Buffy Season One Episode Nine

[koganbot]

Observers find old Catskill comic wooden.

Also, policeman is briefly glimpsed in vicinity of body of murdered dancer, possibly investigating. Sousaphone player attributes her own indifference to dancer to "that whole dance/band rivalry." New authority figure looks like an older version of Eliot Spitzer.

Ho hum.

Comments

[koganbot]

What the show does seem to be getting away with:

(1) Mom. She's a single mom with a demanding job, which explains why she isn't really around to monitor Buffy's comings and goings. But what the show has actually established is that she cares about Buffy and recognizes that she doesn't understand Buffy but assumes that any strangeness is due to standard teenage issues, but also that she feels that she should only probe when Buffy is ready for her to probe but she'll be fundamentally sympathetic to Buffy no matter what. And nothing here is stated, but since we know that Buffy is fundamentally good and trustworthy, it makes sense that her mother would intuitively know the same thing, even though the show never explicitly states this and Buffy keeps getting into apparent mischief.

(2) Naturalism and depth in the main characters (esp. Xander) while some on the periphery get to be comic caricatures. This is standard in Dickens and Austen and a lot of other fiction, but it also hooks up with adults in institutional settings having somewhat one-dimensional roles in relation to youngsters, so their complexity isn't relevant. So it makes sense here that a principal will be a comic caricature while a mom will have more nuance.