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Separating this from my main post about the episode cause I couldn't figure out a place to slot it in, but something I've never wondered about that I started pondering after watching Dead Man's Party is what is the deal with Snyder's relation to the Mayor? He's powerful in local circles but how did he really accomplish that? Like yeah he's an easy pawn to authority higher than him I get that, I mean more how did he get so entrenched so quickly that he's actually in on stuff? His debut in The Puppet Show very much feels like he's entirely newly arrived not that he was promoted from within Sunnydale High School. And yet by School Hard he's already entrenched enough that he's got a line to the Mayor and at least vaguely knows about what's going on, by I Only Have Eyes For You he even knows that the school is built on a Hellmouth. The dialogue immediately following that "The city council was told that you could handle this job. If you feel that you can't, perhaps you'd like to take that up… with the Mayor," does suggest he was brought in specifically by the Mayor to keep things under control but if so, I am curious what is the history there? And why did a hundred plus year old sorcerer with such a heavy influence over local politics and such wait until so close to his planned Ascension to get somebody who could 'handle the job' rather than Flutie who presumably was much more lacking in this regard.
Generously the Hellmouth only really started acting up a month before Flutie died and I guess maybe he didn't think he needed someone to, but less generously by the time the Mayor is really a character we're fairly far past that idea and Sunnydale is just always weird not something that just happened recently.
I dunno I just wonder how they came across each other in a way that the Mayor not only knew he'd be a useful patsy (easily believable that he'd have sufficient references of his character) but also trusted enough to be told fairly early on, yeah part of the job is to suppress supernatural news getting out good luck. He doesn't feel like he knew what was going on from the beginning but maybe he's good at keeping a lid on it, we only really see indications that he does when he's talking to other people in the know after all as it were.
Is there anything in the first half of Season 1 that rules out the idea that Principal Flutie also knew that his high school was on a Hellmouth? By which I mean: I don't think there's anything in the first six episodes of the show to suggest that he did, but given that Snyder clearly does know surely the most parsimonious explanation is that this is just something every Sunnydale High Principal gets told sooner or later?
(I mean, as you say, in the early episodes the idea that Sunnydale was generally a weird and dangerous place and had been for some time hadn't really been established yet. But retroactively, once that becomes the revised history of the setting, I think the implication must be that Snyder's predecessors' were also in on the secret. There doesn't seem to be anything special that the Mayor wants or needs Snyder to do.)
As for where Snyder came from and who vouched on his behalf that he could "handle this job", I'd note that Snyder's line about the school being on "a" (as opposed to "the") Hellmouth is at least suggestive that he's aware of other Hellmouths, something that the show hadn't really made explicit before that episode. (Though I think there are one or two references to "a" rather than "the" Hellmouth in Season 1, I'm inclined to write them off as unintended.)
That is to say: maybe before coming to Sunnydale, Snyder was a Principal (or Vice Principal?) at some other high school on or near a Hellmouth? Maybe the Mayor got in touch with the Cleveland City Council and they recommended him?
The show itself doesn't seem sure how much personal authority Snyder is, or just how highly he ranks in the conspiracy. In School Hard he's practically giving the Chief of Police orders, but by I Only Have Eyes For You their power dynamic seems to have reversed. In Becoming he's making calls to the Mayor about Buffy's expulsion; by Band Candy the Mayor's become somebody he's met a couple of times ("[he] shook my hand! twice!") and then by Choices the Mayor doesn't even bother to tell him he'll be visiting the school after dark so Snyder should stay away. So perhaps Snyder's power in what Giles calls "local circles" comes partly from being appointed directly by the Mayor and partly by dropping vague hints to other people who are also in on the town's big secret that imply he knows more about what's going on than he actually does?
That would explain why, over time, people like the Chief of Police realize that actually Snyder's just all bluster and stop listening to him, but earlier on they're much more solicitous of his opinions. And by the second half of Season 3 he seems to be barely in the loop at all; certainly he doesn't know enough to avoid the graduation ceremony.
(Obviously this is mostly the writers just puzzling out what was going on with Snyder as they went, but I think the resulting picture is more or less consistent if you want it to be.)
I have seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes loaded of fictitious trash, poring day after day and night after night over highly wrought scenes and skillfully portrayed pictures of romance, until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and reckless, and her mind wandered and was lost — the light of intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted. She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels.
