We begin the episode with what I thought was a scream, but is actually sirens. Hanna's eyes pop open. She calls out to her mom and goes downstairs to find her asleep on the patio off the kitchen, all bundled up. As Hanna explains that she had a nightmare, Ashley sits up and reveals that her hair has fallen out and she's wearing an orange jumpsuit. Fortunately this is just some sort of inception nightmare-within-a-nightmare, because Ashley I-hide-my-stolen-money-in-pasta-boxes Marin wouldn't last a day on Orange is the New Black. Back in Hanna's bed, she wakes up for real, screaming, and her mom comes to her. Hanna says she's fine and doesn't want to talk about her prison mom nightmare.
SHHHHH!
Logan is heading up to the Billionaire Bros Bungalow. Before the elevator doors close, Veronica runs inside. Because it is a Logan/Veronica interaction, it's been fully gifed for your viewing pleasure:
Sweeney: It's good to know there are some things we can count on in this world, like shippers on Tumblr.
Lor: All that "Duncan is sad over the death of his ex and his new baby" exposition over, those two finally get upstairs. Veronica walks into Duncan's room, with more sarcastic commentary from Logan in the background. It's a little hard to keep track of Logan's moods sometimes.
Sweeney: It's good to know there are some things we can count on in this world, like shippers on Tumblr.
Lor: All that "Duncan is sad over the death of his ex and his new baby" exposition over, those two finally get upstairs. Veronica walks into Duncan's room, with more sarcastic commentary from Logan in the background. It's a little hard to keep track of Logan's moods sometimes.
Veronica, looking a lot more shaken than normal, is at Mars Investigations (doubling as Mars for Sheriff HQ!) calling the hospital to find out Meg's visiting hours. As she hangs up, an Elle Woods wannabe (D: It's funny because it's literally Laura Bell Bundy from the Legally Blonde musical) (S: AMAZING.) struts into the office in desperate need of a detective to investigate her boyfriend and possible fiance because she found a ring while doing her own snooping. Keith isn't there, but Veronica goes ahead and sells her on hardcore investigative packages. (L: Future Business Leader of America shots!) Keith arrives as she's leaving and is pleasant, but reminds Veronica that she's no longer his employee.
CARRY ON MY WAAAAYWARD SOOOOOOOOON. Sorry. It's the pointy end of the season, and that means we start with a full recap of the season and the show's unofficial theme song. It's a sure sign that heartbreak isn't far away.
Blue Earth, Minnesota. The camera pans over a stained glass window and down to a priest, flicking through a Bible. Meg walks in, and says she needs someone to talk to about all the terrible things she's done. The priest says salvation was created for sinners, earning himself a shiny gold star
Blue Earth, Minnesota. The camera pans over a stained glass window and down to a priest, flicking through a Bible. Meg walks in, and says she needs someone to talk to about all the terrible things she's done. The priest says salvation was created for sinners, earning himself a shiny gold star
YOU GUYS. WE MADE IT TO THE END OF THIS RIDICULOUS SHOW. I honestly thought this day would never come. In some ways it's been a million times harder for me than Buffy because so many of the episodes were meh-tastic and Whedon kept killing off all the female characters. Still, WE MADE IT. And that warrants a dance party!
Sweeney: ALWAYS DANCE PARTIES. ALWAYS.
Lorraine: This post is going up a little late because of timezone issues. So, Kirsti told me to celebrate the end while she went to sleep. I told her I was at work. She said I should have a dance party in the bathroom.
Sweeney: ALWAYS DANCE PARTIES. ALWAYS.
Lorraine: This post is going up a little late because of timezone issues. So, Kirsti told me to celebrate the end while she went to sleep. I told her I was at work. She said I should have a dance party in the bathroom.
Richardson, Texas, two months ago. A group of teens walk through the woods in the middle of the night and find an abandoned log cabin. Because they're idiots, they decide to head inside. There are all kinds of weird occult-y symbols painted on the walls and floors. The dude manning the flashlight tells his friends that "they" say there's a ghost who hides in the root cellar and strings up girls who stumble into the house. One friend is sceptical, wanting to know where he heard the legend. From his cousin, apparently. Sceptical Guy grabs the flashlight and leads the way down to the cellar. He scoffs about how all the cellar contains is random junk, but the others are staring in horror at something behind him. He turns and sees a girl hanging by her neck from the rafters. He screams and lightning flashes us to the Not!Credits.
