Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Motion Comic DVD Review

Today we’re going to take a look at the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Motion Comic. Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: the voices are off. The actress voicing Buffy doesn’t really understand inflections, the actor who voices Xander actually sounds like Xander, but he needs to work on his pacing. The actress who voices Faith is probably the best out of the group. I do understand that it would have been impossible to get the cast back to voice the characters – but for the Buffy video games they managed to get back everyone except for SMG – so it kind of hurts that they didn’t get ANYONE. Forget the new characters or the core 4 (Buffy, Willow, Xander, Dawn) are you honestly telling me that they couldn’t get: Felicia Day (Vi), Indigo (Rona), Adam Busch (Warren), Iyari Limon (Kennedy), Tom Lenk (Andrew), Anthony Stewart Head (Giles), Marc Blucas (Riley), Faith (Eliza Dushku), Elizabeth Anne Allen (Amy), Robin Sachs (Ethan), Rudolf Martin (Dracula), Harry Groener (Mayor Richard Wilkins) or D.B. Woodside (Robin) – really they couldn’t get a single one of them? Really?

As the episodes progress it gets increasingly harder to tell Willow’s voice apart from any of the other females. Giles – I don’t know if it’s the accent or the actors fault but it’s just so off. It was actually easier for me to accept Buffy, Xander and Andrew’s voices but if you think about it: Anthony, Michelle, David, Eliza and Alyson have all been in the public eye and consistently on tv ever since Buffy ended it’s run. The accents on the new characters could be better and part of me wishes that Satsu had an accent – don’t even get me started on the Asian vampires in the Wolves at the Gate episodes – the accents aren’t there, the only one with a consistent accent is Kimiko (a character I really wish stuck around.)

The episodes do give us many new characters like Leah, Rowena, Simone, Satsu, Rowena, General Voll, Aluwyn, Roden, Lady Genevieve Savidge and others plus it makes all of the characters from the Fray comic book now officially cannon (well they were before but now they’re directly tied into the Buffyverse in a way that can’t be discounted. It’s interesting now that I’ve watched the dvd I’m kind of getting the urge to do a wishful casting segment on characters that are strictly Buffy Season 8 characters… hmm… be sure to look for that, this is a post that might come sooner rather than later.

The way the issues break down is pretty simple with a few exceptions (The Chain, Anywhere But Here and A Beautiful Sunset) The Long Road Home, No Future For You, Wolves At The Gate and Time Of Your Life are all 4 ‘issues’ each that add up to roughly 44 minutes a story, which is what the original tv episodes ran. The single issue episodes are good – I don’t mind how short they are time wise because the stories are really strong enough to carry it without a lengthy build up. I’m not going to lie though, I do fear for some of the single issue stories in the second half of season eight if they do release the rest of the season as a motion comic.

Special Features:

Special features… okay where to start?  I’m not exactly sure that this counts as a special feature because it is a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack that comes with not only a standard definition version of the episodes/issues but a high-definition version as well. The first ‘real’ feature really isn’t anything spectacular in and of itself – it’s just a cover gallery of the first nineteen issues. There’s no new information here but it sure is pretty.

There is a feature that allows you to make your own Buffy centric comic book thanks to Tooncast Studio. Now this actually makes me sad because I really wanted to try this out – I knew it would be cheesy as hell but it seemed fun and I wanted to try it. So of course that means when I pop it in my dvd-rom that my computer won’t even read the disc at all. I’m assuming that it’s my dvd-rom that’s the problem and not the disc itself so I can’t fault the dvd.

The next special feature is kind of random and honestly it’s a bit of a let down. The Buffy Trivia Experience is just what you’d expect it to be… trivia. Basically you turn it on and then watch the episodes/issues and it plays ala VH1’s popup videos where random trivia pops up. There’s nothing wrong with this particular feature but think about this… Buffy is popular, but it’s a limited market and it’s been off of TV for seven years so that takes away selling points, this is an animated motion comic adaptation of a comic book series (even though it’s officially Season 8) so it closes the gap even more in it’s marketability because it’s an animated vampire ‘movie’ based off of a comic book. What I’m trying to say here is it is doubtful many people will run into this and just decide to buy it if they have no prior knowledge of Buffy in general, and anyone who has this obviously is a huge fan of Buffy and a fan of the comic books. The pop up trivia while good isn’t delivering anything new here at all for die hard BtVS fans – I would much rather have had pop up bubbles explaining behind the scenes information as to why certain scenes are the way they are or notes from Joss or the writers. To me it would make more sense to have had that especially since there is no writer/director/actor commentary.

