#and that dvd player is from those times apparently. huh. makes sense it only has a scart connection. was the standard back then.

[robinsnest2111]

absolute dvd player odyssey still not over

second, less bulky scart to hdmi converter cable arrived, the power cord is too short to plug it into the outlet 🙃

now to find a longer micro USB to USB cable and a charging block to go into the outlet...

[yetanotherbuffyblog]

Demon assassin!

I had some trouble with my computer playing the DVD from the library. See, sometimes my computer won’t recognize discs in the drive. And sometimes it will, but it won’t play them on one media player so I’ve got to go with another. It’s bloody frustrating, it is.

But I did manage to get it to work, even if the computer had to freak out a couple of times first.

Oh right so I’m doing a two-parter. This is going to take a lot of recapping. Uh...okay. So.

[takes a deep breath]

We begin with Riley and Buffy having a happy start of a serious relationship, which means everyone’s kind of left out of their happy bubble. So Anya, Willow and Xander are playing poker in Xander’s basement, and with a random comment about spanking from Anya (TMI ANYA TMI), Willow feels a bit like she’s third-wheeling.

Buffy during this time is actually not on an official date, though; she’s being tested by the Initiative, and she passes with flying colors. Because of her skillz, Buffy is officially let in, and gets a tour of the facility and security clearance. She asks a bunch of questions and acts less-than-professional though, annoying Walsh. Oh, and we see what’s in room 314 even if Buffy doesn’t (she doesn’t have that clearance): a human/demon/cyborg thing that Walsh calls ‘Adam.’

That has ‘TERRIBLE PLAN’ written all over it.

Spike is being hunted by the Initiative for being a runaway (“Hostile 17” they call him), and they find him, but he escapes. Except they hit him with a tracker so they can find him later.

Willow’s not thrilled with the Initiative, nor with Buffy bringing new Initiative friends along to their friend date at the Bronze. During this they get called to go deal with a demon, and after they tag-team the demon, Buffy and Riley go make some whoopie. Willow, annoyed, goes off and meets Tara. Apparently hanging out all night. Huh.

And Walsh watches Riley and Buffy through planted cameras, which is ten kinds of weird.

Spike runs to Giles’s house for shelter because he’s a wuss. Sadly Riley is called to lead a squad to hunt down “Hostile 17,” while Walsh decides that Buffy’s too much of a hazard, asking too many questions and clouding her best agent (Riley), so she plots to have her killed while Riley’s out. She tells her to do some sort of routine check-up on a reported hostile, only for her to be ambushed, her stun gun to malfunction, and her locked in a room with two demons. Of course, she being a Slayer, she takes them out.

The Scoobies take the tracer out of Spike and they flush it, so Riley’s squad loses the lead. Riley comes back, and Walsh tells her Buffy is dead, rushing off on a mission on her own. Except then Buffy takes the spy camera that fell off her on the fight, and declares she knows that Walsh tried to kill her and she’s pissed. That episode seems like it’s going to end with her going to Giles’s house and declaring that none of them are safe.

But nope! Walsh is in room 314 trying to work out how to fix the situation, how Riley can be persuaded to be okay with her trying to kill Buffy, and how Adam will fix everything. Except Adam wakes up and kills her with the arm of the demon Buffy and Riley took down now grafted onto him.

Oops.

PART DEUCE!

Buffy tells the gang that Walsh tried to kill her. Riley comes in and tries to make sense of what’s going on, only to turn slightly hostile upon seeing Spike and recognizing him as Hostile 17. If Buffy’s sheltering a vampire, what else could she be hiding? They go separate ways, but Buffy’s gang hides out in Xander’s basement (which Giles is NOT happy about).

Then the Initiative finds out about Walsh’s assassination. Riley is informed while talking to his friend Forrest about Walsh trying to kill Buffy (Riley tends to side with Buffy, though he’s confused; Forrest thinks maybe Buffy did something wrong and had it coming). Upon seeing Walsh’s body, Forrest thinks Buffy did it. Riley thinks it’s probably the demon they caught earlier having escaped and puts a squad together to go find it.

And Adam goes and murderizes some kid. Charming fellow.

While Buffy’s investigating, she runs into Riley a couple of times. At first it seems like he’s pretty tightly wound about everything that’s happened, and asks if she’s happy about Walsh’s death (which of course, Buffy isn’t). When Buffy goes to that demon bar place that hasn’t shown up in a while, Riley shows up and gets all itchy because, you know, monsters all over and Buffy’s not fighting them. But he’s all shaky and pulls a gun.

Turns out there’s something seriously wrong with him.

They take him to the Xander Cave, while Xander and Buffy sneak back into Initiative HQ to find some answers. They corner head scientist guy, and find out that the agents are unknowingly given some sort of steroids to make them smarter and stronger--Riley’s going through severe withdrawal. Riley himself arrives, having left the Xander Cave.

Oh and then Adam shows up.

Crap salad!

