overview on continuity issues, or how Joss ate macha's homework in
the seventh season


1. why it matters

when i do exegesis on current eps, i try to do it pure. being
unspoiled, i don't have a fixed future to connect the dots to. so
there's no net. on those occasions when i call futures, i'm calling
them on the basis of existing imagery, extrapolating trends from
existing arcs. for this reason, i rather depend on there being no
continuity errors in the work i'm 'reading'.

another problem that arises is where discussion of continuity
errors properly belongs. there i have to second-guess ME. was it a
careless error? (if they just flubbed it, it belongs to review, not
exegesis.) or was it done on purpose, as part of the story? (in
which case, it clearly belongs to exegesis as part of the language
of the text.) so, is it inadvertent or intentional? i need to
decide that before i can go to work.

ideally, there are no such problems, and i have no such decisions
to make. because i shouldn't be, in exegesis, having to
second-guess the writers. i should be able to look at the text as a
given. too many continuity errors, and i'm having to sit there
contemplating ME's navel instead of the ep. that's kind of an
untenable position to be in. when i open up the can, i hate to find
it full of worms. do i look like the wormkeeper? (don't answer
that.) 

during season 7, my list of questions got longer. my range of
answers all began to start with 'depending on what they meant to
do...'.  the text should have its own meaning. why had ME suddenly
interposed themselves bodily between me and the text? nossir. i
didn't like it. i shouldn't be having to look at the soundness of
the scaffolding: that's supposed to be all packed up and put away
before the ep gets to air.

2. what it means

continuity error covers a lot of different ground, of course.
specifically it may involve: unexplained transitions, dangling or
isolated events, discontinuity, disharmonious relations,
contradictions, incongruities, or egregious error. here are some
examples of these problems in the seventh season (this is an
'including, but not limited to' list). With regard to the season
arc: The First as a villain, The First as incorporeal, the
Potentials as powerless, Potential training, the use of Potentials
as army, the watchers after the blowup, the blowup itself (the
Council building), the intent of D'Hoffryn, the introduction of
Baljoxa's Eye, the Turok-han making, the Turok-han attributes, the
First's plan for Spike, the order of death for Slayers, the late
appearance of the Guardian. With regard to the character arcs: the
undeath of Giles, the changing of Giles, the status of Dawn, the
advice of Joyce, Willow's return from England, Willow's
magic-using, the personality of Anya, the sexuality of Anya, the
unexplained changes in Xander, the eye stuff with Xander, the
expulsion of Buffy, the speeches of Buffy, the exploration of
Buffy's use of power, the relationship between Buffy and
FirstEvilBuffy, the attempt to assassinate Spike. With regard to
the major characters added to the season: the moral status of Robin
Wood, the purpose of Kennedy, the need for Andrew, the appearance
of Caleb.

not all of these are agreed to be continuity errors: some could be
read as intended, or as unfinished business, and some are probably
pointless interpolations. if we all made lists, our lists probably
won't completely agree. but it's absolutely amazing that i, not
generally noted as the most negative commentator on the bverse, can
come up with so many candidates without really giving it a lot of
thought. i doubt i could come up with that many possibles on the
whole of the first six seasons, apart from the Willow going bad
season 6 fiasco. ME, for all its faults, isn't notably careless
with continuity. they care too much. they tend as a general rule to
avoid jerking the audience around. they usually don't countenance
the sacrifice of a character or a story arc to a cheap plot point.
their arcs, both character and story, are structurally elaborate,
logically sound, and sometimes seven seasons long. so why did we
seem in season 7, with regard to continuity, to have suddenly
entered the territory of a cheap Aaron Spelling knockoff on this
front?

i don't exactly have an answer. i can do a reconciliation on some
of them, make them fit by working backwards from the ending. but i
cannot do a season-doctoring that will reconcile them all, and i
know that because i've tried it. so what happens is that, depending
on the thread we choose to follow backwards through the labyrinth
of the season, every reconciliation yields a different story.
that's why, i think, we may all have different season arcs for
season 7 in our widdle heads.

3. ending the series

it's my belief that's what Joss had to do to write 7.22 Chosen: he
chose a thread backwards, followed it through, and left the rest. i
don't doubt that he could have reconciled the whole season, in five
episodes or so. but i wouldn't have wanted, myself, that sort of
ending: it isn't tidiness that's important, when it comes to the
final ending. instead he made a reconciliation of the series, using
the Spike and Buffy threads as his center and employing the Greater
Arcs (from beginning to end of the series) to resolve his
seven-season stories. and let the seventh season arcs outside those
parameters tumble. he only had, at that point in time, those three
choices. and given that, i think he made the best choice.

i don't think, myself, that it comes anywhere near sinking the
season, much less the series. there was a lot of great stuff in the
season. but it makes it tricky to talk about. because each of us
did a different reconciliation, so we're not always discussing the
same season, if you see what i mean. from Joss's point of view,
this is not a good, and i'd certainly agree. he intended to tell a
certain story, and that story was not entirely realized on the
screen. somewhere Jane Espenson talks about how Joss works,
constructing his arcs, working his stories from their emotional
center. she's so smart about language, so interested in process,
and she's been watching him for years, trying to figure out how it
is that he does it. this year, she says she really thought she had
a handle on it at last. but then Joss would come in, throw it all
out, and start again from a different point entirely. his emotional
center, maybe that's a thing he just can't pass on. but that's a
reason they need to have him there when they break the stories. no
matter how much they think they know, no matter how much he thinks
they understand, this has to be the greatest metalesson of the
mechanics of Season 7: it's not about the power, it's about what's
real.<g>

4. the front nine

the first nine episodes, aired 24 Sept to 26 Nov, are fine. well
okay, i'm a ruthless person at heart, as battle goddesses are wont
to be, and i would have got rid of Drew Z. Greenberg before the
year began; he's a nice guy and he loves the show but he's just not
a good enough writer for the company he keeps. Kirshner also is not
good enough, in my bottom-line honest opinion. Marti herself does
no writing in this period, maybe mostly doing baby stuff, and David
Fury only does one co-write, so that's okay. i don't see any
serious signs of trouble in there.

Dawn still isn't written consistently, though it's a different kind
of wrong than season 6 Dawn: some eps she appears to be in serious
trouble, other eps she's competent and unobtrusive. the original
purpose of the principal is unclear; so is the need to introduce a
new major character so late in the game. the England location stuff
is so neat, but ultimately confusing, because of the marked
contrast between Giles in England and Giles later in Sunnydale. is
there a subplot missing? it's inexplicable that Giles would send
Willow back so soon when she clearly isn't ready, given the way
she's written later on. i don't  blame the front end of the season
for any of this stuff, though: it's the middle that doesn't match
up.

7.04 Help (wr RK) is intended, i think, to show the limitations of
the kind of help a Slayer can offer, whatever her good intentions,
but it's kind of a weak ep and the question isn't carried forward
into the later season. would have been a good text to develop, kind
of a Slayer/Protector question to match with 7.05 Selfless, Buffy's
job, the Willow problem, the Spike problem, the Potential problem.
so it's Help that should have framed it clearly, and didn't.

and 7.06 Him is poor (wr DZG), the issues it raises, with Dawn and
Buffy, and the Scoobies use of Spike, not uninteresting but never
later explored, and the time oddities of the train sequence still
puzzling (director error?). the most glaring problems of this
period, though, are with one of the best episodes, 7.07
Conversations with Dead People, in which the intent of the whole
Dawn thing with Joyce remains mysterious to me, raising questions
about both characters and the intentions of First Evil, time is out
of joint (a problem first touched on in 7.03 STSP & the Him train
sequence, though it's later dropped), and the Willow confrontation
seems like an afterthought solution (nothing against Cassie, it
just needed to be Tara, and when that couldn't be done it would
have been better to write it otherwise).

5. the unfortunately not-excluded middle

this is where it all goes really wrong, continuity-wise, these five
next eps aired between 17 December and 11 February. in 7.10 Bring
on the Night (wr MN & DP) we get Giles' chilly return as
not-himself, bearing Potentials, his exposition setting up First
Evil, Joyce as apparition, Wood shown as possibly evil, Dawn's
inexplicable behavior with Anya re tied-up Andrew, and Buffy's
first speech, in which she stirringly but inexplicably declares war
and begins her children's crusade. Giles' whole modus operandi from
the beginning of his return seems calculated to isolate his Slayer
by pressuring her to act in a situation that offers no choices she
can live with, and that's a setup that he has reason to know is
calculated to produce a catatonic Slayer; we never at any point
receive any explanation for why he chooses to take this approach
from the moment he crosses the threshold, so we just don't know
what became of the guy we saw in England with Willow at the start
of the season.

in 7.11 Showtime (wr DF) we get more Potentials. the Baljoxa's Eye
affair (its style imported from AtS, its most important sections
not shown but only discussed afterwards, big jossian no-no and
rightly so). the so-messed up mindreading trick Buffy initiates
(which only *Willow* employed earlier in 5.22 The Gift and 6.01
Bargaining 1). and Buffy's Thunderdome defeat of the Turok-han,
followed by yet another speech. the plotting conceals from us the
real plan to show only the fake plan presented by the Potentials,
then presenting the real plan in flashback: another big no-no
raising the whole question of audience PoV. cheap trick writing,
and atypical of the BtVS standard (aren't you proud of me, managing
to keep this view of  the ep right out of my exegesis? <g>).

