In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will forget to change this opening comment before posting. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:
- Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
- Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
- Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
- Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
- Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
- The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
- All the monsters look like wieners.
- If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
- Angel is a dick.
- Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
- Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
- Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
- Science and technology are not to be trusted.
WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it.
Dreams in the Buffyverse are awesome. There, I said it. And with the exception of the season four finale, no episode of Buffy does dreams as awesomely as this one.
We open in The Master’s lair. Buffy is there and ready to slay, stake in hand. But when she faces The Master, it doesn’t go well:
Know what happens when a Slayer has a bad day?
Willow: “My parents don’t even bicker. Sometimes they glare. Do you know why your folks split up?”
Buffy: “I didn’t ask. They just stopped getting along. I’m sure I was a really big help, though. With all the slaying and everything. I was in so much trouble. I was a big mess.”
Willow tells Buffy that she’s sure her dad didn’t leave because of that, but it’s clear that Buffy still feels differently. Wow, what a powerful conversation guys, really. This not only clears up questions the viewer has about Buffy’s home life, but it adds another layer to Buffy’s burden of being the Slayer. She has this destiny she has been chosen to fulfill, but she believes it destroyed her parents’ marriage. In this scene, Buffy not only becomes a more realistic character, but she becomes a sympathetic figure to children of divorced parents everywhere, because face it, everyone thinks that they are somehow personally to blame for their parents’ break ups.
In a classroom, Cordelia is admiring herself in a compact mirror when a “doofus” blocks her light. Xander sticks up for Wendell the doofus by taunting Cordelia (fairly, in this case) for her belief that the world revolves around her. The bell rings, and they sit down. Willow asks why Cordelia is so “Evita-like,” a slur I repeat here only because any time I mention Juan or Eva Peron on my blog in any context whatsoever, I’m handed my ass by angry Peron fans in the comments. So, let me state here that I think Willow has Eva Peron mixed up with Patti Lupone’s portrayal of her in the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, and the comparison is unfair.
Xander asks if there was any homework, and Buffy and Willow remind him that it was on active listening, a skill the teacher demonstrated with him the day before. Xander wasn’t actively listening, though, because the teacher had on a tight blue sweater. Xander does remember the sweater, so he feels pretty confident that he was really listening. (5)
Buffy drops her pencil, and when she looks up, baby Joseph Gordon-Levitt is there!
Willow: “I don’t like spiders, okay? Their furry bodies and their sticky webs, and what do they need all those legs for, anyway? I’ll tell you. For crawling across your face in the middle of the night. Ew! How do they not ruffle you?
Xander: “I’m sorry. I’m unruffled by spiders. Now if a bunch of Nazis crawled all over my face…
Did anybody else start singing, “What do they need all those legs for anywaaaaay? SPIDERS! SPIDERS IT MUST BE SPIDERRRRRRS!”
Just me? Okay.
Xander actually has a pretty good handle on the situation here, citing the Hellmouth as the reason he can’t get too shaken up about stuff like spiders coming out of books. He has utter faith that Buffy will slay anything that threatens them.
In the library, they find Giles acting kind of suspicious. He comes out of a back room and tells them he “got lost.” How big is the Sunnydale library? Not big. At this point in the episode, the storyline hasn’t become entirely clear to the viewer, and later we’ll be like, “Okay, so that’s what’s going on,” but in my head canon this scene has nothing to with the plot of the episode at all, and Giles was back there with Jenny Calendar losing her piercings all over the damn place. It would explain why he looks so guilty and confused when he comes out of there.
Giles tells the kids to go talk to Wendell who is at school for some reason. I am sorry, I send my kids to school with runny noses or if they’re just having a bad day. I’m like, “suck it up, you’ll have to go to work like this when you’re a grown up.” But if their textbook was full of fucking tarantulas? You know what? Take a few days off. Or like, maybe go to a different school altogether.