We get the ‘test pilot’ – which is done like any pilot, a brief version of what will be the start of the series/movie to show how it can go – and it’s nice but there’s nothing new. It seemed like there was a bit more music to this than the actual first episode. I don’t mean to be down on the special features but it would have been better if they gave us a little bit more – maybe an animated version of Buffy’s opening credits (but use the comic images and play it out like the TV credits) but then who would you include? Obviously Buffy, Willow, Xander and Dawn but would Faith, Leah, Satsu, Rowena, Giles, Faith, Andrew, Twilight, Vi, Kennedy, Renee, Amy or Warren have made the cut? Again this is something that’s for the diehard BtVS fans, they could have thrown in the original pilot, or even the BtVS: Animated Series pilot because that’s a bit part of issue #20 so it could have been positioned as a ‘things to come’ type of deal.

We get a smaller version of the first issue packed in with the dvd set which is nice and I’m glad that they did it for people who haven’t actually gotten the issue but for me it’s a little much. I’m a huge OCD personality when it comes to things and collecting the Buffy comics is one of them and I’m pretty sick of having to buy the first issue over and over. There’s the first print with the two covers, there’s a black and white pencil version of the cover (the only one I don’t own, mostly because it goes for over 350 dollars), the second print, third print, fourth print, fifth (and billed as) final print, The Long Road Home collection, the motion comic singles, the motion comic set and now the smaller print in the motion comic set. It passed going overboard about 5 prints ago.

The final special feature: Under Buffy’s Spell is watchable but some of it is pretty expected. Jane Espenson joking about how no one was shocked about Buffy and Satsu having sex; Jo Chen was there talking about working on the covers for Buffy, Buffy fans talking about how they had never read comics before but now they want to since Buffy is a comic book. It was nice but it kind of felt like someone just went around Comic Con and asked people questions about it. A proper sit-down interview would have been more entertaining and it could have possibly given us a bit more information.

At the end of the day this is a pretty solid dvd and it did make me want to check out other motion comics, which I guess is a good thing. There’s the OCD aspect of myself that needs to have a complete collection so I would rather they waited to release the entire season together, or at the very least some type of guarantee that they will be doing the second half of the season. That’s the one real concern I have – I’m afraid that they won’t release the rest of the season and that is a shame.

Rating: BUY
Special Features: SKIP
Overall Rating: A-

Charmed Season 9 Issue 2 'No Rest for the Wicca' Review

You know, honestly I wasn’t looking forward to the second issue of Zenescope’s Charmed Season 9. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Charmed, but after being blown away by the ‘Book of Shadows’ issue it would be an understatement to say I was underwhelmed by ‘Charmed Lives.’

Honestly I’m not familiar with how Zenescope formats the books because Charmed is the only thing I read from this particular publisher; so it’s taking me a little while to get used to it. I actually like the fact that there are no ads until the end of the issue, but the downside is it makes it seem like a quicker read than it actually is. “Charmed Lives” had 21 pages however “No Rest for the Wicca” only has 20; 21 if you count the recap as a page. This wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that out of the 20 pages four of them are full page spreads and two of them are two page spreads. It seems to me like they could find a better use for the story than what they’ve used these pages for so far.

Out of the three covers for this issue I ended up with the wraparound cover, and I’ve got to say for the second month in a row I’m disappointed. The covers are so phenomenal, next to all the Jo Chen covers for Buffy the Charmed covers are my favorite. The problem is though the art on the covers is so good that when you look at Dave Hoover’s art on the inside you almost feel cheated. Don’t get me wrong though he does well with Holly Marie Combs’ likeness and he did a great job capturing the essence of Rose McGowan, it doesn’t look exactly like Rose, but you can tell it’s how ‘Paige’ would look as a comic book character. Phoebe though, wow she is definitely drawn the worst out of all the sisters. Leo doesn’t come off much better, he doesn’t even look like how Leo looked in the first issue, at least Phoebe is still the same as issue one.

Thankfully the plot pays off a lot better than the art does. The little recap written by Paige is kind of campy, but it works. I’m not entirely sure which of the two plots is supposed to be the A plot or the B plot because they’re both used equally. Phoebe and Piper go to the funeral of an innocent they saved who died of ‘natural causes.’ What makes this significant isn’t just the fact that the writer decided to access the huge library that is Charmed’s mythology; he went back almost to the beginning, all the way back to episode TWO of SEASON ONE- Piper’s friend Brittnay who was a victim of the demon Javna. Phoebe touches Brittnay’s casket only to have a vision of Brittnay’s rapidly aged corpse. Piper freezes everyone and they open the casket confirming Phoebe’s vision.

The C plot involves Neena and Hogan in the Underworld using a handful of lower level demons to construct something. It appears that they summoned something and have made a deal with it, although exactly what is going on still remains unclear. We do learn one thing though, Hogan can’t blink. I don’t know if this is supposed to imply that he’s also a lower level demon, or if he’s a Warlock who maybe hasn’t fully accessed his powers yet.

