“Doppelgangland”

This is a classic episode of BtVS and is also, for the most part, a stand alone episode. The only season arc things that happen in this episode are small moments between the Mayor and Faith. He gets her an apartment, she tries to treat him like a sugar daddy and he shoots her down, thereby starting their strange father-daughter relationship instead. The rest of the plot has nothing to do with the Mayor or with Faith. (Although, I would be curious to see Faith’s reaction to vamp Willow…)

Instead, this episode is about Willow. And why not? Xander got “The Zeppo” recently, it’s only fair that Willow gets her own episode – and there will even be two Willows in this one!

The episode starts with Willow feeling like “doormat person, homework girl” as she is forced by Principal Snyder to tutor Percy West (who thinks Willow will just do his work for him). She continues to feel this way as both Buffy and Xander refer to her as reliable. She wants to do something dangerous and unexpected. Enter Anya.

Yes, Anya from “The Wish” who is trying to get back to the wish dimension from that episode. If she can get back, she can get her necklace back and then go back to being a demon, rather than a human teenage girl. She asks Willow to help her with a spell, which of course goes awry. Enter vamp Willow from the wish dimension.

And now, shenanigans! Vamp Willow doesn’t like our world and upon entering the Bronze, likes it even less. She manages to turn the tables on Percy though, which results in him being scared of Willow and finally doing his own work (and presenting her with an apple – it’s a great moment at the end of the episode). In the process, Xander (who sadly for vamp Willow is not vamp Xander) and Buffy think that Willow’s been turned and go to tell Giles.

It’s actually pretty funny when Willow walks in on the three mourning her. And then Xander uses a cross. I mean, I get it, classic vampire lore… but Willow’s Jewish, a cross had no meaning to her in life, so why would it scare her now? Instead of digressing, I invite you to read my “Passions” blog where I talk about this from my soap box. Before I end this topic, I will say that Willow also uses a cross on vamp Willow later in the episode. Ugh. (I forgive Wesley for using a cross because he might not realize that Willow is Jewish yet.)

Back at the Bronze, vamp Willow is “bored now” and ends up killing a girl named Sandy. The only reason I mention this is that the Sandy actress played Emma on several episodes of Dawson’s Creek during its final season. Vamp Willow also teams up with Anya (since they both want to get back to the other dimension) and several vampires. This Willow is exacting and cold, as we see when she gets said vampires on her side. “Who do you work for?,” she asks several times as she breaks their fingers, until they finally reply, “You.” Good strategy.

Also at the Bronze? Oz (and the rest of Dingoes Ate My Baby) and Angel, who don’t have many opportunities to hang out. But they do in this episode. They also think that Willow’s been turned, so Angel goes to tell Buffy and to get her help as there is clearly a vampire situation about to go down at the Bronze. When he finds Buffy, he also finds Willow and is confused, as one might be, and happy to find out that Willow has not been turned.

Hanging out at The Bronze

And then Vamp Willow walks in.

One great part of this episode is when Willow and vamp Willow are face to face. V.W. and Anya need Willow’s help with the spell, and V.W. wouldn’t mind turning Willow. This all prompts the “and I think I’m kinda gay” conversation that is a funny throw away line… or is it?

Okay, so I get that the writers don’t always have everything planned out seasons ahead, but sometimes they do. Seth Green left the show half way through season 4, in part because he felt that the writers didn’t know what to do with him anymore and that was leading to his character being somewhat out of, well, character. After a conversation with Joss Whedon, Oz was written out of the show. In the aftermath of that, Willow meets Tara and eventually starts a relationship with her, realizing that she’s gay. Part of me feels like if the plan at this stage was not to write Oz out of the show then there would be no reason to plan ahead for Willow to be gay, and yet, I wonder. Angel has a response to Willow’s comment where he starts to say that vampires are a reflection or enhanced version of their human selves, but stops after a look from Buffy tells him to.

