Buffy the Vampire Slayer
“Shadow”
Broadcast November 21, 2000
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon .... Alexander 'Xander' Harris
Alyson Hannigan .... Willow Rosenberg
Marc Blucas .... Riley Finn
Michelle Trachtenberg .... Dawn Summers
Amber Benson .... Tara
Anthony Head .... Rupert Giles
James Marsters .... Spike/William the Bloody
Kristine Sutherland .... Joyce Summers
Mercedes McNab .... Harmony Kendall
Emma Caulfield .... Anya Emerson
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Joyce Summers, Buffy’s Mom, undergoes a CAT scan while Buffy comforts Dawn in the hospital waiting room.
At the Magic Box, Giles’ shop, Giles’ new yellow pages ad competes for attention with the gang’s worries about Riley’s avoidance of them all. Plus, they’re getting nowhere finding info on Buffy’s latest demon nemesis.
Her name is Glori, described by Buffy as being “a lot like Cordelia,” the Buffy, not the Shakespeare, character. Glori tries on new pumps in her swell apartment and receives a long-lost incantation from a toadying demon minion.
ACT I
Riley lets himself into Buffy’s house and catches Spike sniffing Buffy’s clothes. Spike taunts Riley by saying Buffy’s losing faith in him-- after all, she didn’t tell him they’re at the hospital.
Riley comes to the hospital, where Buffy says she didn’t want to tell him until she knew more about Joyce’s possible cancer. The cancer looks bad. Joyce has “low-grade glioma,” a tumor in the left hemisphere, her doctor says. And it’s going to kill her.
While the gang researches the demon, Glori herself walks in, unrecognized by any of them, buys the magic items she needs for her recently-acquired incantation, and walks out.
ACT II
Joyce’s illness may kill her quickly-- she may soon lose vision, muscle control. They may be able o remove her tumor, however. Even if it’s not operable, she might recover, however. The doctor asks a numbed Buffy a series of questions about habits, exposure to carcinogens, etc. The brain surgeon is sent away by charming young Dr. Ben, who knows Buffy needs a break. He recommends she go out and get some rest while Joyce sleeps.
Buffy wants to find a magic spell to fix Joyce, an idea Riley finds unlikely. She runs off, leaving Dawn with Riley.
Anya discovers that Giles sold the items needed for Glori’s conjuration spell-- meaning they put the items in the demon’s hand, and Buffy is going to be mad.
Riley takes Dawn to the park, where she shares tales of her mother’s support when she moved to Sunnydale and had no friends. She brings Riley down by saying what a great and safe guy is, compared with exciting Angel, who made Buffy all emotional.
Willow and Giles don’t think Buffy’s likely to find a magical spell for Joyce’s brain cancer. The mystical and medical were not meant to mix, Giles says. More immediately, they reveal that Glori now has the gear for her spell, which will conjure a big cobra demon. Buffy expects it to come for Dawn, whom she knows the demonic forces are looking for.
Buffy interrupts Glori’s conjuration at the reptile house at the zoo, tussles with Glori and gets knocked cold. As planned, Glori steals a cobra and makes a giant cobra demon of it.
ACT III
Buffy runs while Glori orders the cobra demon to find “the key,” and tell her where it is. (We know the key has been transformed into Dawn.)
At the Magic Box, Xander explains to Riley that Buffy needs to fight something, which explains her running off alone. But why has Riley been such a loner? Riley wanders off.
Buffy knows Dawn will head for the Magic Box after school, so it’s important they keep the snake from her. Meantime, Buffy waits for news at the hospital.
Riley, meanwhile, goes drinking, deliberately picks up a vampire, and appears to let her bite him before staking her at the last minute.
The cobra demon manages to follow Dawn’s scent to the Magic Box, barges in, appears to memorize Dawn’s appearance, and turns and runs for Glori.
ACT IV
The chase is on for the cobra demon, which Buffy can’t allow to get back to Glori. Finally Buffy catches it in the park, jumps atop it, and beats it to death with her fists.
Dawn is safe for now, but back at the hospital, Joyce says she needs to talk to Dawn alone and tell her how sick she is. And Buffy can’t let out her sadness, even for Riley, because her family needs her strength.
NOTES
"Shadow" earnestly begins what may be the most adult subject matter Buffy has ever tackled, that of cancer and the deadly sickness of a parent. Over the next several episodes we get to see Buffy separated from her Scooby Gang not because of mood or destiny, but by simple familial obligation. All of Buffy's reactions, such as her dull response to the doctor's questions, seem dead on. I appreciated her need to just hear what the doctor had to say; she's tired of sitting.
But of course, this is still Buffy, so the show gets to tackle with the question of what to do with a possibly terminal cancer in a world where a magic spell Willow cast gave Angel an entire soul back. Buffy wants to know if there's a spell to cure cancer, and right away the gang is skeptical-- why? Ultimately, because to allow her to find a magic cure would complicate the world entirely too much. It would beg the question of why anyone dies of cancer or any other disease, and any ramifications of the mixture of magic and medicine would sling the show into the realm of science fiction rather than fantasy. So Buffy is bound to run up against a strong taboo that keeps the show from dealing with the question.
Meanwhile, Riley, whom I've said before is doomed, doomed, doomed, has started skating right off the edge of sanity even without the benefit of a brain tumor. Whereas in normal adult dramas the boyfriend feeling sorry for himself would simply go pick up some nameless bar girl, here Riley picks up a vampire. But there's more at work here than the betrayal of trysting with Buffy's enemies: Riley seems to have taken Spike's words to heart and wants to become a vampire himself. Maybe. He can't go through with it just now, staking the vampire girl rather than drinking from her, in turn, to become a vampire himself. Pity, though, because Riley first appeared last season as a completely normal, together guy, even after he was revealed to be a spy. Blessed with the super-soldier powers of Captain America, now we get to see what might happen to Cap if you took his serum away. Of course, Riley happens to be stuck with Buffy the super-hero for a girlfriend, and she seems to have little use for him lately except as a babysitter. So he's suicidal. But I'm trying to imagine Marc Blucas as a vampire and nothing good is coming.
We can fault Spike with putting many of these ideas in Riley's head, but what do we want, Spike is resolutely evil whether that gang let him wander around unimpeded or not. Now, Spike is also in love with Buffy, a development played entirely for comedy around Spike's pitiful crush. One does wonder why, as Spike asks, hasn't Buffy ever barred him from her family's house, but it can't be love. God, what a mistake that would be.
Incidentally, Glori the Demon has got to be one of the cleverest creations the show has ever seen, a petite blonde with a sort of goofy, giddy delivery who nevertheless intends to destroy the world if she can just find "The Key," which has been transformed into Dawn Summers. It will be a pity to see Glori go.
QUOTES
Spike: “It’s a predator thing, nothing wrong with it, know your enemy’s scent, whet the appetite for the hunt. (Sniff.) That’s the stuff-- Slayer musk, bitter and aggravating. Grrr.”
Xander: “Just once I’d like to run into a cult of bunny worshippers.”
Anya: “Great. Thank you very much for those nightmares.”
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Primeval
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 4, Episode “Primeval”
Broadcast Tuesday, May 16, 2000
CAST
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Anya: Emma Caulfield
Tara: Amber Benson
Adam: George Hertzberg
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Riley has come to super-cyborg Adam because, it turns out, Professor Maggie Walsh implanted a behavior modification chip in Riley’s chest. Now Adam has learned to manipulate the chip such that Riley retains his consciousness but must obey his every order (sit, walk, talk, don’t talk, etc.) But sooner or later, he says, Riley will come around to Adam’s side.
ACT 1
As Adam tells it, “Mother” (Maggie Walsh) meant for Adam and Riley to rule together in a new empire of demons and humans, sort of a Romulus and Remus of the Hellmouth. Spike, meanwhile, wants Adam to come through and take the chip out of his head, but Adam won’t give yet: Spike was supposed to deliver the Slayer by feeding her fake computer date through Willow and then isolating her from her friends so she came alone. Unfortunately, Spike succeeded in isolating Buffy (he sewed viciousness between the Scooby Gang) but before Willow gave her the data. So there’s a flaw. But once they get her here, they hope she will exacerbate a war Adam intends to set off between the humans and the demons so there will be effective losses on both sides.
But Willow’s still working on the computer data, and Xander is moping around after he found out his friends think he’s a loser.
When Buffy comes looking for Adam at his underground cave, Adam has taken Riley to the control center of the cyborg’s plan: a Secret Lab underneath the Initiative. There, Riley gets a shock: Adam’s helpers in the labs are the re-animated corpses of Maggie Walsh and Initiative Agent Forrest. Walsh is a pure zombie, merely a worker. Forrest is more, conscious, even ironic.
ACT 2
Buffy runs into Spike and realizes knows more about her falling out with Willow than he should. Meanwhile, the disk Willow has been trying to crack suddenly decrypts itself, as if it were set to unravel after Willow struggled with it for a while.
The whole Scooby Gang meets up and Buffy reveals that they’ve been duped by Spike, who must be working for Adam. They sort of fumble past all the mean things they were “led to” say.
According to Willow’s information, Adam is going to build an army of evil cyborgs like himself. Buffy knows she’s being lured into the Initiative for the war that’s bound to break out when all the demons in the Initiative cells are undoubtedly loosed. Adam will have his pick of the corpses left. The Gang needs to warn the Initiative.
Adam’s power source is a uranium core near his spine. That’ll be hard to get. The best bet would be Sumerian paralysis spell, but a witch must cast the spell, and while Willow’s a witch, only Giles speaks Sumerian. Xander says, heck, too bad you can’t be a “combo Buffy.” The make some plans, unseen by us.
Having formulated their plan, the gang rappels down an elevator shaft into the Initiative, where an armed unit waits for and immediately captures them all.
ACT 3
Adam has decided Spike is a complete disappointment, having failed to deliver the Slayer alone. He orders Zombie Forrest to kill Spike, but the vampire manages to escape.
Buffy pleads with Colonel MacNamara, who refuses to believe that Adam has a secret laboratory underneath the Initiative.
Buffy is tired of being treated like an amateur by the military. “This is not your business, it’s mine... you’re all in way over your heads, messing with primeval forces you have no comprehension of. I’m the Slayer. You’re playing on my turf.” The Colonel’s not buying.
Just then Adam sets al the demons free, blowing the electricity in the whole station. The slaughter begins, and Buffy and the Gang escape their guard to look for a place to do their planned spell.
Spike makes his way through the carnage as demon and human armies destroy one another. Buffy and the Scooby Gang choose their target and head for Maggie Walsh’s 314 section, ducking, dodging and fighting their way through the firefight.
Buffy leaves Giles, Buffy and Xander to head for Adam’s central lab while the three set up their spell.
Almost immediately, Buffy finds the captured Riley and is grabbed by Forrest. Adam stops in to order Forrest and zombie Professor Walsh to “Kill her.” Zombie Walsh closes on Buffy with a whizzing bonecutter.
ACT 4
While Buffy fi9ghts Forrest and Walsh, Riley escapes Adam’s yoke by (and here’s something I never thought I’d see on television) slicing the controller chip off his own ribcage with a shard if broken glass.
That done, somehow blowing up Forrest with sparks and a pressurized oxygen tank is almost anticlimactic, although Forrest’s head flies off nicely.
But still-- there’s a showdown left.
Willow, Xander and Giles chant their spell, each sending their own unique facets to their “avatar,” Buffy.
When Buffy breaks Adam’s spiky arm, he responds by revealing that he can transform his right arm into a chain gun. But by now the gang’s spell has kicked in: the spirits of all three-- Xander’s fighting skill (not as great as Buffy’s, but substantial), Giles’ language and Willow’s magic-- take over Buffy’s body. Their power is magnified to the Nth degree, allowing Buffy to transform missiles into doves, to float in midair, to speed up her body such that she can avoid any blow. All this and Linda Blair eyes. As a female choir harmonizes, Combo Buffy (“You can never hope to grasp the source of our power,”) handily bats Adam, driving him back and then wrenching his nuclear battery out of his torso. And just like that, Adam dies.
Spike, meanwhile, avoids getting killed by saving the Scooby Gang from a demon that tries to bust in and kill them while they awaken from their casting trance.
We’re left with an epilogue, of sorts. Colonel MacNamara meets with a secret government organization to debrief as they watch the final stages of the human/demon battle. A government official says, “Once the prototype took control of the complex, our soldiers suffered a 40% casualty rate,” and would have lost more if not for “a deserter and some civilian insurrectionists... I trust the irony of that is not lost on any of us.” The plan of the Initiative-- to study demons for the military uses, is hereby abandoned. The demons cannot be controlled.
NOTES
With "Primeval", Season 4 comes to an end an episode early in a thoroughly satisfying way. (Next episode, the last of the season, is "Coda," a denouement of sorts.) What we have in this episode is a surprising cap on a shaky season. We've seen the Scooby Gang stretched in their own directions as the creators dealt with what to do with a bunch of high school friends now graduated. They end with a re-affirmation of the power of friendship, as good a theme as any with which to defeat a demonic cyborg.
And what a way to eliminate the main villain of the whole season in one fell swoop! "Primeval " is a complete reversal from last year’s season windup, with its funereal march towards the Mayor’s Ascension. When Buffy and her friends decide they must hang together rather than hang separately, Adam is dispatched fairly easily.
There are a lot of very cool moments in this script, by which I mean, literally, cool moments-- Adam’s arm-mounted chain gun, for instance, is just a bizarre element and fits with Adam as a curious mesh of sci-fi and magic. This comes in the same episode as the delightfully creepy worker-zombies, the scariest of which is Lindsay Crouse, somehow convinced to return as a lobotomized, shambling corpses animated via a bunch of tubes that pump fluid in and out of her pasty flesh.
I do wonder, though, is really what Maggie Walsh had planned? (Adam says it is, "Except she expected to be alive for it.") Her "veddy clever plan" was to use Adam to draw humans and demons into a big enough war that she'd have enough parts to make an army of cyborgs? That sounds like Adam's plan to me, but I've never been all that sure just how crazy Adam was.
Spike continues to amuse. Unlike Angel, Spike has no soul, so he's bent towards evil, we know that. But as viewers, we can't help being fond of the guy with all the best lines, and somehow we hope he'll escape death. While together, Adam and Spike are actually pretty funny-- I love Adam turning with irritation at Spike when the vampire says, “So, um, we’ll do this chip thing when I get back.” George Hertzberg, the actor inside all the Adam makeup, has a great challenge in drawing humor from his monotone character, and somehow he manages to register annoyance without breaking character.
Buffy's transformation is a shocking trick, and it's especially interesting that Buffy, who last episode reminded us "there's no ancient prophesy of the Slayer and her friends" here disappears completely under a combined possession by Xander, Willow and Giles. She gives her body to them, as she has always served mankind, and they use it remarkably well.
I love the carnage of the battle, too, the nice use of slow motion as vampires, soldiers and demons pitch one another through the air and blow one another up. Wisely, we see the rest of the battle play out in flashback, or its video equivalent, while the government winds up the story.
What strikes me as odd is the curious cheapness of the room in which the “government meeting” takes place at the end. This is one of those rooms I haven’t seen except in remarkably cheap porn; a bunch of actors sit at a table in a room in the middle of nothing-- nothing, no walls, no windows, just the black curtains of a soundstage. I understand that the point was to save the money it would take to build or hire a board room set, but the effect is jarring given the believability of the Initiative set, as men and vehicles explode across a vast space.
So we're left with no Initiative and no Adam, and the Scooby Gang repaired. Nice. Not as operatic as last season's finale, but satisfying and effective nonetheless, and almost refreshing.
QUOTES
Xander: “Does anyone else miss the Mayor; ‘I just wanta be a big snake?’”
Season 4, Episode “Primeval”
Broadcast Tuesday, May 16, 2000
CAST
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Anya: Emma Caulfield
Tara: Amber Benson
Adam: George Hertzberg
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Riley has come to super-cyborg Adam because, it turns out, Professor Maggie Walsh implanted a behavior modification chip in Riley’s chest. Now Adam has learned to manipulate the chip such that Riley retains his consciousness but must obey his every order (sit, walk, talk, don’t talk, etc.) But sooner or later, he says, Riley will come around to Adam’s side.
ACT 1
As Adam tells it, “Mother” (Maggie Walsh) meant for Adam and Riley to rule together in a new empire of demons and humans, sort of a Romulus and Remus of the Hellmouth. Spike, meanwhile, wants Adam to come through and take the chip out of his head, but Adam won’t give yet: Spike was supposed to deliver the Slayer by feeding her fake computer date through Willow and then isolating her from her friends so she came alone. Unfortunately, Spike succeeded in isolating Buffy (he sewed viciousness between the Scooby Gang) but before Willow gave her the data. So there’s a flaw. But once they get her here, they hope she will exacerbate a war Adam intends to set off between the humans and the demons so there will be effective losses on both sides.
But Willow’s still working on the computer data, and Xander is moping around after he found out his friends think he’s a loser.
When Buffy comes looking for Adam at his underground cave, Adam has taken Riley to the control center of the cyborg’s plan: a Secret Lab underneath the Initiative. There, Riley gets a shock: Adam’s helpers in the labs are the re-animated corpses of Maggie Walsh and Initiative Agent Forrest. Walsh is a pure zombie, merely a worker. Forrest is more, conscious, even ironic.
ACT 2
Buffy runs into Spike and realizes knows more about her falling out with Willow than he should. Meanwhile, the disk Willow has been trying to crack suddenly decrypts itself, as if it were set to unravel after Willow struggled with it for a while.
The whole Scooby Gang meets up and Buffy reveals that they’ve been duped by Spike, who must be working for Adam. They sort of fumble past all the mean things they were “led to” say.
According to Willow’s information, Adam is going to build an army of evil cyborgs like himself. Buffy knows she’s being lured into the Initiative for the war that’s bound to break out when all the demons in the Initiative cells are undoubtedly loosed. Adam will have his pick of the corpses left. The Gang needs to warn the Initiative.
Adam’s power source is a uranium core near his spine. That’ll be hard to get. The best bet would be Sumerian paralysis spell, but a witch must cast the spell, and while Willow’s a witch, only Giles speaks Sumerian. Xander says, heck, too bad you can’t be a “combo Buffy.” The make some plans, unseen by us.
Having formulated their plan, the gang rappels down an elevator shaft into the Initiative, where an armed unit waits for and immediately captures them all.
ACT 3
Adam has decided Spike is a complete disappointment, having failed to deliver the Slayer alone. He orders Zombie Forrest to kill Spike, but the vampire manages to escape.
Buffy pleads with Colonel MacNamara, who refuses to believe that Adam has a secret laboratory underneath the Initiative.
Buffy is tired of being treated like an amateur by the military. “This is not your business, it’s mine... you’re all in way over your heads, messing with primeval forces you have no comprehension of. I’m the Slayer. You’re playing on my turf.” The Colonel’s not buying.
Just then Adam sets al the demons free, blowing the electricity in the whole station. The slaughter begins, and Buffy and the Gang escape their guard to look for a place to do their planned spell.
Spike makes his way through the carnage as demon and human armies destroy one another. Buffy and the Scooby Gang choose their target and head for Maggie Walsh’s 314 section, ducking, dodging and fighting their way through the firefight.
Buffy leaves Giles, Buffy and Xander to head for Adam’s central lab while the three set up their spell.
Almost immediately, Buffy finds the captured Riley and is grabbed by Forrest. Adam stops in to order Forrest and zombie Professor Walsh to “Kill her.” Zombie Walsh closes on Buffy with a whizzing bonecutter.
ACT 4
While Buffy fi9ghts Forrest and Walsh, Riley escapes Adam’s yoke by (and here’s something I never thought I’d see on television) slicing the controller chip off his own ribcage with a shard if broken glass.
That done, somehow blowing up Forrest with sparks and a pressurized oxygen tank is almost anticlimactic, although Forrest’s head flies off nicely.
But still-- there’s a showdown left.
Willow, Xander and Giles chant their spell, each sending their own unique facets to their “avatar,” Buffy.
When Buffy breaks Adam’s spiky arm, he responds by revealing that he can transform his right arm into a chain gun. But by now the gang’s spell has kicked in: the spirits of all three-- Xander’s fighting skill (not as great as Buffy’s, but substantial), Giles’ language and Willow’s magic-- take over Buffy’s body. Their power is magnified to the Nth degree, allowing Buffy to transform missiles into doves, to float in midair, to speed up her body such that she can avoid any blow. All this and Linda Blair eyes. As a female choir harmonizes, Combo Buffy (“You can never hope to grasp the source of our power,”) handily bats Adam, driving him back and then wrenching his nuclear battery out of his torso. And just like that, Adam dies.
Spike, meanwhile, avoids getting killed by saving the Scooby Gang from a demon that tries to bust in and kill them while they awaken from their casting trance.
