88: Buffy the Vampire Slayer S5E5 “No Place Like Home”

[00:00:00] Hmm? Ah! Hmm... Hmm... Podcastica! You put that in my house. We knew the Slayer would protect. My memories. My moms. We build them. Then un-build them. This is my life, you're- You cannot abandon.

[00:00:29] I didn't ask for this. I-I don't even know. What is she? Human. Now human. And helpless. She's an innocent in this. She needs you. She's not my sister.

[00:01:00] She doesn't know that.

[00:01:03] Hey everybody, welcome to Still Slaying, a Buffy-verse podcast. I'm Penny.

[00:01:32] And I'm Becky. For this episode, we're gonna be discussing the- Season 5, Episode 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, titled No Place Like Home, written by Douglas Petrie and Rebecca Kirshner, and directed by David Solomon. This episode originally aired on October 24, 2000, to an audience of 4.1 million households.

[00:01:56] Some alternative titles and other languages for this episode were, I love these, in Czech, everywhere's good, home is the best. In Finnish, my home is precious as gold. Okay. In French, enemy sisters. I like that one. In German, reality and illusion. In Hungarian, homes, there's- Oh wait. Home, there's only one.

[00:02:27] And in Japanese, bonds of mother and sister. Oh, I like the Japanese one. I love, I always love the German one, because the German one is always like, what is the show actually about? Yeah. Reality and illusion. That's a good, it's a good title for that though. Yeah, it is. It's just so funny. And this is a great example of like, the references to The Wizard of Oz, right? And it's a specific reference that doesn't translate into other languages directly.

[00:02:56] And so they end up with this hodgepodge of things that don't make sense. Like- My home is precious as gold. It's like, no, that's not really what it's about. Okay, whatever. Or home, there's only one. Yeah. Not at all what I would use to classify or split to explain this episode. No, I imagine that if you're watching this in another language, you were like, what? Huh? Oh yeah. Like, the whole way through it. Yeah. Anyway, welcome back, Becky.

[00:03:26] Back to the podcast. And I wanted to know why, when we were talking about what episodes you might want to guest on, you put your hand up for this one. I love this episode because of what's revealed in this episode. And it's such a great bridge to the remainder of the season.

[00:03:51] And when I think of season five, there are three episodes that come to mind and this is one of them. Yeah. So I was like, I definitely would love to be on for this one. And this was on the same night as the episode we covered last week of Angel, where they reveal that Darla is alive and has come back as human. And so I don't remember what it felt like watching it at the time. But I can imagine that that that night, like at 10pm when Angel was off, was finished.

[00:04:20] I was like, like, where are we going now? Wow. Like, oh my God. Like a, just a night of giant reveal would have been really wild. Yeah. Super fun. Where were you in the fall of 2000? In the fall of 2000, October 16th, 2000, I turned 24. Oh, little baby.

[00:04:41] And I was living in Roanoke, Virginia, still traveling and opening stores, restaurants for the company I worked for and preparing for the following year where I moved to Nashville, which is. Your home. Where I've been sent. So. Very cool. I imagine it. On the 24th, I probably I don't think I was actually home for this episode.

[00:05:10] I think it was one that I had recorded and watched later because my birthday is a month long party. So I guarantee you I was probably out doing something that night. Yeah, that sounds right. That's fair. I probably was dealing with midterms. At the time. I'm.

[00:05:43] I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm.

[00:06:13] I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm.

[00:06:43] I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm. out yeah and at the box office meet the parents was number one number two be dazzled what was that about i have no idea what that is huh i'll have to look that up and number three i do did love this

[00:07:11] one was remember the titans great movie football movie cuba gooding jr uh denzel washington denzel washington i think was cuba gooding jr in that i don't remember i never saw it i remember i know denzel was still fine as one and on the new york times best-selling books uh fiction

[00:07:36] the rescue by nicholas sparks never read it and in non-fiction the beetle anthology beetles anthology by the beetles i did read that in the news that week on the 16th oil giant sorry um on the 16th becky was having a birthday probably partying and oil giant chevron agrees to pay 36

[00:08:03] billion dollars in stock to buy texaco and the combined entity will go on to be the world's fourth largest oil company on the 18th the u.s senate voted 86 to 6 to ease the curbs on food for cuba in a measure to end nearly four decades of sanctions but new restrictions were implemented and zach de la rocha announced that he was leaving the rock band rage against the machine that was a

[00:08:31] big deal that was a really big deal on the 21st the u.n condemned israel for exact excessive force against the palestinians uh the general assembly approved the resolution with only the u.s voting against it gee so little has changed very familiar yeah and on the 23rd the u.s secretary of state madeline albright discussed strategic and ideological differences in a cordial meeting with north korea's

[00:08:58] communist president kim jong-il hmm interesting yeah but that song uh just a little bit of history repeating itself yeah exactly on october 24th ebola hits uganda authorities say 60 people have died since mid-september when an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus began in northern uganda the government

[00:09:26] announces a record surplus administration posts 237 billion surplus third in a row for the fiscal year that ended in september that was the clinton president i was gonna say i think financially he might have been our most successful president yeah on october 25th global warming danger stressed

[00:09:54] uh scientists on international panel warn earth temperatures may rise even further if burning of fossil fuels is not curtailed a team led by bridget sanute and martin pickford discovered oririn auroran auroran that sounds better to genesis one of the earliest species

[00:10:19] on the human family tree that lived about six million years ago in the tugan hills in kenya huh it's like a history lesson today yeah oh this one you did this to me on purpose on october 26th the new york yankees beat my new york mets 4-2 in world series game five at shea stadium to win the

[00:10:43] quote-unquote subway series the yankees third straight title the mvp was derrick jeter i remember that i'm not saying that i had anything to do with it but i lived in new york city for three years and those were the three years that the yankees won the world series oh wow and then i moved back to boston and three years later the red sox won the world series i'm just saying okay could

[00:11:10] you move to flushing new york because good lord the new york mets could use a world series win it's been a minute i also have a bad history of going to schools that kennedy's went to and then that kennedy dying while i'm at that school oh yeah i wouldn't claim that one yeah it's it's it it felt real weird when jay when john f kennedy jr died while i was at nyu law school i was like oh no his mom died when

[00:11:37] i was at vassar and she went there like oh i gotta stop going to universities yeah just stick with one yeah although never mind i'm not gonna yeah i'm gonna send you a list of uh people and you make the choice of whether you want to go to school there or not okay yeah yeah okay um there's a there's there's more than there's some kennedy's that i wouldn't mind losing from society let's just put it

[00:12:05] that way if i was gonna pick them it wouldn't have been jackie o or john no no not at all so let's get into this episode i love this episode because like you said there's these massive revelations but i was funny when i was making my notes i was like there's not a lot of the stuff that we usually talk about like social commentary and metaphor this is a pretty straightforward plot

