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ettadunham · 5 years

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A Buffy rewatch 5x20 Spiral

aka cause you had a bad day

Welcome to this dailyish (weekly? bi-weekly?) text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And I’m not sure yet what to focus on with today’s action-packed transition-y episode that’s part of our big finale saga, but I do know how to sell it to you. Woman with sword throws axe to murder a man. There, that’s my elevator pitch for Tumblr.

Spiral is relentless in its pace and is yet also weirdly static - which actually works for its story. Buffy decides that as she can’t fight Glory, they all need to get the fuck out of Sunnydale. They’re on the move for most of the episode, but they’re only delaying the inevitable, and in a classic ironic twist, end up inviting their enemies to their doorstep.

I guess, first of all, let’s talk about these crusaders, because oh boy. It’s rare for Buffy to kill another human being, but these guys are just dropping like flies in this episode. One of them even got an axe into his chest.

Which got me thinking, because I recognized the writer of Spiral, Steven S. DeKnight primarily from his Angel credits. (He was apparently a story editor for season 6 of Buffy though which… yeah, I can see that.) And suddenly these crusade guys with their weird religious ties and their supposed war with Buffy made much more sense. They would be a perfect fit in Angel the series.

In Buffy’s world… maybe not so much. But the world of Buffy is also ever-evolving. Just as Buffy herself grows and changes a lot with each season, so do her enemies and the challenges and dilemmas she faces.

Speaking of Buffy’s enemies… Let’s talk about Glory I guess. And on an unrelated note, Ben.

Now, I know that Glory is one of people’s favorite Big Bads. And I get it. This is a wonderful, highly entertaining performance by Clare Kramer, not to mention that she’s one of the only female Big Bads the show has throughout its run. (Other than Willow in s6, I guess?? And of course The First has no gender.) Still, I mostly avoided discussing her throughout the season, because there are several rabbit holes that we can go down when it comes to Glory, and I don’t have the capacity to lead us through any of them.

First, there’s the idea of Glory being some kind of representation of mental instability. Her condition is also strangely… infectious? What with her messing with other people’s heads to ease her own state of mind.

So I guess in that sense, we could interpret it more as Glory perhaps continuing a cycle of abuse? Making other people suffer in the way she has in order to momentarily make herself feel better? Idk guys, I’m reaching here and I’m way out of my depth.

I also remember Glory having a great speech in an episode or two from now that’ll probably be a better base for an interpretation anyway, so let’s put a pin on that.

Of course, what this episode chooses to focus on more is the other association we have of Glory. And Ben.

As Buffy and Wade Williams were talking about Glory being trapped “in the body of a human male”, I couldn’t help but feel like we were leaning on a transgender / gender-fluid metaphor? Maybe?

I AM VERY OUT OF MY DEPTH HERE.

Which is why I’m not even gonna try and further dissect what the show is saying or trying to say here, and in what ways it can be interpreted. I have no takes or a valuable perspective to add, even after a whole season of trying to figure it out. So I’ll just leave it at acknowledging that there’s something there. I’m unsure of what that is, but it’s something.

Something tangential that I’ve been thinking about though, is how the show isn’t really trying to sell us on a Glory - bad, Ben - good duality. We’ll see that in the finale too, but even as early as episode 9, Ben is revealed to have summoned the alien demon who was murdering mental patients.

This creates an interesting dichotomy, where Ben, a mostly decent guy becomes unsympathetic through inaction, and Glory, a self-obsessed hell-demon who wants to murder all of our heroes becomes sympathetic through her honesty.

The truth is, Glory is irredeemable, but it’s not like she wants to be redeemed. She’s self-aware of who and what she is and what her goals are. She’s consistent in her chaos. She’s the devil you know.

Meanwhile Ben is a nurse, but it’s more out of a desire to feel close to people and humanity, than a genuine want to help them. He summons the alien demon to “clean up Glory’s mess”, and despite protecting Dawn’s identity, he mostly he just seems annoyed with Glory, rather than understanding the danger she poses to Dawn and all of humanity, and the role he plays in it. He just wants to live.

