Hush coments

[Rodrigo]

Hey,

Now that you've all seem the episode(well, most of you) i can finally say a
few things about it.
Now, on to the spoiler space:












Okay, i think it's enough.So, what did you guys think(it may not seem, but
this is the way i learn about the episodes, from people that see things like
i do ).When i first saw dopplergangland i was extremelly excited with the
prospect that Willow's sexuality was going to be explored, but to my dismay
it was just one time thing, done and forgotten(not even the fans seemed
interested).Now Joss does it again, i don't know if there really was
something, cause i haven't seem the episode, but if there was, it's a great
character development.The kind of gay comment had to be explored, and i hope
they do it now.Willow is an character that could easily be bissexual, so
the relationship would be a believible one(plus, we can't forget the men
suck speech from Beer Bad, it may mean something).Of course, i don't think
Willow and this witch girl should have something, but if they did, it would
have to be a short one.To me this could be an Buffy/Willow opening.Willow
realizes that she may love someone of the same gender in the same way that
she does with someone of the opposite sex, Buffy may become a little(okay, a
lot) jealous of this relationship and also realize a few things, then they'd
get together (okay,never gonna happen, but i can dream).Anyway, even if
nothing comes out of this, it's nice to know that other people would
consider the idea of Willow being involved with another girl.It's one step
away from Willow/Buffy*evil laugh*.Now that Willow seems to be getting her
own Faith, i'd like to see how people are going to deal.So, do you guys have
any thoughts on the matter? Maybe fics? : ) I'll shut up now.Now, the review
i talked in the other post is here, and maybe you guys may want to take a
look at the 'Willow is a lesbian' threths going on at Dejanews.


Subject: Earliest-bird review of the HUSH episode (oh yeah, spoilers)
Date: 12/13/1999
Author: Al Smith


Some great bits in this week's episode. Riley and Buffy kiss -- once even
for real, not just in Buffy's incredibly active dream fantasy life. Xander
and Anya kiss and make the lovi-dovi eyes (awwww! they're so cute). Giles
and sophisticated black English chick get back together for a little
recreational ah-ooh-ga! Willow finds a new love in her life, and gets all
nervous and trembly when she and her amour hold hands.

First, let's get the plot out of the way. It was interesting, but didn't
make a lot of sense when you think about it. A group of demonic French mimes
with cheerful dispositions and air-cushion insoles steal the voices from all
the good folk of Sunnydale and put them into a little wooden box. Then they
take their pets, who look like Renfield in a straitjacket, out for a night
stroll -- guess they're not
house-broken -- and in the process, harvest the still-beating, bloody hearts
from the chests of whichever hapless resident of Sunnydale has the
misfortune to have insomnia. The Initiative and the Scooby Gang both get on
the case, and Riley and Buffy end up beating the crap out of the demons and
their monkey-pets together, side by side. Buffy, while wrestling with her
foes, indicates by gesture that Riley should smash the box. He does so on
the second try, the voices are freed, and Buffy's incredibly prolonged
scream causes the heads of the demons to do a "Scanners" retrospective.

OK, you ask, what was so great about this episode? There's so much, it's
hard to know where to start!

Giles and Spike. Having apparently gotten over his fear that Spike plans to
sneak up behind him while he's having a cup of tea and slit his throat,
Giles has let Spike have the run of his house, at least while Giles is
awake. Spike wanders around, eating Ritz and drinking pig blood from a mug
that he keeps in the fridge. Talk about the odd couple! When Giles
criticizes Spike for his overeating, saying he thought vampires only drank
blood, Spike mentions that sometimes he likes to crumble up his Ritz
crackers in his blood and eat the mix, so that the blood has some texture.
Giles indicates that he will never eat again, after hearing this little
detail of the feeding habits of the undead.

At the opening of the ep, Buffy has a dream fantasy in which Professor Walsh
calls her down to the front of the psych class to demonstrate some point she
is making. She has Buffy lie on her back on her desk, and then gets Riley to
lean over Buffy, embrace her, and kiss her.

Could happen! I used to have this kind of fantasy in school all the time,
although it usually involved me and the teacher. Especially if the teacher
was young, pretty and had large breasts.

Willow goes to a Wicca gathering at the university, but is extremely
disappointed. All the Wics want to talk about is social stuff. When she has
the bad taste to bring up the subject of ritual magic, they all fall silent
and stare at her as though she has sprouted two heads. All except one
silent, shy girl, who looks as though she wants to agree with Willow but
can't bring herself to speak up before the disdainful, disapproving faces of
her peers.

