Rachel Getting Married

Watching "Rachel Getting Married," I couldn't help but notice there were so many ways this film could have gone wrong. It could have gone the route of cloying melodrama meant for a Lifetime Original Movie, or it could have become the typical (and typically unfunny) wedding comedy, or it could have even made a open grab for Oscars; instead, Jonathan Demme crafted a understated film containing equals amounts of uncomfortable humor, family drama, and fun.

Don't let the title fool you: Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) does get married, but this is not her show. The story mainly centers around her sister Kym, a recovering addict who's finally found a treatment program that seems to work and who gets a day pass out of rehab to attend her sister's wedding. Anne Hathaway imbibes the character, infusing her with a sharp wit and a completely selfish personality. Not many are happy to see Kym at the house, and you quickly get the feeling that it's not because of her habit, or at least not directly.

The first half of the movie is a fairly dark comedy; Kym is offended that she is not the maid of honor, she wants all the attention, and she is, of course, the token disastrous toaster. So many movies about weddings make practically every character do their best to ruin the whole affair, but writer Jenny Lumet knows that it really only ever takes one.

The third act of the film is where the tensions finally come to a head the night before the wedding. Kym must confront her biggest demon and how it affects her family, and it threatens to rip them all apart before Sidney and Rachel make it to the altar. Hathaway, whose been so biting and self-centered the whole time, suddenly taps into some powerful emotions that expel a great deal of pent-up self-hate in a way that seems totally realistic. All that talk of her Oscar worthiness is true: as clichéd as it may be, she is Kym, and at no point during the near two hour running length did I even think "Hey, she was in The Princess Diaries."

The wedding itself is both wholly irrelevant and the fundamental triumph of the film. For Kym, whose story drives the film, it serves as little more than a device, yet the wedding and everything concerning it contains the ultimate subject of the film: marriage and its affect on family. Rachel, who has been locked into her own personal hell more or less because of Kym and her effect on the family, has a chance at a new and happy life with Sidney. My absolute favorite part of the film, even beyond the actors, is the fact that Lumet not once comments on Sidney and Rachel's interracial relationship. Hollywood loves to pat itself on the back when it comes to social issues, but we see a couple and their families simply interacting; there is no racist grandmother, no initial distrust between the two clans. Sidney's family immediately treats Rachel's family like their own, as does Rachel's. If nothing else, "Rachel Getting Married" hopefully points to a future in which race is a non-issue like it truly should be.

Also deserving mention is Demme's hand-held camera work. He gets in close to the actors, and you feel like that guest who awkwardly stumbles into a party where you don't really know the people or, worse, into a family situation. The way the camera sort of finds itself in the middle of an argument has a humor all its own. Demme gives Lumet's superb script a bit of an Altman-esque feel; he does not examine the background characters like the master did, but Demme does do a good job of exploring people other than Rachel and Kym. As much praise as Hathaway is (deservedly) getting, attention must be paid to both Rosemarie DeWitt and Debra Winger as Rachel and Kym's emotionally distant mother, who has one scene with Kym of great power. Personally, I think DeWitt deserves a Supporting Actress nomination more than Winger, but the Academy loves to pick supporting noms based on scenes, and Winger has the best I've seen of a supporting actress this year.

"Rachel" is not quite perfect; Kym moves through her path just a bit too quickly and there are some scenes that Demme might have bettered served with more traditional shooting. But it is a painfully honest film that, in true Altman fashion, weaves together a tapestry of potential stories, many of which remain unexplored, as they do in real life. Lumet, Hathaway, and DeWitt all deserve Oscar nominations and, barring some great revelations in the last few weeks of the year, wins. It is far and away the best wedding movie I've ever seen, and to understand just how much it breaks the usual mold, just consider that Hathaway's next project is called Bride Wars.

Slumdog Millionaire

“Slumdog Millionaire” is being pitched as an uplifting film, a real feel-gooder, and it certainly qualifies as such. But a film as rich and varied as this cannot be so neatly summarized. “Slumdog” is a vibrant journey that shows you a world you’ve likely never seen before and makes you a part of it; at some point Jamal’s life becomes ours, and the biggest shock of the film is when it comes to an end and you must return to your real life.