Glory is an evil force of nature whose single-mindedness and candid attitude is strangely comforting. Ben is painfully human with understandable motivations and a moral ambiguity we could relate to.

And, as always, there’s Buffy.

Buffy who is terrified and doesn’t know what to do. Still, I actually admire the fact that she took action. Running away is often demonized as a concept, but there are many forms that that can take.

Avoiding your problems is usually a bad instinct, and one that can worsen and snowball your issues into something much, much worse. But not every situation in your life is one where you should or will be able to pick fight over flight. Sometimes we really do need to remove ourselves from a root cause in order to process and move forward.

Granted, when Buffy does that at the end of season 2, it mostly just ends up putting her in a whole depression funk. But it’s hard to cope when you feel like you have no support to rely on.

This is of course a very different case though, almost on the opposite spectrum. Buffy isn’t just running away from her problems - she’s trying to keep her friends and family safe. She doesn’t think that she can protect them, so she’s removing all of them from the conflict for the time being.

In addition, in a conversation with Dawn when talking about all the things that’s happened, she says “Riley. Glory. Tara. Mom”. Four names. One is representing Buffy’s fears of her emotional unavailability. One her fears of not being strong enough to match the evil in this world. One her fears of not being able to protect and save the people she loves. And one is the helplessness she feels in the face of things and deaths she has no control over.

And then it all culminates in the last scene where all of those fears come to ahead. Glory takes Dawn as Buffy watches, helpless, from behind Willow’s magical barrier.

Is it any wonder that it breaks her? She’s had a really bad day. And it’s not getting any better.

Meanwhile I identify with Xander’s motion sickness, and with literally everyone trying to take care of Tara in the gang. It’s fine.

It’s always darkest before… it gets even darker, because this is Buffy, and we’re here for that sweet sweet emotional catharsis we get out of suffering through the pain.

Next up is even more depression. Stay tuned!

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

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thedogsled · 5 years

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Who Tube (Doctor Who YouTube) is hilariously terrible at the moment. You’ve got new fans being gatekept by old fans and then yelling at the old fans and then the old fans yelling back, people subtweeting each other on their channels “Some YouTubers, they know who they are”, people posting vicious rants as soon as episodes end--lots of really really toxic shit on both sides. Like. It’s hilarious--if you enjoy VERY thinly veiled misogyny on one side and blind adoration for progressiveness at the expense of decent writing on the other. If you listen to these people, it’s not very difficult to see where the canon schism between straight white “geek culture” males and anyone with a so labeled by said people SJW motivation come to blows. They both think the other side is just ignorant, and the constant lashing out is just. Wow. It’s really. Wow.

Saltiness ahead.

It frustrates me a lot, because I feel the show has been really hit and miss this season and the warring on YouTube is just another example of how you just can’t discuss this reasonably. It’s not all bad, but it’s certainly been far from all good. Some of it REALLY works, like for example Ryan’s dyspraxia and the decision to explore Yasmin’s character through her grandmother’s story, but some of it doesn’t. I was particularly dismayed today, spoilers, by James I being played through the lens of modern campness by Alan Cumming this week, turning the former monarch into a queer caricature (I know the guy most from his role in Spy Kids, Fegan Floop, which replays ENDLESSLY on british TV). I feel like a lot of the episodes of this season have been simply the characters thrown into chaos, bad guy is revealed to be an alien, then the Doctor gives a shockingly profound, emotional speech that makes you forget how awful some of the other parts were and you go away with ~feels~ and not much else, because all the endings are pulled out of the writer’s ass anyway. Just. That’s how I personally saltily feel about this show this season, like it’s been platforming for a bunch of different writers saying what they want to say about humanity through the Doctor’s mouth. Like she’s ceased to exist beyond her existence as that mouthpiece, and that in some ways the show has too. (just my opinion. anyway.)

