When people speak ill of Mari Noxon,
I wonder if they remember she wrote 'The Wish'.
'The Wish' employs one of my favorite tropes on television and is an interesting bit of foreshadowing
- perhaps one of the more meta episodes in the series thus far as,
other than one specific consequence at the end,
the episode has no direct effect on the denizens of Sunnydale.
It exists, mostly for our benefit.
Let me show you what I mean.
Buffy and company were out for a picnic when they apparently got jumped by a cthulu headed droolly demon.
Are those finger sandwiches?
The demon drops and Buffy gives the episode's thesis,
how she would have been in trouble without her friends.
"I have you guys."
And we see Cordelia is burning an ex-boyfriend effigy,
seemingly concluding that the best revenge is living well as...
[edgy entrance music]
Uhh...
...is...
...is that up to dress code?
Harmony introduces Cordy to a new member of the mean girls,
...Anya.
Watch Anya’s eyes in this scene,
as Harmony and her pack refuse to let Cory rejoin the pride
and scorn her by suggesting her next boyfriend be Jonathan.
Charisma Carpenter does a good job reacting here.
I think we can see in her eyes a couple of realizations.
The first is the pain of the scorn.
She sacrificed her old life to be with Xander who then betrayed her.
At this point she’s lost everything she knew.
But the experience has also opened her eyes a bit
...and I wonder if perhaps she sees Jonathan as a person too.
She COULD take up her old mantle again,
...but does she really want to.
I love Oz’s bit of dialogue in the next scene.
Willow finds him in the hallway and asks him what she can do to make things better.
He asks for space.
She pushes and Oz responds with:
"--I'm sorry this is hard for you."
"But I told you what I need."
"So I can’t help feeling like ..."
"...the reason you want to talk is so you can feel better about yourself."
"That’s not my problem.”
God, I love that line.
In this kind of swirling emotionally ravaging hurricane, I can’t in a million years imagine being able
...to make such a clear and incisive statement like this.
He cuts exactly to the quick of things,
and does so avoiding while avoiding the worst trap in relationship upheaval:
pouring more gas on the fire or saying something you can never take back.
It’s such a sharp wonderful bit of dialogue
and the specific line made me love his character so much more.
In the hallway, Cordelia runs into the new girl Anya,
who wonders if Cordy’s now wishing any harm on Xander.
“I don’t wish."
"I act."
"Starting now, Xander Harris is gonna get a bellyful of just how over him I am,"
At The Bronze, Cordelia makes her best effort to show Xander just how over him she is.
And Cordeila gets knocked into a pile of garbage
...just as Harmony and the mean girls happen by.
The next day, Anya puts her necklace on Cordy saying she probably needs a bit of luck
and Cordelia, blaming Buffy for all her problems,
wishes Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale.
[dramatic turn]
[gasp]
"Done."
Non-Buffy Sunnydale is considerably more drab.
Everyone looks like they’re going to a funeral.
But still...
“Cordy, you reign!”
Cordy wants to go to The Bronze but at the mention of it everyone looks nervous.
She asks about the status of Xander and Willow
...and Harmony lets her know they’re both dead.
Again, a real character here.
Cordy looks taken aback by the notion.
Clearly, this is not what she wanted with her wish.
She ends up walking home.
On the way she runs into….
"Well, whadaya know?"
"Cordeila Chase."
(offscreen) "Bored now."
Vamp Xander and Willow chase Cordelia but are fended off
by Giles and his roaming band of not so merry men.
The Bronze has been turned into a Vamp bar
... by the Master.
A place where even Angel, who Willow calls the Puppy, is kept cooped up and tortured.
They find Cordelia in the library,
lock up Giles
and kill Cordelia in a fantastic twisting shot that to me is like some kind of orgasma-binge.
It’s actually chilling and I was shocked the first time I saw it.
For one, how oddly sexual it was that Xander cups Willow's head against him
as though they were kissing ferociously through Cordelia’s neck.
Their kiss, in this case, literally destroying Cordelia where it was metaphorically before in 'Lovers Walk'.
And two, with Cordelia dead,
...how can she undo this wish?
George Bailey doesn’t die in 'It’s a Wonderful Life'.
It's absolutely brilliant.
"Wait a moment."
Oh.
Well, okay.
It's still pretty great.
Vigilante Giles in his hooptymobile stumbles on some vampires
taking people en masse,
he jumps out,
gets throttled
...and the Slayer shows up and saves him.
