LEGO MARVEL SUPER HEROES: AVENGERS REASSEMBLED (2015)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Almost a dozen of these short LEGO adaptations of Marvel properties have been floating around for about ten years, and I've tended to put off looking at any of them. Maybe the shortness of the features prejudiced me against them, because I have watched most of the available LEGO transformations of DC Comics and have even given some of them fairly positive reviews, for all that I'm no LEGO fan. But then, the very fact that a fair number of the DC ventures are an hour and a half indicates that someone in their production expended some effort. I suppose I thought Marvel wasn't that invested in working with LEGO to produce anything that captured the appeal of Marvel properties.

I don't think REASSEMBLED fails to do so utterly, but it's not very memorable either, even judged as simple kids' entertainment. We meet the Avengers-- mostly the standard roll call from the four live-action movies, though The Vision get a bit more exposure here than he did in the features. The heroes are making silly preparations for a party when the evil robot intelligence Ultron takes control of the Iron Man armor, with Tony Stark still inside. This at least satisfies the almost requisite "heroes forced to fight each other," and when Ultron commands Iron Man to fly off, the others must find a way to free their friend. They eventually learn that Ultron's taking control of the Iron Man armor is just a prelude to mobilizing Stark's flying squadron of armored robots, the Iron Legion, for purposes of world conquest. Frankly, since the idea of the Iron Legion debuted in IRON MAN 2, I always thought it sounded more like the conception of a supervillain than of a superhero.

This would seem to be a sufficient plot for a short of about 22 minutes. But for reasons that might have to do with marketing, the script squeezed in two extra villains, Baron Strucker and Yellowjacket (apparently an enemy of Ant Man in this world), and guest-shots for both Spider-Man and the Iron Spider. There are a lot of jokey lines, and a couple were a little diverting, but I'm not surprised that the LEGO aesthetic doesn't fit Marvel characters very well. After all, Marvel gained fame for being hip, and that's why LEGO is a better match with DC-- for DC's the company famous for showing "it's hip to be square."    

THE KNIGHT OF SHADOWS (2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Considering how awful some of Jackie Chan's 21st-century productions have been, whether from the East or the West, KNIGHT OF SHADOWS is certainly way ahead of any of those embarrassments. Though it's almost entirely formulaic, at least there's some sense of what the formula is supposed to be.   

We're in medieval China, probably around the 17th century, since Chan's character Pu Songling is based on a famous storyteller of that era. The author's stories, particularly the supernatural ones, were often adapted in China, most famously in the original CHINESE GHOST STORY movie. But this fictionalized version-- I'll call him "Pu" for short-- isn't content to write about the supernatural. He also travels from town to town, exorcising demons whenever he comes across them. Pu's principal weapon is the "Yin-Yang brush," a calligraphy-brush with which he can sketch mystic patterns that in turn banish demons. He also travels with three goofy CGI demons, and the fact that one demon is named "Farty" aptly describes the level of humor the film's shooting for. This accords with Chan playing Pu as a jolly bumpkin, seemingly more concerned with selling his story-pamphlets in every town to which he travels. He's not a dedicated demon-hunter but just fights the critters wherever he happens across them.    

In one town, Pu gets mixed up in with a demon that rips off some precious jewels, but that's just an excuse to have him encounter a comic foil, a naive young village cop (Lin Bohong) who eventually becomes Pu's apprentice, little as Pu wants one. However, the more crucial support-character is another demon-hunter, Yan (Ethan Juan). Yan is on the trail of a pair of female demons, Xiaoqian (Elane Zhong) and Jin (Lin Peng). These two demons feed on human souls by promising immortality to young women and then imprisoning them in a painting for eternity. Yan has had a romantic relationship with Xiaoqian that one source claims is derived from the same story that gave rise to CHINESE GHOST STORY. However, KNIGHT adds some confusing business that I don't think would've occurred to a 17th-century teller of tales: that Yan apparently used to be a demon and Xiaoqian used to be a human. These needless complications, happily, don't distract from the strong melodrama of the Yan-Xiaoqian love scenes, which are as ripely melodramatic as anything in CHINESE GHOST STORY.

Between the heavy panting of the romance scenes and the wacky comedy of the funny demon hunters, KNIGHT forces viewers to put up with a lot of tonal shifts. The script compensates with a very episodic structure, making those shifts fairly tolerable. Not much of the comedy works, except for a bravura sequence with Pu in a room full of mirrors. Not only can Demoness Jin strike at Pu through the mirror-surfaces, slapping or choking, she also cuts him off at the waist, literally, so that Pu's two halves run around the room doing silly things. Given that sixty-something Chan can't possibly ever duplicate the martial feats for which he became famous, it's fun to see him try to come up with wild stunts via CGI. KNIGHT is never in the least profound, but it's highly colorful and lively, and that makes it worth a look.

   

            

ALIENATOR (1990)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Re: the above lobby card-- I'll bet the makers of this cheapjack film didn't run any ads using the name "Terminator" in the domestic U.S. back in the day.

As I've commented before in slightly different terms, Fred Olen Ray's movies break down into either dull shit (of which WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD is the current nadir) and lively shit (with CYCLONE occupying the apex). ALIENATOR-- which happens to be the only other movie credit for writer Paul Garson, author of CYCLONE-- is closer to being dull shit than lively shit. Still, it did engage me in one minor way.

As I've also said before, all Ray movies are just standard genre-stories, loosely constructed so that Ray could slot in as many of his favorite actors as he could manage. Usually, though, it's easy to tell who's the star of the show-- a heroic barbarian, a kick-ass motorcyclist, or an imitation Terminator. But I found myself asking, "Is the top-billed 'Alienator'-- actually called a 'Hunter-Unit' in the film proper-- really the primary character/phenomenon?"

