Buffy Blog: "Family"

Last week in "No Place Like Home" we saw how important the theme of the family of blood is in season five of Buffy. This week it is the beloved family of friends that is at the heart of the aptly named and Joss Whedon penned and directed “Family”.

Buffy, of course, has relied on her family of friends, Willow, Xander, Giles, and others including Angel, Oz, Anya, and Riley, since the beginning of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she came to Sunnydale and as she has moved from high school and into college for everything from research to friendship to survival. Season five of Buffy, thus far, has also placed a great deal of emphasis on several themes that have been at the heart of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since it began including growing up and the obligations that come with growing up (a theme channeled through Buffy’s Slayer obligations in the earlier seasons of the show) to family, to the family of friends, and to the community of Sunnydale and beyond.

Last week in “No Place Like Home” Buffy asked her sister Dawn who she was after the Buffster discovered that she really wasn’t her sister in a drawback the curtains spell. In “The I in Team/Goodbye Iowa” we saw Tara sabotage a spell she and Willow were doing to find demon evil in Sunnydale after Adam, the Big Bad of season four, escapes from the Initiative, a spell Willow refers to in “Family”. In “Restless” we learned that Willow thought she knew Tara because she knew Tara’s name. In “Family” we learn that though Willow knew Tara’s name, she, the Scoobies, and we viewers really did not fully know Tara.

“Family” is the Tara episode that devoted viewers have been waiting for since Tara first appeared in the Buffyverse in season four's "Hush". “Family” begins where “No Place Like Home” ends and gives us a glimpse into a day and a half in the life of the Scooby Gang.

“Family” begins with a relatively happy moment, something that seems increasingly rare in Buffy the Vampire Slayer since season three. Ah the trails and travails of leaving high school and being forced to grow up. Willow and Tara are lying in bed while Miss Kitty Fantastico, who we first met in “The Yoko Factor/Primeval" in season four, plays on the floor. Tara tells Willow a bed time story about a kitty saved from a pound full of dogs, ferrets, dolphins, and half-camel’s by some nice people, Willow and Tara one presumes, a tale that ends happily with Willow and Tara adopting Kitty Fantastico and snuggling in bed.

The happy tale of Willow and Tara that begins “Family”, however, is a short one. Soon in act one Tara tells Willow, again, that she doesn’t feel that she really fits into the Scooby Gang, feelings that become even more intense when no one laughs at Tara’s joke when the gang is moving Buffy out of her dorm room back to 1630 Revello. As for the Scoobies, they just don’t get Tara except perhaps Giles who understands that a witch who has a birthday coming up might be interested in something that can be purchased in his Magic Box.

When Tara and Willow arrive at the Magic Box at the end of act one things go from bad to worse. Tara’s brother Donny is at the Magic Box looking for her and he doesn't seem particularly taken with the magic for sale in the Magic Box. As act two begins Tara’s father, Tara calls him “sir”, arrives shortly after she does. We know there is something off about the relationship between Tara and her family of blood almost as soon as Tara opens her mouth. When she sees her brother Donny and later he father the stutter she had at the Wicca group meeting in “Hush”, a stutter that we know from ”Hush” and “New Moon Rising” is linked to self-doubts, a stutter that has been absent largely since she and Willow have been an item, suddenly reappears. Nor does Tara introduce her father, who is decidedly icy toward Tara and toward her “friends”, to Willow. Is she afraid of what he might think of her “lifestyle”? "Family" continues to link witchcraft and lesbianism at least in part.

Over the course of act one and act two we learn that Tara’s father, Tara’s brother Donny, and Tara’s cousin Beth have come to take Tara home because Tara, like her mother before her, is, or so they claim, a demon. It was, according to Tara’s family, on her mother’s twentieth birthday that the witch and magic demon came out in her mother and they expect the demon to appear in Tara since it is now her twentieth birthday. When Tara’s “family” threatens to tell her friends about the demon she is and she is about to become Tara does a spell on the Scoobies at the Magic Box. The Scoobies are at there doing research on the new dyed hair Cordelia demon chick on steroids in town, the abomination.

It is with Tara’s spell that the Tara storyline intersects with the other major narrative thread in “Family”, the Buffy, Dawn, and the abomination story line. “Family”, as I mentioned earlier, begins on the same night that Buffy first encounters the abomination and learns that Dawn is not her sister but is instead a key. In the teaser Buffy tells Giles that she has learned that Dawn is not her sister and both agree to keep the secret from the other Scoobies in order to keep Dawn, who has been sent to Buffy to protect, safe.

It is also in the teaser that the abomination resurrects out of the pile of rubble we saw fall on her last week in “No Place Like Home”. The abomination is upset and soon she begins to plot against the blonde, short, and rude strong for a human who broke her shoe who she blames for what happened to her the night before in "No Place Like Home". The abomination captures a demon, a kind of monster of this week, in the same hospital locker room that Ben comes into in the hospital after he learns from an intern that yet another “crazy” has been admitted to the hospital. Did the abomination take the crazy’s life consciousness in the hospital or near by? The abomination forces, so to speak, the gross, diseased, predatory demon with a black tongue between its teeth, to get together a gang of other Lei-Ach demons and go after the person who she learns from the demon is the Slayer.

It is just before the gang of Lei-Ach demons arrive at the Magic Box to kill the Slayer and her friends that Tara does her spell to keep the Scoobies from seeing the demon who she thinks she is. As so often is the case in Buffy, however, the spell Tara does has unintended and dangerous consequences. The Scoobies, once the Lei-Ach demons attack are unable to see the demons who have come to kill them.

When the Lei-Ach demons attack the Scoobies do the best that they can in the face of an enemy they can’t see. Giles tells Dawn to hide under a table. Xander and Giles fight what they can’t see. Willow hits what she cannot see with a chair before she is thrown into a bookcase. Anya tries to hit the one who is attacking Xander over the head with an item she has grabbed from the Magic Box collection to use as a weapon but Willow gets there with her chair ahead of her. Buffy puts the listening skills she has been practicing into action but with limited success. Spike, who has heard from Harmony that Lei-Ach’s have been sent to kill the Slayer, ever the voyeur, comes to watch the most recent Slayerfest but can’t help but get in on a little fight the Lei-Ach action for the sake of Buffy though Buffy doesn’t notice because she can’t see Spike's demon self. Despite this, of course, Spike wants to be thanked. Eventually Tara’s arrives and saves the day by reversing her spell.

With the battle over and the Scoobies surprised and concerned about the spell that Tara has done that almost got them killed, the Maclay’s demand that Tara come home with them because like her mother she has become a demon. Willow goes to Tara who is sitting on the floor near the sales counter of the Magic Box and asks her if that is what she wants, to go home. Teary-eyed Tara says no. Buffy, then Dawn, then Giles, then Xander, and then the other Scoobies—but not Spike (note how initially Spike is physically separated from the Scoobies and then walks away from them)—refuse to let the Maclay’s take Tara because, as Buffy says, “we’re family”.

It is sensitive Spike, who realises what is really going on beneath the we have come to take Tara home for your own good and the good of the world rhetoric that underlies the words of Tara’s father, brother, and cousin. It is that good old time religious patriarchalism. Spike recognizes that what Tara’s father, Tara’s brother Donny, and Tara’s cousin Beth, really want is someone to take care of the house and to take care of them, well "sir" and Donny anyway, things Tara’s cousin Beth told Tara she was a selfish bitch for not wanting to do toward the end of act three. Spike ever the one to enjoy making very public points hits Tara and is gripped with a wrenching pain in his head proving that Tara is no demon. Cousin Beth seems to have a eureka moment wondering if she too is the victim of a patriarchal family myth that the women in the Maclay family are evil women witch demons just before the Maclay’s leave without Tara in misogynistic tow.

“Family” ends as it began, with a happy moment. In the final scene of the episode the Scoobies gather at the Bronze for Tara’s birthday. All of them, including Tara and Dawn seem to be having a good time. Tara now seems to be full fledged part of the Scooby Gang as Anya talks to her about her jokes trying to understand her in the process, Giles gives her a crystal ball, Dawn gives her a broom, and Willow and Tara dance into the air to a tune with a chorus in which the singer, Melanie Doane, sings, “I can’t take my eyes off of you”, over and over again. Love very much in bloom in the Buffyverse. Yeah. End credits run.

There are a number of important character developments in “Family”. Tara is practicing spells so she can keep up with Willow. Buffy moves out of her dorm room at UC, Sunnydale to return home to 1630 Revello Drive so she can take care of mom and Dawn. Buffy has, thanks to learning that Dawn needs protection, become, as Riley points out to her, far too overprotective of her sister. She doesn’t allow Dawn to visit Melinda across the street because she is too short. Buffy lets off a bit on the keep Dawn close rein at the end of the episode allowing Dawn to come to the Bronze with the Gang to celebrate Tara’s birthday. Anya is reveling in the joys of Magic Box profits and she and Xander are sugar-kissing lovey doveys. Riley is walking on the dark side visiting, as he is, Willie’s, which has a new bartender, on a regular basis. Dawn has a friend named Melinda and thinks only losers drink alcohol. Ironically the Giles, Xander, Buffy, and Riley are drinking alcohol as she says this oblivious to the fact that they are drinking. Spike is still dreaming about Buffy, this time while he is having sex with Harmony, still has his Buffy like mannequin head, and still has that hate her, love her attitude toward our Slayer. There are those themes of responsibility and family obligations again.

“When he bailed on us”. When Buffy and Joyce are discussing Dawn and how to protect her from the abomination in the teaser Giles suggests sending Dawn to her father. Buffy says that won’t work because he is in Spain with his secretary living the cliché. Buffy remembers that when her father bailed on Dawn and her little sis cried for weeks but now knows that her memories of Dawn crying when their father left are false. So much for fatherly family obligations.

“My name is a holy name”. We learn more about the abomination in “Family”. This Cordelia on steroids thinks she is great and beautiful and that all eyes turn towards her when she enters a room. The abomination tells the Lei-Ach demon she captures that her name is holy. The abomination hopes no one of her status finds out that she fought a “common” vampire Slayer. The lady, methinks, thinks she has class.

“Good Birthday?” Birthdays, as we know from “Surprise/Innocence”, “Helpless”, and “A New Man”, all Buffy birthday episodes, have a tendency to turn out bad in the Buffyverse. Tara’s birthday almost, almost, does too but not quite. When Willow asks Tara at the end of “Family” whether she had a “Good Birthday” she replies “Best Birthday”. Since Buffy is a Joss Whedon show and Whedon shows tend to bring the pain after far too brief momentary moments of happiness, it will be interesting to see what will is going to happen next week.

“We’re family”. Buffy tells Giles when he wonders if they should send Dawn away for protection, note that they talk about Dawn and not the key, that she believes the monks sent Dawn to her so she could protect her and that she wants to protect her. Just as Buffy refuses to let Dawn be sent away Willow and the Scoobies refuse to allow Tara, once she has decided that she doesn’t want to return home and that she wants to remain in Sunnydale in school and with Willow and the Scoobies, to be taken forcibly by her blood family. Families of blood and families of the beloved community and responsibility toward both continue to be at the heart of season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of Buffy in general.

“I don't go out with vampires”. Sandy, the vampire who sits down next to Riley in Willie’s and who invites him to someplace more private, is the vampire Vamp Willow sired in “Doppelgangland”, another Whedon penned and directed episode.

