HOME HAND MIND HEART SPIRIT SWEET 16 EXHIBITION
Numfar! Do the dance of victory! There's not really much on screen analysis you can make from this matchup other than a few little tidbits. Numfar would kill at the Apollo. Parking Ticket Lady goes commando. And things like superior dry cleaning please the hell out of Mustard Stain Man. Fun stuff as usual. Thanks everyone.
Numfar, do the dance of joy! You currently have 100% of the votes! (Ok, only one vote, mine, is in yet, but still...) Also, Joss Whedon dances way better then David Fury sings...so there! - grifter
The gag when Buffy sees the Mustard Stain Man singing with chorus backup, then draws back into the Magic Box and says "it's not just us" is too priceless for me not to vote for him. - Finn Mac Cool
Numfar's the dancin'-est demon this side of Sweet. No amount of singing can still the passion for rug cutting in his heart/buttock. Besides, "the dance of joy" and "the dance of shame" have entered our collective vocabulary, whereas "I got the mustard out" and whatever Parking Ticket Lady said have been lost to the ages. Join me, won't you, in the dance of victory. - Apophis
J-Bone! Thank you for the catharsis! (does a Cordy cheer) NUMFAR! NUMFAR! NUMFAR! NUMFAR! NUMFAR! I hear the loser of this contest gets chained up and has Dru pour holy water on her chest like in What's My Line. She wrote it! Not me! (don't get too excited guys. It could be Mustard Man who loses.) - Rochefort
Woo! How not fair to have a three-way! Between PTL and MSM, there's no contest. I, of course, couldn't vote for David Fury for ANY reason, and Marti is just way cuter. BUT...you threw in Numfar! I gotta go Numfar. Sorry, PTL... :o( - Wisewoman
There was just something so sexy about Numfar's dancing...I just cant help but vote for his awesome moves! - Lyonors
I know Joss is the Mad God, and a vote for Numfar is like a putting a couple of bucks in the collection plate in Church--but I'm Jewish, so that doesn't cut much ice with me. Marti is cuter and her singing aces David's solo and Joss' dancing; and her "I'm not wearing underwear" line will last just as long as "do the dance of joy" in our Buffy lexicon. (Well, for me, anyway.) - cjl
Marti's the cutest, Joss is a joy-dancing god, but the Mustard Stain Man won me over with that little bit in Anya's flashback in "Selfless." What was once a hilarious little scene (especially Buffy's dry "it's not just us" as Finn Mac Cool points out) became a tragic, quixotic quest from the agony of realizing that he had a mustard stain, to the long journey in search of the one drycleaner who could remove the yellow, to the cathartic victory over the forces of chaos and random spills, to the climactic chorus where he thrusts the shirt up toward the sky as if in defiance of the cruel and arbitrary universe that had attempted to destroy his clothing and, by extension, his self-identity. Never has the phrase -- not even when Trick uttered it -- "the clothes make the man" carried so much meaning and pathos. Let us all take a moment of silence in reverence for the Mustard Stain Man, more quixotic than Quixote, more star-crossed than Astrophil and Stella, the man who turned a pique into a picaresque epic. Let us sleep now.... - Random
This was interesting. As these combatants were driving two of the best episodes of BtVS, it seems people gave some serious thought (as serious it can be anyway) of who they would vote for. Me, if you couldn't tell from my pre-game notes, I tend to fall on the side of the Gentlemen. I just feel that they were the most genuinely creepy bad guys on Buffy, period. Exclamation point! Underline. This is nothing to take away from Sweet, whom the majority seem to narrowly prefer. Sweet was a big part of the immensely entertaining hour musical, and he got Dawn to do that thing with her hips. But for me, if you take away the tunes, Sweet would have been run of the mill. On the other hand, if you give everyone their voices back, the Gentlemen still have their strait-jacketed henchman, their weird floaty mode of transportation, and their murderous, surgical modus of operandi. Sweet and his Henchpuppets, (props to HarryParachute for that term, I don't remember seeing it before, but it fits), do rule the day. And why not, he did sell Nero his very first fiddle. Not a long list of comments, but a short list of good ones.
