You know how sometimes something can’t be unseen?
Like Stephen Colbert’s lack of symmetry,
or how Toad in 'Super Mario Brothers 1' is flipping you off,
or how the mermaid on the Starbucks logo
is spread eagled and topless.
I feel that way about some common television plots.
'Dead Man’s Party' is a deck clearing episode written by Marti Noxon
and I have very mixed feelings about it.
It has charm,
plenty of wit,
and Buffy is finally home.
It must’ve been an incredibly daunting episode to write.
The writers need to resolve everyone’s feelings about Buffy leaving,
some lingering plot threads from 'Season 2',
and to prepare the gang for the upcoming season arc.
My frustration is the episode’s ENTIRE plot is driven by an overused mostly television based cliché:
our main characters just not talking.
The opening sequence between Buffy and Joyce feels very authentic to me.
At the end of 'Anne', Buffy came home of her own accord and both she and Joyce are reluctant to discuss the details of the past few months
but it is thick in the space between them as Buffy asks to go find Xander and Willow.
“Will you be slaying?
"Only if they give me lip.”
I love Joyce’s complete discomfort and forced casualness with this new idea of slaying.
She drops the term like a parent trying to be hip.
Buffy finds the gang in the middle of one of their vampire amateur Slayer patrols.
"Didn't anyone ever warn you about playing with pointy sticks?"
“It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.”
Let that line sink in for a moment.
There are no jumps for glee at the sight of her return.
Everyone stares awkwardly.
They take Buffy to see Giles and Buffy gets nervous.
“What if he’s mad?”
As ever, Anthony Stewart Head plays Giles with such compassion.
And he does so non-verbally.
The scene in the kitchen as he’s getting them tea, and his home is filled with the sounds of
this unusual family back together again nearly brings me to tears every time.
As he shows us the anxiety of the past few months slipping from his shoulders.
I also love how Seth Green casually drops what would otherwise be a bombshell piece of exposition.
I can just picture the writers' meeting, as they try and figure out how to handle the thorny issue of the police thinking Buffy murdered Kendra,
a delusion validated by a prominent Sunnydale authority figure.
Could’ve been tough.
Maybe an episode or two as she goes before a court?
Or has to speak with the same cops she spoke with in 'Ted'.
But we can’t bring Kendra back.
What a pickle!
Hey, why don’t we just have Oz say it?
He can deadpan any piece of information and everyone will just kind of nod their heads and say, ‘Okay.’
“Hey, so you’re not wanted for murder anymore.”
“Good."
"That was such a drag.”
[cheers]
Buffy and Joyce have a meeting with Principal Snyder to attempt to get her re-admitted and they are gleefully rebuffed.
That afternoon Willow stands Buffy up for a date.
When she returns home she meets Pat.
We hate Pat and we’re meant to.
I think her dialogue is like rage inducing beige poetry.
She’s a poison juice box that I love to hate.
Joyce tells Buffy they’re throwing a party for the gang and asks her to get the guest plates from the basement.
When she does Buffy finds a dead cat.
Joyce and Buffy bury the cat and that night
Joyce’s Nigerian mask she was hanging in the first scene
brings it back to life.
Giles comes over and picks up the undead cat, noticing Joyce’s unusual mask.
As the gang researches the zombie cat, they decide the party at Buffy’s house should be a rager so that they don’t have to talk about her absence.
At the party, Buffy tries to engage Willow in conversation, perceiving something might be off.
Willow poorly denies anything is wrong
and coincidentally the Nigerian mask goes into resurrection overdrive.
Joyce and Pat are drinking schnapps and Joyce, thinking they have a moment of privacy, makes a guilty confession.
“Having Buffy home I-I thought it was gonna make it all better but in some ways..."
"...it’s almost worse.”
In fairness to Joyce,
(and I don’t use those words very often)
that is a line taken conveniently out of context for the sake of the story.
The key words here are “in some ways” and “almost.”
