4.08 Pangs

[Clare]

4.08 Pangs - Episode #064
Buffy tries to give her friends the perfect Thanksgiving while battling a furious Native American spirit.

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

[cyclica]

Another fun filler ep, notable because spike pretty much becomes a member of the scooby gang as of this episode. I'm a big fan of pangs, mainly because of the humour.

The plot with the native american spirits was ok. I liked seeing an arguement with 2 sides (whether or not to kill hus), but the villains themselves were boring and predictable.

The return of angel was rather pointless, its not like he even saved buffy, he just fought one of the clan, and buffy took on hus herself and won. The PTB sent him to sunnydale for nothing. Still, he was funny like he is on his own show, the angel of the high school years would never have worked with the 'I'm not evil' lines.

I give this ep a 7.

[partcynic]

4x08 “Pangs”

Episode Rating = 4

One interesting thing I’ve noticed doing these reviews is that I’ve been able to cover ground for S4 far more quickly than I did for seasons one through three. Part of this is the fact that my “Buffy” viewing tends to focus mainly on the high school seasons (so the later ones have a comparative novelty factor), but it’s also because I find it easier to be critical than positive about things. “Pangs” is a great example of this, as I was able to reel off a long, detailed list of dislikes very quickly, while taking twice the amount of time to consider its strong sides – though that may not be due to my idiosyncrasies, but this episode’s unfortunate status as one that’s willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of humour and plot. The end product is a relatively enjoyable one, but I have to say that I expect better from Jane Espenson.

What I Liked about “Pangs”:

- Throughout the episode, the dialogue was strong, witty and playful. This is the single biggest positive here, as it made quite a few boring or grating scenes digestible. In fact, I could probably summarise the entire thing as “great dialogue, shame about everything else”.

- To remotely enjoy the character that now goes by the name of ‘Anya’, you have to forget what the old one was like, but once you assume that she suffered massive head trauma at some point between S3 and S4, she’s good fun. As always, her bizarre ways of expressing her love for Xander are funny (thinking that getting sick and dying together would be ‘romantic’), and the two work well as a couple.

- As with Anya, we’ve now moved on to Spike version 2.0, but he’s a cool figure who hasn’t lost any of his defining characteristics. At this point, it’s interesting to see how being unable to hunt and feed is affecting him, and I enjoyed the perverse humour of his longingly watching a vampire ’family’ kill a captive victim. His interaction with Harmony was also great (I love that she’s clearly been reading cheesy self-help books, which is very fitting to her character), but the gold came when he got to the Scoobs’ Thanksgiving celebration. Almost every line he had was amusing (as was the visual of him tied to the chair, full of arrows), and his scathing put-downs towards Willow were incredibly satisfying after being subjected to her constant whining.

- It’s great to see Xander having a legitimate place in a S4 story, even thought he spent most of his screentime lying down and shivering. His responses to his newfound syphilis were very amusing, and easily the best comedic part of the episode.

- The brief scenes with Riley were decent. I liked the reminder that the Initiative is still hunting for Spike, and Riley’s retorts to the ever-obnoxious Forrest were good. I also enjoyed his brief scene with Buffy outside the coffee shop, which led to one of the better Angel moments (his jealously asking who ‘that guy’ was).

What I Disliked about “Pangs”:

- Why does the vampire at the start tell Buffy to “go home” and that “things were great until you came here”? Did he (or the writers) not realise that Buffy is going to university in her home town? Related to this, there’s also a bit too much of the ‘everything’s changed’ nostalgia. Considering that the characters are living in the same location, have preserved almost all of their friendships, and get to spend time together regularly, it’s hard to see what the difference is.

- Everything with Angel was gratuitous and gave the impression of being bolted on to an already-finished script. In order to justify his appearance (and the fact that the Powers That Be considered this serious enough to send Doyle a vision of it), he needed to contribute something substantial to the fight, but beyond stopping one spirit from attacking Buffy while she was distracted, he didn’t do anything. In addition, it was a bit weird how people kept assuming he was evil. Sure, it was mildly funny, but why would that be their first explanation for his presence?

- Hus was a boring, one-dimensional villain played by a wooden actor, and I wasn’t interested in or sympathetic to his plight. It would have helped if there had been more layers to the plot, but all we got was a basic, linear story that showed little imagination or creativity. After all, it’s not like ‘the gang fights vengeful Native Americans during Thanksgiving’ is a thoughtful concept.

- A lot of the jokes are repetitive. Buffy’s hyper-attentiveness regarding the dinner was funny once or twice, but got old by the twentieth mention.

- The characterisation in this episode is rather poor, with three important characters (Willow; Buffy; Giles) being grossly misrepresented. What’s annoying is that the script doesn’t pull things out of thin air, but takes minor character flaws and blows them up until the host is entirely consumed. Of the three, Willow gets it the worst, and although she made legitimate theoretical points about the hypocrisy of Thanksgiving in the first act, her childish clinging to her arguments once Hus was released and began murdering people was highly irritating. As someone who is supposed to be smart, she shouldn’t have needed Giles and Spike to tell her that nothing would ever compensate for what was done to the Chumash, and that Hus’ vengeance wasn’t justified. Perhaps this extreme naiveté would have been plausible in the first season, but after three and a bit years of monster fighting (including battles against beings whose motivations were getting revenge/making up for past wrongs, like Marcie Ross and the Inca Princess), that should be long gone, and her willingness to let Xander suffer pain and multiple putrefying diseases just because she had a bee in her bonnet was really cold.

- Like Willow, Giles is written poorly in an attempt to establish an unnecessary moral conflict. It’s sad to see an intelligent man who is usually the voice of reason devolve into a near-parody of himself, and his stupid argument with Willow (and constant jabs at her thereafter) made him come across like a petulant schoolboy.

- Buffy manages to take the least damage from the clumsy theme, but she still suffers. Her dogged adherence to Willow’s point of view and decision to focus on a trivial dinner instead of an angry (and potentially mass-murdering) spirit was way out of character; being completely at odds with her prior portrayals (remember how in “Lie To Me”, she was genuinely upset by the news of Ford’s terminal illness, but let him know that there was no way she’d let him sacrifice innocent people to obtain eternal life? How quickly they forget).

- Is Hus more like a ghost, or a demon? If he was a spirit (as most characters referred to him), how was he able to physically manifest, and why would a physical strike kill him? Also, if Hus knew that his own knife was the only thing that would kill him, why didn’t he just use another weapon? Or were Chumash artefacts the only instruments he could wield?

- Why does Anya act as though she’s never seen Angel before? They’ve already encountered each other (at the end of “Doppelgangland”).

- Buffy shrugs off the bolt to her arm too quickly. Even considering her Slayer strength and accelerated healing, an arrow striking her at that velocity would have caused some nasty damage, and would certainly require a hospital trip for some proper treatment.

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

I’d say I like it a fraction more, but that was because I made the conscious decision to ignore the numerous glaring problems and focus on the good-natured humour. Overall, “Pangs” is quite a weird ep in featuring huge segments that suck, yet writing them with enough deftness to make the overall experience tolerable. I’d probably like this one more if it had a stronger plot and paid closer attention to consistent characterisation, but the material for Spike, Harmony, Anya and Xander is strong enough to make it worth rewatching. Therefore, I’m going to stick with my old rating, and give “Pangs” a passable-yet-problematic four out of ten.