Buffy Blogthrough: 1.3 "Witch"

Most mornings, to warm up my brain I write & edit 150 words on yesterday's entertainment — a TV episode, movie, news item, or whatever. Now that I've got Lady Hotspur watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I've decided to post these exercises so you & she can enjoy them too!

1.3 "Witch"
broadcast: March 17, 1997
writer: Dana Reston
director: Stephen Cragg

Part of what makes early Buffy appealing is how it dilutes the teen melodrama by couching them in a comedic-heroic tone. This week's subject is parental pressure on children. Buffy auditions for the cheerleading squad despite her mother's lack of enthusiasm (Joyce was on the yearbook staff). Their conflict parallels another blonde student, who's pressured by her mother, once the pep-squad leader, to excel at an activity she's ill-suited for. This being Sunnydale High, someone uses witchcraft to eliminate the competition, a predictable plot except for one clever turn: the mom has swapped bodies with the daughter! This magic twist makes literal the theme of mothers living through their children—a dramaturgical tactic unavailable to realistic dramas. Still, the plot does resolve itself conventionally (though the witch's fate caps the episode nicely). The richer drama is on the margins, in Joyce's displays of maternal clumsiness and in Xander's bumbling crush on Buffy.

Theater: Title Bout (May 17)

Every week, I compose listings on the week's new plays for Metromix NY. I'm often disappointed by the titles that playwrights choose for their work, so I'm reviewing their titles now. Not the shows (I haven't seen them yet) just the titles. To read about the content of each show, click through its link to my listings on Metromix NY.


H4
Is this a Shakespeare play titled for the Age of Twitter? Or would that be H4.1 and H4.2? Then it's the final shot in a cutthroat game of Battleship? Or a more generic grid location? A pun on “age four”? Please drop other suggestions in the comments!

I MARRIED WYATT EARP
I like this title's confessional, slightly lurid mid-20C quality, like I Was a Teenaged Werewolf. Presuming it's accurate, the title also gives us a period and subject: the legendary lawman of Tombstone, AZ.

THE ILLUSION
As generic as this definite-article/noun title is, the topic can easily send a potential audience down an whimsical avenue in search of the theme. After all, isn't all theater just an illusion? Isn't life? In fact, this is an adaptation of Cornielle's 17C drama L'Illusion comique, usually translated as The Theatrical Illusion. The original French title focuses on genre, not medium, and hints at the illusion's delight.

THE LADY'S NOT FOR BURNING
One of the great titles of 20C drama. It's such an odd statement! Just what transpires in this show that requires clarification about who shouldn't be burnt? Witchcraft, probably, but it does inspire the imagination. And the iambic syncopation makes the title so memorable.

ONE ARM
This title wears its subject on its sleeve; it's a play about an amputee. That missing limb has the potential to be a smart symbol as well.

SHAKESPEARE'S SLAVE
A bit of poetry that Will might appreciate. Every vowel sound is long, with the “ay” echoing across the gap of the “ee”, making it three stressed syllables, and the sibilant “s” acting as glue. As for content, this title conjures a ironic character from the imagination: a slave owned by one of the most compassionate depicters of human nature.

WTC VIEW
The reference to the Twin Towers helps to date this play's period, but so, cleverly, does the allusion to that lapsed style of classified ads. It's a play about an apartment search and roommate situation, with the heavy portent of the terrorist attacks implied as well. Does 9/11 figure in? Even if not, that reference has been activated.

Buffy Blogthrough: 1.2 "The Harvest"

Most mornings, to warm up my brain I write & edit 150 words on yesterday's entertainment — a TV episode, movie, news item, or whatever. Now that I've got Lady Hotspur watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I've decided to post these exercises so you & she can enjoy them too!

