Buffy, The Vampire Slayer
Season 4
Episode: "Mother May I"
Broadcast February 15, 2000
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Anya: Emma Caulfield
Prologue
Last we left our intrepid Slayer, she had come to the Scooby Gang with news that Maggie Walsh of the Initiative had tried to get Buffy killed. Now she and the gang try to figure out what they can do, especially since Riley, Buffy’s new boyfriend and an Initiative agent, may have been involved in the attempt on her life. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anybody yet, Professor Walsh’s Frankenstein-Monster-like Adam, a crazy-quilt concoction of demon parts, human parts and Terminator parts, is on the loose.
Act 1
Riley shows up at Giles’ place, convinced that there’s been a mistake. He’s horrified to see Spike is a part of the Scooby Gang and leaves when the gang hint that the Initiative might be more than it appears.
Adam the monster finds a young boy playing with a metallic GI Joe. He engages the boy in a brief conversation until the boy asks what the spike on Adam’s forearm is for.
Back at the Initiative, Dr. Angleman discovers Maggie Walsh’s dead body.
The Scooby Gang go underground to hole up in Xander’s basement, where they see a news report about the mutilation of the boy. Buffy recognizes the described wound as the work of a Polgara demon (Adam’s spike, unknown to her, is a graft).
Meanwhile, Riley crashes with his Initiative buddy, who suggests that maybe if Professor Walsh tried to have Buffy killed; Buffy could be a bad guy. Then they learn Walsh is dead, apparently spiked-- or staked-- in the back.
Act 2
But Dr. Angleman points the finger at the Polgara demon, and although he orders Riley and the commandoes to stand down, Riley orders his men to hunt the town for the Polgara.
Spike narrowly avoids being caught by the Initiative, who break into his crypt and smash his TV, “the animals.”
Buffy runs into Riley at the scene of the boy’s death and informs her that Maggie is dead. (“Happy now?”) She storms off, determined to find this Polgara.
Willow comes to Tara’s dorm room to do a spell that will point out the demon locations in the area. But unseen by Willow, Tara blows the spell on purpose.
Buffy comes to Willy’s, the demon bar, to interrogate her snitch Willy. But Riley interrupts and goes a little haywire in the bar; pointing a gun at an innocent woman and sweating like a freak in withdrawal. Finally he lets the woman go (“What’s happening to me?”)
Act 3
Riley’s withdrawal is so major that you’d think Buffy or at least Giles would recognize it, but they just put him to bed as “sick” while Buffy and Xander go to infiltrate the Initiative.
Xander and Buffy walk right into the Initiative since Buffy still has her clearance (apparently she has “freelancer access.”)
Giles and Anya’s research has been as unsuccessful as Willow’s-- “the Polgara” is not acting as it should. When Riley awakens and learns where Buffy’s gone, he tosses Willow aside as he heads to the Initiative. Buffy just overheard that Riley is undergoing withdrawal from his daily doses of super-soldier serum, as it were.
Buffy interrogates Dr. Angleman and is interrupted by Riley, who explains Buffy was able to sneak in because someone’s shut down the surveillance monitors. That would be Adam, who throws down a dead guard and jumps from a second story.
Act 4
So finally everyone can quit saying “Polgara.” Adam is a postmodern monster, who wants to learn about him, “why I feel, what I am?” In a monologue aided by floppy disks he sticks in his cyborg chest, Adam tells us he is a “kinematically redundant biomechanical demonoid.” And he seems to have a “design flaw,” in as much as he feels more like wandering the countryside pulling children apart than following whatever orders Maggie may have had in mind for him. Further, he is Riley’s “brother,” because Maggie “made him what he was,” with her training and drugs. “She said you and I were her favorite children. Her art.” This upsets jumpy Riley, so Adam stabs him. (This is a highly dysfunctional family.)
Adam also kills Angleman and almost kills Buffy before the rest of the Initiative bust in and rush Riley off to a hospital. (Adam gets away through the roof.)
Spike, meanwhile, finds out that since he’s been hunting demons lately, he’s no longer welcome in the demon bars-- which means he’s hunted on all sides, now.
In the end, Buffy can’t go see Riley in his military hospital. But that’s the least of her worries; Adam is still out there.
Notes
And so we end this episode with a new bad guy roaming the countryside and with Buffy squarely outside the Initiative.
Throughout the episode, so much depends on Buffy not knowing that Maggie is dead, or Riley not knowing the Polgara has been cannibalized, that one senses the whole hour is a "between chapter" of sorts. The episode walks a clever line by slowly revealing important plot points-- points long since known to the omniscient viewer-- to the characters. One is reminded of events like the Kennedy assassination, after which half a day went by as the free world thought their leader was still alive and in a hospital. Or the Pinochet uprising in Chile, after which the US government hid the deaths of Americans involved from their families who came to search for them. I like the feeling of here, however short-lived, the fruitlessness of efforts by well-meaning but uninformed actors. But ultimately the episode does little but ask questions for which it provides no ready answers, which I suppose is as it should be.
Also interesting is the almost reverent continued riff on Shelley's Frankenstein-- note the eerie conversation with the boy, which harkens both to the book Frankenstein, in which the creature's first victim is a boy, as well as the 1931 film, in which his first victim is a little girl at play. Even so, the calm approach to slaughter is a sadistic bit of business to put in a TV show that, although heavily invested with horror trappings, is usually pretty bright.
Xander's brief stint as GI Joe comes into play again, but at least this time Anya points out that the Slayer is hoping for a bit more than Xander might be able to provide. There’s a pleasant moment when Xander comes across like Gary Cooper to Anya’s “worried mate.” (“Can’t you do something else, like Xerox handouts or something?” “I’ll be careful. Promise.”)
When Buffy and Xander do sneak into the Initiative, Buffy’s costume of choice is “scientist girl,” complete with glasses. Which leads me to wonder, briefly-- why is it that there are no female Initiative Agents? What’s that about? Doesn’t this outfit need a Black Widow? Angleman says the Initiative has no interest in eliminating the Slayer-- that was Maggie’s protection of her own project. So what else is the Initiative up to? Personally I’d like to see a god side to the Initiative in the future; there’s room for a Buffy Universe SHIELD. Is it really so innovative to have a corrupt army?
And what did Maggie hope to do with her creature, anyway? Adam has the answers, but like the creature in Shelley's book, no one really wants to talk to him.
Personally I think it’s sort of funny that Adam has a 3.5” floppy drive in his left pectoral; wouldn’t Maggie have given him something a little less fragile than this? Maybe a CD-ROM drive, or even a little socket for rugged memory SIMMs. Better yet, I’d have given him a cellular modem so he could just aim his chest at the nearest computer and download this stuff without having to carry around disks in his pocket, which break easily and won’t play when caked in the various things a commando robot on the go is liable to get spilled all over himself. I’m just speculating here.
Clearly, Adam is meant to be a nightmare, not something that makes sense. (Why doesn’t Maggie cover his whole body in metal rather than one shoulder and the back of his head? She could have made this guy invincible.)
In the minor characters department, we see Spike losing his place among the demons and creatures of the night, leaving him out in the cold. He's becoming a grudging member of the Scooby Gang.
Willow and Tara's coy courtship takes an interesting turn, too, because Tara is clearly not as innocent as she seems. She blows the demon-finding spell on purpose, so other than a frumpy love interest, what exactly is she? She's not a vampire, perhaps some sort of demon, a la Anya? Will Anya be able to tell if they meet? And when is Willow going to bring this new girl around, anyway?
Next week: Finally! Faith!
Quotes
“Poor Buffy. Your life resists all things average.”
--Willow
Buffy: “This is the Initiative, Xander. Military guys and scientists do not make out with each other.”
Xander: “Well, maybe that’s the problem with the world. Ever think about that?”
Buffy: “Adam’s the ultimate warrior. He’s smart and fast; he gave the commando guys the slip with no problem.”
Willow: “There’s gotta be a flaw.”
Buffy: “I think that part where he’s pure evil and kills randomly was an oversight.”
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Buffy Season 4 Wrap-up
Buffy Season 4 Wrap-up
By Jason Henderson
Season 4 of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer was nothing if not daring, in as much as the season tweaked nearly every basic concept of the show's past three seasons, for no other reason than that the story seemed to call for it. The theme of the season was change, as the characters left the confines of High School and found themselves growing into new roles in and around the fictitious University of California, Sunnydale.
Fans of the show found themselves deeply uncomfortable with many of the results: Buffy, like most freshman, dallied with piggish senior guys before landing in the arms of the apparently completely normal Riley. (He turned out to be a government agent, but still pretty normal.)
Xander, unable to go to college, grappled with the distance that came from his friends passing him by as he tread water in one meaningless job after another. But Xander had grown up, no longer the geek of Season 1, and had a new and fairly happy relationship with Anya, the quirky former vengeance demon.
Giles, now a retired librarian, wallowed in self-pity until he started singing at coffee shops. Spike the vampire became a regular, almost a pet because of his "neutering" at the hands of government agency The Initiative. But he never really became a good guy, lacking as he did a soul.
Willow went through the broadest changes, suffering unbearable pain when Oz the werewolf cheated on her, slew his paramour and ran off. She landed in one of the sweetest, most innocent romances ever, with a young woman, Tara, a character created apparently to be "Willow, only somehow even more pensive and shy." Newcomer Amber Benson played Tara as a wallflower with a secret and the ability to see great magical promise in Willow. Rail-thin Benson wasn't helped much, though, by the unflattering "soft" clothing the show put her in. The whole relationship was so sweet it should have been filmed through gauze.
With all the changes for the individual characters, a major side effect was the imminent dissolution of one of
It was also a season for broad experimentation with the television medium itself-- the sort of concept-warping that critics cite as what sets apart the great shows like MASH and Homicide. So, in order of appearance (because I can't bring myself to rank them) here are my votes for the best five episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4.
"Hush"
This is the kind of episode a series almost has to be a few seasons in to try. In "Hush," a quartet called "The Gentlemen" comes calling on Sunnydale to prey on the innocent. They cast a spell on the city, taking away everyone's voice. Definitely an episode you had to watch, "Hush" relied on sound effects and the utter silence of the characters for tension without abandoning the usual humor. It was an ambitious attempt and it succeeded nicely, as the characters turned to hand gestures, message boards, voice
modulators, and overhead projectors to take the place of everyday vocal communication.
The concept played out beautifully, with the whole town panicking, the State cordoning off the city, and the Gentlemen rolling through the silent streets, floating a foot off the ground. They even came with their own creepy nursery rhyme. This was also the episode that introduced Tara, the painfully shy fellow Wiccan who would soon become Willow's new love, and who recognized Willow as a more powerful witch than we suspected. "Hush" is an episode that stretched the boundaries of TV.
"This Years' Girl/ Who Are You"
Two episodes, actually, but I'm including them as one story. "This Year's Girl" brought the return of Eliza Dushku as Faith, who had been lying in a coma since Buffy nearly killed her last season. While most of us hoped that Faith would return a changed woman, instead she came back even more vicious than before. In yet another experiment of the season, "Who Are You" had Faith receive a posthumous gift from her dead father figure, The Mayor, that allowed Faith and Buffy to switch bodies. The result was a well-executed romp: Sara Michelle Gellar gave us her Eliza Dushku impression, all sashays and hair-flicks, while Eliza Dushku gave a brilliantly deadpan Sara Michelle Gellar impression. But rather than playing for pure comedy, the episode instead showed Faith go from hating and mocking the Slayer to coming to admire her and despise herself. In the end, rather than escape with Buffy's body, Faith turns back to save a church full of hostages, "because it's what Buffy would do." The character of Faith has been one of the most interesting of the series, and it was wonderful to see the character grapple with what it is to be a hero, and find herself unable to deny the hero's power.
"Superstar"
Then, for something completely different, the series took a weird breather with "Superstar," a comedy episode in which the whole world revolves around Jonathan, the poor slob who was so depressed he tried to kill himself in the much-discussed "Earshot." 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 was 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 the cast 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.
"New Moon Rising"
Seth Green, now a movie star, returned as Oz, the reluctant werewolf, who claims he has finally gotten his lycanthropy under control. Not enough under control that he can handle it when he smells Willow's scent all over new girlfriend Tara's sweater, though. In "New Moon Rising," Green showed us a young man desperate to get his anger under control, and in the end, unable to do so. In other news, this was the episode in which Willow finally came out to her friends, including Buffy, who didn't immediately take it as well as one would hope.
"Primeval"
Finally, "Primeval" brought the whole season full circle, successfully closing the gap that had developed between Buffy and her friends. The whole premise of Buffy, thus far, has been that even an iconoclastic Slayer makes a better warrior if she has a community to fall back on. But this season consistently put that notion to the test, as the Scooby Gang strained its edges and began to grow apart. In "Primeval," Buffy's past reliance on her friends turns out to be right. Here, the Gang gathers to cast a spell, calling on the spirit of the First Slayer to cast an amalgam of all of their abilities in Buffy's body. As a result, Buffy is able to defeat the demonic cyborg Adam-- with Matrix style magic flying kicks, no less. Really the season finale (although there remained one more episode, the eery and wonderful Coda), "Primeval" dispensed with almost every subplot developed through the season. The Initiative, the SHIELD-like underground commando force, was almost completely destroyed in an all-out war started by Adam and his army of demons. Considering the budgetary demands for such a thing, the final battle was as convincing as Buffy's four-in-one-on-one with Adam was satisfying. With the final scene, the government pulled the plug on the Initiative, leaving us back where we started: with Buffy and her Gang (and the added ex-agent Riley) as the rightful guardians of Sunnydale.
By Jason Henderson
Season 4 of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer was nothing if not daring, in as much as the season tweaked nearly every basic concept of the show's past three seasons, for no other reason than that the story seemed to call for it. The theme of the season was change, as the characters left the confines of High School and found themselves growing into new roles in and around the fictitious University of California, Sunnydale.
Fans of the show found themselves deeply uncomfortable with many of the results: Buffy, like most freshman, dallied with piggish senior guys before landing in the arms of the apparently completely normal Riley. (He turned out to be a government agent, but still pretty normal.)
Xander, unable to go to college, grappled with the distance that came from his friends passing him by as he tread water in one meaningless job after another. But Xander had grown up, no longer the geek of Season 1, and had a new and fairly happy relationship with Anya, the quirky former vengeance demon.
Giles, now a retired librarian, wallowed in self-pity until he started singing at coffee shops. Spike the vampire became a regular, almost a pet because of his "neutering" at the hands of government agency The Initiative. But he never really became a good guy, lacking as he did a soul.
Willow went through the broadest changes, suffering unbearable pain when Oz the werewolf cheated on her, slew his paramour and ran off. She landed in one of the sweetest, most innocent romances ever, with a young woman, Tara, a character created apparently to be "Willow, only somehow even more pensive and shy." Newcomer Amber Benson played Tara as a wallflower with a secret and the ability to see great magical promise in Willow. Rail-thin Benson wasn't helped much, though, by the unflattering "soft" clothing the show put her in. The whole relationship was so sweet it should have been filmed through gauze.
With all the changes for the individual characters, a major side effect was the imminent dissolution of one of
It was also a season for broad experimentation with the television medium itself-- the sort of concept-warping that critics cite as what sets apart the great shows like MASH and Homicide. So, in order of appearance (because I can't bring myself to rank them) here are my votes for the best five episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 4.
"Hush"
This is the kind of episode a series almost has to be a few seasons in to try. In "Hush," a quartet called "The Gentlemen" comes calling on Sunnydale to prey on the innocent. They cast a spell on the city, taking away everyone's voice. Definitely an episode you had to watch, "Hush" relied on sound effects and the utter silence of the characters for tension without abandoning the usual humor. It was an ambitious attempt and it succeeded nicely, as the characters turned to hand gestures, message boards, voice
modulators, and overhead projectors to take the place of everyday vocal communication.
The concept played out beautifully, with the whole town panicking, the State cordoning off the city, and the Gentlemen rolling through the silent streets, floating a foot off the ground. They even came with their own creepy nursery rhyme. This was also the episode that introduced Tara, the painfully shy fellow Wiccan who would soon become Willow's new love, and who recognized Willow as a more powerful witch than we suspected. "Hush" is an episode that stretched the boundaries of TV.
"This Years' Girl/ Who Are You"
Two episodes, actually, but I'm including them as one story. "This Year's Girl" brought the return of Eliza Dushku as Faith, who had been lying in a coma since Buffy nearly killed her last season. While most of us hoped that Faith would return a changed woman, instead she came back even more vicious than before. In yet another experiment of the season, "Who Are You" had Faith receive a posthumous gift from her dead father figure, The Mayor, that allowed Faith and Buffy to switch bodies. The result was a well-executed romp: Sara Michelle Gellar gave us her Eliza Dushku impression, all sashays and hair-flicks, while Eliza Dushku gave a brilliantly deadpan Sara Michelle Gellar impression. But rather than playing for pure comedy, the episode instead showed Faith go from hating and mocking the Slayer to coming to admire her and despise herself. In the end, rather than escape with Buffy's body, Faith turns back to save a church full of hostages, "because it's what Buffy would do." The character of Faith has been one of the most interesting of the series, and it was wonderful to see the character grapple with what it is to be a hero, and find herself unable to deny the hero's power.
"Superstar"
Then, for something completely different, the series took a weird breather with "Superstar," a comedy episode in which the whole world revolves around Jonathan, the poor slob who was so depressed he tried to kill himself in the much-discussed "Earshot." 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 was 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 the cast 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.
"New Moon Rising"
Seth Green, now a movie star, returned as Oz, the reluctant werewolf, who claims he has finally gotten his lycanthropy under control. Not enough under control that he can handle it when he smells Willow's scent all over new girlfriend Tara's sweater, though. In "New Moon Rising," Green showed us a young man desperate to get his anger under control, and in the end, unable to do so. In other news, this was the episode in which Willow finally came out to her friends, including Buffy, who didn't immediately take it as well as one would hope.
"Primeval"
Finally, "Primeval" brought the whole season full circle, successfully closing the gap that had developed between Buffy and her friends. The whole premise of Buffy, thus far, has been that even an iconoclastic Slayer makes a better warrior if she has a community to fall back on. But this season consistently put that notion to the test, as the Scooby Gang strained its edges and began to grow apart. In "Primeval," Buffy's past reliance on her friends turns out to be right. Here, the Gang gathers to cast a spell, calling on the spirit of the First Slayer to cast an amalgam of all of their abilities in Buffy's body. As a result, Buffy is able to defeat the demonic cyborg Adam-- with Matrix style magic flying kicks, no less. Really the season finale (although there remained one more episode, the eery and wonderful Coda), "Primeval" dispensed with almost every subplot developed through the season. The Initiative, the SHIELD-like underground commando force, was almost completely destroyed in an all-out war started by Adam and his army of demons. Considering the budgetary demands for such a thing, the final battle was as convincing as Buffy's four-in-one-on-one with Adam was satisfying. With the final scene, the government pulled the plug on the Initiative, leaving us back where we started: with Buffy and her Gang (and the added ex-agent Riley) as the rightful guardians of Sunnydale.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Revelations
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 3
Episode: “Revelations” (November 17th, 1998)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Buffy’s been hiding Angel, but there’s a new watcher in town with an agenda all her own, and Buffy’s secret is blown. Will Xander and Willow’s secret go with it?
Credits:
Screenplay: Doug Petrie
Direction: James A Contner
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
Angel: David Boreanaz
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Oz: Seth Green
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Faith: Eliza Dushku
Synopsis
We open at the Bronze, where Oz is playing a gig and Xander and Willow are practically destroying the place trying not to touch one another; their nervousness is becoming obvious. The gang is obsessing over where Buffy goes every night. New boyfriend? Buffy says no, but she’s going out tonight.
Buffy and Faith open up a can of vampire whoop-ass in the graveyard while Giles sips his coffee and watches, and when its done, out from the stones strolls a stranger: Gwendolyn Post, who pronounces the work “sloppy” and claims to be Faith’s new watcher.