in 7.12 Potential (wr RK) we get the Xander eye analogy (what
happened to the heart, hmm?: okay, now we know but i think that's
pretty counter-intuitive, cause Xander's got so many issues the
analogy is more properly ass-end-to, i.e. Willfully Blind). the
questionable Potential training (they have no powers, so let's just
lock them in, see who survives; plus problem with vamp training
Potentials that it would have been much better to resolve). a
problematic visit to the demon bar (an early Han Solo moment?
bonding? rite of passage? there's a reason Giles didn't propose
such an outing to Buffy as part of her training). and the end of
the Dawn as Slayer thing (except there was never any groundwork
laid for that, so why waste a whole ep putting it to rest?:
apparently to convince themselves). this one i actually declined to
do exegesis on, because whew, the only true moment in it seemed to
be the one where Buffy checks Spike's ribs for damage (and i was so
looking forward to Potential training too).

in 7.13 The Killer in Me (wr DZG) we get the very strange Giles
retreat (Potentials have Spirit Guides? the Scoobies go teddybear
with Giles? Giles is afraid to leave the Slayer alone but is fine
with taking all the helpless Potentials into the wilderness
alone?), which Kennedy implausibly gets to skip. the Initiative
thing with its very odd revisit of 4.21 Primeval and its curious
Riley references (i'm still thinking government conspiracy was the
only way to read that). and the Willow/Kennedy/Warren affair
(beautifully acted but too close to 2.19 I Only Have Eyes for You
so already done, plus really cursory as a farewell to Tara & segue
into Kennedy). although in this ep we can see more traces than
anywhere else of how the power/control and power/real and
death/resurrection were supposed to work throughout season seven
with Spike and Willow's journeys both explicitly compared to Buffy.

in 7.14 First Date (wr JE) we get Buffy's quarrel with Giles about
intuition, Spike and the chip (unclear why Giles is taking this
stance at this point in time, because his argument is two years too
late, plus it rather clashes with his view in 6.22 Grave). Andrew's
temptation by the First, Buffy's investigation of Wood, and
Xander's rescue are all handled fine, but Giles objects to all of
it on the grounds that they aren't being serious enough (maybe he's
worried about being surplus to requirements, but his reactions
still appear way out of whack). intuition, which he's spent seven
years teaching Buffy to trust, is suddenly unveiled as making it
up, what's that about? it's Giles who is way offside here, but he
blames Buffy and, essentially, questions her intuition, her moral
sense, her decisions, and her commitment to the cause: the effect
is demonstrably to separate her from her whole support group. Wood
tells Buffy about his mother the Slayer, so Wood's purpose in the
season shifts here, FirstEvilNikki appears to Wood, making him a
player in his own terms later, and there's a pointless Xander
subplot.

what it adds up to is a whole lot of all five episodes wasted on
misdirection, or at least plot holes. and way too many new
characters to handle, written to serve purposes that in jossian
terms they have not yet earned. while the old characters are
shunted to the side, doing things that are inexplicable, and
without groundwork, so that it looks like they are all shrinking,
regressing right before our eyes. (when i say this, all of this,
i'm excepting Buffy and Spike, their separate arcs, and their arc
together.)

a whole lot of the stuff in these five eps does not serve the
themes of the year, about power, about alone/together, about what
is real. they're just one-offs, standalone eps in the can, marking
time. there's one or two of those in every season, stuff that
simply doesn't work the way they hoped it might. but this is the
midst of the last season; there's just no margin for error, a huge
cast, and way too much to do to segue seamlessly into the
conclusion. and it does matter, because from this point on
continuity demands that the remainder of the season incorporate
what these eps chose to do with the Story. we are stuck with all
the extraneous or ungrounded stuff they've introduced, even if it's
intended only as a way to expand new characters, or play with the
old ones.

it's only five episodes, shown over two months. (and it's important
to note that this period of every season has always included some
of the weakest eps of the year, so it is kind of a tradition. in
season 6 we got Gone and DoubleMeat Palace in this period. plus UPN
in both years lengthened the hiatus period over xmas from one month
to two, destroying the flow of the eps, which in every season
always benefit by back-to-back viewing, just because of the way
they're crafted.) but these five eps are the roots of the
continuity problems, right here.

so what happened right at this point in time? well, this is the
point where i went and made myself the continuity timeline
(appended to this essay). and it's the period, of course, when
Firefly was cancelled. so is it hubris we're looking at? not Joss
biting off more than, but Joss absent, in the cathartic. still, 
AtS fared much better during this period, producing the stellar 
eps Habeas Corpses, Long Day's Journey, Awakening, and Soulless.
conclusion: somebody at AtS was capable of producing arcs and 
keeping the story very tightly told (very few wasted moments 
in AtS 4, particularly in the latter half). at BtVS there was 
only Marti, parttime, and this would be the period when she'd 
be pitching her own show for pilot. maybe that's unfair to
zero in on her, but she was supposed to be in charge. i wasn't
there, though, to know for sure. and ultimately, it's Joss's
responsibility, whether he knew or not. but these five, that's
where everything went - best case report? - dead sloppy.

6. the beginning of the endrun

now we get three strong, powerful eps, that succeed by speaking to
the issues of the whole seven seasons, by the best writers on BtVS.
first there's Petrie's summation, 7.15 Get It Done, in which Buffy
shovels Chloe's grave and returns to shovel the shit in all
directions, and defeats the Men on the ground they stole from her
at the Well of the Slayer, and remains so isolated that she fears
afterwards that she's done the wrong thing. it's a study, that one,
of the Slayer, how alone she really is, and what she risks and
gives, and where her power really comes from and what it's meant
for. i don't agree with all its story choices, but it's certainly
critically important to the seven-year story, and it does as well
as it can with the extraneous characters, Wood and Kennedy and the
Potentials. Why Spike's coat is in the school basement isn't
explained, true, but it's not a can't-be-true.  

then 7.16 Storyteller examines the need for heroes, and possibly
romance, and certainly responsibility for our own misdeeds. it
metas the story that is soon to end, and it uses perspective as a
tool to move back, peeling off layers as it goes. Jane's summation
of the series, about words and cameras and layers of truths. she
moves beyond 'who's got the power' and into, in the meta, the real
lesson of Lessons, 'what is real?' a masterpiece, that one, by any
standard.

then 7.17 Lies My Parents Told Me. which parts are Fury, and which
Goddard? waal, which parts are infuriating?, that should tell
you.<g> this one's a masterclass examining one of the other biggest
themes of the whole series, the difference between justice and
vengeance. the problems in this episode come from, yup, the middle
eps of the season: the proper groundwork was never laid to explain
Giles' change of personality once he returned to Sunnydale, and
Wood as a character is too new and too poorly delineated to take
the weight the role requires in this ep - to do the things he does
and continue to fight with Buffy afterwards. so this ep, although
Spike's backstory itself is powerful, suffers from characterization
continuity problems, and creates by its story more problems that
later are never properly resolved.

7. the five-part ending

7.18 Dirty Girls (wr Goddard) is a powerful beginning, and that boy
can write. very, very tricky ep to write, because (never mind the
weight of its themes) it has to integrate Faith, who hasn't been
seen in Sunnydale for three years, showcase a new villain (five eps
from the end of a seven-year journey!?!), characterize still more
Potentials (five eps ditto), have Wood fire Buffy, and send the
Potentials into their first battle, in which girls die and Xander's
eye is taken. whew. pulls it off, too. i had to write two separate
pieces to do the exegesis on that one (and shoulda done a third,
but i got plumb tuckered out). and he manages throughout not to
fall afoul of continuity anywhere. well, kudos, for sure, and so
looking forward to his upcoming contributions to AtS.

7.19 Empty Places (wr DZG) and 7.20 Touched (wr RK). you know, i
remember Qadesh sending me the writers list for the last five when
it first became known, for comment, and it so stood out to me,
these two eps, that the two weakest writers in the stable would be
assigned eps so late in the final rotation. at that time Marti
Noxon was still supposed to write 7.21 End of Days and i thought
shouldn't it have been Petrie and Espenson in those other slots?
especially considering Jane for one is so hungry, always, for more
to write. and i have to say now i'm still asking myself the same
question. oh, i think both writers here give it the old college
try. but looking at the results, and the furthering in these two
eps of the continuity problems, which End of Days and Chosen then
are compelled to essentially ignore in order to pull off a decent
ending, i have to say that it would have been better to can both
eps (even after they were done) and start again.

because these eps are written to the continuity that the last two
eps throw out. and that's totally confusing, not to mention a waste
of ep time that could have been way better spent. they're still
coming around the curve at best speed, but the train they're racing
to meet has already left the station. they both spun the eps, and
the characters, too far out to bring them back to the desired
endpoint in the two eps that remained. Joss had to ignore them both
to write the ending. We have to ignore them to read the ending.
it's like: Manuel, you are a waste of space. yeah, Empty Places.