1.2 “The Harvest”
broadcast: March 10, 1997
writer: Joss Whedon
director: John D. Kretchmer

This episode can't stand alone as easily as Part 1 did, mainly because it gets bogged down in exposition and resolution. An okay comedic beat at the climax (“You forgot about sunrise…”) undercuts a sense of Buffy's triumph. And the low point has her trundle through tunnels while the vampires simply lurk in longshot. The pleasures of “The Harvest” are in its supporting characters. The cast fills their roles out nicely, especially Nicholas Brendan as sidekick Xander, who delivers the episode's best lines with great timing. The Master, Buffy's arch-villain, makes a good impression: his origin is Lovecraft and his look is Nosferatu, but his style is as casual as the teens'. And the show all comes together when Buffy's mother grounds her, saying, “Everything is life-or-death when you're a 16-year-old girl”. Then Buffy pulls her slaying paraphernalia from a closet stash and sneaks out the window to save the world.
 

Buffy Blogthrough: 1.1 "Welcome to the Hellmouth"

Most mornings, to warm up my brain I write & edit 150 words on yesterday's entertainment — a TV episode, movie, news item, or whatever. Now that I've got Lady Hotspur watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I've decided to post these exercises so you & she can enjoy them too!

1.1 “Welcome to the Hellmouth”
broadcast: March 10, 1997
writer: Joss Whedon
director: Charles Martin Smith

Originally the pilot was two hours, but it's got two directors and on DVD it's two episodes. Part 1 focuses on Buffy's character and setting, showing a springier step than Part 2. The setting—Sunnydale and its high school—have the genre hallmarks of teen life that go back to Archie Comics (the name of the cool girl, Cordelia, echoes her Archie analogue Veronica). But Buffy stands out in this episode with her courage and confidence. Though she does protest initially against her destiny, she then goes straight to work hunting vampires. Buffy has prior experience as a vampire hunter, but she also already finds her destiny incompatible with her typical teen lifestyle, having been expelled from high school in LA for burning down a gymnasium full of the fiends. Her personality is defined, and her conflict is encapsulated by the show's comedic title: a preppy teen fighting vampires.

Theater: Title Bout (May 10)

Every week, I compose listings on the week's new plays for Metromix NY. I'm often disappointed by the titles that playwrights choose for their work, so I'm reviewing their titles now. Not the shows (I haven't seen them yet) just the titles. To read about the content of each show, click through its link to my listings on Metromix NY.


CRADLE AND ALL
A quote from the rhyme “Rockabye Baby”. It's an astute reference, since it alludes only obliquely to the grisly fate of that nursery baby. Hopefully, the play itself deals as darkly with the theme of new parenthood.

DESPERATE WRITERS
This title's awfully bland and only kind of functional. It conveys its subject but nothing of the tone.

JUMP
An imperative verb can be okay, as one-word titles go. But even if this one accurately describes the show's content, it's way too common a title to work well. Plenty of songs have used it (see especially Van Halen and Criss Cross), and a quick check on Wikipedia shows that it's also been used for a movie, a TV show, a TV episode, albums, a funk band―and this very show, a Korean martial arts performance!

A LITTLE JOURNEY
Probably not a jukebox musical about the '70s/'80s rock band. “Journey” is a conventional structure for a tale, which suggests this play won't be too experimental in form. That “Little” is kinda cute, but journeys are short, not little.

MANIPULATION
Abstract nouns like this make weak titles, especially when they're unambiguous. Manipulation promises intrigue and subtextual motives for its characters, but it's also terribly pretentious.

NARRATOR 1
A meta title! Is the show named for its protagonist? Is the subject a duel between Narrators 1 and 2? As promising as that sounds, it also suggests that the show features the device of direct address, which I abhor as undramatic.

THE SHAGGS: PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD
The deliberate misspelling of slang with several meanings (among them, longish hair and casual sex), the long, grandiose subclause: if this sounds like a 1960s rock band's album, that's because it is. Only rock cultists will recognize the reference though, to an execrable sister-act that Frank Zappa and later Kurt Cobain dug.

WOMAN BEFORE A GLASS
The words might be generic in other situations instead summon up an image that's enigmatic and compelling. Who is the woman? Why is she looking in a mirror? Or is she in front of a glass cup, and what's in it and why is that significant?