 Oh well, on to what passes for a story. An opening title card informs us that the film begins out in space, following a rebel insurgence against a "tyrant" sporing the Biblical name of "Baal." So, we might think, we're going to hear about one or more good rebels, like Luke Skywalker, right? Ah, no, because the raid led by the rebel leader Kol (Ross Hagen) claimed "thousands of innocent lives," so maybe Kol, sentenced to die on a prison planet, is not a sterling hero. Or is he the best of a bad lot? The warden of the planet (Jan-Michael Vincent) fairly thirsts to vaporize Kol, and beats on the prisoner for the least excuse. Then the warden gets distracted by the arrival of an official named Lund (Robert Clarke), and later he exchanges bitter bon mots with his sexy subordinate officer, and ex-girlfriend (PJ Soles). However, somehow Kol breaks free, beats down or kills various guards (causing one to be victimized by big worms that bore into one's flesh), and then steals a ship. But Kol has a tracking device attached around his neck, so the warden just sends a "hunter-unit" to follow the fugitive and complete his execution.

Kol makes landfall in some US national park. He wanders around and gets summarily knocked down by an RV. The four collegians therein-- a nerd, two interchangeable girls, and an arrogant pre-law guy-- take the injured alien to the local park ranger (John Philip Law). Kol tells the Earthlings part of the truth--that the hunter-unit will destroy everything in its path to get its quarry-- but also claims that the empire plans to invade Earth. The hunter shows up at the ranger station, proving to be a statuesque female with a metal bikini, a white fright-wig, and a laser-ray mounted on one arm (Teagan Clive). The idiot pre-law guy shoots at her, and the hunter-unit demolishes the station and forces the Earthlings and their ET guest to flee. As she stalks them, she also runs into two goofus comedy relief hillbillies, whom she kills when they shoot at her.

The victims take refuge with an old ex-military guy who lives alone (I guess not in the park per se). Kol doesn't participate in the defensive fight, but he suggests using a metal net to deactivate the hunter's circuits, which of course works where bullets did not, (Not surprisingly, this Terminator clone is both part machine and part organic, though there doesn't seem any good reason for the prison-planet to have used a cyborg rather than a robot.) However, Kol recognizes a kindred spirit in the nasty pre-law guy, and he exercises his one super-power-- a previously unmentioned ability to take over bodies, like that of the asshole guy-- before the "Alienator" revives and chops off Kol's head. 

Even though Ray's faux-Terminator is the film's selling point, the script shows no interest in what she is or even if she possesses anything like consciousness (aside from a throwaway scene in which she pets a deer in the forest). Kol the ruthless revolutionary is really the figure central to the story, whether he's killing "thousands of innocents" or involving naive Earth-people in his troubles. Garson could have swiped Kol's basic type from any number of stories in which alien criminals come to Earth and are pursued by alien cops, such as 1987's THE HIDDEN. I should add that Kol's influence upon the prison planet doesn't end when he leaves it, for the delegate Lund turns out to be a Kol ally, and Lund also kills a few redshirts before the warden takes him out.                          

Because of the rustic setting and the presence of Robert Clarke, some reviewers labeled ALIENATOR a remake of THE ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER. Though ALIENATOR is often as dull as MONSTER, at least the 1990 trash-film doesn't indulge in a phony-baloney cheat-ending. As in most Rayflicks, the talented actors are placed on the same level as the untalented ones, whether it's John Philip Law or Dawn Wildsmith. They're all just uttering undistinguished rote dialogue-- unless, like Teagan Clive, they have next to no dialogue at all.  

CYBER TRACKER (1994)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I've occasionally appreciated the better formula-flicks from the defunct straight-to-video studio PM Entertainment. However, this brain-dead effort, despite starring what might be PM's most bankable star, proves thoroughly routine.   

Don Wilson plays Eric Phillips, a secret service agent assigned to protect government bigwigs, lives in a near-future Earth that looks almost like regular Earth: the presence of cyber-trackers. These emotionless automatons serve roughly the same purpose as the judges in the British JUDGE DREDD comic: once assigned to overtake sentenced criminals, they immediately execute them with arm-guns. The script shows zero interest in how this sociological state of affairs came about, and we never see more than one cyber-tracker at a time. always played by the same hulking actor, Jim Maniaci.

Though Eric's devoted to his job, he's lost a wife who didn't like the danger he lived with, and an obnoxious fellow agent constantly seeks to undercut Eric's authority. (Since the other agent is played by Richard Norton, fans know there will eventually be a match between Norton and Wilson, though the script makes viewers wait until the bitter end for the fight.) However, Eric's biggest problem is that he won't help the governor he's guarding with some illegal project he's got going with Cybercore, the company that makes the trackers. So the villains frame Eric for murder and send a tracker to kill him. Eric is then conveniently enlisted by a rebel group seeking to eliminate Cybercore's influence over the government, and guess what, the head of the rebels is a hot young babe named Connie (Stacie Foster).         

Some of the PM releases are good in terms of mounting decent if unremarkable action-scenes, but TRACKER's many scenes of gunfire and car chases are tedious in the extreme, and the one big kung-fu fight at the end is just fair. The Connie character can't fight but she's reasonably cast as a reporter allied to a rebel group in order to seek justice, though the script, having set up a new romance with her for Eric, doesn't develop that subplot. The movie's only original touch is a concluding quote from Ayn Rand.    

