There is a lot to love about 'New Moon Rising', even if that love is
partially an inherited glow from brighter cleaner episodes.
The story has some wonderful emotion and terrific moments,
but a plot that might’ve been overburdened by some of the season's woes,
and ultimately misses an opportunity for greatness.
I’m going to lay all that out but I want to be clear from the start,
I enjoy this episode quite a bit.
Willow and Tara are discussing getting a relationship pet.
A Mrs. Kitty Fantastico. *Miss Kitty Fantastico
“Do you like cats?”
"More of a dog person myself.”
Of course she is.
The gang is discussing recent Adam-idge, of which there has been very little.
Giles and Anya go at it momentarily...
And that’s when...
"Hey."
Oz returns.
There is an icy tense vibe in the room,
something Xander always feels compelled to cut through himself.
"Okay, once more, with tension."
"Oz, man. Hate to sound grandma but.. you don't call, don't write."
Oz and Willow make plans
and Tara nervously leaves.
Out on patrol, Buffy catches Riley up on several episodes worth of
Previously on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer's,
including Oz’s wolfishnessness.
B:"--wasn't even." R:--"Woah, back up there."
"Oz is a werewolf...and Willow was dating him?"
"Yes."
"Hence the high emotions."
"You're-you're kidding me?"
"Got to say I'm surprised. I didn't think Willow was that kind of girl.'
"What kind of girl?"
"Into dangerous guys."
"She seemed smarter than that."
You LITERALLY run around at night
with weapons in camo,
while high off your ass on a rainbow-sortment of drugs
your B-movie, mad doctor mommy-issue put you on.
So shut up Riley.
Also Buffy’s annoyance over Riley's demon-bigotry shows kind of a MAJOR blindspot for a particular friend in her life.
I don't want to be rude...
but his name rhymes with 'dander'.
Oz shows up at Willow’s room.
Just a hint of their musical theme and a look of cautious longing from them both is enough to make my insides weak.
They go outside and Oz reveals he has gotten his wolfism under control thanks to a cocktail of eastern mysticism.
“I talked to Xander... and he said you didn’t have a new guy.”
“No."
"No new guy.”
Okay...
I love Oz and Willow as much as the next person.
And hearing their theme and seeing them together
in their fuzzy coats makes me feel light and happy.
But there is SO much overlooked in this scene.
About how he left.
About cutting Will off completely.
They don’t have PHONES in Tibet you...
...beautiful tiny ginger?
...I can’t stay mad at Oz.
Graham’s team gets its ass kicked.
Werewolf is the suspect.
Convenient plotty timing.
Oz and Willow talk all night.
While she’s in the bathroom Tara stops by.
“Oh...sorry...I'll come back.”
Buffy and Riley wake up with the morning squabbles..
“Great.
"Then you can eat your perfectly balanced breakfast and then you can call your mother.”
“Okay.
"I’ve been up less than a minute and somehow I’ve managed to piss you off.”
In fairness, she's being a little intolerable in this scene.
Though this is the first time I remember ANYONE mentioning Riley’s incredibly glaring mommy issues.
Back in their dorm room, Buffy asks curiously about Oz, and Willow says...
"Okay, I'm all with the 'woo-hoo' here and you're not."
"It's complicated."
"Why complicated?"
[sigh]
"It's complicated..."
"...because of Tara."
"I-I believe the...subtext here is rapidly becoming...uh...text."
Notice in this scene as she is juggling her emotions she is cuddling a stuffed dog the whole time.
I wish I had more commentary to offer about the coming out scene.
I know this is an important one and I’m
sure there is a lot that could be said.
I did tell my Dad I was an atheist in my 20s
and he started crying and said it was his fault because he hadn't gotten me confirmed.
But THAT'S probably not quite the same thing.
Buffy wigs for a moment but then, to her credit, catches her case of the wiggins and shuts it down.
It’s an endearing and adult little moment of character as Buffy gets past the newness of it all and shows up as Willow’s friend.
She does a better job of processing this new piece of information about her best friend
than Joyce did when Buffy came out to her as the Slayer.
"I mean have you tried NOT being a Slayer."
"Mom."
Adam recruits Spike to help him against the Scoobies
which gives us his best line in the season.
"--the chip comes out, yeah?"
"No tricks?"
"Scout's honor?"
