Act Three
36LLL) The Dingoes are into their next song, "Pain". MUSICALLY SPEAKING: Another aptly-titled musical selection for the evening.
36MMM) "Party Villa, can I rock you?" IT'S SPANISH TO ME!: It's just amusing to note here that the stoner calls the house, "Party Villa," when on-line, a great deal of fans refer to Buffy and Joyce's abode as "Casa Summers." He will refer to it as a casa soon, also.
36NNN) "Bunny?" LITTLE BUFFY FOO FOO: "This is the first time that Buffy is mistakenly called 'Bunny'; Mrs. Rosenberg later does this in Gingerbread."--Anneth, Mon, 06/23/03 at 10:50:57
Interestingly, this did actually occur a previous time, in the original unaired pilot episode, by Principal Flutie (there played by a different actor than the one who appeared in the first season).--Thanks to pr10n for the info!
36OOO) "You got the wrong casa, Mr. Belvedere." POP CULTURE TIME: "Mr. Belvedere was an '80’s sitcom which featured a stuffy English butler."--ponygirl, Fri, 06/20/03 at 20:59:18
36*1) "Sorry that I had to leave, but you don't know what I was going through." LONE SLAYER: See 37Kx4.
36PPP) "No! I don't just mean that. I mean, my life! You know? I, um...I'm having all sorts of...I'm dating, I'm having serious dating with a *werewolf*, a-and I'm studying witchcraft and killing vampires, and I didn't have anyone...to talk to about all this scary life stuff. And you were my best friend." THE SIDEKICK'S REVOLT: One of Willow's most important speeches on the show up to this point, it introduces the idea that Willow is not happy being seen just as the sidekick. She rebels here against Buffy's self-involvement, thinking that Willow only wanted her to talk to her about her own problems. She makes it clear here that she has problems, too, and no matter how earth-shattering Buffy's problems feel to her, Willow's feel just as much so. The theme of Willow demanding that she not be seen as a mere sidekick, or worrying that she is seen only as a sidekick returns in many episodes, including Fear, Itself, The Yoko Factor, and Two to Go. Her last line here, of course, is just heartbreaking. Now we really know why Willow had such trouble keeping her appointment with Buffy earlier. In a way, Buffy's leaving may have hurt her most of all, or at least in a way different than anybody else.
36QQQ) "'Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the *dead*!' Americans." BLOODY AMERICANS!: Giles' elitism about the British being smarter than Americans was expressed most overtly in a similar joke in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date (see 5J).
IGNORANCE IS BLISS: "Joyce is far from the only art dealer to have displayed 'primitive' art without any sense of its cultural context. Giles might well have snarled about 'dealers' and 'interior decorators' as well as Americans. Of course, Joyce's ignorance about an object she was selling in her gallery plays up her complete removal from Buffy's world."--dream of the consortium, Mon, 06/23/03 at 13:55:31
LINKAGE: "Also, Giles does almost this same thing in Season 5 with the statue in Checkpoint that can melt human eyeballs."--Rook, Mon, 06/23/03 at 17:58:55
36RRR) "Jesus!" HOLY HELL!: "Giles yells 'Jesus' just before he hits the zombie, who of course quickly 'resurrects' himself. Hee."--Anneth, Fri, 06/20/03 at 12:00:01
36SSS) "She was running away again." RATTING OUT BUFFY (AND NOT IN THE AMY WAY): Notice how Willow makes no allowances for Buffy here. While in the past, she might have covered for Buffy, saying they were studying all night when Buffy had to patrol or the like, Willow takes Joyce's side here. She doesn't let Buffy explain her way out of the situation, and comes out and tells Joyce exactly what she was doing.
36TTT) "You can't imagine *months* of not knowing. Not knowing whether you're lying dead in a ditch somewhere or, I don't know, living it up..." CONTINUITY CHECK: "As Dawn mentions in Wrecked, the ditch fear was apparently something Joyce said a lot."--ponygirl, Fri, 06/20/03 at 20:59:18
36UUU) "Buffy, you didn't give me time. You just dumped this thing on me and you expected me to get it. Well, guess what? Mom's not perfect, okay? I handled it badly. But that doesn't give you the right to punish me by running away." SHE DOES HAVE A POINT: See 36WWW.
