HMPC 0301 – Anne
Here is the Hellmouth Podcast for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, Season 3 Episode 1 – Anne. (mp3 version here)
Be sure to check out the promo for Kevin Bachelder’s podcast The Signal, a Firefly/Serenity podcast.
The Seeker Cast (Legend of the Seeker)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:01 — 19.7MB)
HMPC 0301 “Anne” – Buffy The Vampire Slayer
- Hello Sunnydale and welcome to the Hellmouth Podcast for the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Series, Season 3 Episode 01 titled “Anne”
- For those of you who may be new to the podcast, here are all of the ways that you can be a part of the show.
- Twitter @hellmouthcast
- Facebook page – search for Hellmouth Podcast
- as always you can email me at hellmouthpodcast@gmail.com
- www.hellmouthpodcast.com
- I want to mention a couple of new podcasts that I have been listening to.
I have been getting a lot of positive feedback from listeners about the potentialcast a podcast that I mentioned a few weeks ago. I have a couple of new podcasts for all of you. Kevin is a new Hellmouth Podcast listener that I have been emailing back and forth with. Kevin is a podcast as well, I say he is a podcaster, Kevin is an uber-podcaster, Kevin is a part of I think 4 different podcasts,
The Seeker Cast (Legend of the Seeker)
http://www.theseekercast.com
Tuning In To Scifi TV
http://www.tuningintoscifitv.com
The Signal (Firefly)
http://www.serenityfirefly.com
The ScapeCast (Farscape)
http://www.scapecast.org
- I have been listening to The Seeker Cast because my wife and I just recently watched the TV series and bought the first book, I have also been listening to The Signal Podcast which if you weren’t aware of the Signal podcast it is a Firefly podcast from the Whedonverse. Here is a promo for The Signal Podcast
- http://media.libsyn.com/media/thesignal/signal_promo_striding.mp3
- I will place a link in the show notes for all of the various podcasts that Kevin is a part of and there should be something for everyone.
- the voicemail line is back up. The new voicemail # is 210-209-9567 this is my Skype Call-in number where you can call and leave me a voicemail that I will include on the podcast.
- So here is the episode recap in two minutes or less.
- We start off at the tomb of Andrew Hoelich
- Willow steps up with a witty buffy quip and attempts to stake Andrew
- But Slaying vamps is hard to do.
- The Scoobies are on patrol
- Xander breaks the past tense rule when he wonders WWBD.
- Buffy meanwhile is standing on the beach with Angel as they discuss their eternal love for each other.
- Unfortunately it was just a dream and Buffy wakes up in a shady neighborhood in LA.
- Buffy is living in LA working as a waitress when she bumps into Lily and Ricky who are on a health kick and need a slice of pie.
- It’s the First day of school in Sunnydale
- Cordelia and Xander are excited to see each other.
- Willow is a little concerned that Oz is a returning Senior, he thinks it makes him eccentric.
- The Football team is going to be great this year if they can cut down on the mysterious deaths.
- Giles gets a lead on a girl who might be a slayer.
- Lily catches up to Buffy on the streets of LA
- Buffy saves an old guy from getting hit by a car.
- Buffy leaves the scene of the accident and runs into Ken, literally.
- At the Bronze – Willow and Xander are doing some world class moping that would give Angel a run for his money.
- Joyce is at home paying bills
- Giles shows up to tell her his lead was not Buffy
- Joyce tells Giles that this is all his fault. Those damn watchers.
- Lily shows up telling Buffy that Rickie is missing.
- They go to the blood bank to try and track down Rickie! How ironic!
- Buffy finds Rickie, he is old and dead.
- Ken finds Lily and tells her that he has Rickie at his shelter.
- Buffy goes back to the blood bank to look at Rickie’s records. He was identified as a ‘candidate’
- The blood bank lady refers kids to Ken
- The Scoobies use Cordelia as bait to catch vampires.
- Just before Lily is dropped into the alternate dimension, Buffy breaks in looking for Ken.
- Lily gets pulled in and Buffy in her struggle with Ken falls in as well.
- Ken, it turns out, is some kind of demon. Is anyone really all that shocked?
