Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Witch

“Why would someone want to harm Cordelia?”

“Maybe because… they met her?”

So, we have the first episode to take place with the status quo (the proto-Scooby Gang) established, even though there’s an interesting moment early on where Buffy questions whether Willow and Xander should be involved in something so dangerous. It seems the status quo is still a bit provisional.

It’s interesting to speculate how long it’ll be before I stop commenting on how the show is gradually establishing its little tropes and memes and just come to accept them. I predict that’ll happen by Angel, or thereabouts. Of course, by definition I won’t remember to point that out at the time, which will be annoying, probably.

This is the first of many non-vampire episodes, establishing that the Hellmouth has an equal opportunities approach to supernatural skulduggery. In this case we get witchcraft, complete with cauldron and bubbling green liquid.

Anyway… yes, as I was saying in my review to Welcome to the Hellmouth, the American High School and all of its tropes and traditions are a completely alien culture to me, and this episode is stuffed full of this sort of thing. We have references to a “Homecoming King and Queen”, whatever they are, and something called Driver’s Ed. Interesting. I never knew that. Do kids in America all learn to drive at school, or is it just a California thing?

Oh, and there’s cheerleading. Most people who didn’t grow up with it (i.e. foreigners like myself) basically have the same automatic reaction that Giles does: it looks awfully like a cult to the outsider’s eyes! Also, isn’t it, er, a bit sexist? We have boys doing manly sporty stuff while the girls are on the sidelines being decorative and supporting the boys. I'm not sure about that, and I say that as someone with a y chromosome.

Still, all that is more to do with my unfamiliarity with American educational institutions than anything that’s actually in the show, which is basically a meditation on parental abuse. The twist- Amy’s mother swapping bodies with her put-upon daughter- is the ultimate metaphor for parents’ failure to understand that their offspring are not just extensions of themselves but individuals in their own right. And her harsh words to Amy are pretty much the ultimate in parental verbal abuse.

There’s a real contrast of Amy’s mother with Joyce, too. While Amy’s authoritarian mother insists on her daughter repeating her own high achievements in youth as a cheerleader, Buffy’s mum is endearingly realistic, however much she may sometimes be inattentive or distracted by her own life, and crucially she comes to realise in the final scene, quite explicitly, that her daughter is a different person and basically inscrutable, as all other people are. Joyce would never, ever, want to be sixteen again: like all sane adults, she remembers all to well just how horrible it is to be a teenager.

Another said to this, of course, is that Joyce is staring to develop as a character, as opposed to a mere instrument of the plot. I think we also get our first sign of Giles as father figure here; he takes a very caring attitude to Buffy while she’s vulnerable.

There’s also some interesting love triangle stuff; Xander wants to ask Buffy out, and asks Willow for advice as she’s “one of the guys”, not realising that she has feelings for him. This is a perfect contrast with the “drunken” Buffy saying that she loves Xander because he’s “one of the girls”. It’ll be interesting to watch this dynamic, but already the characters are developing their relationships very nicely.

Another good episode, by Dana Reston, although notably lacking in the wit of the previous two Whedon-scripted episodes. Three episodes in and the show has a really, really promising set-up.