Wait, why would spiders hold that against Wendell? It’s not his fault they died. He was at camp. Why didn’t his parents check on the collection? Surely some of their money was tied up in the care and maintenance of these animals.
Doctor Exposition Dump: “She’ll recover. She’s got a couple of shattered bones, a little internal bleeding. She got off pretty easy.”
Buffy: “Easy?”
Giles: “Have you looked up the word lately?”
Doctor Exposition Dump: “Well, the first one’s still in a coma.”
Buffy: “First what?”
Doctor Exposition Dump: “The first victim. They found him a week ago, exactly the same M.O. as the girl, only he’s in worse shape. If he doesn’t wake up soon… Somebody’s got to stop this guy.”
Okay, this is all pivotal plot information. And I get that this is before HIPPA, but come on. Even before HIPPA, a doctor wouldn’t just give all this information out to any random person. There had to be a better way for them to get this info. Maybe the could have overheard some nurses talking about how the cases were similar, or a detective could have come to speak to Laura. Instead, we get this doctor who watches too much CSI speculating on modus operandi of criminals in two cases that might be entirely unrelated, and it’s up the viewer to suspend disbelief. Look, we’re already out here accepting that there are vampires and witches and Hellmouths, so the real world details have to be right. If they’re not, we will fixate on them like an out-of-pattern tile.
Meanwhile, in the same community theatre production of Grease:
Buffy: “What do you mean? You can read like, three languages.”
Giles: “Five, actually, on a normal day. But the words here don’t make any sense. Gibberish!”
I’m going to state for the record that “gibberish” is an underutilized word.
Why does Giles have so many newspapers. I find it difficult to believe it took more than one or two tries to realize that the problem was with him and not the papers themselves. There are like, a minimum of two hundred thousand newspapers on that table.
Buffy picks up a paper and notices Mini-JGL on the front page, wearing a Little League uniform. Well, actually she says “kiddie league” but Little League is trademarked and they can get right on your ass for that. She reads about how he was found beaten after a game. She and Giles put two and two together, that she can’t have seen this kid at school if he’s in a coma. Giles suggests that it might be an astral projection, and Buffy notices the nineteen on Mini-JGL’s uniform. Just then, a wild ALMONZO appears:
Hank Summers: “It was you.”
Buffy: “Me?”
Hank: “Having you. Raising you, seeing you every day. I mean, do you have any idea what that’s like?”
Buffy: “What?”
Hank: “Gosh, you don’t even see what’s right in front of your face, do you? Oh well, big surprise there, all you ever think about is yourself. You get in trouble. You embarrass us with all the crazy stunts you pull. Do I have to go on?”
Buffy: “No. Please don’t.”
Hank: “You’re sullen and rude, and you’re not nearly as bright as I thought you were going to be. I mean, Buffy, let’s be honest. Could you stand to live in the same house with a daughter like that?”
Buffy: “Why are you saying all of these things?”
Hank: “Because they’re true. I think that’s the least we owe one another. You know, I don’t think it’s very mature getting all blubbery when I’m just trying to be honest. Speaking of which, I don’t really get anything out of these weekends with you. So what do you say we just don’t do them anymore?”
And Buffy looks like this:
Jesus, Almonzo, why are you such a dick?
This is actually a super hard episode for me, because I was, in fact, brutally rejected by my own father. Not quite so eloquently as old Hank here, but still. It’s rough, and I suspect there is more than one person out there who identified strongly with Buffy’s horror in this moment, because they had been there. I know I said some really awful shit about David Greenwalt’s writing before, and it was all deserved, but this scene is like bottled reality, and it’s the bottled reality moments in Buffy that make it so special. You can throw vampires at an audience all day long, but the things that really scare them are torn from real life.
Buffy’s dad leaves, and Buffy catches a glimpse of Mini-JGL, but she looks away; she doesn’t want to believe that the things her father said to her aren’t true, or are a figment of her imagination. Kudos to Sarah Michelle Gellar for her acting in this scene, because you get literally everything on Buffy’s side from her facial expressions.