Turns out Ms. Post comes from the veddy English Watcher Council, and she’s supposed to be checking up on Giles, as well. She unnerves Giles by criticizing his book collection and accusing him of becoming too American. She’s also brought a quest: there’s a demon called Lagos coming, and he’s looking for the legendary (of course) Glove of Mynnigon, a nasty, metal, scaly, clawed contraption that attacks itself permanently to its wearer and bestows great power.
That night, Buffy and the rapidly recuperating Angel do Tai Chi and pant at one another determined not to kiss. Angel warns Buffy about Lagos, the demon who’s coming to town.
Back at the library, Xander and Willow are trying to help Giles find material on Lagos and the Glove, but he’s irritable and their unusually hormonal. A swell kiss nearly gets them caught, and the pressure is becoming intense. When Giles finds the location of the glove—in a crypt at Restfield cemetery, Xander is so flustered from nearly getting caught kissing Willow he volunteers to go look for the glove.
Out in the street, Faith tells Buffy she’s always been a “loser magnet,” and since then her philosophy is “get some and get going.” Buffy dodges questions about Angel before the girls part ways.
At Restfield, Xander is shocked to see Angel, alive, carrying the glove from the crypt and away. Xander follows Angel back to the mansion where he holes up, there to see Angel and Buffy making out. Buffy backs off, determined that the two must control themselves. (“Shame on you,” she tells Angel, helpfully.)
Back at Giles’ place, Ms. Post is driving Giles to distraction with her constant attacks (she’s even irritated by the way he pours tea.) Bad goes to worse when Xander shows up with news about Buffy and her returned boyfriend.
Next day, Buffy walks into an ambush in the form of an “intercession meeting;” all the gang gathers at the library. Buffy says she found the glove and it’s at the mansion, but the gang is ahead of her. “We know Angel’s alive,” Giles says. “You need help,” Willow offers. Everyone’s convinced that Buffy’s been harboring a vicious killer, even if, as she claims, “he’s better now.” But for how long? They ask, since Angel started out a swell vampire hunky guy last time, before losing his soul after going to bed with Buffy. “You know what you were doing is wrong,” Giles observes, “or you wouldn’t have hidden it.” Ultimately, Giles sends the kids away, saying all in all he can understand Buffy’s reasons.
Privately, Giles sweetly, calmly tears Buffy a new one. “Be quiet,” he says. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that Angel tortured me. For hours. For pleasure. You have no respect for me or the job that I perform.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Post is poisoning Faith against Giles and Buffy, whom she considers profligate. “Why does he let her socialize so much?” Post asks.
Willow doesn’t give Buffy too hard a time because the whole secret thing fascinates her: “I understand. Secrets are normal. Better than normal. Good. Secrets are good!” Buffy fails to find this suspicious.
Xander plays pool and fills Faith I on Angel’s return, and even though “Buffy says he’s clean,” Xander is ready to help Faith slay the vampire.
Meanwhile, Giles has found a way to destroy the glove, and incidentally how to make it work. Post, having learned what she wanted to know, smacks Giles upside the head with a small statue and heads for the mansion.
Willow and Buffy stake out the mansion, waiting for the demon to appear, and Willow nearly tells her secret. But the demon interrupts them and Willow backs out after Buffy slays the demon, and Buffy fails to be suspicious once again.
Xander and Faith find Giles knocked out. Faith leaps to the conclusion that Angel is at fault here and moves on, but Xander knows that doesn’t make sense (no bite marks) and waits with Giles for EMS.
Buffy and Willow come back to school to find hurt Giles and Xander. Giles comes around long enough to tell Buffy to destroy the Glove, but she’s more concerned when she learns that Faith went off to destroy Angel. Buffy heads off to stop Faith.
Back at the mansion, Angel is performing the rites to destroy the glove (which also, apparently, switch the glove on), when Ms. Post appears, claiming to have been sent by Giles. She knocks Angel out, briefly, then grapples briefly with Angel before Faith comes in, jumping to the rescue of her watcher. Faith nearly kills Angel but is interrupted by Buffy.
Buffy and Faith duke it out with vicious ferocity since they’re both practically invulnerable. They don’t notice Post as she puts on the glove, calling its demonic powers from the sky. Willow and Xander show up in time to be targets of the powerful bursts of energy the Glove yields, and Angel saves Willow from one. Buffy and Faith stop fighting when they realize Post is a bad guy. Faith draws Post’s fire while Buffy disarms Post, literally. The powers of the sky destroy Post utterly, and the gang turns to destroy the glove.
Next day, the gang wonders how they feel about Angel. Xander still doesn’t trust him, and especially worries what will happen if the slayer and the vampire have sex again.
It turns out the Post was a former watcher, kicked out for abusing the black arts. “I swear there was a memo,” Giles winces.
Buffy and Faith, though, are not “five by five,” as Faith would say. Faith has been burned again by trusting someone, and her relationship with Buffy is strained. “I’m on your side,” says Buffy. “I’m on my side,” Faith responds. “That’s enough.” Buffy offers, “not always.”
Notes
First off, the single most stunning part of the episode is Giles’ sound chastisement of Buffy. The watcher is completely dedicated to his slayer, and it’s fascinating to see him confront his anger at the disrespect of this girl that he must serve.
Next there’s, “I assure you I’m in complete control of my slayer.” These are the words of Giles, who is being chastised about letting Buffy run wild, as it were. This whole Buffy Universe watcher concept intrigues me, and I’m more curious than ever what the deal is with the watchers—surely they must be general-purpose occult-supervision types, because no way could there be a “Watcher Council” and all if all they watch is Buffy and Faith.
I enjoyed watching Willow wrestle with her secrets, nearly come clean, and back down. The amusing bit is that Willow is so guilt-ridden that she hints broadly throughout the episode about the secret affair, so broadly that she may as well be wearing a pin that says, “Hi! My name is Willow! I’m secretly making out with Xander!” In fact, Oz gives her a skeptical look or two at the Bronze, leading me to wonder how long this is going to go on. Not that I want the tension to end. The Powers that Be will have a real challenge when Willow and Xander can finally hold hands in the sun, as it were. Right now, the romantic tension, the furtive glances, the snuck touching of fingertips, the risky kissing, the heart pounding near-misses, all make for an exciting storyline. How will they beat that?
Of course, with friends like Willow’s, it’s easy to keep secrets. For her part, Buffy is so narcissistic that she’s not even curious what Willow is hiding, which I suppose makes her a nearly perfect friend.
Memorable Quotes
On guilt’s gentle touch
“Hey, Giles, here’s an idea: why don’t I alleviate my guilt by going out and getting myself really, really killed.”
(Xander, who runs from a tense situation by volunteering to go into demon territory.)
On Willowy goodness
“I consider myself a good person. Floss. Do my homework. Never cheat. But lately… I want you to be the first to know… there’s a demon behind you.”
(Willow, nearly getting it out.)
Season 3
Episode: “Revelations” (November 17th, 1998)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Buffy’s been hiding Angel, but there’s a new watcher in town with an agenda all her own, and Buffy’s secret is blown. Will Xander and Willow’s secret go with it?
Credits:
Screenplay: Doug Petrie
Direction: James A Contner
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
Angel: David Boreanaz
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Oz: Seth Green
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Faith: Eliza Dushku
Synopsis
We open at the Bronze, where Oz is playing a gig and Xander and Willow are practically destroying the place trying not to touch one another; their nervousness is becoming obvious. The gang is obsessing over where Buffy goes every night. New boyfriend? Buffy says no, but she’s going out tonight.
Buffy and Faith open up a can of vampire whoop-ass in the graveyard while Giles sips his coffee and watches, and when its done, out from the stones strolls a stranger: Gwendolyn Post, who pronounces the work “sloppy” and claims to be Faith’s new watcher.
Turns out Ms. Post comes from the veddy English Watcher Council, and she’s supposed to be checking up on Giles, as well. She unnerves Giles by criticizing his book collection and accusing him of becoming too American. She’s also brought a quest: there’s a demon called Lagos coming, and he’s looking for the legendary (of course) Glove of Mynnigon, a nasty, metal, scaly, clawed contraption that attacks itself permanently to its wearer and bestows great power.
That night, Buffy and the rapidly recuperating Angel do Tai Chi and pant at one another determined not to kiss. Angel warns Buffy about Lagos, the demon who’s coming to town.
Back at the library, Xander and Willow are trying to help Giles find material on Lagos and the Glove, but he’s irritable and their unusually hormonal. A swell kiss nearly gets them caught, and the pressure is becoming intense. When Giles finds the location of the glove—in a crypt at Restfield cemetery, Xander is so flustered from nearly getting caught kissing Willow he volunteers to go look for the glove.
Out in the street, Faith tells Buffy she’s always been a “loser magnet,” and since then her philosophy is “get some and get going.” Buffy dodges questions about Angel before the girls part ways.
At Restfield, Xander is shocked to see Angel, alive, carrying the glove from the crypt and away. Xander follows Angel back to the mansion where he holes up, there to see Angel and Buffy making out. Buffy backs off, determined that the two must control themselves. (“Shame on you,” she tells Angel, helpfully.)
Back at Giles’ place, Ms. Post is driving Giles to distraction with her constant attacks (she’s even irritated by the way he pours tea.) Bad goes to worse when Xander shows up with news about Buffy and her returned boyfriend.
Next day, Buffy walks into an ambush in the form of an “intercession meeting;” all the gang gathers at the library. Buffy says she found the glove and it’s at the mansion, but the gang is ahead of her. “We know Angel’s alive,” Giles says. “You need help,” Willow offers. Everyone’s convinced that Buffy’s been harboring a vicious killer, even if, as she claims, “he’s better now.” But for how long? They ask, since Angel started out a swell vampire hunky guy last time, before losing his soul after going to bed with Buffy. “You know what you were doing is wrong,” Giles observes, “or you wouldn’t have hidden it.” Ultimately, Giles sends the kids away, saying all in all he can understand Buffy’s reasons.
Privately, Giles sweetly, calmly tears Buffy a new one. “Be quiet,” he says. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that Angel tortured me. For hours. For pleasure. You have no respect for me or the job that I perform.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Post is poisoning Faith against Giles and Buffy, whom she considers profligate. “Why does he let her socialize so much?” Post asks.
Willow doesn’t give Buffy too hard a time because the whole secret thing fascinates her: “I understand. Secrets are normal. Better than normal. Good. Secrets are good!” Buffy fails to find this suspicious.
Xander plays pool and fills Faith I on Angel’s return, and even though “Buffy says he’s clean,” Xander is ready to help Faith slay the vampire.
Meanwhile, Giles has found a way to destroy the glove, and incidentally how to make it work. Post, having learned what she wanted to know, smacks Giles upside the head with a small statue and heads for the mansion.
Willow and Buffy stake out the mansion, waiting for the demon to appear, and Willow nearly tells her secret. But the demon interrupts them and Willow backs out after Buffy slays the demon, and Buffy fails to be suspicious once again.
Xander and Faith find Giles knocked out. Faith leaps to the conclusion that Angel is at fault here and moves on, but Xander knows that doesn’t make sense (no bite marks) and waits with Giles for EMS.
Buffy and Willow come back to school to find hurt Giles and Xander. Giles comes around long enough to tell Buffy to destroy the Glove, but she’s more concerned when she learns that Faith went off to destroy Angel. Buffy heads off to stop Faith.
Back at the mansion, Angel is performing the rites to destroy the glove (which also, apparently, switch the glove on), when Ms. Post appears, claiming to have been sent by Giles. She knocks Angel out, briefly, then grapples briefly with Angel before Faith comes in, jumping to the rescue of her watcher. Faith nearly kills Angel but is interrupted by Buffy.
Buffy and Faith duke it out with vicious ferocity since they’re both practically invulnerable. They don’t notice Post as she puts on the glove, calling its demonic powers from the sky. Willow and Xander show up in time to be targets of the powerful bursts of energy the Glove yields, and Angel saves Willow from one. Buffy and Faith stop fighting when they realize Post is a bad guy. Faith draws Post’s fire while Buffy disarms Post, literally. The powers of the sky destroy Post utterly, and the gang turns to destroy the glove.
Next day, the gang wonders how they feel about Angel. Xander still doesn’t trust him, and especially worries what will happen if the slayer and the vampire have sex again.
It turns out the Post was a former watcher, kicked out for abusing the black arts. “I swear there was a memo,” Giles winces.
Buffy and Faith, though, are not “five by five,” as Faith would say. Faith has been burned again by trusting someone, and her relationship with Buffy is strained. “I’m on your side,” says Buffy. “I’m on my side,” Faith responds. “That’s enough.” Buffy offers, “not always.”
Notes
First off, the single most stunning part of the episode is Giles’ sound chastisement of Buffy. The watcher is completely dedicated to his slayer, and it’s fascinating to see him confront his anger at the disrespect of this girl that he must serve.
Next there’s, “I assure you I’m in complete control of my slayer.” These are the words of Giles, who is being chastised about letting Buffy run wild, as it were. This whole Buffy Universe watcher concept intrigues me, and I’m more curious than ever what the deal is with the watchers—surely they must be general-purpose occult-supervision types, because no way could there be a “Watcher Council” and all if all they watch is Buffy and Faith.
I enjoyed watching Willow wrestle with her secrets, nearly come clean, and back down. The amusing bit is that Willow is so guilt-ridden that she hints broadly throughout the episode about the secret affair, so broadly that she may as well be wearing a pin that says, “Hi! My name is Willow! I’m secretly making out with Xander!” In fact, Oz gives her a skeptical look or two at the Bronze, leading me to wonder how long this is going to go on. Not that I want the tension to end. The Powers that Be will have a real challenge when Willow and Xander can finally hold hands in the sun, as it were. Right now, the romantic tension, the furtive glances, the snuck touching of fingertips, the risky kissing, the heart pounding near-misses, all make for an exciting storyline. How will they beat that?
Of course, with friends like Willow’s, it’s easy to keep secrets. For her part, Buffy is so narcissistic that she’s not even curious what Willow is hiding, which I suppose makes her a nearly perfect friend.
Memorable Quotes
On guilt’s gentle touch
“Hey, Giles, here’s an idea: why don’t I alleviate my guilt by going out and getting myself really, really killed.”
(Xander, who runs from a tense situation by volunteering to go into demon territory.)
On Willowy goodness
“I consider myself a good person. Floss. Do my homework. Never cheat. But lately… I want you to be the first to know… there’s a demon behind you.”
(Willow, nearly getting it out.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Zeppo
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 3
Episode: “The Zeppo” (January 26, 1998)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Xander finds himself cast out of the Scooby gang and goes in search of his cool. Will he find it before the world ends in a subplot?
Credits:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Joyce: Kristine Sutherland
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Faith: Elizabeth Dushku
Oz: Seth Green
Angel: David Boreanaz
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
SYNOPSIS
We open with the slayer gang down in the gutters-where-the-dead may-arise, taking down a horde of oddly new demons. Willow helps with her magic while Faith and Buffy do the slaying, and Xander appears once its all over, having been knocked out by the demons. Buffy and Giles tell Xander he’s going to get himself killed; he should hang back behind enemy lines in the future.
Having been effectively demoted, Xander mopes around school, where he’s a nobody and still manages to provoke the ire of a psychotic bully, O’Toole. Defeated, Xander wanders right into the humiliating insults of Cordelia. “He’s a psycho, which is still a lot cooler than being a wuss. You’re a nothing... you’re the useless part of the group, the Zeppo.”
Further, he has no cool. Oz, a musician, is no help. What does Xander have? He goes out in search of a “thing.”
Meanwhile, Giles and Buffy talk about the coming of the Apocalypse Cult, which is planning to reopen the Hellmouth – located in the library-- and bring the end of the world. It’s Ozwatch time, too, and Oz is locked up. Buffy and Willow worry and fawn until Xander drives up in a new car, a classic Chevy. But Buffy’s not enthused: “Evil. Maybe more than I can handle.” So she sends Xander for donuts.
Cordelia wanders by the donut shop to harass Xander more, but Xander escapes with a random car-obsessed blond in the jump seat.
The bimbo is a bore, so when Angel appears at the Bronze, Xander offers to help fight the Apocalypse, but Angel tells him it’s “best to stay out of harm’s way.” (“But... I can help!”) Xander and the bimbo leave and immediately have a fender-bender with the psycho O’Toole, who threatens him with a Bowie knife. When the cops arrive, Xander covers for O’Toole, earning the psycho’s respect and the official role of chauffeur. (The car O’Toole was in was not his.)
No luck for the Slayer gang, meanwhile, although the Fate of the Entire World rests on their efforts.
At the graveyard, the bimbo runs away while Xander watches O’Toole bring his old gang back from the dead.
Xander crosses paths with Giles while the librarian tries to learn the secrets of the Apocalypse from the Spirit Guides, a mystical bunch of oracles who look like a pink cloud, but they say “no.” Xander, meanwhile, can’t seem to dump his new friends, and Giles rejects his help. Meanwhile, the End of the World looms.
Xander’s dead friends rob a hardware store while Willow wanders n from the Buffy plot with spell materials. But she has to run (“I love you” she says ominously,) and once she’s gone, Xander finds himself offered membership in O’Toole’s gang- via death. Xander’s not up for death, so he manages to escape, driving away.
Xander rounds a turn and drives right into an Apocalypse demon Faith is fighting, killing the demon. He takes Faith home and she’s so wound up from the interrupted demon ruckus that she seduces Xander, who until this scene was a virgin. (“Did I mention I’m having a very strange evening?” Then she throws him out because she needs to take a shower.
Back at the school, Giles and Angel move Oz down to the boiler room to clear out the library for the giant end-of-the-world-stopping spell.
Xander wanders back to his car, remembering that the Dead Gang had intended to build a bomb. So he’d better figure out where the bomb will be hidden. He tries to ask the help of Buffy and Angel, but he finds them in a soft-focused, breathily dramatic scene of Incredible Importance (“This is worse than anything we’ve ever faced!” “I can’t watch you die again!”) and Xander leaves.
Oh, and the Dead Gang are also at the school with their new time bomb, which Xander learns by dragging a gang member from his car, Until gang member’s head comes off against a mailbox, fulfilling the need for a mailbox to be destroyed in any piece with a classic Chevy.
Back at the library, the Apocalypse bursts through the Hellmouth looking like a cross between a giant iguana and a Venus flytrap. Meanwhile, the Dead Gang chase Xander through the school, because he’s looking for the bomb. Demons tear apart one gang member while Xander dispatches another, until finally he ends up down in the boiler room with the bomb, a few minutes to spare, and O’Toole. Since neither of them can make it out of the school before it blows, Xander calmly tries to convince O’Toole to disarm the bomb (this is a different death we’re talking about.)
Meanwhile, a battle royale rages in the library, with everyone swinging axes and the giant flytrap/iguana creature snapping and, apparently, causing lightning to flash.
O’Toole caves and disarms the bomb with two seconds to spare. Xander says, “Good boy. I don’t think I want to be seeing you on campus anymore, Jack.” Then, as Xander walks away, O’Toole opens the broom closet and gets eaten by Oz.
Next day, the Slayer Gang have a gaggingly dramatic post-mortem meeting, all of them covered in scratches and bandages. (“The world continues to turn.” “No-one will ever know how close it came to stopping.”) They tell Xander he was lucky not to be at school last night, and Xander says he likes the quite. Cordelia wanders by, gives him a hard time, and he smiles, and walks away.
NOTES
Once again, it’s the writing that distinguishes Buffy. You have to be impressed with a series that dares to openly itself. This episode is unique and experimental in its satire: Story A is an odd little journey of self-discovery for Xander, and that’s the story we keep following. Meanwhile, Story B is an apocalyptic roller coaster we barely glimpse. As such, anytime we wander into Story B, we’re struck by how silly and overblown the world of Buffy can seem. This, in a word, is brave.
The episode refers twice to Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, and it’s an apt comparison. What is Xander’s place in the Slayer Gang? Even Willow now has witchcraft powers to help out, Oz is a werewolf (and plays guitar.) What is Xander? Xander goes for donuts. Here, he’s even cut out of the action, barred even from the usual research sessions.
