The Gift

[Updated May 2, 2013]

From the moment Buffy has her epiphany on the tower, I start losing it, no matter how often I’ve seen The Gift. Joss Whedon always said that he never worried too much about plot details if he could cut through to the emotional truth. In S5 I think he combined plot and emotional truth incredibly well. While my views on which is the best season are intense but variable, to quote Anya, on a given day S5 is my favorite season.

I’ll start with the ending, because that’s the whole point of the season. Indeed, it’s the whole point of the series. Buffy’s dive off the tower is the end of her journey. As you know, my view is that Buffy’s journey was one of becoming an adult. As I read it, her dive represents the fact that she’s leaving childhood behind and launching herself into the new dimension of adulthood. James Marsters: “Thematically, I think that [Joss] tied up his original premise, which is how does a young child become an adult and pass through adolescence. And all of us vampires are just metaphors for those problems. I think that in the moment that she sacrificed her life to save her sister she became a true adult.”

The Weight of the World

[Updated May 2, 2013]

It may seem, to steal a line from Willow, as if The Weight of the World is mostly filler, but in my view it serves a very important purpose: it shows us that Buffy rejects – or maybe overcomes – Spike’s claim in Fool For Love that Slayers have a death wish. In order to show this I need to go through the dialogue very carefully, so bear with me.

Spiral

[Updated May 2, 2013]

Spiral makes explicit the full implications of The Replacement. We’ve known since Blood Ties that Ben and Glory share the same body, but the consequences weren’t spelled out until now. Since Glory and Ben share the same body, they can’t exist apart from each other: “Kill the man and the god dies”. In case it’s not obvious, I’ll state unequivocally the choices Gregor presents to Buffy: kill Ben to destroy Glory (though when he says this the characters themselves don’t know that Ben is Glory); or kill Dawn to save the world from Glory. You should be thinking about these choices and the moral issues they raise as we move towards the finale.

Tough Love

[Updated May 2, 2013]

Who’s the object of Tough Love in this episode? One obvious answer is Dawn, given Buffy’s treatment of her. Or maybe it’s Ben getting the advice to “take responsibility”. Perhaps it refers to the fight between Willow and Tara. It could mean any or all of these, but in my view the title refers to Buffy.

Intervention

[Updated May 2, 2013]

He who does battle with monsters needs to watch out lest he in the process becomes a monster himself.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

For all that there’s a good deal of humor in Intervention, it’s got a very serious point to it. This episode lays out in express terms Buffy’s feeling of separation between her human half and her Slayer half, a feeling which we saw prefigured in The Replacement, and which has been reinforced since by the recognition that Glory and Ben actualize the “separate parts in a single body” which Buffy feels. Buffy’s concern now is that the Slayer side is winning, that she’s becoming “hard”:

Forever

[Updated May 1, 2013]

Forever provides an opportunity for Buffy to grieve, while giving us a major clue to Dawn’s role this season. It also raises some disturbing issues about other characters which will be explored at more length later on.

The Body

[Updated May 1, 2013]

There’s a lot of television I’ve never seen, so I can’t say The Body is the very best episode of any show ever. I can’t even say that it’s the very best episode of Buffy, because it has close competition (IMO) from Passion and OMWF. It’s a real tribute to the show, in fact, that an episode as incredibly good as The Body can have competition for “best” and that still others are nearly as good. What I can say is that The Body has to be on a very short list among the greatest television episodes of all time.

I Was Made To Love You

[Updated May 1, 2013]

Pygmalion, or I Was Made To Love You:

This has never been one of my favorite episodes, mostly because I’ve always found the metaphor somewhat confusing. While listening to her friends talk in the Magic Shop, Buffy seems to identify herself with Warren:

“ANYA: Why would anyone do that [make a robot] if they could have a real live person? WILLOW: Maybe he couldn't. Find a real person. BUFFY: Oh, come on. The guy's just a big wedge of sleaze, don't make excuses for him. WILLOW: I'm not, I'm just saying, people get lonely, and maybe having someone around, even someone you made up ... maybe it's easier. (Shot of Buffy looking pensive.) TARA: But it's so weird. I mean, everyone wants a nice normal person to share with, but this guy, if he couldn't find that, I guess it's ... kinda sad. (Shot of Buffy staring at her hands.)”

Writer Jane Espenson confirms this when she says “When Buffy’s talking with Warren about his break-up with April, she’s actually identifying with him, because she did a lot of the same stuff with Riley that he did with April.” I think that’s a really weird interpretation of both the Buffy/Riley relationship and the Buffy/Warren conversation, so let’s look more closely at what Buffy says in her conversations with Warren and April.

Crush

[Updated May 1, 2013}

At some point in time between Fool For Love and Crush, Spike began to acquire a very strong following among fans. He’d always been a popular, but secondary, character. Now many fans became fascinated by his story such that he became as important to them as, say, Willow and Xander were. Some fans were beginning to ship him with Buffy (Spuffy). Writer David Fury pissed off a lot of Spike’s fans by ridiculing the idea of Spuffy in public and with Buffy’s line in Crush about Spike being a “serial killer in prison”. Since Crush is so Spike-centric, it’s a good episode to examine in order to see what it tells us about him. I’ll start by discussing his role as the (other) vampire in love with a Slayer.

Blood Ties

[Updated May 1, 2013]

Blood Ties sets up crucial plot and thematic points for the finale. Like the show generally, it uses the real life experiences of teenagers via metaphor. Thus Dawn, like many 14 year olds, perhaps particularly those who are adopted, feels alienated from her family and “not real”. She cuts herself because she’s come to doubt her own reality: “Am I real?”. In this case, the “real” experiences become a metaphor for the “reality” of the plot line – Dawn’s sense of alienation upon learning that she’s the Key. In my view, Dawn’s role as metaphor as well as character means that her sense that she’s “not real” is telling us something important about Buffy. I’ll leave that cryptic for now, but this dialogue seems relevant to me:

BUFFY: It's not that simple! We're not gonna be able to fix this with a hug and a kiss and a bowl of soup! Dawn needs to know where she came from, she needs real answers.
JOYCE: (sits) What she needs is her sister, Buffy, not the Slayer.

