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Post by Clare on Sept 23, 2008 8:46:06 GMT -5
2.22 Becoming II - Episode #034
Season Two finale - Buffy has to stop Angelus from destroying the Universe
Review (also post a score out of 10) and discuss this episode.
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Post by cyclica on Sept 26, 2008 10:33:36 GMT -5
Wow, they really packed a lot into this episode. Buffy is expelled, Joyce finds out her daughter is a slayer, spike joins forces with buffy (I loved every scene they had together), xander lies to buffy, giles is tortured, physically and mentally (bringing back jenny, yay), willow does her first spell and buffy fights angelus, but ends up having to kill angel.
My favourite part of this episode though has to be the buffy/angelus swordfight. We don't see enough sword fighting on this show. It was much more entertaining to watch then simply having buffy and angelus pummel each other.
I'm giving this a 8. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure a lot of my scores are different to the ones I gave on the 'I reviewed every episode' thread. When I'm done watching every episode, I'll go back and add the new scores to that thread.
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Post by jennf10 on Nov 26, 2008 16:07:44 GMT -5
See my review in Becoming, Part 1.
(my rating for both episodes: 10/10)
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Post by partcynic on Nov 28, 2009 8:39:54 GMT -5
2x22 “Becoming, Part Two”
Episode Rating = 9
If “Buffy” has a single ‘wham’ episode (that is, one that irrevocably changes what’s gone before, ensuring that nothing will ever be the same), then “Becoming, Part Two” is probably it (though it has tough competition from “Passion”). Working brilliantly within the contexts of both a concluding two-parter and a season finale, this episode is one of the most famous in the “Buffy” canon, and for good reason. Portraying Buffy at her most admirable and heroic, it’s the encapsulation of everything the show was originally about – and while I’m very glad the series didn’t end here, if it had, it would have been the perfect moment.
What I Liked about “Becoming, Part Two”:
- The opening kicks off nicely right where Part One left off, and Buffy’s repudiation of Snyder and subsequent escape from the police are nicely tense.
- The scenes at the hospital work considering they’re primarily shipper-oriented material, and the Buffy/Xander dialogue in the first one was good (especially how Buffy’s attempt to lighten the moment quickly faded away as she learnt about Willow). I can’t say I’m that keen on the coma aspect, but the numerous reactions to Willow’s condition were strong, especially Xander’s vigil at her bedside (and in turn, the concern Cordelia showed for him). I’m more ambivalent about his declaration of love (I’ve never been one hundred percent sure if it was a statement of deep friendship or romantic interest, though S3 suggests the latter), but it was still an effective emotional moment.
- Everything with Giles and Angelus was excellent. The scenes are unique in giving us some (very rare) interaction between the characters, and both got to shine with some great dialogue. It was fantastic to see Giles stay strong and taunt Angelus about performing the ritual in a tutu, and the vampire himself was darkly funny in his eagerness to do some torturing with a chainsaw.
- Being the first big shocker of the episode, Spike’s attack on the police officer and consequent offer to work with Buffy are brilliant. Thanks to the thorough foreshadowing we got in the last few shows, it felt like an organic change, and it was satisfying to see the building conflict finally translate into action. Buffy’s disbelief (and later, begrudging acceptance) was believable in terms of her character arc, and their interaction with Joyce was funny (like the hasty cover-up about them being in a band).
- Onto twist number two, and that was Buffy finally coming clean to Joyce. I thought that the gay/coming out metaphor was a great one to employ, and its utilisation was made clear without being heavy-handed. Joyce’s disbelief and confused statements provided a little levity, and I also laughed during her moments with Spike (especially when she realised they’d met before, and he responded by mentioning her taking an axe to him). On top of all that, there was also the superb chat between mother and daughter that ended with Buffy being kicked out. It’s full of real emotion on both sides, and I felt for the two of them, even though Joyce was clearly in the wrong.
- Principal Snyder is a brilliant love-to-hate character, and his obnoxiousness soared to new heights with the pleasure he took in expelling Buffy from Sunnydale High. Buffy’s retort about him not ever having a date in high school was a great comeback, and his final call to the Mayor some fantastic, continued setup for S3.
- Drusilla’s method of extracting information from Giles was clever, and the resulting scene with he and ‘Jenny’ was beautiful. After the tragedy and pain in “Passion”, it was very emotional simply to see Jenny again, and the tone was perfect. Thanks to the gorgeous music and excellent performances from Robia La Morte and Anthony Stewart Head, their discussion was spellbinding, and filled with romance and grief.
- Xander’s lie to Buffy is one of the big moments that erodes his likability, but it’s also in character for him and was the right way for the story to go (“Dead Man’s Party”, on the other hand...) Besides, he made up for his behaviour somewhat by accompanying Buffy in her attack despite his injuries, and his chat with Giles was laugh-out-loud funny (“why would they make you see me?”)