We’re left with an epilogue, of sorts. Colonel MacNamara meets with a secret government organization to debrief as they watch the final stages of the human/demon battle. A government official says, “Once the prototype took control of the complex, our soldiers suffered a 40% casualty rate,” and would have lost more if not for “a deserter and some civilian insurrectionists... I trust the irony of that is not lost on any of us.” The plan of the Initiative-- to study demons for the military uses, is hereby abandoned. The demons cannot be controlled.
NOTES
With "Primeval", Season 4 comes to an end an episode early in a thoroughly satisfying way. (Next episode, the last of the season, is "Coda," a denouement of sorts.) What we have in this episode is a surprising cap on a shaky season. We've seen the Scooby Gang stretched in their own directions as the creators dealt with what to do with a bunch of high school friends now graduated. They end with a re-affirmation of the power of friendship, as good a theme as any with which to defeat a demonic cyborg.
And what a way to eliminate the main villain of the whole season in one fell swoop! "Primeval " is a complete reversal from last year’s season windup, with its funereal march towards the Mayor’s Ascension. When Buffy and her friends decide they must hang together rather than hang separately, Adam is dispatched fairly easily.
There are a lot of very cool moments in this script, by which I mean, literally, cool moments-- Adam’s arm-mounted chain gun, for instance, is just a bizarre element and fits with Adam as a curious mesh of sci-fi and magic. This comes in the same episode as the delightfully creepy worker-zombies, the scariest of which is Lindsay Crouse, somehow convinced to return as a lobotomized, shambling corpses animated via a bunch of tubes that pump fluid in and out of her pasty flesh.
I do wonder, though, is really what Maggie Walsh had planned? (Adam says it is, "Except she expected to be alive for it.") Her "veddy clever plan" was to use Adam to draw humans and demons into a big enough war that she'd have enough parts to make an army of cyborgs? That sounds like Adam's plan to me, but I've never been all that sure just how crazy Adam was.
Spike continues to amuse. Unlike Angel, Spike has no soul, so he's bent towards evil, we know that. But as viewers, we can't help being fond of the guy with all the best lines, and somehow we hope he'll escape death. While together, Adam and Spike are actually pretty funny-- I love Adam turning with irritation at Spike when the vampire says, “So, um, we’ll do this chip thing when I get back.” George Hertzberg, the actor inside all the Adam makeup, has a great challenge in drawing humor from his monotone character, and somehow he manages to register annoyance without breaking character.
Buffy's transformation is a shocking trick, and it's especially interesting that Buffy, who last episode reminded us "there's no ancient prophesy of the Slayer and her friends" here disappears completely under a combined possession by Xander, Willow and Giles. She gives her body to them, as she has always served mankind, and they use it remarkably well.
I love the carnage of the battle, too, the nice use of slow motion as vampires, soldiers and demons pitch one another through the air and blow one another up. Wisely, we see the rest of the battle play out in flashback, or its video equivalent, while the government winds up the story.
What strikes me as odd is the curious cheapness of the room in which the “government meeting” takes place at the end. This is one of those rooms I haven’t seen except in remarkably cheap porn; a bunch of actors sit at a table in a room in the middle of nothing-- nothing, no walls, no windows, just the black curtains of a soundstage. I understand that the point was to save the money it would take to build or hire a board room set, but the effect is jarring given the believability of the Initiative set, as men and vehicles explode across a vast space.
So we're left with no Initiative and no Adam, and the Scooby Gang repaired. Nice. Not as operatic as last season's finale, but satisfying and effective nonetheless, and almost refreshing.
QUOTES
Xander: “Does anyone else miss the Mayor; ‘I just wanta be a big snake?’”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Freshman
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 4
Premiere!
Episode: “ The Freshman” (October 5, 1999)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Buffy the Vampire Slayer goes to college-- can she survive the experience?
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Oz: Seth Green
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Prof. Maggie Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
SYNOPSIS
Prologue:
We open in a very familiar place, with Buffy and Willow waiting for a new vampire to rise and passing the time by looking over their college course catalogs (they're going to be attending the heretofore nonexistent UC Sunnydale.) Buffy, it appears, has wasted an awful lot of time, and is left with a dearth of decent courses to pick from. On the positive side, Buffy and Willow are going to be taking psych together. They chatter excitedly about their upcoming freshman year (for instance, Buffy's going to have to resume using a secret identity, but she promises that all this college stuff cannot "take the edge off my slaying.") A vampire rises behind them, sees they are in fact on a vampire stake-out, and wanders away without the two ever noticing.
Act I
Buffy arrives at UCSD and feels immediately overwhelmed by the thousands of students who all seem to know where they're going, except. It doesn't get any better when Willow appears, doing far better. As a matter of fact, this place is Willow Heaven, especially the gargantuan library. All Buffy can do is remark that it would be neat if Giles could be librarian there.
The next gauntlet to run is the bookstore, where Buffy immediately drops two heavy books on the head of a cute guy. But whereas once upon a time she would've been able to wrap this guy around for her finger, this is college, where the guy, a Teaching Assistant, immediately ignores her and begins to pick up on Willow.
At her dorm, Buffy has a roommate, the short-haired, utterly normal Kathy, who appears to be really nice, but horrifies Buffy by hanging a huge Celine Dion poster on the wall. And she snores.
It gets worse. Buffy goes into a pop-culture class, hoping to register for it afterwards, and is horribly humiliated by the Professor, who chooses to make some sort of sadistic example of her.
Finally, she gets to Professor Walsh's psychology class, which Willow and cute TA are taking. Professor Walsh, who says she goes by either Maggie or "the evil bitch monster of death," will be tough, but at least doesn't scream.
That night, Buffy meets Eddy, a Nice Guy. He's taking the same psychology course that apparently everyone else is, and they vow to speak again. But the moment she's gone, he's killed by college vampires.
Act II
The UCSD vampires have a neat gimmick: once they kill a kid, they empty out his dorm room, take all this stuff, and leave and note about “not being able to take the pressure.” But Buffy knows that Eddy has not actually left, because when she searches his room, she finds his copy of Of Human Bondage, which Eddy referred to as his "security blanket."
Buffy goes back to Giles’ place for advice and finds a lovely young British woman, Olivia, wandering the house in one of Giles asserts, and Giles himself in a bathrobe. When Buffy tells Giles she could use some help, Giles hears her synopsis (student missing, could be vampires), and says that she needs to learn to rely on herself more.
That night, in one of the many gigantic expanses of poorly lit foliage on the campus of UCSD, Buffy meets and kills the vampirized Eddy. But she's walked right into a confrontation with the blond sorority vampire I’ll call “Yellow,” and the unbelievable happens: Yellow brutally and quickly kicks Buffy's ass.
Act III
While the vampires gloat, Buffy refuses to go to her friends, who seem to be having too much fun for her to interrupt them with vampire hunting. She goes home and finds that her mom has filled her room packing rates (temporarily, she is assured) and leaves once more.
At her dorm room, the vampires have removed all of her stuff and left one of those "I'm getting out of here" notes.
Finally, Buffy finds her way to her high school hangout, the Bronze where she runs into none other than Xander, her old high school friend. Xander, who was supposed to be on cross-country trip to America, ran out of money and is now home, broke and paying rent to his parents. Xander listens to her story and tells her that whatever she feels like, she should know that she is still his hero. He decides to help her find the UCSD vampires.
At the UCSD library, Buffy and Xander discover that these vampires have been killing freshmen for nearly 20 years, and are holed up in a conveniently abandoned fraternity house. They confirm this by spying on the vampires, and after Xander retreats to go get Buffy's weapons, Buffy falls through the skylight and straight into the vampires’ laps.
Act IV
Buffy is already getting soundly thrashed once again by the time Xander finds Oz and Willow. The three hurry to her rescue, but Buffy manages to do well even without her weapons, and by the time the gang arrives, she has dispatched the vampires. The only thing left is for Giles, also suddenly succumbing to a change of heart, to come running up with his own set of weapons. And so begins a new life for the Slayer Gang.
Not far away, a vampire wanders the trees suddenly he is shut down with a TASER stunned weapon. Out of the trees stepped what appear to be paramilitary vampire hunters.
NOTES
Really, all this episode does is transition Buffy into her new surroundings. Thus the story is very simple, because it has to accomplish only one thing: just as she did last season, Buffy must begin far from where she needs to be, and through personal strength, she must get there.
Of course just as the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampires Slayer established the show as a working allegory for the high school experience, the fourth season premiere of Buffy marches onto new but logical ground: this is the college experience, and luckily there's just as much opportunity for horrible allegory here as there was in high school.
I think almost anybody can relate to what Buffy goes through in this episode. She finished high school at the absolute top of her game: lauded by her classmates as a hero and protector, she now comes to the University and finds that not only is she no one, but she's in over her head. Sarah Michelle Keller is convincing as a girl who walks onto a campus teeming with college students like she's one of those doomed soldiers at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan.
And of course, since Buffy TVS acts out all of its anxieties, this means that at least one professor screams at her, one cute boy refers to her as "Willow's friend," and one fairly bush league vampire gives her a black eye.
I can already tell that Joss Whedon has as much of a feel for the inherent weirdness and even inanity of college as he did for high school. One of the funniest moments in the whole episode is when we see the vampires keeping a running tally on the posters they’ve stolen from the freshmen they kill. So far, Gustav Klimt's “The Kiss” is beating out Monet. "Freshman," the head vampire says. "They're so predictable." This is just wonderful.
Final note: Professor Walsh is played by none other than Lindsay Crouse, the fine, hypnotic actress who starred in David Mamet's House of Games. Obviously, she's going to play a big part, and Buffy could not have done better.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
Willow: Anyway, Professor Walsh, she's great, she’s supposed to be, like, world renowned.
Buffy: How you get to be renowned? I mean, like, do you have to be nowned the first?
Willow: Yes. First there's a painful nowning process.
“It's like this force, this penetrating force, and I can just feel my mind opening up, you know, and this place just thrusts into it and spurts knowledge into it. Sorry, that sentence ended up a different place from where it started.”
--Willow, on education
Xander: Buffy, this is all about fear. It's understandable, but you can't let it control you. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to anger. Wait -- hold on. Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to the dark side. Wait, no. First you get the women. Then you get the money. Then you -- OK, can we forget that?
Buffy: Thanks for the dadaesque pep talk. I feel much more abstract now.
“Does Buffy have a history of emotional problems? Because on my request form, I was pretty specific about a stable nonsmoker.”
--Kathy the room-mate, whose introduction to the world of Buffy has just begun.
Season 4
Premiere!
Episode: “ The Freshman” (October 5, 1999)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Buffy the Vampire Slayer goes to college-- can she survive the experience?
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Oz: Seth Green
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Prof. Maggie Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
SYNOPSIS
Prologue:
We open in a very familiar place, with Buffy and Willow waiting for a new vampire to rise and passing the time by looking over their college course catalogs (they're going to be attending the heretofore nonexistent UC Sunnydale.) Buffy, it appears, has wasted an awful lot of time, and is left with a dearth of decent courses to pick from. On the positive side, Buffy and Willow are going to be taking psych together. They chatter excitedly about their upcoming freshman year (for instance, Buffy's going to have to resume using a secret identity, but she promises that all this college stuff cannot "take the edge off my slaying.") A vampire rises behind them, sees they are in fact on a vampire stake-out, and wanders away without the two ever noticing.
Act I
Buffy arrives at UCSD and feels immediately overwhelmed by the thousands of students who all seem to know where they're going, except. It doesn't get any better when Willow appears, doing far better. As a matter of fact, this place is Willow Heaven, especially the gargantuan library. All Buffy can do is remark that it would be neat if Giles could be librarian there.
The next gauntlet to run is the bookstore, where Buffy immediately drops two heavy books on the head of a cute guy. But whereas once upon a time she would've been able to wrap this guy around for her finger, this is college, where the guy, a Teaching Assistant, immediately ignores her and begins to pick up on Willow.
At her dorm, Buffy has a roommate, the short-haired, utterly normal Kathy, who appears to be really nice, but horrifies Buffy by hanging a huge Celine Dion poster on the wall. And she snores.
It gets worse. Buffy goes into a pop-culture class, hoping to register for it afterwards, and is horribly humiliated by the Professor, who chooses to make some sort of sadistic example of her.
Finally, she gets to Professor Walsh's psychology class, which Willow and cute TA are taking. Professor Walsh, who says she goes by either Maggie or "the evil bitch monster of death," will be tough, but at least doesn't scream.
That night, Buffy meets Eddy, a Nice Guy. He's taking the same psychology course that apparently everyone else is, and they vow to speak again. But the moment she's gone, he's killed by college vampires.
Act II
The UCSD vampires have a neat gimmick: once they kill a kid, they empty out his dorm room, take all this stuff, and leave and note about “not being able to take the pressure.” But Buffy knows that Eddy has not actually left, because when she searches his room, she finds his copy of Of Human Bondage, which Eddy referred to as his "security blanket."
Buffy goes back to Giles’ place for advice and finds a lovely young British woman, Olivia, wandering the house in one of Giles asserts, and Giles himself in a bathrobe. When Buffy tells Giles she could use some help, Giles hears her synopsis (student missing, could be vampires), and says that she needs to learn to rely on herself more.
That night, in one of the many gigantic expanses of poorly lit foliage on the campus of UCSD, Buffy meets and kills the vampirized Eddy. But she's walked right into a confrontation with the blond sorority vampire I’ll call “Yellow,” and the unbelievable happens: Yellow brutally and quickly kicks Buffy's ass.
Act III
While the vampires gloat, Buffy refuses to go to her friends, who seem to be having too much fun for her to interrupt them with vampire hunting. She goes home and finds that her mom has filled her room packing rates (temporarily, she is assured) and leaves once more.
At her dorm room, the vampires have removed all of her stuff and left one of those "I'm getting out of here" notes.
Finally, Buffy finds her way to her high school hangout, the Bronze where she runs into none other than Xander, her old high school friend. Xander, who was supposed to be on cross-country trip to America, ran out of money and is now home, broke and paying rent to his parents. Xander listens to her story and tells her that whatever she feels like, she should know that she is still his hero. He decides to help her find the UCSD vampires.
At the UCSD library, Buffy and Xander discover that these vampires have been killing freshmen for nearly 20 years, and are holed up in a conveniently abandoned fraternity house. They confirm this by spying on the vampires, and after Xander retreats to go get Buffy's weapons, Buffy falls through the skylight and straight into the vampires’ laps.
Act IV
Buffy is already getting soundly thrashed once again by the time Xander finds Oz and Willow. The three hurry to her rescue, but Buffy manages to do well even without her weapons, and by the time the gang arrives, she has dispatched the vampires. The only thing left is for Giles, also suddenly succumbing to a change of heart, to come running up with his own set of weapons. And so begins a new life for the Slayer Gang.
Not far away, a vampire wanders the trees suddenly he is shut down with a TASER stunned weapon. Out of the trees stepped what appear to be paramilitary vampire hunters.
NOTES
Really, all this episode does is transition Buffy into her new surroundings. Thus the story is very simple, because it has to accomplish only one thing: just as she did last season, Buffy must begin far from where she needs to be, and through personal strength, she must get there.
Of course just as the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampires Slayer established the show as a working allegory for the high school experience, the fourth season premiere of Buffy marches onto new but logical ground: this is the college experience, and luckily there's just as much opportunity for horrible allegory here as there was in high school.
I think almost anybody can relate to what Buffy goes through in this episode. She finished high school at the absolute top of her game: lauded by her classmates as a hero and protector, she now comes to the University and finds that not only is she no one, but she's in over her head. Sarah Michelle Keller is convincing as a girl who walks onto a campus teeming with college students like she's one of those doomed soldiers at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan.
And of course, since Buffy TVS acts out all of its anxieties, this means that at least one professor screams at her, one cute boy refers to her as "Willow's friend," and one fairly bush league vampire gives her a black eye.
I can already tell that Joss Whedon has as much of a feel for the inherent weirdness and even inanity of college as he did for high school. One of the funniest moments in the whole episode is when we see the vampires keeping a running tally on the posters they’ve stolen from the freshmen they kill. So far, Gustav Klimt's “The Kiss” is beating out Monet. "Freshman," the head vampire says. "They're so predictable." This is just wonderful.
Final note: Professor Walsh is played by none other than Lindsay Crouse, the fine, hypnotic actress who starred in David Mamet's House of Games. Obviously, she's going to play a big part, and Buffy could not have done better.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
Willow: Anyway, Professor Walsh, she's great, she’s supposed to be, like, world renowned.
Buffy: How you get to be renowned? I mean, like, do you have to be nowned the first?
Willow: Yes. First there's a painful nowning process.
“It's like this force, this penetrating force, and I can just feel my mind opening up, you know, and this place just thrusts into it and spurts knowledge into it. Sorry, that sentence ended up a different place from where it started.”
--Willow, on education
Xander: Buffy, this is all about fear. It's understandable, but you can't let it control you. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to anger. Wait -- hold on. Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to the dark side. Wait, no. First you get the women. Then you get the money. Then you -- OK, can we forget that?
Buffy: Thanks for the dadaesque pep talk. I feel much more abstract now.
“Does Buffy have a history of emotional problems? Because on my request form, I was pretty specific about a stable nonsmoker.”
--Kathy the room-mate, whose introduction to the world of Buffy has just begun.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Initiative
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
11/16
Season 4
“The Initiative”
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
Prof. Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
Prologue
Cute TA Riley and his frat brothers ponder the odd beauty that is Buffy (“I don’t know,” Riley says, “she’s... peculiar.”), while Spike the Vampire, recently returned to Sunnydale, wakes up from his Slayer-killing dreams to find he’s held prisoner in a vast, white compound of countless vampire cells.
Act 1
Willow is moping about Oz’ recent departure while the Gang try to figure out who the strange Storm Troopers Buffy met in the woods are. Buffy puts Giles and Xander in charge, since they’re human and she plans to take Willow to a cheer-up party.
In the commando compound, Spike thinks Buffy is as fault for his imprisonment and plots an escape.
Willow fights to keep Oz listed on his class rolls, and after Prof. Walsh gives her a dressing down, Buffy lashes out at the woman. “You’re right. A human being in pain has nothing to do with your job.” Prof. Walsh likes Buffy’s pluck.
Riley continues to feign lack of interest in Buffy with his frat brothers, but tips his hand when he punches out Parker for being a pig.
Act 2
A la Hannibal Lecter, Spike busts out of the compound, barely escaping the commandoes. Meanwhile, Riley comes to Willow for advice on how to win Buffy’s heart, as it were. Willow’s briefly overcomes her sardonic mood to reveal that Buffy likes, among other things, “she likes cheese.” Has a stuffed pig, likes Icecapades “with healthy irony,” and will be approachable at the frat party tonight.
Spike comes back to ditzy doormat vampire Harmony “for ever and ever, mon petite crème brulee.” They’re going to Europe, after he kills Buffy, of course.
At the party, Willow tries to help Riley find something to say from Buffy. Riley chokes, completely, and simpers away.
Xander runs into Harmony and the two have the most wonderfully sissified fight ever, ending in a draw, but Xander learns that Spike is back. Xander rushes to the party and manages to pull Buffy away from Riley’s second attempt at a conversation.
Riley licks his wounds with his frat brothers as they take a secret elevator downstairs to the commando compound. He’s actually a Special Agent Riley Finn, demon hunter of the secret project called The Initiative, , and his boss is none other than the white-coated Professor Walsh, who reveals that Spike is out.
Act 3
There’s an army of commandoes under Riley’s command as they hit the campus. Buffy’s also looking for Spike, and she has an awkward moment with Riley in which they try to get rid of one another while the hunt. Spike, looking for Buffy, busts into her dorm room and attacks Willow viciously, going for the throat.
Act 4
But, hilariously, somehow it’s not happening for Spike, he has the desire but can’t bite. (“This sort of thing’s never happened to me before.” “Maybe you were nervous.”) Willow’s concerned that maybe it’s her, but Spike says no, if he could, he’d feed happily on her. Meanwhile, the Commandoes track down Spike using an infrared device (he’s the only cold body around) and assault the dorm.
Amid men, rifles, and smoke, Spike is captured and then lost, Willow is almost “quarantined” but escapes, and Buffy shows up and gets into a mano-a-mano fight with Riley, who can’t make out her face but lets her get away.
Riley has to report his failure to Professor Walsh, but at least her anti-feeding serum is working on Spike. Walsh is concerned about this accomplice who appeared.
Unaware of one another’s secret identity, Riley and Buffy begin the long, awkward road to a relationship. (“Did Willow tell you I like cheese?” he asks. “You’re a little peculiar,” Buffy observes.)
NOTES
You have to admire the efficiency of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer with it’s ability to cram satire, comedy, and action reminiscent of vintage Marvel into about 46 running minutes. This was a fantastic episode.