Checkpoint

[Updated May 1, 2013]

Checkpoint is the feel good episode of S5. Who among us can resist a good smackdown of the Watcher’s Council? Better yet, Buffy does that by raising an issue which will be crucial for the series henceforth: “Power. I have it. They don't. This bothers them.” Yes, it’s about power. That word gets used 9 times in the episode. But exactly what “power” consists of or what it might mean is subject to lots of interpretation; we get one here, but there will be others.

Why is the episode called Checkpoint? In my view, it’s because Buffy has nearly reached adulthood. The purpose of the “review” is to confirm that she’s ready for it. That’s the challenge Quentin puts to her: “you're dealing with grownups now”. Quentin demands proof that Buffy’s “prepared for it”, referring to information about Glory, but also, I think, meaning the challenges of adulthood more generally. That was the point of the Cruciamentum in Helpless, to which there are several references here, and it’s the same tactic the Council still employs.

Triangle

[Updated May 1, 2013]

I love Triangle, partly because I think it’s hilarious, but mostly because of Xander’s response to Olaf’s offer of a “Sophie’s Choice”: “that’s insane troll logic”. The only right answer is to refuse to choose. Well, that and have Buffy come in and save the day.

Triangle occupies the same relative point in the season that Ted, Gingerbread and The I in Team did, and it serves a similar role: it gives us the problem Buffy will face in the season finale, but doesn’t quite give us the answer. It’s also setting up some plot points regarding Willow’s magic for S6 which I can’t spoil.

Into The Woods

[Updated May 1, 2013]

The title of Into the Woods is ironic, of course. The success of Joyce’s operation means that she’s now “out of the woods”, but Riley left to join a commando operation in the jungles of Central America. Buffy’s distress at his departure means that she’s not yet out of the woods emotionally.

Listening To Fear

[Updated May 1, 2013]

The Queller demon in Listening to Fear might very well win a contest for lamest demon in the series. The episode also suffers, I think, from the far too obvious metaphorical vampire whorehouse. I’m not fond of this metaphor. Don’t get me wrong. LtF is not a bad episode like, say, I Robot, You Jane is bad. There are important developments here, both in plot and metaphor. It just suffers a bit from weak execution. That said, I do want to praise the scene of Buffy crying privately as she washes the dishes to the sound of her mother’s deranged ramblings. SMG really sells that scene.

Shadow

[Updated May 1, 2013]

If you can overlook the poor quality of the snake demon, Shadow is another good episode. Joyce’s illness is the emotional core of the episode for Buffy. I may be reaching, but I see Joyce’s “shadow” as a metaphor for the shadow of uncertainty cast on Buffy’s journey. If I’m right about that, the season’s focus on split personalities makes it natural that Joyce’s illness is in the brain.

Fool For Love

[Updated May 1, 2013]

Episode 7. We expect something dramatic and important from Episode 7 and we certainly get it from Fool For Love. It’s a fan favorite and in my personal top 20. The whole episode is beautifully constructed, but I have to give special praise to the way Spike’s fight with the NY Slayer intercuts with his present dialogue/fight with Buffy. At the end, the past Spike talks directly to Buffy in the present. Brilliant.

Family

[Updated May 1, 2013]

I see Family and NPLH as a two-parter; Family opens the same night as NPLH ended. Both episodes deal with someone who’s not technically a member of the family, but who is accepted into it through love. One deals with Buffy/Dawn, the other with Willow/Tara, the teaser highlighting both stories. Tara’s story of the kitty can even serve as an allegory for what happens to Dawn and to her:

No Place Like Home

[Updated May 1, 2013]

No Place Like Home introduces the villain of S5. Her name is Glory and it shows up in the transcript, though nobody speaks it in this episode; we’ll learn it soon enough. In Real Me we were introduced to Dawn and I raised the question whether she served as a metaphor, at least for some purposes. The villains almost always serve a metaphorical role, so we now should be asking whether Glory does and, if so, what that role is. There is, I think, a small hint in The Replacement, but it’s pretty obscure except in hindsight. In addition, we’d expect the metaphor to fit within the season themes which I’ve previously identified. I’m hinting, but I don’t want to spoil, so as with Dawn I’ll discuss Glory’s metaphorical role in detail in the finale.

Out Of My Mind

[Updated May 1, 2013]

If one theme of S5 is, as I said regarding The Replacement, “split personality”, then an episode entitled Out Of My Mind seems like an obvious sequel. There are 2 stories here of mental issues, those of Riley and Spike, both of whom go a bit crazy about Buffy (or because of Buffy, depending on how you see it). I guess I could include Joyce and her fainting spell as a mental issue, but I’ll leave her aside for now because that’s a bit unclear. I might also include Buffy, since her behavior in the teaser seemed to be another display of the “hunting” we saw in Buffy v. Dracula. And since I think every episode is about Buffy in some way, this might be a clue that what I’m about to say about Riley and Spike will eventually come back to her. Not necessarily in this post, though.

The Replacement

[Updated May 1, 2013]

Three episodes into the season and as usual we’ve gotten the themes which will play out the rest of the year, as well as foreshadowing of the major plot lines. Fortunately, The Replacement gives us a theme I can discuss even now because it doesn’t require spoilers. It also sets up a plot point for later which I will hold off discussing until it comes up.