Angel ,'Shells'
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.
Provider has Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Timex Guy. Automatic passing grade there.
Dad...
Twitch.
I'm going to vote A Hole in the World because it sparked the most rage in me, but She was appalling, and Happy Anniversary... yeah. Umm. Not what anyone would call good.
That British guy who heard Buffy saying "Mum? Mum? Mummy?" in The Body -- what did he think the episode "Inca Mummy Girl" was about?
Pssst. Why do we hate A Hole in the World so much?
I like the dragon.
I don't remember "Dad" much, but I vaguely remember "Provider" was worse.
I remember liking "Dad." I should rewatch it to see how it holds up in my mind. But I know I loved "Provider," because the end-of-teaser joke made me laugh through the entire commercial break.
Pssst. Why do we hate A Hole in the World so much?
I kind of wonder that too, Shir. I didn't think it was the bestest episode ever, but I liked some of it quite a bit.
Yeah, that's kind of like the talent show stuff in the "Buffy" with the fucking puppet. The talent show stuff is brilliant, even if the A plot is horrid. It always made me hate Mutant Enemy more, because it prevented me from just outright loathing an episode.
Oh, but Skinner had a few good lines in that episode too.
I kind of wonder that too, Shir. I didn't think it was the bestest episode ever, but I liked some of it quite a bit.
My reasons are back a few posts. I wasn't impressed with them killing a major character so soon before the end of the show, and all their efforts to remind us how much everyone else cared about Fred felt gratuitous and contrived. With possibly the exception of Wesley shooting someone in the knee, as there at least they were showing rather than just telling.
I will quote myself because I am shameless. And more importantly, lazy.
This isn't really an episode that's all about Fred. It's all about how other people feel about Fred, and, most particularly, how Wesley feels about Fred. I mean, they only hooked up last week so that this would be that much worse for him; it'd be just as bad for her if they'd kept it on a "just friends" level. Wesley's the tragic martyr who has to watch his sweetie dying, and he's being noble and supportive as his heart breaks, and it could be his dog dying instead for how much who Fred is matters to this. She's not a character, she's a blank screen the other characters project things on. She had no real responsibility for getting sick; that was done to her. She has no ability to save herself; that's up to the others. She could be anyone. It doesn't matter.
Plus there's the excruciating dialogue and the 12-hour death scene and the stuff that I think is meant to be romantic that's actually incredibly creepy. And just the crassness of the manipulation which is a major problem with Whedon. I mean, the opening flashback? The goddamn toy rabbit? It feels like bad faith -- that he writes that stuff solely because it's an easy way to pull tears out of the audience. And at a basic writing level, there's exposition that's more confusing than the thing it's explaining, and a deeply lame "oh no, I am undone by my own sudden & inexplicable carelessness" gotcha for Knox.
I don't know. The run-of-the-mill bad episodes, like She and I Fall to Pieces... they are at least fun to mock. A Hole in the World and Dad make me profoundly angry and then I start ranting and foaming at the mouth and feh.