Willow and Xander find Giles in the library and explain Xander’s bought of sudden public nudity. While recounting the details, Willow muses aloud that the attention would be the worst part. Xander calls the experience “a total nightmare,” and Willow has a lightbulb moment.
Xander: “Um. Our dreams are coming true.”
Giles: “Dreams? That would be a musical comedy version of this. Nightmares. Our nightmares are coming true.”
HA! Careful what seeds of bad ideas you plant in Xander’s head in season one, Giles, because they will bite you in the ass when you find yourself providing lead vocals for a training montage in season six.
Giles realizes that it’s Mini-JGL who’s causing all of this, by astrally projecting out of his own nightmares and bringing everyone else’s nightmares with him.
Remember the nice thing I said about David Greenwalt’s writing? When Willow asks how Mini-JGL managed to bring everyone’s nightmares to life, this is the only response the script offers:
Giles: “Things like that are easier when you live on a Hellmouth.”
Deus Ex Hellmouth much?
“I thought I was gonna die!”
Xander: “You were a lousy clown. Your balloon animals were pathetic. Everyone can make a giraffe!”
Go Xander!
The scoobies run outside, where they find general chaos:
Giles: “Things are getting worse. In a few hours, reality will fold completely into the realm of nightmares.”
How do we know this, Giles? Baby, you know I love you. But you gotta be more specific, because you always are. I know it’s not your fault. It’s the writing. In every other episode so far, the audience has been given detailed backstory about why things are happening, and when. To ask us, in episode ten of a twelve episode season, to just blindly accept that because Giles says stuff is bad, it is, isn’t going to fly. Especially when Giles a) can’t read the books that would lend him expertise on this crisis and b) has admitted to not really understanding what’s going on. If the story takes away his power in the mentor/exposition role, then the script can’t ask us to trust that he has the answers.
Giles thinks if they wake Mini-JGL from his coma, everything should be fine, but they can’t leave Nightmare High without looking for Buffy. They notice that across the street, things are looking a little odd…
Willow: “Excuse me. When did they put a cemetery in across the street?”
Xander: “And when did they make it night over there?”
The gang rightly assumes that Buffy should be in that cemetery. As they walk, Xander wonders aloud about whose nightmare they could be in. And then Giles spots a headstone with Buffy’s name on it.
Giles: “It’s mine. I failed… in my duty to protect you. I should have been more… cautious. Taken more time to train you. But you were so gifted. And the evil was so great. I’m sorry.”
No worries, Giles!
Giles: “You never told me you dreamt of becoming a vampire.”
Buffy: “This isn’t a dream.”
Giles: “No. No, it’s not. But there’s a chance we can make it go away. This all comes from Billy. Now, if we can only wake him up, I believe that the nightmares will stop and reality will shift back into place, but we must do it now. I need you to hold together long enough to help us. Can you do that?”
This is enough to help Buffy regain her confidence in her skills, but she warns them that she’s getting hungry. In other words, she’s got to keep from eating her friends before getting unvamped.
This is one of my favorite Buffy/Giles scenes, because it shows how much he cares about her, and how highly he regards her, even after just a few months. He is truly in awe of her skill and her strength, and he wants her to succeed. Which for a slayer basically means not dying, but also, not giving up even when some dire shit like being turned into a vampire goes down.
As they head to the hospital, Willow asks Giles how he knows things will go back to normal, and what will happen if they don’t, and Giles tells her, as politely as possible, to shut up. It’s going to be rare in the series for Giles to be curt with Willow. In fact, it seems to only happen when he’s worried about Buffy. Because of this, I’m going to use any time Giles snaps at Willow as proof of #2 throughout the entire series.
