Sseason 2 EpisodeWhat’s My Line Part 1 and 2This episode is written with no consideration for plausibility and every consideration for forwarding character’s emotional storyarcs. Jane Espensen, a writer for Buffy, has a great website that gives advice to would-be TV writers on how to write a spec script to get into the business. In one post she advises that writers should start with an emotional moment or action that a character is not likely to have and then write the spec script to answer the question “what would have to happen for x to happen?” So, it seems like the script for this two part series was written sort of like that — there are a LOT Of payoffs in this episode in terms of the buffyverse mythology, characters emotional lives, and actions. Many many things happen and that kind of distracts you from the fact that it’s all just a little too neat.To my mind, the main story arc here, the one that doesn’t feel contrived — is that Spike finally figures out how to get Drusilla cured of her wasting sickness. Of course she needs the blood of Angel (her sire), thus emperiling Buffy’s main emotional support. We also find out that there’s a second slayer b/c of Buffy’s brief death. But the way they introduced her was completely contrived. It’s as though the question was: what would have to happen for the second slayer and Buffy to get in a fight? Make her think Buffy was a vampire which means Buffy has to kiss Angel in vamp face while Kendra (the 2nd slayer) sees them. Kendra is completely stiff and unbelievable and I’m glad they killed her off at the end of the season. I blame this on the fact that they were trying to show that slayers were a worldwide phenom while at the same time giving her this bookish character.  So they made her Jamaican (the actress had listed on her resume that she could do Jamaican accents) but also someone who only has one shirt.  Now, I found out recently that this actress was originally cast as Cordelia(!) but couldn’t take the part for whatever reason. I suppose she must actually be a good actress, and as I watched the episode again, I tried to imagine what her lines would have been like if they’d been played by someone more nerdy, someone not completely stilted b/c they were trying to stick to this crappy accent and it made the episode a lot better.2. Xander and Cordelia kiss — I actually love this, and I think that they set it up pretty well in some of the preceding episodes, having them seek each other out to bicker, almost, and also having them realize that the two people that they are actually really attracted to (Buffy and Angel) were completely into each other (in Halloween). Of course, the only thing that would make Cordelia and Xander kiss is to trap them in a basement after attacking them with a “man of bugs”. This actually foreshadows Buffy and Angel’s sexual encounter where they are so freaked out by their encounter with the Judge that they have to have sex (hey man, Joss said it, not me).3. Willow and Oz finally meet — and we find out that they are basically the two smartest people in the school and therefore, meant for each other.  I love Oz.  The final thing that I found annoying about this episode was that the Order of Tarraka, or whatever, was set up to be this enormous juggernaut that would never stop coming for Buffy. But then, they kill three of them, and they stop coming.  Why?  It’s one of the problems with the show is that each successive villain has to be so much more dangerous in order to get us to be afraid or to put Buffy in peril that when it is defeated, it’s a little of a let down.  Hence the brilliance of making the next villain be Angel. 

Yesterday there was a bona fide actual real, if light, snowfall in D.C. and now there is the best kind of winter day.  The snow piled up on cars and trees, the sky is brilliant blue and the streets and sidewalks are mostly clear to better accommodate the desire to put the babybug in the carriage and take a short jaunt to whole foods for baby bok choy, bread, yogurt, and cheerios.  Did you know they sell Cheerios at Whole Foods?  A chocolate bar will undoubtedly jump into my reusable eco-friendly shopping bag, but that’s okay because it will be dark chocolate and dark chocolate has flavanoids that are good for you. For dinner tonight we’re having asian stle noodle soup with pork.  

Here in D.C. it’s getting a little chilly.  And darn it if I didn’t just look out the window and see some snow flakes.  I’ve looked away quickly in disbelief.  Okay, I’m going to look again — ARGH it’s snow for sure.  Although, snow in D.C. means something quite different from snow in the midwest, it doesn’t really inconvenience one at all, it’s just a slightly thicker and colder rain.  Today I’ve got some writing to do, and then I’m taking the baby bug to my friends house so we can watch her babybug while she gets some alone time.  Later today I hope to finish up my thoughts on the dynamic of the kids fight real monsters/adults fight metaphorical monsters.  ooppss — whilst I had my head turn, the babybug pulled all of my swiffer sweeper cloths out of  a box and onto the floor.  Next time I promise to have a camera ready. 