The film opens on Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an 18-year old contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” being tortured and interrogated by police under suspicion of cheating. The fuzz believes that the uneducated, slumdog Malik, who is one question away from winning the grand prize, cannot possibly know the answers to questions designed to stump doctors and professors. We then cut between flashbacks of Jamal’s youth and how they influence his answers on the show.

And that is all I will say of the plot. The less you know, the more shocking the events of his life are. For a film billed so strongly as a light romantic film, it contains a great deal of the open horrors of growing up in the slums of a major city. Danny Boyle’s depiction of India is the most honest I have seen: it does not gloss over the cities to capture only their classic beauty. Instead, it delves deep into the slums, into the areas that always seem to be under construction, into rivers actually filled with waste instead of sparkling clear. Boyle’s portrayal calls to mind the New York of Scorsese’s films, or the Rio de Janeiro we saw in Fernando Meirelles’ “City of God:” fetid wastelands that are both terrifying and oddly beautiful. Like a combination of those films and the work of Steven Spielberg, "Slumdog" miraculously manages to script an uplifting piece of escapism without ever portraying the slum life as easy or driving a wedge between the horrors of Jamal's past with the hope of his present and future.

A lot of people deserve credit for making “Slumdog” such a wonderful experience. Anthony Dod Mantle’s epic cinematography and Chris Dickens’ fast-paced yet never confusing editing elevate Boyle’s stunning direction, while the actors (some of whom make their debuts here) are stunning and real. Particular attention must also be paid to Simon Beaufoy’s adapted screenplay, which updates the classic Dickensian fairy tale of orphaned, streetwise children who hope for something more into something more energetic than we’ve ever seen.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is what I hope to see every time I go to the movies for the sole purpose of escapism; it sucks me into its world and almost makes me sad when the credits roll and eject me back into reality. It is one of those rare films that seems to get everything right, or at least everything that it applies itself toward (I cannot say that there is any point to the film, but its lack of intellectual posturing works in its favor). It propels itself with such force that you cannot take your eyes off it, nor would you ever want to. The intricacies of Jamal’s life are spectacular but, as one character puts it, “bizarrely plausible,” and the final moments of the game show are nail-biting even though you know how this fairy tale must end.

Danny Boyle has already proven himself an unpredictable and varied director: he has made thoughtful science fiction (“Sunshine”), horror (“28 Days Later”), children’s films (“Millions”), and even a pitch-black comedy about drug addiction (“Trainspotting”). But it is “Slumdog Millionaire” that will cement his name in the list of notable directors, one who can take any genre you can think of and make a great addition to it. This film is an aesthetic jumble, a freewheeling, orgiastic of techniques that don't necessarily work together but add up to something memorable and hugely entertaining. It may not be the best film of 2008, but I'll cherish this Spielbergian romp as much as the year's most demanding and interesting works.

Milk

It’s hard to watch the story of Harvey Milk and not think about recent issues in the country, particularly in California, the state where he left his mark. The recent passing of Proposition 8 is sure to weigh in the minds of all who watch this biopic, and it lends an importance to an already great film. As a matter of fact, a lot of Harvey Milk’s life eerily ties in with today’s events.

We meet Milk as a closeted Republican living in New York City in 1970 patrolling subways for potential partners, one of whom (Scott Smith, played by James Franco), becomes his boyfriend. The two decide to move to San Francisco in the hopes of being able to live out of the closet. However, as they move in and set up a camera shop only to find that even San Francisco is no haven. Slowly, Milk builds ties in the predominately gay neighborhood. Before long, he can rally the denizens of Castro Street for anything, from helping unions to driving anti-gay establishments out of business. You might call him a sort of “community organizer.” Hmmm.

After the police raid Castro Street and beat homosexuals for no reason, Milk is incensed to the point of running for city supervisor and, after a number of failed bids, finally wins it in 1977. Surprisingly, yet perhaps not altogether unexpectedly, this final act of the film, the one in which Harvey Milk made history, doesn’t feel quite as important as his days running the Castro Street like a friendly, nonviolent mobster. As with most idealists, he must deal with the cold, sobering reality of bureaucracy. His biggest political enemy is Dan White, a fellow city supervisor and an ardent conservative.