You know what’s a shitty place to be when reality is turning to nightmares? The hospital. The place is in chaos, there appear to be zombies, and Dr. Exposition Dump’s hands have turned to deformed claws. They find Mini-JGL, still comatose, and Giles’s expert solution is to shout in the kid’s face. Luckily Mini-JGL is like, bi-locating? He’s standing beside his own comatose body when he says that it won’t work. And you know, Mini-JGL is right, without ever having to go to medical school. Shouting at people in comas rarely wakes them up. Reeeeeeally dropping the ball here, Giles. You’d think a dude with his history of head injuries would understand that.
Willow discovers that outside the window, a near Biblical invasion of wasps is plaguing Sunnydale. The ugly man appears, and that’s good, because Buffy the Vampire Vampire Slayer is spoiling for a fight to reduce her stress. She beats the ugly man unconscious, then tells Mini-JGL he has to do “the rest.” Wait, what? Is she going to make a twelve-year-old commit murder?
Nah, he just lifts the ugly man’s face off like a rubber mask on a Scooby-Doo villain. Light pours out, and everything goes back to normal. Mini-JGL wakes from his coma and reenacts the end of The Wizard of Oz, and Giles is about to go get a doctor when Mini-JGL’s kiddie league coach comes in. When the man fondly refers to Mini-JGL as “lucky 19,” Buffy reveals that Mini-JGL is awake and tells the coach that they’re on to him. They know he beat Billy in revenge for missing a catch in the game. Mini-JGL tells the coach that it wasn’t his fault they lost the game, there are eight other players on the team. When the coach tries to run, Xander and Giles stop him. Buffy congratulates Mini-JGL on his victory, but maybe she could also drop in a, “Please don’t solve all your problems by turning reality into a living hell wherein all our darkest fears come true next time, okay?”
At school, where everything is back to normal, Buffy expresses disbelief that an adult could go so psycho over baseball. She tells Xander it was heroic to grab the coach, and they’re all glad he’s in jail where he belongs. And oh, look!
Yay, momentary reprieve from inevitable parental abandonment!
I mean, come on. Everyone knows reality isn’t going to collapse as a result of baseball. Unless the Tigers win the World Series.
I'm only up to the Eva Peron reference, but I'm pretty darned familiar with that couple and Argentine history far beyond the musical and she was kind of sympathetic in the musical while she was a pretty freaking terrible person in reality.
People defend the Perons? Seriously?
A lot of people in this country idolizes them. The main political faction is Peronism, after all. It’s… complicated. I mean, I don’t have a particular fondness for them, but there are a lot of factors involved and I kinda can see how people would become so fanatical over them. It might seem pretty obvious from the outside, but from the inside it looks different. They’re national heroes for some reason, and speaking ill of Eva in particular would piss a lot of people off.
Your opening comments fucking kill me every single time.
I disliked this episode mostly because of the spiders. D: But it's a good one. I'm just an arachnophobe. I can't handly daddy long-legs, let alone those huge, hairy THINGS.
The exploding newspaper also begs the question of why Giles hates technology. Sure, a demon came out of a computer a few episodes ago, but the computers haven't exploded yet! He'll learn. Maybe. I forgot.
Whether I really need the laughs today or you're at the top of your game today, this was the funniest recap you've posted yet! I lost count of how many times I busted out laughing after five.
OMG, I forgot to change the opening comment!
I have to say, I don't have as much problem with 'the hellmouth did it' as you did- I didn't question it while I was watching it, because I actually think it's one of the better catch-all plot devices in sci-fi/fantasy; it's just defined enough that the audience have some idea of what's going on, but vague enough that it allows for some of the more inventive ideas like this episode. I kinda wish Billy had come back later in the series- there were more possibilities to his abilities, I feel.
Anyway, loving the recaps- I can't wait til you get to Restless- SO. MUCH. SYMBOLISM.
Hi, Argentinian passing through. Yes, they defend the Perons. Seriously. I'ts partially the reason we're so fucked up as a country.
