Tuesday 13 March 2018

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Hell's Bells

"Nothing on Earth can stop this wedding now...”

We all know what television wedding episodes are like- Light-hearted, funny, relaxing, with a little bit of drama but everything turning out ok in the end. Except this is a Joss Whedon Show. So we get most of the above aside from the ending, which takes your heart and repeatedly stomps on it.

Still, most of the episode is fun, witty, and let’s the characters breathe in contexts we don’t usually see, with Buffy as best man while Willow and Tara bond again, and Spike brings some ransomed as a date to get at Buffy, except that this ends up in the kind of bizarrely heartwarming conversation between the two of them that few lesser shows would do. We finally get to see Xander’s family, and they are every bit as awful as we might imagine- and his parents’ marriage is a big part of why we get the ending we do.

But then it ends, and Xander can’t go through with the wedding, not because of the token baddie but his own innate, pathetic, yet very human fears and, having seen his family, we are horrified but can sort of understand. Like Willow, we feel we should hate him but can’t. Anya, though? It’s heartbreaking how her loving monologue is juxtaposed with Xander’s doubtful body language, and the blow is utterly devastating in a brutal piece of televisual excellent. In the end she’s back with D’Hoffryn- to be a vengeance demon again? Heart-wrenching telly.

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