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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Buffy.

  
 
doctorbeck
07:28 / 19.12.03
so, the last of the last series is over, mixed feelings about this season (and the 2 before it to be honest), can't help feeling series 3 was the peak (faith, angelus, the mayor) and since then it has got by on past glories, but it seemed to pull it together well enough last night, although i suppose nothing short of a feature length blockbuster of total excellence could have satisfied me it came close enough to my lowered expectations

loose ends a plenty....
sad to see anyanka go but spike dying made sence, clean slate for buff and all that, faith and the principle a nice touch, if a little oedipal (what with the blind guys and all), buff over angel at last and a feminist-lite giving of the slayer powers away to many (thought it would be to all women for a while there)

already looking forward to the late night repeats and hoping the bbc shels out to reshow some earlier series as my wife has only just gotten into it this series and i want her to see it in it's full glory (if you'll excuse the pun)

very interested to ehar what the rest of you think of the seven series arc, and the tragic loss of anya....

a
 
 
rizla mission
08:28 / 19.12.03
I thought the last season absolutely rocked the house - I got really caught up in the storyline, something which I notably failed to do with the last few seasons.. all the series best characters present and correct holed up in a house hiding from indescribably huge evil. Rock.

And it really built up the tension tremendously - I nearly bloody wet myself when they opened the seal and saw the army of vampires! Gee whiz. And the whole "every girl is a slayer now!" thing was a pretty damn inspiring note to leave things on.

And it was so ridiculous and yet made so much sense that the final confrontation with the root of all evil takes place in the high school, which then gets blown up - taking the show's initial teen-horror themes to ludicrous extremes..

I'm not sure I quite understand why Anya died.. it seems a bit kind of random, seeing as how all the more marginal characters like Andrew and the Principal survived the assault of these creatures which were nigh-on invincible a few episodes ago.. and they didn't give her a particularly memorable send-off.. almost like "hmm, guess we'd better kill *somebody* to justify that 'casualties of war' theme we've been building up for weeks, but without jeopardising the happy ending too much.."

Spike's send-off was pretty terrific though "no you don't, but thanks for saying it" - a perfect tragic/glorious conclusion to that particular drama.

I did like the ending though - I don't want it to end there! I want another series with a school-bus full of slayers and their various crazy pals zooming around having adventures!

Seriously, with the obvious exception of the Simpsons, I don't think there's ever ever been a TV show before or since that's approached the quality of Buffy, so - R.I.P.
 
 
doctorbeck
08:42 / 19.12.03
agree obout Andrew surviving, like most ppl i was expecting him to die last night, and he seemed to want to as payment for being a supervillian, a heroic end, instead someone died looking after him and he has to live with the guilt of what he did, which is sort of good i suppose

he has proved to be one of the best things about series 7 for me, especially his flashback to 'when he was a supervillian' and of course singing 'we shall all live as gods'

totally agree that anya dying seemed random and unnecessary, also one of the best things about the past 3 series or so, and had the best number in buffy the musical

farewell then lovely anyanka, i had hoped you would go over to angel and breath some life into that show. anyone know who ends up there?

and the bus ful of slayers idea...i am so there.


a
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
08:53 / 19.12.03
Apparently Anya died at a request from the actress that plays her, not wanting to have to return in any movie/spin off of the series. Which is a little odd, to just chuck that in to the story... but yeah. I was totally upset! She was always one of the funniest for me. I wouldn't have minded so much if a few more people died... instead of just her.

This did seem a little rushed, and a little confused about what to do with everyone, but at it's core - I did find it pretty enjoyable. I could go mad about it, all the little things that were "wrong", but I think I prefer just kind of enjoying it.

And I now found myself totally saddened by having no more Buffy! I just realised that I completely grew up with this show - through all the phases it went itself - from school to college, and I completely forgot. It just seeped in to my consciousness. I am totally nostalgic for when she first went to Sunnydale, and there she is in her little bedroom.. before any of the real bad shit goes down. I always do this though (With LOTR for example, oh, for when they were happy in Hobbiton! At the end of every saga, I get nostalgic for the beginning, before everything was tainted...). Ah well.

I guess I'll have to buy all the DVD's. I'd kinda forgotten how good Buffy can be, in the early days. *sniff* when they were all at school! And Willow fancied Xander! oh, the love!