"Wanna tell me what I'm doing here?"
After Giles figures out the world’s deep dive into darkness is being caused by a demon named Anyanka,
Buffy heads to The Bronze and stumbles on a caged Angel.
Angel tells her the Master is at the factory,
the Master’s mechanized creation for industrializing human bloodletting.
Giles summons Anyanka,
who appears in a genuinely creepy shot emerging from the shadows.
As they joust and Giles figures out what her power source is,
everybody we love at the factory kills each other in a chilling painful end.
With Anyanka’s power source destroyed
...she is rendered permanently mortal as Anya
...and nobody has any memory of it.
I found the peaceful happy shot of the trio on the bench at the end less reassuring than I’d thought,
as now
it’d been made clear to me how tenuous everything really is.
There were a few continuity issues here
...but that didn’t really bug me all that much.
In a world of magic and monsters, it would probably be easy to explain
why the Anointed One wasn’t there
(the Master rose during the Harvest and didn't need the Anointed One).
Or how Spike and Dru didn’t show up
(perhaps they did ...
...but they found a much more formidable Master rather than the child-like Anointed One).
But in 'The Wish', I kind of felt the strict adherence
to the episodes in some way always being about Buffy was a bit of a stretch.
Specifically, when Cordelia redirects her anger towards Buffy instead of Xander.
This is not actually a Cordelia episode.
It’s a Buffy episode, about the implications of...
her Slayer role and the mitigating impact on it her friends have.
The very fact that Cordelia is dead for the last third of the episode is evidence enough.
But also the very last hanging shot before the alternate universe swings back into reality
...is of a friendless,
...jaded...
...and broken Buffy
...dying.
The camera hangs for dramatic emphasis and, I think,
...to drive home a point.
The parallel here with the season arc is fairly obvious but for the sake of being thorough:
“I don’t play well with others."
"I'm on your side."
“I’m on my side."
"And that’s enough.”
"Not always."
Cordelia serves as an expression of Faith’s predicament as well, though a bit more through metaphor.
Xander betraying her has left her friendless and crushed,
...devoid of the status she once had before.
Consequently….
"--he's got a kill moped."
"Faith."
"A word of advice."
"You’re an idiot."
But the most significant detail here
... is Buffy.
Without her friends she has become Slayer incarnate.
She demonstrates no real agency here.
"--you want to stay here and play make-believe, fine."
"I'm not gonna be any help to you anyway."
"There's only one thing I'm good at."
This is adulthood without love,
without connection,
without intimacy
...and notably, without hope.
"The world is what it is."
"We fight."
"We die."
"Wishing doesn't change that."
It is (a) meaningless and empty world
...at least for Buffy.
Note too that the person who saves the day again
... is Giles.
Echoing some of the sentiments from earlier in the season
...Giles retains hope.
"I have to believe in a better world."
"How do you know the other world is any better than this?"
"Because it has to be"
In this case, hope for a better world, even in the face of overwhelming despair.
And perhaps it is that...
...which restores reality.
On some level it might be troubling that the episode is essentially self-negating.
With the exception of Anya, at the end of the episode NO one remembers what happened.
So other than the...
(at this point)
...seemingly small change
...of Anya being rendered mortal
there doesn’t appear to be any consequences to the characters within the universe yet.
That doesn’t really bother me though.
'Buffy' as a show is pretty meta in ways that escape the characters.
The fact that it is, in this case, a meta episode
...as opposed to an Allen Ginsberg sticker on a locker doesn’t really bother me.
The episode is still significant for us the audience,
the way that it values Buffy’s relationships through contrast.
Weirdly, the scariest vampire of the bunch is Xander:
“So you’re a Watcher, huh?
"Watch this."
[bites]
Vampire Willow is just kind of...
...well...
...sexy?
"This just isn't me."
"And that's the point."
I love Angel’s limited role in the story too.
Wouldn’t it be interesting
...if this was the hell dimension Angel went to?
I think that the alternate reality episode trope has a special innate appeal for us the viewers,
and it’s an especially vibrant one
in a show like 'Buffy' that IS all about
...identity, responsibility and choice.
We are all, in a way trapped in time...
bound to travel in one continuous direction.
Only forward.
But there is always an allure to looking backwards and wondering.
A different choice.
A different doorway.
A couple of more seconds.
Would we have become someone else?