So...it was like we were sitting there just having a nice relaxing season of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer.
Buffy vs Dracula was some campy fun.
‘The Replacement’ was a funny rompy Xander episode.
“That is a fertility god.”
Family gave us some of that lovely intimacy the series can be so good at.
The mystery of Dawn was subverting the cousin Oliver trope in a fun and interesting way.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, in came the last three episodes like…
“What the hell just happened?”
Summary The episode opens with Xander and Anya giving
us a quick reminder of ‘Into the Woods.’
A: Maybe it's her.
I mean...she couldn't make it work with Angel.
Then she let Riley go away.
X: Yeah.
Relationship debris is kind of piling up on the Buffy highway.
In a bubble, it’s a cute scene that both Nicholas and Emma play well.
Problem is, I still have a bit of a rage-over going in from Xander’s ‘Into the Woods’
scene with Buffy.
I’m not going to rehash that here lest I start hyperventilating and pass out on the
microphone.
I realize this scene was probably intended to just set up the cold open convent joke,
restate the events of the previous episode, and give us some insight to Buffy’s current
inner-monologue, but it definitely comes off as smug and judgy.
“You smite a few of them and you start to wonder, maybe someone else bears some responsibility,
little lady.”
X: I wonder how she’s taking it.
(I do really like the convent joke.)
And both Buffy’s hoops and sheer hot pink number feel like deliberate commentary...as
if to say, “Yeah...she’s down.
But Buffy’s always going to Buffy.”
The next day Giles says he’s reached out to the Watcher’s Council for aid with Glory
and is going to England.
7:00 “You’re going away for a WEEK?
That’s great.”
Giles has concerns over Anya running the store without him, and the rest of the gang say
they’ll help out...which Anya doesn’t appreciate.
Xander tries to deflect...
8:40 “So, how goes the slaying?”
“I killed something in a convent last night.”
(Sarah’s deadpan delivery is hilarious there.)
Joyce is on the mend and Buffy shares with Dawn what she’s feeling from the breakup,
in one of my favorite scenes in the episode.
11:30 It hurts.
In all kinds of horrible ways.
In the way where I'm furious at him ... in the way where I blame myself ... and all the
little ways I imagine ... how I could have fixed things.
This is the ONLY acknowledgment of the idea that Buffy may and SHOULD be dealing with
some justified anger at Riley over what happened.
In the opening scene, Xander and Anya put all the responsibility for her failed relationships
on her and the rest of the episode plays her grief as a joke...which is all fine of course.
We desperately needed a breather episode.
But it does make me happy this scene is here.
Marsters steals a bit of the show with a one-sided romantic apology that turns into an argument
in his head…which he loses.
It’s...probably not a great sign the degree to which I identify with losing an argument
in your own head.
At the Magic Box Willow is helping herself to some of the supplies trying to make a ball
of sunshine for Buffy.
Buffy fights at night...so a ball of sunshine would be kind of like...oh, I don’t know...a
portable dawn she could keep in her pocket.
I’m sure that’s not a symbol.
Anya expresses frustration with Willow’s five-finger discount to which Willow replies…
WILLOW: You're the fish!
ANYA: What?
WILLOW: The, the fish in the bowl, in The Cat in the Hat.
He was always saying that the cat shouldn't be there while the mother was out.
...Which by extension then would make Willow the trouble-making instigating con artist
cat who, even as a kid, I assumed was the villain of the story.
(I was something of a chronic rule follower.)
Though maybe more accurately, the cat is the ID run rampant and the fish is the Superego.
WILLOW: We could show you how to do some stuff!
You could be floatin' pencils by the end of the day.
ANYA: Sometimes I miss having powers.
Oh!
I know what this is!
This is peer pressure!
Any second now you're gonna make me smoke tobacco and, and have drugs.
Willow IS the cat in the hat!
As the scene progresses Willow’s antics continue to make things worse.
Tara and Xander leave to let their significant others sort out their own troubles...but they
don’t...which causes Willow’s spell to go bad and summon a troll.
