Killed by Death! And, ohyay, I Only Have Eyes for You!!!!

[snick_backup]

Yes. Have reached these eps with the housemate, who persists in having excellent taste with regards to most everything except for being completely immune to the appeal of Xander/Cordy. Alas.

Killed by Death is growing on me. The first time I saw it I went, eh, MotW ep. But the relevant monster is much more effectively monsterish than most Buffyverse monsters - as I told the housemate, it's one of the the few times Joss and co. went for the all-out horror element. It also has the fabulous Willow moment of win: "Frogs! Frogs everywhere! Get them off!" And the equally fabulous Xander white knight moment. Plus, it's just a great episode for Buffy herself - even down with an awful fever and stuck in a place she hates, she's still the Slayer, still worried about other people. I love the drawing the little boy sends her at the end.

Meanwhile, I Only Have Eyes for You continues to give me shivers. Folks, if ever I cared about the Bangel ship, it'd be because of this episode. All the pain and hurt and complexity - just amazing, and amazingly written. To me, "Becoming" is about Buffy, but this episode is about the two of them. This is the Bangel episode of the series.

Someday, if I ever have more time and more brain, I'd love to talk about all the ways this episode rocks. But as movie!Aragorn says, it is not this day.

Comments

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

I have so much love for I Only Have Eyes for You. And I typically roll my eyes in Bangel's general direction. That episode, though, just gets to me. It's when the melodrama and uber-tragedy of Bangel works and I get hit full on with the angst and it's gorgeous.

Plus, I love how it explores Buffy's guilt issues. How there's no neat conclusion. By the end, Buffy still doesn't understand how he could be forgiven (and, by association, how she can be forgiven).

[snickfic]

Yes to everything you said. I hadn't noticed that the question of Buffy's guilt issues ended on that note before, though - you're right, by the end, she's still mystified by the idea of forgiveness.

It also foreshadows Becoming, or it seems that way to me - in this ep, all this discussion of killing is in some sense metaphorical, or at least mystical, when applied to Buffy and Angel, but in Becoming it becomes literal. And again with the same guilt issues.

Oh, Buffy.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And the gender reversal! Ah! So many things to go into there.