With one exception, ‘Out of My Mind’ continues what could almost be described as a surprisingly
gentle opening to ‘Buffy Season 5’.
Plenty of intrigue with the introduction of the Dawnster and some questions up in the
air around what’s happening with Riley and Buffy’s relationship.
But, for the most part and especially in comparison to ‘Season 2’ of ‘Angel’ that was
running in parallel to this ‘Buffy’ season, the opening run of ‘Buffy Season 5’ has
the flavor of one ‘Something Blue’ after another.
Entertaining if not particularly complex.
But...maybe there are a few more things going on beneath the surface than we might realize.
Buffy is out on the hunt as she was in the first episode, the distinction between hunting
and slaying emphasized by the pan up to her crouched atop a tomb like a predator about
to pounce.
She’s getting so good at it now the vamps aren’t even making it out of their graves.
That just seems like cheating.
As a vicious bit of kickboxing occurs in the new fighting style of the season (I love this
flying kick right here,) Riley interferes with Buffy’s “me” time.
Followed closely by a bored Spike.
When Riley joins in with a bit of the Spike chastation Buffy can’t hold back a look
OH.
I saw that.
Looks like neither boy's entirely welcome.
Spike monologues darkly about killing Buffy before…
Buffy and Willow are having a debate about school and Willow drinks in the moment.
Grossly oversimplifying history here, Jean Paul Marat was a French journalist who turned
the people away from political moderates at the time to the more radical French revolutionaries.
After letting a woman into his home who he thought was on his side the woman stabbed
him in the chest and he bled to death in the tub.
In this conversation, Buffy is arguing for Marat’s side.
Her surprise over Buffy’s intellectual-fu makes sense when considering what Willow’s
subconscious depiction of Buffy was in her dreamworld.
Speaking of, after his ‘Replacement’ hijinx, Xander is demonstrating some confidence in
his own abilities for the first time in....well, since ‘The Zeppo’, really.
“Yeah.
Carpentry is pretty cool.”
Xander and Giles have put together a training room for Buffy in the back of The Magic Box
and Riley pulls a surprise attack.
Just keeping you on your toes.
Buffy expresses her gratitude.
“You’re like my Q. Q from ‘Bond’, not ‘Star Trek’.”
Wait a minute….B...Buffy watches STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION!?!?
I didn’t know Buffy watched Star Trek.
Okay, I mean...it’s possible she picked up some TNG knowledge from Xander
“I’m sorry.
Calm may work for Locutus of the Borg here, but I’m stayin’ freaked out and I intend
to stay that way.”
“Sure.
As soon as I get my Master’s degree in Advanced Starship Technology!!”
but, as of THIS day I’m going to proceed as if it’s an ABSOLUTE certainty that she’s
a fan.
And don’t you dare ruin it for me in the comments...Don’t you….DARE
Spike is watching ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ironically, considering the ending of the
episode, accusing Pacey of being blind.
Like a total Jen, Harmony shows up and asks to move back in with him.
Riley is now starting to act like a coked-out chihuahua, even in the bedroom.
Back at the Summers’ residence, Dawn is doing a very relatable excavation of the family
cereal box to get at the toy surprise when....
...something comes over Joyce.
At the hospital, Buffy and company meet an intern named Ben, and Dawn decides to distract
herself with his stethoscope, a moment I’ve always found... oddly magical?
Fiddling with whatever might be handy in a moment of extreme stress strikes me as something
a kid would DEFINITELY do.
And the sound design in the scene is terrific, artfully creating that moment of Dawn being
in her own world.
It works like a little moment of fantasy, gradually building to the reveal of Riley's
heart rate.
Riley refuses support from the hospital and Joyce gets sent home.
And in contrast to the subtle stethoscope bit, Riley’s basketball montage always lands
poorly for me.
