@pedant — to be honest, you all sound like that to me anyway. I’ve always assumed JL was going for uncanny realism.  🙂 But to be fair, Mrs Fish, who is born-and-bred Londoner has similar gripes about Dru and the portrayal of the Watchers’ Council as well.

@purofilion — score another hit for Team Spuffy!!

@pedant — pish, tush, tosh! I’m loving the Drusilla action.

@purofilion — I used to have a friend who would argue that the UK was at a literary disadvantage because of its topography. There are no wide open places. No wildernesses. And therefore you’d never get anything epic. No Kerouacian picaresques and so on. I used to disagree but am beginning to concede that he may at least have a partial point.

@purofilion — Infinite Jest is a bit (actually more than a bit) on the tricksy side but it’s got some of the most breath-taking prose of the last 20-odd years in there too. Foster Wallace’s short stories are pretty good too and probably the best way to read him. His prose is pretty dense and best taken in small, contained doses.

Richard Powers…[Read more]

@pedant —

What’s interesting in this arc is that Spike knows he is a monster, revels in being a monster – but thanks to the chip is having to grasp the unintended consequences of being that thing. But he doesn’t have what Angel had – a soul – and the clear question at this point is ‘does the chip create a quasi-soul’?

Good point but such a Season…[Read more]

@pedant — it never twigged that was who Sandy was till now. Damn.

@purofilion – yes, James Marsters is doing fine work here and I have to say I think his best is yet to come. On the whole Bangel vs Spuffy debate, I come down firmly on the side of the peroxide one. Fool for Love is a great episode too. Some of Dru’s best stuff in there too. And I…[Read more]

@purofilion — To be honest, I haven’t read that much SF/fantasy since my 20s either. I find that while the ideas often brilliant, the lack of work put into characterisation and style is often off-putting. Mind you, the same is increasingly true of mainstream fiction in the UK of late. It certainly seems to me that for the past 20-odd years, it’s…[Read more]

@purofilion — take your time. There’s no rush. Do it at your own pace. It is, after all, meant to be fun.

Family is one of my all-time favourite episodes. It serves the double role of making you love Tara, if you didn’t already, and showing the renewed bond between the Scoobies. The fact that Riley is absent and Spike is not speaks volumes.

@pedant — according to the interwebs (so it must be true) it’s been in common currency since the 1950s. I was never really aware of it until Buffy though and it seems to so appr0priate to the show that it made wonder if they came up with it. Apparently not tho….

@purofilion —

Agree totally about Chabon. He’s a brilliant writer — possibly one of the best English-language novelists around today but he does need an editor on occasion. Wonder Boys, the book, would be perfect without the Passover stuff which goes on too long and almost kills the book’s screwball, road-trip momentum. Steve Kloves saw that…[Read more]

@ichabod — it’s a while ago now but I think at the time Sea of Souls was broadcast as two full series and then a third series of a couple of extended filmic one-offs.

Here’s a question for the Buffiandos — Does the expression ‘Bite me’ originate from Buffy or was it something that existed beforehand?

@barbaralefty — Sea of Souls was a short-lived X-Files-ey style Scottish show starring the mighty Bill Paterson. Never really lived up to its potential but the second series was better than the first I seem to remember.

@purofilion — I never realised that was Jeremy Renner in Somnambulist until this year. Boy done good. Also for my money a film…[Read more]

Poor old @purofilion — doomed to watch DVD boxsets until the end of time…..

@ScaryB — I have one in the, er, pipeline. I’ll try and get to it once all the vampage is done and dusted (arf)….

@scaryb — I think I’ve said this before but my top 3 consoles are:

1. Smith v1

2. McGann

3. Hartnell

I’d also like to add that the whole fan-fiction debate is fascinating and is surely ripe material for a blog at some point. Not me though. My times is being firmly spent commuting between Sunnydale and LA at the moment.

Volunteers form an orderly line….