I don't know, Jen, I think we should give Team Sunnydale for not realizing the supernatural shit going on.
You know how in a nightmare you don't know it's a nightmare? That's sort of what was going on here: Xander and Wendell explictly say they didn't realize they were awake, and Buffy does truly believe her father is telling her all those awful things.
So I think everyone on Sunnydale must have thought they overslept and were having a particularly crappy dream.
Now, who the hell put that abusive asshole as coach for the kiddie league?!
*We should give them a pass. Damn my freezing fingers and my half-sleep brain.
I'm going to be one of those assholes: his name is actually spelled Almanzo. And I don't have that type of father issue, but Jesus that scene was hard to watch.
This episode seemed kind of flimsy to me, too, and thank you for articulating why. I love these recaps because for every time I think “hmm, that's kind of off, but I can't quite say why” you are always spot on.
For the record, Joseph Gordon Levitt was actually in a movie where his character had suffered childhood abuse by his baseball coach. Kind of adds a whole new angle to Mini-JGL, really.
In spite of that beautiful little tidbit, I always found Mini-JGL's Baseball Coach a little over-the-top and unbelievable. Like it was abuse written by someone who has never experienced it and only understands it in an exaggerated format. Also, where were this kid's parents?
“In spite of that beautiful little tidbit, I always found Mini-JGL’s Baseball Coach a little over-the-top and unbelievable. ”
A few episodes ago, we had a mother so desperate to relive her cheerleading heyday that she was willing to take over her own daughter’s body to achieve that goal. That such a violation would come from a mother toward her daughter is an extreme reflection of how some parents act in the real world. Given those actions, I completely see how the the coach in this episode is an extreme reflection of how some coaches act in the real world. The Hellmouth amplifies problems to the Nth degree, but the core of those problems is often something very, very real.
Yes! When I watched Xander's candy scene, all I could think was, “ooh, a piece of candy! Ooh, a piece of candy!”
This was a surprisingly difficult recap to get through. Nothing wrong with your writing, Jen. It's more to do with my own problems. Have you heard of hypnagogic or hypnopompic states? They're basically waking nightmares – where you start off having a nightmare while asleep, then wake up and they continue, with sleep paralysis and hallucinations thrown in for funsies – and I suffer from them rather frequently. After a while, you realise they're not real, even as it's happening, but that doesn't stop them being scary. Great recap, though.
You also hit the nail on the head with the explanation. Almost literally anything would have been better than 'the hellmouth did it'. I would have been okay with it being a mystery, and having a follow up episode as an explanation, where the kid is a 900 year old wizard, or something.
Wow …
I mean, they freaking harbored NAZIS. And not the warm, fuzzy, Oscar Schindler type Nazis.
I usually feel pretty guilty for just loving the musical.
Minor nitpick: it's HIPAA (two As), not HIPPA (two Ps, almost like Hungry Hungry Hippos). I have to deal with it at work so unfortunately, I'm more familiar with that acronym than I would like to be.
Although my dad didn't abandon me, that scene with Manly is hard for me to watch too. Even though everyone experienced one of their nightmare scenarios and they were all legitimately scary in their own way, most of them were rooted in more unrealistic scenarios while Buffy's was something from her daily/family life. Even if you remove the divorce/dad part, I think most people can relate to believing they were to blame for at least one failed relationship in life which is a terrible feeling. A separate but related terrible feeling is hearing your faults listed by someone you love. That was just a double sucker punch of a nightmare. And then poor Buffy got bombarded with even more nightmare material: being buried alive AND turning into a vampire. Way harsh.
Yeah, I've had a few really angry Argentinians take me to task for mentioning Peron, Mussolini, and Franco in the same breath, because he wasn't a fascist and blah blah blah. It's like, okay… he wasn't a fascist, but he did imprison and torture the opposition, silence the press, provide fake passports to Nazis and obstruct international justice to protect war criminals… I'm not sure the comparison is necessarily unfair.
