"One Girl in All the World" Re-Watch: "When She Was Bad" & "Some Assembly Required"

 Buffy the Vampire Slayer

After a premiere season that showed a ton of potential, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" returned for it's sophomore season to fully realize that potential and show that it was a force. The season premiered on September 15, 1997 in the Tuesday night time slot that it would occupy for the entirety of its run. This season introduced classic characters like Spike and Drusilla and Oz. This season showed what the show had to offer. If I have one main critique, it is that the first half of the season feels a bit rudderless, but once the season's Big Bad shows up midway through, it's full speed ahead to the season finale. Let's get into it.

"When She Was Bad"

Cordelia Chase: "You're really campaigning for Bitch of the Year, aren't you?"

Buffy Summers: "As defending champion, you nervous?"

Cordelia Chase: "I can hold my own."

After dying, coming back to life and killing the Master, Buffy has spent a relaxing summer in LA with her dad. She hasn't been in touch much with Xander and Willow and when she comes home, she seems different. She's less like Buffy and more like... Cordelia? The Scoobies and Angel are trying to figure out what is troubling Buffy and how to get her back to her old self.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem Master's bones.

Season two is a great season of "Buffy." I don't think it's the best season. I think the best season will always be season three. But season two definitely begins this great tradition of amazing season premieres. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" had some phenomenal season premieres and this is probably my third favorite. 

I am going to let you know now, this is a Buffy Summers apologist blog. If you've seen this episode before, or maybe you have watched it for the first time and now you're here and you think that Buffy is in the wrong here. I'm here to tell you she's not. That the real people in the wrong are her friends and her watcher and her wanna be boyfriend.

Let's not forget that in the season finale, Buffy was victorious over the Master, but she fully died. She's been gone all summer. She apparently sent a couple postcards at the beginning of the summer and then they stopped hearing from her. They didn't try to get in touch with her. And then, she gets back, clearly suffering from PTSD from having, you know, died and her friends are talking about her behind her back and calling her a bitch, even if one of them is spelling it out and the other is too stupid to figure out what she's spelling. And her Watcher has an out of sight, out of mind philosophy when it comes to being a Watcher since he doesn't seem to try to check on her either, he's too busy trying to get in the pants of another teacher.

I will concede that Giles and Willow do deduce kind of quickly that something is going on. This is not the Buffy that left Sunnydale. She's dismissive and mean to Willow when Willow says something kind of loudly in the hallway about vampires. She dives headfirst into her training with Giles even after he tells her that she can take a few days to get acclimated back to her daily routine. And Buffy does get right back into it whaling on Giles to the point where I am pretty sure that he is legit afraid that he is going to get hurt. This gung ho attitude about something she had spent the whole last season basically trying to ignore every chance she could. This clues in Giles that something is up but he still doesn't ask her about it, because why would he?

I know you're going to be shocked that the majority of my vitriol is saved for Xander Harris. One of the things that fans remember the most about this episode is the "sexy dance" that Buffy does with Xander at the Bronze to make Angel jealous which inadvertently hurts Willow, too. Now, again, I'll concede that she is really insensitive to the feelings of her best friend, but I don't feel bad for Xander at all. At the beginning of the episode, he's almost kissing Willow after putting some ice cream on her nose. But once Buffy is back, he's completely up her ass again, even though she has told him that she is not interested. Xander tries to act all tough when Willow and Giles are kidnapped, saying how he's going to kill Buffy if anything happens to Willow. First off, how are you going to do that? Secondly, now you're worried about Willow when before you couldn't really give two shits. Get it together, dude.

The episode begins the work done at the end of season one to more fully integrate Cordelia into the Scooby Gang and I think it is pretty successful in this episode. Cordelia witnesses the whole dance spectacle and she is the only one to call Buffy out in the way that only Cordy can. One of my favorite moments of the episode is the confrontation with Buffy and Cordy outside the Bronze. Both girls are on fire. The insults are insulting. The quips are quipping. And its always nice to get a glance at who Buffy could have become if she didn't find out she was the Chosen One. This is exactly when Cordelia works the best and you have to give it up for Joss Whedon, the writer of the episode here. And honestly, I hate doing that.

This premiere also picks up some loose ends from the season finale. The Anointed One is still around with Absalom the Annoying. They try to do a ritual to bring the Master back to life using his bones and the blood of the people physically closes to him when he died. Sidebar, a semi running bit in the show is Giles screwing up these prophecy and spell translations until its too late and he continues that here. It's nice to watch Buffy smash the Master's bone, working out her aggression and her PTSD over dying. Who needs therapy? Not the Slayer. Overall, a great premiere and start to this sophomore season. 

Grade: A

"Some Assembly Required"

Xander Harris: "Y'know, this might go a lot faster if you femmes actually picked up a shovel, too."

Rupert Giles: "Hear, hear!"

Buffy Summers: "Sorry, but I'm an old-fashioned gal. I was raised to believe that men dig up the corpses and women have the babies."

After working through her PTSD issues, things are back to normal with Buffy and at Sunnydale High. Normal being grave robberies and dismembered body parts being found in the dumpster behind the school. Like I said, totally normal. It's up to Buffy and her friends to figure out who's digging up these graves and why before Cordelia's body parts end up in the dumpster.

Beauty and this guy.

In the last episode, I talked about how the show did a great job of starting to integrate Cordelia in to the Scooby gang. Well, it only took one episode for them to do kind of a terrible job. I don't think that it is necessarily bad to use Cordelia as comic relief sometimes. She is ridiculous and she is still in her spoiled, rich, popular girl era. But this episode I feel goes a little overboard. There is nothing serious happening with Cordelia here. She is concerned about her safety and it turns out she's right. But when she tries to tell Buffy and the gang about her past with Daryl and then everyone ignores her. Then, after Cordelia feels like she's being stalked in the parking lot and ends up hiding in a dumpster (more humiliation for Cordy) she is all over Angel and forces him to drive home with her. When she is "saved" by Xander in the climax of the episode, she is fawning all over Xander telling him that she'll do anything for saving her implying some stuff I'd rather just ignore, Xander ignores her, which given how horny Xander is, I don't really buy. There's just a lot of humiliating Cordy in this episode and I don't get it and it doesn't really play super well.

The premise of the episode is some weird mash up of both "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein" and "Beauty and the Beast." It doesn't bring anything new to it. There are threads of some decent ideas here like the mother of Daryl and Chris being so obsessed with the premature death of her favored son that the one left behind feels like he has to bring him back to life and then create a girlfriend for him, but its not touched on enough. After watching this episode, you're just left with a ton of questions. Why is Daryl so obsessed with having a mate. What happens to Chris and Eric at the end of this episode? Do they go to jail? Do they get away with it? How is this explained to the police? I just don't get it and honestly, I don't really care.

One thing that usually saves even the most mid "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episodes is the action but in this episode the action sequences are just as lackluster as the rest of the episode. Like, does coming back from the dead as a Frankenstein's monster style creature automatically give you super strength? I'm having a difficult time believing that this dude could really have Buffy on the ropes. The action choreography here is really bad which is so strange for this show.

There are some enjoyable parts. I really liked the kids coaching Giles on how to ask Jenny Calendar out on a date. Giles kind of fumbles his way into it and she ends up asking him to it instead which is the most Giles thing ever. They end up going to a high school football game which is the most un-Giles thing ever. And Xander and Willow crash the date, though Jenny does indicate that she'd be interested in a second. Buffy and Angel continue their courtship with Angel admitting that he was jealous of Xander when Buffy danced with him in the previous episode and they end up holding hands. Awww. Was anyone else put off by Angel wearing khaki in this episode? It doesn't work and I don't think they ever do it again. Strange costuming choice.

This episode is real weak and a definite comedown from the premiere.

Grade: D+

Next up, Spike and Drusilla crash parent-teacher conferences at Sunnydale High and Xander falls in love with a reincarnated Incan mummy.

What do you all think? Do you enjoy season two overall? Did you like the premiere? Do you agree that Buffy is the real victim in "When She Was Bad?" Is "Some Assembly Required" the definition of mid? Let me know in the comments.