Why . . ?

5.15: I Was Made to Love You
5.16: The Body
5.18: Intervention


The episode "The Body" really got to me, since it was such an accurate yet artistic portrayal of what losing a loved one is like. It brought back a lot of my own memories of how the radiating waves of shock and grief wash over everyone the person knew. I was especially touched by Anya's reaction to Joyce's death. In a very childlike way, she says, "I don't understand!" over and over, and for once, it seems that her natural bluntness and unornamented statements of the facts expressed what everyone was feeling better than they were expressing it themselves. It was almost another episode like "Restless" from the end of Season 4: each of the characters respond to the death in his or her own way. Xander tries to find something or someone to blame, so he can DO something about it; an overwhelmed Willow preoccupies herself with little unimportant details; Dawn cannot accept her mother's death and takes out her anger on Buffy.


Buffy herself we see painfully vulnerable once more. She can barely function, and her 911 phone call might have been placed by a 6-year-old. Although she has been surrounded by "death" for year upon year, this is the first time she has lost someone very close to her, and it is extremely different from her general "slayage": devestating and terrifying. The magnitude of her mother's death, compounded by her responsibilities as the Slayer, as the head of the household, and as the protector of the Key, fall simultaneously on her head. Tara tells her, "It's always sudden," and her words are starkly prescient. Later, we see Buffy having to meet with Dawn's principal to work out their problems and their future, and she also has to drop out of college to handle all of the new changes in her life. She tells an accusatory Dawn that she has to keep doing things to keep herself occupied so as not to become overwhelmed with grief, and it's tragically realistic.


I absolutely loved the end of "Intervention," especially Buffy's final words to Spike: "The robot is gone. The robot was gross and obscene. That thing—it wasn't even real. What you did, for me and Dawn . . . that was real. I won't forget it." Her moral advantage over Spike here is palpable, but simultaneously it is balanced out by his actual actions. Even as she speaks, you can tell that Spike has already learned a great deal from his misadventure with the BuffyBot and bout with Glory. He accepts his shame and failure but still has proven himself worthy—and for one brief, shining moment, he steps into the "hero" spotlight, as Michele Boyette's "Spike is for Kicks" article anticipated. He will probably take a few steps backward, as do most of the characters in "Buffy"—and all those who live in the real world, also—but Buffy will keep her word and remember. She'll give him more chances, and I have no doubt he will pull through, eventually, and come out well.