So here we have a clue: the way Willow is as a human will be a little bit of a predictor of what she would be as a vampire. At this stage of the game, Willow is bad at being bad, as evidenced when she swaps places with her doppleganger, leaving V.W. in her classic fuzzy pink sweater, btw. However, anyone who’s watched through season 6, at least, knows that Willow can be very bad indeed. We also know, from “The Wish”, that vamp Willow and vamp Xander are a team, romantically involved, and that V.W. is clearly in charge of their relationship. Our Willow is really good at taking charge of a situation and we obviously know about her feelings for Xander. If Willow was turned into a vampire in the alternate dimension during the Harvest, which I think she would have been, she would not yet have realized she was gay, but her vamp self would still have acted on some of those impulses, making her vampire at least bisexual, which is what she seems based on the two episodes she appears in.

So, did Joss Whedon and company plan on making Willow gay all along? Okay, I don’t have an answer for that, but I suspect that, if nothing else, once they wrote it, they realized they had to do something with it. Or, maybe it was planned all along. No matter the answer, despite my love of Oz and sadness at his departure, I’m glad that Willow ended up being gay because of Tara. (It is also worth noting that the glimpses we see of Liam before he become Angelus and crazy Drusilla before she is turned are good predictors of the vampires they became. Even William had some Spike in him before he was turned.)

The other big thing this episode gives us is another chance for V.W. (you all got that this is short for vamp Willow by now I hope) to kill Cordelia. It’s pretty funny, especially since when Cordelia find her she’s been locked up. Cordy uses this as an opportunity to have girl talk with Willow after the whole cheating with Xander thing. Cordelia is totally right about this, by the way. The two of these girls had actually become friends, so Willow didn’t just betray Oz, she also betrayed Cordelia and it was time for them to have it out (I wonder if Cordy and real Willow ever do have this conversation now). Unfortunately for Cordelia, her timing is off and, as usual, she doesn’t really pay attention to other people and totally misses all signs that this is not her Willow. The only thing that prevents her from being eaten is Wesley showing up at the right time with a cross and V.W. deciding that they are not worth it. And then of course, these two think that Willow’s been turned – I wonder when they found out the truth. Was it the next day when Willow bounced into the library? Anyways, Wesley gets to actually be a hero in this episode, sort of – good for him.

Time for some girl talk

In the end, Giles and Willow are able to get V.W. back her dimension, just in time for her to be staked by Oz, as she was in “The Wish.” Anya gets nothing. Unless of course you count the fact that now the Scooby Gang knows who she really is. And that’s that.

This is a funny and very satisfying episode that is a break from the usual arc, but still fits in as it ties to a past episode and brings Anya into the fold for the first time (although she’s still a villain at this point).

Bored Now.

 

“Bad Girls”

Okay, so things just got good, or bad, depending on your take.  Buffy delves back into the moral quandary pool, only this time Buffy herself is the one toeing the line.

As I’ve mentioned in at least one other previous blog, the slayer’s job is to kill, therefore Buffy is a killer. However, because she only kills monsters and demons (and evil robots) she is not seen as a villain. This episode, along with its companion, “Consequences,” takes this idea and plays with it.  With power comes great responsibility, and on this show, who has more power than the slayer (you know, other than the other slayer)?

There’s a lot going on in this episode.  It starts off with Buffy and Faith working really well together in their fight against vampires.  It’s actually really great to see them fighting together and being all friendly, cause you know, that won’t last long. After the whole evil watcher thing, Faith seems to have come back around nicely, just in time to be a bad influence on Buffy.

