Buffy the Vampire Slayer
We have reached the end of season one! I definitely feel like the first season of "Buffy" is something that you just have to kind of get through to get to the brilliance that the show has to offer in seasons 2-7. If you're a fan of Cordelia Chase, these episodes today are for you as the show works to integrate her more into the Scooby Gang. Let's get to it.
"Out of Mind, Out of Sight"
Cordelia Chase: "Somebody is after me! They just tried to kill Ms. Miller, uh, she was helping me with my homework... and Mitch and Harmony. This is all about me! Me, me, me!"
Xander Harris: "Wow! For once, she's right."
Buffy Summers: "So you've come to *me* for help?"
Cordelia Chase: [nods] "Because... you're always around when all this weird stuff is happening. And I know you're very strong, and you've got all those weapons. I was kind of hoping you were in a gang."
Students at Sunnydale High are being attacked by a seemingly invisible perpetrator and the one thing they all seem to have in common is Cordelia Chase. It's up to the Scooby Gang to figure out who is doing this and when the victim is Cordelia... the suspect list is long.
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| Two sides of the same coin. |
This episode features a guest starring turn from queer icon, Clea DuVall. She was romanced by Natasha Lyonne in the classic, "But I'm a Cheerleader." She was in "The Faculty." Honestly, if you came of age in the late '90's/early '00's (and if you're reading this and/or love "Buffy," you probably did) you are definitely familiar with her. She's worked consistently. She was on "Veep" and "The Handmaid's Tale." She co-wrote and directed the queer holiday film, "Happiest Season." She's really great here in the role of Marcie Ross. I wish we got to physically see her more, but she's perfect in the flashbacks we see. The scene in the bathroom where she is trying to ingratiate herself with Cordelia and Harmony and the rest of the popular girls really sticks out to me. She's so desperate to be included but doesn't want to seem desperate. Repeating her same joke about the speaker's toupee to only be knocked down and then have her joke stolen by Cordelia with the other girls acting like they didn't just hear it twice moments before. The look on DuVall's face after this happens is genuinely heartbreaking and its difficult not to think, well, maybe Cordy has this coming.
This episode really starts the show starting to ingratiate Cordelia into the Scooby Gang. Cordelia has always kind of been on the outskirts up to this point. She'd pop in to give a withering stare or a snarky remark. Or she'd be collateral damage in the weird shit that consistently happened at Sunnydale High, but it felt like she was always very much on the periphery. This episode really changes all that. I like how they show that Cordy isn't as oblivious as maybe we initially thought. She comes to Buffy because she's noticed how Buffy seems to be at the epicenter of all the weirdness that happens at Sunnydale High and she's clearly not fooled by Buffy's lame excuse whenever Cordelia sees the weapons she carries. It's easy to think of Cordelia as a ditz, but this episode relieves you of that idea. She not only deduces that Buffy and the Scoobies are who could help her, but in class she is shown speaking passionately and articulately. Sure, she's maybe on the wrong side of this, but why wouldn't Cordelia defend the person she felt most connected to?
Charisma Carpenter and Sarah Michelle Gellar are really great together. They don't get a ton of scenes together, just the two of them, and this episode is one that shows that it's really kind of a travesty. They are really good at volleying with one another. Seeing Buffy and Cordelia interact one on one really hammers home that Buffy was basically Cordelia when she was in LA and how far she's come as a person since becoming the Slayer.
"Buffy" really works best when it showcases how awful teenagers are and we get a lot of that in this episode. I love how when the gang is going through Marcie's yearbook and they see all the "have a nice summers." They all have the same reaction. And they are absolutely right. That is exactly what you write when you don't really know someone and they want you to sign their yearbook. It is so low effort. And watching this as an adult, I'm sure it's really easy to say something like this is unrealistic but I bet there is someone you went to high school with, someone you saw almost every day, maybe even had class with, that could walk up to you tomorrow and you wouldn't recognize them or remember their name.
Overall this episode works well. I do think the whole even popular kids are lonely narrative falls a little flat, but it doesn't drag the episode down.
Grade: B+
"Prophecy Girl"
The Master: "You're dead."
Buffy Summers: "I may be dead, but I'm still pretty. Which is more than I can say for you."
The Master: "You were destined to die. It was written."
Buffy Summers: "What can I say? I flunked the written."
The time has come for Buffy to face the Master. But things become tricky when Giles deciphers a prophecy from a book retrieved by Angel. If Buffy faces the Master, he will rise and she will die. Will Buffy embrace her calling to stop the Master even if it might mean her own death?