Adam reveals what he is, and that he’s...well that he’s crazy, but that he has records and personal files that Walsh made. She thought of both Riley and Adam as her crowning achievements, shaping them to be her personal...I dunno, surrogate sons? Adam calls her mother which is weird. Anyhow, they fight, Adam kills head scientist guy, and injures Adam. When the commandos show up, Buffy and Xander can leave, but Riley is taken to an Initiative medical facility, and Buffy is unable to visit him.

And Adam’s still out there somewhere.

Right that was a lot. NOTES!

-According to TV Tropes, Maggie Walsh was going to be the Big Bad of the season, but the actress got cast in a movie or something and had to be written out somehow. And you know TV writers: murder is the simplest solution!

-I’m a bit iffy on Adam as a Big Bad though. He’s...I’m not sure. He’s kind of a downgrade from the Mayor. He’s a good villain, but he’s not in charge of anything. Maybe that’ll change as the season goes on.

-And OF COURSE the Initiative pumps its agents full of steroids! Why the eff not?? What sketchiness will we find out about them next?

-Was that old lady Riley pulled a gun on in the demon bar actually a vampire/monster? It’s not clear. She doesn’t transform or anything. Riley himself says he doesn’t know if it’ll kill her if he pulls the trigger.

-Spike is beaten up by demons because he’s “making war on other demons” and demons killing demons is...bad? Like, if it were him fighting demons for a cause, I get it, hanging out with the Slayer and all. But the demon refuses to kill Spike because that’s against their rules or something. Which...seems stupid. We’ve seen demons kill other demons all the time. It’s not a rule. I mean if it is now, it’s a clear retcon.

-Alright why did Walsh want to kill Buffy? It seems like they wrote it as Buffy was asking too many questions and she thought Buffy was a distraction for Riley. But it’s pretty...well, they basically try to kill her after her first day, and we see no sign that Riley’s actually any worse because of his relationship with Buffy. Seems like a bit of rushed plot to me, but whattaya gonna do?

-Also, the way she tries to kill Buffy shows how little she actually paid attention to her. She locks her in a room with two demons? Who have axes? Please. You’ve seen her fight. Maybe Walsh assumes that Buffy’s stories about her own exploits are exaggerations? It’s still stupid. If you want to kill someone, friggin’ kill them. There are so many ways to have gotten that done that would have been less risky. Rush job all around.

-The tracker would have been harder to identify if it hadn’t been blinking. Really, guys, stop making trackers blink. I know it’s easier for the audience to figure out what it is, but it’s also easy for the characters.

-The Polgara demons and Adam have a spike thing in their wrist? Basically it’s like an organic Hidden Blade and I think that’s kewl. So maybe I should start yelling “ASSASSINATE!” every time Adam stabs someone. Or play this sound.

  -Have Tara and Willow slept together? It’s unclear. Are we supposed to believe that she spent the entire night casting spells? And the TV Tropes recap points out that Willow’s sweater is inside out when she gets back to the dorm room. So…. 

-Riley does mention his “vitamins” but are those the steroids? If so that’s a really obvious way to administer them, but I guess it’s the simplest way to get them to him without accidentally serving them to the wrong person in the cafeteria or something. Still, wouldn’t there be a lot of red flags if you join a branch of the military, and then they hand you some vitamins and demand that you take them daily?

-Xander’s idea to flush the tracer was actually… a really good idea. Smashing it might be too difficult, and they’d still know the general area to look in. Carrying it around would make Xander a target, and outrunning the commandos would be a huge risk. There weren’t any moving trains or things like that nearby, so sticking them there would be too difficult too.

-How many times are we going to bring up the whole ‘Xander was a soldier in that one episode’ thing? Anya lampshades how weird it is that it comes in handy so often.

-Buffy asks what the Polgara demon is after, and the Initiative seems to think that the monster’s just...a stupid animal. Which is stupid. Clearly these demons can talk and communicate and have specific patterns of behavior??? They have bars??? Why would you think they’re not of human-level intelligence???

-Is it just me, or do the guns that the Initiative commandos use look...so fake? Outside of the handguns, maybe, they don’t feel like real guns. It’s weird.

-Spike points out that Buffy’s got terrible taste in men. Although Riley isn’t so bad, and Angel wasn’t bad until he evilified. So basically it’s better than Xander’s taste in women. Seriously, will Anya do anything useful???

-Willow and Tara’s spell is to conjure the goddess Thespia. I don’t know jack about Wicca, but Thespia is a very minor Greek goddess/nymph? Her domain is a specific well. She’s...like a nobody on the divine stage.

-Riley tries desperately to paint Walsh as a brilliant scientist changing the world, but...like, I’m getting Angelopolis flashbacks because at this point it’s pretty clear that she was a Mad Scientist and the whole operation was crazy from the start. I realize that it’s meant to be Riley struggling with his entire world coming out from under his feet so I don’t blame him as much. At least the Initiative didn’t cut as many corners as Jurassic Park.

-Is the Initiative going to get a new leader? Is it going to be someone who isn’t off their rocker? Find out next time!