Chris’s comment made me think about the episode the Dark Age some more, and also reread my post which was totally crappy, as well as full of typos (which I fixed — not all of them, just some of them).   This post was one of those instances — much like when I work on my dissertation — where I’m brilliant in my mind but then in actuality, when I go to type up my insights find I only have about a sentence and it’s not all that smart — rather pedestrian actually. Anyway, Chris mentioned that he didn’t like the relationship dynamic between Buffy and Giles that this episode evinces that the whole “do as I say not as I do” thing rubbed him the wrong way.  At the end of the episode Buffy summarizes the whole interpersonal discoveries by saying something like “well, I found out that in addition to being a grown up, you’re also a person and that’s kind of okay).    One of the things i wanted to explore in this blog series was why the later episodes — to my mind — failed so miserably, that is, what did they lack that the early seasons had?  and I think that this relationship between kids and adults and the horror world being something that belongs only to kids and a few priveleged adults is part of that.  Stephen King writes about this explicitly in the novel IT.  If you don’t know already IT is a monster that takes on the guise of the thing that the person confronting it fears most (kind of like a boggart, only it’s actually powerful and will eat you) — or else a clown, which is fine because clowns ARE the actual scariest things in real life.  King has one of its characters comment that IT preys on kids because their fears are finite, concrete, and easy to take form — werewolves, vampires, mummy’s, giant statues coming to life (did you know there actually IS a giant Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor, Maine?  I didn’t know that until about a month ago) whereas adults fear things like “taxes” “failure” or “stage 3 cancer”.  Hard to personify.   So, to return to the point about Buffy.  The creators of the Buffyverse pretty quickly found out that the best way to threaten Buffy emotionally was with things she couldn’t fight — adult fears — so in the first seasons, that happens the most when her friends and family and especially Angel are put in danger.  After Buffy confronts and faces her own death, that fear is just not going to scare her or us again.   But aside from this, in the 2nd and 3rd season, there are two or three episodes that threaten the “kids fight real monster while the adults keep the world running” theme of the show — The Dark Ages, where Giles is not the stable father figure to anchor Buffy’s world as she fights.  Gingerbread, (an episode I loathe) where the adults want to fight the monster world themselves, and Band Candy, where the adults revert to teenage irresponsibility so a monster can take a terrible tribute.  I’m sure there are others, please mention them in the comments. I think that the theme I mentioned earlier is an important theme of all horror movies that involve teenagers, and especially highschool — the idea is that the kids fight real monsters (which personify the highschool experience) and that they have to keep those monsters a secret from adults because adults (except a few who can be trusted to enter the secret world without blowing the cover) have to fight in the real world with its metaphorical monsters like taxes, death of loved ones, and fear of failure running and stable.  It is important that in the Buffyverse at least in the highschool years, the real monsters — vampires, zombies, and creatures from the black lagoon — were all personifications or some other English lit term for real fears and monsters that teenagers confront on a day to day basis — like peer pressure, jealousy, what have you.    I have one more thought about 60s and 70s live action Disney movies and this dynamic, but this post is already too long, so I’ll save it for next time. 

Season 2 Episode 8 — The Dark Age In this episode we learn about the dark side of Giles. In his youth — far from wearing tweed diapers Giles was a rebel. He didn’t want to be a watcher, he wanted to be a bad ass and so him and his other bad ass friends started to summon the demon Eyghon into themselves while they slept because it was a big high. Umm…. so, basically, they were drug addicts of a sort. It’s not like having Eyghon in them gave them power or anything, just a high.Anyway, present day, for some reason, Eyghon has managed to come back and is possessing and killing off (or rather, killing off and then possessing) all of Giles little clique. Eventually, the demon manages to spirit himself into Jenny Calender — who was knocked unconscious during a fight with the dead guy that was being possessed. You see, Eyghon can only possess people who are unconscious or dead.So the trick becomes how do they free Jenny Calender from a demon without killing her? And in this conundrum we learn a lot of things about Giles, about the power relationship between him and Buffy, and also we have, I believe, a masterful foreshadowing of the Angel turning evil arc.  Only this time instead of Buffy’s actions unintentionally turning Angel evil, Giles actions turn his love, Jenny, evil.  In this episode, instead of Angelus snapping Jenny’s neck, we have Angel wringing her throat to get the demon out of her.  And Angel reminds us, chillingly, that he’s got a demon inside him who has been waiting for a good fight. Giles remarks that this monster is different because he created it.   This realization gives him the perspective and compassion to understand Buffy’s plight only a few episode later when she unwittingly releases Angel’s soul and brings forth the evil Angelus.We also have a great instance of a very strong Willow stepping in to take Giles place — and also Buffy’s place — as someone who makes the plan, executes the plan, and is totally in charge.   