For anyone who might not know, Marcus Blucas helped win a basketball national championship
for his high school 2 years in a row, and got a basketball scholarship to Wake Forest
(what is it with him and Forests?) where he played a year with a young Tim Duncan.
The hoop on the back of Riley’s dorm door in ‘Season 4’ was probably an homage to
Blucas’ resume, but this full-on montage in proximity to ‘The Replacement’ is a
little hilarious.
‘Nicholas Brendon has an identical twin?
Sweet, let's do an evil twin episode.
Marcus Blucas played college ball?
Uhm...montage with some rock music?’
By the way, there may be a bit of accidental Riley commentary going on in this scene.
The song playing in the background of his montage is called ‘Breathe’...by…Nickelback.
GRANT crashes the game.
Oh man, I’m actually happy to see him and I’m...not really sure why?
The only part of the Initiative that didn’t ultimately suck?
Grant tries to convince Riley to let him help.
Riley refuses and flees.
While out searching for him, Buffy tips off Spike about the Initiative surgeon waiting
at Sunnydale Hospital.
Harmony, Spike, and crossbow convince the doctor to operate on him.
Spike’s swagger whenever he gets to do evil again, even if it’s by way of Harmony here,
is pure magnetism.
Buffy finds Riley at Sunnydale High.
They still haven't torn that down yet?
Jeez.
She and Riley have a pivotal conversation that I’ll get back to in a minute
31:00 “Loving you is the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”
After that Riley Finn classic, Buffy manages to convince him to go to the hospital.
The doctor fakes Spike’s chip removal.
Harmony and Spike flee.
Riley gets patched up.
Grant plants a seed in Riley’s mind.
And the episode ends with...uhm...is anyone else getting warm?
‘The Replacement’ introduced the idea of twins, dualities, or split identities to
this season
and ‘Out of My Mind’ continues to build on that notion directly - our characters,
in one way or another, divided against themselves.
It’s always astonishing to me how often the writers come up with titles that can describe
many different elements of an episode.
In Out of My Mind, there are MANY characters that are...well...a little out of their minds.
Riley is going out of his over the possibility of losing Buffy and having to put himself
in government hands again for surgery.
The title applies to Spike twice with him literally wanting to get the chip out of his
mind and the panic over his late episode discovery.
Something appears to be up with with Joyce and her mind.
And maybe we can count Harmony as having already lost hers a long time ago.
But, many of these dynamics also represent emerging dualities, the oldest one dating
back to the very first episode.
There has always been a back and forth between, as she called them last episode, Buffy Buffy
and Slayer Buffy.
And lately, those two have been looking more and more distinct from each other, with Slayer
Buffy being portrayed like a predator on the hunt.
There is also 6-Million-Dollar-Government-Empowered Riley and the Joe Riley he’s afraid of turning
into.
And, along with chipped Spike and un-chipped Spike there is now the Spike who hates Buffy
and the Spike who lusts for Buffy.
It might be tempting to believe that the seed for Spike’s dream was planted in ‘Something
Blue’.
“Oh look at that lip.
Gonna get it.”
Or when Faith as Buffy teased him provocatively in ‘Who Are You?’
“I could ride you at a gallop until your legs buckled…”
Remember...it has yet to be made clear whether Spike found out that that was Faith speaking
on her behalf so Spike, as of now, may still believe Buffy was the one saying those things
to him.
But I think Spike’s lust for Buffy has actually been around a lot longer than it seems.
Since his introduction in ‘School Hard’, Spike has always been conflating ideas of
sex, love, and violence.
Everything he says to Buffy in reference to killing her in his first episode has sexual
undertones.
“I’ll make it quick.
It won’t hurt a bit.”
In ‘Lovers Walk’, while suffering from a deep depression over losing Dru he finally
figures out the best way to win back her affections:
“I’ll find her, wherever she is.
Tie her up.
Torture her.
Till she likes me again.”
In ‘The Harsh Light of Day’ he was either staking Harmony or sleeping with her.
