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Post by Clare on Sept 26, 2008 11:12:32 GMT -5
6.16 Hell's Bells - Episode #116
Xander gets cold feet on his wedding day after a mysterious stranger shows him a disturbing vision of the future.
Review (also post a score out of 10) and discuss this episode.
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Post by cyclica on May 30, 2009 12:12:35 GMT -5
Hells bells is another one of those season 6 episodes with virtually no plot. A demon that anya cursed in the past comes back on her and xander’s wedding day to convince xander to break up with her. There, that’s the whole plot in one sentence. All the other main characters add nothing but a few jokes. We do get to finally see xander’s parents and uncle rory, but all they do is fight with anya’s demon friends. Since when does she have so many demon friends anyway? I thought she was a demon fighter, who was formerly a vengeance demon who hated men. Yet a lot of her friends are demon men. I guess demon men are ok. The villain is really an innocent guy who was punished by anya in the past, and his punishment was to become a huge super strong demon, who can travel in time and turn into a human again if he wants. Oh no, poor guy.  And instead of going back to kill anya he just tells xander things he already knows, shows him a vision that xander knows is a lie, and suddenly xander decides not to be with anya any more. Lame. And where’s giles? Or cordelia? And just what was that dark place where anya and d’hoffryn were at the end? A demon dimension? I’m giving this ep 3. I was going to give a 2 but I bumped it up because anya reciting her vows was so darn adorable. |
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Post by partcynic on Dec 16, 2010 14:00:21 GMT -5
6x16 “Hell’s Bells”
Episode Rating = 1
So far, Xander and Anya had made it through S6 relatively unscathed, so I guess it was only a matter of time before the gods of bad writing would decide to rain on their parade. “Hell’s Bells” is yet another disappointing entry into S6, and one that’s all too happy to do away with depth and meaning in favour of heavy-handed, ‘emotional’ crud. It’s amusing to watch the DVD commentary for this ep and hear director David Solomon refer to it as a mixture of great comedy and amazing drama, when it’s actually neither. Horribly unfunny (in fact, I’d say the failed jokes with the wedding party are among the most painful things to sit through in the entire “Buffy” series) and laughable in its attempts at being profound, “Hell’s Bells” is actually just a waste of film, and yet another contender in the race for the coveted mantle of ‘worst ep ever’.
What I Liked about “Hell’s Bells”:
- Despite the ugly dresses (especially Anya’s – couldn’t the costume department have gotten her a nice wedding gown?), the female cast members all looked good. Yes, that’s shallow and sexist, but I’m scrounging for positives here.
- I loved the brief ‘backstage’ moments between Xander/Buffy and then Xander/Willow. They were touchingly written and showed nice flashes of the depths of their respective friendships.
- Anya’s various wedding vows were good, and I liked how they progressed from her typical bluntness/tactlessness to something that was genuine and heartfelt.
- On first viewing, the prospect of Anya returning to vengeance was an interesting one.
What I Disliked about “Hell’s Bells”:
- Instead of writing these out in full yet again, I’ll group the two omnipresent S6 problems together. Firstly, this episode had close to no plot – we weren’t watching a story, but simply following the lives of the characters at this point in time. There was little tension or excitement as the episode progressed, and the attempt at a narrative was nothing more than the thousandth reiteration of a soap opera cliché. Point two relates to this, and that’s that the ‘plot’ provided no window for character insight or development. Despite having a three-second shot of Xander’s parents fighting, we came no closer to truly understanding his motivations for abandoning Anya, and why he only chose to voice his concerns now – and it’s a huge problem they were never fully explored (here, or later on). This ended up doing him irreparable damage, as well as to his relationship with Anya (as the last three years have basically been for nothing). Without this insight, we’re left with yet another example of S6 forcing people out of character, and the ‘all suffering, all the time’ motif has become farcical.
- Just to put things into perspective, let’s consider that the incessant wedding chatter (which dominated Xander and Anya’s discussions and actions for fifteen episodes) has now become one-hundred percent pointless. It was bad enough sitting through it the first time, but it’s even worse when you know it’s all for nothing. If anything, it should have been excised from the get-go – this ep could easily have been bumped up twelve places in the season’s running order, with no loss of meaningful content.
- I know that a lot about “Buffy” requires the willing suspension of one’s (dis)belief, but I just couldn’t buy the Harris family accepting that Anya’s guests were circus folk. It was good that several people seemed incredulous at the concept, but that wasn’t enough to make it plausible.
