Buffy Season One Episode Ten

[koganbot]

This was the Nightmares episode, packed with a lot of ideas, maybe too many. Most of the fears that were brought to life were too generic, so the scriptwriters lost the opportunity to use the fears to say something about Willow's and Buffy's and Xander's characters (Giles' fears were Giles-specific, and Cordelia's were Cordelia-specific too: having a bad-hair day!). That said, even if Buffy's worries were mostly way out of character (come on, she's not the sort whose deepest fears include being unprepared for an exam, and her dad and her issues with him were brought in out of the blue), Gellar did a fine job of being convincing in the moment: confused and heartbroken when she needed to be, and empathetic when that's what the plot called for. Also, I liked the bit at the beginning where a teacher (of some new-fangled subject) is instructing them in "Active Listening," since active listening is just what Buffy ends up doing when she attends to the unhappy Little League boy later in the episode. And also, listening is what the main characters have to do every episode, needing to be sensitive to when people's behavior is going off-kilter.

Although Xander's embodied nightmares were ho-hum, his reaction to them revealed something, which is that (assuming he carries this forward to the following episodes and seasons) he's the most flexible of the show's characters, the one least likely to be restricted by his habitual patterns of thinking about things or about himself. I was once again disappointed that the script didn't do something more interesting with Willow (though Willow does get the best wisecrack, deciding that Cordelia's hair weighs too heavy on her cerebrum). And, NO SPOILERS PLEASE, enough spoilers have already come my way for me to know that the show's got a lot in store for her; already it's clear that being recessive is not altogether who she is, it's just how she's used to coping.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Although Willow's character does evolve, her awesome taste in knitwear remains constant:

[koganbot]

Hey, I've got that sweater (though without the target in front).

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

The issues-with-the-dad thing kind of HAS to be brought in out of the blue, though - he's not AROUND in her day-to-day life, and I guess Joyce wouldn't mention it because of her own issues with the divorce and not wanting to hurt Buffy by reminding her of it; the suddenness of it is kind of the point to my mind. I thought it was a really neat way of introducing and highlighting something that's obviously lurking away unspoken, almost in B's subconscious, and which will emerge again later (that's not really a spoiler as it's kind of an obvious thing to explore).

It's also really nice shorthand for what means the most to Buffy, what's real to her - she fights demons and horrible hell-nasties every day, yet what's her greatest fear? That she's responsible for the emotional trauma of the two people she loves most, even though there was really nothing she could have done. This is also something that will get explored in greater depth.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes i think katie has a pretty good point -- the inspirational gag for buffy is "what if the pretty little no-brains valleygirl cheerleader actually has the weight of the world on her shoulders?" and part of the answer is: that means you don't really get to say "she's the type that... "

so she may not be bookish but she is extremely bright -- and the issue about the nature of her future isn't always just going to sit there unanswered (ie although BtVS is set at a small-town california school, it's not really about such a school, such a town: nor is it set in an eternal present where people are archetypes that don't change

that said i think the first series has to do quite a lot of quite clumsy work getting itself out of the shallowness of its first conception of its concept: contrast the opening sequence of serenity, the film spin-off of firefly, for sheer adeptness of backstory outlay...

[koganbot]

you don't really get to say "she's the type that... "

The next episode has a bit of dialogue that makes this very point:

Xander (in regard to Cordelia): What kind of moron would want to be May Queen, anyway?

Buffy: I was.

Xander: You what?

Buffy: At my old school.

Xander: Oh, so the, uh, good kind will want to do that... the, uh, nonmorons, I mean.

Buffy: Well, we didn't call it "May Queen," but we had the coronation and the dance and all that stuff. It was nice.

Xander: Oh, you know, you don't need that anymore; you've got us.

[And then Willow and Xander go back to cracking up about something Cordelia did in sixth grade, Buffy not knowing what they're talking about, just so we'll get the point that at that moment she doesn't have them, and they don't get that you don't have to be like them.]

Gellar does extremely well here, Buffy asserting herself, but with a tremble and nervous laughs. And this is a good set-up for later in the episode where it's plausible that Buffy will take Cordelia seriously when Cordelia seems to show more depth. And that episode nicely leaves it uncertain whether Cordelia actually has depth or is only being superficially deep, aping depth 'cause that's the best she can do (but still, they don't quite get away with bringing Cordelia in and out of caricature; I'm not sure you can do that, as opposed to bringing someone in and out of type, as they do with Willow and Giles, since of course, people are more than their type; but caricatures aren't more than their caricature). (By the way, Gellar had originally auditioned for and gotten the role of Cordelia, but then they asked her to audition for Buffy, too. Meanwhile, Charisma Carpenter had tried out for Buffy!)

But actually what's unsurehanded here, despite how well they do the scene, is that the show has pretty much established that Willow and Xander are there for her; it hasn't been giving us little weaknesses and disconnects day in and day out. So the clumsiness is that the show is telling us these things when the plot or conception needs it to, rather than working them into the grain of the show.

