Month: October 2015

“Buffy, if you know something, if you’re protecting someone, I promise you it’ll be better for everyone if you just come clean.”

Detective Paul Stein is probably the least-celebrated recurring character in all of Buffy. He’s the cop who investigated Buffy’s involvement in a suspected murder in Ted, and then again in Becoming, Part 2, and then yet again in this episode. Each time, he has a thankless task: to ask Buffy Summers to account for the ways in which her fictional world doesn’t mesh with reality. We take it as a given that Buffy cannot speak truthfully to him, she must hide the supernatural world of which she is a part. There is little reason for this discretion, given the world the show has presented to us – the high death rate joked about in numerous episodes, the constant weird events and monstrous deaths in the town, the fact Stein’s boss is actively covering up vampire activity. The real reason she must hide the supernatural world is because the structure and metaphor of the show demand it; if Buffy told the truth, and Stein was allowed to act on this in a realistic way, the whole world of the show would shift. And that can’t happen, because the show is called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So Stein is (inadvertently) trying to break the show, and Buffy is trying to defend it, and we know she must succeed so the show might continue. Why is Stein there at all, then? What’s the point of bringing him in for a conflict with a foregone conclusion? The answer is the episode’s title, Consequences. The show has committed to realistic emotional consequences since the beginning, but it has always played pretty fast-and-loose with other types of consequence. Here, however, it has trapped itself, since the emotional consequences arising from the accidental murder of Allen Finch can only work if real-world consequences are allowed to play out as well. The show says Faith has crossed a line by killing Finch, and that charge would feel weightless unless the world around the characters endorsed it with a police investigation.

I argued last episode that Faith killing a human, not a vampire, was a cheat as an ethical line to divide Faith and Buffy. This show now presents monsters, vampires and demons as persons, so it’s on shaky ground when it says killing monsters is fine but killing humans is unthinkable. The presence of Detective Stein here is a clear marker of this odd double standard. It’s all too easy to imagine Stein, if made aware of the existence of demons and vampires, applying his diligent questioning approach to seek out the cause of a suspicious death even if the victim was a monster.

Richard Williams wrote something interesting in a Google Plus comment on the last post: “In Buffy the protagonist exists in an environment outside our society, there is no justice, no protection, no law that she does not have to enforce herself.” I agree with this description, although I think the show has no good justification for why this must be so. The supernatural is real in this world, and those in authority – the Mayor, no less – know about it. There is no reason why justice, protection and law should not be extended into this new realm. (Cue countless urban fantasy books about police detectives dealing with vampire crimes.)

Nevertheless, reasonless or not, Williams’ comment is right on point, and it goes to the heart of the conflict between Faith and Buffy. To its credit, the show has gone a few steps beyond the obvious differences between them – it would be fairly easy to build more conflict where Faith’s adventurous risk-taking style causes problems for Buffy’s more reserved and cautious nature. Instead, the show has used these differences to create a problem that illuminates a completely different (although related) conflict, regarding how the Slayer sees her responsibility to the world. As Faith says: “What bugs you is you know I’m right. You know in your gut we don’t need the law. We are the law.”

And this is a real, deep, powerful conflict for Buffy, because it strikes right at the core of Buffy’s greatest flaw. Buffy’s instinct to take on too much herself, to refuse help from her friends and bear the brunt of risk and pain alone, has got her into trouble before and will get her into trouble again. Buffy’s refusal to be honest with the police is simply more of the same. The conflict between Buffy and Faith that splits them apart in this episode is not the risky vs cautious angle the show’s been playing all season, but something much more powerful. The question is, when you have the power to sit above the world, must you sacrifice yourself to it?

Buffy spent season one convincing herself that her answer was yes. But what right does Buffy have to tell Faith to make the same decision? It’s meaty stuff, a big question with no clear answer and lots of provocation for story. It’s the kind of question you can only get to in your third season, relying as it does on a deep understanding of your characters, your themes, and your world. It’s a conflict so good that it makes Faith retain some sympathy even as she turns to the dark side in this story. And that dark side is, of course, the Mayor, the embodiment of someone with the power to sit above the world who has not the slightest intention of serving it. The show is dropping the key parts of this season-long story arc into place just in time for a heck of a run to the season finale. This is gripping, mature, sophisticated television.