36VVV) Jonathan freezes in the middle of bringing a chip laden with dip to his mouth and looks around nervously at everyone suddenly staring at him. POOR JONATHAN: Another instance of Jonathan being in the wrong place at the wrong time. See 16Dx4, 17XXX, 22TT, 24WW, 32M, 39SSS, and 43Y.
36WWW)
"You know, maybe you don't want to hear it, Buffy, but taking
off like you did was incredibly selfish and stupid." DEBATEY
GOODNESS: "Dead Man's Party is a much maligned episode
on this board and everyone hates Xander, Joyce and Willow in it. I found it
oddly very realistic. Remember it is shot entirely from Buffy's POV. So you
are feeling and thinking what she is. Something the writers are apparently very
good at. Actually they are brillant at placing us so deeply in a characters
POV that we have a tendency to think that characters' views of the other characters
is the valid one or true one. Nope. It's just one little angle. The writers
do give us snippets in Dead Man's Party and Anne
of what the other characters are thinking and feeling and if you watch closely
- you can see that their reactions to Buffy aren't entirely unwarranted or unrealistic
or cruel.
They saved the world with her in Becoming.
At the end of that two-part episode: Xander barely got Giles out alive, Willow
had just come out of a coma and did an amazingly difficult spell, and Joyce
wasn't sure if her daughter had gone off to her death. Buffy just leaves Joyce
a note that she's leaving. (Buffy is 17 years of age and Joyce's only child).
That's uh more than she left any of her friends with. They have no clue if she's
okay, what happened with Angel, etc. As far as they know she and Angel could
have taken off together or Angelus kidnapped her. All they know at the end of
Becoming Part II? Is the world didn't end. That's it. Not sure if Joyce shared
her note with them or not. Would assume so...but still. That just means, Buffy
only saw fit to tell Joyce. Not them. All summer they fight vampires. Get injured.
Try to make things work and try not to worry about Buffy. Has Buffy worried
once about her friends? Not that we know of. Has she thought about Giles? Not
that we are aware of. All Buffy thinks about is Angel. She hasn't sent her mother
a note saying she's okay or any word to Giles. Giles in fact has been traveling
around looking for her - this we find out in Anne.
So Buffy comes back to Sunnydale. She expects everyone and everything to be
the same as she left. Sorry, doesn't happen that way. Part of life is dealing
with change and dealing with the consequences of leaving without any word or
note. Also realizing that other people and their problems no matter how seemingly
trival can be important. She was needed and loved by her friends as more than
just the slayer. In Dead Man's Party she begins to realize that. It's
really not until the next episode that her friends find out the specifics of
how Angel was killed. She tells them little. They on the other hand reveal quite
a bit of how they feel. And to their credit? They attempt to deal with her.
But Buff is not the sort to discuss her problems. She contains everything and
wants to move forward without talking about it. Makes sense - after all up until
Becoming she had
to keep the whole slaying gig a secret from her mom. So discussing things? Just
does not come naturally. This causes all the pent up emotions that everyone
is trying to contain to erupt. Like they always do. In a very bad way.
I felt sorry for all the characters in Dead Man's Party and I saw all
of them at fault. Giles actually was the most adult but that had more to do
with his own unresolved issues of guilt. Xander - had pent up feelings of jealousy,
fear, and insecurity motivating him. (How would you feel if your best friend
and crush, disappeared? Not only disappeared but as far as you knew took off
with a vampire? A vampire you hated? He felt abandoned. And probably that she
didn't care about him.) Willow - geeze, she is wondering if she did the right
thing giving Angel his soul, maybe not, her best friend and only true girlfriend
disappears after she did it. She doesn't know what she did wrong. (I've had
these types of blow-ups with friends before and for a lot less valid reasons
then these.) Joyce - well, I don't have kids, but I do remember how mad mother
got when she hadn't heard from my brother in 24 hours. Can you imagine three
months?? And I'm sure she's still struggling to handle her daughter's calling
as the chosen one, the fact vamps are running about Sunnydale, her kid being
kicked out of another school, almost getting killed, and oh wait...being afraid
she'll take off again when she returns. And this kid is stronger than Joyce
is. Joyce can't do anything to make sure she stays safe.