Season Two Episode — uh — 7 Lie to Me

In this episode a friend of Buffy’s from her high school in LA comes to Sunnydale — but it turns out that he really has a brain tumor and is planning on using the Slayer as bait so that he can become a vampire and die young and stay pretty.

Here a couple of interesting character things happen. This is the first time that Buffy has an active reason to distrust Angel (except for the first episode where she finds out he’s a vampire)–she spots him in a park with Druscilla and when he lies to her about that meeting it throws their relationship off — setting up a situation where it seems like she can only turn to her old friend Ford for comfort. We also have Angel turning to Willow for help behind Buffy’s back thus heightening the betrayal from Buffy’s point of view.

And here’s the first inkling of what often becomes a problem on the show — as writer Jane Espensen remarked in her commentary on an episode in the 3rd season (earshot) Buffy being the Slayer is not just an all brawn no brains gig. The slayer is also the general — the strategist — she may not be the brains in the strictest sense, but she runs the show. And when her people start to act without her, or behind her back, or start to mistrust her judgement, well, that throws the whole thing out of whack.

But, as far as I’m concerned, the very best thing about this episode is that it introduces Chantarelle/Lily/Anne: an episodic character with a fantastic arc that lasts all the way into the last season of Angel.

Ford is a great villain (if annoying), yet another in a series of human beings who cooperate with evil out of some really misguided reason. We had Chris Epps who defied death and consented to kill for the love of his brother, we had the frat boys sacrificing to a demon out of greed and power lust, and here we have Ford plotting to feed an entire group of innocent of stupid and foolish kids to vampires so that he won’t have to get ugly as he dies a painful death. But, brain tumor and all, Ford is not excused for his evil actions. As Buffy says “you have a choice — okay, not a good one, but you have a choice.”

Season 2 — Episode 6: Halloween.

Can I just gush for a second? This episosde is SO GOOD, I can hardly function after watching it. One of the all time best hours on TV ever.

The plot: Buffy and freinds buy costumes from a man who casts a spell so that they turn into their costumes. Spike takes advantage of the situation to try to kill the now weak slayer, who has dressed up as an 18th century debutante. The only thing wrong with this episode is SMG’s horrible accent as a non-specific helpless girl from the past.

Everybody has a character arc that’s forwarded — Xander and his problems being a nerdy boy with a slayer for a friend, Willow’s self-confidence (although why does self-confidence have to equal dressing like a ho?), the relationship between Angel and Buffy, Spike’s continuing obssession with killing the slayer, and we even get to see a good side of Cordelia as she flirts good-naturedly with Angel in the Bronze where both she and Angel have been stood up — and of course we get the first glimpse that Giles is not simply the mild-mannered librarian, that he has a dark side, too — one that Ethan brings out with his presence just as surely as his costumes brought out internal weaknesses and strengths in Buffy and friends.

The more I watch this, the more I am impressed out just how tight the script is. All of the major plot turning points flow very naturally out of conversation that is completely in character. For instance, Willow and Giles figure out that the source of the evil costumes come from one particular store because of the confluence of three seemingly random, off the cuff remarks that turn out to have significance later: Cordelia complaining that she won’t get her deposit from Party Time costume shop back because it’s ripped; Giles intimating that Willow is wearing a risque outfit, and Willow responding to that intimation by telling him that Cordelia was dressed much more skankily than she — and then realizing that Cordelia hadn’t turned into her costume like Xander, Willow, and Buffy had.

By the end of this episode, Buffy and Angel’s relationship is solidified as Buffy finally gets the confidence that Angel loves her because of who she is, slayer warts and all.

The moment that we realize exactly what has happened is one of the most viscerally thrilling moments in the show — it’s shot so effortlessly — Xander in the street trying to find the cause of the newly errupted pandemonium, he turns and his toy gun drops down off screen and then his whole demeanor changes and he brings his gun up — and it’s a real gun. The abrupt presence of a real and dangerous military weapon in the clutzy and clownish hands of the hitherto helpless Xander, along with the stealy look in his eye and the obvious assurance with which he uses it, is the epitome of topsy-turvy in the Buffyverse. Our clue that something is seriously and terribly weird. The horror of the universe gone awry is brought to a climax when we realize that not only is Xander an amnesiac soldier but that Buffy is helpless. The savior is brought to heel. But we also learn that the Buffy friends can get it together enough by themselves to save the day — or at least to save Buffy.

Am I the worst blogger or what? Now that I’ve lost my entire audience, I’ll continue. I should warn everyone that my buffy watching has far outpacd my Buffy writing (this is Mr. Elizabuffy’s fault — he always says ‘just one more’) so that my memory of episodes past is getting hazy. But, I soldier on.

