yeah i like the review of this season. a few points i didnt agree on, but i think they did a good job of showing the changes that occured during this season. I especially liked what they said about kennedy, i thought i was the only one who hated her character and thought she had no chemistry with willow. owell.

norman | March 30, 19:02 CET

Excellent review. Sums up my thoughts on Season 7. And no, norman, you're not the only one who felt that way about Kennedy.

David Nabbit | March 30, 19:22 CET

Now, do we suspect that there may be some kind of connection between Cecily and Halfrek???....

Rogue Slayer | March 30, 19:29 CET

Norman, you are definitley not the only one who feels that way about Kennedy. On ther other hand, I am the only one who doesn't feel that way.

I'm a little disappointed that the reviewer didn't like the Joss commentaries or the Marsters/Woodside commentary. I haven't actually read his review of the season yet, so maybe it applies to him disliking the season. I personally love season 7.

Oh, and Halfrek=Cecily, I knew it! Oh man, I love being right. Doug Petrie said in the FFL commentary that he didn't know if Halfrek was Cecily but now we know! I'm so happy that they were the same person. That makes the character so much more interesting.

[ edited by electricspacegirl on 2004-03-30 17:36 ]

electricspacegirl | March 30, 19:31 CET

yeah, im glad im not the only one who disliked kennedy......i agree with most of the things from the review, but i still love season 7. sure things changed and characters were portrayed a little differently, but i think they needed to be. it wasnt the best season, but not the worst either.......

norman | March 30, 19:37 CET

One nitpick - the author says no actors have commentated on Buffy DVD's before... he must have skipped the hilarious Joss/Marti/Seth Green commentary on Wild at Heart which goes on long after the closing credits have finished.

gingeriffic | March 30, 19:54 CET

gingeriffic from what I understand that commentary was on the Region 1 DVD and not the Region 2 DVD. Which kinda sucks for us for Brits.

Simon | March 30, 20:20 CET

It doesn't make much sense that Halfrek and Cecily are the same person. You telling me Spike, the fool for love himself, never noticed?

delavagus | March 30, 20:36 CET

There was that glance between them (sometime in season 6? not sure).

And as Morgain points out on the Buffy Cross and Stake Spoiler Board, it means that she was a vengeance demon when she met William for the first time as Cecily.


[ edited by Simon on 2004-03-30 18:55 ]

Simon | March 30, 20:38 CET

Yeah, there was a look of recognition...was it in Older and Far Away?

For some reason this doesn't feel right to me. I much preferred it when they were different people and it was just an odd coincidence that the same actress played different roles.

ringworm | March 30, 20:49 CET

yeah i know there was a reaction when they saw each other, she said william and he looked at her and you could tell there was something there but they never mentioned anything about it after that. it was in older an far away, when there trapped in the house. man i never put those together, now it kind of makes sense........thanks for this post, now i know.

norman | March 30, 21:00 CET

I also think Cecily/Halfrek is the same person as the stewardess in Meet The Parents, also played by Kali Rocha.

Only a vengeance demon could be that cruel.

prufrock | March 30, 21:03 CET

Well, Doug Petrie wasn't sure if the Spike/Halfrek scened in Older and Far Away wasn't just a joke, a nod to the fans that it's the same actress.

[ edited by electricspacegirl on 2004-03-30 19:10 ]

electricspacegirl | March 30, 21:08 CET

As the person who wrote the reviews for the first three seasons of Buffy over the DVD Verdict, I've got to say this is one of the better written reviews of a TV show on DVD that I've seen. He pretty much hits all the nails on thier respective heads. Very good review.

NOLA64 | March 30, 21:38 CET

I thought there was a scene in "Selfless" which shows Halfrek in a time before William was even born, why then was she hanging around in England with the name Cecily, why had she been there long enough for Spike to fall in love with her.

The "You're beneath me" to Spike was quite evil though, so I suppose it could be believeable that she was a demon at the time, unless she, like Anya, was kicked out at some point.

