![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakYou know, if one has to wait more than a week still to be able to download the Buffy finale and tries not to gnash one's teeth about being unable to participate in the discussions about same, there are worse places to do so than Tuscany. Today we visited Pisa; the Duomo there is one of the most beautiful Italian cathedrals I know, with the straight cross form of the ancient basilicas, Carrara marble outside with a second floor in loggia form which gives it etheral elegance, carefully carved wooden artwork on the ceilings and the light filtered through coloured glass. The Leaning Tower was open to visitors, for a change, though the restoration is not completet yet; I saw three workers carefully cleaning the stones on the roof (all women, btw). It's odd, climbing all those stairs, so distinctly wrong in their lobsidedness. Like a ship, frozen permanently in the same position.
All Italian distractions aside, I can't help the urge to contribute some more "end of Buffy" thoughts. So I offer another eulogy to one of those writers whose voice helped shaping the show: Jane Espenson.
If Marti Noxon was nicknamed the "chains and pains" girl, with the occasional foray into comedy, Jane Espenson, with her sitcom background, was the comedy writer, with the occasional foray into drama. But Jane had done more than comedy in her past; she also wrote for one of my old favourites, ST: Deep Space Nine (and not one of the Ferengi episodes, either). So it doesn't surprise me she's responsible for one of the darkest and most emotional Buffy episodes, After Life. (More about this one later.)
Her Buffy debut, though, came with the upbeat, fun "Band Candy" in season 3. She gave us teenage Ripper in all his smoking, accent-ridden window-smashing glory, not to mention the Giles/Joyce tryst which would provide Buffy with ammo to tease her mother and Watcher for years to come. (That tryst also revealed Joyce having a thing for bondage, apparantly. No wonder she got along famously with Spike.) Ripper and Joyce tend to get all the attention when one remembers "Band Candy", but I'd like to point out one of Jane's subtle touches which came with Teen!Snyder. Not an unpleasant little dictator at all but a nerd desperate to hang out with the cool kids. Jonathan or Andrew, in short. Not surprisingly, Jane became the nerd specialist extraordinaire.
With "Earshot", Jane was the first writer to feature Jonathan - so far a character who existed only in cameos throughout the seasons - in a crucial role. Danny Strong came through with flying colours, but it was Jane's script which gave him the opportunity. Incidentally, it provides also a good argument against Buffy bashers who accuse her of being unable to be kind. Buffy could have easily overpowered Jonathan and disarmed him at once; instead, she heard him out and tried to understand him. To postpone this episode because of Columbine must remain one of the most idiotic network decisions ever; if anything, it should be shown to suicide-and-mass-murder-contemplating teens.
It was Jane who got to write the first part of both Buffy/Angel crossovers in season 4/1, "Harsh Light of Day" and "Pangs" respectively. "Harsh Light of Day", Spike's last foray in his original function as villain, also shows him at his bitchiest ("I love syphilis more than you", to Harmony; "Seems someone already told me you weren't worth a second go - oh yeah, Angel", to Buffy), and is a good example of Jane's ability to humanize stock characters - Harmony, in this case, who while retaining the annoying factor she had as a human is far more vulnerable and interesting as a vampire. Anya was reintroduced to the Buffyverse with this episode, and most of the distinct Anya traits - her blunt literalness (check out "The Wish" and "Doppelgangerland" for a somewhat more adaptive early Anya), her sex-as-a-solution-to-everything attitude, and even her communication/miscommunication relationship with Xander all have their sources here.
Jane's most memorable season 4 contribution, though, was "Superstar". It showcased her tendency to affectionately parody certain fanfic customs; Super!Jonathan is a perfect Mary Sue, a better fighter than Buffy, smarter than Giles, better at computers than Willow, able to tell the Initiative how to defeat Adam, giving sage relationship advice to Buffy and Riley. And all men and women drool over him. (I'll never forget Giles and Xander swooning over the Jonathan swim suit calendar.) At the same time, the episode isn't just a parody, it's a neat character exploration as well. Not wanting to kill himself anymore hasn't solved Jonathan's problems; it makes sense he'd try a magical short-cut to become everyone's hero and friend. (Later, of course, he'll try to be a supervillain for pretty much the same reason.) He's ultimately unwilling to let Buffy die for his status, and this basic decency will be important later on as well, but he's also not above fulfilling his fanboy dreams with the twins. (Note that Jonathan does not try this with any of the characters he considers friends, but with two strangers; Katrina, too, will be a stranger until she identifies herself as Warren's ex.)