I objectively think Buffy deserved a little of the ranting she got in that episode,
even though from a purely subjective level? I find it incredibly painful to
watch and hate the characters while they are doing it to her. And want her to
bash them for it. But that's what the writers wanted. They wanted me to view
the episode from the least justifiable pov. They do that a lot. Put you in the
pov of the person who is actually, once you look at objectivel, in the wrong
and make you take their side. Very clever. I've seen other shows do the whole
running away theme and usually we are in everyone's pov but the runaway. BtVS
flipped it."--shadowkat, Tues, 08/13/02 at 10:17:31
"The problem I have is not that Buffy was completely in the right (she wasn't), but that her friends were so clearly in the wrong. The main problem was this: not one of them tried to find out what had happened in the mansion or to understand what might have caused her to flee. They never even asked. They were all accusatory (Xander) or self-centered (Willow). And not once did they stop to consider that their own actions may have contributed to the problem. In fact, even when they did find out (at least Willow did in Faith, Hope and Trick), we never see any apology to Buffy or sense of contrition (at least, none from Xander or Joyce, maybe a smidgen from Willow at the end of Faith, Hope and Trick) (a)...I'm not saying that Buffy was entirely in the right. She wasn't. But Buffy is shown to be entirely in the wrong, and, worse, accepting that conclusion...It's that combination of misbehavior by her friends and Buffy (as usual) taking the blame that makes the episode so difficult (b)."--Sophist, Tues, 08/13/02 at (a) 10:58:06; (b) 15:03:57
"Okay concede on that point. But...it is an interesting episode partly in how it corresponds with two other episodes dealing with a reunion with friends:
1. When She Was Bad - Buffy in this episode is the cold bitch and everyone else is actually nice and almost gets killed partly to her coldness.
2. Dead Man's Party - traumatized Buffy...deals with being kicked out of school and dealing with her life amongst friends again. She'd been alone and in hell most of the summer...She gets scewered by her friends and family. To the extent that you are almost rooting for the zombies to kill them.
3. After Life - the friends are possessed by a horrible spirit demon who Xander inadvertently sends off to kill Buffy and Willow makes solid at the last possible moment.
Apparently reuniting and dealing with people and relationships is hell. Not
excusable. But highly realistic... What I find interesting is how ME stretches
the theme over an arc of episodes. We start in Dead Man's Party, then
revisit the theme of Xander's difficulty with Angel in Revelations,
Amends, and Enemies. We start in Dead Man's Party
with Willow's witchcraft problems and her struggles - revisit this in Gingerbread
(getting a broader picture which shows how truly insecure and alone Willow really
is, unlike Buffy, her mother truly doesn't notice her existence, she appears
to have no one outside of the Scooby Gang and hasn't found a way of handling
this - so is resorting to magic to feel important to fulfill herself, Buffy
has as you suggested found her own way to deal with being alone inside herself
- a way that is far healthier than Willow's), Dopplegangland, and Choices.
We also revisit Xander's insecurities with group and himself in The Zeppo.
It's interesting how the characters flaws are shown, then explained and the
POV shifts.
In Dead Man's Party - we really don't see why these characters are
acting the way they are. Yes they may be in the wrong and I concede rude and
inexcusable...But it's really not until the middle of Season 3 that I begin
in retrospect to see why they reacted the way they did. What motivated them
to do so. And when I start to see some of the reasons - Xander's lack of any
true family life, Willow's similar lack of one - actually once I see this, I'm
amazed these two haven't run away. Notice Buffy is the only one who is celebrating
the season and holidays with her family in Amends. Willow is attempting
to do something with Oz, her parents are nowhere in sight. Xander is camping
outside avoiding his. This is when I find myself forgiving them. Their flaws
make an odd sort of sense."--shadowkat, Wed, 08/14/02 at 06:52:11
"I've
always had enormous sympathy with Willow and Xander despite their faults just
because it's so clear they had nobody but each other to support them while growing
up. It's no wonder that both looked to Buffy and Giles to feel important and
give their lives direction. What's really interesting is that what makes them
so flawed also makes them monster hunters. Why, of all the people in Sunnydale
who know something is very wrong, do these two kids feel obligated to dedicate
their entire lives to helping Buffy? None of the others that Buffy saved, except
perhaps Cordelia, did.
