"You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back up to get ya."
So, Buffy's back. There are so many things that need to be said, and there's so much awkwardness. And yet, being people, everyone prefers to hide behind polite fictions and all sorts of procrastination- anything other than create awkward scenes. It just goes to show that even Americans can be so, well, British sometimes.
This may be a serious idea in what is, in many ways, a very serious episode, but it's also a great excuse to have an awful lot of fun at the same time. That quote up there tells us what the zombies are all about, for one thing. But there are so many clever depictions of people failing to communicate. Only Giles can see that an intimate get-together is what's called for, not a loud, overwhelming, alienating party. No one else agrees, and so we get a loud party at which it's hardly possible to talk and everyone is avoiding the potential awkwardness of actually talking to Buffy while telling themselves that they're throwing a great party for her. Personally, I see it as a great vindication of why I so much prefer a quiet pub to a trendy, horrible, city centre bar with no decent beer, but let's not wander off on any tangents.
Probably the single moment which symbolises what the whole episode is trying to say is when Giles rings Buffy, but the phone can't be heard under the loud music, and is eventually picked up by one of many people at the party who don't even know Buffy. There's failure to communicate, in a nutshell. It's also a reminder that this sort of party gatecrashing used to happen well before Facebook, as everyone's second favourite Beastie Boys video clearly demonstrates. I hope Joyce earns a lot of money and / or has great terms on her house insurance.
People only start saying the things that need to be said after Buffy, alone, upset and alienated at her own party, starts packing and gets caught by Willow. She, Joyce and Xander all then proceed to have a go at her. It's awkward, it's emotional, but it clears the air, and it has to happen for Buffy to be able to relate to any of them, again.
It's a great episode for Giles, who is dam right about all of this, all the way through the episode, and also gets to threaten Principal Snyder. It's perhaps a less great episode in its treatment of zombies, though. It's generally best, these days, to avoid the West African origins of the trope, as it's bound up with all sorts of post-colonialist awkwardness. And voodoo is a real West African religion, just as "primitive" art is part of real Bantu tradition, history and cultural context, not just something to be patronised as "primitive" and used as an influence by Cubists or whomever. That doesn't mean that West African cultural tropes should be in any way out of bounds (I wasn't moaning about all this with Inca Mummy Girl), but they should have been a little more tactful, I think. Still, it's only slightly unfortunate, and essentially we have another great episode
There's already a bit of arc stuff, too. Willow's study of magic proceeds apace, which will obviously not go wrong in any way. Buffy has another cryptic dream about Angel which, again, conveniently fulfils David Boreanaz's contractual need to appear in every episode. And Snyder is still on about that mysterious Mayor…
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