At first I was scratching my head at exactly why the spell misfires the way it does, and
in such a coincidental way as to summon someone personally relevant to Anya but it IS all
there in the scene.
Willow has all the ingredients on the table needed to pull the spell off.
The first part of the spell creates her Zoom call to the spirits of light.
She says a pretty important line just before finally getting frustrated and turning on
Anya.
19:00 “Spirits of light...grant my wishes..”
In other words, whatever she says next is her wish.
W: Whatever has you mad...why don't you just say it?
Like you do every other thing stomping through your brain.
A: I have said it.
W: No.
You haven't.
Let it out.
So, Willow inadvertently asks for something that is stomping around Anya’s brain making
her mad to be let out, at the same moment that her Zoom call to the spirits of light
starts to drop, touching the last ingredient needed to complete the spell that is laid
out next to the bowl.
Fair enough.
In a rare scene with just Buffy and Tara, Buffy says she’s coming to grips with Riley
being gone but betrays the grief she’s processing when hearing about Xander and Anya squabbling.
21:45 “Little thing.
See...little things get bigger…” *sigh
Willow and Anya set off after the troll.
Tara and Buffy find his wake.
And, at the Bronze, Spike runs into Xander sulking over his bowl of nuts (which feels
like...all of the metaphors.)
Spike offers some supportive culinary suggestions…
24:15 “They have chicken wings too.
Also a sort of flower thing they make out of an onion.”
Of course, since all the Scoobies are deeply in need of therapy one scene later Xander
is confiding in Spike about his relationship troubles.
S: I know that look.
Nobody ever got Dru.
X: Well she was insane.
*Currently over in Angel Season 2 Everyone including troll run into each other
and it’s revealed that Anya…
B: You dated a troll?
A: He wasn’t a troll then…
...Made the troll out of her ex for cheating on her and that’s how she got the job as
a vengeance demon.
As Willow and Anya try to figure out a spell to get rid of him, Xander attempts to defend
them and the troll forces him to make a choice.
Xander refuses.
Buffy finds her necessary emotional catharsis on the troll’s face.
And the episode ends with Dawn taking after Buffy in her ability to be in the right place
at the right time to overhear information that drives the plot.
Though...if the family is trying to keep this a secret from her I’m not sure why they’re
having this conversation in the house in a room with no doors.
Review But it doesn’t matter.
I REALLY enjoy Triangle.
It’s like getting to have a big fluffy slice of strawberry shortcake with cream and a big
pile of fruit after having been force-fed three episodes worth of melancholy beige kale
chips and gloomy grey iceberg salads with thousand island dressing.
I might’ve...gotten a little lost in my metaphor there but, seriously...what the hell
just happened?
With ‘Triangle,’ the dreary trilogy is now behind us and maybe we can stop and wonder
about what that was.
Thanks to Anya, ‘Into the Woods’ was not completely devoid of some charm, but ‘Shadow’
and ‘Listening to Fear’ were dark joyless slogs for me - hard gear changes in a season
that began with the actual Prince of Darkness hamming it up onscreen.
More than one person left a comment on ‘Listening to Fear’ telling me how much that episode
meant to them, having had to care for a parent with dementia.
And look...I get it.
The ways in which fiction reflects life, the ways we find ourselves in our stories and
take strength from that is kind of what this channel is all about.
But there is something...off about the trilogy.
It’s not simply that the past three episodes were depressing.
Season 6 is regularly criticized for being the most depressing season of the show, but
it is the one I most regularly point to as my favorite.
There have been many episodes in the series already that tackled painful issues.
But they didn’t leave me feeling quite so...depleted?
Emotionally constipated?
And that is ordinarily a balance that the show manages so successfully.
Truthfully, I’m not sure where the line is when an episode goes from creating a sad
but satisfying emotional catharsis to just...outright depression and melancholy but I know that
line is there because Wild at Heart, the former, exists along with the latter…
*stabbing snot rocket demon But, whatever...everyone grab your yellow
crayon and do the Snoopy dance with me.