I can imagine now having Buffy home she’s dealing some anxiety about saying the wrong thing and having Buffy run off again.
Or worse, now that she’s taken up the Slayer mantle again, dealing with the constant fear and anxiety of Buffy being murdered in an alleyway.
Of course, much of that could have been addressed if the two of them had had a conversation about what lead to Buffy running off.
And those fears prove a bit justified as upon overhearing this Buffy flees to her bedroom and starts packing.
Giles figures out the source of the zombies and tries to call the house
but two stoner strangers pick up the phone so that we can get some easy stoner jokes.
"Fiesta foul."
“You gotta do a shot.”
"I need to speak to Buffy."
This bit didn’t land for me.
Since when does stringent Joyce allow teenagers to be doing shots in her home?
Willow catches Buffy packing and the firestorm begins.
Those of you who think everyone is too hard on Buffy in the coming scene,
PLEASE note Willow’s olive branch.
"Sorry that I had to leave. But you don't know what I was going through."
"Well I’d like to.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
I can’t stand the end of this episode and EVERYONE behaves badly
but Buffy is not without responsibility in it either.
Here she indicates what an incredible burden she was under
and Willow asks her to share that burden with her.
Because that’s friendship.
But Buffy says: "You wouldn’t understand."
No shot.
No opportunity.
Nothing.
Of course, the counterpoint is Xander’s lie,
and Buffy at the moment still believing that Willow was anti-Angel and said,
“Kick his ass.”
Still, Willow and Buffy come close to making some emotional progress and reconnecting,
...that is until Peppermint Joyce shows up.
Giles is speeding the hoopty towards the party.
And here is the hardest scene in the episode to watch.
As the zombie hoard begins to converge,
everyone’s suppressed feelings boil over simultaneously.
I think this might be the one of the Top Three most excruciating scenes in the series.
Peppermint Joyce decides to emotionally purge herself in front of half the school and the gang
...well mostly Xander...
...joins in, patronizing and mocking Buffy’s pain.
“Look. I’m sorry that your honey was a demon,"
"but most girls don't hop a Greyhound over boy troubles."
"Buffy."
Zombies invade.
Buffy saves the day.
Their mutual purpose brings them together again.
Giles gives a fist pumping moment where he reveals a bit of Ripper to intimidate Snyder.
And the episode ends with Willow and Buffy rebonding via some friendly sniping,
as well as Willow’s disclosure that she’s been experimenting with some new spells.
Now one insanely and incredibly tedious way to drive an episode of a television show or to create dramatic threads
is to just have your characters fail to communicate with each other.
I couldn’t find a name for the trope so I’m going to call it the “Plot of Omission.”
Maybe it’s an unconfessed crush or a secret ability.
Whatever.
And over the course of the episode or couple of episodes,
that failure to properly communicate compounds with another failure
and another
until there’s this huge blowup where everyone says what they should have said to begin with.
"WE WERE ON A BREAK!"
"Did you ever stop to think that looping me in would keep me safe."
I think there must be hundreds of episodes of television that wouldn’t exist
if in the first five minutes of the episode, one character had just opened their frickin’ pie hole and been honest.
I’m not talking about characters lying.
I’m talking about entire plots or plot threads that only exist because at least one character is keeping something to themselves.
A lie is fine as an event in a plot,
but when sins of omission become the plot entire
...you’ve lost me.
It’s so grating because there’s never any surprise to us, the audience, as to how to solve the problems of the story.
TALK TO EACH OTHER.
"She doesn't want to talk about it. We don't want to talk about it."
"So why don't we just shut up and dance?"
No, jus...just... just say something.
"You seem to be...avoiding me, in the one-on-one sense."
"What? This isn't avoiding."
No, you...stupi... JUST open you word hole and make sounds with it about your feelings.
"Well, I'd like to."
"You wouldn't understand."
Oh for God's sake.
Consequently, where some episodes of the show feel a little overplotted
this is a very rare case where I feel it's a little UNDERplotted.