Ghost Spike | March 30, 21:55 CET

Points to this review for its comprehensiveness, but I disagree with the reviewer's assessment of seasons 6 & 7 generally, and Kennedy in particular. Until I've heard the season 7 commentaries, I won't know whether I agree with his reviews of those or not.

As noted by Simon, the R1 DVDs occasionally include features not on R2 sets, so I'll be waiting to see how that turns out, as well.

Maeve | March 30, 21:56 CET

Halfrek does not just recognize Spike, she looks at him and asks, "William?" By picking "William" instead of "Spike," that strongly suggests she knew him in his pre-vampire days. Even his "groin-buddy" Buffy addressed him by "William" very few times.

Vengeance demons certainly have the ability to look non-veiny in the course of their duties - Anyanka was just a pretty young woman for the beginning of The Wish. I'd always figured that Halfrek became Cecily in her off-duty hours, not unlike the way Anya seemed to have a normal (or at least Sunnydale-normal) life when she wasn't zipping around the Earth punishing men.

The vengeance demons also are pretty handy with that ability to alter reality to fit in. Anya's father (for the duration of The Wish) owned a utility company. I would imagine that Halfrek might kick back and be the spoiled daughter of a wealthy English family for fun.

Or, hey, I could just stop taking this waaaay too seriously.

Ocular | March 30, 22:31 CET

Does anyone know of anywhere where one might be able to download the joss/mati/seth commentary, ive heard such good things about it.

Ghost Spike | March 30, 22:33 CET

Wow, do I ever disagree with the trashing that the reviewer gave to seasons 6 and 7. Some points I can agree on, like the annoyance of Kennedy, but overall the reviewer seems like a bitter fanboy who didn't get things the way that he wanted. How can someone think 'Chosen' was anticlimactic? Or feel that Xander acted like a "selfish idiot" in season 6? Or think that Andrew is "essentially an exaggeration of Xander"? Huh?

Then again, season 6 was my favorite year of the series, so perhaps I'm biased. And where did the information come from that the co-executive producers ran the season, not Joss and Marti? I never heard that anywhere.

MindPieces | March 30, 22:39 CET

In response to why would Halfreck be called Cecily in that earlier episode, well it's possible she was "on a vengence assignment". Anya incorporated her way into the high school as a new student to cozy up to Cordelia and didn't go by the name of Anyanka. And Halfrek when acting as a guidance counselor at Dawn's school did not go by the name of Halfrek (I can't remember what she called herself) so it is possible that she incorporated herself into that society targeting someone else and William was attracted to her and her apparent discomfort at his attentions could've been more that she was attracted to him but didn't want to be distracted from her goal.

Firefly Flanatic | March 30, 23:01 CET

I think season 6 stacks up better than a lot of people give it credit for. There are things I didn't like but the show played fair, at least to my way of thinking, with the characters and it was mature in a way that TV rarely is. That said, season 7 was a major bummer for me. Things started off so well and then just went totally off the rails. I think the reviewer sums the year up pretty well. There are flashes of Buffy brilliance but there are more stinkers and more filler episodes than of any other single season of Buffy. Chosen had some nice stuff and was impressive from a production standpoint but I too think it was somewhat anti-climatic. If it makes me bitter fanboy that I wanted the final season to be something that was fun and something that made sense, well, I guess I'm bitter to.

NOLA64 | March 30, 23:03 CET

Well a good review overall. I didn't agree with everything but he makes some valid points. Now to make a few of my own because I gotta!

-Halfrek/Cecily. I can't believe some people never noticed. The moment we heard they were using that actress again we wondered if they would just let it be (Like how Tom Lenk played a vampire already in S5 without connection to Andrew) or if they would do something with it. And sorry, but Spike and Halfrek clearly recognize each other. And she doesn't call him Spike, she calls him William. And Spike's clearly more than a little distraught and doesn't wanna go there. Personally I always felt they dropped a great potential plotline there, but I suppose there was no room for it, which is why they didn't pursue it.

