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Buffy/Angel rewatch; Hell's Bells

posted 8 years ago by Joxerlives
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The Good; Love Buffy's stalling (who knew SMG could juggle?). How beautiful is Anya in her wedding dress? Although her facemask makes her look like some sort of matrimonial superhero?

The Bad; What a shame we don't get to see Xander and Anya's bachelor/bachelorette parties. Surely all of Anyanka's magic was undone when Giles smashed her necklace. By it's nature a depressing episode due to it's ending.

Best line; Buffy; "So anyone here from out of town?"

Women good/men bad; Anya's vows don't promise to obey Xander because he's not a sea Captain (Hello sailor!). Xander's dad has a nastily misogynist rant against his wife in particular and women in general.

Jeez!; Xander killing Anya which thankfully isn't real

Kinky dinky;

Uncle Rory latches onto a nubile young waitress. Virginal Dawn is offered "Hymen's greetings" by D'Hoffryn. Dawn describes Spike's date as a '"Total skank!" Xander's dad likes Buffy's 'chassis' and wonders what's under the hood? Anya wants to be Xander's 'sex poodle'. Uncle Rory has a proposal for the wedding photographer, concerning his 'date'?

Captain Subtext; Willow refers to noted bi actress Marlene Deitrich. Will says that Xander looks great in his tux but quickly adds that she realised she was gay. Halfrek and Anya seem to compete for D'Hoffryn's affection like two little girls with their father but he informs them 'I love all my demons equally'. Willow and Tara end up under the table together (and they haven't even been drinking)

Apocalypses; 6

Scoobies in bondage: Buffy: 8 Giles: 4 Cordy: 5 Will: 3 Jenny: 1 Angel: 4 Oz: 1 Faith: 3 Joyce: 1 Wes: 1 Xander; 1 Dawn; 3

Scoobies knocked out: Buffy: 17 Giles: 12 Cordy: 6 Xander: 11 Will: 8 Jenny: 2 Angel: 6 Oz: 3 Faith: 1 Joyce: 3 Wes: 1 Anya;3 Dawn; 2

Kills: 1 demon for Xander Buffy: 104 vamps, 55 demons, 6 monsters, 3 humans, 1 werewolf, 1 spirit warrior & a robot Giles: 8 vamps, 2 demon, 1 human, 1 god.

Cordy: 3 vamps, a demon Will: 6 vamps + 3 demons +1 fawn.

Angel: 3 vamps, 1 demon, 1 human Oz: 3 vamps, 1 zombie Faith: 16 vamps, 5 demons, 3 humans Xander: 6 vamps, 2 zombies, 2 a demon, Anya: 1 vamp and 1 a demon Riley; 18 vamps + 7 demons Spike; 8 vamps and 4 demons Buffybot; 2 vamps Tara; 1 demon Dawn; 1 vamp

Scoobies go evil: Giles: 1 Cordy: 1 Will: 2 Jenny: 1 Angel: 1 Oz: 1 Joyce: 1 Xander: 4 Anya; 1 Dawn; 1 Alternate scoobies: Buffy: 7 Giles: 4 Cordy: 1 Will: 3 Jenny: 2 Angel: 3 Oz: 2 Joyce: 2 Xander: 4 Tara; 1 Dawn;1 Spike; 1

Recurring characters killed: 11 Jesse, Flutie, Jenny, Kendra, Larry, Snyder, Professor Walsh, Forrest, McNamara, Joyce, Katrina Sunnydale deaths; 93

Total number of scoobies: Xander, Willow, Buffy, Anya, Spike, Xander demon magnet: 5(6?) Preying Mantis Lady, Inca Mummy Girl, Drusilla, VampWillow, Anya (arguably Buffy & Faith with their demon essences?), Dracula?