The Chorus. Some commentators and fans have found “Family” too preachy and too metaphor too close to the surface for its own good. It is ranked as the 50th favourite Buffy episode on the Buffy Phenomenon website. In its attack on conservative evangelical Christianity “Family” is, of course, a companion piece to that other Buffy episode which attacked conservative Christianity, in that instance conservative Catholic Christianity, in “Where the Wild Things Are”. “Where the Wild Things” too doesn’t get a lot of love from fan scholars perhaps because of its metaphor too close to the surface quality. Such readings, by the way, call out for more analysis of why readers respond in this way to particular films or television shows. Perhaps if academics, particularly those with tenured positions, got off their crystal ball textualist pot and did some empirical surveys and interviews perhaps we might find out someday.

But enough whinging and back to “Family”, it is true that in “Family” the metaphor is pretty close to the surface. But then it often is in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Joss Whedon has said. It is true that “Family” does quite clearly attack the misogyny and homophobic attitudes of conservative Christianity. But then conservative Christianity is generally patriarchal and homophobic and I am not a big fan of either patriarchalism or homophobia so I don’t see this as a bad thing. And it is true that “Family” celebrates not only the the family of friends who have your back when you need them, the beloved community of friends that Tara finally becomes a part of at the end of “Family”, the Scooby Gang, but it celebrates Willow’s and Tara’s relationship at its end as Willow and Tara happily dance themselves into the air of the Bronze. But again I don’t see that as a bad thing and I am certainly not averse to an occasional happy ending. I love “Family” and I was deeply moved by its message of gender equality, true love, and the beloved community of friends. Viva Joss. Hey, bet this says something about me doesn’t it?

Music. I like the song “Cemented Shoes” by My Vitriol, a British band whose song plays in the Bronze at the beginning of Tara’s birthday party.

Buffy Blog: "No Place Like Home"

Season five of Buffy began with a mystery for viewers, the mystery of who is this Dawn who claims to be Buffy’s sister and why do all the Scoobies believe she is the Slayer’s sister and why does Joyce, Buffy’s mother, believe she is her younger daughter?

In the Doug Petrie penned and David Solomon directed “No Place Like Home” Buffy and we viewers finally learn who Dawn is. Some supernatural thing or some supernatural someone, Buffy comes to believe, is making her mother ill, making Joyce have the headaches she began to have in “The Real Me”. It is a nightwatchman who Buffy first meets in the teaser to the episode at one of Sunnydale’s empty factories—Sunnydale has apparently experienced the scourge of deindustrialization the rest of the Western industrial world has—who puts this idea into our Slayer’s head.

In act four Buffy goes to the hospital to get a prescription for the ill Joyce. There she helps Ben (Charlie Weber), who she met in “Out of My Mind”, with a crazy man on a gurney, a crazy man who Buffy eventually recognizes as the nightwatchman she met earlier, a madman who tells Buffy that they will get to you through your family. In order to find out what supernatural force may be making her mother ill Buffy performs a spell Anya has suggested she do, a “pull the curtain back spell”, a spell to see other spells.

When Buffy pulls the curtain back she discovers in a scene full of otherworldly overexposed images a la “Restless”, otherworldly music, and otherworldly sound representing the trance-like state Buffy enters while doing the spell, that Dawn is not supposed to be in her house or her home. Dawn’s image disappears and reappears in family photographs. Dawn’s bedroom alternates between her bedroom and a storage room. Dawn literally appears and disappears and reappears as Buffy talks to her. Fearing that Dawn may be harming Joyce Buffy pushes “little sis” back into the wall of Dawn’s bedroom telling Dawn to stay away from my (my emphasis) mother.

Just then the phone rings. It is Giles. He tells the Slayer that the Dagon Sphere she brought to him to investigate in act one of “No Place Like Home” is a “protective device used to ward off” an evil “which cannot be named”. Giles warns the Buffster that, “Anything that goes unnamed is usually an object of deep worship, or great fear. Maybe both”, and that she could face a level of raw power she has never known before if she finds this unnameable evil.

Despite Giles’s warning, however, off Buffy goes to the factory where she was given the Dagon Sphere by the now crazy nightwatchman. It is at the deserted factory that Buffy finds one of the same monks who, two months before the events of “No Place Like Home” take place, as we saw in the teaser, was part of a group of monks who performed a ritual to protect something they called the key, a key represented by a glow, and who has apparently escaped the force who attacked him and the other monks and who is now looking for protection, presumably from the Slayer, now that his Dagon Sphere, which was his protection device, has been taken by the Slayer, and the same force that we heard smashing the wooden door in the teaser begins to smash the industrial size steel door behind which the monk is looking at a map of Sunnydale presumably trying to find where the Slayer lives.

When Buffy arrives at the factory at the end of act three and in act four she finds the monk. He has been captured and tortured by this force. This force (Clare Kramer), this, as the script describes her, real hottie with blonde tendrilled hair that falls down to her shoulders, who is dressed in red business dress and killer pumps, and who knows she is a star, wants the monk to tell her where her key is. When the monk refuses to tell the force where her key is the force tortures him and goes hysterical, rather like the nightwatchman Buffy met in the hospital, until she sticks her fingers into the head of an older nightwatchman who the force has tied to a column in the factory feeding on his conscious life, represented by an ectoplasmic light, returning her to “sanity” (end of act one and act two).

In act four Buffy fights this force. This force, however, is strong, much stronger than the Buffster. After being tossed around the empty warehouse as though she is a Barbie doll and after ducking punches thrown by the force which tears out chunks of concrete from one of the columns which line the factory floor, Buffy grabs the monk and jumps out the second storey window protecting the monk as they fall. Safe, thanks in part to a temper tantrum thrown by the force who stomps on the factory floor after she breaks her heel chasing after Buffy causing parts of the floorboards to crack apart in a straight line bringing down parts of the factory ceiling on her head, the monk tells Buffy that it was he and two other monks who sent the key to her in human form so she could protect it, her, from the “abomination” she has just fought. This key, this Dawn, the monk tells Buffy after she objects to the monks making Dawn her sister and manipulating the memories of her family and that of the Scoobies, doesn’t know she is the key and really believes she is Buffy’s sister. Dawn is, as the monk tells her, a helpless innocent who needs the Slayer’s help.

In the final scene of “No Place Like Home” Buffy returns home and apologises to Dawn for what she said and what she did before she left for the factory. The Slayer has decided, at least for the moment, to protect, as she has so often done previously in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the helpless and innocent, in this case the helpless and innocent key, who believes she is Buffy’s sister and Joyce’s youngest daughter. In Buffy there apparently really is no place like home, Buffy’s play on Dorothy’s mantra in The Wizard of Oz (1939), the place where they have to take you in, as Riley said in “Pangs”, when you go there even when you are energy that has been made into a fourteen year old girl.

This being Buffy there are, of course, other things going on beyond the appearance of the monster of the week and the apparent Big Bad of season five, the abomination who cannot be named—a takeoff on the Hebraic god who is so holy he cannot be named—the abomination the script refers to as Glory—a suitably Judeo-Christian name that draws on Hebraic and Judaic notions of god’s presence and praise for the divine. Joyce’s headaches, it turns out, are more than the product of bickering daughters and turn out to be something other than supernatural. Riley is feeling a bit like a Zeppo, a bit like the Xander of season three and four, someone without superpowers anymore thanks to the operation he had last week that left him weak and kitteny, someone who Buffy now worries is going to get hurt in Slayer battle and some other one who Buffy doesn’t want to protect anymore than she wants to protect that other Scooby without superpowers, Xander, during battle. Giles has finally opened the Magic Box to customers and after a period where it seems like no customers will appear, voila he seems to have a potentially profitable business. Anya is now working for Giles who needs the help at the suddenly busy Magic Box and is being taught the finer points of insincere customer service by Xander. Spike, Buffy calls him William, is still pining after Buffy standing outside her house smoking by a tree while presumably watching Buffy inside creepily replicating Angel’s perverse voyeurism at the Summers home in “Passions” if in a somewhat more tragic way. Spike is still hiding his feelings for Buffy behind his “out for a walk, bitch” tough exterior front.

Home, family, and growing up are central themes of “No Place Like Home”. Buffy is increasingly, thanks to Joyce’s illness, becoming someone who takes care of Dawn and someone who is feeling the angst of being an older sister who is supposed to be grown up—Joyce even says that Buffy is so grown up at one point in the episode—while Dawn gets to be Joyce’s fourteen year old “little pumpkin belly” and book club partner (shades of season three's "Dead Man's Party"). Buffy is also playing mother for Joyce getting medicine for her and expressing concern that some supernatural force may be coming at her through her family making Joyce ill. The older nightwatchman pleads to the abomination for his life by mentioning that he has a family.

"Shiny". The Dagon Sphere, Dawn, and the abomination sucking the life consciousness out of the older nightwatchman seem to have a similar quality of light.

“I could crap a better existence than this”. The abomination is not particularly impressed with the humans and the human society and culture she finds in Sunnydale, she calls the monk she is torturing a monkey (pun intended?), suggesting she is not from the Buffyverse world or Buffyverse dimension.

Forgive me monkey”. There is some sexually charged religious imagery in the scene in act two where the abomination tortures the monk trying to obtain information about the location of the key. As the abomination kneels before the monk she has tied to a chair in Reservoir Dog fashion as the script describes it she grabs the robe that ties together the monk’s cassock as though it was a male sexual organ. In the script she “crushes his [the monk’s] nuts" just after this. Reservoir Dogs is the 1992 Quentin Tarantino genre film about a heist gone bad.

What's in a Name? Dagon is, was, apparently a Philistine deity.

Buffy Blog: "Out of My Mind"

Many of the Scoobies appear to be, literally out of their minds in the appropriately titled “Out of My Mind”, the first episode written for Buffy by Rebecca Rand Kirshner and directed by one of Buffy’s veteran directors David Grossman. It is this out of mindedness that appears to be the Buffy monster of the week.

“Out of My Mind” is primarily a character arc driven episode of Buffy moving along, as it does, the character arcs of most of our Scoobies during its 43 or so minutes. Joyce, while getting breakfast for Dawn, drops a plate, looks at Dawn and asks her, “who are you”. Is she out of her mind? After Joyce collapses she is rushed to the hospital where an intern, Ben, tells Buffy that Joyce’s fainting spell could have been, according to the doctors, a “dizzy spell, low blood sugar, that sort of thing.” Out of body?

Riley, hunting demons in Buffy’s “sector and interfering with her very First Slayer like hunt and kill, is hyperwired and superstrong, out of his body, and out of his mind, still feeling that “The Replacement” moment that Buffy is growing ever more distant from him, a fear symbolised by the exasperated look Buffy gives Spike, who too has shown up to hunt when Riley says that Spike shouldn’t be out patrolling, a Spike who realizes, thanks to this look, that neither he nor boy Riley are really welcome in Slayer territory. Riley also has, as Dawn discovers while playing with a stethoscope at the hospital while her mom is being taken treated for her sudden collapse, a very very fast heartbeat. Riley’s “tachycardia” turns out to be a consequence of the “chemicals and crap”, as Graham says, Walsh pumped into the soldiers of the Initiative, Riley, of course, included. Buffy, worried about Riley and thanks to a suggestion from sister Dawn, gets in touch with the Initiative through Riley’s tapped phone—we see his apartment for the first time in “Out of my Mind”—and after some tense moments, tense moments during which Riley is missing—he retreats to the womb like caves of the Initiative where he once felt safe and useful—tense moments, after Buffy has found Riley in the cave, which give us a glimpse into Riley’s inner fears, fears that if he is no longer super strong like Buffy, the Buffster won’t want him. Eventually Buffy takes Riley to a doctor who is working with the Initiative to fix the problems Walsh’s chemicals and stuff created and after still more tense moments with Riley hurting, he is cured. Is Riley’s hyper fast beating heart a metaphor for the problems of the heart Riley is suffering?

