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Season 3, Ep 14 (Patreon)

Published:
2022-02-10 17:19:25
Edited:
2023-07-01 15:35:26
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

so the new watcher has finally arrived... 😕

BUT yay for a two-parter!! been a while since we've had one of these!

see ya'll tomorrow for the next one!

Files

Buffy Season 3, Ep 14 - Bad Girls

Vidyard video

Comments

Jessica Roth

Two-parter, finally some progress with the Mayor (compare all that the vampires [Absalom, Collin, Spike, Drusilla] had attempted by this point last season with the big nothing we've gotten from Wilkins so far), and my favorite of the new writers (Doug Petrie) returns. Good news? Let's see.

ghostofdurruti

(Paraphrasing) "It could be something to do with the Mayor, with Buffy and Angel, with Faith, with the watcher stuff that we ignored last time..." hmm... how 'bout all of the above? :D

x_Rhi_x

Not a 😕 face for wes! Lol

The Oracle Witch

WESLEY!!! good ol chap lol lol. This is another ep where i grow more to love Angels character more. Him coming out saying "his name is angel" always gives me chills. He has his moments. Not a buffy fan in this ep. When i was younger i was OMG HOW COULD SHE but as i got older i realized the maturity and mistake of the moment. 1. He was still a bad guy. 2. Faith was defensive, lost and went straight back to her antisocial "i dont need anyone" when she clearly needed someone. She was JUST getting comfortable with the gang and having support. Cant wait for tomorrow. How is s3 turning out for you??

Melissa

Ahhh, this right here is my jam. Faith, the Mayor, Rupe's sarcasm at full tilt, everyone hating the new Watcher. Yes, please. You can see Buffy's full circle in her clothing - at the beginning of the episode, she's in bright and cheery colors (flower!), then as she fights along Faith and takes on her "bad girl" tendencies she adopts the leather jacket and dark clothing. When she goes to see Faith at the end after Alan is killed, she has recognized the turn to the dark and is in lighter, more neutral colors. I will never get tired of the Buffy/Faith dancing scene, or them pulling out their stakes simultaneously. Can't wait for "part 2"!!!

SK Elkins

For me, the dreaded herb is chamomile. Everyone always wants to slip chamomile into my things because I suffer from insomnia, but just the smell of it makes my stomach roll. Chamomile tea? I'll literally vomit. I don't even particularly dislike the smell of it, honestly; the nausea isn't disgust, but just some weird automatic visceral response, almost like an allergy. There's so much that I love in this episode. I love Mayor Wilkin's fondness for Family Circus (of course he would!). I love how Faith isn't even willing to take the time to figure out how to use her fancy new compound bow and so has to resort to stabbing with the arrow. And that scene in which poor Deputy Mayor Allen bleeds out right in front of Buffy after Faith drives a stake into his chest is just :chef's kiss:. So beautiful. It's been foreshadowed all throughout this season ("You'd be surprised how many things that kills...") and even earlier (O hi thar, Ted!), and yet it still somehow manages to be shocking as hell when it finally, inevitably happens. And yet, and yet... And yet I can never quite count this among my favorites, and one of the main reasons for that is...Wesley. Poor hapless Wesley. I just can't cope with his role in this episode, and I'm not sure if I can adequately explain why without sounding ridiculous. Basically, it comes down to the fact that I have a really hard time with scripts that I feel are trying to encourage me to be complicit in the bullying of a character. I know that this is oversensitive and silly of me. Fictional characters are fictional, after all; they have no feelings, and nothing I can do, think or say can ever actually harm them. I know, I know. I *know*. And yet, all the same, I just *hate* the way Wesley is written in this episode. I feel as if the writers are deliberately stacking the deck against him so that I'll side with Buffy and Giles in their nasty treatment of him, and as stupid as it may be, I find myself resenting them for it. I resent feeling pressured to dislike him in his condescending exchanges with Giles. I resent the way that he's written to be just annoying and arrogant enough that I'm pleased when he's verbally smacked down. I resent feeling as if I'm being encouraged to sneer at his unheroic performance in Balthazar's lair (as if I'd do any better myself in that situation!). The whole thing just makes me feel...I dunno, OOGIE in a way that I simply don't enjoy. I know. It's totally just a Me Problem. It's a weird quirk of mine. Also, I fucking hate Balthazar's character design. It plays off of fatphobia in a way that I find pretty gross. Also also, while it doesn't bother me now, I remember when this first aired feeling really annoyed by the way that Angel gets the classic Hero Entrance ("His name is Angel!") in Balthazar's lair. I understand that they were trying to backdoor pilot him as an action hero, but this is still supposed to be Buffy's show, and I found something deeply uncomfortable about the script giving that role to the heroine's (white, male, muscled, conventionally attractive) love interest, rather than to the heroine herself. It would be fine if we'd been drowning in female action heroes back in the '90s, but we weren't, so it just felt like the narrative equivalent of the male subordinate in the business meeting rudely talking over his female superior who was supposed to have the floor. Back in 1998, I'd been seeing quite enough of that bullshit in the workplace, thanks. Didn't need to see it in my supposedly-empowering funtime TV show as well. So okay. Turns out there are actually a few things I don't like in this episode. On the whole, though, I think it's excellent. Douglas Petrie seems to be the guy you turn to whenever you need to cram a *whole lot of stuff* into a single episode: lotsa plot advancement, lotsa character development, and a whole lotta pipe getting laid for the back half of the season. It's one thing that most of his scripts seem to have in common: they're efficient as all hell. Whenever there's a Petrie episode, things seem to happen about five times faster than they do in other episodes, yet they never feel overly rushed. That's a valuable skill to have when writing for TV.

