Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy vs. Dracula.

Episode 1 of season 5; 79 overall.
airdate: 26 Sept 2000.

If I remember this episode right, it's pretty cheesy...fluffy.

Buffy already has to get up in the middle of the night to kill things in order to sleep through the night next to boring Riley...oops.

There's a beach scene...possibly the only one ever. I guess I get why they had to address the Dracula issue, but it seems a little like Joss might have been humoring one of the writers...it doesn't really fit into the narrative. Giles is doing a lot of archiving and labeling things. He tells Willow, in secret, that he's planning to leave Sunnydale. Going back to England. He's trying to make sure they have everything they need (his books archived into the computer, etc) for when he leaves. It kinda hurts in the chest area thinking about Giles leaving.

Buffy is sort of obsessed with slaying right now. Dracula shows himself. He's very Anne Rice: pale, pretty, long hair, alluring. I love that Buffy always uses their summers off as real time. It's always actually been as long in their world as it was in ours. So, they've had a summer off school, etc. Buffy tries to slay Dracula but he disappears in vapor, to reappear and then disappear again as a bat. When they're telling Giles, Anya, and Tara back at Giles' they're all starstruck and the girls all think he's sexy.

Ok, maybe the reason for the weird Dracula episode is to show that the world is slightly off as a precursor to Dawn who'll show at the end of the episode. Dracula can also, apparently, turn into a wolf. He shows himself alone to Xander in order to bewitch him into servitude, his "eyes and ears in daylight", with the promise of becoming immortal. Odd. Poor Xand-y.

Riley ends up in Spike's crypt for some reason...oh, he wants info on Dracula. Apparently, they're old foes and Spike laments that Dracula's fame outed the vampirekind secrets. Riley is being all threatening to Spike. He's obviously very insecure after no longer being Initiative dude whilst Buffy is still his "super honey".

Dracula enters Buffy's bedroom and bewitches her. He calls her "kindred", a "creature whose darkness rivals" his own. He actually is really pretty. He bites Buffy and it's all sexy and she has to wear a scarf the next day. It's nice seeing her in her old room. Xander is all twitchy and hilarious: "like any of that is enough to fight the Dark Master...bater." Xander eats a spider. Riley pulls off the scarf, outing her to everyone. She's "under the thrall of the Dark Prince". They decide Buffy can't be alone with him so she's going to stay with Xander-the-bug-eater while Willow and Tara do a protection spell at Joyce's house (it turns out she was the one that invited him in for coffee in the first place). Xander takes her to Dracula of course, then Giles and Riley break in. Buffy is having trouble fighting Dracula. She's fighting the "thrall". Dracula is talking a lot of sexy at Buffy about what her "body is capable of" etc. Dracula offers her his blood...

Riley finds out about Xander and knocks him out. Giles falls into the "chick pit" aka Dracula's three sisters. They seduce him. Dracula convinces Buffy to drink. She really does want to. He says the thing Tara said to her in the dream: "You think you know what's to come...what you are. You haven't even begun." She has a vision while she's drinking of the First Slayer and other stuff. She finds her strength after the blood drinking and fights him. Riley rescues Giles. He tries to go back and he says, "No sir. No more chick pit for you." Cute.

They catch up to Buffy after she's staked him. Xander makes a cute speech about how he's sick of being everybody's "buttmonkey". Dracula re-solidifies, Buffy stakes him again, he tries to reassemble again...she says, "I'm standing right here!" and he stops. So she hasn't bested him. He's still in the world, but this makes him decide to leave her alone.

Giles tries to tell Buffy he's going to leave but she tells him she wants to train with him. She wants him to be her Watcher again, because she's questioning her identity. She tells him she's been patrolling ("hunting") a lot lately. She wants to know more about her power, her darkness, the origins of her Slayerness, etc. She tells him she needs him, to be her Watcher again. It's so sweet. He's so touched.

Then, Dawn.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Restless.

episode 78.
airdate: 23 May 2000.

In the month of April I will be FINISHING this Buffy project. I'm doing April's Camp NaNoWriMo and that's my goal. So there's my public announcement so that I will stick to it, damnit! Ok, here we go with the last episode of season 4 so that I can watch/blog seasons 5, 6, AND 7 in the next 30 days. Woo!

Riley is going away for the episode and they're all at Joyce's house. They're all cuddling in to watch videos and they fall asleep before the FBI warning is over.