I have never re-watched this episode, for two reasons: spiders, and clowns.
And you put pictures of both in this re-cap.
I don't think I'll sleep tonight.
All your other points were good, just… *shudders* Clowns. AND spiders.
Well, to be fair, Juan Perón did some good things. He gave the workpeople a lot of rights they didn't have before. That's kind of like saying that Hitler was a big time sponsor of architecture, but yeah… that's the reason Peron remains so popular.
But he was Mussolini's fanboy, and everyone knows that.
As I recall, Xander was also the only one to properly, and single-handedly, defeat his nightmare. So, just saying, the author-avatar was the only one 'man enough' to pull himself together. Yeah.
“Did anybody else start singing, “What do they need all those legs for anywaaaaay? SPIDERS! SPIDERS IT MUST BE SPIDERRRRRRS!””
Well, I actually just started singing about bunnies and their suspiciously good eyesight, but eh… same diff. You're not alone!
I don't know, the whole “The Hellmouth Did It” thing doesn't really bother me. Because there are later episodes where the Hellouth causes things like this. Marcie in Out of Mind, Out of Sight comes to mind. And the students going all crazy en masse in season 7. It might be a lame reason, but it is something that gets continued.
I thought it was sort of sweet that Xander was still attracted to Vampire!Buffy, it shows he isn't just trying to get with the hot girl but he has genuine feelings for her. You don't always remark on things that go against your list of points, and I think this is one of his anti-Nice Guy moments.
Like an above commenter I'm happy with the Deus Ex Hellmouth, I don't usually pay much attention to the exposition for stand-alone episodes anyway…
That's true, it does go against his anti-nice guy thing. I guess I didn't point it out because he made it clear that he thought it was fucked up, LOL. And later in the series, it becomes clear that Xander is down with the demon, he doesn't discriminate.
I think the reason it becomes a device and not a plot point in this episode is because that's all the explanation there is. In Out of Mind, Out of Sight, the Hellmouth affected the girl because she really felt invisible. There was a reason it was happening, and at the end you get evidence that it had happened before. We don't get a reason why Billy was able to affect the entire town the way he did, other than “he was abused” or “he was in a coma.” Just “that's the Hellmouth for you!” What made this kid special? What was it about him that made him able to do this? Otherwise, this could happen any time a kid went into a coma. That's what's missing from the episode, and I think it's obvious because the writing on the rest of the series is usually so good, we as viewers get spoiled. I'm judging the episode by unfairly high standards set by the rest of the show being so damned amazing, LOL.
Almanzo? Well, that just doesn't look right, LOL.
That's what I thought too. I was like somebody better mention it somewhere.
“Which doesn't really fit with what happened in the movie, but whatever”
But the show isn't a continuation of the movie, so it doesn't matter
PSA, y'all- if you ever wake up not being able to read, please go to your nearest hospital.
Especially if you get knocked out every episode.
LOL!
In my mind, heart, and soul, it always will be. *cries one manful tear as a majestic bald eagle soars against a purple-hued sunset*
Xander is often quietly a hero. I wonder how much of that is creator avatar and how much is just coincidence. But now that I'm thinking about it, Willow doesn't get to save the day in a big way very often…
Those are the WORST.
I fortunately only have them very infrequently, but they scare the hell out of me when they happen. I couldn't imagine having them any more often than a couple of times a year.
No you weren't the only one who started singing and now I have it stuck in my head.
I definitely started singing the bunny song after I read that.
Every evil dictator did “some good things.” Oy.
Oh well. I guess everyone has their fans. And a lot of people hate the Jews, so maybe they don't care about the harboring Nazis thing.
Am I the only one still looking at that picture of Xander? I didn't remember him looking that nice the last time I watched this series. Then again I was in elementary school (and only had eyes for Angel).
