Good God, that’s a lot of shake

Smashed (Drew Z. Greenberg)

We find out immediately that Willow is in a bad place when she complains to Amy-rat that Tara left her “for no good reason”. That makes it clear that she is in no state to change her behaviour particularly when the next thing she does is de-rat Amy. And that was stupidly and lazily easy: Amy should not have been a rat for so long. No wonder that later, when she has had time to think, she gets vengeful.

(Bloody hell the Mac advertising was unsubtle.) I can hardly bear to watch Willow’s behaviour in the denial scene. People do behave badly but it’s so horrible to watch.

The conversation about Willow in the Magic Box reminds me of this entertaining tangled synthesis. I love conversations that are either about something else or two things at the same time (not in real life mind because that sort of thing is seen whizzing miles over my head) and Buffy’s horror at the “seductive” word is very funny: “but we can't assume that everybody's getting seduced, you know, sometimes…” [they are]

My least favourite five minutes of BtVS consist of Willow and Amy being unspeakable in the Bronze and Buffy and Spike smashing up a house (and, OMG, you can hear the zip! – somehow that makes it all even ickier). It pains me to see Buffy enter this (literally) destructive and rather vile relationship.

Sooo, if I don’t like Willow and I don’t like Buffy and Spike’s relationship then I don’t like the show? Hell no, it’s still BtVS, it’s still as funny as ever, it’s still as fabulously acted as ever (for example, SMG on the phone to Spike is hilarious), it is still as involving as ever and Amber Benson is still in it – from now I was a credit hawk – ironically I almost missed the credit sequence when I rushed upstairs for a wee – Andy paused it for me because he was delighted and he didn’t know (but I did…).

They really slapped the make up on Amber in the lot of shake scene and in her brown/beige clothes she was borderline orange. However, hold the front page, but I genuinely like Willow’s outfit at the Bronze. The vest is particularly nice. Finally on the shallow notes, does Spike wear that chain all the time? It’s not nice.

I have said before and will say it again: Elizabeth Anne Allen is great, notably in her line delivery; as in one of the best delivered exchanges on BtVS :

“How've you been?”
“Rat. You?”
“Dead.”
“Oh.”

My problem with the Trio isn’t the actors who are super in their roles or their banter (which is geekily entertaining) it’s just that the concept is, as Anya says, “lame”.

Which brings me to Anya who is Anya great in this episode, the one who is forthright, honest and right. I wish she was always as well written.

Spike thinks he’s fixed and the first thing he does is try to kill someone. A real hero. I’m afraid I didn’t spot any attempt to wind himself up for the kill – he was just monologuing.