Angel and Gunn start us off with a pede-argument about whether or not they just take on some new case. Angel wants a full risk analysis, Gunn wants to go now, now, now. "Don't want to lose another baby with the bath water," Gunn says with a meaningful head tilt. Angel says fine. They'll send Spike.
Cut to Spike telling them to do it themselves, playing on what looks like a Game Boy Advance. There are Mario sound effects in the background of the rest of this scene. They all bicker back and forth about the super important job: some dead, demon mobster's body needs to be collected. He was a human-tolerant demon so they need to return him to his family to be revived, or else some other, less tolerant demons will take his place. Angel tells Spike to pack his bags and go.
Cut to Spike telling them to do it themselves, playing on what looks like a Game Boy Advance. There are Mario sound effects in the background of the rest of this scene. They all bicker back and forth about the super important job: some dead, demon mobster's body needs to be collected. He was a human-tolerant demon so they need to return him to his family to be revived, or else some other, less tolerant demons will take his place. Angel tells Spike to pack his bags and go.
Joss Whedon got his feature length film, and we're going to recap it, but fair warning that this post will be long.
The Universal Pictures logo becomes Earth. A voice over gives us the set-up, but it is not Mal, as we were accustomed to. It's a woman (S: Tamara Taylor from Bones!) with a slightly different version of events: Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain the ever growing population. People found a new solar system, terraformed the planets and moons to form new Earths. The central planets formed the Alliance. The savage, outer planets refused Alliance control, resulting in a devastating war. But the Alliance won and now everyone is happy!
The Universal Pictures logo becomes Earth. A voice over gives us the set-up, but it is not Mal, as we were accustomed to. It's a woman (S: Tamara Taylor from Bones!) with a slightly different version of events: Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain the ever growing population. People found a new solar system, terraformed the planets and moons to form new Earths. The central planets formed the Alliance. The savage, outer planets refused Alliance control, resulting in a devastating war. But the Alliance won and now everyone is happy!
Who gets the puppet episode? THIS GIRL.
I'm pretty pumped, but first, I wouldn't be a true Snark Lady if I didn't say that puppets will always and forever remind me of Goosebumps, and that one time we thought it'd be an awesome idea to cover all three Night of the Living Dummy books. (It was an awesome idea.)
Sweeney: Night of the Living Dummy is Traumaland's One True Puppet.
Lor: Always and forever. On to the episode: While the screen is still black, some jaunty, cartoonish music greets us. It's coming from a TV show that features (BIG REVEAL) puppets!
I'm pretty pumped, but first, I wouldn't be a true Snark Lady if I didn't say that puppets will always and forever remind me of Goosebumps, and that one time we thought it'd be an awesome idea to cover all three Night of the Living Dummy books. (It was an awesome idea.)
Sweeney: Night of the Living Dummy is Traumaland's One True Puppet.
Lor: Always and forever. On to the episode: While the screen is still black, some jaunty, cartoonish music greets us. It's coming from a TV show that features (BIG REVEAL) puppets!
Kirsti: We start literally where we left off, with Angelus biting Faith's neck. Suddenly, he stops and drops her, scurrying backwards. "What...did you do?" he asks. Flashback to a few minutes earlier. While Angelus was taunting Wes, Faith grabbed a syringe from her boot and injected something into her arm before re-entering the fight. Back in the present, Angelus staggers around briefly before passing out. Wes asks Faith if she's okay. "Kicked his ass," she slurs before blacking out. Electric cellos.
After the credits, Fred's researching behind the desk at the Hyperion when Gunn bursts in the front door, dragging Angelus and screaming Connor's name. Apparently Wes called him and he went, no questions asked.
After the credits, Fred's researching behind the desk at the Hyperion when Gunn bursts in the front door, dragging Angelus and screaming Connor's name. Apparently Wes called him and he went, no questions asked.