Dan White is most interesting character in all this tragedy, even moreso than Milk. He is played by Josh Brolin, who has been on a hot streak for the last two years and shos no signs of slowing down. Rumors abound concerning White’s sexuality, and whether his role in the assassinations could be perhaps traced to his own self-hating homosexuality. Van Sant certainly hints at this; White is ever opposed to gay rights, but seems to genuinely want to befriend Harvey. He even seems open to voting with Harvey, provided he backs some of White’s proposals of course. When Milk backs out his end of the bargain, White grows to hate Milk. Was Harvey an exit to Dan? A path out of his lie of a life into being able to live in happiness? I do not know, but at any rate it sends an already unbalanced man over the edge.

While “Milk” must inevitably follow the well-tread, clichéd road of biopics, Gus Van Sant manages to buoy the film above most. Dustin Lance Black’s script is full of tender moments, and the anecdotal research he put into the project gives the film a more personal feeling; I did not feel like I was watching an historic figure, but a man, and that makes me identify with it more than the usual slice of hero worship that defines such films. Van Sant mixes documentary footage with the film, making the voices of those who condemn homosexuals all the more affecting. Anita Bryant, a pop singer who famously championed the removal of gay rights, is wisely never portrayed by an actress; we see her as she actually decries gays as child molesters (despite the evidence even then that most molesters are heterosexual) and we feel the rage that many must have felt watching her at the time.

But the film rests squarely on Sean Penn’s shoulders, and he delivers magnificently. Penn is an actor of little, if any subtlety; he throws himself into a role and infuses it with such melodrama that he either triumphs (“Mystic River,” “21 Grams”) or fails spectacularly (“I am Sam”). Here, he is energetic and warm; you can’t help but love Harvey.

There is a tendency for these kinds of films to praise the messenger for the message and not its merits. For example, while I thoroughly enjoyed the romance of “Brokeback Mountain,” I found the film itself to be a meandering, poorly paced jumble that placed more focus on Ang Lee’s visual prowess than the actual emotions. But “Milk” gets it right, and it becomes perhaps the first great mainstream film to deal with gay rights. I don’t think it will convert any homophobes, but it just might galvanize the gay and gay-friendly crowds, who need something to unite them in the wake of Proposition 8.

Synecdoche, New York

There’s a heck of a lot going on in Charlie Kaufman’s latest opus, “Synecdoche, New York,” so much so that even the critics, whom everyone loves to paint as out-of-touch elitists who automatically reward any film too intricate for them to “get,” are sharply divided on the issue. I saw it once and loved it, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t need to see it again.

The plot, insomuch as I could possibly summarize, concerns Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a playwright who receives a MacArthur genius grant after producing a successful version of “Death of a Salesman.” When his wife Adele (Catherine Keener), a critically acclaimed painter, takes their daughter and leaves for Germany, Caden decides to use his grant money to make a grand statement: a play about life itself.

What results is the most epic theater production you’ve ever seen. Cotard leases out a warehouse and slowly creates a miniature version of New York City. His cast grows into the hundreds, possibly thousands, all in effect playing themselves. Cotard wanders city streets and you can never be certain if they are the actual streets or his set until he starts giving notes to people. In one of the more amusing running gags of the film, the actors never can pull off acting naturally; they inject a melodrama into their performances no matter how many times Caden tells them to be ‘normal.’

In classic Kaufman tradition, the lines between reality and the play, between consciousness and dreams, slowly fades until it’s anyone’s guess what, if anything, is actually happening. As Caden buries himself deeper in the project, he slowly drives himself mad with the undertaking of it all; soon, he’s hiring actors to play…the other actors, and actors for those actors as well. Sammy (Tom Noonan), who plays Caden’s doppelganger, has followed and studied the playwright for decades, but when he finally collects his notes and dives into the character he is driven to madness. Caden himself can barely hold himself together; what hopes does an actor have? Eventually the lines blur so much that Caden starts to play himself (or play himself playing himself, it’s hard to keep track) under the guidance of a new director. My good friend Wikipedia tells me that Caden’s surname, Cotard, is the name of a psychological condition in which a person believes himself to be dead or dying, which certainly fits with Caden’s fascination with the subject, and of his own mysterious, debilitating illness.

