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Episode 3.17: Enemies | Episode 3.19: Choices
Characters:
| Buffy | Angel | Xander |
| Willow | Giles | Cordelia |
| Oz |
Overall (7/10)
Buffy:
This is the penultimate high school episode. It deals with the isolation of teendom and the fears that result from it.
Buffy is the perfect example of this. She already feels like an outcast because of her Slayerness. She can't go to the basketball game with her friends because she needs to patrol. Add onto that the fact that she finds out she's gonna develop an "aspect of the demon", and she finds herself firmly in the "isolated" camp.
This is highlighted as she's voicing her concerns to Willow during the pep rally. Willow interrupts her to cheer for Percy. The importance placed on social status and "fitting in" in high school gets in the way of what's truly important in supporting one's friends.
Once Buffy finds out that the aspect is telepathy, she is excited, at first. However, she soon finds herself more isolated than if she'd grown a tail. She's utterly handicapped, unable to be near people because of the fury of thoughts.
But what she'd learned as she went around school listening to people's thoughts serves her well at the end. Thinking Jonathon is about to mow down a bunch of students, she brings him down with a tremendously wonderful speech. She knows of what she speaks because she has seen into the minds of the students of Sunnydale. She knows that everybody is busy thinking about their own problems. In essence, everybody is alone, and everybody is concerned that they are alone because they think everybody else is thinking about them.
Buffy's speech is wonderfully done and really gets to the heart of the high school experience.
She finds out, though, that Jonathon had been intending to kill himself. Fortunately, the sentiment stands.
Moving on to Angel, who's actually something of a separate issue in this episode. He pulls the stalker-guy routine on her again. I'm a little annoyed that they focus so heavily on the Faith-jealousy without addressing the concern Buffy has for unsouled!Angel. Now, the Faith part is important, and it's handled quite well by Angel. But the issue wherein Buffy was harshly reminded of the grief unsouled!Angel had caused her isn't even mentioned. Not cool.
Let me also comment on the Buffy/Angel relationship. Angel makes a big point about protecting Buffy in this episode. Sweet? Yes. But a little patronizing. This girl is the Slayer. She's supposed to represent the empowered female. Yet, she's swooning over a guy who's pledging to keep her safe?
I think that an important result of Angel leaving Buffy later on is that she learns she doesn't need to rely on a guy to protect her. By the time she gets together with Riley, she doesn't desire that in a man (Indeed, that's a large part of the reason Riley leaves in S5).
But it's frustrating to see our heroine now openly fawning over a guy who doesn't seem to realize that she can take care of herself.
Angel:
Angel apparently doesn't know the meaning of the term "a break" as he was out in full stalking-force at the beginning of the episode.
Fortunately, when Buffy (finally) directly confronts him about the Faith-issue, he handles it well. We get hints of his background with "dozens" of bad girls. And we find out that he's only ever loved one girl: Buffy.
I'm not sure where Angel's protective nature comes from as we haven't seen anything in his past to suggest that that's always been present. But he is fiercely protective of Buffy to the point of stalking her. In fact, I find it a little insulting, but I addressed that in the previous section.
Xander:
Xander is, again, showing jealousy towards Cordelia and Wesley. It's interesting that Oz comments to him that he's a complex man during the pep rally. Once Buffy can read minds, we see that the opposite is actually true. Xander is quite simple. He is the typical teenage boy.
And all he thinks about is sex. We get a wonderfully funny scene where he's trying not to think about sex around Buffy (and fails miserably).
We also get another instance of the theme of the episode of acceptance by one's social peers. At the beginning, Xander insults Hogan, the basketball star, but then goes very swoony upon being greeted by Hogan. Even denying that he wants the recognition of the social elite, Xander does crave it.
Willow's actually pretty interesting in this episode in what Buffy hears while reading her mind. Willow, as usual, plays the supportive best friend, but in her head we can hear her insecurities that she doesn't voice.
Throughout the series, we rarely get a glimpse of what Willow is really thinking as she doesn't often voice her true opinion (This will be most apparent again in S6's Once More, With Feeling).
Giles is, besides Cordelia, the most honest about what he's thinking. He may not always say what's on his mind (Witness his reaction to Buffy's shoes when she enters the library), but he almost never lies about what he's thinking. The one time he does, it's in an attempt to comfort Buffy.
Cordelia is even more honest than Giles. She blurts out whatever is one her mind, and she's usually not thinking very deep thoughts.
Oz is quite the philosopher. We finally get to see why Oz is so quiet all the time. It's because he's busy thinking deep thoughts.
In this way, he's the opposite of Xander, who is only thinking about sex. Oz is the anti-male.
Some demony blood makes Buffy telepathic. She hears somebody who's planning on killing a bunch of students. Slayerness ensues.
Well, the cafeteria lady is the culprit. But the real baddie is everybody's insecurities.
Not an arc episode.
This episode gets a lot of praise, and rightfully so. It's a wonderful episode that encompasses the high school experience very well. It has some truly touching moments, along with a hilarious mislead of an ending. I have no complaints.
Special performance award goes to whoever played the lunch lady. Cause that scene always makes me laugh.
7 out of 10.
Buffy's speech to Jonathon in the tower.
Episode 3.17: Enemies | Episode 3.19: Choices
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