Other notes:
* Poor Cordelia is still filling in time until the end of the season, but her flirtation with Wesley is amusing at least.
* Another lovely reversal where we expect Faith’s lie that Buffy was responsible will put her at odds with Giles, but he saw through her immediately.
* Xander actually gets some great stuff here. He goes to talk to Faith to try and get her to open up to him, and it is a horrific misjudgment on his part as Faith assaults him. In the process he also hurts Willow, who divines the reason for his approach to her and cries in the bathroom.
* Alas, Mr Trick. We knew him, Horatio, but not that well. An underserved bad guy, wasted to put over the Faith-turns-bad storyline. Bother.
* Does Faith kill Trick selfishly or selflessly? Does she do it because Buffy’s in danger, or so she can create an opportunity with the Mayor? Or both? I don’t know. I think the show wants us to think she did it selflessly, then stun us with the revelation that her motives were different all along. It doesn’t come across clearly, however, and my assumption (on first viewing and now on another look) is that Faith killed Trick to save Buffy, but then thought about it and realised the Mayor might have a place for her.

It’s almost surprising we’re half-way through season three, with only a few episodes left before high school is just a memory, and the show is only now getting to the Bad Influence story. You know the one: don’t hang out with the wrong crowd, or they will lead you astray. You’ve seen it in a dozen films and TV shows, and there’s an even chance you’ve lived it. The Bad Influence story is one of the fundamental morality tales of youth, and it is intimately entwined with high school, that era of surging hormones, growing independence, and very poor judgment. It also has a surprising amount of resonance with the threat of the vampire – you can see the outlines of the Bad Influence story in Dracula, with Mina watching in prudish horror as Lucy falls under the sway of a sexily alluring bad boy.

Despite this, the show has avoided the Bad Influence story so far, and it isn’t too hard to see why. The Bad Influence story is about the normal kid who is led astray by the glamour of rule-breaking, but in this show, there is no normal kid. These kids are the nerds. They hang out in the library and obsess about their subcultural thing and exist a step or two removed from the social world of high school. Why would a heartthrob rebel influence them? They’ve got coding/larping/vampire-slaying to do, dammit! In fact the show’s effectively run a Good Influence story on Cordelia, who is no longer a mean socialite, and now limits her sniping to the very deserving target that is Xander.

The closest the show has to a normal kid is Buffy. She has been tempted by a sexy older-man rule-breaker, but one so diligently moral the show really had to stretch to make Buffy compromise herself for him (for example, her unlikely decision not to tell her friends he had returned from death). She’s also been the rule-breaker herself – Snyder identified her early on as the Bad Influence on Willow and Xander, but again her clear commitment to doing good rather undermined that allegation. Even her influence on Giles, luring him away from the accepted practices of the Watcher’s Council, is clearly presented in the show as a good thing (witness Kendra’s growing acceptance of their unorthodox partnership).

Buffy herself, her character, has never really been tested. She has been a good girl for forty-seven episodes. When the show starts easing her into temptation here, it immediately feels heavy with accumulated potential energy. It also feels entirely organic because of the show’s patience with the Bad Influence.

Which is to say, Faith finally has a role in the story as of this episode. She’s been kicking around since episode three but apart from featuring in the seventh episode (the one with false watcher Gwendolyn Post) she’s basically contributed nothing of substance to the show. Even Oz and Cordy have had bigger impacts on the series narrative. She’s become just another member of the ensemble, turning up to deliver sass and sex appeal. For such an epic character – the new Slayer, the new Chosen One, Buffy’s counterpart self – her impact has been underwhelming.

While somewhat unsatisfying, that’s been part of the show’s long game. We’ve become comfortable with Faith and her rebellious appeal – in fact, we’ve enjoyed it, because while she hasn’t been given much to do, she’s stolen a lot of scenes along the way. When Buffy actually starts paying attention to her message, it makes sense immediately, because we’ve been getting comfortable with it too.

Like most Bad Influence stories featuring young women, this is all about sex. The episode opens with Faith quizzing Buffy on why she hasn’t slept with Xander, and mocking her for worrying that sex might ruin a friendship. Later Faith talks about the charge she gets from slaying a vampire, and challenging Buffy to say “staking a vamp doesn’t get you a little bit juiced…” Later, obviously excited by the new world Faith is showing her, Buffy sneaks out of class to fight vampires and then hits the Bronze to get into some sexy dancing. She wraps her legs around Angel when he shows up. All of this is very out of character for the sexually reserved Buffy, very in character for the sexually adventurous Faith, and yet somehow it’s easy to go along with simply because we (and Buffy) have had so long to get used to how Faith moves through the world.