(What are the best dvds to get, btw? The boxed sets are expensiiiive - but I see that you will soon be able to buy the series for a more reasonable price. I don't get the dif.... can anyone help?)
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:18 / 19.12.03
I absolutely hated what they did to Willow this season- she was all like 'oh but I don't know if I can do that. I'm just so uncertain now I've been an addict'. Hated, hated, hated it and her girlfriend was crap and not right. Andrew was great though and he was sooo funny, they got him absolutely right, Spike came off okay as did Wood and Faith. In fact the 'bad goodies' were written quite well, it was just everyone else who was sanctimonius. The script was awful, totally rubbish with slime on top.
 
 
doctorbeck
12:28 / 19.12.03
agree. willow was a real core of the show before and did get a bit lame, the new love interest was poor and badly written but i suppose she had to be seen to be moving on at some point.

was hoping for an excuse to repreive lesbian vampire willow from the alternate sunnydale, another highlight for me.

does anyone know if andrew makes it to angel? i hear spike does but can't imagine how.

a
 
 
Mike-O
13:31 / 19.12.03
Andrew does not make the jump to Angel. Spike....


SPOILERS


.... is ressurected as a "ghost"-like being on Angel when the pendant he wore in the final Buffy ep is recovered. He is later inexplicable corporialized... chaos insues.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:34 / 19.12.03
SPOILERS FOR ANGEL S5:





Andrew appears in an upcoming episode entitled 'Damage'. This episode also updates us on what Giles (and others?) have been doing, which is tracking down all the new Slayers, as well as showing why suddenly granting superpowers to an unspecified number of unknown teenage girls may not have been an entirely smart idea.
 
 
rizla mission
13:52 / 19.12.03
Actually, what happened to Giles long-promised BBC spin-off show?

Has it gotten fucked up somewhere along the line to production?
 
 
_pin
14:53 / 19.12.03
Does Head even want to do it? Did he ever? God, if I ever hear him say "it was a great experience, ad as it went on, we get a much bigger budget"- really? A big budget? Please explain that shitty-arsed seal opening sequence, the cheapo crappy buildings falling down with Buffy jumping, and that fucking THING you put in Spike's head. Where was the money? Spent on keeping you out of coffee adverts and I'm-so-old,-me! agnsters for a few more years?

But yes, I did enjoy this last series a lot more then I thought I would, although possibly having it three times a week kept it all zipping by. The only things are: Faith should have come in earlier, and got with Wood more convincingly, and the scale should have been smaller- if you're killing the entire world, yr best weapon is not Spike. This is a fact, hugh and incontrovertible, burning with the fire of a thousand suns. I really wasn't buying that the Buffy and the Slayerettes were a major fucking obstacle to world-eating.

But it pulled it off surprisingly well, and the final episode didn't mae me want to kill things, like I feared it might. It probablly helps that they weren't carrying the weight of the whole fictional universe.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
16:16 / 19.12.03
It was snotgobbling cheese of the highest order, worse even than the "Will... I love you..." from Xander at the end of S6 which makes her dissolve into non-homicidal, non-cool goo. So many inconsistencies, so many continuity gaps.

* The worst tonal error (and there are a lot) was, not in killing Anya - fair enough, and fits with the tone they're trying (failing) to inject, but in the cavalier manner in which it happened - and then the callous way in which her death is treated after it happens. "That's my girl... always doing the stupid thing." Fuck off, you jilting, one-eyed sack of useless shit. You're the one who watches? Watch THIS .!. (that's a shitty representation of me flipping Harris the bird, fact fans).

Anya gets a crap, bathetic death, and a one-liner instead of a wake - while Wood (whodat?) gets a death scene with Faith - that turns into a fake-out, comedy death scene! Woo hoo, that was good! And worth doing! He's a character who caught everyone's imagination! It's right that he gets dramatic shit happen now! Yes!

* Someone should take Whedon aside and point out that 'deus ex' equals lazy writing. Someone should then tell him that having it done TWICE in one 45 minute episode is just embarrassing:

1) The origin of the amulet is even played in another TV series, for fuck's sake. Anyone not watching Angel (idiots - it's far and away the superior show) won't have a clue where Angel comes from and why.