Meanwhile Paige is off trying to mentor her newest charge a nineteen year old High School senior named Brent who is just coming into his powers. She stops him and his friends from giving a swirlie to another student. After trying to explain to him about his powers Paige is forced to tackle Brent and orb him out of school when he attempts to use his powers on a teacher. She explains to him about Magic School and how important the next forty-eight hours are to how the rest of his life will play out (this ties into yet another plot from Charmed, you really have to respect the fact that the writers are actively using the history of this show in a way that actually makes sense); Brent says he needs a little while to figure everything out so Paige instructs him to call her name when he’s ready and she orbs back to Halliwell Manor. Seconds later Brent runs into Hogan and Neena who try to tempt Brent into being evil.

Back at the Manor Paige arrives to see Phoebe and Piper frantically looking through the Book of Shadows when suddenly Phoebe has a vision of many people in danger, she explains to her sisters that the vision she just had involved every innocent they ever saved and every charge Paige ever had being in great danger. The issue ends with Brent’s bloody corpse (his neck had been snapped) laid out on display to the entrance to Magic School.

The plot is amazing if for nothing more than the fact that it was dripping with references from previous seasons. Coop wasn’t in this ‘episode’ at all, but that’s fine because he wouldn’t have really served a point, not that Leo did either, but he’s been a staple of Charmed for so long that he kind of has to be inserted into at least one scene. I’m a little concerned by the fact that we still haven’t seen Henry at all, but it took us two ‘episodes’ before we even saw his and Paige’s children.

I’m looking forward to the next episode/issue especially with how “No Rest for the Wicca” played out. The fact that we got another mention of Prue, Neena and Hogan going after the Charmed One’s previously saved innocents and Paige’s charges really gives me hope that Billie will make at least an appearance, the teaser image of issue 3’s cover looks like it has the demon of Fear on it, so I’m hoping we’ll get more Prue references, if not even a flashback or a ghostly visit like Patty and Grams do. Of course the image of the woman drowning in Phoebe’s vision makes me think even more that we might get Prue soon if it really is the demon of fear on the cover because he used Prue’s fear of water and drowning to magnify her fear of loosing a sister to torment her. And this issue alone proves that the writers have no problem bringing up things from the past. I mean they used Brittnay and Javna and they were stand alone characters.

Rating: A+
Still not a fan of the art but the use of history blew me out of the water

Ranking the Ten Worst Buffyverse Characters

It’s something that happens in every fandom, it’s inescapable. There are characters that polarize the fandom so drastically it can start decade spanning internet wars. Joss Whedon’s projects are no exception; the only difference is they are kept so intertwined it’s hard to separate them. Actors migrate from one series to another, playing different characters some times actors come on to the show playing one character and by the time they’re done they’re playing an entirely different character.

And then we get to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or as I like to call it ‘The Little Show That Could’ and its sister show Angel (The Little Show That Should Have Known When To Stop.) Not only are these shows intertwined by being contained within the Whedonverse, having migrating actors, actors playing multiple characters but now we’ve got crossovers and actors playing the same characters on both shows. So it’s only fitting that in a list of Top 10 Worst Buffyverse Characters that the list also contain characters from Buffy’s sister show Angel.

10) DAWN SUMMERS (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

The thing about Dawn isn’t so much the character but what she represents and how much of a game changer she actually was.  Buffy had always been a series that was meant to be metaphorical and larger than life and despite it being a show about demons and vampires it never had too many undertones of religion. Dawn changed everything. In the course of one season we get a magically created girl who can open a portal to hell that will end the world that had been protected by monks because she needed to be kept hidden from a God so evil that she was banished from the very hell she was trying to return to. We get the death of Joyce, Dawn’s reveal as Buffy’s sister but not really Buffy’s sister just as an army of religious knights storm Sunnydale to stop Glory from using Dawn. Buffy died because of Dawn, Buffy suffered the most because of Dawn and then all of a sudden Buffy went from fighting Gods and dragons to the Nerd Herd. And now in season 8 we have Dawn hooking up with Xander (which is still creepy because while her body is 18-20 her soul is only like 5 max), saying she considers Willow to be her mother and has a resentment towards Buffy that rivals the emotional roller coaster that was season 5-7 Dawn COMBINED!

