Buffy Season Two Episode Four
Oct. 11th, 2009 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
"You gave up your life."
"But I had you to bring me back."
Another monster-of-the-week episode, but this one they pretty much ace. A mummy comes to life as a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, wanting back the life that she sacrificed five centuries earlier. Obvious analogies to Buffy, but done not for weepiness but to further underline the ramifications of Buffy being potentially doomed herself. Not only can't Buffy have a normal life (this is standard to the superhero genre, and to some extent also to the western and to the detective story), but she is also the center of a group, the young woman who gives purpose to her friends and allies, connecting them to each other as well as to her: there's Buffy and Mr. Giles, of course, and also Xander and Willow, but (um, these are minor SPOILERS if you are reading despite not having seen the show) Angel and Cordelia are sort of in the circle too, now, as is Miss Calendar, possibly. So all these people need her but none of them can quite have her; yet if they lose her they might lose their center. Angel and Buffy can maybe have a romance since neither of them is normal, but both know there's no way they can really be a couple, since he can never join her day, or her his predicament. And, well, that bit of dialogue above, from the end of the episode, is rich:
When Buffy tells Xander "But I had you to bring me back," she's drawing a double analogy. She is like that mummy girl, in that YES, ABSOLUTELY, SHE CAN SEE XANDER AS A ROMANTIC FIGURE, see him "like that," as they say; but Xander didn't just awaken the teen mummy girl to the love life she'd been gyped out of, he also therefore brought her back to her purpose, which is to stave off evil, not to feed off of good; the mummy girl couldn't bring herself to kill him. Unfortunately, mummy girl lacked the moral strength to actually renew her purpose, but Buffy does. That's what Xander is telling Buffy when he says "You gave up your life." She gave up her normal life and will likely give up her actual life. And so the second meaning of Buffy telling Xander "But you brought me back" is that you can bring me back not just to the life of a real girl but to my purpose, my calling, my destiny. For the first time in the series she's straight-up reciprocating Xander's love. But the irony is that her calling puts a barrier between the two of them. The scene is staged for just the right emotional pitch. Buffy and Xander are conversing at middle distance from the camera, in the school courtyard, the on-the-way-to-class motion of students and teachers around them, as the pair walk parallel to the camera; then they turn towards it, as the conversation gets less witty and more personal, but always in two-shot, avoiding the overemphasis you might get when Person A says something and the camera cuts to Person B's reaction. Rather they're simply walking and talking and finally facing one another, Buffy telling Xander "You brought me back to life," this appreciation/reciprocation, and then the two walking forward as life goes on, his face simultaneously showing gratitude, acceptance, pain, and the opposite of acceptance, episode over and out.
I love that courtyard: cheap functional "pillars," a bush, and a tree of some sort, you see its trunk only (eucalyptus? palm?), hard to tell if it's regular bark or metal mesh atop the bark to protect it from students. Courtyard convos are always so great; the courtyard seems to be the truth spot, the characters hidden in full view, the multicultural swirl going by (a couple of Chicanos on a bench, an Asian teacher, diverse ethnicities and all colors but still mostly white) while Xander or Buffy or Willow or Rupert speaks to one of the others about what he or she is most troubled by.
This entire school is suggested by: a lawn, two classrooms, a hallway, a principal's office, a library, a locker room, a gymnasium, a boiler room, a closet, a girl's lavatory, and a few more nondescript rooms as needed. I recall in one episode there was also a media room with several computers. Also an episode with stage and auditorium. (Other places?)
Buffy uses the phrase "Mummy dearest" 'cause you knew she had to at some point.
Cordelia watch: Back to caricaturized bitch, very funny for several seconds saddled with exchange student she finds it a burden to adapt her speaking patterns to. Also when she sees Willow in sexless eskimo outfit she says, "Oh! Near faux pas! I almost wore the same thing."
I groaned when I saw the title and that there they were on a field trip, at a museum. Whedon has his own TV show and damn he's going to do everything in the horror show playbook, just for fun. And the show still doesn't trust all members of the audience to understand major points, hence Willow in sexless costume (but looking winsome, and goofy guitar player notices) and the parallels between Buffy and Ampata The Inca Mummy Girl getting explicitly stated. But none of the explicitness is clunky, and Ampata is appealing and sympathetic, as was the episode.