Scoobies shot: Giles: 2 Angel: 3 Oz: 4 Riley; 1

Notches on Scooby bedpost: Spike has a very goth date for the wedding, a parody of the Spikettes? Giles: 2; Joyce & Olivia, possibly Jenny and 3xDraccy babes? Cordy: 1? Buffy: 4 confirmed; Angel, Parker, Riley, Spike. 1 possible, Dracula(?) Angel: 1;Buffy Joyce: 1;Giles, 2 possible, Ted and Dracula(?) Oz: 3; Groupie, Willow & Verucca Faith:2 ;Xander, Riley Xander: 2; Faith, Anya Willow: 2;Oz and Tara Riley; 3; Buffy, Sandy and unnamed vampwhore Spike; 1 Buffy

Spike; good or bad? Tries to make Buffy jealous but eventually leaves with some dignity

Dawn in peril; 8

Dawn the bashful virgin; 7 "Hymen's greetings!"

What the fanficcers thought; What were the bachelor/bachelorette parties like? Try 'The Last Night'

Questions and observations; We finally meet Xander's family. Unlce Rory is a drunken letch (Irish coffee for breakfast?) but quite likable as is his cousin Carol and her daughter, his parents by contrast are wretched. Dawn's notoriously big mouth once again makes an appearance. Is the demon right? He was a philanderer but that's hardly worthy of being tortured in hell dimension? Buffy wears an 'I survived' T-shirt in the final scene with what looks like a dragon on it? (although technically she didn't survive the dragon, she died and was brought back). What about Giles? Surely he at least sent them a card? What about inviting Tito or Oz or anyone? One interesting theory I did hear is 'Was D'Hoffryn behind it all?'. Did he secretly want Anya back in the fold and bring the demon to ruin her wedding deliberately?

Check out the pics of the first seasons on Xander's fridge, just in case we didn't get enough nostalgia in this ep. Re-watching it's hardly surprising how Xander seems much more fond of Rory and his cousin Carol than his parents, they almost seem like substitute figures for his mum and dad. Of course it might also explain the nature of his relationship with Joyce and perhaps even Giles?
I'm almost ashamed to admit it but when you have the line "2 people all they bring one another is pain" and then you immediately cut to Buffy and Spike it went over my head completely the first time around. Xander's hug with Willow pre-shadows the ending of 'Grave'. When Xander goes missing wouldn't it have made more sense for Willow to have babysat Anya and for Tara to have gone searching for him using her magic powers?
Interesting final scene when D'Hoffryn tells Anya her problem was that she let Xander control her, Andy Umberger having previously played an ultra-controlling stalker on Angel.

Marks out of 10; 5/10 not too good

[–] poem 8 years ago

Still the only BtVS episode I never managed to watch to the end.

Because Xander not marrying Anya -> IMHO thats extremely out of character.

---
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

[–] stargazer_1682 8 years ago

Surely all of Anyanka's magic was undone when Giles smashed her necklace.

Joxerlives, can you elaborate what you mean by that? Is your impression that, because her power center was destroyed, reversing her curse, which undid Cordelia's wish; it should have had the same effect on all of her other wishes?
I have kind of wondered about that myself, but Olaf still being a troll in season 5 kind of undermined that. I think the fact that, at the end of "The Wish," the moment Anya was snapped back to was when she granted Cordelia's wish, that's as far back as her magic was undone. Otherwise she would have gone back to her very first wish and had it, and every subsequent wish fail. What I've always wonder about was, how did Giles' book know that destroying her power center would undo everything in the first place, if him smashing the pendant was the first time that had ever happened to Anyanka?
It didn't strike me the first couple of times I watched the episode, but more recently I realized how odd it was that there wasn't even so much as a mention of Giles not being able to make it for some reason, or anything us that by all rights he should have been there, but due to the actor's availability wasn't going to be seen.

Still the only BtVS episode I never managed to watch to the end.

Because Xander not marrying Anya -> IMHO thats extremely out of character.

I can watch it to the end, but each subsequent viewing has been more of a slough to get through it.
I don't strictly think it was out of character for Xander to bail, especially given the nature of what happens in this episode itself, but there a lot of poor execution; both in leading up to this episode, pretty much the episode itself, and subsequently the follow-up, or the major lack there of after.
One very important aspect, that I at least took for granted on my initial viewing, and didn't really sink in until much later, is just how young Xander is supposed to be in this episode. It's season 6, which means Xander is maybe 22. Now that isn't not a grossly young age, he's not really a child any more, but he's still pretty young. It's not impossible to get married at that age and have it work - I've read that some studies have shown 25 to be about the ideal age to get married at; not sure how much difference another three years might make, but for some people those three years make all the difference.