Lindsay Crouse finally reveals why we’ve been has so much introduction to her character Prof. Walsh this season-- she’s the head of The Initiative, which looks like a secret government project to hunt and experiment on vampires. (Which makes we wonder if her story about “wild dogs” was just a cover when Veruca attacked her.) Crouse is a strangely mannered actress, so unlike anyone else on Buffy that it’s almost bizarre. And the Initiative is a huge addition to the Buffy Universe- - the implications are staggering. Is the university aware it’s the cover for this project? Why don’t’ they know about the Slayer? This thing seems to employ thousands. Why don’t the Watchers know about the Initiative, or do they?
This episode also manages to point Buffy towards a new, demon-hunting boyfriend. (Give it three episodes to happen.) We can just sit back and predict how this will play out, of course, but I’ll admit I didn’t expect Riley to be a secret agent. I thought he was that buff because he’s from California.
Giles and Xander look great on patrol, and it’s interesting to see them take orders from Buffy. Giles’ leather jacket is a great improvement on his old tweed. But what’s with Xander’s Bobby Brady haircut this episode?
Speaking of Bobby Brady, the best moment in the show has to be the slow-motion tussle between Xander and the unicorn-loving ditz vampire Harmony, who finally calls a truce after they pull one another’s hair.
Next best, narrowly, is the gag conversation between Spike and Willow when Prof’ Walsh’s experiments have rendered the vampire unable to “perform” vampirically. (“Let’s wait half an hour and try again!” Willow suggests, before recalling that instead she should hit Spike over the head.) You have to admire James Marster’s Spike character, so incredibly cool and yet, like Doctor Doom, seemingly doomed to fail, over, and over, and over.
Last thought: in the fight in the dorm room, what on earth prompts Buffy to fire a flare-gun? The flare bounces around the hall, and even she has to dodge it when it zings back at her. Since when does Buffy use any sort of gun?
QUOTES
“The Slayer! I knew it! I always worried what would happen when that Bitch got some funding.”
(Spike, in the Commando Compound. He’s wrong, but it’s and interesting thought.)
“I've seen honest faces. They usually come attached to liars.”
- - Willow, wondering why she should help Riley attract Buffy and not liking his first excuse.
11/16
Season 4
“The Initiative”
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
Prof. Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
Prologue
Cute TA Riley and his frat brothers ponder the odd beauty that is Buffy (“I don’t know,” Riley says, “she’s... peculiar.”), while Spike the Vampire, recently returned to Sunnydale, wakes up from his Slayer-killing dreams to find he’s held prisoner in a vast, white compound of countless vampire cells.
Act 1
Willow is moping about Oz’ recent departure while the Gang try to figure out who the strange Storm Troopers Buffy met in the woods are. Buffy puts Giles and Xander in charge, since they’re human and she plans to take Willow to a cheer-up party.
In the commando compound, Spike thinks Buffy is as fault for his imprisonment and plots an escape.
Willow fights to keep Oz listed on his class rolls, and after Prof. Walsh gives her a dressing down, Buffy lashes out at the woman. “You’re right. A human being in pain has nothing to do with your job.” Prof. Walsh likes Buffy’s pluck.
Riley continues to feign lack of interest in Buffy with his frat brothers, but tips his hand when he punches out Parker for being a pig.
Act 2
A la Hannibal Lecter, Spike busts out of the compound, barely escaping the commandoes. Meanwhile, Riley comes to Willow for advice on how to win Buffy’s heart, as it were. Willow’s briefly overcomes her sardonic mood to reveal that Buffy likes, among other things, “she likes cheese.” Has a stuffed pig, likes Icecapades “with healthy irony,” and will be approachable at the frat party tonight.
Spike comes back to ditzy doormat vampire Harmony “for ever and ever, mon petite crème brulee.” They’re going to Europe, after he kills Buffy, of course.
At the party, Willow tries to help Riley find something to say from Buffy. Riley chokes, completely, and simpers away.
Xander runs into Harmony and the two have the most wonderfully sissified fight ever, ending in a draw, but Xander learns that Spike is back. Xander rushes to the party and manages to pull Buffy away from Riley’s second attempt at a conversation.
Riley licks his wounds with his frat brothers as they take a secret elevator downstairs to the commando compound. He’s actually a Special Agent Riley Finn, demon hunter of the secret project called The Initiative, , and his boss is none other than the white-coated Professor Walsh, who reveals that Spike is out.
Act 3
There’s an army of commandoes under Riley’s command as they hit the campus. Buffy’s also looking for Spike, and she has an awkward moment with Riley in which they try to get rid of one another while the hunt. Spike, looking for Buffy, busts into her dorm room and attacks Willow viciously, going for the throat.
Act 4
But, hilariously, somehow it’s not happening for Spike, he has the desire but can’t bite. (“This sort of thing’s never happened to me before.” “Maybe you were nervous.”) Willow’s concerned that maybe it’s her, but Spike says no, if he could, he’d feed happily on her. Meanwhile, the Commandoes track down Spike using an infrared device (he’s the only cold body around) and assault the dorm.
Amid men, rifles, and smoke, Spike is captured and then lost, Willow is almost “quarantined” but escapes, and Buffy shows up and gets into a mano-a-mano fight with Riley, who can’t make out her face but lets her get away.
Riley has to report his failure to Professor Walsh, but at least her anti-feeding serum is working on Spike. Walsh is concerned about this accomplice who appeared.
Unaware of one another’s secret identity, Riley and Buffy begin the long, awkward road to a relationship. (“Did Willow tell you I like cheese?” he asks. “You’re a little peculiar,” Buffy observes.)
NOTES
You have to admire the efficiency of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer with it’s ability to cram satire, comedy, and action reminiscent of vintage Marvel into about 46 running minutes. This was a fantastic episode.
Lindsay Crouse finally reveals why we’ve been has so much introduction to her character Prof. Walsh this season-- she’s the head of The Initiative, which looks like a secret government project to hunt and experiment on vampires. (Which makes we wonder if her story about “wild dogs” was just a cover when Veruca attacked her.) Crouse is a strangely mannered actress, so unlike anyone else on Buffy that it’s almost bizarre. And the Initiative is a huge addition to the Buffy Universe- - the implications are staggering. Is the university aware it’s the cover for this project? Why don’t’ they know about the Slayer? This thing seems to employ thousands. Why don’t the Watchers know about the Initiative, or do they?
This episode also manages to point Buffy towards a new, demon-hunting boyfriend. (Give it three episodes to happen.) We can just sit back and predict how this will play out, of course, but I’ll admit I didn’t expect Riley to be a secret agent. I thought he was that buff because he’s from California.
Giles and Xander look great on patrol, and it’s interesting to see them take orders from Buffy. Giles’ leather jacket is a great improvement on his old tweed. But what’s with Xander’s Bobby Brady haircut this episode?
Speaking of Bobby Brady, the best moment in the show has to be the slow-motion tussle between Xander and the unicorn-loving ditz vampire Harmony, who finally calls a truce after they pull one another’s hair.
Next best, narrowly, is the gag conversation between Spike and Willow when Prof’ Walsh’s experiments have rendered the vampire unable to “perform” vampirically. (“Let’s wait half an hour and try again!” Willow suggests, before recalling that instead she should hit Spike over the head.) You have to admire James Marster’s Spike character, so incredibly cool and yet, like Doctor Doom, seemingly doomed to fail, over, and over, and over.
Last thought: in the fight in the dorm room, what on earth prompts Buffy to fire a flare-gun? The flare bounces around the hall, and even she has to dodge it when it zings back at her. Since when does Buffy use any sort of gun?
QUOTES
“The Slayer! I knew it! I always worried what would happen when that Bitch got some funding.”
(Spike, in the Commando Compound. He’s wrong, but it’s and interesting thought.)
“I've seen honest faces. They usually come attached to liars.”
- - Willow, wondering why she should help Riley attract Buffy and not liking his first excuse.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Replacement
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 5, Episode "The Replacement"
Broadcast October 10, 2000
1100
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendan as Alexander "Xander" Harris
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Marc Blucas as Riley Finn
James Marsters as Spike
Emma Caulfield as Anya Emerson
Amber Benson as Tara
Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
Someone is taking over Xander’s life.... and he looks an awful lot like a better-adjusted Xander.
PROLOGUE
Xander, Anya, Buffy and Riley watch kung fu while Xander contemplates finding a new place to live-- far from his parents’ fighting. Meanwhile, a demonic sorcerer at a bubbling cauldron plots Buffy’s death.
ACT I
The gang checks out an apartment for Xander, but it’s way out of poor soon-to-be unemployed Xander’s league. Anya’s feeling pretty discontent.
After the demon of the week, a Toth, roughs Giles up looking for Buffy and wanders away, Buffy and the gang wonder where the Toth would be. Judged by the demon’s smell they look for him at the city dump.
The Toth attacks them and Xander pushes Buffy out of the way of a demon blast, taking the full brunt of a mystic staff-missile. The demon leaves and so does the gang, but unbeknownst to them, an exact replica of Xander has sprung up where Xander fell-- and the real Xander remains behind while the new one walks off with his friends.
ACT II
Xander I wakes up the following day at the city dump and heads home to discover Xander II living at his place. (Xander II dresses better.)
While Buffy and sister Dawn drive their mother batty, Spike plots the death of Buffy, as well, practicing his kicks on a blonde mannequin.
While Xander I skulks in the background, Xander II manages to get a promotion at the job site, then not only gets the apartment he applied for but gets the apartment manager to come onto him. (Xander II has a shiny coin that hypnotizes people.) Xander heads to Giles’ to get Buffy’s help, but finds Xander II.
ACT III
Xander I does the Charlie Brown Christmas "Snoopy dance" to convince Willow that he’s himself. He tells Willow the whole problem while Xander II tries to convince Buffy and Riley to find the doppelganger and kill it right away. Both parties assume it’s the Toth. “A demon has taken my life from me, and it’s living my life better than I do.”
“I never help; I get in trouble and Buffy saves me,” says Xander I. He’s upset that Xander II does everything better-- maybe he should just let Xander II have his life. “It’s not like I was doing anything so great with it.”
Xander II sweet-talks Anya at the new important, astutely dissecting her fears of sudden vulnerability. (Anya’s recent shoulder injury is a new experience for the formerly invulnerable demon.) Xander I busts in on the two kissing, but Anya sticks beside Xander II.
When Willow goes to Giles, the gang surmises that the demon spell was designed to split Buffy into two parts-- instead it’s done the trick on Xander, splitting him into a strong and weak half. Both are genuine Xander and neither can be killed, or both will die. They need to be rejoined.
Meanwhile, Xander I desperately pulls a gun on Xander II.
ACT IV
While Xanders I & II grapple, Buffy and Riley rush to the apartment. Riley consoles Buffy that he would not prefer a non-Slayer “weak Buffy.” Buffy puts a stop to the fight and reveals to the Xanders that they are both Xander. Turns out the shiny coin Xander II toys with isn’t hypnotic after all; it’s just a cool flattened nickel.
Later, the gang marvel at the identical Xanders. “Psychologically this is fascinating,” Riley says. “Doesn’t it make everyone wanta lock them in separate rooms and do experiments on them?” Anya has some experiments of her own she’d like to try, but Willow reverses the spell, leaving us with a whole Xander once more.
Xander tells Riley he envies how Riley has always been as confident as Xander II was. Riley says he's lucky, especially regarding Buffy. He soliloquizes about how “Buffy is the one” for him... “But she doesn’t love me.”
NOTES
Of course I'm bound to give a good review to "The Replacement" because I have a soft spot for Xander-oriented episodes of Buffy, but as usual, my enthusiasm is not misplaced. This is the second time a character's spawned a twin on the show (Willow acknowledges this, nicely) and it has a different twist this time. Xander thinks that he's been replaced by an evil version of himself, but in fact he's merely given flesh to all the parts of Xander that we rarely see: his bravery, intelligence, wit and confidence. It's telling that Xander interprets these attributes as not him, almost as telling as the fact that we, too, feel as though "Weak Xander" is "Xander Complete" on first blush.
I love the concept that if we could strip away our doubts we could become a far more powerful version of ourselves. If anything, the character Xander should retain some of the lessons learned here, but I wouldn't count on it too much-- he's learned a lot of lessons along the way, and his gradual improvement has been agonizingly slow. Note, though, that Xander's plight stems from an act of bravery in the first place, as Xander pushes Buffy out of the way of the Toth's blast. Incidentally, Xander II is played by Nicholas Brendan's identical twin, and he does a fine job, although the script wisely leaves the funny lines to Brendan, who is a master at comic delivery.
On more minor notes, Buffy's sister Dawn remains in this episode, very realistic as an irritating young teen in her sister's hair. I personally applaud the whole Dawn sub-plot because of it's very daring. Whedon and the powers that be knew what they were doing bringing this character on in the fifth season. As with every other choice in the series, Dawn is a commentary on late-season cast additions with a Buffy twist, in that slowly but surely the whole world is going to realize she shouldn't be here. It's a cool idea, and it's irked me to no end that critics, always eager to write cliches lest they waste time thinking, have merely sniffed at the addition without considering the whole point.
I enjoyed seeing Buffy analyze the fighting in the David Chiang movie the gang watches at the beginning. She whines at the stage fighting, telling Riley, "it would drive you crazy if we watched an army movie and they were saluting backwards and invading all willy-nilly."
But where on Earth does Riley's soliloquy at the end come from? I watched the junior super-soldier wax about how very lucky he is to have Buffy, although he knows she "doesn't love me." He's just thankful to have known her, he says. She's made him a better person. I heard this and my first thought was: this guy is so very, very doomed.
And that's my bet. Doomed.
QUOTES:
On demon exits:
Buffy: “He ran away, huh?”
Giles: “He rather more turned and swept away majestically, I suppose.”
Season 5, Episode "The Replacement"
Broadcast October 10, 2000
1100
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendan as Alexander "Xander" Harris
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Marc Blucas as Riley Finn
James Marsters as Spike
Emma Caulfield as Anya Emerson
Amber Benson as Tara
Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
Someone is taking over Xander’s life.... and he looks an awful lot like a better-adjusted Xander.
PROLOGUE
Xander, Anya, Buffy and Riley watch kung fu while Xander contemplates finding a new place to live-- far from his parents’ fighting. Meanwhile, a demonic sorcerer at a bubbling cauldron plots Buffy’s death.
ACT I
The gang checks out an apartment for Xander, but it’s way out of poor soon-to-be unemployed Xander’s league. Anya’s feeling pretty discontent.
After the demon of the week, a Toth, roughs Giles up looking for Buffy and wanders away, Buffy and the gang wonder where the Toth would be. Judged by the demon’s smell they look for him at the city dump.
The Toth attacks them and Xander pushes Buffy out of the way of a demon blast, taking the full brunt of a mystic staff-missile. The demon leaves and so does the gang, but unbeknownst to them, an exact replica of Xander has sprung up where Xander fell-- and the real Xander remains behind while the new one walks off with his friends.
ACT II
Xander I wakes up the following day at the city dump and heads home to discover Xander II living at his place. (Xander II dresses better.)
While Buffy and sister Dawn drive their mother batty, Spike plots the death of Buffy, as well, practicing his kicks on a blonde mannequin.
While Xander I skulks in the background, Xander II manages to get a promotion at the job site, then not only gets the apartment he applied for but gets the apartment manager to come onto him. (Xander II has a shiny coin that hypnotizes people.) Xander heads to Giles’ to get Buffy’s help, but finds Xander II.
ACT III
Xander I does the Charlie Brown Christmas "Snoopy dance" to convince Willow that he’s himself. He tells Willow the whole problem while Xander II tries to convince Buffy and Riley to find the doppelganger and kill it right away. Both parties assume it’s the Toth. “A demon has taken my life from me, and it’s living my life better than I do.”
“I never help; I get in trouble and Buffy saves me,” says Xander I. He’s upset that Xander II does everything better-- maybe he should just let Xander II have his life. “It’s not like I was doing anything so great with it.”
Xander II sweet-talks Anya at the new important, astutely dissecting her fears of sudden vulnerability. (Anya’s recent shoulder injury is a new experience for the formerly invulnerable demon.) Xander I busts in on the two kissing, but Anya sticks beside Xander II.
When Willow goes to Giles, the gang surmises that the demon spell was designed to split Buffy into two parts-- instead it’s done the trick on Xander, splitting him into a strong and weak half. Both are genuine Xander and neither can be killed, or both will die. They need to be rejoined.
Meanwhile, Xander I desperately pulls a gun on Xander II.
ACT IV
While Xanders I & II grapple, Buffy and Riley rush to the apartment. Riley consoles Buffy that he would not prefer a non-Slayer “weak Buffy.” Buffy puts a stop to the fight and reveals to the Xanders that they are both Xander. Turns out the shiny coin Xander II toys with isn’t hypnotic after all; it’s just a cool flattened nickel.
Later, the gang marvel at the identical Xanders. “Psychologically this is fascinating,” Riley says. “Doesn’t it make everyone wanta lock them in separate rooms and do experiments on them?” Anya has some experiments of her own she’d like to try, but Willow reverses the spell, leaving us with a whole Xander once more.
Xander tells Riley he envies how Riley has always been as confident as Xander II was. Riley says he's lucky, especially regarding Buffy. He soliloquizes about how “Buffy is the one” for him... “But she doesn’t love me.”
NOTES
Of course I'm bound to give a good review to "The Replacement" because I have a soft spot for Xander-oriented episodes of Buffy, but as usual, my enthusiasm is not misplaced. This is the second time a character's spawned a twin on the show (Willow acknowledges this, nicely) and it has a different twist this time. Xander thinks that he's been replaced by an evil version of himself, but in fact he's merely given flesh to all the parts of Xander that we rarely see: his bravery, intelligence, wit and confidence. It's telling that Xander interprets these attributes as not him, almost as telling as the fact that we, too, feel as though "Weak Xander" is "Xander Complete" on first blush.
I love the concept that if we could strip away our doubts we could become a far more powerful version of ourselves. If anything, the character Xander should retain some of the lessons learned here, but I wouldn't count on it too much-- he's learned a lot of lessons along the way, and his gradual improvement has been agonizingly slow. Note, though, that Xander's plight stems from an act of bravery in the first place, as Xander pushes Buffy out of the way of the Toth's blast. Incidentally, Xander II is played by Nicholas Brendan's identical twin, and he does a fine job, although the script wisely leaves the funny lines to Brendan, who is a master at comic delivery.
On more minor notes, Buffy's sister Dawn remains in this episode, very realistic as an irritating young teen in her sister's hair. I personally applaud the whole Dawn sub-plot because of it's very daring. Whedon and the powers that be knew what they were doing bringing this character on in the fifth season. As with every other choice in the series, Dawn is a commentary on late-season cast additions with a Buffy twist, in that slowly but surely the whole world is going to realize she shouldn't be here. It's a cool idea, and it's irked me to no end that critics, always eager to write cliches lest they waste time thinking, have merely sniffed at the addition without considering the whole point.
I enjoyed seeing Buffy analyze the fighting in the David Chiang movie the gang watches at the beginning. She whines at the stage fighting, telling Riley, "it would drive you crazy if we watched an army movie and they were saluting backwards and invading all willy-nilly."
But where on Earth does Riley's soliloquy at the end come from? I watched the junior super-soldier wax about how very lucky he is to have Buffy, although he knows she "doesn't love me." He's just thankful to have known her, he says. She's made him a better person. I heard this and my first thought was: this guy is so very, very doomed.
And that's my bet. Doomed.
QUOTES:
On demon exits:
Buffy: “He ran away, huh?”
Giles: “He rather more turned and swept away majestically, I suppose.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Real Me
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 5, Episode “The Real Me”
Broadcast October 3, 2000
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon .... Alexander 'Xander' Harris
Alyson Hannigan .... Willow Rosenberg
Marc Blucas .... Riley Finn
Michelle Trachtenberg .... Dawn Summers
Amber Benson .... Tara
Anthony Head .... Rupert Giles
James Marsters .... Spike/William the Bloody
Kristine Sutherland .... Joyce Summers
Mercedes McNab .... Harmony Kendall
Emma Caulfield .... Anya Emerson
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Giles leads Buffy in her meditation (real Yoda-Luke balancing stuff,) but sister Dawn makes such a racket that Buffy can’t concentrate.
ACT 1
“Nobody knows who I am,” complains Dawn to her diary, “not the real me,” by which she means “no one has an older sister who’s a Slayer.” Dawn is so weary of her perfect super-hero sister.
Neither sister is thrilled when Mrs. Summers tells Buffy to take Dawn with her when she and Giles go pick up material at the Magic Shop. Buffy's boyfriend Riley (he calls her "kid") irritates Dawn, but she gets along with Dawn and Willow, who seem to identify with her awkwardness.
When the whole gang gets to the magic shop, they find the latest owner dead, and Buffy makes Dawn wait outside while they investigate. Outside, an insane man approaches Dawn, raving about the voices in his head. Then he points at Dawn: “I know what you are. You don’t belong here.”
ACT 2
Tara comes out to keep Dawn company on the magic shop stoop while Buffy, Willow and Giles investigate the owner’s death. The vampires who killed him apparently stole a book on vampire slayers, but Giles is more impressed by the owner’s records, which reveal that the shop would be a great investment. “I’ll be the death rate keeps the rent down.”
