| Character - by Jenny68 | ||||||
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| The change between last season's finale, and Anne, the third season premiere, is both intriguing and unsettling. It's cool to see new looks like Willow's haircut, and new regulars like Oz, and even seeing the slayerettes attempting to keep the vamp population down in Sunnydale, but at the same time, something's really different. And it's not the absence of Buffy. This episode is depressing, and in this case, it's a bad kind of depressing. Some episodes, like Passion, are dark and meant to be depressing. But this episode is the season premiere, and shouldn't be so void of emotion and lacking in spirit.
The episode starts out with Willow in the slayer position, with the antics of Xander and Oz to help slay a newly born vampire. It's to be expected that the gang would try and fight off the vamps while Buffy is gone, but it's disheartening to see them not succeed. Xander questions Willow's witty comments to the vampire, and she's the first to bring up the absence of Buffy. Buffy uses smart-ass remarks....Buffy seems to do her job with little problem. Willow is at least optimistic that Buffy will be returning, but Xander is the opposite. He seems to go about the episode as though Buffy never existed to begin with. For someone who has lusted after Buffy since the beginning, he sure forgot her in a hurry. This isn't right at all. Nobody just forsakes a good friend when they're missing, especially when they've saved the world a couple of times. The next morning is the first day back at school, and Oz finally tells Willow about his need to repeat his senior year. Willow is shocked at this information, and well, she has good reason to. Ignoring the fact that it's a little hard to believe that she didn't know he was not attending summer school, Oz should have at least told her the night before when the topic of school was brought up. It seems as though Oz didn't do summer school on purpose, to be with Willow more often than the after 3pm thing they would have had. Whatever gives the reason for his regular status on the show, I guess it'll work. Xander is psyched to see Cordelia after the summer break, as Cordelia is to see him. At first this seems normal, and pretty much expected. At the end of the last season, Xander and Cordy were getting to be pretty solid. When they finally do meet up in this episode though, there's nothing between them. No sparks, no magic, nothing. What happened? Why didn't they take a few steps and run off to the storage room? Not even a fight? For some stupid reason, they both figure that the other has been off cheating on `em the whole summer. Xander and Cordelia always need something to fight about, but they seemed to have gotten a little more mature about their relationship towards the end of last season. I guess their relationship wasn't as solid as it appeared to be. Especially since they didn't even pick up the phone or write a letter to each other the entire summer break. Couples usually do that sort of thing. They do eventually get over their crazy behavior though, and end up exchanging smoochies in the park in typical fashion. Poor Giles is a nervous wreck in this episode, as any watcher would be when their slayer is missing in action. He's followed up several leads to the whereabouts of Buffy, but alas no luck so far. He is the one person, besides Willow in this episode who has not changed. He knows the slayer is gone, but he does not and cannot go on like she was never there in the first place. His job now is to find her, but he doesn't get much encouragement from the gang. Xander figures that Giles will find her when she's ready to be found, and that may be true, but what do they expect him to do, sit and wait while Sunnydale is overrun by baddies? And then, if his situation wasn't bad enough, Buffy's mom blames him for Buffy's behavior and her disappearance. Of course this is a logical thing to do on Joyce's part since Giles does have quite an influence on Buffy, as well as the fact that he sees her daughter more than she does. Giles is practically Buffy's father figure during the "regular season" and well, Joyce must figure he should be doing a better job. This episode was like two shows in the same hour. On one hand there is Sunnydale, and life without Buffy. And then there was Buffy, and her life apart from Sunnydale. While there was a lot of strange behavior from some of the other characters, Buffy stayed true to her usual kick-ass self. While she is quite sullen and reserved, she's still the same person in the end. Buffy shows herself to be very mature and competent because she has not only found herself a place to live, but also a job as a waitress. It becomes clear that Buffy is serious about her stay in the City. Buffy has changed her name to "Anne", her middle name we later learn, and she's apparently given up her slayer job completely. Even going as far as not reacting with violence when a nasty older man slaps her ass when she walks by him (It's great that she did consider it though *g*). When she encounters the young homeless couple she's shocked a bit by the exact words she heard in her dream of Angel the night before. Of course that isn't the only reason for Buffy to be unnerved, because the girl actually knows Buffy, and seeks her out later to tell her so. The girl, Lily, or as previously known as Chanterelle from last season's Lie to Me, is at a loss to why Buffy would be hiding out in poverty when she could have her life in Sunnydale, but doesn't push it because she knows how it feels to move on and forget the past. She tries to raise Buffy's mood by offering to introduce her to some of the other people through a rave, but Buffy declines, still in her anti-social mood. Later Lily finds Buffy and asks for her help in solving the mystery of her boyfriend's disappearance which drags Buffy back into her old self. As much as Buffy denies it and feels trapped by her destiny, she never feels more alive than when she can act out as herself and be the person she is fated to be. She's back to normal when she breaks into the blood clinic and uses her usual smart-ass remarks and super slayer strength to get her way. Not to mention when she answers her real name and title to Ken the freak down in the strange underground factory. Escaping gives not only her physical muscles a well needed workout, but her mental muscles as well. She knows she can go home and deal with what she has to....she's can survive. She gives the apartment and waitress job to Lily, as well as her middle name, and a promise to check up on her. This hints that perhaps this isn't the last of Chanterelle/Lily/Anne, which is cool since the show lacks reoccurring characters (who are normal human beings). At last there is the knock on the door and Joyce opens it to find Buffy staring at her. Buffy has the look of hell on her face; she asks for help, forgiveness, acceptance, and love all at once. Joyce reads her perfectly and without words Buffy is welcomed back home. (of course if words had been spoken, it would have had to been a two hour episode ;-) Character wise, this episode was a step backwards in development. The only character to survive the stagnant condition was Buffy, and thank goodness because she was the one in despair. I can only be glad that I'm not a first time viewer.....I at least know that this show can be better than this episode. Character wise I give Anne 2 ehs out of 5. |