 

9) EVE (ANGEL)

I wanted to like Eve I really did. Actually out of all of the characters on this list I would consider her ‘middle ground’ not really hated, but not really loved. Or more accurately Eve is on this list because of the hate of what she was, but there’s a desire to keep her off of this list for the love of what she could have been. There was a tongue-in-cheek aspect to her character the second she threw an apple at Angel and offered him the keys to Wolfram & Hart. Now part of me wants to believe that she was actually *THE* Eve from The Garden of Eden, not only because of that but also when the Senior Partners send in her replacement and force her to sign away her immortality. That implies that she’s been around for a long time because of how scared she got, but it also makes you think because it’s been proven that the contracts with Wolfram & Hart extend postmortem, so there wouldn’t have necessarily been a need to keep Eve alive and ‘human.’ All that aside the big bone of contention among essentially every single Angel fan is that not only was Eve a poor substitute to Lilah but an extremely poor follow up given the fact that there wasn’t enough time to properly expand on her character or even give fans time to really get used to her. I hate to say it but she had almost been reduced to a throw away character. We don’t know what happens to her at the end of the TV series. We don’t know how she reacts to Lindsey being killed, yet in Angel: After the Fall (aka Angel Season 6) The Senior Partners discuss the idea of resurrecting a zombified version of Lindsey or Eve to serve as their liaison to Angel because they are both currently under their control.

8) KENDRA (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

Oh where to start? Is it the bad accent? Is it the fact that it continued the trend that Slayers can’t use crossbows (first Buffy, then Kendra, later Faith finally Kennedy broke that trend)? Could it even be a case of bad casting? I think it’s a case of all of the above and none of the above. Kendra has sort of made her mark as unforgettably forgettable. She will never go down in history as the most hated Slayer in Whedonverse, I think that honor belongs to Kennedy (although I don’t understand that one,) she’ll never be the ‘weakest’ Slayer we have all of season 7 and a good chunk of season 8 for that. She was the first Slayer Drusilla killed, but they never touch on Drusilla’s time in Sunnydale much and her death gave us Faith. My problem with the character is the fact that Kendra was sort of before her time. Buffy didn’t really start her quest for normalcy until season 3-4, that would have been a good time for a character like Kendra to show how much more normal Buffy was than she thought she was. Seasons 5-8 are when we really get to see the full grasp of the Slayer mythology and how deep and profound it is, so we get moments like Kendra being given to her Watcher as a child, but that isn’t touched on again until season 7. At best Kendra was introduced one season too soon.

 7) SCOTT HOPE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

I don’t understand why Scott exists in Buffyverse at all. I get that he was supposed to be this bridge to Buffy trying to get her life back together but at that point in the series it was unnecessary. He would have fit in with Buffy with the way the character was written in the movie or ‘The Origin’ comic but with all of the characters Buffy has been romantically involved with: Pike, Angel, Spike, Parker, Riley, and Satsu; Scott is the one character that just doesn’t fit. Yes Riley was too ‘bland’ ‘milquetoast’ ‘Mary Sue-like’ for many but Scott took all of those qualities and amplified them a thousand times over.

6) BEN (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

For me Ben is the Eve of Buffy. I wanted to like him, I tried to like him, but it’s hard to look past what they had done with him. But there were so many unanswered questions and that’s why he lands on this list. Why was he chosen to contain Glory? Was it a punishment for something he had done? Was it a last ditch attempt on Glory’s part to make a pact with someone on Earth before she was sent there? How long ago had the two of them actually merged, was Glory sent to Earth long ago and Ben just didn’t age and his life sort of just started over and he was implanted with all these fake memories and a history of himself and those around him like the monks did with Dawn? Was he drawn to Dawn and Buffy because he honestly felt sorry for what they were going through because of Joyce being sick and later dying or was he drawn to them out of a feeling of remorse because he knew that Glory was going after the two of them? When Giles killed Ben to kill Glory did their souls stay merged? Did they go back to Glory’s dimension or Earth’s version of  hell? Do characters like Ben, Dawn and Connor even have souls? I wish Joss found a way to keep Ben around post Glory, to see his struggle with the things that had happened because of someone in his body, to see him and Buffy struggle to regain their sanity together – it would have made for a much better redemption story than Buffy/Spike. The only reason why Ben doesn’t rank higher on the list is because Giles killing him helped to deepen the rift between Buffy and Giles that gets to the point where Giles sides with Faith over Buffy multiple times in season 7 and beyond.

