I Don't Sleep On A Bed Of Bones

What is this?

This is a series of essays exploring every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is not intended as episode reviews exactly, but a look at the themes, ideas, qualities and flaws of the show as they develop through each installment.

You can find links to every piece below the cut.

There are many thing I agree on your analysis and others things I didn’t think about but are brilliant.

if it doesn’t bother you to say it, which is your ao3? I’d like to read your fic too! I’m dying for a good Buffy/Faith fic, but there are many of them and I’d like to start with an author whose interpretation of the show I know I trust and find so fascinating 😂 (because I’ve read your essays.)

https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvorySteel92

S5

S2

S3

S6

S4

S1

S7

Doppelgangland is a very good episode.

There’s a version of this essay that is nothing but that sentence over and over again, phrased in different ways. It’s a nearly self-evident truth – this episode is uncontroversially and near-universally beloved. IMDB’s ranking has it as the best episode of Season Three, and 8th overall. It’s regularly mentioned as a season highlight by dedicated and casual fans alike. Vampire Willow is one of the show’s most memorable villains, and she only gets this episode to shine at all, after being criminally underused in The Wish. Even Joss Whedon ranks it among his own top 10. Fan ratings aren’t everything – the fact that Restless comes in at #33 is a clear indicator of the voters’ collective lack of taste – but when a fandom so clearly agrees on something, I think it’s worth asking why.

In one way, that question has a very easy answer: this episode is very fun to watch. Alyson Hannigan dazzles as the quietly charismatic Vampire Willow, dominating the screen with a very specific almost-awkward swagger. She then channels her inner Tatiana Maslany and delivers sparkling turns, first as Willow-playing-Vampire-Willow and then as Vampire-Willow-playing-Willow. She gets such joy from playing up the differences and similarities between both characters – perhaps my favourite bit coming in her demonstration of how terrible both Willows are at improvisation acting. Hannigan has been quietly improving as an actor since Welcome to the Hellmouth, and now shows herself to sit comfortably beside Gellar and Head as one of the strongest members of the cast.

And it’s more than just Vampire Willow – the whole show is singing. The humour is bright and zippy. Every character, now settled in the roles they’ll fill for the rest of the season, gets moments to shine. Anya is starting to emerge as a character who is recognisably Anya. The climactic fight in the Bronze is probably the best group action scene so far, and might have a shout to be the show’s best ever. Even the tertiary characters are in form: Devon’s insistence that only “fruity jazz bands” know more than three chords is quietly one of the funniest moments of the episode. This is an episode that starts being fun early on, and never stops.