Paraphrasing China Miéville in the title can be a good way of starting a post I have absolutely no idea what to fill with. I mean, everything there is to write about this, I’ve already written. Or at least the things I’m bright (no, not atheist, although I am that, too; I don’t use stupid euphemisms like that) enough to see, and skilled enough in English to formulate.

Perhaps I should begin with the only thing I took notes of when watching the episode? Which is that this is, to the best of my knowledge, the first reference to “Night of the Comet”, a B-flick from the mid-80s that supposedly inspired Joss Whedon when he created Buffy. If I remember this correctly, there was something about a comet turning people into either gas or zombies, and a few survivors who had to kill said zombies to survive. And amongst these survivors, what else do we find, than a cheerleader, who apparently finds an UZi she uses (ooh, see what I [inadvertedly] did there?) to take out zombies. I guess everyone sees where that inspiration ended up.

Anyway, as for the episode itself, it had two highlights, I think. The first was Connor’s scene in the church, where he during his little monologue to the still comatose Cordelia displayed more insight into himself than I would have thought him to. (Funny thing, this, how it seems like I’m watching this for the first time, when it is in fact the second.) I won’t bother to rehash all the stuff he said, seeing as I’ve said most of it before, but I can say that the character sure needed that. I mean, not everyone’ll be able to remember Connor’s rather special circumstances when they judge his actions, and many might perhaps because of this think, based on their own experiences and their own morals, that he behaves badly. Which is a kinda invalid way of thinking.

The second highlught of the episode was the little skirmish between Angel and Jasmine, and particularly the verbal part of this. I won’t go into details there, either, but I will say that I’m mostly with Angel on this one. If you take away humans’ ability to choose (no matter how limited this ability might or might not be) you also take away much of what makes them human, reducing them to mindless meatsacks. And that ain’t too cool to quote Jimi Hendrix.

Oh well. Off to watch that last episode. Which has commentaries by Tim Minear. Looking forward to seeing what he’s like.