5) PRINCIPAL ROBIN WOOD (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

Everything that’s right about this character is actually what makes him so wrong. It is fitting that he jumped in with Buffy and the gang considering the fact that his mother was a Slayer. The problem with that is that Buffy has moved so far past this ‘can a Slayer have a normal life’ plot that the idea of a Slayer having a child is pointless. But it does tie up some loose ends, Robin’s mother turns out to be Nikki, the Slayer from New York that we learn through flashbacks in season 5 that Spike killed. This would work, but it’s a bit out of place too, his character would have been done justice better if he had been introduced in season 6. The idea that he held a grudge and was taught his entire life to hate vampires, more specifically Spike would have worked so much better while Buffy was spiraling out of control in season 6. Instead Robin is used more as a prop, first to keep Buffy at Sunnydale High since he is the principal, and secondly to further hold Spike on this pedestal where Buffy must always stick up for him and forgive him and protect him even though Buffy’s own father figure Giles begs her to stay away from him. Instead of his story being about a man who had his entire life shaped by one event and forever altered in the most tragic of ways it became about Spike’s redemption. As a bone we got thrown an 11^th hour Robin/Faith relationship but that seems to have fallen apart between season 7 and 8.

4) CONNOR (ANGEL)

Connor is sort of like Dawn, only worse. He’s a mystical being who was sort of thrown in there for a plot point, yet they were so deeply connected to a main character that they couldn’t retcon him out permanently or kill him off for good. My problem with Connor is actually the same problem I have with Dawn, I like them both and the actors really grew on me over time but they were major game changers. The only problem is that Buffy as a series seem to rebound after the introduction of Dawn but the same can’t be said for Angel after the introduction of Connor. I like the episodes in the Connor era of Angel but the creation and existence of this character destroyed too many others. Darla got her ultimate redemption in killing herself in order for Connor to be born, but she *can’t* come back, only she does when she unsuccessfully tries to keep Connor from going over the edge; so now we can only get ghost/spirit!Darla or flashback!Darla. Connor while not directly involved in the destruction of Cordelia’s character played a major role in it. The birth of Connor set Wesley down a path he never recovered from, and it changed Angel. Angel essentially sold out all of his friends in order to give Connor a normal life, only to have that never work and he still got stuck in the ‘family business’ anyway only to be killed by Gunn in season 6 and then that was all retconned out too. So we have a character that never was supposed to exist, then was a victim of ‘rapid aging syndrome’ (where a character goes a way for a brief period of time and comes back aged to suit the plot), gets thrown into a really odd plot, gets retconned out, gets written back in, then out, then back in and remembers EVERYTHING, then we get season 6 which happens and then suddenly the entire season gets retconned out and we’re right back to three seconds after the end of ‘Not Fade Away’ so they retconned the third retcon, or re-retconned the second one. It gives me a headache.

3) PROFESSOR MAGGIE WALSH (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

Numbers 3 and 4 were a tough call and both for different reasons. In the case of Maggie Walsh I think it’s a combination of Buffy suffering growing pains as a series and a poorly constructed plot in general. Buffy wasn’t meant to be a series with political subtext and undertones so the fact that the show suddenly became about Buffy VS. the Government came out of left field. As a whole season 4 is hated by the fans for various reasons but in the end it all comes back to the plot with the Initiative. They neutered Spike, they ‘created’ demons to stop demons; we ended up with the stereotypical ‘evil government’ plot. The whole thing was a failure; there were a few bright spots we got Tara, more Anya, Faith waking up from her coma, vampire Harmony; I liked Riley and Graham but not so much as soldiers. But there was a lot of bad that went with the series too, so for the life of me I can’t figure out why for a large part of season 8 it was Buffy VS: The Army, Government and Twilight. If it didn’t work the first time: don’t revisit it!

2) SPIKE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL)

Forget about restricting it just to Buffy/Angelverse characters Spike is quite possibly the most polarizing character in all of Whedonverse. I’m not going to talk about the shipper aspects of it because honestly I’ve never been a big supporter of Buffy/Angel or Buffy/Spike her relationship with both of them almost perverted the essence of Buffy’s character; but that’s a story for another blog post. Spike at best was a one note character that honestly didn’t need to exist within the universe beyond the second season of Buffy. It’s going to be impossible to do this without talking about the time Spike tried to rape Buffy so I’ll have to go into that. I get that it had shown how far Buffy had fallen on her own that she had let Spike get as close as he did but from that episode on Buffy the Vampire Slayer almost switched gears into becoming about Spike’s redemption and nothing else. Anya had a wish gone wrong in season 7 and Buffy was ready and willing to kill her that second, it didn’t matter that she had a soul, yet Spike was given chance after chance by Buffy. He was the one that closed the Hellmouth, not Buffy. The grand sacrifice of the series didn’t even come from the main character; it came from a guest star that just wouldn’t go away. And then Buffy ends and he goes over to Angel and we get season 5 of Angel (again my hate of that is a post for another blog.) And now at the eleventh hour Spike is about to swoop in and help save the day in season 8. The ONLY reason why he isn’t ranked number 1 in my most hated list is because his very existence gave us Drusilla. Well that and the episode of Angel where Illyria kept killing Spike over and over.

