Spoiler Slayer

Herc has posted his review of 'Life Serial' over at AICN.

TV Guide description for the Musical

Once More, with Feeling
60 min.
Series creator Joss Whedon wrote, directed and composed the music for this episode in which a mysterious force impels the Scooby Gang to burst into song.
Even Buffy devotees may be hard-pressed to find an episode as off-the-wall as this, as Sunnydale denizens become players in production numbers in which cast members do their own vocals. Hear Tara (Amber Benson) sing about her love for Willow (Alyson Hannigan)! See Xander and Anya (Nicholas Brendon, Emma Caulfield) perform a duet! Listen to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) croon about her lack of life direction! Who's behind the music? Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) provides the key.

Hmmm, now I'm trying to remember where I read that Dawn was the one who cast the spell, because she wanted to know what everyone really thought of her. This would be a good time to address a couple of emails I received about the Amy comments made by Joss and Drew. Before I made major changes to this page, I was not keeping note or linking spoilers to their sources. Which is why some of the earlier spoilers don't have links. I'm not trying to hide anything or concoct confirmations, just some of the earlier stuff got lost in the shuffle. I can't remember where Joss made the comments about Amy, but it was very soon after 'The Gift'. Drew made his comments in a radio interview at The Succubus Club (as mentioned below) and Marti Noxon mentioned in TV Guide that Amy would be back as a human. Which provides a nice segue into the comments that she made in an interview (the one I mentioned yesterday).

It would appear that the writers are not thrilled by the fact that spoilers are leaking and the willingness of certain spoiler sites (AICN) to post spoilage about the show. Being someone who is running a spoiler site, I have to admit that it bothered me more than a little. I love the show, and I love the work that the writers do. Having a writer imply that we are ruining the energy of the show, causes the same reaction. It sort of took the wind out of my sails a bit, especially since the writers do make an effort to be a bit closer to the fan base than most shows. While I haven't actually had a writer drop me a note about the site, I do know that they are aware of it and stop by occasionally. Which is one of the cool things about the show. But, when they accuse us of hurting the show, it also makes you feel like you are being scolded as well.

In the original incarnation, this site was never intended to be either a full-blown Buffy or Spoiler site. The Buffy Formula has been here since Day One (even before Day One, the site was kind of built around it), the Spoiler Slayer came along a few months later. As I've mentioned before, the entire reason why I started the Spoiler Slayer was to help cut through the obviously false spoilage out on the Net. If the writers, actors, or crew never leaked a bit of information, Spoilers would still be floating around. You couldn't stop it from happening, and that bothered me more than the actual spoilers. In terms of energy, what about the sites who constantly promise that 'Xander and Buffy have a connection' and manufacture spoilers to fit. What happens to the Buffy/Xander fans, when these storylines never come to be. I've seen the comments people have made, such as 'If Buffy and Spike get together, I'm going to stop watching the show'. False spoilers can ruin the energy of a show as much as the real ones.

But I also see the point she is getting at. I have to admit that reading the Wildfeed does diminish the fun I used to have watching the show. The writers are correct, it does ruin some of the energy. But on the other hand, does having seen episodes like 'Passion' or 'Becoming' diminish the power of those episodes the second, third, or fourth time you watch them? I used to be a big 'Survivor' junkie, following all the spoilers and trying to find every clue to who would get voted off. This season, I've decided that I won't visit those sites at all. I don't want the fun to be spoiled for that show. For the same reasons, I don't follow spoilers for other shows like 'Felicity', 'Angel', 'Gilmore Girls' or 'Alias'. With Buffy, I just can't resist. Part of it could be the nature of the beast. With Network Television, you're forced to endure repeats, scheduled breaks and the such. It's one of the reasons why I love 'The Sopranos', 'Six Feet Under', and 'Band of Brothers'. I get the entire season in one sitting, so there isn't a time where I'm anxiously awaiting a new episode. In fact, I've stopped reading the book 'Band of Brothers', because I don't want to spoil the final two episodes. I watch the episode, then read the chapters that it was based on, then wait for the next episode.

Part of the reason why I only track the major spoilers, and only include portions of the script and such on this page (and not the Spoiler page), is because I want to give everyone the chance to decide how much they want to be spoiled. If you just want to find out the basic facts, you can visit the Spoiler page. I'm not going to spill all the little details, but I'll give you links if you want to know more. For example, in 'Life Serial', I only mention that Buffy experiments with various jobs. I don't go into the actual details. If you want to verify something you've heard in a roundabout way, you can check in and see if I believe it or not. Most of the time, the information on the page isn't much different than what you'll read in TV Guide (it's just a few weeks earlier). If you want to know everything done to the little details, you'll find the links and comments on this page. But it's your choice, you decide how much you want to know.

Finally, I don't think that those of us who run Spoiler sites should take all the blame. We aren't the ones who are confirming things like 'Amy returns' in multiple media interviews. We weren't the ones who let Wanda onto the set for the filming of 'The Gift', we weren't the ones who let Entertainment Weekly print a perfect description of Willow's resurrection spell. It's one thing to drop hints in an episode, 'Counting Down From 730' or 'Be Back Before Dawn', it's entirely different when you're telling the entire world that 'Buffy will be back'. I also think that when it comes to major spoilage, the writers have done a pretty good job of keeping us in the dark. There are always going to be spoilers, but it always seems that the best ones are never discovered until the Wildfeed goes out. I think that is where the real energy of the show is. It isn't in learning that 'Spike Didn't Know About The Resurrection Spell' or 'Buffy Talks With Spike About The Afterlife', it's in discovering that 'Every Night He Saves Her' or 'She Wasn't In Hell, She Was In Heaven'. Those are the magic moments of the show, and the spoilers didn't come close to giving anything away. No matter how hard we try, I don't think we'll ever be able to spoil the power of this show.