{"id":929,"date":"2012-02-16T12:37:45","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T20:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=929"},"modified":"2012-02-07T18:30:45","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T02:30:45","slug":"mark-watches-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-s03e12-helpless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2012\/02\/mark-watches-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-s03e12-helpless\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches &#8216;Buffy the Vampire Slayer&#8217;: S03E12 &#8211; Helpless"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the twelfth episode of the third season of <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>, I AM SERIOUSLY SO UPSET. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch <em>Buffy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Dear David Fury,<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know what you are trying to do to me. I don&#8217;t know where you get off thinking that it is at all acceptable to play with my heart like this. I am <em>offended<\/em>. I am <em>outraged<\/em>. And it is time for me to write you a furious and angry letter.<\/p>\n<p>In many ways, Giles is the moral core of the Scoobies. He is reliable. He is dependable. He is full of knowledge, advice, and tact. He is the one thing the Scoobies can always turn to. He is the one person who regularly has Buffy&#8217;s back, who cares for her, who tries to help her be a better Slayer <em>and<\/em> a better person, and who routinely acts the most selfless out of the group. He just put aside his burning discomfort and rage for Angel a few episodes ago in order to help him! This show has spent years bringing us to this point, too. In a way, Giles is Buffy&#8217;s father, or at least a father <em>figure<\/em> to her. He&#8217;s even compatible with Joyce! THIS IS ALL WONDERFUL! He&#8217;s such a fantastic part of her life!<\/p>\n<p>AND YOU DECIDED TO DECONSTRUCT THIS. You decided to take that implicit, unspoken trust that Buffy has in Giles, and you put Giles in a situation where he must <em>exploit that<\/em>. He has to purposely break her trust, lie to her face, and put her at risk for death. He has to do this <em>JUST DAYS AFTER BUFFY&#8217;S OWN FATHER DISAPPOINTS HER<\/em>. In the process, he stands up to the Council of Watchers. (I have no idea if this is the actual name for it, but whatever. I&#8217;m so angry I don&#8217;t care.) And after standing up to this organization that would justify doing such a horrible thing to a Slayer, HE IS FIRED. HE IS PUNISHED BY THE COUNCIL FOR TREATING BUFFY LIKE A DAUGHTER. Something that is lovely and pure and gorgeous is treated like an abominable sin by Quentin Travers, whose face I will hate on principle from here until eternity.<\/p>\n<p>On top of this, you made Buffy&#8217;s &#8220;test&#8221; for her eighteenth birthday happen anyway, and you wrote the scene to unfold like a slasher movie, and it&#8217;s utterly terrifying. You want me to feel absolutely no good things from this episode, and <em>it is not fair<\/em>. You even wrote a line in the episode about not being in the business of being fair. YOU KNEW I WOULD SAY THIS WAS NOT FAIR. I hate that you are already aware of how distressed I would be by watching &#8220;Helpless.&#8221; Wait, is the title of this episode an accurate description of how I feel right now? GREAT. THERE&#8217;S THAT, TOO.<\/p>\n<p>This whole episode addresses the idea of Buffy&#8217;s identity and how tied it is to her being a Slayer. Your episode made me <em>think<\/em> things about my own identity. Like, what if you took away my gayness? (Don&#8217;t fucking write anything about that, dude, I swear. You&#8217;ve already upset me enough for one lifetime.) I don&#8217;t even know who I&#8217;d <em>be<\/em> without that. And then you have Angel telling Buffy he loves her regardless of her powers, and you melt my heart right before you crush it.<\/p>\n<p>You are <em>evil<\/em>, David Fury. You have taken joy from me. So here&#8217;s my angry letter to you. You can&#8217;t even complain about it because it&#8217;s now established canon that Willow is going to write an angry letter to the Council, thereby validating my own actions. I suppose I should thank you for that. For the time being, though, I&#8217;m watching you. You&#8217;re not allowed to do this again. I&#8217;M WARNING YOU.<\/p>\n<p>Yours,<br \/>\nMark<\/p>\n<p>PS: I better not find out that you wrote anything in the script about the Scoobies making PB&amp;J sandwiches with smooth peanut butter. Crunchy <em>only<\/em> in my world. I will fight you on that.<\/p>\n<p>PPS: Nice touch by having Buffy kill Kralik with the Holy Water. I still am not forgiving you, though.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Dear Joss Whedon,<\/p>\n<p>Stop enabling your writers to be evil. Just stop it.<\/p>\n<p>Yours,<br \/>\nMark<\/p>\n<p>PS: Just a heads up. Whomever is Buffy&#8217;s next Watcher now that Giles has been fired will be irrationally hated by yours truly. I don&#8217;t care. They&#8217;re not Giles. They deserve all of my hatred.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Death Count: 3<\/strong>. Kralik, Blair, Hobson. <strong>Total: 34<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the twelfth episode of the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I AM SERIOUSLY SO UPSET. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch Buffy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[178,181,180,136,14,209,9,174,187,177,190],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buffy-the-vampire-slayer","tag-alyson-hannigan","tag-anthony-stewart-head","tag-charisma-carpenter","tag-david-fury","tag-joss-whedon","tag-kristine-sutherland","tag-mark-watches","tag-mark-watches-buffy-the-vampire-slayer","tag-nicholas-brendon","tag-sarah-michelle-gellar","tag-seth-green"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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