That gets us to the halfway point. The mid-episode cliffhanger is a clear sign that we’re in trouble, as Faith and Buffy get stopped by two police officers. The police always serve as an intrusive presence in Buffy, breaking the logic of the story world and dragging the whole narrative towards collapse. They don’t respect the rules of story, and they can tear apart the whole structure of the show if they are provoked. You don’t mess with the police.

Faith immediately pulls Buffy into messing with the police.

In most Bad Influence stories, this is the climax. This is where the kid who’s just playing at rebellion realizes that nothing lies down that path but misery and pain and prison and diseases and every other dark future their parents and teachers warned them about, and they tearfully renounce badness and split with their “bad influence”, expressing only pity for that rebel’s empty lifestyle. Here, however, things are going to play out differently. This show presents a heightened world, where a cheerful teenage girl engages in deadly battle with vampires while keeping up with her homework. The police signal the upset, but they do not mark its final form. The true crisis happens when an overeager and careless Faith accidentally kills a human.

It’s a genuinely shocking moment. The victim is a minor recurring character, and to see him bleed out after being murdered by Faith is deeply unsettling. That’s the three-quarter climax, and it’s a heck of a good swerve.

It’s also fraudulent.

This show has evolved substantially from its early presentation of the supernatural. In season one, the enemy were almost all cruel and weird murderers – the glorified serial killers that were the Master’s vampires, and an array of inhuman devouring demons. Since then, the show has slowly shifted the enemy to suggest that there is an entire supernatural subculture out there, a hidden world with its own rules and rumours and seedy dive bar hangouts. Key vampires like Spike and the Gorches and Mr Trick have had personalities with more human dimension than the Master or Darla managed in season one. Demons like Anyanka appear to have personal depth and internal lives. Questionable figures like Ethan Rayne hover around the edges, greying out the moral boundaries between good and evil. The villains have become people, and the Buffy universe is vastly richer as a result.

However, the meaning of the Slayer has changed as a consequence. The idea of a young girl who murders a succession of irredeemably cruel murderers, as in season one, is black-and-white enough that we can round down the moral questions and end up with a fun monster-fighting show. The idea of that young girl murdering a bunch of people – even if they are bad people – doesn’t sit as smoothly. And yet that is what this show has become. This is a show about a vigilante murderer, and we are encouraged to overlook this fact simply because the victims don’t exactly fit our category of “human”. They are people who laugh and love, but they are demons or vampires or whatever as well, and that means Buffy and Faith can kill them with impunity. It’s fundamentally false, as is immediately apparent when you consider who among the Scoobies would even support the death penalty. (Xander, maybe?) And yet they all jauntily participate in the execution of any monster who crosses their path.

This is another faultline in the moral world of the show, and this episode seems to walk right along it without really pausing to properly consider its ramifications. The epic crisis in this episode occurs because Faith kills a human, and we do feel it. But I think we feel it because we have seen Allan Finch a few times before now and we understand him to be potentially sympathetic. It isn’t because he is a human that we are shocked by his death at Faith’s hands, but because he is a non-combatant, even an innocent.

The show doesn’t seem to see it this way. Buffy and Faith fall out over the murder of a human, not the murder of an innocent. (Would Buffy be so concerned if Faith had killed a demon who had done no more or less harm than Allan Finch?) For all that this crisis is not on solid ground, it is still remarkably effective. Faith reveals to Buffy that she doesn’t feel at all bad for what she did, and in fact she has disposed of the body. Again, we’re meant to be shocked at her amorality, but we’ve been watching Buffy kill for two seasons now, and so Faith’s reaction does carry a certain layer of sense.

The police arrival at the midpoint shattered the walls that keep this show safe in its own little world of monsters and vampires; Faith is showing that she doesn’t intend to show the wider world any greater respect. The relationship between Buffy and Faith finally has a real conflict driving it, and it’s a good one, but if they aren’t careful they could knock the whole show off-kilter. Best of all, we are once again in a situation where it’s impossible to know what will happen next.

