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Episode 2.22: Becoming Pt. 2 | Episode 3.02: Dead Man's Party
Characters:
| Buffy | Angel | Xander |
| Willow | Giles | Cordelia |
| Oz |
Overall (6/10)
Buffy:
Last season's finale left Buffy with nothing. No home. No school. And, in having to kill Angel, she lost her Slayer-identity. Without that, and without the human!Buffy identity as represented by her home and school, she is left without any sense of self.
So she goes to LA, cause it seems to be the thing to do. And she works as a waitress. And she pretty much just barely lives. She lets the world go around her and simply exists, as she doesn't know who she is without what had been taken away from her last year.
She gets jolted out of her crisis by Lily. Lily is, first off, a painful reminder of her life as the Slayer, as Lily knew her back in Sunnydale. She is also, though, an unwelcome mirror of herself. Like Buffy, Lily has no identity except for the one she lets others give her. True, Buffy hasn't gone to the extreme of adopting another persona. But Lily's lack of self hits a little close to home for our Buffster.
Is it any wonder, then, that Buffy is a little harsh towards Lily? Especially when Lily goes to her for help when her boyfriend is missing. Buffy steadfastly refuses to get involved. She doesn't feel like she's the Slayer anymore and doesn't want to do anything Slayer-related.
However, she can't deny who she is. When push comes to shove, she seeks out trouble by breaking into the blood bank. And, when forced to identify who she is, she cheerfully proclaims that she's Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
When finally faced with the ultimate choice of being a complete nonentity (as she'd been trying to do for the past three months), she instead chooses to admit to who she truly is. She embraces her Slayerhood (Slayerdom? Slayerness?) and kicks a little demon ass.
Finally, at the end, she passes along the "Anne" persona to Lily. Now that she's accepted herself as the Slayer, she decides to go back home to see if she can regain the rest of her identity.
Angel:
Angel is currently in hell. He's been busy looking for a mailbox to drop off his postcard to Buffy. Turns out hell doesn't have a postal system.
Xander:
And here we get a stunning contrast from last season's opener. Whereas with When She Was Bad, we see that Xander had been pining over Buffy all summer, this episode shows the complete opposite. Of the group, he actually seems to be the one who's most decidedly given up on Buffy. He misses her, yes. But he realizes that she's not coming back until she's ready, so he's prepared to move on.
Instead, he's been pining over Cordelia. This is actually an interesting development. Last we saw in S2, Xander didn't quite hold the same affection for Cordelia that she did for him. And Buffy still always held priority. It looks like Buffy's disappearance has changed his views a bit. He actually missed Cordy over the summer and is eager to see her again.
I would say that this bodes well for their relationship, but, unfortunately, I've seen the rest of the season.
Regardless, when the two finally meet here, they fall into good old Cordelia/Xander habits. It's amusing.
Willow, being the eternal optimist, is convinced that Buffy will come back. She refuses to let Xander talk about her in past tense. She speaks as if Buffy were sure to return.
Of course, we know that she is, but Willow's persistent optimism is still very endearing. Part of it is surely to convince herself of this, though. She's lost her best friend, and it's obvious that she's hurting.
Giles is only second to Joyce in his desire to find Buffy. He rushes off at every opportunity to check out various leads. This does bring up the interesting question. What exactly does a Watcher do without his Slayer? While Buffy has, temporarily, lost her Slayer identity, Giles has also lost his identity as a Watcher.
Indeed, he knows that the others have taken over Buffy's slaying duties, but he doesn't join them. He doesn't seem to show much of an interest, actually. His only concern is in finding his Slayer.
There's a wonderful scene between Giles and Joyce. He tells her that she shouldn't blame herself for Buffy leaving. Then she informs him that she doesn't blame herself. She blames him.
We never got the chance at the end of S2 to see Joyce's full reaction to Buffy's other life. It must surely have been a shock to hear about the strong relationship her daughter shared with Giles, a man that Joyce barely knows. It's completely natural that she would feel some resentment. I would also imagine that she feels he had a responsibility, as a fellow adult, to tell her about her daughter's duties.
It's no wonder, then, that she lashes out against Giles now, when her daughter is still missing.
Giles doesn't have too much of a response to this. I'd be willing to bet that most Watchers don't have to deal with their Slayer's parents (Witness Kendra's situation).
Cordelia actually has a friendly conversation with Willow in the library. My word. Go back and watch Cordy in S1 (or early S2) and compare her to now. She's gotten a lot more secure in herself as she lets herself hang out with who she wants to, rather than who's perceived as cool.
She even tells Xander that she's helping with the slaying for Buffy. For Buffy? It wasn't too long ago that Cordy couldn't stand her.
We also get her part in the cute Cordy/Xander reunion.
Oz is amazingly funny in that first fight scene. Love the stake toss.
And is it any surprise that he gets held back a year? Oz has other priorities in life. Willow, a fellow brainiac, just can't understand how a guy as smart as Oz does so poorly at school.
The plot's almost immaterial to the theme of the episode. Like S2's When She Was Bad, this episode is a vehicle for Buffy to deal with the events of the past year.
An evil charity worker. Bleh.
This is starting to wrap up the S2 arc.
Like When She Was Bad, this episode does what it sets out to do. The PSA runaway interlude was a little heavy-handed, but I thought it did a good job of dealing with Buffy's identity issues.
Personally, I had trouble watching Buffy apart from her friends because I missed the banter. I realize that that's the whole point of the episode, but it still affected my enjoyment.
Special performance award goes to the actress who played Lily for bravely wearing Gabrielle's burlap sack (and I am amazed I went this long without any Xena references).
6 out of 10.
"I'm Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. And you are?"
I maintain that there's not enough comedy wallpapers for BtVS, which is a shame because the series does have a good deal of humor in it. This is my attempt at fixing that imbalance. My noviceness still shows.
Credits:
Caps: Screencap Paradise
Textures: Misplaced Moments
Fonts: Demon Night (Link), Stalker2 (Link)
Brushes: None
Episode 2.22: Becoming Pt. 2 | Episode 3.02: Dead Man's Party
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