1) JASMINE (ANGEL)

Joss does best when he is allowed to tell the story he wants within the timeframe he wants to. Jasmine is proof of how big of a train wreck it can turn into if he looses control, and here he lost it not once but twice. The series was still rebounding from Darla’s mystical pregnancy in season 3. Season 4 was deeply intertwined with Buffy season 7, Buffy was ending, Angel had taken a massively dark turn, The WB had an axe hovering over Angel’s head telling Joss the series had grown too deep and complex and needed to be simplified and more stand alone and self contained, Joss and crew had just finished killing off a massive amount of the recurring and regular cast and then Charisma Carpenter became pregnant. I get that if Joss would have been left alone Jasmine would have been the endgame for Angel, I could easily see him tying Jasmine, Illyria and Glory all together and connecting them somehow, but sadly that never came to be. Jasmine wasn’t introduced until the fourth quarter of season 4, there was the mandate of ‘stand alone only’ episodes from the WB so she needed to be wrapped up quickly. But it left a sour taste in my mouth, magic!Dawn one year, magic!Connor the next and then magic!Jasmine. There were too many magic babies that rapidly aged way too close together.

Buffy Season 8 Episode 2 - 8.02 The Chain Review

Issue 5 The Chain
Buffy Anne Summers is dead, again... again.  The sad thing isn't Yamanh's clan's war-stomp but that Buffy hasn't ever even met herself.  Buffy has a special friend and Tinkerbell she ain't.  This foul-mouthed fairy laid her eggs in Buffy's ear.  That's right folks, Buffy's ear is preggers.  There is some random girl who is trying to be way too cool for school gets whacked by the Slayer magic mushroom and goes on a trip involving past Slayers and the G-Man.  Andrew and Vi are bitten by the Hollywood bug and have their very own infomercial.  Rona and Giles decide who will be on the next episode of Extreme Facial Reconstruction Slayer Edition.  One of Andrew's Slayers of the Vampire, Simone knew the Slayer formerly known as someone other than Buffy and she's still got a big honking boner for packing heat.  Leah, Satsu and Rowena try to rescue NotBuffy-Buffy from Yamanh but don't get there in time but that's okay because NotBuffy-Buffy knows who she is and oh yeah, Dawn is still a giant.

 

Well here we have episode two, also written by Joss Whedon and let me say boy does it live up to every single bit of the hype Buffy Season 8 has been getting.  Those who are familiar with Joss’ work, and Buffy for that matter knows that  Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a long history of disappointing season openers along with Buffy usually needing a few episodes to really get into the swing of things know to just give Joss a little bit of time before you make your judgment.

While I complained in the last review about it taking four months to tell an entire ‘episode’ slowed down the momentum too much and was frustrating; now I am actually glad that it took us five months to get to the second episode.  All of the usual kinks that Buffy has each season that take about a month to iron out are done and over with starting with The Chain.  This episode feels like it’s the payoff to a season long story arch instead of what it was – a stand alone filler episode.

The funny thing is that this isn’t uncharted territory when it comes to Joss, some of the most powerful episodes have almost always been stand alone episodes: Hush, The Body, Once More with Feeling, and Conversations with Dead People  just to name a few.  The Chain is no exception when it comes to powerful emotionally resonating episodes.  Where Joss takes a risk is that this is the major re-launching of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we’re only on the second episode and the titular character is no where to be found. Not only that, but the main cast is MIA as well.  Giles makes a brief appearance, but Andrew, Rona and Vi all manage to have more screen time.

We don’t even get the new characters, Satsu, Rowena and Leah that were established in the previous episode for more than the very last second of the episode.  Instead we get an entire episode focused on a character that we’ve never seen before and have no idea even what her name is.

There is a line that is shared between Rona and ‘Not Buffy’ Buffy that is the main focal point of not only this particular episode but also manages to reiterate what has always been the message of Buffy’s character in a nutshell.  “I’m lookin’ at you for this so I gotta figure you want the truth.  As in…  Why me? Did I get the hardest, darkest path to walk ‘cause I’m strong, I’m good, I can handle the heavier burden?  Or am I weak, expendable.  The one that won’t be missed.  The truth?  There is no truth.  There’s just what you believe.”

No matter how outlandish Buffy gets with it’s story telling when it gets back to that very basic point is when the series shines.  A character dies, she sacrifices her life, not to stop a God, not to fight The First Evil; she laid down her life to save the life of a clan of fairies and a slug creature.  And in that one brief act of self sacrifice a character’s -who we had known for all of twenty two pages (which in this case amounts to about thirty minutes of a TV episode)- death every bit as powerful as when Joyce died after five seasons, Tara’s death or both of Buffy’s deaths.

