What Else is New?

Hi guys! So.... I was watching Buffy. What else is new, right? Actually it's been a pretty good while since I'd watched an episode. I had started rewatching them about 4 weeks ago to do some Buffy quotes back and forth with a pal of mine, seeing as they still air the show where she lives. I had decided I was going to start in at the episode she was at, just to refresh my mind on the quotes, because I don't look them up... I feel like it's cheating, and that may be the Buffy trivia champ in me talking. I have most of the scripts memorized oddly enough. I think I made it through one episode before things in life started going wonky... you know how that goes.
Anyway. Moving right along. I was watching Buffy, only watched the episode HUSH last night, well... actually, around 3ish this morning. Let me just say, NOT an episode to watch before you go to sleep. Not scary, just weird dreams of wrinkly old dudes trying to cut your heart out and you "can't even shout". Anyhowzers, watched the episode, and thought to myself, during the seen where Giles is explaining who the Gentlemen are, you know the one, I thought, well... who ARE the Gentlemen! So, the researcher in me got to wondering if it was simply a tale created from Joss Whedon's exquisite imagination, or if they were REALLY fairy tale monsters.
My results? The "Can't Even Shout" tune, set to "Master of the House" from Les Miserables, is an actual jump rope song that children used to skip rope to! Kinda freaked me out a little... almost like the "Lizzie Borden" rhyme. Creepy. Anyway, there are some parallels with HUSH and another fairytale. If Disney didn't swap and switch the fairytales up to make them kid friendly, basically what you'd have is a Saturday night horror matinee in a literary binding. After looking through a series of different websites, all of which I Googled anything that would lead to the Gentlemen. I finally remembered an old book of my grandmother's I had that was an original copy of Grimms Fairytales... well, not the German version, the after it was translated version. I kept seeing references to a story, in my online research, called The Seven Brothers. If you count the Gentlemen on the show, there are seven of them, hence the reason for needing seven hearts. I finally grabbed the copy of Grimms Fairytales that I had. I probably looked very much like Giles on the series when the realization struck him that he'd seen them before. I grabbed the book, flipped to the Table of Contents, and there, among the yellowed pages and black lettering, staring straight back at me... THE SEVEN BROTHERS. So, I did what any good detective with the last name of Holmes would do. I read it. :o)
The story, was about a poor couple that had 7 sons, and, since humans can never be pleased with what they already have, they wanted a daughter. They finally had a little girl, and she was a sickly little thing. When she was older, the father sent one of the boys to get some water from a spring, and the others decided to go along. Apparently, they took too long for the father's liking and he wished that they were changed into birds(upon researching, some translations say ravens, some translations say cows.) Mine only said BIRDS, so I'm going with birds. So, pops makes this wish, and suddenly all these birds start flying around his head. He's saddened by his mouth speaking before his brain thought. Apparently, back then, all you had to do was wish and it came true... hmmm... I wish I had a million dollars. Ah, well, it was worth a shot. Back to the story. So, dear old dad turned out to be Daddy Dearest. They took care of the birds, and the sister grew up really pretty and healthy. She overheard the townspeople saying one day how pretty she was, but what a shame it was about her brother, which, up until this point, she'd completely forgot she had. She goes to this woman that was supposedly the town witch. She tells the sister that she must stay totally silent for 24 hours to change her brothers back to their natural form. So to ensure that she does, the sister asks the witch to take away her voice... UH OH! Gee... Little Mermaid much? So, the voice is gone, and the sister goes back to the house, which is oddly enough no longer inhabited by her parents, not specified as to why not. She lets the birds out of the cage, and here is where the Grimms version differ from all the rest of the translation. The witch sneaks in, changes the brothers into creatures(again not specified what kind), gets two of them to hold down the sister while the witch cuts out the poor girl's heart as the remaining brothers look on smiling.
So see? Similarities, but I liked Joss' version a lot better. Plus... to make the silence last longer that five minutes, it was just a genius episode. Not as good as ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, which will ALWAYS be my favorite, but I LOVE HUSH! It was just creative. My opinion, it set the bar pretty high for a series on a network that, at the time, few people had even heard of. I need Joss' mind!
Here's to an exciting blog adventure on the next go around guys! :o) Catch ya'll later, and take care!