Oh and I don't think she was a vengeance demon when she met William. The only flashback I can recall is her and Anya in Russia during the revolution in 1905. When she meets William in England it's 1880 as I recall. Not quite before.

-The 'nose dive in quality'. While I agree that S6 and S7 where the most troubled, most inconsistent and least fluent in story, I think they were still better than this guy says. That the show took a nosedive, I always feel is a bit much to say. Two more flawed seasons of Buffy that were still better than pretty much any other show out there. I too did see a lot more problems with S7 than S6 though. I have no problem with dark and angsty stuff so I never got what was the big deal with 6. The so-called rape scene was a forced, contrived and over-the-top plot device and filmed like it was a cheap day time soap show. And there were other things, but overall I liked the season. I always enjoy exploring dark sides of good characters. I also think some of the show's funniest moments were in that season. And the season finale with the return of Giles was one of the best for me.

-Many of this guy's complaints about S7 I agree with, but I still enjoyed it. Xander, Willow and Giles indeed were tossed aside a little. Could've done with a lot less Wood, a lot less SiT stuff (still wonder if they weren't focusing on them so much in the hope to create a 'slayer school' spin off.) and absolutely no Kennedy. Egad, if there's one character on the show I can't stand. She was supposed to be a brat. Well, she was. She ruined Willow's presence on the final season and added nothing but a lot of bratty whining and being generally annoying. I kept hoping a Turok Han would eat her but nnnoooo, Buffy had to saave her. (Not surprisingly I also agree with the guy, in 'The killer in me' being my least fav ep of the season and probably the show.)
"Hey, I can sense you're gay, so I've decided to have you!"
- "Uhhh."
- "Come on a date and we'll have two drinks while I tell you I will have you."
- "Uhh..."
- "Come here and kiss me!"
- "Uh, okay. Smooch. AARRGGHH I am so traumatized over this kiss!!!"
- "Well then I'll kiss you again."
- "Smooch. I LOVE YOU!! I'm all better now!!"
- "Now we are a couple."
- "Ok."

Makes me want to heave.

Something I DIDN'T agree with in this article is that remark that S7 in the beginning looked like we were returning to 'monster of the week' and that it should've stayed that way. If Buffy had never been anything but 'moster of the week' I would've stopped watching around S2!

And yeah, Joss, it's true that the message is more important than the technicalities, it was a little odd how it takes seasoned Slayer Buffy 2 days to get ONE vamp, but Anya, Wood and Giles kill 6 per minute. It would've been easy to say that the first one was a leader of the tribe and stronger than the others or something, because now it left me scratching my head a bit.

The extras sound cool. And SMG's absence in the extras is SO normal by now that if she had appeared I would've fainted or something. Anyhoo, looking forward to seeing it all. Including the wrap party.

EdDantes | March 30, 23:05 CET

EdDantes, check out Simon's link further up, to a post by Morgain at Buffy Stake & Cross. Halfrek mentions an incident with Anyanka during the Crimean War, which pre-dates the 1880's when she might've been undercover as Cecily.

The review makes a lot of good points and I appreciate when reviewers really know their stuff about the Buffyverse as this fellow does, but I'd have this on my shopping list anyway and I still want to see all those commentaries no matter how lame!

punkinpuss | March 30, 23:39 CET

In "Lessons", Anya and Halfrek were talking about something they did in the Crimean War. That took place in the 1830's. The events with William and Cecily took place in 1880. Therefore, if Halfrek and Cecily are the same person, Cecily was already a demon during "Fool For Love".

lalaa | March 30, 23:59 CET

Ah ok I thought people were referring to a flashback. More like a mention then. Ok, I have no problem with the notion she was a vengeance demon already, just that the russia flashback wouldn't prove it.

Frankly her attitude to him as Cecily qould quite fit a vengeance demon's character. And the magic surrounding a Vengeance Demon would give her a 'known-status' in society. like Anya was later a registered student of Sunnydale High. Only to get stuck in that persona when she lost her powers. And not entirely unlike Dawn's 'past'.

