24 Posts

Category: Season 5

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons Ranking

  • Posted byby Marines
  • March 4, 2014
  • 42 Comments
We figured we'd give this its own post, mostly so you all could also rank with us in the comments.
I feel like I'm going to put this order up, wake up tomorrow and feel differently. Seasons are made up of so many moving parts, that ranking this way is difficult. I think I'm stalling now. OKAY. OKAY. Here we go:
  1. Season 5 - When season 5 took first place in my eyes, it surprised me.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E22 – These are the choices.

  • Posted byby K
  • August 22, 2013
  • 85 Comments
It's finale time, kids! Can we all just stop and marvel at how this season seemed to last about five minutes while season 4 dragged on for a freaking millennium? Also, we've now made it through a whopping ONE HUNDRED episodes of Buffy. I feel like that warrants celebration.
Lorraine: I'm really feeling all nostalgic over Buffy. I know we have two full seasons to go, but it's just that much more over. I'm sorry. I'm clouding our celebration with my attachment-to-TV feels. Here. Have a happy dance gif:
Sweeney: I'm glad it's also a well dressed happy dance gif. This is a big event and we must dress accordingly.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E21 – Head canon

  • Posted byby K
  • August 19, 2013
  • 49 Comments
After the previouslies, we're at Glory's. Her Flattery Demons are packing up all her stuff and talking about how they're already behind schedule. Glory, meanwhile, is trying on some kind of robe thingy. She overhears her minions talking smack about her, and wonders out loud why she doesn't have the urge to kill them for it. She follows it up with a ramble about all the chaos she's going to cause when she gets home, then asks why she isn't happy. "What do you think?" she says, and the camera pans across to a bound, gagged, and crying Dawn sitting in a chair.
Cut to the petrol station. Spike informs the gang that he's successfully hot wired Ben's car, so they can leave.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E20 – Road trip!

  • Posted byby Marines
  • August 15, 2013
  • 22 Comments
The episode starts immediately after the end of the last, with Glory busting into Tara's dorm room from the outside and discovering that Dawn is the key. Buffy takes off running with Dawn, and apparently doesn't have time to open the door, so she barrels through it. Of course, now she's on the floor and has to scramble to her feet. I'd call that a plan fail.
Sweeney: Not that she really had ample time for quality plan-making.
Kirsti: True. But my first thought would always be to open a door rather than try to jump through it...
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E19 – For the right person.

We begin the episode with an additional journey through Buffy's grief and Slayer struggles as she is dropping a poetry class. She explains to the professor (and the audience) that she's dropping all of her classes because she just can't be in school right now. This scene with an uninitiated person in Buffy's life obviously emphasizes that Joyce's death is probably reason #1 for this decision (a second cousin of mine lost her mother at Buffy's age and she dropped out of school too). That said, I like that this happens immediately after the trip to the desert because it makes it clear that Slayer stuff is a part of it. As Buffy pushes the Slayer expiration date, these are the kinds of hard choices she's going to have to start making.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E18 – Weird love is better.

  • Posted byby K
  • August 8, 2013
  • 47 Comments
We open in the Summers' kitchen. Buffy's washing dishes while Giles and Dawn dry and put things away. Apparently the Best Surrogate Parent of Ever made dinner for the girls. Dawn goes to check her room for additional dishes, and Giles takes advantage of her absence to ask how they're both doing. "Some minutes are harder than others," Buffy replies.
Lorraine: Subtle but brilliant line. Grief happens minute by minute.
Sweeney: Agreed. I think that applies to most turbulent life times. Emotional stuff doesn't just hit you all at once and then go away. It ebbs and flows and I can't stop congratulating this show for how wonderfully it's portraying all of this.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E17 – Forever ever?

  • Posted byby Marines
  • August 5, 2013
  • 54 Comments
Buffy appraises a bunch of coffins. Spooky music plays while she opens one up, but it's all a bit of misdirection. There is nothing in the coffin. Buffy is here to pick one for Joyce.
Misdirection dictated that Buffy was doing all of this in the dark, in a room away from Giles, Dawn and the salesman. They enter the room now, and Buffy points out her selection. The salesman makes a skeevy comment about he can tell how much she care for the deceased based on her selection. It must be expensive. (S: Clearly. Such a skeevy and inappropriate comment and this guy needs a new line of work.) (K: Agreed. Creepy coffin salesman is creepy.)
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E16 – Negative Space.

