Bringing on the Night with a bit of Serenity
Well, after waiting all week for Brian to post to the site, it looks like I'm finally going to have to step up and take point.

First, let's talk about "Bring on the Night." Possibly one of the coolest episodes yet and yet another bit of bait to keep us coming for more.
Every bit of this episode was crafted around the one idea that Buffy is in trouble and that things are going to get worse from here on out. Things start getting bad, no one knows what the First is up to, and then all of a sudden Giles shows up with the SITs (Slayers in Training) to save the day. Only, and here's the best part, we have no idea what Giles is really up to. The episode is full of expository points like "The first can not act on anything himself" and that "he can only take the form of dead people" (both paraphrased.) With that in mind Joss and Co. do two things. A)They make sure that throughout the entire episode, Giles touches nothing. B)They go out of their way to ensure that no explanation is offered as to how it was that Giles escaped deadly death the last time we saw him.

Now, as to whether or not he is just a dead spirit helping out, or if he is a manifestation of the First is left truly ambiguous. At first I thought that he HAD to be The First. I mean it fit the profile above and it would be the only possible reason for one of the SITs to go running out of the house (if The First coerced her to do so.) Not to mention it makes sense that the First would go out of his way to make sure that all Slayers (in-training or otherwise) were together so that they could be taken out at once (like the Watcher's council.)

On the other hand, I am left with the only other image that could speak volumes. Giles going to see if Buffy is OK, when she climbs out of the hole, and is back-lit by intense light. It gives one the impression that he almost looked angelic.

With both of those chains of thought out there it's hard to figure out what is what.

It was a thought provoking episode and a perfect lead in to the end of the season, which has got me wondering. Here we are, months before the season (and possibly series) finale, and it already feels like we're winding down. They have a lot of time to cram in a lot of stuff. I wonder if the last few episode are going to become almost "24"-esque. Almost in realtime.

As for Serenity, OH MY GOD!!! This is an example of how FIREFLY never had a chance at FOX. Any executive who felt that the pilot episode was lacking in ANY way must have been out of his mind, or just wanted the show to fail. It had all the great elements of a great Joss story. Humor combined with Super-Seriousness. Mystery and fun. All the great character elements were there. And the best part is that unlike most pilots, this one actually seemed to have the characters come out fully formed. Most pilots have generic characters, who can be easily interchanged, and can also be caricatures of their own personailty traits. But these characters came out exactly as we have seen them all season. They were real. The interacted realistically. And the story was engaging. The circumstances of how they got together were believable, and (the best part is that) we didn't need any more backstory to how this group got together than we already had. It was as perfect as it could have been, and I for one would like to know who could have thought otherwise.

I feel that if this pilot were the first thing anyone had seen of FIREFLY (especially since the promos were made up primarily of footage from the pilot) it would have done much better and would have drawn a bigger audience.

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  posted by J @ 19:45