2) Suddenly Buffy decides to give everyone the power of the Slayer, and tells Willow to do it - without asking whether she can, of course, since the fool's a 'general', now. Willow looks a bit fearful ("oooh, I'm so unstable" - fuck OFF. It's the end of the fucking world (allegedly), and Rosenburg still can't grow a backbone without Summers there to hold her up. Only users lose magick. Or something), and then does it anyway, without any research, or danger to herself. Giles says it's a brilliant idea, when a few months ago he'd have said it was dangerous, unpredictable and stupid - he might have ended with "but it's all we've got", but NO! They had to have Buffy and Giles agreein' and bein' all smiley and shit after their recent fights, didn't they? It's the end of the series, can't have them pissed off with no closure, can we? Arse. And like Fly says - past experience of having unsupervised Slayers has not been good. Remember Faith? (you might have seen Eliza Dushku in the background somewhere while Gellar was proving how two-dimensional her acting is) Thought so. PsychoCriminalBastardSlayerPatrolGo! Anyone have any idea how many other Slayers-In-Waiting there are? Funny, thought they'd all been rounded up and taken to Sunnydale. No, obviously both the Watchers and the First Evil missed some. Maybe they couldn't find them because they were too cheesy. "One girl in all the world, chosen to be - the Cheddar..." And any idea where to find the rest? Any idea what'll happen? Sod it, let's do it anyway, with no thought or consideration or back-up plan.

* Caleb dies, just like that. After just having been powered up by the First Evil. After he spent several highly enjoyable episodes kicking seven shades of sparkling shite out of Buffy, robbing Xander of his eye, killing Slayerettes left right and centre - and Buffy gets hold of a big axe and chops him in half. Bollocks. The fact that she doesn't take him at all seriously and quips all over the show while she kills him makes it insulting bollocks.

* The ubervamps. Thousands of them. When just ONE kicked seven shades of sparkling shite out of Buffy earlier on in the season - several times. And suddenly Buffy, Faith, Spike and a few under-trained Slayers can take them all on. Even Wood and Giles look good against them upstairs - and this time the ubervamps have swords. WHAT RUBBISH.

* It just felt like they spent so long setting up the First and the u ubervamps and Caleb - the whole demon army poised to end the world - as the ultimate Big Bad ("How will Buffy stop THESE guys, True Believers?") - and then realised with two episodes to go that they'd written themselves into a corner. "Fuuuuck... how DOES she stop them?" "Don't look at us, we've been making this up as we go along..."). Arc plot? Arse plot.

* The effect the amulet has. It blasts a huge whole in the ceiling, letting the wearer become a sunlight conduit, coincidentally killnig Spike (after a long time - if it's going to take that long for the sunlight to toast him, why let it kill him at all?). Christ, it's like the amulet was invented for That One Purpose Alone - killing a cave full of vampires while tragically taking out the user. Almost as if It Was Planned. Oh, GOD this is bad. Someone make my brain stop bleeding.

* Yet another miraculous recovery by Summers. Takes a sword through the back. Lies there for a while, gasping. Gets up unsteadily, bliking through the pain. I can take all this, no problem, it's what heroic fantasy narratives live on. Then she's suddenly fighting normally again, and then jumping over badly CGIed collapsing buildings to overtake and jump onto A MOVING VEHICLE. How? Even Slayers don't heal that fast. She never has before. Oh, crap, it's Buffy's version of Hulk Hogan's 'superman' schtick, isn't it? Nooooo...

* They've stopped the First Evil! They've sealed the Hellmouth! Forever! NO YOU HAVEN'T, TWATS. You've just buried it under a town. Again. It didn't stop the Master getting out, and it won't stop the denizens of the Hellmouth - which, by the way, is a spacially-fixed portal to a hell dimension, as set up in previous seasons, not an actual door where you can wedge a fucking chair under the handle. And it especially won't stop the incorporeal First Evil - who doesn't even warrant a kick-ass payoff scene as a defeat. After Summers does her 'superman' bit, we never see the First Evil again. So the Big Bad's not defeated, you've destroyed the town, empowered a bunch of adolescent strangers all over the world with the power to kill anything they want, and lost a bunch of replaceable teenagers and one central character doing it.

* Personal peeve - but STOP SAYING YOU KILLED ANGEL, Summers! Firstly, he's already dead, Intellect Girl. Secondly, Jesus, you'd think that eight years of slaying vampires would have made her realise that you can't destroy a vampire by stabbing it through the chest with a steel sword. The whole point of the season finale in S2 was that only Angel's blood could close the portal to hell. All (all?) she did was send her boyfriend to hell for a century or so. He wasn't brought back to unlife, idiot, he was brought back to Earth. Madder than a box of frogs for a while, but in one piece, and as alive as the undead get.

