6.22 Grave

[Clare]

6.22 Grave - Episode #122
Season Six finale - After draining Giles of his magical powers, Willow attempts to destroy the world.

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

[cyclica]

Giles is back! He somehow knew willow had become dark willow, and he somehow has all the magic powers needed to stop her. It’s a good thing he chose that day to visit a coven and ask them what’s going on in sunnydale (instead of picking up a phone), and that the coven was able to give a huge amount of magic powers to a guy who has almost no experience using magic, at least since he was a teenager.

So he and willow fight, and she absorbs his magic power. But he had poisoned himself with the orpheus drug, and she absorbed the poison and fell into a coma. No wait, that was on angel. Instead, giles poisoned himself with the world’s most powerful magic, and willow absorbed it and got even more powerful. Which was a very stupid thing to do, given he had no way of knowing for sure what willow would do with this power. Luckily she did exactly as he thought she would- she raised a tiny temple (complete with a statue of a demon more scary and demonic than any actual demon in the show), and xander saved her with his words of love (as well as stupidly jumping in front of her beam of magic, without knowing what would happen). Giles also somehow knew what was going on even when he wasn’t there, and after willow became good he was somehow cured of his injuries. Pleh.

Where’s buffy in this season finale? In a hole. Actually I did enjoy seeing buffy fighting alongside dawn, teaching her how to fight. But still, I would have liked a better end for buffy for the last episode. And why didn’t buffy just leap out of the hole, like we know she can? And if she was stuck, how did they climb out at the end?

There seems to be more faults in this episode than the previous one. Like anya telling giles she’s blonde to get a hug, even though she was blonde last time they met, or giles bursting into laughter when buffy fills him in on all the horrible things that have happened. But there’s plenty of good too. Anya spends the whole episode being adorable. Like I said buffy and dawn fighting demons side by side was cool, as was xander saving the world. And there’s a good end to the spike subplot – after being covered in beetles (more icky than scary or threatening), he gets his soul back. This may have lead to some bad season 7 episodes, but watching grave for the first time, knowing things with spike will be different from now on, was great.

This wasn’t a bad episode, but it’s probably my least favourite of all the season finales. Buffy had no real part in it, and giles was a total deus ex machina. My rating is a low 4.

...And I'm done with season six!

[partcynic]

6x22 “Grave”

Episode Rating = 2

We’ve finally reached the end of S6, and its closer is just as disappointing and empty as the rest of the year. It’s no surprise that this is the weakest of all “Buffy”’s finales (after all, it was penned by David Fury, while the other six were handled by Joss), and like its predecessor, it forces the characters through some unconvincing twists in order to progress its questionable plot. In addition, this ep also features two before-unprecedented events for the series – the dialogue veers towards flat-out bad (featuring plenty of awful puns and hackneyed attempts at emotional speeches), and the actors appear to be phoning it in (with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan being particularly off). That’s not to say that there aren’t some cool things here, but they’re too reliant on tired plot devices and shocks for shocks’ sake to give “Grave” any lasting success, especially considering its crucial position in the season.

What I Liked about “Grave”:

- The teaser was solid, with some good, cutting lines from Willow and a sense of tenseness. I also loved the callback to “Flooded”, and Willow’s retort to Giles that she’d “now turned pro”.

- “Buffy” was originally written with Giles being a pivotal player, and while the series has coped without him, there’s been a void present that only he could fill. I enjoyed having the character back on screen, with special to regard to his interactions with his ‘kids’. Tony Head managed to convey much tenderness and affection in the statement “you cut your hair”, and Anya’s attempts at getting Giles’ attention very cute (even though she had blonde hair the last time they saw each other, if memory serves correctly).

- My favourite part of the episode was Buffy listing the long list of overblown miseries that have befallen the Scoobs, and Giles’ response being hysterical laughter. Sure, it was out of character, but it was glorious to know that the writers (or at least David Fury) had an inkling of how farcical the season had been, and had the humility to laugh at its failures.

- Dawn was decent for most of the second half of the episode – when she shows backbone without being snippy, she’s quite watchable, and her “you think I never watched you?” line when Buffy looked incredulously at her fighting moves was funny.

- Anya has a number of humorous lines, with my favourite being her smart observation that perhaps it would have been better if Giles hadn’t come back (only to get his powers taken and enable Willow to destroy the world).

- As far as landmark scenes go, the one with Xander and Willow on the bluff was good (though not as clever or emotional as some people have tried to make out). It was the first great thing Xander had done in almost a year, and his yellow crayon speech was a believable way of bringing Willow down (though it seemed coincidental that the magical powers she took from Giles started fading just at the right moment). I liked how she progressed from cold fury to feebly trying to beat Xander; then finally broke down and allowed herself to grieve, and it was notable that for once, physical force and magic didn’t save the day.