-- an anonymous pastor in 1864, on the greatest threat to young women
one time a guy friend told me he was quitting league of legends and literally two weeks later she was on estrogen. these events are intrinsically connected in my mind.
What are your favorite Giles moments? What is a 'missing scene' or something you'd like to have seen Giles do or say and didn't?
I think my favorite Giles moments are the obvious ones, really.
His reaction to Buffy coming back to Sunnydale in Dead Man's Party: not just the fact he's the only person not to give her a hard time about being gone but because he's so obviously happy that she's returned but tries to hide that delight from her. He understands her in a way her friends and her mother can't -- he too struggled with his supernatural calling when he was young, and tried running away from it, after all -- but he thinks his affection for her is something to be ashamed of.
His speech to her in Innocence ("if it's guilt you're looking for [...] I'm not your man. All you will get from me is my support and my respect"). Not only is this a nice moment in itself (albeit one later undercut a little by the events of Helpless), it also -- together with Joyce looking at Buffy and telling her that "you look the same to me" in the very next scene -- strongly suggests that people who read Season 2 as the show somehow punishing Buffy for the "mistake" of sleeping with Angel have chosen a reading that the show is actively rejecting. Angel losing his soul is a metaphor for something that really happens -- you sleep with somebody and then they seem to become somebody a lot less pleasant -- but it's not the show's position that any of this is Buffy's fault.
His various moments sticking up for Buffy when she's not around to see it. Threatening Snyder in Dead Man's Party, of course ("would you like me to convince you?"), as well as more gently defending her earlier in the show, but also lots of his interactions with Wesley or other Watchers are also fun ("If you want to criticize my methods, fine. But you can keep your snide remarks to yourself. And while you're at it, don't criticize my methods").
Giles is pretty funny, actually; I think he gets some pretty good lines throughout the show. For example I like the scene in Intervention when he and Buffy are out in the desert for a ritual, she points out they don't have any food or water with them and wonders if the guide he's summoning for her will also "a week later" lead him to her "bleached bones", and he insists that won't happen: "it takes more than a week to bleach bones". Or his speech to the gang in I Only Have Eyes For You ("I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. In fact, well, I encourage you to always challenge me when you feel it's appropriate. You should never be cowed by authority. ... Except, of course, in this instance, when I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong.")
I don't really like fandom attempts to cast Giles as the Scooby Gang's unproblematic Team Dad, but I do like the very different ways Giles interacts with Buffy's friends, from his gentle support of Willow in the early seasons to his frequent irritation with Xander ("Am I right Giles?" "Almost certainly not, but to be fair I wasn't listening." or "Xander, don't speak Latin in front of the books"). I like the fact that Dawn -- as the part of Buffy who gets to be a normal kid and not a Slayer -- quickly intuits that Giles doesn't really like her. I like the scene where Giles goes to kill Angelus in Passion and the scene in which he confronts Angel in Amends.
Oh, and of course "I believe the subtext here is rapidly becoming text", which I'm pretty sure I've quoted on this blog more than once.
Missing scene ... well, I've argued recently (and repeatedly) that we should have seen Giles trying to help Faith a bit more than we did if the show didn't want us to blame him for her changing sides, so let's go with something else. It would have been nice if we'd had a scene where Giles tried to get Buffy to talk about Kendra's death, I think (I mean in the same way he's able to get her to open up about how it felt to have to send Angel to hell). He wouldn't have to be successful -- you could contrast this with his own reluctance to talk about Jenny, even -- but it would make it much, much easier to read Buffy's ongoing silence about Kendra as a deliberate character choice, rather than -- as I strongly suspect it was -- the writers just never caring about Kendra at all and assuming the audience didn't either.
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Further context: Durham city council (Reform UK) cut funding and support for Pride. The Durham Miner's Association and other trade unions raised enough money for Durham Pride 2026 to go ahead - a direct call back to when Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) raised money for mining communities when Margaret Thatcher seized union funding during the miner strikes of 1984-85.
At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.
Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association, said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community […] They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.”
I've talked a little bit about why I don't think Dead Man's Party works as an episode, and in a subsequent post I'm going to outline the changes I'd make if it were in my power to rewrite the episode from the ground up.