RATING: A+

Buffy Season 8 Episode 1 - 8.01 The Long Way Home Review

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is back!  Joss Whedon and Dark Horse Comics bring us the official continuation of the Buffy series with Season Eight! Since this blog will cover virtually all things Whedon it would be impossible to ignore Buffy so we're going to start with season 8.  Each review is going to start with a recap of the episode in a very Andrew-esque "Storyteller" way in order to catch you up on the highs and lows of each individual issue that way it will be easier to understand once we get our hands dirty and discuss the events of the episode in question.

Issue 1 - The Long Way Home Part I
We join our heroes years after the events of Chosen.  Willow is off doing who knows what, Buffy is leading a Slayer faction in Scotland where Xander is serving as base commander.  Giles appears to be no where to be seen, we meet three new Slayers who appear to be close to Buffy, one maybe a little too close.  Speaking of Buffy, there are three of her now, one underground, one off disco-ing it up with The Immortal in Italy and our twice dead religious history ignorant Slayer herself.  There's some guy who is all floaty and oh yeah Dawn's a giant.

Issue 2 The Long Way Home Part II
We rejoin our heroes - actually only about 3 seconds after where we left them, only with added Scoobage.  Giles is off being all watcher-y but seems to have accepted the idea that a Slayer works better with others instead of alone.  Buffy is pointing out how overqualified Rowena, Leah and Satsu are to be corpses while totally crushing on Satsu's hair.  Andrew is explaining that guns are evil and how he's Team teddy bear with killer trees yet he can not join Team Leader who wears bellbottoms and a half cape and Xander is desperately trying to keep his one eye from looking at Dawn's... shadow.  Living trapped in the mouth of Hell has led Amy to well, have sex with... who knows what, and seems to have gone retro\vintage, storming castles on dark nights, army of undead at her bidding, ritualistic sacrifice and a true love spell.  Apparently Hell is full of 80s horror movies and teen rom/coms.  Oh yeah Dawn is still a giant, yet couldn't really see our favorite Wiccan formerly known as Darth Willow floating on in at the eleventh hour.

Issue 3 The Long Road Home Part III
Our favorite chaos worshiping no friend of Ripper Ethan Rayne guides our sexually deprived heroine through memories of high school, Mr. Fruit Punch Mouth the Master, Angel, the loss of her mother, The evil smurf the Judge, fallen fashionista Goddess Glory, Dawn, Caleb, some guy named Joss Whedon and frienemy Faith, Slayer of the Vampire - who literally fought with the forces of good for weeks.  Giles meets with a demon and Andrew is bored by watching girls play strip poker.  Willow goes Wiccan y Wiccan with Dark Witch/Army Bitch Amy who it turns out has been boning, well a bag of bones.  Filet-o-Warren is back, skinless of course because why would the government find it disgusting that Amy was 'dating' Warren if he had his skin.  Willow tells Buffy that over the year she had been not in Scotland she was off with Kennedy who died, but its okay it was only for a month.  Dawnie learns that while big girls don't cry they f%&#ing fum!  Oh yeah, and Buffy learns that true love tastes of cinnamon buns moments before Willow is sucked through a vortex of Amy's techy smelling magic.

Issue 4 The Long Road Home IV
Warren explains that sometimes having a stalker can save your life.  Amy is pretty much holding Warren together with her magic.   Warren stabs Willow in the eye while Amy freakaleak that she is enjoys watching, but won't let the government join in her reindeer games.  Willow goes on some trippy trip and is guided by a tree woman, a hairy woman, a blue woman, a two faced woman and a wordy woman.  XXX marks the spot, not with treasure but with dead bodies.  Buffy sees the beautiful sunset that is carved into General Voll's chest.  Satsu also enjoys cinnamon buns.  Giant Dawnie's milkshake doesn't bring all the boys to the yard, but it damn near brings down Scotland Yard.  Oh yeah, and the world hates Buffy.

Alright let’s start off with how amazing it is to even have Buffy back in the first place; the property itself has been around since the early 90s with the Buffy movie, the TV show, the Angel spin-off, the first run of Dark Horse comics which ran for over 60 issues not counting the endless mini-series’ and one shots.  Now Buffy is back and it’s officially canon with Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight.

The format is a little clunky because each issue isn’t technically an individual episode; the episode only changes to a new one once it gets a new sub-header on the cover, sometimes that’s just one episode or it could be up to four or five issues.  That is kind of annoying considering that it is a monthly book and we had seven years of only having to go one week between episodes.

The first episode – The Long Way Home – is written by none other than series creator Joss Whedon and it shows from the first sentence.  We have all the usual players: Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Xander, Andrew and Giles; Joss does what Joss is known for by bringing back characters that we wouldn’t have seen ever again if this were anyone else at the helm.  Amy, Warren and Ethan are all back, and we get a bunch of new characters: Satsu, Rowena, Leah, Renee, General Voll, Simone and the mysterious Twilight.

