I Like To Think She Joined The Order Recently. She Needed To A Way To Make Some Money After The Divorce,

I like to think she joined the Order recently. She needed to a way to make some money after the divorce, and stumbled onto a demon bar looking for a job, and someone suggested she join as a joke. But she'd been thinking about getting a gun anyway, and thought What the hell, why not?

Soon, she's the Order's top assassin. Turns out, Demon Made Of Fire and Guy Who Invades Peoples Dreams just can't compete with her power of 'just shoot them with a gun'.

I love that the scariest assassin in What's My Line is just Woman With Gun. Like, the bug guy is spooky, but turning to bugs is actually a pretty innefficient assassination technique compared to Gun Lady's strategy of:

1) Find target and 2) Shoot them with gun

GORCH! GORCH! GORCH! GORCH!

What's My Line part 1 thoughts:

MR GORDO! And Angel can't help playing with him. Someone should really get that guy some plushies of his own - you know he'd love cuddling with them.

Angel: "It's career week." Buffy: "How did you know?" Angel: "I lurk." Angel:

God, he's such an awkward, pathetic disaster [affectionate]. And he knows he is! When he's with Buffy, he's just fumbling around, trying to sound vaguely person-like. But because he's big and quiet and vampiric, everyone interprets his awkwardness as badass brooding.

Buffy says ACAB. Honestly, this subplot is just reminding me how how pre-9/11, the view of cops as corrupt, lazy and/or violent was pretty standard across pop-culture. (I'm currently playing Miles Morales: Spider-Man and it's so weird the way these games treat the NYPD as unambiguous allies, compared to how most Spider-man media has always treated them.)

Buffy and Giles' interactions feel like a regression after the last four eps developing their relationship. To be fair, Buffy is regressing a little due to having feelings about her life (never a good idea, always suppress those), but it still feels odd.

Looking at Spike's obsession with Buffy here, you can really see the origins of his feelings for her, on both a Watsonian and Doylist level.

Snyder, to Xander: "Whatever comes out of your mouth is a meaningless waste of breath. An airborn toxic event." Huh, is Principal Snyder part of the Buffy fandom? He really sounds like the Buffy fandom here.

Feel like Willow and Oz's big computer company opportunity isn't quite as exclusive as they're making it seem, if two students from a small town are being offered it.

Wonder how you comission the Order of Whatever. Is there a ritual, or do you just call them? Do you pay in money? Magical relics? Virgin sacrifices?

The ice-skating is really pretty. That's it, don't have any critical thoughts, it's just super pretty.

The piano soundtrack here isn't the iconic Buffy/Angel theme, but it sounds a little similar? But more innocent. Is this like an earlier variation? I guess it makes sense - this feels like their first real date beyond coffee at the Bronze; the first time they feel like they're in an actual relationship together. Which is kinda weird when they've already confessed their love, but idk, I guess teenagers and vampires are like that.

"Kill as many of these assassins as you want, it won't make any difference. They won't stop. Unless you kill three of them, then they'll stop and never come back. But otherwise? They're completely unstoppable."

Has Buffy been to Angel's place before? It looks significantly nicer than where he was staying in 'Angel'. Fits with the sense that he's gradually learning to be a person. I do wonder how she knows where he lives, though. Like, that can happen off screen, but first time at his place seems like a significant step?

And now Xander has named the Scooby Gang the Scooby Gang! If you don't like the name, blame him. (The writing of Cordelia in this scene feels very Season One though. Not great.)

And Kendra's finally here! Man, these episodes are really paying tribute to Chris Claremont with this accent.

random 'Inca Mummy Girl' thoughts:

In the museum, Buffy is disappointed her friends think she solves all her problems with violence. Then later, Giles agrees to let her go to the dance to end their training session, because when she trains while angry she unintentionally hurts him. Her response: "Yay! I win :)". Don't know if I have anything to say about that, but I'm definitely paying more attention to Buffy's characterisation on this rewatch, and noticing more of her Faith-like traits.

I think of Xander's jealousy over Buffy as a Season One thing, but it seems to be sticking around, and I am extremely tired of it. Hope it doesn't last much longer.

The Scoobies' assumption that Ampata can translate an ancient Incan relic just because they're South American is so wild I struggle not to read it as a joke at their expense. (Though given the show's approach to other cultures - as exemplified by this episode especially - it almost certainly isn't.)

It's interesting that this episode doesn't try to play itself as a mystery - the audience is never kept in the dark about what's happening, even as the Scoobies are. It's much to the episode's benefit - it allows Ampata to be an actual character, where a mystery would likely keep her at too much of a distance. It doesn't just make her sympathetic - it makes her a viewpoint character, which makes the Buffy parallels much more tangible.

Speaking of which, this episode has a Garth Marenghi approach to subtext, but honestly I kind of like that. It's nice to have subtext even I can notice sometimes.

I didn't remember going in that Oz first appeared in this episode, so that was a nice surprise. But then seeing Jonathan was even more of one - I really wasn't expecting to see him so soon. Strange that such a small role became a recurring character when so many Sunnydale students appear in one episode and then are immediately forgotten about, but I guess he does give a good, distinctive performance.

Sorry Buffy, but "I'll say one thing for you Incan mummies - you don't kiss and tell," is just a terrible quip. And you can tell Buffy was thinking of it on the journey - as she runs to the museum she's thinking to herself 'I need to say something funny about kissing, I guess?', and she does a bad job. I think she needs to take some improv classes or something if she's gonna keep doing this.

There’s like 12 different kinds of tension in this image.

In general, I'm noticing a lot of Faith-in-Buffy on this rewatch that I missed on previous watches. 'Prophecy Girl' has a lot of it (after she dies, but also her smile while she's fighting vamps at the start of the episode), and obviously Buffy in 'When She Was Bad' is full of Faith.

And now, in 'What's My Line pt. 2', it's astonishing how much Buffy is Faith to Kendra. The way she provokes her, tries to bring out the passion in her - it's so Faith, so much a mirror of Buffy and Faith's relationship, with Buffy in the Faith roll. Just, you know, less homoerotic.

... I mean, it's still pretty homoerotic. Just... less so.