"Today, you all graduate from high school."
"Today, all the pain, all the work, all the excitement"
"...is finally over."
"It's been a long road getting here,
"...for you. for Sunnydale."
"There's been achievement,"
"joy, good times.""
"And there's been grief."
"There's been loss."
"Journey's end."
"And what is a journey?"
"Is it just..."
"distance traveled?
"Time spent?"
"No."
"It's what happens on the way."
"It's the things that shape you."
"At the end of the journey, you're not the same."
"Today is about change."
"Nothing will ever be the same."
"Nothing."
It’s summertime in the graveyard, where Buffy and Willow are organizing Buffy’s schedule for the upcoming semester at college.
Freshman year.
We find out they’re taking Psychology together lead by the world renowned Professor Walsh.
Buffy is obviously nervous and distracted with the impending change.
Something that is reflected in her slaying.
“Is this guy ever going to wake up?”
I am NOT a defender of the remaster
but I will say there's a small detail in this scene I never noticed in the standard def(inition).
Willow is wearing a hoodie with an emblem on it that says,
“The Hysteric Woman."
According to Wikipedia, female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis,
reserved exclusively for women.
It's diagnosis and treatment were routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe.
Women considered to have it exhibited a wide array of symptoms,
including nervousness,
sexual desire,
shortness of breath,
irritability
and a "tendency to cause trouble".
Hell...yeah.
The next morning, Buffy is lost in a sea of students
and Whedon gives us a very quick and confronting cross section of campus life.
“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”
--“Uhh. You know I meant to and then I just got really busy.”
Willow has already begun to blossom in the energy of a higher education.
It’s an experience that people CHOOSE to have, rather than are subjected to like high school.
So Willow, mostly shunned in high school, is excited to be in college.
And Oz, while sympathetic to Buffy’s displacement, is obviously quite at home as well.
"My band's played here a lot."
“Still...all new..."
"I don’t know what the hell's is going on.
"Hey, Doug.”
I do love this twisting shot, in the actual USC library, that shows Buffy’s feelings of being dwarfed by it all.
As Willow and Buffy walk along,
their conversation reveals that Giles is now an unemployed gentleman of leisure and Xander is the midst of a cross country trip.
In the school bookstore, Buffy accidentally knocks a pile of books onto…
[knowledge is painful]
[Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it]
[reading is FUNdamental]
Riley Finn’s head.
Riley is the T.A. for Professor Walsh’s class and introduces himself to the two Scoobies.
Riley is a key character, for which there are A LOT of opinions in the fanbase,
but as I make these videos with the intention of avoiding spoilers
it’s going to be a little while before I give you my complete rundown.
Riley and Willow hit it off over the topic of "operant conditioning",
Professor Walsh’s specialty.
Operant conditioning (also called "instrumental conditioning") is a type of learning
in which the strength of behavior is modified by the behavior's consequences, such as a reward or punishment.
An example of operant conditioning might be a shock collar.
Every time a dog barks the collar shocks them, and eventually the dog won’t bark anymore.
Has the dog learned that the barking is bad, or is the dog simply avoiding pain?
This is Professor Walsh’s specialty.
Buffy gets humiliated by the insanely arrogant pop media professor and kicked out of class.
A part of me feels like this is Whedon's commentary on higher education pop media courses.
Which is funny given Whedon properties keep a lot of these classes going.
Feeling alone and isolated she wanders the school halls and runs into Riley who walks her to Psychology
where we meet Professor Walsh
"Those of you who don't, will come to know me by the name my T.A.-s use, and think I don't know about:
“the evil bitch monster of death.”
That line always THUDS for me.
I feel like her students would’ve come up something much more clever if it stuck.
Wicked Walsh.
Orrr….
Monster Maggie.
Monster Maggie Wicked Walsh.
Uhm....
...s
wh..
s-s-stupid face?
After class she runs into Eddie,
"You raped my sister. You murdered her. You killed her children."
...another lost Freshman.
Buffy said school is making her feel like carrying around a security blanket,
one must assume she means Mr. Gordo,
and Eddie chimes in with:
“'Of Human Bondage'."
"Have you ever read it?"
Now of course, there’s no such thing as an arbitrary literary reference in 'Buffy'.
'Of Human Bondage' is an incredibly complex and somewhat autobiographical book by William Somerset Maugham.
To grossly oversimplify, the story is about Philip
and his journey to eliminate the constraints imposed on him by ideologies and institutions in order to live more freely.
But the story is more a warning of how the world blocks Philip’s efforts to do that,
and ultimately Philip abandons his hopes and dreams in exchange for “normality.”
An existentialist might say he is living inauthentically,
and that the institutions in Philip’s life (mostly religion and school) actively encouraged him to do so.
No surprise then that Eddie quickly gets eaten.
Eddie and Buffy console each other,
which is the show's handing equivalent of handing Eddie a red shirt and having him beam down to the planet with Kirk and Spock.
"You have a first rate mind and you can think on your feet."
"Imagine what you could accomplish if you actually did the--"
"--the homework thing."
"The homework thing."
[Sorry to bug you.]
He is promptly killed by a cadre of vampires
who steal his things from his dorm room and leave a note saying he flipped out.
At their hideaway they’re divvying up his stuff.
I absolutely love the bit where they guess whether the victim had a Klimt or a Monet poster.
Whedon's calling out of that Freshman cliché is perfect
and I would argue the game should have a third category:
Einstein posters with quotes on them.