"YOU were a boy scout?"
"Parts of me."
Willow stops by Tara’s and expresses her confliction.
“Do what makes you..."
[cries]
"...ha-happy.”
Later, Oz smells Willow on Tara
and accidentally releases the wolf during the day.
You know, I've been a staunch defender of the wolf and its makeup,
'Phases' excepted.
But the plastic chair thrown by the 5'4" 20 year-old
bringing the ferocious beast to a halt
rivals Angelus tripping over a mop bucket for,
'...seriously.'
Yes, what really happened was the Initiative shot him with a tranquilizer
but the way the scene is blocked still looks ridiculous.
The Initiative captures Oz.
Spike wins himself an inroad with the gang by offering to guide them into the Initiative.
We see Oz naked in a cell with a very strategically placed left foot to hide his bait and tackle.
Riley tries to break him lose and gets captured.
The Scoobs break in themselves and grab them both.
Buffy shares her past with Angel to Riley.
And the episode ends, again, with Oz and Willow.
Well...
....let's wait a minute.
I have a LOT to say about this one
but before we get into into it, let's back up for a second.
From the beginning, the episode’s plot sets up two main conflicts to resolve,
one of which finds a contrived pathway to a satisfying conclusion.
And the other, which finds a rich emotional pathway
to an unsatisfying conclusion.
And bizarrely, comparing the two against each other actually reveals their strengths and weaknesses.
The first is Riley’s bigotry.
Which, as mentioned, feels like a bit of a step backwards for his character.
The surety with which he says Willow is not as smart as he thought she was because
dangerous-werewolf-love
is tediously tone deaf of him
and backpedals on the scene in Willy’s.
When Riley had to come to grips with that he didn’t know everything.
I think we can mostly chalk this writing up to Walsh’s unceremonious and unplanned departure,
and the writers not really being sure what to do with the Initiative without her.
Making Adam the Big Bad
and putting him at odds with the Initiative has left them
to languish in dull middle ground now
for seven episodes. *six
What is going on?
Why do they matter to the arc anymore?
The architect of the Initiative itself built a giant, scary floppy drive monster.
How are they still a thing?
And why is Riley still with them?
I’m not sure the writers quite knew the answers to those questions
and so did a bit of a rewind here in order to set up to the finale.
Graham’s team being attacked
validates Riley’s emotional myopia
in the same way Walsh’s attack did.
“Maggie’s dead."
"Happy now?”
“What kind of demon was it?”
“Does it matter?”
The coincidence of an unrelated wolf attack occurring on the same night
that Oz returns to Sunnydale feels VERY contrived.
Then there’s the the crisis of conscience in Willy’s, which is repeated
when Riley discovers the werewolf the Initiative has captured and is now experimenting on...
...is Oz.
Though the shedding of Riley’s bigotry feels incredibly shallow to me.
“Hey, that's enough. Come on, the guy's a student. I know him.”
I see.
So the fact that the human version of THIS werewolf happens to be a friend of yours
means it’s wrong?
The insinuation being if this had been another werewolf with a different human in it, who maybe Riley didn’t know
it wouldn’t have mattered.
Or, if Oz’s wolf HAD killed Graham’s team,
would he still have changed his mind?
There’s no weighing the morality here.
Riley just...pivots.
Then again, a person only coming to grips with their own bigotry when it’s personal for them
is probably a reasonable portrayal of human nature.
Riley tries to help Oz escape.
Not-Maggie-Walsh captures him.
And we get a pretty good Riley line, when Buffy and company bust him out.
“If I leave now, I can’t ever come back.”
“I just wanted to hear that out loud.”
And then an OKAY Riley line.
"No, sir."
“I’m an anarchist.”
[anarchist punch]
I say okay because this episode by itself
has to carry the emotional weight of the line,
since Maggie Walsh is now gone.
But the conclusion to Riley’s conflict still feels satisfying and cathartic to me
because the setup pays off,
and we get to watch Riley make a hard choice that develops him as a character.
The other conflict in the episode, is setup as
who will Willow choose?
Oz or Tara?
That IS the question that the episode sets up.
As much as I found Oz’s handling of their breakup callous,
there is no indication that that is the problem Willow is grappling with.
She makes no mention of resentment of it to Oz, Tara, or Buffy.
