ivyology | (no subject)

Even when everything else sucks Buffy can still reach that part of me that glows.

It doesn't hurt that "Storyteller" was a fabulous episode. Hilarious (as in too hilarious to even point out the best lines, best parts, there are just too many, and they're too constant throughout the ep) and real and yet another reminder why BtVS (or, shall we say, Buffy, the Slayer of VamPIRES) is such a step above anything else in its pseudo-genre.

As L said last night, about the use of Andrew as the focus of the episode, it's great when the writers recognize the potential of something and run with it. It rarely happens. In the same vein, though, is the way they took this character who's been around for almost two seasons now and never stood out as anything more than a peripheral player, one with established quirks that identified him but nothing that made him less than surface material, and in the space of one episode turned all that around, used those throwaway Andrewisms to make him suddenly and vividly three-dimensional. And the thing is, you realize he's been that way all along. That's the genius of it, that it wasn't that they added something to Andrew's characterization; they simply took what was already there and let it shine a little, said see? this is what you'd have seen if you'd been paying attention.

And that makes me happy.

Kennedy does not make me happy, because unlike Andrew she's a terrible side character and the show doesn't usually go in for that. The thing is I tried to like her. I wasn't going to hate her just because she's Tara's "replacement" so to speak and I loved Tara like no other. I was going to be okay with the fact that Tara was her own character and Kennedy another, but the thing is, Kennedy has no character, and the actress playing her does anything but help that, because she sucks. Amber Benson wasn't a great actress when she started as Tara, but the difference is you could always see the potential, in both Amber and Tara, and Kennedy just lacks that entirely. It's disappointing, really, and why are we seeing all this Willow/Kennedy kissing when we saw so little Willow/Tara over that span of two years?

I'm sure I had other thoughts, but class is getting in the way. But, yeah, Buffy's a fabulous thing, and who needs pills when you've got good television?