Buffy seems to be out of her mind and out of her body, as she has been since “Buffy vs. Dracula”, with hunting and killing, a hunting and killing that has moved to more intense and more athletic levels in season five. She is worried, if not obsessively so, yet, with Joyce’s fainting spell. And she is worried about Riley’s health making sure he gets the medical help he needs from the Initiative. In the womb like cave into which Riley has retreated Buffy does try to assure Riley that she loves him and needs him and that she has opened herself to Riley in ways she never has to anyone else. And while Buffy may believe what she says I am not sure Riley does.

Harmony is out of her mind with fear that her “arch-nemesis” Buffy is hunting for her so the Slayer can kill her. She returns to one of her old obsessions, one that no longer seems to obsess her any more, Spike, to seek protection from the Buffster. Perhaps Harmony is a changed person.

Spike continues to be out of his mind (he is watching Dawson's Creek after all when the episode begins) with getting that emasculating chip out of his grain, out of his body. With Harmony’s help he kidnaps the doctor who is working with the Initiative and who is waiting to operate on Riley, and forces him to take the chip out of his head. Well not really. When Buffy and Riley find Spike and Harmony in the medical school—Sunnydale has a medical school?—Spike, in full I am going to kill you Slayer mode engages Buffy in fight learning, thanks to that old pesky splitting head pain, that the chip is still in his brain. Spike continues to be obsessed with the Slayer. After Buffy asks Riley if he wants to go back and kill Spike for fun in the teaser Spike says to himself and to us viewers, of course, that “I will know your blood, Slayer. I will make your neck my chalice and drink deep”, right before he, in patented Buffy undercuts intense drama with humour fashion, falls into an “empty grave”. Spike’s obsession with the Slayer takes a rather surprising turn in act four, well perhaps not so surprising if you have been watching Buffy since, as we know from the Xander and Cordelia relationship of season two, nasty sniping can be of the hatred attracts opposites variety, has a dream in which he kisses Buffy and wakes up from this “terror” saying “God, no. Please no.” So Spike’s obsession with killing the Slayer is lust? Love?

Willow’s magicks continue to grow in power and Willow is relying more and more on her magicks. Is it only me or did Tara seem a bit concerned over Willow’s increasing magical powers and her increasing reliance on magicks to make things easier?

Giles, Xander, Anya, and Tara seem to be fully in their minds and in their bodies. Giles is still getting the Magic Box ready for its grand re-opening. Xander is helping Giles prepare for the opening by putting his carpentry skills to work building a display shelves for the store. In the shooting script Xander makes mention of two other carpenters, Harrison Ford and Christ. Giles and Xander, with a little help from Riley, have “set up with all sorts of training apparatuses: gymnastics equipment; various bulls-eye targets; straw dummies; exotic weaponry etc.” Buffy’s Slayer training gym in the back room of the Magic Box. Xander and Anya, using the old I have a friend who metaphorical strategy, express comfort with their relationship.

“What’s to come”? “Out of My Mind” moves and may be moving, if very subtly, several season five arcs along arc along. By the end of “Out of My Mind” it is unclear where Buffy’s and Riley’s relationship is going. Buffy does seem to distance herself from Riley. It is unclear where Willow’s increasing reliance on magicks that are better than “using a flashlight like some kind of doofus” is going. It is unclear what is going on with Joyce. Last week in “The Replacement” she had a headache and a pained look on her face, this week she drops a plate, shades of “Surprise”/“Innocence”, and faints. And it is unclear where Spikes hate/love/hate/love obsession with the Buffster is going. I assume season five will tell?

The Chorus. “Out of My Mind” may not be among my favourite episodes of Buffy but it does what it sets out to do. It moves several character arcs along and sets up several character arcs that presumably are to come.

Buffy Blog: "The Replacement"

Last week’s “Real Me” was a Dawn centred episode. If Dawn had been around for “Nightmares”, “Halloween”, “Fear Itself”, and “Restless”, “Real Me” would have to be seen as yet another key moment in Dawn’s journey toward growing up and conquering her inner "demons" in the same way that “The Replacement”, a Xander centric episode, an episode that, like “Nightmares”, “Halloween”, “The Zeppo”, “Fear Itself”, and “Restless”, takes us inside the mind of a Xander who is having trouble in his journey toward adulthood particularly after high school.

Xander is still living in the dark and dank basement in his parent’s home that he kept returning to against his will in “Restless”. Over the course of season four Xander has moved from one job to another, from bartender, to construction worker, to pizza delivery guy, to ice cream truck driver and salesman, and back again, at the beginning of season five, to construction worker. Throughout season four Xander was unsure whether he is taken seriously by the other Scoobies or contributes much to the Scooby fight against evil in their midst. He can’t even afford to rent the wonderful “above-terranean” art deco apartment he, Anya, Buffy, Riley, and Willow go to look at because the construction job he has had for three months is ending to Anya’s great displeasure.

“The Replacement”, like so many other character centred episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, takes the inner emotional turmoil in our Scoobies minds and gives it flesh in fantasy narrative form. On the story level “The Replacement” is about this week’s monster of the week, Toth, the only survivor of the Tothric Clan who is out to, as he says, kill the Slayer. It is Toth, who, after the Scoobies find him in the city dump after he attack Giles in the Magic Box. “So you bought the magic shop and you were attacked before it even opened. Who's up for a swingin' chorus of the "We Told You So" symphony?, wisecracks Xander. During the battle between the Scoobies and Toth, Toth shoots a blast of magic force from his rod at the Buffster hoping to kill but Xander, the Xander without superpowers, pushes Buffy out of the way saving her once again who is hit by the force of the blast instead. With Toth gone from the scene of the crime the Scoobies rally around Xander to see if he is all right. He says he is and off the Scoobies go.

The camera, however, doesn’t follow the Scoobies to wherever they are going. Instead it remains in the dump, as do we viewers. The kino eye soon takes us forward across piles of garbage to find half hidden among the garbage another Xander, another Xander?, lying unconscious. Since the camera stays in the dump and moves in on an unconscious Xander writer Jane Espenson and director James Contner force us viewers to identity with the unconscious Xander lying amidst the detritus of Sunnydale. When he wakes from unconsciousness the camera and we follow him as he returns “home” to his basement.

For most of the episode we believe that this Xander, the Xander of the garbage, this clumsy Xander who slips as he leaves the city dump, who can’t get in his apartment when he gets there, who hurts his foot kicking the door when he can’t get in his apartment, who trips and falls when he sees another Xander living his life in his place, is the real Xander. When our Xander follows the other Xander to work we think, as does our Xander, that the other Xander has managed to get a full-time job heading the interior carpentry crew of the construction company he works for thanks to the hypnotism he is doing with a shiny object he occasionally takes out of his pocket. When our Xander follows the Xander-Double, as the script calls the other Xander, to the apartment he looked at earlier we believe, like our Xander, that he’s too clean to be the real Xander. When our Xander attacks Xander-Double in the hallway outside the apartment we believe that Xander-Double is too violent to be our Xander. When Xander-Double goes to Giles’s apartment to tell Buffy, Riley, and Giles that someone has stole his face and needs to be killed we believe, like our Xander who peers through the window at the surreal scene within, that Xander-Double has managed to hypnotise them as well. And when Xander goes to Willow’s and Buffy’s dorm room to tell Willow that he believed at one time that Willow set fire to a home next to his when he didn’t get the toy fire truck he wanted for his seventh birthday and that he does the Snoopy dance—and he does do the Snoopy Dance for Willow—every Christmas after he and Will watch Charlie Brown, we believe him. We may not believe our Xander when he says that Xander-Double is an evil robot but we do believe Willow when she hypothesizes that it is Toth in disguise and part of his plan to kill the Slayer.

Buffy, when Xander-Double comes to her for help, comes to the same conclusion. It is Toth. Almost simultaneously—something that should tell those of us who are paying attention something—our Xander and Xander-Double realize that Anya may be in danger. Xander-Double, who called Anya after he took the apartment leaving a message for her to meet him at the apartment when she refuses to pick up the phone, heads off to his new digs. Meanwhile our Xander heads over to Anya’s apartment—the first time we see it—to protect her from the demon with the Xander face. When he gets there she’s gone. He hears the phone message, searches for Anya’s gun—you have a gun Riley asks Anya later—and heads over to the apartment as well.

The showdown at the not so wild art deco apartment begins. Anya is confused by the two Xanders but after some hesitancy our ex-vengeance demon gone capitalist success mad chooses Xander-Double as her real Xander. While the Xander on Xander showdown is going on, a researching Giles comes to a different conclusion than Buffy and a Willow who comes walking through a front door Giles was sure this time he locked—the saga of Giles’s front door continues—one that requires two oh my lords to get Buffy’s, Riley’s, and Willow’s attention. I love it when characters in the Buffyverse metacomment on the narrative of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But back to Giles’s conclusion. Both Xanders, he says, are the real Xander.

With Buffy and Riley off in Giles sexy new BMW to get to Xander before one of the Xanders kills the other simultaneously, as Giles says, killing himself, our Xander pulls Anya’s gun on Xander-Double. Buffy and Riley arrive just in the nick of time to stop Xander from killing himself but just as they break up the Xander on Xander battle Toth appears and tries to kill the Buffster. The plans of demons and vampires rarely work out in Buffy, however. Buffy kills Toth, Buffy and Riley take the Xanders back to Giles’s, the two Xanders have a bad influence on themselves, and Willow reunites the two Xanders through a very easy magic spell.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as I note in my discussion of doppelgangers in Buffy in my Reading Buffy Synoptically blog on this site, is full of doubles. We have seen doubles of Buffy, including Cordelia, Faith, Kendra, and now Dawn (the Buffy-Dawn snarky sisters double act is giving Joyce headaches), doubles of Giles, including Ethan Rayne and Ripper, doubles of Willow, Vamp Willow from the alternative universe of “The Wish” and “Doppelgangland”, a double Willow references when Xander wonders how she will handle it when she has an evil double, I handled it fine she says as Xander heads off to Anya’s, and doubles of Xander, the Vamp Xander of “The Wish” and “Doppelgangland”. We have even seen the two Xanders of “The Replacement” before, we have seen the confident and witty Xander since the beginning of the show and we have seen the unconfident loser Xander since the beginning of the show and especially in that other Xander centric episode “The Zeppo”. We have also seen nerd Xander before but now we know that he has seen the first season "The Enemy Within" episode of the original Star Trek (6 October 1966), an episode, not surprisingly, with a double in it, and has a collection of Babylon 5 commemorative plates.