[00:12:32] heavy episode where there's like massive revelations that set up the rest of the season so we're not gonna have a lot of like feminist theory or film theory to talk about on this on this episode but that's fine because there's all kinds of fun stuff oh definitely just great stuff where do you want to start i'd like to start with the buffy dawn and joyce dynamic uh yeah good stuff

[00:12:59] it leads it just the way it goes from it builds from start to finish it's just the bookends they just did such a great job in writing this episode you know we start with typical typical sisters i mean i only had brothers growing up but we bugged each other just like dawn irks buffy i irked my older brother and

[00:13:25] my little brother irked me um and and i love michelle trattenburg i i did not like her first watch she got on my last nerve but this knowing the full story now she bring i just have such a new respect for her and how she played this role and i loved the bickering the the sibling rivalry and how buffy it brought out a lot of insecurity and buffy because you know she didn't ever have a nickname

[00:13:56] or anything like that from her mom and i just i loved their dynamic and one of the things that i thought was coolest about this storyline and the dynamic is how well once buffy figures out starts figuring out she cast the spell and she starts figuring out something's different with dawn

[00:14:23] how they framed it i forgot i'd forgotten this how well they framed it that dawn for just a little bit in this episode you thought she was the evil she was yeah i loved that they used great like horror movie tropes of like dawn looking out the window in a shadow while buffy's on the yard and like the way she's like mom's gonna be home soon and buffy's like i'll be home i'll be back and like

[00:14:50] dawn just standing there once you know that buffy thinks there's something up you're also like i don't know if you should leave dawn alone in the house like what's she gonna do to your mom like it's scary and then she offers joyce that cup of tea like i made it yeah it's just like all that was missing

[00:15:10] was like like crazy music yeah i've forgotten about that um and i just that really stood out to me in this episode i loved all of the scenes of the three of them together because we know it's coming i love the way it just it was very humorous at the you know sibling rivalry dynamic and then

[00:15:38] how well they flipped the script at the end and how sweet you know when the monk is talking to buffy and she understands what her sister is and he uses that word innocent yeah must protect the innocent that i felt that like i felt buffy's mind changing like right then how sweet she is when she comes

[00:16:06] home and she can't she can't reveal it but the way she loves on dawn and how that just like i said earlier it just it's just a bridge to all the beauty that's to come in the remainder of the season it was amazing and i love that you know i have a lot of siblings and there were so many moments that rang true my younger sister is now a full adult very accomplished professional person but around

[00:16:35] this age when she was like 13 14 15 she was klutzy she broke stuff all the time just like buffy was with dawn like don't touch anything don't do that don't whatever with my little sister it would be like oh there goes the toaster oven oh no i used to have a blender like oh you locked the bike to the house and don't know the combination anymore like there were so many times that that kind of stuff happened

[00:17:03] oh what happened to my towels like all this stuff and you would be like it was always a mix of like annoyed and also amused and love like there was this like oh you're just you can't help it you're just like going through an awkward phase i know that but also like ah i just bought those towels like it was just i remember watching this episode with my little sister and being like hey that's you

[00:17:33] but like i didn't say it you know what i mean i was like and i i wonder now if she was watching it being like oh no that's me probably like oh no i remember when i knocked stuff over and broke stuff all the time and like yeah like she's not like that at all anymore but uh at around this age she was and it was it's it's funny to me every time i watch this i'm like yep yep yep yep i mean that's

[00:18:00] exactly what it's like yeah and like i the number of times that younger siblings took credit for something i did like when dawn is like we made it for you mom and buffy's like i didn't help and her mom's like sure you did buffy like i was like yeah i've been that sibling who's like i did all the work and you like walked in at the last second and got the credit like ah but like you can't be petty you have to just let it happen right and i you know i have i'm the middle child and so

[00:18:30] you know my older brother i was like his annoyer and then my little brother was my annoyer but i was stuck in the middle so you know the oldest he often he was the smartest of the three i mean he really he could have skipped two years of high school and gone straight to college if my parents would have let him he was so smart

[00:18:56] but um so you know he oh he was like the oldest and the smartest and then the chris was the baby and then i'm like hey um jan brady yeah so i yes so i often felt kind of like buffy when it came with she's like well did i ever have a nickname and she's like no you're just you've always just been buffy

[00:19:23] um i got to be fair buffy is kind of its own nickname it really is it really is but yeah i loved that whole it was so cute so funny and every time i mean don is just she is a bull in a china shop at home or at the magic store at the magic store and everything she did was just cute and i did like

[00:19:51] willow telling buffy to go easy on her um and trying to empathize with her and buffy's like but she's so annoying um and how buffy wishes she was an only child and i'm like well you were surprised

[00:20:13] the thing about buffy is always that she has all these very like reasonable human reactions to the world around her until her responsibility as a slayer interferes and then she is 100 locked in to slayer duty like being annoyed by dawn as a younger sister takes a total backseat to her duty

[00:20:38] as the slayer with like just barely a second's hesitation on her heart she's like but you put it in my house you did whatever and like you said the monk is like she's innocent she doesn't know and buffy's like beat beat all right i accept that like yeah and it it's um it's beautiful it's a testament to what we always talk about about buffy that her strength is not just her physical strength and

[00:21:05] agility and fighting abilities it's that she truly loves and has all this love to give and and uses that to power her work as the slayer and so she's like all right then i'll love the key and i'll protect her like i guess that's my job now and i accept it and like boom i'm in it's um it's daunting too

[00:21:32] the idea of like so we have a friend our friend sam who sometimes is on the podcast has a new baby and she's been talking a lot about how it changes your brain it rewires your brain when you're when you give birth like physically the act of giving birth does things to your brain but also even if you didn't give birth when you get a baby the act of caring for that baby and nurturing that baby like even if you adopt or whatever it rewires your brain the more you physically and emotionally care for

[00:22:00] another living creature you your love for them grows physiologically not just emotionally it's not an abstraction it's real it's measurable and i think that the act of acting like dawn's sister has taken root in buffy it's not just memories or abstractions it's part of her now and i i you know

[00:22:25] she's been handed this responsibility but she can't help but have love mixed in with the the duty it's really it's it's kind of beautiful it is and i really think they did a phenomenal job of the reveal when she cast that spell my one i have a note here is i hope that sand doesn't stay in that white carpet

[00:22:53] as soon as you started pouring it i was like maybe pick up the carpet first and then put that directly on the floor or like lay down a towel like yeah something that's just that's too much but then the the way they changed i don't know if cinematography is what changed or if it's the focus on the lens you're you're way more you've got more intelligence on how that stuff works than me

[00:23:16] but i thought that was so cool that they made it like blurry and there was like a they must have put a filter on the there's probably a few different things going on one is some kind of filter on the lens that made the focus a little soft like dreamy there was a dreaminess and all the light had like softer edges and glow there was a glowy quality when buffy was walking around in the trance and then the flipping between the two realities was just a really cool effect cool i think they did that by

[00:23:46] filming the two rooms separately and then compositing them the shots together in quick succession that's an editing trick and it was beautiful it was so cool and i don't know if you noticed and and it might have just been me overthinking this the situation but when there were the flickers of dawn going in and out of the picture there was like this really cool drum beat in the background that that's cool