What I Disliked about “Grave”:

- As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, much of the dialogue and acting here is horrible. Alyson Hannigan has an ‘I can’t believe I have to say this, but I’ll grit my teeth and soldier on’ expression on her face half the time (and with lines like “fly my pretty, FLY!”; “That all ya got, Jeeves?”; “I’m SO juiced!”; and “No... mortal person... has ever had... this much power...”, you can’t blame her). Sarah Michelle Gellar is also iffy – we already know from “Real Me” that she can’t fake-laugh (though that’s hard for anyone), and her delivery of Buffy’s ‘I want to see [Dawn] grow up’ speech was her poorest acting yet.

- The sudden introduction of an all-powerful magical coven that could loan out god-like powers smacked of deus ex machina, and you have to ask why they were never mentioned before (and didn’t contribute anything afterwards, besides helping to rehabilitate Willow – couldn’t their magic have been handy in taking on the First?)

- Knowing that even a magically bound Willow would be incredibly dangerous, why did Giles and Buffy leave her alone with Anya? Wasn’t that just asking for trouble?

- Giles’ Trojan horse plan is too complicated, and is based upon an individual with a history of magic addiction and self-control issues (who’s also overloaded with anger and grief) behaving in a predictable, rational way. How did he know that he’d be able to get Willow to expend enough of her power to drain his own, and that she’d even be willing to battle (as opposed to just flaying him like she did with Warren)? Why did he even bother containing her in a forcefield at the start if his entire plan involved her being able to break out of it?

- For all of the talk about how Tara’s death was vital in making the evil Willow arc work, there wasn’t enough of a tie to her character in this story. Willow’s shifts in motivations (from wanting to kill Warren; to wanting to get one up on Buffy; and then wanting to bring about the apocalypse; only the first of which was logical and believable) have distanced her so far from the cause of her rampage that it’s questionable if Tara’s murder was even required in the first place.

- Did we really need another apocalypse? That well has long run dry, and I think the story would have worked better if Willow was being destructive on a smaller scale.

- While it was fine, the ending of the Willow story was predictable. It was obvious that she wouldn’t be killed off, and on first viewing I’d have put money on either Xander or a Tara-ghost being the ones to stop her. As soon as Xander stated that he was Willow’s best friend and that he felt useless (at the start of “Two to Go”), the climax was essentially telegraphed.

- The concept of ‘love overcoming all’ is rather juvenile and trite for a year that’s meant to be dark.

- Willow is channelling a magical beam of who-knows-what into a Satanic temple, and Xander thinks it’s a good idea to just step into it? I know he’s desperate, but isn’t that a little rash?

- Not satisfied with using the attempted rape to whitewash Buffy of all her Spuffy-related bad behaviour, the writers have now tried to do the same thing with Spike. While his getting his soul back was okay on first viewing, it messes up all of his prior character development, as Spike-with-soul should be a fundamentally different person from soulless-Spike. Besides, what always made Spike interesting was that he was fundamentally evil, yet could do good things out of love, but that’s now been removed and replaced with an Angel retread.

- Xander was a disrespectful tool in telling Dawn about the attempted rape (and it wasn’t even done through concern, just spite and vindictiveness), and Dawn stopping Buffy as the world was ending to chat about sexual assault was unreal.

- Spike’s trials were uninteresting and made little sense. What do killing a couple of generic monsters and having bugs crawl over his face have to do with getting his soul back? Those scenes should have been re-written to throw in something more surprising or complex. In addition, after seeing “Angel”’s “The Trial”, did we really need another story about a vampire going through three challenges to get a ‘second chance’?

- In a more general point, I have to give a thumbs-down for all of the failed character development. This is the collective fault of the season as opposed to “Grave”’s sole burden, but it’s sad to see that we’re now at the end of the year, yet none of its issues have been addressed (nor will they be in S7). We’re no closer to having Buffy understand her questionable actions with Spike, nor finding a real reason to live (yes, she comes out with some grand statements, but they’re filled with platitudes as opposed to substance), and there hasn’t been any real progression of Willow (dealing with why she abused magic and got addicted in the first place) or Xander (who still hasn’t taken responsibility for what he did to Anya). Listening to Buffy’s chat to Giles about ‘finding a purpose’, I was struck by just how much of S6 has been ripped from “Angel” S2, except that the “Angel” season was genuinely dark and complex, while S6 was a superficial soap opera.

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

I feel similarly. In my original list of ratings, I gave “Grave” a three out of ten, but dropped it to a two a bit later. I think that the two grade remains appropriate, as while this ep has some decent ideas and scenes, its plot and general writing a more suited to a low-quality comic than a show of “Buffy”’s former calibre. Between the two-dimensional characterisation, utilisation of scenarios that were worn out two years ago, and fundamental problems with dialogue and acting, there’s little to truly love about “Grave”, and it’s an extra shame that such a weak episode had to serve as a season finale.