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| Writer: | Marti Noxon |
| Director: | James Whitmore, Jr. |
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| - | Review |
This episode has two distinct halves to it, one which is great and the other which is poor. The first half is dealing with the unresolved issues from Buffy skipping town in "Becoming Pt. 2" (2x22). The second half is a somewhat poorly done zombie plot that seems to happen right when important dialog is about to be said. I can't help but feel cheated by the fact that all is forgiven just because they killed some zombies together. This is a cheap way out of having to find real solutions to the problems everyone has with Buffy taking off and not telling anyone. There are a few really powerful scenes, though, which help elevate this a bit beyond failure.
The episode begins with Joyce telling Buffy she wants to put this whole mess behind them, which we find out later isn't that easy. The group's initial reaction to suddenly seeing Buffy back is perfect: they all looked kind of dazed and confused. None of their reactions can compare with the beautiful piece of subtle acting by Anthony Stewart Head when Giles, alone in his kitchen, gives us a potent emotional sense of happiness and relief just by his expressions. This is possibly one of my favorite "small moments" in the entire series.
I was very pleased to see that it isn't going to be too easy for Buffy to get back into school. I do, however, love Giles' pressuring of Snyder at the end. I have some real issues with some of the characters' reactions though. First of all, while I can buy that the group has issues with how Buffy took off, they seem to be overdoing the anger and not at all understanding what she went through. This seems a tad out of character, especially Willow being so avoidy. However, the scene between Buffy and Willow in Buffy's bedroom helps exlpain why she feels the way she does and is quite touching.
While walking around the stupid party she didn't even want, Buffy understandably gets the impression that everyone is ignoring her and would prefer she not even be there. She hears a guy say the party is for a "chick on rehab." Joyce even says that things were in some ways better before Buffy came back. I could feel Buffy's sadness and can understand why she nearly took off again. This leads to the big confrontation downstairs where Joyce and most of the Scoobies all start attacking Buffy for leaving without telling anyone. The group should be more understanding of what Buffy went through! I agree that she should have left some indication that she was at least 'okay,' but poor Buffy! It's great to see that at least Joyce admits she made a mistake when she gave the ultimatum to Buffy in "Becoming Pt. 2" (2x22).
It's here when the zombies come literally crashing in and ruin the rest of the episode. These guys are hokey, boring, and completely spoil the incredibly important argument that was being had. So the final verdict is that I loved most of the scenes dealing with Buffy's return and really disliked all the zombie stuff. I would have been perfectly content if there was no supernatural threat. Overall it's an 'okay' episode at best.
| - | Minor Pros/Cons (+/-) |
| Pros: | |
| + | Principal Snyder's "tingly sensation." |
| + | Buffy yelling to get her mom downstairs when Pat comes over. |
| + | Buffy disliking the big gathering and wanting a personal dinner instead. |
| + | Two really annoying people get killed: the dumb phone guy and Joyce's friend, Pat. |
| + | Good to know that Willow's been doing a lot more witchcraft over the summer. |
| Cons: | |
| - | Zombies. |
| - | Quotes |
| JOYCE: | We got a very exciting shipment in at the Gallery. I, um, thought I'd hang a few pieces in here. It cheers up the room. |
| BUFFY: | It's angry at the room, Mom. It wants the room to suffer. |
| XANDER: | Check it out. The Watcher is back on the clock. And just when you were thinking career change, maybe becoming a... a looker or a... a seer. |
| XANDER: | So where were you? Did you go to Belgium? |
| BUFFY: | Why would I go to Belgium? |
| XANDER: | I think the relevant question is why wouldn't you? |
| OZ: | We should figure out what kinda deal this is. I mean, is it a-a gathering, a shindig or a hootenanny? |
| CORDELIA: | What's the difference? |
| OZ: | Well, a gathering is brie, mellow song stylings; shindig, dip, (Cordelia smiles) less mellow song stylings, perhaps a large amount of malt beverage; and hootenanny, well, it's chock full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny. |
| BUFFY: | (smiles) You're really enjoying this whole moral superiority thing, aren't you? |
| WILLOW: | (smiles) It's like a drug! |
| BUFFY: | Fine! Okay. I'm the bad. I can take my lumps... for a while. |
| WILLOW: | All right. I'll stop giving you a hard time. (pauses) Runaway. |
| BUFFY: | Will! |
| WILLOW: | (smiles and giggles) I'm sorry! Quitter. |
| BUFFY: | Whiner. |
| WILLOW: | Bailer. |
| BUFFY: | Harpy. |
| WILLOW: | Delinquent. |
| BUFFY: | Tramp. |
| WILLOW: | Bad seed. |
| BUFFY: | Witch. |
| WILLOW: | Freak. |
| - | Score |
| 60/100 | C- |
Very flawed. Either the main plot is completely insulting or there's some out-of-characterness going on. Avoids falling into uselessness by way of some good character development and/or insight.