[00:24:13] beat like three times and it almost like she flickered with each beat almost like a heartbeat yeah is what i took it as it was just like i don't know it just it gave me chills i was like because i've told you before sometimes i don't listen to spoiler sections because i forget a lot of what i saw and i remembered this reveal i remembered it happening but i didn't i don't

[00:24:39] remember the specifics of it and like those little nods that we've just been talking about with changing the the filter on the camera and the flashing it in and out and i was like it just i felt it like i felt like i was watching it again for the first time and i i just think that was brilliant the way they did that and then when she looks at dawn and says you're not my sister and dawn is clueless she has no idea

[00:25:09] why she said that and the look of like just absolute hurt on dawn's face just broke my heart and led but it led to a beautiful moment at the end of the episode like we talked about i thought that was just a really cool way to reveal that something was off with dawn and then to lead into the creepy

[00:25:31] dawn is creepy is she evil and then we get the the story of why she's here yeah amazing i um let's talk about about the key and the things that we learn so we get first of all two classic buffy verse door bursts from this this new villain this uh this this woman in the first scene we see the monks

[00:25:57] in absolute terror and we see the door being burst but we don't get to see the villain there's no reveal and we just know something weird is going on there's chanting what what and then the second time it's just one monk so you're like oh no those other monks must be dead now and then she bursts in the door and it's so beautifully done because that door is huge and it has this graceful arch and she

[00:26:22] she knocks down that thick metal door and it's like all mangled and stuff and she is relatively tiny compared to that tiny person a giant arch and she's wearing this very sort of chic simple red dress and the effect of it is intense you're like whoa like who is this person and then you know we see her like attack the monk and like beat him up and stuff and then we have a couple of monologues and i've got

[00:26:50] them of course i love you you know when you think about it i'm the victim here first off i don't even want to be here and i'm not talking about this room or the city or the state or this planet i'm talking about the whole mortal coil now you know it's disgusting the food the clothes the people i could

[00:27:13] crap a better existence than this but okay and feel free to tell me if this next part gets a little too personal because i'm told i have boundary issues but i'm hurt yes by your incredibly selfish

[00:27:32] selfish behavior newsflash hairdo it's not always about you all i want is the key why why can't you tell me where the key is she's so narcissistic like i'm the victim here yes

[00:28:00] and i should have written down this actress's name do you have it oh yeah claire kramer claire kramer she this is what i wrote in my notes about her i love how she plays this role spoiled narcissistic narcissistic plays the victim but has this like unintentional raw sexuality about her and um

[00:28:24] the way she goes from confident to manic like when she's i think you probably have the monologue when she's talking to her she's in her own head yeah talking to herself or well for you isn't it say you like to torture me why you don't even own the damn thing and i want it i need it and i've got to have it now and you

[00:28:51] keep refusing to tell me where the key is and it's typical it's typical it's typical the whole mortal meat that comes complete with stinking bile sweating protein yes i said humans not now mommy's talking wriggling piling prowling crawling clowning convorting doing it over and over and over and over so someone's gonna sit down on their tub and make this birthing stop and then she sucks the brain of that poor dude whoever he was who had a wife and kids

[00:29:21] yeah i know bless his heart which was a big reveal at part of this villain's power and where this power why why they do what they do why she does this and what she gains from it and that goes on to be very important down yeah yeah and it's terrifying because first we see her physical strength right she

[00:29:47] beats down that giant door and then she the reveal she wants the key and she's willing to be violent and she's all like i'm the victim here and then she starts to lose it and you're like oh god like she's an unstable violent strong like each reveal is like another level of scary yeah and i loved the camera work when she was doing that monologue like the typical typical typical they were doing these cuts and sometimes the

[00:30:15] voice didn't match her face in the shot like sometimes she wasn't talking but you could hear her talking and i loved that because it just seems so disjointed and probably what the experience was like in her head of being like literally unhinged and then she sucks the brain out of that poor guy and then she's like oh i feel better like oh god that poor man uh she is terrifying but she's also funny

[00:30:42] yeah that's what makes her like such a great like she i wrote here in my notes she's probably one of the top 10 tv villains yeah that i adore her i can remember and she's definitely top three um in this show yeah like for me maybe only my other favorite villain is angelus like

[00:31:04] she's amazing and she is physically of a very similar size to buffy which is nice it's it's kind of like when faith was the villain it was nice to see buffy have a foil that is you know sort of like because we often see buffy fighting like giant villains like men or male demons that are way larger than her like even the first opening fight she has with a vampire in this episode is like this big dude

[00:31:32] to see her fight someone who looks like they should be an easy take for her because they're small like she is and then have to have this this woman be like oh you have superpowers how fun for you like it it set me back it made me almost more afraid than i am of the big of the big villains because i was like oh if she's this small and she's that powerful that's actually kind of scarier yeah and that took

[00:31:57] buffy that caught buffy off guard when she i loved it that was before we get into that part but when she was trying to sneak up on buffy and she's all like cart it reminded me of like a cartoon guy trying to sneak up on whatever he or something yeah and then buffy clocks it and grabs her by the throat because i'm not stupid and then we get to see uh the villain strength which you could see

[00:32:22] immediately shakes buffy's confidence so that i was not prepared for her to throw me across the room like that right and it just great introduction great introduction and fantastic yeah character introduction and like this this woman whoever she is is so scary and clearly unpredictable and willing

[00:32:49] to do anything like there's she like as far as we could see she's not going to have any limits she's mean but she also thinks that she's in the right she thinks that she's doing something that like other people are wrong for opposing her right it it's it's wild and buffy is right to be freaked out by it and she makes a very smart decision when she's like i know what i'll do i'll take this

[00:33:18] monk and get out of here he's like yeah buffy good on you i want to give a nod to production and the writers for the i don't know why this is a random stuff that pops into my head when i'm watching episodes now that i'm gonna be podcasting about the way she jumped backwards so when she landed she took the brunt of the fall yeah so he didn't kill the monk i just nice touch man just a nice touch

[00:33:47] also our third bursting through something buffy verse classic action of bursting out of a window like i never get tired of those i want to say before we get keep going we were talking about top villains of the buffy verse mine comes in the final season oh okay yeah there's good ones in the final season too i'm gonna want to be all over that final season just so you know okay good good i'm glad um there's great villains throughout the buffy verse i mean spike has been

[00:34:16] a great villain um i really loved angela as the mayor i love the mayor you know faith great but like this particular villain i really enjoyed i also just i've said before season five is my favorite season i think it's the best season of buffy i think it's practically flawless like from beginning to end it has so many delightful elements yeah um so yeah she protects the monk from the fall but he

[00:34:42] still doesn't he doesn't survive and she she's really like no no i can help you like we could go and he's like i'm not important you know like uh you know don't don't you know try to save me i'm i'm not the point and he he explains and this is the big reveal the key is energy it's a portal it opens the door

