>SUPERVERBOSE

Early in my Buffy-watching project, I swore off both DVD extras and Television Without Pity recaps, because they were just way too spoiler-laden. Now that I've finished watching all episodes of Buffy and Angel, I'm (slowly!) going back through the whole saga, reading the recaps and watching the extras.

I just finished season three of Buffy for the second time, and am amazed anew. What a marvelous achievement. It's just such great television, and this time through I found myself appreciating a couple of things that had passed me by the first time:

( Here begin the spoilers )

Oh, it's a sad, sad day. It's now official: I've seen every episode of every Joss Whedon show. I suppose it's a happy day, really -- it's been a very satisfying journey since the day I saw Serenity (October 1, 2005, as it happens.) Still, I can't help feeling a little grief at the fact that I'll never watch another new episode of Buffy or Angel.

Well, at least I had a good sendoff. I was quite pleased with this season of Angel. Like season 7 of Buffy, the show found its feet again after a dreary and depressing previous season. It was both funny and thrilling, with a solid premise that was low on the endless angst and high on the superheroics of old. Not only that, it had a lovely elegiac quality, bringing back moments and characters from previous seasons like some kind of victory lap, or maybe a greatest hits album.

( Do I even have to start with how spoiled you all are? )

And thus it ends. But hey: only 74 days to Dollhouse!

I don't tend to watch a lot of TV, but the shows I do watch, I tend to cover pretty thoroughly. There must be something in that habit that explains why almost all my TV vocabulary comes from two shows: M*A*S*H and The Simpsons. Turns out you can learn a fair amount from M*A*S*H and The Simpsons!

( Homer Sez: Increase Your Wordiness )

And finally, one of my favorite COMBO SCOREs of all time is spoken by one of my favorite Simpsons characters:

• arglebargle or foofaraw: Argument or disturbance over nothing
  [In "Last Exit To Springfield", in which Homer leads a power plant strike, newsman Kent Brockman asks: "Tonight, on Smartline, the power plant strike: arglebargle, or foofaraw?"]

Last night, our old VCR finally gave up the ghost. This was a drag, but not altogether surprising. It was quite old, and had been slowly breaking down. Too bad about the SNL tape that is irretrievably stuck in there -- guess Laura won't get to see that. I lay all blame at the feet of Sarah Palin -- it must have been the experience of recording her that finally killed the thing.

So anyway, after I discovered this problem last night, and made it worse by trying to fix it, I decided to just head to my friendly neighborhood Best Buy and get a new VCR. Only I discovered that the outside world has changed on me, dagnabit. It took a subsequent Circuit City trip to convince me of this, but apparently retail stores no longer sell VCRs, only VCR/DVD combos. So okay, fair enough, I'm not entirely crazy about our current DVD player, and there was a Sony combo there for only $99, so I went ahead and got it.

BUT:

There are some fatal flaws to this new arrangement. The new combos (at least, the ones costing less than $250) apparently lack a tuner, so they can only do "dumb" recording from a line in. Now, the box made this pretty clear, and I thought maybe I could work around it using an extra VCR I had around that doesn't record properly but does tune into the cable signal just fine. However, I failed to account for the fact that doing this makes automatic recording so annoying as to be infeasible. Whereas before I could just set a bunch of presets to record TV shows on whatever channel at whatever time, now I can set a timer to start recording from the line in, but I have to make sure the VCR is set to the right channel. Hey, if I have to set something manually, I have just lost the benefit of automatic recording.

Perhaps you are thinking this: he needs a DVR! Maybe I do, but what I also need is portability of recordings. See, in our VCR world, the VCR in our living room would tape our various shows, then Laura could pop out the tape and watch them in the kitchen (where we have a combo TV/VCR which lacks a timer but does playback just fine) while she takes care of Dante. I do not know how to accomplish this with a DVR.

So here is my question: how do other people deal with this? My requirements are that I want to automatically (with no manual intervention) record TV shows, and have those recordings available in multiple rooms. I would also love it if I didn't have to spend a lot of money to achieve this goal. Should I just head over to the VCR section of eBay, or what? Is there some cool 21st century solution that I'm not thinking of?