But you can’t talk about this stuff. I find myself reading reviews and watching people who like the show and place no accountability on the show beyond being politically bold, and it drives me nuts. It doesn’t matter what form it comes in, so long as it’s pro-feminist, or it exposes people to history they might not have learned in class, or there’s a dude giving birth for 50% of the airtime. If I want to hear or discuss any challenge to those things, I find myself listening to purely negative reviews instead, and noping out when the person suddenly reveals halfway through that they believe that because men aged 18-40 is a big demographic, it only makes sense that they’re the group that are kowtowed to at every opportunity. Like wtf dudes, sorry you can’t hack that other people exist in the world and you aren’t being catered to 24/7 any more. Fuck off. So it’s no wonder the antis feel Doctor Who lovers are all SJWs and the pos!Who people are convinced that the antis are all racist misogynist fucks. (The showrunners do too afaik, and that isn’t helped at all by Chibnall and Jodie both being SO resistant to negativity that neither of them seem to be soliciting fan feedback that isn’t positive.) Is it hard to ask for objectivity, though? For something that comes down the middle? That isn’t racist and misogynistic, but maybe still cares about how the things we’re looking for in terms of representation are being handed to us? How about, at least, not having to listen to some people who are so entitled that they literally think that Jodie Whitaker shouldn’t have shot out any babies so that she can instead devote her entire life to making TV shows? (Seriously, I listened to one girl who thought that, and you could hear her contempt for people who have kids in every syllable.)

I’ve liked episodes of this season. The Kablam! episode was great, I only had minor complaints with the ep that I handwaved away because I felt like there was actually some dramatic tension. I liked episode 2 because it was idk. A fun adventurous romp and the characters all had flaws. I quite liked Rosa because it had the bones of something better, and that showed through in all the scenes where Rosa’s actress (Vinette Robinson, who was also in the Chibnall episode ‘42′, btw what nepotism how many british actors do you think there are?) interacted with the other characters.

But they weren’t all perfect, at least to me. Maybe I’m a negative nelly, because everyone seems to be tripping over themselves to scream positivity about the show in their reviews, but I, personally, feel like much of it has fallen flat. When they did finally drop - as they’ve been avoiding for much of this season - the ‘If I was a bloke this wouldn’t have been a problem’ thing, it wasn’t even delivered with a great deal of gravity or purpose. Maybe some people think that was a good thing, I don’t know, but looking at the way sexism was handled in Timeless, for example, and hell, Sliders (which was a trashy 90s show about jumping between alternate realities; or Quantum Leap for that matter, which had Sam jump into the lives of women in the past and experience days in their lifetimes), it’s way past the era of TV to deliver that kind of line like it’s inconsequentially drawing attention to something nobody noticed before, you know? Why is the BBC always 100 years behind, despite playing like it’s the most progressive thing ever? Why do we let it, and say “Sure we’ll take it, that’s enough” instead of also insisting they tell GOOD stories, and not wave their hand and say aliens did it at the end of every episode? I get it’s a time traveling series but the aliens show up and then the doctor waves her magic wand and ~science~ and yes she quoted Arthur C Clarke but she can do that and be powerful and tell powerful stories that aren’t completely...halfhearted, and if you don’t have trumped up stupid bad guys you don’t have to have flimsy solutions for beating them at the end.

We SHOULD be seeing ourselves in the media we’re absorbing. I firmly believe that. I also think, though, that we’re entitled to be respected by that media as well, in that the stories we’re seeing that show US should be good stories. They shouldn’t be concentrating on making as many nods as possible to as many corners of culture as possible that it stops caring about the story it’s telling, because whatever politically correct points it scores will ensure people overlook its flaws. It’s disrespectul, and we shouldn’t allow it, because it means we’re nothing but a commodity, an unquestioning storyblind audience that just doesn’t care so long as our representation needs are getting catered to. That means we’ll keep getting more representation, but a lot of it will be shit, because no matter what we’ll throw up our hands and give it ten out of ten and rigorously defend it no matter what caricatures it throws in front of us.