- Buffy and Lily are captured.
- Buffy quickly decides its time to get out of there.
- Hijinks ensue, she gets a bunch of the kids out of the alternate dimension.
- Buffy lets Lily stay in her apartment, she is heading back to Sunnydale.
- Knock Knock, who’s there? Buffy. Buffy who? Buffy your daughter open the door mom so we can hug.
- Discussion
- The episode Anne for me is really about relationships but it is about two different aspects of relationships.
- The eternal/permanent nature of love.
- New beginnings.
- A lot of the relationships that we discuss in this episode are going to highlight both of those elements.
- I realize that it might sound like I am getting to deep with this episode. After all this is a season premiere episode. Unless it is a pilot, these episodes are typically not all that fantastic. Most often the first episode of a season is simply a lot of setup for what is going to happen throughout the rest of the season.
- There is definitely some of that in this episode as well but I think there are some interesting things that we can take away from this episode.
- Overall, I think this episode does a really great job of picking up where last season left off. Right off the bat they say, listen we understand that some pretty heavy stuff went down in the last episode of season 2. Now we aren’t going to give you all of the answers now but we aren’t going to waste any time we are going to start dealing with all of that right away.
- Let’s talk about Lily and Rickie
- So Lily and Rickie are in the diner where Buffy works.
- They are very much in love so much in love that they went out and got tatted up with a Lily and Rickie tattoo.
- They talk about how it is a symbol that their love is permanent or forever just like the tattoo.
- This really strikes a cord with Buffy. I probably don’t have to remind you that she just killed the man that she thought she was going to love for eternity.
- I think it is difficult for Buffy to even look at the two of them so in love. If you notice in the scene she can’t even look at the two of them when she talks to them, she just looks down at her waitress pad.
- Obviously, Rickie gets bamboozled by Ken and ends up aging very rapidly and dying.
- Buffy finds Rickie dead and sees that this eternal love is very fragile, even when you aren’t the slayer.
- So now Lily has lost the man she thought she was going to love for the rest of her life and there is a great moment where she talks to Buffy about what she is going to do next. How is she going to move on and Buffy tells her basically it gets a little bit easier every day. There is almost this sense that Buffy isn’t talking just to Lily, she is talking to herself as well.
- Xander and Cordelia
- These two crack me up in this episode. We start of the first day of school, a new beginning and both of them are so excited to see each other.
- You can tell that they have been thinking about each other all summer but as is often the case when you haven’t seen each other in a long time, there is that apprehension almost like butterflies in your stomach when you see each other again.
- So I can understand where Xander and Cordelia are coming from and I can understand their reaction to each other when they first see each other on that first day of school.
- This is a very great scene on the first day of school, it is a very long scene without any cuts, a steady continuous shot.
- From Willow talking to Giles in the stacks all the way to Xander and Cordelia walking away from each other.
- That insecurity leads them to start treating each other like they did in the very early stages of their relationship.
- Xander and Cordelia make up in short order when faced with a life and death situation and once again they see how fragile and how quickly love can be snatched away from you and they kiss and make up. I think that it is important to keep in mind that the Scoobies are dealing with the death of Angel and the loss of Buffy as well. It impacts Cordelia and Xander’s reaction in this situation in my opinion. We will be talking a lot about how Buffy deals with the “death” of Angel but the rest of the group deals with it in their own ways as well.
- Buffy and Joyce
- Joyce feels like she has lost Buffy. It has been months and she hasn’t seen or heard from her. As a parent it must have been torturous to be constantly waiting, hoping Buffy would come home. Again that loss of someone who Joyce had thought she would spend the rest of her life loving.
- And then at the end of the episode Joyce gets her new beginning. Buffy comes home and they get that second chance.
- Another thing that I think was done really well by the writers is the way they handled Buffy’s return. To me it was real life stuff. It wasn’t Buffy’s back and everything is fine. In the next episode we are going to be dealing with the aftermath of Buffy’s return a lot more and I really appreciated that they took the time to deal with that as opposed to just glossing over it.
- Buffy and Angel appear in this episode for just a brief moment. But in the end we are still left with the feeling that this episode was really in a lot of ways all about them. How crazy and fantastic is the writing.
