6.20 Villains

[Clare]

6.20 Villains - Episode #120
Devastated by Tara’s death, Willow loads up on black magic and determines to kill Warren.

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

[cyclica]

Villains starts where the last episode left off. After tara dies, willow pleads with ancient egyptian god osiris to bring her back. He says no, so she kills him by... breathing on him. She then leaves, covered in blood which xander doesn't notice, and sets about finding warren. Along the way she meets anya and rack, both of whom inexplicably already know tara is dead. Willow then absorbs some books and becomes dark willow, complete with a deep voice that sounds more silly than scary. She later goes to her and tara's old dorm, which they haven't lived in since the end of s5, even though it seems like all their stuff is there.

Willow also heals buffy, and the doctors don't notice.

Warren too has somehow found rack, despite being a regular human who wouldn't be able to find the entrance to rack¡¦s place, and asks him to for a spell to protect him. It turns out later that the spell was to make warren's robot feel human to willow's magic senses. Yeah willow can sense human essences now. And I'm no expert in robotics, but wouldn't it take more than a few hours to build a fully functioning, life size sentient robot?

After willow kills the robot, buffy and xander are like 'so you got magically superpowered and tracked down warren.... so you could kill him?'. Buffy and xander's brains don't appear in this episode. Willow does find warren though, and tortured him in horrible ways, as well as creating an illusion of Katrina, whom willow never met. She then kills warren and somehow teleports away.

Meanwhile spike has somehow reached africa in a day. I guess he must have used one of those planes with no windows to let daylight in.

Ok my review may have been a constant stream of criticism, but that's mostly because criticism is fun. Really this episode had its flaws, but it was a fun , exciting ride that I enjoyed watching. And it brought back vamp willow's awesome catchphrase 'bored now!'

My rating is a high 4.

[partcynic]

6x20 “Villains”

Episode Rating = 2

Onto the Dark Willow arc, and I can say that it doesn’t hold up as well as I’d like it to. If you settle with making comparisons to the rest of S6, then these eps are positively fantastic – things happen, and there’s lots of potentially interesting inter-Scooby conflict. However, they (like much of the year) are the kind of thing that fails to stand up to repeat viewings (or critical analysis... or comparison to S1-4...), and can thus only climb so high in my ratings. Of the three, I’d say “Villains” is the one that 1) makes the most sense for the Willow character and 2) has the largest amount of quality scenes, but it remains mindless adventure with little in the way of plot, theme, character development, humour or emotion. It takes us from A to B with a number of cool moments – and one or two excellent ones – but there are too many gratuitous scenes and poorly-written conversations for anything to shine.

What I Liked about “Villains”:

- There was a real sense of urgency and drama at the start. I liked the juxtaposition between Xander/Buffy and Willow/Tara, and you could feel Willow’s grief (and then anger – though both unfortunately dissipated by the halfway point, with the character just being ‘there’). The first two acts were paced pretty well, and that made them fun to watch.

- The special effects are good throughout, with great bits including Willow sucking magic from the books; healing Buffy; seizing control of the bus; and confronting Warren in the woods.

- The torture scene was excellent, and the first genuinely dark thing we’ve been given this year. I hate Warren, so it was rewarding see him come to a sticky end, and Willow turning his own bullet back on him was wonderfully karmic. I’d have liked for Willow to be angry/grieving as opposed to numb, but she was still compelling, and I felt for her as she lamented Tara’s death.

What I Disliked about “Villains”:

- This doesn’t actually have anything to do with the episode itself, but I think it’s funny that this ep’s title isn’t even spelled correctly on the DVD (“Villians” [sic]). I’m guessing the same amount of attention got paid to the box set as the season itself (i.e., next to none).

- Willow summoning Osiris was the first sign of the episode’s impending cheesiness, and the giant face on the wall didn’t work for me. I didn’t like the idea that she could attempt a resurrection just by demanding one (yet another example of her power/ability inconsistencies), and the nonsense about “natural passing” was a contrived device to ensure she’d go on a vengeance spree. I think it would have worked better if she had tried to do a different spell to restore Tara, and one that would require the deaths/body parts of three people to work. It would have given her a proper reason to go after Jonathon and Andrew once Warren was dead, and would have kept the focus on her grief/Tara’s murder instead of her being ‘possessed’ by dark magic.

- I know that the writers wanted to clearly differentiate between regular Willow and evil Willow, but I kind of wished they hadn’t. I think it would have been much more creepy/disturbing if Willow had committed those acts while looking like her normal self; and it could have said something interesting about human nature and evil. Plus, the raven black hair was a needless invocation of a cliché, and the bizarre lowered voice she evidenced right after sucking up the magic was silly.

