I can see vampires missing chewing and satisfying crunchiness.

Hee - all vampires are stoners.

I'm not sure if it was mentioned before, but last week's Entertainment Weekly reviewed the "Chosen Collection" DVD package. Says the release is poor (not enough extra goodness), but in the process praises the hell out of the show. A fun read.

There are some things you can't state often enough. The Aston Martin DB5 was the greatest Bond car ever. The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the seminal TV shows of the last 50 years. In the top 10. Not open for debate.

Hush:

Giles: I thought vampires were supposed to eat blood.

Spike: Yep. Well sometimes I like to crumble up the Weetabix in the blood - give it a little texture.

I loved Giles' reaction to that.

If you don't have an EW subscription, CNN has picked up that boxed-set review here. I like this paragraph:

"Buffy" did what all great genre fiction does. It allowed us to look at ourselves through a fantastical lens, and see who we truly are: at once stronger than we thought we could be and weaker than we'd like to let on. And, as with most great genre fiction, the establishment just didn't get it.

I was rewatching "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" and in the scene outside the Observatory where Angel is standing in his James Dean jacket, he's smoking. Literally puffing on a cigarette and blowing smoke out. My Mom jumped on this, exclaiming that "He shouldn't be able to do that! He doesn't have any breath! He couldn't do CPR on Buffy when the Master bit her because he didn't have any breath." Is this one of those things that has already been discussed, and just hand-waved away?

Also, this episode has earwormed me with the damned "Whoop-de Doo polka" that the salesman plays on the record player before committing suicide. All the great music that they had in the 50's, and they used that one.... So now my brain is stuck in an endless loop between that polka and "Honky Cat." (Ever since I saw Elton John on "Inside the Actor's Studio.")

If he literally had no breath, he wouldn't be able to speak either.

I think Joss wanked it with a "spark of life" sort of thing.

Which should mean that hospital equipment can't resuscitate people, since it doesn't have the spark of life either (well, except for defibrilators, I guess...). Sometimes Joss wasn't so much with the sense-making.

Maybe if the equipment is operated by a human, the spark is conveyed?

Yeah -- lovely metaphor, shame about the logic.

Joss' handwave was that metaphorically a vampire shouldn't be able to give life. Which sits okay with me, but isn't much of a handwave in the worldbuilding department.

A better handwave is that a vampire can force his lungs to breathe in and out pushing air, but that once the air goes in, whatever property animates the vamp taints the air making it unfit for resusscitation.

I'm with Hec on the whole "Taint of death" thing. In a mystical sense, air is a different animal than breath. Vampires can move air with their lungs, but they don't breathe. Which scientifically means they should still be able to ressuscitate someone, but as Angel said about vampires and cameras versus mirrors, it's metaphysics, not physics.

(Edited because one "but" is plenty for anyone.)