- Scene on the beach with Angel
- Her dream, Angel out in the sun
- Angel is that eternal love for Buffy.
- Not only did she lose that love but she is the one responsible for its death and so the loss and guilt that she is feeling is just crippling in a lot of ways.
- Buffy came to LA because she had absolutely nothing left and she needed her own NEW BEGINNING much like Lily did.
- She is trying to figure out what to do…
- Awkward moment here where she tells Giles that she blames him for everything happening with Buffy.
- Joyce mentions the last thing they did was fight.
- The scene ends kind of awkwardly and at first I thought it was poorly done until I paid close attention to the dialogue.
- Giles says “I didn’t make Buffy who she is”
- Joyce says “and who exactly is she?”
- The next shot is a cut to Buffy standing in the diner being contemplative as she fills the sugar dispensers.
- I think this is at the heart of this episode
- Who is Buffy, she has even changed her name because she doesn’t know who she is…
- Ken says at one point when talking to the slaves in his alternate dimension.
- So afraid so pathetically desperate to run away from wherever you came from.
- So afraid. – that is not Buffy and this is when she starts to realize it.
- I think that this point in the episode is where Buffy internally really starts to turn things around and put herself back together a little bit.
- But even after Buffy goes back to Sunnydale I really feel like she had no idea why or what would happen.
- End Episode.
- Rate the episode
- Bonus point for the Oz and Willow discussion about him returning for his senior year.
- Bonus point for Lily and how they have woven her character into this universe and will continue it into the Angel series.
- Bonus point for Giles, I didn’t really talk to much about Giles in this episode but he will play a bigger role in the next podcast. I really feel like on the Sunnydale side of this situation, Giles is kind of the glue that is holding things together on that end so Giles gets a bonus point.
- Lose a point for the continuity issues that I mentioned earlier.
- Bonus point because cinematically this episode was a big improvement over things we were used to in season 2.
- Think about the long scene on the first day of school and the shots that we saw during the scenes in the alternate reality during the escape and Buffy’s fighting.
- Joss is really kind of branching out visually in this episode to things we haven’t really seen before and I thought it was really great, for me it added a lot to this episode.
- So this is not one of my favorite episodes, when I am on an abbreviated run through the series it is one that I usually skip, but it is a solid 5 and with bonus points comes in at a 9. Which is a pretty respectable rating.
- Weekly Poll
How do you feel about Buffy leaving Sunnydale?
- Buffy just killed the love of her life, I would have been sitting next to her on the bus. (83%, 10 Votes)
- Maybe a little melodramatic, but I understand why she left. (17%, 2 Votes)
- Buffy abandoned her friends and her family, she was selfish. (0%, 0 Votes)
- This episode is already way too long so we are going to save Listener Emails for next time.
- Thanks to everyone for tuning into another episode of the Hellmouth Podcast.
- Remember www.hellmouthpodcast.com
- hellmouthpodcast@gmail.com
- See you guys next time for the episode titled “Dead Man’s Party”, Stay Classy Sunnydale.
5 Responses to “HMPC 0301 – Anne”
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Actually the time goes exactly the other way around in the hell dimension than what you said. Four years can go by in the hell dimension, while only an hour goes by in in the “normal” dimension. It’s explained on show. The writers didn’t get it wrong but you did.
jarppu thanks for the clarification. I am glad that I was mistaken because I feel better about the continuity of the episode now. For some reason my brain was stuck in reverse on that one. Hope you enjoyed the podcast aside from the apparent brain-dead-ness of the host.
Thanks, jarpu. I was confused like Brian. I’m glad Buffy retained her good looks. Still, what were they making down there? For all the toiling, you would think you would see a finished product.
If I remember correctly, the Watchercast people theorized that they were making Longaberger baskets.
That might make sense – you need to make those things cheap if you want to get profit out of them.
This is Midwestern Watcher from the Buffy Thoughts podcast, still very new as I write this. In my installment 9, or maybe 10, I’ll give my take on what they were making down there. For now, no spoilers. As of January 22, only two installments are out, with 3 due at the end of the month.