I'm slowly working my way through William James' The Varieties of Religious
Experience, and he states, "...the psychopathic temperment...often
brings with it ardor and exciteability of character. The cranky person has extraordinary
emotional susceptibility. His conceptions tend to pass immediately into belief
and action...." The same emotional susceptibility that makes Xander and
Willow insecure and full of self-hatred also makes them unwilling to hide in
comfortable disbelief. Having found a source of self-affirmation, they can't
go back to the sterile lives they lead before Buffy arrived. Xander especially,
having the more toxic home life, developes an idee fixe regarding monsters,
to the point of being unable to tolerate Angel. It's like he has finally found
some beings he feels superior to, and I'm still convinced that part of Xander's
rejection of Anya has something to do with her having been a demon...Note: I'm
not calling Xander and Willow psychopaths-just people with serious self-esteem
problems."--Arethusa, Wed, 08/14/02 at 08:11:45
"I
find myself in between here. Buffy did indeed just leave everything and everyone
hanging. Until she felt capable of dealing with everything. Joyce had given
her an ultimatum. Not one that any of us believed she truly meant from where
we sat, but Buffy wasn't where we were. She saw a shut door at the time. Giles
had just been horribly tortured by Angelus. Was he the one to go to for sympathy
because Buffy had to send Angel into the hell dimension to save the world? Not
at that time, not from her point of view. As for Xander and Willow, well we
know Willow was risking her life to perform the soul restoration, but what did
Buffy know? She knew that Xander wanted Angel dead, and that according to him,
so did Willow (see 34TTT).
What understanding would she be hoping for there? Not much, not when she was
in that much turmoil. So she left, she had to reach her own coping point without
help, which was perhaps good practice for this past season. When she was ready
(and yes, she was very wrong for not letting anyone know she was at least all
right), she came back. After going literally to hell and emerging whole.
And what happened? Joyce welcomes her home, gladly; but we then overhear that
she thought it might have been easier when Buffy was missing (see 36JJJ).
Willow welcomes her and then leaves her waiting, without any message, when they
were supposed to have their first one-on-one get-together (see 36BB).
Xander and Cordelia aren't available either. Only Giles seems to welcome her
unreservedly. A welcome dinner is planned. Buffy is looking forward to the chance
to talk to everyone. And what happens? No one else, except Giles, wants this.
They revise the plan to a large enough scale that all conversation of any consequence
is prohibited. When Buffy tries to talk to Willow she is shut out. Xander and
Cordelia are clearly otherwise occupied. Oz is playing. Joyce is in the kitchen
with the one person actually more annoying then Ted. Buffy is as effectively
'not there' as if she hadn't come back. And yes, the feelings on both sides
needed to be let out. Yes, very harsh things were said. And while we saw it
from Buffy's point of view, what we also saw was that her point of view was
not accepted as having validity. Xander was worried about her. Joyce had been
frantic. Willow had to deal with changes all by herself. Buffy needed to tell
them how she felt.
But not where, when or how it was done. Not downstairs in a shouting match,
not attacking her in front of all those people they decided should be there
to insulate them from the situation until they decided the insulation was no
longer necessary. It should have happened in the one-on-one Willow skipped on.
It should have happened as a small group of her closet friends over a quiet
dinner like the one that was planned, but was sabotaged by her friends. [Editor's
Note: Interestingly, this same issue will be brought up again in Empty
Places, when Buffy's friends once again "attack" her in public.]
Both parties were wrong here. Buffy for leaving and not letting any of
them help her through this. I find that decision understandable, if unfortunate.
The others were wrong for first shutting her out and then humiliating her with
all her faults in a very public venue. Unfortunately, only Buffy admitted that
she had been wrong, and only Buffy apologized. And then she saved them. Once
again."--LittleBit, Tues, 08/13/02 at 11:35:29
"Hmm,
maybe the whole inappropriateness of Joyce and Xander calling Buffy on her behaviour
in public was the point. It was a kind of stripping away of Buffy's power. From
the others' perspective Buffy had been calling the shots first by leaving then
by returning, it had all been on her terms. Joyce was trying to assert the control
she had lost -- Joyce had played her trump card in Becoming
II with her 'if you walk out that door' and Buffy had called her bluff.