What allows Buffy to slowly start losing (or at least testing) her moral compass? Well, that would be the arrival of new Watcher, Wesley Windham-Pryce.  First of all, Alexis Denisof is awesome, and I have been waiting to see Wesley on Buffy since “Helpless.” And, wait, is his British accent more proper here than it was on Angel? Hmmm… it definitely sounds different than I remember, maybe it’s just been a while since I’ve seen his character on either show. Second, his character is such a great buffoon (“Preparation, preparation, preparation” says it all) that Giles now looks extremely cool by comparison. I do appreciate that Giles is still the school librarian.  I mean, the Watcher’s Council obviously got him that job to put him in the slayer’s orbit and give him a place to hide all the occult books he would need in his capacity as Watcher, yet, Wesley just shows up at the school, starts hanging out in the library and goes unquestioned? I know that schools were much more lax about these things in the 90s, but the Watcher’s Council could have made him some sort of teacher or assistant librarian as a cover – don’t you think?

Anyways, Buffy’s reaction to having a new Watcher is great – “Is he evil? The last one was evil.” Faith’s reaction is better – “Screw that.” And then she turns around and walks out of the library. Clearly Wesley has an uphill battle here. He is also the cause of Buffy being more open to rebellion. She never liked taking orders from Giles, but he was able to find teaching moments to get her to take responsibility and never treated her like a lackey. Think back to the very first episode. Buffy is at the Bronze, still resisting the whole slayer thing, when Giles shows up. She teases him, he puts up with it and then gets her to try to hone her senses to see if there are any vampires at the club. She spots one easily and explains to Giles how she knows that he is a vampire.  Giles is a bit flummoxed, as Buffy is not doing things in the traditional way, but he accepts that and he accepts her. Wesley, on the other hand, goes straight in for the orders. And he’s super uncool. She’s having none of that, so when Faith’s bad girl approach calls, she listens.

Interestingly, this is all against the backdrop of college talk. Although Buffy has applied for colleges, she still sees her future as limiting. She understands Xander, who is definitely not going to college. And Willow, of course, has early acceptances from Harvard, Yale, and Wesleyan (didn’t Joss Whedon go to the latter?). During the career fair in season 2 (the same episode that introduced Kendra) Buffy was also not feeling so great about her future.  She has a better outlook now, but it is interesting that when a story about 2 slayers working together comes along, the gang’s future is being discussed yet again.

Speaking of Kendra, Buffy is the Kendra to Faith’s Buffy.  Last season, Kendra had to remind Buffy that slaying isn’t a job, it’s who she is. Kendra was also a rule follower and Buffy was the impulsive one. Now Faith is reminding Buffy that slaying is who she is, but taking it a whole lot further. And because Faith is so impulsive, it puts Buffy in a more responsible position, the position that Kendra used to fill. Doug Petrie, who wrote this episode, says something to the effect that Faith is Buffy’s darker side in his episode commentary. This will come up again when Buffy is learning about Othello in English class. Comparing Buffy to other slayers is interesting.  Obviously, all people are different, and therefore so too are slayers. But seeing how different slayers perceive being the slayer, and what that means, is what makes this and the next episode so important.  And it’s all centered around the idea of how far a slayer can go and how far a slayer should go.  Faith takes this to the extreme with her mantra of, “Want, take, have.”

Doug Petrie also talks about Buffy’s rebirth in this episode. There’s a moment when a vampire seemingly drowns Buffy and she reemerges from the water with, “I hate it when they drown me,” recalling “Prophecy Girl.” This almost drowning serves as a baptism of sorts. When Buffy emerges, she changes and is more open to bad behavior. From that moment on, she makes horrible choices up until the moment when Faith accidentally stakes a human.

This is an understandable mistake. Vampires are coming at them as they walk down an alley, and Alan, the deputy mayor, probably shouldn’t have been in that alley. Buffy sees him as he reaches for her, pushes him away, and then Faith picks up the slack, ready to pounce. As she’s about to stake him, Buffy realizes that he’s not a vampire and tries to warn Faith, but it is too late.