When Giles learns that his love life, in the living embodiment of the
attractive black English woman whose name escaped me, is going to visit
Sunnydale, he dumps Spike off on Xander, who takes Spike to his
basement love nest for safe keeping. Xander ties Spike into a chair so that
he can sleep undisturbed through the night without worrying about being
murdered. Spike tells him he needn't be afraid, that he's not worth biting.
This offends Xander, who strenuously declared that he is eminently bitable.
Spike, rolling his eyes: "Oh, yeah."

Maybe the best scene in the episode is where Giles, who has lost his voice,
gives a silent lecture concerning the nature of the Marcel Marceau demons
using visual aids in the form of crudely drawn
transparencies and an overhead projector. Buffy indicates what she thinks
they should do to the demons by making a fist and pumping it vigorously up
and down above her lap. This draws strange looks from Giles, Willow and the
others. Buffy realizes how she has been
misconstrued and grabs a stake to repeat the gesture. Her desperate eyes
say: "I meant stake them, stake them -- geez!"

When the silent, shy little Wiccan goes walking alone at night through
Sunnydale to seek out Willow to see if she and Willow can whip up a spell to
restore everyone's voice, she runs into the demons and their ape-like
henchmen, who follow her to harvest her heart. The terrified girl leads them
directly to Willow. She and Willow flee into a room of the dorm and Willow
tried to use her Psi powers to move a coke machine over to block the door.
But she doesn't have the strength. The other girl stares meaningfully into
Willow's eyes and takes her hand,
interlacing her fingers with Willow's -- an extremely sensual moment! She is
somehow able to magnify Willow's power, and easily shifts the coke machine
to the door, saving both their lives in the process.

There are some real sexual sparks flying between Willow and this new witch,
and it's not something that can be swept under the rug in future episodes.
Willow is going to have to deal with this lesbian attraction at some point
this year. She was obviously strongly attracted to the other girl -- none of
this maybe she is, maybe she isn't crap that we usually see on prime time
TV. When they interlaced fingers, Willow felt it between her thighs.

Another really great scene is when Xander comes into Giles' house and sees
Anya asleep on the couch, her head lolling over the arm, and Spike kneeling
on the floor beside her with his lips all bloody. Anya's neck is not
visible, and Xander naturally jumps to the conclusion that Spike has sucked
her dry. He hurls himself on the startled Spike and starts to pound him in
the face. When Anya wakes up, he realizes his mistake and hugs and kisses
her with real passion. This is the first time in their relationship that
Xander fully realizes how deeply he cares about Anya, and she is absolutely
delighted to learn that he shares her feelings of love. A really sweet
moment for this sweet couple. I'm glad Xander has finally got something good
going on in his life.

When Giles' love interest sees one of the floating demons drift past his
window, she is completely terrified. Later, after they get their voices
back, they have a talk, and it turns out that she never really believed all
the stuff about magic and monsters that Giles told her about. Now she knows
it is all true, and she is not sure she can deal with it. We may not be
seeing much more of her. If she's like any sane, normal woman, she'll get
the hell out of Sunnydale never to return, and send Giles a postcard every
year at Christmas. Wouldn't you?

We learn lots of tidbits this episode. Buffy definitely is capable of
prophetic dreams. In the dream where she and Riley make out in front of the
entire psych class, she sees a little girl with the same box that will later
hold all the voices of Sunnydale, and gets some clues as to what is going to
happen in the form of a creepy nursery rhyme. It seems Buffy has Doyle's
talent, but without the migraine headaches.

We learn that the Initiative has a murderous device that releases lethal gas
into the elevator if the person riding down to the complex can't produce the
correct voice print. Since Riley is mute when he rushes to Initiative
headquarters to learn what they should do about the sudden quiet in
Sunnydale, he cannot give his voice print, and is almost gassed to death
before he is able to override the system. When he finally escapes from the
elevator of death, other members of the Initiative waiting beside the
elevator doors merely point at a sign on the wall "In case of emergency, use
stairs." Definitely. In fact, I'd use the stairs all the time ... for the
exercise, you understand.

Cute little scene -- Near the start of the show, Riley climbs up out of an
aluminum foil-lined pit in which lurks a horned demon. Riley is all sweaty,
and has evidently been working out with the demon, probably to test his
ability to combat it hand-to-hand. Some demons must be working for the
Initiative! They have sold out to the other side. Damn! You can't even trust
the minions of Satan anymore! What's the world coming to?

We also learn that the greater United States can, indeed, learn about the
happenings at Sunnydale. The sudden loss of voice by the entire town is 6
o'clock news on the national networks. Although there aren't many details.
It's put down as a city-wide case of laryngitis. Xander is pissed off -- he
wants more media coverage.