I'm not saying that the scene wasn't painful to watch and I certainly think
that all parties were at fault. But they end up working together, and Joyce
gets to see what Buffy deals with on a daily basis. It's interesting that it's
Joyce, Willow and Xander up in the bedroom with Buffy for the final battle;
Oz and Cordy the people with no issues with Buffy are left downstairs and pretty
much forgotten, while Giles who actually seems to understand Buffy arrives late
(a) I too find this episode incredibly painful to watch (abandonment by
friends is a scary thing to me) yet in many ways it's the episode that caused
me to respect ME the most. It was not an easy homecoming, Buffy may have got
the well-deserved hug at the end of Anne
but that did not erase the consequences of her actions. We as the audience were
in the position of feeling far more sympathetic to Buffy because we had the
privilege of seeing what had happened in Becoming
and what she had endured in Anne, so
to see the abuse that Buffy endures from her family and friends becomes almost
unbearable. However the amazing thing is that the episode reverses this and
Buffy comes to see that she is indeed at fault, that she needs to ask pardon
from those she abandoned.
I usually wonder when watching this episode how things could have gone differently.
Buffy goes out to find her friends and encounters Xander on his vampire hunt.
There's a moment when they both look at each other all pain and awkwardness.
It looks as though so much is about to be said. Then the vampires and the rest
of the team arrives, and Buffy handily defeat the vamp while the gang gets knocked
to the ground. Almost immediately the inequality of their positions is established.
It's as though Buffy is mocking both their slaying efforts and their worry.
Since Buffy doesn't offer them even a glimpse of her own pain they aren't going
to show theirs. Instead we get the party, a huge amount of noise generated to
cover up what everyone is feeling. And that feeling would be anger, with a healthy
dose of resentment. Again utmost respect for ME in realizing that homecomings
are not always happy.
As mad as everyone usually gets at Xander and Joyce, I give them credit for
actually vocalizing their feelings. I get incredibly pissed off at Willow --
she's the one Buffy actually seems to be reaching out to, and Willow retreats
first by standing Buffy up for coffee, then by blowing her off at the party.
Maybe it's because Willow senses that Buffy will want to deal with her own pain,
not Willow's. There's so much foreshadowing in this episode. Buffy's inability
to deal with emotional overload-- here she tries to physically flee, in season
5 she will try to escape in other ways, through numbness and catatonia. The
Scoobies' attempts at slaying sans Buffy are repeated in Bargaining,
and their attempts at immediately forcing normality on an extraordinary sitaution
will appear again in After Life ('let's order pizza'). And finally
all of the characters' huge inability to articulate their issues and emotions
will form the basis of that little event we like to call season 6. All in all
Dead Man's Party is a great episode, it just makes me awfully sad."--ponygirl,
Tues, 08/13/02 at (a) 11:56:59; (b) 11:32:55
"Buffy almost left a second time because she thought what all teenagers think about emotional trauma: 'I'm the only one in the world who feels this way, and you'll never understand.' Most teenaged girls who say this are advised to GROW UP and consider the feelings of those she would leave behind. But Buffy is RIGHT. She is the Chosen One. She's the only one in the world with these problems. How could Xander, Willow, or Joyce understand? Buffy feels alone in her misery because the Burden of Slayerhood isn't something housewives or high school kids can relate to that easily. So is she justified in her series-long string of emotional implosions? No. Because just as the Scoobs have to realize that Buffy has special problems and special burdens, Buffy has to realize that every one of her friends (yes, even Xander) has his or her own unique emotional journey, special in its own way, deserving of consideration and attention."--cjl, Tues, 08/13/02 at 12:05:12
36XXX) "You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back up to get you." MAIN THEME FROM "DEAD MAN'S PARTY": "An incredibly obvious statement of the episode’s metaphor, but still it is a good metaphor. The zombies both represent all of the emotions that Buffy and the others are trying to repress, and also the idea of returning in a different form. The zombies aren’t like vampires who give the appearance of being alive, the zombies are worse for wear, they bear the scars of what has happened to them. Emotionally so do Buffy and the others."--ponygirl, Fri, 06/20/03 at 20:59:18
36YYY) Giles touches the wires together. They spark, and the engine starts up. RETURN OF RIPPER: See 36Nx4.
36ZZZ) "As if I even could've gone to you, Xander. You made your feelings about Angel and I perfectly clear." GRAMMATICAL OUCHY: This is one of the more glaring grammatical errors in Buffy's speech (not counting the intentional ones)...The correct phrase, in this case, should have been "Angel and me." The rule is that the pronoun form you would use without adding the other person is the same when another person is added. If Buffy was just speaking about herself, she would have said "You made your feelings about me clear," and so that is the correct pronoun even when Angel is added.