And like I said, I think they dropped a potentially great sub-plot. They could've created a funny triangle with her and Buffy and Spike. I might've preferred that to some of the elements they did go for in S6. Oh well.

EdDantes | March 31, 00:31 CET

Well, I never caught the Crimean War reference. That was 1854-1856, so before the William/Cecily thing. But I think the fact that she called him William implies that they were the same person.
Wonder what kind of vengence she was doing in Merry Ol'......

BTW, Ed, I'd hardly say that Spike looked "more than a little distraught". I think it was more of a curious/slightly surprised look he gave her.

But to my shame, I think after all that time, I'd never have seen William in Spike. Just too drastically different, except the cheekbones and eyes, but Cecily probably never paid much attention to William's looks anyway, so I'm surprised she caught it!

Rogue Slayer | March 31, 00:51 CET

Was I just imagining it or wasn't this all settled by an interview with a writer a really long time ago to simply be an inside joke as a red-herring for hardcore fans...now we've got writers saying they're the same person?

ringworm | March 31, 00:56 CET

who knows, if they are the same person, then cool. at least i did notice the tom lenk played a vampire as well in season 5, wasnt he part of harmonys gang?..............

norman | March 31, 01:06 CET

Gotta love any review that talks about the show (or any review subject for that matter) like it carries the plague for the first six paragraphs and then calls it one of the best things on television. Who do they get to write this stuff?

Unitas | March 31, 02:34 CET

>>Gotta love any review that talks about the show (or any review subject for that matter) like it carries the plague for the first six paragraphs and then calls it one of the best things on television. Who do they get to write this stuff?<<

i believe the reviewer was trying to establish even crap buffy is better then the best of any other television show

aapac | March 31, 04:53 CET

Yeah, but he does a really bad job of of it. If you just read the opening three paragraphs, you would be stunned to find that he recommends the discs and that is just bad writing. It's an inability to structure your thoughts in coherent (and interesting) form, so your audience doesn't get whiplash by the sudden turns.

It would be fine (if not that original. Oh, he doesn't like Kennedy. How novel!) if it was someone's post but a professionial should be able to do a little bit more.

[ edited by Unitas on 2004-03-31 03:06 ]

Unitas | March 31, 05:04 CET

Well I just recently watched season 7 over again in 3 days and I have to say it was very powerful with all the tension and buildup to the final apocalypse. I just don't understand why people think it had filler episodes or that it fell apart or was anti-climactic. Every episode I saw fit into the long story arc. All in all, it's a good season, the impact of which you can appreciate more if you watch it quickly.

But than again, I've never had many gripes about the series.

electricspacegirl | March 31, 09:02 CET

I've had gripes, but you can have gripes about everything. I have gripes about Citizen Kane. But I think this reviewer says what he disliked about the season and he makes clear why. I don't agree with it all, but he seems to've done his job. And if you just read the first paragraphs and not the rest, no one is to blame for your wrong impression but you. Finish what you read I say. Many reviews list the good and the bad in different places.

And just because it's not novel to dislike Kennedy doesn't mean it's suddenly not a valid opinion anymore.

And it did have filler eps. Every season of every TV show ever had filler eps. 'Him' was a filler. It was also one of the funniest episodes in the show if you ask me.
- "I can prove my love with magic!"
- "Yeah? What are you going to do, turn him into a woman?"
- "Ohhh, yeahhhh!!"
- "....Damn."

And Spike and Buffy running back and forth with the bazooka behind an oblivious Wood. Cracks me up every time. But technically I can see how it was sort of a filler.

But don't get me wrong, I've been defending both S6 and S7 against a slew of people. I'll never say Buffy 'should've ended with S5'. No way! That was two more years of one of the best shows ever! (Now I sound like the simpsons' Comic Book Guy. Great)

Oh you know what I really could've done less with in S7? Speeches! Buffy gave about 26 speeches in 7 episodes there! And then Faith started doing them! And they weren't all pure gold either!

