Scott Ellington's Blog

Spiral

An odd little wrinkle:

In the twentieth episode of the fifth season of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (May 2001), the Sunnydale crew holds hostage a general of holy knights who spills a bunch of backstory about Glory, the season’s BigBad.  It seems Glory is The Beast, a powerful god who was overthrown in an unspeakable hell dimension ruled by a triumverate of jealous and capricious gods before she was imprisoned in the body of a newborn male whose identity was (and remains) unknown to the knights who mean to topple Glory once and for all.

If that wasn’t sufficiently complicated, two years later (in February, 2003), Angel faces The Beast, who covertly serves the scheming Cordelia Chase, who will bear and give birth to Jasmine, the incredibly powerful god-in-transit from at least one unspeakable hell dimension.  Oz?  My head’s starting to hurt.  But hey!  The Beast awakened from rocky inprisonment  deep in the bowels of the Earth to emerge from the ground in Los Angeles in the very same alley where Darla gave birth to Connor.  What?!

And let’s not forget Illyria, whose (A Hole in the World) backstory sounds remarkably similar to that of the other two gods whose ultimate objectives involved the apocalyptic dissolution of natural barriers between familiar definitions of chaos, paradise, heaven/hell and unspeakable hell dimensions in which people are no longer discrete packets of private, unique identity…kinda like The Master’s plan to be the mass-production Henry Ford of Sunnydale/BtVS in the first season, with an irresistible vision of billions of beastly HappyMeals in denim served piping-hot to all the vampire beasts and hellishly-beastly demons drawn toward the Hellmouth.  Wasn’t there a Beast among the X-Men?  Maybe The Beast took some kind of part in building the hole in the world:  Idle speculation.  Slime and antlers.

I think looking for stinking plot holes in Mutant Enemy products is an absolute waste of time.  It’s far more interesting and exciting to attempt to connect deliciously-harmonious points of reference across arbitrary divisions (like those erected by competing broadcast networks; nonsequential presentation, content [standalones vs seriality] meddling, budget curtailment and eventual cancellation).

This post is only a remark, a gracenote for somebody’s preliminary investigation of probable interseries resonance between a couple of complex, compact and fascinating supernarratives and Yeats’ gyre, and realwold information/privacy controversy, and the seeming-inevitability that The Beast would eventually have made itself evident in Firefly.  Reavers?

Grushow/Groosalugg?  Of just how much invaluable realworld/fictional woven resonance is one small underfunded production company capable?  Whither Mutant Enemy? Check that question out!  They’ve infiltrated most everything interesting in recent American television.  And why aren’t those amazing motherfuckers federally subsidized?  That‘s a band I’d love to see reunited.

Also, whither Beauty?

10 Jan 12 - Posted by Scott Ellington | Uncategorized