Gil Hates Everything

OK, I’m going to avoid commenting on the success of the plot aspects of this, because I haven’t watched it, and I see from Wikipedia (which is not the same as wanting to hear from anyone else, in the considerable detail I’m sure could be supplied ;-) that this episode of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” isn’t just a one-off musical thing, but subtly alludes to earlier episodes as well as probably foreshadowing stuff. So this is just a review of the songs as songs. Happily it’s kinda short and easy to write: songs mostly good, singing mostly ropey.

Still, out of a sense of due diligence: the plot, if you want to know, is that the demon of the week in Sunnydale is making people sing and dance to release their pent-up emotions, which wouldn’t be so bad if this didn’t also make some people spontaneously combust. There’s some relationship stuff between Giles and Buffy, and between Willow and Tara, and there’s stuff about Buffy’s return from Heaven. So, it’s just like most episodes, then ;-)

Who can sing? Well, Giles and Anya and Spike, basically, plus some bit parts who were presumably cast for their singing voices. I see that Joss heard his cast singing at a party and concluded they could handle a musical episode… really? A couple of cast members are definitely short on lines for a reason… but a couple of others are distressingly not short on lines at all…

Despite the soundtrack being 23 tracks long, there’s only maybe eight or ten actual songs on here, with the rest being vignettes. (“Dawn’s Lament” seems to be all of two lines long, which is fairly lamentable.) I like “Going Through The Motions”, “What You Feel” (the demon of the week’s song), and, yes, I approve of “I’ve Got A Theory”, which features the gang trying to figure out what’s going on until they’re totally derailed by Anya’s bonkers distrust of bunnies.

The slower songs don’t work all that well. “Walk Through The Fire” is a prime example… singing slowly is difficult if you’re not particularly a singer, and although the song is kinda interesting, the performances cripple it.

Sarah has pointed out that Joss Whedon’s tunes which don’t go where musical theory might necessarily suggest… I see from my usual two minutes of research that Whedon is apparently a big fan of early-70s Yes albums such as “Close To The Edge”, and sure enough, “Something To Sing About” sounds exactly like a Yes song. Unfortunately Sarah Michelle Gellar is no Jon Anderson, and the song is pretty horrible to listen to.

The logistics of prepping a musical episode must be interesting; writing songs isn’t a cheap process, and yet people will still expect an episode with a strong plot and probably with connections back and forth in the series arc. I know that the soundtrack for episodes is usually scored and recorded pretty quickly, but then, it can reuse existing themes, and can be cut and pasted without worrying about explicit ties to the plot and actual performances and whatnot. Songs, eh, not so easy… you have to get it right. On that basis, the fact that there’s at least a few songs which tie into the arc as well as the plot is probably impressive.

As bonus content, there’s a bunch of instrumental music after the coda, some of which may be from other episodes, and it’s harmless but not the world’s most essential fifteen minutes of music. Just so you know.

Overall, my listening experience got more and more grimace-inducing after a tolerable-to-strong start. Did it make me want to watch the episode? No. I watched a fair bit of Buffy in the day, and it got kinda dull, and I’m not going back. I’m sure the episode as a whole is better than the soundtrack, as is the case with most things I review, but the low points of this gave me a mental image of being tied to a chair and sung to by bad singer-songwriters at Lilith Fair, and that ain’t good (in case you needed clarification). Also, no-one ever agrees to watch one hundred and ten episodes of “Babylon 5” just because I tell them to and blat them over the head with my sister’s book which proves that B5 is a staggering work of heartbreaking genius, so screw the lot of you ;-)

Random Panda can’t really rate this out of ten; it’s not a musical that you really go to see. (Go on, next time the singalong version comes to Vancouver, take someone who knows nothing about Buffy.) My personal enjoyment of the soundtrack was medium at best. So that’s that. Bring the static, Buffy stans :)

(originally posted May 18, 2009)