“Willow and Tara are still in school” works fine for me. We can even assume it’s still summer vacation and that accounts nicely for all their free time.
And Xander’s allegedly a carpenter, so it would have been a nice touch for Buffy to be in a homemade coffin.
Are we sure Buffy was buried in the woods, and not just in the same cemetary the Scoobies have been patrolling all these years?
Topic for discussion/debate: Harmony’s guest spot on Angel last season seemed to definitively declare that a soulless vampire cannot redeem itself or change its spots.
Yet in Spike we appear to have a definitive counter-example. A matter I hope to see addressed with Spike this season is:
Why is Spike an exception?
Or is he really an exception after all? Last night we saw he still has the urge for mayhem. Will he give in to it?
Willow and Tara are both still students, or at least there hasn’t been any mention of either of them graduating or quitting. I imagine that they’re both blowing off some classes to bring Buffy back. Student loan? Money from parents to live on while they’re in school? Maybe. Xander? He’s in construction. Maybe it’s the slow season and he’s on unemployment. Or it’s his day(s) off.
I think the only thing I had a hard time coming up with an explanation for was the tombstone. Ok, they buried her. They got a coffin from somewhere. Like there’s never been a vacant coffin in Sunnydale. But why not have a funeral unless they were planning on bringing her back from the get-go? They must have been working on this the whole time. But why did Giles and Dawn go along with burying her privately? Just so Dawn wouldn’t go live with her father? And if they privately buried her, then why go through the bother of ordering a tombstone? In case someone wanders through the woods and reads the name, it just doesn’t make any sense. Tombstones are expensive, and heavy, and I imagine they would have had to put that on her grave by themselves. A tombstone with a name is just not a good way of keeping a secret.
Ok. Deep breath. It’s just a TV show, not reality. Some things won’t make sense, just to keep the story going…
As far as Willow-the-megawitch, I expect repercussions soon from the black magic aspect of the resurrection spell. Surely, in the Buffyverse, knifing a fawn (that was a surprise!) is not something you’d do for lily-white spell. She’s been pushing that boundary a bit in recent episodes. Remember the bad books she looked at before the “I owe you pain!” encounter with Glory? There will be a backlash.
I don’t see Spike as being an exception. We saw what he was like as a human - a hopeless romantic. After he became a vampire? Hopelessly devoted to Dru. His demon side is still there, he still wants chaos and mayhem on some level, but the chip took care of a lot of that. The only way he can destroy stuff is by fighting bad now, plus that ties in with trying to impress his latest love (and always a slave to love, that boy is) with fighting side by side with Buffy last season.
And my theory that Willow will be the big bad this season still stands. Killing a fawn is so un-Willow like.
And it looked to me like the spot they buried her was in the woods, just a little way off of the cemetary.
Last season, there was a recurring theme on the power of blood and the need of it in magic. Willow needed and used the blood of the fawn for the spell to bring Buffy back.
I did not find the killing of the fawn to be particularly out of the developing character for Willow, who has always been a fairly practical person. She did not cause the fawn to suffer, which would have been wrong for her. Willow has learned to hurt and to kill. This was not her first kill. In the words she spoke, she was asking for a sacrifice and that was the animal that appeared (a la Isaac and Jacob, for just one example). I think we found it extra-disturbing because of the pretty dress/idealized pastoral background of the scene.
Consider last season when those monks are all after Dawn/Buffy in the Winnebago, and even when her life is in danger, Willow yells out “Don’t hurt the horsies!!”, and appears to mean it.
Then she kills a fawn by herself first thing this season. I dunno, I just considered that out of character.
I agree with lolagranola’s analysis of Spike’s behavior. He was a total sap as a human, and some of that has obviously carried over into his vampire persona. Spike has become one of my favorite characters because of this complexity . . . We didn’t get to see his reaction to the ressurected Buffy in this episode, and I can’t wait to see his response!
I am a bit concerned about Willow. She’s been having quite a few un-Willow-like moments . . . She did seem just a leetle obsessive about her plan to bring Buffy back. Her whole demeanor seemed “off” to me. I suppose that could be chalked up to grief, but I think her “any means necessary” attitude could definitely be foreshadowing some psychodrama later this season. Concerning the much talked about Willow/Tara smooch - I completely missed it. Did I blink?
I was a little disappointed by the pacing of this episode - it seemed to drag a little in certain places. Dawn’s exhortations to Buffy on the “diving board” portion of the tower seemed to take forever. I mean, didn’t you know she was not going to jump? They just brought her back! They weren’t going to kill her again!
And the Scoobies did seem a bit slow on the uptake in realizing that Buffy’s ressurection spell would not automatically extract her from her coffin. Hellooo, people! Is this just Joss emphasizing to us the complete lameness of the Scoobies sans Buffy? I can’t believe that all this weirdness is the result of oversights on the writers’ parts. Joss and company have always ruled in the past - There must be a reason! There must!
Oh, it was utterly out of character - and that was the point. She would do things she wouldn’t even think of doing to bring Buffy back - remember her “it all was for nothing” line when she thought the spell didn’t work.
Edwardina you could have missed the smooch, simply because it was utterly downplayed - as simply what a couple does (Tara promised Willow pancakes for breakfast, Willow said “Yay” and smooched Tara). And, I think, that’s how Joss, etc., wanted it - “they’re a couple, no big deal”.
The whole vampire/guilt thing - I think Joss throughout the years has overplayed the whole “a demon takes over the person when they become a vampire” business, in order to absolve the Scoobies from any guilt in killing them. Harmony, Spike, Drusila, etc., have all demonstrated that the human personality deeply affects the person after they become a vampire. Seeing how the show also has numerous examples of “good” or at least neutral vampires, the fact that a vampire can be conflicted makes sense.