[00:35:11] the the daggonsphere no for centuries it had no form at all my brethren it's only keepers then the abomination found us we had to hide the key gave it for molded it flesh made it human and sent it

[00:35:40] to you and the the realization that comes over her face in that moment is amazing when she's like dawned like yeah it's literally dawning on her like oh that's why she looked weird when i was in the trance like and then she gets mad which i think is just viable right she's like you sent that to my house

[00:36:06] like what are you what were you thinking i love that line she's not my sister and he just calmly says she doesn't know that yeah she's innocent she needs you i was like yeah and you can almost see like smoke coming out of buffy's ears as she's like change all of your preconceptions like yeah even when she goes home and she's trying to make up with dawn and dawn makes this nice comment and she starts to

[00:36:35] be like you always do this like like she's recalling a memory that she now knows was put there yeah that's wild and then she's just like she immediately shifts into like just sweet nurturing mode and then they have that moment where dawn's like what's wrong with mom and i'm like oh yeah these poor girls there's so many times buffy walked in that house and it panned over to

[00:37:04] i just i'm not ready for what's coming yeah even though i know it's coming i still i'm not ready for it it's brutal and yeah it's it's a really it's a really hard storyline the mystery of it is rough and i can i can very easily identify with both buffy and dawn in that situation and with joyce honestly and uh it's um buffy wanting it like thinking it's supernatural like logical conclusion after

[00:37:34] she encounters that guy at the hospital who's like they come at you through your family and thinking like ah this is about me and they're coming at me through my family it's a supernatural threat i think that for buffy as the slayer she's so used to being the one who can solve the problem and the there are a lot of horrible things that happen in her world and she has definitely gone through

[00:38:02] lots of occasions of feeling like she's not up to it like it's too much for her like it's not fair like it's it's awful like she's taking too much for all those things but very rarely does she feel helpless yeah and medical stuff when your family member or someone you love is hurting and you can't

[00:38:28] do anything to help them whether it's medical or just life things that are going wrong for someone and you can't help them in any way except for to be like can i get you some tea like it is so painful and if you're a person who usually can help and you can't help you you're looking for an enemy to fight right and it would be so much better for buffy if her mom was being hurt by an evil demon and that she

[00:38:58] could find it hunt it and kill it it it would be more straightforward it would be like psychologically and emotionally easier for her she's done that before she knows how to do that she doesn't know how to do this nobody teaches you how to do that it's no it's rough it is rough it sucks you know she's like what can i do her mom's like my prescription buffy's like i'm on it like finally a task that i can

[00:39:25] complete like yes it's it's hard i my heart goes out to people in that situation i think it is it is um one of the hardest things that we have to do as humans is like just do what we can when we know that there's no way that it is enough yeah i'm in it right now i i know you are and it's i i wish i could support you better you're doing great oh thank you i think all the time about that scene in

[00:39:54] it's season two of the walking dead when um carl has been shot and they need to get medical supplies and shane's like i'll go do it and rick is like i'll go too and shane is like no you have to sit here by his bed and watch him it be in pain and yeah that's harder for rick to do than going on a like death defying you know zombie defying mission because he's just sitting there doing nothing from

[00:40:20] his perspective having to just like be strong in the moment and not take any action and that's that's parenthood that's love it is sucks yeah i agree and you know something i'm learning

[00:40:42] through this whole experience is that sometimes honestly just being there is like the biggest thing that you can do you can't fix what's broken but we feel like we're doing very little like buffy didn't feel like she was doing enough i feel like i'm not doing enough but

[00:41:10] then there's those moments when it's like just sit here with me just be here yeah and let's watch this movie together that is enough and so it's it's a fine line to walk and it is hard it is and i felt i felt for both buffy and dawn there it's like we don't know what's wrong we can't figure out what's

[00:41:35] wrong and when buffy realizes like you said it's not supernatural it's just this is just life and that is a hard lesson that at some point all of us are going to have to learn one way or the other sometimes you just the best you can do is just be there and that is doing a lot more than you

[00:41:55] actually think it is yeah it's important and it's it's hard it's painful and i think that this storyline on this show is incredibly valuable for anybody that has gone through having a relative basic

[00:42:17] yeah because it shows you that even the most like powerful superheroes are helpless in the face of some things and that sometimes life is too much for you and that's okay like you're still doing what you're supposed to be doing you're not a bad person because you can't fix everything like it's it's i imagine and it was very helpful for me when when my dad was sick it was very helpful for

[00:42:46] me for me after he died to think about how buffy handled all of this and be like i feel like buffy it was it was helpful and i imagine it's been helpful for a lot of people um yeah buffy is um it's so funny because people often just look at the face value of the show they're like it's about someone named buffy and there's vampires that sounds dumb and it's like it's really

[00:43:11] not dumb like if you took a second to like watch it you'd understand that it's it's it's really deep a lot of the time i mean it's still silly there's plenty of silly but yeah but there's so much there's so much heart to learn yeah to relate to to life lessons um there's just and with angel too

[00:43:32] yeah uh it's there's just stuff that you like when you do read the description it's like okay this is can't be whatever but then you get into the thick and you and it's also with television in general when you get to know characters and you start to care about these characters and they mean something to

[00:43:55] you eventually somehow some way you're gonna line up with a storyline like i relate very you we both related very well with this buffy and joy situation and the sibling situation or a few episodes ago with angel when there was a racist racism issue you know eventually when you care about these people and you pay attention you're going to become invested in their stories and eventually those stories are going

[00:44:23] to touch you in some way and that's one of my favorite things about television yes it's an escape but sometimes it's also great therapy it really can be and different shows affect you in such different ways we were talking last week about how i've been watching vampire diaries and vampire diaries is way shallower than buffy the vampire slayer it's it's lots of relationship drama like teen romance

[00:44:46] drama constantly it's very soap opera it's very melodrama it's it's silly um and i enjoy it for the escapism but i don't get the depth out of it that i get out of buffy but then also this week ted lasso came back and it had me thinking about how on its surface it's a silly show about a guy who coaches a soccer team or a football team and but when you watch it i don't know do you watch ted lasso i have not

[00:45:14] started the new season yet but i did not realize it was officially out so i will be doing one episode is out okay and um you know when i watched it when it first was out i was like oh this show is about wisdom and love and there's all this depth in it wrapped in goofy soccer silliness yeah and it i know

[00:45:39] so many people that have gotten like life altering wisdom from characters on tv shows you know like you can learn so much from you know be curious not judgmental thank you ted lasso like i know that came from walt whitman but i didn't hear it from walt whitman i heard it from ted lasso so thank you that's helpful to me yeah i mean the pit this last season of the pit oh my god the literally was like

[00:46:07] therapy for me almost every week yeah and i still am using some of what i learned during that last season today it's yeah it's wild that show's amazing that show's so good i uh i tell people all the time they're like i don't know i watch scrubs and i'm like it's not the same it's not at all the same but i do love scrubs yeah scrubs is fun scrubs is great and sometimes scrubs has a lot of heart

