When the ep first aired all the critics were calling them a cross between Mr. Burns and the bad guys in "Dark City."

I think Joss himself cited Mr. Burns and Nosferatu as influneces on The Gentleman. I'm not sure about Dark City.

That's what I meant about "until I heard the commentary" -- Joss says the floating thing was from childhood nightmares, and he personally names Mr Burns and Nosferatu, and some other stuff, but not Dark City.

From a commentary transcript:

What I was going for very specifically with the Gentlemen was a Victorian kind of feel, because that was very creepy and fairy tale like. The politeness, the suits, the crazies who were like the crazies in the asylum in Dracula, the metal teeth still representing science, defeating cavities. Everything is very Victorian era, and for me that bespeaks total creepiness.

When I designed them, I was drawing from everything that had ever frightened me, including the fellow from my dream, Nosferatu, Pinhead, Mr Burns, anything that gave that creepy feeling. I wanted guys that will remind people of what scared them when they were children, and I believe what scared us when we were little children, were old people. It’s the idea of age.

most musicals aren't very much on plot. There are some exceptions like "Chess"

Dude, Chess has no more plot than any other musical! Love...er...semi-quadrangle, and political match, but...really, no more than most. Now, there are definitely some with less ("Assassins" springs to mind, as does t shudder "Cats")...

My Fair Lady has plot - but OK based upon Pygmalion, and thus non-musical roots.

OK Sweeny Todd (Sondheim version) tons of plot. And many of the subplots are new, not from the original Sweeny Todd legend.

I finally scored a decent DVD player the other day. I did have a Voxson T172 but I got my money back b/c there was no feasible way to disable macrovision. I then bought a Magnavox MDVD-100 from Kmart (only $178) and used a CDR to flash the firmware to turn off macrovision and add a custom-made Buffy background. (The picture signal is much clearer if I run it through my VCR than the RF Modulator I also had to buy [and take back for a full refund from Dick Smith's].)

So now I've been buying Buffy DVDs to catch up on all the episodes I've missed (and which Channel 7 haven't repeated). So far I've bought the Season 1 box set and Season 2 Part 2 box set. I should have them all in the next couple of months.

I've watched a lot of TV in my time but no other show has ever made me cry -- either with joy, or sadness -- as much as Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- and I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit that. Damn you, Joss Whedon.

I also picked up the "Once More With Feeling" soundtrack CD a few weeks ago. On first listening I hated it. I felt the only worthwhile things about the release was the Chris Beck scores for "Restless", "Hush" and "The Gift". However, this was due to having heard the MP3s ripped straight from the actual episode.

Now that some time has passed and I've refrained from listening to any versions of the songs for a few weeks, I've reassessed how I feel about the CD. I understood that they had to make some changes to the songs for the CD but that didn't mean I had to like what they did. I still don't like some of those changes but now I can accept them and thus ignore them, more readily. If you haven't got it yet, it is well worth the money.

I'm sure I've seen Joss namecheck Dark City as an influence on "Hush" in at least one interview.

It depends on the version of "Chess." Most of the rewrites done by productions sacrifice the narrative, but there are some that are very good, and one or two that make it into a compelling but less predictable story.

The "Dark City" resemblance might not have been intentional. Though I like the idea of Joss trying to recreate the eerie manners of the Cenobites.

It seemed that they were working from classic nightmare fuel - the inability to scream, inability to escape by running, the relatively slow way they killed their victims - people have a couple minutes of absolute terror before their hearts were ripped out.

I'm sure I've seen Joss namecheck Dark City as an influence on "Hush" in at least one interview.

Me too. In one of the print interviews around the episode. He ticked it off with Nosferatau and Mr. Burns.