"But I had you to bring me back."
Another monster-of-the-week episode, but this one they pretty much ace. A mummy comes to life as a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, wanting back the life that she sacrificed five centuries earlier. Obvious analogies to Buffy, but done not for weepiness but to further underline the ramifications of Buffy being potentially doomed herself. Not only can't Buffy have a normal life (this is standard to the superhero genre, and to some extent also to the western and to the detective story), but she is also the center of a group, the young woman who gives purpose to her friends and allies, connecting them to each other as well as to her: there's Buffy and Mr. Giles, of course, and also Xander and Willow, but (um, these are minor SPOILERS if you are reading despite not having seen the show) Angel and Cordelia are sort of in the circle too, now, as is Miss Calendar, possibly. So all these people need her but none of them can quite have her; yet if they lose her they might lose their center. Angel and Buffy can maybe have a romance since neither of them is normal, but both know there's no way they can really be a couple, since he can never join her day, or her his predicament. And, well, that bit of dialogue above, from the end of the episode, is rich:
When Buffy tells Xander "But I had you to bring me back," she's drawing a double analogy. She is like that mummy girl, in that YES, ABSOLUTELY, SHE CAN SEE XANDER AS A ROMANTIC FIGURE, see him "like that," as they say; but Xander didn't just awaken the teen mummy girl to the love life she'd been gyped out of, he also therefore brought her back to her purpose, which is to stave off evil, not to feed off of good; the mummy girl couldn't bring herself to kill him. Unfortunately, mummy girl lacked the moral strength to actually renew her purpose, but Buffy does. That's what Xander is telling Buffy when he says "You gave up your life." She gave up her normal life and will likely give up her actual life. And so the second meaning of Buffy telling Xander "But you brought me back" is that you can bring me back not just to the life of a real girl but to my purpose, my calling, my destiny. For the first time in the series she's straight-up reciprocating Xander's love. But the irony is that her calling puts a barrier between the two of them. The scene is staged for just the right emotional pitch. Buffy and Xander are conversing at middle distance from the camera, in the school courtyard, the on-the-way-to-class motion of students and teachers around them, as the pair walk parallel to the camera; then they turn towards it, as the conversation gets less witty and more personal, but always in two-shot, avoiding the overemphasis you might get when Person A says something and the camera cuts to Person B's reaction. Rather they're simply walking and talking and finally facing one another, Buffy telling Xander "You brought me back to life," this appreciation/reciprocation, and then the two walking forward as life goes on, his face simultaneously showing gratitude, acceptance, pain, and the opposite of acceptance, episode over and out.
I love that courtyard: cheap functional "pillars," a bush, and a tree of some sort, you see its trunk only (eucalyptus? palm?), hard to tell if it's regular bark or metal mesh atop the bark to protect it from students. Courtyard convos are always so great; the courtyard seems to be the truth spot, the characters hidden in full view, the multicultural swirl going by (a couple of Chicanos on a bench, an Asian teacher, diverse ethnicities and all colors but still mostly white) while Xander or Buffy or Willow or Rupert speaks to one of the others about what he or she is most troubled by.
This entire school is suggested by: a lawn, two classrooms, a hallway, a principal's office, a library, a locker room, a gymnasium, a boiler room, a closet, a girl's lavatory, and a few more nondescript rooms as needed. I recall in one episode there was also a media room with several computers. Also an episode with stage and auditorium. (Other places?)
Buffy uses the phrase "Mummy dearest" 'cause you knew she had to at some point.
Cordelia watch: Back to caricaturized bitch, very funny for several seconds saddled with exchange student she finds it a burden to adapt her speaking patterns to. Also when she sees Willow in sexless eskimo outfit she says, "Oh! Near faux pas! I almost wore the same thing."
I groaned when I saw the title and that there they were on a field trip, at a museum. Whedon has his own TV show and damn he's going to do everything in the horror show playbook, just for fun. And the show still doesn't trust all members of the audience to understand major points, hence Willow in sexless costume (but looking winsome, and goofy guitar player notices) and the parallels between Buffy and Ampata The Inca Mummy Girl getting explicitly stated. But none of the explicitness is clunky, and Ampata is appealing and sympathetic, as was the episode.