- The climax of this episode is wonderfully paced – there’s lots of suspense as Angelus and Willow conduct their concurrent rituals, and on first viewing it’s anyone’s guess as to what would happen.
- The big Buffy/Angel swordfight is one of the best in the series – it’s fast, exciting and well choreographed. Some of the stunt doubling is obvious (David’s is instantly discernable because his hairline is receding quite badly), but it doesn’t detract from the dynamics. The sojourn into the garden provided an awesome moment, with Buffy grabbing Angelus’ sword and informing him she was all she needed being cheesy but magnificent.
- I love this episode’s theme of sacrifice, and how your responses to major events determine who you are. From what happens here, we get to be shown the full extent of Buffy’s heroism, and the traumas she undergoes are interesting in adding to the story instead of detracting from it. By removing Buffy’s ties to her home, friends and school, the episode makes its focus her relationship with Angel, so when it comes down it, there are no question marks regarding her final actions. After sacrificing her own life in “Prophecy Girl”, we now see her willing to kill the person she loves most of all for the greater good – and those two events earn my unyielding respect for her. The contrast between her initial joy at Angel’s restoration and the slow dawn of horror as she realises what she’ll have to do is heartbreaking, and I was completely pulled into her emotions. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s acting is top-notch, and the fade from Buffy standing in silence to bursting into tears (and then silently leaving Sunnydale as Sarah McLachlan’s “Full of Grace” plays in the background) is incredibly moving. All I can say is bravo – while the show would go on to hit many additional peaks, few of the following dramatic episodes were able to hit the heights of this one (and its S2 siblings).
What I Disliked about “Becoming, Part Two”:
- Where did Buffy get her early, police-dodging change of clothes from? She hadn’t been home to get changed – does she have hidden stashes all over town?
- A minor thing, but I’m not too fond of convenient comas. If you’re going to put a character in one, having it be somewhat long term (like with Faith) as opposed to something they recover from five minutes later.
- Whistler’s scenes felt a bit tacked on to me – and some of his dialogue was painful. He could probably have been excised from the story here with few (or no) problems.
- Angelus should have had a few more vampires defending the mansion. As is, Buffy takes too long killing one anonymous guy, when she should have been able to dust him quickly. It’s not a big issue (as Angelus is none too bright, and would be reasoning that even if Buffy attacked with the Scoobs, he, Dru and Spike could take care of them, even with the latter being immobilised), but having Buffy work her way through a few more cronies would have prevented the first part of the fight from feeling so contrived.
- Shouldn’t Angelus have caught on fire from being exposed to sunlight when he cornered Buffy in the garden? It’s particularly glaring given that in the last episode, the immolation-o-gram combusted instantly after only a second of exposure.
- Spike knocks Drusilla out using a choke hold? As with the gaffes in “Surprise” and “Innocence”, it would be much appreciated if the writers took the time to read up on the vampires they’re writing about.
Do I like this episode more or less than the last time I watched it?
I still think this episode’s fantastic, though I’ve recently grown fond of having only two ten scores (one for my favourite arc episode, and one for my favourite standalone), so I’m going to award “Becoming, Part Two” a (truly excellent) rating of nine. I don’t think I could do justice to this ep by reducing its qualities to a mere summary form, so I’ll just say that this is certainly one of the top ten hours of TV “Buffy” ever produced, and one that shows the series at its dramatic/emotional peak.