36Ax4) "Time out, Xander. Put yourself in Buffy's shoes for just a minute. Okay? I'm Buffy, freak of nature, right? Naturally I pick a freak for a boyfriend, and then he turns into Mr. Killing Spree, which is pretty much my fault..." THE HONESTY OF CORDELIA: See 11UU and 30ZZ.
36Bx4) "Talking about it isn't helping. We might as well try some violence." THE BIG FIGHT: "The big argument in Dead Man's Party is part of a recurring problem between Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies over her responsibility to them especially considering how close they are, and at the same time how much right she has to be the boss even when they do make demands of her to do important things for them. Two other notable examples when this argument bubbles to the surface are The Yoko Factor in season 4 and Empty Places in season 7. Willow and Xander occasionally resent Buffy's superiority and 'superior attitude' yet as this episode points out, they are often severely needy of her help and moral support. Dark Willow's rampage at the end of season six becomes as much about feeling lonely and abandoned as it starts out about getting revenge. Each of them can be quick to say hurtful things as happens in Fear, Itself. But, they are also quick to forgive and forget. It's all another sign they are more like family than friends."--Cactus Watcher, Mon, 06/23/03 at 08:12:21
"I was also thinking that this episode is a bit of a re-working of When She Was Bad. In both episodes Buffy returns after a summer away and saves the Scoobs with some nifty timing, but something is a bit off. In When She Was Bad, it's Buffy's anger at her family and friends, in Dead Man's Party, it's everyone else's anger towards her. In both cases the external threat is something everyone thought was literally dead and buried. And in both cases violence - the dealing with the external threat - allows them to work through their issues."--ponygirl, Mon, 06/23/03 at 08:48:04
ZOMBIE LOVE: "There is a question (in my mind) as to who the dead people at the party actually were. Beyond the decaying bodies. The Scoobies and revelers themselves seem to be, in a large degree, avoiding dealing with the real life issues surrounding them. Willow is basking in the glow of improving her status from nerd to groupie. Xander and Cordelia absorbed in each other. Joyce mellowing under the lull of Pat's words and Schnapps. Even Giles who resisted turning the party into a maelstrom of avoidance and arrived at the party late was shown sleepwalking through his research, page turning distractedly past vital information and later complaining about Americans when he should have been watching the road. The stoner carelessly answering the phone without knowing who Buffy was died as he lived clueless. Pat, hiding in the shadows, died when confronted by an aspect of life which couldn't be smoothed with mindless patter. In a way they were all dead. Buffy may have been right to try to leave. There was no place among the dead for her. Fortunately when confronted with the alternative, the residents began to wake up. Starting with Willow when she admitted avoiding Buffy after denying it earlier. Then Joyce owning her part in Buffy's leaving. Cordelia and Xander being told they can't fill Buffy's shoes and at best are living a comic book fantasy. Giles reconnecting with the Ripper part of himself (see 36Nx4). It was all very painful both for characters and viewers. As Angel warned it would be. Maybe waking and giving up comforting imaginings always is."--tost, Wed, 07/02/03 at 14:17:54
36Cx4) "I got your back!" FROM THE ORIGINAL SHOOTING SCRIPT: "Without even thinking - Willow, Xander, Buffy, Oz and Cordelia respond to the crisis by coming together. Instinct kicks in and they are back to functioning like a fine oiled machine."--"Dead Man's Party" by Marti Noxon, available through Pocketbooks Inc. as Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book, Season Three, Volume 1
36Dx4) He turns around and tries to make a grab for her, but Joyce comes up behind him with a vase and smashes it over his head. POWERFUL JOYCE: Who knows? Maybe Joyce was an uncalled Potential. She certainly has shown remarkable bravery and strength in fighting off monsters, superpowers or not, most especially when it is in the defense of her daughter. See 15Gx4.
