4.02 Living Conditions

[Clare]

4.02 Living Conditions - Episode #058
The gang worries about Buffy's mental state when she continuously insists her annoying roommate is evil.

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

[cyclica]

I'm a big fan of comedy episodes, and so of cource I'm gonna be a big fan of this episode. I loved every scene with kathy, its a shame she only lasted 2 episodes. I also loved xander becoming too enthusiastic about slaying, and the scene at the end where it turns out, maybe buffy wasn't being bitchy because of the soul-sucking after all.

My only real nitpick with this episode concerns that scene where they try to tie buffy up. There's no way giles, xander and oz can overpower buffy like that, not after seeing her take on gangs of vamps single handed. And that rope was never going to contain her, we've already seen break out of being tied to the wall by faith in 'enemies', and that was metal chains not just a rope.

But that one scene aside, I love this episode. I'm giving it an 8.

[partcynic]

4x02 “Living Conditions”

Episode Rating = 3

I don’t know what it is about “Buffy”’s second-of-the-season episodes, but they have a tendency to be mediocre at best (the notable exception being “The Harvest”), with the worst being among the weakest of their parent years. For me, “Living Conditions” is one such failure, despite little about its concept being questionable on paper. In theory, this could have been a respectable sibling to other eps that have downplayed plot in favour of milking a single situation for laughs, but unlike its predecessors “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”, “Band Candy” and “Doppelgangland”, this one is painfully unfunny and crucially neglects to include any character insight or development. The tone is also way off, and nothing feels connected to “Buffy” as we know it – in fact, its closest relative is the similarly disoriented “Doublemeat Palace”, and that’s not a legacy to be proud of. It’s disappointing to see the writers try so hard yet fail so badly, but I’m just about willing to let this one slide, viewing it as an unfortunate case of an experiment gone wrong.

What I Liked about “Living Conditions”:

- There are a few pleasant bits of observational humour here and there (Kathy’s horrid taste in music and obsessive labelling), and a few of the lines are good (“Giles is our grown-up friend – but not in a weird way”; “I’m 3000 years old! When are you going to stop treating me like I’m 900?”) I would have liked there to be some fall-on-the-floor-funny stuff, but most of what we were shown was passable.

- The make-up on the Mok’tagar demons is decent, and I liked the combined effect of their bright orange skin and glow-in-the-dark green eyes. I also really appreciated that they spoke their own language – it made them feel more believable than typical inter-dimensional characters that arrive and speak perfect American English.

- The monster dreams are cool, and the scorpion, symbols and forced ingestion of blood make them a little creepy.

- To its credit, this ep has a number of good continuity pieces. Parker’s introduction is decent and important to Buffy’s first emotional arc of the season, and the little flashes of both Veruca and the commandos were clever and avoided feeling intrusive.

What I Disliked about “Living Conditions”:

- The ‘previously on’ recap was too long and ended up being gratuitous.

- The big issue for me was that this episode really wanted to be funny, but I didn’t laugh once. Sure, there were the mildly cute moments I mentioned in the positives section, but most of the ‘comedy’ left me feeling embarrassed for the person who wrote it. Far too much of the humour relied on overblown slapstick or verbal gags a child could have penned, and that’s not the kind of intelligent stuff the show usually provides in the laughter department. In fact, I can think of plenty of moments from dark, dramatic episodes that were far funnier than anything portrayed in this supposedly comic one.

- I think this story could have worked as a sub-plot, but it wasn’t strong enough to justify a whole 42 minutes. The lack of interesting narrative or non-predictable twists made the whole thing linear and boring, and I had to repeatedly fight the temptation to check the clock and see how much more I’d have to sit through.

- This is the second edition in a row in which Buffy has been badly characterised, and that’s a worrying thing for a fledgling season. While Buffy states early on that she’s having a “bitch attack”, that doesn’t excuse how much of an actual bitch she is to Kathy at the start of the episode. She makes no attempts are reconciling with her or coming to a compromise over their issues, and that’s at odds with the emotionally mature girl she was in the first three seasons (who actually befriended weird, quirky people instead of dismissing them because they didn’t fit a preconceived notion of ‘cool’).

- Annoyingly, there’s next to no development here. Ignoring her badly-written actions at the start of the ep, most of Buffy’s crazy behaviour is caused by the soul-corruption Kathy’s ritual creates, meaning that she doesn’t learn anything or grow by the story’s close – and that leaves me wondering what the point was (remember, her ‘issue’ with Willow at the end comes to nothing, and she has no problems living with her during the rest of the season).

- Kathy is both poorly conceived and poorly written. The fact that she was only hired for a two-ep mini-arc was no excuse for making her a one-dimensional, witless stereotype, and she went beyond the intended ‘humorous irritant’ and became an unreal, jarring blight on the show. It’s disheartening to see that the writers didn’t even try to give her a mixture of good and bad qualities (which would have a helped a lot in making her interesting/sympathetic, and would have lent the ‘is Buffy crazy?’ plotline some credence), and that’s a classic sign of laziness. Instead, Kathy was like a character from “Charmed” or “Supernatural” – and believe me, that’s no compliment.

