It’s Buffy time again – yay! Do a Snoopy dance!
Although dancing may not necessarily be the order of the day – yet – for the last season left things all quite a bit doldrummy. If you’re not up to speed, be warned, by virtue of necessity you’ll probably find what follows to be reasonably spoilerific – so you may wish to go away and do some catching up stuff.
Right, now that we’re rid of the casual observers…
As most will know, the fifth season saw quite a darker shade of darkness descend upon Sunnydale and all who sail in her, culminating in a rather confuddling “what do they do now?” ending involving the Buffster. That permeatey darkness vibe continues in season six, most notably with everybody growing up and having to deal with real world, adult stuff like never before (things actually get quite risqué at times), although those Buffyistic necessities we all love such as the unique humour and the sheer castration of that English languagey type thingy are all here in plentiful enough quantities.
Icky, corn-fed fathead Riley is so far mercilessly nowhere to be seen, while games are being played in allusions to just who may be the Big Bad for this series – if indeed there is one at all. Willowy things get quite non-Willowy, Buffy and Spike get quite non-Spikey and Buffyish (or “Buffy-y” if you must), Giles becomes but a guest star and lots more besides. Which anybody who’s seen it will know, so I’m possibly risking broken nails here for nought...
Easily the highlight is that which very much lives up to the hype, the seventh episode in Once More With Feeling - a full-on musical! (OK, everybody can dance now) One of the greatest television moments ever (at least for those who get Buffy), rather than being a simple, escapist lump of visual fluff, it is possibly the most plot-advancing episode ever to have graced our screens – and is in fact a pivotal point in this entire series. Dashingly clever, it’s a mega-high pointy point in a show which has often redrawn the boundary lines for brilliant scripting. I know, gushy-gushy-gush-gush – I’ll shut up now. So, here’s what to expect episode-by-episode. Well, kinda…
Bargaining Parts 1 & 2
With the Buffster kind of not around the Scoobs are doing the patrol thing – oh there’s Buffy, bot… The bads mustn’t know of a certain absence, so the toaster oven’s descendant needs to step up for the dangerous challenges – like parent/teacher day. With Giles off to England something needs to be done, Mercury’s in retrograde so it’s time for Willow (we now know who killed Bambi) to lead some deep stuff – but hello, biker demons – time for some destructorama. Would anybody like a sandwich?
After Life
Honestly, having been plucked from a hell dimension, you’d think Ms Buffy would be a bit happier. But when you mess about with magic there are always consequences – like blobby floor demons just for starters...
Flooded
The Summers household is all wet - with bills piling up Buffy goes for a loan, but for some reason property values in Sunnydale aren’t exactly peachy. Xander is Captain Fear, while Giles returns. With a mercenary demon in town it looks like something’s afoot – what triumvirate of super-villains is out to get Buffy? And was that a broody call?
Life Serial
Life. Plans. Big. Scary. Buffy tries her hand at a number of careers – student, construction worker, selling stuff person, alcoholic – while dealing with time speedy-uppy stuff, her own personal groundhog day and big red wussy demons – so just who is testing her? Ni!
All the Way
Phew, it’s Halloween – rest day for the supernatural. Well, except for those more rebellious types. Dawn does the trick or treat thing – or should that be ick or eat? Tara’s all concerny about Willow’s witchiness, Xander’s all eepy about he and Anya’s big announcement and THAT’s why Giles is always cleaning his glasses!
Once More With Feeling
Sunnydale’s bursting with singing and dancing
What’s gotta be wrong with that?
Like a big cheesy musical the Scoobs are all prancing
Thanks to the red lord of dance (who ain’t got no hat)
Emotions they are running ever so high
With breakaway pop hits to make us all sigh
Those secrets concealed are now all revealed
But the natural order of things is always important and… oh, bugger this!
Tabula Rosa
Buffy and Spike have to talk, while guilt hits the Scoobys. Our slayer is running low on cope – and then Giles says he’s off again. Ah, forget it, with a bit of balderdash and chicanery the spell is broken between Willow and Tara, but perhaps Randy and Joan will save the day from a fish-headed kitten shark?
