Oh yeah...miles to go.
Little Miss Muffet counting down from 730.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Buffy is lying in bed oddly Restless (see what I did there) and leaves Riley for an
impromptu slayer session.
She now looks like a max-leveled character killing monsters in the first zone.
One of the things I find most memorable about this episode is the musical theme when Buffy
is "hunting" in the opening.
Strings + drums get me all psyched up and want to go running...kinda...well think about
running...maybe do a pushup.
Buffy gets her fill of monster hunting and returns home now able to get a proper nights
sleep.
Cue credits and hoo-boy is it good to be back.
The gang is taking a beach day and Buffy and Riley produce my favorite GIF.
“Anyone ever tell you the team quarterback throws like
a girl?”
“I do?”
“You’re gonna teach me”
The day is spoiled by an impromptu storm.
The storm heralds the arrival of Dracula with a musical stinger setting the tone of pure
camp.
I’ve heard that one more than the Wilhelm scream.
At Casa de Giles Willow and Giles are digitizing his library (hopefully they learned their
lesson after *Season 1) and Giles reveals big news:
5:53 “See I’m...I’m going back to England.”
That evening, as Buffy goes ham on this vampires face Dracula shows up and they make introductions.
“Do you know what a Slayer is?”
- “Do you?”
The confidence with which he rebuffs her sarcasm momentarily takes Buffy aback.
“I’m the good guy remember?”
- “Perhaps but your power is rooted in darkness.
You must feel it?”
The gang shows up.
Xander standing there with his iced latte is just such an insane juxtaposition and Drac
sensing how gauche everyone is goes batty.
So Dracula is real.
Was Van Helsing also real?
The implications of making him an actual part of the Buffyverse are kind of mind-bending.
Drac has actual Drac powers and Buffy shares the news with the gang.
Riley is feeling a little insecure about the undead...again.
*Angel flash
“I couldn’t believe it the first 20 times you said it.
But it’s starting to sink in.”
Tara and Xander are both also feeling a little jealous and Riley and Xander suggest they
go hunting immediately.
Buffy and Giles choose caution and the team breaks for the evening.
“Are you sure?
Maybe you could just come lie down with me.”
“Nothing you’re about to say will lead to rest.”
Dracula makes Xander his thrall.
Riley pumps Spike for information about Dracula...what?
And Spike reveals how Dracula fits in the Buffyverse.
“He’s not just a regular vampire.
He has powers right?”
- “Nothing but showy gypsy stuff.”
So Dracula is vampire + warlock, essentially.
Spike, always with the Yoko factoring, knows where the knife is in Riley and how to twist
it.
R: So you're saying I should check mansions?
That kinda thing?
S: No.
I'm saying you should go home.
To your super-honey.
Have a nice, safe, snog.
You're out of your depth on this one.
Misty Dracula doesn’t need an invitation to get into Buffy’s room to have a sultry
off.
Drac discovers Buffy’s Angel/Master scar but neither of them make clear who they’re
talking about.
“You have been tasted.”
- “He was…”
- “Unworthy?”
Drac isn’t jealous of previous...tasters - this is getting weird.
Drac bites Buffy, appearing to do so using some kind of mind mojo.
The next day Buffy badly hides her vampire hickey (her...vickey?) as Xander badly hides
his new man-crush
23:30 “Like you’d need that to fight the dark master….baiter.”
Willow’s new choice of lipstick color after crushing on Drac a bit in the previous scene
feels particularly evocative.
Xander eats a spider and even though the shot is accomplished with two cuts it still gives
me a wiggins.
Isn’t that spider a little...much for southern California?
Riley stops Buffy on her way out to get Drac and discovers her secret.
“You’re under the thrall of the dark prince!”
The gang tries to keep Buffy safe from herself but Xander gets her to Drac.
“I’m supposed to deliver you to the master now.
There’s this whole deal where I get to be immortal.
You cool with that.”
Buffy and Drac, apparently house Baratheon, talk about how Buffy’s power is rooted in
darkness and she’s a creature of the night.
He offers her his arm and says something a little familiar...
“You think you know.
What you are.
What’s to come.
You haven’t even begun…”
Drac offers her a taste.
Buffy sees visions of the First Slayer and snaps out of her reverie.
Drac’s mind mojo stops working.
They fight.
Buffy wins, kind of, and has a conversation with Giles reassuring him that she really
does need him.
And the episode ends when Buffy stops home and Joyce suggests she take Dawn out.
I mean...I get it.
I would resent just being my sisters throw in task as well.
Buffy vs Dracula is a fun episode but has never been high on my list of favorite episodes.
In fairness, none of the season openers have.
Table setting while cleaning up from the previous meal is never an easy thing.
Also, not helping things for me and my personal proclivities is the show's portrayal of the
dark prince.
From the opening stinger, Dracula is just absolutely drenched in campy.
This MAY BE the most Scooby Doo episode that has ever Zoinks’d its way on Buffy.
“I’m standing right here.”
The episode is, of course, loaded with references to Dracula lore.
Xander becoming Dracula’s servant, eating bugs, being weird.
