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4.21 Primeval

Xander: "Demons versus soldiers. Massacre, massacre."
Willow: "And Adam has a neat pile of body parts to start assembling his army. Diabolical, yet gross."
Xander: "Does anybody else miss the Mayor I-just-want-to-be-a- big-snake?"

Mildly anticlimactic but certainly attention-getting, we had a melee of bullets, flying decapitated heads, tentacles, and half of this year's guest cast walking around dead as Adam's diabolical yet gross plan came to fruition. This certainly couldn't have been easy to stage; my compliments to the director.

My favorite parts of this episode were the Fab Four (Buffy, Giles, Xander and Willow) scenes. Their relationship was, of course, much too strong to dissolve just because of a year of change and some Spike-injected malice, but they seem to have pulled it back together a bit too quickly perhaps. The spell that brought the four of them together in Buffy's body was cool -- I liked it, contact lenses, Sumerian chanting, and all. Is that where the "primeval" in the title comes from -- a primal fight again evil, maybe?

Spike showed some real talent at self-preservation. He managed to avoid being killed by (count them) Adam, most of what was left of the Initiative, a huge group of demons (what do you call a group of demons? A gaggle? A murder?), and the Slayerettes. Although of course he didn't get his chip-ectomy. (And Whedon likes to pull fast ones out of his hat -- it certainly could have happened and probably will someday.) And he had some great lines, too -- "Warms the cockles of my non-beating heart, seeing you lads together." "Well, let's go save them, by gum."

So maybe Riley isn't an artificially created human. But then again, maybe he is; Whedon has said in interviews that he tries to leave character backgrounds open so that things can change in an interesting way. What human being could actually pull a computer chip out of his own thoracic nerve without anesthetic? (Or maybe that was anesthetic that Night-of-the-Living-Dead-Maggie gave him?)

I'm glad Adam is gone. He never did much for me anyway. Maggie Walsh was the really interesting villain this year, and she was gone too soon.

Bits and pieces:

-- Poor Forrest looked like someone went nuts on him with an industrial-strength stapler.

-- Was that a black velour bathrobe hung-over Giles was wearing? Can't be bad.

-- Tara looked really good with her hair up. In fact, she's looked distinctly cuter in the last couple of episodes. She must be in love.

-- I couldn't help but notice that Anya told Xander "I love you", and he didn't say it back.

Quotable quotes:

Spike: "Warms the cockles of my non-beating heart seeing you lads together."

Giles: "Um, uh, Spike can be very convincing when-when-when, uh ... I'm very stupid."
Buffy: "He played us. He wanted us to fight to split us up. That's where it came from. The stuff we said the other night."
Giles: "Of course. Well, piffle. Let's move on."

Willow: "Nervous?"
Xander: "No way. I'm full of that good old Kamikaze spirit."
Giles: "Xander, just because this is never going to work, there's no need to be negative."

Buffy: "Xander!"
Willow: "Oh, wonderful Xander!"
Buffy: "You know we love you, right?"
Willow: "We totally do!"
Xander: "(with dread) Oh, God, we're gonna die, aren't we?"

Xander: "Great plan. That's right up there with duck and cover."

Spike: "Nasty sort of fellow. Lucky for you blighters I was here, 'ey?"
Giles: "Yes. Uh, thank you. Although your heroism is slightly muted by the fact that you were helping Adam to start a war that would kill us all."
Xander: "You probably just saved us so we wouldn't stake you right here."
Spike: "Well, yeah. Did it work?"

I liked this one, even though it had some weak points. I'm going with another three,

Billie





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