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Episode 4.03: The Harsh Light of Day | Episode 4.05: Beer Bad
Characters:
| Buffy | Xander | Willow |
| Giles | Oz | Anya |
| Riley |
Overall (8/10)
Buffy:
This episode is all about fear.
With Guy Number Three ditching her (Four if you count Scott Hope), Buffy's feeling a little insecure. Notice the scene in the teaser with the kid in a Halloween mask jumping out at Buffy. She reacts, rather naturally, by knocking him on his ass. His response? Asking what's wrong with her.
This is indicative of her encounter with Parker. Where Buffy responded to his promises of intimacy and commitment, she is the one being blamed for her reaction to his callous use of her. Buffy may not have done the smartest thing in sleeping with Parker. But she did so because he led her on. When she tries to call him on it, though, he firmly places the blame on the miscommunication on her. And, what's more, she believes him. Just as she believes the kid in the mask who blames her for her reaction.
Buffy will often have a tendency to blame herself for the failure of her relationships. This plays into the nature of being a Slayer and the loneliness and isolation that comes with it.
She's feeling fairly jaded now, especially for an 18 year old. She's reaching a point where she wonders if it's worth it to even try to have a relationship when the guy just ends up leaving you. This is highlighted in her heart-to-heart with her mother.
It is appropriate, then, that Buffy dresses as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween. Red Riding Hood is a character symbolic of the innocent girl being preyed on by the "Big Bad Wolf", or men. Notice that Buffy's carrying weapons in her basket. She's playing the victim and trying to avoid another occurrence of the Parker-fiasco, even at the same time she's blaming herself for that very incident.
Once inside the frat house, Buffy quickly gets separated from her friends and ends up in the basement. This is where her problems with guys in relationships melds with her issues of isolation as the Slayer. Not only have men in her life abandoned her, but she is utterly alone, her friends having stormed off. As the broken-necked frat boy tells her, she's always alone. Not just because she's Buffy. But because she's the Slayer.
In the basement, she's told that she's actually not truly alone just as zombies come up from the dirt to attack her. The Slayer, while isolated from friends and lovers, can only find company in vampires, the dead creatures that she hunts. And...well...they try to kill her.
This isolation is something that Buffy carries with her all the way through to the end of the series.
At the end, the friends are reunited and the fear demon is fully summoned. In a humorous twist, the demon is very tiny and absolutely non-threatening, speaking to the relative triviality of the fears depicted in this episode. Buffy easily squashes him just as he warns that everybody will leave her.
However, even with her defeat of the fear demon, her own fears are far from resolved. The Parker issue won't reach its resolution until the next episode, and the isolation of the Slayer will be a common theme of the series.
Xander:
Xander is once again feeling the burden of being the Zeppo. It's highlighted several times that he's a "civilian" and not part of the college crowd. In addition to that, he doesn't have any of the special powers that his friends do.
Anya, being her ever-tactful self, confronts him about this, asking why he still hangs out with them. Xander doesn't have a very good answer for her.
His costume is a generic tuxedo. He wants to be the James Bond guy, the cool, slick guy who saves the day. Instead, Buffy dubs him the cool headwaiter guy.
His fear is manifested when he becomes invisible to the group. He already feels invisible as he feels he has nothing to contribute. He's suddenly an outsider to his high school gang. Then he panics when they, literally, don't see him at all and barely notice his absence.
Willow's trying to get more proficient in the magics. She is an interesting case in this episode as to her fear and how it manifests.
Firstly, she dresses up as Joan of Arc. This speaks to her own perception of herself as a noble woman and a leader. Not to mention, of course, the witchcraft connection. Though Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for the crime of witchcraft, she did not view herself as a witch (Indeed, she was a highly religious woman). Her execution was primarily for reasons of heresy.
Willow expresses for the first time her frustration at being Buffy's sidekick in this episode. She rebels against Buffy's leadership and attempts to take control of the group herself. Willow's character is slowly growing in confidence as she feels comfortable lashing out against her friend in this manner.
Unfortunately, this desire to break out of her "sidekick" role will lead her down a dark path in S6. And her desire to be the leader will be realized in S6's Bargaining Pt. 1 and 2 as she takes charge of the group after Buffy's death. We'll see then that she doesn't handle the responsibility of the leadership role very well.
Once Oz leaves her, Willow is left alone and tries the spell she'd been wanting to do. The spell backfires. This may suggest that Willow has a fear of her own magic. But I think it's something deeper than that.
Since S3's Doppelgangland, Willow has grown much more comfortable in the use of her magic. However, she's aware that her friends aren't fond of her magic attempts and that Giles, especially, questions her magic-use at times.
I think the backfiring of her spell speaks more to her own fear that they are right about her magic-use than anything else. We'll see, consistently, that Willow grows more confident and more arrogant about her abilities. She almost never exhibits fear over her powers until S7 after she'd reached her lowest point.
Giles is so desperately trying to find a life. He embraces the Halloween-spirit.
He does manage to come to the rescue. Though his rescue consists of him leaping onto the scene, with chainsaw in hand, and delivering some exposition.
Does anybody blame this guy for having a midlife crisis?
I think this episode shows us the primary reason for Oz's departure in a couple episodes.
His fear is of the beast within and the harm it may do to Willow.
This has been Oz's fear since S2. There comes a point where the writers must wonder what else they can do with this. Oz isn't an especially deep character, and he doesn't have much in terms of development. He's fairly static, as well, and is left with very little screentime as a result.
I love Oz. But him leaving is probably for the best considering they couldn't figure out what to do with him.
I do love his God costume, though. I don't want to belittle Oz as a character, because I do adore him and love his scenes. But looking at the show in a critical fashion, it's easy to understand why he had to leave.
This is the episode where we first find out about Anya's leporiphobia, or fear of rabbits.
Anya inserts herself back in Xander's life. We'll see in S7's Selfless that Anya has a history of clinging onto whatever she comes across and adopting it for her own identity. It's appropriate, then, that she would cling to Xander, who is indirectly responsible for her becoming human.
For his part, Xander seems largely apathetic towards Anya. While he does express some pleasure in seeing her, he's not very worked up about his date with her. He seems to have reluctantly accepted her in his life and is making the most of it.
Nice Guy Riley tries to give Buffy some life advice. This is furthering their budding relationship. And the astute viewer will notice his hesitation at announcing that he'll be grading papers that night. We all know that he was one of the "NATO" soldiers that Buffy and company ran across on the way to the party.
A frat house unleashes a fear demon. I knew frats were evil.
This episode, though, is a vehicle for exploring our character's fears and psyches.
Not the fear demon, that's for sure. At the risk of sounding obvious, the bad guy of the episode is simply each character's own...uh...fears.
Not an arc episode. Though we do get another glimpse of the Initiative soldiers.
The S4 arc is actually fairly weak. Note that this is episode four, and we have yet to have an actual arc episode. In the previous two seasons, the arc started up with episode three. On the other hand, we'll have to wait until episode seven, The Initiative, to get into the arc.
A surprisingly deep episode, though it may not seem like it at first glance. While it's not a classic in the sense that S2's Halloween was, it is a very good episode that successfully delves into our characters and explores them on several levels.
Special performance award goes to Anthony Stewart Head for the chainsaw acting.
8 out of 10.
When the fear demon finally manifests and is revealed to be a tiny, tiny demon. Besides being absolutely hilarious, it's a good metaphor for the importance of fears and the ability to overcome them.
Episode 4.03: The Harsh Light of Day | Episode 4.05: Beer Bad
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