..corners her abuses her and she's tooootally fine with it.
'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' on the other hand is about a girl with superpowers...
...who punches people in the face.
[clip show punch]
...all in all, it's not a terrible start.
There are some rough edges.
The Master's cave looks like a leftover set from a Meatloaf video.
The opening is hilarious and had the episode occurred in later seasons
it might have turned into a scathing critique of conformity
...or a soul searching exercise in the value of responsibility.
The bug itself sorta breaks the rules of the show's own universe:
a giant praying mantis? They never fight a giant squirrel,
or a giant Persian cat.
"AAAAAAAHHHH!"
....it's like the writers just picked from a grab-bag of random traits and pulled one each from
neckbeard, goth and jock.
He's also kind of a douche
...and the Pack attacks
...and eats him.
*record scratch*
Yes.
The possessed students...
...EAT Principal Flutie.
.....Angel confesses that he wanted to kill Buffy tonight
but I believe that's the impulse of the demon in him and I think that he does too.
He's attempting suicide by cop.
Wait is ...
...is she?
Is this the first episode she's in?
Oh son of a bi...
I loooove Snyder. He's one of my favorite ancillary characters in the early seasons of the show.
"Kids."
"I don't like them..."
I made a list of all the ones in this episode and, as a high-functioning neurotic, I'm batting nearly .500
...but it's mostly there to allow Buffy the opportunity to relinquish her desire for a life other than her own.
..at which point Buffy and Cordelia are grabbed by Invisi-Girl for the final confrontation.
Buffy breaks loose...
[ominous music]
Giles discovers a prophecy in the Codex Angel got him
and an earthquake gets the Master doing his happy dance.
The next day, Giles is obviously shaken and sleep-deprived.
"How ya doing there, Giles? Get much sleep last night?"
I kind of love the way he says Buffy's name when she comes in.
"Buffy..."
Anthony Stewart Head just exudes this kind of patriarchal concern.
Buffy and Xander find a moment alone and OH MY GOD do I identify with this scene:
asking your crush out on a date.
The stomach clenching terror.
The forced casualness as you stand in the doorway of the airplane to prepare to hurtle yourself
out into space not sure if you'll find a parachute on your back or not.
And the sense of free fall when the other person says they're not interested.
"Xander, you're one of my best friends."
I actually die a little bit every time I watch this scene.
Pro tip everyone:
Xander did entirely the right thing in asking her.
If you're interested, YOU ASK.
But the measure of your class isn't in your asking, it's in the handling of rejection.
You don't beg.
"I just don't think of you that way."
"Well try."
And you don't lash out at the person who was just trying to let you down gently.
"I guess a guy's gotta be undead to make time with ya."
--- Come on man.
It's a beautiful little very human scene in the midst of this high school horror show
and Nicholas Brendon & Sarah Michelle Gellar pull off both parts of the awkward conversation easily.
As he tumbles into the teenage abyss of rejection he tries to grab onto Willow.
"Hey, I know what'll we'll do. We can go."
"Be my date, we'll-we'll have a great time. We'll dance, we'll go wild.
"What do you say?""
--- "No."
But despite her obvious crush on him she refuses to be his backup option.
It reminds me a lot of the scene from 'The Pack where Willow baited evil Xander into revealing himself.
Every once in a while we get a peek at something in Willow beneath the veneer of nerdy awkwardness.
Also, Xander's summary of events gives us an important detail into the way he sees and handles things.
"Well, what did she say?"
"Apart from 'no' does it really matter?"
Yes. Yes it does Xander!
It matters a lot.
"She's still jonesing for Angel and could care less about me."
This is an incredibly important insight into Xander.
His ego can't accept that Buffy just isn't interested in him.
It's easier to have a target for his pain rather than accepting and facing it himself.
So he makes Angel the target of his aggression,
despite the fact that Buffy never said a thing about Angel,
and they haven't actually seen each other socially since Episode 7.
After Buffy sees a sink pouring blood
she heads to the library and catches Giles telling Angel about the prophecy he deciphered earlier.
"...but it's very plain."
"Tomorrow night, Buffy will face the Master and she will die."
It was in this scene, my favorite in Season One and probably one of my favorites in the series,
...that something dawned on me.
"They say how he's gonna kill me?
"You think it'll hurt?"
SHE'S A KID.
"Giles, I'm 16 years old."
"...I-I don't wanna die."
Until this moment in the show, I never really realized the ghastly nature of the Slayer mythology.
'ONE girl in all the world.'
The day Buffy became the Slayer and was gifted the powers, was the day another Slayer was MURDERED.