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| This guy's in big trouble. |
This is a pretty big episode in the history of the series and for Buffy herself, so why don't we start off with something completely inconsequential: Buffy's hair. It's crazy that her hair looks so good after she drowns in like an inch and half of dirty, nasty standing sewer water. It looks amazing. No one's hair would look that good. I appreciate it. It definitely makes her look badass when she goes for her final confrontation with the Master. I know it's a weird thing to be fixated on especially when we are talking about a show featuring a teenage vampire slayer, but hyperfixating on seemingly small things is part of what I do and its something I think of literally every time I watch this episode.
In this first season, it can sometimes feel like Buffy is taking a backseat in a show that bears her name. Early episodes focusing on Xander I'm looking directly at you. But this episode is focused squarely on Buffy. This episode begins a trend that will rear its ugly head a few times throughout the life of the series. Angel and Giles are talking about the Pergamum Codex, the book of Slayer prophecy, that Angel retrieved for the Watcher in the last episode. They learn of a prophecy that states for the Master to rise the Slayer must die. Do they tell Buffy about this? Try to roper her in because she's, you know, the Slayer? Nope. Instead they hide it from her and she finds out when she overhears them talking about it. I wish I could say this was the last time that something like this happens, but boy howdy, it is not.
Sarah Michelle Gellar has a ton of great moments in this episode. My favorite is probably her big speech when she confronts Angel and Giles about lying to her. It's easy to forget that Buffy is a 16-year-old girl, but this speech reminds us. Gellar kills it. She never veers into melodrama, even when she is tossing books at Angel and Giles. She has great moments throughout the episode. She and Joyce have a nice moment. And Buffy is great consoling Willow when she talks with her after Willow and Cordelia find their classmates slaughtered in the A/V room. That is pretty chilling particularly with cartoons playing on the TV and a child's bloody handprint on the screen.
The final battle between Buffy and the Master is great. I love Buffy, Xander and Angel marching to the battle with the Nerf Herder theme playing. The Master's shock to find Buffy still alive. Buffy's snappy comebacks. Her walloping on him and her observation that he has "fruit punch mouth," which will never not make me guffaw. There is a nice turn when the Master grabs Buffy by the throat and she turns the tables on him, tossing him through the skylight and on to the exposed wood below.
I know we've talked a lot about how awful Xander is but this episode is a great example. He spends the first part hyping himself up to ask Buffy to the Spring Fling. He does and she rejects him, like we all knew she would and how he should have known she would and he immediately becomes a giant asshole. He makes nasty remarks about how she'd rather date a vampire than him. He acts like Angel is the only barrier to them having a relationship, which is definitely not the case. Buffy has never and will never feel that way about Xander even if there is no one else in the picture and Xander (plus a lot of dudes) don't get that. Xander continues to be a jackass when he asks Willow to the dance after Buffy's rejection and she right says that she won't be his back up plan. I'm not sure if we are intended to have sympathy for Xander, but I definitely do not.
The Xander and Angel dynamic is another thing that rolls my eyes. I think its supposed to be some sort of redeeming moment when Xander goes to Angel to try to get him to help Buffy. But their whole thing is so cringe and its primarily because of Xander. He's not a tough guy and we all know Angel could put him down easily, with or without that cross. His talk about Angel staring at his neck is not funny. Xander does get his hero moment when he does CPR to bring Buffy back to life, but it doesn't really negate all the messed up, douchebag shit he does in the rest of the episode.
The Master is an interesting Big Bad. Up until this episode, he never feels like a real threat because he spends most of his time in the first season trapped. Unlike most of the other Big Bads in the series, he and Buffy never really have any face to face time until the finale and I'm not counting "Nightmares." They sort of wrote themselves into a corner. They created this all-powerful vampire, but he was almost too powerful. It's hard to create a compelling threat when the protagonist and antagonist never really have any screen time together. They do what they can and succeed for the most part. There is some solid menace when Buffy and The Master have their underground face off, but it could have been so much more.
All in all though, this is a great episode. It closes out the first season on a strong note and gets us ready for a season two that is a marked improvement in every way and fulfills the potential that we have seen throughout these first twelve episodes.
Grade: A-
Season Grade: B-
Next up, we begin season two with Buffy returning from a summer in LA with an attitude and the team deals with grave robber.
What did you all think of these episodes? Did you want more Clea DuVall? Is the Master a solid Big Bad? Are you excited for season 2? What do you think of season one overall? Let me know in the comments.
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