While Buffy is the actual Van Helsing of the Buffverse, the tropey parallel here is Giles,
with Buffy and Riley being Mina and Jonathan Renfield.
It’s cute, and fun and I get it.
Campy just isn’t for me.
But surrounding Dracula is an episode operating with a LOT of the comedic confidence and chemistry
that we saw in Season 4.
Say what you will about that seasons’ arc (and I said quite a bit) it was by far the
funniest and most visually self-assured season so far.
And all of that is on display here.
Xander’s stint as the thrall-guy has some great moments and Giles getting seduced by
the three sisters is pure joy.
“TICKLES.”
Buffy reaching out to Giles for new watchering closes his open loop from the previous season
and restores some purpose and Xander’s butt monkey syphilitic speech is maybe his greatest
moment of confidence since graduation day.
And that’s pretty much all I ever thought of this one.
Mostly just...kind of forgettable...especially in comparison to other openers like Anne and
The Freshman.
...unless...see there was one thing that kept bothering me about the episode, and that was
Drac’s mind mojo.
This is the second time that a mind mojo has worked on Buffy and subsequently stopped working.
“You have fruit punch mouth.”
And when outlining this essay, it kind of got me to thinking...
What if there is more going on in this one then the comedic surface might suggest?
What if instead of reading Buffy vs Dracula so cleanly as an opener, we read it as a continuation
from Restless?
Quick refresher, Buffy’s dream in Restless consisted of her
Waking up in bed with her friends nowhere to be seen.
Tara making cryptic references to Dawn.
Joyce being covered over by her new life and Buffy leaving her.
Riley acting strange, untrustworthy, calling her killer, and then leaving her.
And the First Slayer telling Buffy that the Slayer is nothing but death.
“No friends.
We are alone.”
As much as Buffy spoke confidently to the First Slayer, part of Buffy’s inability
to sleep in this episode may have been brought on by the fact that the slayer power inside
of her is of a thing that she does not yet truly know and understand.
She may have mastered the use of it, but does she know where it came from or truly understand
it’s essence?
Let’s also not forget that, in Restless, each Scoobies dream versions of each other
behaved in the way that that Scooby subconsciously perceived them.
“I’m cowboy guy.”
So, bearing those two things in mind and taking another look at Buffy vs Dracula, the episode
opens and closes with Buffy showing experiencing a certain amount of anxiety over who she is.
In the opening, she finds catharsis by going out and killing things and in the closing,
she finds it by reaching for her connections.
When she meets Drac his confidence seems to indicate to her that he has knowledge about
the Slayer power that she does not.
“Do you know what a Slayer is?”
- “Do you?”
So...what about that mind mojo.
Well in Prophecy Girl, it was never completely clear why the Master’s stopped working on
her.
Metaphorically it made sense because she’d embraced growing up and wasn’t going to
be controlled by the literal manifestation of what she feared adulthood might be.
But it was never made literally clear why his magic stopped working.
But in this episode, Dracula spills the beans.
Do you know why cannot resist?
Because you do not want to.
Yes, spoken by this camp-tastic Cassanova Drac, that’s just supposed to be sleaze-ball
speak, “Dur hur you know you want it.”
But what if he is literally explaining the way the mind mojo ACTUALLY works and is right
for the wrong reasons?
Buffy can’t resist him because she wants to know what he knows about the Slayer power.
She admits later in the episode that Dracula knows more about her power than she does.
Once she has the sexy vamp taste of what he’s trying to show her, which doesn’t bring
her any information she doesn’t already have...
...thrall broken.
This at least partially explains why the Master’s thrall broke over her as well.
Buffy’s father figure had told her that she was going to face the master and she would
die.
She CHOSE to go and face the Master.
It’s not that she wanted the thrall to work but she wanted to be the Slayer that was prophesied.
When she’d fulfilled that prophecy and integrated it into her identity, there was nothing to
want for anymore except the Master dead - and so the thrall died.
When considering vampire mythology in a bubble, there is a sexual assault metaphor to blood
sucking with a victim and a perpetrator, so this might seem a little victim blame-y a
thing to put forward.
But the Buffyverse has shown us that things aren’t always that simple.
And Buffy is not just anyone.
She is Van Helsing - as much a character of myth as vampires themselves.
The normal metaphorical rules do not apply to her and I find the idea of her playing
Drac for information...kind of interesting.
But if Buffy is playing Dracula then she is also playing everyone, in this episode.
The simplest explanation is that considering Spike confirmed Dracula’s reputation, she
may have wanted to suss out who in the group he’d made his minion.
But the reading does put her conduct with Riley this episode in a curious light.
Hunh…
Foreshadowing the next review.
Having spent more time mulling it over, I think Buffy vs Dracula may now be one of my
favorite season openers, second only to Anne.
There is a shocking amount of foreshadowing in this one and it does an unexpectedly elegant
job setting up some of the themes that we’re going to be grappling with for the next 20+
episodes.
Yes Drac is still silly, it’s heavy on comedy and light on the pain and melodrama that we
all secretly really love.
But that might come.
Who knows what the season will bring?
At the very least, after three seasons of being on the backburner, we can hope that
Dawn will FINALLY get some development.