The Chorus. What Buffy is so good at and has been so good at since it began is its ability to mix and match tone, to mix and match comedy, melodrama, drama, and tragedy. There is a lot of humour in “The Replacement” from Anya wanting to have sex with both of the Xanders to clumsy Xander doing the Snoopy Dance for Willow while soaked from the rain in her dorm room. But while there is a lot of comedy in “The Replacement” there is also some of that bittersweetness that occasionally rises out of the humour of Buffy. To wit: Our Xander at one point wants to let what he thinks is a demon take his life because he wasn’t really do anything with it and the demon is living it so much better than he is. And then there is that remarkable and incredible scene on which “The Replacement” ends. Riley, Buffy, and even Anya, with some prodding from a newly more confident Xandman, are helping Xander finally move out of his dismal parent’s basement. Things are, sorry for the pun, loking up for the Xandman. As Xander and Riley discuss love and relationships Riley, from out of the blue, tells Xander that while Buffy is the love of his life that burns through him and makes him feel at peace he knows that our Slayer doesn’t feel the same way about him, that Buffy doesn’t love him. What an emotional kick to the gut. What a mirror of the real emotional horror and terror at the heart of the growing up life. What a bad omen for the Buffy and Riley relationship. Great episode.

And hey, didn’t you love it when Riley mentioned Buffy’s bad ice movie obsession? Michelle Tractenberg would go on to star in one of these in 2005, Ice Princess. By the way, Nicholas Brendon’s identical twin brother, Kelly Donovan, played Xanders in scenes that required the two Xanders but didn’t require dialogue.

Buffy Blog: "Real Me"

“You don’t belong here”. Buffy has a sister. Buffy has a sister? Though we viewers only met Buffy’s sister Dawn (Michelle Tractenberg) at the end of “Dracula vs. Buffy” last week everybody else in the Buffyverse, Buffy, Joyce, Willow, Tara, Riley, Xander, Anya, and Giles, seems to know Dawn and seem to have known her for sometime just as she seems to have known them for sometime. Dawn, Michelle Tractenberg, even appears in the opening credits. I kept waiting for this “Superstar” moment to end in this episode but it never does.

“Real Me” is structured around and centred on Dawn’s diary entries, diary entries about herself and the Scoobies which serve as an economic and elegant way for “Real Me’s” writer David Fury to introduce viewers to Dawn, to recapitulate where the Scoobies are at this point in their character arcs in Buffy, and to introduce new viewers to all of the major characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dawn’s diary entries also serve as voice over narration throughout significant parts of the episode.

There are two mysteries of the week that weave their way through “Real Me”. Who killed Mr. Bogarty, the current owner of the Magic Box, and who is this Dawn who seems to have appeared suddenly and literally out of nowhere and who appears to be Buffy’s sister and is accepted by everyone in the Buffyverse as the Slayers sister.

“We kill the Slayer tonight”. The Big Bad of this week is Harmony, something we viewers should have known as soon as we learned that a $12.95 tasteless ceramic unicorn is missing from the Magic Box (remember that unicorn poster on Harmony’s and Spike’s cave wall in “Harsh Light of Day”, 4:3?). Also missing is the book Buffy and Giles have come to the Magic Box to buy, A Treatise on the Mythology and Methodology of Vampire Slayers, a book Buffy needs now that she is back in training with Giles. Willow and Tara arrive at the Magic Box at the same time as Giles, Buffy, and Dawn do to pick up some charms they have on back order.

Harmony and her minions, Brad, Mort, Peaches, and Cyrus, have taken the Treatise from the Magic Box because they need it to help them in their plan to kill the Slayer. As is often the case with Harmony’s plans—Buffy reminds her of the bad things that happened when she was head cheerleader and head of the homecoming committee—her plans generally “suck”. And suck Harmony's plans do from the get go.

When Harmony and her gang arrive at 1630 Revello to call Buffy out—Harmony throws a rock through Buffy’s window requesting that she come out and die in red marker with a happy face over the “I” in die—the Slayer is out hunting for whoever killed Mr. Bogarty. When Harmony is accidentally invited into 1630 by a Dawny who thinks that Xander is cool and treats her like the woman she is and says that Xander will, if she comes inside, kick her-, inside Harmony comes. The Harmony who comes inside Buffy’s house, may be a new a Harmony, a Harm who has been working out, learning some new tricks, and honing her instincts, a Harmony who is no longer the hair pulling pushover she was in “The Initiative” (4:7), but this new Harmony, as Spike points out later in the episode, is still an amateur and should leave the slaying to the professionals like, one presumes, him. Harm and Xander fight. And while Xander may not have kicked her- he is able to kick the new and improved self confident Harmony in the gut sending her flying out the front door locking it behind her managing so she can’t get in and once again saving the day at least for the moment. Another Harmony plan ends in suckiness.

“She’s a kid”. When Buffy returns from patrolling with Riley and complaining about Dawn while patrolling with Riley, she finds the idea of an empowered Harmony calling her out to kill her even funnier than Xander did when Harmony told him her plan. The laughter doesn’t last for long, however. Buffy learns that Dawn accidentally invited Harm inside to 1630. Not willing to chalk the “accident” up to the fact that Dawn is, as Xander, Riley, and Tara keep saying, “a kid”, Buffy tells the Scoobies that by coddling and protecting little Dawn the Scoobies are “…turning Dawn into a little idiot who’s going to get us all killed!”

Hearing everything Buffy yells Dawn runs past an Anya who is in the kitchen, out the back door, and into the almost waiting arms of Harmony’s minions. An injured Anya, who has been punched by Mort, tells Buffy, Xander, and Riley that Dawn has been taken somewhere by the Harmony Gang.

Since it is Tuesday it's Buffy to the rescue. Our Slayer pumps, well really punches Spike several times in the nose to obtain information about where Harmony is living these days. Learning that Harmony and her gang are holed up in a cave Buffy arrives at Harmony’s lair just in the nick of time. Unwilling to follow Harmony’s plan for keeping the sister of the Slayer alive to draw her to their lair—why keep Dawn alive when the Slayer is coming anyway notes Cyrus”—there has been a rebellion in the Harmony ranks and Harmony’s minions now plan to feed off the Slayer’s sister and kill Harmony. Another Harmony plan gone bad.

Just as Dawn warns the Harm Gang that “[m]y sister is so going to kill you”, it’s Buffy to the rescue, again. The Buffster stakes Cyrus telling him as she does it that Dawn did, after all, warn him. With Cyrus dead and Harmony fleeing a battle between our Slayer and Peaches, Brad, and Mort ensues. Buffy defeats Gang Harmony, Mort with some effort and difficulty, and with Dawn saved for the first time the dueling Summer’s sisters threaten to tell Joyce about each others recent failings when they get home. When Buffy and Dawn arrive home they don’t however, and Dawny even admits that it was pretty okay that Buffy didn’t tell Joyce about her rather reckless behaviour.

“Nobody knows who I am. Not the real me. It's, like, nobody cares enough to find out…”. “Real Me” is, of course, a Dawn centric episode. On one level Dawn comes off as really pouty and annoying thanks to all her huffing and puffing about how nobody, save Xander, takes her seriously, how Buffy, she who saves the world, is her mom’s favourite, how, if she were a superhero she would wear a cool mask and take on a cool superhero name to protect the loved ones Buffy doesn’t even. Buffy not protecting her loved ones?

Dawn, however, really is “a kid”, despite her protestations against being called one by Riley. Sorry to pile on Dawny. She is also a lot like her sister when we first met the Slayer way back in season one. Like Buffy Dawn is a bit self-centred, overly self-confident, and rather self-satisfied. That said, it must be remembered that it must be tough living in the shadow of the one girl in all the world, the chosen one, the Slayer.

“You don’t belong here”. Hovering beneath the surface whimsy of this getting to know Dawn, getting to know about the sisterly competitiveness and jealousies between her and Buffy, and the hilarity of the Harmony as a Big Bad with minions aspects of this episode, there is something deadly serious and decidedly unsettling going on. As I watched “Real Me” I had an eerie and foreboding feeling about Dawn thanks to two things that occur in the episode. The first is when, as the script says, a, “[a] raving LUNATIC - dressed in a stained and torn business suit and tie; his face and hands are filthy, his hair matted, his eyes… the haunted look of one who's seriously deranged”, comes up to Dawny and says, “What are you doing HERE?... I know you… curds and whey…I know what you are… You don't belong here” at the end of act one. Curds and whey, of course, is a clear reference to Faith’s little miss muffet speech in “Graduation Day” and yet another “Restless” moment in season five. The second is Dawn’s monologue that ends the episode—“She still thinks I'm little miss nobody, just her dumb little sister. Boy, is she in for a surprise”—a monologue that made me wonder just who little miss nobody, a self description that again eerily recalls the “little miss muffet” of “Graduation Day”, really is and what surprise she has in store for our Slayer and our Scoobies. Is Dawn the Big Bad of season five?

“I’ve found the real me and I like her”. As is often the case in Buffy there are some significant character developments in the lives of our Scoobies in the “Real Me”. Buffy, as I already mentioned, now has a little sis. Giles is once again training Buffy. Her “zen-like” and very impressive one hand hand stand complete with mystical crystals—I couldn’t help but think of the crystals in another David Fury penned episode, Helpless” (3:12) as I was watching this—is disrupted by Dawny in a very annoying can we go now way in the teaser. Can you say in character? By the way, Buffy stunt man and woman Jeff Pruitt and Sophia Crawford were replaced by John Medlen and Melissa Baker at the beginning of season five bringing a more athletic and very appropriate given that Buffy is getting more proficient quality to the stunt choreography of the show.

Giles finally has a new car, a sporty red BMW that Giles says seduced him. Giles’s sexy new BMW, which he has some problems driving, replaces the old Citreon DS that was apparently totaled by a Spike fleeing the Initiative in “A New Man” (4:12). At the end of the episode Giles has taken over the Magic Box with its Slayer training room in the back, despite, as Buffy tells him, the life expectancy of a Magic Box owner is about as long as that of a Spinal Tap drummer (shout out to the 1984 Christopher Guest, Michael McKean Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner 1984 mocumentary about a self absorbed hard rock band, This is Spinal Tap).

Xander, Dawny tells us, is working in construction again. Wonder how long this job will last? Anya learns that in ooh the Game of Life you may be burdened with a husband and several tiny pink children and more cash than you can reasonably manage, but that cash, as Xander says, equals good. Anya tries to trade in the children for more cash. Can you say in character?

Willow is taking drama in the upcoming term at UC, Sunnydale. This is a major step for our Scooby witch given Willow's fear of drama in "Nightmares" and "Restless". Buffy had to drop drama, which doesn't make Willow happy, because of her new Slayer training schedule.

Tara and Dawn feel like non-Scooby outsiders. Tara tells Willow that the “Scooby circle” have this really tight bond that’s really hard to break into even if you want to and she is not sure she wants to. Willow tries to assure Tara that she really is one of the gang, one of the good guys. A good guy? Really? What about that time she undermined the demon finding spell in “Doomed” (4:11).

Willow and Tara are still doing, as Dawn says, the magic spells and stuff which she finds so much cooler than slaying and that she once told her mom that she would really like to learn more about. Dawn has memories of life in Scoobyland. After making that suggestion Joyce got, Dawn says, really quiet and made her go upstairs. Though Dawn thinks Joyce and her generation are rather close-minded about witch stuff it is more likely that she doesn’t want fourteen year old Dawn to know about the secrets of lesbian love yet. Oops, forgot, there really is no conflict here because Buffy has, at times, made the connection between witch stuff and lesbian sex and lesbian love Buffy remains as protective of “kid” Dawn as Joyce at the end of “Real Me” telling her, as she goes off to see the training room at the back of the Magic Box with Giles, that she should not break anything, not touch anything, just keep doing what she is doing—writing in her journal at a table—and not even move. Buffy thy name is overly critical mother hen.