(okay, that's as close as i plan to get to rant.)

way too much space is devoted here to minor characters. Faith's
character is IMO not consistently written from one ep to the
other(though at least ED manages to find a way to play her through
consistently and limit the damage). the unanimous switch of
allegiance from Buffy to Faith is very poorly written (in jossian
terms Buffy may have forfeited it but Faith has also failed to earn
it). Wood looks completely extraneous every time he appears. Giles
and Dawn and the Scoobies are like pod people. Anya's motivation is
incomprehensible in places (i still have no idea how Anya got from
Selfless to Chosen in her head/heart, because we never get an arc
that shows it). there are still too many Potentials. the hostility
between Buffy and Giles is pitched way too high. they're still
playing the misdirection that First Evil might be in any of them:
but that makes no story sense at all so late in the game, and that
only dooms the First Evil as Big Bad to a fate as a pretty fizzly
proposition.

in short, both eps have the appearance of having been written much
earlier, in the blackhole period of the middle eps, the very ones
that screw the continuity. to top it all off, FirstEvilBuffy and
Caleb have this weird personal thing going on with one another,
grandiose plans that keep failing, and altogether they're looking,
like, really lame, both of them. there are way too many girls to
care if any of them get killed. there's too much time for Andrew
(though Andrew is the only new major character of the season to
work at all, partly because he is usually well-written, and partly
because he's such a tabula rasa that he can be made to serve any
transient purpose). the thing between Faith and Buffy is mostly too
blandly written to do justice to their violent past. the thing
between Faith and Wood is like, what?, they're writing a new
relationship at this point in time? there has been no leadup to
Dawn and the Scoobies' extreme alienation from Buffy. for that
matter, the climatic declaration of Spike to Buffy in the empty
house is blandly written, and contains words borrowed from Riley to
boot, and that's not just lame, it's shoddy. lucky for us that by
this time their story had long since passed beyond words.

all this time there's been in the season to learn about the First,
and really they know nothing more about (her) than they learned in
7.14 First Date. what is (her) rationale in making appearances, for
instance? not a single person since Eve has been actually tempted
by this ploy (i mean, not even Andrew), nor has anyone failed to
grasp that the person appearing was the First. and why does the
First appear to identify with Buffy? does (she) envy humanity? is
(she) becoming 'corrupted' (well, from the First's PoV) by wearing
Buffy's form? is (she) tired of living in the incorporeal? these
might have been interesting questions earlier in the season. but at
this point, well, we'll never know: we have no data at all on the
matter. so why show it? it can't be to make the audience feel
sympathy. had they nothing else to show? huh.

7.21 End of Days (wr JE and DP). originally MN was to write this
ep: i'd really like to know what happened there exactly. i mean in
the last season, 22 eps, Marti wrote half an episode, that's it,
that's all. (okay, in my daydreams, see, i have this scenario
going, where Joss trots in, having braved the tangles of post-show
placement for Firefly, the abortive wooing of ED for FtVS, the
near-cancellation of AtS, the pitches surrounding all and sundry,
storylines to get AtS to TM's smart conclusion 4.22 Home, the icky
tricky CC thing, the job placements for Zoe and Mal, and oh yeah
the new baby, not sleeping through the night at all, at all,
irrespective of signs up all over 'genius at work', just no respect
from kids these days.... and he says 'well, Marti, how's my first
love, now in its last days, which i left in your capable hands
cause i trust you implicitly to.... and on second thought, now that
i take a close look at what you've left me, go do your pilot,
posthaste, with my blessing, staying not upon the order of your
going, and don't worry your purty little head (still a bit stuck in
Firefly lingo) about 7.21 that you were supposed to write, Jane and
Doug are as usual the last men standing and this should work out
swell, and anyway i have all summer to sleep, if i move to the
guesthouse.)

well, however it fell out, we come to the End of Days (7.21), in
more ways than one. don't get me wrong, the episode's okay. but
it's jarring after the two eps that precede it, which follow the
buggered continuity issues of mid-season. and like Joss after them,
doing 7.22 Chosen, this ep wisely elects to ignore them all. so
although the continuity problems are not its fault, and like Joss
it makes i think the right choices on how to handle them
(invisibility spell, that's the ticket), it's really hard to watch
it in order and not get thrown out of the story frequently by
thoughts of 'hey, but what about...' or 'yeah, but, when did...'.
Buffy returns to the house they threw her out of, and it gets a
one-line acknowledgement by a very minor character; nobody else
either blinks or says 'how the hell are ya, Buff?'. her issues with
Giles also get one line (maybe, that's an interpretation), and
we're never gonna know what became of Giles or what he was thinking
between the time the axe came down and last ep, because we're back
to, well, the beginning, Giles in England with Willow. there is no
sign that Buffy ever fell out with Willow or Xander. everyone's
team-oriented, like the other thing never happened. the Potentials
are pretty much extraneous, like Wood. the Xander conversation is
not logically sound, nor is the plan about Dawn. the Anya/Andrew
thing is nice, but not consistent with Anya's characterization in
this season: no sign of how she got from there to here.
interrelations between FirstEvilBuffy and Caleb are amusing, but
increasingly irrelevant. it is very, very late in the day for Spike
and Buffy to be having that particular miscued conversation, though
it's certainly interesting and in itself suggests enough material
to occupy a whole eighth season. it's impossibly too late for the
Guardian to be showing up, and then she just beats around the bush
till Caleb comes in to kill her. what statement are we making with
that, hmmm? (Guardian class protectors totally ineffectual, and of
even less use to Slayers generally and Buffy in particular than Men
and Watchers? i mean, true, we don't want a dea ex machina anymore
than we wanted the Men to be instrumental, but still - ) and Angel
turns up. mixed messages the theme? pretty odd theme for a second
last ep.


8. conclusion

i see all this stuff, but i have to say, it's not a dealbreaker for
me. i count it as a administrative snafu, not a major failure of
nerve. with perspective, i can't see any reason i should reassess
my stance that the bverse is worth the weight of my regard. and i
don't need to fake hysterical blindness to maintain that posture,
ya know? not blinking, that's still working out okay for me. Joss
kept his Arc of the Covenant with me as well as he could, which is
pretty damn well, over seven years, when the foregoing is basically
all the nit i've got to pick. the ending was true to all the main
themes of the series, and the three protagonists were beautifully
drawn, intensely written, and perfectly played across the whole
canvas, both their character arcs and their triangulated stories.
moreover, the problems listed above were very, very local,
affecting (by my count) only seven eps in this season, and the last
two of those did not perpetrate any errors, but only failed to
resolve them at the point they should have been resolved.

in my view it's a curiosity, because first it's so unusual for ME,
and second because the very fact that the damage is so concentrated
in that one block of time suggests some kind of logistical failure
at that point in time. but it still didn't bugger the main arcs, or
any of the core themes. the fractal exegesis on the what? fourteen
lines of text in Spike and Buffy's last conversation, down in the
Hellmouth, that's a proof structure for the theorem that the main
arcs are intact, if you can see that whole [see the separate essay
"triangulated shifts: blind inside forever coming home"]. so it's
simply not that big of a big.

i can't help thinking that the mileage of some may differ because
they are looking at BtVS as though it was an ensemble production.
which would mean that, with its end, all the stories in it should
be over. but that isn't the way it works. BtVS is about a girl. It
has three protagonists, a world (and sometimes a worldview) it
shares with AtS, and all else is commentary. as long as the
characters remain alive (and often even if they don't), story
remains possible for them all within this world. which still has
three protagonists, whether or not they're gone. that's the way it
works.

Joss clearly loved the ensemble feeling of Firefly. and that's
certainly a possible way to take the bverse now, if he wants to go
there. but neither BtVS nor AtS were built that way, and he's the
guy that built them. the way he designed it, that's the way they
play. there's a reason one show is called Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
and the other's called Angel. now Buffy's seven-year story is over.
if Joss really wants an ensemble, then starting Faith the Vampire
Slayer, or Dawn the Key, or Willow the Witch, would have been a bad
idea too. because of the, you know, title. we have to tell him,
listen, you didn't call Firefly Mal, nossir, and that's how you got
what you got. so next season, go instead for Tales of the Slayers,
Hellmouths I Have Known, Infernal Families, Science and Magic,
Eternal Dimensions, Pestilential, Human Inhuman, Apocalypses Now
and Then, or whatever you like, with your ensemble cast and your
huge bverse world and your recurring characters. let all the
characters we know and love wander in and out with stories exactly
as long as you want them to be. cause then we'll all be happy. and
that's a good.

and so we come to 7.22 Chosen. which resolves the series, rather
than the season. good choice, under the circumstances. there are a
number of ways to look at the whole thing. i'm lucky: i'm pretty
much happy with the way Chosen ends the series. i truly enjoyed
watching Angel find out at last that Spike also had a soul of his
own. not to mention having to accede to Buffy's choice of champion.
Spike saves the world, his own choice, and dies in the ecstatic,
perfectly in character, as Spike and not as William. Buffy tells
him she loves him, and he knows it, and he is the one who chooses
to let her go. Buffy finds in herself not just the Slayer, but the
Protector, which i like. Willow finds the White Magic power in
herself (though i admit that oh, i would have liked to see her find
it in Tara's company). Buffy and Faith share out the Slayer powers,
a solution i wrote into descant descending sometime around last
november.  plus, definitely, free of the weight of her calling and
after

holding on to Spike's ultimate Becoming, Buffy also becomes a Chaos
figure, dancing on the ruins of her city, on the remains of her
duty, which makes me happy to contemplate.  i even got my hint of
seed to come, in the "fat grandchildren". i didn't need the Scoobs
to validate Spike's choices, or Anya's either, by giving them
either credit or grief. i think their demeanor just before the
battle and at the end was the way it goes with old warriors
together: it's an affirmation of life in the midst of death, and
that's the way it's supposed to play. 

so in all those ways perhaps it's easier for me to let go now, and
call it all well-done. the continuity problems of this season are
really an extension, in some ways, of the problems of season six.
if Giles had been around in the sixth season and Willow's arc had
not been buggered then, and if Tara had returned this season
according to plan, the whole season could have been written much
more strongly. in particular, Willow's WillToPower and (remorse?
not sure that's the right word to use) and struggle to find a
workable model for being both powerful and honorable in the world
would have better mirrored Buffy's struggle in this so alone and
isolated season when the Slayer needs to learn how to transcend all
that she has been taught, death model, to learn to live, and love,
and thereby to truly come into her power.

just as Spike kept Buffy alive last year in that bitter season when
she returned reluctantly from the dead, so this year she travelled
the Great Below to retrieve him from the Dead. and they made each
other immeasurably stronger thereby in this season. each one
transcending their nature and their natural fates to give to one
another: trust, and hope, and love. Willow and Tara, that would
have worked with that, i think, in a way that Willow and Kennedy
could not. and the Giles thing would have much better definition,
because it would have been shown onscreen. at any rate, there they
stand at the end, Buffy and Spike, in light, not Chosen but
Choosing, to Become. true, i had my eighth season all planned, but
even macha can't have everything. still, they live, just like the
resurrection spell says. so anything remains possible and i look
forward to the next entire-lack-of End.<vbg>

macha

overview first posted 19 july 2003 to: tea at the ford with macha



9. Appendix#1:

internal chronology, relevant to continuity, for ME during the
2002-2003 season (#7 of BtVS, #4 of AtS, #1 of FF)

[i did this for myself, but it occurs to me that others may
possibly also find it useful in establishing a clear sequence of
events, so i'm sharing it just in case it's of interest.]