Season 2 — episode 5: Reptile Boy

Reptile boy is a monster of the week episode that has lots of juicy turning points for character relationships. The plot is that a college fraternity worships a demon, who ensures the financial success of its members, forever. Once a year (or however long) the frat boys make a sacrifice of girls to the demon and also throw a keg party.

Of course, Cordelia, in her search for rich guys to date, gets her — and Buffy — invted to the party, where they are drugged, chained up, and offered to the phallic snake demon for his pleasure/lunch.

The best thing about the episode is that Willow has her first bust out moment where she lashes into both Giles and Angel for making Buffy miserable.

After eviscerating Giles for running Buffy raggedwith slayer training, se turns on Angel and says, “And you, you’re going to live forever, you don’t have time for coffee?”

The other thing about this episode is the way that Xander reacts to being hazed by the frat guys. During the actual hazing he is just totally blank, suffering the indignity of wearing a bra and wig with the resigned incomprehension of someone who knows that any action on hs part is futlie and all he can do is wait it out. Very understated moment of Xander vulnerability.

Next episode is Halloween — if you did a poll it probably ranks very high on every Buffy fans list of all tme best episodes. It was so clever, unexpected and just darn fun of an episode — it is one of those that makes the series stand out.

Season 2 — Episode 4: Inca Mummy Girl

This is a really sweet episode. It continues to explore the idea of evil actions done by people who are pressed into bad choices due to intolerable circumstances.

The plot here is that an ancient Incan Princess was called to be a sacrifice for her people at the age of 16. She was killed and mummified and then, in the 20th century, discovered and brought on a tour of museums. The ancient shield holding her in place was broken and she escapes and proceeds to suck the life out of a series of men to return and maintain her human appearance.

And she and Xander fall in love.

Ampata — as she calls herself after the innocent and good-natured foreign exchange student she ruthlessly slays (I feel so sorry for him) is a really sweet and beautiful girl who was chosen against her will. She provides a counterpoint to Buffy, who, like Impada, was called to die for the benefit of her people. But, unlike Buffy, who despite a certain ambivalence to her role as Slayer, does actually choose to do it (remember the finale of Season 1) over and over again, even though she doesn’t like it, it doesn’t seem like Ampata actually made peace with her role as Chosen One. And once she gets a taste of a normal life, she will kill anyone that stands in her way — even the person she claims to love — Xander.

The emotional arc continues to explore the Xander/Willow relationship–hammering home the idea that Willow loves Xander and he continues to see her as just a friend. We also see Willow wrestling with the realization that Xander is never going to like her. And we also meet Oz for the first time who shows us that he really gets Willow by falling for her in her Eskimo costume. See, there’s lots of sweetness.

But by far the sweetest scene is the end scene where Xander sums up the differences between Ampata and Buffy. We realize that, even though she bitches about it a lot, Buffy does actually choose day after to day to be the chosen one and to take the sacrifices and petty annoyances that come with it. She doesn’t shirk her duty. We know it now after this episode because we see, in Ampata, what it looks like for someone to make the wrong choices.

That ability to Show rather than Tell the differences between good and bad choices — is one of the real strengths of the early seasons of Buffy and it’s one that we start to lose about halfway through the 3rd season as the show starts to talk too much. But that’s a discussion for another time. Here, the real emotional pay off of this episode is that we finally have Buffy acknowledging to Xander, in a real way, that he was the one who brought her back from the dead.

1. I was walking with my baby in the stroller and a woman passing us suddenly YELLED at me “He’s got that thing in his mouth!!! … the strap!!!” She was talking about the shoulder harness, which is very sturdy and okay for him to chew on and if I tried to stop him every time he did it I wouldn’t get anywhere. So I smiled and nodded and said “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” like an idiot because she kept yelling “THE STRAP THE STRAP THE STRAP” until we were past her.

2. We were on our morning walk–again with the stroller–on a balmy 78 degree (F) morning when a little person (swear to God) sitting at a bus stop spotted the baby and started to go on about how cute he was. The she GASPED suddenly and said “Oh, he looks cold, isn’t he cold?!!” He was wearing a onesie and long pants (no shoes or socks) and it was 78 DEGREES outside.

3. And finally, while shopping with my husb, I was carrying the baby who was just wearing a onesie–it was about 90 F that day–a little 4 year old girl exclaimed in a loud and scandalized whisper to her mother “that baby’s not wearing any pants!”