We enter Willow's dreams. Tara is there and Willow is painting a spell on her back. Tara is telling her she doesn't know everything about her and that "they'll find out" about Willow. Willow looks out the window at a desert, then suddenly she's in school and Oz and Xander are there. They might be in the high school. Harmony is suddenly there and Willow is about to star in a play. Joss really makes it feel like a dream. Nothing makes sense and the transition between settings is exactly how it is in dreams (like walking into a completely different world like walking into another room or just appearing elsewhere with no transition whatsoever). The threads that hold everyone's dreams together are an elusive yet pursuing tribal chick and a weird dude that's obsessed with cheese. Suddenly Willow is in the outfit she was wearing in episode one after Buffy rips off her "costume" (the way she dresses now). The pursuing tribal chick catches up to her and suffocates her.

Now Xander's dream shows him watching "Apocalypse Now" with everyone. Joyce attempts to seduce him. Xander's dream reminds me the most of my dreams because when he opens the door of Joyce's bathroom he ends up in his basement and then he's in a playground with Giles and Spike swinging on a set. Anya finds she can steer by "gesturing emphatically" in the ice cream truck. I think about that all the time. Xander keeps ending up back in the basement. Then he ends up in the school and Giles tries to tell him how to solve the situation, but everyone starts talking in French...bad dubbed French. Then he's in "Apocalypse Now". Principal Snyder is there. Even in their dreams though, they're all connected and they're figuring out how to fight it as the "creature" pursues them in each of their dreams. Perhaps this is because they're still connected via the conjoining spell they used to defeat Adam. In the end of Xander's dream his dad is yelling at him from upstairs. "That's not the way out." The tribal chick rips out his heart.

Now we're in Giles' dream. Olivia is with he and Buffy in a carnival and Buffy is acting like a 5-yr old. Spike is posing for a photo shoot in his crypt. Olivia is pregnant and crying. Everyone is doing research in the Bronze. The dreams are sequential, so Willow and Xander are still dying: "sucking chest wound here". Everyone is looking to Giles for help, so he sings about it. So cute. He does figure it out, too, mostly. "I know who you are and I can defeat you..." She still scalps him as he says, "you never had a Watcher." So we know she was a Slayer.

And she's killing them in the ways they were contributing to the conjoining spell. Willow was Spirit, so that's why she's being suffocated. Xander is Heart, and now he doesn't have one. And Giles is brain, but she cut it out. She's taking away the things they brought to the union.

Now for Buffy's dream. She's in her childhood bedroom with Tara staring at her unmade bed. "Didn't Faith and I just make this bed?" Tara says, "You think you know what's to come. What you are. You haven't even begun." after showing her the "Manus" tarot card. She is Hands and Feet in the spell. Suddenly the bed is made. Buffy knows she needs to find them. As she leaves the room Tara says, "Be back before Dawn." Joyce is living in the walls of the school. This reminds me of a dream I have had too. She sees Riley and he's talking about world domination ("filing things, giving things names") with Adam as a human. Buffy washes her face with clay. She also had clay on her face in Giles' dream. Riley keeps calling her a "killer". Buffy is in the desert and the Israeli music is really peaceful and pretty. Tara speaks for the primal Slayer. The First Slayer. She tells her she's supposed to be alone. I'm not sure if the First Slayer is trying to kill Buffy necessarily, or just her friends...oh, wait, now she's stabbing her. Buffy tells her she's ignoring her until she goes away, then they all wake up. How cool is that?

They all talk about what happened: "the spirit of the first Slayer tried to kill us all in our dreams". Joyce says, "Oh, you guys want hot chocolate?"

COMMENTARY: I'm going to watch the commentary now because that is a DAMN good episode.

Willow's dream: Turns out what Willow was writing on Tara's back was a love poem by Sappho. When Willow finds Tara in between the red curtains that's a vaginal reference. Totally should have gotten that!

Xander's dream: All roads lead to his basement because of the sense of failure/something dangerous there. Joss is talking about the images having resonance by themselves. That is the coolest part of this episode. There's so much space with the music and the long shots/images. Xander talking about being a conquistador/comfortador...Joss talks about this being because Xander needs comfort/love in a way that he never got growing up. He also talks about when everyone is speaking French this is because he feels stuck while everyone else is moving on with their lives. Whoa. That's cool. Didn't get that either. I'm so slow.

Giles' dream: Giles can't decide if he wants to have his own life or be a mentor. Does he want to be a rock star or a Watcher?

Buffy's dream: Tara is her spirit guide. Riley can't handle when Buffy becomes primal (when she puts the mud on her face). Buffy defies the notion of climax and defies the notion of the tragic tale of the Slayer. When you stop taking a dream seriously, you wake up.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Who Are You?