The Chorus. Wonderful episode penned by David Fury and directed David Grossman that introduces us to a new but at the same time a seemingly, at least in the eyes of the other Scoobies, old character in the Buffyverse, Buffy’s sister and Joyce’s daughter Dawn. “Real Me” lays down a mystery that, at least at this point, seems like it is going to last longer than the two episodes that we have seen Dawn in up to this point. Additionally, “Real Me” moves the character arcs of almost every one of our Scoobies along and I always like that.

Buffy Blog: "Buffy vs. Dracula"

“Buffy vs Dracula” is the first season premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that Buffy’s creator Joss Whedon hasn’t written. During seasons one through four Whedon wrote many if not most of the most important season beginning and season ending episodes of Buffy. His season one premiere “Welcome to the Hellmouth”/“The Harvest” brought Buffy from Los Angeles to Sunnydale and saw the formation of the Scooby gang to fight the evil in their hellmouth midst. His season ending “Prophecy Girl” saw Buffy reject and then accept her Slayer responsibilities even when it meant certain death at the hands of the Master. Fortunately for Sunnydale and for us viewers Xander was there to resurrect Buffy from her death prophecy foretold. His season two premiere “When She Was Bad” saw Buffy return from her father’s place in LA to resume her Slayer duties even though she did have a chip on her shoulder for most of that episode because of her death and the never ending fight against evil that seemed to be a vampire Slayer’s lot. His season two ending “Becoming” gave us a Buffy who chose her Slayer duties over house, family, and love of life and then leave them and the Scoobies behind as she rode a bus out of town. His season three premiere “Anne” gave us a Buffy trying to escape her Slayer responsibilities by living and working in LA but who was unable to do so because even in LALAland there was evil and old acquaintances in her midst. At episodes end Buffy returned to Sunnydale to once again live the ever angsty life of a Slayer. His season three ending “Graduation Day” found the Scoobies not only graduating from high school but stopping yet another of the seemingly endless apocalypses that seem to be their lot. His season four premiere “The Freshman” brought Scoobies Buffy, Willow, and Oz to college and a Xander who was lost to a basement in his parents home and for which he had to pay rent. His season ending “Restless” prepared the narrative ground for the Scooby journeys apparently to come in season five and beyond.

“Buffy vs. Dracula”, the season five premiere written by Marti Noxon and directed by David Solomon, is Buffy’s spin on yet another Hollywood horror classic. Over its four previous seasons Buffy the Vampire Slayer has done Frankenstein, season two’s “Some Assembly Required”, The Mummy, season two’s “Inca Mummy Girl”, and “The Creature from the Black Lagoon, season two’s “Go Fish”. In “Buffy vs Dracula” Buffy does Dracula.“

“I’m Dracula”. On the narrative level “Buffy vs. Dracula” is about the new vampire, the new monster of the week, in town. The new vampire in town, as the new vamp in Sunnydale tells Buffy during a conversation between him and the Slayer in one of Sunnydale’s many graveyards in act one, has come to Sunnydale to meet the “Killer” he has heard so much about, Buffy. The new vampire in town is Dracula (Rudolf Martin who played Vlad “The Impaler” Dracula in 2000’s Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula).

Buffy, Xander, and Willow are star struck when they meet Dracula. His reputation precedes him even in the Buffyverse. Later in Giles’s apartment where the Scoobies have gone to map out a strategy for how to deal with with the “glory hound”, as Spike later calls him, who revealed to the world what vampires were like and how they could be killed, Buffy, Xander, and Willow talk excitedly about their meeting the Dark Prince earlier that evening. Buffy, Willow, and Anya, who has met Dracula before when she was a vengeance demon, also talk about Dracula’s penetrating eyes and lilty accent sending Riley, Tara, and Xander into mild fits of jealously. Buffy is also enthralled by the fact that, as Dracula tells her, she, the Slayer, is known throughout the demon world. The Slayer as celebrity.

The narrative of “Buffy vs. Dracula” has a little bit of Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula in it. Xander plays the role of R.M. Renfield, a role that includes the bug and spider eating and a love of blood coloured jelly donuts. Falling under the thrall, Spike, who was, or so he claims, the Dark Prince’s rival, tells Riley that Dracula’s tricks are showy gypsy stuff, the script, refers to it as “going fully Renfield”, of his “Dark Master bator", Xander is forced to become Dracula’s “emissary”, his eyes and ears to the Slayer, during daylight. Buffy plays the role of Mina Harker who, when Dracula enters her bedroom in a scene reminiscent of the bedroom scenes between Buffy and Angel in season one (“Angel”) and season two (“Passions”), comes under the thrall of the Dark Prince who tastes Buffy in the very same spot and with the same sexual and erotic implications Angel did in order to save his life in “Graduation Day”. Xander, who has manoeuvered Buffy into the “safety” of his basement apartment while the other Scoobies are searching for Drac, takes Buffy to his “Master” when the sun goes down, as he is ordered. Giles plays the role of Jonathan Harker who, when he and Riley discover the castle in which Dracula is living in comes under the spell of the three Sisters, the erotic and sexually desirable Brides of Dracula, when he falls into a basement in a scene reminiscent of the scene in “Fear Itself” when Buffy falls into the basement in the frat house and is attacked by vampires. Instead of Abraham Van Helsing and his group of male vampire hunters to the rescue it is Buffy-there's that feminist Buffy spin again-who slays Dracula. After tasting Dracula’s blood the thrall has gone out of Buffy’s and Dracula’s relationship and after an epic battle between the two the Buffster stakes Dracula and he disintegrates into eurotrash.

The Journey Continues. Beyond the surface narrative of Dracula coming to town and the Scoobies figuring out how they are going to defeat him and finally defeating him, “Buffy vs. Dracula” explores a lot of the same character territory “Restless” did. “Buffy vs. Dracula” picks up where season four and “Restless” left off and has quite a few “Restless” moments in it.

“It’s always the blood”. At the heart of “Buffy vs. Dracula” are the character arcs, the character journeys, of Scoobies Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles. In “Restless” Chorus Tara told Buffy, “You think you know. What you are, what's to come… you haven't even begun“. In "Buffy vs. Dracula", Dracula repeats these very words to her. In “Buffy vs. Dracula” the Buffster begins to sense what she is and what has begun thanks to the first and thanks to Dracula. Dracula tells Buffy that she and he are kindred spirits. He tells her that the power she has is similar to the power he and other vampires have and that that the dark power they share is in their blood. Dracula tastes Buffy’s blood and Buffy tastes Dracula’s blood. When Buffy tastes the blood of Dracula she senses the power of a Slayer within it. She sees the face of the primitive, she sees the first in silhouette, and she experiences the thrill of the hunt, something, Buffy tells Giles, she has been doing since the Scoobies did the Combo Buffy spell, something Buffy does in the trailer to the episode. As the Master got stronger when he tasted Buffy’s blood, as Angel escaped death when he tasted Buffy’s blood, Buffy gets stronger after she tastes Dracula’s blood. There seems to be a link between Slayer and vampires and that link seems to be in the blood. Is season five going to explore Slayerness?

In “Restless” we learned that Xander had in the back of his mind the hope that someday he might become a Watcher. While Xander doesn’t get to play the role of Watcher Junior in “Buffy vs. Dracula” he does get to play the role of Dracula’s "butt monkey", a role he says he is playing for the last time. Will Xander escape the role of "butt monkey" forever?

It is Willow who actually gets to play the role of Watcher Junior in the episode. In a meeting at Giles’s apartment after a night of research on Dracula Willow details for the rest of the Scoobies what Dracula’s modus operandi is. Willow also continues to up the magicks. At the beginning of the episode the Scoobies, Anya, Tara, and Riley are having a picnic on the beach. Xander is unable to light the grill so Willow does thanks to her magicks explaining that it is easy as long as she balances the elements, so when you affect one you don't end up causing-Just then a thunderstorm comes in and Willow denies any responsibility for it. Since this scene is followed by Dracula’s arrival in Sunnydale it is possible that Willow is right that she didn’t cause the thunderstorm and that Dracula did so to cover his arrival in Sunnydale. But did he? What if Willow doesn't have her balancing act together?

At the beginning of “Buffy vs. Dracula” Giles appears to have found a solution to his season four mid life crisis, he is going, he tells Willow, to return to England. He even lets Willow play the role of Watcher Junior in preparation for the time in which he will no longer be by Buffy’s or the Scooby’s side. At the end of the episode, however, the best laid plans of former Watcher Giles to return to England are put on hold when Buffy tells him that since the Combo Buffy spell and the dream battle with the first she has been “hunting”, as Dracula called it, and that she needs his help to understand her power, the power Dracula hinted at. Buffy asks Giles to be her watcher again. Giles smiles. Giles is staying. Giles is going to be Buffy's Watcher again. Yeah!

Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles aren’t the only ones who get a “Restless moment. Spike calls Riley “cowboy” when Riley goes to Spike for help in finding Dracula. There is a lot of macho tension between the two and Riley tells Spike that while Buffy may not be willing to stake him now that he is helpless he doesn’t have any such problem. Shapes of things to come? Did you notice how Tara, unlike Willow, did not work the magicks?

“MOM!!” The other “Restless” moment that is at the heart of “Buffy vs. Dracula” is the counting down to 730 prophecy that we first heard in “Graduation Day” and heard again in “Restless”. In the last scene of “Buffy vs. Dracula” Buffy is back at 1630 Revello before dawn or after dawn, depending on your perspective, of day five of the episode. Joyce tells Buffy that if she and Riley are going to the movies that night she should take her fourteen-year-old sister Dawn with her. Buffy has a sister? Her name is Dawn? Is Buffy's sister what 730 and be back before dawn referred to?

It seems it is. In the season five “Featurette on Dawn” Joss Whedon says “We had set it [the arrival of Dawn] up in the end of season 3 with Faith saying, you know, 'counting down from 730' which is 2 years exactly by the day.” In his commentary to “Restless” Whedon says, “Buffy's dream [in “Restless”] has a lot of references to Dawn and what's going to happen next year [season five]…”Restless” is the first time mention was made of Dawn. It's also the time Michelle Trachtenberg actually came to visit the set. She had worked with Sarah [Michelle Gellar] before, and she was a big Buffy fan, and so she came to visit the set, and I met her that day. Sarah introduced us, and I spent some time talking to her, and afterwards Sarah said to me “You should get Michelle to read for the part of Dawn. She's just great.” And so I think there's some fate going on there. The fact that she showed up the first time the character was ever mentioned, and then went on to play her."

It’s off to season five…

The Chorus. Buffy vs. Dracula” does everything a season premiere episode of Buffy usually does. It nicely weaves the past into the present, and sets the stage for the future. There are some really funny bits in “Buffy vs. Dracula" from Xander attempting to cover up his slip of the tongue in the presence of the Scoobies at Giles's, calling Dracula his Master by adding “bator” to the end to Buffy returning to the scene of her eurotrashing of Dracula to stake him again, “You think I don’t watch your movies?”, she says. Buffy breaking the fourth wall again.