As complex as the film gets, Kaufman sums it up with the title: Synecdoche, a term that denotes a part of something to refer to the whole, or vice-versa. This is Kaufman’s attempt to prove that old Shakespearean line “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Every play and every movie is a reflection of life, and this is the (il)logical extreme of art. It seems so simple when it’s written down like that, doesn’t it? Well, despite its clear, resonant, darkly funny message, the steps that the film takes towards it are where I get confused. I do not need another viewing to “get” it, but to discover that which was not apparent when I first watched it.

“Synecdoche may not be Charlie Kaufman’s best film, but it is perhaps his greatest. I detest movies like “Donnie Darko,” which receive praise for being deliberately obtuse seemingly because people mistake wheel-spinning, navel-gazing nonsense for depth, but “Synecdoche” really does work. Just as the title suggests, every part of this film serves as a microcosm for the world; it is so dense and layered that it is inevitably sluggish, but I kept on staring in wonder.

Angel — Season 1

Spinoffs never do seem to work, do they? No wonder; most of them just take the most memorable supporting character place them in a wacky new location, and have them try to be the exact same character they were, only now as the lead. The problem? Supporting characters can be over the top because they do not have all the screen time, but when you throw, say, Kramer into a show of his own you get nothing but Kramer being Kramer all the time and it drives you nuts.

Thus, when Angel left Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the end of its thirds season after practically making the show a hit, I was nervous. I first watched this concurrently with Buffy, swapping out seasons of both, going from Buffy S4 to this, etc., and immediately had my fears put to rest. While I believe Buffy is the show that will define Joss Whedon, and was more consistent, I found myself prefering its sister show. On a first watch, I thought Angel S1 was good, but overall uninteresting, lacking a strong enough arc to keep me engaged. While that view still somewhat applies, I found myself liking it a whole lot more on a second viewing.

In one of the most assured pilots I've ever seen, "City Of" establishes David Boreanaz as a much more mature actor and a viable leading man, as well as introducing the overreaching theme of the season: connection. Angel left Sunnydale because he was afraid, afraid of his relationship with Buffy and how it could cause him to revert to Angelus again. In Los Angelos, Angel finds himself alone, and that's how he likes it; he wants to kill as many demons as he can before someone finally gets to him, and he'll finally be free. But that all changes over the course of the pilot. When he fails to protect a young woman, he realizes that he's ultimately useless fighting this battle alone. The friendships he forges with Cordelia and the newcomer Doyle give him an actual link to the world from which he was trying to cut himself off, and gave him something to fight for beyond the quixotic "take as many as you can with you" philosophy he adhered to.

"City Of" leads to a number of strong standalone episodes that waste no time setting up Angel as a unique show and one capable of standing on its own merits. They also proved to be deeply metaphorical (even compared to Buffy): "Lonely Hearts," for example, works as a superb allegory for singles who move from one night stand to one night stand foolishly believing they'll ever find "the one" that way. Also, episodes like "In The Dark" and "Rm W/ a Vu" are just great fun that also cram in some surprising development.

But the season really kicks into high gear in the double punch to the gut that is "I Will Remember You" and "Hero." The former brings Buffy in for what so easily could have become a boring, "hey look kids!" crossover; instead, it's the most affecting moment in the Buffy/Angel relationship since "Becoming, Pt. 2." After fighting a demon with regenerative powers, Angel suddenly finds he's human again, and he and Buffy can finally be happy together without fear of Angelus (or the sun, of course). But bad things are coming, and Angel realizes that he needs his vampire strength to fight them, and gives up his newfound life, something made all the more painful by the fact that no one will remember his humanity but him. The last scene before the time wipe is heart-wrenching: Buffy tearfully repeats, almost pleads "I won't forget, I won't forget" until she suddenly does. It's the final nail in the coffin of their relationship and it's a beautiful send-off.

"Hero," on the other hand, proves just how different and unpredictable this show was going to be. In it, we see the first glimpse of how Angel's daily grind against evil actually results in major changes; Doyle is so inspired by his boss' selflessness that he gives his own life in what may be the most shocking death in the Buffyverse simply because it happened so soon after the show started. "Hero" marks the turning point of the show from some fun standalones to a much bigger purpose. It goes into deep territory and, even when the episodes are just average, delivers enough character advancement or pure entertainment that they're worth it.