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| - | Comments (26) |
| 1. | junMar 22, 2007 (Thu) | |
| I completely agree with your comments about this episode. Wasn't Giles wonderful throughout? The quiet emotion, the whole funny bit where he's going "Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty?", where hotwiring a car's like getting back on a bicycle, and yes, the lovely bit with Snyder at the end. Everyone else, non-Buffy, was getting on my nerves. |
| 2. | JessicaMay 1, 2007 (Tue) | |
| I'm so glad you included the hootenanny quote! I actually became friends with a person based on that final line. We were planning my friends(his girlfriends) birthday party when we both recited the line at the exact same time:) |
| 3. | spuriousAug 10, 2007 (Fri) | |
| I am in the process of watching the entire series through for the second time; the first time I watched this one, I thought it was pretty weak because of the zombie plot. But, with the knowledge of how things develop in the series, it is a little more interesting. What I think is interesting about this episode is that it is one of the first times we see a recurring theme, that Bs friends don’t know how to handle her when she is having problems. We see this several times, such as with their reactions to Joyce’s death in season 5, and especially throughout season 6. In some ways, her friends are a lot like many of the show’s fans, who prefer Buffy to be light and “quippy,” but don’t know what to do when she starts to struggle with her dark side. Like many of us, Xander and Willow can be quite selfish in their relationships, and this is highlighted here. Maybe this explains why Buffy starts to keep so many secrets as the series progresses (about Angel returning, the truth about Dawn, her relationship with Spike). Anyway, I like it when we see these consistencies in the characters’ personalities, played out over many seasons. |
| 4. | AustinAug 22, 2007 (Wed) | |
| I thought the note that Joyce read at the end of Becoming was the I'm ok letter, at least thats how I took it. And about the zombies, especially their hokey music, I was under the impression they were supposed to be dumb, and I think kind of symbolic, crashing the party that Buffy didn't want to have, giving her a chance to do what she does best, save lives and fight evil. Kind of like saying, at least the Hellmouth welcomes you back. I do agree, however, that they should have let the confontation pan out, I'm interested in what would have been said, and does she really ever work out these, issues, I mean other than revealing that the curse worked, do her friends really ever forgive her? |
| 5. | AustinSep 24, 2007 (Mon) | |
| Dude Giles is really cool and freeky at the end when he basically threatens snyder |
| 6. | AustinOct 5, 2007 (Fri) | |
| I also really liked how coordinated and cool the scoobies were while Joyce was freaking out - like when she asks if these are Vampires and Willow cooly tosses Buffy a stake and then responds "no when he doesn't dust |
| 7. | buffyholicOct 21, 2007 (Sun) | |
| I don´t mind the zombies very much, what I really care about is her reintegration back in Sunnydale. The only person who I think is a bit harsh on Buffy is Xander. I can get Willow, though. I agree with Spurious here; her friends don´t want to deal with Buffy while she is depressed and sad, they want her happy. I think their issues stem from that too. They wanted her to move on, that she would kill Angel and just move on and be all happy. |
| 8. | gabrielleabelleNov 8, 2007 (Thu) | |
| This episode's always uncomfortable for me to watch cause of Buffy's situation. The confrontation scene during the party just hits a little too close to home for me. I was actually grateful that the zombies interrupted before Buffy totally lost it. SMG, of course, does a superb job. I'm always amazed by her acting in the series. |
| 9. | MsFeasanceApr 14, 2008 (Mon) | |
| This episode always leaves me yelling, "Oh, f**k you!" at the TV set; starting with Xander's assertion that she "ruined their lives", particularly given his role in Angel's trip to hell with the "kick his ass" deception. Given the arc of the full series, they all seem more accepting of the fact that Buffy slept with Spike than they do of her return here. |
| 10. | cddApr 23, 2008 (Wed) | |