Buffy Blog: "Restless"

From the vantage point of season four “Restless” seems an odd episode on which to end a season of Buffy particularly when you compare it to the adrenalin rushes of the previous season ending Buffy episodes “Prophecy Girl”, “Becoming”, and “Graduation Day”. From the perspective of seasons five through seven, however, “Restless” seems to take several themes that have haunted Buffy the Vampire Slayer—growing up, the psychological traumas of growing up, responsibility—and add a bit of new blood into the mix (pun intended)—the nature of Slayerness, in particular—to lay the thematic ground for the rest of Buffy from season four until its end in season seven. From this vantage point “Restless” is both the first episode of season five and the opening salvo in Buffy seasons five through seven.

In his commentary on “Restless” Buffy creator and “Restless” writer and director Joss Whedon calls “Restless” his attempt at verbal and visual free associating poetry. The visual qualities of “Restless” are similar, in many ways, to Whedon’s shooting of the Buffy and Angel sex scene in “Surprise”/“Innocence”, a style Whedon compares, in his commentary on “Innocence”, to the visual style of David Lynch. There is some Lynch in “Restless” as well thanks to its visual style, its poetic form, and it’s dreamscape as well as, according to Whedon in his commentary to the episode, the Orson Welles of The Trial, the Stanley Kubrick of Eyes Wide Shut, and the Steven Soderbergh of The Limey and The Underneath. In its focus on the subconscious or unconscious issues haunting our Scoobies in their dreams “Restless” shares a lot with the Buffy episodes “Nightmares” (1:10), “Halloween” (2:6), and “Fear Itself” (4:4) all of which explored the subconscious or unconscious fears of our Scoobies.

It is these dreams and the reason for them that make “Restless” more than simply a dreamscape of free association poetry. Free associating poetry “Restless” may be but it is also a linear—yes I have gone all linear on you Xander—narrative tale that probably contains more symbolism per square 43 minutes or so than any other episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any episode of American television before it. Whedon structures “Restless” around the dreams of each of the Scoobies. The dreams of Willow, Xander, Giles, and Buffy constitute the four acts of “Restless”. These dreams take us into the minds of the Scoobies, just as “Nightmares”, “Halloween”, and “Fear Itself” did, to reveal the fears, fears very much tied to the theme of growing up, that is at the heart of Buffy, fears the Scoobies have which are generally left unsaid in their waking life.

Restless is a bit odd from the very get go. Unlike every other Buffy episode until now, “Restless” begins with the Buffy theme song and goes directly into a teaser. “Restless” opens shortly after the battle between Adam and the Scoobies that we saw in “The Yoko Factor” and “Primeval”. The Scoobies Willow, Xander, Giles, and Buffy are together at 1630 Revello for the first time in season four. Riley is with them. He is facing a debriefing at the Initiative "in the morning". He expects to be discharged from the Initiative with an honourable discharge because of his role in saving the day and the knowledge he has of the governments own “Bay of Mutated Pigs”, as he puts it, so he leaves but not before Joyce pointedly, as she says, says it is nice to meet him. Shades of Buffy keeping Angel a secret from Joyce.

With Riley gone the Scoobies, still feeling the adrenalin rush of battle, tell Joyce that they won’t be able to sleep and so they are going to watch a film. Xander wants to watch Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Apocalypse Now but Willow and Buffy prefer a chick flick while Giles prefers a British guy flick, something Xander has, in his video choices, has already prepared for. With Joyce in bed upstairs because she is tired the Scoobies are soon asleep downstairs as well.

“Camera moves slowly to…face”. Restless” begins in normal Buffy “realist” mode (every book, film, and TV show creates its own sense of “normal” “reality” that viewers either accept or reject). As we enter the dreamscapes of each Scooby, however, Whedon takes us into a theatre within a theatre (the rehearsal and the performance of the reflexive "Death of a Salesman"), a film within a film (the riff on Apocalypse Now), and a television show within a television show (Xander plying his trade as ice cream salesman as Dream Xander-voyeuristically a la Hitchcock-watches) world, theatrical, filmic, and televisual worlds which Whedon, throughout most of “Restless”, plays with in somewhat Brechtian alienation effect fashion.

In “Restless” Whedon undermines the “realism” the series has built up over the previous four seasons. Each of our Scoobies dreams in “Restless” are built, on one level, around journeys, the journeys of each of our Scoobies toward growing up and the psychic traumas that result from those journeys. Each of the dreams begin with Whedon panning his camera slowly up to the faces of each of our Scoobies. Once inside Whedon’s dreamscapes we see a very different Buffyverse. We see a Buffy who is flapper in Lulu wig, a Riley who is Cowboy Man (“Restless” has apparently made him into John Wayne, a reference to Buffy’s “Who died and made you John Wayne” quip in “The Initiative”) and, along with Adam, a World Domination Guy, a Harmony who is a European milkmaid peasant girl with braids, a Giles who is a theatre director who finally gets the before the show theatre circle right (a reference to “The Puppet Show” where his speech in the circle was less than motivating), acting that is sometimes self-conscious, a Giles and Anya who speak dubbed French in a scene at UC, Sunnydale, a Joyce who is trapped in a wall, exterior dayscapes, including dayscapes in the desert, which are overexposed, interior shots that are blue, green, and orange thanks to blue, green, and orange gels, interior shots in black and white, the use of a 17 mm lens to give a sense of motion along the walls in Buffy’s house and at UC, Sunnydale, rear screen projections playing the role of rear screen projections, Steadicam tracking shots as Xander wanders from set to set, negative images of Buffy as she goes all primitive, 4:3 frames that are largely empty with characters placed on the bottom or or on the edges of the frame, space and time manipulations, and a Greek like chorus.

“It's exactly like a greek tragedy”. The Greek chorus—Chorus Anya says “Restless” is like a Greek tragedy—is made up of several characters in the Buffy verse including Tara, the Cheese Man, Buffy, Giles, Olivia, Willow, Xander, and Anya, all of who function as oracle throughout the episode as they comment not only on the journeys of each of our Scoobies past and present, but in some cases, the future journeys of our Scoobies, and on what is going on narratively in “Restless” in our Scoobies dreams.

In her dream Willow worries that, despite how safe she feels with Tara in Tara’s room, where she writes the poetry of the Greek poetess Sappho on Tara’s nude back, and behind the vaginal curtains (this is what Whedon calls them in his commentary on “Restless”) before she enters her Sunnydale High School stage, both lesbian references, her journey may still take her back to the softer side of Sears loser that she and others thought she was in high school, a fear symbolised in the transformation of the Willow of season four into the Willow of season one and season two who stands in front of a Sunnydale High School class in one of her softer side of Sears dresses and with her long hair back reading her book report. There are other things that are haunting Willow in her dream as well. Just as Willow wasn’t sure why Oz chose her as his girlfriend, she is not sure of why Tara is with her, a fear symbolized by Tara and Oz flirting in the Sunnydale High class. Nor is Willow over her stage fright. Willow refers back, at one point, to the disastrous Madam Butterfly stage role she was forced to play in “Nightmares”. And just as Willow’s family and everyone she has met was in the audience in “Nightmares” they are in the audience in “Restless” waiting to see Willow star in “Death of a Salesman”, a, very different “Death of a Salesman” from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

In his dream Xander is worried that his journey will never take him out of the basement he is living in. Realising, thanks to Joyce, that instead of being a "conquistador" he is a "comfortador" Xander still worries that he is not fully a part of the Scoobies, a fear symbolised by Joyce telling the Xandman that the other Scoobies have left him behind at 1630 Revello and when he sees Spike apprenticing as a Watcher, Junior. Apparently Xander hopes or hoped he might be in line to become a Watcher thanks to his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Giles in season four. He continues to fear that he will end up as soldier guy in his own version of Apocalypse Now. In his version of the film he, playing the Martin Sheen role, is brought before Principal Snyder (a wonderful Armin Shimerman), playing the Marlon Brando role, who compares him to decomposed mulch. There is still a lot of the sex on Xander’s mind in his dream. Remember "Surprise"/"Innocence" (2:13 and 2:14) and "Earshot (3:18)? Xander has a thing for Joyce and is interested in the possibility of the little girl on girl and guy action Willow and Tara invite him to partake of at the back of his ice cream truck, a little girl on girl on guy action for which Xander leaves girlfriend Anya, an Anya Xander fears is failing as a human and is going to return to vengeance demoning—is Xander fearful that Anya will go all vengeancy on him? Xander ends up following Willow and Tara, who have disappeared, by crawling past sheep graffiti (shout out to Cordelia calling the Cordettes sheep in “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”, 2:16) only to end up back where he began and to which he keeps returning, his dark and dank basement.

In his dream Giles continues to worry about where his life is going after being fired as a Watcher. He may no longer be a Watcher in real life but, in his dreams, he brings his Slayer to a scary nightmare carnival in a graveyard to teach her how to kill vampires by throwing balls at the vampire dummy carnival game. Olivia, who is back at least in Giles dreams, tells him to take it easy on the Buffster after Giles tells her to hold her elbow in when throwing and telling Buffy that he doesn’t have any treats for her as a reward for killing a vampire. Giles seems to harbour little hope for him and Olivia as she breaks down crying after she is unable to fold up the baby carriage she has been pushing as Giles and her walk with Buffy through the nightmare carnival. Spike has a cameo in Giles’s dream just as he did in Xander’s. Giles sees Spike as carnival act in 1930s film black and white. Apparently he sees a Spike who has been to the vet as no longer a threat to him or the Scoobs. Anya also has a cameo in Giles’s dream just as she did in Xander's dream. In Giles’s dream Anya fails at being a stand up comedian. Is Giles afraid that failing at being human Anya will return to her vengeance demon days?

“Restless’s” dreamscapes are not purely surreal nor are they unreal. In “Nightmares” the dreams of the Scoobies burst forth into “reality”. In “Restless” the "reality" of what the Scoobies did in “The Yoko Factor” and “Primeval”, break into our Scoobies dreams bringing forth a somewhat different kind of primeval force. Throughout Willow’s, Xander’s, and Giles’s dreams we see fragmented images of the episode’s monster of the week, images that become more and more complete as our Scoobies continue to dream in succession. In Willow’s dream the kino eye reveals, as the script says, glimpses of a woman who is stalking Willow who appears to be wearing soiled rags, rags not unlike a mummy's, who has black hair in coarse dreads as a result of neglect, not for fashion reasons, a face painted in coloured clay and with long, almost clawlike nails. Willow’s dream ends as the Primitive” sucks Willow dry, a la “Inca Mummy Girl” (2:4). In Xander’s dream he hears someone, something, making scratches behind the upstairs door to his basement apartment, catches a glimpse of the Primitive waking on its knuckles just as a panther growls, and watches as his father comes down the stairs, complaining as he comes that Xander doesn’t spend time with him and his mother anymore and wonders whether he is ashamed of them, morph into the Primitive who kills him by pulling out his heart. In Giles’s dream we see the full silhouette of the Primitive as indoor lighting strikes behind her. Seeing her Giles says, “I know who you are. And I can defeat you. With my intellect”. Before Giles can kill the Primitive with his intellect, however, she slashes him across his forehead killing him first.

