Sunday, April 19, 2009

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 6.6: "All the Way"




Season 6, Episode 6: “All the Way”
Grade: 6.8


This episode was not as bad as I thought it was going to be but there are a lot of things here that are just really underdone and annoying. Basically the over focus on Dawn is fine. I don’t really like her but I don’t have a problem with her being the focus; IF THEY ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING WITH IT!! They do nothing with her here. Just her being rebellious. I mean there is some intense stuff going on with her willing to be bitten and her trying to have her own friends and stuff. But nothing is done with it because Buffy never even talks to her about it. I know that has to do with Buffy simply not putting the effort into doing anything but because of that we get no aftermath with anything Dawn did in the episode. They have the opportunity to develop her but instead it’s just all “I steal things and nobody cares about me”. Seriously writers; that’s the best you can come up with? I expect better character development from this show. In the meantime we get handfuls of good stuff with everyone else but we keep leaving those conversations to go back to Dawn and her lame ass friends which by the way, her having them as friends makes me like her less because they are really stupid. But there is some really good stuff here:

The Good:

- The dance of capitalist superiority
- Everyone helping Anya at the Magic Box
- Xander picking that moment to tell everyone they are getting married. You can see that even though he is not going to go through with it that he really does love her.
- Everyone’s various reactions to the engagement announcement
- Willow’s decoration spell and Giles and Tara’s reaction to it.
- The ridiculousness of Willow attempting to transfer everyone at the Bronze to a different dimension quickly to search for Dawn. And Tara standing up for herself and telling Willow she is worried. Great scene but seriously Willow is such a bitch. It’s crazy how much I love Tara after she stops stuttering and comes into her own.
- Everything involving the creepy old man. The audience being fooled into thinking that he was the bad guy. He’s just a lost soul. I don’t know. I just liked the randomness of his presence.
- Buffy telling Spike “good fight”
- Buffy: “Is that why you always clean your glasses?”
Giles: “Tell no one”
- How fucked up it is that Willow erased Tara’s memories.

The Bad:
- I did not like how much time was spent on Dawn with their being no real point to any of it or any real consequence or character development. It’s a huge detractor. Huge.

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