...I had all three.
Buffy, realizing Eddie has been taken, seeks solace in her parental units, starting with Giles
...WHO has an attractive pantsless guest
and is wandering his home in a silk robe during what appears to be the middle of the day.
“I’m not supposed to have a private life?”
“--Nooo..."
"....because you’re very, very old and it’s...gross.”
Buffy tries to get Giles to join in the search for Eddie
and Giles expresses some Scotch soaked apathy and says that Buffy doesn’t have a Watcher anymore.
Out on patrol, Buffy discovers Eddie has turned,
stakes him and loses a fight to the vampire, Sunday.
It’s an unspectacular and quickly lost fight.
Alone, dejected, she goes home to see Joyce
and discovers Joyce has already filled her room with stuff.
[rings]
"Hello."
[You used to call me on my cellphone...]
"Hello."
[Not committing to Drake jokes today]
Nearing bottom, Buffy finds her way to the Bronze and her metaphorical heart
who has been conspicuously absent this whole episode, appears.
Xander explains his summer has gone seriously awry and Buffy says the same.
She’s feeling dejected and no longer herself
and Xander takes a knee and gives her one of my favorite lines ever.
“Let me tell you something."
"When it’s dark, and I’m all alone and I’m scared or freaked out or whatever,
"I always think:"
"‘What would Buffy do?’"
"You’re my hero.”
The return of her metaphorical heart helps her find the courage to confront the situation as she always would have.
Buffy and Xander figure out where the vampire hideout is and while Xander is off seeking weapons
the roof collapses and Buffy confronts Sunday.
Xander finds Oz and Willow and they head to the vampire hideout with weapons.
Sunday destroys Buffy’s Class Protector award
and Buffy finds her mojo and takes out the rest of them.
And the episode ends with the straggler being taken out by a weird trio of military men.
As I’ve said in previous guides, season openers have got to be some of the most difficult episodes to write
and I have to believe that 'The Freshman' was one of the most difficult in the series.
As the Mayor said on graduation day, nothing will ever be the same.
Whedon completely upends the apple cart.
That comfortable sweet formula that had found a perfect groove sometime in Season 3 is gone.
No more hours in the library,
no more Snyder,
No more daily check-ins with Mom,
and all of the familiar high school iconography.
So as much as 'The Freshman' is not one of my favorite openers, I have great respect for the series’ courage to take risks.
Because 'Buffy' is a show ABOUT a person’s life for seven years
and just like OUR lives things change.
Grooves are lost and routines are destroyed.
But the consequence is that Season 4 takes a little bit of time to find its footing,
just as it would’ve taken Buffy in this kind of transition.
And just when you feel like it’s found it,
some factors external to the show, once again, altered the direction of the season,
which ultimately had the effect of somewhat neutering the season arc,
even though the season itself has some of the best one offs in the series.
I love nearly every episode in 'Season 4',
but it doesn’t add up in quite the way 'Season 2' and '3' did.
But we’ll get there.
I’d put the opener somewhere in the middle of the seven,
that means it's still really darn good.
Still, some of the setup feels a little clunky to me.
The way in which Buffy gets her butt handed to her by Sunday
and then manages to just find her mojo big time again in the end of the episode.
Or Eddie’s clunky 'Of Human Bondage' name drop,
which you know is going to have some sort of deep thematic resonance later on.
These elements all work when they have been nourished and fed by a season arc
but in the openers it has the effect of making each shot feel like it was setup
juuuust before the camera turned the corner.
As I've said.
Season openers are hard.
Still, there is much to savor and indulge in here.
So many of the details of college ring true.
I love the entire opening sequence where Buffy is loudly being recruited by each of the different sub groups.
I strongly identified with her sense of displacement.
I love the introduction of Giles’ lack of clarity as to where the line is between allowing Buffy to face certain confrontations on her own,
or to show up and risk impeding her becoming a strong independent adult.
And I love Kathy,
"I just know that this whole year is gonna be SUPER fun."
another poison juice box that I take great joy in despising.
I think the show’s creators also made a deliberate alteration to the look of the series starting with this season,
perhaps in an attempt to differentiate itself from its spinoff 'Angel' which began the same year.
The first season and a half of Buffy is very gritty and dim.
'The Freshman' looks brighter and the colors more deeply saturated.
Things pop off the screen.
It feels to me like the final letting go of the show's original aspiration to be a high school HORROR show.
This season, 'Buffy' looks to me like the writing always felt,
as though it’s now allowed to visually have it’s own sweetness and identity.
Sunday’s destruction of Buffy’s Class Protector award is deeply symbolic.
I touched on it in the 'Top 10 Buffy or Angel episodes that remind us everything is going to be alright.'
But, in brief, the show staunchly avoids happy endings.
There are no endings in the series.
'The Prom' was a bright, shiny, warm light. True.
but the destruction of the Class Protector award is to me a symbol of the constant inevitability of time.
We are always moving forward.
“I can’t wait 'til Mom gets the bill for these books.
"I hope it’s a funny aneurysm.”
[rewind]
“I can’t wait 'til Mom gets the bill for these books.
"I hope it’s a funny aneurysm.”
[rewind]
[zoom]
“I can’t wait 'til Mom gets the bill for these books.
"I hope it’s a funny aneurysm.”
[TEXT BOOKS KEEP FALLIN' ON MY HEAD]