The one clue they have is that the vampires stole a $13 unicorn statue. “What kind of vampire enjoys cheap, tasteless statuary?”
In a belowground crypt, Harmony the Vampire addresses her “minions,” loser vampires she has convinced or created to follow her. They will destroy the Slayer, the ditzy vampire announces.
That night, Xander arrives to baby-sit Dawn (she’s thrilled) with girlfriend Anya in tow (a definite minus.) Meanwhile, Tara feels like she may never chip her way into the Scooby Gang.
On patrol, Buffy tells Riley she thinks Dawn is to coddled when Buffy has to deal with all the difficult stuff. “She doesn’t get the sacrifices [you make,]” Riley says. “She’s a kid.” Dawn, meanwhile, thinks Buffy gets more love and respect.
When Harmony arrives to kill Buffy (her brilliant plan is to call Buffy out of the house and beat her.) But Buffy’s not home, so Harmony and Xander trade insults instead (she can’t come in without an invitation) until Dawn reacts to an insult by saying, “Oh yeah? Come inside and say that!”
ACT 3
Luckily the invitation was only for one, and Xander is able to kick Harmony back out.
Buffy is furious that her little sister has given a vampire an invitation, even by accident. (They’ll have to cast a spell to reverse the invitation.)
Harmony .licks her wounds and runs into Spike, who is amused that she has minions now. Inadvertently, Spike gives Harmony the idea of kidnapping someone close to Buffy and luring the Slayer into a trap. He advises her to “leave Slayer-slaying to the professionals.”
Buffy says they’re all turning Dawn into in idiot by coddling her: “I was just a kid when I met my first vampire... I can’t protect her twenty-four hours a day.” When Dawn runs from the house in shame, pursued by Anya, vampires knock Anya out and kidnap Dawn.
ACT 4
While Harmony’s gang lose faith in their boss’ capabilities, Buffy learns of her hideout by beating Spike. By the time Buffy is headed for her lair, the vampires have all turned on her.
“Touch me and my sister’s gonna kill you,” Dawn tells a vampire-- and it’s true. Buffy finishes off the whole Harmony gang and they make it home before their Mom gets back from a late work night at the Gallery. The sisters cover for one another.
Giles, who says he was so bored last year he watched “Passions” with Spike, has decided to buy the magic shop.
Dawn, meanwhile, promises that there’s more to her than “a dumb little sister.”
NOTES
"The Real Me" is the first full Buffy episode with "Dawn," who suddenly appeared at the end of the season 5 Premiere. Dawn is Buffy's suddenly present and retroactively effective little sister. Everyone knows her and everyone's known her for years. She's a pain in the neck, too, as far as Buffy is concerned, and the Slayer is getting sick of her little sister cramping her style and making fourteen-year-old mistakes.
What the Heck is going on here, you ask? Only the single most ambitious trick Joss Whedon has tried yet with Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. When Whedon announced that he was adding a little sister to the cast for the fifth season, the caterwauling among fans and critics alike rose to a fever pitch. It was, to judge by commentator's estimates, an astonishing, cynical, misguided misstep serious enough to threaten the viability of the show, borne of the kind of late-season desperation that often leads shows to add children to the cast. Mind you, all of this was before the Premiere even aired. Little did we know that Whedon had something else up his sleeve: the coup de gras of post-modern TV, in which such a character is, in fact, awkwardly added to the story, but the very addition becomes part of the story. Dawn's addition is thus directly in line with every other self-aware move Buffy has ever made.
And besides all that, I like Dawn. She's refreshing, telling us that if she were a superhero, she'd wear a mask and have a secret identity to protect her loved ones. She's geeky and awkward, a chess player and an avid reader, a glutton for attention and a messy eater. We can totally believe she's made Buffy's life hell, as only siblings can do, for her full fourteen-year tenure on the earth.
And her relationship with Buffy is interesting, bringing attention for the moment away from college, which was last season's focus, to the Scooby Gang and Buffy's home life. Dawn secretly idolizes Buffy and adores her friends, especially Willow, with whom she shares a great deal, and Willow's even-more awkward girlfriend Tara. And she has a sweet crush on Xander, fantasizing that he "sees her as a woman." Dawn is bratty mainly because she wants people to take an interest in her, and she's charming when they do. Michelle Trachtenberg has created a character we can instantly recognize and enjoy.
Question: at fourteen, isn't Dawn old enough to baby-sit other kids, much less watch herself? Someone clue me in because, as a guy, I have no idea.
In other notes, when Tara comes out of the shop to tell Dawn, “At times like these, it's best non-scoobies like you and me stay out of their way,” I wondered, when exactly will Tara qualify? Does dating a Scooby instantly exclude you as a member? Up until now I thought the Scoobies were utterly informal, anyway, but Tara seems to be right that she's not quite "one of them." The real answer, of course, is Buffy self-referentialism, as the script reflects reality: the show revolves around Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles.
Meanwhile, toe-headed Harmony has returned as the ditziest vampire super-villain ever, a development Spike finds "adorable." I'm getting tired of Spike as the sassy, weak vampire he's become-- think how far he's fallen since he first appeared, boasting of having killed the last two Slayers and having his own minions videotape her moves so he could study them. ("The last Slayer I killed begged for her life.") Oh, Spike, how art the mighty fallen.
QUOTES
Giles and Buffy, on Giles' hot ride:
Giles: “I’m just not used to this automatic transmission. Just sitting here not contributing. No, no, no, it’s not working out.”
Buffy: “Giles, are you breaking up with your car?”
Giles: “Well, it did seduce me. All red and sporty.”
Buffy: “Little two-door tramp.”
Dawn Summers, on the Goddesses that are Tara and Willow:
Dawn: “Tara and Willow... do spells and stuff, which is so much cooler than slaying. I told Mom one time I wish they’d teach me some of the stuff they do together, then she got real quiet and made me go upstairs. I guess her generation isn’t cool with witchcraft.”
Dawn Summers, on the Glory that is Xander:
“He totally skipped college and got a job working construction... which is so deep, you know?”
Harmony the Wise:
Harmony: “So, Slayer. At last we meet.”
Buffy: “We’ve met, Harmony, you half-wit.”
Season 5, Episode “The Real Me”
Broadcast October 3, 2000
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon .... Alexander 'Xander' Harris
Alyson Hannigan .... Willow Rosenberg
Marc Blucas .... Riley Finn
Michelle Trachtenberg .... Dawn Summers
Amber Benson .... Tara
Anthony Head .... Rupert Giles
James Marsters .... Spike/William the Bloody
Kristine Sutherland .... Joyce Summers
Mercedes McNab .... Harmony Kendall
Emma Caulfield .... Anya Emerson
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Giles leads Buffy in her meditation (real Yoda-Luke balancing stuff,) but sister Dawn makes such a racket that Buffy can’t concentrate.
ACT 1
“Nobody knows who I am,” complains Dawn to her diary, “not the real me,” by which she means “no one has an older sister who’s a Slayer.” Dawn is so weary of her perfect super-hero sister.
Neither sister is thrilled when Mrs. Summers tells Buffy to take Dawn with her when she and Giles go pick up material at the Magic Shop. Buffy's boyfriend Riley (he calls her "kid") irritates Dawn, but she gets along with Dawn and Willow, who seem to identify with her awkwardness.
When the whole gang gets to the magic shop, they find the latest owner dead, and Buffy makes Dawn wait outside while they investigate. Outside, an insane man approaches Dawn, raving about the voices in his head. Then he points at Dawn: “I know what you are. You don’t belong here.”
ACT 2
Tara comes out to keep Dawn company on the magic shop stoop while Buffy, Willow and Giles investigate the owner’s death. The vampires who killed him apparently stole a book on vampire slayers, but Giles is more impressed by the owner’s records, which reveal that the shop would be a great investment. “I’ll be the death rate keeps the rent down.”
The one clue they have is that the vampires stole a $13 unicorn statue. “What kind of vampire enjoys cheap, tasteless statuary?”
In a belowground crypt, Harmony the Vampire addresses her “minions,” loser vampires she has convinced or created to follow her. They will destroy the Slayer, the ditzy vampire announces.
That night, Xander arrives to baby-sit Dawn (she’s thrilled) with girlfriend Anya in tow (a definite minus.) Meanwhile, Tara feels like she may never chip her way into the Scooby Gang.
On patrol, Buffy tells Riley she thinks Dawn is to coddled when Buffy has to deal with all the difficult stuff. “She doesn’t get the sacrifices [you make,]” Riley says. “She’s a kid.” Dawn, meanwhile, thinks Buffy gets more love and respect.
When Harmony arrives to kill Buffy (her brilliant plan is to call Buffy out of the house and beat her.) But Buffy’s not home, so Harmony and Xander trade insults instead (she can’t come in without an invitation) until Dawn reacts to an insult by saying, “Oh yeah? Come inside and say that!”
ACT 3
Luckily the invitation was only for one, and Xander is able to kick Harmony back out.
Buffy is furious that her little sister has given a vampire an invitation, even by accident. (They’ll have to cast a spell to reverse the invitation.)
Harmony .licks her wounds and runs into Spike, who is amused that she has minions now. Inadvertently, Spike gives Harmony the idea of kidnapping someone close to Buffy and luring the Slayer into a trap. He advises her to “leave Slayer-slaying to the professionals.”
Buffy says they’re all turning Dawn into in idiot by coddling her: “I was just a kid when I met my first vampire... I can’t protect her twenty-four hours a day.” When Dawn runs from the house in shame, pursued by Anya, vampires knock Anya out and kidnap Dawn.
ACT 4
While Harmony’s gang lose faith in their boss’ capabilities, Buffy learns of her hideout by beating Spike. By the time Buffy is headed for her lair, the vampires have all turned on her.
“Touch me and my sister’s gonna kill you,” Dawn tells a vampire-- and it’s true. Buffy finishes off the whole Harmony gang and they make it home before their Mom gets back from a late work night at the Gallery. The sisters cover for one another.
Giles, who says he was so bored last year he watched “Passions” with Spike, has decided to buy the magic shop.
Dawn, meanwhile, promises that there’s more to her than “a dumb little sister.”
NOTES
"The Real Me" is the first full Buffy episode with "Dawn," who suddenly appeared at the end of the season 5 Premiere. Dawn is Buffy's suddenly present and retroactively effective little sister. Everyone knows her and everyone's known her for years. She's a pain in the neck, too, as far as Buffy is concerned, and the Slayer is getting sick of her little sister cramping her style and making fourteen-year-old mistakes.
What the Heck is going on here, you ask? Only the single most ambitious trick Joss Whedon has tried yet with Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. When Whedon announced that he was adding a little sister to the cast for the fifth season, the caterwauling among fans and critics alike rose to a fever pitch. It was, to judge by commentator's estimates, an astonishing, cynical, misguided misstep serious enough to threaten the viability of the show, borne of the kind of late-season desperation that often leads shows to add children to the cast. Mind you, all of this was before the Premiere even aired. Little did we know that Whedon had something else up his sleeve: the coup de gras of post-modern TV, in which such a character is, in fact, awkwardly added to the story, but the very addition becomes part of the story. Dawn's addition is thus directly in line with every other self-aware move Buffy has ever made.
And besides all that, I like Dawn. She's refreshing, telling us that if she were a superhero, she'd wear a mask and have a secret identity to protect her loved ones. She's geeky and awkward, a chess player and an avid reader, a glutton for attention and a messy eater. We can totally believe she's made Buffy's life hell, as only siblings can do, for her full fourteen-year tenure on the earth.
And her relationship with Buffy is interesting, bringing attention for the moment away from college, which was last season's focus, to the Scooby Gang and Buffy's home life. Dawn secretly idolizes Buffy and adores her friends, especially Willow, with whom she shares a great deal, and Willow's even-more awkward girlfriend Tara. And she has a sweet crush on Xander, fantasizing that he "sees her as a woman." Dawn is bratty mainly because she wants people to take an interest in her, and she's charming when they do. Michelle Trachtenberg has created a character we can instantly recognize and enjoy.
Question: at fourteen, isn't Dawn old enough to baby-sit other kids, much less watch herself? Someone clue me in because, as a guy, I have no idea.
In other notes, when Tara comes out of the shop to tell Dawn, “At times like these, it's best non-scoobies like you and me stay out of their way,” I wondered, when exactly will Tara qualify? Does dating a Scooby instantly exclude you as a member? Up until now I thought the Scoobies were utterly informal, anyway, but Tara seems to be right that she's not quite "one of them." The real answer, of course, is Buffy self-referentialism, as the script reflects reality: the show revolves around Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles.
Meanwhile, toe-headed Harmony has returned as the ditziest vampire super-villain ever, a development Spike finds "adorable." I'm getting tired of Spike as the sassy, weak vampire he's become-- think how far he's fallen since he first appeared, boasting of having killed the last two Slayers and having his own minions videotape her moves so he could study them. ("The last Slayer I killed begged for her life.") Oh, Spike, how art the mighty fallen.
QUOTES
Giles and Buffy, on Giles' hot ride:
Giles: “I’m just not used to this automatic transmission. Just sitting here not contributing. No, no, no, it’s not working out.”
Buffy: “Giles, are you breaking up with your car?”
Giles: “Well, it did seduce me. All red and sporty.”
Buffy: “Little two-door tramp.”
Dawn Summers, on the Goddesses that are Tara and Willow:
Dawn: “Tara and Willow... do spells and stuff, which is so much cooler than slaying. I told Mom one time I wish they’d teach me some of the stuff they do together, then she got real quiet and made me go upstairs. I guess her generation isn’t cool with witchcraft.”
Dawn Summers, on the Glory that is Xander:
“He totally skipped college and got a job working construction... which is so deep, you know?”
Harmony the Wise:
Harmony: “So, Slayer. At last we meet.”
Buffy: “We’ve met, Harmony, you half-wit.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Wish
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 3
Episode: “The Wish” (December 9, 1998)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Cordelia can trace her problems to one event: Buffy’s arrival. When a wish takes Buffy away, Sunnydale becomes a nightmare landscape drenched in darkness and the lusty rule of the Master, Xander and Willow. Can we get the old nightmare back, please?
Credits:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
Angel: David Boreanaz
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Oz: Seth Green
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Synopsis
We open with Buffy defeating a walking octopus-like demon in the park with the help of Xander and Willow. Afterwards, Buffy learns that Xander and Willow are still making no progress towards reconciling with Cordelia and Oz, their significant others. (Cordy and Oz caught Xander and Willow kissing last episode, shortly before Cordy was impaled on a spike and sent to the hospital.
At Cordelia’s place, the spurned beauty queen burns mementos and photographs while listening to Xander leave message after pathetic message on her machine.
Cordelia returns to school next day dressed to the nines, but her old gang of popular girls tease her and shut her out—as Xander Harris’s “cast-off,” she’s fallen far.
Willow, meanwhile, tries to reconcile with Oz again, and he tells her again to give him time. “I’m sorry this is hard for you,” he says. “But I told you what I need. So I can’t help thinking the reason you want to talk about this is to feel better about yourself. That’s not my problem.”
After crude insults from popular girls and boorish jocks, Cordelia manages to make a friend, a lovely newcomer who shares Cordy’s haute bourgeoisie fashion sense. The newcomer is tired of hanging out with idiots.
At the Bronze, Xander, Willow and Buffy hang out and try to look happy in front of Cordelia. Xander’s tired of sulking, and worse, it appears his friendship with Willow is ruined. With Willow determined to get Oz back, she feel she should have even less contact with Xander than before.
Buffy follows Cordelia out into the alley out of concern. Cordelia is clutching her wound, still in some pain, but she brushes off Buffy’s attempt at comfort, especially after getting knocked back into a pile of garbage when a vampire attacks Buffy. Cordy’s had it with these people.
Next scene, Cordy talks to her new friend. She never would have gone for Xander if Buffy, semi-popular, hadn’t made Xander seem somewhat cool. “I wish Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale.” The newcomer, now revealed as the demon Ananka, says, “done.”
And so it is. Cordelia looks around, the newcomer gone, and people instantly begin kowtowing to her as Ms. Popular again. The popular clique is dazzled by her “very daring” dress; she casually blows off a nervous request for a date from the same jock who insulted her in the previous reality. This is a great reality, Cordelia realizes. The newcomer was a genie of sorts.
Except that class is cancelled tomorrow because of the “weekly memorial,” and at the end of the day, everyone rushes home with an hour to spare before city curfew. And the other girls are confused as to how Cody would wear “this come-bite-me” outfit, and they take her suggestion of going to the Bronze as a sick joke. And the parking lot is a barren field of blowing papers; no students drive here. “Get in before the sun sets,” advises the custodian.
Out into the night Cordelia wanders, to be set upon immediately by, of all people, Xander and Willow, looking pasty and vampiric. Xander wears a leather jacket, Willow a blood-red leather teddy thing that makes her look like a member of the Hellfire Club. Cordelia mentions Buffy, and Xander has heard of the name. Willow and Xander purr at one another before attacking Cordelia. But at the last minute, a van pulls up. It’s the White Hats, Xander curses, and the van opens to find Giles, Oz and a couple of others, pushing back the vampires, scooping up Cordelia, and driving away.
Willow and Xander repair to the Bronze, which is in this reality a sexy vampire rave joint, where the Master holds sway and tosses Willow a quivering ingenue. The Plant, the Master’s next big thing, begins operation in twenty-four hours. If Cordelia mentioned the slayer, she may call her, the Master suggests. Find her, and kill her.
Back at the library, Cordelia pleads with Giles, who does not know her, to call Buffy. “You’re her watcher!” Giles doesn’t know where Cordelia got this information, but he’s moved by her insistence that the world has changed because of a wish she made, and should be better than this. Giles goes to look up Cordelia’s medallion, but can’t save Cordelia: Xander and Willow break in and viciously kill her together before Giles’ eyes.
Later, while Giles pleads on the phone with the Cleveland Watcher that the slayer is very much needed at the Hellmouth, Willow gets a special treat from the master: playing with “the puppy,” an imprisoned good vampire- - Angel. She straddles Angel’s chest and tortures him with matches while Xander looks on.
Giles traces the medallion to Ananka, a demon devoted to spurned women. She grants wishes, which backs up Cordelia’s last words. On the way to his home, he passes a vampire van loading up wit victims. Giles rescues the mortals but is about to die himself when he is saved by a violent young woman with a nasty scar on her lip: the slayer he ordered. “Wanta tell me what I’m doing here?” Buffy asks.
Buffy rejects Giles’ theory that there’s a demon who can change the world back to what it’s supposed to be. For one thing, the books say to destroy the demon’s “heart of power,” which Giles cannot identify, and in any event, Buffy doesn’t believe there’s a better place to restore. She’s more interested in hunting the Master, and when Giles directs her to the Bronze, Buffy leaves.
Buffy finds the Bronze empty, except for Angel, who recognizes Buffy. “I was supposed to wait for you. You never came.” Buffy lets the vampire out of his cell in exchange for help hunting the Master, who’s now out at the factory beginning a new mass-vampire-production operation.
Buffy and Angel go into the factory as the first innocent victim is killed and Oz watches from a cage with the other prisoners. Buffy takes a crossbow shot at the Master and catches Xander in the shoulder, setting off a battle. Angel opens several cages, (“Uh-oh,” Willow coos, “Puppy got out.”) letting victims run free, as vampires close in on them. Xander slays Angel, and is in turn impaled by Buffy. Oz and another white hat force Willow back on a broken shaft and watch her turn to dust, while the Master and Buffy toss people aside as they make a beeline for one another.
Back at home, Giles summons Ananka, who is furious that a man would bring her. As they scuffle, Ananka asks, “what makes you think the other reality is better?” “It has to be,” Giles says. He tears away her medallion and prepares to crush it with a heavy bowl.
The Master overpowers Buffy easily, and snaps her neck.
Giles crushes the medallion, and as Buffy begins to fall, the world snaps back.
And Cordelia wishes Buffy had never come, and nothing happens. And she wishes a lot of other things, and nothing happens there, either. She wanders off, as Xander, Willow and Buffy talk on a bench behind her.
Notes
• As Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episodes go, this is one of the creepiest. Even the humor is pared back a little, traded for a few cynical witticisms that hurt a little more than they amuse.
• The alternate reality Cordelia triggers is a nightmare landscape of Sunnydale under siege, complete with new rules and new heroes, including the ill-matched White Hats, Giles’ band of vampire-slaying merry men (including werewolf Oz.) Were this a comic book, I’d expect a return at some time to this reality. (Days of Future Past was originally a one-shot X-Men alternate reality, but fans liked the grimness of it so much that the characters managed to go back several times.)
• The single most memorable moment is, of course, the final battle at the end, when EVERYONE gets iced in slow motion. Think Gallipoli.