13 May 2002:

SdeK moves to AtS as a writer, to replace TM, who will continue to
write and direct for AtS but is becoming showrunner for FF. ME has
hired Drew Goddard to replace SdeK on BtVS. DF co-exec producer of
BtVS will become consulting producer on AtS for fourth season,
while continuing his duties on BtVS. (BBC Cult News)

16 May

Firefly is picked up by Fox network for Fall season, replacing Dark
Angel in the Friday 8 p.m. slot. Fox executives had been
underwhelmed by JW's two-hour pilot and were considering bumping
the series to mid-season replacement status, but picked up instead
on the basis of a new script JW & TM wrote over a weekend at Fox's
request. The network will use that script as the premiere, and
reserve the pilot to be shown later in the season.

11 June

JW says Fox wanted "more action and humor than what I had
originally pitched" for the Firefly pilot. "They also felt that
they wanted to start the show with a one-hour pilot that showed
everybody in place, instead of doing a movie in which you have to
go through the whole thing and get everybody there." As of this
date they're "coming back to the story-breaking process", and
shooting begins in July. (Sci-Fi Wire)

15 July:

Emma Caulfield reports that everyone in the cast except her and SMG
has already signed on for an eighth season. JW is quoted as saying
that after the seventh season, with or without SMG, he's "game for
almost anything. It's an incredibly strong ensemble. It's a very
strong mythos. It's a huge universe we've created and an incredible
cast of actors. So there are definitely opportunities for different
kinds of shows." (Sci Fi Wire)

16 July:

Greenwalt's decision to leave AtS "was a bit of a shock to the
system, because we obviously created the show together, and he's
such a central part of it", JW says. But he and TM have brought in
David Simkins to take his place. "We have built a staff over the
years. It's now our fourth year, so we have enough people to sort
of stop the gap. And the process is more difficult without David,
but the show isn't going to suffer, because I won't let it....
Unfortunately, though, Greenwalt was also a great director, which
means we have to find new guys there." JW says he will also 'lean
on' TM. "He is running AtS with me the way he is running Firefly
with me.... He is, like, totally bifurcated at this point.
Eventually he'll be more on Firefly, when AtS gets on its feet, but
for now, with the sudden hole that Greenwalt has left,... Minear is
spending a lot more time on AtS than we intended."

22 July:

David Greenwalt announces he is leaving AtS because he was unable
to work out a new contract with production studio Fox. He explains
that JW, TM, and him together have already plotted out much of the
season, including the Angel/Connor arc and the midseason twist, 
they have the first three or four stories broken, and he's reading
scripts, and will continue to consult. David Simkins is already in
place as showrunner. (SciFiWire)
  Simkins reports that TM and DG are both still contributing
materially to AtS. "Not a day goes by that [TM's] not down in the
writer's room.... We're all in the room together: Joss, Tim, David,
me, the writing staff - Jeff Bell, Mere Smith, Steve DeKnight." He
says he was hired after a meeting with JW, TM, and ME head Chris
Buchanan, but also "I have an overall deal with [Fox], and there is
that influence, that 'Let's take care of the guy with the deal'
situation." (Zap2It)

4 Aug:

New showrunner David Simkins gives press conference at Fox with
some of the cast.

9 Aug:

David Simkins leaves AtS; producing studio Fox cites "creative
differences".

14 Aug:

TM reports that since Dave Greenwalt's departure to do Miracles for
ABC, he and JW are running both AtS and FF together. David Simkins
as showrunner was hired on short notice and didn't work out, and
now Jeff Bell is taking over that role for day-to-day. "But at the
end of the day, the season arc and the stories are going to have to
be broken by Joss and me and the staff, just like they have been
since the beginning of the year." (Zap2It)

15 Aug:

CC is quoted as saying she'll be back for the fourth season, but
she doesn't know if she'll be recurring or regular cast, but she'd
prefer to be recurring, "Just in the sense 'cause I want to be a
mother, and being a mother on a show working those hours is in
direct conflict. It's just not easy, and I don't want to be an
absentee mother. I don't want nannies. I don't want that ideally.
I'm older than most of the other actresses, so it's dawned on me."
(BtVS Magazine #37)

"Gossip on the web has it that some of Angel's principal cast
members were not too happy with Mr Simkins and that is what
precipated his leaving. Joss has described his departure more
diplomatically by stating that it was unrealistic to expect a
newcomer to jump full swing into the boss' chair at the height of
production." (ScoopMe)

28 Aug:

TV Guide Online reports that Amber Benson "has agreed to return 
to BtVS this fall in a new role".
  
9 Sept:

Science Fiction Weekly Interview with JW:
"I'm going to be more involved in AtS and BtVS even than I was last
year. At the same time, I'm going to be completely immersed in
Firefly. And the trick to it all is increased efficiency. Because
I'm also going to be home more, too. I have all these New Year's
Resolutions. And there really is a question of increased
efficiency. We juggled some writers. They're all aware that they
have to step up now in ways they haven't before, and that's great.
That's a great opportunity for a writer, or a writer-producer. And
I have built this family. And although daddy left and we all feel
bad about that, it's, I still have a huge extended family who are
great creative people. So it's just a question of absolutely using
the time and using the people and making sure that nobody is ever
not busy. Is it impossible? Yes. Are we going to accomplish it?
Yes. Because I won't abandon BtVS this late in the game. I won't
abandon Firefly this early in the game. And I especially won't
abandon AtS ri! ght in the middle of its power, because AtS is the
one that nobody really knows about. It's flying under the radar."

20 Sept:

FF 1.01 The Train Job (wr JW & TM dir JW) is 1st shown.

AtS 4.03 The House Always Wins and BtVS 7.05 Selfless are currently
shooting. 

JW on shooting three series: "It's a really dumb idea, and I don't
recommend it. Do not do this at home, because it's exhausting,
painful and annoying. I wouldn't do it again. This will be the only
time I do this." (EOnline)

24 Sept:

BtVS 7.01 Lessons (wr & dir JW) is 1st shown (rc: Giles, Halfrek).

27 Sept:

FF 1.02 Bushwhacked (wr & dir TM) is 1st shown.

29 Sept:

It is announced that ED will return as Faith for three episodes of
AtS and the final five eps of BtVS.

1 Oct:

BtVS 7.02 Beneath You (wr DP dir Marck) is 1st shown (rc: Giles).

4 Oct: 

FF 1.03 Our Mrs Reynolds (wr JW dir Curtis-Hall) is 1st shown.

5 Oct:

Charisma Carpenter gets married.

6 Oct:

AtS 4.01 Deep Down (wr SdeK dir O'Hara) is 1st shown (VK becomes
cast) (rc: Lilah, Justine, Gavin, Linwood).

8 Oct:

BtVS 7.03 Same Time, Same Place (wr JE dir Contner) is 1st shown.

13 Oct:

AtS 4.02 Ground State (wr Smith dir Grossman) is 1st shown (Gwen
introduced) (rc: Lilah).

AtS 4.07 Apocalypse, Nowish shoot is finished (reported SdeK at
Bronze).

15 Oct:

BtVS 7.04 Help (wr Kirshner dir Rosenthal) is .1st shown (Cassie &
Amanda introduced)

18 Oct:

FF 1.04 Jaynestown (wr Edlund dir Grabiak) is 1st shown.

19 Oct:

MN is asked about the logistics of Joss having three shows on the
air:  "It's sort of a weird time for all of us, too, because David
Greenwalt left AtS and I [was] out with the baby. I'm back... with
the baby, so it will be sort of not 100% fulltime, but I'll be back
lending a hand. A lot of his support system, as it happened, has
kind of been shook up this year. So even more is demanded of him on
the other shows than usual. But at the same time, there's that sort
of devilish gleam in his eye, which is all about, "Well, this can't
be done, so I shall do it and do it well." And I'm reading the
scripts as they come and they're really good. I don't feel quality
has been compromised *at all*, which is only Joss. Only someone who
is slightly insane." (Sci Fi Magazine)

20 Oct:

AtS 4.03 The House Always Wins (wr DF dir Grabiak) is 1st shown.

Shooting on location for: BtVS 7.08 Sleeper.

22 Oct:

BtVS 7.05 Selfless (wr Goddard dir Gershman) is 1st shown (rc:
Olaf, D'Hoffryn, Hali)

24 Oct:

location shooting for: BtVS 7.07 Conversations with Dead People

25 Oct:

FF 1.05 Out of Gas (wr Minear dir Solomon) is 1st shown.