(Giles is more interesting here in that he's a somewhat comic figure but also trustworthy because he is the adult in the room and the kids instinctively trust him. So he can be petty or bumbling or grating without losing his authority and without the kids losing their fundamental sense of comfort with him, the sense that they can turn to him not just for knowledge but for a sense of nurture and perspective.)

[koganbot]

Did you ever see Sailor Moon? It's aimed at six-year-olds pretty much, so it doesn't do a lot with multiply-sided characterizations, but its premise is that Serena, the girl charged with saving the universe, is this ditzy good-natured scatter-brained teen (approximately age thirteen, I think) who sleeps through alarm clocks and forgets to pick up her room and who botches recipes and gets distracted by dreamy boys. And when she becomes Sailor Moon, she physically transforms - she spins around, stardust surrounds her, and she emerges taller, a young woman, her cuddly babyfat gone. At age five, Naomi's youngest daughter, Jordana, would rewind the spinning scenes over and over and practice the spinning herself, in front of the television. That's where I got the idea for her imitating the Powerpuff girls in my Drunken Tiger review (and I imagined her acting out the Drunken Tiger songs from watching her and Lia and a couple of friends lip-synching Britney's "Lucky," which included a staged dance routine).

[koganbot]

Episode Four (praying mantis episode):

Old science teacher guy: I gather you had a few problems at your last school?

Buffy: What teenager doesn't?

Science teacher: Cut class, got in fights, burned down the gymnasium? Principal Flutie showed me your permanent record.

Buffy (nervously): Well, that fire - there was major extenuating circumstances. And actually it's kind of funny.

Science teacher: I can't wait to see what you're going to do here.

Buffy (resigned): Destructive girl, that's me.

Science teacher: But I suspect it's going to be great.

Buffy (puzzled): You mean "great" in a bad way.

Science teacher: You have a first-rate mind and you can think on your feet, imagine what you could accomplish if you actually did the...

Buffy: The homework thing.

Science teacher: The homework thing. I understand you probably have a good excuse for not doing it; amazingly enough, I don't care. I know you can excel in this class, and so I expect no less. Is that clear?

Buffy: Yeah. Sorry.

Science teacher: Don't be sorry, be smart. And please don't listen to the principal or anyone else's negative opinion about you. Let's make them eat that permanent record.

Buffy (smiling, lit up): OK. Thanks.

Science teacher: Chapter six through eight.

[Thinking on her feet: science teacher had seen this, Buffy trying to bluff her way through answers by picking up pantomimed cues from Willow. And during the quoted interchange with Buffy, he's putting away slides and his lab coat and cleaning his glasses, so as not to focus directly - overbearingly - on Buffy, hence giving her a chance to have her own reactions, to take in what he's saying without having to put up a big front. Good staging.][Also, this may be the first time we hear that Willow's last name is Rosenberg, i.e., that Willow is likely to be of Jewish descent. In a later episode it's mentioned that her mom is getting them the usual Chinese takeout for dinner, hence mom doesn't have the time or inclination to cook for her daughter.]

[koganbot]

she's responsible for the emotional trauma of the two people she loves most

This makes a lot of sense, and will probably make the show better when it actually does get explored;* but the thing is, nothing like it has been part of her character yet, which is why it feels out of the blue. If Willow'd felt this way, I'd have accepted it. Whedon et al. didn't go in with a strong sense of this stuff, or how to do it. It's not surprising that a series might evolve into different conceptions over time; I think that the only place where the show is absolutely sure of itself so far is in the banter (and the body language too, no doubt, though I don't have a good conscious eye for it on a first viewing), the combo of scared and not scared and the tentative explorations of who the characters might become in relation to one another. The show has created some excellent characters, but hasn't yet figured out how they should interract.

(Bear in mind that I'm instinctively comparing Buffy to Magnum P.I. and My So-Called Life and Rocky And His Friends, i.e., my favorite TV shows ever, and to films of Ford and Hawks and Mann and Boetticher, so it's not surprising that I'm not nearly as moved and that I'm finding all sorts of flaws in comparison; those three TV shows hit the ground running, but Jay Ward of Rocky had already had experience with Crusader Rabbit, the My So-Called Life People with Thirtysomething, and Larsen and Bellisario with the original Battlestar Gallactica. And the early movies of Ford et al. are hardly as sure-handed as the masterpieces I tend to use as reference points. The TV Buffy was Whedon's first time being in charge (he was only scriptwriter on the movie).)

*And clearly Willow and Xander and Giles can join the list of people she loves most, and I'm somewhat surprised that the issue of her hurting them - as opposed to potentially failing to save them - hasn't come up yet, since such issues are hardly foreign to action-adventure stories.

**Not that I've ever seen Thirtysomething or Battlestar Galactica; and the little I've seen of subsequent Bellisario productions like Airwolf and JAG didn't impress me. Magnum managed something real well; it wasn't just the characters but their relationships that had to rise to the occasion (had to grow up, as it were) week in and week out, and the scriptwriters and directors and actors rose to the occasion as well.