"If we can focus, keep discipline, and not have quite so many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule!"
Well, here I am, the prodigal son returned, and the Fates have dealt me an episode that feels rather appropriate in the circumstances. This blog is now back to normal, so it's time for me to plough through Season Three of Buffy. This happens to be my favourite season, I'm afraid, boring and conventional though that opinion may be.
This episode is, let's just come out and say it, simply sublime. It's also a sort of statement about the following season, breaking new ground in a number of ways, the most obvious of which is the subtext. It's not been unusual for Buffy to use monsters and supernatural phenomena as metaphors for aspects of teenage life and young people's issues, but this episode deals with a social issue which is much more gritty and adult: homelessness.
We begin by seeing Buffy living hand to mouth, in a dead end job, in a crummy apartment in LA. This is our first example of Joss Whedon using the big city as the setting for more adult problems which, in spite of the metaphorical supernatural elements, feels much more gritty and "realistic". This is not the world of adolescence, authority figures and parental support; existence is much more tenuous. The contrast between "Anne", with her tenuous and poverty-stricken life, and the homeless people she passes, is only a matter of degree. It's made very clear that homelessness is something that could happen to anyone. And premature aging and death is an obvious metaphor for what homelessness does to you.
Of course, Buffy isn't "really" poor, as she could return to her mother at any time, but I think the point still stands.
The homeless are, of course, ripe for exploitation. I'm not sure I'm getting all the subtext of who the bad guys represent (this may be a specifically American thing), but a certain piece of blatant symbolism later on gives a definite indication that they're supposed to be capitalists of some kind. Buffy leads the workers against their oppressors armed initially with a hammer, but soon acquires a sickle too. And the camera lingers far too much on Buffy posing with a hammer and sickle (in fact, this is one of the iconic poses) for it to be possible to deny that the intent is to represent revolutionary socialism. And I, much though I'm sometimes tempted to wish for an equal and opposite left-wing counterweight to our excessively conservative political discourse, am no revolutionary socialist. Still, I'm not sure Whedon is either. Buffy does, after all, begin her revolution by asserting her individuality, and ends by returning to her bourgeois lifestyle.
Oh, and it's nice to see Chanterelle again, now calling herself Lily but with no fixed identity. It's already clear that her arc is going to be one of increasing confidence and self-reliance. She's an interesting character.
But what of Sunnydale, after that extraordinarily long summer? Everything seems to revolve around Buffy's absence but, of course, Whedon isn't afraid to have a bit of metatextual fun with this. The fact that Willow doesn't find the quips coming as easily as they do for Buffy is essentially a cheerful admission that Whedon-esque dialogue is hardly realistic; people in real life just aren't as witty as that, especially in times of stress. But the point is, well, who says realism is so great, anyway?
The whole inevitable sequence of Cordy and Xander being nasty to each other and then finally snogging is played for laughs, too; it's become so familiar now that it can be presented almost as slapstick. And Whedon manages to get around the massive plot convenience of Oz having to repeat a year by pretty much just coming out and admitting it.
The scenes with the biggest emotional punch both involve Joyce, though. At first we think that she and Giles have built up a connection but then she turns on him. And, of course, we end perfectly, with a silent hug between mother and daughter.
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