Before that, though, I want to say a bit more about some of the specific details of the episode we actually got. I also want to talk a little bit about the shooting script for this episode (which, while still far from perfect, contains a number of lines that didn't make it to air and which I think the episode would have been stronger if it had kept)
As I said in the first post, one of the mistakes I think the episode makes is to spend so little time in the heads of characters other than Buffy, having them behave unpleasantly towards Buffy for reasons that aren't ever particularly well articulated, only to suddenly pivot to an ending where Buffy admits that everything is her fault and apologies unilaterally to everyone else. So maybe it's worth running through all the non-Buffy characters and trying to discuss what the episode tells us about them (or how badly out of character they're written).
In order of how much dialogue they get this episode:
(1) Joyce
Call me predictable, but I think Joyce is actually pretty sympathetic for most of this episode [if you ignore the whole 'taking exhibits home from the gallery to keep' thing, at least]. It helps, of course, that Joyce gets more screen time than anybody other than Buffy (by some distance, in fact: the gap in screen time between Buffy and Joyce is about as big as the gap between Joyce and any one of Willow, Xander and Giles). It's clear that Joyce is both glad Buffy is back and trying her best to do right by her (fighting to get her back into school, for example), but also unsure how to act around her and afraid Buffy might leave again (her visible discomfort about the idea of Buffy leaving the house to go and look for her friends is well acted and feels true to both characters, for example).
Before the party Buffy's only real (and repeated) complaint is that Joyce is pushing (as a back-up option!) for her to maybe go to a private all-girls school, but ... what are the alternatives supposed to be, if they can't work around Principal Snyder? Home-schooling is Buffy's suggestion, but that clearly isn't a reasonable option at all, because Joyce is the only person in the household with a job. (Also, Buffy: probably no boys if you're home-schooled either...) Sure, Joyce is being a little naive about things ("Superhero ... is that the right term? It's not offensive, is it?"; her suggestion that Buffy could tell a few trustworthy people like ... Principal Snyder) but Buffy is the only person in this conversation to actually say anything derogatory (with her unfortunate comment about 'riding the little bus to school').
Also, speaking of the party: rewatching I found myself kind of outraged by this plot development on Joyce's behalf. She invited "Willow and Mr Giles and the others" [which I think is a nice insight into how Joyce thinks of the Slayerettes] to have a nice fancy dinner at her house. An excuse to use the company plates (which we see Buffy setting out before Pat arrives). They then (without once consulting her!!) collectively decided to extend this to an invitation to dozens of other people, including a live band?? Call this an over-reaction if you like, but personally I think she should be allowed to hunt them for sport. Certainly I understand now why only Faith gets invited over for dinner at Christmas. At least Faith just pretends she has a fun party to go to: she doesn't decide she's now free to hold one at Joyce's house without asking.
Obviously Joyce shouldn't have said things were "worse" with Buffy home, which is the tipping point for Buffy to try to run away again. But (1) with the context of the rest of the conversation, which Buffy didn't hear, I think that's more understandable (things are 'worse' because Joyce spent the summer telling herself that when Buffy was back she'd be able to fix things with a simple gesture but now she knows she can't) and (2) Joyce obviously didn't mean for Buffy to hear any of that, and the episode is careful to establish that she's gotten used to Buffy not being around and that she's been drinking a little (which, again, is understandable when you realize she's had her plans for the evening entirely upended by some of the worst dinner guests imaginable).
In the aforementioned shooting script, Joyce's conversation with Pat during the party is a little big longer than it is in canon. There's also a bit more of a build-up to the part which Buffy overhears. Full quote below, with the cut lines in red.
"While Buffy was gone, all I could think about was getting her home. I just knew if I could put my arms around her, and tell her how much I loved her, then everything would be okay.
"[But] things are never that simple, are they? I mean, she's here. She's right in front of me … so now I can see how unhappy she is. And I still don't know what to say - what to do - to make things right.
"Having Buffy home - I thought it would make it all better. But in some ways, it's almost worse…"
I don't know why those lines didn't make it into the finished episode, but I think they help make Joyce's words here a lot more sympathetic: because she's explaining (to us, not Buffy) why Buffy being back is "almost worse" than it was when she was gone. And (again, modulo the fact Joyce should have been more careful about not being overheard), I think this is somewhat reasonable? I can see that seeing firsthand "how unhappy" Buffy still is, and not being able to do anything about, would in some way be worse for Joyce than only imagining Buffy's unhappiness and being able to convince herself she could magically fix it if only Buffy would come home.