Quite correct I’m sure, SuaSponte. Willow did something wildly out of character for her…not because her character is changing, but because that’s how much she wanted Buffy back.
On the Other Hand, if you can give me some other examples of “good or at least neutral” vampires other than Angel or new Spike, I’d like to read about them.
Excellent point, lolagranola, I had forgotten that scene about the horsies.
However, I think we’re looking at the difference between spontaneous behavior and planned behavior. Willow had obviously decided it was worth the price of a fawn and her own torment to bring back her beloved friend. I don’t think Willow would ever run over a fawn while driving, she’s swerve and probably get killed to preserve it. But with deliberation she decided Buffy was worth the price, just as she decided that Tara was worth the price when Willow went after Glory last season.
Willow does seem to be headed to the dark side, and I think (assuming Tara’s milquetoast objections and rationalizations were Jossesque foreshadowing) that sometime this season Willow is going to succumb to the darkness and Tara is going to be the price for it.
My biggest question…Does Sunnydale have no police force? Many things in the past have operated under the cover of night and in the shadows. But this was blatantly out in the open and involved invading people’s homes. Surely they have at least a couple of officers to try and put up with some sort of resistence. Or at least write traffic tickets.
It took it more as a solid indicator that they didn’t think the spell had worked at all. Remember, Willow is in shock and says, “It was all for nothing. … Buffy isn’t coming back.” All the Scoobies think they’ve failed (the spell seemed incomplete), and so don’t consider that it had worked and Buffy was merely trapped in the ground. Then they see her alive, filthy, and with bloody hands, and as the shock of seeing her at all wears off, they put two and two together. It made sense to me.
Also, I agree that the pacing was off. The looting and pillaging of the baddies went on overly long. About the tower scene, though, I think it needed to be that long to be believable. Buffy clearly needed time to understand where she was, and rushing to her enlightenment would have rung false.
I think the significant quote was, “Am I in hell?”. Considering what Buffy has seen since she dug her way out of her grave, it’s an entirely reasonable question.
I think the up-the-tower is indicative of Buffy trying to figure out what was going on and where she was. She went to the last place she remembered. I don’t think Buffy knew she was dead (or perhaps does not remember being dead). Willow’s concern of Buffy being in hellish torment was well intended but as of the moment we have no evidence that she was. I’m looking forward to the next episode, to see what happens when Buffy starts talking.
Back to Fiver’s question, I can’t think of a positive or neutral vampire in this mythos. There are a few examples of vampire sufficiently stupid to be effectively neutral (the mullet-head in the bar with Darla last season, squealer-boy from last night) but none are neutral or good by nature. I think Spike can be relentlessly emotional because he has the time to think about, due to the chip in his head. Take out the chip and Spike will no longer have reasons to think before he eats. Remember the woman Dru killed and Spike ate?, and the “I miss it” from last night? Spike is one chip away from being his old demonic self, IMHO.
My biggest complaint is that they brought Buffy back so soon. I mean, when you kill off the title character, it is supposed to mean something. We only got about 40 minutes of the Scooby gang reacting to their loss, then she’s back.
I wish they had kept her dead for a while, kept the BuffyBot around so SMG could justify her paycheck, and have the Scooby gang need to perform some task to get the stuff needed to get Buffy back. I just feel cheated out of seeing them react to life without Buffy. Seeing Dawn cry and look all sad for a few minutes didn’t cut it, although crawling into bed with the recharging BBot was a nice scene.
I loved Spike getting excited by the looting bikers, I hope they bring back some of his bad side, not just his bad ass side. I must say, the demon bikers were pretty lame, all things considered. Except for the final confrontation with the head demon, all they did was fairly lame property damage. Come on, why would a demon need a Molitov cocktail?! They could have just been Hell’s Angels, not, um, well, you get the idea.
And what about Angel? Did he come visit after Willow told him last season? I missed the first two episodes of Angel, did they address this? And will we have anymore crossovers now that they’re on two networks?
My goof. I meant to write “good or at least neutral demons”, the point being that, in Buffyverse, vampires are demons that have taken over the body of a human.
It was Tara who said the “horsies!” line from last season.
I’m also very upset that Amber Benson isn’t in the credits, and I can’t help but think that it’s for a specific reason. If that is because Tara isn’t going to make it through the season or because she’s just not going to be in a few episodes, I can’t say. It seems like saying “Tara isn’t going to last the whole season” is too obvious- characters that have not made it through the season have been in the opening credits. I suppose we’ll wait and see.
Remember, vampires imitate/ “are” the people who they were before they died. Harmony was a vacuous bubble-head and the demon did nothing to change that. Spike is a viscious killer, but he was also a wimpy poet.
There are police in Sunnydale, they’re just ineffective. There were sirens in the distance, but I think that the general Sunnydale PD reaction is to take cover and hope it will go away. Why wouldn’t they feel that way when they have Buffy and an entire town which systematically ignores what happens there? (See Gingerbread for Joyce’s (sniff) speech about the town’s mentality.)
When Buffy died, Kendra was called. After Kendra died, Faith came. Buffy’s “she’s dead so another will rise” has been used up- her death no longer calls another.
Xander is a carpenter and although nothing has been made of it yet this season, they showed him at work several times last season. Willow and Tara are still students, which serves as enough of an occupation, presumably. Also, if you consider both of their backstories, it’s reasonable enough to think that both of them have full scholarships to school.
I would agree that Willow is getting progressively darker. I can see it being dealt with this year, but I also wonder how powerful Tara really is.