3.19 Choices

[Clare]

3.19 Choices - Episode #053
Thinking about her future, Buffy decides to take the fight to the Mayor - a plan that backfires when he takes Willow hostage.

Review (also post a score out of 10) and discuss this episode.

[cyclica]

An interesting and exciting arc episode, I give it a 7.

The end scene was the highlight- I loved willow deciding to fight the good fight.

Slight nitpicking- why didn't faith retrieve her knife? It's her new favourite thing, and she could easily have pulled it out of the wall.

And willow staking the vampire with a pencil seemed too easy. Not that its a problem here, but you'd think in later episodes she would fire pencils (or wooden stakes) at vampires all the time when on patrols with buffy. But no.

[partcynic]

3x19 “Choices”

Episode Rating = 7

Of all its chronological episode runs, I think that the span from “Doppelgangland” to “Graduation Day, Part Two” is “Buffy”’s strongest, featuring an unbroken run of top-notch editions that are filled with drama, humour, arc progression and meaningful character development. “Choices” is one such entry, and proves to be one of David Fury’s best contributions (especially considering that out of the show’s five core writers – the others being Joss, Marti, Jane and Doug – he was usually the weakest on a per-ep basis). Unlike with “Earshot”, I can’t necessarily pull out more than a couple of fantastic moments here, but “Choices” is filled with spot-on Buffyverse writing, and reaches the level of quality that all arc eps should strive for.

What I Liked about “Choices”:

- This episode dealt effectively with the ongoing issue of college, and brought the story to its inevitable conclusion without feeling like a waste of time. It was easy to understand Buffy’s eagerness to escape from Sunnydale, and Cordelia’s nasty lines in her first scene with the gang were a good way of facilitating her sudden decision to combat the Mayor pro-actively.

- Snyder’s obsession with drugs being present on the school grounds is funny, and provides levity in an otherwise dark episode.

- Since the Mayor has been in charge of most of the arc proceedings, it was refreshing to see Buffy take the lead and plan a strike. It was humorous how everyone basically ignored Wesley’s protestations, and there was a pleasant old-school vibe to having the whole gang participate in the scheme. The heist itself was good fun, and I liked the use of props during the battle Buffy and Angel had with the two henchvamps.

- The intra-group conflict that occurs after the gang realises Willow’s been taken is well-written, with every character making valid points and no single perspective being promoted over another. I liked how Buffy completely ignored her desire to leave after realising her friend was in danger, and Oz silently rising and destroying the spell paraphernalia was the perfect, in-character way of him making the decision for everyone.

- For me, Willow’s development was the strongest part of the story. We saw her learn a valuable lesson about dealing with people in “Doppelgangland”, and her actions here showed how much she’d grown from the experience. Maintaining a level head and standing her ground, her face-off with Faith was excellent; and she said what I’ve yearned for someone to tell Faith for a long while. I absolutely loved her statement that the time for sympathy and blaming the past was long gone, and was rooting for her all the way. In addition, I admired how she chose to stay at City Hall and get more information instead of fleeing, and the way she played dumb before pulling out the papers for Giles in the library scene defined the word ‘cool’.

- As always, the Faith/Mayor interaction deserves superlatives. His gifting her with a knife was an organic way of introducing a story element that would be important later, and their bond is a wonderful counterpoint to Buffy/Giles. Away from each other, the characters continued to shine; with Faith being nicely nasty to Willow and the Mayor’s excellent speech in the cafeteria being the first important wedge in splitting Buffy and Angel for good.

- Besides the speech, the cafeteria scene is relatively tense, and the CGI spiders aren’t bad for TV effects circa 1999.

- The final chat between Willow and Buffy is one of my favourite moments in the season, and one of the sweetest friendship moments in the series. In the rush for drama and ratings, TV shows are all too quick to pile on the angst and conflict, and often forget that genuine displays of caring and affection can be just as powerful. The dialogue between the two characters was excellent, and it also developed them both; with Buffy’s acceptance that her future’s set in stone and Willow’s decision to stay in Sunnydale being well-articulated. Although it obviously happened to guarantee the show’s perpetuation (after all, who would turn down the likes of Oxford and Harvard?), the episode managed to justify Willow’s sticking around without making it feel contrived, and deserves credit for doing so.

- Cordelia has spent most of the second half of the season acting as little more than a tacked-on foil for Xander, and while her attraction to Wesley has at least given her something new to do, it hasn’t been important or meaningful in the character development sense. The revelation that she was working at the clothing store instead of shopping there was a nice surprise, and while the full explanation won’t come until the next episode, this one certainly whetted my appetite for it.

What I Disliked about “Choices”:

- Buffy’s “Mission: Impossible” getup during the box heist is too corny to be taken seriously, and its winch jamming at the crucial moment was very predictable.

- The security at City Hall is too lax considering the current stage of the Mayor’s campaign. Willow and Buffy/Angel are able to wander about with almost no trouble, and the safeguards on the crucial box should have amounted to more than an easily-dispelled force-field and two vampires. As is, it seems that Xander’s suggestion that the gang storm the building to get Willow back could have been effective after all.