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Post by cyclica on Nov 30, 2009 19:10:34 GMT -5
This episode starts out awesome, and while there are a few problematic scenes along the way, it mostly stays awesome. Buffy gets arrested straight after finding out kendra was dead. As if those two shocks weren't big enough, she straight away finds out xander and willow are injured too, and snyder's making things worse. She's on her own with no one to help her, and now needs to get away from the law, as well as kill her ex-lover, fight vamps and save the world. Poor buffy! This may be the most screwed she's even been, and I'm on the edge of my seat. After a few more nice scenes (hospital reunion, angelus being genuinely scary to giles) buffy goes to giles's house and runs into mr makesnosense, aka whistler. Just what was he doing in giles's house anyway? If he was waiting for buffy shouldn't he be at her house? If he knows the world is doomed why is he not doing something about it? And why is it buffy assumed this guy is a demon before she's told, despite the fact she's never seen a human looking demon before (not counting bugs in disguise)? And why is whistler still in giles's place later on? Soon we come to the coolest moment in the episode- buffy teaming up with spike. Of course later on they will team up all the time, but at this point it's a huge surprise that these mortal enemies would be working together. And it's always amusing to see spike talking to joyce (I loved her asking if she's seen him before, and his reply that she hit him with an axe once). Then we get another huge moment- buffy revealing to joyce that she's the slayer. I was totally on joyce's side during this conversation- buffy dumped a huge amount of information on her and expected ehr to buy it without giving any kind of explanation. I understand buffy was eager to go save the world, but she really comes across as unlikeable in this scene. Buffy returns to the school where snyder (who just happened to be standing around alone in an empty school, I guess he has his reasons) shows up and expells her, clearly enjoying the experience way too much. Snyder is always enjoyable to watch, and this might be my favourite snyder scene. Plus it ends with another subtle set-up for season 3 as he phones the mayor with the 'good news' that buffy's expelled. Angelus can't seem to get the information out of giles (perhaps because his idea of torture is making giles sweaty and giving him a small nick on the forehead) so dru comes in to hypnotise giles into thinking jenny is there. It's a bit ridiculous that dru suddenly has these amazing hypnosis powers (in the previous ep and this one) now that the plot has called for it, and even more ridiculous that giles would beleive it's jenny and tell her everything. But I don't care, I can overlook it because it's just so awesome to have jenny back again for a moment. Willow goes ahead with the spell to make angelus into angel. Looking back now it seems a bit odd that she could do this huge spell with no problems, but it took her so long to master other, much simpler spells like floating pencils. But that's not a problem yet. Xander hides from buffy that willow's restoring angel's soul (bad xander! Shame we'll have to wait four and a half years before this is addressed), and they go to fight angelus. There were some more nice moments to come (xander asking giles why dru would make giles see him, spike turning on angel and the subsequent spike vs dru fight) but the big highlight for me is the swordfight. Like I said before, watching buffy and angel (and their stunt doubles) settle their differences with swords was a much more entertaining and elegent way than having them get into yet another fistfight that we've seen so many times before. I especially loved the scene (out in the courtyard, in daylight?) where angel says to buffy 'you've got no weapon, no friends and no hope, what's left?' and buffy replies 'me'.  After spike somehow strangles dru and gets away, angelus gets turned into angel by willow's spell. But it's too late because he already pulled the sword from acathla (like five minutes ago, why did it take so long for him to wake up?) and the demon burps out a vortex that will suck up the world. Buffy is finally back with angel but now she has to kill him to save the world. It's one of the most emotional scenes on the show, you feel so bad for buffy that you don't even notice that it makes no sense that angel has lost his memory of the things he did as angelus (the whole point of the curse was to make angel live with the memory of all the bad he's done). It's just so heart wrenching watching buffy murder angel, who has no clue what's going on. After an annoying song we see that the gang is back together at the school, all except for buffy, who's ran away. Not knowing where she's going, this makes for one of the best cliffhanger endings on the show. (And as a bonus the grr arg monster gets his first new line, 'I need a hug!'  I'm bumping this one down to a low 8, mostly because I'm losing patience with whistler, but it's still an amazing episode, full of huge moments. Since I've incorporated the nitpicks into the review this time, I'll end this review with a funny picture of angel for your entertainment.  |
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Post by cyclica on Dec 3, 2009 15:29:00 GMT -5
Oops! I forgot to comment on your review. Sorry. - Where did Buffy get her early, police-dodging change of clothes from? She hadn’t been home to get changed – does she have hidden stashes all over town? I can only assume she snuck into her bedroom without joyce knowing and snuck out again. - Whistler’s scenes felt a bit tacked on to me – and some of his dialogue was painful. He could probably have been excised from the story here with few (or no) problems. Yup. - Angelus should have had a few more vampires defending the mansion. As is, Buffy takes too long killing one anonymous guy, when she should have been able to dust him quickly. It’s not a big issue (as Angelus is none too bright, and would be reasoning that even if Buffy attacked with the Scoobs, he, Dru and Spike could take care of them, even with the latter being immobilised), but having Buffy work her way through a few more cronies would have prevented the first part of the fight from feeling so contrived. I agree. It was strange how angel only had two lackeys, one buffy killed straight away and the other took her ages to kill. Where were all the others? - Shouldn’t Angelus have caught on fire from being exposed to sunlight when he cornered Buffy in the garden? It’s particularly glaring given that in the last episode, the immolation-o-gram combusted instantly after only a second of exposure. - Spike knocks Drusilla out using a choke hold? As with the gaffes in “Surprise” and “Innocence”, it would be much appreciated if the writers took the time to read up on the vampires they’re writing about. Double yup. |