• Interesting to see what incredibly evil villains Xander and Willow become in the alternate reality Cordy triggers, which suggests to me that her subconscious affected the molding of the reality itself. (And why not? It was born of her wish.) Willow is another Dru, a cooing, sadistic sex kitten, whereas Xander is a violent punk.
• I've often criticized Buffy for being a bit narcissistic, but this episode gave me a good slap for that disrespect: according to this, Buffy is the one thing that’s kept Sunnydale from becoming complete Hell. For her part, Buffy is an interestingly different character when she does appear. Apparently she has failed to find the kind of mentor she needs (the Watcher in Cleveland apparently never sees her,) and Buffy arrives in Sunnydale as a slouchy warrior so Clint Eastwood-like she should be chewing on a cigar. She’s got a nasty scar on her lip and a nastily cynical disposition; there’s little hope for this Buffy. She’s overconfident, too: she underesti9mates the situation in Sunnydale, rejecting Giles’ offer of backup and walking into a battle with the Master she cannot win.
• Kudos, though, to the subplot of the show: the slow, slow recovery of Oz and Cordelia after their betrayal by Willow and Xander. Like Lancelot and Guinevere, Xander and Willow have profited nothing by their affair, and have even ruined their own relationship. Oz has been such a likeable character all along that there’s a sickening feel to Willow’s pleading with him, and Cordelia’s suffering has only begun—she gave up a lot to be with Xander, and didn’t deserve to be treated this way. No-one is getting out of this aftermath easily or quickly.
* Last thought about the alternate reality: shouldn’t everyone carry massive crosses like Giles does?
Memorable Quotes
On catch-all remedies
“You’d be surprised how many things that’ll kill.”
(Buffy, suggesting they stake the demon Ananka, even though she’s not a vampire.)
On getting on with it
“I’m gonna grab hold of that crazy little thing called life and make it do its crazy heal-y thing.”
(Xander, tired of moping around. The good times nevertheless fail to roll.)
Season 3
Episode: “The Wish” (December 9, 1998)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Cordelia can trace her problems to one event: Buffy’s arrival. When a wish takes Buffy away, Sunnydale becomes a nightmare landscape drenched in darkness and the lusty rule of the Master, Xander and Willow. Can we get the old nightmare back, please?
Credits:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
Angel: David Boreanaz
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Oz: Seth Green
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Synopsis
We open with Buffy defeating a walking octopus-like demon in the park with the help of Xander and Willow. Afterwards, Buffy learns that Xander and Willow are still making no progress towards reconciling with Cordelia and Oz, their significant others. (Cordy and Oz caught Xander and Willow kissing last episode, shortly before Cordy was impaled on a spike and sent to the hospital.
At Cordelia’s place, the spurned beauty queen burns mementos and photographs while listening to Xander leave message after pathetic message on her machine.
Cordelia returns to school next day dressed to the nines, but her old gang of popular girls tease her and shut her out—as Xander Harris’s “cast-off,” she’s fallen far.
Willow, meanwhile, tries to reconcile with Oz again, and he tells her again to give him time. “I’m sorry this is hard for you,” he says. “But I told you what I need. So I can’t help thinking the reason you want to talk about this is to feel better about yourself. That’s not my problem.”
After crude insults from popular girls and boorish jocks, Cordelia manages to make a friend, a lovely newcomer who shares Cordy’s haute bourgeoisie fashion sense. The newcomer is tired of hanging out with idiots.
At the Bronze, Xander, Willow and Buffy hang out and try to look happy in front of Cordelia. Xander’s tired of sulking, and worse, it appears his friendship with Willow is ruined. With Willow determined to get Oz back, she feel she should have even less contact with Xander than before.
Buffy follows Cordelia out into the alley out of concern. Cordelia is clutching her wound, still in some pain, but she brushes off Buffy’s attempt at comfort, especially after getting knocked back into a pile of garbage when a vampire attacks Buffy. Cordy’s had it with these people.
Next scene, Cordy talks to her new friend. She never would have gone for Xander if Buffy, semi-popular, hadn’t made Xander seem somewhat cool. “I wish Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale.” The newcomer, now revealed as the demon Ananka, says, “done.”
And so it is. Cordelia looks around, the newcomer gone, and people instantly begin kowtowing to her as Ms. Popular again. The popular clique is dazzled by her “very daring” dress; she casually blows off a nervous request for a date from the same jock who insulted her in the previous reality. This is a great reality, Cordelia realizes. The newcomer was a genie of sorts.
Except that class is cancelled tomorrow because of the “weekly memorial,” and at the end of the day, everyone rushes home with an hour to spare before city curfew. And the other girls are confused as to how Cody would wear “this come-bite-me” outfit, and they take her suggestion of going to the Bronze as a sick joke. And the parking lot is a barren field of blowing papers; no students drive here. “Get in before the sun sets,” advises the custodian.
Out into the night Cordelia wanders, to be set upon immediately by, of all people, Xander and Willow, looking pasty and vampiric. Xander wears a leather jacket, Willow a blood-red leather teddy thing that makes her look like a member of the Hellfire Club. Cordelia mentions Buffy, and Xander has heard of the name. Willow and Xander purr at one another before attacking Cordelia. But at the last minute, a van pulls up. It’s the White Hats, Xander curses, and the van opens to find Giles, Oz and a couple of others, pushing back the vampires, scooping up Cordelia, and driving away.
Willow and Xander repair to the Bronze, which is in this reality a sexy vampire rave joint, where the Master holds sway and tosses Willow a quivering ingenue. The Plant, the Master’s next big thing, begins operation in twenty-four hours. If Cordelia mentioned the slayer, she may call her, the Master suggests. Find her, and kill her.
Back at the library, Cordelia pleads with Giles, who does not know her, to call Buffy. “You’re her watcher!” Giles doesn’t know where Cordelia got this information, but he’s moved by her insistence that the world has changed because of a wish she made, and should be better than this. Giles goes to look up Cordelia’s medallion, but can’t save Cordelia: Xander and Willow break in and viciously kill her together before Giles’ eyes.
Later, while Giles pleads on the phone with the Cleveland Watcher that the slayer is very much needed at the Hellmouth, Willow gets a special treat from the master: playing with “the puppy,” an imprisoned good vampire- - Angel. She straddles Angel’s chest and tortures him with matches while Xander looks on.
Giles traces the medallion to Ananka, a demon devoted to spurned women. She grants wishes, which backs up Cordelia’s last words. On the way to his home, he passes a vampire van loading up wit victims. Giles rescues the mortals but is about to die himself when he is saved by a violent young woman with a nasty scar on her lip: the slayer he ordered. “Wanta tell me what I’m doing here?” Buffy asks.
Buffy rejects Giles’ theory that there’s a demon who can change the world back to what it’s supposed to be. For one thing, the books say to destroy the demon’s “heart of power,” which Giles cannot identify, and in any event, Buffy doesn’t believe there’s a better place to restore. She’s more interested in hunting the Master, and when Giles directs her to the Bronze, Buffy leaves.
Buffy finds the Bronze empty, except for Angel, who recognizes Buffy. “I was supposed to wait for you. You never came.” Buffy lets the vampire out of his cell in exchange for help hunting the Master, who’s now out at the factory beginning a new mass-vampire-production operation.
Buffy and Angel go into the factory as the first innocent victim is killed and Oz watches from a cage with the other prisoners. Buffy takes a crossbow shot at the Master and catches Xander in the shoulder, setting off a battle. Angel opens several cages, (“Uh-oh,” Willow coos, “Puppy got out.”) letting victims run free, as vampires close in on them. Xander slays Angel, and is in turn impaled by Buffy. Oz and another white hat force Willow back on a broken shaft and watch her turn to dust, while the Master and Buffy toss people aside as they make a beeline for one another.
Back at home, Giles summons Ananka, who is furious that a man would bring her. As they scuffle, Ananka asks, “what makes you think the other reality is better?” “It has to be,” Giles says. He tears away her medallion and prepares to crush it with a heavy bowl.
The Master overpowers Buffy easily, and snaps her neck.
Giles crushes the medallion, and as Buffy begins to fall, the world snaps back.
And Cordelia wishes Buffy had never come, and nothing happens. And she wishes a lot of other things, and nothing happens there, either. She wanders off, as Xander, Willow and Buffy talk on a bench behind her.
Notes
• As Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episodes go, this is one of the creepiest. Even the humor is pared back a little, traded for a few cynical witticisms that hurt a little more than they amuse.
• The alternate reality Cordelia triggers is a nightmare landscape of Sunnydale under siege, complete with new rules and new heroes, including the ill-matched White Hats, Giles’ band of vampire-slaying merry men (including werewolf Oz.) Were this a comic book, I’d expect a return at some time to this reality. (Days of Future Past was originally a one-shot X-Men alternate reality, but fans liked the grimness of it so much that the characters managed to go back several times.)
• The single most memorable moment is, of course, the final battle at the end, when EVERYONE gets iced in slow motion. Think Gallipoli.
• Interesting to see what incredibly evil villains Xander and Willow become in the alternate reality Cordy triggers, which suggests to me that her subconscious affected the molding of the reality itself. (And why not? It was born of her wish.) Willow is another Dru, a cooing, sadistic sex kitten, whereas Xander is a violent punk.
• I've often criticized Buffy for being a bit narcissistic, but this episode gave me a good slap for that disrespect: according to this, Buffy is the one thing that’s kept Sunnydale from becoming complete Hell. For her part, Buffy is an interestingly different character when she does appear. Apparently she has failed to find the kind of mentor she needs (the Watcher in Cleveland apparently never sees her,) and Buffy arrives in Sunnydale as a slouchy warrior so Clint Eastwood-like she should be chewing on a cigar. She’s got a nasty scar on her lip and a nastily cynical disposition; there’s little hope for this Buffy. She’s overconfident, too: she underesti9mates the situation in Sunnydale, rejecting Giles’ offer of backup and walking into a battle with the Master she cannot win.
• Kudos, though, to the subplot of the show: the slow, slow recovery of Oz and Cordelia after their betrayal by Willow and Xander. Like Lancelot and Guinevere, Xander and Willow have profited nothing by their affair, and have even ruined their own relationship. Oz has been such a likeable character all along that there’s a sickening feel to Willow’s pleading with him, and Cordelia’s suffering has only begun—she gave up a lot to be with Xander, and didn’t deserve to be treated this way. No-one is getting out of this aftermath easily or quickly.
* Last thought about the alternate reality: shouldn’t everyone carry massive crosses like Giles does?
Memorable Quotes
On catch-all remedies
“You’d be surprised how many things that’ll kill.”
(Buffy, suggesting they stake the demon Ananka, even though she’s not a vampire.)
On getting on with it
“I’m gonna grab hold of that crazy little thing called life and make it do its crazy heal-y thing.”
(Xander, tired of moping around. The good times nevertheless fail to roll.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Into the Woods
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
“Into the Woods”
Broadcast December 19, 2000
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon .... Alexander 'Xander' Harris
Alyson Hannigan .... Willow Rosenberg
Marc Blucas .... Riley Finn
Michelle Trachtenberg .... Dawn Summers
Amber Benson .... Tara
Anthony Head .... Rupert Giles
James Marsters .... Spike/William the Bloody
Kristine Sutherland .... Joyce Summers
Mercedes McNab .... Harmony Kendall
Emma Caulfield .... Anya Emerson
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
The gang waits restlessly at the hospital for Buffy’s mom, Joyce to emerge from her cancer-related brain surgery.
ACT 1
Joyce’s surgery was a success-- the doctor says he was able to remove the tumor completely, although they’ll have to observe Joyce’s progress for awhile at the hospital.
While Anya and Xander baby-sit Dawn, Riley and Buffy celebrate with a romantic night at home. But after Buffy falls asleep, Riley sneaks out of the house.
A spying Spike (the vampire is now fixated on Buffy) curiously follows Riley as the former super-agent heads in silence to a warehouse district.
The next day, while the Special Ops group that has replaced the Initiative plans to ask Riley to join them in an operation in Belize, Spike comes to Buffy in the middle of the night. He guides her out to the warehouse where Riley is hanging out with a sort of vampire orgy house. In an upper floor they find Riley, sitting calmly as a female vampire feeds on his army.
ACT II
“We only came here because we care about you, friend,” Spike snidely says to Riley as Buffy storms out. Riley drags himself back to his apartment to find a couple of Special Ops guys in his apartment asking him to join them for the Central American job. He doesn’t give them an answer yet.
Giles tells Buffy has hasn’t seen the sort of risky behavior she saw at the vampire den “since his Ripper days.” He explains that People hire vampires to feed off them and get off on the rush; it’s sleazy, addictive, even a little dangerous, but consenting and ultimately not all that worth troubling over when there are greater evils around. Buffy doesn’t reveal Riley is into the scene but does insist that thy go torch the den. She does, but it’s empty.
Riley, furious with Spike, visits the vampire’s crypt and impales him with a stake.
ACT III
But it’s a plastic stake, and Riley says next time it’ll be real if he doesn’t get out of his and Buffy’s life. Spike, in turn, says Riley isn’t likely to be the long-term love for Buffy, who wants a more corrupt man-- whereas despite current developments, Riley ultimately is good. Spike admits he isn’t likely to win Buffy either, and they drink together.
Riley goes to see Buffy, and she’s not much interested in talking. He explains that his dalliances with vampires started after her incident with Dracula. But it’s not her fault; he soon moved from ill-conceived jealousy to addiction for being needed in a passionate way. He thinks Buffy has never needed him, and his evidence is that Buffy didn’t turn to him when Joyce was sick.
Buffy sees that the real issue is that Riley hates the fact that Buffy is stronger than he is. She isn’t going to change the way she relates to him. Riley drops another bombshell: he’s rejoining the military and headed for Belize later tonight unless she gives him a reason to stay.
Buffy storms out to the streets, where she’s surrounded by vampires of the feeding den, who are still mad that she burned down their place.
ACT IV
Buffy tells the vampire horde to get lost, but when they give her attitude, she actually kills all of them. Xander observes this and demands that she open up to him. “You’re acting like a crazy person. He also has figured out that Riley is the problem, largely because Riley can’t handle being merely a convenience anymore.
Xander tells Buffy, “You’ve been treating Riley like the rebound guy, when he’s the one who comes once in a lifetime.” He tells her to either let Riley go in a clean break if she doesn’t love him, or fight to keep him if he matters.
Buffy realizes Riley is worth fighting for and runs to meet him, but she’s too late to stop him from getting into the military helicopter, and as Riley is carried away on his mission, he doesn’t hear her calling.
Back at his place, Xander tells Anya he’s in love with her-- just because he wanted to make it clear.
NOTES
It's a shame that this is the exit of Riley, considering he's only become an interesting character once the creators decided they'd be writing him off. Someday the histories of Buffy will tell it more or less this way: Once upon a time, there was the new boyfriend Riley, attractive in a corn-fed, hunky sort of way, a confident government agent superhero and psychology teaching assistant. Soon enough Riley was the super-powered beau, and the fans were less than enthused. Slowly this lack of enthusiasm worked its magic on the reality of the show, and Buffy cooled towards Riley about the same time he lost his super-powers. Gradually he became more and more pathetic and uninteresting-- until he suddenly developed a taste for vampire kisses.
Now this is interesting; I love how delightfully sleazy Riley’s nocturnal escapes are. It's such a shameful, torrid practice born of all sorts of mixed emotions that it creates some interesting drama. Giles and Anya know about the vampire brothels, and both regard it as not really worth dealing with in a world of much greater evils. I doubt Buffy would care either, if not for her random rage. These are about the least evil that vampires can get-- they only bite people who pay them.
But Buffy is right to feel betrayed, and right when she says Riley is making a common mistake of men who frequent brothels, believing the hookers care. And one can't expect her to react any differently than she does, with revulsion and a sense of betrayal. But Riley explains himself exactly as best he can-- he did what he did out of rage, loneliness, and jealousy. And he's exactly right when he tells Buffy he doesn't really matter to her, just as Xander is when he tells her Riley has always been less a partner than a convenience.
What I appreciate here is that the show has always treated Buffy's ego consistently. Buffy is like most TV heroes; she's basically a self-centered person lucky enough to exist in a world that really does revolve around her. She's a hero, but she's so impressed with the awesome responsibility of being a slayer that she can be an insufferable martyr. In the cases where she has deviated from her own selfishness, it's an act of heroism, such as when she declined to crush Tara's hope of acceptance. She's really not a very nice woman, except to the people she needs at the time, but she's our hero, and that's good enough.
In fact, despite Buffy's apparent sudden conversion and race for the helicopter pad, I doubt her newfound appreciation would have lasted. But off he goes, and I was almost surprised that the episode didn't end with the radioed news that Riley was shot down over Belize, but you just wait.
In other news, it was nice to see Riley and Spike being lovable losers together, drinking and sullenly insulting one another. Spike has some nerve, doubting Riley's darkness even after the super-agent has driven a plastic stake through his heart. Why exactly didn't Riley kill Spike?
I also found the closing scenes with Xander quite satisfying and believable-- Buffy challenges Xander by accusing him of using Anya because the girl is there, and Xander goes straight home to tell the ex-demon that he really has fallen for her. It's a good thing to do and the best thing to come out of his argument with Buffy; besides, Anya has become a truly interesting character.
QUOTES
Spike: “Hey, let’s be reasonable about this.”
Riley: “You may have noticed, I left reasonable about three exits back.”
“Into the Woods”
Broadcast December 19, 2000
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon .... Alexander 'Xander' Harris
Alyson Hannigan .... Willow Rosenberg
Marc Blucas .... Riley Finn
Michelle Trachtenberg .... Dawn Summers
Amber Benson .... Tara
Anthony Head .... Rupert Giles
James Marsters .... Spike/William the Bloody
Kristine Sutherland .... Joyce Summers
Mercedes McNab .... Harmony Kendall
Emma Caulfield .... Anya Emerson
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
The gang waits restlessly at the hospital for Buffy’s mom, Joyce to emerge from her cancer-related brain surgery.
ACT 1
Joyce’s surgery was a success-- the doctor says he was able to remove the tumor completely, although they’ll have to observe Joyce’s progress for awhile at the hospital.
While Anya and Xander baby-sit Dawn, Riley and Buffy celebrate with a romantic night at home. But after Buffy falls asleep, Riley sneaks out of the house.
A spying Spike (the vampire is now fixated on Buffy) curiously follows Riley as the former super-agent heads in silence to a warehouse district.
The next day, while the Special Ops group that has replaced the Initiative plans to ask Riley to join them in an operation in Belize, Spike comes to Buffy in the middle of the night. He guides her out to the warehouse where Riley is hanging out with a sort of vampire orgy house. In an upper floor they find Riley, sitting calmly as a female vampire feeds on his army.
ACT II
“We only came here because we care about you, friend,” Spike snidely says to Riley as Buffy storms out. Riley drags himself back to his apartment to find a couple of Special Ops guys in his apartment asking him to join them for the Central American job. He doesn’t give them an answer yet.
Giles tells Buffy has hasn’t seen the sort of risky behavior she saw at the vampire den “since his Ripper days.” He explains that People hire vampires to feed off them and get off on the rush; it’s sleazy, addictive, even a little dangerous, but consenting and ultimately not all that worth troubling over when there are greater evils around. Buffy doesn’t reveal Riley is into the scene but does insist that thy go torch the den. She does, but it’s empty.
Riley, furious with Spike, visits the vampire’s crypt and impales him with a stake.
ACT III
But it’s a plastic stake, and Riley says next time it’ll be real if he doesn’t get out of his and Buffy’s life. Spike, in turn, says Riley isn’t likely to be the long-term love for Buffy, who wants a more corrupt man-- whereas despite current developments, Riley ultimately is good. Spike admits he isn’t likely to win Buffy either, and they drink together.
Riley goes to see Buffy, and she’s not much interested in talking. He explains that his dalliances with vampires started after her incident with Dracula. But it’s not her fault; he soon moved from ill-conceived jealousy to addiction for being needed in a passionate way. He thinks Buffy has never needed him, and his evidence is that Buffy didn’t turn to him when Joyce was sick.
Buffy sees that the real issue is that Riley hates the fact that Buffy is stronger than he is. She isn’t going to change the way she relates to him. Riley drops another bombshell: he’s rejoining the military and headed for Belize later tonight unless she gives him a reason to stay.
Buffy storms out to the streets, where she’s surrounded by vampires of the feeding den, who are still mad that she burned down their place.
ACT IV
Buffy tells the vampire horde to get lost, but when they give her attitude, she actually kills all of them. Xander observes this and demands that she open up to him. “You’re acting like a crazy person. He also has figured out that Riley is the problem, largely because Riley can’t handle being merely a convenience anymore.
Xander tells Buffy, “You’ve been treating Riley like the rebound guy, when he’s the one who comes once in a lifetime.” He tells her to either let Riley go in a clean break if she doesn’t love him, or fight to keep him if he matters.
Buffy realizes Riley is worth fighting for and runs to meet him, but she’s too late to stop him from getting into the military helicopter, and as Riley is carried away on his mission, he doesn’t hear her calling.