- Xander’s early appearance at the cafeteria was tacked-on and awkward. There was no real reason for him to be there, so he shouldn’t have been there. Ditto for Giles meeting the gang at university. Although it was necessary for the plot, wouldn’t it have been smarter for the Scoobs to discuss demons at his apartment instead of in the middle of a public place with strangers sat in earshot? After all, Buffy was willing to leave the campus and go there just to get away from Kathy, so why not do so when she had an actual issue to address?

- Much like Wesley in “Consequences”, why do Xander and Oz opt to restrain a dangerous, unhinged Slayer’s arms, but neglect to do anything to her legs? They’ve known Buffy for years and know what she’s physically capable of, so there’s no excuse for forgetting.

- Why was Kathy having dreams of the demon performing a ritual (and appearing genuinely unnerved by them) if she was the one who was actually responsible for the attacks?

- Why did Kathy need to perform a ritual to get the first couple of pieces of Buffy’s soul, but then show the ability to take the next by just forcing her mouth open? Why didn’t she just do that from the start?

- The concept of taking a soul piece by piece is silly; and it doesn’t sit comfortably in the show’s universe, where souls have been portrayed in an ‘all or nothing’ manner. Though I am interested in what would theoretically happen if Kathy tried to take Angel’s soul – would Angelus emerge as soon as some ‘corruption’ was introduced, or would he not appear until she’d taken it all?

- Tapparich arriving just as Giles reversed Kathy’s spell and restored Buffy’s soul was overly coincidental.

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

I’ve never liked this episode (the first time I saw it, I had real concerns about how the general writing in S4 would progress, and getting “Beer Bad” a few weeks later hardly alleviated those feelings), and I can’t say I enjoy it now. This is actually the first ep of the show I would skip viewing when doing a sequential run-through, as it fails to succeed for me in the key areas of plot, humour and character development – in fact, it has huge issues in each of them. That said, I can concede that while “Living Conditions” is a dud, it’s a self-contained one that doesn’t do any long-term damage to the series’ characters or universe, and while I’d score it a one or zero if I was just rating S1-4, taking S5-7 into account forces me to up the grade. Therefore, I’m artificially inflating this episode’s score to a (very low) three out of ten, and as with “Dead Man’s Party” a year before, consoling myself that at least I’ve gotten my least favourite ep of the season cleared quickly.

[cyclica]

Previously on buffy the vampire slayer- riley, professor walsh, army guys. None of which will be appearing in this episode, but we thought we should remind you of them none the less.

Ok, this episode was full of plot holes, took characters out of character, slowed down the on-going story which had only just begin in the previous ep, and at times didn't make sense. But that's ok, because it had kathy in it.

Once again season 4 is going for something new, as this buffy vs roommate story could obviously never have been attempted in the first 3 years. I found interesting the idea of a 'superhero' (buffy) having to live with a villain (kathy). Admittedly this aspect was only hinted at, since kathy was only truly revealed to be evil at the end, but that makes it all the more of a shame that she left at the end. I would have loved to have had kathy stick around once it had been revealed she was a demon.

The story is pretty simple- buffy suspects her roommate is evil, this being the btvs version of kids who go to college and find it hard to deal with a roommate. The logic had to be a little fudged in places to make the episode work, but that's ok because it was all about the humour anyway. Pretty much every scene with kathy I found at least a little entertaining, with some moments being laugh-out-load funny. Highlights for me included when kathy paused mid-sentance with buffy just so she could replay a song which had gone off, buffy trying to annoy kathy by drinking an entire bottle of milk, the (pre-)kill bill style close ups whenever kathy or willow are spilling food on buffy's clothes, and buffy destroying a bench, accompanied by oz pointing out that it was 'looking shifty'.

We also get the start of the parker subplot, though at this point I'm not too interested in some guy buffy likes, there's no real drama to this plot yet. Speaking of characters being set up for later... veruca! All she does is walk past oz and they look at each other, yet somehow this one little scene makes me eager to find out who she is, and what will happen next. And speaking of oz... I liked that scene where he and buffy went patrolling together. As buffy pointed out, this was the first time it's been just the two of them, and it's a big shame it'll be the only time, given how well they played off each other.

Like I said before there were some problems with the plot, though I admit I didn't really notice most of them until I started rewatching the episode for the review.