It is in Buffy’s dream that we finally learn who the monster of the week is. It is “the first, the first Slayer. Sineya (Sharon Ferguson). It is in Buffy’s dream that we see and hear the first Slayer for the first time. And it is in Buffy's dream that the monster of the week, the first Slayer, is named. Naming plays an important role in “Restless”. Tara and Willow try to come up with a name for their cat, “Miss Kitty”. You’d think, Tara says, that she would have told us her name by now. Tara tells Willow that she doesn’t know everything about her yet, and she doesn’t as we know from “The I in Team” and "Goodbye Iowa" where Tara intentionally botched a spell she and Willow were performing. Willow responds by asking Tara if she has told her her real name. Riley and Adam in human form are filing and giving things names in their World Domination headquarters. When Buffy asks Adam what his name was before he became Adam, he replies that not a man among us can remember. It is women who finally name the threat to the Scoobies in their dreams. First Tara, then Buffy, speak the name of the first Slayer, “the first”. With the name spoken the dream spell is broken and Buffy tells herself to wake up. This Sleeping Beauty needs no Prince Charming. As Buffy wakes so do the other Scoobies. This weeks threat over, at least for the moment.

“Restless” ends with the Scoobies sitting once again around Joyce’s and Buffy’s table telling Joyce about the battle with the first they just fought. The power of the first Slayer, they surmise, was affronted when they joined manus, Slayer power, with Willow’s spiritus, spirit, Xander’s animus, heart, and Giles’s sophus, mind, to create Combo super Buffy. The first Slayer, by the way, makes the punishment of each Scooby fit the crime. She sucks the spirit out of Willow, pulls the heart from Xander, slashes Giles’s forehead, and tries to kill Buffy in ancient Slayer fashion.

Beyond the fears of our Scoobies and the attack by the first on our Scoobies, both in their dreams, both of which are at the narrative heart of "Restless", a number of other themes weave their way through the episode. There is the reference to 730 again, a reference that once again raises the question of what exactly 730 is. There is the theme of friendship, a theme that has been at the heart of Buffy since it began, a theme interwoven with the tradition that the Slayer fights alone. There is the theme, the new blood I mentioned earlier in this blog, of what a Slayer is. There is the theme of growing up. And then there is the Cheese Man.

The Cheese Man Cometh. Though Whedon said in his commentary on “Restless” that the Cheese Man and his statements and movements—“I”ve made a little space for the cheese slices”, “These will not protect you”, “I wear the cheese. It does not wear me”, “the Cheese Man leans into frame, dangling a couple of slices invitingly"—are meaningless and just one of those weird things that happen in dreams this hasn’t stopped scholar fans and fan scholars from writing about the meaning or meanings of the cheeseman and cheese in the Buffyverse (see the articles by Fionnagh and Melanie Wilson below). And let’s not forget that Buffy, thanks to being turned into a rat in “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” has, as Willow tells Riley and us viewers in “Doomed”, a thing for cheese.

“THE CLOCK reads 7:30”. When talking to Chorus Tara in her bedroom in her dream Buffy says that she and Faith just made her bed, a reference, of course, to the Faith and Buffy collective dream in “Who are You” and “This Year’s Girl” earlier this season. Buffy also notices that the digital clock in her room says 7:30, a reference to what Faith says in another Buffy and Faith collective dream, this one in “Graduation Day”. Chorus Tara responds by telling Buffy that, “Oh, that clocks completely wrong”. So 730 is still to come? As Buffy leaves to find the other Scoobs Tara reminds her to “Be back before dawn”…Be back before dawn? At the end of the episode Buffy goes upstairs to take a shower, stops and looks into her bedroom, sees that the bed is made and hears Chorus Tara’s voice in voice over saying “You think you know. What's to come, what you are… You haven't even begun.” Are we going to learn something new about Slayerness in season five and beyond?

“Have you seen my friends anywhere?” As Buffy wonders through the dreamscape of her bedroom, of a UC, Sunnydale where she finds Joyce in a closet, and the offices of world domination guys, she searches for her friends asking where they are. Is Buffy naming her friends? When she and the first finally confront each other in the desert Buffy asks the first where her friends are. The first, through her oracle of Tara, tells Buffy that a Slayer lives in the action of death, in the blood-cry, the penetrating wound. The Slayer, she says, is absolute destruction and is absolutely alone in a world she doesn’t walk in. Buffy responds by telling the first, “I'm not alone”. “I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze, I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don't sleep on a bed of bones. Now give me back my friends.” The first refuses speaking for herself for the first time, “No… friends… just the kill… we are… alone”. Buffy rejects this ancient tradition of a Slayer alone for a new tradition of a Slayer with friends and family once again and says to the first that you are not the source of me. So will we learn about more Slayer mythology in season five and beyond?

"Is that a fact?". Buffy tells Adam that she is not a demon when Adam tells her that she and he come by aggression differently than humans. In “The Yoko Factor” and “Primeval” Buffy told Forrest that she was not a killer. Isn't the first a killer and doesn't Buffy, by putting coloured clay on herself in her dream, connect herself to the first? Is the first a demon?

“Also in terms of hair care…Not big with the socialization…or the floss…”. Buffy criticizes the first’s hair care, Xander her lack of socialization skills, and Willow her lack of flossing skills. Some academics have seen this as evidence of Whedon and Company’s Western ethnocentrism. I have to admit that occasionally these references to the first’s lack of hygiene (there are so many references to hygiene in Buffy that one might wonder if it was a theme to the show if it wasn’t clear that it was a parody and satire of teenager and adult obsessions with how one looks) skills and lack of socialization skills make me uncomfortable. Perhaps these remarks, however, are supposed to make viewers uncomfortable since they may reflect one theme of the show, Buffy’s, Xander’s, and Willow’s continuing struggle to grow up and move beyond the cultural blinders of late twentieth century middle class American ideologies of hygiene, beauty, and socialisation. On the other hand these remarks may be meant to be humourous. Or perhaps they function to return the Scoobies to from their surreal Wizard of Oz dreamscapes back to their mundane “normal” Buffy world. Joss Whedon, in his commentary to "Restless", says that Buffy’s mundane comments to the first function as a means to bring the dreamscape in which the Primitive threatens her and her friends to an end and hence reflects her return to her mundane mental world of old.

So we’re finally off to season five. At this point Willow, Xander, and Giles appear to be on journeys they would rather not be taking. Willow fears journeying beyond her vaginal curtain world with Tara scared that she will once again see the softer side of Sears. Xander would like to journey beyond his dark and dank basement but at this point he can’t seem to get out of the underground lair he keeps returning to again and again. Giles would like to journey back to his days as a Watcher but is not sure he can. And Buffy seems to have embarked on a journey that I am not sure she wants to be on either, the journey to find out who the Slayer within her is. After all Buffy told the first very pointedly that she was different from her. She, she told her, is a Slayer with friends and family.

The Chorus. Fascinating and important symbolically dense episode with tonnes/tons of character developments. Yet another Joss Whedon penned and directed episode that pushes at the boundaries of conventional American television while still keeping the episode fully within the narrative structure and thematic concerns of the series as a whole.

Awesome. Anthony Stewart Head singing “The Exposition Song”, written by Whedon and arranged by Buffy composer Christophe Beck. The band performing the song is Four Star Mary, the band who were the real musicians behind Oz’s band Dingoes Ate My Baby in seasons two through four. “The Exposition Song” sums up what Giles has concluded about the monster stalking them in their dreams. It is, he sings, some primal evil released by the spell they cast in “The Yoko Factor” and “Primeval”.

References
Transcript of Joss Whedon’s Commentary on “Restless”,
http://stormwreath.livejournal.com/69633.html
Transcript of Joss Whedon’s Commentary on “Innocence”,
http://stormwreath.livejournal.com/121980.html
Joss Whedon, Commentary: “Restless”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Fourth season on DVD)
Fionnagh, “An Analysis of Cheese as a Metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”,
http://www.whedon.info/article.php3?id_article=5318 http://www.stonesoup.co.nz/ecoqueer/archives/003318.html
Melanie Wilson; “Why the Cheese Man Is an Integral Part of Restless” in Kevin Durand (ed.); Buffy Meets the Academy: Essays on the Episodes and Scripts as Texts (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), pp. 161-168

Buffy Blog: "The Yoko Factor" and "Primeval"

Last week in “New Moon Rising” we were given hints as to what Adam’s master plan might be—to provoke a demon versus human war that would leave both sides depleted and Adam, presumably, in charge. Last week Adam enticed Spike to aid him in his plan by promising to remove that pesky chip from our caged wild at heart animal’s head. Spike’s role in Adam’s chess game was to manipulate the Scoobies and the Slayer in to playing their role as pawns in the demon/human war on Adam’s chessboard. In “The Yoko Factor”, written by Doug Petrie and directed by David Grossman, and “Primeval”, written by David Fury and directed by James Contner, Adams’ plan comes to fruition but doesn’t quite end, as we will see, in the way he quite intended.

There are, as is always the case in Buffy, several things going on in “The Yoko Factor” and Primeval” at once. In the teaser of the episode Buffy has just gotten back from LA where she and Angel have gotten into a fight over Faith. Faith, as I mentioned in the blog to “Who Are You” went to LALALand to get her revenge on a Wesley who turned her over to the Watcher’s Council in “Consequences” (3:15) and an Angel who spurned her for Buffy in “Enemies” (3:17). In the two-part episode “Five by Five” and “Sanctuary” (1:18 and 1:19, 25 April 2000 and 2 May 2000) Faith, after terrorizing Angel and torturing Wes, thanks to Angel, sees the error of her ways and, like Angel, begins the difficult path toward redemption.

Buffy is hardly in a forgiving mood when she arrives at Angel’s LA apartment in search of Faith and finds the two hugging. Shades of “Enemies”. Buffy wants to turn Faith over to the police but Angel wants to give Faith the opportunity to turn herself in and take her first baby steps toward redemption. At the police station where an arrested Angel has been taken for harbouring fugitive Faith, he and Buffy have an intense verbal fight that ends with Buffy telling Angel that she has a new life and a new boyfriend and Angel telling Buffy that his loyalty to Faith has nothing to do with her and that LA is his town and that she should go back to Sunnydale. She does.

As Buffy returns from LA Xander brings Riley, who is still hiding from the Initiative at the old Sunnydale High School, some clean clothes and take his dirty ones to launder. Thanks to Buffy heading to LA Angel is on Riley’s mind and he asks Xander about Angel. Riley fills in the blanks as to what Buffy told him about Angel between “New Moon Rising” and “The Yoko Factor”/“Primeval” but, as Riley learns, while talking to Xander about Angel, the Xander who still hates Angel’s guts, Buffy left out one important point in their conversation, that it was Buffy and Angel sex that turned Angel into Angelus (season two). As a result Riley goes into jealous boyfriend mode.

The Buffy-Angel-Riley triangle reaches a crescendo when Riley, who has patched into the secret Initiative radio frequency, hears a report that an Initiative team is being torn apart by something and goes to help. That something, as Riley soon finds out, is Angel. Since jealous testosteroned poisoned boys will be boys the two fight--Angel is the stronger--until an Initiative patrol shows up sending both fleeing furtively to Buffy’s dorm room. In her dorm room Buffy forcibly calms them both down and then talks to each of them separately. Angel apologises to Buffy and Buffy apologises to Angel telling him that he was right, they now live in separate worlds and that she has no right to come into his world and make judgements about his decisions. Heading back to LA Angel tells her that in the future he’ll apologise, if necessary, by phone. Buffy then talks to Riley who jealously wonders aloud whether the Buffster has had sex with Angel turning him evil once again. Riley is surprised to learn that the Angel, the Mr. Billow Coat King of Pain guy the girls really go for, the Angel he has just had a run in with, is experiencing one of his “good” days. Buffy asks Riley how he could even think such a think and asks him if she has ever given him cause to be jealous. Realising that he has gone “nuts” because of his jealously Riley says no she hasn’t. Buffy and Riley crisis over for the moment. Question marks still remain, however. Where is the Buffy and Riley relationship going? How does Angel fit into it? Hopefully season five will tell.