Xander’s search for his cool is inspired. He wanders, nay, surfs through a series of misadventures: attracting a random bimbo with a new car, acting as driver for a zombie gang’s burglary, roughing up a zombie for information, fighting his way to a hidden bomb, and talking his way out of certain death in a contest of wills with the school psycho. And he loses his virginity. This is a big night.
So in the end, when the Slayer Gang is congratulating itself, Xander doesn’t mention any of it. He just walks, and smiles. Somewhere in there he grew enough that he doesn’t need to talk about it. It’s a tactic that works well on Cordelia, incidentally, and Xander’s self-satisfaction is palpable. (Even if Cordelia’s had a rough time this season, she’s been slamming ex-boyfriend Xander pretty hard.)
THE ZEPPO never does resolve what will be done with Xander as pertains to Buffy’s trials and tribulations. But it does make a resolution: Xander will be fine either way.
A note, by the way, about Nicholas Brendan. Brendan continually impresses with his comic timing, and we’ve seen him take on varied personalities. (Last Halloween, he became Barry Sadler, apparently.) But here, Brendan pulls off a rare thing- a complete and yet narrowly constructed transition from Xander-the-nebbish to confident Senior. Personally, I think Xander the nebbish is likeable enough; his shock at the schoolyard psycho’s hostility is utterly believable and remarkably mature. But the Xander we see at the end is a different man. It’s easy to impress people with acting when you’re playing crazy or mentally challenged, it’s a harder task when you’re playing Joe average.
Nice to see that Cordelia and Xander still think alike- Xander is momentarily thrilled that Cordelia also thinks of him as being like Jimmy Olsen. Will Cordy and Xander be back? Probably not, but eventually they’ll be friends. Not that he deserves her.
Final note: the zombie gang is hilariously drawn; these are walking dead versions of Butch’s gang from STAND BY ME. Inspired writing, that.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
On what to do with dead demons:
Buffy: “Should we burn him?”
Willow: “I brought marshmallows. (Pause.) Occasionally, I’m callous and strange.”
“It’s not like I haven’t helped before. I've done some quality violence for those people.”
-- Xander, annoyed that the Slayer Gang doesn’t want him around.
“Now I’m involved in a crime. I’m the criminal element. Having a car sure is cool!”
- - Xander, finding his way
“Being blowed up isn’t walking around and drinking with your buddies dead. It’s little pieces being swept up by the janitor dead, and I don’t think you’re ready for that.”
- - Xander, talking a psycho zombie into disarming a bomb for him
Season 3
Episode: “The Zeppo” (January 26, 1998)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
Xander finds himself cast out of the Scooby gang and goes in search of his cool. Will he find it before the world ends in a subplot?
Credits:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Joyce: Kristine Sutherland
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Faith: Elizabeth Dushku
Oz: Seth Green
Angel: David Boreanaz
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
SYNOPSIS
We open with the slayer gang down in the gutters-where-the-dead may-arise, taking down a horde of oddly new demons. Willow helps with her magic while Faith and Buffy do the slaying, and Xander appears once its all over, having been knocked out by the demons. Buffy and Giles tell Xander he’s going to get himself killed; he should hang back behind enemy lines in the future.
Having been effectively demoted, Xander mopes around school, where he’s a nobody and still manages to provoke the ire of a psychotic bully, O’Toole. Defeated, Xander wanders right into the humiliating insults of Cordelia. “He’s a psycho, which is still a lot cooler than being a wuss. You’re a nothing... you’re the useless part of the group, the Zeppo.”
Further, he has no cool. Oz, a musician, is no help. What does Xander have? He goes out in search of a “thing.”
Meanwhile, Giles and Buffy talk about the coming of the Apocalypse Cult, which is planning to reopen the Hellmouth – located in the library-- and bring the end of the world. It’s Ozwatch time, too, and Oz is locked up. Buffy and Willow worry and fawn until Xander drives up in a new car, a classic Chevy. But Buffy’s not enthused: “Evil. Maybe more than I can handle.” So she sends Xander for donuts.
Cordelia wanders by the donut shop to harass Xander more, but Xander escapes with a random car-obsessed blond in the jump seat.
The bimbo is a bore, so when Angel appears at the Bronze, Xander offers to help fight the Apocalypse, but Angel tells him it’s “best to stay out of harm’s way.” (“But... I can help!”) Xander and the bimbo leave and immediately have a fender-bender with the psycho O’Toole, who threatens him with a Bowie knife. When the cops arrive, Xander covers for O’Toole, earning the psycho’s respect and the official role of chauffeur. (The car O’Toole was in was not his.)
No luck for the Slayer gang, meanwhile, although the Fate of the Entire World rests on their efforts.
At the graveyard, the bimbo runs away while Xander watches O’Toole bring his old gang back from the dead.
Xander crosses paths with Giles while the librarian tries to learn the secrets of the Apocalypse from the Spirit Guides, a mystical bunch of oracles who look like a pink cloud, but they say “no.” Xander, meanwhile, can’t seem to dump his new friends, and Giles rejects his help. Meanwhile, the End of the World looms.
Xander’s dead friends rob a hardware store while Willow wanders n from the Buffy plot with spell materials. But she has to run (“I love you” she says ominously,) and once she’s gone, Xander finds himself offered membership in O’Toole’s gang- via death. Xander’s not up for death, so he manages to escape, driving away.
Xander rounds a turn and drives right into an Apocalypse demon Faith is fighting, killing the demon. He takes Faith home and she’s so wound up from the interrupted demon ruckus that she seduces Xander, who until this scene was a virgin. (“Did I mention I’m having a very strange evening?” Then she throws him out because she needs to take a shower.
Back at the school, Giles and Angel move Oz down to the boiler room to clear out the library for the giant end-of-the-world-stopping spell.
Xander wanders back to his car, remembering that the Dead Gang had intended to build a bomb. So he’d better figure out where the bomb will be hidden. He tries to ask the help of Buffy and Angel, but he finds them in a soft-focused, breathily dramatic scene of Incredible Importance (“This is worse than anything we’ve ever faced!” “I can’t watch you die again!”) and Xander leaves.
Oh, and the Dead Gang are also at the school with their new time bomb, which Xander learns by dragging a gang member from his car, Until gang member’s head comes off against a mailbox, fulfilling the need for a mailbox to be destroyed in any piece with a classic Chevy.
Back at the library, the Apocalypse bursts through the Hellmouth looking like a cross between a giant iguana and a Venus flytrap. Meanwhile, the Dead Gang chase Xander through the school, because he’s looking for the bomb. Demons tear apart one gang member while Xander dispatches another, until finally he ends up down in the boiler room with the bomb, a few minutes to spare, and O’Toole. Since neither of them can make it out of the school before it blows, Xander calmly tries to convince O’Toole to disarm the bomb (this is a different death we’re talking about.)
Meanwhile, a battle royale rages in the library, with everyone swinging axes and the giant flytrap/iguana creature snapping and, apparently, causing lightning to flash.
O’Toole caves and disarms the bomb with two seconds to spare. Xander says, “Good boy. I don’t think I want to be seeing you on campus anymore, Jack.” Then, as Xander walks away, O’Toole opens the broom closet and gets eaten by Oz.
Next day, the Slayer Gang have a gaggingly dramatic post-mortem meeting, all of them covered in scratches and bandages. (“The world continues to turn.” “No-one will ever know how close it came to stopping.”) They tell Xander he was lucky not to be at school last night, and Xander says he likes the quite. Cordelia wanders by, gives him a hard time, and he smiles, and walks away.
NOTES
Once again, it’s the writing that distinguishes Buffy. You have to be impressed with a series that dares to openly itself. This episode is unique and experimental in its satire: Story A is an odd little journey of self-discovery for Xander, and that’s the story we keep following. Meanwhile, Story B is an apocalyptic roller coaster we barely glimpse. As such, anytime we wander into Story B, we’re struck by how silly and overblown the world of Buffy can seem. This, in a word, is brave.
The episode refers twice to Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, and it’s an apt comparison. What is Xander’s place in the Slayer Gang? Even Willow now has witchcraft powers to help out, Oz is a werewolf (and plays guitar.) What is Xander? Xander goes for donuts. Here, he’s even cut out of the action, barred even from the usual research sessions.
Xander’s search for his cool is inspired. He wanders, nay, surfs through a series of misadventures: attracting a random bimbo with a new car, acting as driver for a zombie gang’s burglary, roughing up a zombie for information, fighting his way to a hidden bomb, and talking his way out of certain death in a contest of wills with the school psycho. And he loses his virginity. This is a big night.
So in the end, when the Slayer Gang is congratulating itself, Xander doesn’t mention any of it. He just walks, and smiles. Somewhere in there he grew enough that he doesn’t need to talk about it. It’s a tactic that works well on Cordelia, incidentally, and Xander’s self-satisfaction is palpable. (Even if Cordelia’s had a rough time this season, she’s been slamming ex-boyfriend Xander pretty hard.)
THE ZEPPO never does resolve what will be done with Xander as pertains to Buffy’s trials and tribulations. But it does make a resolution: Xander will be fine either way.
A note, by the way, about Nicholas Brendan. Brendan continually impresses with his comic timing, and we’ve seen him take on varied personalities. (Last Halloween, he became Barry Sadler, apparently.) But here, Brendan pulls off a rare thing- a complete and yet narrowly constructed transition from Xander-the-nebbish to confident Senior. Personally, I think Xander the nebbish is likeable enough; his shock at the schoolyard psycho’s hostility is utterly believable and remarkably mature. But the Xander we see at the end is a different man. It’s easy to impress people with acting when you’re playing crazy or mentally challenged, it’s a harder task when you’re playing Joe average.
Nice to see that Cordelia and Xander still think alike- Xander is momentarily thrilled that Cordelia also thinks of him as being like Jimmy Olsen. Will Cordy and Xander be back? Probably not, but eventually they’ll be friends. Not that he deserves her.
Final note: the zombie gang is hilariously drawn; these are walking dead versions of Butch’s gang from STAND BY ME. Inspired writing, that.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
On what to do with dead demons:
Buffy: “Should we burn him?”
Willow: “I brought marshmallows. (Pause.) Occasionally, I’m callous and strange.”
“It’s not like I haven’t helped before. I've done some quality violence for those people.”
-- Xander, annoyed that the Slayer Gang doesn’t want him around.
“Now I’m involved in a crime. I’m the criminal element. Having a car sure is cool!”
- - Xander, finding his way
“Being blowed up isn’t walking around and drinking with your buddies dead. It’s little pieces being swept up by the janitor dead, and I don’t think you’re ready for that.”
- - Xander, talking a psycho zombie into disarming a bomb for him
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Prom
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 3
Episode: “The Prom” (May 11, 1999)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
It’s the Big Night, Prom, when hearts are broken, disco balls sparkle, and Hellhounds bark at the doors of the High School Gym. Can Buffy, reeling in the wake of a break-up with Angel, keep it a night to remember in al the right ways for everyone else?
Credits:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Oz: Seth Green
Angel: David Boreanaz
Joyce: Kristine Sutherland
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
SYNOPSIS
We open in the Buffy rendition of “Wake up Little Suzy,” with Buffy awakening in the morning after a chaste night in Angel’s arms. (They take post-patrol naps; this one got carried away.) Anyone who’s wondering what the big deal is will try to remember our stalwart heroine is still in high school, Angel is a vampire, and if the pair ever have sex he’ll become a demon.
Speaking of demons, demon senior Anya is slowly transitioning into life as a high school senior (she got trapped here at the end of THE WISH). Anya, man-hating harpy that she is, needs a date for the prom, and somehow Xander is man enough to say yes. (Especially since Xander figures it’s Anya or a sock puppet.)
Buffy’s Mom pays a visit to Angel to gently explain that whatever Buffy appears to be, she’s still a twelfth-grader, whereas Angel is hundreds of years old, and maybe it would be best if he laid off the little girls. (“Do the right thing, even if she isn’t able to.”)
The Slayer Gang’s minds are filled with all things prom while a caged, vicious Hellhound snarls in some secret place. Meanwhile, Angel dreams that he marries Buffy, and she burns up in the sunlight.
Angel picks a fight with Buffy in the very next scene, suggesting she’s “too into this stuff” (meaning the prom) and breaking up with her then and there. “You deserve more... something outside demons and darkness.” Angel announces he’s leaving after the Ascension “if we survive.”
Buffy mopes.
Thankfully, Willow, supportive though she is, agrees that breaking up with Angel is ultimately the right thing. But Buffy wails that right now she’s “trying to keep from dying.”
Xander makes a thrilling discovery- - ex-girlfriend and rich ho Cordelia has fallen on hard times; her family lost its money in a tax dispute and now Cordy has to work at a formal wear store to buy a dress on layaway. This revelation is interrupted by the attack of a Hellhound, which busts into the store and eats a guy in a tuxedo.
Xander gets to flex his chivalry in the very next scene when he keeps Cordy’s reduced means a secret while the Gang discovers the identity of the Hellhound keeper after turning up his image on a videotape of the attack. The keeper, a random geek named Tucker, has posted threats on the Internet promising that the students' big night will be their last. The Gang worry that the Hellhound is going to Osterize the prom, Buffy vows that a good time will be had by all; she’ll keep the hounds away.
Buffy finds Tucker’s address when she goes to the place where he buys cow brains to feed his Hellhounds. She has a brief run-in with Angel and is on her way.
Cordy leaves work for the prom, disappointed that she didn’t finish paying for the dress she wanted. But there’s a surprise: someone paid the dress off for her.
Xander’s already having a tough enough time listening to date Anya prattle on about men she’s killed through the ages when Cordelia walks in, a long-legged, slim-hipped and low-cut vision of High Cordiness.
Just, just wait a second. Ah.
Anyway, Wesley’s heart rate soars at the sight of Cordelia and he takes Cordy’s arm; they run into Xander and her demon date, allowing Cordy to thank her ex for his silent help.
Meanwhile, Buffy gets to the geek’s house too late to stop his release of three Hellhounds. They’re already clawing their way towards the Prom. She dispatches all three fairly quickly, changes into her dress, and heads for Prom after a hard day’s work.
After Xander loses class clown, Buffy receives an award in appreciation from the Class of ’99: Class Protector. The award is a gaudy umbrella, but the letter from the class is genuine and appreciative. Buffy has quietly and unassumingly come from obscurity to save nearly every student in a school besieged by the forces of Hell. She has not made a lot of friends, but she has not gone unnoticed. (The Class of ’99 boasts the lowest mortality rate in Sunnydale History.)
Basking in a wonderful evening, Giles dismissively gives Wesley permission to ask Cordelia to dance. “For God’s sake, man, she’s eighteen. And you have the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone. Just have at it, would you, and stop fluttering about.” Even Xander and Anya seem to have a nice time.
It’s almost anti-climactic when Angel shows up for a dance. For us, not for Buffy. As the Sundays play “Wild Horses,” we fade out.
NOTES
This is an excellent episode for several reasons, not the least of which is how deftly it deals with the very premise of Buffy. What started out as a show about a girl who has to forsake her popularity for a secret war against the forces of darkness has gradually morphed into a show about a girl finding herself and her place among her peers. It’s clear by now that the people of Sunnydale, for whatever reason they remain, are aware of the Hellmouth, and the children have come to recognize Buffy as their champion. In high school terms, Buffy ends her year as a person with a special place. This isn’t the life or identity she intended- - and whatever is?- - but it’s a good life, and a good identity.
This is also the episode where Angel breaks up with Buffy yet again, and probably for the last time before he heads off to spin-offs unknown. His breakup fits within a long tradition of Hollywood movie breakups that happen right before the big dance. (Down in those tunnels where the dead may arise I swore I heard Molly Ringwald yelling “Whaaaat aboouttt Praaawwww-aaahhhmm?”) But let’s face it, Angel’s breakup speech is absolutely right. He is old enough to be her ancestor, they'll never have a future together, and the very nature of such romances, at least in fiction, is that they're doomed. Buffy should go find herself a nice psycho hunter, a young Frank Black to hang with.
But hey, if anything, this ep reminds us that Buffy’s still a high school student. (She scrawls “Angel + Buffy 4 Ever” on her notebook. I wonder if she also writes, over and over, Buffy Angelus. Buffy Summers-Angelus. Buffy Angelus Summers.) The poor thing takes her breakup like the Holocaust at the same time that she shows deftness and skill in her professional handling of the Hellhounds.
Also just wonderful is the brilliant teaming of Anya and Xander. Anya’s delightfully pathetic as the millennia-old demon struggling with her new identity as a twelfth-grader, and the way she asks Xander to the prom is adorable: men are evil, she says. I kill them. Um, do you want to go or not?
Tucker, the dweeb whose decided to ruin Prom for everyone, is revealed to have developed his desire for murderous revenge because a girl said “no” when he asked her to go with him. Sounds good to me. In real life we struggle with the idea that losers snap when they stub their toes; in fiction we take it in stride.
I did wonder, if Willow can break into Tucker’s email account, why did Buffy have to go to the meat place to get his address? Couldn’t Willow pull that out of school records? Of course, then she wouldn’t have run into Angel.
Xander, by the way, wins major points with Cordelia, who may well warm to him after he deftly hid the truth about her reduced means and paid off the balance on her dress. Cordy assumes Xander will be gleeful and mean; instead he’s understanding and gentle, probably because his means have always been pretty reduced. They’ll be back together, however briefly, before she’s gone.
The Prom becomes a set piece to showcase the characters. Anya’s a brilliant date for Xander, regaling him with gory man-killing tales but finally shutting up to slow dance; Wesley summoning the inappropriate gumption to ask Cordelia to dance; Willow and Oz twirling in the background without incident or care.
I also enjoyed Giles at the Prom, the only true adult around, genuinely pleased to see Buffy make her debut as Protector. He’s been sculpted into Buffy’s resident father, and his pride is well-portrayed. “I had no idea that children en masse could be gracious,” he says.
This leaves me sort of unimpressed when Angel arrives, because it’s sort of like the Navy boyfriend showing up to make sure he’s a part of his high school girlfriend’s memory of her big night. If Angel wanted out of her life, he would have stayed away. But we all know the truth about that.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
Dialogue at the Zero Hour of a Break-up:
Angel: “It’s nothing.”
Buffy: “No, you have something face.”
Buffy, on Angel dropping her before the Big Night: “He’s 243 years old, he doesn’t exactly get the prom.”
Giles, suggesting he might be able to talk Buffy through her breakup:
“I understand this involves ice cream of some kind.”
Season 3
Episode: “The Prom” (May 11, 1999)
Synopsis by Jason Henderson
Overview
It’s the Big Night, Prom, when hearts are broken, disco balls sparkle, and Hellhounds bark at the doors of the High School Gym. Can Buffy, reeling in the wake of a break-up with Angel, keep it a night to remember in al the right ways for everyone else?
Credits:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Oz: Seth Green
Angel: David Boreanaz
Joyce: Kristine Sutherland
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Cordelia: Charisma Carpenter
SYNOPSIS
We open in the Buffy rendition of “Wake up Little Suzy,” with Buffy awakening in the morning after a chaste night in Angel’s arms. (They take post-patrol naps; this one got carried away.) Anyone who’s wondering what the big deal is will try to remember our stalwart heroine is still in high school, Angel is a vampire, and if the pair ever have sex he’ll become a demon.
Speaking of demons, demon senior Anya is slowly transitioning into life as a high school senior (she got trapped here at the end of THE WISH). Anya, man-hating harpy that she is, needs a date for the prom, and somehow Xander is man enough to say yes. (Especially since Xander figures it’s Anya or a sock puppet.)
Buffy’s Mom pays a visit to Angel to gently explain that whatever Buffy appears to be, she’s still a twelfth-grader, whereas Angel is hundreds of years old, and maybe it would be best if he laid off the little girls. (“Do the right thing, even if she isn’t able to.”)
The Slayer Gang’s minds are filled with all things prom while a caged, vicious Hellhound snarls in some secret place. Meanwhile, Angel dreams that he marries Buffy, and she burns up in the sunlight.