We open at an airport where some guy is looking super anxious. He heads to the bathroom and is splashing water on his face, and a random other guy says not to worry because your odds of dying in a plane crash are 20,000 to 1. YEAH, NOT WHAT I WANNA HEAR, MAN. Let me just go ahead and tell you that flying is my absolute biggest fear and the majority of my nightmares center around plane crashes, so I'm pretty sure this episode is going to ruin me.
Kirsti: I'm not afraid of flying on account of I've been doing it on the regular since I was like nine months old (also because I live in Australia and it's really fucking time consuming to get ANYWHERE if you don't fly), but bathroom guy is a total asshat for listing that hugely unhelpful statistic.
Kirsti: I'm not afraid of flying on account of I've been doing it on the regular since I was like nine months old (also because I live in Australia and it's really fucking time consuming to get ANYWHERE if you don't fly), but bathroom guy is a total asshat for listing that hugely unhelpful statistic.
We open at a cabin in Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin. Inside, a skinny blonde girl in a warm up suit greets her father and brother, the latter of whom informs her that she shouldn't work out so much because guys don't like buff girls. How about GO FUCK YOURSELF, I WORK OUT FOR ME. She informs him that girls don't like guys who still live at home before she heads out the door. (S: BURN.) Her dad tells her to be careful.
Cut to her standing in a bathing suit next to the lake. We get a weirdly far away shot taken through some bushes as she dives in. We follow her underwater for a second, then she surfaces. She looks to the shoreline as if she's heard something, then swims for a few moments and does a tumble turn. Which I really don't see the point of because there's no wall to push off.
Cut to her standing in a bathing suit next to the lake. We get a weirdly far away shot taken through some bushes as she dives in. We follow her underwater for a second, then she surfaces. She looks to the shoreline as if she's heard something, then swims for a few moments and does a tumble turn. Which I really don't see the point of because there's no wall to push off.
We start out on an unknown planet, with a group of cowboys on horses stopping two strangers, a husband and wife, driving a wagon. The cowboys tell the guy driving that he's carrying something that belongs to them. He says that the stranger is going to give him everything he has in the wagon, including some one-on-one time with his missus. The stranger says he might want to reconsider that last one because he married him a "powerful ugly creature," and as he lifts his head, we can see that it's lovable, huggable Jayne.
Jayne says that if he could make him prettier, he would. Mal responds that Jayne is not the man he met a year ago. This is all happening with Mal still wearing the bonnet, by the way.
Jayne says that if he could make him prettier, he would. Mal responds that Jayne is not the man he met a year ago. This is all happening with Mal still wearing the bonnet, by the way.
Buffy is packing up a Slayer Bag-o-Tricks as she fills us in by way of conversation with Dawn that she's running out mid-dinner to go track down some non-vampire beastie. Dawn is gamely saying everything is fine, but her tight smile and stiff body language say otherwise. Dawn says that perhaps they can set-up for Buffy's birthday trauma party the next day when she gets back, but B tells her not to wait up.I wonder how she got word of this baddie, mid-dinner. Bat signal? Also, no, I do not like this flippy hair thing.
Kirsti: Me neither. I was on board with it when she cut it short, but now it just keeps getting more and more flippy, and I think we need to hold an intervention... Also, BRB, HAVING DAWN FEELS.
Kirsti: Me neither. I was on board with it when she cut it short, but now it just keeps getting more and more flippy, and I think we need to hold an intervention... Also, BRB, HAVING DAWN FEELS.
After a repeat of the long this-is-the-show-you're-watching narration, we are aboard Serenity. Most of the crew are playing a game that's kind of like basketball and would look really fun if group sports didn't terrify the elementary school nerd inside me. They're having so much fun, and it's giving me happy feels, so I'm going to go ahead and prepare myself for something terrible happening. See: Joss Whedon Ruins Lives.
Sweeney: It's such a stressful watching experience. Happy feels are experienced and immediately followed with anxiety and despair because you know that happy feels can't be trusted.
Sweeney: It's such a stressful watching experience. Happy feels are experienced and immediately followed with anxiety and despair because you know that happy feels can't be trusted.