While the Buffy-Angel-Riley arc is an important thread running through “The Yoko Factor” and “Primeval” it is not at the centre of the episode. That place is reserved for several arcs and the interrelationship between them, several arcs that have wound their way throughout season four and which now come to a kind of conclusion, the Scoobies disassemble arc, an arc grounded in the Scoobs leaving high school, the Scoobies versus the Initiative arc, an arc grounded in the different knowledges about and different ways of dealing with the demon world the Scoobies and the Initiative have and act upon, and the Adam arc, an arc intimately related to and tied to the Initiative arc and grounded in the Initiative’s attempt at, as we will see, world domination.

As “The Yoko Factor” and “Primeval” begins Adam is still moving his pieces around his chessboard and Spike is continues to help him. Adam is still counting on the Slayer being in the think of his demons and humans war but, at Spike’s suggestion, he decides to have Spike break up the Slayettes so they can’t come after Adam and muck up his plan before the great demon and human war.

Spike uses his old tricks to break up the Scoobies. He plays on Giles’s fear that we have seen throughout season four (and even before) that he is no longer really a central part of Buffy’s life. He plays on Xander’s fear that that he is useless and really doesn’t play a role whatsoever in the Scooby battles against evil. Remember “The Zeppo”!. He plays on Willow’s fear that she is Buffy’s sidekick and that Buffy, Xander, and Giles think that Willow’s Wicca thing with Tara is nothing more than a college phase she is going through. He plays on Willow’s and Xander’s fears that Buffy, with her sense of superiority, looks down on them even though she is, as Xander says, superior. By the end of the first part of the episode, “The Yoko Factor” the question marks Spike puts into the minds of each of the Scoobies about each other does its intended work and after an intense shout and blame match the Scoobies go their own ways not because, as Spike tells Adam, he broke them up any more than Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles, but because, just like the Beatles, the Scoobies were already spitting apart on their own. And he’s right. As Willow says, it is hard to keep the old high school gang together after high school.

The Scoobies are not the only ones who are being torn apart. While Buffy is out hunting Adam she runs into Forrest who tells her that his family is being torn apart, the Corleone Family (reference to Mario Puzo’s 1969 book The Godfather and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 film adaptation of the book) Buffy sarcastically replies. Though Buffy and Forrest say they are going their own ways they go their own ways into a cave in front of them looking for Adam. And Adam they find. After a fight in which Buffy tries to save Forrest by pushing him out of the way and in which Adam once again tosses around Buffy like a plastic toy, Adam kills Forrest.

Now Buffy has to tell Riley the bad news. After the big Riley versus Angel testosterone match in her dorm room Buffy tells Riley that Forrest is dead, killed by Adam. Riley in blank stare mode tells the Buffster he has to leave. I initially thought that Riley wanted to be alone it with the pain of the death of someone he was very close to or perhaps that he was going to pull a Giles (“Passion”, 2:17) and hunt down and try to kill the hybrid beast who killed his best friend. In the final scene of “The Yoko Factor” we see Riley walk into Adam’s lair. Adam says, “I have been waiting for you”. Riley responds “And now I’m here”.

The second part of the episode, “Primeval”, begins where “The Yoko Factor” left off. Buffy and the Scoobies have been split apart and Buffy is no longer wondering why there isn’t a prophecy about the Chosen One and her Friends. A Slayer with friends or without, of course, has been a major theme in Buffy the Vampire Slayer up to this point. Buffy goes in search of the one person who she is sure she can trust, Riley, but Riley has deserted and is missing in action from Buffy’s point of view, anyway. We viewers, however, know where Riley is. Riley is, for some reason, in Adam’s lair.

Now we viewers learn why Riley is with Adam. Adam tells “brother” Riley the real nature of Mother’s, of Maggie Walsh’s, plan for them both. They are part of an experiment that will provide the US government and its military the opportunity for world domination. Riley, like Adam, has been modified by Mother thanks to a behaviour modification chip in his chest and is forced against his will to obey every command Adam utters, though his will fights against Adam’s control over him. Riley struggles, in other words, against his Initiative conditioning. The betwixt and between Riley, the Riley betwixt and between the Initiative and the Scoobies and not quite a part of either, it turns out, thinks too much as Colonel McNamara tells the government agency types in suits at the beginning of the episode.

Though it appears that every chess piece is in its correct place on Adam’s chessboard there is a flaw in Adam’s plan as Adam and Spike soon realise. Adam has filled the Initiative’s holding cells with demons convinced by his demagogic rhetoric that he is on their side and that he is going to set them loose on their Initiative enemy, his version, as Xander says, of the Trojan Horse. If the Slayer presence in the Initiative is essential if the kill ratio of demons and humans is to be evened out after he releases these demons into the Initiative so that he can build an army of hybrid demon/human/technological beings like himself, how is she going to be enticed into the underground Initiative lair when the Scoobies have broken up and Buffy needs Willow’s help to decrypt the computer discs Adam has had Spike give Giles in order to entice Buffy into the Initiative’s lair?

Spike, with the promise of a “chipperectomy” is off to rectify the damage he has done. Buffy, checking out the cave she earlier found Adam in, runs into Spike near Adam’s now deserted lair. She tells Spike of the Adam danger. When Spike mentions to her that she should get on the computer discs he has given Giles and Willow, Spike goes on to make one of those proverbial slips of the tongue when he tells Buffy that her falling out with Willow can’t get in the way of finding out about the valuable information on those discs. How did Spike, Buffy wonders suspiciously, know that she and Willow, the two birds, have had a falling out?

Buffy reunites the Scoobies sans Anya and Tara on the UC, Sunnydale campus and tells the Scoobs that it was once again Spike who set them up and knocked them down. The Scoobies reunited head off to Giles’s place to do some research in order to figure out how they can fight an Adam who, they learn, thanks to the automatic decryption of the computer discs in Willow’s possession, wants the Slayer in the Initiative but is not really worried whatsoever that the Slayer might kill him.

Meanwhile Adam has his gang together again as well in a secret lab behind room 314 in the Initiative. Walsh and Angleman, artificially reanimated and now walking corpses, are there to help him with the medical procedures necessary to turn war dead into hybrid army. Adam has already turned Forrest into something nearly as “bad” as he is, a preview of Adam’s coming attractions, and as Riley is to become.

Things are looking dire for our Slayer. Just when all seems lost it is Xander once again to the rescue. “All we need”, he says, “is a combo Buffy with slayer strength, Giles' multi-lingual know-how and Willow's witchy power”. And that is what they get. Making their way into the Initiative by repeling down the lift/elevator shaft the Scoobies escape the Initiative, an Initiative that is clueless as to what is about to happen, who have captured them, after Adam unleashes the demons in his Trojan Horse on the Initiative, and head to the room near Adam’s secret lab. There Willow, Xander, and Giles do a spell—so that is what the magic gourd was for—while Buffy heads off into the secret lab to find and fight Adam.

Buffy finds Adam and Walsh and Angleman and Riley in Adam’s secret lab. Riley? Adam leaves for his command headquarters to continue to push the buttons on his chessboard and leaves Buffy to a now superstrong Forrest who has been yearning to take on the Slayer and kill her for some time. Buffy, with Riley’s help, a Riley who through force of will manages to cut into his chest with the glass from a beaker that has been broken while Buffy and hybrid Forrest fight, manages to remove the chip in his chest and escape the experimental ties that bind. Riley thinks too much. He takes Buffy’s place in what has become their tag team match against Forrest. Buffy is now free to follow Adam into his surveillance centre where the experiment has gone to watch the battle taking place in the Initiative.

Meanwhile Willow, Xander, and Giles put Willow’s spiritus, spirit, Xander’s animus, heart, Giles’s sophus, mind, and the power of the Slayer, the first Slayer, the first of the one’s, manus, hand, into the daughter of Sineya, Buffy. In a remarkable scene, the camera, as the Scoobies perform the spell, begins to circle around the Scoobs. As the spell proceeds and begins to work the camera, circling the Scoobies faster and faster, travels, once the spell has kicked in, from the Scoobies to Buffy in a spectacular piece of montage, transforming the Buffster into super combo Slayer in the middle of her fight with Adam. It is this Slayer of the spell, this combo Slayer, the Slayer who combines aspects of Buffy, the Slayer, Willow, Xander, and Giles, who defeats Adam by pulling the power core out of his body. Thank you Jonathan. Too bad Buffy doesn’t know it was you who gave this information to Riley.

Cavities Defeat Science. One of the narrative themes of season four has been the stark contrast between the military follow the orders of the leaders Initiative and the ever questioning primeval Scoobies. It is the “she’s just a girl” Buffy and her band of freaks with their “backward”, actually primeval, knowledges, who win the day putting an end, if for the moment, to an American governmental and military attempt to harness demons in hybrid form for use for the use of the American military in, presumably, service to American imperialism.

With the Scoobies victorious the American government decides to shut the Initiative down, to fill it in with concrete, to burn it down and salt the earth, a la what ancient Rome did to ancient Carthage, as one governmental official says. And, this being a government with a security state mentality, it decides to monitor the civilians, the Scoobies, the “civilian insurrectionists” who saved the Initiative from casualties greater than the forty percent they suffered. Should the Scoobies decide to go public with what they know the US government has prepared the usual measures to counter such "fabrications". So is the real big bad of season four the governmental-military-industrial complex the Initiative represents?

“Opted Not to Join Us Despite the Fun We Had at Our Last Meeting”. While Buffy, Xander, Willow, and a drunken Giles the semi-Scoobies Anya and Tara head to Giles’s bathroom to wait while the storm blows over. Nor do Anya and Tara come to the Scooby meeting Buffy has called at UC, Sunnydale after the big blowup the day before. Anya and Tara still aren’t full-fledged members of the Scooby Gang.

The Continuing Saga of Giles’s Front Door. It is Spike once again who comes unnoticed into Giles’s apartment while the Watcher is performing—in preparation for a return concert at the Espresso Pump?—a spectacular version of the Lynyrd Skynyrd tune “Free Bird”. Spike snarkilly says something to Giles that probably some of us in the viewing audience have wanted to say to him for awhile, “You know, for someone who's got "Watcher" on his resume, you might want to cast an eye to the front door every now and again”. Perhaps Giles’s seemingly ever open door to anyone who wished to walk in is a metaphor for the Watchers very un-Watcher-like behaviour in season four and his sense of not knowing exactly what to do with his season four life.

A Little Guy on Guy Action? I suppose some academics would see homoeroticism in Riley’s and Forrest’s relationship, but is there, really? Or, if we viewed academic analysis as simply a form of reading just like any other reading, would we have to ask why academics see homoeroticism in so many books, films, and television shows these days? Does this reading say something about the social and cultural contexts of contemporary Western academia?

Next Season on Buffy. So the Initiative is defeated and it’s on to season five. But hey aren’t I jumping the gun? Isn’t there still one more episode yet to come in season four?