Continuity: Wow, you're really bent out of shape about this, huh?
Couch Baron: Well, what do you expect? You used to give a shit about this show.
Continuity: Now, I realize it may be hard to believe, but everything's going to be wrapped up in an explanation that makes sense. I swear on all that's good and holy.
Couch Baron: Well, that's a huge relief. Shake on it?
Continuity: Uh, what?
Couch Baron: A handshake, to seal the deal.
Continuity: Er, I really don't think that's necessary. How about I just give you a hearty thumbs-up?
Couch Baron: I knew it. Continuity is dead, and you're the First Evil.
Morphy!Continuity: Well, congratulations, you figured it out. I'm surprised you didn't shake your fist at the sky and yell, "You bastards! You killed Continuity!"
Couch Baron: Do you ever shut up?

Well, that explains a lot. I'm definitely instituting a handshake policy with all personified literary devices with whom I hang out in the future. And I think that would be a good policy for ME to establish among its staff -- I'd be willing to bet no one's touched Joss in quite some time. Not to mention Rebecca Rand Kirshner. I really wasn't planning to depart into full-scale bitterness here, but I rarely get such a clear shot at the current season, so why the hell not? I mean, this once was my favorite show. I actually used to get excited in the hour or so leading up to eight o'clock on Tuesdays. But now, all I can say is that what I considered to be one of the smartest and most well-written shows on television is now an unrecognizable steaming heap of dreck that makes me almost catatonically utter "a wizard did it" about twenty times an episode just to make sense of the plot developments while shivering from the copious amounts of liquid that flew out of the TV when the Buffy shark hit the water after its quadruple twisting flip of Dawn, magic addiction, Slayers in training (to mangle the Slayer mythology almost as much as they mangle their accents), and Spike: 100\% less snark, 100\% fewer clothes!