This episode does raise the question of what would happen if a slayer was vamped. Would she retain any of her slayer abilities plus her new vampire ones? I don't think this is ever addressed in the series.
Is this the only time we ever see Papa Summers? If so then he basically abandons her like in her nightmare.
We see him a couple more times, but not many.
I'm curious about the Slayer-becomes-vampire thing, too. I mean, you know there has to be a Slayer who has been turned at some point in history. I would think vampires would be chomping at the bit to be the one to turn a Slayer. But I don't think it's ever mentioned. Maybe Watchers have to kill their Slayers if they're turned?
That would explain why the Watcher are able to fight/handle vampires.
That's one thing I love about the show – it's not as male-gazey as most of its contemporaries (at least, it wasn't during the first three seasons – IMHO the show slowly went to hell after that so I'm not nearly familiar with the later stuff), but we got some awesome female-gaze moments. Most notably the sloooow pan over Xander in a Speedo in that episode with the swim team. And of course Xander-in-his-underwear in this episode.
Yeah, Nicholas Brendon is really rather easy on the eyes. I actually found it impressive how well the viewer gets distracted from that fact and instead is led to see Xander as the goofy, often slightly pathetic “average shmoe” who is (at least at first) mostly the comic relief*. It's really a credit to Nicholas Brendon's acting skills and/or the writers and directors.
I know I am not the only one who at first bought the “Xander is just some goofy shlub” characterization hook, line and sinker (and at a decidedly older age than Nim). I watched scenes in which the Cool Mean Girls made sneering comments about that dork Xander and how embarrassing it would be to be associated with him without a hint of cognitive dissonance.
…and then that swim team episode that Meredith mentions happened, and Xander walks in wearing only a speedo, and I went “holy shnikes, Xander is hot! How have I missed that this whole time?”
And even then, I can't even take much credit for finally seeing the obvious. The show pretty noticeably switches from its usual portrayal of Xander to that very explicitly female-gaze slow pan over his body that Meredith points out – and to top it off, one of the female characters (was it Cordelia? that would actually be pretty nifty foreshadowing) says something along the lines of “wait a minute, since when has Xander been hot?” So I really missed Nicholas Brendon's pretty darn blatant hotness until the show hand-held me towards this realization with explicit cues. ::hangs head in shame::
This was actually one of the first times I noticed how much a media work can manage what the audience perceives, up to and including hiding/denying some pretty obvious things, through writing cues, good acting, clothes, angles, etc. I'm actually still quite impressed with that, if done well.
I suppose it should also make me a bit less judgmental of other people who ignore obvious things about fictional characters because the story tells them something else – like, say, FSoG readers I've mocked here before. Though I do think that BtVS works harder, and does a better job, at making us think of Xander as a goofy shlub despite evidence to the contrary than FSoG does of convincing us that Ana is a strong woman despite evidence to the contrary.
*Even though, as Jenny points out very well in these recaps, he actually gets to do some serious saving and feats of heroics/strength right from the start… but still, these never end up recasting the character as the Big Damn Hero. Instead, they come across as “average guy makes good” (giving the [male] viewer some wish fulfillment through a viewer avatar), but Xander stays in character enough – and everyone keeps treating him accordingly – that we still keep seeing him as “just a goofy average-good-guy shmoe”.
You know, dude's all tattoed up now.
And he plays a nerd on Criminal Minds 😛
I kind of agree with the theory that people were just thinking they were dreaming. I woke up this morning crying because of a dream, so XD
Even better.
And as a special treat for us Nicholas Brendon admirers:
(SPOILER ALERT) You know the episode where Xander gets duplicated/split? Ever wonder how they filmed some of those scenes? I thought it was some sort of special effects magic, but no, they simply invited Nicholas Brendon's identical twin onto the set. That's right, there are two of them. Sometimes Mother Nature just has a generous day.