Brief pause: why was Alan there? He must’ve been there to tell Buffy and Faith about the Mayor, right? We’ll never know for sure unfortunately, but he did look pretty uncomfortable in the Mayor’s office with Mayor Wilkins and Mr. Trick. How did he become the Deputy Mayor? When did he find out that the guy he worked for was evil? What made him stay and why decide to speak out now? Unfortunately, we are left with a lot of questions. Of course, none of these really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Back to the murder. I have to wonder, what if their roles were reversed? What if Faith was the one who pushed Alan, and Buffy was the one who tagged in with the stake? Would Buffy have realized he was human before shoving the stake into his heart? Would Faith have noticed from afar or would she have continued moving, knowing that B can handle herself? Since Buffy is more of a thinker and more of an observer than Faith, who again is more impulsive and more about the action, would Buffy have been able to stop the murder from taking place if their roles had been reversed? This doesn’t really matter. We don’t want the hero of our show, who will always be Buffy, killing anyone, so it had to be Faith. However, how Faith handled this crisis, versus what Buffy would have done, is how you know that Buffy is a moral character and Faith is not.

I have to believe that this event affected Faith, even if she won’t admit it. She goes back to look at the body and seems genuinely upset. But then, like a Vampire Diaries vampire turning off his humanity, she makes a decision off-camera to not care. She disposes of the body (and honestly, not very well as he pops right up again in the next episode), and moves on, not wanting to discuss what happened, not wanting to think about it, and, as she tells Buffy, not even caring that she killed someone.

What follows is fodder for the next blog.  While this feels like a natural ending point there is so much more to discuss here that I haven’t really even touched on.

I mean, Buffy is pushing Willow, her best friend aside.  And using the same lousy excuse the whole gang used on Xander in “The Zeppo.” Doesn’t Buffy get that just by being her friend Willow and Xander will always be in danger? Poor Willow. Or what about when Xander’s eye twitches every time Faith’s name is mentioned? Or how about when Joyce says that she doesn’t want to meddle in Buffy’s slaying? I guess she learned her lesson after “Gingerbread,” huh?

I haven’t even talked about what a bad influence Faith was on Buffy.  I mean, I skirted the topic, but then went straight to the murder, leaving out all the class skipping (when there’s an important test to be taken) and store robbing.  For the first time, Buffy breaks the law for fun, rather than out of necessity. And then, while escaping police custody, she and Faith injure the police officers and against Buffy’s better judgement, they leave without calling for help. Buffy gets so caught up in the whole bad girl behavior thing that she actually freaks Angel out by being way too sexual with him. Sure, they’re back together, but no one wants Angel to lose his soul again and it seems as if Buffy’s too caught up in her own feelings to realize that her behavior with Angel is inappropriate. Angel has to remove himself from Buffy and get all business-like with her.

Oh, and Wesley! Yes, I talked about him, but I didn’t mention what a horrible Watcher he is. Aside from all the negative things I’ve already mentioned, he thought that the demon of the week was dead, then got kidnapped by said demon, and then was ready to blurt out everything to that demon in order to try to save his life – what an amateur! And then, because he lacks fighting skills, Giles had to save him. Now, this isn’t entirely Wesley’s fault, the Watcher’s Council doesn’t really field train their guys. You know, cause that’s the slayer’s job anyways.

And speaking of the demon of the week, when Buffy kills him he utters one more ominous line –  “When he rises you’ll wish I’d killed you all.” We know that he is referring to the Mayor, but our characters haven’t figured that out yet. And Mayor Wilkins has that whole dedication ceremony that makes him invincible. A sword-wielding vampire slices his head in two, and the Mayor lives (and magically heals).  This does not bode well for our hero.

At the end of this episode there is also a not-so-sneaky Shakespeare reference. Faith is washing blood out of her shirt and, metaphorically, off of her. Here, she is like Lady MacBeth, only Faith’s conscious doesn’t seem to be in play here. Faith washes out the blood, but Buffy is the one who’ll have the hard time dealing with the murder, which I’ll talk more about in the next blog.

“The Zeppo”

This is one of my favorite episodes of the series.  It might even be my favorite episode of season 3.  Why?  Well, for starters it is Xander-centric, but it also turns the regular Buffy formula on its head by telling a B-story as the A-story and relegating the A-story to the B-story for the week.  It’s just a fun episode!