Angel picks a fight with Buffy in the very next scene, suggesting she’s “too into this stuff” (meaning the prom) and breaking up with her then and there. “You deserve more... something outside demons and darkness.” Angel announces he’s leaving after the Ascension “if we survive.”
Buffy mopes.
Thankfully, Willow, supportive though she is, agrees that breaking up with Angel is ultimately the right thing. But Buffy wails that right now she’s “trying to keep from dying.”
Xander makes a thrilling discovery- - ex-girlfriend and rich ho Cordelia has fallen on hard times; her family lost its money in a tax dispute and now Cordy has to work at a formal wear store to buy a dress on layaway. This revelation is interrupted by the attack of a Hellhound, which busts into the store and eats a guy in a tuxedo.
Xander gets to flex his chivalry in the very next scene when he keeps Cordy’s reduced means a secret while the Gang discovers the identity of the Hellhound keeper after turning up his image on a videotape of the attack. The keeper, a random geek named Tucker, has posted threats on the Internet promising that the students' big night will be their last. The Gang worry that the Hellhound is going to Osterize the prom, Buffy vows that a good time will be had by all; she’ll keep the hounds away.
Buffy finds Tucker’s address when she goes to the place where he buys cow brains to feed his Hellhounds. She has a brief run-in with Angel and is on her way.
Cordy leaves work for the prom, disappointed that she didn’t finish paying for the dress she wanted. But there’s a surprise: someone paid the dress off for her.
Xander’s already having a tough enough time listening to date Anya prattle on about men she’s killed through the ages when Cordelia walks in, a long-legged, slim-hipped and low-cut vision of High Cordiness.
Just, just wait a second. Ah.
Anyway, Wesley’s heart rate soars at the sight of Cordelia and he takes Cordy’s arm; they run into Xander and her demon date, allowing Cordy to thank her ex for his silent help.
Meanwhile, Buffy gets to the geek’s house too late to stop his release of three Hellhounds. They’re already clawing their way towards the Prom. She dispatches all three fairly quickly, changes into her dress, and heads for Prom after a hard day’s work.
After Xander loses class clown, Buffy receives an award in appreciation from the Class of ’99: Class Protector. The award is a gaudy umbrella, but the letter from the class is genuine and appreciative. Buffy has quietly and unassumingly come from obscurity to save nearly every student in a school besieged by the forces of Hell. She has not made a lot of friends, but she has not gone unnoticed. (The Class of ’99 boasts the lowest mortality rate in Sunnydale History.)
Basking in a wonderful evening, Giles dismissively gives Wesley permission to ask Cordelia to dance. “For God’s sake, man, she’s eighteen. And you have the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone. Just have at it, would you, and stop fluttering about.” Even Xander and Anya seem to have a nice time.
It’s almost anti-climactic when Angel shows up for a dance. For us, not for Buffy. As the Sundays play “Wild Horses,” we fade out.
NOTES
This is an excellent episode for several reasons, not the least of which is how deftly it deals with the very premise of Buffy. What started out as a show about a girl who has to forsake her popularity for a secret war against the forces of darkness has gradually morphed into a show about a girl finding herself and her place among her peers. It’s clear by now that the people of Sunnydale, for whatever reason they remain, are aware of the Hellmouth, and the children have come to recognize Buffy as their champion. In high school terms, Buffy ends her year as a person with a special place. This isn’t the life or identity she intended- - and whatever is?- - but it’s a good life, and a good identity.
This is also the episode where Angel breaks up with Buffy yet again, and probably for the last time before he heads off to spin-offs unknown. His breakup fits within a long tradition of Hollywood movie breakups that happen right before the big dance. (Down in those tunnels where the dead may arise I swore I heard Molly Ringwald yelling “Whaaaat aboouttt Praaawwww-aaahhhmm?”) But let’s face it, Angel’s breakup speech is absolutely right. He is old enough to be her ancestor, they'll never have a future together, and the very nature of such romances, at least in fiction, is that they're doomed. Buffy should go find herself a nice psycho hunter, a young Frank Black to hang with.
But hey, if anything, this ep reminds us that Buffy’s still a high school student. (She scrawls “Angel + Buffy 4 Ever” on her notebook. I wonder if she also writes, over and over, Buffy Angelus. Buffy Summers-Angelus. Buffy Angelus Summers.) The poor thing takes her breakup like the Holocaust at the same time that she shows deftness and skill in her professional handling of the Hellhounds.
Also just wonderful is the brilliant teaming of Anya and Xander. Anya’s delightfully pathetic as the millennia-old demon struggling with her new identity as a twelfth-grader, and the way she asks Xander to the prom is adorable: men are evil, she says. I kill them. Um, do you want to go or not?
Tucker, the dweeb whose decided to ruin Prom for everyone, is revealed to have developed his desire for murderous revenge because a girl said “no” when he asked her to go with him. Sounds good to me. In real life we struggle with the idea that losers snap when they stub their toes; in fiction we take it in stride.
I did wonder, if Willow can break into Tucker’s email account, why did Buffy have to go to the meat place to get his address? Couldn’t Willow pull that out of school records? Of course, then she wouldn’t have run into Angel.
Xander, by the way, wins major points with Cordelia, who may well warm to him after he deftly hid the truth about her reduced means and paid off the balance on her dress. Cordy assumes Xander will be gleeful and mean; instead he’s understanding and gentle, probably because his means have always been pretty reduced. They’ll be back together, however briefly, before she’s gone.
The Prom becomes a set piece to showcase the characters. Anya’s a brilliant date for Xander, regaling him with gory man-killing tales but finally shutting up to slow dance; Wesley summoning the inappropriate gumption to ask Cordelia to dance; Willow and Oz twirling in the background without incident or care.
I also enjoyed Giles at the Prom, the only true adult around, genuinely pleased to see Buffy make her debut as Protector. He’s been sculpted into Buffy’s resident father, and his pride is well-portrayed. “I had no idea that children en masse could be gracious,” he says.
This leaves me sort of unimpressed when Angel arrives, because it’s sort of like the Navy boyfriend showing up to make sure he’s a part of his high school girlfriend’s memory of her big night. If Angel wanted out of her life, he would have stayed away. But we all know the truth about that.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
Dialogue at the Zero Hour of a Break-up:
Angel: “It’s nothing.”
Buffy: “No, you have something face.”
Buffy, on Angel dropping her before the Big Night: “He’s 243 years old, he doesn’t exactly get the prom.”
Giles, suggesting he might be able to talk Buffy through her breakup:
“I understand this involves ice cream of some kind.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The I in Team
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 4
Episode "The I in Team"
Broadcast February 8, 2000
Cast
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Maggie Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
Prologue
Willow tries to use magic to cheat at cards against Xander and Anya. (They have no money; in fact Xander has decided to start selling grainy, tastelessly multi-flavored "Boost" Bars. They gossip that they’re not sure they can trust Buffy’s new commando pals, the Initiative. Meanwhile, Buffy shows the Initiative what she’s made of, keeping them tracking her for forty-two minutes before wiping out the whole team in twenty-eight seconds.
Act 1
Buffy and Willow make plans to catch up at the Bronze. (“I miss you guys.”) Buffy’s been too busy with new boyfriend Riley.
Giles visits Spike’s new crypt to hand over the $300 he owes Spike. The vampire takes the money and says he wants no more to do with the Slayer Gang.
Buffy gets the official tour of the Initiative, which stretches across a complex the size of your average Galleria below UC Sunnydale. Initiative boss Professor Walsh issues her a badge, a pager, and lots of reading material. On the tour she learns that the Initiative has various methods of “bringing under control” the demons and subterrestrials they capture. They meet Dr. Angleman, a xenomorphic behavior modification leader.
Willow disappoints her terribly sensitive new friend Tara-- not only does she refuse an extravagant gift, but she turns down an invitation to hangout because she has plans with the Slayer Gang. (“It’s a specific crowd; you might feel out of place.”)
Professor Walsh, meanwhile, confers with Doctor X about the dangers that Buffy poses, and we get to see what frightens the demons about Initiative Room 314: a jigsaw-like Frankenstein monster called Adam that Walsh intends to wake soon enough.
Act 2
The Bronze is a bust until Buffy shows up an hour late with about six Initiative guys, which defeats Willow’s idea that this was an intimate, catch-up event. Ex-demon Anya avoids the commandoes and Buffy lamely apologizes. Willow warns Buffy about joining or working with a group she knows little about just because her boyfriend works for them.
The Initiative guys and Buffy get beeped away and Willow wanders back to campus to Tara’s dorm room. She sheepishly tells Tara her plans didn’t work out and she’d love to still do something.
Buffy gets her first taste of working for the Initiative-- they’re going to take down a demon with spikes in its arms, and she’s confused that she’s not allowed to break the spikes in its arms. “Zap and tap, people,” Walsh says, “Capture, not a kill.”
In the field, the Initiative spot Spike and shoot him with a tracer. Riley and Buffy take down the demon they’re chasing, and afterwards go to bed. We pull back from Riley’s bed to reveal Professor Walsh, watching them on a spy camera.
Act 3
Spike comes running to Giles’ place (this after his speech about “don’t come running to me”) because “they’re the goody-goods” and he can’t seem to lose the Initiative. Giles takes his money back and sets about trying to dig the tracer out of Spike’s back.
Buffy and Riley wake up to Riley’s alarm, which reminds him to take his vitamins. Turns out Riley asks no questions and liked the Initiative because removing the subterrestrial threat is “work worth doing.” Walsh calls Riley away when Buffy asks about Initiative Room 314. Walsh sends Riley to chase after Spike.
Next, Walsh decides its time to get rid of Buffy before she asks too many questions. (She could have been a powerful ally,” says Dr. Angleman, “and [Riley] Finn will take it hard.”)
Giles steps up the operation when Xander’s pseudo-military memory kicks in and tells him that’s a tracer in Spike’s back.
Buffy gets back to the dorm in time to see that Willow never made it home either, before Walsh calls Buffy in and Giles calls Willow in.
Buffy is to go on a simple reconnaissance job in a tunnel across town. Buffy has questions: “When you get back,” Walsh lies, “we can have a talk.”
Willow, meanwhile, has to use magic to ionize the air around Giles’ house and disrupt the tracer signal.
When Buffy reaches the tunnel she finds not a low-level demon but two axe-bearing super-demons she immediately recognizes from the Initiative demon-alteration Pit. As Walsh watches through the camera on Buffy’s headset, Buffy’s Initiative TASER gun shorts out and triggers an iron gate that falls and traps her in the tunnel.
Act 4
Walsh watches Buffy fight for her life until the Slayer’s headset falls and her heart monitor flatlines.
Giles removes the tracer just in time to let Xander flush it, losing the Initiative. Buffy, meanwhile, takes down both demons.
While Walsh lies bald-faced to Riley, Buffy comes back on the comlink. They watch Buffy as she tells Walsh, “You really don’t know what a Slayer is. Trust me when I say you’re going to find out.” Feeling betrayed, Riley walks away.
Buffy runs to Giles’ place and announces they have new enemies. Meanwhile, Walsh retires to Room 314 to talks to herself like a Republic villain until her Frankenstein monster “Adam” spikes her through the back with the word, “Mommy.”
NOTES
And so an excellent guest character becomes, in one episode, a stilted and remarkably short-lived villain. I was sorry to see Lindsay Crouse, one of the most unusual actresses I've seen, raving to herself in this episode. There's a hint of this in the beginning, when Walsh stops the training session and yells “lights” like the SPECTRE leader in the prologue to FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. I was rather hoping we'd see at least a few months of rivalry between her and Giles for influence over Buffy before Professor Walsh turned bad. Instead we find out here that Walsh was merely a long setup for Adam, the monster she created.
Apparently Adam is something the demons have feared for some time, but you'd think a genius like Walsh would have made him a little more discriminating in whom he spears through the back. If you're going to make a jigsaw man out of the best demon parts you can find, it has to answer to someone. But I guess that's how these things go. They just usually go a lot slower before the mad scientist loses control. At least now we know why the Initiative is chasing demons; essentially to recruit them or cannibalize them, which indicates that in the Buffy Universe, the greatest evil turns out to be the government.
Looking back, if calling the creature Adam is homage to FRANKENSTEIN, then there is some precedent for the creature waking up and running off immediately, but even the Shelley Monster didn't bother to kill anyone right away. (In that book, Frankenstein's creature awakens and the doctor is so revolted he runs off, leaving the creature to wander off and brood like a romantic poet.) It would be nice to see Adam recite bad poetry before Buffy kills him.
A few minor notes:
Cornfed Iowa government agent Riley is so well adjusted he just aches to be killed in another episode or two. He beams with pride because his girlfriend can kick his ass, he has the decency and honesty to tell Buffy to stop talking while they're on patrol because, “I don't have your reflexes, so I need to pay attention.”
I also liked the lovemaking between Buffy and Riley, which here is directed like the love scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in Nicholas Roeg's moody DON'T LOOK NOW, transitioning back and forth in time with the violent and skillful capture of a demon. Buffy usually slays; here, she captures, saving energy to be released in afterwards. It's a fine scene.
I also love this handy plot device involving Xander’s "military memory," which comes and goes as needed. One of the things I've always respected about BUFFY is the unabashed use of silly plot devices to keep it all rolling. I also wonder, is Xander is busy selling Boost Bars, will these silly bars play a part in the plot? They're fairly minor comic relief if not, and BUFFY rarely wastes time unless the detail is going to matter later on.
Last but not least, Willow's courtship with Tara, shy and pensive, rolls along poignantly. It's a nice romance, full of blushes and awkward apologies. I presume the powers that be will keep it going at least until they bring Oz back.
QUOTES
“And I don’t want you comin’ back here begging me for help the moment teen witch’s magic goes all wonky or little Xander cuts a new tooth, got it?”
-- Spike, who just doesn't grasp that he's become a main character
Season 4
Episode "The I in Team"
Broadcast February 8, 2000
Cast
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Maggie Walsh: Lindsay Crouse
Prologue
Willow tries to use magic to cheat at cards against Xander and Anya. (They have no money; in fact Xander has decided to start selling grainy, tastelessly multi-flavored "Boost" Bars. They gossip that they’re not sure they can trust Buffy’s new commando pals, the Initiative. Meanwhile, Buffy shows the Initiative what she’s made of, keeping them tracking her for forty-two minutes before wiping out the whole team in twenty-eight seconds.
Act 1
Buffy and Willow make plans to catch up at the Bronze. (“I miss you guys.”) Buffy’s been too busy with new boyfriend Riley.
Giles visits Spike’s new crypt to hand over the $300 he owes Spike. The vampire takes the money and says he wants no more to do with the Slayer Gang.
Buffy gets the official tour of the Initiative, which stretches across a complex the size of your average Galleria below UC Sunnydale. Initiative boss Professor Walsh issues her a badge, a pager, and lots of reading material. On the tour she learns that the Initiative has various methods of “bringing under control” the demons and subterrestrials they capture. They meet Dr. Angleman, a xenomorphic behavior modification leader.
Willow disappoints her terribly sensitive new friend Tara-- not only does she refuse an extravagant gift, but she turns down an invitation to hangout because she has plans with the Slayer Gang. (“It’s a specific crowd; you might feel out of place.”)
Professor Walsh, meanwhile, confers with Doctor X about the dangers that Buffy poses, and we get to see what frightens the demons about Initiative Room 314: a jigsaw-like Frankenstein monster called Adam that Walsh intends to wake soon enough.
Act 2
The Bronze is a bust until Buffy shows up an hour late with about six Initiative guys, which defeats Willow’s idea that this was an intimate, catch-up event. Ex-demon Anya avoids the commandoes and Buffy lamely apologizes. Willow warns Buffy about joining or working with a group she knows little about just because her boyfriend works for them.
The Initiative guys and Buffy get beeped away and Willow wanders back to campus to Tara’s dorm room. She sheepishly tells Tara her plans didn’t work out and she’d love to still do something.
Buffy gets her first taste of working for the Initiative-- they’re going to take down a demon with spikes in its arms, and she’s confused that she’s not allowed to break the spikes in its arms. “Zap and tap, people,” Walsh says, “Capture, not a kill.”
In the field, the Initiative spot Spike and shoot him with a tracer. Riley and Buffy take down the demon they’re chasing, and afterwards go to bed. We pull back from Riley’s bed to reveal Professor Walsh, watching them on a spy camera.
Act 3
Spike comes running to Giles’ place (this after his speech about “don’t come running to me”) because “they’re the goody-goods” and he can’t seem to lose the Initiative. Giles takes his money back and sets about trying to dig the tracer out of Spike’s back.
Buffy and Riley wake up to Riley’s alarm, which reminds him to take his vitamins. Turns out Riley asks no questions and liked the Initiative because removing the subterrestrial threat is “work worth doing.” Walsh calls Riley away when Buffy asks about Initiative Room 314. Walsh sends Riley to chase after Spike.
Next, Walsh decides its time to get rid of Buffy before she asks too many questions. (She could have been a powerful ally,” says Dr. Angleman, “and [Riley] Finn will take it hard.”)
Giles steps up the operation when Xander’s pseudo-military memory kicks in and tells him that’s a tracer in Spike’s back.
Buffy gets back to the dorm in time to see that Willow never made it home either, before Walsh calls Buffy in and Giles calls Willow in.
Buffy is to go on a simple reconnaissance job in a tunnel across town. Buffy has questions: “When you get back,” Walsh lies, “we can have a talk.”
Willow, meanwhile, has to use magic to ionize the air around Giles’ house and disrupt the tracer signal.
When Buffy reaches the tunnel she finds not a low-level demon but two axe-bearing super-demons she immediately recognizes from the Initiative demon-alteration Pit. As Walsh watches through the camera on Buffy’s headset, Buffy’s Initiative TASER gun shorts out and triggers an iron gate that falls and traps her in the tunnel.
Act 4
Walsh watches Buffy fight for her life until the Slayer’s headset falls and her heart monitor flatlines.
Giles removes the tracer just in time to let Xander flush it, losing the Initiative. Buffy, meanwhile, takes down both demons.
While Walsh lies bald-faced to Riley, Buffy comes back on the comlink. They watch Buffy as she tells Walsh, “You really don’t know what a Slayer is. Trust me when I say you’re going to find out.” Feeling betrayed, Riley walks away.
Buffy runs to Giles’ place and announces they have new enemies. Meanwhile, Walsh retires to Room 314 to talks to herself like a Republic villain until her Frankenstein monster “Adam” spikes her through the back with the word, “Mommy.”
NOTES
And so an excellent guest character becomes, in one episode, a stilted and remarkably short-lived villain. I was sorry to see Lindsay Crouse, one of the most unusual actresses I've seen, raving to herself in this episode. There's a hint of this in the beginning, when Walsh stops the training session and yells “lights” like the SPECTRE leader in the prologue to FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. I was rather hoping we'd see at least a few months of rivalry between her and Giles for influence over Buffy before Professor Walsh turned bad. Instead we find out here that Walsh was merely a long setup for Adam, the monster she created.
Apparently Adam is something the demons have feared for some time, but you'd think a genius like Walsh would have made him a little more discriminating in whom he spears through the back. If you're going to make a jigsaw man out of the best demon parts you can find, it has to answer to someone. But I guess that's how these things go. They just usually go a lot slower before the mad scientist loses control. At least now we know why the Initiative is chasing demons; essentially to recruit them or cannibalize them, which indicates that in the Buffy Universe, the greatest evil turns out to be the government.
Looking back, if calling the creature Adam is homage to FRANKENSTEIN, then there is some precedent for the creature waking up and running off immediately, but even the Shelley Monster didn't bother to kill anyone right away. (In that book, Frankenstein's creature awakens and the doctor is so revolted he runs off, leaving the creature to wander off and brood like a romantic poet.) It would be nice to see Adam recite bad poetry before Buffy kills him.
A few minor notes:
Cornfed Iowa government agent Riley is so well adjusted he just aches to be killed in another episode or two. He beams with pride because his girlfriend can kick his ass, he has the decency and honesty to tell Buffy to stop talking while they're on patrol because, “I don't have your reflexes, so I need to pay attention.”
