Tonight, on Buffypiece Theater... (WARNING: Spoilers!)

Finally got home and got to watch tonight's Buffy. And, hmm... Well, what can I say? Great premise, but it made for a muddled mess of an episode. Hey, sometimes these things happen.

The biggest problem with it was that close to half the episode felt like nothing more than a recap of the Story Thus Far, with a Who's Who of the Characters thrown in for good measure. And that's in addition to the "previously on..." stuff, which itself felt like it went on for a good five minutes. I don't know if Joss and Co. have suddenly become deeply concerned about explaining all the tiny continuity details for the hypothetical channel-surfers, or if they just needed a lot of filler to pad out the episode, but either way, it didn't work terribly well. I've been watching the show all season, guys. If you're going to sit around for minutes on end telling me stuff I already know, you're going to have to be more entertaining about it than that.

That having been said, this ep did have some redeeming features. If nothing else, I really am glad to see an Andrew-centered episode. The kid is rapidly becoming one of my favorite characters on the show. He certainly gets all the best bits in this one... The fantasy scenes are a hoot (especially dashing Criminal Mastermind Andrew). We get a really good look into the workings of his mind (aspects of which I find I can identify with all too easily). And he actually gets some highly significant character development and provokes some genuine sympathetic emotion, at least on the part of this viewer. The climactic scene, where Buffy basically jolts him forcibly into reality is well done (at least when compared with the rest of the episode), and works on a number of different levels. After all, she's making him confront the fact that his life isn't a story, that he has to deal with messy, unsatisfying, morally ambiguous reality. The thing is, of course, his life is a story. It is scripted and structured and awash with the kind of thematic resonance he keeps trying to impart to it. But then again, the story he's in is, after all, Buffy... which means the predictable ending often doesn't happen, the Good Guys don't always emerge unscathed, and moral ambiguity is far from unknown. It's all very "meta," and I just love that kind of stuff.

But the rest of it just drrrrrrragged. The fact that so much of it was filmed in that flat, amateurish video quality to simulate Andrew's videotaping didn't help much, either, as it made a lot of the scenes feel very dull and flat and motionless.

Also, Kennedy is still irritating me, and I'm finally beginning to join the ranks of those who are getting very, very tired of bitch-mode Buffy. And I still miss Giles.

One final thought... A lot of the stuff in this episode had the feel of serious foreshadowing. I'm really hoping that Andrew's prediction that he probably isn't going to survive doesn't come under that heading. I'll be very miffed, indeed, if they kill him off. Even if the series is ending.