Except, of course, "She." "She" is the kind of episode that is not only bad on a surface level, but infuritating upon further examination. In it, a demon named Jhiera (played by Bai Ling, which spells trouble from the start) must protect her humanoid female demons against savage males. Why? Because they have something called the Ko, and the males remove their Ko because it causes pure chaos. In case you can't tell, this all stands for the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, which is certainly horrifying, but how does this apply to the characters? What makes this show and its parent work is that it tackles every day issues with the supernatural; this on the other hand, plays like "a very special episode of," something Joss always set out to combat. It's boring, preachy (does anyone disagree that the practice is wrong and horrifying anyway?), and useless to the show.

Still, things end in style for the season with two awesome mini-arcs, one involving the return of Faith, and the other presenting us with Angel's destiny, or at least a part of it. "Five By Five" and "Sanctuary" show a Faith acting out even more than usual because she wants to simply self-destruct, and Angel must do what he can to save her. Faith's breakdown at the end of "Five By Five" is one of the best moments in either show. "Blind Date" and "To Shanshu in L.A.," on the other hand, break Angel out of his funk by proving that he is destined to be a hero and to regain his humanity. It brilliantly sets up the Angel of the second season who, for a while, will be much more filled with confidence and vigor until Wolfram & Hart pull the rug from underneath him.

So what are we left with? Out of 22 episodes, I'd say about 13 are either enjoyable, great, or classic. It seems to clash between being entertaining and lacking a real narrative to make the whole season seem worth the time, even though it's so good so often. It does wonders for moving Cordelia forward from the materialistic "bitch" (as she refers to herself gleefully in one episode) of Buffy to a more compassionate, caring individual. It also reintroduces Wesley and starts moving him away from the bumbling fool of Buffy S3, although he really doesn't begin to turn into a strong character in season 2, and he REALLY goes through a transformation in season 3. Season 2 would explore the themes of Angel in a much deeper, infinitely darker way, but this is a hell of a strong season, and it blows every other spinoff out of the water from the start.

Choice Episodes:

City Of

One of the best pilots I've ever seen. It establishes its themes, begins to move both Angel and Cordelia away from their Buffy personas into more fleshed out characters, and it features one of the show's most badass moments at the end. Also, it sets up its affinity for strong metaphor with its main plot that clearly represents the L.A. moguls who use up wannabe actresses for their pleasure and toss them aside. An incredible start.

I Will Remember You

Angel's sudden life lends to a cheesy (yet totally believable) reunion for Buffy and Angel and even though we're waiting for the other shoe to drop, nothing can prepare you for that ending. Angel wouldn't make such a big sacrifice again until "Home" at the end of season 4.

Hero

Many would become inspired by Angel's personal struggle against evil, and Doyle was the one who started the ball rolling. The Nazi allusions that the Monsters of the Week conjure up are cheap, but they cannot bring down so wonderful an episode.

Somnambulist

I wish Penn had lasted for a mini-arc of his own, but even in this standalone he brings up so much of Angel's past and confronts him with the horrors he can never really atone for that it's hard to believe it can all fit in one episode.

I've Got You Under My Skin

What better foil for a vampire with a soul than a human without one? What starts out as a fun Exorcist parody stuffs in a number of marvelous twists and turns. There are precious few truly standalone episodes in the series (i.e. ones that don't even push forward the characters very much or at all), but this is definitely my favorite.

The Prodigal

This is the first, and certainly not the last, episode to shed light into Angel's actual guilt of being Angelus. We've seen that he feels guilt and know why, but we never see him really try to come to terms with the horrors he committed until now.

Sanctuary

"Five By Five" has the incredible breakdown, but "Sanctuary" spread out everything over the whole episode. It puts Faith firmly on the road to redemption and features an alternately deep and hysterical insight into the difficulties of "how it works," only to find out that the "it" in question was actually a microwave and not an existential question. Also, Angel's pained outburst at Buffy lets her know that it's over (keep in mid she forgot most of IWRY and doesn't share Angel's pain) and firmly separates not only those two but their shows as well.

To Shanshu in L.A.

"Hero" started shifting Angel, but it was "To Shanshu" that busted the thing wide open, allowing for the personal fights against evil of Season 2, 3, and 5 and, for better or worse, the epic borderline opera of season 4.

