what made you think you could fly?

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.)

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.