THE BODY
Episode 93, #15 of Season 5

Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer… well, they just repeat the final scene.  And even after a week it’s still a bit of a shock.

The show returns to a flashback.  It’s Christmas and everyone is happy and it’s family and it’s all so very nice that you want to cry.  Back in the present Buffy calls 911 to get CPR instructions.  However, when Buffy tells her that her mom is cold the operator tells her just to wait for the paramedics.  Buffy calls Giles and garbles something about her mom and Glory and he says he’ll be right over.

The paramedics arrive and, while watching them, Buffy has a day dream about her mom reviving and being fine.  The paramedics finally give up saying that it looks like a brain aneurysm and that the coroner will be along for the body.  They tell her not to move the body and head out on another call.

Alone in the house Buffy wanders a bit until Giles arrives totally panicked at the thought that Glory has attacked.  He approaches Joyce but Buffy yells at him that "We're not supposed to move the body!" so he simply hugs Buffy.

At the new Sunnydale High Dawn is in the girls room crying because some of the kids were picking on her.  One of her friends helps her pull herself together and they head to art class.  Dawn flirts a bit with a cute classmate when Buffy arrives and takes her into the corridor.  Dawn refuses to go outside until Buffy tells her what’s up so Buffy breaks the news.  Dawn screams, starts crying and then collapses.

Xander and Anya, in silence, head to Willow and Tara’s.  Willow is freaked tying to find her blue sweater that Joyce had once told her that she liked.  Tara ends the freak with a kiss and offers to find the sweater.  Xander and Anya arrive, Xander to angrily try to find someone to blame and Anya to ask totally insensitive questions trying to understand this newest human mystery.  Will snaps at Anya, Anya starts to cry, Xander punches a wall and Tara returns from not finding the sweater.  They decide to head down to the morgue to be there with Buffy, Dawn and Giles.

After a hug fest at the the morgue Dr. Kriegel confirms that Joyce died of a sudden aneurysm, one of the complications he mentioned and a risk Joyce was aware of.  He says everything that Buffy wants and needs to hear - that it was sudden, that there was no pain and that even if someone had been right there she would still have died.  He brings up paperwork and Giles volunteers to handle as much as he can.  Dawn heads to the washroom while Xander, Willow and Anya head out to find food because if you don't eat you talk and if you talk you start to cry and if you cry you may not stop.  Alone Tara tells Buffy that her own mom had died when she was 17 and that she (Tara) had all these unexpected and irrational emotions.  She tells Buffy that this is normal and OK and that Tara is there if she needs someone to talk to who’s been there.

Dawn sneaks into the morgue and to where the body is.  She is about to lift the cover when we see a vampire rise in the corner and start toward her.  Back at the waiting area the gang arrives with armloads of snacks and Buffy realizes that Dawn is missing and where she must be.  She arrives in time to (with some effort) decapitate the vamp but, in the scuffle, the cover slips from the body.  Dawn and Buffy sit just looking for a bit before Dawn rises to slowly touch her mother’s face.

Fade to black.

Random Quotes 

Sorry, you're not getting any quotes from me.  For a show known for it's sound bites this episode was a low quote episode.  Like "Hush" most of the impact comes not from what is said but from expression and body language.  So I can quote all sorts of stuff but unless you see Xander's grateful look to Buffy when she accepts Anya's awkward condolences or Tara's look of helpless pain at Willow's bewilderment or Buffy's look of emptiness every time she turns and the body is just a body and not her living mom then the quotes are just words without the impact.

Random Notes:

First off, this one gets an "As Good as 'Hush'" rating

Written by Joss, directed by Joss who's last offering was "Family".

This is a show where nothing happens.  I mean, one vampire must be some kind of record.  The summary took about a half hour to write.  And yet everything happens.  I compared it to Hush but I'm beginning to think it has more in line with an Akira  Kurosawa film.  The long silences when the actors just think which flies in the face of the Western convention of filling silence with some kind of noise be it chatter or background conversation or music belonged more in the Seven Samurai or Ran than in American prime time.

Thus goes the only parent in the entire show.  Really, that was a theme in the show - that the only person with normal parents was the Slayer.  Willow's parents were in one episode (and her mom tried to burn Willow at the stake), Xander's dad was in one dream episode and some off screen yelling and Cordy's parents were either globetrotting or in jail for tax evasion.  Most kids didn't seem to have parents as evidenced by the sparse turn out in the parent night episode "School Hard".  Maybe it's a symptom of raising your kids in Sunnydale,  that you don't want to get too close to your kids least they die or decide to use you as a sacrifice.

A lot of things were *supposed* to happen this episode and didn't.  No Angel guest shot and no Glory/Ben revelations.

Buffy's focus seems to mean she can take on groups but is starting to maybe have problems with single opponents.  Sort of like the giant in Princess Bride.

Next week is a repeat of “Family”, a truly appropriate choice as far as I’m concerned.

Random rambling thought harkening back to the fourth season finale "Restless".  Xander is heart, Willow is spirit, Giles is brain and Buffy is physical.  I was wondering about Tara and Anya and came up with anchor and innocent.  Time and again (but highlighted especially in this episode) Tara has seemed to be the calm of the storm, the voice of reason and the steadying presence.  What my Texan evil twin might refer to as "a rock".  Anya, on the other hand, is the innocent who, by not understanding the need for societies rules looks beyond them and questions why the rules were ever established.

Oh yeah, the kiss.  If I were the moral majority this kiss would really get my feathers up.  Joan the English Chick said it best on the PupList, this isn't about titillation or sex or a ratings grab.  This is about comforting the person you love.  When John Byrne created what was likely the first lesbian in mainstream comics (Superman's Maggie Doyle) he explained it in the book as a difference as simple as who you hugged when you needed a hug.  And there you are.

This is a random note, not a quote per se.  From second season, "Lie to Me"
Buffy: Does it ever get easy?
Giles: You mean life?
Buffy: Yeah.  Does it get easy?
Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy: Lie to me.
Giles: Yes, it's terribly simple.  The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day.  No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar.

Angel Notes:

See, you can't just sing a song and have everything be all right (paying attention RenPic?).  Especially when you sing as badly as Angel.