Tim Pierce

After the season is over, you should watch the bloopers for the first three seasons. Don't do it now, there's a pretty big spoiler in the video. But in one of the bloopers, the latch on the little bath Balthazar was in comes open, and you can see the actors legs.

Strange Motions

Literally never met anyone else who gets a headache from smelling Lavander... I don't feel so alone now 😁

Thom Purdy

The lavender I despise is lavender perfume. Before I was enlightened, I went to church relatively often, and all the little old ladies wore way too much perfume. I suppose if it was only one person it would have been fine, but it seemed like all of them.

Eric Paul Owens

It could be about the mayor ... Check It could be about Faith ... Check It could be about the watcher stuff with Rup ... Check lol

Jessica Roth

Christian Clemenson, the actor who played Balthazar, would go on to be a regular on the series "Boston Legal". He started out as a guest-star (for which he won an Emmy™ Award), then became recurring and finally a regular. Two connections here: the character's name was "Jerry Espenson", as in Jane. (Neither Jane nor anybody from this show worked on that staff; my guess is they remembered Christian's guest spot and liked Jane's name, and did the shoutout on their own.) And Christian probably got the job at least in part because he knew "Boston Legal" star James Spader (who, you'll recall, was part of Cordy's "coolness quiz" in the pilot) from their working together on the 1990 thriller "Bad Influence", where Christian played Spader's brother. I mention "Bad Influence" because there's another BtVS connection there…but that's for next episode..

Jessica Roth

Alexis Denisof, who plays Wesley, is of course Alyson Hannigan's future husband. They didn't date right away, though…at this point Alyson was still seeing Ginger Fish, the drummer for Marilyn Manson. (I actually ran into Alyson and Ginger at the Tower Records store on Ventura Blvd later in the spring of 1999. I was too shy to say anything, though.) It's said that it was obvious that Denisof was attracted to Aly straight away, but Anthony Stewart Head (Giles) told him straight out that he didn't want any on-set "romance" to interfere with the work. (And Aly reminds him of his own daughters and he's protective of her; in casual cast pictures, you can see ASH hovering around her.). So nothing could happen on the personal front until Denisof had completed his episodes…however long Wesley was around. But, as noted, it all worked out. So, as Wesley might say, "I must remind you…patience is a virtue. A patient slayer is a prudent slayer."

Jessica Roth

Director Michael Lange (last episode was "Surprise") gets some lovely visuals this time around. Several of the shots in this one will make next season's opening credit sequence. But he does make one gaffe…when Angel catches Buffy in the alley after Buffy runs from Allan's corpse, it's a well-composed and beautifully-lit shot…all the better to see the steam coming out of David's nostrils. He looks like a dragon, lol. So much for that "I have no breath" thing, I guess. (And somewhat appropriate this happens in an episode with a "Prophecy Girl" reference. {"I hate it when they drown me."])