Back at his place, Xander tells Anya he’s in love with her-- just because he wanted to make it clear.
NOTES
It's a shame that this is the exit of Riley, considering he's only become an interesting character once the creators decided they'd be writing him off. Someday the histories of Buffy will tell it more or less this way: Once upon a time, there was the new boyfriend Riley, attractive in a corn-fed, hunky sort of way, a confident government agent superhero and psychology teaching assistant. Soon enough Riley was the super-powered beau, and the fans were less than enthused. Slowly this lack of enthusiasm worked its magic on the reality of the show, and Buffy cooled towards Riley about the same time he lost his super-powers. Gradually he became more and more pathetic and uninteresting-- until he suddenly developed a taste for vampire kisses.
Now this is interesting; I love how delightfully sleazy Riley’s nocturnal escapes are. It's such a shameful, torrid practice born of all sorts of mixed emotions that it creates some interesting drama. Giles and Anya know about the vampire brothels, and both regard it as not really worth dealing with in a world of much greater evils. I doubt Buffy would care either, if not for her random rage. These are about the least evil that vampires can get-- they only bite people who pay them.
But Buffy is right to feel betrayed, and right when she says Riley is making a common mistake of men who frequent brothels, believing the hookers care. And one can't expect her to react any differently than she does, with revulsion and a sense of betrayal. But Riley explains himself exactly as best he can-- he did what he did out of rage, loneliness, and jealousy. And he's exactly right when he tells Buffy he doesn't really matter to her, just as Xander is when he tells her Riley has always been less a partner than a convenience.
What I appreciate here is that the show has always treated Buffy's ego consistently. Buffy is like most TV heroes; she's basically a self-centered person lucky enough to exist in a world that really does revolve around her. She's a hero, but she's so impressed with the awesome responsibility of being a slayer that she can be an insufferable martyr. In the cases where she has deviated from her own selfishness, it's an act of heroism, such as when she declined to crush Tara's hope of acceptance. She's really not a very nice woman, except to the people she needs at the time, but she's our hero, and that's good enough.
In fact, despite Buffy's apparent sudden conversion and race for the helicopter pad, I doubt her newfound appreciation would have lasted. But off he goes, and I was almost surprised that the episode didn't end with the radioed news that Riley was shot down over Belize, but you just wait.
In other news, it was nice to see Riley and Spike being lovable losers together, drinking and sullenly insulting one another. Spike has some nerve, doubting Riley's darkness even after the super-agent has driven a plastic stake through his heart. Why exactly didn't Riley kill Spike?
I also found the closing scenes with Xander quite satisfying and believable-- Buffy challenges Xander by accusing him of using Anya because the girl is there, and Xander goes straight home to tell the ex-demon that he really has fallen for her. It's a good thing to do and the best thing to come out of his argument with Buffy; besides, Anya has become a truly interesting character.
QUOTES
Spike: “Hey, let’s be reasonable about this.”
Riley: “You may have noticed, I left reasonable about three exits back.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Superstar
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 4, Episode “Superstar”
Broadcast April 4, 2000
CAST
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Jonathan: Danny Strong
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Buffy and the Scooby Gang make their way to a nest of vampires that’s too large for them to handle alone. Hastily they return to the large mansion of Action Man Jonathan Levinson, who swings around behind his desk like Howard Hughes. “I take it you need my help.”
ACT 1
Jonathan, clad in black leather, amazes everyone by leading the gang to victory at the vampire nest, and then emerges to eager photographers. Next he taunts unfanged vampire Spike, while Buffy hangs back like a dim girlfriend.
Willow gives girlfriend Tara the rundown on the evening while the two work on a collage of cute Jonathan photos, while Buffy and boyfriend Riley still suffer from closeness issues after Faith’s recent betrayal sleeping with Riley while inhabiting Buffy’s body.
Buffy consults with Jonathan, who alternates signing copies of his latest book (“Oh, Jonathan!-- An Autobiography”) with advising her to forgive Riley. Next, Jonathan dons his camo to consult with the Initiative about the hostile cyborg Adam, offering hitherto unreached insights into the creature’s makeup.
ACT 2
At the Initiative, Jonathan consults Riley on his relationship with Buffy while preparing to shoot apples off the heads of three Initiative agents. At the Bronze, Buffy and Riley finally reconcile while the whole gang sways as Jonathan joins the orchestra for his rendition of “Serenade in Blue,” after which he drives Anya into a sex-craze with his stunning trombone playing, “off the new album.”
The concert breaks up when Karen, a girl whose book Jonathan signed, runs in. A hideous creature with a strange triangle mark on its forehead has attacked her. Jonathan listens to her story and tells the gang its no big deal. He’ll handle it on his own.
Nearby, in the headquarters of evil messiah/cyborg Adam, a vampire derides Jonathan the Great “These are lies,” Adam observes, “None of this is real. It’s intriguing, but it's wrong.” Somehow the world has been changed, but “these majiks are unstable, corrosive, and will inevitable lead to chaos.” But heck, Adam likes chaos, and he’s interested to see how it all works out.
While Jonathan broods by his mansion fireplace, baring the mark o the beast for us while he prepares to join his twin model friends in bed, Buffy tells Willow and Tara that she thinks Jonathan is holding something back.
Later, the same beast attacks Tara.
ACT 3
Tara holds off the beast with magic and escapes into a closet. Next morning, Tara recuperates in Willow’s room, and Buffy quickly establishes that it was the same creature Jonathan dismissed as harmless.
Buffy visits Xander’s basement apartment, where she surveys Xander’s Jonathan comic books and Jonathan card collection and asks Anya about how it could be that Jonathan is the best at everything. “I mean, he fights better than I do, and I’m the Slayer.” She quizzes Anya about alternate realities.
Buffy tells the gang that she’s convinced Jonathan has them all under his spell. They don’t believe her, until Riley comes to her defense. (“She sees things we don’t.”) Buffy shows the gang a picture from the Jonathan swimsuit calendar-- on his shoulder is the mark of the beast.
Jonathan walks in on this meeting and gives them all an “explanation:” he has a history with the creature, but when he faces it, his mind becomes confused. He has his mark tattooed on him to prevent underestimating it again. “Well, that does explain everything,” Riley says.
Buffy urges Riley to go hunting the monster with her, and he nervously agrees.
They approach Spike for information and Buffy’s real personality begins to surface, as she successfully plies information from Spike after Jonathan backs off.
The Scooby Gang study the possible spells Jonathan might have cast, until Willow finds the triangle rune Jonathan and the beast bare. The spell turns the caster into a paragon to be worshipped by all, but it also creates a monster that embodies the worst of all nightmares. If the creature dies, Jonathan and the world will revert.
Just then, Buffy and Jonathan find the monster in a cave next to a bottomless pit.
ACT 4
Xander doesn’t want the world to change back-- he’s happy with his place as friend of Jonathan.
Meanwhile, in the fight wit the monster, Buffy’s abilities are manifesting themselves more completely and Jonathan is losing his cool. By the time Buffy is back to her former fighting glory, Jonathan has one cool act left-- to toss the monster down the pit.
The world reverts to its former status. The world is slowly forgetting the effects, but Jonathan and Buffy have time for apologies. Jonathan gives Buffy some last advice on her relationship with Riley. But he’s already forgotten the cool things he said.
NOTES
What a trip this episode was, from the revamped opening credits to reflect the coolness that is Jonathan, to the jazzy guitar and orchestra a la Monty Norman’s James Bond theme that plays whenever Jonathan swings into action. There's a risk any show takes when they dare to play the "alternate world" card, but I tend to enjoy them more often than not. Buffy has done it before, of course, notably in the episode with the alternate Buffy who never came to the Hellmouth. This episode is more like something out of Star Trek, in which more sensitive characters become aware of the oddness of their own reality and have to convince the rest of what surely must be a strange instinct. Actually, it's always amused me that genre is the one place where existentialists can turn out to be empirically right.
The details are beautifully rendered. This is Jonathan's imagined world, so naturally we see Jonathan posters everywhere, as he peers down like Big Brother. Jonathan himself is a walking action figure, appearing in the same episode in black leather "Angel" outfit, a thousand-dollar suit, army camo, and a Bogart-style dinner jacket before a full orchestra. Jonathan makes Buckaroo Banzai look underemployed: he’s a medical doctor, a best-selling author, a socialite millionaire playboy, a military consultant genius, a vampire hunter, a pro basketball player, a victorious World Cup Women’s Soccer coach, and the star of The Matrix. He invented the internet.
But because this world is really built around Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Buffy has to be dampened by the effects of Jonathan's spell, and this is as prime a weakness as the monster the spell unleashes. (One wonders if she ever cast a spell, so faithfully does the universe revolve around her. Oh, wait, Joss Whedon cast that spell.)
From the very beginning, with the raid on the vampire nest, Buffy has her doubts-- she feels sure she should be able to think and fight better. This never was a neutral world; it's a Buffy world with a Jonathan filter.
I feel compelled to note, though, that I remained a bit disturbed by the concept overall: it's no surprise that Jonathan or any other loser would cast such a spell, but it troubles me that so much humor comes from what seems to be the self-evident ridiculousness of the worship of the character Jonathan Levinson. Surely no one would worship a short, Jewish nerd with a high voice when we have tall, sexy, strapping Aryans like Buffy and Riley to be our heroes. And they are, week in and week out. “Did anyone else feel way too tall?" Riley asks, understanding that he was lost in a nightmare. "I felt way too tall." Because, of course, taller is better. Hmm.
But that's nit-picking. This was a brilliant episode.
QUOTES
Riley: “These spells. These really work? You can really turn or your enemies inside out, or ‘learn to excrete gold coins?’”
Anya: “That one’s not so much fun.”
Season 4, Episode “Superstar”
Broadcast April 4, 2000
CAST
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Jonathan: Danny Strong
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Buffy and the Scooby Gang make their way to a nest of vampires that’s too large for them to handle alone. Hastily they return to the large mansion of Action Man Jonathan Levinson, who swings around behind his desk like Howard Hughes. “I take it you need my help.”
ACT 1
Jonathan, clad in black leather, amazes everyone by leading the gang to victory at the vampire nest, and then emerges to eager photographers. Next he taunts unfanged vampire Spike, while Buffy hangs back like a dim girlfriend.
Willow gives girlfriend Tara the rundown on the evening while the two work on a collage of cute Jonathan photos, while Buffy and boyfriend Riley still suffer from closeness issues after Faith’s recent betrayal sleeping with Riley while inhabiting Buffy’s body.
Buffy consults with Jonathan, who alternates signing copies of his latest book (“Oh, Jonathan!-- An Autobiography”) with advising her to forgive Riley. Next, Jonathan dons his camo to consult with the Initiative about the hostile cyborg Adam, offering hitherto unreached insights into the creature’s makeup.
ACT 2
At the Initiative, Jonathan consults Riley on his relationship with Buffy while preparing to shoot apples off the heads of three Initiative agents. At the Bronze, Buffy and Riley finally reconcile while the whole gang sways as Jonathan joins the orchestra for his rendition of “Serenade in Blue,” after which he drives Anya into a sex-craze with his stunning trombone playing, “off the new album.”
The concert breaks up when Karen, a girl whose book Jonathan signed, runs in. A hideous creature with a strange triangle mark on its forehead has attacked her. Jonathan listens to her story and tells the gang its no big deal. He’ll handle it on his own.
Nearby, in the headquarters of evil messiah/cyborg Adam, a vampire derides Jonathan the Great “These are lies,” Adam observes, “None of this is real. It’s intriguing, but it's wrong.” Somehow the world has been changed, but “these majiks are unstable, corrosive, and will inevitable lead to chaos.” But heck, Adam likes chaos, and he’s interested to see how it all works out.
While Jonathan broods by his mansion fireplace, baring the mark o the beast for us while he prepares to join his twin model friends in bed, Buffy tells Willow and Tara that she thinks Jonathan is holding something back.
Later, the same beast attacks Tara.
ACT 3
Tara holds off the beast with magic and escapes into a closet. Next morning, Tara recuperates in Willow’s room, and Buffy quickly establishes that it was the same creature Jonathan dismissed as harmless.
Buffy visits Xander’s basement apartment, where she surveys Xander’s Jonathan comic books and Jonathan card collection and asks Anya about how it could be that Jonathan is the best at everything. “I mean, he fights better than I do, and I’m the Slayer.” She quizzes Anya about alternate realities.
Buffy tells the gang that she’s convinced Jonathan has them all under his spell. They don’t believe her, until Riley comes to her defense. (“She sees things we don’t.”) Buffy shows the gang a picture from the Jonathan swimsuit calendar-- on his shoulder is the mark of the beast.
Jonathan walks in on this meeting and gives them all an “explanation:” he has a history with the creature, but when he faces it, his mind becomes confused. He has his mark tattooed on him to prevent underestimating it again. “Well, that does explain everything,” Riley says.
Buffy urges Riley to go hunting the monster with her, and he nervously agrees.
They approach Spike for information and Buffy’s real personality begins to surface, as she successfully plies information from Spike after Jonathan backs off.
The Scooby Gang study the possible spells Jonathan might have cast, until Willow finds the triangle rune Jonathan and the beast bare. The spell turns the caster into a paragon to be worshipped by all, but it also creates a monster that embodies the worst of all nightmares. If the creature dies, Jonathan and the world will revert.
Just then, Buffy and Jonathan find the monster in a cave next to a bottomless pit.
ACT 4
Xander doesn’t want the world to change back-- he’s happy with his place as friend of Jonathan.
Meanwhile, in the fight wit the monster, Buffy’s abilities are manifesting themselves more completely and Jonathan is losing his cool. By the time Buffy is back to her former fighting glory, Jonathan has one cool act left-- to toss the monster down the pit.
The world reverts to its former status. The world is slowly forgetting the effects, but Jonathan and Buffy have time for apologies. Jonathan gives Buffy some last advice on her relationship with Riley. But he’s already forgotten the cool things he said.
NOTES
What a trip this episode was, from the revamped opening credits to reflect the coolness that is Jonathan, to the jazzy guitar and orchestra a la Monty Norman’s James Bond theme that plays whenever Jonathan swings into action. There's a risk any show takes when they dare to play the "alternate world" card, but I tend to enjoy them more often than not. Buffy has done it before, of course, notably in the episode with the alternate Buffy who never came to the Hellmouth. This episode is more like something out of Star Trek, in which more sensitive characters become aware of the oddness of their own reality and have to convince the rest of what surely must be a strange instinct. Actually, it's always amused me that genre is the one place where existentialists can turn out to be empirically right.
The details are beautifully rendered. This is Jonathan's imagined world, so naturally we see Jonathan posters everywhere, as he peers down like Big Brother. Jonathan himself is a walking action figure, appearing in the same episode in black leather "Angel" outfit, a thousand-dollar suit, army camo, and a Bogart-style dinner jacket before a full orchestra. Jonathan makes Buckaroo Banzai look underemployed: he’s a medical doctor, a best-selling author, a socialite millionaire playboy, a military consultant genius, a vampire hunter, a pro basketball player, a victorious World Cup Women’s Soccer coach, and the star of The Matrix. He invented the internet.
But because this world is really built around Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Buffy has to be dampened by the effects of Jonathan's spell, and this is as prime a weakness as the monster the spell unleashes. (One wonders if she ever cast a spell, so faithfully does the universe revolve around her. Oh, wait, Joss Whedon cast that spell.)
From the very beginning, with the raid on the vampire nest, Buffy has her doubts-- she feels sure she should be able to think and fight better. This never was a neutral world; it's a Buffy world with a Jonathan filter.
I feel compelled to note, though, that I remained a bit disturbed by the concept overall: it's no surprise that Jonathan or any other loser would cast such a spell, but it troubles me that so much humor comes from what seems to be the self-evident ridiculousness of the worship of the character Jonathan Levinson. Surely no one would worship a short, Jewish nerd with a high voice when we have tall, sexy, strapping Aryans like Buffy and Riley to be our heroes. And they are, week in and week out. “Did anyone else feel way too tall?" Riley asks, understanding that he was lost in a nightmare. "I felt way too tall." Because, of course, taller is better. Hmm.
But that's nit-picking. This was a brilliant episode.
QUOTES
Riley: “These spells. These really work? You can really turn or your enemies inside out, or ‘learn to excrete gold coins?’”
Anya: “That one’s not so much fun.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Hush
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
December 14, 1999
Episode: “Hush”
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
Professor Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
SYNOPSIS
Act 1
While Willow tries to fit in at a pretentious Wicca meeting (they’re horrified by the idea of casting spells but think a bake sale would be empowering,) Giles asks Xander to “take Spike” for a few days while his woman friend Olivia comes to town. (Xander, unlike Giles, will tie Spike up.) Meanwhile, Buffy and Agent Riley of the Initiative each want to come clean about their crime-fighting ways, but alas, cannot.
Giles researches a group of spirits called the Gentlemen until the lovely Olivia arrives. In the night, the Gentlemen cast a whispering spell that travels through the town and removes everyone’s voice.
Act 2
Next morning, everyone is magically mute. Not deaf-- they can hear doors slamming, books opening-- just mute. The Initiative elevator nearly toasts Riley and his Initiative Pal when they can’t speak to the computer. (Professor Walsh recommends they use the staircase next time; at least she has the benefit of a voice modulator on her computer.)
Sunnydale turns to Doomsday Land, with all public services closed and people wandering the streets like silent ghosts.
Across town from one another, Giles and Professor Walsh do their research while Buffy and Riley hit the town to keep chaos from descending. Riley and Buffy meet on the street and embrace in silence.
Then, the Gentlemen come gliding across the town, smiling and wraithlike in caretaker suits as they float on their heels, guided by dog-like ghouls in straitjackets. Silently they enter a dormitory, killing a college student who can’t scream as they slice him open with a scalpel.
Act 3
The Gentlemen are collecting hearts in the bell tower where they hang out. Meanwhile, Giles gives the Slayer Gang an overhead-projection lecture on the Gentlemen, fairy tale ghosts who steal the voices of the living so no one can scream as they collect seven hearts from their victims. Legends tell of a Princess who got her voice back and screamed once, killing them all.
Buffy patrols, once again running into Riley when they both track the Gentlemen to the Church Tower. Meanwhile, Tara, a painfully shy girl from the Wicca group, goes hunting for Willow, and ends up pursued by the Gentlemen. Willow is the only in the dorm one brave enough to emerge from her room while Tara frantically beats on the door. At the Church Tower, Riley and Buffy come face to face with one another in their respective crossbow-wielding roles.
Act 4
While Buffy and Riley do their action hero thing, Xander nearly beats Spike to death when he mistakenly believes Spike has attacked Anya. Sweet. At the dormitory Willow and X use their combined telekinesis (!) to block the Gentlemen’s path with a coke machine. And at the church tower, Buffy and Riley finally stumble across the Box of Voices, which must be crushed to release the captured sounds. Buffy becomes the Screaming Princess, her shriek popping the heads of the Gentlemen like green pimples, if pimples were bald and wore lots of eye shadow.
Turns out Tara recognized Willow as a powerful witch like Tara’s mother was. Willow doubts her own powers, but the two have a sweet moment when Tara protests that Willow is special.
Riley comes over to Buffy’s dorm to talk things out, but as it happens, they can’t think of a thing to say, and we end the episode with silence.
NOTES
Wow. Buffy, The Vampire Slayer has always been a show that leaned heavily on nearly unmatched dialogue, but in this episode, the series reaches MASH heights by pulling out a truly different episode. Definitely an episode you have to watch, "Hush" relies on sound effects and the utter silence of the characters for tension without abandoning the usual humor. It's an ambitious attempt and succeeds nicely, as the characters try to use hand gestures, message boards, voice modulators, and overhead projectors to take the place of everyday vocal communication. Buffy is great TV, if there is such a thing.
The only thing I thought lacking, in fact, would be a hearing-impaired community (doesn't every college have one) who would, of course, blithely go about their business, suddenly better equipped than the rest of the town. Sunnydale shuts down when no one can speak; a deaf person would probably find that hilarious.
Willow is getting more powerful by the episode, and here we learn that in fact she's not your usual witch-- in fact, most of the Wiccans in the Buffy world are like those of your average college, just regular folks with a hip hobby. Willow is special, and it takes the tongue-tied Tara to tell her. I wonder where this relationship with Tara is going. Will this be a new best friend, someone to finally free Amy the rat, or are we looking at the beginning of a Neve Campbell-esque LUG scenario?
And of course, finally Riley and Buffy have discovered that neither is who he or she seems. It's a nice touch that, having discovered this and gotten their voices back, they still sit in silence, unable to begin the talk. (Good move, too, any conversation would be anti-climactic.)
Xander continues to grow in bravery and mass; he's reaching Shwarzeneggarian proportions and soon will be the resident muscle of the team. He and once-dweebish Giles are in a race to become sex symbols on the show, and soon we will have no resident nerds. (Meaning the powers that be will have to introduce some new ones.) So it goes.
