Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Body

“I don't understand. I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she can't just get back in it and not be dead any more. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid, and, and Xander's crying and not talking, and I was having fruit punch and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever. And she'll never have eggs, or yawn, or brush her hair, not ever and no one will explain to me why."

Ok, deep breath. I can do this. Even though this episode hurts so much. DAMN YOU, WHEDON!

Joss himself write and directs, and sets such a sombre and unsettling mood, in large part through the extended use of silences to convey not only grief but also the awkwardness of not knowing what to do, what is socially acceptable, and to what extent we should broadcast our feelings when we lose a loved one. The scoobies are all young and just feeling their way through all this, and the episode consists, McLuhan-like, in characters not communicating and being incapable of reconciling their feelings, their feeling about how they should be feeling, and whatever the rules are supposed to be when the sky falls in. One theme of this episode is the silliness, and simultaneously the necessity of social conventions at times of extreme emotion. Anya may provide the comic relief in breaking these rules, but at least she’s being herself. This contrasts with Xander’s lack of eloquence as he punches the wall and Willow’s displaced distress over what to wear.

Another deep breath. New paragraph. And hopefully a shorter one.

The opening scenes are brutal, presenting Buffy and the viewer with a body, an object, that is not Joyce. We feel for Buffy in the eternity before the paramedics arrive and both we and her are punched in the face with the brutality of the language they use: ”Try not to disturb the body”. Even more brutal is Buffy having to break the news to Dawn. We know what’s coming as we see Dawn in her art class, adrift in the everyday concerns of a teenage girl, and as we hear her teacher speak of “The negative space around the object”. That’s a fair description of what this episode is about if ever I saw one.

We cut to scenes of the scoobies’ silent reactions to the news. We are not used to seeing them so helpless and distressed, but this is nothing so manageable as a monster. Death by natural causes is the most harrowing thing that has ever happened in Buffy, and it hits everything like a train. No one reacts well. No one really knows how to. Except Tara, who has experience bereavement before, and who seems less awkward with Buffy than before.  No one can cope with the lack of a simple linear cause or, in the case of Buffy, with not being able to know for certain that there is nothing she could have done.

Her mother “probably” didn’t suffer. Probably. Such a cruel word.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I Was Made to Love You

“I go online sometimes, but everyone’s spelling is so depressing.”

I know it’s been a while, but we’ve just moved in to a new house and I’ve just had a massive exam for work, all in the last two weeks. The blog will return to normal as life returns to normal and the cardboard boxes slowly get emptied. In the meantime, here’s an episode of Buffy for your delight and edification.

Yes, I realise that the concept of Warren making a science fiction sex robot has some serious things to say about the objectification of women, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s a very silly idea, Yes, it is a comedy episode, and the witty lines are of a standard one would expect from Jane Espenson, but it’s hard to shake the suspicion that she deliberately set herself the challenging task of writing a quality episode from what she knew was a silly idea. This is not an easy task, and, brilliant writer though she is and excellently written though this script may be, the episode does not succeed in overcoming the intrinsic silliness.

The idea almost redeems itself, however, with a wonderfully metatextual joke as the scoobies just accept the existence of the robot with a knowing wink to the conventions of the genre within which they exist: Buffy usually deals with the tropes of horror, not sci-fi. The only character who does not react in this post-modern fashion is Warren himself, both because of his character and because he seems, at this point, to belong in sci-fi rather than horror.

Aside from all this we have character stuff. Early on there is a surprisingly mature conversation between Buffy and Xander which further deepens the trend in recent episodes to emphasise Xander’s sudden maturity, what with his job and that. His comments to Buffy seem surprisingly worldly-wise, but the recent development of the character  means this does not seem out of place. I also like the fact that uber-capitalist Anya has been making heaps of money with online trading. Oh, and there’s a rather interesting scene in which Giles, rather menacingly, threatens Spike with bad things if he does not leave Buffy alone. My girlfriend rather enjoyed Giles and Spike’s male on male encounter…

The episode begins with Joyce beginning to throw herself into life again after her recent brain issues. She’s beginning to throw herself back into dating and beginning to look more like her old self. Or so we thought. The ending of the episode is one of the most upsettingly shocking things I have ever seen on television, but I’ll let you make that decision for yourself.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Checkpoint

“He could seduce her and BANG the key out of her!”

This is a bloody good episode, all about the appearance of power versus the reality of power. The conclusion, and Buffy’s speech, is a powerful and hard hitting message. The council, though they may appear to be authority figures, are in fact completely dependent on Buffy. Even Glory needs something from Buffy and she is, as we learn at the end, pretty damn powerful. The Council, who everyone starts off being desperate to appease, end up as Buffy’s bitches. Technically, this means that Buffy can order them about to do research and stuff, although I suspect this will not be picked up on.

It turns out that Glory, being as powerful and capricious as a god from the Greek myths, is, in fact, a god. Oh dear. Not only that, but she uses her first appearance to express regret at the fact she’s done sod all for a few episodes, and that she now needs to fulfil her duty as the season’s Big Bad to get the season arc moving forward.

This is an important episode for the father/daughter relationship between Buffy and Giles; it is he, far more than her, who expresses fury at the blackmailing tactics of his former employers. He ends up reinstated as her Watcher, with full back-pay, while the loathsome Quentin Travers is at last humiliated.

I love the scene in which the Watchers interrogate Willow and Tara about their relationship, played perfectly to comic effect by Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson, although not as much as the Watcher who fancies Spike. Ooh-err! I also love Giles’ use of the phrase “Poncey sods!”, which we Brits obviously use all the time. Most of all, I love the way Spike and Joyce bond over Passions, whatever that is.

Bloody good stuff. Roll on the next one.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Listening to Fear

“Because it is a killer snot monster from outer space. I did not say that.”

I’ll be honest; this is the weakest Buffy episode for some time. That doesn’t mean it’s awful, just not up to the current excellent standard. If anything, that’s a testament to the quality of this season. Certainly, we get an awful lot of arc stuff going on.

This episode is essentially about Joyce’s illness, showing us how serious it is, and graphically demonstrating the effects of serious illness on people and their families. This week’s monster/metaphor is the demon that preys on people with mental health issues. It’s shocking for us to see Joyce switching between lucid phases and nonsensical ranting. To see a mother figure reduced to this, a childlike dependence, is terrifying for us, especially as we see it from the point of view of her two daughters.

This in itself puts pressure on Buffy to the extent that her college work appears to be slipping alarmingly. This, together with patrolling, is too much. This stressful confluence of events highlights how she instinctively does not confide in Riley. She doesn’t love him. Riley, meanwhile, is establishing contact with his old mate Graham from the Initiative and his gang of soldiers. He is also, of course, still visiting his vampire brothel. This can’t end well.

It’s nice, among all this foreboding, to see such a lovely scene between Willow and Tara in which they come up with silly names for constellations. These two, seem to have no problem between them. They’ll be happy ever after, right?

It’s fun to see the metatextual fun the script has by teasing us with the fact that the demon arrives in a meteorite. We’re made to ask whether or not to expect a science fiction based threat in this fantasy show. This seems to confuse the characters as much as it confuses us.

We end with two interesting events. Joyce, now lucid still remembers that Dawn is not real, but still loves her as her own daughter. Worryingly, she makes Buffy promise to look after Dawn should anything happen to her. Foreboding much? We also learn more about Ben, the hospital orderly, who turns out to have summoned the Queller Demon. He does it “because I’m cleaning up Glory’s mess, just like I’ve done all my life.” What does this mean? If this isn’t enough drama to end with, Joyce is about to go in for brain surgery. I love this season.