In fact, the only time Joyce really loses my sympathy is when she talks about Buffy running away as something Buffy did to "punish" her mother. I do think it's fair for Joyce to feel a little aggrieved to have had Buffy's role as the Slayer suddenly revealed to her without warning or time to process it. I think it's understandable, if not especially admirable, that she's not talked about any of that with Buffy yet. But she's had time to think about it now, and surely after three months she can do better than "my daughter left the house she lived in and all her friends behind and ran away to parts unknown after being wrongly charged with murder and forced to send her ex-boyfriend to hell to make me feel bad".
(2) Willow
Rather to my surprise, on rewatching I realized that -- at least thirty minutes in -- Willow was probably the character whose behavior I found most irritating. Yes, including Xander. I know.
I mean, to clarify, Xander's behavior is gross and awful, but bluntly that's not the first time I've been able to say that during this rewatch. Being unpleasantly possessive about Buffy's sex life is just something you have to factor into how Xander is consistently written. WIllow's behavior is just more surprising, I think?
I mean, logically I get that Willow is hurt that her best friend left town without telling her anything and doesn't seem to care about any of Willow's recent life experiences, but I'm just not seeing that on screen. Surely if the show wants me to sympathize with Willow (which the ending of the episode must want me to do?), then it should be showing her in a far more favorable light? She genuinely doesn't seem to like Buffy very much this episode; and (unlike the others!) Buffy does repeatedly try to reach out to her only to be repeatedly rebuffed.
It just feels like we're missing a couple of key scenes showing us things from Willow's perspective. Why exactly does Willow stand Buffy up at the Espresso Pump? Was she really busy with "school work"? Really? Why does she seem so reluctant to even agree to meet her then? She can hardly resent the fact Buffy hasn't asked how she's doing, yet, because she hasn't given Buffy a chance to ask! She hardly gives her a chance when they next meet, either. Why include the line where Willow hopefully talks about Buffy showing up "like nothing's happened" if she's not going to be pleased when that does happen?
And -- while I think Willow, of all the Slayerettes, has the most reason to feel aggrieved Buffy never tried to contact her over the summer (she didn't lie to her like Xander or tell her not to come back like Joyce; she isn't, like Giles, responsible for her assuming the duties of a Slayer in the first place) -- the episode is just desperately reaching in trying to give her "scary life stuff" that's remotely comparable to Buffy's experiences. I mean, sure, she's dating a werewolf: but she was doing that last year! Buffy has talked to her about it! Buffy encouraged her into that relationship! What more is there to say?
Incidentally, in the confrontation in Buffy's bedroom, the filmed episode has Willow say "I'm studying witchcraft and killing vampires, and I didn't have anyone to talk to about all this scary life stuff. And you were my best friend." before we cut away to Giles's zombie misadventures.
The shooting script has the alternative (and, I feel, clearly superior?) version: "I've been studying witchcraft and killing vampires, and you were my best friend. I didn't have anyone to talk to about all this scary life stuff. Then you come back and you didn't even ask about me. You just worried about whether I was mad at you."
I wish we'd kept the original wording: I think the omission of the last lines in particular rather undermine the point the episode is (I think?) trying to make.
I also don't really like the final scene of the episode. I get what it's trying to do -- tell us more about Willow's new status as a witch, establish that things are back to normal post-zombie fight -- it just feels, as I said before, glaringly unearned. It almost feels like it was written by somebody who didn't watch the rest of the episode.
(3) Xander
Pros: Xander's stunned reaction to running into Buffy in the pre-credits sequence is genuinely quite charming. Some really good face acting going on there, I think. (Plus, in this scene we get our first of several -- coincidental, I'm almost sure -- bits of foreshadowing for Season 7, with Buffy warning Xander that fighting demons without superpowers is "all fun and games until somebody loses an eye".)
Cons: literally every other word that comes out of Xander's mouth makes my blood boil. Absolute worst moment is a three-way tie between his line about the "nice pimps" he assumes Buffy was hanging out with over the summer, his audition for the role of Buffy's shitty step-dad when Joyce admits to telling Buffy not to come back ("You should have seen what you put her through!", with an almost audible "young lady" at the end) -- I do not think this reaction is consistent with what we'll later learn about Xander's home life -- and his decision to double-down on his plan to trick Buffy into killing Angel rather than possibly sparing him by telling her (without even asking whether Angel is dead or not!) that "most girls don't hop on a Greyhound over boy troubles".