I also liked the lovemaking between Buffy and Riley, which here is directed like the love scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in Nicholas Roeg's moody DON'T LOOK NOW, transitioning back and forth in time with the violent and skillful capture of a demon. Buffy usually slays; here, she captures, saving energy to be released in afterwards. It's a fine scene.
I also love this handy plot device involving Xander’s "military memory," which comes and goes as needed. One of the things I've always respected about BUFFY is the unabashed use of silly plot devices to keep it all rolling. I also wonder, is Xander is busy selling Boost Bars, will these silly bars play a part in the plot? They're fairly minor comic relief if not, and BUFFY rarely wastes time unless the detail is going to matter later on.
Last but not least, Willow's courtship with Tara, shy and pensive, rolls along poignantly. It's a nice romance, full of blushes and awkward apologies. I presume the powers that be will keep it going at least until they bring Oz back.
QUOTES
“And I don’t want you comin’ back here begging me for help the moment teen witch’s magic goes all wonky or little Xander cuts a new tooth, got it?”
-- Spike, who just doesn't grasp that he's become a main character
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- This Year's Girl
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
YOU GOT TO HAVE FAITH
Season 4, Episode "This Year's Girl"
Broadcast February 22, 2000
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Faith: Eliza Dushku
Prologue
We open with Faith and Buffy making a bed and preparing for a guest. (Remember Faith? Pinch-Slayer, as it were. Fell under the spell the Evil Mayor. Buffy put her in a coma.) Faith’s dream ends with the realization that Buffy has stabbed her once again. We pull back; she’s still in a coma, but dreaming, dreaming.
Act 1
At Giles’ place, the Scooby Gang try to repair an Initiative blaster rifle which an exhausted Buffy hopes to use on the rampaging cyborg monster Adam. She’s also concerned that Riley may never get out of the Initiative hospital.
But Riley’s coming around, and it turns out the soldiers he’s worked with have no desire to stop him from leaving. His buddy Forrest, who’s had a problem with the Buffy factor in Riley’s life, tries to talk him into staying, but to no avail. Riley walks out.
Comatose Faith dreams of her surrogate father the Mayor at a picnic, until Buffy kills him and stalks her.
The Scooby Gang, meanwhile, find a demon Adam killed: he’s bound it between two trees and splayed it open to study its insides. Disturbing.
Riley shows up at Giles’ place, and although Xander is worried that Riley has a mind-control chip in his head, the Gag accepts his help in their Adam-hunt.
Faith dreams once more of being stalked until she dives into a grave. After a moment she emerges from the hole, and in the real world, her eyes open.
Act 2
Faith is a little nonplussed to find herself in a hospital. She immediately sneaks off, interrogates a random girl about what happened to the high school, and take the girl’s clothes. Meanwhile, the police are alarmed to find out coma girl escaped and the head nurse secretly calls out “the team.”
Buffy reassures Riley that there’s life after not taking orders-- after al, she quit working for the Watcher Council. But Riley’s not completely ready to divorce the Initiative.
Faith walks the streets in amazement until she comes to Giles’ place, where she eavesdrops on the Scooby Gang plus Riley, dealing with the Adam threat. Riley offers to share information if he can get any from the Initiative. Buffy gets a phone call: Faith is free.
Buffy takes responsibility for Faith and decides to go hunting for the evil Slayer, whom Buffy suspects might even be reformed and frightened. But no. Next day, Buffy runs right into Faith on campus.
Act 3
Faith is angry that the world has changed, even Angel, whom Buffy stabbed Faith for, is out of the picture. The two Slayers start kickboxing (always sort of meaningless since they’re almost a perfect match and this is only the beginning of the third act) until the cops arrive and Faith runs.
Willow and witch-buddy Tara sort of search for Faith while Giles and Xander do the same. But Giles and Xander find Spike, instead, who tries to remind them that he’s not their friend and if he sees Faith, he’ll send her their way. “We’re dumb,” Xander observes to Giles after he’s described Faith to Spike and sent the vampire on his way.
The Head Nurse’s team arrives in a black helicopter and soon Faith receives a gift from a demon (she kills the demon). Inside the gift is a videotape message from the Mayor, who recorded a message for her in the few days before he died. He tells her chances are her days are numbered without him, so he’s left her another gift to make her last, hunted days bearable. (“There won’t be a place for Faith any more.”)
In a box in the envelope, Faith finds a sort of magical brass knuckle set.
Riley knows there’s something about Faith that Buffy’s not telling her, but gets nowhere. Buffy does say, however, that faith is the type to come after the people Buffy loves.
On cue, Faith pays a visit to Buffy’s mom, Joyce.
Act 4
Faith taunts Joyce, whom she’s tied up. They’ve been forgotten, Faith says. “You think you matter, you think you’re a part of something, and you get dumped.” Buffy has abandoned them both; she’s not about to crash through that door.
Buffy crashes through the window, actually, and saves Joyce. She and Faith duke it out, trashing Joyce’s house. Meanwhile, a bunch of eurotrash thugs are waiting for Giles at his place, and they know him.
As the cops arrive at Joyce’s house, Faith puts on her magical brass knuckles and snacks Buffy with ‘em. There’s a strange flash, then we see Buffy knock Faith out.
Buffy crushes the strange weapon and lets the cops take Faith away, but we’ve realized something by now. The weapon allowed Faith to switch bodies with Buffy!
NOTES
So Faith is back, and she has some issues. Poignantly, Faith disappoints us all by not coming back reformed. The “Evil Slayer” fails to take any responsibility for her part in last season’s events; as she sees it she’s the victim of Buffy’s cruelty. She’s been abandoned, she says, although it was she who betrayed her friends, she who’s been in a coma. She veers wildly from angry to hurt and back to angry.
Faith’s been one of the better character creations of the Buffy Universe, because she’s one of the more complicated ones: she’s mean and sadistic and has gone a little far into hard-core criminality by now, but at every step the writers throw in a hint of the Faith that could be but is not. The clever thing about this character is that you don’t ever want her to die, even if she deserves it by fantasy standards. You want her to get better. Buffy’s a bit on the whiny side; it would be good to have a darker Slayer out there on the side of good.
Buffy, who of course isn’t completely innocent but certainly can’t be faulted for killing the Mayor, understandably seems to have hoped for a quieter, wiser Faith to emerge. I think that’s sort of what I was hoping for, too-- some altogether different character, maybe a mentor of sorts. But Faith hasn’t changed in the slightest; she wakes up and her attitude-- like her magically-enhanced physical prowess-- is still the same.
I was a little surprised at Joyce’s reaction to Faith. Faith has tied Joyce up, so I understand she’s upset, but Joyce had a clear maternal relationship starting with Faith back when the character was a regular. Joyce is usually the overly forgiving type, it’s harsh to hear her say, “My daughter is going to kill you soon.”
By the way, Adam’s display of the demon he killed, trussed up and splayed open, is a direct lift from Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, in which Hannibal Lector did the same thing in flashback. The image the killers create in so doing is itself a rendering of an old medical journal illustration of sorts, used to understand how the insides of bodies work.
And we end with Faith taking Buffy’s body, which is fitting since Faith has always exhibited jealousy towards her “sister.” Faith only came along because Buffy’s brief death spawned a second Slayer, who died, spawning Faith. As silly as all that is, Faith’s the classic “accident” child. Her jealousy, though, was perverted and heightened by the Mayor, who both loved and emotionally abused Faith, twisting her against Buffy. And now, just as Buffy used the Mayor’s last gift to Faith-- a knife-- to stab the evil Slayer, now yet another gift from the Mayor comes into play, a body-switching device.
We also get to see the Watcher Council return (that’s my guess about who’s waiting in Giles’ living room. Here’s a group that always struck me as peculiarly overstaffed if their chief job is watching Slayers, since it’s taken an accident to create two at once. But the rest of their job seems to involve demon-studying; they’re a big demon think-tank. The writers have Buffy explain the Watchers briefly to Riley just for those of us who have never seen Giles in his Watcher role. My guess is the Watchers want Faith destroyed; they probably regard her as their responsibility as Buffy regards Faith as hers.
Totally off the subject, I have to ask what in the world are the wardrobe people thinking with Xander and Willow’s clothing this episode. With Xander in his unpleasant, horizontally striped skintight sweater and short-sleeved orange shirt, and Willow in her two-toned ice-fishing cap and oddly-printed, frumpy wool getup, it’s as if they’ve dropped in on their way to a “Revenge of the Nerds” party. Except no; they just hang around, insults to fashion.
Two wonderful, unconnected moments: One, when Xander shocks himself with the rifle and, to his horror, is completely ignored by the rest of the Gang, who go on dispensing plot exposition on the couch. Second, when Spike just can’t get it through the Gang’s head that “I hate you all.”
Lastly, you have to cringe at Xander’s pathetic notion that he shares a bond with Faith. Sweet, really.
Predictions? My guess is Faith will die at the hands of Adam, whether in Buffy’s body or not. Maybe she reforms first.
QUOTES
“I’d hate to see the pursuit of a homicidal lunatic get in the way of pursuing a homicidal lunatic.”
- Xander
Willow: “What did you tell him?”
Buffy: “The truth. That (Faith)’s my wacky identical cousin from England and whenever she visits, hijinks ensue.”
Willow: “Don’t worry, we’re sure to spot Faith first; she’s like this cleavagey slutbomb walking around going, ooh, check me out, I’m wicked cool, I’m five-by-five.”
Tara: “Five by five? Five what by five what?”
Willow: “See? That’s the thing, no-one knows.”
Riley: “What exactly did this girl do to you?”
Buffy: “It’s a long story.”
Riley: “I’m from Iowa. We drive four hours for a high school football game. Try me.”
YOU GOT TO HAVE FAITH
Season 4, Episode "This Year's Girl"
Broadcast February 22, 2000
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Marc Blucas
Spike: James Marsters
Faith: Eliza Dushku
Prologue
We open with Faith and Buffy making a bed and preparing for a guest. (Remember Faith? Pinch-Slayer, as it were. Fell under the spell the Evil Mayor. Buffy put her in a coma.) Faith’s dream ends with the realization that Buffy has stabbed her once again. We pull back; she’s still in a coma, but dreaming, dreaming.
Act 1
At Giles’ place, the Scooby Gang try to repair an Initiative blaster rifle which an exhausted Buffy hopes to use on the rampaging cyborg monster Adam. She’s also concerned that Riley may never get out of the Initiative hospital.
But Riley’s coming around, and it turns out the soldiers he’s worked with have no desire to stop him from leaving. His buddy Forrest, who’s had a problem with the Buffy factor in Riley’s life, tries to talk him into staying, but to no avail. Riley walks out.
Comatose Faith dreams of her surrogate father the Mayor at a picnic, until Buffy kills him and stalks her.
The Scooby Gang, meanwhile, find a demon Adam killed: he’s bound it between two trees and splayed it open to study its insides. Disturbing.
Riley shows up at Giles’ place, and although Xander is worried that Riley has a mind-control chip in his head, the Gag accepts his help in their Adam-hunt.
Faith dreams once more of being stalked until she dives into a grave. After a moment she emerges from the hole, and in the real world, her eyes open.
Act 2
Faith is a little nonplussed to find herself in a hospital. She immediately sneaks off, interrogates a random girl about what happened to the high school, and take the girl’s clothes. Meanwhile, the police are alarmed to find out coma girl escaped and the head nurse secretly calls out “the team.”
Buffy reassures Riley that there’s life after not taking orders-- after al, she quit working for the Watcher Council. But Riley’s not completely ready to divorce the Initiative.
Faith walks the streets in amazement until she comes to Giles’ place, where she eavesdrops on the Scooby Gang plus Riley, dealing with the Adam threat. Riley offers to share information if he can get any from the Initiative. Buffy gets a phone call: Faith is free.
Buffy takes responsibility for Faith and decides to go hunting for the evil Slayer, whom Buffy suspects might even be reformed and frightened. But no. Next day, Buffy runs right into Faith on campus.
Act 3
Faith is angry that the world has changed, even Angel, whom Buffy stabbed Faith for, is out of the picture. The two Slayers start kickboxing (always sort of meaningless since they’re almost a perfect match and this is only the beginning of the third act) until the cops arrive and Faith runs.
Willow and witch-buddy Tara sort of search for Faith while Giles and Xander do the same. But Giles and Xander find Spike, instead, who tries to remind them that he’s not their friend and if he sees Faith, he’ll send her their way. “We’re dumb,” Xander observes to Giles after he’s described Faith to Spike and sent the vampire on his way.
The Head Nurse’s team arrives in a black helicopter and soon Faith receives a gift from a demon (she kills the demon). Inside the gift is a videotape message from the Mayor, who recorded a message for her in the few days before he died. He tells her chances are her days are numbered without him, so he’s left her another gift to make her last, hunted days bearable. (“There won’t be a place for Faith any more.”)
In a box in the envelope, Faith finds a sort of magical brass knuckle set.
Riley knows there’s something about Faith that Buffy’s not telling her, but gets nowhere. Buffy does say, however, that faith is the type to come after the people Buffy loves.
On cue, Faith pays a visit to Buffy’s mom, Joyce.
Act 4
Faith taunts Joyce, whom she’s tied up. They’ve been forgotten, Faith says. “You think you matter, you think you’re a part of something, and you get dumped.” Buffy has abandoned them both; she’s not about to crash through that door.
Buffy crashes through the window, actually, and saves Joyce. She and Faith duke it out, trashing Joyce’s house. Meanwhile, a bunch of eurotrash thugs are waiting for Giles at his place, and they know him.
As the cops arrive at Joyce’s house, Faith puts on her magical brass knuckles and snacks Buffy with ‘em. There’s a strange flash, then we see Buffy knock Faith out.
Buffy crushes the strange weapon and lets the cops take Faith away, but we’ve realized something by now. The weapon allowed Faith to switch bodies with Buffy!
NOTES
So Faith is back, and she has some issues. Poignantly, Faith disappoints us all by not coming back reformed. The “Evil Slayer” fails to take any responsibility for her part in last season’s events; as she sees it she’s the victim of Buffy’s cruelty. She’s been abandoned, she says, although it was she who betrayed her friends, she who’s been in a coma. She veers wildly from angry to hurt and back to angry.
Faith’s been one of the better character creations of the Buffy Universe, because she’s one of the more complicated ones: she’s mean and sadistic and has gone a little far into hard-core criminality by now, but at every step the writers throw in a hint of the Faith that could be but is not. The clever thing about this character is that you don’t ever want her to die, even if she deserves it by fantasy standards. You want her to get better. Buffy’s a bit on the whiny side; it would be good to have a darker Slayer out there on the side of good.
Buffy, who of course isn’t completely innocent but certainly can’t be faulted for killing the Mayor, understandably seems to have hoped for a quieter, wiser Faith to emerge. I think that’s sort of what I was hoping for, too-- some altogether different character, maybe a mentor of sorts. But Faith hasn’t changed in the slightest; she wakes up and her attitude-- like her magically-enhanced physical prowess-- is still the same.
I was a little surprised at Joyce’s reaction to Faith. Faith has tied Joyce up, so I understand she’s upset, but Joyce had a clear maternal relationship starting with Faith back when the character was a regular. Joyce is usually the overly forgiving type, it’s harsh to hear her say, “My daughter is going to kill you soon.”
By the way, Adam’s display of the demon he killed, trussed up and splayed open, is a direct lift from Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, in which Hannibal Lector did the same thing in flashback. The image the killers create in so doing is itself a rendering of an old medical journal illustration of sorts, used to understand how the insides of bodies work.
And we end with Faith taking Buffy’s body, which is fitting since Faith has always exhibited jealousy towards her “sister.” Faith only came along because Buffy’s brief death spawned a second Slayer, who died, spawning Faith. As silly as all that is, Faith’s the classic “accident” child. Her jealousy, though, was perverted and heightened by the Mayor, who both loved and emotionally abused Faith, twisting her against Buffy. And now, just as Buffy used the Mayor’s last gift to Faith-- a knife-- to stab the evil Slayer, now yet another gift from the Mayor comes into play, a body-switching device.
We also get to see the Watcher Council return (that’s my guess about who’s waiting in Giles’ living room. Here’s a group that always struck me as peculiarly overstaffed if their chief job is watching Slayers, since it’s taken an accident to create two at once. But the rest of their job seems to involve demon-studying; they’re a big demon think-tank. The writers have Buffy explain the Watchers briefly to Riley just for those of us who have never seen Giles in his Watcher role. My guess is the Watchers want Faith destroyed; they probably regard her as their responsibility as Buffy regards Faith as hers.
Totally off the subject, I have to ask what in the world are the wardrobe people thinking with Xander and Willow’s clothing this episode. With Xander in his unpleasant, horizontally striped skintight sweater and short-sleeved orange shirt, and Willow in her two-toned ice-fishing cap and oddly-printed, frumpy wool getup, it’s as if they’ve dropped in on their way to a “Revenge of the Nerds” party. Except no; they just hang around, insults to fashion.
Two wonderful, unconnected moments: One, when Xander shocks himself with the rifle and, to his horror, is completely ignored by the rest of the Gang, who go on dispensing plot exposition on the couch. Second, when Spike just can’t get it through the Gang’s head that “I hate you all.”
Lastly, you have to cringe at Xander’s pathetic notion that he shares a bond with Faith. Sweet, really.
Predictions? My guess is Faith will die at the hands of Adam, whether in Buffy’s body or not. Maybe she reforms first.
QUOTES
“I’d hate to see the pursuit of a homicidal lunatic get in the way of pursuing a homicidal lunatic.”
- Xander
Willow: “What did you tell him?”
Buffy: “The truth. That (Faith)’s my wacky identical cousin from England and whenever she visits, hijinks ensue.”
Willow: “Don’t worry, we’re sure to spot Faith first; she’s like this cleavagey slutbomb walking around going, ooh, check me out, I’m wicked cool, I’m five-by-five.”
Tara: “Five by five? Five what by five what?”
Willow: “See? That’s the thing, no-one knows.”
Riley: “What exactly did this girl do to you?”
Buffy: “It’s a long story.”
Riley: “I’m from Iowa. We drive four hours for a high school football game. Try me.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Listening to Fear
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
“Listening to Fear”
Broadcast November 28, 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 waits with Buffy and Dawn for her coming brain surgery at the hospital while Giles, Xander and Willow patrol for vampires. Willow dusts both of the vamps they find. Riley, who is also supposed to be filling in, is instead holed up in a fleabag apartment letting a vampire drink from him,
ACT I
Due to the pressure of Joyce’s tumor on her brain, she’s started to say demented things. Buffy wants to take Joyce home until surgery. A former security guard that Glori the demon assaulted runs into the girls in the hall of the hospital. Insane, he stares at Dawn and calls hr “empty,” saying there’s “nothing there.” Handsome Dr. Ben says that this man is a mental ward patient going home with his family.
That night, Tara and Willow play a game of naming new constellations (e.g., “big pineapple) on the roof of their dorm. They see a strange meteorite crash to earth.
The crazed security guard wanders mumbling in the woods where the rock crashed. The meteorite’s resident demon, which sort of resembles a big boll weevil, jumps him.
ACT II
Buffy gets permission from Dr. Kriegel the brain surgeon to take Joyce home, but she has to remember to look after Joyce and administer her several meds. Joyce is erratic already, childish and impatient when she’s lucid, completely wacky when she’s not. Meanwhile, the boll weevil creature is crawling on the ceiling of the waiting room.
The gang find the meteorite and the dead security guard, complete with a weird and foul-smelling fluid that fills the dead man’s mouth. While the gang go off to look for demons that come from space, Riley remains behind. Once they’re gone, he calls the Initiative, his spy group.
At the hospital, the boll weevil from space attacks another dementia patient and his screams go more or less unnoticed while the creature spits thick gunk all over the patient’s face.
ACT III
The Initiative, whom Riley once worked for, set down in helicopters. Riley shows the Initiative Major the “protein alkaloid” gunk the creature spat into the security guard’s mouth, and they determine to track the creature’s radiation signature wherever it went.