Episode 72.
airdate: 29 Feb 2000.

This episode is going to be difficult to write about, because it's SUCH a phenomenal display of television writing and really demonstrates Sarah Michelle Gellar's prowess as an actress. Joss Whedon really outdid himself with the themes/concept of what it would be like psychologically for these two women to switch bodies. Buffy gets to see what it feels like to be treated like a psychotic "bitch" and Faith is forever changed after being treated like a trusted "good" girl. Each could stand to be more like the other. It's not healthy to be as black and white as these two women are in comparison to one another. I'm getting ahead of myself, but this is probably one of my top ten favorite Buffy episodes, so I'm worried I won't do it justice.

Play.

I don't really understand what the Mayor was doing, I mean I guess he was giving Faith a fresh start by making it possible for her to get inside Buffy's body.

Willow finally explains to Tara that the reason she's keeping her a secret from her friends is because she likes having something that's just "mine". Tara says, "I am, you know...yours." Eeeeeeeee! Love that moment.

Ok, I need to get out of the way how I will speak of Faith and Buffy in this episode. I once saw an academic paper do it this way, so I will follow suit: when I'm speaking about Faith IN Buffy's body I will write FIB. When I speak of Buffy in Faith's body, BIF.

So, after being all weird with Joyce for a bit, FIB takes a bath, makes faces at herself in the mirror to get used to her new body, eeks as much cleavage as she can with Buffy's small cups, steals her passport, and books a flight with Joyce's credit card. Joyce gets a call from Giles to meet up at his place and FIB decides to go before she skips town.

Meanwhile, the police have BIF, but the Watcher's Council steal her from the cop car and take her into THEIR custody instead. They're planning to take her back to England to deal with her in Council territory. FIB meets Spike for the first time. She begins the episode declaring things "wrong" with sarcasm, but ends it with conviction, which is a nice nuance.

BIF gets her face spit into, bet that's never happened to Buffy before. Willow and Tara run into FIB at The Bronze. First time Tara's ever met Buffy, though you know, not really. She's mean to Tara. Willow notices a vampire, points him out to FIB, therefore FIB is obligated to kill him. When she does, the girl the vampire was feeding upon thanks her genuinely...this is a moment for FIB. She's not used to being thanked.

When Tara and Willow are alone, Tara explains, though she'd never met Buffy before tonight, that Buffy wasn't Buffy. "A person's energy has a flow, a unity. Buffy's was fragmented, grated, like something forced in where it doesn't belong." FIB goes to see Riley. She acts real weird asking him what he "wants to do to this body" etc and Riley stops her from the raw fucking thing and makes looooooove to her instead, so this is another pivotal moment for Faith. Tara and Willow are doing a sexy spell, as per usual. FIB sort of freaks after sex with Riley. He tells her he loves her and sticks around as she freaks out. She wanted to run, but she allows herself to be comforted by Riley.

Adam makes a speech, but I wasn't paying attention; thinking about the ramifications of someone having sex with your bf while in your body. That's pretty heavy, man. BIF is fighting the Council dudes and escaping in a big truck. FIB is at the airport.

I want to talk about clothing symbolism for a sec. When FIB first dressed after her bath at Joyce's, she put on leather pants and a black tank top. After her evening with Riley, she put on HIS shirt when she left his house in the morning. At the airport she's wearing light blues and a flowery skirt. She's obviously changing. I always notice clothing symbolism. I know it's such a simple thing, but I really like the effort.

BIF gets back into town and visits Giles, convincing him (eventually) that she is Buffy. Dushku isn't as good as Gellar, but she's not bad. The scene is really endearing (I'm trying not to say cute as much) between former Watcher and Slayer. Willow and Tara show up explaining the whole sitch after their sexy spell. They've conjured a remedy and Tara is introduced to the real Buffy, still BIF of course. So now they just need to find FIB and switch back bodies. They find out, both FIB and BIF via news broadcast, that some vampires are holding a church-full of people hostage. They both go to save the day, FIB leaving the airport (and her escape) to do so. Virtue! FIB is acting a lot like the real Buffy now. BIF shows too as FIB is kicking ass.

They're now face to face, kicking each other's asses, as per usual. FIB starts deconstructing, beating herself up and calling herself disgusting. BIF switches them back and Faith runs. Buffy realizes Riley had sex with Faith. Buffy is hurt, but she looks contemplative. She understands where Faith is for the first time, even empathizes with her.

Faith's redemption has begun. So exciting! I love her story arc.