Frankly, I love Season 5. For me, it falls just behind Season 2 in the season rankings. What makes it so great? Well, Season 5 has, without a doubt, the most well-plotted season arc, with almost every episode contributing something to the ongoing story. In this way, it's very much the opposite of Season 4. Where that season felt disjointed and wandering, this one is tightly focused basically from the word go. Everything is there for a reason, and every time a question threatens to go unanswered, Whedon and company milk just the right amount of suspense before addressing it. It's a master class in setups and payoffs, which is why the season finale, which weaves all those gathered elements together, is the best of the series (which is saying something, since this is a series filled with great finales). There are some significant problems which keep it from being better than Season 2, and it doesn't have quite the emotional resonance of that season, but it's still plenty powerful, and a fantastic season of television.
So, when we're talking about Season 5, we have to start with the big surprise we get at the end of the first episode, Dawn. Suddenly, a teenage sister pops up out of nowhere, and nobody seems to be bothered that she's there. In fact, they all seem to think that she's been there all along. What the heck is happening? It's a bold thing that Whedon did here. Bringing in a new character with no introduction, and then not bothering to explain it until 5 episodes in? Ballsy. So, the question is, did it work? A lot of people really don't like Dawn, but I have no real problem with her. I like the dimensions she brings out in the other characters, particularly Spike. She's bratty and annoying, but frankly, she's a 14 year-old, they're all bratty and annoying. For the most part, her character felt believable, brought something new to the table, and her introduction was handled well.
Along with Dawn, the other big new character is our big bad for the Season, Glory. I love Glory. She's not as good a villain as Angelus or Mayor Wilkins, but she's pretty great nonetheless. She's hilarious, but also a genuine threat. By having her beat the crap out of Buffy in their first encounter, the show tells us early, this bad guy is not to be messed with. She may be crazy (and have hilariously incompetent minions), but she's still plenty dangerous.
I also love the addition of the Magic Box as the gang's new headquarters. It gives Giles a purpose, something he lacked last season (as well as giving us one of the series' best sight gags). It also gives Anya a job, which really is fantastic. Anya's development into a blunt, money-loving, capitalist ex-demon is one of the best things about this season. So, thumbs up to the Magic Box.
On the positive side, Riley leaves! On the negative side, Riley is still there for the first half of the season, and he's even more useless than last season. Without the Initiative around, Riley is really pointless, and he feels perfunctory for the whole time until he leaves. Since his relationship with Buffy never really felt like it was long-term, he just doesn't serve much purpose. So, the first 10 episodes of the season with Riley are, on a whole, the worst batch. I'm also not really a huge fan of the way they got rid of him, which seemed to happen a bit too quickly for my taste, but he's gone, so on the whole, a positive.
The other interesting character development that has to be talked about in Season 5 is Spike. I'm of two minds about Spike. On the one hand, I love me some Spike. He's a great character, and the fact that he hangs around more with the team and plays a more prominent role in this season is excellent. On the other hand, the implications of his behavior really kind of mess with the show's mythology. Is Spike a good guy, even though he doesn't have a soul? Can he really fall in love with Buffy, even without a soul? The show's answer seems to be "yes", which raises all sorts of problems. I think the show could have made an interesting point about the difference between love and infatuation if it had shown Spike as being attracted to Buffy, but not really being able to truly love her without a soul. It doesn't do that though. Spike's actions, particularly standing up to Glory's torture, show that this isn't just basic lust, it's more than that. To me, that's a problem. If Spike can love without a soul, what does that mean for other vampires, Angel in particular? If Spike can love with a soul, if he can be a good guy, what does that mean for Angelus and his killing sprees, and how much blame does Angel deserve for that? The Buffyverse never really makes it clear what exactly a soul means, and the case of Spike makes the whole idea of "vampire = evil" a lot more fuzzy. On a plot level, it works well to keep Spike heavily involved in the group, but from a character perspective, I'm not so sure it works in the mythology of the show.
