Okay, no Slayer army yet, but I have yet to see what happens on the Buffy that showed while we were elsewhere. And Willow under a different writer is sort of like Willow on speed.

And where the hell is Cordy getting her clothes? Evil Pregnant Sluts ‘R’ Us?

Have you ever realized that an elegant solution to an age-old question was sitting right in front of you? Or rather, had just left town for an undisclosed reason? My point: I think I know how the proverbial “Slayer army” can come into being.

Here’s the problem: Buffy is, for all intents and purposes, the Slayer, but as we’ve seen, when she dies, no new Slayer gets called. The line goes through Faith, who as far as we know is currently in jail. So, barring prison riots, getting any new Slayers by killing off Faith seems problematic at best, especially when you take into account that she’s slated to appear on both shows sometime this season. Doing what some people have suggested is possible, and creating a “Slayer army” by deliberately flatlining and then reviving Faith and each subsequently called Slayer, seems more plausible at this juncture than ever before, given the crowd of potentials hanging out in Sunnydale. But how to accomplish this?

Enter Gwen. We’ve seen her shock Gunn to death and then back to life, and she’s not contractually bound to appear on only one of the two shows. It wouldn’t take much for her to show up, not know anything about Faith, and kill her, then revive her when someone in the hotel goes berserk upon walking in a few seconds later. (Or any other scenario you can come up with, it doesn’t really matter.) Then you get a phone call from Sunnydale saying that one of the potentials just über-whupped a teammate in a practice session, and does Angel know anything? and Faith and Gwen eventually hightail it off to the Summers residence. Presto: Slayer army.

But how to get Faith out of jail? That one’s easy. L.A. has descended into eternal darkness, and vampire armies are looking for recruits. What better place to find people already turned to the dark side than a prison? And imagine their surprise when one of their candidates starts slaying her way out. Now there’s a teaser sequence I’d like to see.

Yay me. Looks like the writing-stuff-down-so-I-can-prove-I-said-it purpose of this board is coming into play sooner and more effectively than I’d thought. Not that I like the way the writers brought it about, but I’m beginning to think that to write on one of Joss’s shows, you have to take an Emotional (Manipulation) Intelligence Test. Saying any more in this vein would constitute spoilage, so I’ll just insert my little tag…. Continue reading →

Don’t you just love having your head messed with? And isn’t Joss great at it? Of course, if you’re a return viewer, you know this by now and it’s probably part of the reason you tune in. The season premiere, though, didn’t have a lot of time or latitude to do much but mess with our heads, since it had so many loose ends to tie up. Not a whole lot of hints about the rest of the season, so far as I could see, but still good. What we’ve got here is a bunch of people who are doing things, but generally either being very cagey about their motives or not giving a clue as to whether they have any. In a writing class, this would be unforgivable. On TV, it’s suspense. Continue reading →