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Post by partcynic on Dec 12, 2009 15:35:18 GMT -5
It's not that unreasonable for her to assume he was a demon. After all, vamps can appear human - there's no reason why other monsters might not be able to do the same. Really? I appreciate that Joyce was given a lot to deal with, but Buffy was trying to stop someone from destroying the world, and that takes priority. I was actually grateful that she pointed out how dense Joyce (or anyone) would have to be to look at her past and not realise something was off. Sure, she didn't handle it brilliantly, but Joyce had no right to kick her out of the house. Saving the lives of 6 billion people > Coddling your mother. It's not really an issue of Dru suddenly having powers - she's demonstrated psychic ability with her visions, and I think it progresses naturally that she may have other skills related to it (like projecting images into other's heads). Besides, it compensates well for her comparative physical fragility and lack of fighting experience - it's not like it makes her overpowered or undefeatable. I disagree again here. The guy had been held hostage and tortured, and it's believable that the overwhelming emotional response he'd have to seeing Jenny could combine with his physical stress to override his logic. Technically, she was fine with the pencil floating spell from the start. It was just her upset at the mention of Faith that caused her to momentarily lose control. Yep - this should absolutely have been dealt with in S3 (I wasn't impressed by the mention in "Selfless", since it didn't go anywhere). Between this and "Dead Man's Party", Xander gets the 'idiot' crown of Scoobs (until S6, when they all get it). Yes - that's an excellent sequence. But he didn't lose his memory - it was consistent with what was shown with the original curse in Part One (where he had no idea what was going on for a few moments, and then realised what had happened). "Full of Grace" is gorgeous, not annoying.  And this is coming from someone who can't stand Sarah McLachlan. |
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Post by cyclica on Dec 13, 2009 18:53:46 GMT -5
It's not that unreasonable for her to assume he was a demon. After all, vamps can appear human - there's no reason why other monsters might not be able to do the same. Well then she should have assumed he was a vampire! Really? I appreciate that Joyce was given a lot to deal with, but Buffy was trying to stop someone from destroying the world, and that takes priority. I was actually grateful that she pointed out how dense Joyce (or anyone) would have to be to look at her past and not realise something was off. Sure, she didn't handle it brilliantly, but Joyce had no right to kick her out of the house. Saving the lives of 6 billion people > Coddling your mother. I can understand buffy's need to leave and save the world as quickly as possible, and agree that joyce shouldn't have kicked buffy out. But I still say buffy was unlikable in that scene, especially when telling her mother to have another drink. I don't see why buffy couldn't have elaborated upon where she was going, instead of just 'I'm off to save the world'. I disagree again here. The guy had been held hostage and tortured, and it's believable that the overwhelming emotional response he'd have to seeing Jenny could combine with his physical stress to override his logic. One minute it's drucilla, the next instant it's jenny, back from the dead... I admit I don't know much on what the effects of torture have on someone's mind, but I can't see anyone falling for that. Besides, giles is the most level-headed, intelligent and knowledgeable of the gang (especailly in regard to vampire powers), if there was anyone who wouldn't fall for that trick, it would be him. Technically, she was fine with the pencil floating spell from the start. It was just her upset at the mention of Faith that caused her to momentarily lose control. Well ok but that was just an example. My point was that she can do such a powerful spell so easily, and yet later on it seems to take a much longer time to learn simpler spells (like, here's another example, turning a rat into a human). But he didn't lose his memory - it was consistent with what was shown with the original curse in Part One (where he had no idea what was going on for a few moments, and then realised what had happened). When angelus first became cursed, his memory loss only lasted a moment, but when willow cursed him, it seemed like a couple of minutes before buffy had to kill him. His memory should have returned by then. And since it didn't, I got the impression he would have remained with no memory of angelus's actions, had he not been killed. "Full of Grace" is gorgeous, not annoying. And this is coming from someone who can't stand Sarah McLachlan. It's not really the choice of song that's the problem. I just really can't stand it when tv shows/movies put a song in the background of a scene. It's one thing if it's instrumental, or if the characters are at a party or whatever and can hear the song too, but it really pulls me out of a scene to hear someone singing about something that's only barely related to what I'm watching. It's the end of the season, I was totally invested in what was happening with the characters, then suddenly I'm listening to someone going on about darkness and courage, or whatever. It's totally unneccessary, and annoying, because it's like forcing us to feel emotions we are already feeling. The scene would have worked just as well with imstrumental music. It's also breaking the forth wall, unless Sarah McLachlan is standing just off-screen, singing to buffy. I realise I probably sound crazy, but I can't help how I feel. I've just always hated songs in shows.  |
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Post by Twisted Slayer on Apr 29, 2010 15:44:06 GMT -5
Rating: 10
I really like the fact that Buffy sacrificed someone that she really loved to save the world, even though many heroes I've seen in other fanfics. thought before that they'd let the world be destroyed for their selfish desires.
I also like that Buffy overpowered her weakness at seeing Angelus inside her lover's body and was able to defend herself and her friends.
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And this is coming from someone who can't stand Sarah McLachlan. 