I've been rather critical of Mark Field on this blog recently, so for balance I'll just note that when it comes to his take on Xander in this episode ("Almost every single word he says to or about Buffy is utterly indefensible […] and 'boy troubles' is so inadequate a description of what Buffy went through that I would have cheered if she actually had punched him right then.") I couldn't possibly agree more.
Also, one change from the shooting script I do approve of: the originally written script had the credits roll right when Xander turned around (when it seemed that he was about to stake Buffy) only for the rest of the scene to play out just as it does in canon. A fairly pointless bit of non-tension; I'm glad that idea was dropped.
(4) Giles
On paper, Giles is the non-Buffy character who comes off the best this week. Like Joyce and (initially) Xander, and notably unlike Willow, he is clearly very happy to see Buffy back. And by skipping the party until the big zombie attack, he manages to avoid getting written saying anything particularly horrible then (very much unlike Xander). He also tries (and fails) to argue against the group's plan to turn Joyce's dinner into a massive house party.
On the other hand, it feels noteworthy that Giles's big show of emotion about Buffy's return happens somewhere where she can't see it. Maybe he could have dared to be a bit more open with Buffy about the fact he's glad she's alive and back in town? The stereotypical stiff upper lip and refusal to discuss his feelings isn't exactly giving her a reason not to run away again.
I think my biggest complaint about Giles this episode is that he's ... basically not involved in the story in any way that matters? He doesn't got to the party. He has some (not very compelling) adventures with zombies. He passes on a message to Buffy that she doesn't end up needing. He threatens Snyder into letting Buffy back into school, I guess, except ... does he?
I saw a screenshot of a bit of published Buffy analysis that annoyed me a few days ago, in which the authors praised Giles for getting Buffy back into school when her mom wasn't able to. But the thing is, as satisfying as it might be for us to see Giles cheerfully threaten Principal Snyder here, next week's episode will in fact confirm that it was Joyce who managed to get Buffy back into school. This bit of implicit physical violence didn't actually seem to help. Snyder doesn't, in fact, change his mind about admitting Buffy: he'll be still openly against her coming back next week, but he'll have been overruled by the school board, who Joyce appealed to and Giles didn't. (To be fair I should note that the shooting script for this episode implies differently, but, well, the version of the show that actually made it to air is pretty clear.)
And yes, as other people have noticed, it's a bit weird that the episode reminds us about Joyce blaming Giles for Buffy leaving only to ... not follow up on that at all. Why show her inviting him for dinner as if they've got no ongoing quarrel if he's not going to turn up anyway? And if they don't have any ongoing quarrel, why bother with that scene in the 'previously on...' section?
(5) Oz
Yes, Oz gets more speaking time this episode than Cordelia. No, I don't like it either. He doesn't say anything particular bad to Buffy (why would he, they don't have any sort of established relationship), but I will dock him significant points for being the leading voice behind the plan to unilaterally take over Joyce's dinner plans. I know you're having fun being a regular cast member now, Oz, but sometimes it is better to be quiet.
(Also, are Oz's band with the unfortunate name meant to actually be good or not? The show can't seem to decide.)
(6) Cordelia
Cordelia and Buffy don't interact much (because, spoiler: Cordelia and Buffy aren't friends). In fact Cordelia is barely in this episode.
I will note, for the record, that I don't think much of Cordelia's supposed "defense" of Buffy during the party scene. Yes, she tells Xander to stop and "put [him]self in Buffy's shoes". She then calls Buffy a "freak of nature", calls her dead boyfriend both "a freak" and "Mr Killing Spree" and then tells Buffy cheerfully that Angel's loss of soul and subsequent murderous rampage was "pretty much [Buffy's] fault".
It's not exactly a surprise that an indignant Buffy then tells Cordelia to "get out of my shoes!". The shooting script makes this slightly more explicit: rather than just replying that she's "just trying to help", Cordelia also adds "In case you hadn't noticed, Buffy, people aren't exactly lining up to give you props". You know, like a friend wouldn't.
(7) Principal Snyder
I enjoyed his opening scene this episode a lot! Unlike everyone else, his unpleasant treatment of Buffy is perfectly in character. (Notably the episode does not end with Buffy conceding the moral high ground to her high school principal.) His subsequent scene with Giles I am a bit less enthused by, but it's fine.