THIS EPISODE. Hush was a weird one to recap, but this is kind of on another level. This episode is also included with Hush on many best-of-the-series lists, with good reason. I'd also argue it's the single hardest episode to recap because of a combination of feels and simply the way the episode is done. I mentioned in a Segue Magic video that there was another episode, aside from Hush, that made brilliant use of sound. Obviously all of you who have seen the series knew what I meant, but I'm going to acknowledge it now for the sake of our first-time watcher. It's a brilliant device whose impact is greater on the whole of the episode than in any particular moment. Hush was the only Emmy nominee, but that seems a shame, because this episode certainly deserved one too.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E15 – Breaking Asimov’s Laws

  • Posted byby K
  • July 29, 2013
  • 35 Comments
Kirsti: Okay, I hate this episode SO FUCKING MUCH, YOU GUYS. Because of reasons. Not least of which is the introduction of quite possibly my least favourite character in the whole of the Buffy-verse. Oh Number Gods, why must you torment me like this? SIGH.
Sweeney: Robots + Warren? Yeah, this was pretty bad draw.
Lorraine: Let's just remember that you ended up third in the rotation because you HAD to cover School Hard.
K: Okay, fine. I have no one to blame but myself.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E14 – Check yes or no.

  • Posted byby Marines
  • July 25, 2013
  • 119 Comments
The Bronze is having a grand re-opening, which is a sweet little piece of continuity, since Olaf (otherwise known as the Troll Gone Wild) destroyed it pretty good in the last episode I covered. Xander was also wearing a cast the last couple of episodes. I like to positively reinforce the show when I can, so it doesn't feel too bad when I yell at it for plot devices or contrivance or Season 4.
ANYWAYS. Inside, The Bronze has gotten a bit of a facelift. A band is playing on stage while Anya and Xander dance together, right next to Willow and Tara. Buffy is sitting nearby, alone, and watching all the fun she isn't having.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E13 – Sisters

Sweeney: The episode begins at The Magic Box, mid-Scooby powwow. It's that time of year again! Time for another traumatically bad Buffy Birthday! Willow is being the best friend and fully on Team Party, but Buffy's all, "Yeah, but, remember how my birthday falls mid-season, when things start to get really interesting with the Big Bad?" I'm paraphrasing.
Lorraine: A lot. Because no one has learned that lesson yet, and still have faith in things like cake and presents.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E12 – Power play.

  • Posted byby K
  • July 18, 2013
  • 94 Comments
Kirsti: Well, we're officially into the second half of season 5, y'all! We open at Chez Summers where a Scooby Gang meeting is in progress. Buffy apologises for the house being messy - Joyce still isn't up to doing the cleaning, and Buffy's 19 and has a sacred duty to save the planet from evil, so pffff, cleaning.
Lorraine: I'm 26 and have a sacred duty to watch TV for a not-living. Pfff. Cleaning.
K: A+. I'm 30 and periodically "Pff" when my mother suggests I dust my room.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E11 – Forever Bathrobe.

  • Posted byby Marines
  • July 15, 2013
  • 106 Comments
Lorraine: Last recap got fun, didn't it? After all that, I just wanted to say that we love hearing all of your feedback. The 3,000 plus words we spend recapping an episode are nothing, if not for the comments section underneath. So, thank you for keeping it interesting. Thank you for being imaginative, insightful, but most, most of all, respectful. Thank you for understanding that you may not change my mind, and I might not change yours but that's okay because there are no right answers.
Well, perhaps there is ONE right answer: potatoes > Riley Finn.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer S05 E10 – Join the party.

We begin in the hospital. Buffy and Riley are sitting together while Dawn naps on Buffy’s lap. Giles is fretting about trying to be useful while Willow and Xander bicker about the painfully slow passage of time. Once we have sufficiently driven home the Everybody Feels Like This Is Lasting Forever-ness of the situation, we see a doctor walking down the hall and they all stand up. Then the credits roll to keep us waiting a little bit longer. Rude, show. Just rude.
Kirsti: SRSLY. Also: I love that all the Scoobies are there. I mean, yes, they’re there in part to support Buffy. But at the same time, as much as we’ve hated on Joyce in the past, she’s a surrogate mother to most of them.