The trilogy is over.
And who better to lift us up than Jane Espenson, of ‘Band Candy,’ ‘Earshot,’ ‘Superstar,’
and ‘The Replacement’ fame?
Abraham Benrubi is a lot of fun as Olaf.
The episode is brimming with great humor and shrimpy inside jokes.
I used to think Nicholas Brendon was the cast member with the best comedic timing in the
series but, the deeper we get, the more I think it might be Emma Caufield.
“I’m going to push this pedal and we will probably die.”
Spike has been a professed hedonist for all things human since Becoming Part 2
Spike: The truth is, I like this world.
He doesn’t have to eat or drink anything other than blood, but he chooses to.
“We’re out of wheatbix.”
“Spicy buffalo wings.”
For some reason the affectation does a lot to soften his character but the height of
it for me is probably his obsession with the Bronze version of Bloomin Onion.
27:50 “They got this onion thing…”
For anyone who doesn’t know, the bloomin onion is a 1400 calorie appetizer you can
get at the very American restaurant, Outback Steakhouse.
The funny part is both the name and device for making it are trademarked and patented
by Outback, which is part of the reason Spike never refers to it by its proper name.
The episode is just a ton of fun, even with a couple of things that don’t really work
anymore, including a grope’y appearance by sweater-sniffer Spike.
Yecch.
Not cute.
Analysis Structurally, there are two parallel conflicts
being worked out in the episode: Buffy grappling with a post-Riley world and Willow and Anya
figuring out how to make peace with each other.
One mirrors the other in the way nearly every episode is, in some way, about Buffy’s journey.
In their bedroom scene together, Buffy tells Dawn that she is vacillating between feelings
of anger and sadness over Riley’s departure.
We see the grief in all the bits played for fun.
Olaf plugs into her anger.
According to Willow’s spell, Olaf is an ex of Anya’s that she is still angry about
because…
“He cheated on me…”
“I did not cheat.
It was only one wench.
I had had a lot of mead.”
*Buffy kicks Riley across the room (Olaf’s voice over Riley)
“DESIST WOMAN.
You are as emasculating as you always were.”
So, Buffy facing Olaf represents her having to process her own feelings of anger and frustration
at Riley.
Willow and Anya As for Willow and Anya, I think the original
intention of all this drama might have been that we would feel as torn as Xander between
Willow’s charming cat-in-the-hat antics and Anya’s, maybe, abrasive literalness.
But, the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve actually been turning INTO the fish from cat
in the hat.
Willow has NO defensible position in this episode other than Anya is
“Newly human and strangely literal.”
She acts judgy and entitled and then defends herself by personally attacking Anya.
32:46 “Unless I’m really wrong about crazy Larry down at the bus stop, he’s not going
to turn Xander into a troll.”
32:30 “Oh, you think I’m going to hurt Xander?
I would NEVER hurt Xander.”
And Holy Hecate, that's some blinding hypocrisy from Willow, judging how someone else MIGHT
handle the pain of a relationship fallout.
It's Sunnydale.
Can't we just agree that spells, vengeance, and breakups happen?
It’s an emerging arrogance from Willow following her magical development and, I get it.
But it’s also a little disappointing because, other than her mostly supporting role in the
Tara-centric, ‘Family’ we really...haven’t had a lot of Willow yet this season.
Anya expresses her anxiety over the fact that Xander and Willow have an intimate friendship
and Xander actually once cheated on Cordelia with her.
Having been cheated on by Olaf, that is an active wound in her mind that mingled with
Willow’s spell.
“Whatever has you mad.
Let it out…”
The two of them hash things out as they both love Xander and want what’s best for him.
I find two things odd about the whole exchange.
The first is that any responsibility Xander might’ve had in Anya’s cheating scenario
is never mentioned.
Which feels like an echo of the opening where Xander and Anya put all the responsibility
for the Biley breakup on Buffy.