Other notes:
* The Mayor is finally back on the scene, once again lurking in the background and performing a weird magic ritual. Several moments sell his character beautifully – laughing at the anodyne Family Circus cartoon, then reacting with distaste to Mr Trick’s affection for Marmaduke because he’s unhygienic. Opening a cupboard full of sinister magic objects to retrieve… a packet of cleansing wipes. Crossing “become invincible” off a very mundane to-do list.
* Mr Trick is still not in any kind of focus. He and the Mayor are so far removed from the Scooby Gang that it’s hard to really invest in them emotionally as bad guys.
* The new watcher Wesley arrives – he’s a nicely played comedy character, but he’s mostly treated with respect by the show. Until the end of the episode when he’s capture and promptly spills every secret he has. Way to throw the guy under the bus in his first appearance, show. Can’t see how he’ll be sticking around!
* Xander’s eye-twitch whenever Buffy says Faith’s name is genuinely funny, but his desperate attempt to insult Cordelia’s clothing for being like a hooker is another sign of how making the instinct character also the voice of masculinity leads you right into trouble.
* There’s a story a few places around the net that the original plan for the episode was to end with Buffy discovering Faith has killed herself, and this was only changed because the creative team liked what Faith brought to the show. I find myself unconvinced by this story – it might contain a small bead of truth, but it just doesn’t sound right for the show. (Not to mention that it doesn’t seem to go anywhere or provoke any action from anyone, it just ends Faith’s story abruptly.) I’d welcome a link to any of the show’s actual creators commenting on this idea.

What is the point of Xander? He doesn’t offer Willow’s empathy and nerd abilities, or Giles’s knowledge and common sense, or Oz’s wisdom and wolfy-powers. He doesn’t do anything particularly well, except screw up. Why is he there? Why do the others allow him to get involved?

Revelations offered a compelling answer: Xander could disrupt the patterns the rest of the group tend to follow, and hold them to account when their ethics and morals are getting tangled. He could, in short, be the guy who cuts the crap. And as the most vulnerable person on the team, he’s a natural in the role, because uncut crap gets guys like him killed. That was a Xander with a point, a Xander who could justify his presence in the group.

Now forget that Xander. The writer’s room did. Maybe deliberately, deciding it was a narrative dead-end or something Nick Brendan couldn’t pull off or something else. Maybe they simply didn’t remember what Doug Petrie had done with the character. Maybe they didn’t understand how Petrie’s version would play out. Who knows? Whatever the reason, the show lined up this episode to tackle the same question again. What is the point of Xander? Writer Dan Vebber would deliver a very different answer.

In this episode, the Scooby gang face a grave and apocalyptic threat that forces them to confront their fears and feelings, before the danger culminates in an epic showdown with terrifying demonic enemies. Big, epic stuff. Also, in the opening scene, Xander is hurt, and the other Scoobies suggest he transition into more of a support role. While he is unhappy at the suggestion he can’t handle himself, he ends up fetching snacks while the rest of the Scoobies prepare.

In a more conventional show, things would play out from here in a predictable way. The Scoobies would face the horrific threat and the terrifying climax in the A-story. Meanwhile, in the B-story, we’d get glimpses of Xander slumping about the place, sad about being unappreciated. Then at the end of the episode the stories would recombine, as Xander would discover some crucial weakness and show up at the climax to provide the right assistance at the right moment. Everyone would win, the Scoobies would concede Xander was valuable after all, Xander would concede he shouldn’t be charging into battle so readily, they’d all laugh together, freeze frame and out.

Not this show. The episode completely flips the A story and the B story. The apocalyptic threat is gleefully relegated to the status of a runner, allowing the comic misadventures of Xander Harris to take centre stage.

The episode takes its time to let this reversal become clear. Early on we get our standard scenes of Buffy receiving portentous information from Giles in the library, and then a research scene that sets up information-gathering moves from Buffy and Giles. Everything looks very normal except we’re spending more and more time with Xander, to the point where the camera just stays with him for most of the second act. Soon the episode becomes a series of vignettes where Xander stumbles into a moment with each of the other characters, each time with steadily increasing comedy, culminating in the stupendous moment where Xander interrupts a charged tragic-romance scene between Angel and Buffy. Dramatic music stops and starts around his interruption, as the episode has become a parody of itself, while at the same time being absolutely sincere in every way. It’s utterly hilarious – Xander disrupts the show’s normal form by violating the way its stories are (through careful editing) assembled into dramatic narratives. We’re not just getting Xander’s perspective on life in the Scooby gang, we’re getting a sideways glimpse of how Buffy stories are made.

Throughout, Xander has an arc. After having his confidence sapped by the Scoobies telling him to step back and Cordelia attacking his sense of self-worth, he tries to act cool, and ends up being recruited by some very scary (but very street-level) thugs who turn out to be zombies trying to blow up the school. Across the episode Xander’s attempts to get help from the others come to naught, and he ends up having to stop these guys and their bomb himself, which he does by demonstrating that he is in fact willing to die in order to save the day. He then goes on to keep the whole affair to himself rather than brag about his success or show how he has been misjudged by his friends, and his new sense of self-worth allows him to brush off more invective from Cordelia and embrace his role as snack-fetcher. (Notably, no-one in the Scoobies reconsiders their decision to keep Xander away from the danger zone.) It’s a lovely arc, and the final confrontation, where Xander gently engages in a showdown over a ticking bomb, is perfectly played by Brendan.