We also get to hear over a high-tech speaker phone the voice of the Great
Leader of the Initiative, who is consulted by Walsh about the problem in
Sunnydale. He sounds exactly like Stephen Hawking! That guy, always
thinking, thinking, thinking. Seriously, folks, the voice is computer
generated using the standard Microsoft voice module, leading me to speculate
that the Initiative is actually being run by -- da, da, da, dahhhh! -- Bill
Gates. Where do you want to go today, Mr. Vampire?

Little things that bugged me... Why were the demons harvesting human hearts?
There was no explanation.

Why would the citizens of Sunnydale be any more prone to riot after losing
their voices than on any other night? I think they'd be more likely to stay
at home and drink Neocitran. But they are out fighting -- silently -- in the
streets.

Why were the Igor-like stooges of the floating mime-demons wearing
straitjackets? Was this some sort of underworld fashion statement?

When Willow and her new female witch love interest moved the coke machine,
was it Willow's power, the other girl's power, or a
combination of the two? This wasn't clear to me.

Buffy seemed oddly impotent when fighting the loony-stooges of the demons.
This was done to permit Riley to act the part of the White Knight and rescue
her with his high-tech electronic demon-zapper gun. But it didn't ring true.
Buffy should have been rescuing Riley, not the other way around.

When Riley and Buffy were battling the demon stooges together, there was a
great missed opportunity for Buffy to do something amazingly superhuman and
really make Riley's eyes pop. The situation practically begged for it. But
all she did was swing on a rope and kick one of the monsters. You really
missed a chance for a little gem here, Joss. Buffy should have done one of
those neat moves that show why she's Buffy -- something no one else could
possibly do.

And Riley's demon-zapper! Really lame. He must have bought it
secondhand off one of the Men in Black, just before they wiped his memory.

Riley knows Buffy is not what she seems, but he still doesn't know about
Spike. When he learns about Spike, he's going to want to take Spike back to
the Initiative lab. Buffy is not going to let him do this. Friction,
friction.

Maybe the funniest scene, in an understated way, occurs when Buffy and Riley
finally kiss. Always before, each has talked and talked so much, they never
had a chance to smooch, but at last, when both have lost their voice, they
have nothing to say and can get down to the mutual exchange of spittle we
humans so dote upon. It was a relief to see them finally lock lips, if only
to get it over with.

I really liked this episode a lot. The plot was weak, but the floating mime
demons were very scary (though not as scary as real mimes), and there was
sustained action on several simultaneous fronts. More energy and action in
this story than we've seen on Buffy for quite some time. And the show had
some really great character and story arc
developments. 1) Giles and Spike living together, odd-couple style. 2) Giles
and his occasional English lover maybe about to break up because she can't
take the reality of life in Sunnydale. 3) Xander finally realizing that he
is passionately in love with Anya. 4) The computer voice of the Great Leader
of the Initiative (who is this guy?). 5) The combat-training demon at the
Initiative fighting pit. 6) Spike's revelation that he eats crumbled
crackers and blood -- even Giles didn't know this. 7) The vapid sniping
circle of Wiccans at the
university, who are really only "wanna blessed be" witches, as Willow puts
it. 8) Willow's lesbian love interest begins -- this is going to be good,
trust me. 9) Buffy and Riles kiss. 10) Buffy and Riley learn each other's
secret identity, sort off. Both know the other is not your average college
student.

This year amazes me. Except for the episode best-forgotten that was "Pangs"
(but no pangs), every show has had something worthwhile about it, even the
maligned "Beer Bad" which was really funny and got us all talking like
cavemen. Sure "The Freshman" wasn't much, but Sunday was a great villain. I
am excited about the flowering of the love between Xander and Anya (can an
out-of-work young guy living in his parents' basement and an
ex-1000-year-plus demon really make it in this crazy, mixed up world of
ours?); and about the even more mind-blowing
beginning of a love between Willow and her shy little witch friend. Great
potential -- very sexy!

Strangely, I'm not that interested in the love affair between Riley and
Buffy. I have to agree with others who post on this newsgroup, there are no
sparks between these two. Riley's a nice guy, but he really should be
Buffy's gay friend. In that role, he would work out fine. Maybe we should
chip in and buy him a fluffy white poodle?



Riley:...And so far, well, the only thing that I know she likes is you.(to
Willow, about Buffy)
Buffy:I need my Willow.
Buffy: I kind of love you.(to Willow)
Buffy:I love you, Will.
See, Buffy loves Willow.
Go to:http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/buffyloveswillow and subscribe.





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