And the second is that Willow defends her character from Anya’s accusations, not by
saying she would never do that or would never want to hurt anyone but:
“Hello.
Gay, now.”
Bi-Erasure In the interest of due diligence, it’s worth
mentioning I have heard this is now a pretty infamous line.
The phrasing is cute and Alyson Hannigan’s delivery is perfectly Alyson Hannigan, but
the line gets criticized for a few reasons.
First, as celebrated as the show has been for depicting same sex relationships in a
positive light in its time, the specific line is considered an example of what’s called
bi-erasure or bisexual invisibility, defined by GLAAD as “...a pervasive problem in which
the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual)
is questioned or denied outright.”
Considering the show from a critical perspective, until this line in question, Willow has not
been written as strictly gay.
She had a well-established intimate relationship with Oz.
She had an infatuation with Xander that was there since the beginning of the series.
Tangentially, there’s also the fact that Villow in Dopplegangland clearly had a thing
for Vander but also wasn’t sure if she wanted to lick or bite her own neck along with Sandy
in the Bronze.
“Don’t worry Willow, I hear vamp versions are completely different.”
Angel: “Well, actually.”
In a UK Metro interview from May 2020, Joss said he was pressured to not make Willow bisexual,
over fears her same-sex attractions would feel like a ‘phase.’
Quoting… ‘…if I did it now, I’d be like yes she
can be bi.
Because some people are!
But back then it was like, no…we’re not ready for that.’
Not the greatest phrasing but, at this point, the battles Whedon had over Willow and Tara’s
relationship with the network are part of the legend of the show.
I wasn’t able to find many first hand quotes from the other Mutant Enemy writers regarding
the topic but, in the years of doing this, have heard many unsourced mentions that they
have acknowledged the omission.
However, if you’re interested in further reading, I’ve included links to some other
perspectives more relevant, informed, and/or educated than my own in the description down
below.
When I think about the show, it’s typically while peering through one of two lenses.
The first is the critical one I look through while writing these videos.
Through that one, Buffy looks to me like a constructed piece of fiction.
Willow is an invented character.
And that the line now looks like a dated oversight perpetuating a crappy legacy for some people
in the queer community.
Worse, it’s one that the show leans into later in the series.
Buuuut, if you think that’s bad...
*Tara and Willow hugging in Entropy Samuel L Jackson - Jurassic Park: “Hold
onto your butts…
The other lens I watch the show through is as a fan.
Those are the moments when spending time with these characters feels deeply comforting and
I talk to other fans about them as though they were people we both knew at school.
“Can you believe what Xander was wearing in that episode?
SHEESH.”
From that perspective I think to myself, Willow gets to say how she identifies.
It’s her life.
Her journey.
I’m 42 and still figuring myself out.
We do the best we can in the moment and, if this is what she says her sexuality is in
this moment, at this time in her life, then so be it.
Why should it diminish the beauty and the intimacy of anything that came before Tara?
Still, I love this episode.
And one of my favorite things is probably the way it gets all foreshadow’y.
This is Buffy so whenever someone says the magic word…
*choice montage “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You don’t have a good choice but you have a choice.”
...something important is happening.
“Choose who shall die.”
In my video for the Angel episode, “Reunion,” I highlighted that, as with this parallel
season of Buffy, Angel Season 2 has also been exploring the idea of chosen family, if from
a radically different perspective than Buffy has.
Dru: “Daddy’s home.”
Pivotal to Angel’s second season plot has been his willingness to engage in a game put
in front of him by Wolfram and Hart.
It’s a game with a predetermined set of decisions for him to make, but any of his
potential options serve their ends.
Not completely unlike the options that Olaf, a troll god, puts in front of Xander.
Anya tries to sacrifice herself but Xander does what Angel hadn’t by ‘Reunion,’
and refuses Olaf’s game entirely, even if it means his death.
“I’m not going to choose between my girlfriend and my best friend.
That’s insane troll logic.”
After all, who would want to live in a world, if these are the choices?