Another unnecessary distraction–“Angel”

The first season of Angel (spin-off of my beloved Buffy) is on Hulu.  As if I needed another way to waste time that I ought to be using for homework, grad school applications, or at least leisure reading.  However, maybe I will watch Angel instead of Wife Swap, which I feel would be a significant step towards respectability on the “unproductive ways to spend free time” hierarchy.  I don’t even really like Angel.  I mean, sure, I was all broken up when he left Buffy, but only because I had invested my emotions in their relationship.  Angel himself is kind of emo and whiny and, although being very pretty makes up for many foibles, his awareness of his own excessive badassery walks a delicate line between bearable and otherwise.  No, the real attraction of the show is that it exists within the same world as good old Willow, Xander, Giles, and of course, Spike.  Seeing as there is no more Buffy, I suppose I’ll settle for passing references and cameo appearances from the gang and focus more attention on Angel’s physique than his personality.

Buffy, Season 6

So, ignoring the ridicule of certain (most) individuals, I have made it to the middle of the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer this summer.  People who judge just haven’t experienced…that’s all I have to say.  I feel like the show is really maturing along with the characters as the seasons progress.  In the earlier seasons, it seems to me that conflict was fairly external.  New vampire/demon/supernatural threat shows up, Giles and co. figure out what it is and how to deal with it, and Buffy kills it.  Harm was sometimes done, of course–people died from time to time, for instance–but it was usually harm to unimportant auxiliary characters and our heroes were usually left more or less unscathed and unchanged.  In season six, it seems that more often than not the conflict of the episodes changes, reveals, or destroys something integral to the main characters themselves.  Sure, there are still demons, but the chaos they create is secondary to what it brings out in our heroes.  For instance, in the most excellent musical episode, the demon in question doesn’t even require any slaying and is extremely simple to get rid of–the real issue at hand is the dark truths that everyone is forced to express aloud in song-and-dance routine style.  I’m psyched about the enhanced intellectual interest this trend provides, but I have to say it makes the show more difficult to watch.  After five and a half seasons I’m deeply attached to the characters, so the more the episodes expose and compound the tangled threads of good and bad in each of them, the greater my chance of having my mood dampened by a television show.

Oh, and what I’ve learned from Buffy about men: Be Mean.  Apparently, if you tell a guy that he’s scum and you loath and scorn him utterly and completely, and if you beat up on him a lot, he’ll love you with undying devotion.  And he’ll be drop dead gorgeous.  Ah, thank you Buffy.  Now I understand.

Dreams

I’ve been having the strangest dreams lately.  Last night I dreamed that I was slaying vampires.  Well…not so much slaying, but I was at least deflecting all of the things they were throwing at me with my badass axe.  For some reason, we were all in a mall (kind of like it was a zombie attack, only it wasn’t) and there were epic chase scenes through the food court and down broken escalators.  Perhaps my subconsciousness thinks that I don’t get enough entertainment during the course of my days, and has thus decided to provide exciting cinematic experiences for me while I sleep.  Or perhaps I’m just suffering from Buffy withdrawal–seasons 4 and 5 shipped yesterday, but obviously they haven’t arrived yet.  I’ve set up a viewing station in the basement in front of the exercise bike; that way, I hope not to incur so much censure from my family members, who don’t seem to understand the inherent wonderfulness of that show.  If I’m moving my legs, watching an episode a night can’t be a complete waste of time, now can it?  Anyhoo, stay tooned to see what’s playing in the heat-crazed theater of my sleeping mind.