- The ‘meanwhile, with the nerds’ scene was a gratuitous waste of time. Its omission wouldn’t have hurt at all, and would have spared us from the ever-present, annoying pop culture reference jokes. Who exactly finds them funny, and who would continue to find them amusing on the second or third viewing?

- The operating scene was poorly done. Judging by the dialogue (“bleeding in the left ventricle”), Buffy got shot near her heart, meaning that she’d be undergoing a major procedure. However, despite this, the medical staff hasn’t even got someone monitoring her breathing, and when the screen cuts to show Willow removing the bullet, there isn’t even a visible incision on her chest. The whole thing should have been re-scripted or re-filmed, and I’d have also liked a reason for the surgical team walking out. Did they do so out of fear of Willow, or did she put some kind of hypnotic mind-control spell on them?

- There was a big missed opportunity with Buffy’s near-death. Given how much she’s hated being back, and the fact that she almost got an ‘out’, I’d like to have known how it affected her psychologically. Did nearly dying (again) do anything to change how she views life?

- Xander and Buffy are dense in their failure to realise that Willow’s transformation isn’t just about Buffy getting shot (it’s especially silly that Xander didn’t put two and two together after seeing Willow in her blood-covered shirt early on); and their dialogue about her addiction was after-school special tripe. In addition, if Willow could sense Warren’s whereabouts and had teleporting as one of her new abilities, why didn’t she just warp after him in the first place? Why even bother taking the others with her?

- Did Warren always have that robotic version of himself? And perhaps I don’t want to know, but how did he imbue it with his ‘essence’?

- With the exception of Dawn, the characters’ reactions to Tara’s death are non-existent. I get that they have bigger things to worry about, but they respond as though she was an anonymous stranger, and not a friend of two years (and for Buffy, a recent ally and confidante). In “Passion”, the show was able to convey that everyone was deeply upset by Jenny’s murder without detracting from the main plot, and I don’t get why that couldn’t have been done here. It’s even more callous if you take note of Buffy’s hairstyle before and after finding Tara’s body – she’s apparently taken the time to condition and crimp while waiting for the coroner to come. This obviously wasn’t intentional, but it’s another example of little things spoiling scenes.

- I absolutely hated Buffy’s morality speech in the Summers living room. Sarah Michelle Gellar is hardly acting (and doesn’t seem to believe a word she says), and Buffy ends up looking smug and self-satisfied. It was annoying that none of what she said specifically focused on the situation at hand, and also that she conveniently forgot that she’s killed humans in the past. Granted, that was for self-preservation rather than revenge, but I’d like it if the season wouldn’t resort to such a black-and-white view of morality.

- Was the dorm room Willow went to supposed to be the one where Tara was staying after they broke up? Why would she need to go there when she could cast her blood map spell anywhere?

- Clem has been funny approximately once during the season, and we don’t need elongated scenes of him doing nothing.

- The Spike scenes were tacked on and terribly done. Besides the racism (we’re in Africa, so there must be tribal drumming and people living in mud huts!), we got a dull continuation of Spike’s story that pulled the viewer out of the more interesting Willow material; a cheesy demon that would make many S1 monsters look like horror masterworks; and some poor misdirection (as there’s no way Spike was talking about getting his soul back).

- The material at the Magic Box was uninteresting, and Xander/Buffy learning about Anya’s return to vengeance was a big nothing. Xander continued to act like a self-righteous ass, and Emma Caulfield’s acting was poor.

- Why on earth did Warren decide to hide out in the woods? Was there something there he was searching for? Most of his attacks on Willow were gimmicky (the flying, exploding box), and the axe strike resulted in an awful pun. I’d also like to know why Willow didn’t just bind him immediately – it’s not like she didn’t have the power to do so.

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

I found the first two acts more engaging and interesting that before (and still really liked Warren getting his comeuppance), but I disliked the third act much more, with the Spike scene and ‘wise woman Buffy’ convo being the visual equivalents of nails down a chalkboard. I was also really unimpressed with the treatment of Tara’s death, and even the Willow scenes were so reliant on shock value (and set-up by bizarre characterisation and illogical twists) that their wow factor is stunted. Although I enjoyed portions of this ep quite a bit more than other editions I’ve rated higher, I can’t ignore the near-endless list of flaws here, nor the fact that little of it makes sense. As a result, the only viable rating I can award “Villains” is a two out of ten.