'Fear, Itself' is the second Halloween episode of 'Buffy', written by fan favorite David Fury.
Like Ethan’s episode it relates in some way to chaos,
here how fears run amok, creating disorder.
And like Ethan’s episode, 'Fear, Itself' is just flatout excellent.
It’s pumpkin carving season and the gang is all together for a night of frivolity
...that Buffy isn’t feeling.
Xander got the wrong scary movie from the video store
and Willow and Oz recommend a frathouse party that they forgot to invite him to.
Buffy excuses herself and wanders home alone across an empty Sunnydale
...and a demon jumps out to scare her.
[punch] "Ugh."
"Jeez, that hurt!"
“What the hell is wrong with you lady?”
You know what!
Demon or not that kid deserved to be punched in the face.
Startling.
Isn’t.
Funny.
The next day, Willow is telling Buffy about all those things she can do magically now
but that she feels like she’s plateaued
and Oz says he hopes Buffy doesn’t encourage her.
"Okay, Brutus."
Little odd that Willow calls Oz 'Brutus' for just not wanting her to hurt herself.
That was a serious reference.
To oversimplify, Brutus killed Caesar for fear that Caesar was accumulating too much power.
Buffy spots Parker and decides she’s not hungry, heading out.
She also tries to dodge out of the party, saying she has to patrol on Halloween.
“Happy Hall---”
Giles, now with copious amounts of time, has decided to pursue American traditions his Watcher duties never gave him time for.
“IT’S ALIVE…”
[middle age laughter]
"See--"
At the upcoming frathouse party, the brothers are setting up
and one of them has found a special book with a creepy symbol in it he thinks will spice things up.
Anya shows up to try and figure out why Xander hasn’t called her
after she told him she was over him.
“Well, that’s the funny thing about me.
I...tend to hear the actual words people say and accept them at face value.”
"That's stupid!"
"I accept that."
Xander invites Anya to the party
and she inadvertently plays on his current insecurities by being brutally honest.
Not out of any attempt to harm, of course.
Anya just doesn’t have another speed.
Buffy attempts to speak to Miss Walsh about why she’s missing class
(a bit of the Parker blues)
and Walsh bypasses her completely
saying class is her responsibility and she needs to solve problems on her own time.
At the frat, the spooky symbol is now on the floor
and Oz, a supernatural creature of the night,
cuts himself and accidentally adds the missing ingredient.
That night, Buffy goes as Little Red Riding Hood,
Xander as James Bond
and Willow as Joan of Arc.
At the frat house, things have turned into total chaos
as individual terrifying fears have begun manifesting themselves.
Inside, Willow runs into a fake web and a moment later sees an actual tarantula on her shoulder.
A moment later, they are attacked by bats, which then turn to rubber.
The gang gets split up by the horrors
and each of them are forced to experience their own worst personal fears.
Anya, dressed in full-on furry bunny outfit
witnesses the frat house lock people in
and goes to seek Giles’ help.
Giles finds his way into the frat.
"Well?"
“We're gonna have to create a door.”
[chainsaw noises]
Giles finds the group and figures out that what's going on is
the monster Gachnar is consuming enough fear to summon himself into the mortal realm.
Buffy inadvertently hastens Gachnar's summon into our realm.
"I am the dark lord of nightmares!"
"The bringer of terror!"
Turns out they had nothing to fear but fear, itself.
It’s a brilliant little episode that is both self contained and deeply informing about the characters.
I love that the whole idea of the episode is kind of a riff on the end of 'Ghostbusters'.
Gozer the Gozarian has brought the Traveller to destroy the Earth,
which will take the form of whatever they imagine.
Everyone empties their heads but Ray
who can’t help think of...
“It’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”
[Stay Puft roar]
So the things that the characters are most afraid of are manifested in the real world.
Xander is afraid his lack of both direction and super-powers makes him invisible and irrelevant to the group.
He picks James Bond for his costume,
as super human a character as you can get without actually having superpowers.
Oz is afraid he won’t be able to control his inner wolf,
and because of that
he might actually harm Willow.
And Willow is afraid she might not actually be able to control her magic,
which has become a defining part of her identity.
The bit she believes shows everyone she is remarkable,
and not just Buffy’s sidekick in geeky clothes.
And...
...she is also very afraid that Oz will leave her.
"You don't have to proof anything to me."
"Oz..."
“Oz, don’t leave me.”
(echo) "Don't leave me."
"Don't leave me."
I love, LOVE everyone’s costumes as well.
Willow going as Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake is perfect.
Buffy dressed as Little Red Riding Hood
is a nice callback to 'Helpless'.
Of course, the highlight of them all is...
...Anya’s turn as a bunny.
"That's your scary costume?"
"Bunnies frighten me."
I’ve heard Anya accused a few times of being the comic relief brutally honest character that took the departed for L.A. Cordelia’s place.
And while there is some of that here I believe there IS something fundamentally different about their two characters.
The intent of their brutal honesty.
Cordy is wicked smart.
Incisive.
She doesn’t beat around the bush because she just doesn’t have time for that.
Love her or get the hell out of her way.
Anya just doesn’t have another speed.
"Men are evil."
"Will you go with me?
Anya was made a demon, not taken over by one.
Her transformation to human again is completely starting her from scratch.
It’s been so long since she’s BEEN human that simple concepts are going to need to be relearned.
In a lot of ways, she is a child trapped in an adult body.
“They all ran away from you.
They always will.
Open your heart to someone and...
Which brings us to Buffy’s fear.
Abandonment.
Buffy’s moping about Parker is a little frustrating,
until you take into account that this is not actually just about Parker.
Notice the word “all” here.
She’s unpacking baggage that she’s been carrying for a long time.
I highlighted the ways in which Angel related to this in the previous video
but here we see her neuroses around love and men go all the way back to her father.
“Your father loved spending time with you.”
“Not enough, I guess.”
When she is unable to sort out the details of her private life
Buffy often hides behind the Slayer mantle, as she does in trying to avoid the party.
And her fear of that maybe being all there is for her manifests in the basement of the frathouse.
“No matter how hard you fight you just end up in the same place."
Maybe there is nothing for her in life but monsters and the dead.
Perhaps to be the Slayer is to be nothing but a killer.
If you’re reading ahead, then you might wonder if some of the coming events in the series undercut a bit of the philosophy here.
I don’t think so.
Perhaps, some of our fears ARE valid,
justified,
warranted,
even precognitive.
But there is something to keep in mind.
In the intervening time since I wrote the first draft of this video,
I stumbled on a fascinating video on the 'New York Times' which I have linked to in the description.
Two Swedish documentary filmmakers wanted to make a film about people facing a difficult situation.
They found 67 participants who had never been on a high dive before and paid them all to climb a 30 foot diving tower,
look over the edge,
and then to jump
or to not.
The filmmakers then turned on the cameras and watched.
I was so struck by what a simple analog this was to so many choices in life.
To ask out a crush or to not.
To go to an interview.
To step on stage.
To take responsibility.
Whether you take the plunge
or turn around to go back and make a different decision,
in every case
it is the space between those two choices that is the worst of it.
The fear is the worst of it.
There is no torture like the precipice.
No anxiety like the icy grip of the unknown.
And some spend their whole lives here, paralyzed to inaction by the fear.
Confinement in that space between has accounted for so much of the anxiety I have suffered in my own life.
And for some reason,
it took the longest time to come to grips with the fact
that anxiety has...
...only...
...one...
...antidote.
Action.