"I'm beginning to suspect that it may be [Buffy's] last season", JW
tells TV Guide Online. "Nothing's official, but it's starting to
feel possible. The way people are talking, there's a finality to
it.".... Whedon says Gellar remains undecided. "She hasn't told me
one way or another."

27 Oct:

AtS 4.04 Slouching Toward Bethlehem (wr Bell dir Schoolnik) is 1st
shown (rc: Lilah).

30 Oct:

JW reports that Amber Benson will not be returning to BtVS as
expected. "Benson - who was slated to be brought back to life as a
different character - failed to reach a deal with producer 20th
Century Fox." (TV Guide Online)

"Addressing reports that this may be the last season for UPN's
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, star Sarah Michelle Gellar told Access
Hollywood that no decisions have been made. "I read that this
morning in the paper", Gellar told the entertainment news show. "It
was the first I'd read about that as well. There have been
absolutely no decisions made. Conversations haven't even begun."

1 Nov:

FF 1.06 Shindig (wr JE dir Gillum) is 1st shown.

JW: "I think the chances for an eighth season are good. Whether or
not they will include Sarah, I don't know, but I suspect there may
be some kind of incarnation of the show, even if she decides to
pull back or even pull out altogether. Right now, I'm looking at
every possibility humanly possible, but it doesn't really affect
where we're going this year." (Sci Fi Wire)

JW tells TV Guide Online that if BtVS ends, it's "very possible"
some cast members could make a permanent jump to AtS. "I think it
would be cool. It's sort of exciting, because you have this
universe and all these people and all of their juxtapositions. It's
interesting - to me anyway. But until I know what's happening with
BtVS - and AtS - I don't know who will go where." (JW to TV Guide
Online)

3 Nov:

AtS 4.05 Supersymmetry (wr Craft & Fain dir Norton) is 1st shown
(rc: Lilah).

4 Nov:

The projected Buffy animated series  is defunct. "We just couldn't
find a home for it - which will baffle me to the grave" (JW, BBC
Cult News)

5 Nov:

BtVS 7.06 Him (wr Greenberg dir Gershman) is 1st shown.

8 Nov:

FF 1.07 Safe (wr Greenberg dir Grossman) is 1st shown.

10 Nov:

AtS 4.06 Spin the Bottle (wr & dir JW) is 1st shown.

11 Nov:

JW: "This year, three series is unlike anything I've ever
experienced. I never want to do it again because it would kill me,
and I will not phone them in. I will not turn out two good series
and one contractual obligation. I believe making movies is a
gentleman's game. It's leisurely. And it's beginning to interest me
because I'm very, very old. Working on TV is like dog years."
(Houston Chronicle)

12 Nov:

BtVS 7.07 Conversations with Dead People (wr JE & Goddard dir
Marck) is 1st shown (rc: Joyce, Jonathan, Andrew, Warren, Cassie).

15 Nov:

FF 1.08 Ariel (wr Molina dir Kroeker) is 1st shown.

17 Nov:

AtS 4.07 Apocalypse, Nowish (wr SdeK dir Gillum) is 1st shown (rc:
Lilah, Gavin, Beast introduced).

19 Nov:

BtVS 7.08 Sleeper (wr DF & JE dir Levi) is 1st shown (rc: Giles).

22 Nov:

JW on Firefly set dynamics: "I'm not saying my other casts don't
work hard. And some of them get along, and it's great. But there's
a star, and then there's the ensemble. And there's tensions on the
set.... It's not one big happy family. It seldom is on a television
set. And [in Firefly], I've got nine people, all of whom are great
in a scene. Any pair of them works great. And all of them doing
their best to help each other out. It's early on still. But they
really feel more like an ensemble than any bunch I've worked with."
(Sci-Fi Wire)

26 Nov:

BtVS 7.09 Never Leave Me (wr Goddard dir Solomon) is 1st shown (rc:
Travers, Lydia, Andrew, Turok-han introduced).

shooting on location for: BtVS 7.11 Showtime

UPN reports discussions with JW about future of BtVS (if SMG
continues) and possible spinoffs.

29 Nov:

TM reports online that JW and TM and AtS staff broke AtS 4.13
[Salvage, first in the Faith trilogy], but he will no longer be
writing or directing it: instead DF will write. This is because on
FF they can't hire directors in advance for the back-9 order owing
to Fox's habit of just approving a couple of eps at a time. TM 
still expects, though, to be able to do the AtS season finale,
since FF should wrap for the season earlier than AtS.

3 Dec:

Glenn Quinn dies.

6 Dec:

FF 1.09 War Stories (wr Cain dir Contner) is 1st shown.


12 Dec:

JW on the Firefly cast and crew: "I've had crew members who've been
working for 20 years say they've never worked around such
excitement, support and love. You walk on that set, you're
transported." And on FF's prospects: "Don't think for a second that
I have given up on this show. I think it has been mistreated
shamefully, but the Fox network has indicated that they would not
stand in the way (which they can) of my finding a new home for the
show.... But even if the show goes back up ve given up on this
show. I think it has been mistreated shamefully, but the Fox
network has indicated that they would not stand in the way (which
they can) of my finding a new home for the show.... But even if the
show goes back up elsewhere, I'm going to lose a good portion of my
crew. Production will halt, they'll need to find new jobs. You
can't imagine how that feels. How much they brought to the table,
how hard and well they worked. And their Christmas bonus is this."
(net posting, Hellmouth Central)

13 Dec:

FF 1.10 Objects in Space (wr & dir JW, who calls this his
existential episode) is 1st shown.

13 Dec:

Firefly goes "on hiatus" at Fox network, and doesn't plan to order
any more eps. TM is finishing filming the last of 3 unaired eps. TM
says "there's some frustration that we feel like the show really
wasn't allowed to be found. There were a lot of scheduling issues
and inconsistency in airing, and some lack of promotion".

14 Dec:

shooting BtVS 7.12 Potential, and reshooting location shots for
BtVS 7.11 Showtime

17 Dec:

BtVS 7.10 Bring on the Night (wr MN & DP dir Grossman) 1st shown
(rc: Giles, Joyce, Dru, Andrew, introduction of Kennedy & Molly)

18 Dec:

To Joss Whedon & Kai Cole, a son, named Arden.

20 Dec:

FF 1.11&12 Serenity (Pts. 1&2) (wr & dir JW) 1st shown

7 Jan 2003:

BtVS 7.11 Showtime (wr DF dir Grossman) 1st shown (rc: Giles,
Andrew, Kennedy, Molly, Amanda, introduction of Rona & Vi)

13 Jan:

UPN is discussing with JW four possibilities for next season: SMG
returns for another season, SMG returns in a few eps as a guest
star, a BtVS spinoff is launched, or the show is cancelled.

15 Jan:

AtS 4.08 Habeas Corpses (wr Bell dir Schoolnik) 1st shown (rc:
Lilah, Beast, Gavin, WhiteRoom Girl)

Chris Buchanan of ME reports that ABC, CBS, NBC, UPN, and the SCI
FI Channel have all turned down deals to resurrect Firefly. But the
sets have not yet been struck, and they have explored a lot of
options, including moving production to Canada, in order to lower
costs for the show. "Joss is completely committed to finding a home
for it. And we're joking, we're saying puppet theatre if need be.
Because we just love our whole cast and crew and have had a great
time on it." (Sci Fi Wire)

21 Jan:

BtVS 7.12 Potential (wr Kirshner dir Contner) 1st shown
(rec:Andrew, Clem, Kennedy, Molly, Rona, Vi, Amanda)

22 Jan:

AtS 4.09 Long Day's Journey (wr Smith dir O'Hara) 1st shown (rc:
Gwen, Beast)

28 Jan:

location shooting for: BtVS 7.15 Get It Done

29 Jan:

AtS 4.10 Awakening (wr DF & SdeK dir Contner) 1st shown (rc: Beast)

4 Feb:

BtVS 7.13 The Killer in Me (wr Greenberg dir Solomon) 1st shown
(rc: Giles, Warren, Andrew, Amy, Kennedy)

5 Feb:

AtS 4.11 Soulless (wr Craft & Fain dir Astin) 1st shown (rc: Beast)

10 Feb:

There are rumours of ED signed to a spinoff with ME, but Chris
Buchanan says ME is waiting on UPN and Fox production studio to
"figure out what they want to do. (New York Post)

11 Feb:

BtVS 7.14 First Date (wr JE dir Grossman) 1st shown (rc: Andrew,
Giles, Kennedy, Jonathan, Amanda, Nikki, Chao-Ahn introduced) (gs:
Ashanti as Lissa)

12 Feb:

AtS 4.12 Calvary (wr Bell & SdeK & Smith dir Norton) 1st shown (rc:
Lilah, Beast)

5 Mar:

AtS 4.13 Salvage (wr Fury dir Kibbee) 1st shown (rc: Faith, Lilah,
Beast)

12 Mar:

AtS 4.14 Release (wr SdeK & Craft & Fain dir Contner) 1st shown
(rc: Faith)

18 Feb:

BtVS 7.15 Get It Done (wr & dir DP) 1st shown (rc: Andrew, Kennedy,
Amanda, Molly, Chloe, Rona, Chao-Ahn, FirstSlayer)

25 Feb:

BtVS 7.16 Storyteller (wr JE dir Grabiak) 1st shown ( rc: Andrew,
Warren, Jonathan, Kennedy, Rona, Amanda)

26 Feb:

ED signs up to do a pilot for Fox, originally called Heroine (later
renamed Tru Calling). JW explains why she passed on FtVS: "A number
of reasons. She was interested in playing another character. Fox
came at her with a big, solid offer, whereas UPN was still going,
'Um, *what*?' And it's a bigger network." (TV Guide Online. 19 May
2003)

4 Mar:

JW on the 3-show season, which he calls cathartic: "'I am not
nearly as nice as I was,' he laughs, reciting a parody of himself
performed by his colleagues: 'Men, we're going to take that hill...
well, probably not, most of us will probably die, we probably won't
take the hill... we don't need the hill to win the war, I don't
think morally we should win the war and, anyway, I'm afraid of
hills...' Even though I love [my] writers, if they're not giving me
what I need, I get all mean and scary. I won't settle. I've settled
occasionally and known it, and regretted it. I'm probably not as
pleasant to be around as I used to be... but we're getting it
done." (smh.com)

7 Mar:

SMG exclusive interview in Entertainment Weekly: "Buffy Quits". "At
the beginning of this season, Joss and I had a conversation outside
my trailer. We both kind of felt that this was the end, that we
should make that decision and say it publicly. And then... we
didn't. We didn't even talk about it for a while....[It used to be
Joss] was here every single day, I was here every single day, and
neither of us could make a move without the other. And then, when
he was creating [the Fox series] Firefly, he really wasn't here at
all. It's been weird. You're so used to seeing him on the set; now
he's much more a presence from above."

