blackfrancine | Moar Thoughts! I'm a thinking machine! A cylon! I'm a cylon!

I don't actually even know about that. I haven't really watched enough BSG to know if I'm a cylon or not (But soon! Soon I will know!).

Anyway. I watch TV and then I have thoughts. And sometimes I write the thoughts down here. That's how this goes.

Here's some thoughts.

First, I wanted to throw a thought or two out there that occurred to me during discussion in the comments of my last post.

molly_may and I were talking about Giles and Buffy's relationship at the beginning of season 6, and

molly_may pointed out that Buffy only ever opens up about her emotional state with Spike and Giles--and as soon as she realizes that Giles was happy in England and is conflicted about being back in Sunnydale, she closes herself off and begins wearing a mask for him (just as she is for her friends and Dawn).

So, I was thinking about that scene in "Flooded" in which Giles says that he's "bewildered" to be back and he, frankly, seems less than happy about the whole thing. Now, this isn't to meant to criticize Giles, because I think he had lots of issues of his own with Buffy's death and moving from one continent to another and so on--but he was clearly Buffy's life line. He's the only person she said that she missed. He's the only person that she was unreservedly happy to see. He's the only person she was honest with about her sundry problems with being back. Again and again, he's the only person to whom she expresses her feelings of being unable to function. So, in that scene, when he rejected her just a tiny bit (somewhat reminiscent of Nightmares, I suppose)--he really hurt her. But what I find interesting is how quickly Buffy groks to exactly what he's going through. He says he's conflicted and BOOM, her walls come up, and her mask goes on. And I think that when she saw Giles in that state, she may have connected him with her own feelings about Dawn's potential death that we see in "The Weight of the World." She sees that Giles wanted sympathy and relief--he wanted the pain and difficulty to be over. So, Buffy's continued life therefore is synonymous with pain and difficulty--at least that's what she believes.

And, jeesh. That just breaks my heart even more than it already breaks for Buffy. That she believes she's nothing but a burden to the one person that she feels emotionally connected to. *sob*

But in more current news, I just finished watching Smashed. And here's a thought, for ya:

When Buffy comes into Willow's room at the beginning, wanting to talk (presumably about Spike) and then she finds out that Amy's been de-ratted? I never quite got all the Amy/Buffy parallels there. Sure, Buffy is reminded of Willow's part in her misery because Willow resurrected her with a spell and she also de-ratted Amy with a spell. But there's more--Amy was GONE for a while and is having to readjust to all of these changes. So the phrase "while I was gone" keeps coming up--reminding Buffy even more of her own death and resurrection. And (this is a little off topic, but oh well) it's always interesting to me Willow's reaction to Amy's transformation and how it matches up with her (and all the rest of the Scoobies') reaction to Buffy's resurrection. Willow doesn't seem concerned about Amy at all. She's like, oh, she's a little freaked out, but who wouldn't be? That must seem to Buffy to diminish what she and Amy are going through. No wonder she clammed up.

And am I the only one who thinks there may be a haircolor connection here? How come the only season that Buffy has reddish hair, we get overt Buffy/Amy and Buffy/Willow parallels (though we get Buffy/Willow parallels in other seasons, but not really ones that dominate the entire seasonal arc). Plus, Buffy even chops her hair to pretty much the exact same length as Willow's. Just sayin'.

And last but not least, I am still plugging away at AtS as well. I just have fewer thoughts about it for some reason.

But I will throw this out to the crowd: In "Billy," Angel isn't affected by Billy's touch. He says that it's because he has no hate or rage in him--that even his evil was done out of emptiness and pain or something. How do we feel about this? It seems a little like bullshit to me, because I tend to think that hate is just pain and fear being expressed in a certain way.

And is it me, or is the idea that it's "noble" to act not out of emotion but out of profound emptiness a little unsettling? LIke, is it me, or does that seem a little bit latently misogynist--since acting out of emotions is typically connected with women and acting out of higher ideals--abstract ideas and logic--is considered more masculine behavior?