| I just re-watched this episode for the first time in a couple of years. My recollection was that it was disappointing and, for the most part, it was. I too liked Giles. And SMG is, as usual, very engaging and exceptional acting. And I saw more interesting things in the dynamics knowing the future of the relationships. Regarding the idea that Xander's attitude towards Buffy is out of character, I think it's just a continuation of his jealousy of Angel. Of course, Xander knows (thinks anyway) that Angel is dead and Xander also has a girlfriend (though, as we've seen it's primarily on the physical rather than emotional level). But perhaps Xander is responding to the fact that Buffy's relationship to Angel seems to still override her relationship to Xander, even after she has "killed" him. In other words, Xander is thinking "Even after Angel's dead (thanks, in part to me), she's still thinking more about him than she is about me." |
| 11. | PaulaDec 4, 2008 (Thu) | |
| Just re-watched this episode for the second time. The zombie part is boring. The other part - Buffy and her mom and friends trying to reconnect after her return - is a good effort at actually dealing with such mutual issues in a realistic way, and has many good and fairly insightful moments (I actually do buy the anger from Xander and Willow, particularly since they tride to hide it at first; yes, things have been and still are hard on Buffy, but the same goes for her friends and Buffy is far from blameless), although it ultimately just resorts to "solving" everything by having everybody fight zombies together. The most interesting thing about this episode, though, is that I'm pretty convinced that this is where the writing team first started thinking about doing something like Season Six. The connections and similarities between this episode and S6 are many (of course there are differences too), but three seasons later, it was done thoroughly and properly without resorting to any quick fixes. |
| 12. | ZillexMar 14, 2009 (Sat) | |
| I enjoyed everything non-zombie related in this episode. It makes me sad that this could have been an incredible and pivotal episode in series, but the zombie attack and quick "resolution" (nothing was really resolved...just ignored) was disappointing. |
| 13. | EmilyMar 16, 2009 (Mon) | |
| I always hate the "kiss and make up" type scenes, except that here it's "fight against evil together and make up." It's dumb and stupid. Xander continues to be an a**hole, but I understand Willow's feelings. Willow was right, Xander was not- in the end, it's really him who ruined their lives because he lied to Buffy in Becoming. |
| 14. | MissKittyFantasticoMar 16, 2009 (Mon) | |
| "...in the end, it's really him who ruined their lives because he lied to Buffy in Becoming." I really have to disagree with you here, Emily. Soulless Angel would still have opened hell up even if Buffy had known that Willow was trying to restore his soul. In fact, although Xander's reasons for telling Buffy Willow said "kick [Angel's] ass" (if this is the line to which you're referring) were less than chivalrous, I could even make the argument that this is what Buffy NEEDED to hear. If she had known that Angel might get his soul back, she might not have fought as hard as she did - not on purpose, but because she was thinking about that possibly and trying to figure out how to save him if he became good again. This way, she focused on the fight and did what she needed to do to save the world, even when the tables turned at the last second. |
| 15. | MissKittyFantasticoMar 16, 2009 (Mon) | |
| *possibly should be possibility, sorry! |
| 16. | PaulaMar 16, 2009 (Mon) | |
| Agreeing with MissKittyFantastico. It was selfish and bad of Xander to lie to Buffy, but it didn't ruin any lives and didn't change what was going to have to happen to Angel. (It's a little strange though that Buffy didn't - much before S7 - realize Xander had lied to her about Willow's message, since it's pretty obvious that it was Willow who had restored Angel's soul and she would hardly have sent Buffy a message like that if she was working on the soul restoration.) |
| 17. | SamMar 16, 2009 (Mon) | |
| OMG, how can you forget the best line in the whole episode??? Giles: Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead! Americans. :) |
| 18. | EmilyMar 23, 2009 (Mon) | |