- The demons in the park don't recognise kathy? I know she has a human face, but surely she looks similar enough to her 'demon face' that they would recognise her?
- Why do the demons bother waiting around to see if it really is kathy, then summoning her father? Why not just grab her and throw her in a portal? If it turns out kathy wasn't the one, they could always go back and try again. I'd be surprised if these demons are the kind who wouldn't want to harm innocent people, given what a big deal was made about how soulless they are.
- Kathy finds buffy's weapons... and nothing happens. You'd think she'd question buffy about them, or use them during the fight, but no.
- Buffy dreams about a demon going through a ritual, which it turns out was kathy. Why would kathy claim to be having the same dream?
- Why does extracting a soul take so long? Can't kathy just do it all in one night?
- Why take buffy's soul? Knowing that rremoving someone's soul makes them evil, and more prone to fight you, you'd think kathy would rather sneak into someone else's room and steal their soul, as they could never trace it back to her and get into a fight.
- Why does kathy seem so surprised and bothered that buffy's becoming more of a pain? She's the one making buffy act like that!
- Why would kathy entertain willow's idea of having them take seperate rooms (even suggesting that buffy be the one to move)? Since she hadn't completed the ritual yet, you'd think she would be eager for buffy to stay her roommate.
- Why would buffy measure kathy's toenails? She couldn't have known beforehand that they'd be longer in the morning.
- If buffy is becoming more 'evil' as her soul gets removed, shouldn't kathy be starting out as evil, and be getting more 'human' the more soul she gets? Instead, she seems to always be just as bitchy as buffy is.
- This point was mentioned several times in the episode, but was never answered- why didn't the gang believe buffy? Even if she didnt have much evidence, they should have given her the benifit of the doubt.
- There's no way giles, oz and xander can overpower buffy. And if she could have escaped at any time, why would she wait so long before doing so? (Though I admit, I did absolutely love xander's over-the-top reaction to finding out he'd need to check buffy's ropes)
- So kathy and her people have no soul. Would that mean all other demons do have a soul? Btvs and angel make it clear that vampires with souls have morals and those without are just killers. So why is it that kathy and her people aren't evil (well, not outright killers) yet many of the apparantly souled demons are?
- If kathy's people can identify her by her absence of a soul... why didn't they when they first saw her?
- Giles conducts his soul restoration spell from presumably miles away from buffy and kathy. Even if it was possible to do the spell from anywhere, surely he'd want to be close enough to be able to tell straight away if the spell has worked?
- Kathy is three thousand years old? Come on!
- I really wish the show could have explained what would actually happen if kathy had succeded in taking buffy's soul. Would buffy die? Would she become a killer like angelus? Would kathy start acting like a slayer? Since kathy had no plans to go home, would they have continued living together?
- The ending with willow implied buffy would have been bitchy even if her soul hadn't been partially removed. So how much of buffy's actions can be attributed to the lack of a soul and how many were her own?

Overall this episode is one I've given a high rank to based on entertainment value above any other factors, like emotion or action, or making sense. Upon rewatching I feel compelled to downgrade my ranking, if only because the sheer number of flaws has made me loose a bit of respect for the writing. But humour and entertainment-wise, this episode is as enjoyable to me as it ever was. So I'm giving it a high 7.

[partcynic]

^ Yay - I'm glad to see another review from you.

I'm commenting here more to let you know I've read this than for a big discussion, since we pretty much agree about the questionable quality of this ep. The only real difference is that you found it entertaining despite its flaws, while I didn't, which is more of an idiosyncratic thing than a topic for debate.

[cyclica]

^ Agreed.

Apr 5, 2010 9:34:59 GMT -5 partcynic said:

...and the little flashes of both Veruca and the commandos were clever and avoided feeling intrusive.

I actually didn't notice any commandos. I assume they must have made a small cameo, and I just blinked and missed them.

Apr 5, 2010 9:34:59 GMT -5 partcynic said:

While Buffy states early on that she’s having a “bitch attack”, that doesn’t excuse how much of an actual bitch she is to Kathy at the start of the episode. She makes no attempts are reconciling with her or coming to a compromise over their issues, and that’s at odds with the emotionally mature girl she was in the first three seasons (who actually befriended weird, quirky people instead of dismissing them because they didn’t fit a preconceived notion of ‘cool’).

That's a good point. I had forgotten how buffy was back in the first episode, befriending willow and xander.

I'd imagine if she'd met kathy beforehand (in school perhaps) rather than became roommates with her straight away, they might have become friends too. Assuming there was no soul-sucking anyway.

Apr 5, 2010 9:34:59 GMT -5 partcynic said:

- Xander’s early appearance at the cafeteria was tacked-on and awkward. There was no real reason for him to be there, so he shouldn’t have been there.

They were just hanging out, I don't see that as a problem.

Apr 5, 2010 9:34:59 GMT -5 partcynic said:

Ditto for Giles meeting the gang at university. Although it was necessary for the plot, wouldn’t it have been smarter for the Scoobs to discuss demons at his apartment instead of in the middle of a public place with strangers sat in earshot? After all, Buffy was willing to leave the campus and go there just to get away from Kathy, so why not do so when she had an actual issue to address?

Good point.

It's possible giles was paying buffy a visit, and she wanted to talk to him immediately rather than wait till they got to his place.