“Wow! I never knew being a teenager was so full of possibilities!”
…And the first bad episode is succeeded by a good one. That’s a relief. It’s still somewhat lacking in that extra Whedon polish, but this is a solid episode which develops the characters and themes while also moving on the season arc another notch. Although I must protest that being bookish as a teenage boy doesn’t actually work quite as well in attracting girls as this episode seems to imply…!
We begin with Buffy, in that graveyard, fighting a vampire; only four episodes in and this type of scene has already become iconic. But then we get the rather odd sight of Giles training her. Is it just me who wonders why this rather bookish chap should be considered at all suited to teaching Buffy how to fight? He certainly seems to have difficulty in handing himself later in the episode.
Still, Buffy, Giles and the Master’s plan to bring about the “Anointed One” are the B plot of the episode. This is there to contrast thematically with the teenage allegorical stuff of the A plot, to accomplish a bit of stuff for the season arc (we end with the discovery that the Master has succeeded, and the “Anointed One” is the little boy we saw in the bus earlier), and, I suppose, to provide this episode with its quota of vampire-slaying.
But this episode is basically about Owen and the normal life he represents. Buffy can never date a “civilian” without putting him in danger; her status as the Slayer means she can’t quite be normal. Admittedly, the insistence that Willow and Xander aren’t imperilled in the same way because they “know the score” and are “careful” is a bit shaky, but I’ll let that slide as I really like them both.
The way we gradually learn more about Owen is really quite clever in an impressive debut script from Rob Des Hotel and Dean Batadi. At first he seems a nice, shy, bookish, deep, brooding(!), very handsome boy who is ogled at by all the girls, and Buffy is amazed and delighted to have caught him in her net. He seems to be intellectual, reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson, although the first alarm bells start ringing quite early in the date as he explains that he likes Dickinson because she’s “morbid”. Still, he seems mature, and Buffy is obviously overjoyed to see him giving Cordelia the brush-off.
There are massive tensions between Buffy’s normal life and her Slayer life, though. Both of her attempts at dating Owen clash with Slayer stuff she has to do, and Giles is insistent, however much Buffy may protest that “Clark Kent has a job”. But this is more that the clichéd old superhero / secret identity stuff; there’s a feminist subtext. Buffy, here, is the woman who Does It All, just as many women have to balance a full time career with all the childcare and domestic chores as lots of men, and I say this as a fully qualified possessor of a “y” chromosome, are useless arses.
In a surprising twist, it’s Buffy who dumps Owen; the earlier hints pay off with the revelation that he’s a danger junkie, far less mature than he appears (hey, he’s a teenage boy!) and far too much trouble. Perhaps this is a little convenient as an excuse to dump him from the show (which had to happen) without killing him (which obviously couldn’t happen as the title implies it too heavily), but it’s a nice pay-off of all the hints we’ve been getting.
In other news, I believe we get our first “Bite me”.
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