Speaking of Warren: it was Jane who introduced him, Katrina and April in season 5, with "I was made to love you". Not a top-ten-of-Buffy episode, but funny with the occasional deeper character moments; the talk between "dying April" and Buffy is a precursor of the pathos the Buffybot would be able to evoke along with the comedy, and the groundworks for Warren's character are skillfully laid - it's easy to forget that he tries to escape his April dilemma with no less than his first (albeit at this point panicked and unplanned) murder attack on Buffy, by siccing April on her.
My favourite Jane Espenson episode of season 5 and one of my all-time favourites of the show is "Intervention". It must have been one of the most dreaded episodes before it was broadcast. I remember the Spike fans moaning about the mere idea of Spike using a robot double of Buffy being the final indignity, the complete ruination of his character; other fans were not necessarily concerned for Spike but felt that after the tragedy of Joyce's death a robot comedy episode could only be trivializing travesty. Jane had all odds against her, and she succeeded beyond everyone's expectations. The dreaded robot plot WAS funny, not silly - and the Spike/Buffybot scenes are another example of Jane gently parodying fanfic, Spuffy fanfic in this case ("darn your sinister attraction!"), and with one of the shows most effective twists, let to character drama via Spike being captured by Glory, tortured, and finally having his first not-posturing moment with Buffy, ironically because he believes she's his robot creation. The non-sexual kiss Buffy gives him is a moment of acceptance, absolution and tenderness which would not come again (on her side) until season 7.
(Mind you, Spike couldn't have picked a better day to display noble heroics; if Buffy had caught him with the 'bot instead of Glory, she'd have staked him.)
"Intervention" also displays Buffy's inner turnmoil and the isolation process which has already started, her fear of losing her ability to love, to connect - "not boyfriend love", as she tells the spirit guide in the shape of the First Slayer", love in general. And Jane throws in a bone or two for the slashers with Buffy's "I'm not sleeping with Spike but I'm starting to think you might be"; check out her other episodes for similar stuff.
"After Life", definitely Jane's darkest episode throughout her five years with the show, proved something the Dawn scenes of "Conversations with Dead People" would confirm as well - Jane has a rarely tapped gift as a horror writer. Anya slashing her face open, Buffy seeing the picture of her friends and herself with skulls instead of faces, Willow and Tara clutching each other as the Buffy apparation berates them for their resurrection - those are among the most frightening scenes I've seen in this series. And yet they are only an additional Bonus, for the heart of this episode are the scenes in which outwardly, nothing much happens: Dawn trying to dress Buffy. Spike seeing Buffy on the stairs (which btw is an exact recreation, position-wise, of the moment in "The Gift" when he tells her "I know you don't love me, I know I'm a monster etc.", only then Buffy was ascending the stairs and now she's descending - I don't have to point out the symbolism). Buffy hiding her bloody hands. "Every night I save you". And the moment which keeps breaking my heart whenever I think of it: Buffy thanking her friends for her resurrection. (BTW, SMG does an incredible job here - she had to play it convincing enough so that the Scoobies don't look like idiots, but also just "off" enough to clue in the audience something is terribly wrong here.) Because what we see here, the three friends hugging each other, supposedly affirming friendship and regained closeness, is the point of the largest distance between them. They did something to her which was worse than anything the various villains of the show had come up with, but she loves them too much to burden them with this knowledge. Or to permit herself to hate them. Looking back, one could make a good argument that the relationship between Buffy and her friends never recovered completely; it did heal, but something of the basic trust and her ability to open up to them emotionally was gone.
The last scene, Buffy confessing the truth to Spike (which, also in retrospective, lays the groundwork for her ability to accept him as confidant and emotional life line), must have been incredible hard to write. How to make something like this sound not phoney, not like kitsch? But Jane, in what is essentially a monologue, gave us the other heartbreaking scene of the show, with not a single wrong note.
"Life Serial", the only pure comedy episode of season 6, managed to be funny without being false to the overall arc which I credit to Jane's skill with both comedy and drama. (Nothing against Doug Petrie; he'll get his ode another time.) The troika interaction must have been Jane in Geek writing heaven, but the scenes with Buffy, stamping on Giles' glasses in frustration, watching kitten poker and getting drunk with Spike are just as good. It's another of my Jane Espenson/BtvS as a whole favourites.
And it's only fitting that season 7 would offer Jane the chance to go out writing in all her areas of expertise - geeks-as-central characters (long live "Storyteller"!), comedy mixed with drama and some horror ("First Date", which manages to go from humour to drama to and thro effortlessly ) and some slash/fanfic allusions ("Jonathan-slash-the First", and Xander's "gay me up!" speech), not to mention Scoobie interaction (Buffy, Willow and Xander talking dates; or the Buffy-Xander talk in "End of Days"). She wasn't the headwriter, or the executive producer, but I think this look back showed she was quintessential to the tale of Buffy, Slayer of VamPYres. And, Jane: Never stop telling stories!