Season three of Angel had a great arc, and a cliffhanger ending. Season four resolved the cliffhanger well enough and managed a couple of strong episodes, only to descend into a disappointing spiral, full of bewildering choices, shredded continuity, and the same kind of personal disintegration that characterized season 6 of Buffy. As a whole, these episodes had less humor and fewer highs than ever before. The show recovered some ground for the final third of its season, luckily, and wound up in a head-scratcher of an ending that certainly piques my interest in the beginning of season 5.

( Turgid, supernatural spoilers within )

Season 6 of Buffy was all about degradation -- the characters debased themselves, their relationships disintegrated, and the Big Bad herself was a nightmare version of Buffy's beloved friend. Season 7, on the other hand, exudes synthesis and uplift. "I have so much strength, I'm giving it away," says Buffy, and strength is what we see, both within and without her. Friendships mend, and it's once again the strength of Buffy's team that allows them to fight the forces arrayed against her. The routine of Good vs. Evil battling it out in Sunnydale has become a bit worn by now, and consequently this season can't quite reach the peaks of the show's extraordinary middle period (seasons 2-4.) Nevertheless, I was really happy with season 7. It was a satisfying and well-executed end to a terrific journey.

( And now, all the spoilery specifics )

I liked season 1 a lot, and I liked season 2 even more, but season 3 was where I came to really love The Office. The show does many many things well, and at the front of the line are plotting and characterization. The former takes spectacular advantage of continuity to provide some deeply satisfying moments, while the latter provides hundreds of funny and subtly moving gems. As a bonus, the whole thing also provides some fascinating food for thought about the camera-aware culture of Reality Show America.

( Oompah-loompah-doompity-doilers. If you click here, then you will read spoilers. )

After watching season 1, I expressed the hope that the element of pain and suffering remains in the show as time goes on, saying that "its satire would be pretty toothless if the characters weren't actually in pain." Well, in season 2, the characters are still in pain, but much work is done to rehabilitate our feelings towards those who inflict the lion's share of that pain. By the end of the season's first episode, it became clear to me that the show was taking a turn away from vicious, biting satire and into a softer, more traditional sitcom feeling, albeit with generous doses of that uncomfortable spirit that is the hallmark of season 1. All of the characters gain more depth; we gain more sympathy towards the "villains", see flaws in the "heroes", and get to know a wide range of quirks in the surrounding characters. And yeah, as a result, the satire loses some of its sting.

I worried when I saw this turn taking place. I thought that maybe the show would turn its back on the savage spirit that made it so dark and funny to begin with. That doesn't happen, really -- it just adds some sweetness to the cocktail, morphing from a straight shot of whiskey into more of a Manhattan. The writing stays sharp, the jokes stay funny, and a little grace is thrown into the mix to stop us from ever really hating any of the characters. And here's the thing: it turns out that I enjoy a good story with ongoing characters and clever jokes even more than I enjoy razor-sharp satire. Thus, to my slight surprise, this season of The Office worked even better for me than did the first. So let the notes begin:

( Not that there's anything wrong with spoilers. If they're consensual. )

I'd always heard that the British version of The Office was hilarious, but I never got around to watching it. When the American one premiered, I heard great things about that too, but I didn't really make the time for it, basically because I already had enough shows to watch. This was to the mild chagrin of my two closest friends at work, who are big fans and would love to share it with me. Well, now that a member of my family is working on the show, I figure it's time to catch up so that I can fully enjoy season 4. Towards that end, I've bought the DVD sets of the first two seasons (no idea yet what I'm going to do about season 3), and I've just finished the first one.

I have to say: I really, really like it. I'm shocked at how different it is from what I think of as a sitcom -- no laugh track, very naturalistic acting style, mostly handheld camera. It's so refreshing, so dark, and so funny. I find it heartening that a show like this can actually be a success on network TV. I also kind of can't believe for Ryan's sake that he actually gets to work on a show that's really good. The odds of getting a job as a TV comedy writer seem long, but the odds of getting a job on a good show seem EXTREMELY long. I'm still kind of stunned.

Anyway, here are a few semi-spoilery notes:

( I wish every day was Spoiler Day )

The Buffyverse Watching Project is going on hold for a while.