Let's imagine Andrew was tied to a chair and were trying to scare him. Sweet would come off a little like Xander's story about his sad emptiness. "Well you'd have to SING!" "That's not really that scary." "And you'd have to give up your secrets!" "Uh..wow...could I have some more water?" The Gentlemen start OUT the same, but then Xander just has to give up and go "And then they take a knife and CHOP OUT YOUR HEART!" heh heh. So the Gentlemen would win, but then again, Andrew thinks Lex Luther is a good bad guy. So I'm going with Sweet. I mean singing you to death, that's subtle bad guy-ness. - Rochefort
And thanks d'Herblay, for noting my growth as a person, while simutaneously cautioning respect for my prodigious political power. - Rochefort
Sorry, but the Gentlemen would just steal Sweet's voice and have their henchmen hold him down while they cut out his heart. What I'd love to see, however, is a Sweet/Lorne Singing Smackdown! Or Sweet vs. Pylea, of course. He could really turn that dimension upside-down, y'know? But I digress. The Gentlemen could beat Sweet, which is too bad, because I really like his style. - HonorH
The Gentlemen are the only one of Buffy's Badguys that I have had a Nightmare about. Nuff said. Wolfie - Wolfhowl3
So yeah, I posted some semi-serious points on the atpobtvs board as to why Sweet would come out on top. This battle has deep resonance for me, speaking of the Eternal Struggle between All That Which is Sweet and Good against Things Which Float and are Creepy. But I don't want to take up too much space, so I'll summarize as best I can. Everything of import in this confrontation boils down to one irrefutable fact. Sweet made Dawn do That Thing With Her Hips. Some scholars might contest that this is a Creepy Move on the basis of Teenagery. They are Old. Ultimately, however, I am not. Dawn's hips in motion is Sweet and, in being Sweet, Good. Conversely, if the Gentlemen made Dawn do That Thing With Her Hips it would exude Creepy and be Bad, verily so. Therefore, Sweet should set fire to the faces of the Gentlemen with a cattle-prod and gasoline, and they should die like the horrid, horrid Hell-spawned freaks they are. God Bless America. - Harry Parachute
In some ways, a case of fresh, crisp, delicious apples vs. sweet, aromatic succulent oranges. But in another sense, the difference between our contestants may be only in their tactics. The Gentlemen represent the thin line separating savagery and civility, and how losing your voice (which represents your higher brain functions) takes away the coping mechanisms provided by civilization and forces you to fall back on to your instincts. Sweet, on the other hand, is all razzmatazz and stylized articulation, which provide a focus and outlet for deeper emotions unexpressed in normal conversation. Given a choice, I'm reluctantly forced to go with the Gentlemen. Loved Sweet, and Hinton Battle was smooth as blown glass, but when the Gentlemen politely applaud their brother after displaying his catch of the night, it is a genuinely creepy moment for a guy who does not get creeped out easily... - cjl
Not enough voters are under the thrall of the Dark Prince. I think Holtz was hunting down the wrong vampire. He probably would have been much more professionally satisfied if he could have put a beating on Dracula like he did here instead of futilely chasing Angelus and Darla over half of Europe. Dracula wasn't been able to overcome the absence of the Dracu-babes or a bug-eating butt monkey. And Holtz wasn't impressed by showy, gypsy parlor tricks. That, boys and girls, is the story of Holtz and Dracula... bater.