36Ex4) "Man, this sucker wobbles, but he won't fall down!" POP CULTURE TIME: "The tagline of the egg-shaped toy figures, The Weebles – 'Weebles wobble but they won’t fall down!'"--ponygirl, Fri, 06/20/03 at 20:59:18
Act Four
36Fx4) "It's him." CINEMATIC LINKAGE: "I wondered if Cordelia's line, 'How do we know you're the real Giles?' along with Giles' response, 'Don't be tiresome,' is a Joss rewrite. For evidence I'd point to the Cyclops/Wolverine...exchange in [the first] X-Men [film, the original screenplay of which was written by Joss, although later heavily rewritten by others,] as being identical in tone, and one of the few remaining lines from Joss' script for X-Men":
Wolverine: It's me!
Cyclops: Prove it!
Wolverine: You're a dick.
Cyclops: Okay.--ponygirl, Wed, 07/02/03 at 13:35:53, with script addition by Rob
36Gx4) "Worse than a zombie." CUTTING TO THE CHASE: Isn't it great how Cordy never needs the big complicated explanation about the evil of the week, because, in the end, the Cliff Notes version is always just as helpful? See how simply she sums up the gist of the situation: "worse than a zombie," all that's needed for her to put the situation into perspective.
36Hx4) "Generally speaking, when scary things get scared: not good." LINKAGE: A lesson Buffy learned when the Fork Guy ran away from the fake Natalie French in Teacher's Pet (see 4P).
36Ix4) "Willow, don't look!" SPELLBOUND: "I think it's significant…that Evil!Pat's power is to freeze people in their place, something I think the Scoobies want to do in this episode. They want to pretend nothing has changed, that they can go back to their old state and relationships."--ponygirl, Wed, 07/02/03 at 18:31:54
OH, MYTH?: Evil!Pat's power is reminscent of the Gorgon, Medusa, in Greek mythology, a female with the body of a woman but whose hair was made of living snakes growing out of her head. Any one who looked directly into her eyes turned into stone, much as the people who stare into Pat's here freeze like statues.
36Jx4) "She has to go for the eyes to defeat him!" EYE-REMOVAL: Eye (and eye-gouging) imagery occurs most in Buffy episodes such as: Dead Man's Party, Same Time, Same Place, Showtime, and Dirty Girls. Interestingly, almost each occurrence represents a symbolic re-evaluation of the Scoobies' relationships. "In Dead Man’s Party, Pat acts as a sort of personification of the 'emotional safe distance' between Buffy and those who love her. Upon Buffy's return to Sunnydale, both Joyce and the Scoobies experience the conflicting emotions of joy and relief that she's returned safely, and anger and resentment that she left in the first place. They all hold Buffy at a sort of emotional arm's length in order to keep their emotional reactions to her return under control. Pat, with her superficial, glib commentary, represents that emotional distance. Upon killing Pat and thus ending the threat that she represents (both as Zombie Queen and emotional personification), Joyce and the Scoobs are able to reconnect with Buffy, to regard her not with their eyes but with their hearts."--Anneth, Wed, 07/02/03 at 17:34:38, with additions by Rob
POP
CULTURE TIME: "Another
theory on eye-gouging…Considering that Joss and quite a few other writers
are comic fans:
When the psychiatrist and moral crusader Frederic Wertham launched his campaign
against comics in the fifties, a big part of his attack on the gratuitous violence
element was what he saw as comics' excessive and particularly repulsive portrayal
of 'injury to the eye'. He actually kept a list of every single scene in which
someone got blinded or poked in the eye or threatened with eye damage, however
peripheral it was to the actual plot. Neil Gaiman suggested in an interview
in The Sandman Companion that comics do have a special fascination
with eye injury because of the symbolism in a totally visual medium. Joss Whedon
has talked quite a bit about TV as a visual medium, and attacked dialogue-dominated
'radio with pictures'. Or it could be because it's, you know, especially gross."--KdS,
Thurs, 07/03/03 at 02:14:28
36Kx4) "Made you look." CHILDHOOD GAMES: This is a reference to the playground game, where one child will tell another, "I see a [fill in the blank: monster, movie star, spider, what have you]." Then when the other child turns to look, the first laughs, "Ha ha, made you look!" A usually maddening game that most kids can't get enough of.
36Lx4) "Never mind." LINKAGE: Oz, perhaps without realizing it, refers to the song played earlier in the episode (see 36EEE). Interestingly, where the first "never mind" implied that the Scoobies were not addressing their problems with each other, this "never mind" has the opposite effect, stating that the walls erected between the friends are no longer standing. Buffy did not need Oz to tell her to go for the eyes to symbolically shatter these barriers; she just knew, and in so doing allows for their friendships to begin growing strong again.