Jessica Roth

You're sadly right about Buffy's stunt double (Sophia Crawford) being too visible in the fight sequences, specifically in those middle-range shots. Usually Jeff Pruitt (as fight coordinator/2nd unit director) makes sure to hide Sophia in the long shots and do inserts of SMG for close-ups, to maintain the illusion. But, as mentioned, things were fraying between Jeff/Sophia and Joss/SMG. With the show bigger than ever before, there were lots of profiles that talked up Sarah's (alleged) brown belt in Tae Kwon Do, and implied that she did her own stunts, and Jeff was annoyed, thinking his wife wasn't getting the credit he felt she deserved. So was letting Sophia be more visible as subconscious reaction on Jeff's part? Or was he deliberately showing who was doing the work? Was he already thinking of leaving and showcasing his wife, who would be part of the package as they sought other jobs? Beats me; Jeff might have written about it (he's not exactly shy), but I haven't seen it if he did. (The fight work itself is still kickass, though.)

Jessica Roth

My only major complaint here is that the character usage is…not good. Willow gets only three scenes, Xander only gets two (and isn't seen in the second half, at all) and Oz gets literally two lines before he's done for the week. Cordelia also gets just two lines, and doesn't even stick around until the end of the scene. That's just seven scenes for four of the main cast. I think Wesley gets that many on his own. Not that I don't enjoy Wesley, but the regulars are supposed to be regular for a reason. I don't even understand what the problem is; yes, we have Faith and Wesley in the mix now, but Jenny was here last season. It's literally only one more character than previously, so why are so many getting crowded out? We just went to all that trouble to claim that Xander was important and should be taken seriously…and then he's in a whopping two scenes, one where he gets insulted by Cordelia again (I could have sworn last episode's moral was that he's grown past being bothered by that…) and the other one where he's all twitchy about him and Faith. Doesn't exact seem as though they're treating him as an important, serious character. Which I suppose puts last episode on David Hines's "no follow-up" pile. (Although Hines actually loved that one.) 3.10-An immortal evil turns Angel into an emotional wreck and is never defeated. But apparently the First got bored and Angel's just fine…watch his spinoff! 3.11-Buffy and Willow's mothers try to BURN THEM ALIVE. But no tension between Buffy and Joyce, everything is fine. Have some waffles! 3.12-Giles betrays Buffy, but nobody is mad at him for that. (I'd like to think that Xander would be, but of course I don't know if Xander even knows what Giles did. But of course it's unreasonable of me to expect that Season 3 "Angel! Buddy!" Xander would react like Season 2 "You're going to die. And I'm going to be there" Xander, anyway.) Oh, and Giles is fired. Which theoretically makes Wesley Buffy's Watcher, but you can't tell that by Buffy. And presumably Wesley was already assigned to be Faith's Watcher, and thus would have come, regardless. 3.13-Newly mature (???) Xander discovers he likes the quiet and he won't be a disrespected clown any more. One week later, he's cringing and twitching away. Sigh. Well, at least we're reasonably sure to get follow-up to *this* episode. Yay for two-parters!

Jessica Roth

I mentioned last time that Doug Petrie's first script, "Revelations", set the show record for fights (six, plus Gwen Post clonking various people on the head), but this one comes close on the Fight-o-Meter: 1. The graveyard in the teaser 2. In the sewers in Act 1 3. Busting up the nest in Act 2 4. Taking out random vamps (and poor Allan) in Act 3 5. Big showdown with Balthazar in Act 4 Not to mention Vincent's attempts on the Mayor's life. Two things you can count on from Doug: lots of violence and lots of Buffy/Faith lesbian undertones. (Yes, those are deliberate. I hadn't mentioned them before, but at this point it's a bit hard to ignore. Joss had gone on the message board saying he hadn't planned on this, but if people wanted to see it, he was cool. But of course David Greenwalt and Doug HAD been deliberately putting them in… 3.03-"Hungry and Horny" [which Buffy eventually agrees with], "Slayer Pride Parade" 3.05-"Getting sweaty in the Library", Faith asking Buffy to the dance 3.07-Buffy teasing the gang about her "new boyfriend", saying she's "going out with Faith", and putting her arm around Faith with that winking "Really, we're just good friends." [Very good friends, I'm sure, Buff.] But of course, this is 1999 and the WB isn't going to let their lead character indulge in such shenanigans [and Joss probably doesn't want to throw away all that lovely Buffy/Angel $$$], so I wouldn't hold your breath. It seems as though David and Doug are just doing this for their own amusement. However, IF one does a "queer reading" of the episode, I'd get a bit annoyed about Buffy dumping Obvious Soulmate Willow to chase after Leather Girl. I mean, didn't you learn your lesson with Angel, Buffy? "Troubled" people in leather are too much trouble, don't you know?)

samantha

Now I can no longer unsee Buffy's double :P