My sister's boyfriend is a comedy writer (sequitur coming soon...), or at least he's been an aspiring comedy writer. He graduated from Harvard and worked on the Lampoon there, so he knows a lot of people in the biz, but has been trying unsuccessfully to break in himself for a couple of years. Then, last month, he learned he'd gotten a job as a writer for The Office! This is super exciting, not only because I'm very happy he's landed a job, but because it seems to be one of the best things on TV right now. I haven't been watching it, but (and here comes that sequitur I promised) I'm going to start this fall, so my summer project is to get caught up on the seasons I missed. I have several friends who watch it, and I'm looking forward to being able to participate in their conversations.

Amid the depressing degeneration that characterized season 6 of Buffy, it was a pleasure to watch season 3 of Angel. It didn't grip me the way that some previous seasons of Buffy have, but it was solid, enjoyable television, with lots of good surprises and dramatic twisty turns. Strangely, though, it wasn't the main plot that I found most compelling, but rather the thematic unity that draws together some of the season's most important events aside from the main plot.

( It's about the spoilers, bro. )

And now, season six of Buffy, in which the characters I've come to know and love begin to morph into weird, unpleasant versions of themselves, or else disappear altogether. This unsettling trend was somewhat remedied by the end of the season, but once that end had come, enough bad things had happened that the Buffyverse appeals to me less than it did when the season began. Still, even if the season was a net loss, there were still plenty of wonderful moments to be had. In particular, there was one shining episode which joins the all-time hall of fame.

( The usual spoilery list of details )

I enjoyed the finale of Heroes very much, but there were a couple of bits in the final scene that didn't sit quite right with me. (Well, the climactic scene, I mean. Not the actual final one.) They were almost right, but I'm amending them in my head to be better.

( Like so. Spoily spoily )

Loved it loved it LOVED IT! That one joins the Hall Of Fame. It ended too soon.

The soundtrack is now on my Amazon wish list.

This season of Angel is all over the road, veering from the very very dark into the very very kooky, sometimes quite abruptly. It's also pretty inconsistent in terms of structure, starting with a long arc and ending with a short one, and stringing a few individual pearls between the two. Still, I found a lot to enjoy at both ends of the spectrum.

( Look inside for buckets o' spoilers )

Another season of slayage is through, and the subplots have finally come to eclipse the main plot. This year's Big Bad was bigger and, well, worse. On the other hand, several of the smaller stories that wove through this season were riveting, and resulted in some of the best scenes and episodes ever.

( Here be spoilers, including one for Serenity )

Angel comments will follow just as soon as I can get them written up.

( spoiler guard )

Buffy started out as a horror riff with elements of superhero drama thrown in, but it seems to me that Angel announces itself as a superhero drama with a horror theme. Since I'm a big fan of superheroics, this sits quite well with me. Also, Angel himself is much more tolerable when he's not a supporting player in Buffy's life. For one thing, he actually breaks a smile every so often. He's still often annoyingly mopey ("Broody McForehead", I'm told they call him over at Television Without Pity, and that's about right), but Cordelia does a nice job of lightening the tone. The metaphorical underpinnings of the show don't really hold up to those in Buffy, since "city life" is a much broader target than "high school/college", but I still enjoyed it.

( We spoil the spoilerless. )

It's another season in Sunnydale, and while season 4 doesn't quite manage to match or exceed the heights reached by season 3, it's still a solid bunch of shows with some amazing standouts thrown in. Unfortunately, there are also a few really terrible and/or irritating moments, too, which is a first. Oh well, at least they didn't show up for three whole seasons, and are still pretty rare in this one.

( On to the spoiler-laden comments! )

Up next: comments on Angel Season 1, which I watched concurrently with Buffy Season 4.

This was easily my favorite season yet of Buffy. It's rather amazing to me that it wasn't the work of just one writer, given how tightly the whole thing hangs together. Each episode tells a satisfying story on its own, but the season as a whole is an incredible story, with dramatic peaks and valleys, great surprises, and tons of character development for almost everybody. It feels fuller than the last two seasons put together, which is quite an achievement. So many connections, so much depth, such a smooth flow from one episode into the next. Awesome.

So, the short review is: I loved it. ( The longer and much more spoiler-filled review follows. )