[00:46:34] but the pit is like i don't know the pit is like nest level the excellence of the pit is hard to explain to people who haven't watched it yet on a lighter note this episode we did have the whole magic box opening day storyline giles in that costume oh my god and the look on buffy's face where she's like i'm not even gonna say it you know she just looks at him and then he's tucking it away under the

[00:47:01] counter like sheepishly like i didn't have that on you saw nothing oh my god so great and the look on his face he's like look it's like when a little kid is like mommy look and you're like oh honey it's like i dressed myself for school today and they're wearing two different shoes and a tutu with yeah yeah and you're like you can't actually leave the house like that but

[00:47:29] it's so cute that you tried yeah that was hilarious and the anya we got out of the whole magic box was so great when she walks in and she's like your conjuring powder is way overpriced i can hook you up with the troll that sheds it like yeah the way that her demon history and like that she knew about the trance thing the way that her demon past like pops up from from time to time with like

[00:47:58] helpful knowledge is such a great plot device and the way she delivers it so nonchalantly like that spell that buffy could do she just it's like you and i are just talking right now about life she's just like oh well you could do this and then she goes right back to what she's doing and then her talking about when you're mentioning the powder she's frustrated because she's poor and she doesn't know what she doesn't know what to do with that she doesn't like it yeah i've never had to afford

[00:48:27] things before yeah i'm like oh honey and then um i have the clip from the end of the day at the store oh good would someone please rip that bloody bell off its hinges that involve moving my feet are numb i'll see your numbness and i'll raise you a lower back pain i think i like to better when demons will

[00:48:54] just crash in here and tear the place apart just seems so much simpler you're out of crystal balls those babies are really popular with the amateurs better restock and raise the price 10 percent make it 15. anya your cash register looks like squirrel's nest in it anya and the hand of glory pack some serious raw power better institute a seven-day background check

[00:49:15] anya would you like a job okay good and we can talk shop tomorrow okay boss she's so proud yeah she was so excited i loved i love all things anya yeah and i love the magic box

[00:49:43] i love that at first they were like there's no customers and then he was like yay customers and then he was like too many customers yeah it was like way overwhelming but she she knew man she's a boss she knew what to do how to but the i wrote it down um oh where was it sorry i wrote it it's when xander's talking to her and she says now go away when she makes the sale and uh xander oh xander's like

[00:50:13] um or no she says please go and xander's like yeah that's not really what we do we tell them to have a nice day she's like but i got their money i don't care about their day because it's an extra it's an extra long um culture of insincerity so it's like hey you have a nice day

[00:50:40] so cute and i love that now she has a place in our universe that makes sense she's not just xander's girlfriend she's gonna work at the magic box so it gives her a purpose and a role in the group and we get lots of anya like quips and additions and knowledge and she has a it's great it's it's a perfect solution and a structure for for the group and it's wonderful i love everything about the magic

[00:51:06] box it's a great set um the doorbell is hilarious it's like a nice punctuation on different dialogue sometimes and which is important later too yeah and it's convenient to have like all of the magic supplies there and all the books and like everything's in one place and they have a place to meet up like like we used to use the library like that's great it makes perfect sense and kudos to

[00:51:33] the story right the story people for all of this and they did it in angel and they're doing it here i just they they really are yeah both shows are really like in the groove right now yes like just fantastic love it love it love it um we have one one spike moment that is one of the most iconic

[00:52:03] spike moments i have seen this on so many t-shirts and stickers and memes oh my god which is buffy finds him in her yard and i love the look on her face she like walks out of her house and then she has this look on her face like something's not right and then grabs spike from behind a tree and we get this amazing exchange what are you doing here five words or less out for a walk

[00:52:35] out for a walk at night by my house no one has time for this william on your merry way then you know contrary to one self-involved worldview your house happens to be directly between parts and and other parts of this town and i would pass by in the day but i feel i'm outgrowing my whole burst into flame phase fine keep going i cut you a break oh yeah okay let me guess you won't kill me

[00:53:02] oh the whole crowd pleasing threats and swagger routine outstandingly original you know i'm just passing through satisfied you know i really hope so because god knows you need some satisfaction in life besides shagging captain cardboard and and i never really liked you anyway and and you have

[00:53:25] stupid head i loved that entire exchange despite this strong slate slayer killing demon reverted to a 12 year old boy on the playground and it's it just was so funny but i did like the reveal that he wasn't just passing by right there's like 12 cigarette butts there yeah he'd been kicking

[00:53:53] it for a minute and i'm glad buffy clocked that uh but i love spike and you have stupid hair yeah it's so great i've seen tattoos that say out for a walk bitch like i it's such a favorite buffy fan scene and he is on screen what one minute out of the whole episode and it's one of the most

[00:54:20] memorable moments in the entire series like it's so great and the look on her face is like fine go and he's like and another thing and another thing like because as we all know last episode he realized that he loves buffy and so now he doesn't know what to do oh yeah it's adorable and she's just like and walks away i love that she called he called riley um captain cardboard yeah which is not that

[00:54:48] dissimilar from what i thought about him at the time yeah i this is where my heart i i liked riley the first time around a lot more than other people did and still feel the same and i i really am starting to feel for him i could just imagine you living this life this whole time and

[00:55:12] thinking that you're some level of importance and strength and learning that it was all a lie you've been lied to your entire time and now you're with this way stronger way feet more fierce individual and now you've officially lost all of that strength that you felt made you equal it's it's man insecurity i'm

[00:55:35] not saying it's not yeah stupid but it i get i feel for him and then dawn blabbering that buffy is worried that he's not strong enough to be out on patrol and stuff with her and referring to him as a kitten it just brutal it i and then when she's starting to spell and she's like hey you can help me with this and as i felt bad that she even felt like she needed to placate him but i also understand when you're in

[00:56:04] a relationship with somebody and somebody's feeling less than you want to try to do something to make them feel better but he caught on to it but i felt like it was a good moment between the two of them where he's like let's just say we'll be great together and but yeah this that that made me a little sad for riley yeah it's the riley situation is hard because there's a big part of me that is very irritated

[00:56:30] with how often he wants to compete with and fight with and take down buffy that's fair i'm like if you love her why is that the thing you want to do all the time because he never is like let's have a weightlifting competition let's race it's always let's fight always it's not like who can stake more vampires tonight

[00:56:53] it's fight each other and it bothers me it really bothers me but i also can understand from his point of view that like his entire world was ripped apart he was manipulated and used and like you said lied to betrayed all those things and he loves buffy but he like he cannot get past feeling inadequate he can't it's sad it's a really sad situation for both of them because she doesn't have it in her to give him

[00:57:22] what he really needs in this moment which is for her to be not as strong as she is she can't do that no she has to be who she is and he has to either accept that that they are different they are not they are not they're separate nor equal um and we you know as we figure out like it's just not something he can do and it's it's a sad ending to the story arc because what made me saddest about

