While not managing to pack the emotional wallop that 'Season 2' does,
the third season of 'Buffy' is often rated as the strongest of the high school seasons and I agree.
It is consistently good.
There’s no need for candy episodes in this season because there are no clunkers.
No 'Bad Eggs', 'Reptile Bo'y-s, or 'Fish'.
Well okay, there's ONE.
But considering 'Buffy' comes from the years before shows with 12 episode seasons were all the rage,
I’d say that’s pretty damn good.
Another thing to note about this season is that the series shifts away from hard metaphors driving every episode.
There still are PLENTY of metaphors
but the stories in each episode now aren’t chained to a specific one each and every time,
a difference that made the season MUCH less prone to the monster of the week one-off,
as well as more driven by its overarching plot.
I’m excited to get into this with you.
At the end of 'Season 2' Buffy made the choice to kill Angel, performing her duty as the Slayer and saving the world.
Her friends had told her to ‘kick [Angel’s] ass’ which sort of callously disregarded Buffy’s personal stakes in the battle.
She had also “come out” as the Slayer to her mother
“I-I mean have you tried NOT being a Slayer?”
...and Joyce got all Joyce about the matter and played a hard card.
"You walk out of this house don't even think about coming back."
After the fight with Angel
Buffy runs away from Sunnydale.
In Buffy’s absence the other members of the Scoobies are performing her duties somewhat ineptly.
School is starting soon.
“I can’t wait to see Cordelia.”
"I can't believe I can't wait to see Cordeila."
Somewhere on a beach in the setting sun Angel and Buffy embrace.
Angel tells Buffy he’ll never leave
- 'not even if you kill me'.
I always read the sunset as a visual metaphor.
End of a day. End of a relationship. No turning back time. So forth.
It is just a dream. Buffy wakes in a shoddy room somewhere in the city.
It’s day time and we see she’s gotten a job at a diner.
She meets a young couple in a booth making young couple level decisions.
The blonde thinks she recognizes Buffy and she does.
It's Chantrelle, one of the vampire worshippers that Ford offered to Spike in 'Lie to Me'.
First day of school and Willow is giving Giles an update on the gang's vampire hunting work,
or lack thereof.
I melt a little when Giles tells Willow if she dies he’d take it poorly.
“You’d be cranky?”
“Entirely.”
In a wonderful 3 minute continuous single shot we learn Oz didn’t graduate and has to repeat a year,
Cordelia and Xander’s relationship isn’t heavily based on communication so they struggle a bit when they’re not making out,
and Sunnydale is going to have a great year in sports this year
...IF they don't have so many deaths.
Whedon loves these long shots and honestly I do too,
even though oner’s can sometimes lack purpose and just look like a director showing off.
In this case, it gives first day at school SO much kinetic energy.
The halls feel alive.
And what a STARK contrast to the quiet confines of Buffy’s city apartment.
We learn that Giles has been flying around the country trying to find Buffy
and that the gang is starting to give up.
Chantrelle approaches Buffy on the street and tells her she knows who she is.
Another in a small rash of crazy people crosses in front of them.
And Buffy saves him from being hit by a car.
This draws attention to her and she runs off and into a man sharing flyers for a local shelter.
Of course the lyrics to the songs played in The Bronze are always relevant to the theme of the episode
but pay particular attention to these.
Giles stops by to visit Joyce to share the results of his latest trip to find Buffy.
Joyce is still obviously distraught over how she and Buffy left things.
“...you musn’t blame yourself for her leaving.”
"I blame you.”
Or you know...you could blame yourself a little bit...too.
“...you walk out this house don’t even think about coming back.”
I suppose I can understand her frustration with not being told the truth.
And don’t forget.
Giles very explicitly told Buffy NOT to tell her Mom who she was.
"I'm gonna have to tell her something."
The truth?"
"No! Yo-you can't do that."
This scene feels like the two inner halves of Buffy having it out.
Buffy does some reconnaissance and finds the old man she saved earlier.
Turns out the old man was Lilly’s boyfriend.
Buffy tells Lilly and she runs off.
On the street, Lilly is approached by the nicey shelter guy who tells her Ricky is with them.
"She said he was dead."