Yes, the S7 finale was competently directed. What else do you expect from Whedon? He's not exactly an untalented director. But that's all you got. The rest was bilge.

Such a poor way to end what was one of the most vibrant and exciting genre series on TV. And Whedon's taken responsibility for it, so we all know who to blame. Kali was right two years ago. They should have finished it at the end of S5, when Buffy the character died. Instead, they spent two more years killing Buffy the show.
 
 
J. White
02:57 / 20.12.03
Couldn't have said it better myself, Jack.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
15:37 / 20.12.03
It went all wrong after series 3, though I think that was mostly due to inattention and poor execution, rather than malicious intent. The overdrive soap opera feel of things from season 4 on were partly to blame, I know things got intense with the Buffy and Angel relationship in s. 3, but I think they should have looked at that and gone 'okay' and taken a step back. The absolute worst thing was to kill Buffy and then bring her back for the next season, she should only have died to finish off the show.

I also don't think SMG is that much of an actress, so as cast members leave or are killed off, so the focus shifts more on to her, I think the show suffered. And the absolute shitfest which was her relationship with Spike, did she want a relationship? Did she need a relationship? It was brutally botched, DSM written by people who have never experienced DSM (and I say this as someone who hasn't either, this comes from a conversation I had with someone offboard) which comes to a peak in the scene when the writers decide that Spike has raped Buffy. I say 'the writers' because no matter how hard I try, I can't see it as rape, I see it as Spike starting a scene when Buffy's not ready, and when he thinks she's saying "No" as part of the scene, not that she really means she wants to do something now. Absolute fuck up. And they don't have the courage to keep it up (as it were), a couple of episodes into the next season and the whole 'Spike raped Buffy' thing is brushed under the carpet as otherwise it would interfere with their sexual tension for the last series.

The First turned out to be a crap villain, that handily gave Buffy the exact thing she needed to defeat it's plan. Killing Tara was an extremely big mistake as she was the genuine heart and soul of the show.
 
 
doctorbeck
10:08 / 23.12.03
taras death was a shame but did provide the motivation for the dark willow ending, which was a bit lame with the saving everyone through love thing but good in that it was xanders finest hour, his uselessness and general decency being his only powers

i have liked his character arc until recently, nothing really seemed to gell in this last series, as somone said earlier willow was all over the place too and buffy has been a whinging bore since her last resurrection, more ali mcbeal than anything, and the big speachiefying at the end of S7 wasn't much of a character development either

have to largely agree with jack that the end was wrong in so many ways and with Our Lady that it probably peaked around series 3 , and has been limping along for the past 2 series

only redeemed really by Andrew, Anya and Spike
i guess if there is to be life afterwards for anyone i would like Andrew presenting 'Thee tales of thee slayers of thee vampyres'
a sort of buff stories through the ages, which leaves the door open for bad Spike and Dru to crop us some more. i just sort of stopped caring about most of the main characters they were written so badly.

also just want to say that the first evil sucked big time as a last ever Big Bad.

but, regardless, it's been fun, and occassionally poignant and brilliant

a
 
 
doctorbeck
10:08 / 23.12.03
taras death was a shame but did provide the motivation for the dark willow ending, which was a bit lame with the saving everyone through love thing but good in that it was xanders finest hour, his uselessness and general decency being his only powers

i have liked his character arc until recently, nothing really seemed to gell in this last series, as somone said earlier willow was all over the place too and buffy has been a whinging bore since her last resurrection, more ali mcbeal than anything, and the big speachiefying at the end of S7 wasn't much of a character development either

have to largely agree with jack that the end was wrong in so many ways and with Our Lady that it probably peaked around series 3 , and has been limping along for the past 2 series

only redeemed really by Andrew, Anya and Spike
i guess if there is to be life afterwards for anyone i would like Andrew presenting 'Thee tales of thee slayers of thee vampyres'
a sort of buff stories through the ages, which leaves the door open for bad Spike and Dru to crop us some more. i just sort of stopped caring about most of the main characters they were written so badly.

also just want to say that the first evil sucked big time as a last ever Big Bad.

but, regardless, it's been fun, and occassionally poignant and brilliant

a
 
 
Tryphena Absent
10:52 / 23.12.03
And the seventh season might have recovered the show if they'd paid attention to the fact that Willow should have adopted the dark in to her. Christ, Alyson Hannigan had nothing to work with at all, they ahould have written Willow, Xander and Giles out because they made them cardboard cut outs.

