Yay for Beer Bad love. I picked other, because the right answer is "all of the above."
You found a lot of interesting and true things to say about this supposedly awful episode. But what's really great, is that I'd have a meta that says a bunch of other interesting (to me, anyway) and true things about the same episode. I love that it took so much screen time for Buffy to work through her Parker issues, which is pretty much just Angel redux as a farce. Ending it with a farce is brilliant. I love that there's just a hint of how scary a slayer really can be to ordinary humans (see some of Giles' reactions). Excellent follow up to the same theme in Living Conditions, and an important subtext in the Scoobie break up plot. I personally love the shoutout to Aquinas even though it's in the middle of all the pretentious blather, because that particular remark is exactly the nub of the difference between Joss and me, and I love that it's text. It's funny as all get out (though I think some of the running around at the end gets a wee bit tedious, which might be the only bad thing I have to say about the episode). I could go on. I think my commentary on the episode to my brother ran for pages. (Season 4 in general is much more brilliant and well-crafted than people think. The main arc was silly, but boy everything else is tight and that's what counts. Scoobie relations are dissected in a million different ways, Buffy's slayer issues, her relationship issues, patriarchy issues, insider-outsider issues, etc. etc.)
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Date: 2010-07-29 10:10 pm (UTC)You found a lot of interesting and true things to say about this supposedly awful episode. But what's really great, is that I'd have a meta that says a bunch of other interesting (to me, anyway) and true things about the same episode. I love that it took so much screen time for Buffy to work through her Parker issues, which is pretty much just Angel redux as a farce. Ending it with a farce is brilliant. I love that there's just a hint of how scary a slayer really can be to ordinary humans (see some of Giles' reactions). Excellent follow up to the same theme in Living Conditions, and an important subtext in the Scoobie break up plot. I personally love the shoutout to Aquinas even though it's in the middle of all the pretentious blather, because that particular remark is exactly the nub of the difference between Joss and me, and I love that it's text. It's funny as all get out (though I think some of the running around at the end gets a wee bit tedious, which might be the only bad thing I have to say about the episode). I could go on. I think my commentary on the episode to my brother ran for pages. (Season 4 in general is much more brilliant and well-crafted than people think. The main arc was silly, but boy everything else is tight and that's what counts. Scoobie relations are dissected in a million different ways, Buffy's slayer issues, her relationship issues, patriarchy issues, insider-outsider issues, etc. etc.)