I am still a bit puzzled about the Mayor. Does he know Buffy is the Slayer? Does he care about her being expelled? I'm not sure I believe the writers know the answer to these questions yet.
(8) Pat
I'm sorry to say it, but I really don't like Pat. It's nice to see that Joyce has made a friend, I guess, but she's pretty awful to Buffy all episode and not in a particularly amusing way. I like the idea of giving Joyce somebody she can talk to Buffy about, and who will say rather insensitive things to and about Buffy without the writers having to worry about damaging any existing relationship, and whose presence in the house Buffy can be repeatedly put off by, I just .... really don't like Pat.
(If I have to return my Fictional Middle-Aged Women Defender badge over this, I'd understand blame Pat.)
That said, I do quite enjoy the awkward moment between Buffy and Pat at the bottom of the stairs. "Do you want to see my mom? MOM!!"
(9) Jonathan
Was glad to see my good friend Jonathan this week. No complaints about anything he does this episode. (He doesn't know nobody who actually lives in the house wanted to have a party, after all.)
Jonathan also has some fun lines in the shooting script that were excised from the final episode. Before the party gets interrupted, we'd have seen him attempting to chat up a girl with the line "I think you'll be impressed, it's like the Cadillac of mopeds". He'd have then teamed up with Devon to fight off some of the zombies. (The shooting script is generally clearer than the final episodes about the fact that some of the party guests survived; obviously we know Jonathan and Devon do, but I don't think that's at all clear from the episode alone.)
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I've tried a few times to articulate why I enjoy writing about female characters-- both in original fiction and in fandom-- and every attempt has sort of turned into a rambling nothingburger.
But you know what a big part of it is? Spite.
There is so much fiction out there that treats its female characters as disposable. Background noise. A love interest to check off a box, to give the male character as a prize, but unimportant beyond that. Doesn't matter what objectively interesting things have happened to her, when looked at on paper; the powers she has, the major life shifts she's gone through, the grief or pain or terror-- it's all secondary or tertiary to the guys'.
So I like taking those characters and saying No, and forcing the spotlight on her.
And then. And then. When you find those stories that do care-- that do see the full intelligence and complexity and autonomy of their women-- then I'm not fighting against the writers. I'm fighting alongside them. I'm holding hands with the authors, and each of us are picking up a pick-axe and taking it to the patriarchy.
I don't like Dead Man's Party. I didn't care for it before this week, and after rewatching it my opinion hasn't really changed. Actually, of all the episodes I've managed to finish during the group rewatch, this was probably the one I enjoyed least.
I mentioned last week that I liked Anne more than I thought I probably should 'objectively', and I suspect something similar (but in reverse) is happening here. There have been, I'm sure, worse episodes of the show, at least on paper. Teacher's Pet is worse. The Pack is worse. Inca Mummy Girl and Reptile Boy are worse. And yet ...
Well, the truth is, I just didn't dislike watching any of those episodes quite as strongly as I disliked this one. Apart from any objective flaws in the episode -- which I'll get into in a moment -- I think there are a couple of reasons for that.
The first is that all the episodes I mentioned before (and both the episodes I skipped rewatching) can be easily ignored in a way that I'm not sure this one can. They didn't have a place in the wider narrative arc in a way that this episode has (or at least aims to have). The viewer can basically skip them without losing anything important. But you can't really not want to know what happens in the aftermath of Buffy coming back home from her three-month long exile. This episode matters to Buffy's arc (or at least, it should matter).
The second is that, while I have no problem at all with intra-group character conflict, and I think this is something the show has done well before and will do well later (for example in When She Was Bad, in Revelations, and in what I remember of The Yoko Factor, though it's been a couple of years since I last watched that), I really don't like intra-group character conflict done poorly. I don't enjoy seeing characters I like act in strange, inconsistent ways just to serve the demands of the plot, or to watch arguments go unresolved and the impact they should have on a relationship be handwaved away. And despite the successes I mentioned above, the show has something of a habit of doing this sort of thing poorly (Empty Places is probably the worst offender, though this very episode runs it pretty close).
My notes for this episode quickly descended into a running commentary on which character I thought was being the least sympathetic (naturally Xander Harris emerges as the winner of this dubious prize, though I was surprised by quite how unpleasant I found Willow to be this episode, and probably very few people will be surprised that I end up deciding that Joyce wasn't actually that bad until a specific point in the final party confrontation).