We should demand better stories alongside our representation. Fandom is so powerful now that we’re being written for, because as a whole we aren’t objective. We engage in mass squeeing, we’re GREAT at giving positive feedback and high ratings like it’s our job to do it even if it’s undeserved (and arguably Who NEEDED that positive feedback this year) and best of all anyone who doesn’t agree can be written off as an angry white dude, or racist, or just ignorant. That’s good for ratings and good for clicks, and networks eat that stuff up because it makes them money. But that isn’t respect, and we shouldn’t be selling ourselves out for a bargain basement price.

That’s my last word on it for now. I’ll probably complain again next week, and I know I KNOW this isn’t a popular pov for people, but I’ve made my bed with that. For those of you who loved it, I’m glad for you. I’m mostly disappointed for myself. And I still think camp James I was fucking terrible but I already know people love him, so what do I know?

P.S. my tags are for my flist so they can blacklist properly, not to force my saltiness down the throats of other Who fans. You don’t have to agree with me. I just needed to vent.

#wank for ts #doctor who #doctor who spoilers #dw spoilers #not spn #i'm a giant salty butt combo #cause see the thing is i love the idea of a female who #and i am conflicted cause obviously fake it till you make it #but i also find it so fucking insincere from the bbc and from the writers #and you know that poisons those big FEELS moments for me #when the Doctor goes into quotable mode and starts rambling off stuff about humanity #it all seems just so faked to me #but other people love it i guess #i look at the way eccleston's doctor ruminated on humanity for guidance you know #it's just a completely different animal and it makes me sad to see it cheered #when i feel like it's just so so empty #i am sad about it #so cheap

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theskyexists · 3 years

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Revolution of the Daleks

im actually really happy with this, Yaz not being able to let go. Ryan and Graham having practice. i could wish a million things had happened with Ryan (!) and Graham before but this is as good as it’s gonna get from this point

i like the way they’re trying to imitate the Doctor explicitly

‘this is hard, innit?”

‘have you had work done?’ ‘you can talk!’ (that sounded so Nine and Jack!!! hahahaa) edit: it was litearlly Ten and Jack

reference!

DOCTOR AND JACK HUG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Leo......is a very cynical representation of an amoral scientist.

How the hell is Trump-analogue the sane one here lolololol. but he’s dumb enough to leave incinerating the thing to Leo.

what an idiot - opening the casing. im not really into how the narrative is basically like: trump is right about stupid scientists! hah...

the banter between jack and the doctor is so good? imitation of the original product clearly but still GOOD

love how the Doctor instantly goes - i need to go see the fam

she was in space jail for decades (she doesn’t mention the decades)

THAT MOMENT OF MATERIALISATION WAS SO GOOD

noooooooooooooooo OUCH - ouch! YAZ!

‘im sorreh’

SHE DOESN’T MENTION HOW SHE’S BEEN LOCKED IN PRISON FOR FUCKING DECADES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my god Doctor. give them some perspective PLEASE

Jack’s ‘whoops’ is hilarious if you consider his history with teh Doctor

Ryan - god i love Ryan.

Actually didn’t like Graham’s response to Jack. narratively, homophobic

absolutely despise the orange lettering

this episode really goes to show that Chibnall thinks structurally extremely slowly. he picks threads up from ages ago. and then he does do something decent with it. does this mean that the longer he keeps on the better it will get?

i think it’s pretty fuckin hilariously sad though that the companions are once again relegated to couriers - they note that they can’t do stuff on their own (even though the season finale last time gave them ‘Doctor-like’ sequences even if they never managed to impact the story of the Doctor herself - so i guess we’ve gone backwards in this arc) and then they CAN’T do stuff on their own and the Doctor comes in

it’s not the Doctor OR the companions Chibs. and if these companions are just incapable - make that a point! that would be a wonderful contrast to Clara

Woah Jack fuckin infodump

aahahhaa

i do love Yaz’s response. this seems to build up to some final DESERVED - i need to know MORE doctor - now.