Spike also shares some literal and metaphorical connections to Riley.
In ‘Season 4’ they were both fitted with behavior modification chips
“So it’s chips all around?”
Riley’s chip was near his heart - Spike’s in his head.
Riley loves Buffy and his heart is now breaking.
Spike’s head is consumed with thoughts about her...
...and those thoughts have been revealed as lust.
Btw in case you missed it, the gravestone he destroyed said, ‘Mama,’ on it.
Both men would probably be better off if they left Sunnydale and yet both have made Buffy
the center of their lives.
And upon returning to Sunnydale in ‘Season 4’, after losing the Gem of Amara, he’s
standing above Buffy monologuing, before he is electrocuted and ‘falls.’
This episode opens with Spike monologuing about drinking from the chalice of the Buffster’s
neck, before he immediately ‘falls’ into a grave.
That bookended with his stupid sexy smouldering dream at the end of the episode reinforces
his perception of sex and violence not being that far from each other.
And I think we also read his repeated ‘falls’ as he’s been ‘falling’ for Buffy for
a long time.
In a similar fashion, the show has been building to Riley and Buffy’s conversation in the
burned out school for a long time.
When their secret identities were revealed to each other in ‘Doomed,’ the first question
Riley asks Buffy is: “What are you?”
‘What?’ he asks.
Not ‘Who?’
In ‘A New Man,’ Riley and Buffy have a conversation about their own personal ‘number,’
and he reacts with insecurity over Buffy’s.
When Xander reveals Buffy has a past with a previous super-powered guy Riley reacts
with paranoia.
And throughout, he regularly uses treacly romantic phrases that indicate that HIS half
of the relationship is actually Buffy’s responsibility...not his.
“You really have a lot to learn about women, Riley.”
“You’re going to teach me.”
“Why would think I would do that?”
“Because I’m so in love with you I can’t think straight.”
After losing the only other cornerstone of his identity, the Initiative, in ‘Season
4’...
...he is now adrift, his only identity being, as Graham rightfully points out this episode,
Buffy’s boyfriend.
He has made the classic mistake of making his partner his whole life.
“Angel, when I look into the future, all I see is you.”
And in this episode he several times tries to make Buffy’s life about him in the same
way.
From horning in on her Slayer time, to trying to make the moment Xander and Giles reveal
their training center gift to her, about THEIR relationship.
“Think you can take me?”
There’s even a look of disappointment on his face when Buffy leaves him after surgery
to go check on her mother.
But Buffy resists his attempts to institute codependency, having already been-there/done-that.
Finally, in their scene together at the wreckage of Sunnydale High School all of this comes
to bear.
“What is this?
What’s happening to you?”
“I go back there best case scenario they turn me into Joe Normal.
Just another guy.”
So, this is the repetition of his machismo belief that power is what gives us value and
makes us who we are.
“And that’s not good enough for you?”
“That’s not good enough for you.”
And his ingrained belief that Buffy only wants to be with powerful dude bros.
Buffy tries to speak truth to him “Nobody has ever known me the way that you
do…”
But the scene still ends with a bit of responsibility-abdicating treacle.
“Loving you is the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”
Ugh.
Anyway, it’s never really clear whether he finally agrees to go see the doctor because
Buffy convinced him he was being dumb or because he really didn’t have any choice.
“If you don’t believe me...then I am still going to make you go to that doctor.”
Now, putting Riley aside, because it’s clear the dude needs to take a long hard look at
himself, what he’s up to in life, and some of his values, I just want to consider something
Buffy says in this scene for its own sake.
“Do you think I spent the past year with you because you had super powers?”
Is it possible to interpret a pattern in Buffy’s relationships to this point that might point
to Buffy having a penchant, one way or another, for a certain type of relationship?
Skipping over the two day crush of Owen, Angel, and Buffy have probably been the closest thing
so far to soulmates, pun intended.