With regards to this Anyone have any idea how many other Slayers-In-Waiting there are? Funny, thought they'd all been rounded up and taken to Sunnydale

The problem being all of the potential Slayers were about 16 and obviously that's not going to work... Kendra was trained from childhood wasn't she? Clearly a girl becomes a potential at an early age so why the hell wasn't the First killing seven year old kids and why wasn't Buffy taking any in to her home??

Bad plot, bad script, painfully dull characters who once were great. If it had been my series I would have stuck slightly-evil-Willow and Faith together to create uber-fight erotica team, I would have killed Anya in the second episode for real shock factor, used 'the key' otherwise known as Dawn brat to collapse Sunnydale in to the pit instead of Spike, I would have had Ripper come out to play, made Wood the first male potential Slayer, had a load of children running around and climbing over mega annoying Buffy. There would be no Caleb, no uber-vamps and it would have turned out Buffy was the First. Then she would have died and the last shot would have been a picture of the entire cast lined up and smiling grimly at the pit that was once their home- Andrew would have muttered some quote about ambiguity from some literary theorist or other and the resounding tones of 'where do we go from here' would have sounded.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
11:36 / 23.12.03
I like your season seven. Let's fly around the world together very fast till we go back in time, and make it happen.
 
 
DaveBCooper
12:21 / 23.12.03
Nah, let's not fly round the world, that'd be too Deus Ex Machina.

Dunno if the Giles spin-off was ever likely to happen; despite the prestige element that Joss might have felt about working with the BBC, it's painfully clear that the BBC couldn't care less about the show, as popular as it might be - cut, bumped for weeks at a time, and even this last season appeared to be run in a hurry as if it was something the BBC was trying to get rid of. Strange.

And I didn't used to think Sarah was too great a thesp , but 'The Body' and 'Once More, With Feeling' show that she can play quite a range of things more than competently. Okay, you might choose to be contrary and attribute that to the director, but hey, y'know...
 
 
doctorbeck
12:56 / 23.12.03
from now on the series 7 that i will remeber is tryphenas

no more heartache or sense of beijng let down, that ending rocks

a
 
 
Brigade du jour
20:15 / 23.12.03
Um, I've got a little confession to make. Please don't tell anyone, but ...

I only started watching Buffy during the last series.

I know, I know, but please sheath those sharp-looking weapons of minor destruction and let me explain (oh and btw, this is all a bit personal but written with a conversational, self-deprecating whimsy that makes the reader feel like an acquaintance (according to my English teacher ... or maybe she just said "could try harder") Still, skip it if you like).

The film BTVS came out when I was about eighteen and it looked like the biggest piece of shit ever (with the possible exception of Basic Instinct) so I went nowhere near it.

Then, I'm twenty-two and what do you know, they made a TV series out of it. I mean, duh, that's definitely going to be shite.

Then, I'm twenty-five and I get to know Stoatie at work, and after much movie bonding based around everything from Aliens to The Elephant Man he tells me he's a big fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. "Buffy The Vampire Slayer?" I quizzically echo, wondering if this is that irony thing I keep hearing about. My respect for the Stoat's hitherto impeccable taste notwithstanding, I wander off shaking my head in incomprehension.

Of course, now I'm twenty-eight and feel like even more of a Johnny-come-so-lately-he's-not-even-in-time-to-clear-up-the-Carlsberg-cans than I do about Lord Of The Rings. I mean here's me, nodding in sage agreement with every retrospective academic article praising Buffy's originality and adventurousness and having the nerve to post an excessively long and probably quite boring message on Barbelith's latest well-informed Buffy thread.

ACHTUNG BITTE! HERE'S THE POINT! DANKE SCHON!
What's your point, I hear my final solitary masochistic reader cry? Well, it just kind of occurred to me that somebody might like to read a fresh perspective from someone only shallowly steeped in Buffy lore, someone who would also really like to know from seasoned devotees if it's worth me investing in DVDs of former series because I'd really like to.