Now there is a gap in time between Buffy Season 7 and 8 – exactly how much is unknown, however I’m assuming no less than three years have passed since in season 7 of Buffy Dawn is a Sophomore at Sunnydale High School and now Dawn goes to college in Berkley, well at least she was until she became a giant. There are a few other changes, aside from the major ones which I will get into later in this review.  Something seems off between the gang and Giles; it could just be because the group is divided a little oddly.  Dawn is supposed to be in Berkley without any connection to the Slayer world; Xander and Buffy are based in Scotland where he is sort of the de-facto Watcher, Andrew is off in Europe with his own group of Slayers to train, Willow for the most part is off at parts unknown with Kennedy and Giles has his own group of Slayers but also acts on his own.

The major changes obviously have to be Willow is no longer afraid to use her magic; Buffy and Xander have a home base that is actually an old castle in Scotland.  Faith and Robin are no where to be seen, but this is only the first episode of season 8 so it’s a little too soon to tell what’s going on with them.  Andrew seems to have really proven himself as a true Scooby since he’s been trusted with his own Slayer squad.  One thing that I think deserves to be touched on is the massive amount of tension between Dawn and Buffy.  In season 7 they seemed to have gotten a lot closer and were getting along fine, now all of a sudden Dawn appears to be verging on hating her sister.  I guess this could be explained due to the age problems.  When her body was 16, technically her soul was only a baby, so when she was acting the part of the teenager that the world is out to get, it could be argued that she was going through her terrible twos.  Now that Dawn’s body is that of a 19-21 year old her soul appears to be going through puberty.

I like the idea of Amy surviving Sunnydale’s destruction, but I’m still not too keen on her being evil. Personally I always wanted her to become a member of the Scooby Gang.  Warren on the other hand – I like the idea of Amy saving him and after his body dies bringing him back magically without his skin, they do make quite the pair.  The problem I have with this is that Warren appeared as The First in season 7.  The First could only take the form of someone who had died and now that Warren is back and appears to be a pivotal character I need a better explanation as to why The First could appear as him other than a throw away line from Warren where he says that ‘Bored now,’ where the last words he ever heard in his ‘human’ life.  Also it is a little hard to swallow that Amy turned into the magical stalker version of Big Brother and was following Willow around unknown to everyone.  Another thing that I have a problem with is General Voll and the government being back in play.  I wasn’t a big fan of the Buffy VS the Government in season 4, and I’m even less of a fan of the idea of a do-over.

Don’t get me wrong we do get our handful of classic Whedonverse moments: Buffy wearing a Serenity T-Shirt, one of Andrew’s Slayers reading the Fray trade paperback, Andrew in full on geek mode, a brand new big bad in the form of Twilight and a use of the massive established character pool at Joss’ disposal.  I only wish that they didn’t kill off Ethan so soon, and with it being a natural death – a gunshot to the head – it’s one that will never be undone it sort of makes it pointless to have brought back a character that had been around since the second season only to kill him off so abruptly.

The first episode also gives us more questions than answers.  Who or what is Twilight?  What’s up with the beautiful sunsets carved into the people’s chests?  How did Kennedy die, and more importantly how did she come back to life within a month?  Where was Willow?  How did Dawn become a giant?  What’s a thricewise?  Why does true love taste of cinnamon buns?  How was the destruction of Sunnydale spun in the news?  We get a few answers too.  We find out why Buffy was partying up in Italy with The Immortal and that not everyone who stayed in Sunnydale when the Hellmouth was closed died once the town sank in on itself. We also get a plethora of new characters: Satsu, Renee, Leah, Rowena, General Voll and Twilight all of them manage to have just enough ‘screen time’ and be interesting enough for you to become invested in them.  When Renee felt responsible for the girls getting injured once Amy released her army of zombies it had just as much emotional resonance coming from a character that we’ve only been exposed to for one episode as it would have if Dawn or Buffy were laying on the bed bandaged and bleeding You want to know about these characters because in Whedonverse no one is a simple throw away character, they’re all there for a reason whether you like them or not.

All in all The Long Way Home is a good reintroduction to the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It will take a little while to work out all the kinks since Buffy had been off the air for so long and that the new season told strictly in comic form is a different venue for the property it will take a bit of patience because it switches from a weekly product to monthly.  I might not agree with things, Buffy does seem a little out of character to be honest; but anyone who knows Joss knows that his strength is in the long term and the pay off, and historically Buffy doesn’t have strong season premieres when it comes to plot and momentum.

Rating: B