- Giles has a number of amusing moments. The silent scene where Buffy sees him in his hat and cloak is great, as is his later statement that the sphere must be magical because “it’s so shiny”.
Meh, that line sounded too out of character to me.
- Anya fits perfectly in the Magic Box, and it was an intelligent decision to have her work there. I also smiled at her attempts to provide good customer service (“Hey you...
have a nice day”).
Agreed. Anya and the magic box were made for each other.
- Glory’s entrance is excellent, and it’s cool to have a female Big Bad after four years of evil men. Her dialogue is humorous, and it’s startling when she effortlessly creams Buffy during their fight.
Yup.
- The cinematography during the trance scenes is funky, as are the special effects of Dawn fading in and out of the family photographs (and then, her room and possessions doing the same when Buffy confronts her).
Agreed, though I do wish that scene wasn't quite so 'washed out'.
- Spike’s solitary scene is very funny, and “out for a walk... bitch” is a classic line.
I love spike in small doses like that.
- Big chunks of this ep are annoying. We have Dawn being clumsy, clueless and not having a single good line
I loved buffy making breakfast for joyce, and dawn telling joyce 'buffy helped'. So annoying it's funny! ;D
- The first warehouse scene needed to be filmed again or re-edited. There’s no way that the security guard wouldn’t have seen Buffy fighting the vampire, and he proceeds to pluck the Dagon Sphere from mid-air – it wasn’t visible on the ground in any of the preceding shots, despite his grabbing it from a location of couple of feet away from Buffy.
Yeah, that was stupid. And the audience just forgets it because they're busy wondering what this sphere things is.
- The Magic Box is unbelievably busy for most of the day, and it was weird for Giles to be so overwhelmed. The show’s starting to play him as a doddery old man, and it feels disrespectful to an otherwise excellent character.
I'd imagine it was busy because it was the grand reopening, and all the shop's regular customers had shown up at once.
- It was this episode’s job to justify Dawn’s existence, and it did so in the least convincing manner possible. Rather than go through them in separate paragraphs, I’ll make a master list of all the current problems and issues the Key storyline is having:
Yay! List!
1) How did the surviving monk escape from Glory when she first attacked (in the opening flashback)?
Something must have happened offscreen that wasn't shown, because it wasn't important. Maybe he knew a teleportation spell, or conjured up a portal?
2) Why doesn’t Glory use her super-speed running ability (“Spiral”) to catch up with the fleeing monks at the start; or with Buffy as she made her escape?
High heels?
Either that, or that superpower wasn't written yet.
3) Why did the monk choose to come to Sunnydale, and what was he doing in the warehouse? If he was being pursued by Glory, wouldn’t it be smarter to not lead her to the town where the Key was being kept?
I can only assume he was off to tell buffy all about dawn, so buffy could know to protect her.
4) Why did the monks choose to turn the Key into a human being? Why not turn it into a grain of sand and put it at the bottom of the ocean, or transform it into an orbiting satellite – thus ensuring that Glory would never find it? Or why not just make it a stone and have Buffy hide it in a cupboard?
Buffy would have been far more invested in protecting a sister than a grain of sand. And a key that is capable of running away is a better idea than a key that's just a stationary object, waiting to be found.
And we know glory can summon snot monsters from outer space, perhaps she could have got them to grab any key-satellites. Not that I approve of the concept of space demons.
5) The monk’s magic violates my suspension of disbelief. We’ve had universe-changing spells before, but they existed for the space of a single episode (“The Wish”) or were explicitly stated to be tenuous and bound to collapse (“Superstar”). It would take a ridiculously powerful spell to completely, permanently rewrite the lives of so many people, and it’s too much for the series to cope with. It’s also bad that the show’s damaged its canon, as big chunks of S1-4 have now not happened the way we saw them.
It didn't seem so bad to me at the time, but then I kept assuming it would all be undone at some point. It sucks how the show ended with eevryone just happily staying in this alternate universe.
6) Even if the spell could be believable, the fact that the monks could cast it by sitting around and going ‘ohm’ is stupid.
Again, it looks like there must have been more going on off-screen. Like the spell was already prepared and it was just a case of setting it in motion or something.
7) Why are the monks so desperate to protect the key to begin with? I understand that they don’t want Glory to destroy the world, but they’ve apparently been its protectors for centuries – and thus had it long before Ben/Glory was ‘born’. Were they anticipating that it might one day be used for good?
Good point, I've never thought about that before.
Still, it's not outside the realm of beleivability that they've been guarding the key for centuries like they said. And I'd imagine glory wasn't the only person in all history who might have wanted to use the key to open demon dimesions.
8) Why didn’t the monks let Buffy know what had happened in the first place? If the survivor hadn’t conveniently come to Sunnydale just as Buffy randomly found the Dagon Sphere, decided to do a trance spell and discerned the truth, she’d never have known what Dawn was, and could have attacked or even killed her.
He could have come to sunnydale straight after doing the spell, and got caught straight away, and glory's spent the last few episodes torturing him. And I can only assume it was his own dagon sphere that he brought with him.
If buffy hadn't have done the trance nothing would really have changed, she would still have met the monk and been told dawn was the key.
9) If the monks constructed everything about Dawn, why make her weak, whiny and devoid of personality, and why make it so she’d have a hard time accepting the truth?
The monks had never done this sort of thing before perhaps?
They didn't have much training, and dawn was the best human being they could come up with at the last minute.
Considering how important she is to the season, it might have been good for the directors to consider qualities beyond ‘blonde’ and ‘pretty’ when casting her.
I heard she was best friends with eliza dushku, and it was eliza who got clare the job.
... I kept hoping for a 'faith meets glory' episode, but it never happened.
- The special effects when Glory brain-sucks the security guard are sub-par, with an obvious green-screen.
I wish we could have seen more blood, instead of just beams of light coming out of peoples' heads.
- Michelle Trachtenberg’s performance during the “want tea, Mom?” scene is bad. She tries too hard to be creepy, and the moment’s actual innocuousness isn’t present.
Agreed, but it's a minor point.
- The supposed character development is weird. This episode begins with Buffy disliking Dawn for her obnoxiousness, and ends with Buffy tolerating her because duty now obliges her to – a rather strange message to send. Last time I checked, the fact that they aren’t ‘real’ siblings has no bearing on Dawn’s self-centredness and grating personality, which were the actual source of Buffy’s upset.
I figured buffy was internally conflicted/confused about how to deal with someone who'se suddenly appeared, even though they've supposedly been there all along, like on some level she knew something wasn't right.
Discovering the truth about dawn means buffy can finally 'relax' and make sense of it. And discovering there's a huge threat who wants dawn dead earns dawn some sympathy points too.
...
Looking back, that trance scene is the only reason I'd watch this episode outside of a series marathon. That and every scene with glory.
Whilst I don't have as big of a problem with dawn as you do, I do think you've made some good points and revealed some plot holes that have made me loose a bit of respect for the episode. And besides, an entire episode devoted to revealing something isn't going to be as enjoyable to watch on repeat viewings, when you already know how it ends.
I'm bumping my rating down to a 6.