"Well, someone sure handed you a tall tale."
It is interesting his incredibly saccharin language,
and very evocative of a particular character we’ll meet in a couple of episodes.
Shelter guy baits Lilly back and tosses her through a portal.
Buffy goes through as well and it turns out the shelter was a cover for an operation to gather slaves for a demon dimension.
Buffy wakes up in a prison.
Wait no, the literal one.
There-there you go.
The shelter demon explains the game.
Shelter demon describes how a hundred years in this dimension is one day on earth,
hence the elderly insane ex slaves.
Buffy and Lilly are then put to work.
Their overseer walks down the line asking who they are
If they answer anything other than 'no one' they catch a beating.
When he gets to Buffy
"Who are you?"
"I'm Buffy,"
"...the Vampire Slayer."
"And you are?"
No more Anne.
Shelter demon grabs Lilly to stem Buffy’s rebellion
and Lilly takes control of her own destiny and pushes him off the ledge.
The image of Buffy holding the hammer and sickle, given the hard labor factory setting seems like more than an accidental nod to communism,
as Buffy leads an uprising of the ‘workers’ against the demons.
They escape and Buffy cedes her Anne identity to Lilly.
At home Joyce hears a knock at the door and opens it to find.
The opening oner at the beginning of the episode is extremely telling.
In the three minute continuous shot the school feels vibrant and alive.
There is energy and a sense of motion.
Everyone is hopeful for the new year.
"What is Hell, but the total absence of hope?"
"The substance, the tactile proof of despair."
Throughout the series Buffy, as any of us does, sometimes struggles with the fine line between grief and despair.
What happened to Buffy and Angel was horrifying.
And Angel is gone.
Grief is an inevitability.
But an important aspect to the grieving process is the belief that things can and will get better.
Hope is the line between grief and despair.
Hope is an absolutely essential element of meaningful existence.
By running away Buffy hasn’t eliminated her problems so much as frozen herself inside them.
There is nothing but pain.
This is the absence of hope.
This is hell.
This is despair.
There are a number of external hints at her predicament, including the fact that she’s working at
HELLllllllen’s kitchen.
And the shelter demon tells her:
"You get old fast here."
"The thing that drains the life out of them..."
"...is despair.”
In the parlance of the Sartre text I brought up in the 'Lie to Me' review,
by abandoning her own life she has made herself an object in the world at the mercy of its circumstances.
She has given up her commitment to her authentic self.
And of course, Lilly is a thematic echo of Buffy.
Given what the theme of this episode is I think it’s perfect that her character is a call back to 'Lie to Me'.
There are the boyfriend parallels.
"Stay with me."
“Forever. That’s the whole point.”
"...nice and, uh...permanent."
"Yeah. Forever. I mean that's the whole point."
And when Buffy tells Lilly her boyfriend has died.
“But...he takes care of me…”
And both she and Buffy end up in the hell together.
And when Buffy claims her identity again,
Lilly makes a choice of her own.
Of course, hope looks different to different people.
Where the Anne identity meant the abandonment of it for Buffy
...it is the manifestation of it for Lilly.
And I love the scene where Buffy hands it off to her.
The transition to the hell dimension gives us a construction of what has been going on inside Buffy’s head.
Prison.
Servitude.
Denial of free will.
But...
“You have a choice."
"You don’t have a good choice, but you have a choice.”
Outnumbered, outgunned, and a slave in hell.
You STILL have a choice.
"Who are you?"
“I’m Buffy,"
"...the Vampire Slayer."
"And you are?"
It’s a great start to the season and consistent with the philosophy of the show so far
... if not the tone.
After the emotional gut punches of 'Season 2,' I think I was hoping for a little bit more for soul searching catharsis
than ironic humorous villain.
The final scene between Angel and Buffy in 'Becoming (Part 2) left bruises I still felt protective of,
and wasn’t quite ready for the quippy Buffster to come back just yet.
BUT my self pity and Buffy’s strength are both mutually consistent character traits.
She finds the strength to move forward and catharsis where she can.
And in some ways, the humorous treatment of the ghastly in this episode foreshadows the season to come.
Ultimately, I can’t complain as I still got what matters most:
an engrossing story with characters I care deeply for.