ANGEL SEASON 3 (2001-02)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*






HEARTTHROB (F)-- Some time transpires between Angel learning of Buffy's death at the end of BTVS Season 5, and the beginning of HEARTTHROB. Angel has left the agency for some time to grieve, but his retreat is interrupted by a demon-attack. When he returns, he learns that the agency's guest Fred, whom the heroes rescued from Pylea at the end of Season 2, has stayed confined to her room because of her anxieties about contact with others-- except for Angel, whom she worships. Angel returns just in time to be guided, along with Gunn and Wesley, to save some teenagers from a vampire gang. The good guys kill the vamps, but a female, Elizabeth, was the romantic partner of a male vamp, James. The bereaved bloodsuscker undergoes an operation to make him more powerful than Angel, an operation involving his heart-- which also relates to the story's romantic metaphor, as Angel deals with surviving the broken heart he carries due to Buffy's passing. The episode ends with the revelation that Darla has somehow conceived a child from her last interaction with Angel.

THAT VISION-THING (F)-- Cordelia's visions start to carry dangerous consequences, and the detectives suspect that someone is interfering with the messages sent by the Powers That Be. Lilah has messed with Cordy's visions in order to extort Angel into performing a task, and he reluctantly agrees. He travels to another dimension, where he must defeat a powerful demon in order to liberate a prisoner. Angel surmises that this prisoner, later revealed to be a human named Billy Lane, will serve some fiendish purpose for W&H, but he exchanges Billy for the termination of the curse, and then follows up the deal by killing the curse-sender.

THAT OLD GANG OF MINE (P)-- Since Gunn started working for AI, his former vampire-slaying gang is taken over by a new guy named Gio. Suddenly someone starts killing off harmless demons, so one guess as to the culprit. The gangbangers invade Lorne's club, which doesn't have wards against human violence, and the Angel group has to curb the gangstas' enthusiasm for demon-killing. There's a cute scene in which Cordy finds out about the implicitly sexual transaction between Angel and the female Furies, which is one of various early signals the writers put forth as to a possible romance between Angel and Cordelia.

CARPE NOCTEM (F)-- This is a lighter episode despite some dangerous moments. An old man named Marcus has been using his ability to switch bodies to live it up in other people's bodies before returning to his own body and leaving the original owners to perish. As the detectives investigate these anomalies, Marcus switches bodies with Angel, who's then confined to an old-age home. Marcus then provides much humor as he tries to figure out how things work in Angel's domain, and when he learns he's immortal he plans to keep the vampire body for good. After all returns to normal, Angel gets the news that Buffy has been restored to life. A meeting between the two of them is indicated but was never filmed.     

FREDLESS (G)-- Up to this point it's not been clear exactly why the ANGEL writers introduced Fred to the ensemble, except for the possibility that since Wesley provided the pedantic "Giles" of the group, Fred might've been brought in to be the wacky but incisive "Willow." Still, Fred is more a walking-wounded type than any BUFFY character, and the default attitude of the Angel group toward her has been bemused protectiveness. The episode FREDLESS offers the possibility that Fred may find better care from her parents, who arrive in LA seeking their missing-for-five-years daughter. There's a thankfully brief subplot as to whether the cornfed parents might be something sinister, but the main plot concerns the inexplicable attack of a giant bug-demon. Fred initially does not want to see her parents because seeing them makes her whole Pylean experience too real, though she finally resolves to return home with her family. However, Fred realizes that she can't return to being the innocent she was before, and her Pylean experiences, however negative, have made her uniquely situated to help the noble mission of Angel Investigations.  

BILLY (G)-- Though both BUFFY and ANGEL executed a number of stories, good and bad, about how women often get the short end of the stick throughout history, BILLY may be the best meditation on how the XX sex were short-changed by biology. Billy Lane, rescued by Angel from a hell-dimension in THAT VISION-THING, was liberated because W&H owed a favor to Billy's rich uncle. However, Billy hates women and possesses the psychic talent to exacerbate the negative feelings of men towards women. Billy gratuitously gives Lilah a demonstration of his ability by causing her legal rival Gavin to become incensed against her, battering her severely before the spell wears off. Cordy's vision-powers clue the heroes into what Billy's doing. Lilah, somewhat less than charitable toward Billy, informs Cordelia that Billy can activate a "primordial misogyny" in men. Billy uses his power to make Wesley attempt to assault Fred, a sequence made more harrowing by the fact that Wesley secretly likes the super-genius. The climax kills Billy dead in an inventive manner, and in a minor subplot, Angel begins teaching Cordy hand-to-hand combat, which gives her a little more resemblance to a certain vampire slayer.

OFFSPRING (F)-- A few previous episodes hinted at earlier conflicts Angelus and Darla had with Holtz, a 16th-century vampire killer. OFFSPRING opens with Holtz's first big scene, at a time in the 1700s when Holtz has captured Angelus but loses him to a rescue by Darla. In modern times, the Angel Team investigates an apocalyptic prophecy, but a more pressing problem raise its head when pregnant Darla shows up at the hotel. The writers don't immediately address how Angel was able to impregnate a fellow vampire, but Cordy almost immediately blames Angel for the little stranger. However, Darla hasn't changed much, repaying Cordelia's kindness by trying to suck her blood. Darla flees and almost preys on a small boy, but Angel overtakes and fights her. Still, Angel spares Darla because she bears his child. Meanwhile, a demon named Sajihan brings a still living Holtz to the 21st century.       