So, consider the above a tale cautionary against knee-jerk negatively prejudiced responses to The Show That Everyone's Talking About. The West Wing, 24, Blackadder, The Young Ones, Lord Of The Rings, all fine works of fiction, and all took me at least a year to get around to watching. Ah, there's the moral of this story.
 
 
doctorbeck
08:52 / 24.12.03
in my totally subjective opinion i would say seasons 2 and 3 are worth looking out for, or renting from your local vid store. they are more dawsons creek than the later seasons ali mcbeal stylings. 4 was alright too, 5 okay but 6 not worth the effort except for andrew and the league of ubergeeks.

also worth a look is buffy the musical episode (season 5?), but you'll enjoy it more for having got some more backstory from earlier vids

in retrospect this might have been the jumping the shark episode for buff, even though i didn't see it like that at the time. the musical is utterly brilliant though

i am almost jealous that you have all that fun to look forward forward to

if it's any consolation, i've still not seen donnie darko. and it took me 4 years to see the matrix.


a
 
 
Brigade du jour
09:27 / 24.12.03
Cheers doctorbeck, for reminding me to check out the musical episode. Once More With Feeling, right? I find it very hard to imagine how they could pull that off, but am most excited to learn!

Yeah, I suppose I am a lucky little sod. But so are you. Donnie Darko? Here's a hint buddy - watch it at midnight, with the curtains open, on your own. Or with a significant other or very close friend in front of whom you don't mind crying or reverting to childhood.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
21:00 / 06.01.04
...And I didn't used to think Sarah was too great a thesp , but 'The Body' and 'Once More, With Feeling' show that she can play quite a range of things more than competently...

What, you mean staring off into the middle distance in a vaguely stoned manner to signify appalling grief/angst? That's one of two in her 'range of things', dude... Daphne in Scooby-Doo is too complex for the woman to handle.

And I'm sick of people holding up the Holy Two as perfect Buffy. Gimmick episodes to hold the dwindling attention of the Master Whedon as he went off to create something with a narrative life beyond high school. 'The Body' would be great TV if the vampire didn't turn up at the end, if Gellar could act worth a damn (upstaged by the teenager playing her younger sister. Shiiit), and if the character of Ma Summers wasn't a stock cube in the soup of the show. The opening is great, and the accidental breaking of Ma's ribs, magic... but who gives a crap, really? She's hardly been there in the show as a mother the whole time, except when plot demanded some fool turn up to spoil Buffy's fun or take her shopping. None of the performances are credible except Michelle Trachtenburg's (sp?), and Emma Caulfield's and the script is just risible. Why would Anya give a crap about Joyce Summers. Hardly met her in the context of what's shown on the series, so why should we think she'd be so heartbroken? Willow breaks down. Boo fucking hoo... Rosenberg breaks down at the drop of a hat. Remember her hysteria in Season 2 when Jenny Calendar, another useful plot-device who Willow was apparently inexplicably attached to, gets killed by Angelus? In a town where the kids disappear with disturbing regularity, the demise of her computer science teacher is apparently the Big Heartbreaker. 'The Body' is highly overrated, in my opinion.

And 'Once More With Feeling'? Falls a little more every time I watch it or hear those songs. It's a directorial achievement, I'll give him that. But it's a gimmick, and a crappy one at that. What exactly did this demon Chant do to people in the centuries before Gene Kelly, Fred and Ginger lit up the big screen? Make them act out comedies with cross dressing and hilarious mistaken identity? Pooooor. No, it's "I wanna do a Buffy musical! And I'm gonna!" Again, I'm truly impressed that he wrote the songs himself, from scratch, with little previous experience. They were mediocre, but that's because they were up against musicals like West Side Story, On The Town and the ultimate, Singin' In The Rain. Hate to say it, Joss, old buddy, but you're up there with Disney - and that's The Lion King, not The Jungle Book. And the big reveal - "we ripped Buffy out of Heaven?! NOOOOO!" - poor reaction shots from all concerned, while Tony Head looked like he wished he was somewhere else, and I checked my watch and wondered why they thought this was such a big deal, since we'd had it revealed to us long before. Dramatic irony can be powerful. This was melodrama, pure and simple. I ended up shouting at the screen - "you didn't think of that? WHY?! Come on, guys, think of a reason why Buffy is all angsty and depressed about being brought back from a Hell dimension! It never once occurred to you that she might have been better off where she was?"

Gah.
 
  
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