'Conversations with Dead People'
Is it better the second time around? Or the third? Or tenth? This is the place to come when you have a burning desire to talk about an old episode that was just re-run.
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.)
Technically, someone who doesn't use oxygen or generate carbon dioxide should be better at giving CPR than a living person who would be blowing secondhand air into the patient's lungs. I can see some less-than-clean vampires being a health hazard in their own right, what with having old blood and the blood-borne germs of dozens of victims in their mouths. But most anything infectious that a person could catch would be better than the not being resuscitated option. And you can't tell me that Angel's daily routine didn't involve toothpaste and mouthwash in addition to all the hair products.
Well, I'm fresh off a CPR course, where I was told that we only yank 25% of the oxygen normally available in a given breath, so that there's no need to concentrate on pushing "fresh" air into the person's mouth.
Of course, we were also told "Well, they're already dead -- how much worse can you make it?" so take that as you will.
Of course, we were also told "Well, they're already dead -- how much worse can you make it?" so take that as you will.
Did anyone in the class respond, "Well, I'm always up for a challenge"?