Then there was Scott Hope, her first attempt at a Joe Normal, who was a bit of a juggling
Buster-Keaton-festivaling-dud that she lost interest in when Angel came back, and, according
to Scott.
“You just seem so distracted.”
After she and Angel broke up...again...there was Parker a SEEMINGLY Joe Normal, who manipulated
and used her.
That act COULD be read as an exercise of power, if of an evil sort, and Buffy pined over THAT
jackass for weeks.
Then you have the ambiguity over his eminent spookiness the dark Master (baiter,) a legendary
evil who either Buffy let bite her to get information out of or was suddenly and without
proper explanation in the text able to break the thrall of by the end of the episode.
I mean...when she says…
“...If that’s what I wanted, then I’d be dating Spike.”
...that’s just patently ridiculous and she’s obviously being hyperbolic because she would
never date vampire who was evil...well...not currently.
BUT, I’m just saying, if we look for patterns in her dating history to this point, you could
see how someone might think that was a POSSIBILITY.
Even if the pattern itself doesn’t validate Riley’s turdish behavior.
And before anyone gets on me for thinking I’m making some kind of indictment here
of a 20 year old for her (mostly) high school dating history let me be clear: I’m just
trying to interpret the perspectives of these two characters at this particular moment in
their story together.
No one is ever finished and one of the insane joys of this show is that the characters make
choices, good and bad, and grow from them.
Usually…
The other Scoobies take a little bit of a backseat in this episode but there are a couple
of details worth noting.
Xander makes the connections between him and Riley that I mentioned in the previous episode,
explicit:
“Maybe he needed some time alone.
Like I had this friend once who really liked this girl.
And...he got all worried that...maybe she didn't like him back.
Maybe that made him act like a total jerk.
“
“K...I guess I guys got to be undead to...make time with you.
“Maybe Riley reminds me of him.
He is probably referring to Riley directly with that piece of dialogue and not himself
but I still think it’s telling that, when you pair that line with his scene in ‘Prophecy
Girl’, it’s almost impossible to tell.
Even Anya is confused.
“I like you Xander.”
And the line has the same problem as your average Riley-treacle in that it frames their
behaviour in a way so that Buffy is ultimately responsible.
As in, not being liked back MADE Rander act like a total jerk.
In ‘Season 4’, I mentioned there were some potential parallels between the relationships
of Riley and Buffy and Tara and Willow, if inverted slightly.
When Riley and Buffy were unable to find the words,Tara and Willow were talking endlessly.
As Willow kept Tara somewhat hidden away
“I just want something that’s...mine…”
Buffy made Riley her central focus for a period of time.
And in this episode, as Tara and Willow are searching the school, Willow uses a spell
to illuminate all of the darkness.
“Isn’t this better than holding a flashlight like some kind of doofus?”
Uhhh..no?
Not if all magic has a cost.
You know, doors opening that can’t be closed again, yada yada.
And Tara reacts with concern over Willow’s exponential growth in power...in an episode
in an episode with Riley fearing that the loss of his will cause Buffy to lose interest
in him.
Sooo, yeah...a surprising amount going on in this one.
Back when the show first began, there was always a pretty noticeable difference between
the flavor of one-off episodes (in which the Big Bad might make a mostly posthumous appearance,)
and the season arc episodes.
As the series has gone on, I think the writers have just gotten a lot better at mixing the
two types of flavors together, where season arc episodes can evoke the high concept memorable
nature of great standalones, and many of the one-off’s can contain pivotal character
changing moments.
Seasons still tend to end in a run of continuous cliff-hanging-arc-episodes but, while the
first part of ‘Season 5’ may feel entertaining, with a touch of the aimlessness that ‘Season
4’ had (and was, at least, appropriate to some of ‘Season 4’s themes,) if you look
very closely, you might be surprised to already notice all of the thematic elements that will
take us to ‘The Gift’, my favorite season finale of the show.