In the case of BtVS, and this particular episode, I feel like the optics are deceiving. I've said it before in other threads, but it's very clear that Brendon was not 22 in "Hells Bells". A more accurate take would be to picture Xander around season 1, in a tux, having those experiences; and walking away in the rain. Having a good paying job and being out on his own, combined with his portraying being much older than the character was supposed to be, gave a false impression of the character's maturity, that might have painted a different picture if Xander looked his actual age.

They had also been laying some ground work for both of them having doubts, between their freak out in the car, bingeing on snack foods in the car, on the way to get their relatives; to Xander summoning Sweet to better understand if they'd last. As I said though, the execution could have been better. It's bad enough that Xander calls a demon that, in addition causing them to burst into song and dance, resulted in the deaths of at least a few people, and they never address that; they brush off the reasons for doing it.

In my opinion, the visions Xander has during "Hells Bells" are perhaps the best, if also the most unsettling part of the episode; in that it, to me, sold the reason for Xander not being able to go through with the wedding. He not only saw his worst nightmare for his relationship to Anya come true, he experienced it in vivid detail. It's like waking up from a nightmare that felt so real, you can't shake the feeling right away that it wasn't true.
There was no disorientation as Xander assumed his role in each setting; so presumably some element of the experience filled in some of the blanks in his conceptual awareness of what had happened in between one point in time and the next, forming his state of mind and that of his relationship to Anya - the idea that Buffy had died again, and that Xander was so severely injured he couldn't work; the strained ennui in his marriage and the obvious fact that at least one of his children clearly isn't his. It all builds to the climax where he finds himself, of his own volition, striking Anya; presumably killing her. He didn't just see it happened, he felt the fury and the impulse to do it; only to suddenly be snapped back to a world where it was all undone. That's the kind of experience that would shake most people to their core. I don't think I could experience something like that, and still go through with the wedding; no matter how much I loved that person, or was assured that it was all a lie. The experience would be too fresh, with all the emotions that came with it, that I'm not sure I could easily trust my senses enough to do much of anything, other than take some time to try and process it all.
Now, there again, the follow-up to all that is very poor. Instead of explaining what he went through, and all the doubts that were played on in the course of his experience; no one talks to anyone, about anything - pretty much the theme of the season, so it's not all that surprising. I would disagree with how far afield Xander went, going off the proverbial grid and not having any interaction with Anya or anyone else; and when he does try to explain his decision, instead of having his mind ravaged by a demon showing him his worst possible future, his reasoning boils down to them just not being ready, which is a very weak excuse

All in all, there's a lot of great character depths that they introduce; we finally see the horrible family Xander had been describing for years, and there's a lot of great material to explain a lot about Xander and expound on, but it's all a one off, and even in the episode it's kind of squandered.

"Sorry, I mistook you for a corpse."

[–] rosemei 8 years ago

Supposedly one of Anya's wishes caused the Russian Revolution and another led to President McKinley's assassination. Those clearly weren't undone.

[–] poem 8 years ago

Anya was still a human being and had no power center yet when she turned Olaf into a Troll.

The power center was dropped anyway; Anya no longer had one when she was turned into a demon again.

---
A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

[–] faulknerster 8 years ago

It doesn't quite crack my top five worst episodes. But it is one of the more difficult episodes to sit through. It's just an incredibly poorly written, cliche cheesy episode. The idea of someone abandoning another at the alter is almost always a cheap dramatic trick. And this episode didn't do it better than most. It was also improperly built towards. And what comes after the episode (the attempt by the writers to not have Xander look like an a-hole) makes it even worse.

[–] question7 8 years ago

it's one of the best episodes of season 6 but one thing that annoyed me was how xander's family and extended friends outside the scoobies easily bought the lie that anya and her relatives were circus folks.