Ha, I actually had rather a thing for Xander in my teenage days, but I didn't want to admit it to my friends at the time (we were and are obsessed with this show) because we were /supposed/ to be fawning over Angel.
Thank you, Belegeuse (awesome name, by the way) 🙂 .
I remember really liking this episode when I first saw it. Mostly for Buffy's realistic and heartbreaking nightmare with her father. When I first saw that scene, it actually made me cry. The way he said all that stuff and the way her face just froze was so effective.
“The Hellmouth did it” is a very bad excuse to explain what's going on. Such a blanket statement is just annoying. The kid could have been possessed by a demon, or something, and that wouldn't have been as far-fetched.
I had not thought about Buffy's fear of being buried alive when season six came around. I can't believe I forgot about that. Well, maybe I can. I was so angry at Willow when that season happened. It all turned into something I didn't like from then on
I am terrified of clowns after an experience at the circus when I was very little. I wish it was as easy (and awesome) to overcome that fear as getting frustrated and rattling off a Yelp review. Though, Xander did make me very proud during this episode by being the only one to “fight back” against his nightmare.
“Did anybody else start singing, “What do they need all those legs for anywaaaaay? “
Yes. Yes I did.
The scene with her dad and the look on her face breaks my heart every time.
“And I don't have that type of father issue, but Jesus that scene was hard to watch.”
Amen! I don't have that type of father issue either, and that scene just makes me cringe. It's every child's worst nightmare, idyllic childhood or no. OUCH.
I didn't know they had a name! That's happened to me a few times.
Huh. The more you know! *shooting rainbow star*
“At school, where everything is back to normal, Buffy expresses disbelief that an adult could go so psycho over baseball.”
Hmpf. Buffy clearly never went to any of my nephew's soccer games. The kids at these things are usually fine; some of the adults scare the daylights out of me.
I liked this episode, if only because the nightmares actually seem realistic. At the ripe old age of 44, I STILL have the one where I'm in class and about to take an exam for something I never studied. And it still disturbs the crap out of me.
I would have gone with “Vampire Buffy the Vampire Sayer”, but awesome review! I'm loving them. Thank you.
maybe the whole “the hellmouth did it” was part of the nightmare… it was the audiences nightmare about not knowing what was the cause of everything in a Buffy episode…
Not sure if any other comments mentioned it, but regarding your lovely paradox question about the Buffy being the Master’s nightmare since the haven’t yet met… I think we still have a “logical” explanation:
Buffy has been dreaming about the Master throughout the season and right at the beginning of this episode. Reality and subconsciousness cross over a bit, so in theory, she has “met” him, even if while asleep.
I think it’s in a later episode too (season finale?) that Giles(?) says something about Buffy having the prophetic “dreams,” so there is enough reality to her dreams.
PS I always get a happy when when future episodes are foreshadowed by a random comment (e.g. “once more with feeling” in this one, and xander referencing “railroad spikes”in a previous episode, etc)- and smile when you pick up on it in the recaps.
PSS thanks for always calling out Xander’s “nice guy-ness.” He was always such a jerk (and often the most cruel character to Buffy) in so many ways that it drove me crazy watching the show when it was originally on. Now seeing the recaps he gets even sleazier in his stewardship of Buffy’s sexuality. But hey, I have nothing against ogling Nicholas Brendan in a Speedo later on…double standards be damned!
However, to play devil’s advocate on this- sometimes I wonder if those aspects of his character (and other troubling themes) were dropped in intentionally by the writers. I always felt that part of it was the writers directly pointing and waving: “here is this example that is completely anti-feminist/slut-shaming/ (or insert another theme that is bothersome), and we are being ironic and intentionally placing it here.”
Not that they wanted to portray that as an ideal in their world-building, but they wanted to drop it in as a real world issue that exists, and show that their characters are representations of things that are faulty in the real-world. I don’t usually take it at face value because I assume that most of the show is using irony to display real world issues. This makes me feel better : )