QUICKENING (F)-- In line with prophecies that suggest Darla's baby will be a "miracle child," both W&H and several demon cultists dog the Angel Team's tracks, hoping to remove the baby from Darla's womb and use it for assorted mystical purposes. Most of the episode consists of fighting and fleeing, and concludes with Holtz confronting Angel, whom he believes to still be Angelus.             

LULLABY (G)-- I was never impressed by the Darla character, though actress Julie Benz portrayed her well. However, Darla's last hurrah is also her best outing. Though unlike Angel she has no soul, her child is human and she feels the effects of his spirit, which makes her regret all of the terrible things she did as a vampire. Angel, taken prisoner by Holtz and his demon-servants at the hotel, manages to break free. The demons later attack the Angel Team while they're caring for Darla, whose pregnancy is coming to term. The heroes speculate that the Powers That Be made the conception possible but that the Powers may fear that the miracle child may bring about an apocalypse. Holtz continues to attack and at the climax Darla, who's grown to love the child, realizes that if she gives birth, she'll lose her soulful quality and may even destroy her own offspring. Thus she stakes herself so that her body dissolves and the infant alone survives. An interesting DVD extra asserts that Darla has always had a loose mother-son vibe toward Angel, who's both her true lover and the only vamp she ever sired. But all of her past actions flowed from self-interest, while Darla finally transcends her evil in an act of self-sacrifice. Holtz sees Angel with the newborn and decides to take a new tack for vengeance.         

DAD (F)-- The writers, having set up a situation where Angel Investigations could be besieged all season by baby-hunting demons, have to do some fancy stepping to restore the status quo. Angel becomes hyper-protective of his child, now named Connor. Another wave of baby-hunters strikes the hotel, but Angel devises a set-up to annihilate the attackers. He then crashes into the office of current W&H big shot Linwood and makes clear that if the baby even gets a cough, Linwood will soon be coughing up blood. Meanwhile, Holtz dispenses with his demon servitors because he wants loyal soldiers in his crusade, and makes his first convert in a young woman named Justine. Also, Lorne starts hanging out with AI since his club has been closed again.

BIRTHDAY (F)-- The gang celebrates Cordy's birthday, not knowing that she's been suffering migraines due to the increasing pain of her visions. A vision strikes her and her body falls comatose, while Cordy's spirit floats free, unable to touch anything or communicate with anyone. She's visited by a spirit guide from the Powers That Be, and he informs her that the half-demon Doyle should never have given her his precognitive powers. Because she's fully human, the visions will eventually kill her. The Powers That Be offer to rewrite Cordelia's history so that she becomes a major TV actress. She refuses until her guide lets her hear part of a conversation where Angel petitions the Powers to release Cordy because she's "weak." Cordy angrily lets the Powers change her history, and so she gets to be the Big Star she always wanted to be. Yet in jig time her normal personality and sense of responsibility re-assert themselves, not least when she sees that in her alternate reality Angel receives the visions and goes half-crazy in reaction. Cordelia returns to her regular status with an infusion of demon-energy, ensuring that she can endure the visions painlessly.

PROVIDER (G)-- Ironically, while in the first season Cordelia repeatedly nagged Angel about getting more well-paying cases, this time Angel is desperate to rack up lots of money to help raise Connor. This causes the team to divide its efforts into too many directions. Angel undertakes a mission to clean out a nest of vampires, Gunn and Wesley protect a woman from her undead husband, and Cordy has to rescue Fred and Lorne from demons who want to separate Fred's ultra-smart brain from her body. Though many of the ANGEL comedies are a little too baggy-pants for me, PROVIDER has a better conceptual focus and delivers good payoff on all the plots. Also, both Wesley and Gunn become interested in Fred.

WAITING IN THE WINGS (P)-- Angel's extreme protectiveness toward Connor fades a bit as he and the others go out for a night at the opera (albeit leaving a resentful Lorne home minding the baby). However, after the first performance, Angel claims that he saw the identical prima ballerina in 1990, utterly unchanged. Angel and Cordelia, neither of whom has become conscious of the sparks between them, get trapped in a time-loop by a spell that makes them re-enact the romance of earlier lovers, one of whom is the ballerina. Nor surprisingly, Angel references his previous experience with this plotline in the BUFFY episode I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU. Gunn, Welsey and Fred come to the rescue and all the heroes fight harlequin-masked demons while seeking to solve the mystery of the cursed dancer. In other developments, Wesley loses the contest for Fred's heart before he even has a chance to fire a shot. Also, just as Angel begins considering that he might have feelings for Cordy, up jumps Groo, her old lover from Pylea.

COUPLET (P)-- Cordelia wants to have sex with Groo in the worst  way, but she's afraid, for no clear reason, that said activity might interfere with her ability to transmit visions, especially since she went through a lot of trouble to make them painless. Angel is as jealous as hell but will move heaven and earth not to reveal it, and even to help his potential new love get it on with her old flame. The actors seemed to be having a good time with the simple material, but there's still not much meat on the bones, and this time the team has to deal with two make-work menaces. However, the subplot about a cryptic prophecy reaches a culmination when it seems to foretell that Angel will kill Baby Connor.        