Great episode.
QUOTES
Anya: “You don’t care what I think; you don’t ask about my day.”
Xander: “You really did turn into a real girl, didn’t you?”
December 14, 1999
Episode: “Hush”
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
Professor Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
SYNOPSIS
Act 1
While Willow tries to fit in at a pretentious Wicca meeting (they’re horrified by the idea of casting spells but think a bake sale would be empowering,) Giles asks Xander to “take Spike” for a few days while his woman friend Olivia comes to town. (Xander, unlike Giles, will tie Spike up.) Meanwhile, Buffy and Agent Riley of the Initiative each want to come clean about their crime-fighting ways, but alas, cannot.
Giles researches a group of spirits called the Gentlemen until the lovely Olivia arrives. In the night, the Gentlemen cast a whispering spell that travels through the town and removes everyone’s voice.
Act 2
Next morning, everyone is magically mute. Not deaf-- they can hear doors slamming, books opening-- just mute. The Initiative elevator nearly toasts Riley and his Initiative Pal when they can’t speak to the computer. (Professor Walsh recommends they use the staircase next time; at least she has the benefit of a voice modulator on her computer.)
Sunnydale turns to Doomsday Land, with all public services closed and people wandering the streets like silent ghosts.
Across town from one another, Giles and Professor Walsh do their research while Buffy and Riley hit the town to keep chaos from descending. Riley and Buffy meet on the street and embrace in silence.
Then, the Gentlemen come gliding across the town, smiling and wraithlike in caretaker suits as they float on their heels, guided by dog-like ghouls in straitjackets. Silently they enter a dormitory, killing a college student who can’t scream as they slice him open with a scalpel.
Act 3
The Gentlemen are collecting hearts in the bell tower where they hang out. Meanwhile, Giles gives the Slayer Gang an overhead-projection lecture on the Gentlemen, fairy tale ghosts who steal the voices of the living so no one can scream as they collect seven hearts from their victims. Legends tell of a Princess who got her voice back and screamed once, killing them all.
Buffy patrols, once again running into Riley when they both track the Gentlemen to the Church Tower. Meanwhile, Tara, a painfully shy girl from the Wicca group, goes hunting for Willow, and ends up pursued by the Gentlemen. Willow is the only in the dorm one brave enough to emerge from her room while Tara frantically beats on the door. At the Church Tower, Riley and Buffy come face to face with one another in their respective crossbow-wielding roles.
Act 4
While Buffy and Riley do their action hero thing, Xander nearly beats Spike to death when he mistakenly believes Spike has attacked Anya. Sweet. At the dormitory Willow and X use their combined telekinesis (!) to block the Gentlemen’s path with a coke machine. And at the church tower, Buffy and Riley finally stumble across the Box of Voices, which must be crushed to release the captured sounds. Buffy becomes the Screaming Princess, her shriek popping the heads of the Gentlemen like green pimples, if pimples were bald and wore lots of eye shadow.
Turns out Tara recognized Willow as a powerful witch like Tara’s mother was. Willow doubts her own powers, but the two have a sweet moment when Tara protests that Willow is special.
Riley comes over to Buffy’s dorm to talk things out, but as it happens, they can’t think of a thing to say, and we end the episode with silence.
NOTES
Wow. Buffy, The Vampire Slayer has always been a show that leaned heavily on nearly unmatched dialogue, but in this episode, the series reaches MASH heights by pulling out a truly different episode. Definitely an episode you have to watch, "Hush" relies on sound effects and the utter silence of the characters for tension without abandoning the usual humor. It's an ambitious attempt and succeeds nicely, as the characters try to use hand gestures, message boards, voice modulators, and overhead projectors to take the place of everyday vocal communication. Buffy is great TV, if there is such a thing.
The only thing I thought lacking, in fact, would be a hearing-impaired community (doesn't every college have one) who would, of course, blithely go about their business, suddenly better equipped than the rest of the town. Sunnydale shuts down when no one can speak; a deaf person would probably find that hilarious.
Willow is getting more powerful by the episode, and here we learn that in fact she's not your usual witch-- in fact, most of the Wiccans in the Buffy world are like those of your average college, just regular folks with a hip hobby. Willow is special, and it takes the tongue-tied Tara to tell her. I wonder where this relationship with Tara is going. Will this be a new best friend, someone to finally free Amy the rat, or are we looking at the beginning of a Neve Campbell-esque LUG scenario?
And of course, finally Riley and Buffy have discovered that neither is who he or she seems. It's a nice touch that, having discovered this and gotten their voices back, they still sit in silence, unable to begin the talk. (Good move, too, any conversation would be anti-climactic.)
Xander continues to grow in bravery and mass; he's reaching Shwarzeneggarian proportions and soon will be the resident muscle of the team. He and once-dweebish Giles are in a race to become sex symbols on the show, and soon we will have no resident nerds. (Meaning the powers that be will have to introduce some new ones.) So it goes.
Great episode.
QUOTES
Anya: “You don’t care what I think; you don’t ask about my day.”
Xander: “You really did turn into a real girl, didn’t you?”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- I was Made to Love You
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"I was Made to Love You"
Broadcast February 20, 2001
"I was Made to Love You" masquerades as a comic relief episode until it punches us in the stomach with no less than two unhappy endings. In brief, Buffy's recent obsession with her own loneliness after being dumped by Riley leads her to ask Doctor Ben out on a date. But she sees her own plight reflected in that of April, a beautiful, monomaniacal robot built to be the lover of-- and then dumped by-- mad college scientist Warren. April goes ballistic when she learns that Warren doesn't love her anymore and finally powers down, never understanding what her purpose was if not to love her boyfriend. Buffy manages to scrape a lesson out of that somewhere, and probably forgets all about it because she comes home and finds her in-remission mom, Joyce, dead on the couch. Just like that.
I Robot, Part Deux
So, there are several wonderful notes struck in this episode, which reminded me of the early Buffy, with its wacky, over-the-top literalization of social dilemmas. Here, April represents the ultimate jilted girlfriend, unable to comprehend what she did wrong or what she's supposed to do now. The conceit of the show is that April is so sophisticated an android that she genuinely aches to be back in the good graces of her creator, and the result is a story that starts out funny and turns sad. I haven't seen a robot story this sad since the Twilight Zone episode "The Lonely," which in fact was also about a perfectly-designed robot companion who must face her own abandonment. (At least in "The Lonely," the guy felt awful about it; we get the sense that Warren's dilemma with April is far less emotional and moral than logistical.)
And then April dies. We don't even know what happened to the robot body. Did Buffy hide it? Fold it up and stuff it into Giles' trunk? There are plenty of opportunities for a female Data in the Scooby Gang, I'm thinking. But if one were to reprogram April-- and who could do this besides maybe Willow-- what directives would replace April's, which start with "be a good girlfriend" and end with "laugh at Warren's jokes?" This robot has some sophisticated programming-- note that she has a whole subroutine dedicated to recognizing Warren as a "snappy dresser." (She has about four subroutines dedicated to "fetishes.") Were you Willow, how would you reprogram her? "Help Buffy and her friends?" "Be a good person?" A good one for Warren to have added if it didn't sap too many precious resources from "Neckrubs" would have been "The Relative Density of Human Flesh and Bone" and maybe "Crimes and Misdemeanors." Heck, it's sort of odd to me that Warren never told April his last name.
Buffy's loneliness
So really the whole April mess is meant to reflect Buffy's loneliness and wish for a good boyfriend to make her "whole," and the end result of the story is she decides she chooses to "be with Buffy" for a while. I hate to be the one to bring it up, but personally I think Buffy's correct to suggest she might fare better in relationships if she were a little less self-involved. Didn't she more or less dump Riley, actually? Wasn't she already getting rid of him before he left? But she really can't not be self-involved, given that the world revolves around her. Still, admitting you have a problem is the first step to healing. ("I'm Buffy, and I'm the Lead.") My recommendation? Therapy, not dating. Especially after the end of this episode.
Giles and Spike
But the finest moment of the episode comes at around the middle, when Spike comes to the magic shop and is shunned by the whole Scooby Gang. (Buffy has declared him persona non grata, and he did tie her up in a mad attempt to get her to love him, the moron.) He tries to be friendly, but it's Giles who changes the rules. Giles finally talks to Spike as not a friend but as a demonic force that must be spoken to clearly, as one would a child. "We are not your way to Buffy," Giles says. "There is no way to Buffy." And he looks as though he just might kill Spike, and yet, does not, because so far this demon has been more or less an ally. But as of this moment, Giles makes it clear that Spike is no longer welcome to fancy himself different from what he is: an outsider with his own magical-- presumably evil-- destiny.
Joyce's Death
Which brings us to the real clincher, a roughly six-second beat at the end of the episode that carries the biggest wallop of the whole season. Buffy comes home to find Joyce, who has just been doing well enough to go out on her first date, lying unconscious if not dead on the sofa. (By all incoming reports, including the previews of next episode, she's dead.) It's a completely unexpected development, whether it should have been or not, and it's one none of us really want to think about very much. We'll look fondly at Kristine Sutherland the loss of her character next week.
"I was Made to Love You"
Broadcast February 20, 2001
"I was Made to Love You" masquerades as a comic relief episode until it punches us in the stomach with no less than two unhappy endings. In brief, Buffy's recent obsession with her own loneliness after being dumped by Riley leads her to ask Doctor Ben out on a date. But she sees her own plight reflected in that of April, a beautiful, monomaniacal robot built to be the lover of-- and then dumped by-- mad college scientist Warren. April goes ballistic when she learns that Warren doesn't love her anymore and finally powers down, never understanding what her purpose was if not to love her boyfriend. Buffy manages to scrape a lesson out of that somewhere, and probably forgets all about it because she comes home and finds her in-remission mom, Joyce, dead on the couch. Just like that.
I Robot, Part Deux
So, there are several wonderful notes struck in this episode, which reminded me of the early Buffy, with its wacky, over-the-top literalization of social dilemmas. Here, April represents the ultimate jilted girlfriend, unable to comprehend what she did wrong or what she's supposed to do now. The conceit of the show is that April is so sophisticated an android that she genuinely aches to be back in the good graces of her creator, and the result is a story that starts out funny and turns sad. I haven't seen a robot story this sad since the Twilight Zone episode "The Lonely," which in fact was also about a perfectly-designed robot companion who must face her own abandonment. (At least in "The Lonely," the guy felt awful about it; we get the sense that Warren's dilemma with April is far less emotional and moral than logistical.)
And then April dies. We don't even know what happened to the robot body. Did Buffy hide it? Fold it up and stuff it into Giles' trunk? There are plenty of opportunities for a female Data in the Scooby Gang, I'm thinking. But if one were to reprogram April-- and who could do this besides maybe Willow-- what directives would replace April's, which start with "be a good girlfriend" and end with "laugh at Warren's jokes?" This robot has some sophisticated programming-- note that she has a whole subroutine dedicated to recognizing Warren as a "snappy dresser." (She has about four subroutines dedicated to "fetishes.") Were you Willow, how would you reprogram her? "Help Buffy and her friends?" "Be a good person?" A good one for Warren to have added if it didn't sap too many precious resources from "Neckrubs" would have been "The Relative Density of Human Flesh and Bone" and maybe "Crimes and Misdemeanors." Heck, it's sort of odd to me that Warren never told April his last name.
Buffy's loneliness
So really the whole April mess is meant to reflect Buffy's loneliness and wish for a good boyfriend to make her "whole," and the end result of the story is she decides she chooses to "be with Buffy" for a while. I hate to be the one to bring it up, but personally I think Buffy's correct to suggest she might fare better in relationships if she were a little less self-involved. Didn't she more or less dump Riley, actually? Wasn't she already getting rid of him before he left? But she really can't not be self-involved, given that the world revolves around her. Still, admitting you have a problem is the first step to healing. ("I'm Buffy, and I'm the Lead.") My recommendation? Therapy, not dating. Especially after the end of this episode.
Giles and Spike
But the finest moment of the episode comes at around the middle, when Spike comes to the magic shop and is shunned by the whole Scooby Gang. (Buffy has declared him persona non grata, and he did tie her up in a mad attempt to get her to love him, the moron.) He tries to be friendly, but it's Giles who changes the rules. Giles finally talks to Spike as not a friend but as a demonic force that must be spoken to clearly, as one would a child. "We are not your way to Buffy," Giles says. "There is no way to Buffy." And he looks as though he just might kill Spike, and yet, does not, because so far this demon has been more or less an ally. But as of this moment, Giles makes it clear that Spike is no longer welcome to fancy himself different from what he is: an outsider with his own magical-- presumably evil-- destiny.
Joyce's Death
Which brings us to the real clincher, a roughly six-second beat at the end of the episode that carries the biggest wallop of the whole season. Buffy comes home to find Joyce, who has just been doing well enough to go out on her first date, lying unconscious if not dead on the sofa. (By all incoming reports, including the previews of next episode, she's dead.) It's a completely unexpected development, whether it should have been or not, and it's one none of us really want to think about very much. We'll look fondly at Kristine Sutherland the loss of her character next week.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Family
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 5, Episode "Family"
Broadcast November 7, 2000
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon .... Alexander 'Xander' Harris
Alyson Hannigan .... Willow Rosenberg
Marc Blucas .... Riley Finn
Michelle Trachtenberg .... Dawn Summers
Amber Benson .... Tara
Anthony Head .... Rupert Giles
James Marsters .... Spike/William the Bloody
Kristine Sutherland .... Joyce Summers
Mercedes McNab .... Harmony Kendall
Emma Caulfield .... Anya Emerson
SYNOPSIS
Prologue
Tara tells Willow a bedtime story and in return, Willow reassures Tara that she’s an essential part of the Scooby Gang. Meanwhile, Buffy and Giles have learned that Dawn is actually a living embodiment of an energy source called “The Key.” The monks who sent Dawn to Buffy, also sending a full range of artificial memories to everyone, did so for a reason, and Buffy vows not to reveal the secret to Dawn. “I have to take care of her,” Buffy says-- especially since the mysterious blond demon hunting for Dawn the Key is still out there.
Act I
Just a few days after the gang moved Buffy into her dorm room, Buffy has them move her back out. She’s moving back in with her Mom. While they move, Tara’s feeling awkward and Willow wants everyone’s assurance that they’ll be at Tara’s birthday party the following night at the Bronze.
Anya’s having a wonderful time working for Giles: “I have a place in the world now... I’m a working gal.” Xander and Buffy, meanwhile, beat their brains trying to figure out what to get Tara for her birthday, revealing they know little about her.
Across town, Spike is fantasizing about Buffy while making love to Harmony (his fantasy involves not sex but violence, but there you are).
At the magic shop, a creepy blond guy (blond guys should not grow beards) comes in and irritates Giles, Anya, Xander and Buffy until Tara and Willow show. Tara looks frightened as we learn the stranger is Tara’s brother.
Act II
His name is Donny, and Tara’s visibly unnerved and eager to know how the family found her. But she has a hug for her dad and cousin, who come in next. Tara stays nervous even after they leave, but she promises to see them that evening.
Later, Buffy is over-protective of Dawn enough to practically ground her, and Riley thinks she’s over-reacting. He also suspects there are things Buffy’s not telling him.
Speaking of deep secrets, Tara’s dad is disgusted that Tara, so close to her vitally important twentieth birthday, has hidden from them. She “has evil inside” her, just as her mother did. She should come home. Dad wants her away from all this witchcraft stuff and at home where the upcoming transformation to her “true face” occurs.
The blond demon girl dispatches a bone-eating demon to find and kill Buffy.
Willow wants to cast a demon-finding spell (one Tara sabotaged once before), but Tara sends her away. Later, while the Scooby Gang meets, Tara sneaks up on them and casts a curse (of unknown purpose) on them.
Act III
Riley goes out drinking at “Willie’s” and immediately finds company in a brunette named Sandy. Sandy wants to go somewhere else, but Riley knows a vampire when he sees one.
Harmony has come back from shopping (killing the clerk and taking the goods) and reports that the blond demon has been siccing demons on Buffy. Spike
Tara’s cousin Beth calls Tara a “selfish bitch” for not wanting to come home with her family. “Your friends are going to know the truth about you.” When Beth guesses that Tara put a curse on the gang “so they wouldn't see the demon part” of her, Tara begs Beth not to tell her dad.
Unfortunately, the spell makes it impossible for the gang to see any demons, which becomes a major problem when several arrive at the magic shop door.
Act IV
Tara is out of control, Beth says. If her father doesn’t force Tara to come home, he’s at least going to reveal her demon-ness to Tara’s friends. Tara should tell them first.
At the magic shop, demons wander, invisible, until all Hell breaks loose when they attack Buffy. Spike arrives, ostensibly to watch Buffy die, while the gang fights an invisible army. But Spike joins their fight.
Tara arrives in time to break the spell, allowing Buffy to prevail. But Tara and her father reveal that the women in Tara’s family, including Tara, are demons. Buffy’s not very forgiving and Tara is almost dragged away by her father, but finally the Slayer stands up for their demon friend. The whole gang, in fact, appears in their leather jackets and proclaim themselves Arthur Fonzerelli. No, actually they proclaim themselves Tara's family, a moving statement.
But then, a shock: Spike tests a theory and attacks Tara, causing himself pain. This can only mean Tara was never a demon in any event. “It’s just a family legend to keep the ladies in line.” She's just a human, adept at magic.
The birthday bash for Tara is a hit, and Willow and Tara dance into the night, about two feet off the ground.
NOTES
"Family" will for me stand as the episode when Buffy actually grew up, although the episode doesn't focus on her at all. The reason, to me, is the mature choice she makes at the end when she defends Tara from her father. This is Buffy, remember, as self-centered and megalomaniacal a protagonist as episodic television has ever seen. The world revolves around Buffy, she takes her life and work very seriously, and she gets very angry whenever other characters make her life any more difficult. When sister Dawn made a dangerous mistake last episode, Buffy was ruthless. Because it rarely happens, we forget how easily Buffy is riled into rage if things don't go her way and she feels betrayed. But now, some things have changed: Buffy has more responsibility than she did before, because she now knows Dawn is depending on her. And whatever over-protectiveness that might bring out, it's softened her edge. So when Tara, not even a close friend, makes a dangerous mistake, Buffy (as expected) genuinely looks like she's ready to feed Tara to the wolves. But then she snaps out of it, and tells Tara's dad that he'll have to come through her to take his daughter home.
This is a nice enough development that it doesn't really matter that the revelation that Tara isn't a demon after all is somewhat anticlimactic. I'm glad, anyway, because we already have Anya the demon. It was good to learn some more about Tara's pre-Buffy life, and interesting to find Tara is the only human character since Xander who doesn't come from an upper-middle-class background. The powers that be use Tara's witchcraft to stand for her lesbianism here, as her stodgy father reacts with revulsion about the lifestyle she's living. He says he'd hoped it was a phase. (If it is a phase, of course, he's a little early: one expects she'll at least be a Witch until Graduation.)
Tara's relationship with Willow, meanwhile, continues to be the sweetest romance on TV, gay or straight-- and stands as certainly the most well-handled and mature gay romance we've seen yet in a TV show.
I was a little turned off by the painfully realistic discussion between Xander and Buffy about Tara, who they do not know very well and frankly haven't invested the time to know any better. But I was more troubled by the reaction Giles, Xander, Anya, Buffy and Dawn have to Tara's brother when he comes in the store. Admittedly he's kind of a jerk, but even before he says anything insensitive, the whole gang stares at him, chastising him silently for being the outsider he is. Here's a rule of thumb to take with you through life: if your friends seem like nice people, but they're mean to strangers, they're not nice people.
Oh, minor note: more Buffy/Riley stress. I still think boyfriend is doomed, doomed, walking-dead-doomed.
And that's all the predicting I'll do.
QUOTES
Giles: “People help each other out, Anya. It’s one of our strange customs.”
Giles: “I’ve narrowed it down some.”
Buffy: (looking at Giles’ mountain of open books.) “Your definition of narrow is impressively wide.”
Season 5, Episode "Family"
Broadcast November 7, 2000
Cast:
Sarah Michelle Gellar .... Buffy Summers
Nicholas Brendon .... Alexander 'Xander' Harris
Alyson Hannigan .... Willow Rosenberg
Marc Blucas .... Riley Finn
Michelle Trachtenberg .... Dawn Summers
Amber Benson .... Tara
Anthony Head .... Rupert Giles
James Marsters .... Spike/William the Bloody
Kristine Sutherland .... Joyce Summers
Mercedes McNab .... Harmony Kendall
Emma Caulfield .... Anya Emerson
SYNOPSIS
Prologue
Tara tells Willow a bedtime story and in return, Willow reassures Tara that she’s an essential part of the Scooby Gang. Meanwhile, Buffy and Giles have learned that Dawn is actually a living embodiment of an energy source called “The Key.” The monks who sent Dawn to Buffy, also sending a full range of artificial memories to everyone, did so for a reason, and Buffy vows not to reveal the secret to Dawn. “I have to take care of her,” Buffy says-- especially since the mysterious blond demon hunting for Dawn the Key is still out there.