Buffy doesn’t bring up the way Oz left and immediately upon hearing Oz has solved the wolf problem, celebrates:
“I’m all with the 'whoo hoo' here, and you're not.”
"No, there's 'whoo'" and..."
"...AND 'hoo'."
And rather than Willow saying it’s complicated because of the way Oz handled the relationship,
she says:
“It’s complicated..."
"...because of Tara.”
So, Oz, or Tara?
That’s the other conflict the episode sets up.
And it is THE emotionally riveting aspect of the episode.
When Oz appears at Giles’ place I think we all hold our breath.
Seth Green and Alyson Hannigan have wonderful chemistry.
And seeing them together has the emotional impact on me
of one last perfect night with a passionate love lost.
“Yeah, we talked all night.”
And I love Amber Benson’s performance in this one.
Her agony at being the outsider and witness to a piece of Willow’s heart that she has no access to is beautiful,
and I love the way Amber portrays that through a pained physicality and verbal idiosyncrasies.
“Do what makes you…”
[cries]
"...ha-happy.”
My frustration with the conflict, and this question the episode sets up, is it doesn’t ACTUALLY ever payoff.
Willow doesn’t actually make a choice
because it ends up there not being a choice to be made.
Oz is physically incapable of staying.
He hasn’t solved the wolf problem and so he just has to leave anyway.
Instead of Willow making a hard choice and the consequences of it being the source of drama in the episode,
her scene with Oz in the van is a restatement
of HIS choice from 'Wild at Heart'.
Oz chooses to not be around her as long as the wolf is there.
There is the appearance of choice in her scene with Tara
but consider their dialogue carefully.
"No, I-I understand."
“You...have to be with the person you l-love.”
“I am.”
That’s not a choice.
It’s a description.
Willow is with someone she loves.
She was with Tara before the episode
and is now STILL with her.
It also doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love Oz.
Oz couldn’t stay before
and still can’t stay.
I love this scene because I love Willow and Tara.
I love the van scene because I love Willow and Oz.
The plot not paying off doesn’t invalidate the emotional resonance of those scenes
or make them cheats.
But it does, ultimately, make the episode feel, as a whole, like it’s missing something for me.
And makes the return of one of my favorite characters in the series
seem a little inconsequential when it’s all over.
Now, most of us have advanced knowledge of where all these threads go,
and when I brought this issue up on Twitter I got a few replies from people telling me that they,
in context, read the episode this way or interpret the episode that way
...and I get it.
Maybe if the choice had been there to make,
she would’ve chosen Tara anyway.
I think she probably would have.
I’m just suggesting that the bicycle of this episode's plot alone, has a flat tire.
Riley’s conflict pays off onscreen.
But I know some of you have a Riley allergy,
so let's just take a quick look at the power of conflicts resolved by choices paying off ONscreen.
"Take all that away, and what’s left?”
[catch]
“Me.”
[ouch]
“Close your eyes.”
“I’m Buffy,"
"...the Vampire Slayer."
"And you are.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Are you?”
“I like the quiet.”
“You are NOT going to kill these people.
"Why not?"
"Because it’s wrong.”
A simple way to fix the problem would’ve been to just lead with a different conflict.
Has Oz really conquered the beast?
Or to restructure the plot.
Instead of Oz going wolf when he runs into Tara in the hallway,
why not have Willow find him to tell him she loves him.
There’s a part of her that will always be waiting for him,
but she’s a different person now and that person is in love with someone else.
Oz smells Tara on her,
wolf’s out.
And the episode plays out identically.
EXCEPT
in the van now, Willow has spoken her truth to him.
She found her power and who she is after the devastating events of 'Wild at Heart'
and we’ve seen her take the action that proves it.
Nonetheless, there is more I enjoy here than not.
The failure of one aspect of the plot to payoff
doesn’t mean that we don’t get some wonderful scenes between characters we cherish.
And they all feel honest.
There are no cheats in the Oz, Willow, Tara love.
And to be perfectly fair to the episode, writing this one was probably a monumental undertaking in which it tried to do
a little too much.
Provide some sort of catharsis for what happened with Oz.
Setup the season finale.
And be thematically on point while moving our characters forward
in a season partially derailed by forces outside the show.
The fact that 'New Moon Rising' still feels at least
partially successful and very watchable is a wonder.