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| Story - by Govia | ||||||
Well, I must commence by saying that I was disappointed in the season opener, especially after the simply smashing conclusion we witnessed earlier this year. This seemed to be a storyline thrown together with no particular purpose other than to briefly highlight a growing problem of teenage runaways and hard life on the streets. The connection was presumably Buffy's own confusion about her life in general, and how her vocation impacted on it. The premise of a story to show how she finally has to deal with the fact of being the Slayer and the vast amount of emotional baggage it must carry is admirable but the storyline was simply too choppy to accomplish this. Basically, the story shows the runaway Buffy currently working as a diner waitress under the name of Anne and lives alone in a cheap but very neat bachelor apartment overlooking the sordid streets of an unknown generic big city. Feeling sorry for herself and deep in angst, she mutely accepts all the guff given by her clientele until she crosses paths with Lily and Ricky, lovers who have declared their undying love for each other in the form of matching tattoos. Lily recognizes her from a previous visit to Sunnydale and tries to persuade Buffy/Anne to hang with them, at the same time providing the cash to party. Cross cutting this action are scenes of the Watcher and Scooby Gang doing the amateur Slayer bit, badly I might add, while blithely carrying on with life at Sunnydale High. Scenes of a suddenly very active library and a coyly uncertain Xander and Cordelia (given that they were all over each other last time we saw them) were a bit hard to swallow but Rupert's tentative reaching out to Joyce was a little more realistic as she lashed out at him for promoting Buffy's secret lifestyle without her knowledge, an understandable frustration under the circumstances. Back on the streets, Ricky disappears and Lily pleads with Buffy to help her find him. Buffy appears to readily abandon her self imposed isolation exile for a girl she has met for a few seconds once before. Anyway, she checks out their known hangouts with Lily, including the local blood donor centre where young people exchange blood for the cash necessary to live, even on the streets. Late that night, she goes Slayer-type cruising by herself into the sleazier parts of town and finds a dead, old derelict who she identifies as Ricky by the tattoo on his arm. Lily, on hearing the news, begins to wander the streets in despair and encounters a young man who has been seen handing out pamphlets extolling the virtues of a drop in centre for troubled youth that offers a family type atmosphere for those who have lost their way in life. Buffy in the meantime heads back to the blood donor clinic to rifle through their files and intimidates the doctor there into telling her where she last saw Ricky. Directed to the drop in centre, Buffy seems to come to life and goes off to save lives as the Slayer. Interestingly enough, I immediately experienced a flashback as I recalled those days of Western movies when the gun-totin' cowboy hero appeared on the hilltop just before racing to the rescue of the outnumbered settled, while every kid in the theatre screamed in anticipation that the bad guys would NOW get their due. Buffy forces her way in to save Lily, who is kneeling in front of moving oil slick in the floor, and somehow manages to fall through the slick into some sort of nether region where many humans are labouring and are overseen by Gestapo type, alien looking creatures. The leader explains that time there passes much slower than in the real world, so that Ricky who loved Lily to the end actually lived his full life working in the space of a few days on Earth. To cut a long story short, Buffy gets really ticked off and with her super strength, escapes and with Lily's help, kicks butt all over the joint to help everyone escape. As she is leaving, the Leader tries to stop her and is pinned to the floor through the calves by a drop gate and Buffy completes the task by bashing in his head with a weapon. We see a unrealistic scene of farewell with Lily taking Buffy's place as Anne in the apartment and restaurant and is followed by a genuinely touching scene of welcome between Joyce and Buffy as she shows up at the door. There were several unexplained facts in this specific story. Who were these aliens/demons and why did they have humans endlessly working for them? And at what? And why return their dead bodies to the other world? Why does the blood clinic doctor turn her patients over to these people? Why does the oil slick gateway disappear completely - is the other world destroyed or do its denizens decide to leave?? What was the Gandhi quote about anyway - if just sarcasm, it fell way short of its mark. Good points in this story were the plight of young people filled with despair who now frequent the extremely dangerous streets of any big city, even though it simplified a very complex issue, as well as Buffy's trying to come to terms with her own feelings of guilt, despair and hopelessness. The special effects of makeup for the aliens were very good, albeit a bit more gruesome than usual. And finally, maybe it's a bit too early to tell, but I found the violence somewhat extreme, a la Scream movies - a new pitch for the young viewers out there? Hopefully not. |
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| Villian - by Kaboo | ||||||
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