[00:57:51] their relationship is when i think it was prom when angel tells buffy he wants her to have somebody normal and here we find and that's why i liked riley so much in the beginning so i was even when i found out he was with the initiative i was like right i was like that seems great yeah this is like a great level of normal and turns out that even normal doesn't work for her

[00:58:17] when it comes to relationships so it just the whole thing for both of them it just made me it's it's it's sad it's really sad at the time i was so excited about ben i thought this guy is a doctor he's not going to want to fight buffy right he's not going to feel like he has to compete with her at fighting because he's got a whole different thing that he can excel at which is healing and so since

[00:58:47] they're not trying to do the same type of thing there won't be a competitive problem maybe they could be a couple that works and she was a nurturer right i was so i was so into like i felt like there was a little spark between them in this episode when he's like you know you've got some crazy muscles for a girl and all that and i i was like oh maybe ben is the future i was very i was very shipping we

[00:59:14] didn't use shipping as a verb back then but of buffy and ben i thought that was like that had serious potential yeah i agree yeah i uh and there's part of me that's like maybe when she's a few years older she and angel can make it work like i mean she was a senior in high school when they broke up like that is so young like she was a baby he he needed to go away he's way too old for her

[00:59:45] yeah um i was i was right yeah i don't know i we can have a total separate two and a half four hour podcast yeah my thoughts on angel and buffy yeah i mean like i've i have said before like the normal rules of what is and is not acceptable are kind of hard to apply to somebody who has superpowers

[01:00:12] and a life expectancy of 20 years old like it's hard it's hard to say like don't love this person you have strong feelings for you know you have plenty of time to like maybe she doesn't like i don't know and she's like she doesn't really have a peer who's male she only has yeah it's just hard it's hard to apply normal morals to right it's not black and white this is yeah so 50 shades of gray

[01:00:39] yeah unintended except not but yes wasn't 50 shades of gray originally didn't it get developed out of twilight fan fiction yeah that's hilarious to me i've never read the books or seen the movies so i don't i have done all all of that you know that new movie wicker that everyone's talking about the preview for when it came out i saw somebody call it 50 shades of hay and i've been laughing

[01:01:04] about that in my head for days that is great the memes that that is producing are giving me life right now yeah and i saw somebody on instagram being like you know whenever hollywood wants someone to do something super weird they get a scars guard and i was like yeah that's true because it works yeah those scars guards are talented and there's apparently like 600 of them so yeah so it's like endless

[01:01:31] we've got 400 more years of it's like the uh targaryens and yeah game of thrones non-stop scars guard weirdness i'm so here for it all right hey it's time to move on to a little bit of pop culture and not pop culture references want to start us off i shall in the villain's rant after interrogating the

[01:01:54] monk she mentions someone sits on a tuffet dawn has been referred to as little miss muffet in the dream that faith had while in her coma on graduation day part two miles to go little miss muffet counting down from seven to three to zero little miss muffet comes from a nursery rhyme about a little girl eating curds and whey and along came a spider and sat down beside her and frightened miss muffet away

[01:02:23] that's right and the title of this episode had its origins in the wizard of oz in which the main character dorothy clicked her heels together and repeated there's no place like home in order to get back to her home in kansas after having found herself in a magical world of oz i don't completely understand how that relates to the episode but um i do understand that like oz was sort of possibly

[01:02:52] an illusion in that movie at least i don't know it's kind of confusing to me it's not the best title for what i felt this episode meant i feel like some of the other countries had better choices than what they chose for this uh dawn says who died and made you the iron chef iron chef is a japanese produced tv show that went on to air on the food network in the us the host of the show pits his quote iron chefs

[01:03:20] unquote master chefs from various culinary styles against challengers to try to prove their culinary prowess and skill in an arena called kitchen stadium after seeing their theme ingredient they have an hour to whip up a multi-course menu that utilizes the theme ingredient a group of judges taste the dishes and offer their commentary on them before a vote is cast uh buffy says to her mom i want you to relax

[01:03:46] all day keep your feet up plenty of oprah the oprah winfrey show of course is the daytime talk show which started in 1984 in chicago and started running as a syndicated show in 1986 the show and oprah have won more than 30 emmy awards and man oprah used to give stuff away yeah like crazy like everyone in the

[01:04:07] audience gets a car you get a car you get a car everybody gets a car yeah it was wild but oprah is like a major cultural touchstone in american culture yeah riley says giles you've got that danger room set up out back the danger room is part of a comic tv series x-men it's a room where the teammates go to

[01:04:36] work out computers simulate a variety of dangers hence the name allowing the mutants to practice in a variety of conditions and ben when he talks about buffy's strength he says a radioactive spider bite this comment refers to the method by which marvel comic spider-man received his superpowers and moving on

[01:05:03] to some trivia a sign under the cash register in giles's new business the magic box reads shoplifters will be transfigured i never yeah i after i wrote this i went and checked i was like oh that's hilarious that is brilliant and at the end of the episode right after dawn storms upstairs joyce is reading

[01:05:28] a magazine and there is an advertisement that features sarah michelle geller in the ad how did you see that i didn't i got this from a like one of the buffy wikis oh my god i'm gonna have to go back and look yeah that's great that's a great little easter egg that's so fun in the flashback scenes and i had to think about this hard when i was making the agenda i was like there were flashback scenes and i realized it's the opening scene of the monks chanting those take place in the czech

[01:05:58] republic in the year 2000 all right becky it's time for me to ask you a very important question does it still slay 100 billion gajillion trillion thousand million percent still slays very high

[01:06:18] percentage i give this five flickering dawn photos out of five i loved it i think i loved it more this time than i did when i watched it the first time almost always watching an episode in order to podcast on it gives me a much deeper appreciation than i would have had just casually watching it i get so much more out of it when i'm watching it closely like that which is amazing every now and

[01:06:48] then i watch something to podcast on it a show or a movie or something and i'm like oh no i hate this but with buffy that never happens i actually loved it even episodes that i don't like very much when i watch them really closely i find things in it i do appreciate even if i don't like the episode as a whole uh but this one slays this is definitely one you would not skip in a rewatch because it's important

[01:07:14] all kinds of plot revelations the reveal of this new villain who's so iconic and terrifying and fun and yeah it's a it's a 100 or bajillion percent slay i agree with you on that yay um it is hot in boston i don't know about in tennessee but would you like to go to the bronze and get something to drink yeah

[01:07:38] i feel like a shot of vodka with a beer chaser sounds delish ice cold right like ice cold super ice cold shaking shaking shaking yeah bronze things things of bronze all right via facebook karen hey karen she says listening to the podcast here's my theory on how quickly folks get buried in sunnydale

[01:08:04] leftover rule from the mayor quick burials equals more chaos from vampires or it's easy for him to know where they'll be so he can recruit them also love anya just being somewhat perfect for retail thanks karen and that's smart i hadn't thought about it as the mayor setting up that precedent and it's kind of perfect it is it really is we have a couple of voicemails one is from karen and i believe