These are the small things though, the character details. On the whole, the season is a tremendous success. Not only is the season-long arc brilliant, but it includes my two favorite Buffy episodes ever. Lets take a look at those episodes, as well as some other favorites.
The Replacement: Of the two major Xander-centric episodes (along with "The Zeppo"), this is the one that I unabashedly love (which is not to say "The Zeppo" is bad, but this one is better). First off, it's a hilarious episode, particularly when the two Xanders get together (Giles: "He's a bad influence on himself"). On top of that though, it's a turning point for Xander's character. After a season of being a worthless layabout, Xander sees that he's actually capable of success, and it didn't take what Xander thinks is magic coin to do it (It happens it's just a flattened coin, "Hey, it is cool. Washington’s still there, but he’s all smooshy. And he may be Jefferson.").
Fool For Love: The episodes of Buffy and Angel which focus on the history of the Spike/Angel/Darla/Drusilla group are almost always great, and this one is no exception. There is a lot of great backstory for Spike here, which informs a lot of his actions for the rest of the series (of course, we have to overlook that troublesome soul business I talked about above). He's a dreamer, a poet, a hopeless romantic, but one who has constantly been rejected. It's that rejection that leads him to become a vampire in the first place. It's that history of rejection that makes Buffy's rejection of him such a powerful scene. When she tells Spike that he's beneath her and throws his money at him like he's some kind of prostitute, it's a crushing blow to the poor guy. Even after being hurt so badly though, he's still too much of a romantic to kill Buffy when he sees her sitting sadly behind her house. It's not just a great Spike episode though, it's a great Buffy episode as well. Spike explains to Buffy that every Slayer has a death wish, something that will come back into play at the end of the season. It's one of those really great mythology-building episodes that Buffy is so good at.
Checkpoint: Another big step forward in the overall story of Buffy, as she finally stands up to the council which, wouldn't you know it, really doesn't have any power over her at all. There's a lot of great stuff in "Checkpoint" as the council examines Buffy's friends and her rather unorthodox methods of demon-fighting. Also, I always love episodes where Spike and Joyce interact, as they do here, sharing a mutual love for the soap opera Passions. There's a lot I love in this episode, but the moment of Buffy standing up to the council is the big
The Body: I'm going to try not to go on too long about this, but that's going to be hard, since "The Body" is my all-time favorite episode of television. It's incredibly hard to capture the emotional impact of death onscreen without it feeling forced or manipulative, but this episode nails it. There's an incredible rawness to "The Body", starting with the decision to leave out any background music. It seems like such a small thing, but it changes everything. There's a stillness to the episode that really captures that feeling of "what now?" that comes from the death of a loved one. Everybody feels like they should do something, but no one knows what to do. This is best embodied by Anya who, as a former immortal demon, doesn't understand death and how to cope with it, which leads to this incredible scene:
It's the "Joyce will never drink fruit punch again" bit that gets me. It's hard to process death completely, you just can't really comprehend it, but it's the little things that finally make it hit home. I know that was the case for me. When my grandpa died, I didn't really cry much on the day it happened (I'm not much of a crier). It was later, when I was sitting there talking to my mom, and she talked about how Bopa had been a great card player, particularly Bridge, and I realized that I hadn't really seen that side of him often, and now I wouldn't. That got me crying (also, it went from there to the fact that Bopa would never see his grandchildren get married, and then things got a good bit more teary). The other thing that struck me in particular is Tara's line when Buffy asks if her mother's death was sudden, to which Tara answers "No...and yes. It's always sudden."
I won't go on any more about this episode, though there is plenty to talk about, but I do want to mention Sarah Michelle Gellar's acting, which is truly outstanding, especially in the first scene, where she finds her mother's body. It's all one continuous two and a half minute take, and Gellar is brilliant in it. In the opening moments of the episode, where she calls out to her mom, "Mom? Mom? Mommy?" the way her voice breaks when she says "Mommy?" is heartbreaking. Also, the moment where she yells at Giles "we aren't supposed to move the body!" before she realizes that she just referred to her mother as "the body". It's incredibly powerful stuff, and SMG makes it believable and raw. Everyone is great in this episode, but she deserves special mention.
