Buffy Season One Episode Eleven

[koganbot]

If you ever find yourself in a high school that has a lot of vampire and demon action, stay away from locker rooms. They are not safe.

This is the invisible girl episode ("Out of Mind, Out of Sight"). Kind of obvious with its points; e.g., Xander and Willow still have a long, rich history together, common experience from grade school on, etc., and in drawing on it they casually leave Buffy out. This of course foreshadows what we're to learn about poor Marcie, her feeling left out of Cordelia's crew. The show prepares us to think it'll be a weepy, the poor girl to be brought home through Buffy's empathy and sensitivity, parallel to how the little league boy was brought back in the previous episode. But instead the script twists the episode into something else.

FBI agents show up at the end. This may set up something interesting for the future, but in the context of this episode they're bullshit.

At the end, at the invisible person training school, the chapter the class is reading in the textbook consists of the lyrics to "Happiness Is A Warm Gun." So what?

Comments

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

One of my least favourite episodes - the metaphor is very heavy-handed. The ending is mildly amusing, but also stupid and, and this hardly counts as spoiling, inconsequential.

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

I agree, tho ISTR that there's at least one more reference to it in a much later series (it's just a passing one but I remember being v pleased that they'd slipped it in there because of Buffy's personal position at the time - it fit in v well with what she was going through!)

I think that BtVS becomes much more satisfying later on when the writers know that they have more episodes and seasons to play around with, and develop proper story arcs. The monster of the week stuff can, and does, get a bit annoying and heavy-handed in the first season, and this is a prime example. I do know people whose favourite Buffy season is S1, though! So perhaps I shouldn't take that for granted!

[koganbot]

Well, I responded to the premise, because I'm essentially maudlin. But actually where the episode was good was in suggesting potential social similarities between Buffy and Cordelia, and potentially humanizing Cordelia (though there's something problematic in that, and I actually end up writing more about this episode in the comments to my post on the previous), and suggesting that Xander and Willow will have to grow up a bit to embrace Buffy in all her million subtleties.