“I don't understand. I don't understand how this all
happens. How we go through this. I mean I knew her, and then she's, there's
just a body, and I don't understand why she can't just get back in it and not
be dead any more. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid, and, and Xander's crying
and not talking, and I was having fruit punch and I thought, well, Joyce will
never have any more fruit punch, ever. And she'll never have eggs, or yawn, or
brush her hair, not ever and no one will explain to me why."
Ok, deep breath. I can do this. Even though this episode
hurts so much. DAMN YOU, WHEDON!
Joss himself write and directs, and sets such a sombre and
unsettling mood, in large part through the extended use of silences to convey
not only grief but also the awkwardness of not knowing what to do, what is
socially acceptable, and to what extent we should broadcast our feelings when
we lose a loved one. The scoobies are all young and just feeling their way
through all this, and the episode consists, McLuhan-like, in characters not communicating and being incapable of
reconciling their feelings, their feeling about how they should be feeling, and whatever the rules are supposed to be when
the sky falls in. One theme of this episode is the silliness, and
simultaneously the necessity of social conventions at times of extreme emotion.
Anya may provide the comic relief in breaking these rules, but at least she’s
being herself. This contrasts with Xander’s lack of eloquence as he punches the
wall and Willow’s displaced distress over what to wear.
Another deep breath. New paragraph. And hopefully a shorter
one.
The opening scenes are brutal, presenting Buffy and the
viewer with a body, an object, that is not
Joyce. We feel for Buffy in the eternity before the paramedics arrive and both
we and her are punched in the face with the brutality of the language they use:
”Try not to disturb the body”. Even
more brutal is Buffy having to break the news to Dawn. We know what’s coming as
we see Dawn in her art class, adrift in the everyday concerns of a teenage
girl, and as we hear her teacher speak of “The negative space around the object”. That’s a fair description
of what this episode is about if ever I saw one.
We cut to scenes of the scoobies’ silent reactions to the
news. We are not used to seeing them so helpless and distressed, but this is
nothing so manageable as a monster. Death by natural causes is the most
harrowing thing that has ever happened in Buffy, and it hits everything like a
train. No one reacts well. No one really knows how to. Except Tara, who has
experience bereavement before, and who seems less awkward with Buffy than
before. No one can cope with the lack of
a simple linear cause or, in the case of Buffy, with not being able to know for
certain that there is nothing she could have done.
Her mother “probably” didn’t suffer. Probably. Such a cruel
word.
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