All Italian distractions aside, I can't help the urge to contribute some more "end of Buffy" thoughts. So I offer another eulogy to one of those writers whose voice helped shaping the show: Jane Espenson.
If Marti Noxon was nicknamed the "chains and pains" girl, with the occasional foray into comedy, Jane Espenson, with her sitcom background, was the comedy writer, with the occasional foray into drama. But Jane had done more than comedy in her past; she also wrote for one of my old favourites, ST: Deep Space Nine (and not one of the Ferengi episodes, either). So it doesn't surprise me she's responsible for one of the darkest and most emotional Buffy episodes, After Life. (More about this one later.)
Her Buffy debut, though, came with the upbeat, fun "Band Candy" in season 3. She gave us teenage Ripper in all his smoking, accent-ridden window-smashing glory, not to mention the Giles/Joyce tryst which would provide Buffy with ammo to tease her mother and Watcher for years to come. (That tryst also revealed Joyce having a thing for bondage, apparantly. No wonder she got along famously with Spike.) Ripper and Joyce tend to get all the attention when one remembers "Band Candy", but I'd like to point out one of Jane's subtle touches which came with Teen!Snyder. Not an unpleasant little dictator at all but a nerd desperate to hang out with the cool kids. Jonathan or Andrew, in short. Not surprisingly, Jane became the nerd specialist extraordinaire.
With "Earshot", Jane was the first writer to feature Jonathan - so far a character who existed only in cameos throughout the seasons - in a crucial role. Danny Strong came through with flying colours, but it was Jane's script which gave him the opportunity. Incidentally, it provides also a good argument against Buffy bashers who accuse her of being unable to be kind. Buffy could have easily overpowered Jonathan and disarmed him at once; instead, she heard him out and tried to understand him. To postpone this episode because of Columbine must remain one of the most idiotic network decisions ever; if anything, it should be shown to suicide-and-mass-murder-contemplating teens.
It was Jane who got to write the first part of both Buffy/Angel crossovers in season 4/1, "Harsh Light of Day" and "Pangs" respectively. "Harsh Light of Day", Spike's last foray in his original function as villain, also shows him at his bitchiest ("I love syphilis more than you", to Harmony; "Seems someone already told me you weren't worth a second go - oh yeah, Angel", to Buffy), and is a good example of Jane's ability to humanize stock characters - Harmony, in this case, who while retaining the annoying factor she had as a human is far more vulnerable and interesting as a vampire. Anya was reintroduced to the Buffyverse with this episode, and most of the distinct Anya traits - her blunt literalness (check out "The Wish" and "Doppelgangerland" for a somewhat more adaptive early Anya), her sex-as-a-solution-to-everything attitude, and even her communication/miscommunication relationship with Xander all have their sources here.
Jane's most memorable season 4 contribution, though, was "Superstar". It showcased her tendency to affectionately parody certain fanfic customs; Super!Jonathan is a perfect Mary Sue, a better fighter than Buffy, smarter than Giles, better at computers than Willow, able to tell the Initiative how to defeat Adam, giving sage relationship advice to Buffy and Riley. And all men and women drool over him. (I'll never forget Giles and Xander swooning over the Jonathan swim suit calendar.) At the same time, the episode isn't just a parody, it's a neat character exploration as well. Not wanting to kill himself anymore hasn't solved Jonathan's problems; it makes sense he'd try a magical short-cut to become everyone's hero and friend. (Later, of course, he'll try to be a supervillain for pretty much the same reason.) He's ultimately unwilling to let Buffy die for his status, and this basic decency will be important later on as well, but he's also not above fulfilling his fanboy dreams with the twins. (Note that Jonathan does not try this with any of the characters he considers friends, but with two strangers; Katrina, too, will be a stranger until she identifies herself as Warren's ex.)
Speaking of Warren: it was Jane who introduced him, Katrina and April in season 5, with "I was made to love you". Not a top-ten-of-Buffy episode, but funny with the occasional deeper character moments; the talk between "dying April" and Buffy is a precursor of the pathos the Buffybot would be able to evoke along with the comedy, and the groundworks for Warren's character are skillfully laid - it's easy to forget that he tries to escape his April dilemma with no less than his first (albeit at this point panicked and unplanned) murder attack on Buffy, by siccing April on her.