There are so many little things from this episode that I could talk about, like that fact that all television pastry boxes are pink for some reason.  Or the fact that I appreciate Willow’s marshmallow joke when the other characters don’t seem to.  Not to mention, who names their knife, “Katie”?  Who names a knife, period? And – wait, Sunnydale has gangs? And while I could go on to talk about these insignificant things a little longer – this episode has so much meat to it.  It’s different than “Helpless,” which was certainly a meaty episode, as well.  This one is so much lighter, despite the episode featuring yet another apocalypse.

Xander is threatened by “Katie”

Okay, I honestly don’t know where to start with this episode, so I guess I’ll throw a dart and land at… Xander and Cordelia.  Surprisingly, Cordelia is still talking to Xander, even after the whole cheating thing (although, Oz and Xander seem to be friends again and Oz forgave Willow and got back together with her, so this isn’t so far-fetched) – of course she’s mostly just taunting him which is classic Cordelia. However, her teasing strikes a particular chord in this episode.  She compares him to Jimmy Olsen, which is down on Xander’s level, he even made a joke about the same subject with Giles, who just didn’t get it (oh, if only Oz had been there).  When Cordelia says it though, it is suddenly an insult. She also says, “Can you say “expendable”?” – which I find particularly funny since she ended up being in a movie called The Expendables.  This all leads to Xander obsessing over being cool.  Here’s the thing though, although Cordy was being mean, when compared with Jack O’Toole’s threats moments earlier, one can see that at least Cordelia still cares.  Her taunting comes from a place of wanting to hurt Xander for what he did to her, sure, but re-watching this makes me certain that these two can be friends again (and they will be before she moves on to L.A. and the spin-off series).

It’s also fun to compare this scene at the beginning of the episode, with the scene at the end when Xander does find his cool.  He leaves Cordelia hanging, as he walks away with a big smile on his face.  What a great ending!  Xander really grows during this episode and it shows.

Okay, we have to talk about one more thing having to do with these two former love birds, and I know I’ve mentioned it before.  Xander loses his virginity in this episode, which I think is proof that Cordelia is a virgin.  I know, this shouldn’t matter, but it does because of certain events in Angel’s first season.  Xander may have been Cordelia’s first love.  She is never shown, before or after Xander, having another committed relationship on the series.  The one possible exception to this is Darryl, who we find out about in “Some Assembly Required.” She loved him, he treated her badly, then he died.  And then he became Frankenstein’s monster and tried to make her his bride.  He died while Cordelia was a high school freshman, when she was maybe 15 years old.  Now it’s completely possible that she lost her virginity to him, but if she did, it stands to reason that she would have had sex with Xander, too.  Likewise, if she had had sex with any of the other random guys she dated in season 1, there’s almost no good reason for her not to have also had sex with Xander.  Since they didn’t have sex, Cordelia must have lost her virginity to that guy on Angel who impregnated her with a demon baby.  Which again, means that Cordelia’s first time having sex got her pregnant!  Can you imagine – that must have been so traumatizing.  Yet, Angel, being a more grown-up show and making Cordelia seem more like a twenty-something than a 19-year-old (if not 18-year-old) glosses over her loss of virginity, which is a really big deal.  I understand that there wasn’t really room in that episode for this discussion, but at the same time – can you imagine?

Alright, I’m done, so back to the Xander portion of this conversation.  Yep, Xander manages to help Faith out of a jam, she has some energy she needs to get out and they have sex.  It’s actually kind of funny how one second, they’re shown in post-coital bliss with the cuddling and the next minute she’s kicking him out of her motel room without any emotion.  I wonder if Cordelia ever found out about this and what her reaction was.  We see Willow’s reaction in a couple of episodes, but never Cordelia’s.