LOYALTY/ SLEEP TIGHT/ FORGIVING (F)-- Sajihan, Holtz and W&H all mount various attacks upon the Angel Team. W&H still wants to harvest Connor for some recondite mystical purposes, Sajihan wants Connot dead, and Holtz has decided that he can best make Angel suffer by spiriting the infant off to parts unknown. Wesley becomes so triggered by the prophecy's claim that Angel will kill Connor that the crusader steals the infant to protect him. However, Holtz's pawn Justine cuts Wesley's throat and steals the child from him. A frantic Angel swears vengeance on Wesley, and he and his aides show up in a four-way face-off against Sajihan, Holtz, and a W&H team led by Lilah. Holtz absconds with Connot by fleeing into a dimension-gate opened by Sajihan. Later, the Angel Team finds that they cannot open the same dimensional gate. They use dark magic to summon Sajihan, but they end up imbuing him with superior physical powers. Not only does he defeat the Angel Team, he also reveals that he faked the prophecy that deceived Wesley. Oddly, Justine, acting to save her own life, manages to bottle up the demon. The heroes learn that the injured Wesley was found and taken to a hospital. However, though Angel seems willing to forgive his ally his trespasses, the vampire goes berserk and almost smothers Wesley to death.      

      

DOUBLE OR NOTHING (F)-- This episode isn't anything special, but it furnishes some much-needed relief from all the heavy sturm-and-drang of the Connor Abduction plotline. Cordy and Groo return from their vacation, only to have their good spirits quashed by the doom and gloom in the hotel. Once all these ducks are in a row, it's time to reveal that many years ago, Gunn sold his soul for a mess of pottage, or something along those lines, and now a demon-gambler wants to collect. Prior to this conflict's resolution, Gunn and Fred enjoy some nice romantic moments, even if he does try to blow her off so she won't be harmed by his enemies. The actors are good even though the resolution is lame.       

THE PRICE (P)-- The team belatedly realizes that when they tried to re-open a gateway to the dimension to which Connor was taken, the gate is still letting bad things through to Earth. The make-work threat this time is at least suitably grotty: a small army of phosphorescent slugs that can possess people in their ceaseless quest for liquid refreshments of any kind. One visitor to the hotel dies from being infected, so Angel and the others attempt to seal up the place so that they can exterminate the brutes. Gunn soon realizes this won't work, and when Fred gets possessed, he seeks out Wesley. Wesley renders some useful advice but makes clear that he's not cool with having almost been snuffed by his old boss. The slugs are ultimately disposed of by a very contrived measure, after which one more visitor shows on AI's doorstep: Connor, grown to adolescence in his few days abroad.

A NEW WORLD (F)-- As soon as Connor appears, he tries to kill his dad with a stake-gun. He fails but escapes after knocking Gunn and Groo around. Connor wanders into the projects and saves a young female heroin addict from a dealer and his gang. The two of them find their way to a crib and they make out a bit, but the girl shoots up and kills herself. The dealer and his buddies track down Connor, but so does Angel. The thugs get routed, and Angel tries to reason with Connor, not knowing that (somehow) an aged Holtz has also crossed over. Holtz meets Connor at the end. It's clear that Connor considers the man who raised him to be his real father, but Holtz has deeper plans. In other news, a friend of Lorne seals the gateway, and Lilah, having found about Wesley's rift with AI, seeks to enlist him to W&H.

BENEDICTION (F)-- Holtz has evidently told Connor of his heritage, but he wants Connor to explore his feelings about his vampiric daddy. Just as Connor returns to the hotel, Cordelia has a vision: a gang of vampires are about to attack a woman at a night club. Angel, knowing that Connor is a warrior at heart, invites his son along for the fighting. As it happens, the woman who's going to be attacked is Justine, who's been preying on vampires since Holtz departed with Connor. Lilah invites Wesley to see the show, and though he repudiates her he nonetheless stays to watch, not least because Justine almost killed him. Angel and Connor arrive and help Justine fight the vampires. Though Connor comes close to killing Angel too, the youth experiences a bond with his true sire. Angel locates Holtz and seeks him out for a confrontation, but Connor finds out and fears that one father will kill the other. Holtz however tells Angel that he's had his pound of flesh but now wants Angel to protect Connor, since Holtz cannot. However, Holtz then proceeds to have Justine-- who thinks of Holtz as the father she never had-- to kill him in such a way that it looks like Angel bit his throat to death. A minor subplot shows Groo becoming aware that there's a romantic vibe between Cordy and Angel that neither is fully aware of.       

TOMORROW (F)-- Connor and Justine plot revenge for Holtz. Lorne takes his leave for the time being, and Groo will soon follow, realizing that despite his having hot sex with Cordy, she really cares most deeply about Angel. Lilah continues to tempt Wesley and goes the extra mile by sleeping with him. Connor returns to the hotel and feigns being reconciled to being Angel's son. Because of Groo's revelations, Cordelia begins to think seriously about the matter, as does Angel. However, the Powers That Be want their own pound of flesh. For having endowed her with demon-powers, the Powers suddenly want her on another plane of being. The season ends on a cliffhanger as Justine and Connor plot to end Angel's career for good.          

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SEASON SIX (2001-02)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological* 

Death Comes for the Vampire Slayer-- but not permanently. 

BARGAINING PT. 1-2 (F)-- In the wake of Buffy's demise, the Scoobies seek to keep up the crusade of slaying vampires and demons. They also try to keep Buffy's death secret from the rest of the world (not counting, I guess, the honking big headstone with her name on it), in part by using the Buffybot to fight alongside them, despite the robot's many cognitive limitations. After Giles returns to England, leaving the management of the magic store to Anya, Willow decides to perform a spell to bring the (buried) Slayer back to life, though both Spike and Dawn are left out of the loop. A gang of motorcycle-riding demons learns that the patrolling Slayer is just a robot, so they disable the bot and begin razing Sunnydale (no cops are ever seen trying to stop them). Willow, Xander, Tara and Anya commence the spell, but the demons interrupt them, forcing the Scoobies to scatter. Unbeknownst to the Scoobies, the spell works, and Buffy is restored, albeit in a buried coffin. She's forced to claw her way to the surface, and when she emerges, she seems distanced from reality. After lots of Sunnydale violence, the Scoobies, except for Spike, witness Buffy regain enough vigor to trash the demons, though the question of her recovery is still up for grabs.

