I have been v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was tempted to give a reason here, but: I don't need a reason, damnit! It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. To contextualise how slowly: it's taken me... maybe a year or so to get to the end of Season 3, and that's with some skips.
This post is going to include some spoilers, at least up to the end of Season 3.
Season 3 is where the show really comes into its own. There's a whole lot I could say about that, about how S3 is really the point where it hits the 'promise of the premise', with some big interesting character arc swings and a great villain story-engine for the back of the season in particular, and how it has just one of the best and most thematic villains in general BUT I want to mention one episode in particular.
The Prom is the 20th episode of S3, the last before the two-parter finale we've spent so long building up to. The episode has an odd feel to it -- the pacing feels really off, and it does a lot of things differently. One of the reasons it stuck out, though, was because of my very strong emotional memory of watching it for the first time about a decade ago.
Towards the end of the episode, during the eponymous prom for the graduating class, Buffy's classmates award her the title of 'Class Protector', complete with a shiny novelty umbrella. This includes a little speech about how 'no one really talks about how Sunnydale High is weird' and 'bad shit happens all the time here and a lot of students die'. They name Buffy 'Class Protector' because she so often seemed to be at the centre of it all, saving people.
My emotional memory of that moment was strong -- an important highlight of the season -- so I was looking forward to this episode. But I was also worried it would feel saccharine now -- too much.
It didn't.
It should, I think. It has all the trappings of a somewhat easy moment that should come off as a bit trite. So I was curious as to why it lands so well.
- First off, it feels earned. We're three seasons deep in a show that doesn't give us a lot of moments like this. The show bounces around tonally, but mostly knows what it's doing. The time with the characters and in this world helps earn this moment. (It would have absolutely died for me if they'd tried the equivalent in S1, for instance.)
- The whole episode serves a different function from usual. This is a 'quiet(er) moment' episode before we move into the finale. It's space for those character moments to breathe, to reflect on where we are in the story and what this means. This is what lends it that 'off pacing' I mentioned above -- the core threat of the episode is pretty small-fry (if personal) and tangential. It's also resolved with what feels like trivial ease. Because that's not what this episode is about. It's a victory lap for the characters before the coming hardships, and the 'monster of the week' really serves to underscore/motivate some of the other moments.
- Another way of putting that is: this episode is about letting the core characters have what they want for a bit (with the exception of the Angel breakup plotline). That's... not something that this show normally does -- or, when it happens, it's to subvert it or serve some other, less wholesome purpose. And again, that makes sense! A lot of the time, characters getting what they want is boring! But here, after a long journey with them so far and all that's coming up... it feels earned, and special.
- The last point, really, and why the 'Class Protector' moment works so well for me, is that it also is the show breaking its own rules. Throughout Buffy, we've got used to suspending our disbelief about the sheer density of Bad Shit that happens in Sunnydale, especially at the high school. We get used to, say, the cops not investigating things and the students not commenting on it, because, hey, it's a monster of the week show. That's just part of its whole deal. (Actually, S3 pushes on that more generally with the reveal of how this structural conceit is embedded inside of Sunnydale's power structures.) In The Prom, though, that suspended disbelief is turned on its head -- and turned into a rare moment where the world acknowledges the wholeness of Buffy as a character. Again, it's a really delicate line -- it risks being a bit 'cute', by hanging a lampshade on some necessary narrative artifice. But to me it doesn't feel like winking at the audience or trying to 'explain away' something fairly functional. It's about reaching to create an earned moment for Buffy, which is precisely what the episode is about, which makes it sing, rather than clunk.
I have a cold coming on, which makes me grumpy and badthinky. I may arbitrarily skip updates this week.