Act I
Just a few days after the gang moved Buffy into her dorm room, Buffy has them move her back out. She’s moving back in with her Mom. While they move, Tara’s feeling awkward and Willow wants everyone’s assurance that they’ll be at Tara’s birthday party the following night at the Bronze.
Anya’s having a wonderful time working for Giles: “I have a place in the world now... I’m a working gal.” Xander and Buffy, meanwhile, beat their brains trying to figure out what to get Tara for her birthday, revealing they know little about her.
Across town, Spike is fantasizing about Buffy while making love to Harmony (his fantasy involves not sex but violence, but there you are).
At the magic shop, a creepy blond guy (blond guys should not grow beards) comes in and irritates Giles, Anya, Xander and Buffy until Tara and Willow show. Tara looks frightened as we learn the stranger is Tara’s brother.
Act II
His name is Donny, and Tara’s visibly unnerved and eager to know how the family found her. But she has a hug for her dad and cousin, who come in next. Tara stays nervous even after they leave, but she promises to see them that evening.
Later, Buffy is over-protective of Dawn enough to practically ground her, and Riley thinks she’s over-reacting. He also suspects there are things Buffy’s not telling him.
Speaking of deep secrets, Tara’s dad is disgusted that Tara, so close to her vitally important twentieth birthday, has hidden from them. She “has evil inside” her, just as her mother did. She should come home. Dad wants her away from all this witchcraft stuff and at home where the upcoming transformation to her “true face” occurs.
The blond demon girl dispatches a bone-eating demon to find and kill Buffy.
Willow wants to cast a demon-finding spell (one Tara sabotaged once before), but Tara sends her away. Later, while the Scooby Gang meets, Tara sneaks up on them and casts a curse (of unknown purpose) on them.
Act III
Riley goes out drinking at “Willie’s” and immediately finds company in a brunette named Sandy. Sandy wants to go somewhere else, but Riley knows a vampire when he sees one.
Harmony has come back from shopping (killing the clerk and taking the goods) and reports that the blond demon has been siccing demons on Buffy. Spike
Tara’s cousin Beth calls Tara a “selfish bitch” for not wanting to come home with her family. “Your friends are going to know the truth about you.” When Beth guesses that Tara put a curse on the gang “so they wouldn't see the demon part” of her, Tara begs Beth not to tell her dad.
Unfortunately, the spell makes it impossible for the gang to see any demons, which becomes a major problem when several arrive at the magic shop door.
Act IV
Tara is out of control, Beth says. If her father doesn’t force Tara to come home, he’s at least going to reveal her demon-ness to Tara’s friends. Tara should tell them first.
At the magic shop, demons wander, invisible, until all Hell breaks loose when they attack Buffy. Spike arrives, ostensibly to watch Buffy die, while the gang fights an invisible army. But Spike joins their fight.
Tara arrives in time to break the spell, allowing Buffy to prevail. But Tara and her father reveal that the women in Tara’s family, including Tara, are demons. Buffy’s not very forgiving and Tara is almost dragged away by her father, but finally the Slayer stands up for their demon friend. The whole gang, in fact, appears in their leather jackets and proclaim themselves Arthur Fonzerelli. No, actually they proclaim themselves Tara's family, a moving statement.
But then, a shock: Spike tests a theory and attacks Tara, causing himself pain. This can only mean Tara was never a demon in any event. “It’s just a family legend to keep the ladies in line.” She's just a human, adept at magic.
The birthday bash for Tara is a hit, and Willow and Tara dance into the night, about two feet off the ground.
NOTES
"Family" will for me stand as the episode when Buffy actually grew up, although the episode doesn't focus on her at all. The reason, to me, is the mature choice she makes at the end when she defends Tara from her father. This is Buffy, remember, as self-centered and megalomaniacal a protagonist as episodic television has ever seen. The world revolves around Buffy, she takes her life and work very seriously, and she gets very angry whenever other characters make her life any more difficult. When sister Dawn made a dangerous mistake last episode, Buffy was ruthless. Because it rarely happens, we forget how easily Buffy is riled into rage if things don't go her way and she feels betrayed. But now, some things have changed: Buffy has more responsibility than she did before, because she now knows Dawn is depending on her. And whatever over-protectiveness that might bring out, it's softened her edge. So when Tara, not even a close friend, makes a dangerous mistake, Buffy (as expected) genuinely looks like she's ready to feed Tara to the wolves. But then she snaps out of it, and tells Tara's dad that he'll have to come through her to take his daughter home.
This is a nice enough development that it doesn't really matter that the revelation that Tara isn't a demon after all is somewhat anticlimactic. I'm glad, anyway, because we already have Anya the demon. It was good to learn some more about Tara's pre-Buffy life, and interesting to find Tara is the only human character since Xander who doesn't come from an upper-middle-class background. The powers that be use Tara's witchcraft to stand for her lesbianism here, as her stodgy father reacts with revulsion about the lifestyle she's living. He says he'd hoped it was a phase. (If it is a phase, of course, he's a little early: one expects she'll at least be a Witch until Graduation.)
Tara's relationship with Willow, meanwhile, continues to be the sweetest romance on TV, gay or straight-- and stands as certainly the most well-handled and mature gay romance we've seen yet in a TV show.
I was a little turned off by the painfully realistic discussion between Xander and Buffy about Tara, who they do not know very well and frankly haven't invested the time to know any better. But I was more troubled by the reaction Giles, Xander, Anya, Buffy and Dawn have to Tara's brother when he comes in the store. Admittedly he's kind of a jerk, but even before he says anything insensitive, the whole gang stares at him, chastising him silently for being the outsider he is. Here's a rule of thumb to take with you through life: if your friends seem like nice people, but they're mean to strangers, they're not nice people.
Oh, minor note: more Buffy/Riley stress. I still think boyfriend is doomed, doomed, walking-dead-doomed.
And that's all the predicting I'll do.
QUOTES
Giles: “People help each other out, Anya. It’s one of our strange customs.”
Giles: “I’ve narrowed it down some.”
Buffy: (looking at Giles’ mountain of open books.) “Your definition of narrow is impressively wide.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Fear Itself
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
“Fear Itself”
Prologue
Buffy's feeling blue after her rejection of Parker, who used and dropped her, and she's waxing philosophical at Halloween and likening herself to the pumpkins she and the Slayer Gang are eviscerate make Jack-o-Lanterns. The Gang invite Xander to join them at a scare-house/party hosted by the Alpha Delt fraternity the following Saturday.
Act 1
At lunch next day, Willow’s talking about her eagerness and fear at moving to the next level in her witch training, which will involve conjuring. Oz is concerned that Willow will “touch something deep and dark” that she won’t like, but he’ll support her decisions. Depressed Buffy hopes she can avoid fun by going to see Giles, but he’s all dressed up for Halloween and tells her to forget patrolling, since the spirits of darkness “shy away from Halloween - - they think it’s all too crass.”
Anya comes to see Xander - - she’s not over him, and the boy actually responds warmly to the former demon and invites her to come to the frat party. “Are we dating?” “There are definitely datelike qualities here.”
Buffy mopes into Prof. Walsh’s lecture hall to pick up the assignments she’s been missing. The cute TA urges her to get back to work and get over whatever it is that’s bothering her.
At the frat house, Xander and Oz help set up the stereo for the party in the attic. One of the frat brothers has chalked a demon circle from a book into the floor, and when Oz cuts himself, he bleeds into the circle. No one sees the wave of energy that emanates from it and turns a plastic spider into a real one.
Act 2
Buffy goes home so her Mom can re-fit her old Red Riding Hood outfit, causing Buffy to wonder if there’s something about her that drives men away. (She recalls that her father ran out, too.) Willow is Joan of Arc, Xander is James Bond in a rented tux, and Oz is God (as proven by a “Hi – My Name is” sticker on his casual clothes.) The Tom Clancy-esque vampire hunters wander by, to be revealed more fully in some other episode.
And at the frat party, the props are becoming real, and by the time the Gang reaches the house, panic has descended upstairs. Downstairs, all is silent except for the Halloween sound effects loop, and the Gang begins to wander, trying to find their way upstairs. The house has set up a detour of sorts through a hall where they encounter bloodstains, spiders, and animated rubber spiders. As a demon voice calls “Release me!” they begin to worry. By now Anya, who had to go out and rent a costume and found a pink bunny outfit, has arrived to find the door has disappeared and windows closing themselves up. Anya runs for Giles. The house, the Halloween party, is coming alive.
Act 3
The Gang is trapped in a maze as the house re-arranges itself and Buffy determines to find the upstairs. They start fighting and Willow and Oz go off alone, while Xander simply becomes invisible to Buffy.
Anya appears at Giles’s place (“We have to save Xander!) and the ex-Watcher suggests the disappearing windows might be the temporal flux associated with a demon conjuration.
Oz begins to turn into a werewolf, as he’s wont to do, and he runs. Now the four are completely separated.
Willow manages to make a guidance-beacon spell, but it backfires, attacking her in a horde of little light-bees, while Buffy ends up in a crypt-like basement where the dead tell her how alone she is.
Act 4
“We’re going to have to create a door,” Giles announces as he and Anya check out the doorless frat house. “You can do that?” “I can,” he says, whipping out a chainsaw and sawing into the house.
By the time Buffy escapes from the dead she finds herself in the upstairs with the rest of the frightened Gang, and she realizes the house has been separating them with illusions. “It wanted to scare us,” Oz said. They read the book from which the demon circle was copied—it’s a summoning spell for Gachnar, a demon who feeds on people’s fear.
Giles busts through the door. “Everyone!” calls Xander. “It’s Giles. With a chainsaw!” Anya the bunny demon is there, too.
Thinking it will shut down the summoning spell, Buffy destroys the Mark of Gachnar on the floor, but this instead brings Gachnar straightway. Everyone holds their breath as the demon finally appears. Gachnar is a hideous, snarly horned creature like something out of Hellraiser. Except he appears to be four inches tall. (This was obviously not the best dimension for him to choose.) Buffy squishes him with her shoe, and that’s the end of that.
NOTES
Finally, with this episode, Buffy returns to the sort of witty goofiness of the show at its best. Recently I was talking to a friend, a fellow Buffy fan and writer, who said she hates season premieres, because they always feel like awkward transitions back into what makes you like a show. As much as I enjoy Buffy, this show suffers from that problem in particular, taking several episodes at the beginning of each season to find a pleasant, familiar groove. (This is not to say that those early episodes of any given season are good; to the contrary they're very good. I just like to get past them.) I guess it's pleasing that this season, Buffy hits its stride with the Halloween episode.
I've always enjoyed the idea than the Buffy universe, howling is a true holiday because demons and ghosts consider it beneath them. That sets up in the challenge for the writers, who must figure out some excuse to have particularly howling and themed goings on (on a show whose themes are already pretty Halloween-ish).
So what they do is give us a rough on one most reliable horror movie cliches around: the accidental summoning. In Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, this was accomplished by having some kids simply read out of a book of magic (Hey! Let's read this wacky magic indentation!) Here, it's both stupid and incredible incredibly bad luck: of frat guy randomly copies a summoning circle out of a demonic book in another language, and Oz manages to cut himself and bleed on it. And there you have it: excuse for all sorts of Halloween decorations to run amok.
It’s nice to see the Slayer gang hanging out together, now the Xander is back in town and apparently completely forgiven by Oz for his dalliance with Willow. What is Xander anyway? I mean, Willow is a witch, Oz is a werewolf, even Anya is a demon: what is Xander, other than an apparent babe magnet? (I'm well aware that this is rhetorical question that was explored at great length in “The Zeppo.”)
Buffy spends the first half moping around, but she flirted with her TA and got to stomp a small demon; I'm sure she’ll get over this Parker thing.
Joyce appears again this episode, fixing Buffy's costume for her. Joyce shares Buffy’s pain and says she’s been a little lonely herself; I was just thrilled that this is the kind of show where continuity makes for laughs and Joyce bothers to mention that her last boyfriend was “a homicidal robot,” and he really was. (He was also Tex Ritter’s actor son John.)
The best moment in the episode is when the demon spell begins to work on the gang and they turn against one another. Willow wants to cast a guidance spell, summoning a small like demon to show them the way out. She's deeply offended when Buffy tells her not to. “I’m not your sidekick,” Willow says, storming out. The funny thing here is that in the Buffy story, Willow is the sidekick. But the writers of Buffy are aware that we as people do not necessarily believe ourselves to be supporting characters and somebody else's story. Willow is the heroine of her own story, after all, in which Buffy is at most a supporting character.
Beyond that, the moment also illustrates that Willow is growing into a different character in college, one who may be coming out of Buffy’s shadow. Buff’s always been a little self-centered, so it probably takes Willow lashing out “under the influence” for Buffy to notice.
Lastly, I love Anya’s alien-ness; she hits just the right note in being clueless but eager to live the world of humans. (For those of you who’ve forgotten, Anya’s a demon who terrorized men but who got stuck in her a teenage body last season. She’s like Mork, only from Hell.)
MEMORABLE LINES
Willow: “Don’t do it? What kind of encouragement is that?”
Buffy: “This is an encouragement talk? I thought it was ‘share my pain.’”
(I have this problem, too.)
T.A.: “Halloween isn’t a night for responsibility. It’s when the ghosts and goblins come out.”
Buffy: “That’s actually a misnomer.”
(Actually it’s merely inaccurate, but whatever.)
Xander, checking out Anya’s bunny outfit: “That’s your scary costume?”
Anya: “Bunnies frighten me.”
“Fear Itself”
Prologue
Buffy's feeling blue after her rejection of Parker, who used and dropped her, and she's waxing philosophical at Halloween and likening herself to the pumpkins she and the Slayer Gang are eviscerate make Jack-o-Lanterns. The Gang invite Xander to join them at a scare-house/party hosted by the Alpha Delt fraternity the following Saturday.
Act 1
At lunch next day, Willow’s talking about her eagerness and fear at moving to the next level in her witch training, which will involve conjuring. Oz is concerned that Willow will “touch something deep and dark” that she won’t like, but he’ll support her decisions. Depressed Buffy hopes she can avoid fun by going to see Giles, but he’s all dressed up for Halloween and tells her to forget patrolling, since the spirits of darkness “shy away from Halloween - - they think it’s all too crass.”
Anya comes to see Xander - - she’s not over him, and the boy actually responds warmly to the former demon and invites her to come to the frat party. “Are we dating?” “There are definitely datelike qualities here.”
Buffy mopes into Prof. Walsh’s lecture hall to pick up the assignments she’s been missing. The cute TA urges her to get back to work and get over whatever it is that’s bothering her.
At the frat house, Xander and Oz help set up the stereo for the party in the attic. One of the frat brothers has chalked a demon circle from a book into the floor, and when Oz cuts himself, he bleeds into the circle. No one sees the wave of energy that emanates from it and turns a plastic spider into a real one.
Act 2
Buffy goes home so her Mom can re-fit her old Red Riding Hood outfit, causing Buffy to wonder if there’s something about her that drives men away. (She recalls that her father ran out, too.) Willow is Joan of Arc, Xander is James Bond in a rented tux, and Oz is God (as proven by a “Hi – My Name is” sticker on his casual clothes.) The Tom Clancy-esque vampire hunters wander by, to be revealed more fully in some other episode.
And at the frat party, the props are becoming real, and by the time the Gang reaches the house, panic has descended upstairs. Downstairs, all is silent except for the Halloween sound effects loop, and the Gang begins to wander, trying to find their way upstairs. The house has set up a detour of sorts through a hall where they encounter bloodstains, spiders, and animated rubber spiders. As a demon voice calls “Release me!” they begin to worry. By now Anya, who had to go out and rent a costume and found a pink bunny outfit, has arrived to find the door has disappeared and windows closing themselves up. Anya runs for Giles. The house, the Halloween party, is coming alive.
Act 3
The Gang is trapped in a maze as the house re-arranges itself and Buffy determines to find the upstairs. They start fighting and Willow and Oz go off alone, while Xander simply becomes invisible to Buffy.
Anya appears at Giles’s place (“We have to save Xander!) and the ex-Watcher suggests the disappearing windows might be the temporal flux associated with a demon conjuration.
Oz begins to turn into a werewolf, as he’s wont to do, and he runs. Now the four are completely separated.
Willow manages to make a guidance-beacon spell, but it backfires, attacking her in a horde of little light-bees, while Buffy ends up in a crypt-like basement where the dead tell her how alone she is.
Act 4
“We’re going to have to create a door,” Giles announces as he and Anya check out the doorless frat house. “You can do that?” “I can,” he says, whipping out a chainsaw and sawing into the house.
By the time Buffy escapes from the dead she finds herself in the upstairs with the rest of the frightened Gang, and she realizes the house has been separating them with illusions. “It wanted to scare us,” Oz said. They read the book from which the demon circle was copied—it’s a summoning spell for Gachnar, a demon who feeds on people’s fear.
Giles busts through the door. “Everyone!” calls Xander. “It’s Giles. With a chainsaw!” Anya the bunny demon is there, too.
Thinking it will shut down the summoning spell, Buffy destroys the Mark of Gachnar on the floor, but this instead brings Gachnar straightway. Everyone holds their breath as the demon finally appears. Gachnar is a hideous, snarly horned creature like something out of Hellraiser. Except he appears to be four inches tall. (This was obviously not the best dimension for him to choose.) Buffy squishes him with her shoe, and that’s the end of that.
NOTES
Finally, with this episode, Buffy returns to the sort of witty goofiness of the show at its best. Recently I was talking to a friend, a fellow Buffy fan and writer, who said she hates season premieres, because they always feel like awkward transitions back into what makes you like a show. As much as I enjoy Buffy, this show suffers from that problem in particular, taking several episodes at the beginning of each season to find a pleasant, familiar groove. (This is not to say that those early episodes of any given season are good; to the contrary they're very good. I just like to get past them.) I guess it's pleasing that this season, Buffy hits its stride with the Halloween episode.
I've always enjoyed the idea than the Buffy universe, howling is a true holiday because demons and ghosts consider it beneath them. That sets up in the challenge for the writers, who must figure out some excuse to have particularly howling and themed goings on (on a show whose themes are already pretty Halloween-ish).
So what they do is give us a rough on one most reliable horror movie cliches around: the accidental summoning. In Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, this was accomplished by having some kids simply read out of a book of magic (Hey! Let's read this wacky magic indentation!) Here, it's both stupid and incredible incredibly bad luck: of frat guy randomly copies a summoning circle out of a demonic book in another language, and Oz manages to cut himself and bleed on it. And there you have it: excuse for all sorts of Halloween decorations to run amok.
It’s nice to see the Slayer gang hanging out together, now the Xander is back in town and apparently completely forgiven by Oz for his dalliance with Willow. What is Xander anyway? I mean, Willow is a witch, Oz is a werewolf, even Anya is a demon: what is Xander, other than an apparent babe magnet? (I'm well aware that this is rhetorical question that was explored at great length in “The Zeppo.”)
Buffy spends the first half moping around, but she flirted with her TA and got to stomp a small demon; I'm sure she’ll get over this Parker thing.
Joyce appears again this episode, fixing Buffy's costume for her. Joyce shares Buffy’s pain and says she’s been a little lonely herself; I was just thrilled that this is the kind of show where continuity makes for laughs and Joyce bothers to mention that her last boyfriend was “a homicidal robot,” and he really was. (He was also Tex Ritter’s actor son John.)
The best moment in the episode is when the demon spell begins to work on the gang and they turn against one another. Willow wants to cast a guidance spell, summoning a small like demon to show them the way out. She's deeply offended when Buffy tells her not to. “I’m not your sidekick,” Willow says, storming out. The funny thing here is that in the Buffy story, Willow is the sidekick. But the writers of Buffy are aware that we as people do not necessarily believe ourselves to be supporting characters and somebody else's story. Willow is the heroine of her own story, after all, in which Buffy is at most a supporting character.
Beyond that, the moment also illustrates that Willow is growing into a different character in college, one who may be coming out of Buffy’s shadow. Buff’s always been a little self-centered, so it probably takes Willow lashing out “under the influence” for Buffy to notice.
Lastly, I love Anya’s alien-ness; she hits just the right note in being clueless but eager to live the world of humans. (For those of you who’ve forgotten, Anya’s a demon who terrorized men but who got stuck in her a teenage body last season. She’s like Mork, only from Hell.)
MEMORABLE LINES
Willow: “Don’t do it? What kind of encouragement is that?”
Buffy: “This is an encouragement talk? I thought it was ‘share my pain.’”
(I have this problem, too.)
T.A.: “Halloween isn’t a night for responsibility. It’s when the ghosts and goblins come out.”
Buffy: “That’s actually a misnomer.”
(Actually it’s merely inaccurate, but whatever.)
Xander, checking out Anya’s bunny outfit: “That’s your scary costume?”
Anya: “Bunnies frighten me.”
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