- Xander’s relatives were one-dimensional stereotypes who felt like figures from a Saturday morning cartoon. Little effort was placed into making them seem real (or even interestingly offbeat), with only cousin Carol having vaguely believable behaviours (and even she had problems. Was her sporting Xander’s cufflinks as earrings supposed to be funny?)
- I hated the portrayal of demons. I don’t believe that they should always be shown as evil and destructive, but they can be written as nuanced or morally neutral without being rendered as ludicrously as they were here. As with the Harris clan, nothing about them felt real or believable, and they were cheesy caricatures that cheapened an important part of the Buffyverse. I had a particularly tough time finding D’Hoffryn and vengeance demons scary after this outing, and their return to ‘evil’ in “Selfless” ended up coming across like someone trying to make the Teletubbies intimidating.
- The writers have apparently forgotten Anya’s history, as it was explicitly stated in “The Wish” that smashing Anya’s amulet would undo all of the wishes she’d granted. Therefore, the guy who came after her here was never cursed in the first place.
- Ignoring the previous point, let’s look at the silliness of what Anya did to the philanderer. Since when was giving someone the abilities to use powerful magic, hop across dimensions and willingly change from human to demon a punishment? She’s supposed to be hurting/killing these men, not giving them superpowers. And if the guy attained his skills in an unrelated way, how exactly did he do it? Did he escape his captors and barter with some kind of demon? How did he even find out what Anya was up to, and learn the specific date of her wedding?
- Why did the demon go down the ‘show Xander visions’ route in his attempts to hurt Anya? Wouldn’t that plan require complex powers and an insight into Xander’s mind he couldn’t possibly possess, as well as having an unpredictable outcome? How did the demon know that Xander would readily believe him, and why did he choose to tell Anya everything (when she could theoretically explain everything to Xander, and get him to go through with the wedding after all)? Why didn’t the demon just lure Xander into the back room and brutally murder him? That would cause Anya pain and suffering that would stay with her for the rest of her life, and thus be an effective form of revenge.
- The false-future scenes were poorly written, and dealt with shallow, surface material. Parts were relatively interesting (like the news that Buffy had died again), but those were counteracted by annoying things like the demon-eared daughter and her constant “I hate you!” whining. I didn’t feel any emotion upon seeing that sequence, and I wasn’t drawn into Xander’s confusion afterwards.
- Spike and Buffy continue to be inconsistently characterised. They’re now acting like long-term, caring lovers who’ve been forced through an unwanted separation; with no acknowledgement of the mutual abuse they’ve given each other, nor that their time together was more about hate-sex than emotional bonding.
- How was Spike getting in and out of the wedding venue? He was moving about via the front door, despite the fact that it was daytime. Were we supposed to believe that the heavy cloud cover was sufficient to prevent him from being set alight? In addition, was he just crashing the party? I can’t see Xander having willingly invited him.
- A quick line explaining Giles’ absence would have been welcome. He really should have been there – after all, it’s not like the wedding was a spontaneous event that couldn’t have been planned for.
- The attempts at comedy with the wedding party were embarrassing. Things like Buffy’s drawn-out ‘Mini-tor’ excuse (which Anya – and bizarrely, Tara – appeared to believe); the juggling; the charades, the multiple, campy fights; and the unabashed silliness of the musical ensemble playing the wedding march for someone who was obviously not the bride were thoroughly cringe-worthy.
- The ‘dramatic’ material in this episode amounted to little more than cheap tear-jerking, relying on simplistic emotional manipulation (juxtaposing Anya’s vows with Xander walking out in the rain; the shot of her walking down the aisle on her own) instead of substance.
Do I like this episode more or less than the last time I watched it?
I still think it’s terrible, both in context of being a low-quality episode and fumbling horribly with what was a crucial moment in Xander and Anya’s development (both individually, and as a couple). Neither of them really recovered from the damage done here, and the event the jilting was engineered for (having Anya become a demon again) was itself abruptly abandoned, making the whole venture pointless. With almost nothing in this episode working, I can only award “Hell’s Bells” a solitary point, in acknowledge of the fact that Nicholas Brendon and Emma Caulfield tried their best with such poor material.
