Covering
“The Body,” in which our characters mourn like we do.
Per
tradition (and the jerk in me is screaming to point out this “tradition” has
only needed to be invoked once):
Here it is, perhaps Buffy’s most daring experiment, and the
one I return to the least. It’s one of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer’s best episodes, and it’s also…well, it’s hardly an
episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at
all. Sure, all our core characters we know and love show much show up, it has
those familiar credits, it even aired in the Buffy timeslot on the WB, where I recall it being advertised as a “Buffy special event,” and it eventually
got pressed onto season 5 DVDs and then even more eventually bundled onto
Netflix, and it’s now available behind that icon that has Buffy, Spike, and
Dawn staring out at us on it. “The Body” is immensely powerful, but fragile and
precarious. I don’t return to it often because even as well sustained it is in
mood and tone, parts of it will crumble under too much scrutiny, ruining the
magic a bit. Best to not prod at it too much.
The show has dealt with death before, but this
time is different (enough to explain why this time wrecks everyone so much if
you don’t think about it for tool long). While everyone’s first question
regarding Joyce’s death is if Glory was responsible, but it wasn’t. Joyce’s
death was prosaic, and suddenly the universe around them becomes prosaic, too.
Their usual quipping and flippancy rings hollow, and there’s no one to fight,
and no one they can blame, and no one they really need to save. All they can do
is grieve, but they have to do so like us, rather than, you know, people who
fight vampires and demons all the time.
Which is why it feels so weak to
examination, and yet demands not to be ripped apart. Any quibbling over how,
say, it feels weird that the paramedics leave so quickly, will just seem empty and
petty in the face of the raw emotion here. Does the episode sometimes strain a
little too hard for artfulness? Sure, a little bit, but that’s also a key
component of the mood. Are everyone’s reactions congruent with what we know of
them? More or less, especially in the mundane world of this episode, where
Willow realizes most of what she owns has silly crap all over it (allowing the
show to sneak in the first show kiss between Willow and Tara), which is full of
people going about their humdrum lives save, of course, for one.
No, it seems too raw to comment upon
too much. Joyce is never having fruit punch again, and everyone, us included,
just has to live with that. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re supposed to do,
because there’s nothing to do.
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