AFTER LIFE (F)-- Spike finds out about Reborn Buffy and expresses his extreme displeasure with the group having messed with a magical resurrection. Buffy seems to be regaining her memories, but now everyone in the group experiences weird phenomena, thanks to a "hitchhiker demon" that crossed over to Earth by riding Buffy's spirit. The demon's good for a few creepy effects but it's mostly a time-killer. Once it's destroyed, Buffy confides the truth to Spike: her spirit was in some heaven-like realm that gave her feelings of peace and serenity. Her return to life is thus a torment to the heroine.

FLOODED (F)-- With Buffy's return to life comes all of the problems of being alive: principally, that it costs money, and the Summers family doesn't have any. On top of regular difficulties, Buffy has a glancing encounter with The Trio, the "Big Bads" of this season. One of them, Andrew, made his first appearance here, where he was revealed to be the brother of Tucker, the summoner of the hellhounds in "The Prom." The next, Warren, created the robot girl in "I Was Made to Love You" and the Buffybot, and the last is Jonathan, an uber-nerd seen in various previous episodes. The three of them combine their talents with magic and mad science with the aim of becoming supervillains (though they only want to conquer Sunnydale), and they plan to get rid of the Slayer even before committing their first major evil. A subplot regarding Willow's over-use of magic is further developed when Giles berates her for all the things that could've gone wrong with her spell; Willow's outrage at being questioned is a good foretaste of things to come. The episode ends with Buffy getting a call to meet with Angel, which event follows up Angel's having been informed of the resurrection in a Season 3 episode of ANGEL. Their meeting is not depicted in either show.

 LIFE SERIAL (F)-- Getting past the peculiar pun of the title, Buffy's new life becomes a series of disappointments in relation to education and employment. Meanwhile, the Trio start testing Buffy with various menaces to learn her weaknesses. Nerd jokes abound, Willow again shows more indications of magical obsession, and Buffy finds it easier to hang with Spike than with the Scoobies.

ALL THE WAY (F)-- Halloween comes to Sunnydale once more, but of course not all the evils take the night off. Xander reveals to the group that he and Anya are now engaged to be married, though in private the young man expresses doubts about the nuptials to Giles. (Buffy also expresses doubt about the union to Giles, though it's not clear for several episodes what the Slayer's objections are.)  Dawn makes plans to rendezvous with a girlfriend so that the two of them can neck with a couple of high-school boys in the park. However, both guys are vamps, and they have a bunch of bloodsucking friends, forcing Buffy, Spike and Giles to come to Dawn's rescue.     

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING (G)-- All of Sunnydale is trapped in a "wacky Broadway nightmare," so that everyone, including the Scoobies, find themselves singing and dancing about their inner feelings, often regarding things they'd rather keep concealed. They even get invisible musical accompaniment, just as in musical theater and movies. A dancing demon named Sweet is responsible, though he can only work his magic if summoned. He initially thinks Dawn summoned him, and his price will be that she must join him in his hell-realm as his bride. (The true identity of the summoner is the episode's only flaw.) The unleashing of deep emotions endangers the romantic unions that musicals usually celebrate-- Xander and Anya, Willow and Tara-- though the greater menace is that surrendering totally to the emotional whirlwinds can cause one to spontaneously combust. And perhaps nothing better illustrates the series' trope of "hell is other people" than the song Giles sings to Buffy, about fearing that she's too dependent on him, a song that Buffy cannot or will not hear yet. This causes Giles to send his Slayer to face Sweet alone, and though he changes his mind later and all the Scoobies join together to rescue Dawn, the tumult in Buffy's mind leads to her to reveal to all of them the Big Truth: "I live in hell, 'cause I've been expelled, from Heaven." Sweet is defeated only because Spike, the only one in the group beyond ordinarily morality, saves Buffy-- thus paving the way for their romance, which is as doomed as all the others. I could do a separate essay just on the songs alone-- which combine existential despair and silly doggerel, and somehow make it work. 

TABULA RASA (G)-- How do you follow an act like "Once More With Feeling," which is all about hell being other people? Well, one might as well try a Divine Baggy-Pants Comedy-- though the comedy still comes from a place of tragedy. Tara is tempted to leave Willow after uncovering how Willow messed with Tara's memories. Willow swears not to perform any magic for a week, but almost immediately, magic junkie that she is, she sets a spell to make everyone forget their troubles. Instead, all of the Scoobies, including Spike, forget who they are, and try as best they can to re-construct their identities with raucous results. The external menace is a loan shark-- a literal shark-demon, that is-- trying to force Spike to pay a debt. But the memories must come back and have bad consequences for Tara and Willow and ambivalent ones for Buffy and Spike. Giles departs for England and does not return until late in season six.      

       

SMASHED/WRECKED (G)-- These episodes might as well have a Part 1/Part 2 label, because they're almost exclusively about (1) Willow's addiction to her magical "highs" even after Tara leaves her, and (2) Buffy's increasing attraction to Spike. "Smashed" begins with Willow using her increased powers to restore Amy-- changed into a rat in Season Two-- back to humanity. Though Amy's not a substitute for Tara, she encourages Willow to extreme behavior, setting her up for an even deeper spiral in "Wrecked." As for Spike, he makes the accidental discovery that though the chip in his head still keeps him from harming humans, Buffy's return from death has made her subtly different, so that Spike can hit her now without consequence. Since his past attempts to woo her with affection haven't worked, he resorts to calling forth her savage side by engaging her in fisticuffs. Buffy will later claim that her first intercourse with Spike was just her emotional reaction to losing Giles, but it's clear that she is drawn to his amoral roguishness but can only respect him (slightly) as a guy able to trade punches with her. The Trio starts another wacky plot. Dawn gets mixed up with Willow's descent as she foolishly takes the teen to a place that deals in dark magic. After incurring censure from Buffy, Xander and Dawn herself, Willow makes a sincere attempt to go "cold turkey." Though the parallels with drug addiction are obvious, the episode avoids falling into allegory thanks to the writers' appreciation of all the characters' existential problems.   

GONE (F)-- For some reason, the Three Dorks invent an invisibility ray. They accidentally turn it on Buffy, and though she doesn't know how her new unseeability happened, she takes great pleasure in feeling liberated from her immediate problems, much as Giles feared she would. Much as enspelled beer lowered her inhibitions, being invisible makes it easy for her to beard Spike in his lair and initiate sex with him. However, after sex, he kicks her to the curb, knowing that she's just using him. The Trio capture Willow and try to lure Buffy into a trap. They too become invisible. but not only can they not overcome the Invisible Slayer, all return to visible status and Buffy meets her "nemeses" for the first time. They escape but Warren has made a real attempt to kill Buffy. presaging his more ruthless acts later in the season.    

DOUBLEMEAT PALACE (P)-- This is the first subpar episode of Season Six, and its gimmick reminds me much of something from Season One. Willow continues to battle her desire for magical stimulation, with her college classes being barely referenced after "Wrecked"). Apparently, Buffy was paying bills with the remains of whatever resources Joyce left the two girls. But now Buffy's broke, and despite a generous donation from Giles, she has to take a humiliating day-job, that of food service at a burger franchise, the Doublemeat Palace. Everyone goes on about the secret ingredient, and when some employees disappear, Buffy comes to suspect that it just might be-- PEOPLE! But that would be too easy, and so the entity responsible for the missing employees is just another one of the many make-work menaces abiding in the Buffyverse. Spike, Xander and Anya all have minor roles, though Anya's "vengeance demon" BFF Halfrek shows up briefly. Amy, wanting to undo Willow's resolve to resist temptation, charges up her powers, but this development has no consequences except that Willow unfriends Amy.

DEAD THINGS (G)-- In "Smashed," Spike briefly encountered the Trio and coerced them into analyzing the functioning of his brain-chip, but this episode is the first one where he's directly affected by one of the dorks' eccentric schemes. Warren invents a brainwashing device, and all three dopes want to use the device to lure women into sleeping with them. Warren first targets his former girlfriend Katrina, who spurned him after learning about his pleasure-bot, and he successfully brings her back to the Trio's lair under dominion. However, his control wanes and when Katrina tries to leave, he kills her. Warren then gets the idea to undermine the Slayer's confidence by making her think herself guilty of Katrina's death. The plot works, and Buffy is as torn up at the thought of having killed an innocent as she was when Faith did so. Despite all the consequences to Buffy's friends and family, she heads for the police station to turn herself in. Spike blocks her, they fight, and Buffy tries to exorcise her self-disgust at sleeping with the vampire by beating him to a pulp. But Spike's interference keeps Buffy from confessing too soon, so that in the police station she hears an officer mention Katrina's name and realizes that this is a Trio plot. In this episode, Buffy confesses her dalliance with Spike to Tara and begs Tara not to shame Buffy by telling anyone else.

OLDER AND FAR AWAY (F)-- It's another story where the main characters are stuck in a "haunted house," but this one's pretty good, as well as giving viewers a vacation from the Trio. The Scoobies plan to hold a birthday party for Buffy at the Summers house, but Dawn is still alienated by the fact that Buffy almost left her behind in order to atone for "killing" an innocent. While speaking with a school guidance counselor, Dawn innocently wishes that everyone would have to stay at home forever. And this comes to pass, because the counselor is a disguised Halfrek, making trouble for humans out of a perverse concept of justice. The party ensues, with Xander inviting a handsome young guy to meet Buffy, and Tara in the same house with Willow for the first time in over a month. Spike crashes the party with a (harmless) demon-buddy. But Buffy's accidentally brought in an even more malefic menace than Halfrek: a nameless demon with a sword, able to pop in and out of floors or walls. Ultimately Buffy vanquishes the sword-demon and Halfrek is obliged to cancel the curse. Both the fight-scenes and Spike's attempts to woo Buffy in secret make this a good basic adventure.               

 

AS YOU WERE (F)-- While Willow continues to battle her addiction, Buffy gets some indirect aid to throw off her besotted fascination with Spike. Riley Finn comes to Sunnydale and invites Buffy to join him in a thrilling monster-slaying adventure, which invitation she eagerly accepts. But the big egg-laying monster has less impact on Buffy's life than the revelation that in the year of his absence, Riley's married another kickass female, name of Sam (Ivana Milicevic). Buffy also suffers humiliation when her ex witnesses her debasing herself with Spike, who happens to be involved (very improbably) with the plot to unleash egg-monsters on Sunnydale. Riley and Sam take their leave, and Buffy breaks it off with Spike-- though naturally things don't prove so simple.

HELL'S BELLS (F)-- I assume the "bells" of the title connote the wedding bells that the show seemed to be leading up to for most of the season re: Xander and Anya. This episode, nominated for three Emmys, often seems to play for broad comedy as the wedding day transpires, forcing together two undesirable groups of guests: Anya's demon buddies and Xander's gross relatives. But then Xander meets an uninvited guest who brings him a terrible vision of his future with Anya, and he leaves her at the altar. The guest's vision is fake, but it uncovers real demons in Xander's soul-- though he does make an effort to overcome them in the next episode.

NORMAL AGAIN (F)-- Technically this is a decently done melodrama, in which Buffy is poisoned by a Trio-summoned demon. She then begins alternating between her regular existence and a world in which she's stuck in an asylum and her physicians seek to convince her that her entire Slayer-identity is a psychotic fantasy. But despite the cant about Buffy being disgusted with herself due to her sleeping with Spike, the idea that she buys into the fantasy and almost kills her friends seems incredibly contrived. Of more interest is the fact that Xander returns and hopes to mend fences with Anya despite breaking her heart.

ENTROPY (G)-- Anya does not want to mend fences with Xander; she wants him to suffer supernatural vengeance. But neither she in her mortal form nor any of her demon-kindred can wish a dire fate on her ex-boyfriend. She makes numerous funny attempts to fool one of Xander's friends into making a wish to hurt him, but though they all sympathize with her broken heart, none of them will do the deed. She gets the bright idea to try the same routine on Spike, knowing that he regards Xander as a wanker. This doesn't work as Anya intends, but her dialogue with Spike leads to an interaction that, if anything, torments Xander in a basic, non-supernatural manner. As icing on the cake, all the Scoobies who didn't already know about Buffy's dalliance with Spike-- excepting only the absent Giles-- get the benefit of a big soap-operatic revelation scene. However, arguably the real meat of the episode is a prolonged conversation between Spike and Anya about how repressed and uptight the Scoobies are, which holds at least a grain of truth.     

SEEING RED // VILLAINS // TWO TO GO // GRAVE (G)-- And so at least we reach the four-episode conclusion of Season Six. Even though a lot of time is devoted to the inevitable breakup of Buffy and Spike, the writers have been building up to Willow's crisis since the earliest episodes.

SEEING RED boasts one of the archetypal scenes of male-female conflict in the series. A day or so after Spike slept with Anya, he shows up at the Summers house with the intention of rendering some apology. However, Buffy isn't having any, and Spike's lust for her overcomes all reason, as he deludes himself that he can make things right by forcing intimacy on her. The filmmakers avoid the usual action-trope of two super-beings going at one another in a big throw-down. Instead, Buffy can't seem to marshal her forces against his attack, just as if she were an ordinary female against an ordinary male, and only at the last moment does she get things together to kick him away. Not long after that, the Trio make another attempt at super-villainy, with Warren using a mystic talisman to make himself a powerhouse. However, Buffy gets some covert help from Jonathan, so that she defeats him, though he escapes and leaves his partners in the hands of police. However, later still Warren shows up at the Summers place, and uses a mundane pistol to shoot Buffy. He only wounds her, but his indiscriminate firing also kills Tara, mere hours after she and Willow reconciled.

In VILLAINS, Willow tries and fails to bring Tara back to life. She goes berserk with grief, intending to slaughter not only Tara's killer Warren but the other two members of the Trio as well. She stokes up her power by invading the magic shop and draining power from the arcane books. Warren finds out Willow's coming for him and takes measures to escape, while Andrew and Jonathan cool their heels in jail. Buffy, Xander and Anya attempt to save Warren but Willow first tortures and then kills him. Meanwhile, Spike, wanting to do something to change his monstrous nature, leaves Sunnydale 

The title TWO TO GO tells it all: the Scoobies endeavor to keep Willow from killing both Andrew and Jonathan by freeing the duo from jail and seeking to hide them. The two nerds are something less than cooperative, though Andrew is still the bigger villain of the two. The Scoobies take cover at the magic shop, but Dark Willow thunders in, and only a spell from Anya holds her in check. Willow transforms herself into a powerhouse via magic, not unlike what Warren did earlier, and she and Buffy throw down. Willow finally neutralizes both Anya and Buffy, setting things up for the cliffhanger return of Giles.

I'm not sure I get the meaning of the season finale's title GRAVE, except that after Willow has her magical duel with Giles and saps his mystically-endowed powers from him, she has grave intentions for the whole world. In short, she forgets about Andrew and Jonathan-- who later escape the Scoobies and flee the country-- and decides to bring an end to the world's endless pain by destroying the world. Only Xander can stop Willow's vengeance, and he does so in such a way that counters (but does not disprove) the theme of the season's first half-- that "hell is other people"-- with the theme that "other people are also the only redemption from hell."

And so ends what some might deem the BUFFY series' best season. My memories of Season Seven, the last roundup for the show, are not quite so salutary. But then, Six could not have provided any sort of closure, even an imperfect one, so Seven may turn out to be something of a "necessary evil."      

HONOR ROLL #286

 "Monsters can he heroes, too," says EMMA CAULFIELD. 

From comic bungler to serious brooder defines the course of ALEXIS DENISOF.

STACIE FOSTER might not do much in this movie but she's a little more interesting than the weak villains.

ROSS HAGEN seriously needs cleanup on his eyeliner.

If Jackie Chan is playing a Knight of Shadows, does that leave the role of a Knight of Ghosts for ETHAN JUAN?

As proof of Marvel Studios' inability to do much good with animated versions of the comics characters, first testimony goes to LEGO AVENGERS.