Great, great episode. It's a crime that it didn't win boatloads of awards.
Intervention: And we move from the most tragic, heart-rending episode of TV that I've ever seen to one of the funniest episodes of the season. One part of this story has Buffy going off on a "vision quest", which is alright (Giles sets her off on the quest by jumping in and out of a circle and "shaking my gourd"). It includes the important thematic moment of The First Slayer telling Buffy that "Death is your gift", but the thing that makes this episode so great is the other half of it. That other half features the group mistaking Spike's Buffy-Bot for the actual Buffy. This leads to lots of greatness, especially when the real Buffy shows up, which just goes to show you that you can't go wrong with having dopplegangers in Buffy episodes. Some highlights from the Buffy-Bot:
- She addresses Anya with the question "How is your money?" Of course, Anya finds this entirely appropriate
- Spike did not program the Buffy-Bot to pronounce "Giles" correctly
- [to real Buffy] "Look at you. You look just like me. We're very pretty"
- "Angel's lame. His hair grows straight up, and he's bloody stupid."
Also, this episode features one of my all-time favorite Buffy lines. When the tortured Spike sarcastically tells Glory that the Key is Bob Barker, Glory's minion responds: "We will bring you Bob Barker! We will bring you the limp and beaten body of Bob Barker"
The Gift: My second favorite Buffy episode, and the best season finale the show ever did. It's the perfect resolution to the season-long build. The first half of the episode has the gang planning how they're going to get disrupt Glory's ritual and save Dawn. the best part of this section is Buffy's interplay with Giles, starting with her refusal to talk about what should happen if the ritual begins.
Buffy: "We're not talking about this"
Giles: "Yes we bloody well are! If Glory begins the ritual...If we can't stop her ..."
Buffy: "Say it. Come on, we're bloody well talking about this, tell me to kill my sister!
I love that with Buffy insisting Dawn must not die at any cost, Giles is willing to stand up and say that it's insane to let the world end, even if stopping it means killing Dawn. We later get a softer, quieter scene between the two of them where Buffy says that with all she's had to deal with, killing Dawn would be the last straw. "It doesn't matter. If Dawn dies, I'm done with it. I'm quitting." How do you live in a world where you have to kill your sister? Buffy knows that she can't. So, even with Giles' objection, Buffy's rousing speech as they set off to face Glory is as follows.
Buffy: "Remember: The ritual starts, we all die; and I'll kill anyone who comes near Dawn."
Spike: "Well, not exactly the St. Crispin's Day speech, was it?"
Giles: "We few, we happy few..."
Spike: "...we band of buggered."
That's just the set-up though, the real action is the big fight with Glory, which brings everything from the season into play. First, Willow weakens Glory by sucking the sanity out of her mind and restoring it to Tara. Next, Glory battles the Buffy-Bot before finally kicking its head off ("Hey, did everybody else know that the slayer is a robot?"). The real Buffy proceeds to fight her, using the Dagon Sphere (which it seemed like the writers had completely forgotten about, but nope) and the troll hammer from Anya's ex-boyfriend troll (both suggested by Anya, "Here to help, wanna live."). Meanwhile, the seriously creepy Doc, from earlier in the season, has defeated Spike and starts making tiny cuts on Dawn to start the ritual. Buffy wails on Glory until she turns back into Ben, who Buffy cannot bring herself to kill. This leads to an amazing moment where we get to see Badass Giles again, as he kills Ben after explaining that he's not a hero like Buffy. Buffy reaches Dawn, but it's too late, and finally the overall thematic significance of the season becomes clear. Buffy and Dawn being family, and more than family, having the same blood. The Slayer's death wish, and death being Buffy's gift. Everything that has been set up throughout the preceding 21 episodes pays off as Buffy sacrifices herself to save the world without killing her sister. The season ends with a shot of Buffy's tombstone, with just a couple short lines perfectly encapsulating the essence of who Buffy was.
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