Smashed
Eek! A rat! Oh, it’s just Amy back from the rodent – hey, she’ll be a good magic buddy for Willow, right? Well… Meanwhile Spike discovers he’s not the only “thing” in town. The rules may have changed, but somebody’s still quite the little Spike tease…
Wrecked
Buffy discovers there’s got to be a morning after, while Willow tries a spot of raising hell while living on the ceiling after going into the black with a guy named Rack. And strawberries?!
Gone
Willow goes cold witchy, while Social Services are getting all hassly with she who uses Mr Pointy. Buffy gets to clear her head – and more – after a certain threesome’s ray which rhymes with “blinvisibility” goes astray, but can the Scoobys Mulder things out before the Buffster goes all puddingy?
As usually seems to be the case with the Buffy DVD releases, there’s news of the good variety, but also news of the bad – you could say it’s a bit of a Spike-like transfer (but let’s face it, most probably wouldn’t). Starting off with a bit of positivity, it’s all once again served up in a 16:9-enhanced 1.78:1 package, and all episodes exhibit fabulous colour and, for the most part, impeccable detail from the sunniest moments to the darkest. Speaking of darkness, with so much of the show set in less glowy places, shadow detail is of great import. Once again it’s very good without being brilliant, but few should have any reason to be all complainy about it.
What is worth getting whiny about, however, is the treatment given to what is inarguably this season’s showpiece - Once More With Feeling. Watching on a standard 4:3 television – as indeed I think it’s safe to say the majority of people purchasing this will – substantial parts of the left and right of the picture are chopped off, to the point where the show was written and directed by one Joss Whedo… Putting on my rather attractive little Scully hat, the explanation seems to be that while the episode was made in a ratio of 1.78:1, it was REALLY made in a ratio of 1.78:1 – utilising the entire frame rather than keeping in mind safe areas. The US still get Buffy aired in 4:3, so when it came to presenting this episode in widescreen (for the full musical effect) the image was shrunk slightly and black bars were inserted on the left and right to allow for that thing TVs do called overscan (examples of the image presented in this fashion can be seen in the ‘making of’ doco). When it’s come to creating this DVD transfer, however, it seems nobody even thought about this whole overscan thing, so we get a significant proportion of the image chopped off. Good news at least is if you’re watching on a computer with a DVD-ROM drive, projector, plasma screen or the like is that you’ll get the entire image – while the rest of us are just left to be all upsetty and annoyed as we watch Buffy’n’pals all dancing about claustrophobically - depending, of course, upon the extent of this overscanning thingy your TV does.
As well as this somewhat sizeable annoyance, there are a few other oogly booglys. Odd speckles pop up here and there, the slightest of slight examples of aliasing slip by and the occasional example of graininess struts its stuff, but really these occurrences are all of little consequence. The only other odd issues occur in the fourth episode, Flooded, where for a few seconds starting around 34:44 some crawly white dotty/dashy lines pop up along the top of the image and in Life Serial where there’s some weird fluttering at the top of the frame for a few seconds around 12:35. Both of these oddities are quite distracting, the first appears to be something that occurred at the time of shooting as only shots from the one camera are affected, as for the second, well, who knows what the frilly heck is going on?
Yes, it’s another series of Buffy, and once again it comes complete with a surround-encoded Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack. As we’ve come to expect it all strikes a lovely balance between dialogue, effects and music, with no synch issues (unless you’re a REALLY hard-marker as they’re all miming in Once More With Feeling). Surround usage isn’t exactly going to set your feet on fire, although if your receiver can get down to the Dolby Prologic sound you’ll find quite a bit more happening, and the subwoofwoof waking up, having a good stretch and then getting down to its business quite regularly.
He who took over scoring duties last season, Thomas Wanker, is back on board doing a fairly natty job, with the exception of Once More With Feeling. For this Christophe Beck comes back to the Buffyverse to musically interpret Joss Whedon’s songs, with a little help from Mr Angie Hart, Jesse Tobias, in the arranging department. The Bronze also serves as a good forum once again to give us a bit of music from the odd obscure band.