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Yes, but it was shit. There was no need for it to happen. Angel managed to deal with Buffy dying and coming back from the dead in the space between two episodes with no trouble and no need for a joke episode.
For starters, Angel *was* over Buffy. There was a confused moment at the end of Buffy 7.22 when a combination of hormones and bad writing had him sniffing after her again, but in general he had already *got* closure, and decided to become emotionally useful again (5.14), shown by him dating Nina, and before that by him falling in love with Cordelia. Buffy was an ex-partner that he was always going to be fond of (after all, she was barring retcon his "first", in the sense of his first girlfriend after the reensouling - the icky age difference between him and Buffy being counterbalanced by the fact that he is himself deeply emotionally insecure and immature at that point...), but to have him suddenly mooning after her seems unnecessarily plot-driven, especially as he is at this point dating another woman. For that matter, Spike came to terms with the basic unhealthiness of his relationship with Buffy in 7.22 *as well* - the two competing over who is a champion, who will shanshu, all that, makes perfect sense, but to have them competing over *Buffy*? It's silly. Spike could perfectly well have addressed whatever dangling Buffy plot there was at the end of 5.9, no worries ... Spike is essentially emotionally adolescent, but we didn't have to devote most of an episode to finding that out. We already know.
The B plot - well, I take your point, but again I don't think it needed that much time. It also didn't need the Brian Rix farce treatment, or the revelation, in the interests thereof, that Wesley had in the presumaby several weeks between the discovery that Fred was dead, dead, dead, unrecoverably dead and the arrival of the Burkles, not bothered to call them up, despite this being Fred's *last wish* (5.15). This is utterly out of character for a man obsessed with duty, and again makes a character we are meant to like and sympathise with look like a complete rat bastard for no better reason than the dictates of the plot. We could not have discovered that Fred had the power to turn herself into Fred, and that this fucks Wesley up, in a more generally useful episode that didn't alienate you from the characters just before the season finalé. All the relevant stuff could have happened in a better episode, is all I'm saying.
(And DON'T SPOIL THE FINAL EPISODE! Including who is or is not in it...) |
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