At the Summers’ place, Joyce is getting dangerous, nearly setting the kitchen on fire and calling Buffy “fat.” Buffy puts her to bed, but not before Joyce, too, stares at Dawn and calls her “a nothing, a shadow.”
Dawn is disturbed that now three people, including Mom, have called her a thing that doesn’t belong. Buffy tells her they’re all just crazy. (She knows the secret, which is that it’s true.)
At the gang’s research session, Xander and the gang put together a picture of their demon: it’s called a Queller, summoned whenever there are huge breakouts of insanity. The Queller basically gets rid of the extra insane people. At the hospital, the whole mental ward is dead.
Buffy’s so emotional cleaning up the kitchen and crying that she can’t hear (nor would she particularly countenance) when Joyce starts talking to the boll weevil creature, which has followed her back from the hospital and now clings to her ceiling.
ACT IV
Riley and the Initiative figure out that the demon weevil must have followed Joyce, so they rush for the Summers home. By now of course, the demon is spitting its mental-patient-killer juice all over Joyce. But Dawn sees it, finally screams for Buffy, and Buffy goes after the critter.
Spike, who is rummaging in Buffy’s basement for pictures of her, turns up and provides at least some help, and Buffy stabs the creature to death before Riley even shows up. At the hospital, demon Glori’s servant Dreg shows up to ask Dr. Ben why, exactly, the young doctor needed to summon the Queller. Dr. Ben says he’s “cleaning up Glori’s mess-- just like I've done my whole life.”
A day later, at the hospital before her surgery, Joyce tells Buffy that she senses that Dawn is not really her daughter-- but she feels like she is, and Joyce senses Dawn is vitally important. She makes Buffy vow to watch over Dawn.
We end with Joyce, finally being hauled into surgery.
NOTES
"Listening to Fear" is a frightening episode of Buffy not for its wacky doodlebug, phlegm-spewing meteorite demon, but for the image of Joyce Summers veering between lucidity and madness from moment to moment. When Buffy starts to cry while she's doing dishes (in a setup nicely borrowed from Fatal Attraction), we can identify with her pain, better than any other she's had on the show. We're unlikely to date vampires or come back from the dead, but we just might see one of our parents dying of cancer. The plot recalls the moment in the 1978 Superman: "All those powers… and I couldn't even save him."
Of course, this has to be the fastest-acting brain tumor in the history of television, because Joyce was just having headaches a week ago and now she's raving. But that's TV. Other elements, like Joyce setting the kitchen on fire, will be very familiar and even unnerving to people who deal with Alzheimer's victims. Joyce just doesn't know what she's doing in these moments.
I don't know what to make of the idea that the monks' spell that convinces everyone that Dawn is "real" only works on the sane. I presume this is just an extension of the age-old idea that fools possess wisdom, like children. But nicely, the powers have Joyce decide that somehow Dawn isn't hers, but that she wants Dawn to be treated as her daughter anyway. What troubles me is that Joyce tells Buffy, "she feels like my daughter… I love her as I love you." What she doesn't say, and what would be more comfortable to hear is "love her as I love her." Does Joyce, can Joyce, love Dawn?
Speaking of Dawn, we're still in the middle of Dawn's long settlement into the show, which of course may not happen. She never gets very far without someone pointing out that she doesn't seem to fit, and she's getting a complex. Beyond that, she's the show's resident kid, and she reminds those of us who aren't just how much being a kid sucks: when bad things happen, adults have you money and tell you to go buy a candy bar.
Riley continues to degenerate, showing up at the start of this episode calmly letting a vampire girl drink from him. He's becoming obsessed with the vampires, which he believes hold a higher place in Buffy's heart than he does, enemies or not. If he becomes a vampire, he'll be a pathetic one.
Spike gets to toss Buffy a knife so she can kill the demon, an altruistic move, but we know Spike is evil and he helps now only because he now has a crush on Buffy. I fear, watching these scenes, that the powers are flirting with giving us a Buffy/Spike pairing, and I really don't want to see it.
Lastly, I have no idea what to make of Dr. Ben's claim that he's cleaning up after demon Glori, “like always.” What is he, Glori's brother? Father? Husband?
“Listening to Fear”
Broadcast November 28, 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 waits with Buffy and Dawn for her coming brain surgery at the hospital while Giles, Xander and Willow patrol for vampires. Willow dusts both of the vamps they find. Riley, who is also supposed to be filling in, is instead holed up in a fleabag apartment letting a vampire drink from him,
ACT I
Due to the pressure of Joyce’s tumor on her brain, she’s started to say demented things. Buffy wants to take Joyce home until surgery. A former security guard that Glori the demon assaulted runs into the girls in the hall of the hospital. Insane, he stares at Dawn and calls hr “empty,” saying there’s “nothing there.” Handsome Dr. Ben says that this man is a mental ward patient going home with his family.
That night, Tara and Willow play a game of naming new constellations (e.g., “big pineapple) on the roof of their dorm. They see a strange meteorite crash to earth.
The crazed security guard wanders mumbling in the woods where the rock crashed. The meteorite’s resident demon, which sort of resembles a big boll weevil, jumps him.
ACT II
Buffy gets permission from Dr. Kriegel the brain surgeon to take Joyce home, but she has to remember to look after Joyce and administer her several meds. Joyce is erratic already, childish and impatient when she’s lucid, completely wacky when she’s not. Meanwhile, the boll weevil creature is crawling on the ceiling of the waiting room.
The gang find the meteorite and the dead security guard, complete with a weird and foul-smelling fluid that fills the dead man’s mouth. While the gang go off to look for demons that come from space, Riley remains behind. Once they’re gone, he calls the Initiative, his spy group.
At the hospital, the boll weevil from space attacks another dementia patient and his screams go more or less unnoticed while the creature spits thick gunk all over the patient’s face.
ACT III
The Initiative, whom Riley once worked for, set down in helicopters. Riley shows the Initiative Major the “protein alkaloid” gunk the creature spat into the security guard’s mouth, and they determine to track the creature’s radiation signature wherever it went.
At the Summers’ place, Joyce is getting dangerous, nearly setting the kitchen on fire and calling Buffy “fat.” Buffy puts her to bed, but not before Joyce, too, stares at Dawn and calls her “a nothing, a shadow.”
Dawn is disturbed that now three people, including Mom, have called her a thing that doesn’t belong. Buffy tells her they’re all just crazy. (She knows the secret, which is that it’s true.)
At the gang’s research session, Xander and the gang put together a picture of their demon: it’s called a Queller, summoned whenever there are huge breakouts of insanity. The Queller basically gets rid of the extra insane people. At the hospital, the whole mental ward is dead.
Buffy’s so emotional cleaning up the kitchen and crying that she can’t hear (nor would she particularly countenance) when Joyce starts talking to the boll weevil creature, which has followed her back from the hospital and now clings to her ceiling.
ACT IV
Riley and the Initiative figure out that the demon weevil must have followed Joyce, so they rush for the Summers home. By now of course, the demon is spitting its mental-patient-killer juice all over Joyce. But Dawn sees it, finally screams for Buffy, and Buffy goes after the critter.
Spike, who is rummaging in Buffy’s basement for pictures of her, turns up and provides at least some help, and Buffy stabs the creature to death before Riley even shows up. At the hospital, demon Glori’s servant Dreg shows up to ask Dr. Ben why, exactly, the young doctor needed to summon the Queller. Dr. Ben says he’s “cleaning up Glori’s mess-- just like I've done my whole life.”
A day later, at the hospital before her surgery, Joyce tells Buffy that she senses that Dawn is not really her daughter-- but she feels like she is, and Joyce senses Dawn is vitally important. She makes Buffy vow to watch over Dawn.
We end with Joyce, finally being hauled into surgery.
NOTES
"Listening to Fear" is a frightening episode of Buffy not for its wacky doodlebug, phlegm-spewing meteorite demon, but for the image of Joyce Summers veering between lucidity and madness from moment to moment. When Buffy starts to cry while she's doing dishes (in a setup nicely borrowed from Fatal Attraction), we can identify with her pain, better than any other she's had on the show. We're unlikely to date vampires or come back from the dead, but we just might see one of our parents dying of cancer. The plot recalls the moment in the 1978 Superman: "All those powers… and I couldn't even save him."
Of course, this has to be the fastest-acting brain tumor in the history of television, because Joyce was just having headaches a week ago and now she's raving. But that's TV. Other elements, like Joyce setting the kitchen on fire, will be very familiar and even unnerving to people who deal with Alzheimer's victims. Joyce just doesn't know what she's doing in these moments.
I don't know what to make of the idea that the monks' spell that convinces everyone that Dawn is "real" only works on the sane. I presume this is just an extension of the age-old idea that fools possess wisdom, like children. But nicely, the powers have Joyce decide that somehow Dawn isn't hers, but that she wants Dawn to be treated as her daughter anyway. What troubles me is that Joyce tells Buffy, "she feels like my daughter… I love her as I love you." What she doesn't say, and what would be more comfortable to hear is "love her as I love her." Does Joyce, can Joyce, love Dawn?
Speaking of Dawn, we're still in the middle of Dawn's long settlement into the show, which of course may not happen. She never gets very far without someone pointing out that she doesn't seem to fit, and she's getting a complex. Beyond that, she's the show's resident kid, and she reminds those of us who aren't just how much being a kid sucks: when bad things happen, adults have you money and tell you to go buy a candy bar.
Riley continues to degenerate, showing up at the start of this episode calmly letting a vampire girl drink from him. He's becoming obsessed with the vampires, which he believes hold a higher place in Buffy's heart than he does, enemies or not. If he becomes a vampire, he'll be a pathetic one.
Spike gets to toss Buffy a knife so she can kill the demon, an altruistic move, but we know Spike is evil and he helps now only because he now has a crush on Buffy. I fear, watching these scenes, that the powers are flirting with giving us a Buffy/Spike pairing, and I really don't want to see it.
Lastly, I have no idea what to make of Dr. Ben's claim that he's cleaning up after demon Glori, “like always.” What is he, Glori's brother? Father? Husband?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Out of My Mind
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 5
Episode "Out of My Mind", Broadcast October 17, 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
OVERVIEW
Riley’s Super-soldier serum is killing him, and he may not live long enough to get to the surgery that would save him but make him a normal man again. Meanwhile, something strange is happening with Buffy’s sister.
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Patrolling gets crowded as Riley and Spike both horn in on Buffy’s vampire-killing action. Riley is getting a little over-eager.
ACT I
Buffy’s re-energized dedication to becoming the ultimate Slayer means harder work than ever, but it’s paying off in that for once her studies actually engage her. Meanwhile, Xander is using his hitherto-unseen powers of expert carpentry to help fix up Giles’ new magic shop. When Buffy arrives, they present her with a new Buffy Training Dojo, complete with practice dummy and pommel horse. And Riley’s still pretty darn wired.
Harmony, who is convinced that she has attained the status of Buffy’s arch-nemesis, hides out with Spike. This is good for Spike because although he can’t attack Buffy, she can do it for him with the right plan.
Mom serves Dawn some eggs and has a moment of clarity: “Who are you?” she asks, and the strain knocks her right to the floor. She’s rushed to the hospital, where Dawn chances to discover that Riley has an accelerated heartbeat.
ACT II
Riley’s heat is so accelerated he could have a heart attack and die at any moment, but he's convinced the Initiative Regimen has made him immune to all that. More to the point, he doesn’t want to be reduced by a possible Initiative operation to being a “normal,” non super-powered, boyfriend of the Slayer.
At home, Joyce has forgotten her confusion about Dawn. Dawn, meanwhile, comes up with the way for Buffy to ask for the help of the Initiative: talk into Riley’s phone, because it’s probably bugged.
It is, and soon Riley’s Initiative buddy Agent Graham shows up to kidnap Riley into medical care. Riley runs and goes into hiding, and Buffy takes charge of bringing him in.
Buffy hires Spike to search the tunnels, but Spike and harmony have a better idea, and kidnap the Initiative surgeon in town so he can remove the aggressiveness-punishing chip in Spike’s head.
ACT III
In a cave, Buffy catches up to Riley and convinces him to come in for the operation, vowing not to abandon him just because he can’t bench what she can.
The Initiative doctor is nervous about doing the operation at the medical school where Harmony and Spike have set him up, but they have faith in his survival instinct.
Meanwhile, Willow and Tara hunt for Riley at the old High School, where we learn that Willow can now use her magic to light a whole building.
ACT IV
The doctor finishes the operation and has Spike stitched up in time for Riley and Buffy to bust into lab so Riley can begin his operation. It turns out, however, that the doctor actually only pretended to remove the chip from Spike’s brain, leaving Spike to run for his life, still unable to fight Buffy.
Alive but normalizing, Riley runs into Graham, who suggests his time would be better spent back working for the government, not sitting on the sidelines as a Slayer’s boyfriend.
We fade out with a dream of Spike’s, in which he and the Slayer kiss. Spike wakes up in a cold (vampire) sweat, dreading the thought that he may be falling for the Slayer.
NOTES
Finally, the mystery of Dawn is coming home to roost. "Out of My Mind" is the episode in which Joyce Summers looks straight at the girl she thinks is her daughter and short-circuits her own brain when she asks, "Who are you?"
I've been really interested in this storyline because I can't recall a time in television when this sort of reality-shift has lasted more than one episode. On Star Trek, it usually gets recognized by the more gifted characters in about Act 3 and fixed by the end, so too in similar Buffy episodes, but Dawn's existence has gone off without a hitch since the season began. One of the best choices of the story, if I'm reading it right, is that Dawn seems to lack awareness that she doesn't belong, which should make her extrication all the more painful and dramatic.
I also want to mention that Michelle Trachtenberg is yet another excellent Buffy discovery; her brattiness and confusion are all dead-on and never cloying. She's nervous, vulnerable, shaky and awkward, and still a holy terror, and I believe everything the actress says and does. I also appreciate that she eats-- or at least roots around in the box of-- Sugar Bombs, breakfast of Calvins.
Best moment? Buffy has a monologue early on about how hard work should be more like a montage. “I’m starting to think this working hard is hard work,” she says, when she had hoped there would be inspirational music and flitting scenes of her reading ("with glasses, because in my montage I have glasses.") It's a wonderful self-referential moment, and so very true of both hard work and pop ideas of hard work.
Minot notes:
Harmony the super-villain moves back in with Spike, who still doesn't get the chip out, but at least now has someone to do his bidding, more or less. I'm tired of seeing Spike made a foil; I'd like to see him take a turn for the far worse. Instead, he seems to be falling for Buffy. Spike has the makings of an excellent and cruel villain, should the show ever decide to release him from the strange role as hateful ally he occupies now. This episode goes a long way towards that, though.
Willow’s become a powerful witch this season, and she's getting pretty scary. Recently episode she accidentally brought rain when she built a fire, but I don't think that will happen again.
As Tara and Willow explore the burnt-out school, I had to wonder, shouldn't someone have torn that place down by now?
Last episode I said Riley is doomed. Now I think he may just wander off.
QUOTES
Tara: “This place kind of creeps me out.”
Willow: “You should have been here when it was a school.”
Season 5
Episode "Out of My Mind", Broadcast October 17, 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
OVERVIEW
Riley’s Super-soldier serum is killing him, and he may not live long enough to get to the surgery that would save him but make him a normal man again. Meanwhile, something strange is happening with Buffy’s sister.
SYNOPSIS
PROLOGUE
Patrolling gets crowded as Riley and Spike both horn in on Buffy’s vampire-killing action. Riley is getting a little over-eager.
ACT I
Buffy’s re-energized dedication to becoming the ultimate Slayer means harder work than ever, but it’s paying off in that for once her studies actually engage her. Meanwhile, Xander is using his hitherto-unseen powers of expert carpentry to help fix up Giles’ new magic shop. When Buffy arrives, they present her with a new Buffy Training Dojo, complete with practice dummy and pommel horse. And Riley’s still pretty darn wired.
Harmony, who is convinced that she has attained the status of Buffy’s arch-nemesis, hides out with Spike. This is good for Spike because although he can’t attack Buffy, she can do it for him with the right plan.
Mom serves Dawn some eggs and has a moment of clarity: “Who are you?” she asks, and the strain knocks her right to the floor. She’s rushed to the hospital, where Dawn chances to discover that Riley has an accelerated heartbeat.
ACT II
Riley’s heat is so accelerated he could have a heart attack and die at any moment, but he's convinced the Initiative Regimen has made him immune to all that. More to the point, he doesn’t want to be reduced by a possible Initiative operation to being a “normal,” non super-powered, boyfriend of the Slayer.
At home, Joyce has forgotten her confusion about Dawn. Dawn, meanwhile, comes up with the way for Buffy to ask for the help of the Initiative: talk into Riley’s phone, because it’s probably bugged.
It is, and soon Riley’s Initiative buddy Agent Graham shows up to kidnap Riley into medical care. Riley runs and goes into hiding, and Buffy takes charge of bringing him in.
Buffy hires Spike to search the tunnels, but Spike and harmony have a better idea, and kidnap the Initiative surgeon in town so he can remove the aggressiveness-punishing chip in Spike’s head.
ACT III
In a cave, Buffy catches up to Riley and convinces him to come in for the operation, vowing not to abandon him just because he can’t bench what she can.
The Initiative doctor is nervous about doing the operation at the medical school where Harmony and Spike have set him up, but they have faith in his survival instinct.
Meanwhile, Willow and Tara hunt for Riley at the old High School, where we learn that Willow can now use her magic to light a whole building.
ACT IV
The doctor finishes the operation and has Spike stitched up in time for Riley and Buffy to bust into lab so Riley can begin his operation. It turns out, however, that the doctor actually only pretended to remove the chip from Spike’s brain, leaving Spike to run for his life, still unable to fight Buffy.
Alive but normalizing, Riley runs into Graham, who suggests his time would be better spent back working for the government, not sitting on the sidelines as a Slayer’s boyfriend.
We fade out with a dream of Spike’s, in which he and the Slayer kiss. Spike wakes up in a cold (vampire) sweat, dreading the thought that he may be falling for the Slayer.
NOTES
Finally, the mystery of Dawn is coming home to roost. "Out of My Mind" is the episode in which Joyce Summers looks straight at the girl she thinks is her daughter and short-circuits her own brain when she asks, "Who are you?"
I've been really interested in this storyline because I can't recall a time in television when this sort of reality-shift has lasted more than one episode. On Star Trek, it usually gets recognized by the more gifted characters in about Act 3 and fixed by the end, so too in similar Buffy episodes, but Dawn's existence has gone off without a hitch since the season began. One of the best choices of the story, if I'm reading it right, is that Dawn seems to lack awareness that she doesn't belong, which should make her extrication all the more painful and dramatic.
I also want to mention that Michelle Trachtenberg is yet another excellent Buffy discovery; her brattiness and confusion are all dead-on and never cloying. She's nervous, vulnerable, shaky and awkward, and still a holy terror, and I believe everything the actress says and does. I also appreciate that she eats-- or at least roots around in the box of-- Sugar Bombs, breakfast of Calvins.
Best moment? Buffy has a monologue early on about how hard work should be more like a montage. “I’m starting to think this working hard is hard work,” she says, when she had hoped there would be inspirational music and flitting scenes of her reading ("with glasses, because in my montage I have glasses.") It's a wonderful self-referential moment, and so very true of both hard work and pop ideas of hard work.
Minot notes:
Harmony the super-villain moves back in with Spike, who still doesn't get the chip out, but at least now has someone to do his bidding, more or less. I'm tired of seeing Spike made a foil; I'd like to see him take a turn for the far worse. Instead, he seems to be falling for Buffy. Spike has the makings of an excellent and cruel villain, should the show ever decide to release him from the strange role as hateful ally he occupies now. This episode goes a long way towards that, though.
Willow’s become a powerful witch this season, and she's getting pretty scary. Recently episode she accidentally brought rain when she built a fire, but I don't think that will happen again.
As Tara and Willow explore the burnt-out school, I had to wonder, shouldn't someone have torn that place down by now?
Last episode I said Riley is doomed. Now I think he may just wander off.