| MissKitty and Paula, the Willow told Xander, "Go tell Buffy what we're doing...maybe she can stall." I think Buffy was a strong enough vampire slayer at this point to stall Angel for a few minutes. If she *had* gone in there knowing that Willow was trying, she would've stalled Angel, he would've never opened Acathla, and everything would be happy. of course, this is a Joss show and things don't happen like that here, but the blame has to go somewhere. And it lies on Xander, because he lied. Straight out, right through his teeth, to her face. And he never even felt bad about it- never fessed up or anything. So yeah, I do blame him. |
| 19. | MissKittyFantasticoMar 25, 2009 (Wed) | |
| Emily-- I honestly don't think getting a message to "stall" in her fight with Angel would have been all that helpful to Buffy. Buffy didn't know Angel might get a soul, but this didn't change her needing to keep Angel away from Acathla - Whistler had already warned her about Angel being the key anyway. Buffy and Angel were in the middle of an incredibly intense fight when he finally managed to grab Acathla's sword -- it's not as if she let him get it while they were fighting because she didn't stall enough. Also, if Buffy had been more worried about distracting Angel than fighting her best, she could have ended up dead. I also disagree that "the blame has to go somewhere". Buffy is a complex show. One thing did not cause Acathla to open; one person did not ruin all their lives. It was a combination of factors, and I don't think it's fair or correct to make it all Xander's fault. ... Maybe this is just something about which we have to agree to disagree. =) |
| 20. | ShinosaiApr 27, 2009 (Mon) | |
| Buffy telling Xander "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" while taking a stake from him is possibly foreshadowing. I've also always sided with Buffy over Xander and her mom. As Buffy tells Xander in season 6 about her depression, "You didn't wanna know." Xander doesn't want to know what Buffy went through, and his moral superiority here is sickening. He says she should have talked to someone, but who, Xander? Has Xander ever given her a reason to think that he would be slightly understanding about what happened with Angel? And her mom told her not to come back. She couldn't talk to mom, she freaked when she found out that Buffy had sex. I think her friends and family should have been more sympathetic. If my parents told me to not come back home, I wouldn't come back for a long while, either. It's just stupid that they get down on her for leaving, but not one of them attempts to talk to her about what happened with Angel except Giles. |
| 21. | EmilyMay 8, 2009 (Fri) | |
| "...Buffy and Angel were in the middle of an incredibly intense fight when he finally managed to grab Acathla's sword -- it's not as if she let him get it while they were fighting because she didn't stall enough." That's true, but I think that if she had known what Willow was trying, she would've tried harder to keep Angel away from the sword. Hope can change everything. Lack of hope can also change everything. Buffy had no hope because Xander lied to her. Maybe if she had *had* hope, she would've been stronger, would've fought better. She is always at her strongest when she is fighting for Angel (see 3x10: Amends and 2x10: What's My Line? Part 2). If she had known that there was even the slightest chance that she could get Angel back and bury Angelus forever, she would've fought her hardest. I also agree with you that Buffy is a complex show, but there is a point where if one person had said something differently, things would've changed. Yes, it is possible that even if Xander had told her the truth, she still would've had to kill Angel. That doesn't change the fact that Xander is arrogant and thinks he can make the choice *for* her. And he does this by lying. Maybe it is something we just have to agree to disagree on. Though I enjoy the debate:) Shinosai, I completely 100% agree with you. |
| 22. | BethMay 24, 2009 (Sun) | |
| I don't really blame Xander, Willow and Joyce for their reactions to Buffy's return. She did leave for months with no word that she was alive, if she was planning to return, if she was even going to be the slayer anymore, etc. Her friends fought hard for her, even though they had no real skills, and felt abandoned when she left. They continued to fight the good fight, always hoping that she would come back, but not knowing. On some level they did understand what she was going through, but a lot of time had passed which we, as the viewers, didn't get a good sense of as we only saw one episode with Buffy out of town. As a viewer I feel bad for Buffy but intellectually I understand her friends' and mom's reactions.
