It's hard to imagine why the writer continues to look for continuity in every new episode even after You're Getting Old.  Wasn't it immediately apparent in the episode following Ass Burgers that they weren't going to go in a new direction?  It was for me, and I imagine that it was for most of the viewing public.  If…

And if they are going to have continuity, I'd appreciate it if the writer would just wait until it shows itself rather than hunting for it in every episode.  It makes the reviews sound unbearably pretentious.

No, I don't think it cheapens anything, although at this point I don't think there was really much left to cheapen.  Xander and Anya met, they fell in love,  Xander fucked it up royal, and they split up.  They kind of dance around each other for the majority of Season 7 and by the end it looks they're on the road to…

I would have watched the Hell out of a Spike-Joyce spin-off.

"Huh."

I thought that both shows had quite a bit of thematic heft to them, and I liked how they didn't really overlap in that area.  What pushes Buffy above Angel for me is the characters.  Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, and Spike are all grade-A, top-flight, fully-realized characters for me.  On Angel, the only ones I could…

I think it's tied with Season 2 as my favorite, although I've never understood how people can call it perfect or nearly perfect.  It's got great stuff, but there are way too many mediocre or just plain bad episodes to call it perfect.

I never understood the ire over Anya's death, and I don't think the other comparisons are fair.  Jenny and Tara were brutally and unexpectedly murdered.  Buffy killed Angel herself, and Buffy was the group leader and pretty much the most important person in all of their lives.  Anya died in a war zone.  She and…

Naw.  Harmony came into her own the second she tries to hide from Buffy in Spike's crypt because "I'm totally her arch-nemesis."

One of the many joys of Buffy is that there was so damn much to it.  It was a witty comedy, and a monster flick, and a soap opera, and a feminist odyssey and on and on and on.  But yeah, at the end of the day I think it's mainly a story about how it feels to grow up.

But the thing is that, unlike Buffy, or Faith, or any of the older Slayers, the Potentials DO have a choice as to how they use their power, even if they didn't choose to receive it.  Buffy had to fight evil because there was no one else who could.  That's the way it always worked.  But the new Slayers can fight evil…

Gut-wrenchingly awful?  Soul-smashingly awful?  So awful it should be tried in the Hauge?

Topher?  I love that guy!

I never got that either.  I will say that I enjoy Firefly's first and only Season more than I enjoyed Buffy and Angel's inaugural Seasons, but come on.  It just never had the time to build up the emotional momentum that characterized the best Seasons of the other shows.

SPOILERS

I liked the episode a lot.  And I appreciate the time that was spent writing the review.  But I don't get it.

I've definitely got a soft spot for The Cautionary Tale.  It's whimsical, yeah, but it's rooted enough in the characters to justify itself.  And it's so lovably quirky!

That's interesting you should mention Angel's attempts at humor as compared to Buffy's.  While I think that Angel, as a show, did some things better than Buffy, humor definitely wasn't one of them.  When I think of the "funny" Angel episodes: Sense and Sensitivity, Provider, Life of the Party… so many of them fall…

Well, Lullaby and Forgiving are definitely great.  But in between those two you've got Dad, and Provider, and Couplet, and even a good-but-not-great episode like Birthday.  I'd say there were more than a few rocky moments on that path.

Everything having to do with Wesley in Season 3 = awesome.