Covering
“The Freshman” and “Living Conditions,” in which college hijinks ensue.
Let
us take a moment to praise one of the best jokes the show ever did: the Klimt
v. Monet tally. It’s really great, probably more than anything because it’s
keenly observed and accurate to the college experience at the time. Do they
still have those huge poster sales? Because they sure did when this episode
aired, and they sold a lot of copies of Water
Lilies and The Kiss. I went for
the Reservoir Dogs still, personally.
Sunday’s vampire gang tallying the cliché posters is funny, and detailed to the
college experience.
If my memory’s right, it’s one of
the few that is so.
Both Buffy and Buffy were going to have to eventually leave high school, which
wouldn’t be a huge issue because for many, college is waiting right there after
it. This would force an evolution of the show, but not any huge changes—instead
of classic high school issues supernaturally twisted, they’d be college issues.
Thing is, though, well, there are a lot of things. For one, many college issues
aren’t too different from high school issues, they’re all just issues of
growing up. But there’s also something elemental about the high school
experience, a commonality that’s easy to tap into, and a specificity that
doesn’t change too much. But there’s less universality to the college
experience, and, well, if I’ve remembered these accurately, many of the college
details feel more pulled from stories about college rather than actual college,
and would often feel outmoded and out-of-touch. Like the poorly attended
political rally Buffy walks by on her first day. “What do we want!?” shouts the
leader into a megaphone. But the response is an indecipherable murmur.
High school is a real
pressure-cooker, with everyone stuck with each other in the same small
conglomeration of buildings—hence all the dark jokes about the casualty rates
at Sunnydale High, and the many ways the students and staff rationalized. The
bullying sports teams and queen bee bitches couldn’t be avoided, so we all have
experience with them. But college is so much larger, so much freer, and so much
more diverse, someone could easily vanish without anyone suspecting anything
was amiss, if they noticed at all.
These first two episodes of the
season do a pretty good job at convincing that there may be something to the
college setting. Buffy often feels inadequate, but that inadequacy is pretty
well justified in “The Freshman,” as she struggles to adapt to that aforementioned
size and lack of guidance. She’s adrift and confused, while suddenly Willow is
confident and in her element, in an environment that seems designed to make her
feel insignificant. It’s been advised she resume her secret identity, but with
so many people on campus, would anyone know she was the Slayer even if she didn’t
try to hide it, and of those who did, would they care? Sunday’s gang doesn’t.
Their contempt for Buffy speaks to this truism—no one cares how cool you were
in high school, except, of course, for you. They may not care about the Class
Protector award, but Buffy sure does, and that leads to her concluding she
actually can do this college thing.
Pour one out for Oberyn Martell, I
almost didn’t recognize you without your rock star swagger.
“Buffy’s roommate is a demon” is a
pretty simple pitch, and almost certainly the pitch for “Living Conditions.” Difficult
roommates, dealing with the fact that you now share space with someone from a
very different background than you, that’s probably going to be an evergreen
college experience. Kathy’s persnickety habits and Buffy’s mounting madness in
the face of them is all pretty hilarious, particularly since everything Kathy
does is just ever so slightly more exaggerated than typical bad roomie behavior.
Of course, any thinking person in such a situation has had the worst thought of
all occur to them—what if I’m the one that’s the problem? Probably the
cleverest bit is the reveal at the end which hints that Buffy’s irritability had
less to do with Kathy’s soul-sucking spell than she might like.
Cleverness is going to be the season’s
saving grace. Consensus holds that Buffy’s college years aren’t as consistent
as her high school days, as the writing crew never quite got a hold on how to
make that transition. At the same time, many of the episodes coming up are some
of the best the show ever did, as, perhaps to compensate, they show a real
playful, clever creativity and some brave experimentation. College, after all,
is supposed to be the place for that sort of thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment