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The follow-up to the original
Watcher's Guide - still the essential Buffy
non-fiction book - Volume 2 takes an in-depth look at Buffy's
third and fourth seasons.
Yet despite having ten more
episodes to cover, this second volume doesn't deliver the good in the same
way as the original.
One of the few faults with The
Watcher's Guide was the authors' tendency to overuse quotes from the
show, a habit that was also seen in The Monster Book.
Volume 2 takes this even further with pages of quotes,
mainly of which are nowhere near as good as the authors seem to think.
The character guide and 'The Pain' sub-section are particularly annoying on
this front.
Also annoying is the book's
repeating of The Monster Book's constant repetition of
facts, which also extends to the constant use of the same phrases - so
Parker is constantly referred to as "stinky Parker", which soon
got on my nerves.
As with the first volume, a
huge chunk of the book is devoted to the televised episodes, and things pick
up here. Unlike Virgin's decidedly average Slayer
there's no analysing each episode over a dozen or more silly headings and
the book's official status means that as with the first volume there are
plenty of cut lines given. On the downside, some of the pop-culture
explanations are very basic, while some that might
have been explained are omitted entirely.
Profiles and interviews with
the cast and crew follow - some are little more than brief bios but others,
often the ones with recurring rather than regular characters, are more
substantial.
This leads into a section on
the Buffy production process which promises a look at The
I In Team, but which was rather disappointing to me. Anyone
expecting the sort of approach that the Doctor Who
Handbook series (or even the Lively Arts
documentary) used will also be disappointed that this is mostly a collection
of interviews with the crew and production team that just happened to take
place during the making of that particular episode. Far
too much of the information isn't really relevant to Buffy,
let alone following the production process through to the transmitted
episode. Following this are
brief sections on some of the bands featured on the show and some of the
merchandise.
The amount of information in The
Watcher's Guide Volume 2 means that there's plenty of good stuff here,
but it could have done with some pruning - and also some editing since there
are some frustrating errors and typos throughout. The lack of an index
in a book of over 470 pages is also an annoying ommission.
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