So, jumping all over the place, I want to go back to talking about Xander’s search for how to be cool.  It reminds me of this episode of Beverly Hills 90201 when Valerie was going to be written up in some magazine for being cool and she kept asking about it (and therefore, being uncool).  Xander’s obsession with it is very similar.  The more you think about being cool and ask questions about how to be cool, the less cool you are apparently.  I mean, take Oz.  He has hardly anything to say on the matter and doesn’t even know that he is cool when Xander asks him about it.  And so Xander, in his quest to be cool, ends up looking for a thing – which ends up being a car (and some penis jokes).  And that car is what ends up getting him in trouble and eventually leads him to finding his cool – without the aid of a “thing.” But the car isn’t what makes him cool at all.

The other thing that leads Xander towards his strange night is the abandonment of his friends.  I mean, I get it, they want to keep him safe, but why now?  I mean it’s great that Faith is in the mix and working well with Buffy, but that doesn’t mean that Xander can’t be useful (in a non-snack capacity way). What his friends do to him in this episode is actually kind of mean. Also, Xander is actually pretty good at staying cool and collected in the face of danger. He doesn’t buckle under pressure. Sure, over the years he has his moments and sometimes runs away screaming (only in “Go Fish” though) or gets pummeled, but overall, he keeps his cool when it really counts. Sure, by not running away he is a liability as much as he is an asset, but what does Willow contribute?  Can’t she do her spells from a safer room/distance?  Xander could at least work to protect her during these tense moments. And honestly, his cool head in these matters is what allows him to save Faith.  He sees that she is in trouble and maneuvers the car just so, without missing a beat, to hit one of the demons and allow Faith a quick get-a-way.  Clearly, he is being underestimated in this episode by those who know him best. And, after this episode, without his friends ever finding out about his own adventures, he’s back in the mix without a question.  Weird, no?

After all is said and done, this episode is a zombie episode. I am not a zombie fan, but here they are used for comedy and are completely different from the zombies seen in “Dead Man’s Party” – thank goodness!  One of them is even played by Michael Cudlitz – one of those actors that you’ve definitely seen in at least one other thing between the 90s and now. The majority of the Xander-centric episode is played for laughs.  Sometimes it is in the physical humor (see Xander accidentally decapitate a zombie with a mailbox), and sometimes it is through the typical Xander method of talking.  For example, “Two guys wrasslin, but not in a gay way “– oh Xander.  I don’t think this would fly anymore, but it is amusing to hear Xander try to be cool and then have to backtrack and say too much.

• 

  MIchael Cudlitz on Buffy

• 

  Michael Cudlitz in real life
  

This is juxtaposed with the overly dramatic apocalypse scenes sprinkled throughout the episode. The most obvious example of this is, of course, the Buffy-Angel scene.  It seems pretty typical, but then once Xander interrupts we see how the over-dramatic can be played for laughs.  Especially since, as soon as Xander leaves, the romantic music swells up once again – right where it left off.

Imagine this with dramatic music swelling

Music actually plays a really important part in this episode.  As soon as Xander’s scenes get serious, there is no music.  The apocalypse battle has music and is very loud, but Xander’s scenes are quiet. This signals a change, both in tone and in Xander. The lack of music shows Xander’s inner-calm (or, cool, if you will) – the music stops, the rest is silence. It is in these moments that we see just how much Xander is worth.  After all, unbeknownst to his friends, he is the one saving those who save the world. If not for Xander (with an assist from werewolf Oz that he doesn’t know about), anyone in the high school would have been killed in an explosion.  Xander stops a bomb from going off and rescues his friends – and the world. No wonder he’s my favorite guy on this show!

I do wonder though why Jack isn’t a better fighter.  I mean, you’re telling me that he can’t take Xander? Or maybe, against regular threats, Xander can hold his own? Last season Xander almost got pummeled by Larry, but maybe he would have been okay without Buffy’s interference.  Or maybe he’s learned some fighting over the past 2 years. Or maybe Jack’s not as tough as he seems.

It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Xander is cool and he gains some much-needed confidence through his own hero’s journey in this episode.  Also, Oz is strangely full the next day.