Buffy The Vampire Slayer 5x7 (TWO PARTER WITH ANGEL 2x7!)
Added 2025-02-21 13:00:15 +0000 UTCThis was so cool!! I really like the character study we got!
Comments
I'm super late to replying to this, but that's so interesting! I love that take!
Vic
2025-03-12 13:31:43 +0000 UTCIt's so sad! :( Thanks for making me aware!
Vic
2025-02-28 21:14:11 +0000 UTCTrachtenberg was found unconscious and unresponsive in her New York City apartment on the morning of February 26, 2025. Paramedics would ultimately pronounce her dead at the scene. She was 39 years old. ABC News reported she had undergone a liver transplant and "may have been experiencing complications," while noting local police were not investigating the death as suspicious. An autopsy reportedly will be performed to determine the exact cause of death.
ThePowerDrome
2025-02-26 19:30:53 +0000 UTCthat was a great analysis. I lived it
Jon Mackay
2025-02-23 17:43:47 +0000 UTCFun facts: It is revealed how Spike got the scar over his left eye (which in real life James Marsters got when he was mugged in New York). Drusilla siring Spike contradicts School Hard (1997) when Spike calls Angel his sire, but Joss Whedon later verified that any vampire in a line can be called a sire. Darla sired Angel, who sired Drusilla, and who sired Spike, forming a "familial" line. Riley's hand signal means "increase speed/double-time/rush". In the graveyard scene, Xander does not comprehend Riley's military hand signals, suggesting that his knowledge from being transformed into a soldier in Halloween (1997) has completely faded. It was revealed Spike's character's real name is "William Pratt", which is also Boris Karloff's birth name. In School Hard (1997), Giles says that Spike was "barely 200", while in "The Initiative", Spike said that he was 126 years old. This episode definitively establishes that he was sired 120 years before. When Spike is fighting the Chinese Slayer inside the Buddhist Temple, two Guardian Lions (or Fu Dogs) are facing inward toward the Buddha Statue. The statues of guardian lions have traditionally stood in front of Chinese Imperial palaces, Imperial tombs, government offices, temples, and the homes of government officials and the wealthy, so they properly would be placed outside facing the street. The song playing at the beginning of Spike's first-period flashback is Bach's Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major This song also featured prominently in the film The Hunger (1983), a vampire classic. The scene in South America is in reference to S3's Lovers Walk (1998). When Spike is drunkenly confiding in Willow, he mentions he caught Drusilla making out with a Chaos Demon. The Chaos Demon, matching Spike's description as "slime and antlers," is in the middle of the argument between Spike and Dru.
Jon Mackay
2025-02-23 17:42:40 +0000 UTCThis is my favorite episode of the entire series. There are other episodes that are "better", but this is my favorite. I love the final scene where they are sitting together like two old warriors. Spike in reality and Buffy just for a Slayer. My two favorite characters, one mostly good, one mostly evil. Spike's best weapon is his ability to read people. He went to Buffy's house to kill a derisive Slayer, but what he found was a vulnerable Buffy. He could see that she would be receptive to an "act" of compassion. Spike, when he was talking to Buffy about how Slayers die, mentioned three ways. First, Slayers are in deep if they don't have a weapon. The first Slayer dropped her stake and dropped her life. Second is pure RNG. Keep fighting long enough, eventually something is going to get you. Third was the darkest. Eventually Slayers get to the point where they've had enough. When Buffy says, "Say it's true. Say I do want to." I don't think she was talking about making out with vampires. I think it was about that third way. When she says, "It would never be you." She means Spike would never be the vampire that takes her out. But Spike was trying to get a physical relationship going, and that is how he took her rejection. Spike says that he can see that Buffy isn't ready to die yet. But we also see in the cold open that Buffy is purposely making the fight harder for herself by doing unnecessary jumps and flips. Perhaps trying to get closer to that edge and it costs her. He says that inevitably her death wish will come to the fore. S-"The second that happens, I'll slip in, have myself a real good day." Later, after his awkward attempt to hit on her he says "Come on. I can feel it Slayer. You know you want to dance." Spike is saying he can feel her desire for him. But then Buffy says, "Say it's true." That she has desire for him? Or is she saying she has a desire for the dance. A death wish. "Say I do want to." But Spike also said it's her family and friends who tie her here. Keeping it at bay. Is it in her, kept at bay by her family and friends? We already know the answer to this, it's yes. In "The Wish" we see Buffy without her support system, and she has death-wishyness all over her. B-"The world is what it is. We fight; we die. Wishing doesn't change that." And she turns down help to fight the Master. B-"There's only one thing I'm good at." G-"At least let's muster some force." B-"I don't play well with others." And eventually he kills her. So, I think it is there, and Buffy is telling Spike he would never be the vamp who takes her down.
Bud Haven
2025-02-22 05:07:01 +0000 UTCGreat reaction, it made me understand the death wish thing better.
slypeartree
2025-02-22 04:00:09 +0000 UTCBuffyverse doesn't explore the question of whether vampires can do the same things humans can, but I have a great headcanon from the World of Darkness universe that explains the mechanism. So technically a vampire is a dead person who doesn't age or decompose. All of their internal organs are blood reservoirs, so a vampire can take in more blood than a living person. However, in addition to the standard bonuses like eternal life, increased speed, strength, and stamina, vampires also gain certain abilities. One of them is the ability to make their organs come alive. So, for a while, by spending a small amount of the blood they have, a vampire can make certain organ systems function as if they were alive again. Want to eat human food? No problem, you spent a little of your own blood and your stomach, esophagus, etc. are functioning. I'm not sure if taste receptors are part of that system, maybe they are. Want to breathe air like humans do? You spend blood and your lungs fill with air. Do you want to have sex? Well, you know the mechanism. Why do vampires do human things so much less often? Because they no longer bring as much pleasure as they did in life. Human food? Human blood tastes better than any food, plus vampires feel a hunger for blood that they have never felt in life. Sex? The process of absorbing blood brings much more vivid sensations to a vampire than sex. Plus spending your own blood on things that are not necessary for life? Not everyone agrees with this. However, some vampires are much more connected to human society than others. Like Spike. Remember, the Judge said that he stinks of "humanity"? That doesn't make him kinder, it makes him more attached to people, to their habits, places, etc. Angel is cut off from people, he spent a century or more avoiding people and eating animals. Spike enjoys people and the things they create. In fact, he said so in Becoming part 2. He was also a poet, which probably allows him to enjoy people's art.
ThePowerDrome
2025-02-21 15:11:37 +0000 UTCWilliam and Buffy, both crying and maybe wanting to die. William met Drusilla and received death instead of comfort but through that Spike realizes here that Buffy needs comfort and he’s able to provide it. Such good writing.
Isaiah Bryant
2025-02-21 14:36:07 +0000 UTC
