Covering
from “Hell’s Bells” to “Entropy,” in which I will attempt to crown a champion.
It’s
incredibly convenient for me that these three episodes all come right in a row,
because I’m not sure which is the worst episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it’s one of these three.
“Hell’s Bells” destroys one of the
show’s most significant characters.
“Normal Again” nearly destroys the
show with its clumsiness.
“Entropy” is just pointless.
If you’ve been waiting to see if I
melt into a puddle of hate and profanity, this might just be your post.
So let’s get into it. “Hell’s Bells”
is the wedding episode that hits all the wedding episode clichés, but thinks it
will be funny and fresh if it just throws in demons. This threatens to twee up
the demon world as much as “Smashed” did for magic. Back in “Something Blue” it
was funny when D’Hoffryn, imposing, dark, and powerful demon, simply handed
Willow a talisman and asked she “give him a chant” if she changed her mind,
like some sort of recruiter or Hollywood agent, because it played with and
undercut our expectations, but he still seemed dangerous. Having him pop in for
the wedding is just lame and lazy, as we’re apparently supposed to laugh that
the demons are all here for a wedding, I mean, the very idea, right? Demons at
a wedding, ha ha, crazy! And what if, maybe, Xander’s dad is super racist about
the demons, except everyone’s been told they’re circus people, so I guess he’s
racist toward carnies?
I say the above to illustrate that
the episode was really fucking irritating well before the things that make this
episode so widely reviled (it’s another accepted potential worst episode
candidate), but let’s get to the bullshit, shall we? An old man claiming to be
future Xander shows Xander a vision of a life with Anya full of misery and
possibly murder, so he runs away, but it turns out the old man is a victim of
Anya’s from her vengeance demon days looking to get some vengeance for himself
(honestly, a pretty good idea for an episode), but then Xander returns, but he
calls off the wedding anyway, even knowing the vision was a trick because he’s
been worrying about repeating his parents’ mistakes for a while now (which,
again, does not align with what we’ve seen), so he leaves Anya at the altar.
Fuck. You. Show.
This utterly torpedoes Xander’s
character, and I’m not sure he ever recovers from this. It makes him seem
gutless, cowardly, stupid, senseless, and cruel, and it’s also an unmotivated
twist that comes out of nowhere, but seems smugly pleased with how it played
with your expectations. See, bet you thought when Xander came back through the
door because he’d seen through his fears, but oh no, gotcha, he came back to
crush his beloved’s heart even harder, apparently. But we did all think that’s
why he came back, because up until now the story of Xander and Anya was how
they had been able to get through their fears and issues because they did love
each other and wanted to be together. This is just more miserabilism in a
season wallowing in it, and is annoyingly defeatist, too—people were skeptical
of their relationship since it started, and it seems those skeptics were right
all along, but only because the show declares them right with issues it claims
have been building for a while even though they are only introduced in this
episode. Along with Tara, Xander and Anya had been enjoyably reliable through
the season’s rougher patches, characters who seemed to be actually growing up
in a season allegedly about growing up. But no more. And you know, if you’re
dead set on breaking up Xander and Anya, do so, but not with this spurned at
the altar hack bullshit. Do it in such a way that doesn’t make one of your main
characters look like an enormous piece of shit.
“Normal Again” is a genre staple—the
genre show visiting “the real world.” In this one, Buffy keeps hallucinating
that she’s in an asylum and every aspect of her slayer life is actually the
hallucination. Apparently Whedon himself has proclaimed it the ultimate
postmodern deconstruction of writing, as it questions some of the show’s
elements. And now that he mentions it, it is
kinda weird that a teen girl fights a nightly war against evil and
darkness, because that usually doesn’t happen. I’m glad the show took the time
to point that out. Buffy’s doctor even expresses incredulity that Buffy would
have a little sister monks made for her from mystical energy. Really?
Fuck this.
Fuck this.
Know how I know the show isn’t real?
Because it’s on my fucking TV and has a bunch of actors in it, and each episode
has the credit “Written by.” Yeah, watching it takes requires some suspension
of disbelief, and given how much you’ve been abusing that suspension lately, it’s
probably best not to call attention to it.
The episode is allegedly open-ended
deliberately, except it really isn’t open-ended, the last thing we see is Buffy
in the asylum after she’s supposed to have cured herself of the hallucinations,
and there’s no reason we should see unless the asylum is reality. While you may
think such a statement aligns me with the “Asylum Buffy” school of thought
which apparently exists, I reject Asylum Buffy’s Reality for a much more simple
reason: it’s fucking stupid. “It’s aaaaaall a dreeeeeeam!” isn’t clever, or
insightful, or thought-provoking, it’s wack ass bullshit, I’ve already begun to
suspect I’m wasting my fucking time with this show, best not to confirm it by
telling me none of the events I’m seeing aren’t actually happening. Anyway, the
notion that everything in the show is a fevered hallucination is said to gloss
over inconsistencies and weirdness, to which I say No. Fuck no. Fuck you, fuck
no. I deny you that cover for the terrible turn in characterization and
plotting the show has taken. I deprive you of it. In the next episode, Buffy’s
friends don’t care that she tried to kill them all not because all these events
are just in her mind, no, they don’t care, because allz y’allz didn’t feel like
fucking writing them to care. That shit is on you, son. On you.
“Entropy” is mostly about Spike and
Anya fucking because they’re both sad and lonely, and through stupid
contrivance Buffy and Willow and Xander and briefly Dawn all see it through a
spy camera. It’s powerfully pointless, and mostly exists to crush whatever was
left of any love we might have had for Xander into bloody dust as he rushes off
in an alpha male rage, attacks Spike, and shouts at Anya, while Buffy stands
around and is shocked and hurt that Spike would have sex with someone else
after she broke off their relationship, and while Anya asks “Where do you get
off?” and I ask “Where do either of them get off?” the show doesn’t seem aware
of what a bad soap opera all of this is. Oh and Spike lets slip that Buffy’s
been sexing him. Whatever.
I’m not going to lie, coming into
this, I was expecting to crown “Hell’s Bells” the worst episode of Buffy, but
that’s when I thought the ending of “Normal Again” was a clumsy attempt to do “but
is the horror really over!?” But learning that we’re encouraged to ignore all
of the massive, massive failings and slovenliness of this season due to its
possible revelations? It filled me with a rage. The ultimate postmodern
deconstruction? Fuck you. Fuck you, do a better job writing the show, don’t
blame shit on some idiotic shit about schizophrenic fantasy worlds.
Fuck.
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