubal Early in Firefly.
- Spike becomes even more of an outsider. He's refusing to ally himself with Giles, Buffy and co, but at the same times has no friends in the demon world.
- I get the feeling that even way back in season 4, Spike is interested in Buffy. When he moves out from Xander he wonders why she didn't show up to say good bye. In this episode, he mentions quite gleefully that he thinks Riley was in on Walsh's plot.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-24 03:33 pm (UTC)From what I've seen so far all demons are the same to the Iniative. They've never noticed that they all have different personalities.
No. They're really animals to them.
Worst day ever: till season 5 anyway, but oh, yeah.
Adam killing the little boy: clear homage to James Walsh' version of Frankenstein, in which the monster does this to a little girl.
I get the feeling that even way back in season 4, Spike is interested in Buffy.
Err, I think you're only two episodes away from getting a verrrrrry interesting scene in this regard.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 07:19 am (UTC)as for the Spuffy tension, it goes at least back to the season 2 finale, I think.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 10:20 pm (UTC)Spike is definitely captivated by Buffy. The other way around, though? I don't see that yet. He's an ally at the end of season 2, but apart from that he's either an opponent or just plain irritating to Buffy.