Part One of Two.
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| Buffy Summers, 20th Century Fox |
In some sense the communal aspect of watching a show is a thing of the past. There are plenty of very popular series being broadcast around the world now, but long gone are the days when twenty million people would be watching Only Fools and Horses on Christmas Day at that instant. Only live sporting events or the like can be, well, events. The key to Top of the Pops success in its old Thursday evening slot (which I'm old enough to remember) was that children could discuss the acts the next day at school. Thus, in 1974 there was a cultural watershed when every child remembers Hitler playing the keyboard. The contemporary name for this is the 'water cooler effect' in which office workers will gather and converse over the previous night's programming. Whilst Buffy was perfectly timed for me, the other dominant force of 90s sci-fi/fantasy television was not. I can still remember having to go to bed before 9pm and hearing The X-Files theme emanate from the living room. By the time I was old enough to stay up to see it, by mid 1999 in a late Saturday evening slot on BBC1, the show was in its sixth season and on a critical as well as cultural decline. The days when you could release a single that rode on the back of the phenomenon were, at the end of the ninth and final season, a mentally distant yet temporally proximate memory of the glorious 90s.
When I think of a show that explored adolescent issues in a less fantastical setting I recall Clarissa Explains it All. When I was around ten years old my grandparents had satellite tv and I used to watch Nickelodeon on a Saturday afternoon (alternating with Cartoon Network). I was just within the audience range to understand the topics touched on, but I was also becoming interested in girls. In a perfect demonstration of the influence of television, I always wished I could climb a ladder into a girl's bedroom like Clarissa's neighbour Sam - even if their relationship was platonic. When the old woman next door with the seriously overgrown garden died a family moved in and they had a daughter who was no more than two years older than me. The equivalent of the ladder was a gap in the hedge and though we had both been in each other's room a few times, in hindsight it's quite clear how much of a difference a year or two makes in the adolescent years. I look back and cringe - I had a girl in my room and I was more interested in talking about Star Wars figures. I was still in primary school. Give me a break.
Not two years later I was in secondary school and lapping up the 'high school as hell' metaphor of Buffy. The depiction of the trials of adolescence had become relateable. Season Two shifted focus onto the affairs of the heart and paired up every member of the Scooby Gang - Buffy and Angel, Xander and Cordelia, Willow and Oz, Giles and Jenny. It's the progress in Buffy and Angel's relationship that is the core of this season and the strength of which makes it my favourite. I don't think the subtext of the show was any more brilliant than when sex with Buffy causes Angel, the vampire with a soul, to lose his soul. After becoming a jerk when he gets what all men want, he, as the alter-ego Angelus, becomes the 'big bad' through to the season finalé. 'Becoming Part II' has been a favourite, if not the favourite, episode since I first saw it. It had a perfect blend of humour (light as well as dark) and drama, a sense of impending doom that I thought was lacking in some other season enders, and an extremely powerful emotional punch. I wouldn't have admitted this at the age of thirteen, but I cried at the end. I watched the late-night repeat and even taped the episode and re-watched it a couple of times that weekend. It was such a favourite that when Sky One repeated the entire series an episode a day in 2003 I wrote a 1,200 word synopsis/review of it for a friend's website - by far the longest thing I had written back then.
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| Screenshot of Becoming Part II, 20th Century Fox |
Season Three began in direct continuity with the events of the last episode. Buffy has run away and is working as a waitress under her middle name in Los Angeles. It's here that we see a darker and more mature setting that would soon play host to the spin-off show Angel. Buffy is living relatively anonymously in a city of millions until events of the episode reconcile her with her identity as The Slayer and role as a protector and defender. Throughout people are kidnapped to a hell dimension, enslaved and dehumanised - when asked "Who are you?" all learn to respond "I'm no-one". Having infiltrated the operation and witnessed the brutality, when asked the same question she finally re-embraces her identity proclaiming "I'm Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. And you are?".