- Willow’s pencil-floating was a cute callback to “Doppelgangland”, but using the implement to stake a vampire was too silly. Do vampires no longer have ribcages, or were they just replaced with ones made out of gelatine?

- Why did Faith leave her precious knife behind? Even if the Mayor was eager for them to leave, it wouldn’t have taken more than ten seconds for her to yank if from the wall and march off.

- The existence of Sunnydale University is a necessary evil, but it doesn’t fit with the ‘small town’ vibe the show has cultivated over the past three seasons. It would also have been nice for the Uni to have been explicitly mentioned at some point prior to this episode, to make its introduction seem less abrupt (can we assume that the frat house in “Reptile Boy” was on the Sunnydale campus?)

Do I like this episode more or less than the last time I watched it?

I can’t say I feel any different, but that’s a good thing, since I’ve always liked this episode. As I mentioned earlier, I might not be able to think of “Choices” and come up with much immediate brilliance beyond Willow’s development and the Mayor’s speech, but sitting down with it enables me to pull out all of the strong material contained within – and there’s quite a bit to be found. Thanks to this, I’m giving “Choices” a great score of seven out of ten, and furthering S3’s streak of fantastic episodes.

[cyclica]

Ok, this is a hard one for me to review, because another one of those 'ok' episodes that has no outstanding or terrible moments. It's another arc episode, and it seems to go by incredibly quickly, maybe because there's not a whole lot of story to this one.

There were a lot of setups for later, like buffy's college plans (which take up a bit too much time), talk of buffy and angel's lack of a future together (a situation the mayor makes worse), cordelia's new job, and the box of spiders, all of which leads to something later on.

There were a few nice moments, like buffy deciding to take the fight to the mayor instead of waiting for him to come to her (and it's near the end of the season, not in the middle like s7 when you knew the story wouldn't be resolved anytime soon). I also liked the development for willow, the way she stands up to faith and decides at the end that fighting the good fight is what she wants to do with her life (which in a way makes her a better person than buffy, who's always trying to escape her 'destiny', or at least used to). Oz too had one of his finest moments in this ep, as he sits calmly during an argument over whether to rescue willow, then gets up and destroys the mystical vase, thereby making rescuing willow the only option.

Action-wise this ep had one of the more entertaining fight on the show- buffy and angel fighting vamps with a box, both protecting it and using it as a weapon, plus at one point buffy was suspended from a wire. It's nice to see props being used in a fight, turning a run-of-the-mill action scene into something fun to watch.

Humour-wise, this ep was ok but no scenes really stood out as hilarious. The funniest moment for me was wesley telling the gang to synchronise watches, only to discover they weren't wearing watches. Like the mayor, wesley, on buffy at least, is a big source of comedy in every scene he's in.

Speaking of the mayor, he's becoming a very interesting villain, especially in his scenes with buffy. He regards faith as being as close to him as a daughter, but he treats buffy with no respect whatsoever, calling her 'little girl', and then ignoring her and talking only to angel, his aim being to try to split them up just to distract them from his plans. It's the first time he comes across as truly evil, and not just as a fun guy whose nefarious plans include taking over a town, or turning adults into teenagers with chocolate.

Overall I enjoyed this episode, though like with most arc episodes I only watch it during marathons. And while there were a few good moments, nothing stood out as great, and by this point the arc eps were dragging a bit. Low 7.

There were no big flaws, but here's something I noticed after watching too closely-

- How is willow able to shoot a pencil into a vamp's back? I know it's magic, but she didn't use any ingredients or speak any magic words. And it seems too easy that vampires can be killed with just a pencil, it takes away from them feeling like a threat. Really from this point on the gang should never be afraid of vampires again, just so long as willow is with them and brings her pencil case.

In fact, buffy doesn't even need to go patrolling anymore. Willow can do it all herself. Everytime buffy goes on patrol and gets beaten up, it's willow's fault buffy's hurt, for not joining her and shooting pencils into the vampires. And why didn't willow put a pencil in faith's back when faith put a knife to her throat? Why didn't willow zing pencils into the vamps in 'doppelgangland'? And hey, why don't all the other scooby members take up magic as well, so they can all be pencil-firing, vamp-slaying heroes?

They could rid sunnydale of it's entire vamp population in a few weeks. And for killing demons, I suppose you'd need something bigger, like a fountain pen.

[partcynic]

^ Just posting to let you know I've read this review, though I have no real comments to make.

[cyclica]

Feb 14, 2010 8:55:08 GMT -5 partcynic said:

- The final chat between Willow and Buffy is one of my favourite moments in the season, and one of the sweetest friendship moments in the series. In the rush for drama and ratings, TV shows are all too quick to pile on the angst and conflict, and often forget that genuine displays of caring and affection can be just as powerful.

I don't often notice moments of friendship like that, but now that you bring it up, it really was a nice scene, and you're right about how rare it is to see friendship like that. Usually with two characters on tv you just assume the closeness, and all that you see is the conflict that would momentarily drive them apart, well that or two people just making jokes.

Feb 14, 2010 8:55:08 GMT -5 partcynic said:

- Willow’s pencil-floating was a cute callback to “Doppelgangland”, but using the implement to stake a vampire was too silly. Do vampires no longer have ribcages, or were they just replaced with ones made out of gelatine?

Yup