Yay! The polls are back! I didn't see them, so I didn't get to vote for Buffy-bot, and I've been dying to vote for Buffy-bot since this summer. If only her winning could bring her back to life. Maybe if everyone at home claps their hands and believes? Anyway, I vote for Dracula. Euro-trash Dracula was pretty cool (for a Marti Noxon episode). - Rochefort
For Holtz is the Alpha and the Omaga. No other Bad, (Big or Little) aside from Angelus himself, has caused more pain and suffering to our beloved heros. What pain did Dracula cause, turing Xander into a Spider eating Man-Bitch, Pbbbbtttt. Wolfie - Wolfhowl3
Holtz would have that pansy begging for mercy in two seconds. Drac's all bark, no bite. Angelus had bigger fangs (as Buffy could well attest) and Holtz managed to give him a run for his unlife. Puncture that inflated reputation! - HonorH
Not a tough choice -- at least Holtz got off his butt and DID SOMETHING! All Dracula did was talk. Sure, he had sexy vampire babes (a plus in the Dracula column) -- but he was hardly a scary figure, whereas Holtz pinned Justine's hand to the table with pointy objects, trained many normal humans to hunt vampires, nearly whacked Angel, and had the stomach to kill his own vampirified daughter. Dracula just sat there, being pasty and annoying. Holtz takes him out, over and over again, while Dracule continues to reconstitute himself and get staked. - Earl Allison
Bah Holtz never killed anybody but himself. He was after Darla and Angel, and all he can come up with is a bad Bruno Hauptman imitation? Please, he's got nothing on the Dark Prince...bater. - Just me
Holtz, no contest. Eurotrash Dracula was fun, but the Buffyverse version of Drac sounded like he'd been coasting on his rep for the past two centuries. Holtz, on the other hand, took nothing for granted, stayed focused on the mission, and managed to inflict unimaginable pain on our heroes in a variety of ingenious ways, including a JW first: epistolary sabotage. Plus: Keith Szarabajka = cool. - cjl
Wow. My off-the-cuff, gut-feeling, visceral response, which I had nothing really invested in, seems to be part of a landslide. I guess it's not too surprising, though; multiple episodes of even "Angel" create a deeper impression than just one of "Buffy." On the other hand, Rochefort is **praising**Marti**Noxon**! (Kind of.) Perhaps we shouldn't marginalize the lovers ("preferrers"?) of Dracula too much. - d'Herblay
Being the descendant of a toaster oven, and not the descendant of a long line of mystical warriors didn't hurt the Buffybot in this techno blood bath. April, who refused to blackmail her boyfriend by crying, put in a decent showing. The effects of Ted's mini-pizzas and cookies seem to have worn off. Take that salesman! Moloch didn't fare any better. His mastery over the internet seems to have worn off as much as the excitement over 28.8 modems. Heck, I even got a write in vote for the Warren-bot that matches Moloch's total. But the day ultimately belongs to the Buffybot. Now, if she could only solve the mystery of what small breed of humans is going to live in Dawn's class city of the future model, she'd be home free.
April is relentless. Her single-minded focus is terrifying -- I think she may be a Borg. - Flo
April is, though the cruelest month, the kindest robot, and therefore gets my vote. Ok, I'm a sucker for busty brunettes. - d'Herblay
Shucks! I wanted to vote for Warren-bot. After all he didn't try to seduce Willow to the dark side, didn't plan on keeping Joyce in the basement closet, didn't beat up anybody's ex-girlfriend, and he wasn't designed mostly to do naughty things with Spike. He wasn't scary like Moloch, and he wasn't cheerful to the point of being creepy like Ted, April, and RoboBuffy all were. Besides all that, he kept his creator alive for at least an extra half an hour. What more can you ask of a robot? - CW
Gotta go with D"Herb about "perky" brunettes, but April was still too one-dimensional to get my vote. (OK, she was, uh, TWO-dimensional.) Despite my undying admiration for John Ritter's fearless performance (especially those last ten minutes), the most interesting aspect of Ted (episode and characters) was Buffy's reaction to him. Ditto Willow and Moloch. So that leaves everybody's favorite sexbot--the simulation that rocked the nation, the Kama Sutra and Terminator all rolled into one--the Buffybot. You can see that SMG had a lot of fun playing the 'bot, since she so much more fun than the real thing, what with Buffy's rigid moral stances and "burdens of Slayerhood" angst-athons. Bonus points for the pre-programmed Angel insults, digital readouts ("Gay, 1999-present") and calling our boy Rupert "Guyles." - cjl
Oh that Buffybot! Two words: oral fixation. Buffybot wins, hands down. Ew, unfortunate image translation there, sorry. - pr10n
The way Warren programmed in April's little growl just cracks me up, and creeps me out at the same time...gosh, can the fine line between sex and violence get any finer there? But this is a 'bot with a dozen fetishes programmed in, a killer smile, and an obsessive streak that makes Moloch's need-for-love, Ted's need-for-marriage, and the Buffy-bot's need-for-creepy-sex-with-Spike all seem a little tame. Plus, you gotta vote for the one with a mad-love for a psychotic killer. Umm...okay, Buffy-bot comes in a close second there. - Random