So we finish this episode with a Xander who is at peace with himself. Roll credits.

And now we know: what is the point of Xander? He’s the snack guy, and he’s cool with it.

Wait. What?

This is a resounding personal triumph for Xander the character, finding self-acceptance; but it is a disaster for Xander the member of an action-drama ensemble. The problem was “he contributes nothing substantial to the Scoobies”, and you can’t fix that with “and he’s okay with it”. That is the opposite of fixing it! Nick Brendan will still be turning up to work every Monday, and every script will need to find stuff for him to do. At least his anxious inadequacy was a source of some kind of plot energy and character motivation, forcing him to try and justify his presence. Now he isn’t even going to do that? How is this better? How can this do anything but make Xander even more redundant?

This episode is surely one of the best chunks of TV to go out under the Buffy name – it is intelligent and suspenseful and laugh-out-loud funny. But it’s a failure where it matters. It set out to fix Xander, and it ended up making things worse. Xander is still broken, still pointless, but now he’s even harder to fix.

You had one job, episode. You had one job.

Other notes:
* Have to mention the highly-memorable scene where Xander is deflowered by Faith and then decisively shown the door, with the romantic/sexy music abruptly ending and Brendan looking absolutely bewildered.
* Willy at the demon bar again makes an appearance – this is likely a riff on Josie’s Bar, a staple of Frank Miller’s Daredevil run during Joss Whedon’s phase of high comics geekery.
* Vebber’s previous Buffy episode was the superb return-of-Spike episode Lover’s Walk. This one is even better, and while it is certain that the whole room was pitching laugh moments aplenty, the result feels expertly judged and strongly unified. Might as well give Vebber the credit for another classic. He never works on Buffy again.
* Okay, there is one moment in this episode that stretches credulity too far: that it’s Cordelia who calls Xander “the Zeppo”. That’s the kind of reference that might be believable coming from a TV nerd brought up in a family of TV writers cough cough Joss Whedon, but Cordelia? What, she’s been watching Animal Crackers while recovering from her impalement?
* Not really a fan of Xander desperately calling for those guys to throw him the ball at the top of the ep. I have never seen someone do this.
* The Buffyverse creative team decided not to transform the useless comedy character into a badass. Probably a good decision – no way the audience would go along with that sort of thing, huh. In completely unrelated news, new character Wesley debuts next episode!

The relationship between Buffy and Giles sits at the centre of the show but is never the centre of attention. He was initially a stuffy patriarchal authority but across the first season, Buffy slowly won him over, until he adopted an unorthodox style that complemented her own. In the second season their relationship was shown to be strong and loving, with Giles giving Buffy support (and, occasionally, correction) in what was very much a parental mode. It is no accident that Buffy has been without an actual father! Giles has been shown to consistently be the conscience of the show, the higher-order Freudian superego that keeps the other aspects of the show’s character balance in check. Giles the character has been broadened and explored in other ways too, through his romance with Jenny Calendar, and subsequent loss and hardening; but throughout, he has been the show’s bedrock, a reliable presence who only wavers in the most extreme circumstances, and the one who gives comfort and safety to Buffy on her very worst days.

With this context in place, the first act break in this episode gives us a devastating revelation: Giles has been hypnotising Buffy and secretly injecting her with some drug or other. The betrayal is absolutely enormous. It isn’t absolutely clear that these injections are the source of the lethargy that is affecting Buffy – just one episode previous, after all, the first act break was Willow’s involvement in a sinister ritual that turned out to be innocent in nature – but the act itself is violation enough, a deeply creepy penetration of Buffy’s bodily autonomy without her knowledge or consent. This alludes to the crime of drugging a woman and then sexually assaulting her, which even in metaphor is a horrific association with Giles. While shocking, this intrusion into our safe assumptions about Giles is one the core themes of the show: women are hurt by men.