‘oh she’s good’ - that’s such a RTD thing to say. chibs just directly copy-pasting a lot here. this is acceptable if he can give it new meaning. inverse meaning

why even drop two people off - whats the Doctor gonna do - nothing?

i actually like the new dalek design very much. oh confront Robertsen? i still can’t get used to the explicit task division set-up - even if this time it was used for characterisation

i - adore. this talk between Jack and Yaz. because it’s Yaz accessing so much shit from the Doctor’s past suddenly. and then it becomes extra clear that Jack’s and the Doctor’s connection was kinda romantic in whatever way - and it’s directly paralleled with Yaz. that romantic tragic attachment - doomed to hurt. (i.e. my fav)

god mandip gill is yeeting this out of the park. I LOVE IT. i love these lines. ‘we’re the lucky ones yaz’ - graham also told her something like this in demons of the punjab.

‘the joy, is worth the pain’ - is it? Jack thinks so - still! my god.that’s so tragic - so beautiful. so much rtd feel here.

jezus chibnall - fuckin sonic gun even???? ‘thanks, that’s it??’ hahahahaha. ok you did good. nobody’s ever impressed at it. LOL DAMN YAZ

‘they’re growing daleks’ - this secondary reveal doesn’t matter bc no reveal would have been a genuine reveal anyway

the new prime minister givin her speech and the doctor explaining daleks should have had snappier editing - specifically the music should not have gone back to simple british empire horns or whatever- but should have had an undertone of dalek in there

really! ALIEN REFERENCES! MY GOD CHIBNALL!!! everybody was thinking it but you did it.... i guess it’s done now. sexual politics wise i’d say Robertsen might have been a much better choice.

guns and explosives will solve everything!!!!!! oh chibnall

i love this lil talk between Ryan and teh Doctor - because it goes to show that the Doctor actually really cared. it would be fitting if they all left now actually lol - that would be nice and dramatic. Jodie is doing great on the acting here - i can FEEL the warning messages in her brains going AAAAAAAAAAA im losing this one!!!!

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Ryan - oh finally - finally this is coming out. calling her out, ‘how do you feel about that’‘ - the counsellor

‘things change, all the time, and they should, cos they have to’ - oh ffffff and ryan inverts things on her. oh i would have loved that if they’d done the extensive groundwork for it. now it just feels like a final death knell - the Doctor paternalised in classic Doctor words by her pseudo-son (but not really bc we never got it for real). couldn’t chibnall have left that for a dude actor ....

i love Jodie’s acting here my GOD. the mouth, the thin lips. The Doctor’s thinking - ah ive lost him - he doesn’t need me at all. ‘always’ this is Ryan’s motif actually. Yaz said the same thing about him.

LOL and Leo reveals himself only when the bombs have been planted and the Doctor’s arrived

lol ok that’s a pretty grisly reveal chibs, BUT would have been cooler if Yaz somehow found out herself and not through villain exposition. Robertsen really is VERY good comic relief here ‘this is a pr disaster’

that was actually a GOOD use of the Doctor going hmmm what’s wrong here and Yaz going well maybe this

ok but because chibnall has such dumb and obvious twists all the time it makes the Doctor always look dumb for slowly stumbling through a self-deprecating explanation. the least authoritative doctor ever my god.... like she could feel the shock to her system coming and that’s why she was born so un-self-assured. hate that shit. not what i wanted

the recon dalek used ultra viiolet light to teleport. lol. but then the Doctor is too late to stop it. hmm a bit uh..........idk conflicted about all the poc getting exterminated at the border...is this irony???

so how is the Dalek electrocuting Leo with nothing but a shitty slime body? also don’t like that. especially because Robertsen is getting away scot free again probably

‘no weapons’ (what about the bombs - couldn’t jack have interjected with knowledge on that shit - before the daleks teleported mysteriously????) ‘no time to think’ - Doctor i thought it was established that you could think at 3000 miles per fraction of a second.