Letdowns:

I Fall to Pieces

The stalking metaphors are very interesting indeed, but they belong in a better episode. The suspense of the stalking gave way to unintentional hilarity when you saw how the guy was supernatural.

Expecting

Ugh, "sex is bad," part...what, 4? I like the message to be careful with sex, but at this point it looks like all the writers have hangups. I did like seeing Ken Marino, though.

She

Possibly the worst episode of the entire series. Insulting to the audience and it doesn't fit into the show's M.O.

The Ring

Fight Club, now with demons! This starts kind of promising but is just sort of pointless. Although, when Scott William Winters' character dies I like to shout "How do you like THEM apples?"

Australia

There’s a definite classic feel to “Australia,” as if all the grandiose epics of Old Hollywood mated and gave birth to an anachronistic child. At last, Baz Luhrmann has made a film with the scope to contain his oversaturated flash, a fairy tale about a wide open land and star-crossed lovers. Unfortunately, the film’s size simply bloats Luhrmann’s already glaring flaws and makes for a tedious experience.

“Australia” starts simply enough: an English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) travels to Australia to visit her husband’s flagging cattle ranch, only to find him recently murdered. A rival cattle baron seeks a monopoly, and tries to force Ashley out o business. Sarah fights back with the help of a mixed race child named Nullah and “The Drover” (Hugh Jackman), a cattle-herder who is rugged, handsome and, when the situation calls, shirtless. They must get their cattle to the port town of Dover to ensure the ranch’s survival, all the while being sabotaged by Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), a higher-up in the rival rancher’s pay.

The film starts out decently enough, but it wastes no time beating you about the head with Luhrmann’s usual cartoon-ish nonsense. Nicole Kidman spends the first hour making goofy faces that equally reflect shock, outrage, and mild intrigue, and her facial contortions are so over the top I began to wonder if I was watching an old sitcom with the laugh track turned down. The Australians are dusty and say “Crikey” a lot, and the ragtag team gets the cattle across the harsh Outback.

It is around the two hour mark (where the film should have ended, by the way), that we are suddenly plunged into the dreaded territory of Serious Business. The bouncy slice of optimism abruptly turns into a somber look at the frightfully-racist-yet-not-as-frightfully-racist-as-it-actually-was Australia. Nullah, a complete outcast because of his mixed race, is taken to a island mission, which presents the first tactical target to the approaching Japanese.

We learn of Australia’s horrible policy of removing aborigine children from their families and adopting them to white homes, which might have made more emotional impact if the whole thing wasn’t so campy. Sorry, but you can’t go about making cartoon faces and suddenly talk about racism. Well, maybe Charlie Chaplin could, but then we wasn’t a flashy hack.

And why is it that films that criticize racism always seem to employ stereotypes? An Asian fellow works at Sarah’s ranch and speaks in a heavy accent guaranteed to score cheap laughs. And Nullah…oh, where do you start? He speaks an annoying type of pidgin English that is often incomprehensible. Worse, he provides the voice-over narration. Voice-overs are bad enough, but a voice-over in near gibberish? Why bother? Imagine how much worse “Episode I” would have been if Jar-Jar narrated it.

The only bright spot in any of this is David Wenham. Wenham, who starred as Faramir in the “Lord of the Rings” films, puts in a performance far better than the film deserves. His Fletcher is a cold, soulless demon who stalks the rival ranchers with increasing vigor, not because he is getting paid but because he simply enjoys it. He has no real loyalties and only loses his temper when his status is threatened. The only redeeming part of the tacked on 45 minute final act is that we see more of him.

So what are we left with? The film sure is pretty to look at, but so is a poison dart frog, and you shouldn’t go pawing one of those. Luhrmann set out to make “Australia” his “Gone With The Wind,” and instead he made a spiritual sequel to “Pearl Harbor.” Speaking of, I’m beginning to suspect that Hollywood is pushing forward some sort of revisionist history in which the Japanese got involved in the war in an effort to firebomb dull romances off the face of the Earth. If so, then the United States owes them an apology.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer — Season 3

After the finale of Season Two, it's a wonder they ever managed to continue with this show. "Becoming, Pt. 2" was such an emotional, gut-wrenching ordeal, and Buffy was so thoroughly broken that to rebuild the pieces seemed impossible. But never underestimate Joss Whedon. Though Buffy's readjustment was a bit too quick, the season quickly picked up and stands as the most consistently brilliant season of the show.

