Pateman's Ponderings - the musings of Matthew Pateman

I was sifting through my files and found a couple of pieces. One is a long essay that expresses considerable concern over the representation of Willow as Jewish (because it seems to be so irrelevant to her being when one might expect it to have rather more informing power). I think this was for a seminar series but cannot remember. The the piece is super short and looks like a companion piece to strong defence of Beer Bad. It's short and the exact opposite of sweet! Willow Rosenberg, in the very last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , saves the world. She does so by summoning her extraordinary magical powers and performing a spell of such magnitude that it transforms all of the girls and young women who may have become the Slayer on the death of the previous one into a Slayer now. In other words, it alters millennia of (super)-natural law and lore and, in the process, allows Buffy (the current vampire slayer) to have an army strong enough to defeat the First Evil.

Trolls, hammers and and hints of the early pre-Anya days of the Nordic nuisance. A brilliant episode with  humour, great character development and tension (Xander's anger at being in the middle of the squabbling Willow and Anya is great), Anya's love of money... One of the most under-rated eps of the entire seven seasons, I think. Also, post Avengers ' Hulk, 'puny receptacle', anyone...! And here's the outline ( a revised version of an earlier one that I don't have) and the first and third drafts, separated by a mere nine days. I'm not sure where the second one is. Espenson writes of this episode: ‘Triangle’! Another one I like a lot. The troll was wonderful to write for. And I'm very proud of Spike's interest in the fried onion appetizer. And I love that he tries to be helpful with the location of possible babies - ‘what do you think - hospital, maybe?’