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Post by cyclica on Mar 20, 2011 16:20:21 GMT -5
Sorry there's no futurama review this week, I'm having problems with the player. So instead, a new buffy review! I agree with all of your points on this one, so if I hadn't replied to a post just assume I typed 'agreed'.  - I know that a lot about “Buffy” requires the willing suspension of one’s (dis)belief, but I just couldn’t buy the Harris family accepting that Anya’s guests were circus folk. It was good that several people seemed incredulous at the concept, but that wasn’t enough to make it plausible. And besides, xander's family must have been the only people in sunnydale who weren't aware of demons by this point. - I hated the portrayal of demons. I don’t believe that they should always be shown as evil and destructive, but they can be written as nuanced or morally neutral without being rendered as ludicrously as they were here. As with the Harris clan, nothing about them felt real or believable, and they were cheesy caricatures that cheapened an important part of the Buffyverse. I had a particularly tough time finding D’Hoffryn and vengeance demons scary after this outing, and their return to ‘evil’ in “Selfless” ended up coming across like someone trying to make the Teletubbies intimidating. Definetly agree about the first part, these demons aren't demons, they might as well just be circus folk. Their cover story is more beleivable than the truth. Though I did still find d'hoffryn intimidating later on, if only because he had so much potential to be a threat, seeing as how he was more powerful than most of the big bads. - Ignoring the previous point, let’s look at the silliness of what Anya did to the philanderer. Since when was giving someone the abilities to use powerful magic, hop across dimensions and willingly change from human to demon a punishment? She’s supposed to be hurting/killing these men, not giving them superpowers. And if the guy attained his skills in an unrelated way, how exactly did he do it? Did he escape his captors and barter with some kind of demon? How did he even find out what Anya was up to, and learn the specific date of her wedding? At least her giving him abilities fits in with the idea from selfless (and in a way, the wish) that anya just did whatever she felt like to her victims, just because she finds the outcome entertaining. Though it makes no sense that she would make him so powerful he'd be a threat to her. - Why did the demon go down the ‘show Xander visions’ route in his attempts to hurt Anya? Wouldn’t that plan require complex powers and an insight into Xander’s mind he couldn’t possibly possess, as well as having an unpredictable outcome? How did the demon know that Xander would readily believe him, and why did he choose to tell Anya everything (when she could theoretically explain everything to Xander, and get him to go through with the wedding after all)? Why didn’t the demon just lure Xander into the back room and brutally murder him? That would cause Anya pain and suffering that would stay with her for the rest of her life, and thus be an effective form of revenge. I can only assume this future-demon-man is simply an idiot. - The false-future scenes were poorly written, and dealt with shallow, surface material. Parts were relatively interesting (like the news that Buffy had died again), but those were counteracted by annoying things like the demon-eared daughter and her constant “I hate you!” whining. I didn’t feel any emotion upon seeing that sequence, and I wasn’t drawn into Xander’s confusion afterwards. I did like the (far too briefly explored) idea of what scooby gang member's lives would be like in the future, especially if that future is without buffy. How would that affect everyone's lives to not have their protector around, and still live in a world of demons? Which we sort of saw at the start of s6, but that was more to do with the immediate problem of routine patrols and keeping buffy's death secret, I would have preferred seeing how it would affect everyone in the long run. We almost got a moment of development to see how important buffy was by showing life without her, but we were robbed of that in favour of watching teenagers while. Which didn't even come across as xander and anya being bad parents or having problems relating to the kid's demon sides, it just looked like typical teenagers-being-annoying. - How was Spike getting in and out of the wedding venue? He was moving about via the front door, despite the fact that it was daytime. Were we supposed to believe that the heavy cloud cover was sufficient to prevent him from being set alight? In addition, was he just crashing the party? I can’t see Xander having willingly invited him. He was there because his name's in the opening credits, that's all I can figure. I have no problem with someone having a token appearance, but he had no role to play in the wedding and no reason to be there. They could easily have had a token scene of anya inviting him and him saying no, or giving him a seperate subplot. - A quick line explaining Giles’ absence would have been welcome. He really should have been there – after all, it’s not like the wedding was a spontaneous event that couldn’t have been planned for. Cordy too. ............ I stand by my 3. Maybe a low 3. |
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Post by partcynic on Mar 22, 2011 12:44:12 GMT -5
I agree with your entire review here, so I have no (major) extra comments to add. I think it was supposed to be the same place D'Hoffryn took Willow to in "Something Blue", so it's at least a cute bit of continuity. Yay for a new review - and you know I always like the agreement. Agreed. Even if she wasn't thinking of potential consequences, I doubt she'd ever be that stupid. Yes - that could have been interesting and provided character development. It's depressing thinking about what might have been. |
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And instead of going back to kill anya he just tells xander things he already knows, shows him a vision that xander knows is a lie, and suddenly xander decides not to be with anya any more. 