Things start off with "Anne," in which Buffy is working as a waitress in L.A. trying to leave her Slayer past behind her. She meets one of the girls who wanted to be turned into a vampire in "Lie To Me," and the two wind up captured by demon slavers. Freeing the captured humans makes Buffy realize that she has to keep fighting evil, and she returns to Sunnydale. The gang is upset that she abandoned them without even saying goodbye, but they forgive her when a contrived invasion of zombies crops up ("Dead Man's Party"). The first episode was pretty good, while the second was a letdown, but things shift into high gear and stay there when Faith hits the scene.

The perfect foil to Buffy, Faith is one of the series' most interesting characters. The two come to actively hate each other because they each represent the other's ideal: to Buffy, Faith is individualistic, free, and she fits in perfectly with the friends that on some level still feel alienated from Buffy for leaving; to Faith, Buffy has the emotional support she never had and, issue-laden as Buffy is, she represents normalcy for Faith.

Of course, none of this is immediately apparent. Faith is a breath of fresh air for the Scoobies, and even for Buffy. Jealous as she may be of her friends' instant acceptance of Faith, Buffy views her as a way out. As opposed to Kendra, who just showed up and (mercifully) left after a mini-arc, Faith sticks around, and Buffy (and others like Giles and Joyce) begins to think that this new Slayer can take over for her. Finally, Buffy can put the "Slayer half" to bed and live a normal life.

Such thoughts are only a fantasy, though, thanks to the appearance of my favorite Buffy villain: the Mayor. Never has there been a villain so evil yet so unassuming as Mayor Richard Wilkins III; he deplores foul language, slackers, germs and loves the comic Family Circus. He also wants to become a demon and has allowed the creatures from the Hellmouth to feast on Sunnydale's residents for nearly a hundred years. He's disturbing, and disturbingly funny.

The best development of the season is the tender relationship that develops between Faith and The Mayor. After accidentally killing a human, Faith cannot bear to be around Buffy because she does not want to accept responsibility for her actions, so she offers her services to the Mayor. Faith, clearly the victim of a traumatic childhood, comes to view Wilkins as the father she never had and, even more surprisingly, the Mayor truly cares for her. He had a wife whom he had to watch die as he retained his youth; Faith provides him the opportunity to really connect with someone again.

His plan to ascend into demon form plays out in the explosive (quite literally) finale, "Graduation Day." If "Becoming" was an all-out emotional punch to the gut, then "Graduation Day" is just the height of fun. It's got great jokes, some juicy character development (including the simple but affecting breakup between Buffy and Angel), and the effing school gets blown up. Who doesn't want to see that happen?

I've been reading some highly interesting reviews on Buffy courtesy of this guy, who points out something that, in retrospect, is so obvious I want to go back in time and whack myself on the nose with a newspaper for missing the first time around: the season is all about indentity. From the start Buffy is trying to squash one aspect of her identity to become someone more normal, and she must eventually come to terms with the fact that the Slayer is a part of her identity and not just some curse (which is as important a lesson to the audience as it is to her). The most obvious realization of this comes when Buffy decides not to go out of state to good colleges like Northwestern but to stay in Sunnydale to monitor the Hellmouth. The residents of Sunnydale recognize this identity when Jonathan awards her the Class Protector award at the prom in one of the most touching moments of hte whole show. Faith, on the other hand, has never had any identity at all, and her relationship with her surrogate father gives her something to cling to for the first time in her life. She proves that being a Slayer is not a guarantee of purity, and that Buffy is even more heroic for her goodness.

When you boil it down to its essence, this season lacks the emotional impact of the last one, but it pushes forward so much character development and the episodes maintain such a high quality throughout that it still ranks above S2 in my book. Now, I still prefer the flawed Season Six because of its emotional turmoil, but this ranks a close second.

Choice Episodes: too many to go into detail here. Will discuss some when I publish a top 25 episodes list.

Faith, Hope, and Trick
Band Candy
The Wish
Amends
The Zeppo
Doppelgangland
Earshot
The Prom
Graduation Day, Pt. 2

Letdowns:

Dead Man's Party - Yep, that's the only clunker of the season. Zombies are fun, but not when they serve for a cheap cathartic fight.