I really liked these parts of the episodes - the zombie parts were hokey and one of the weaker monsters-as-metaphor plots. Too bad, because the rest of the episode was great. |
| 23. | ChristianMay 25, 2009 (Mon) | |
| I always disliked Xander’s reaction to the whole situation. I understand he’s hurt on some level but he should be more sympathetic with Buffy’s feelings instead of going blind with jealousy over anything that has to do with Angel. I’m glad Willow can see outside the box and really understand, or at least try to understand what Buffy’s going through.
I’m sure that if Xander was in Buffy’s place he would have had a meltdown… he showed it clearly in season 7’s “Selfless�. I hate it when people judge another’s condition before they have to face it themselves and realize how hard it is. I did like the episode… but I do agree with the discontent at how quickly they made up. I yelled, “yeah right� at the tv when Buffy and Willow shared the cheesy hug after the fight. Oh well… Sarah and Anthony’s acting made up for the flaws =) |
| 24. | Jen BradleyJun 19, 2009 (Fri) | |
| Wow, it's been a few years since I saw the episode, but I never felt negative about the Scoobies' reactions to Buffy's sudden return. I always enjoyed the episode, even the stupid zombies. The only part that bothered me was that Buffy killed her mother's only friend and didn't even feel bad about it just because Pat had the misfortune of putting on a zombie mask. Pat was still a human, after all. But back to the point. I think Willow and Xander were just teenagers, and they were thinking of their own pain rather than Buffy's. It's completely realistic that they would be angry with her. They didn't know what Buffy had was going through because she didn't tell them, and they (especially Willow) really felt bad that she hadn't bothered to confide in them. Were they right in attacking her? No. It was completely selfish and immature of them to try to punish her for leaving. Yet I understand it, and I don't think that it would be realistic for any of the characters at this point to just forgive and forget. That's what Willow and Xander did after Buffy treated them so badly in "When She Was Bad," but how could they really do it a second time? Especially after everything they'd been through together in Season 2? They deserved to be treated better, and if they weren't understanding about Angel, well that's Buffy's fault for not telling them. |
| 25. | Lollypop75Jul 30, 2009 (Thu) | |
| Er, Jen: Pat was killed by the zombies, dragged into joyce's room (when they thought she was just hurt). She then became a zombie and put the mask on. So Buffy didn't kill a human in this episode at all. On the episode as a whole - I felt what all the characters were feeling so much throughout this episode; it actually brought me to tears a couple of times (although it never has when I've watched previously). The zombies weren't great and it would have been nice to see *some* resolution between them all; this did let down the second half. But still I think this deserves a lot more than a C-. Everyone really has a point in the episode; obviously we understand why Buffy ran away, and it's a kind of realistic thing for her to do, and not helpful for someone to yell at her for that; but the others are just people too. As most people, I was really touched by Giles' reaction - I can't help feeling sad at the moment about all the stuff that comes between them in season 7 because of this. |
| 26. | KatieJJan 4, 2010 (Mon) @ 11:04am | |
| I'm in agreement with Sam. That is the best quote. Humor again serves as the Gorilla glue, holding together the less believable parts (relationship issues and plot devices) of the episode. |
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