QUOTES
Tara: “This place kind of creeps me out.”
Willow: “You should have been here when it was a school.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- No Place Like Home
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 5, Episode “No Place Like Home”
Broadcast October 24, 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
We open two months ago in a monastery, where a powerful force escapes the monks who guard it. We move to today, in Sunnydale, where a security guard chasing Buffy away from a warehouse hands picks a glowing orb off the ground and hands it to her, presuming the orb to be hers.
ACT I
Joyce Summers is still headachy and woozy, while Dawn and Buffy compete for her affection over fresh breakfast. The sisters head for Giles’ Magic Shop’s grand opening, where Dawn breaks things, insults Riley and infuriates her sister, all more or less by accident. Buffy’s wishing she were an only child, especially because Joyce is so close to Dawn. Dawn is the baby, Willow explains, which is why she’s closer right now to Buffy’s Mom.
Buffy, alarmed by Joyce’s headaches, heads for the hospital pharmacy to fill a prescription and talk to the doctor. She helps control a mad patient who she recognizes as the warehouse security guard. He tells her, “They’re coming for you... through your family.”
Meanwhile, at the warehouse, a monk calls for “the Beast” and conjures a blond girl in a red dress.
ACT II
Still no luck figuring out the origin of the orb Buffy found, but now Buffy knows there’s a supernatural connection to her mother’s headaches.
Meanwhile, the devilish blond girl tortures and interrogates the monk looking for “the key.” She kills a security guard, but the monk won’t talk.
At the magic shop, the gang all seem to be working for Giles while Anya suggests they use an old spell called “Pull the Curtain Back” to reveal the source of the spell affecting Joyce.
For no particular reason I can ascertain Buffy, not Willow, will cast this spell. Buffy goes into a deep trance as she sits in a magic circle.
Buffy rises and walks the house in a deep-concentration trance: she walks downstairs and talks to her mom, seeing no magic on her mother. But a family photograph flickers-- Dawn is fading in and out, and the same effect appears on every family photo. In Dawn’s room, the child’s shelves and desk flicker and trade places with the clutter of an unused room. And Dawn herself flickers in and out.
“You’re not my sister,” Buffy says.
ACT III
Buffy attacks Dawn (“Stay away from my mother!”) but Dawn seems genuinely confused (or is she?) Meanwhile, Giles calls to tell her that the sphere is a protective device to ward off evil.
Outside the house, Buffy runs into Spike, who trades barbs with her until his newfound love for her overtakes him enough that he sums it all up with, “And I never really liked you anyway, and you have stupid hair.”
Joyce comes home and Dawn is suddenly very creepy, while Buffy goes to the warehouse to get thrown across the room by the devil in a red dress.
ACT IV
The first day at Giles’ shop was a huge success, so Giles hires Anya, who is broke and knows the merchandise.
Meanwhile, blond devil has the strength of the Hulk and Buffy has little choice but to take the captive monk and run. The monk tells her to protect “the key” from the devil woman, or many more will die.
The orb is not the key. Dawn is the key. The monks took the good energy they protected and cast a spell, gave it human form, and sent it to Buffy’s life. Buffy must protect Dawn, which is why she was placed in Buffy’s household. Buffy resents the false memories that have been sent to her, but starts a new truce with Dawn, who is an innocent in all this and doesn’t know where she really came from.
NOTES
Well, here's a result I didn’t expect. Watching the Dawn plot play out across the early part of this season has been a joy because of all the different balls Joss Whedon was juggling. Buffy introduced sister Dawn as almost a concession to the gods of TV, adding exactly one late-season retro-active history change (a sister) but doing it the Buffy way. This meant that Dawn came on the show at the end of an episode, so we all knew we weren't supposed to simply accept her presence, and then Buffy herself slowly came to her awareness of the anomaly over several episodes. (To be more accurate, she never really came that far until this episode, when a spell she casts points Dawn out as otherworldly. Before that her annoyance with Dawn is, all told, pretty normal sister stuff.)
And in fact I've enjoyed Michelle Trachtenberg's performance as Dawn, the awkward sister of the Slayer who has a crush on Xander and an inability to say the appropriate thing. When Willow says, “I just have all this involuntary empathy for Dawn, because she’s, you know, a big spaz,” we all know whereof she speaks. Frankly, we're meant to think, Buffy needs to cut the kid some slack and quit being such a whiner.
Except Dawn, even more than the rest of this imaginary cast, isn't real, and for a moment we think Dawn may be a demon out to kill Joyce. (Awkwardly, Trachtenberg is directed to act Bad Seed creepy in the scene in which Joyce comes home.) But the truth is even stranger: Dawn is a created human, integrated by a spell into their lives. Her soul is a mystical key Buffy must protect, but the body and personality are sincere. She really does think she's Buffy's sister, Joyce's daughter, and in fact the whole world has changed enough to make it more or less the truth. Now Buffy is faced with the problem of protecting a sister she knows isn't hers, a sister experienced through memories that aren't even real.
Except-- except-- that they are real, after all, in as much as they're shared by other people in her life (and also inasmuch as this is dramatic performance, in which Buffy's face can change between high schools.) The world itself has changed to make these memories real. The effect for the show, for now, is that Dawn Summers is here to stay. Good thing, because I'm not sure we wanted to see Buffy kill Dawn, as much as she seems to want to justify the act.
Also in this scene, Giles' new vocation, Magic Shop Owner, goes off without a hitch, and it's nice to see the show take on a new set piece (complete with Buffycave in the back.)
Ah, isn't it time for Buffy to get back to college? Is it still Summer in Sunnydale, or has existence been altered perfectly except that the monks forgot to build semesters back into the equation.
QUOTES
Giles: “[This orb] appears to be paranormal in origin.”
Willow: “How can you tell?”
Giles: “Well, it’s so shiny.”
Xander: "'Please leave' has now been replaced by 'Have a nice day.'"
Anya: "But I already have their money."
Xander: “Yeah. It’s just a long cultural condition of raging insincerity. Embrace it.”
Buffy: “What are you doing here? Five words or less.”
Spike: “Out for a walk. Bitch.”
Season 5, Episode “No Place Like Home”
Broadcast October 24, 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
We open two months ago in a monastery, where a powerful force escapes the monks who guard it. We move to today, in Sunnydale, where a security guard chasing Buffy away from a warehouse hands picks a glowing orb off the ground and hands it to her, presuming the orb to be hers.
ACT I
Joyce Summers is still headachy and woozy, while Dawn and Buffy compete for her affection over fresh breakfast. The sisters head for Giles’ Magic Shop’s grand opening, where Dawn breaks things, insults Riley and infuriates her sister, all more or less by accident. Buffy’s wishing she were an only child, especially because Joyce is so close to Dawn. Dawn is the baby, Willow explains, which is why she’s closer right now to Buffy’s Mom.
Buffy, alarmed by Joyce’s headaches, heads for the hospital pharmacy to fill a prescription and talk to the doctor. She helps control a mad patient who she recognizes as the warehouse security guard. He tells her, “They’re coming for you... through your family.”
Meanwhile, at the warehouse, a monk calls for “the Beast” and conjures a blond girl in a red dress.
ACT II
Still no luck figuring out the origin of the orb Buffy found, but now Buffy knows there’s a supernatural connection to her mother’s headaches.
Meanwhile, the devilish blond girl tortures and interrogates the monk looking for “the key.” She kills a security guard, but the monk won’t talk.
At the magic shop, the gang all seem to be working for Giles while Anya suggests they use an old spell called “Pull the Curtain Back” to reveal the source of the spell affecting Joyce.
For no particular reason I can ascertain Buffy, not Willow, will cast this spell. Buffy goes into a deep trance as she sits in a magic circle.
Buffy rises and walks the house in a deep-concentration trance: she walks downstairs and talks to her mom, seeing no magic on her mother. But a family photograph flickers-- Dawn is fading in and out, and the same effect appears on every family photo. In Dawn’s room, the child’s shelves and desk flicker and trade places with the clutter of an unused room. And Dawn herself flickers in and out.
“You’re not my sister,” Buffy says.
ACT III
Buffy attacks Dawn (“Stay away from my mother!”) but Dawn seems genuinely confused (or is she?) Meanwhile, Giles calls to tell her that the sphere is a protective device to ward off evil.
Outside the house, Buffy runs into Spike, who trades barbs with her until his newfound love for her overtakes him enough that he sums it all up with, “And I never really liked you anyway, and you have stupid hair.”
Joyce comes home and Dawn is suddenly very creepy, while Buffy goes to the warehouse to get thrown across the room by the devil in a red dress.
ACT IV
The first day at Giles’ shop was a huge success, so Giles hires Anya, who is broke and knows the merchandise.
Meanwhile, blond devil has the strength of the Hulk and Buffy has little choice but to take the captive monk and run. The monk tells her to protect “the key” from the devil woman, or many more will die.
The orb is not the key. Dawn is the key. The monks took the good energy they protected and cast a spell, gave it human form, and sent it to Buffy’s life. Buffy must protect Dawn, which is why she was placed in Buffy’s household. Buffy resents the false memories that have been sent to her, but starts a new truce with Dawn, who is an innocent in all this and doesn’t know where she really came from.
NOTES
Well, here's a result I didn’t expect. Watching the Dawn plot play out across the early part of this season has been a joy because of all the different balls Joss Whedon was juggling. Buffy introduced sister Dawn as almost a concession to the gods of TV, adding exactly one late-season retro-active history change (a sister) but doing it the Buffy way. This meant that Dawn came on the show at the end of an episode, so we all knew we weren't supposed to simply accept her presence, and then Buffy herself slowly came to her awareness of the anomaly over several episodes. (To be more accurate, she never really came that far until this episode, when a spell she casts points Dawn out as otherworldly. Before that her annoyance with Dawn is, all told, pretty normal sister stuff.)
And in fact I've enjoyed Michelle Trachtenberg's performance as Dawn, the awkward sister of the Slayer who has a crush on Xander and an inability to say the appropriate thing. When Willow says, “I just have all this involuntary empathy for Dawn, because she’s, you know, a big spaz,” we all know whereof she speaks. Frankly, we're meant to think, Buffy needs to cut the kid some slack and quit being such a whiner.
Except Dawn, even more than the rest of this imaginary cast, isn't real, and for a moment we think Dawn may be a demon out to kill Joyce. (Awkwardly, Trachtenberg is directed to act Bad Seed creepy in the scene in which Joyce comes home.) But the truth is even stranger: Dawn is a created human, integrated by a spell into their lives. Her soul is a mystical key Buffy must protect, but the body and personality are sincere. She really does think she's Buffy's sister, Joyce's daughter, and in fact the whole world has changed enough to make it more or less the truth. Now Buffy is faced with the problem of protecting a sister she knows isn't hers, a sister experienced through memories that aren't even real.
Except-- except-- that they are real, after all, in as much as they're shared by other people in her life (and also inasmuch as this is dramatic performance, in which Buffy's face can change between high schools.) The world itself has changed to make these memories real. The effect for the show, for now, is that Dawn Summers is here to stay. Good thing, because I'm not sure we wanted to see Buffy kill Dawn, as much as she seems to want to justify the act.
Also in this scene, Giles' new vocation, Magic Shop Owner, goes off without a hitch, and it's nice to see the show take on a new set piece (complete with Buffycave in the back.)
Ah, isn't it time for Buffy to get back to college? Is it still Summer in Sunnydale, or has existence been altered perfectly except that the monks forgot to build semesters back into the equation.
QUOTES
Giles: “[This orb] appears to be paranormal in origin.”
Willow: “How can you tell?”
Giles: “Well, it’s so shiny.”
Xander: "'Please leave' has now been replaced by 'Have a nice day.'"
Anya: "But I already have their money."
Xander: “Yeah. It’s just a long cultural condition of raging insincerity. Embrace it.”
Buffy: “What are you doing here? Five words or less.”
Spike: “Out for a walk. Bitch.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Pangs
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Season 4
Episode: “Pangs”
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
Angel: David Boreanaz
Prologue
After Buffy dispatches a campus vampire as usual, we spot Angel-- who’s supposed to be in LA, spying on her in the bushes.
Act 1
UCSD Dean Guerrero introduces Professor Gerhard, who’s breaking ground on a new Cultural Center. Xander, an honorary ground-breaker, breaks right through to a tunnel below, which turns out to be a lost “Sunnydale Mission,” swallowed by an earthquake long ago.
Buffy senses someone watching her (it’s Angel.)
Despite Willow’s hatred of Thanksgiving and Buffy’s mom being out of town, Buffy decides to invite all her friends over to her Mom’s place, including Xander’s new love, Anya. (This irritates Willow.)
Xander turns up sick the next day, and Anya insists he spend the day in bed.
And at the University, a Chumash Indian, (long destroyed) manifests itself, seizes a Chumash ceremonial knife and immediately slices Professor Gerhard’s throat.
Act 2
Professor Gerhard turns up sans one ear, so Buffy and Willow suspect a witch, but they put Giles on the importance of the knife. Giles, meanwhile, is harboring Angel. Angel has come to Sunnydale because his mystic friend Doyle had a vision of Buffy in danger.
Meanwhile, Spike, essentially vampirically neutered by the Initiative so that he cannot feed, wanders like a lost soul until he finally goes back to Harmony, who tells him to “get out,” and threatens to stake the pitiful vampire.
Angel finds Willow, tells her he’s got to keep his presence a secret from Buffy, and is troubled to see Buffy flirting with New Guy Riley.
Buff goes to consult with priest Father Gabriel and finds the Chumash, Hus, skewering him. He’s out for justice, he says, and disappears in a cloud of ravens.
Act 3
Buffy’s conflicted about having to Slay the warrior of Chumash, who were a peaceful tribe slaughtered by the Europeans and herded into the disease-riddled mission. Yes, yes, very sad, Giles says, basically, but he still can’t get away with killing people. Xander, meanwhile, shows up at Thanksgiving complaining of various diseases he’s contracted from the ghosts of the Mission. “He’s a vengeance demon,” Xander says. “You don’t talk to vengeance demons, you kill them.” Giles agrees: “Hatred is a cycle; all he will do is kill.”
While the whimpering Spike turns to Buffy for help, the Chumash conjures a whole army of his former comrades.
Act 4
Buffy lets the neutered Spike come inside, but only if she can tie him up. Giles realizes that Xander is the only non-authority figure the Chumash has killed. The Gang decides that since they have an hour before dinner’s ready, Xander, Willow and Anya go check out the Dean. He's fine; but they run into Angel, who tells them the Chumash arsenal in the museum is missing. Meanwhile, the Chumash have decided Buffy is the head warrior of the conquerors and lay siege on Giles’ place with volley after volley of arrows.
The rest of the Slayer Gang arrive (on bicycles-- cavalry, see) and full war breaks out. The Gang fights admirably while Spike tries to avoid an arrow through the heart. Angel kills almost all the Indians but stays outside Buffy’s house and unseen by her; the Gang wins using Chumash weapons, the only weapons that can kill them.
Afterwards, the Gang reflects on its prowess over Thanksgiving Dinner, and Willow says it was “just like old times.” “Yeah, especially with Angel being here and all,” adds Xander, before he realizes he’s just given away the secret. (Angel, by now, is long gone.)
NOTES
Whereas Buffy’s Christmas Episode last season was a fairly traditional seasonal tale, this Thanksgiving episode is more along the lines of what one might expect from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Which is to say, it’s a satire on Thanksgiving Episodes of other shows.
As with all humans on television, the characters' families are conveniently dispensed with so our family, the characters we see each week, can end up at a table together. It’s wonderful that, although Angel can’t join them, Spike can, even if he’s tied to his chair lest he try to bite someone.
I also enjoyed the fact that this episode makes a genuine effort at reconciling the family feast tradition with the newer PC concept that the beginning of colonial conquest should be regretted, not commemorated. Every character gets to comment on this, with Buffy falling in the middle as the conscience of the show, Willow taking the extreme left, Xander moderate left, and Giles and Spike (Englishmen, therefore subjects of a once-thriving empire) falling to the right. And as always, it’s handled with humor. (And violence; how wonderful that the episode slyly includes a debate about the treatment of American Indians and yet involves a siege from face-painted, arrow-shooting redskins.)
A few other thoughts, no particular order:
*I like Anya’s blithe pronouncement of Thanksgiving dinner as a “blood sacrifice:” “To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It’s a sacrifice of blood.” The former man-killing demon is integrating herself nicely into the group, but Willow’s grumbling about it. Hmmm.
* Why is Xander a groundbreaker? Because the plot says so, that’s why.
*Anya
* Giles and Angel now have something in common-- it’s not either of their jobs anymore to be looking after Buffy, and yet they both do it. It was interesting to see them in collusion.
* It’s Hilarious when Spike looks wistfully through a window on vampires killing, a wonderful visual play on the old chestnut of the poor vagrant, complete with a blanket around his head, who usually pines away at happy diners in holiday movies where a rich man learns to care, or something. Spike is the best part of the whole episode and has all the best lines, including a brilliantly cynical speech about the plight of the Indians. His take is that the Europeans had better learn to live with their own aggression because they wielded it very well. “You had better weapons and you annihilated them,” he says.
* This is more a question. Several times characters use the term “Indian,” and are corrected by others who seem to want them to say “Native American” (the gag is, no-one ever gets the term out). But I wonder is what’s behind this constant play is that we seem to have had yet another cultural shift, and the group involved, formerly known as Native Americans, now prefer the term “Indian” (or at the very least, resented a new term being foisted upon them. I have no idea what’s the correct term.
QUOTES
“It is a sham, but it’s a sham with yams.”
--Buffy, on why we continue our insensitive Thanksgiving ritual.
“I’m still trying to not call you lot “bloody colonials.”
-- Giles, struggling with his terms
“I’m saying that Spike had a little trip to the vet and now he doesn’t chase the other puppies anymore.”
-- Spike himself, trying to explain what the Initiative did to him (the made him unable to bite.)
“You won. You came in, you killed them, and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do.”
-- Spike, laying it all out for us
“Hey. Sorry. Sorry about that, chief.”
-- Spike once more, changing his mind and apologizing to the Chumash in hopes they’ll not shoot an arrow through his heart, and incidentally quoting Maxwell Smart.
Season 4
Episode: “Pangs”
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
Angel: David Boreanaz
Prologue
After Buffy dispatches a campus vampire as usual, we spot Angel-- who’s supposed to be in LA, spying on her in the bushes.
Act 1
UCSD Dean Guerrero introduces Professor Gerhard, who’s breaking ground on a new Cultural Center. Xander, an honorary ground-breaker, breaks right through to a tunnel below, which turns out to be a lost “Sunnydale Mission,” swallowed by an earthquake long ago.
Buffy senses someone watching her (it’s Angel.)
Despite Willow’s hatred of Thanksgiving and Buffy’s mom being out of town, Buffy decides to invite all her friends over to her Mom’s place, including Xander’s new love, Anya. (This irritates Willow.)
Xander turns up sick the next day, and Anya insists he spend the day in bed.
And at the University, a Chumash Indian, (long destroyed) manifests itself, seizes a Chumash ceremonial knife and immediately slices Professor Gerhard’s throat.
Act 2
Professor Gerhard turns up sans one ear, so Buffy and Willow suspect a witch, but they put Giles on the importance of the knife. Giles, meanwhile, is harboring Angel. Angel has come to Sunnydale because his mystic friend Doyle had a vision of Buffy in danger.
Meanwhile, Spike, essentially vampirically neutered by the Initiative so that he cannot feed, wanders like a lost soul until he finally goes back to Harmony, who tells him to “get out,” and threatens to stake the pitiful vampire.
Angel finds Willow, tells her he’s got to keep his presence a secret from Buffy, and is troubled to see Buffy flirting with New Guy Riley.
Buff goes to consult with priest Father Gabriel and finds the Chumash, Hus, skewering him. He’s out for justice, he says, and disappears in a cloud of ravens.
