Friday, July 28, 2006 "Life's a song, you don't get to rehearse.."
This morning as I was eating my usual breakfast bowl of cereal, I decided to flip over to FX and see where in the rotation of Buffy episodes there were.
Huge mistake.
I noticed immediately that the episode was being shown wide-screen and since there was only one episode of Buffy filmed wide-screen (despite rumors to the contrary), I knew instantly which episode it was. The instant classic, musical episode "Once More With Feeling."
I was immediately sucked into the episode as I always am. I had to force myself to eventually turn it off and leave for work since a)I've got it on DVD and can watch it later and b)it ran long on first showing and will be edited in syndication which will only irritate me. But those few minutes of enjoyment did one thing--it got all the songs from the episode stuck in my head. So now here I am, trying to be a productive member of society and humming pieces of "Walk Through the Fire" and "Something to Sing About."
Oh sure, I've got the soundtrack (both offical release and the bootleg rips of the songs that wandered the Net for a while right after it aired) and I've been listening to it.
And I'm once again struck by the sheer genius that was Buffy. A lot of other shows copied Buffy's musical episode but there were none that did it any better.
It also makes me appreicate the genius that is Joss Whedon. He wrote and directed the episode and composed the songs and lyrics for the show. I'll be honest, when I first heard they were going to do a musical episode back in the summer of '01, I was skeptical. And then, what does Joss do, but completely and totally defy all expectations and deliver the best epiosde of any show that year. The fact that this show was unrecognized by an Emmy is a travesty.
And yet, as the years go along, I become more and more impressed by Joss Whedon. My admiration grows even more as I'm rediscovering Buffy this summer on DVD and then when I see things like his speech for Equality Now below.
