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Exactly what the title says.
***
Holy crap.
I'm blown away. This is the best Buffy episode for me since Once More With Feeling a year ago. I can't get over how awesome it was. It's written by Jane Espenson and new Golden Boy Drew Goddard. Take what I said about Drew Goddard 2 episodes ago and multiply that, because now we've got Jane Espenson helping out too.
For me, there is not a sour note here. From the beginning, you know you are in for something special. A band tunes up their instruments and then begins to play and with it, we see Sunnydale and out gang going on about their lives as usual. Buffy is patrolling when a vampire hand pops out of a grave. She raises her stake and says "here we go." Cut to black. When you've got an opening like this, you know you're in for a real treat.
So we start with Dawn, who is home alone, and judging by her behavior, maybe I understand why Buffy wanted her to have a babysitter for the last 2 seasons. but anyway, Dawn ends up being haunted by the ghost of her mother and by something that her mother tells her is trying to harm her. It's EERILY effective and creepy. Especially the strobe like flashes of light where we see some presence looming over the body of Joyce on the couch.
Willow is in the library of the college studying when what seems to be the ghost of the girl Buffy couldn't save a few episodes ago comes to give Willow messages from Tara.
Buffy is fighting the vampire when they realize that they went to high school together. They stop fighting and talk for a long time, and the vampire, Webs, being a psychology major, analyzes Buffy and makes her realize a lot about herself.
it's one of those episodes that not just moves the plot along but takes you on an emotional journey while you are at it. You get the laughs with the vampire, you get some sadness with Willow, and you get outright chills with Dawn and the presence. The way that "Joyce" communicates with Dawn, through a series of bumps that shake her house, is outright creepy. And I just re-calibrated my surround sound system, so those bumps sounded like they were real, and in my house.
I'm really glad that Kristine has had the chance to come back a few times too, since what happened to her. Only on a show like this does she get to still be a working character on the show, even though she is dead.
And of course, the classic awesome Buffy ending is in full effect here. Each character copes with what they've been through in the episode, while the music eerily parallels what we're seeing. Jonathan is killed by his friend, Andrew, over a symbol in the basement of the high school. Buffy dusts Web. It's downright powerful. This is one of my favorite episodes of Buffy, period.
Rating: 10/10
2 comments:
Definately the highlight of season 7! Strangely enough though, I believe this is the only episode in the history of the show that Xander is not in. Amber Benson was supposed to come back for this one- obviously to be Willow's tormentor as the First...but I believe she was unavailable at the time. That would of made it a hair more powerful for me (cause I wondered why they had that girl from the earlier episode doing that when Tara would of made more sense. Buffy's psychoanalysis by Web was fantastic insight and the title of the episode even works with Spike's plot (him being dead and all).
Yep, Amber Benson would have been much more appropriate than random chick, but it didn't take anything away from the episode, thank the maker.
This one will go down as one of my all time favorites. Parts of it give me goosebumps.
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