My one criticism of buffy even as a genius show was how the show was set in sunnydale and there was all this demons, vampires, monsters set loose on the town with hardly any constant human realistic reaction and hell bells represented the worst of that .

Demons were invited to a wedding and we the audience were to accept that the humans in the show were easily fooled by the circus folks reason for their appearance..

[–] stargazer_1682 8 years ago

The conceit of anything based on the supernatural, set the otherwise real world, has to be the plausible obliviousness of that reality to the vast majority of the world, or else it would be common knowledge; which it isn't.
For Buffy, my "no prize" solution is that someone, likely the Mayor, enacted a type of cloaking/perception filter spell on Sunnydale, that allows the average person to hyper rationalize the abnormal world around them. This makes sense given that Richard Wilkins built Sunnydale as a feeding ground for demons, as he worked his way towards ascension. If the average person looked too closely at the dangers that should be very obvious to see, then it would become less likely people would stay there, and it wouldn't be much of a feeding ground. Once Wilkins is dead, the perception filter may have still been in place, but most likely not maintained. So the Initiative sets up stakes, people become a little more skeptical, the demons a bit more brazen; and it eventually weakens, or overwhelmiled to the point that people do flee town and desert it; something itself I think deserved a little more attention, and happened relatively suddenly. It didn't exactly appear to be an exceptionally small town, big enough for a UC campus; and completely abandoning the city should have been no small thing, especially if the demons were fleeing too.

"Sorry, I mistook you for a corpse."

[–] question7 8 years ago

The cloaking perception is a great theory, I wished they had used that in the entire series. it would have made watching the series a lot easier when you realiss Buffy is set in the real world of California.

[–] lnoland-1 8 years ago

For Buffy, my "no prize" solution is that someone, likely the Mayor, enacted a type of cloaking/perception filter spell on Sunnydale, that allows the average person to hyper rationalize the abnormal world around them.

I like your theory but the situation was often even worse in "Angel" (Lorne's night club, for instance) and that was set in L.A.

As for "Hell's Bells" I was amused by some of it but ultimately didn't care for the episode, mainly because it brought up, once again, the inconsistencies in the character of Xander -- Xander was so hot and cold throughout the series that I found the character very difficult to believe. His walking away from Anya was just one more incongruency which I had a great deal of trouble with.

[–] flyerzzrul 8 years ago

I like your theory but the situation was often even worse in "Angel" (Lorne's night club, for instance) and that was set in L.A.

Do you remember Angel's conversation with Kate?

Kate: “So, do I call the coroner or hazardous materials?”
Angel: “My advice? Don’t call anyone. I’ll see it gets taken care of.”
Kate: “And what do I put in my report?”
Angel: “Just do what you would normally do in a case like this.”
Kate: “There is no normal in a case like this.”
Angel: “Los Angeles, Kate, you’ve seen this kind of thing before, probably a lot. You just didn’t have a name for it, that’s all.”
Kate: “No, I think I’d remember.”
Angel: “Yeah, well, people have a way of seeing what they need to.”

[–] PreachCaleb 8 years ago

Demons were invited to a wedding and we the audience were to accept that the humans in the show were easily fooled by the circus folks reason for their appearance..

Have you seen what some people have done to alter their bodies in real life? It makes some of demons at the wedding look quite normal.

Besides, are they really supposed to think, "These aren't circus folks; they're demons."

It's not like they were acting like monsters. Most of them were pretty polite and courteous.

You are sin.

[–] PreachCaleb 8 years ago

Demons were invited to a wedding and we the audience were to accept that the humans in the show were easily fooled by the circus folks reason for their appearance..

[–] faulknerster 8 years ago

That was a persistent joke throughout the whole show. The idea of everyone else not knowing or caring about the demons of Sunnydale was frequently addressed but often used a joke. If the series indulged realistically in how "normal" people would react and interact with demons or knowing there were demons it would have been a very different show. That just went against the show's basic conceit and structure. The show handled it properly, though the interaction with demons "Hell's Bells" was corny and used for laughs that never came.