My favourite Jane Espenson episode of season 5 and one of my all-time favourites of the show is "Intervention". It must have been one of the most dreaded episodes before it was broadcast. I remember the Spike fans moaning about the mere idea of Spike using a robot double of Buffy being the final indignity, the complete ruination of his character; other fans were not necessarily concerned for Spike but felt that after the tragedy of Joyce's death a robot comedy episode could only be trivializing travesty. Jane had all odds against her, and she succeeded beyond everyone's expectations. The dreaded robot plot WAS funny, not silly - and the Spike/Buffybot scenes are another example of Jane gently parodying fanfic, Spuffy fanfic in this case ("darn your sinister attraction!"), and with one of the shows most effective twists, let to character drama via Spike being captured by Glory, tortured, and finally having his first not-posturing moment with Buffy, ironically because he believes she's his robot creation. The non-sexual kiss Buffy gives him is a moment of acceptance, absolution and tenderness which would not come again (on her side) until season 7.
(Mind you, Spike couldn't have picked a better day to display noble heroics; if Buffy had caught him with the 'bot instead of Glory, she'd have staked him.)
"Intervention" also displays Buffy's inner turnmoil and the isolation process which has already started, her fear of losing her ability to love, to connect - "not boyfriend love", as she tells the spirit guide in the shape of the First Slayer", love in general. And Jane throws in a bone or two for the slashers with Buffy's "I'm not sleeping with Spike but I'm starting to think you might be"; check out her other episodes for similar stuff.
"After Life", definitely Jane's darkest episode throughout her five years with the show, proved something the Dawn scenes of "Conversations with Dead People" would confirm as well - Jane has a rarely tapped gift as a horror writer. Anya slashing her face open, Buffy seeing the picture of her friends and herself with skulls instead of faces, Willow and Tara clutching each other as the Buffy apparation berates them for their resurrection - those are among the most frightening scenes I've seen in this series. And yet they are only an additional Bonus, for the heart of this episode are the scenes in which outwardly, nothing much happens: Dawn trying to dress Buffy. Spike seeing Buffy on the stairs (which btw is an exact recreation, position-wise, of the moment in "The Gift" when he tells her "I know you don't love me, I know I'm a monster etc.", only then Buffy was ascending the stairs and now she's descending - I don't have to point out the symbolism). Buffy hiding her bloody hands. "Every night I save you". And the moment which keeps breaking my heart whenever I think of it: Buffy thanking her friends for her resurrection. (BTW, SMG does an incredible job here - she had to play it convincing enough so that the Scoobies don't look like idiots, but also just "off" enough to clue in the audience something is terribly wrong here.) Because what we see here, the three friends hugging each other, supposedly affirming friendship and regained closeness, is the point of the largest distance between them. They did something to her which was worse than anything the various villains of the show had come up with, but she loves them too much to burden them with this knowledge. Or to permit herself to hate them. Looking back, one could make a good argument that the relationship between Buffy and her friends never recovered completely; it did heal, but something of the basic trust and her ability to open up to them emotionally was gone.
The last scene, Buffy confessing the truth to Spike (which, also in retrospective, lays the groundwork for her ability to accept him as confidant and emotional life line), must have been incredible hard to write. How to make something like this sound not phoney, not like kitsch? But Jane, in what is essentially a monologue, gave us the other heartbreaking scene of the show, with not a single wrong note.
"Life Serial", the only pure comedy episode of season 6, managed to be funny without being false to the overall arc which I credit to Jane's skill with both comedy and drama. (Nothing against Doug Petrie; he'll get his ode another time.) The troika interaction must have been Jane in Geek writing heaven, but the scenes with Buffy, stamping on Giles' glasses in frustration, watching kitten poker and getting drunk with Spike are just as good. It's another of my Jane Espenson/BtvS as a whole favourites.
And it's only fitting that season 7 would offer Jane the chance to go out writing in all her areas of expertise - geeks-as-central characters (long live "Storyteller"!), comedy mixed with drama and some horror ("First Date", which manages to go from humour to drama to and thro effortlessly ) and some slash/fanfic allusions ("Jonathan-slash-the First", and Xander's "gay me up!" speech), not to mention Scoobie interaction (Buffy, Willow and Xander talking dates; or the Buffy-Xander talk in "End of Days"). She wasn't the headwriter, or the executive producer, but I think this look back showed she was quintessential to the tale of Buffy, Slayer of VamPYres. And, Jane: Never stop telling stories!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-05-21 08:40 am (UTC)I love your details. The Buffyverse spills over with fabulous details, and sometimes we get busy rushing from one to the next. Thanks for highlighting some of my favorite ones.