19 Mar:

AtS 4.15 Orpheus (wr Smith dir O'Hara) 1st shown (rc: Faith,
Willow)

24 Mar:

Charisma Carpenter gives birth to a son.

25 Mar:

BtVS 7.17 Lies My Parents Told Me (wr DF & Goddard dir DF) 1st
shown (rc: Giles, Drusilla, Andrew, Kennedy, Rona, Nikki)

shooting location scenes for: BtVS 7.19 Empty Places, 7.20 Touched,
7.21 End of Days, and 7.22 Chosen

26 Mar:

AtS 4.16 Players (wr Bell & Craft & Fain dir Grossman) 1st shown
(rc: Gwen)

Dave Greenwalt reports that he went with JW, TM, and Jeff Bell to
pitch, to the WB and Fox as producing studio, a fifth season of AtS
that would revamp the whole show . He says he thinks the revamp
ideas are so strong they should drive the show for at least two
more years. (Zap2It)

2 Apr:

AtS 4.17 Inside Out (wr & dir SdeK) 1st shown (gs: JB as Darla,
Skip, Jasmine introduced)

9 Apr:

AtS 4.18 Shiny Happy People (wr Craft & Fain dir Grabiak) 1st shown
(rc: Jasmine)

11 Apr:

shooting location scenes for: BtVS 7.22 Chosen

15 Apr:

BtVS 7.18 Dirty Girls (wr Goddard dir Gershman) 1st shown (rc:
Faith, Giles, Molly, Rona, Kennedy, Andrew, Amanda, Chao-Ahn, Caleb
& Shannon & Caridad introduced)

16 Apr:

AtS 4.19 The Magic Bullet (wr & dir Bell) 1st shown (rc: Jasmine)

23 Apr:

AtS 4.20 Sacrifice (wr Edlund dir Straiton) 1st shown (rc: Jasmine)

27 Apr:

TM on the season finale for AtS 4.22 Home: "We tried to design it
so that it would basically be a pilot for next season." DB on the
series: "Joss has a really long-term vision for the show. In order
to get there, you have to go through a lot of stuff, and that's
what we're doing now." TM on JM: "We really think Spike could add
something to the show. He's a great character and a great actor....
We talked to David [DB] about it, and he was totally on board. He
loves playing scenes with James." DB on Spike: "The addition of
someone like him coming over would be fantastic. He's been stuck in
a small town for too long. He needs to get out in a big city and
see where the big dogs play." (Zap2It)

29 Apr:

BtVS 7.19 Empty Places (wr Greenberg dir Contner) 1st shown (rc:
Giles, Faith, Caleb, Andrew, Kennedy, Rona, Amanda, Chao-Ahn, Clem,
Shannon)

30 Apr:

AtS 4.21 Peace Out (wr DF dir Kibbee) 1st shown (rc: Jasmine,
Lilah)

6 May:

BtVS 7.20 Touched (wr Kirshner dir Solomon) 1st shown (rc: Faith,
Kennedy, Giles, Andrew, Caleb, Rona, Mayor Wilkins, Amanda,
Shannon, Vi, Caridad)

7 May:

AtS 4.22 Home (wr & dir TM) 1st shown (rc: Lilah) (gs: JMW as Knox)

13 May: 

BtVS 7.21 End of Days (wr JE & DP dir Grabiak) 1st shown (rc:
Giles, Faith, Caleb, Angel, Andrew, Kennedy, Amanda, Vi, Caridad)
(gs: CH as Guardian)

15 May:

ED's show for Fox, Tru Calling, added to the fall schedule.

16 May:

JW on the decision to make this the last year for BtVS: "The
decision came about largely because I was like, 'I can't do this
anymore! I'm so sleepy!' [SMG's] contract was up, amd I knew that
she wanted to branch out. She always gave her best and was very
professional, but at the same time, I knew that she was getting
worn down by it, and so was I. Just physically, not mentally. I
feel like the show could run forever in terms of the stories you
could tell, but it's just that eventually the process grinds you
down; you're going to start letting things slip. I didn't want that
to happen. So this whole year was designed to be the last year of
the show.... But actually, the biggest problem a show can have
ultimately comes from the network or the studio or from the stars.
We didn't have those problems. I would say that it was actually a
pretty smooth ride. So smooth, in fact, that Firefly... was such a
slap in the face to me because I just assumed this is how it
worked." And on s! pinoffs: "What happened was, I came up with a
premise, and then Eliza Dushku (Faith) landed in our laps. We
talked about the possibility of a spinoff, but that fell through.
Although it was a good premise, it would've required a great deal
of energy on the part of a lot of people, most of whom were like,
'I feel the need to do something new. When it didn't happen, we
realized that we were clutching our stomachs with relief. Even
those of us who might be involved in another spinoff - and I think
there's great potential in a lot of different directions for
spinoffs - we need a breather." (CNN.com)

20 May:

BtVS 7.22 Chosen (wr & dir JW) 1st shown (rc: Faith, Angel, Andrew,
Giles, Kennedy, Wood, Caleb, Amanda, Vi, Rona, Shannon)

Nathan Fillion reports that he is completing audio commentaries for
a complete DVD set of Firefly. There are still plans for a movie,
with JW writing and directing.
  
21 May:

The WB announces the renewal of AtS for a fifth season, with JM as
cast, and CC gone. "We think it was the right thing to do for Joss,
the right thing to do for the fans.... With AtS, we felt like it
would have been extraordinarily abrupt to have brought it to an
end, brought the whole 'Buffy' mythology to an end." The WB head
reported that the WB was negotiating deals with a "handful" of
Buffy writers to move to AtS, and that other BtVS characters are
scheduled to make AtS appearances in the coming season. (Zap2It)

macha

chronology first posted 16 july 2003 to: tea at the ford with macha



10. Appendix#2:

discontinuities, miscommunication, and the lesson of the lost exegesis


[harmony/dissonance: playing the counterpoint, or, how Joss ate
macha's homework. that's the original title: only the
squarebracketed bits have been added later. this is a micro
demonstration, exhibit A, of what happens to context when
continuity problems start living too large on the body of the work.
it's my unspoiled, and unfinished, exegesis, spinning off 7.21 End
of Days, written by Doug Petrie and Jane Espenson, directed by
Marita Grabiak, BtVS episode #143, buffyverse episode #231. and one
to go. wasn't gonna do crit on the episode at first, as it made so
little sense after what came before that it felt it just had to be
the first half of a two-hour ep intended to rewrite the season, and
i don't like to inhabit the halfway. but then i caved, got as far
in as the Spike & Buffy scene (in first draft form, which usually
lacks the argument), and then, bemused by the million questions
raised by the analysis but compelled by the need to stop and watch
the finale, abandoned this piece, temporarily (or so i told myself
at the time).

so this unfinished exegesis was entirely done before i saw 7.22
Chosen and wrote the exegesis for that, the piece called "on beyond
sacrifice: becoming in light". nothing in this piece, as far as it
went, was altered afterwards. the Andrew/Anya conversation at the
hospital, the meeting between Buffy & the Guardian, Dawn's
turnaround, and the meeting between Buffy, Caleb, and Angel, were
the sections of the episode that remained undone: i estimated about
three hours of work left before i could send.

i tried several times to finish it, but could not: i simply
couldn't take back what i now knew about how things were and
weren't gonna be resolved. and the piece was undoable as exegesis
because it did not have a continuum within which to work, owing to
the cumulative effect of the massive discontinuities that littered
the seventh season. once 7.22 Chosen showed, i was able to do
exegesis on that by viewing it as a piece in itself, a standalone
episode built on the context not of the seventh season but of the
series as a whole: i highlighted the reconciliations Joss did, for
instance on the character of Giles, and left, following Joss'
example, the rest alone. but once i knew all my issues in this
piece had no resolution, i couldn't find a way to finish this
piece. too much of End of Days simply was not in harmony with what
had gone before.

