7.20 Touched

[Clare]

7.20 Touched - Episode #142
As the apocalypse looms, couples grow closer in Sunnydale and Buffy learns of a mystical scythe that may be the key to defeating the First.


"You stay on guard, Faith. Buffy's dangerous. If you're not careful, she'll destroy you."

[partcynic]

Rating = 2

After “Empty Places”, there was very little that could have been done to make a high quality episode. And although “Touched” is far from being good, it’s about as solid a recovery as could have been made from the atrocity of the previous edition.

What I Liked about “Touched”:
- The odd funny line, like Xander’s letter to the First and Andrew’s comment about needing a lozenge.
- Spike pointing out that Willow et al were traitors. Absolutely.
- Sad to see that the best scene was like a piece of shipper fanfic, but the Spuffy stuff was okay. Finally some nice development on Buffy’s character, and the contrast of the cuddle vs the empty sex of the others was nice.
- The music during the sex montage was okay.
- Buffy at the vineyard. This was all good, with some nice flashes of the old Buffy coming through. She actually used her brain and dodged Caleb’s attacks, and got in a couple of quips too.
- Go Amanda! Loved it when she started beating on the Bringer with her crossbow.

What I Disliked about “Touched”:
- The filming of the early sequence at the Summers house. The jangling cameras were nausea inducing, and seemed like a really tacky way of making the scene look tense.
- All of Kennedy’s whining and bitching at the start. Very poor characterisation.
- Kind of slow paced, with very little going on – although that’s a spot-on description of the entire year.
- Theme. Faith takes over from Buffy’s leadership role, and simply turns into Buffy version II. She then concocts a plan almost identical to the one Buffy suggested last week (blindly go in to a scenario that certainly looks like a trap), and yet everyone agrees and praises her style. It thus transpires that Buffy, despite her truly dim decisions and ridiculous plans, was right all along. Just what is the show trying to say about leadership? Does anyone want to dwell on the jumble of attempted themes in these last few eps?
- Andrew and Spike at the abbey. Not interesting. Did the writers need to kill some time?
- Dawn and her Turkish spell. Since when could she fluently read all of these foreign languages?
- The completely pointless Spike/Faith fight (complete with poorly acted looks of horror from everyone else).
- Why does Giles kill the Bringer when it was being so giving? And why does everyone assume it was telling the truth, and not bother considering that it may have been a trap?
- Spike telling Buffy her plan to go back in was right… even though he never heard about it.
- Characterisation of Spike. I didn’t mind the scenes with Buffy, but he has completely turned into the hero of a tacky romance novel. It was all so flowery, and not reminiscent of how any male would really speak. Perhaps Spike’s getting his soul back was a metaphor for being castrated? He came across more like a begging pet than an equal partner.
- Giles getting all fatherly with Faith. More silly characterisation, and once more Tony Head is wasted.
- The First Mayor. Having Harry Groener return only amplifies how much better S3 is than this garbage. His performance was as spirited as ever, but the dialogue sounded more like a vague facsimile of the Mayor than the actual character. Not to mention that it didn’t bring up anything interesting (so Faith is worried about being alone. Wow. They’ve never brought that up before). More important, Faith really should have dealt with all of those issues during her time in prison, and after her confrontation with Angelus in LA.
- Faith and Wood. You’d have thought it would be difficult to make the combination of Faith + sex be boring, but they somehow managed it. It was bland and dull, and the bra was just gratuitous.
- Xander and Anya continue to have no purpose. It was a little cute when they were eating the ice cream, but we are returning to plots that should have been finished long ago.
- Willow and Kennedy. The painful kite string dialogue. The complete and utter lack of chemistry made it rather unpleasant to watch their sex scene. The Willow and Tara parts of “Seeing Red” were so much more romantic and sexy, and didn’t get anywhere near as ‘explicit’ as this scene did. Bad actor chemistry = bad viewing.
- Another cliff-hanger ending. Zzz. And the lighting during the underground cave fight was so flickering as to be seizure inducing.
- More pointless blabbing from Caleb and the First.
- The shiny Excalibur scythe of deus ex machina – complete with bizarre light shining down on it!

Okay. I didn’t despise it, which is all I can ask from the show at this point.

[Clare]

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