This episode puts at the forefront a problem with the show’s structure that has sat quietly unaddressed since the end of season one: even though her personal relationship with Giles has changed, Buffy is still subject to a large patriarchal institution. It turns out that Giles’s betrayal is mandated by his own masters, the Watcher’s Council. We have heard much about them before now – most recently, that they tend to exclude Giles from their activities – but this is the first appearance on-screen of the embodiment of establishment power that is Quentin Travers. Giles cannot protect her from the Council. Women are hurt by men, and the Watcher/Slayer relationship, even in the ameliorated form existing between Giles and Buffy, is impossible to fully reconcile with this theme.

The Council was never made to be looked at closely. If there is an global organisation with the resources to put a highly-trained occult researcher into an undercover role in a school she’s going to attend – well, then, surely the global org can deliver other support too, especially given Buffy seems to keep saving the world. Of course, this would violate the thematic structure of the show – Buffy cannot be part of a large organisation or all the metaphors break down! So the Council is portrayed as distant and virtually uninterested in Buffy and her activities. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but we roll with it, because that’s how we get the show we want to watch.

It is notable, though, that the Council’s first appearance in the series is through a violation of Buffy’s autonomy that is inexcusable and abhorrent. The nature of the Council is being made absolutely clear by this storytelling choice: although they speak loftily of the importance of their work, they exist to harm those with less power. They are tainted and corrupt and inimical to Buffy.

The drama of the episode arises from two questions: how will Buffy manage to overcome this dramatic trial? How will Giles respond to the test of his character posed by his part in the abuse of Buffy? Both are answered in most dramatic fashion.

The challenge Buffy faces is depicted with as much intensity as anything in the series. Without her powers, she is extremely vulnerable, and the show makes you feel it by deploying the visual structure of a horror film – doubly effective because of the jarring awareness that it is powerful Buffy stumbling about in terror here. (The only precedent for the sustained and terrifying chase sequence is the one where Angelus hunted Jenny Calendar through the school, and that ended in a shocking fashion.) The episode’s monster, Kralik, is a fantastic threat, charismatic and unnerving and full of personality – exactly the kind of figure that could carry the dramatic weight of doing something really bad to the show’s balance. The showdown between Buffy and Kralik, when it comes at last, is again right out of a horror movie, Buffy as final girl, and edge-of-seat terrifying to watch. It would be easy to let down this storyline with a resolution that feels false, Buffy winning because she must for the show to continue, but the show doesn’t drop the ball here. It finds a beautiful resolution where Buffy outsmarts Kralik, and her victory feels totally earned.

The challenge to Giles is similarly powerful, albeit less breathlessly thrilling. The parental aspects of his relationship to Buffy are highlighted by the failure of Buffy’s father to come through for her, and the presence of Joyce in the narrative, and even the clear evocation of Buffy’s teenage sexuality in her sweaty sparring session with Angel and the suspiciously phallic crystal (another reading of Giles’s intrusive injection is a father sedating and annulling the sexual urges of his daughter, because he doesn’t want her to be a sexually independent being).

Obviously and unsurprisingly, Giles does not hold the line for Travers and the Council, but defects to confess the truth to Buffy. And here the show does not do the unsurprising thing: Buffy does not forgive and appreciate Giles’s confession. She is horrified and repulsed and flees from him, forcing him to appreciate that his actions were even more awful than he has admitted to himself. Later, after the danger is past, Giles faces the consequences of his actions: he is summarily dismissed from the Council and his role as Buffy’s Watcher. Although he is affronted because he sees this as a disruption of his relationship with Buffy, it is in fact the best thing that could happen for their relationship: he is freed of the tainted institution and can give Buffy support without the unsettling structural power hanging over their every interaction. There is a lovely scene where they reconcile as he gently, silently tends her wounds.

The show reasserts its fundamental opposition to structures where men claim power over women. The imbalance that has been part of the show since the first episode is finally expunged, and patriarchy is properly undercut. The show celebrates the occasion in typically distinctive style: by ending on Xander failing to open a jar. Just one more great moment in an episode full of them. Buffy‘s third season continues to excel.

Other notes:
* Typically Whedon geek reference, where Xander and Oz debate types of kryptonite. This kind of nerdery has become a lot more common in the years since this show!
* And, as is now customary, some gratuitous continuity references to Amy the rat and even Kendra’s stake, Mr Pointy.
* Angel confesses to Buffy that he saw her before she became a slayer. It plays… weirdly. Their relationship is kind of fuzzy and strange here, guilt-wracked self-denial replaced with a kind of self-deprecating chemistry.
* One interesting switch on a recent episode – once again Buffy steps up to stop some schoolyard bullying, but this time the guy she steps to doesn’t even know who she is. This isn’t really a continuity error – it’s a big school! – but it does jar.