And in this episode, to top it off, when the final out-pouring DOES occur everyone treats each other like crap.
The other Scoobies are completely devoid of empathy and compassion.
So much so that I used to get mad about how they treated Buffy,
but on repeat viewings I kind of feel like she has some responsibility for this cluster.
In the beginning of the episode, she was given an opportunity to open up to everyone and she didn’t do that.
"Perhaps Buffy could use a little time to adjust before we grill her on her summer activities."
"What he said."
"I think I just wanna get back to my normal routine."
"You know school, slaying..."
"Kids' stuff."
That’s a bit of a tall order to ask of your loved ones
after you scared the crap out of them by taking off without a word, leaving them feeling abandoned and frightened about your safety and well being.
I get that everyone needs to process things in their own time and all of that
but then... you wait to go see your friends until you’re ready.
When you do, explanations or apologies or SOME kind of reconciliation to the people who love you seems to me, reasonable to expect.
Sure, she seems to change gears by the end of the episode and be wanting an intimate gathering
but that doesn’t make it her friend’s fault for going along
with what she first requested.
Now I’m not making an argument that the Scoobies were then validated for their behavior at the end of the episode,
rather that everyone in this scene deserves to wear the crown of asshat equally.
Except Oz, of course. He’s awesome.
"OK. Gonna step in now. Being referee guy."
To put it another way, in this scene everyone is right, and everyone is wrong
...especially Xander.
It’s just a horrible scene to have to watch.
The only person who shows any kindness in this episode is Giles.
He’s actually the only one who ever utters the word: Welcome.
“Welcome home, Buffy.”
Then again, he’s really the only one capable of grasping what Buffy went through in 'Becoming'.
And to be clear, I wish their poor communication hadn’t driven the plot,
but I don’t wish that the characters in this specific episode had been written differently.
Mistakes were made and there were consequences to them.
The show wouldn’t be interesting if the characters never made them.
The metaphor here is a little problematic as well as...
if the point is simply as Xander says,...
"You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back up to get ya."
...then there’s a problem.
The gang never actually resolved their feelings.
The zombies themselves interrupted that from happening.
Buffy simply shoulders the burden(s) of everyone’s feelings herself while keeping her own bottled up.
“OK. I’m the bad.”
"I can take my lumps."
She has personally achieved zero catharsis
(that comes a little later).
Perhaps then, the mask itself represents
Buffy’s act of leaving Sunnydale,
and the angry feelings it summons up in each of her friends.
By killing the monster
and simultaneously accepting responsibility for the pain she caused
she has ended the zombie feelings attack.
But in that case, we’re back to me being angry at how horrible everyone was to her in the living room
and how nobody bothered to try and understand her point of view.
Still, that particular interpretation is consistent with the show's logic.
“In the end, you're always by yourself."
"You’re all you’ve got.”
"That's the point."
It’s always tempting to think of the Scoobies as a single cohesive unit
...but that just isn’t the case.
Buffy is the One and we see her having to be that here,
much as it pains me.
If it seems unfair, it’s because it is.
A theme the show rarely shies away from.
But like I said, my feelings about this episode are ENTIRELY mixed.
There IS so much to love.
I love horrible Pat, in that same way I love horrible Snyder.
"Anyway, I'm off. We're making empanadas in my Spanish class tonight."
I love Buffy’s wry observations.
I love Jonathan’s cameo.
I love how Giles hot wires his car and references his shady past.
"Like riding a BLOODY bicycle."
I love when Pat shows up for the party,
Buffy and she stand awkwardly staring before Buffy offers to get her Mom and does so by screaming Joyce’s name across the house.
"Do you want to see my Mom?"
"Please."
"MOM!"
I’m sure I did something like that when I was a teenager.
And Giles’ line about Americans might be up there with one of the funniest in the entire series.
(in a higher-pitched, sarcastic voice) "Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead."
"Americans."