Her identity is later challenged with the appearance of Faith. This is a serious callback to events of the season one finalé in which Buffy dies but is revived by the decidedly un-magical practice of resuscitation. During season two a new slayer shows up due to this technicality but is later killed, thus activating Faith. In a sense this parallels the introduction of Dawn in season five, as Buffy's fatherly relationship with her Watcher, Giles, forces the two into quasi-sisterhood. Whilst there's an element of unhappy family backgrounds for Buffy, Willow, and Xander; Faith is from a conventionally abusive background and never really manages to fit into the alternative family that is the Scooby Gang. By mid-season her alienating behaviour culminates in the accidental staking of a human, for which she is not remorseful, and she sides with the big-bad of the season, Mayor Wilkins, becoming an adoptive daughter to him. Again the show explores tragic circumstance as Faith seeks love all her life and eventually gets it from the villain. Even then there's an unsettling undercurrent to the relationship as the Mayor seems to express it materially - "Thanks, sugar daddy!". Though I never really understood the attraction many had to Sarah Michelle Gellar, my weakness for Eliza Dushku (as Faith) probably reveals too much about myself. It was always rather sad that Eliza had to change how she spoke or risk damaging her vocal cords beyond repair, as I would have gladly been in Xander's place when pounced on by the bad girl with the husky voice. I knew, in the non-biblical sense, a girl in school who had an interest in knives. She dropped out and joined the territorial army. I prefer to stay uncircumcised anyway.
As Buffy becomes more distant from Faith, believing that she is taking her father figure and friends from her, the one thing Buffy wanted to remain distant comes back. Angel is brought back from hell in the first intervention by the "Powers That Be" - their prophecy that Angel would prevent the awakening of Acathla in 'Becoming' being subverted by his relationship with Buffy. As he struggles with the knowledge of his actions as the soulless Angelus, primarily the deaths he has caused over the centuries, he is preyed on by the First Evil - foreshadowing the threat of season seven. Unable to deal with the torment he decides to kill himself by standing on a hill overlooking the town waiting for sunrise. The Powers intervene again providing a touching Christmas miracle of snow. With the sun concealed for the day, he and Buffy can enjoy a walk together out of the cover of night.
In the mid-season is one of the best standalone episodes - 'The Wish'. Arising from the 'what if?' one-shots of the comic book world, episodes featuring drastic divergences and radical changes from the normal course of a show are by now standard fare in science-fiction and fantasy series. One of the most memorable is 'Yesterday's Enterprise' in the third season of The Next Generation, due to the stark shift of the set from bright and beige with psychiatrist on deck to a militarised dark and black. Similarly; when Cordelia wishes Buffy had never came to town, Sunnydale transforms into a shuttered community at night under the control of the demons and vampires attracted to the Hellmouth. The Master was never defeated, Willow and Xander are vampires, and Angel as the vampire with a soul is the object of ridicule and torture. As the reset button will inevitably be pushed by the credits, this form of episode always removes the immortality shields of the main characters. It's a cop-out that we get to see the tragedy of what never was unfold while we avoid the consequences of the story. Nonetheless, we gain an insight into how Buffy could have turned into Faith if she had stuck to the slayer ethos of remaining alone. In the ensuing battle we see Xander, Willow, and Angel all staked and it means nothing to Buffy in this divergent universe, who herself is ultimately killed by The Master. In the antepenultimate episode of the season, 'The Prom', the other students present Buffy with an award for protecting them from the paranormal events that plague Sunnydale - affirming her eschewing of traditional slayer solitude.
That said; whilst her relationship with Angel resumes after his return from hell, he comes to realise the impossibility of their (mainly his) circumstances and breaks it off vowing to leave for Los Angeles after graduation. I will forever associate The Sundays' cover of 'Wild Horses' with Angel having the last dance with Buffy. Following this Faith uses a five-finger discounted compound bow to poison Angel from afar. The cure is the blood of a slayer, and Buffy sets out to get just that from Faith. In the ensuing fight Faith escapes badly injured and is revealed to have slipped into a coma. As Buffy offers herself to Angel she ends up hospitalised from blood loss a few rooms along from Faith. Here the two first share a dream - no less cryptic than subsequent ones. In the concluding battle with the transformed Mayor the Scooby Gang reveal their ace - that they've recruited and armed all their classmates. At this point the existence of the demonic is an open secret although cognitive dissonance covers up the events witnessed by other attendees at the graduation. In a more composed parallel with Buffy's departure in 'Becoming', Angel looks to Buffy through the noir-esque smoke of the destroyed school before walking away toward Los Angeles and his own show.