More on that, some discussion of the shooting script for this episode (which includes quite a bit of cut dialogue that I think would have been good to include), and my thoughts on how I'd rewrite the episode all to follow in a subsequent post (or perhaps multiple posts: for an episode I didn't like I found I had quite a lot to say).
In the remainder of this post, I'd like to focus on what I think the objective problems with this episode are.
Basically I think there are three interconnected issues.
The episode doesn't allow itself to dwell on the events of Becoming as much as it really should.
The episode can't decide which of two different stories about Buffy it's trying to tell, to the detriment of both.
The episode is also telling a (mostly unrelated, not particularly interesting) story about zombies.
[1] The episode doesn't allow itself to dwell on the events of Becoming as much as it really should.
This is somewhat understandable, in a way. We're still not in a era of network television when everything is expected to be highly serialized. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is the start of a new season for the show which is still trying to grow an audience and appeal to new viewers. And there's no easy way for people to easily catch up on or remind themselves about older episodes (at the time this episode first aired, I believe some episodes of Buffy had recently been released on VHS, but it would still be a couple of years before full seasons started to appear on DVD).
But however understandable it is, it's kind of fatal to the whole episode. In Becoming, a second Slayer -- a girl all the Slayerettes had met, who had only a few months ago helped save their lives -- died fighting to protect them all again, in the school library where they continue to hang out, and Buffy was wrongly accused of her murder. What pay-off does that major, no doubt life-shaping event get in this episode? Well, Oz tells Buffy in passing that "Hey, so you're not wanted for murder anymore", to which Buffy replies "Good, that was such a drag". And that's it. That's all we get (in this episode, and indeed forever). Kendra who?
Equally, when we last saw the Slayerettes they did not know what had happened to Angel. Did Willow's spell work? Had Buffy left with him to be "alone together"? Or perhaps the spell wasn't in time, and she was forced to kill him? They explicitly did not know. They cannot have learned Angel's fate since that episode (who would have told them?). And when Buffy comes back they do not ask her about Angel! The most we get is a sneering reference to Buffy leaving town because of "boy troubles". None of them even bother to check whether or not Angel is alive!! How can this not be a question they think to ask?
How can it not be a question Xander in particular thinks to ask, given the nature of Xander's Lie to Buffy at the end of last season? Is he not worried that Buffy will talk to Willow and realize she didn't tell her to "kick [Angel's] ass" after all? Is he not worried that Buffy did have to kill Angel, and that she blames Xander for having tricked her into doing this? In a sense, this is something that should be hanging over Xander's head all episode: a lens through which all his subsequent strange behavior can be examined and interpreted. In another, more accurate sense, the writers of this season just doesn't care about the Lie at all, and it won't be brought up again for another four years (and won't be taken seriously even then).
Again, however understandable this is from one perspective, it has the side effect of making Buffy's friends seem almost pathologically uninterested in why she actually ran away or how she must have been feeling at the time.
Which is a huge problem in its own right, but also feeds into the second of the fundamental issues with this episode....
[2] The episode can't decide which of two different stories about Buffy it's trying to tell, to the detriment of both
I think Dead Man's Party is trying to tell two parallel stories -- one in which Buffy finds it hard to adjust to being back home because all her friends seemed to have moved on to a life without her, and one in which Buffy has to accept that she shouldn't have run away and will have to deal with the fallout of that decision. That is, one perspective in which Buffy is actively trying to rebuild her life in Sunnydale but her friends are rebuffing her, and one in which Buffy's friends want her back but she's refusing to be open with them about what she went through, and she has to learn that it's up to her to make things right.
Except, when I say the show is trying to tell two stories, I'm not entirely sure this is a conscious decision. We follow Buffy's perspective for most of the episode, and it's the first of these two stories we're actually shown. Then, at some time during the big party scene, the show seems to abruptly pivot and decide that actually it was telling the second story all along.
But the problem is that, because we've been in Buffy's head for so long, and because her friends have been so callously uninterested about the death of Kendra and the fate of Angel and what Buffy actually had to do to stop Acathla, that pivot doesn't feel remotely earned. We go from Xander whining that Buffy "ruined our lives" (while wondering out loud if she "met any nice pimps on [her] travels", because of course he does); and Cordelia cheerfully telling Buffy she picked "a freak for a boyfriend" and that his subsequent "killing spree" was "pretty much [Buffy's] fault"; and Willow ludicrously suggesting that Buffy having to stick a sword through the chest of the man she loved and watch him be dragged into hell isn't as important to talk about as the fact Willow has started dating (and never mind that Willow started dating during Season 2 -- at Buffy's urging! - and did, in fact, talk about her boyfriend with Buffy); to ... Buffy apologizing unilaterally to Willow at the end of the episode and conceding (somehow??) that Willow has gained some degree of "moral superiority" over her(????).