Chosen, I believe, gets away with this and succeeds on its own
terms by simply ignoring the preceding text for the season; it
takes as its goal the resolution of the series. so Joss in Chosen
makes some backwards reconciliation, but only of those particular
elements he needs to use to tell his story. but End of Days doesn't
have that luxury. it simply cannot be reconciled with the two
preceding episodes, Empty Places and Touched, and with a number of
specific episodes before that, and that made doing exegesis in the
end untenable.

questions that eat the text, and the craft, and the art, and won't
let go. an episode about communication that mostly, in the ironic,
cannot communicate because there is no context understood on which
the reader can still stand, outside, to view the story.

best
macha]

i move through valleys of the damned
the dead reach out to me
but i have life to give because
he gave it back to me

Buffy's underground again, pulling the axe effortlessly from the
stone because she's the One. She's in the matrix. Prophecy Girl.
Could Faith have done that, then? Caleb's patronizing her again,
like that's gonna work: "I know you're backing away", she tells
him, a bit gleeful, like Joan in Tabula Rasa. Is this the destiny
for which she was made?

FirstBuffy tells Caleb to let her go, and RealBuffy looks like she
hears that conversation. Can she really see and hear her now? Are
they really part of one another? "She has friends," she says, "and
her friends are in trouble. Faith go boom." Is she warning off
Caleb, then, or warning Buffy? It's a very odd beginning. What is
real? Buffy's first lesson to Dawn, about and not/about power: the
real lesson is, it's always real. Yeah, but in what sense? That's
still the question.

Is that why Buffy just happens to drop in on Faith's excursion
underground, with the axe all handy? Good thing she does, three
ubervamps have cornered the girls. Three (I'm looking for dualities
today, and triangulations; you can come too, if you want). The axe
thing works a treat, and they all beat a hasty retreat. "There's
always more", Buffy says grimly. Because that's the way it is in a
war. That's how you model it, that's how it plays. 

It's only fair to note in passing that Kennedy is the heroine of
that doomed excursion. There are casualties, hard to say how many:
three deaths for sure, and probably more. It's only because of
Kennedy that any of them survive, including Faith. She insists they
search out Faith before they leave, and they find her underwater,
unconscious, and take her with them. Kennedy keeps them all from
panicking, gets them moving, and puts herself between the girls and
the ubervamps, even without a weapon. It isn't enough, of course:
just like Faith's careful plan wasn't enough. But it was brave,
resourceful, intelligent. Selfless, even, in the best sense. So
Kennedy can learn.

Back at Revello Drive earlier Andrew's looted food from the empty
supermarket: Giles so oddly grabs for the cookies. The Scoobs look
alienated, standing apart from one another. Now the livingroom
becomes a field hospital. Faith is taken upstairs,


Amanda: I think we got punished.
Buffy: What?
Kennedy: We - we followed her. And it was -
Vi: It didn't work out.
Buffy: You guys, it was a trap. It's not her fault. It could have 
just as easily happened to me.
Caridad: So, are you like, back?
Buffy: I don't know. I guess I'm not leaving.
Kennedy: So, we got a plan now, or anything?
Buffy: Yeah, there's a plan. Get ready. Time's up. (She goes
upstairs.)
Amanda (to Kennedy:) I still think we got punished.

"Time's up. Rules change." (Oz in 3.04 Beauty and the Beasts, wr
MN) Punishment, that's an odd way of stating it. For what, hubris?
Potentials as the Chorus, Faith as the flawed hero, Buffy as the
god in the machine? Feels like the lesson's more in the
rules-change line, though. But oh, it's hard to read into, this
one. 

Upstairs, Buffy is discussing the new weapon, which they're calling
a scythe (yo, props?: axes don't look like scythes, not even a
little, and that there's an axe). Was it rechristened just to
accommodate Willow's quip "scythe matters", which both girls find
amusing? No tension between Buffy and Willow at all: odd, that. The
scythe kills in three different ways: the axe end, a wooden stake
attachment, and a sharp pointy metal end to the handle. Three. A
sacred weapon, most likely. Giles is testing it out, admiringly,
which is more usually a Wesley thing.

There is no particular hostility between him and Buffy, but it's
still an odd exchange:

G: I can not understand how something like this could exist without
my having heard of it.
B: Well, the good guys are not exactly known for their
communication skills.

Kinda self-important on Giles' part, I'm thinking: what's he
asserting here, omniscience? Buffy's remark is very Ms Pointy, and
Giles gets it and does not rise to the bait. Who is communicating
here, and what, and why?

G: Right. Any chance that it might be something other than a tool
for killing things? B: The First's guys clearly wanted it out of
that stone. It's not just a tool. It's important.

Ah. This is the critical exchange. Is it a weapon, or is it a tool?
Because this is going to define the nature of the final battle.
Will she use the war model (a death model) she has been given, or
will she use a life model? Is she the Slayer, or the Protector?
Death is your gift, love is your gift. At the End of Days.

B: We need to find out whatever we can. Who made it? When? Why?
Does it have a name? I don't know, a credit report? Just find out
fast.
G: We'll start work immediately.
W: Yeah, don't worry, Buff, we'll find out everything there is to
know.
B: Good. Because right now, that thing's all we got going for us.

Boy, isn't that a back to the beginning kind of an exchange. Wiping
out five years worth of mixed signals. Okay, it's armageddon, but
still. Should we wipe this ep or Empty Places, then? Cause it isn't
clear to me how both sequences can be real, emotionally speaking.
That's my credit report, and I hate to make it. But I'm reduced to
wondering if this apocalypse comes in alternate versions, and that
can't be good. So who's on First? Who's got the axe?

There follows another curious exchange, with Anya as Nurse Stimpy
talking to Andrew. Her bedside manner is wonderful, even for Anya:
"Many of these girls will die. A slaughterhouse is what it is.
Trying to talk will just kill you sooner." "What?", the poor girl
she's working on keeps saying. It's hilarious. Black humour in the
face of death. But is it real? Because when Andrew decides, on the
strength of some single-malt, that it's time for another foray to
the hospital for supplies, and volunteers Anya, Anya's reaction is
seen through Andrew's unreliable-narrator lens: she goes all 'my
hero'y and what Anya could that possibly be coming from?

There follows a conversation with Xander and Buffy, in which he
wants to stay and fight at her side, and she wants to send him
away. As though there would be an away in a final battle. Xander
expects her to die, and he wants to be there. Wait, that didn't
come out quite right. It doesn't, either. Come out quite right, 
I mean:

X: I should be at your side, that's all I'm saying.
B: You will be. You're my strength, Xander. You're the reason I
made it this far. I trust you with my life. That's the reason I
need you to do this for me.

Nothing wrong with Xander's logic. He can't be both there and away.
She talks him into it anyway, while they're bantering about her
immanent death: 

B: Don't look at me. You're the one who said I'm gonna die.
X: I never said you were gonna die. I implied that you were gonna
die, it's totally different.
B: Yeah, okay, sure.
X: Besides, if you die, I'll just bring you back to life. That's
what I do. 

Neat conversation between old comrades. Conceded. Can't bring her
back to life if he isn't there, though, can he? More discontinuity.

So much talk of death, death everywhere, the army field hospital in
the livingroom, the Potentials fewer, the second Slayer comatose,
the toplined Slayer expected to die. She was built to lose. She was
born to die. Giles and Willow are doing research on the fancy
weapon. The Axe of Dekeron, she reads out, "lost since the
children's crusade, where it was said to have killed.... Oh.
Children. Hope that's not it." Yes, there are children here. War
model. Death model. And oh, what about the children. Then Giles
plays narrator for a min, describing the episode, the research:

How are we supposed to narrow this down? The illustrations are
never clear enough. Oh damn! We're running out of time. We really
haven't got anything useful.

So much for the exposition. Can I go meta on that? Cause I'd have
to agree. Giles suggests using magic to uncover the secrets of the
weapon. Willow is once again reluctant to use her power:

W: If I try something big, I change, and then it's all black hair
and veins and lightning bolts. I can hardly do a locator spell
without getting dark roots.
G: And if it was necessary?
W: Honestly? I don't know. (She returns to the computer.)
G: All right. Do what you can. That's all any of us can do.

No pressure on Willow to... perform, even at the End of Days. But
isn't it time, really, to fish or cut bait? Then what are you doing
here?, as Buffy said to them all in Get It Done. But what do they
expect from the Slayer? More. There's always more. She can die
again, for an instance. "The scythe is the symbol of death. Let's
see where these pagans buried their dead."

Xander reports to Dawn that the government doesn't trust his depth
perception. He complains about I-jokes. Dawn says, "everyone's
still on guard around you". And from behind her he does the
chloroform thing. Pardon me? And Buffy sent him to do this? "She's
a part of me", as Buffy says in The Gift. And FirstEvilBuffy, how
are they related then? Because we didn't see that part of Xander's
conversation with Buffy, we don't really know the why of this
action. Because there are at least three ways to read it: there is
something wrong with Xander, or there is something wrong with Dawn,
or Buffy is just trying to protect her little sister. Not enough
evidence either way to tell. Too many cues and too few clues. It's
a problem: to me there are massive discontinuities, both in terms
of plot holes and in terms of character portrayal, between
especially Empty Places and this episode. Did they junk the season
arc at about this point, and just leave the split ends dangling?
It's making i! t really hard to navigate, to do a reading.

But meanwhile the relationship between FirstEvilBuffy and Caleb is
devolving in interesting ways. What are we looking at here,
exactly? Are they playing out some superevil version of Buffy and
Spike? And FEBuffy is really getting fixated on RealBuffy:

FEBuffy: She's powerful right now. And you're weak.
Caleb: Now all of a sudden I'm getting less calm.
FEB: Face it, your strength is waning. It's been quite some time
since we've merged.

Hey, there's a summary. And FEBuffy, amusingly, is way more
romantic than the one-of-a-kind model:

C: All right, let's do it.
FEB (doing sarcasm:) Boy, you sure know how to romance a girl. No
flowers, no dinner, no tour of the rectory. Just okay, I'm ready,
let's do it. Help me, my knees are weak.

And on it goes with the foreshadowing:

C: Watch what you say now. You're starting to sound like her. This
is a sacred experience for me.
FEB: And for me as well. Look, when this is all over, and our
armies spring forth, and our will sweeps the world, I will be able
to enter every man, woman and child on this earth, just as I enter
you.
C: Are you trying to make me jealous?
FEB: I'm trying to make you a god. (She assumes demonic form.)
C: I am thy humble servant. (He is filled, blackeyed:) And I am
ready to serve thee.

Caleb doesn't want the realBuffy. But FEBuffy wants to be the
realBuffy. And meanwhile they reenact a blasphemous demonic version
of the sacred marriage. Whew. Well, Caleb is doomed right there.<g>
And does this mean Spike gets to be a god? (Just kidding. Maybe.)

Meanwhile, Faith and Buffy are really talking at last. Faith feels
the power of the weapon, as Willow did not:

F: It's old, it's strong, and it feels like it's mine. (She looks
at Buffy, and throws it down. Their whole history is contained in
that look. Flatly:) I guess that means it's yours.
B: It belongs to the Slayer.
F: Slayer in charge. Which, I'm guessing, is you.
B: I honestly don't know. Does it matter?
F: It never mattered to me. Somebody has to lead.

Never? Has to? The Chosen Two. It was Faith's phrase. It was what
she wanted. Sometimes. When she didn't want just to be Buffy. Want.
Take. Have.

"Let's vote for Chao-Ahn", Faith says. "It's hard to lead someone
into a deathtrap if you don't speak English." And there's
communication linked to death. Again. "It wasn't your fault", Buffy
tells her:

People die. You lead them into battle, they're gonna die. It
doesn't matter how ready you are. Or how smart you are. War is
about death. Needless, stupid death.

But talking about death, Faith and Buffy come to an understanding
at last about the nature of the Calling, and what it's like for the
One, The Slayer.

F: Me, by myself, all the time, I'm looking at you, everything you
have, and, I don't know, jealous. Then there I am, everyone's
looking to me, trusting me to lead them and I've never felt so
alone in my entire life.
B: Yeah.
F: And that's you. Every day. Isn't it?
B: I love my friends. I'm very grateful for them. But that's the
price. Being a Slayer.
F: There's only supposed to be one. Maybe that's why you and I
could never get along. We're not supposed to exist together.
B: Also you went evil and were killing people.
F: Good point. Also a factor.
B: But you're right. I mean, I guess everyone's alone. But being 
a Slayer, there's a burden we can't share. 
F: And noone else can feel it. Thank god we're hot chicks with
superpowers.
B: Takes the edge off.
F: Comforting.
B: Uh huh.

Are they one, or two? Did Faith take the dark side so Buffy
wouldn't have to? Did Buffy push her away because she refused to
acknowledge that darkness in herself? Could they ever truly have
shared the office, that burden they can't share? Did either of them
survive the price? Changing of the guard.

Buffy goes down the stairs and meets Spike coming in. And they do a
dance. It's not the usual. They're trading places in a way.

S: Honey, you're home.
B: Yeah.

Did he come to make sure that she was all right? And what does he
see? Himself forever outside that '50s sitcom version of the
happily ever after references?
  
S: And you did it. Fulfilled your mission. Found the holy grail,
or the holy hand grenade, or whatever the hell that is.

He knew it was for her. The One. She who is that Grail that he
believes he can never earn, Drusilla's perfect knight.

B: Right now, we're going with scythe. You like? S: Well, pointy
and wooden is not exactly the look I want to know better, but it
does have flare. I can see why a girl would ditch a fella for one
of these.
B: I'm sorry about that.
S: It doesn't matter. You're back in the bosom. All is forgiven.
And, last night. It was just a glitch. Bit of cold comfort from the
cellar dweller. It's - don't make a thing out of it.

She has what she deserves, that family and friends he once
complained about, in the bad old days when it cost him a trophy. He
wants her to have them, not to be alone. But he knows it takes her
away from him. So he tries to make it look easy. It echoes a little
the feel of Faith's conversation with Buffy about not being the
One. The part where she feels shut out till she gets the role and
discovers she's never felt so alone.

But he stumbles into Buffy's history with the making it look easy
part. Because his language is way too close to the words Angelus
uses to blow her off the morning after she gives herself to Angel
for the first and only time and wakes up to the soulless demon who
has taken his place .

Angelus: Lighten up. It was a good time. It doesn't mean like we
have to make a big deal. 
B: It *is* a big deal! 
Angelus: It's what? Bells ringing, fireworks, a dulcet choir of
pretty little birdies? Come on, Buffy. It's not like I've never
been there before. 
B: Don't touch me. 
Angelus: I should've known you wouldn't be able to handle it. 
B: Angel! (teary-eyed) I love you. 
Angelus: (points coolly at her) Love you, too. I'll call you. 
(He shuts the door behind him on his way out.)
(BtvS 2.14 Innocence, written Joss Whedon)

B: Great. I have work to do.
S: Oh, yeah. Another solo mission, of course.
B: Yeah, it is.
S: That's fine, you don't have to get all shirty about it.
B: I'm not shirty. And what is shirty? That's not even a word.

So she withdraws herself, in time-honoured fashion. And he senses
it, but mistakes the reason. Now they're both on the defensive.
She's definitely shirty. So it meant something to her, to sleep in
one another's arms. She's confused but she still tells him about
the mission. She does trust him. Why doesn't she invite him along,
though, for backup? He offers to check on her at the Vineyard, and
she accepts. They're being quite adult, but they're not
communicating.

But when he goes to leave, she runs after him. *She's* determined
to communicate; what an amazing moment:

B: You're a dope.
S: I'm a what?
B: You're a dope. And a bonehead. And, you're shirty.
S: Have you gone completely carrot-top?

The comedy team of Buffy and Spike. They're getting and giving
miscues, but underneath all their considerable baggage they are so
amazingly comfortable with one another. Friends and comrades first.
"You'll never be friends", Spike tells Buffy and Angel in Lover's
Walk, but now Buffy and Spike have come round the hard way to that
level of sympathy and connection the demon could not understand.  

B: Do you see this (brandishing the axe)? This may actually help me
fight my war. This might be the key to everything. And the reason
I'm holding it? It's because of you. Because of the strength you
gave me last night. I am tired of defensiveness and weird mixed
signals. You know what? I have Faith for that. Let's just get to
the truth here, okay? I don't know how you felt about last night,
but I will not -

It's Buffy, queen of defensiveness and weird mixed signals, now
overriding the dark history of the failed relationship with Angel,
visibly trying to dismantle all her walls to let Spike in. It's
astonishing.
 
S (interrupts:) Terrified.
B: Of what?
S: Last night was - (They stare at each other.) God, I'm such a
jerk, I can't do this -
B: Spike -
S (blurts:) It was the best night of my life. If you poke fun at
me, you bloody well better use that, cause I couldn't bear it. It
may not mean that much to you, but -
B: I just told you it did.
S: Yeah, I hear you say it, but - I've lived for sodding ever,
Buffy. I've done everything. I've done things with you I can't
spell. But I've never been close, to anyone. Least of all you.
Until last night. All I did was hold you, watch you sleep. And it
was the best night of my life. So, yeah, I'm terrified.
B: You don't have to be.
S: Were you there with me?
B: I was.

And there they are, for a moment, explicitly connected on some
level deeper than words but mutually understood. Together in some
sense they were never meant to be, gifted with each other
afterLife, those two alone, The Chosen One and the monster

S: What does that mean?
B: I don't know. Does it have to mean something?

But they falter. He pushes his luck a bit. She loses her nerve for
a second. Communication is a minefield.

S: No. Not right now.
B: Maybe when -

She backs up, and starts to say what she means. For her, that's a
commitment. But he thinks it's just false hope she's offering, and
hope is an unbearable risk to take. So he shuts it down quick:

S: No. Let's just leave it.
B: Okay.
S: We'll go be heroes. (He leaves. She nods, but he's already gone.)

It's a dance in the ironic, that one. She's finally reaching out
for him, fulfilling at last the injunction of the Spirit Guide:
"Love is pain and the Slayer forges strength from pain. Love. Give.
Forgive. Risk the pain. For it will bring you to your gift." (BtVS
5.18 Intervention, written by Jane Espenson) And he, the poster
child of risk, flees the field, because he's afraid to risk the
pain, because he's sure she doesn't love him, and what does he have
to give her that she will accept besides "cold comfort"? Front door
to back door, it's a reversal of roles, in which she is the one who
initiates risk and he is the one to pull away. Worst possible
response to offer to Buffy, of course, who believes they all
inevitably leave her.

[and that's where it ends, sunk on the weight of its unanswered,
unanswerable questions. still to go: Andrew and Anya, Buffy meets
the Guardian, Dawn turns around, Buffy, Angel and Caleb.  a couple
of scattered reminders of materia yet to mention: about the dog who
didn't bark in the night, seven years and eleven seasons in. and:
what is real? what we can touch, and what touches us. some very
basic reminders about the shape of the argument still to come, the
one about the central question of communication, too ironic really
to lay out in the context of the next to last: to play up, to play
out, to play on, to play against. a note for meditation: what is
the lesson in Lessons? and a note on conclusion, meant to highlight
the truth, in the midst of so much unreality, that centrepiece
tour, the promenade, Buffy and Spike's altPilgrim's progress from
the front door to the back door at Revello Drive: only one
question, and one answer matters, because that moment at least was
real.]

macha

unfinished exegesis first posted 16 july 2003 (as object lesson, 
not exegesis)
to: tea at the ford with macha