[01:08:33] this covers um the last episode of buffy out of my mind and the last episode of angel hey still slaying it's karen um i finally i've been watching way too much other stuff with my kids while my daughter's home for the summer and stuff so uh including gilmore girls which i know you guys mentioned a few episodes back we sucked my husband into gilmore girls so we start at the beginning

[01:08:59] um anyway i'm gonna cover four uh episodes here just to get myself caught up and then hopefully i will be good um so angel uh untouched uh i i have to say as someone who works with psychiatrists that wesley's uh approach of just being like and what about your father you know it's it's bad counseling

[01:09:22] technique uh but effective but bad um and i also want to say that angel loves pretending to be somebody else like he loves just like you know acting like cordy maybe the actor but he's actually really good at just pretending to be someone and he just loves the heck out of it when he gets to do it um in dear boy like darla says something's like i know there's darkness in you and i just brought it

[01:09:49] out and i'm just like you are like completely dark like angel had some darkness but like he also had a lot of light and darla doesn't really seem to have that much light um and yeah let's see out of my mind you know the absolute best part of that whole thing is just that path to spike realizing how much

[01:10:12] you know that he has feelings for buffy and it's hilarious it's so much fun to watch you know it's coming i wasn't sure if this that was coming in this episode but just watching him be like i hate her so much and it's like yeah no you don't um it's it's just it's so funny to me to watch that um i loved having um riley riley's friend i forgot his name again show up and the doctor totally fooling

[01:10:41] spike hilarious gotta love that um why do i feel like i have the wrong episode anyway these are all sort of in these episodes um you know the stuff with oh yeah right that so that is out of my mind so no place like home finally uh you know we get glory i love her she is

[01:11:06] so deliciously insanely evil and like you know things just like make sense to her in a way that do not make sense to you know anyone else and and i love her she is probably my favorite villain in all of the buffy verse she she just wipes the floor with most of our most of our other villains especially

[01:11:28] coming off of adam she's just so so much more fully realized um and you know just figuring out what where dawn came from is so so impactful here and i really i really enjoy it i'm i'm so looking forward to having juicy glory scenes um and you know her whole like why are you doing this to me

[01:11:54] like she's the victim you know it's so crazy she's just she's wonderful and and i'm looking forward to it and i'm looking forward to hearing uh all of these podcasts i've only listened to untouched i got to listen to the other ones as we go all right i'm running over so bye thanks karen i love what she mentioned about how much angel loves when he's like slightly undercover and in that episode untouched it's the one where he pretends to be a police detective and he just like grabs someone's random coffee and he

[01:12:24] walks up and he's like so what do we got here can you move these people off my crime scene and it's so clear that he's having the time of his life when he does it it's really it's really entertaining he does love it when david boreanis was on bones every time they would have an undercover episode you could tell that they were having the time of their lives playing like outrageous undercover characters i just watched one the other day where they were dancers

[01:12:50] yeah they're in the ballroom dancing one yes i love the circus one where they're the russian knife throwing couple like just that scares me like ridiculous ridiculous undercover operations they do on bones and he does it a few times on angel where he gets to go undercover and act like some kind of silly character and it's just really fun um it it highlights david boreanis's goofy side when he

[01:13:19] does that stuff and i i love it which is a beautiful thing to see yeah it's great i love a a handsome man who can be silly and not take himself too seriously makes me happy thanks karen good to hear from you yes and i love that you're watching gilmore girls with the whole family that's adorable same i might try to get my husband to watch it and he's like they just they talk too fast i can't keep up so

[01:13:42] yeah you need to watch it at like three-quarter speed right yeah and we also heard from our good friend pio hello slayers i would like to nerd out about alternate realities if you don't mind as it is a recurring theme in the buffy verse one definition for creating alternate realities is a switch that occurs with a decision or an event that makes our timeline branch out

[01:14:11] the moment when the monks made dawn out of a mystical shapeless energy could be seen as such trigger or could it be the moment when the abomination and her lost key jumped from their dimension to this one in a way conjuring something magically might simply involve pulling the elements of alternate realities through some sort of portal thus turning the world into a sort of alternate universe

[01:14:38] we had an alternate reality when jonathan was a superstar or the one when zander used a love spell to make all women fall for him or the one when buffy summers never came to sunnydale are these realities a result of magic or are they shifts between universes could it be both introduction of dawn and the beast could mean that we are now watching buffy in a parallel world

[01:15:03] one interesting fact is that buffy expressed a recent annoyance with her little sister precisely since the moment dawn was brought into existence she is really annoying lately implies that buffy has been a lot more annoyed with dawn in the past two months because that is precisely when the monks brought her to life dawn is created with magic so it was also magic that showed buffy the world as it was supposed to be

[01:15:31] dawn less could there have been an alternate world still in existence where everyone just continued without dawn and the beast a world where aside from the routine vampire slage everyone just got really bored and fat and happy the possibilities are endless the possibilities are endless the world without shrimp i would still watch that i enjoyed how the enormous strength of our new villain

[01:15:54] reset the power scale and almost made the fight and destruction scenes seem cartoonish i think we can look forward to more cartoon violence coming up in this season beep beep beep

[01:16:10] thanks pio i love it it is there have been a bunch of alternate realities throughout the series and i was just talking about this this morning with cara about that episode of community where they show the six different possible realities and then they have the darkest timeline

[01:16:30] and uh it's interesting to think about a world where dawn never came to sunnydale and there was no dawn and what their lives would have been like yeah if they had never met the abomination they had met if if she had never been looking for the key if that had never happened would there have been a the rise of a different

[01:16:57] villain that they would have had to deal with i don't know i feel like it would have been i mean it's it's sunnydale it's the hell now right there's always somebody brewing it would have been something else yeah yeah uh i also agree with what karen said that especially after adam who was so meh that that that this villain already in just one episode has given us more personality and motivation

[01:17:25] and evil than adam ever did yeah oh yeah much more fun that's awesome thanks for for writing and voice mailing in you guys keep it coming we love it yeah those are great eat me meet me and that is the end of the main section of the podcast and remember to stay tuned at the very end for the watchers diaries if you want to hear a few minutes of the spoilery talk and if you'd like to join the conversation you can

[01:17:53] find all of our contact information at podcastica.com and in the show notes for each episode also at podcastica.com you'll find links to our social media pages and all our other shows so what have you been watching reading and listening to lately oh my god everything um i've been listening to uh you all in

[01:18:17] your recent angel and buffy episodes i've also been listening to house of the dragon yeah with wendy veronica and uh oh my gosh i'm blanking renny renny thank you sorry renny uh just you're doing such a great job and um i binged the last two days i was looking for something mindless and i obsessed got obsessed

[01:18:46] with house of stassi oh i've never been heard of it who watch vanderpump rules will know exactly what i'm talking about it's awful but it was so awfully good uh i had to finish it so yeah awesome yeah i have also been watching house of the dragon and listening to dragon cast with uh wendy veronica