forget it. forget it forget it forget it. chibnall and I will never agree on this. if the Doctor hits rock bottom here - then it better be a companion that picks her back up. nope, she gets back up herself. best job they’ve done so far on that i admit but then they cut immediately to a leisurely discussion as people are getting gunned the fuck down in the streets.

ah, shes inviting the original fleet to destroy these daleks which are ‘corrupted’

why..................did they explain the whole plan before it happened. WHY. OH WHY! is Chibnall so structurally BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!

this would have WORKED as a GOOD twist if he’d made it an actual fucking TWIST. please chibs....let me at the scripts....please....

the stakes are also not well-established because none of the companions said: oh shit but we could barely get rid of ONE, now there’s thousands!

‘they shouldn’t know im here’ *materialises TARDIS right in front of hundreds of Daleks*

this whole scene between the two sets of Daleks would have been great if we hadn’t been spoiled

is................Robertsen gonna pay for his arrogance - ignoring the Doctor? or is the Doctor’s ineffective ‘get back here’ going to be the last we see of this. Betraying the Doctor?

Chibs if you dont make this guy pay i will give up

Ryan stepping up to save Earth. hmmhm.

Jack: w-wait are you okay with this?

Jack she’s been sending these idiots in without supervision for no reason for ages. she just did it with Yaz?? but its a nice era-contrast - even if the meaning is muddled

So i guess Jack’s just got hundreds of bombs on him? at all times?

who the fuck doctors the script

why............did Chibnall regress Graham’s and Ryan’s relationship into awkwardness in their final episode. that’s just plain sad.

inversely, NOW would have been good to know the second plan because then we would have known why the Daleks knowing about the Doctor is bad SPECIFICALLY

‘even if we blow up the ship, theres still SAS daleks marauding through earth’s skies’ she says, like she wasn’t supposed to have a plan to stop them ??????

‘right’ she said, walked off, and then didn’t think of a plan

‘orrr.... you’re gonna have to trust me on this one Yaz’

this is such a TERRIBLE and unsubtle and stupid way to segue into discussing the Doctor’s problems with disappearing

WHY IS CHIBNALL HAVING THEM SAVE ROBERTSEN - fuck this! FUCK THIS!

wow - that’s really shit of the Doctor - just telling a TARDIS to destroy itself completely......

really chibnall.....really you’re gonna let this man get away LIKE THIS. I’m done. i’m done. im sorry but this is not something to just PLAY with. letting a Trump guy get the better of the female Doctor not once, but twice? this makes me so sad. and im done. it’s just insult after insult. he just doesn’t GET it. this is too close to my heart. this is not a GAME. this is supposed to be a fucking POWER FANTASY - and he can’t even fucking make it that. he can’t discuss the problems with power because he can’t even FATHOM the Doctor as a power fantasy in this form. fuck. this.

‘can you believe that’ - ‘yeah i can’

thanks - thanks for this political hopelessness on top of the real shit Chibnall. that’s not what Doctor Who is about - that’s the starting point - not the fucking end state

i know it’s supposed to be related to Ryan and how it’s quite subtly about making the world a better place politically bc it’s going to hell - and Robertsen is definitely coming back because chibnall just does that shit

but

if he wanted to do that he should have had Ryan and Robertsen have a confrontation this episode

a hug. a HUG. my god. so what was the absence of hugs all about then? now im grumpy about THAT. fck

this is good acting, good lines, good normal ending to Graham’s time in the TARDIS, it ties in just a little bit with his family arc. but it’s not particularly coherent - guess that;s life ?

‘it’s ok to be sad’ - cut to black. that was good

so the conclusion is that all they needed to be like the Doctor is a little gadget. this is deeply incoherent but it appeals to me anyway. and i dont really understand how Robertsen features into protecting the planet from aliens then

what is this weird Ryan speech lol. Tosin did incredibly good on making that seem halfway organic.

ok so Grace appearing made me tear up lol

#my stuff #vidi #dw

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