36Mx4) "You, too." COMPLIMENTY BUFFY: After seeming a bit dismissive of their slayage efforts earlier in the episode, Buffy here reaffirms her friendship with Xander and the others by letting them know that they do good work, and that it is appreciative, probably also implying that their slayage work over the summer to cover for her was appreciated, too.
36Nx4) "Would you like me to convince you?" RIPPER: In this episode, "...[w]e get a couple of hints about just who, exactly, this Ripper guy was... He's not afraid to use physical force in order to intimidate Snyder, and has apparently hotwired cars before (see 36YYY). These character traits come to a head in Band Candy, four episodes later, where Giles is 'reduced' to his earlier, JD-self."--Anneth, Mon, 06/23/03 at 10:50:57
36Ox4) "It has. I tried to communicate with the spirit world, and I *so* wasn't ready for that. It's like being pulled apart inside. Plus I blew the power for our whole block. Big scare." WITCHY WILLOW: Inspired by her foray into the dark arts in Becoming II, Willow, over the summer, has taken even more risks with her magical experimentation. Giles warned her in Becoming about delving into powers too dark and forceful for her to control, and his warnings are going unheeded. Not that he objects per se to Willow doing magic, but she is definitely doing too much too soon. At least at this point Willow realizes she may be going over her head.
36Px4) "You're really enjoying this whole moral superiority thing, aren't you?" LINKAGE: "Perhaps the first articulation of the superiority/inferiority complex that will stay with Buffy for the rest of the show – she feels her problems are beyond the comprehension of her friends, so she withdraws from them. As a result she feels guilty about the pain she is causing them, seeing herself as a bad person. So many of Buffy’s big emotional themes are present in this episode: her isolation because of her role as the Slayer, her fear of abandonment, and her strategy of withdrawal to pre-empt the abandonment. Even though things seem to be headed back to “normal” at the end of this episode, this episode probably marks the start of the slow drifting apart of the Scooby gang."--ponygirl, Fri, 06/20/03 at 20:59:18
36Qx4) "It's like a drug!" FORESHADOWY GOODNESS: In retrospect, this line foreshadows Willow's future magic troubles being shown as a metaphor for drug addiction, but it goes even deeper than that. Later on in the show, it was made clear that magic was not in fact like a drug addiction, but was in fact an issue of power, which, like a drug, can corrupt and make someone lose his or her rationality and control. Before Willow truly went overboard with magic, however, she was casting spells in a way that claimed her superiority over others, such as when she decided that it would be best for her and Tara's argument in All the Way to disappear, so she wiped Tara's memory of the incident; in fact, she even tried to claim superiority over nature when she resurrected Buffy in Bargaining, and later tried to do so for Tara in Villains. Near the end of Grave, she decides that it is up to her to rid the entire world of its suffering. Therefore, Willow will in the sixth season do exactly what they speak of here, enjoy her "moral superiority" to the point that it becomes like drug abuse.
36Rx4) "Bad seed." POP CULTURE TIME: "This refers to the classic 1956 horror film, The Bad Seed, starring Patty McCormick, about a seemingly sweet loving blonde child that is in fact remorselessly evil. It was especially shocking because child star McCormick had always played sweet lovable girl roles exactly like the false image the evil child was trying to project. The movie is kind of a benchmark for stories with a child as the big evil that parents can't deal with. Probably the only one[s] as famous [are]The Other based on Tom Tryons' book of the same name[, and the 1993 film, The Good Son, staring the at-the-time angelic-looking Macauley Culkin, who, similar to McCormick, was also usually known for playing the good child in films]. The Angel episode I've Got You Under My Skin carried the theme one deeper when a demon possesses a child and finds itself trapped and the child even more horrible the demon was."--Cactus Watcher, Fri, 06/20/03 at 11:28:02
36Sx4) "Freak." HOW INSULTING!: "Willow’s barbs seem a bit closer to the mark than Buffy’s. This the second time that Buffy is called a freak in this episode. Another one of Buffy’s big fears – that she is a freak who will never have a normal life." Thank Joss for Chosen!--ponygirl, Fri, 06/20/03 at 20:59:18, with small addition by Rob