"Band Candy"....Joyce, looking at the coat in the window, "Oooh! Very Juice Newton!" Snyder, edging over, "So are you two, like, going steady?" as he nods at Joyce and Giles. Joyce rolls her eyes and gives us the exact right teen-age "Eeww" reaction. And the dialog throughout.
WILLOW: Are you okay, Ms. Barton?
Ms. Barton: Oh, I'm cool, Willow. Willow... That's a tree. You're a tree! Yeah, uh, uh, are there any nachos in here, little tree?
There's also one of my favorite Cordelia lines - again, JE skillfully deepens a character with a "throwaway" line about the SATs.
CORDELIA: Actually, I'm looking forward to it. I do well on standardized tests.... What? I can't have layers?
Jeez, I could quote stuff from now until the next apocalypse (even if that's tonight). But thanks for bringing up "Life Serial" - that ep hasn't been praised nearly enough. Well, that probably has something to do with the fact that not very many people loved it the way I did.
But..."Storyteller"? Pure precious gold. Oh, and I still quote from "Pangs". And "insane troll logic" is one of hers.
Must shut up soon. But I think everyone who isn't me seemed to hate "Doublemeat Palace", while I thought it was hilarious on many levels. (For one thing, TV rarely shows the smelly, greasy, unsettling dreariness involved in minimum wage service jobs. Also? Spike in that sweater, looking up at the menu.)
Here's the "humorless" post-Resurrection Buffy, upon being handed a soft drink cup:
BUFFY: So ... what's the deal with Manny the manager? If I ask him really nice can I write a children's book called that?
GARY: Fill this while I get the fries.
BUFFY: Fill this? I didn't know there was gonna be drug testing on this job.
GARY: (laughs) You're funny. (stops smiling) You better stop that.
Now I've fallen in love with Jane all over again.....
PS: Ongoing hugs and kisses and adulation for vrya at Buffy Dialog Database (http://vrya.net/bdb/)
The eminently quotable JE...
Date: 2003-05-21 08:56 pm (UTC)I do, however, love and adore another Jane episode which gets listed pretty low by most fans - "Triangle". (Aka the origin of insane troll logic.)
Minor sidenote
Date: 2003-05-26 09:39 am (UTC)Hmm. I agree that it was idiotic to postpone GD2, but ... the postponement of "Earshot" actually caused a mild identity crisis for me at the time. I'd just started watching Buffy a few months before, I was in the full flush of love, I was eager for the new episode ... and I felt like postponing the episode was the right thing to do. Because it was the DAY after Columbine. Because the problem wasn't encouraging teens (or not) to go on violent suicide-murder sprees, the problem was that at that point events were so raw that there was no way for many people to ... submerge themselves in story, to relate to the story as fiction, not to end up devastated by the reminder of horror. It would be like watching "The Body" the day after your mother died.
I was utterly opposed to the idea that the episode would *never* be aired, and I happily watched the bootleg a friend got a few weeks later; but I didn't feel like the network had made the wrong decision.
The identity crisis is because I know my teenage self would have been frustrated and outraged at the censorship; and I wasn't sure the change was for the better. It helped that even ME, at that point, agreed in public with the postponement; "Bootleg that puppy" didn't come until GD2.
Point taken re: The Body/death of one's mother...
Date: 2003-05-26 09:15 pm (UTC)However, why not show it about two weeks or so later (still before “The Prom”, because Jonathan as the speaker who gives Buffy her award just makes more sense if you’ve seen their scene together in “Earshot”)? Not that two weeks would lessen grief, but one couldn’t accuse ME anymore of being tactless in the immediate aftermath. Also, I imagine that with a warning – i.e. “this episode deals, among other things, with…” viewers who would think themselves still unable to deal with any kind of even remote parallel would be able to implement a little self-censorship and stay way.
Speaking of (self)censorship out of consideration vs freedom of expression: Did you ever read Janet Malcolm’s “The Silent Woman”? It’s a fascinating exploration of the questionability of modern biography as a genre, with Sylvia Plath and her biographers providing an example.
Re: Point taken re: The Body/death of one's mother...
Date: 2003-06-21 11:28 pm (UTC)I haven't read the Malcolm book; I'd heard bad things about Malcolm herself as an unreliable narrator.
Since Malcolm's book is about ...
Date: 2003-06-25 09:42 am (UTC)Re: Since Malcolm's book is about ...
Date: 2003-06-30 07:39 am (UTC)Blurry third-hand opinions, take 'em for what they're worth.