Covering
from “Inca Mummy Girl” to “Halloween,” wherein we stutter a bit but recover
quickly.
Feh.
When I dreaded the beginning of
season 2 having issues, what I imagined looked a lot like “Inca Mummy Girl” and
“Reptile Boy.” Neither is strictly awful, but they’re both pretty uninspired.
The former is a return to the “Xander is besotted with a comely and obvious
demon who descends on the school” format. Said Inca Mummy Girl is at least a
bit sympathetic, though everyone looks especially stupid ignoring her highly
suspicious behavior. Between the Bodyguard who seems to leap from nowhere and
Xander’s full regression to obnoxious territorial dick, it really feels like
season 1 leftovers.
The latter, erm, well. Well, to get right
to it, “Reptile Boy” is about Cordelia dragging Buffy to a frat house party, where
they end up drugged to unconsciousness, and awake to find they are to be
sacrificed to the demon all the frat pigs worship. There’s kind of no subtext
or metaphor, really, it’s just this very uncomfortable, sadly too-plausible
scenario that only veers into the supernatural at the very end, when instead of
rape there’s a snake man. Horror, and vampires especially, have a strong
undercurrent of sexual violence, but this is simultaneously too laid bare and
too ridiculous for the show to really handle properly. Also, it’s an episode
like “When She Was Bad” in that Buffy is foul-mooded most of the time, but this
time moody and mopey rather than fun and vampy. So it’s both uncomfortable, and
not very fun.
So why, then, did I lump “Halloween,”
one of the all-time great episodes, in with these slabs, instead of the obvious
run of banger eps it leads off?
Because I’m aware that, despite
being a central character, I hadn’t talked about Willow very much.
This isn’t the fault of either of
us, it’s unfortunately just how the character was built. As initially
conceived, she’s very shy and passive and supportive, so she’s taken that role
in most episodes—helping, obviously, and playing her part, but taking things as
they come. Certainly, her biggest episode being “I Robot, You Jane” didn’t help
much. Still, important as she is, she hasn’t been foregrounded all that often.
So when I saw that “Halloween” built upon moments and stories from those duds,
I elected not to let Willow lose her moment again.
Part of the reason she has gotten
lost in shuffling is due to how she handles her axis of the Buffy-Xander-Willow
triangle, which is a good thing, actually. Xander has borne mentioning due to
his overbearing assholery in this regard, but Willow has been doing her pining
and suffering in silence, which makes her circumstance sadder, but also more
mature, all of which makes her much more sympathetic when it comes to her
unrequited longing. But this also means that we usually just get a quick bit
where that unrequited longing is significant (usually in the context of and
contrasted to Xander’s unrequited longing) before it returns to the character’s
undercurrent. But it remains near the surface in “Inca Mummy Girl” long enough,
I’m pretty sure, to be resolved. She pines, she looks rather miserable, she
self-pities, she talks with BFF Buffy about it, but she ultimately acts like a
grown up and suggests Xander date the mummy he’s into.
Being “grown up” sometimes has
strange ramifications on this show, OK?
Next episode, she stands up for,
well, not herself, this is early Willow we’re talking about, she stands up for
Buffy, shouting at Giles and Angel for their treatment of her, then quickly
admitting that shouting didn’t make her feel better.
Which seems to lead quite naturally
into “Halloween,” the (rightly) much beloved episode where everyone becomes
their Halloween costumes. I think it’s best described as “a romp,” a fun, goofy,
joke-leaden time, and probably one of the best episodes for enticing new
viewers.
The mastermind behind this Halloween
madness, Ethan Rayne, says his plan is a “be careful what you wish for” sort of
deal, well suited for a day everyone is encouraged to dress up as something
else. I don’t quite buy this line of thinking though. It’s a bit too simplistic
and obvious, and besides, Xander becomes a bold, commanding, competent soldier
under the spell—I don’t think he finds much to regret there. No, suitably,
everyone’s experience of becoming their costumes is different.
For Buffy, there’s some supreme
irony—she chose her costume to evoke the ladies of Angel’s 16th
century youth (side note: much of the Buffy and Angel tension in these episodes
feels really rote and lame, it’s fairly obvious they’re destined, trying to
make Cordelia an obstacle is just sort of weird and absurd). And when she
actually is one, she’s utterly useless and vulnerable (Spike, again, comes
within seconds of killing her). There’s some ill-planned wishing there,
admittedly, but I think also some commentary on the impulse to attempt to
reshape ourselves for the sake of someone else. The stinger: Angel hated 16th
century girls.
As for our girl Willow, Buffy
encourages her to use Halloween as an excuse to try a bold new look, so she elects
to skank up her look a bit, before ultimately chickening out in favor of a bilious
sack of a ghost costume. When the spell takes effect, she becomes a ghost in a
way she certainly would not have wished for, as she intangibles through her
ghost costume, leaving her exposed in the kit she had wanted to hide (Giles
gets the best laugh of a very funny episode when he asks “A ghost of what,
exactly?”). She still has her proper sense of self, but she can’t interact with
the environment, she can’t do research, she can’t even turn book pages, so she
has no choice but to do something she never would otherwise do—she has to take
charge. It turns out she’s pretty good at it.
Hanging out in the margins of these
episodes is that dude who piloted the Normandy for me, curious about who she
is. Is he important, do you suppose?
Costumes aren’t just for kids,
though, grownups have them too. Some of them have to be put on every day. Giles
has been, to our eyes, uptight and bookish, and while no great warrior, at
least confident enough in a fight to not get killed. Until, at least, he tracks
down Ethan, a figure from his past, and gives him a vicious beating with the
air of someone who has done this many times, until the sorcerer tells him how
to end the spell.
It wouldn’t be Halloween if masks
didn’t slip a little.
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