Act 3
Buffy’s conflicted about having to Slay the warrior of Chumash, who were a peaceful tribe slaughtered by the Europeans and herded into the disease-riddled mission. Yes, yes, very sad, Giles says, basically, but he still can’t get away with killing people. Xander, meanwhile, shows up at Thanksgiving complaining of various diseases he’s contracted from the ghosts of the Mission. “He’s a vengeance demon,” Xander says. “You don’t talk to vengeance demons, you kill them.” Giles agrees: “Hatred is a cycle; all he will do is kill.”
While the whimpering Spike turns to Buffy for help, the Chumash conjures a whole army of his former comrades.
Act 4
Buffy lets the neutered Spike come inside, but only if she can tie him up. Giles realizes that Xander is the only non-authority figure the Chumash has killed. The Gang decides that since they have an hour before dinner’s ready, Xander, Willow and Anya go check out the Dean. He's fine; but they run into Angel, who tells them the Chumash arsenal in the museum is missing. Meanwhile, the Chumash have decided Buffy is the head warrior of the conquerors and lay siege on Giles’ place with volley after volley of arrows.
The rest of the Slayer Gang arrive (on bicycles-- cavalry, see) and full war breaks out. The Gang fights admirably while Spike tries to avoid an arrow through the heart. Angel kills almost all the Indians but stays outside Buffy’s house and unseen by her; the Gang wins using Chumash weapons, the only weapons that can kill them.
Afterwards, the Gang reflects on its prowess over Thanksgiving Dinner, and Willow says it was “just like old times.” “Yeah, especially with Angel being here and all,” adds Xander, before he realizes he’s just given away the secret. (Angel, by now, is long gone.)
NOTES
Whereas Buffy’s Christmas Episode last season was a fairly traditional seasonal tale, this Thanksgiving episode is more along the lines of what one might expect from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Which is to say, it’s a satire on Thanksgiving Episodes of other shows.
As with all humans on television, the characters' families are conveniently dispensed with so our family, the characters we see each week, can end up at a table together. It’s wonderful that, although Angel can’t join them, Spike can, even if he’s tied to his chair lest he try to bite someone.
I also enjoyed the fact that this episode makes a genuine effort at reconciling the family feast tradition with the newer PC concept that the beginning of colonial conquest should be regretted, not commemorated. Every character gets to comment on this, with Buffy falling in the middle as the conscience of the show, Willow taking the extreme left, Xander moderate left, and Giles and Spike (Englishmen, therefore subjects of a once-thriving empire) falling to the right. And as always, it’s handled with humor. (And violence; how wonderful that the episode slyly includes a debate about the treatment of American Indians and yet involves a siege from face-painted, arrow-shooting redskins.)
A few other thoughts, no particular order:
*I like Anya’s blithe pronouncement of Thanksgiving dinner as a “blood sacrifice:” “To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It’s a sacrifice of blood.” The former man-killing demon is integrating herself nicely into the group, but Willow’s grumbling about it. Hmmm.
* Why is Xander a groundbreaker? Because the plot says so, that’s why.
*Anya
* Giles and Angel now have something in common-- it’s not either of their jobs anymore to be looking after Buffy, and yet they both do it. It was interesting to see them in collusion.
* It’s Hilarious when Spike looks wistfully through a window on vampires killing, a wonderful visual play on the old chestnut of the poor vagrant, complete with a blanket around his head, who usually pines away at happy diners in holiday movies where a rich man learns to care, or something. Spike is the best part of the whole episode and has all the best lines, including a brilliantly cynical speech about the plight of the Indians. His take is that the Europeans had better learn to live with their own aggression because they wielded it very well. “You had better weapons and you annihilated them,” he says.
* This is more a question. Several times characters use the term “Indian,” and are corrected by others who seem to want them to say “Native American” (the gag is, no-one ever gets the term out). But I wonder is what’s behind this constant play is that we seem to have had yet another cultural shift, and the group involved, formerly known as Native Americans, now prefer the term “Indian” (or at the very least, resented a new term being foisted upon them. I have no idea what’s the correct term.
QUOTES
“It is a sham, but it’s a sham with yams.”
--Buffy, on why we continue our insensitive Thanksgiving ritual.
“I’m still trying to not call you lot “bloody colonials.”
-- Giles, struggling with his terms
“I’m saying that Spike had a little trip to the vet and now he doesn’t chase the other puppies anymore.”
-- Spike himself, trying to explain what the Initiative did to him (the made him unable to bite.)
“You won. You came in, you killed them, and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do.”
-- Spike, laying it all out for us
“Hey. Sorry. Sorry about that, chief.”
-- Spike once more, changing his mind and apologizing to the Chumash in hopes they’ll not shoot an arrow through his heart, and incidentally quoting Maxwell Smart.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- The Body
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Episode "The Body"
Broadcast February 27, 2001
"The Body" is one of the most mature examinations of everyday death I've ever seen on television, and certainly one of the most memorable episodes of Buffy. The episode recalls other moments in the series when Buffy has suddenly taken a left turn into M*A*S*H territory. The episode involves no plot other than the slow dissemination of and digestion of the news of the death of Kristine Sutherland's Joyce Summers.
The trick of the episode is that it moves in merciless, almost real time, and beginning with the first scene, in which Buffy discovers her mother's body on the sofa in the den. The camera doesn't shy away from showing us what Buffy sees: Joyce, pale and cold and vacantly staring. Buffy does everything we expect her to do; she calls EMS, can't quite remember how to do CPR, and moves as if somehow floating outside her own body.
This whole sequence, in which Buffy seems to be going through the motions of being conscious, is written with a keen sense of how people behave in traumatic situations. (The scene will be echoed repeatedly though the episode as different characters talk and seem to be slightly disconnected.) And over and over again we see Joyce, still very much dead. Although Buffy has shown bodies before, this episode could be disturbing for younger viewers-- it was disturbing for me, and I think it was one of the finest episodes of the series so far. What comes through most clearly in the sheer slowness of the episode is the lack of editing in life. Joyce is dead and we don't cut to commercial, we sit down and wander around the room and she's still dead, and will be forever.
Buffy's first memory when she finds Joyce is the sort of memory Thornton Wilder called the most painful: the least important. Buffy flashes to an utterly ordinary Thanksgiving dinner, the dialogue in which offers no double meanings or ominous portents, followed by another flash to the body. Buffy watches as arriving paramedics try to revive Joyce and fantasizes that Joyce survives, but soon the paramedics have another emergency call and leave Buffy to wait for the coroner. It's not until Giles arrives that Buffy heads out to tell Dawn at school.
Dawn has her own issues. We see Dawn's school life here for the first time as she and her best friend wander navigate what seem to be another series' worth of subplots (bully girl, hunky crush, art class)-- when Buffy arrives to tell her that their mother is dead. Dawn remains agitated and angry throughout the episode because she needs to see the body of her mother to be satisfied that what she has been told is true. She also can't verbalize this need, although she does ask if they're going to see her. Dawn finally does sneak into the morgue to see the body, which doesn't happen until after Buffy saves her from a random vampire. (It's almost daring that the show retains its Buffy-ness; there are still supernatural dangers all over the Hellmouth.)
Meanwhile, the rest of the Scooby Gang wander in the sort of daze most of us will recognize from such situations. I like that the individuals deal with the death with different but equal impotence. Xander is the angry one, double-parking despite the traffic police, punching walls, and cursing doctors. Anya is the child, not really knowing what to say, entirely new to death in a mortal world, only vaguely aware of what is appropriate to say. I liked her anger that no one will tell her what she's expected to do. Willow, meanwhile, sublimates her grief below an obsession with finding the right blouse to show her support for Buffy.
The coolest head is Tara, who keeps her stutter but tells Buffy she's navigated these waters before. Tara's mom died when the girl was 17, she tells Buffy. She even knows what's liable to trigger anger and says she knows Buffy's situation is different. She does a similar trick with Willow, offering to look for Willow's blouse long after Willow has lost all perspective. Tara tells Buffy that nothing she's likely to be feeling will make a lot of sense.
This is a fantastic episode, slow and painful, and very authentic. When I heard Joyce would be dying on Buffy I pictured typical action-show grief; chiefly a montage of Buffy on long drives. What we got, instead, was an episode that tries to drag us down into the few moments right at the beginning of grief. It's a fine picture, and a fine moment in television.
Episode "The Body"
Broadcast February 27, 2001
"The Body" is one of the most mature examinations of everyday death I've ever seen on television, and certainly one of the most memorable episodes of Buffy. The episode recalls other moments in the series when Buffy has suddenly taken a left turn into M*A*S*H territory. The episode involves no plot other than the slow dissemination of and digestion of the news of the death of Kristine Sutherland's Joyce Summers.
The trick of the episode is that it moves in merciless, almost real time, and beginning with the first scene, in which Buffy discovers her mother's body on the sofa in the den. The camera doesn't shy away from showing us what Buffy sees: Joyce, pale and cold and vacantly staring. Buffy does everything we expect her to do; she calls EMS, can't quite remember how to do CPR, and moves as if somehow floating outside her own body.
This whole sequence, in which Buffy seems to be going through the motions of being conscious, is written with a keen sense of how people behave in traumatic situations. (The scene will be echoed repeatedly though the episode as different characters talk and seem to be slightly disconnected.) And over and over again we see Joyce, still very much dead. Although Buffy has shown bodies before, this episode could be disturbing for younger viewers-- it was disturbing for me, and I think it was one of the finest episodes of the series so far. What comes through most clearly in the sheer slowness of the episode is the lack of editing in life. Joyce is dead and we don't cut to commercial, we sit down and wander around the room and she's still dead, and will be forever.
Buffy's first memory when she finds Joyce is the sort of memory Thornton Wilder called the most painful: the least important. Buffy flashes to an utterly ordinary Thanksgiving dinner, the dialogue in which offers no double meanings or ominous portents, followed by another flash to the body. Buffy watches as arriving paramedics try to revive Joyce and fantasizes that Joyce survives, but soon the paramedics have another emergency call and leave Buffy to wait for the coroner. It's not until Giles arrives that Buffy heads out to tell Dawn at school.
Dawn has her own issues. We see Dawn's school life here for the first time as she and her best friend wander navigate what seem to be another series' worth of subplots (bully girl, hunky crush, art class)-- when Buffy arrives to tell her that their mother is dead. Dawn remains agitated and angry throughout the episode because she needs to see the body of her mother to be satisfied that what she has been told is true. She also can't verbalize this need, although she does ask if they're going to see her. Dawn finally does sneak into the morgue to see the body, which doesn't happen until after Buffy saves her from a random vampire. (It's almost daring that the show retains its Buffy-ness; there are still supernatural dangers all over the Hellmouth.)
Meanwhile, the rest of the Scooby Gang wander in the sort of daze most of us will recognize from such situations. I like that the individuals deal with the death with different but equal impotence. Xander is the angry one, double-parking despite the traffic police, punching walls, and cursing doctors. Anya is the child, not really knowing what to say, entirely new to death in a mortal world, only vaguely aware of what is appropriate to say. I liked her anger that no one will tell her what she's expected to do. Willow, meanwhile, sublimates her grief below an obsession with finding the right blouse to show her support for Buffy.
The coolest head is Tara, who keeps her stutter but tells Buffy she's navigated these waters before. Tara's mom died when the girl was 17, she tells Buffy. She even knows what's liable to trigger anger and says she knows Buffy's situation is different. She does a similar trick with Willow, offering to look for Willow's blouse long after Willow has lost all perspective. Tara tells Buffy that nothing she's likely to be feeling will make a lot of sense.
This is a fantastic episode, slow and painful, and very authentic. When I heard Joyce would be dying on Buffy I pictured typical action-show grief; chiefly a montage of Buffy on long drives. What we got, instead, was an episode that tries to drag us down into the few moments right at the beginning of grief. It's a fine picture, and a fine moment in television.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer- Something Blue
Buffy, The Vampire Slayer
Season 4, Episode "Something Blue"
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
SYNOPSIS
Prologue
Willow, the witch whose werewolf boyfriend Oz just left, mopes around in his dorm room, while cute TA Riley makes picnic plans with Buffy. Buffy worries that true love cannot exist without danger, so maybe he’s too normal. (He’s not.)
Act 1
Spike the Vampire has been chained up at Giles’ place since Thanksgiving, trading information for sips of pig’s blood from the Slayer Gang. Spike has information about the strange commandoes who captured and defanged him, as it were. Buffy enjoys taunting Spike, but Willow and Giles decide to whip up a “truth spell,” which Willow promises to return to work on in the morning.
But Willow goes for a loop when she finds Oz’ room cleared out. She forgets to come over to Giles’ and instead depresses Buffy and Riley before going on a beer bender until Buffy takes her forcibly home.
Determined to take a big shortcut around the healing pain of breaking up, Willow casts a spell in her (remarkably cavernous) bathroom-- a spell to make “her will be done.”
Act 2
Giles comes over to ask why Willow never showed, and in an argument she curses him idly with “You don’t see anything.” Giles starts going blind, giving Spike the opportunity to lift Giles’ key and escape.
When Buffy rushes off to catch Spike, Willow is irritated and declares that she’ll find him immediately, which she does-- in the yard outside. “Spike’s more important than me,” Will says petulantly, “why doesn’t she just go marry him.” At which point, the squinting Giles finds Spike on bended knee, and the slayer and vampire celebrating their new engagement.
Act 3
Xander’s next; Willow runs down the list of weird loves he’s had and pronounces him a “demon magnet.” Meanwhile, Giles is not blind enough yet to be spared the vision of Buffy and Spike cooing and planning their registry. (Buffy asks Giles to give her away.) When his vision cuts out, Buffy and Giles search for a reversal spell. Buffy runs into Riley, telling him all about her nuptials.
Anya and Xander’s makeout session in Xander’s Mom’s basement is interrupted by one big demon after another. At Giles’ place, Xander figures out what’s going on, but back on campus, a new demon has come for Willow.
Act 4
D’Hoffryn, the demon who created Anya, has heard Willow’s psychic scream and whisks Willow off to his dimension to offer her the same demon gig he gave Anya. Anya figures this out and they try to pursue before being waylaid by demons; Willow learns of their danger and rushes back to reverse her “harmful spell.” (She says no to the demon’s offer.) And as we close, the Gang eats cookies and Buffy and Spike hate one another once more, meaning the Slayer has to go back and convince Riley she’s still single. That’s easy.
NOTES
My will be done? That’s what Willow asks for? Not to be over her grief, not to have Oz back, but "her will be done," which is like asking a genii asking for more wishes. Still, it was a powerful spell Willow cast, and one wonders if her non-grief-riddled spells might backfire less.
Willow is offered a life as a demon! She nearly gets to be the new Anya, in fact. It's nice to see Anya put to some use, as well, even though Anya's attempts at opening a portal backfire. (But it's good to get a reminder about Anya, who just last season was trying to get Willow to join her in black magic.)
Once again, Xander nearly saves the day by figuring everything out-- except that he doesn't really save anything; Willow pretty much just notices she's caused a lot of trouble and cuts it out.
Really, this was one of those episodes that are funny but not particularly momentous. The running gag involving Buffy and Spike preparing to marry is wonderful, of course. I think my favorite moment is when Amy the rat becomes human, then goes back again, at Willow's completely unaware whim.
Three minor notes:
* What is all this business about Buffy not knowing anything about driving? This is California, for crying out loud.
* I continue to be amazed at how the show is morphing Giles into a regular guy, far less the dweeb he was in the first season. He's become almost normal character.
*For those who keep track, now nearly the whole cast has new hair. Willow and Xander were re-done at the start of the season, and now Anya's cut hers to an off-shoulder bob, while Buffy's going with a crimpy-wavy thing that, all in all, suits her. I can't believe I noticed this.
QUOTES
“Just think of my lips as the fruit roll-ups of love... okay, that was just gross.”
-- Xander to Anya, who loves her some fruit roll-ups
“This is the crack team that foils my every plan? I am deeply shamed.”
-- Spike,
Season 4, Episode "Something Blue"
Cast:
Buffy: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Willow: Alyson Hannigan
Spike: James Marsters
Xander: Nicholas Brendan
Giles: Anthony Stewart Head
Riley: Mark Blucas
SYNOPSIS
Prologue
Willow, the witch whose werewolf boyfriend Oz just left, mopes around in his dorm room, while cute TA Riley makes picnic plans with Buffy. Buffy worries that true love cannot exist without danger, so maybe he’s too normal. (He’s not.)
Act 1
Spike the Vampire has been chained up at Giles’ place since Thanksgiving, trading information for sips of pig’s blood from the Slayer Gang. Spike has information about the strange commandoes who captured and defanged him, as it were. Buffy enjoys taunting Spike, but Willow and Giles decide to whip up a “truth spell,” which Willow promises to return to work on in the morning.
But Willow goes for a loop when she finds Oz’ room cleared out. She forgets to come over to Giles’ and instead depresses Buffy and Riley before going on a beer bender until Buffy takes her forcibly home.
Determined to take a big shortcut around the healing pain of breaking up, Willow casts a spell in her (remarkably cavernous) bathroom-- a spell to make “her will be done.”
Act 2
Giles comes over to ask why Willow never showed, and in an argument she curses him idly with “You don’t see anything.” Giles starts going blind, giving Spike the opportunity to lift Giles’ key and escape.
When Buffy rushes off to catch Spike, Willow is irritated and declares that she’ll find him immediately, which she does-- in the yard outside. “Spike’s more important than me,” Will says petulantly, “why doesn’t she just go marry him.” At which point, the squinting Giles finds Spike on bended knee, and the slayer and vampire celebrating their new engagement.
Act 3
Xander’s next; Willow runs down the list of weird loves he’s had and pronounces him a “demon magnet.” Meanwhile, Giles is not blind enough yet to be spared the vision of Buffy and Spike cooing and planning their registry. (Buffy asks Giles to give her away.) When his vision cuts out, Buffy and Giles search for a reversal spell. Buffy runs into Riley, telling him all about her nuptials.
Anya and Xander’s makeout session in Xander’s Mom’s basement is interrupted by one big demon after another. At Giles’ place, Xander figures out what’s going on, but back on campus, a new demon has come for Willow.
Act 4
D’Hoffryn, the demon who created Anya, has heard Willow’s psychic scream and whisks Willow off to his dimension to offer her the same demon gig he gave Anya. Anya figures this out and they try to pursue before being waylaid by demons; Willow learns of their danger and rushes back to reverse her “harmful spell.” (She says no to the demon’s offer.) And as we close, the Gang eats cookies and Buffy and Spike hate one another once more, meaning the Slayer has to go back and convince Riley she’s still single. That’s easy.
NOTES
My will be done? That’s what Willow asks for? Not to be over her grief, not to have Oz back, but "her will be done," which is like asking a genii asking for more wishes. Still, it was a powerful spell Willow cast, and one wonders if her non-grief-riddled spells might backfire less.
Willow is offered a life as a demon! She nearly gets to be the new Anya, in fact. It's nice to see Anya put to some use, as well, even though Anya's attempts at opening a portal backfire. (But it's good to get a reminder about Anya, who just last season was trying to get Willow to join her in black magic.)
Once again, Xander nearly saves the day by figuring everything out-- except that he doesn't really save anything; Willow pretty much just notices she's caused a lot of trouble and cuts it out.
Really, this was one of those episodes that are funny but not particularly momentous. The running gag involving Buffy and Spike preparing to marry is wonderful, of course. I think my favorite moment is when Amy the rat becomes human, then goes back again, at Willow's completely unaware whim.
Three minor notes:
* What is all this business about Buffy not knowing anything about driving? This is California, for crying out loud.
* I continue to be amazed at how the show is morphing Giles into a regular guy, far less the dweeb he was in the first season. He's become almost normal character.
*For those who keep track, now nearly the whole cast has new hair. Willow and Xander were re-done at the start of the season, and now Anya's cut hers to an off-shoulder bob, while Buffy's going with a crimpy-wavy thing that, all in all, suits her. I can't believe I noticed this.
QUOTES
“Just think of my lips as the fruit roll-ups of love... okay, that was just gross.”
-- Xander to Anya, who loves her some fruit roll-ups
“This is the crack team that foils my every plan? I am deeply shamed.”
-- Spike,
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