This is not earned, to put it mildly.
I think there's potentially compelling way you could tell this second story -- Buffy herself certainly is very closed off when she comes back, and repeatedly refuses to talk about what happened to her while she was away, and clearly running off to wait tables in LA did not actually improve Buffy's life in any way and I do think it's fair (if rather needlessly unkind) to describe this as a "bad choice" -- but the Slayerettes as we see them in the first two thirds of the episode are just very, very unpleasant! I think people throw around the word "selfish" to describe Buffy's friends far too much, but in Dead Man's Party that's exactly what they are. We are hardly being primed for Buffy to apologize to them. Certainly not if they don't also apologize for their own less than stellar behavior during the episode itself.
[3] The episode is also telling a (mostly unrelated, not particularly interesting) story about zombies.
This is a problem on four counts. For one thing, it takes away time from the interpersonal dynamics that this episode should really be about, exacerbating the second of the two big problems with the episode. For another, none of this is very well justified by the show's internal logic (does the mask starting raising the dead because of the proximity of the Hellmouth? surely it can't have always been doing that or somebody would have noticed? if Joyce received the art for her gallery, why is she hanging the pieces up in her house? why is a dead cat resurrected but no other animal at all?). For a third, we're back at Inca Mummy Girl levels of engaging with other cultures (what is the link between Nigeria and Hollywood-style undead zombies? what is "primitive" art, and is it inherently evil?).
And fourth, and perhaps most importantly, it's a problem because the zombies in this episode are here to serve a metaphorical reading that (as I think I first saw pointed out in this Insect Reflection essay) does not actually make sense in the context of this episode.
Xander tells Buffy that "you can't just bury stuff, it'll come right back up to get you". So, okay, the zombies are a representation of all the things Buffy was struggling with after Becoming and has been trying to repress. Repressing your feelings like this doesn't work, so the zombies rise from the dead and attack Buffy and her friends, in parallel with Buffy and her friends having a ferocious row. I'm following so far. This is a solid if somewhat heavy-handed metaphor of the sort that Buffy is very fond.
But then ... each of the zombies is actually trying to get hold of a mask that will grant them incredible powers over the others? The body of a friend of Buffy's mom, who was killed by the zombies, is the one to claim the mask for herself? So Pat represents ... what? The most important and dangerous of all of the issues Buffy was repressing? And the trick to defeating zombie!Pat -- which Giles figures out but, as it happens, Buffy doesn't need him to explain, making his trip to the house ultimately pointless -- is to ... not look at her? At killing this one zombie magically makes all the others vanish?
In other words, you can't bury your problems, but if you try that and suffer the consequences you can overcome them by ... pointedly ignoring them? I think the metaphor might have escaped us a little.
And this ties back to the first of the three issues I have with this episode, because the worst of the personal trauma Buffy is presumably burying can only be ... well, the death of Angel (and in a better version of the show than we got the death of Kendra too). But that isn't something the show wants to discuss, so the impression we get is that Buffy hasn't actually learned any kind of lesson.
The episode tells us she needs to do something, and then doesn't show her doing it. The literal defeat of the zombies isn't followed by any sort of resolution of the problems they were supposed to be a metaphor for! Instead, Buffy and the others all seem to decide to pretend their fights didn't happen. The exact opposite moral to the one Buffy is meant to have learned.
(And I don't think that reading is intentional, because by next episode the gang will all know -- somehow? -- that Buffy killed Angel to stop Acathla. And if this episode is supposed to be her figuring out that she needs to talk about that, it's a very strange decision for her to do it off-camera after the episode ends.)
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You listen to music regularly? Why? Have you even tried quitting? Could you quit? You get music stuck in your head? Wow. You're so ruined and music brained. I bet you make your partners listen to music with you when you have sex. Music addiction has really ruined a whole generation. You know it's not realistic to expect reverb in real life, right? You're probably so desensitized that you don't even feel anything anymore when you hear a bird singing that it wants some fuck.
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