With Sunnydale High turned to rubble and the class of 1999 graduated, the setting progressed onto freshman year at university. Having rapidly broadcast the first three seasons in a near back-to-back run, BBC2 looped back before gaining the rights to the fourth in Autumn 2000. As only eighteen months had passed for terrestrial viewers I found myself out of step with the show. Though it remained strong, I had been drawn to the show for its fantastical spin on teenage life but now the themes had grown up and become those of people on the cusp of their twenties - although, as is typical in television, the cast was closer to thirty. It wasn't until the show had ended and I finished school that I understood the sense of disorientation that the early part of season four conveys. The introduction of The Initiative and therefore the big bad of the year is very gradual. A good chunk of the first half of the season is spent exploring the new situation. 'The Hush' and 'Superstar' are excellent standalone episodes, the former for horror and the latter for humour making great use of a long-time background character. Unfortunately, fans may recall the crossovers with Angel were ruined by Channel 4 winning the broadcast rights and deciding to start airing a month before Buffy's return on the BBC - thus putting them out of synch to much backlash.
The fate of Faith is resolved for the time being in 'Who Are You?' when she awakens from the coma to find the Mayor failed in his scheme and receives a plot device that allows her to swap bodies with someone else - the other person, of course, being Buffy. In a realisation of Buffy's earlier fear that Faith was stealing her identity, she now does that very literally. Initially Faith sets out to abuse her new body, but by the end she has thoroughly judged herself from the perspective of her host. Both come to understand the other through this vantage and afterwards Faith flees to Los Angeles seeking redemption. Due to the above mentioned airing of Angel on C4 and its continual moving of the time slot I only sporadically saw the show and eventually abandoned even trying, so I never actually found out what happened to Faith between seasons four and seven, nor what happened to anyone after the end of the seventh season.
Eventually Adam, the big bad, recruits the neutered vampire Spike to sow discontent between the Scoobies. For the most part remaining out of sight since being revealed, he believes he has negated the power of the current slayer and engineered a one-on-one confrontation with Buffy instead of the gang united. They, however, overcome their differences and unite in a spell to bind all their strength and that of the entire line of slayers into Buffy as she faces Adam. Their magic succeeds over Adam's fusion of technology and Frankenstein like assemblage of human and demon body parts an episode early. It was a bold move to wrap up the main storyline in the penultimate episode, but I can confidently say it is universally considered a successful one. 'Restless' brilliantly deals with the consequences of the spell that invoked the power of the slayers, rousing the spirit of the first slayer as the gang sleep off the battle. The dreams of the four all offer insights into the characters' minds especially as they stand at crossroads in their lives with Sunnydale High behind them. The broad meaning of each dream is fairly self-evident: that Willow fears being able to grow out of who she was, that Xander is trapped in his parent's basement with no direction in life, that Giles is growing less relevant in the life of his slayer-cum-daughter, and that Buffy will be alone in the end.
The script and visual direction really capture the disjointed and illogical essence of the dreams without losing the meaning that they project. I particularly love the hysterical video posing as Apocalypse Now on the tv ("Men? Oh my god! What happened to my men? Aaagh!"). The almost shot-for-shot parody of the encounter with Kurtz is also impressive and the dialogue changes are particularly amusing. In the end, though, Buffy is not alone. The four survive into a new season directly foreshadowed by Tara's words ("Be back before dawn"). To hark all the way back to my earlier remarks about the 'water cooler effect', the next day on Radio 1 the episode was a point of discussion with many people having watched it and interested in sharing their thoughts. What followed explicitly breaks with the preceding four seasons and for me it marks the end of the road as nearly three years on from my declaration to buy the final three seasons I've yet to do so - it must be nine years since I last saw them. Come to think of it, it's been five years since I watched the first four.
As I said, it's finding time to spend forty minutes looking at moving images that's the problem. This blog doesn't write itself - in the time it took to write this I could have watched fifteen episodes back to back. I was going to republish my old reviews of 'Becoming Part II' and 'Graduation Day Part II' this summer, being ten years since they were written; but whilst they would have contributed an easy 3,000 words, I figured I'd resorted to that tactic too often. Instead I used them as a basis for this lengthy piece and later in the year I'll cover the latter three seasons as there's plenty to examine beyond the educational setting that the show started with.
Finally, after years of scheduling this post it's finished three hours late. A Buffy review was the longest thing I had written ten years ago and, fittingly, this is now the case again.
Drawing on material written June 25th 2003, July 23rd 2003, and August 22nd 2003
[3194 ; 10: 0100-0400, 1400-1700, 2100-2330, 0030-0130, 0230-0300]
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