EdDantes | March 31, 12:39 CET

yeah there were a lot of speeches. some of them were good, but others not so good........i dont like how buffy was kicked out and then giles, willow, and xander follow faith like she was miss perfect....i mean, she tried to kill them how many times. especially giles, he turned on buffy to faith, and i started laughing at the stupidity of it. giles is the one who told buffy to make choices and be a "general." then she does and things dont go quite as expected and she had another thought and he turns on her..........quite stupid.. and nobody ever said anything about when buffy came back, except for i think we are being punished by that one girl and kennedy..........

norman | March 31, 17:10 CET

EdDantes - I did read the whole review and a well written review of anything isn't several paragraphs of rants then a mea culpa. The review should be written so that the differing opinions are layered and logical, not bullying whines and then yeah, you should get it. As for the Kennedy thing, It's just boring to hear people complain about Kennedy at this point and he doesn't really add anything to the discussion. At the end, I'm just saying he's a pretty bad writer.

Unitas | March 31, 22:41 CET

Sorry Unitas, just because you didn't agree with the views of the reviewer does not mean they're bullying rants. I've seen plenty of reviews where there is nothing but creative name calling. This reviewer explained with every problem he had with arguments.

Also, "mea culpa" means 'my fault', 'the blame is mine'. I don't think the writer takes the blame for what happened on Buffy. I don't understand how you mean that here.

And layered and logical? Many reviewers of all kinds divide the good and the bad. There was nothing 'illogical' in his structure. He writes about Buffy in general, about S7 in general. Then he goes through the box set element for element and says what he liked and disliked. And he neatly names the paragraphs. Quite logical and structured, captain.

As for Kennedy, like I said, just because many did not like her does not mean this guy is not allowed to say it anymore. She was a fairly big part of S7 so in writing a review about that season it would have been bad writing to not mention her. And a reviewer is not going to say "Oh I guess I'll write that I like Kennedy now, even though I still hate her, because otherwise I'm boring."

As for not adding anyhting to the discussion, he's not participating in any discussion. You act like this was a post on a thread where all the points had been mentioned. He wrote a review for a DVD set that's coming out. And in that review is his opinion. Backed by arguments. That's all he was there to do.
And that everyone has said many of those things already is not his fault either because it's not his decision to bring out the DVD set a year after the season ended is it?

Ah, look. Sorey, but all I really hear is 'how dare he say anything bad about Buffy'. I didn't agree with some of his points either but this was a decent review, and it's clear he's a long time Buffy fan.

EdDantes | March 31, 23:55 CET

well said

norman | April 01, 00:12 CET

I didn't really mean to get into this. First, mea culpa is a very poor choice of words on my part. I couldn't think of what term I was looking for and reached.

My point is, and remains, that the reviewer rants, with little to no subtlety, for several paragraphs and then gives us a recommend. I like my reviews more layered where if a writer is going to recommend something he/she should lay off the vitrol of the opening half-dozen paragraphs, and allow a fuller picture of his opinions throughout the entire piece.

His opinion of the show doesn't really matter to me. We have all read bad reviews of Buffy S7 by now and another is certainly no big deal at this point. To be honest, I actually like when someone writes a really thoughtful negative review of something I like because it gives me another angle to examine the work by. Certainly don't think this is it.

In the end, I just like my reviews a little more measured than I felt this one was. The tone is just too blustery for my tastes. I think I responded to it like a post because it reads that way and I think a professionial should be doing a little more than that. If you like it, fine by me.

Suddenly, I am editing like mad. I looked at the review again (didn't change my mind) and read some of the posts again. One of the posts (I forgot whose, so sorry for the lack of credit) points out another problem with the reviewer which is his making up of facts. One example is that there has never been any public comment that Marti & Joss left the show to the other writers to run which he states pretty bluntly. This is just his opinion and should be labelled as such.

[ edited by Unitas on 2004-03-31 22:43 ]

[ edited by Unitas on 2004-03-31 23:04 ]

[ edited by Unitas on 2004-03-31 23:13 ]

[ edited by Unitas on 2004-03-31 23:34 ]

Unitas | April 01, 00:31 CET