Some woman who we never meet
...and Buffy begins the fight again.
In a broad sense then it's almost like the Slayers are sacrifices to stave off the darkness.
And in this scene we see the real and tragic consequences of it in the fear on Buffy's face.
How ever the Slayer line was created, there's almost a subtle evil to it all.
To me, this scene, and the episode to this point, represent the beginning a shift in the series.
From being a clever show about monsters in high school
to being a show about characters with hearts and souls
and the consequences these horrifying situations have on their lives.
Buffy says she quits and storms off.
She tries to convince Joyce to leave Sunnydale with her, who refuses and mistakes her anxiety as having to do with the dance.
And in a scene I still find confusing, Willow and Cordelia discover a massacre at the school.
So... wait?
Cordelia's boyfriend didn't show up the Bronze last night
presumably because he and his friends were being butchered by vampires on the couch while watching television.
Buuuuut the vampires probably couldn't get to the school until it was dark
And wait! Weren't Buffy. Giles and Angel at the school last night when it was already dark?
Then again, maybe the vampires brought the bodies back to the school and dumped them there?
I don't know.
I think it's because the episode at this point was handled so expertly
that I find this scene jarring and out-of-place.
It really exists only to get us to the moment when a disturbed Willow puts Buffy in touch with the importance of being the Slayer.
Throughout the season we've watched Buffy torn between the life she's wanted and the life of the Slayer that has been thrust on her.
Two worlds in opposition to each other.
And it is in this scene that she comes to accept that without her the world she wants to live in will be lost anyway.
"It wasn't our world anymore."
"They made it theirs."
She decides to sacrifice herself for the good of the people she cares about.
The Master sends the Anointed One to fulfill the prophecy
and Giles tells Jenny Calendar the plan has changed.
"Buffy's not going to face the Master."
"I am."
To which Buffy replies.
[daughterly punch]
Buffy leaves the school and The Annoying One is waiting for her.
He leads her down to the Master and the Master reveals a tricky little thing about the prophecy.
"You're the one that sets me free."
"If you hadn't come, I couldn't go."
Xander goes to get help in order to save Buffy.
Cordelia comes to the aid of the rest of the gang
as a very 80s monster comes out of the open Hellmouth in the library.
Xander and Angel find Buffy not breathing in a pool of water.
"CPR."
"You have to do it. ...I have no breath."
This is a rather inconsistent semantic point in the universe. More on that later on.
Anyway, Xander resuscitates Buffy
as the gang fights of the puppet slime demon.
And, love it or hate it, the theme music invades an episode for the only time during the entire series.
I think the music signifies that she has totally committed to her destiny.
She has become the embodiment of what the credits and opening of every episode say she is.
She died. She sacrificed herself.
There's no greater sign of commitment to destiny.
Which is why when she wakes up and Xander asks if she's okay she says.
"No. No, I feel STRONG."
Within the metaphor of the show she has now committed to growing up.
She has a long way to go but this episode puts her on the path.
It's not really a coincidence that the Anointed One was a child.
'Anointed One' is another word for 'chosen one'
and in that sense he was a symbol for Buffy's alternate fate had she not chosen her destiny:
Perpetual childhood.
Buffy faces off against the Master,
tosses him onto a stake,
he goes all skeletal
and Season One is in the books.
'Prophecy Girl' is the best Season One has to offer and I'd probably put it in my personal Top 15 episodes.
There's just something about Whedon written episodes.
The dialogue crackles more.
It's the first time the show seems aware that the human drama amidst these fantastic events is what's interesting,
not the events themselves.
This low-budget television show can't really offer us spectacle necessary
to make giant bugs and killer puppets interesting by themselves,
but it CAN give us fantastic characters to identify with and root for as they struggle against these things.
As much as I think Season One is my least favorite,
(I'm most partial to the problematic Season 6)
There's no denying that it's tightly scripted and stays very close to its purpose.
Very few things happen without a reason.
From Sid the dummy who sacrifices his own life to kill the demon seeking perpetual youth
to Billy, the child stuck in ghostly youth because he can't be brought to face his own fears.
Still it Season Two where the show really finds its legs.
When I first watched 'Buffy', Prophecy Girl' was the ray of light revealing what the show could be
but Season Two is where the show sunk in its hooks and became a fiction for me that I treasure and love.
That's it, friends. The end of the first season episode guide.
I'm gonna take a break for a couple weeks to work on some other projects
but I love making these and will be back soon with the Season 2 video guide and episode guide for
'When She Was Bad.'
I'll see you then.