5.16 - The Body

Buffy and her friends must deal with a personal tragedy.


***

What do you say about an episode like this? How can you even talk about it?

I guess I should try. This is an incredibly difficult 45 minutes of television to get through. From the opening scenes where Buffy walks in and finds her mom dead...you know it's going to be terrible.

Is it weird that I wished they could have run this episode without the opening credits? It just seems gaudy and loud when dealing with this sort of thing. But also, I think that's one of the points here, that life goes on around you even when you are at your lowest.

We see how each of the Scoobies deal with this tragedy. Buffy, first with shock, then with blaming herself, then by kind of shutting it out. Willow keeps changing her clothes. Xander uses anger (I am most like him and have put my fist through at least one wall). Anya doesn't understand, really, but her speech about what death means to her is moving in it's own way and got me all worked up again. Dawn is angry about it, doesn't believe Buffy, and needs to see the body to believe it.

Of course, this is excellently written and shot by Whedon. He's intercut some scenes that take us back to when Joyce was alive, and he's also made some interesting choices here, such as showing Buffy's thoughts about her mom waking back up, saying it's a miracle, and being okay, but we instantly snap back to the reality of the body on the floor.

Also, he's gone for some tight close ups that are almost uncomfortably close. The scene where Buffy vomits, then gets up and looks out the door, the camera is way too close, and she's pasty and pale. I think that's the point. It's supposed to be awkward. He focuses the camera on mundane details, like the paper towels soaking up the puke. And throughout the episode is the message, for me, that no matter how bad you are hurting, the people around you are living their lives as they always do. Just because your world is falling apart doesn't mean anyone else that isn't affected by it is going to understand.

Michelle Trachtenberg is EXCELLENT in her meltdown at school when she finds out. That got me pretty upset, seeing her upset.

We also have the first on screen kiss between Willow and Tara. I think they did it well by not making a big deal out of it. If their goal is to portray these two not as token lesbians but as real people who also happen to be in a relationship, I think they did a good job.

In the end, this was a really important episode, and we can all relate, or will be able to relate at some point, because we've all got to deal with this. This was a very real depiction of the emotions and experiences that we go through when affected by a death.

Rating: 10/10