[01:19:09] and renny and that's been great i also really like crazy stupid podcast they are a different approach from the podcastica style podcast it's more short form they usually are about 20 minutes but i i enjoy their coverage they usually pick out a couple of different items to talk about and they're very insightful in a short amount of time so i recommend them they're great and uh vampire

[01:19:35] listat ended but i know that you're you've been covering it uh guesting on dragon cast over on pirate core and oh right vamp cast sorry i misspoke and uh i haven't been listening to i've only listened to like one episode of vamp cast so i gotta get caught up on vamp cast and you guys just recorded right yeah we just it'll probably take mark a few days to get it up but we just did finish our recording yesterday

[01:20:01] on the season finale and oh my gosh it's so good the season of vampire listat was awesome it was so good i'm so excited for the next season which they did finally announce is coming so if you like vampire stories like don't wait go and watch all of the vampire chronicles they're really entertaining it's really something and i'm still working on uh dungeon crawler carl i know it's been um uh there's a tv

[01:20:27] show version in production so i want to finish reading at least the first book before the tv show comes out so i'm going to keep working on that it's just so hard for me to find reading time yeah that's why i do audiobooks yeah i can't focus on audiobooks i get it unless i'm in the car i just i lose my place and then i'm like oh now i have to rewind like i just i can't i don't know i can't make it work and if you like what we're doing give us a five star rating a review or a like a follow

[01:20:56] subscribe all the stuff you know how to do it next time we'll be covering angel season two episode six speaking of undercover guys will be guys and that's g-u-i-s-e thanks everyone and it appears to be paranormal in origin how can you tell well it's so shiny i love shiny things all right

[01:21:24] that is the end of the non-spoiler section so if you want to avoid spoilers you should stop listening now and i forgot to load the sound clip so i'll drop that in here onto the watcher's diaries seriously whoops onto the watcher's diaries and we can talk now about all things glory and ben and ben and glory

[01:21:54] i heard there's a connection between ben and glory i don't really know what that is and um how much we love glory and how she does reset the power scale in a big way oh yeah did you notice my name yes oh my god i didn't notice it until we started recording but you guys when when becky signed into the into the zen caster the the um the interface we use to do podcasting she put her name

[01:22:19] in as glory hole so funny oh my god oh god oh yeah i oh glory is so so good she's so funny i love when she broke her heel of her shoe in this episode and that was enough to stop her murderous rampage against buffy and the monk was so funny to me and it it just made me look forward to like

[01:22:48] all the scenes that we have to come where she's like like dissing on like earth fashion but she's like bubble baths are cool and she likes champagne and like all the scenes where she turns into ben and ben is there wearing some like silly dress yeah oh my god i oh god i love glory so much and claire

[01:23:12] kramer is just just touched like tone perfect every moment she's on screen you can't take our eyes off of her she's so good in this role yes she does they really really did well casting her in this role um and

[01:23:30] i do want to say my favorite villain in the buffy buffy side is caleb oh caleb yeah he's evil oh my god nathan fillion that was my first experience with nathan fillion and i hated him yeah for so long and then when i think it was castle yeah and he's so charming on castle i was like oh my god you are

[01:23:59] precious uh and then the rookie it just but man oh i can't wait i know we have to go through five and we i know six we have to do it whether we want to or not um six has six is in six is a little uneven but six has some really juicy stuff in it it does the episode where where buffy is in an alternate

[01:24:24] reality and thinks that she's in an insane asylum is one of the best episodes of television like that is a good one you're right i really love that one the one where warren drugs is or spells his ex-girlfriend to be his like slave is intense it's gross but it's gonna be fun to talk about yeah i like uh you mentioned buffy thinking she's in a mental place um the bell over the door

[01:24:54] yeah that's the one where time loop she's dreaming yeah and it's just a constant thing that's what the first thing i thought of when that they focused in on that bell and then giles makes that comment can somebody please rip that thing but she does eventually rip it down yeah um that's a great episode yeah the mummy hand it's like how she repeatedly tries to give the mummy hand to that one customer so funny it's not the mummy

[01:25:21] hand it is an ex-mummy hand like it's oh it's such a good episode um so season six is not even but it has it has really it has some really great stuff and uh i some people don't like season seven it's controversial i love it i think i think it's the best it's my favorite it's really interesting i think that the ending of it of the whole series is beautiful and that buffy sort of like spreading

[01:25:49] the power and sharing power with other women is like the ultimate form of matriarchy i oh my god it's such a feminist season it is and it's it there's it's top three series finales of all time in my book yeah but interest it'll be interesting to hear from listeners when we get there because it's not consistently loved by all the fans and i understand the criticisms but i do love it and i even loved

[01:26:18] it at the time i was sad the show was ending i was super sad but i was like that is a very solid ending to a show that meant a lot to me yeah and i i yeah slow clap yeah i was so sad though it was it was a lot of but that that's part of what made it beautiful was that you know not everybody walked

[01:26:43] away and you know we don't know who all got a happy ever after we just we know what we know we know it was a the ultimate a beautiful battle like you said and the way they they made it work and then you know i when when it faded to black i sat there and i was like i'm sad this is over but i felt

[01:27:09] i felt complete and that to me it's like the the series finale of six feet under which is the my favorite series finale of all time uh it just i wasn't mad i didn't i would have loved always love more buffy but i didn't need it i didn't i felt complete and i felt like they did the show justice so

[01:27:35] it still remains up there as one of the tops i agree completely so i think we're good that is the complete end of our show today thank you all for listening to us and until next time i'm penny and i'm a glory hole i'm kidding please don't put that in there no actually you can put that in there but i am gonna say i'm becky oh becky uh i forgot to ask you where can our listeners find you and what

[01:28:04] are you doing next oh yes please uh you can find me and my friend mandy on what's on tonight podcast we our bread and butter is the pit um but we do cover dexter uh we will be covering the new season of dexter whenever it comes out um but we're excited we finally decided after discussing with uh mark over

[01:28:29] at pirate core entertainment we are going to cover the prequel uh to friday the 13th all about uh jason vorhees mother cool like on the name of the show right now which is a terrible thing when you're trying to plug it so that will be coming in october we are super super excited about that so please check us out you can find us um if you go to piratecore entertainment.com you can find the link

[01:28:54] uh you can look on facebook under what's on tonight podcast and you can find us we're on instagram and penny is always so kind to post a link in uh show notes to our podcast so please check us out especially if you love the pit uh what we do in the shadows dexter there's a lot of fun stuff that we've covered and we're very excited to cover this and i would like to say penny mentioned the vamp

[01:29:19] cast where we've just finished the vampire list stat we are also in october there is a new show on cbs that is a comp vampire comedy it is about a vampire couple it's eternally yours is the name and they uh are a couple who've been together for a gajillion years they are kind of growing stagnant in their relationship which i imagine after that much time together you would until their son

[01:29:45] brings home a human uh companion and uh looks like all heck is gonna break loose so we are going to cover that on the vamp cast as well so you can find that on piratecore entertainment.com so please check us out super fun and we'll plug it again in october when the time comes thank you so once again i'm penny and i'm becky keep slitting you