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Episode 5.04: Out of My Mind | Episode 5.06: Family
Characters:
| Buffy | Xander | Willow |
| Giles | Spike | Riley |
| Anya | Dawn |
Overall (7/10)
Buffy:
Buffy is continuing her juggling act in this episode. She takes on responsibilities and tries to handle them as ably as possible. Slaying, her mom, and Riley now. This episode shows a progression with her handling of Dawn. At the beginning of the episode, Dawn is an annoyance. Not her responsibility. Instead, Dawn is a hindrance to her duties to others.
Buffy: Yeah but she's so annoying, especially now Mom's sick and Dawn's all over her, while I have to be the grown-up...
Once Buffy does the trance and suspects Dawn as being the cause of her mother's illness, she puts Dawn in the "enemy" bracket.
It isn't until the end when the monk tells her the truth that Buffy takes Dawn on as one of her responsibilities, where she'll remain for the rest of the season.
She's doing well with her other duties at the moment. She's firmly taken on the role of caretaker to her mother, cooking breakfast and keeping track of doctor's appointments. She's also taken on Riley as a responsibility, which is probably not the best way to view a boyfriend. She's concerned about his wellbeing if he patrols solo.
In some ways, this points to an intrinsic problem with the Buffy/Riley relationship. Ideally, they should be partners on equal footing, as Riley suggests in this episode. He shouldn't be a "responsibility" to Buffy in that sense. However, they aren't on equal footing. At least, not in that sense. Buffy is stronger than him, and she's the Slayer. Part of her duty is protecting people, and that includes him, especially now that he's not super-strong. Buffy can't let go of that responsibility as it's an innate part of her being the Slayer.
I don't think this means Buffy didn't have feelings for Riley. However, she has duties outside of him that he has no way of helping with. This is bound to cause tension, as it does in this episode (and subsequent episodes).
Perhaps one of the most significant things of this episode is the dichotomy of Joyce and Dawn as Buffy's responsibilities.
Early on, Buffy comes to the conclusion that Joyce's illness is magic-related. Buffy can't fight a medical illness. She has no control over that. She wants to believe it's something supernatural that she can fight and defeat. However, by the end of the episode, it is apparent that Joyce's illness is completely non-supernatural. It's something Buffy can't do anything about.
Dawn, however, is. Indeed, Dawn is supernatural beyond supernatural, against Buffy's wishes. While she desires something to fight with her mother's illness, she's resistant to the idea of her sister being a magically-created person. That's a responsibility that she doesn't necessarily want, but she takes on anyway because, of course, it's her duty.
Joyce's illness, throughout the season, remains something that is out of Buffy's hands. It's the ultimate enemy as Buffy can't even fight against it. As that progresses, she clings more and more to her responsibility towards Dawn, which she can try to do something about.
Xander:
Xander helps out with the shop. Not much else, though.
Willow:
I love Willow's wrapping job. It's worthy of...well...me.
She has an interesting line when she's telling Buffy to go easy on Dawn.
Willow: I can't help it. I have all this involuntary empathy for Dawn, 'cause she's, you know, a big spaz.
Obviously, the monks placed Dawn as Buffy's sister so Buffy would feel extra-obligated to protect her. I've heard it suggested that the monks also affected the other characters to sway them to intuitively protect Dawn, as well (and I've heard this theory extend to Spike, also).
Willow's line here, if this is the case, is telling that she "can't help" speaking up and trying to help Dawn out.
Giles opens up shop and gets his first taste of life in retail. He quickly finds out how exhausting the work can be.
Spike's taken to lurking outside Buffy's window, a spot he'll be at many times throughout the series. He's not very subtle in his actions. Fortunately, Buffy's distracted and doesn't realize the significance of it.
Riley's insecurities surely aren't helped by Dawn's socially-inept tell-all about what Buffy said about him. Against his wishes, Buffy's taken him on as someone to be protected. He wants to be above that to stand beside her as a partner. Unfortunately, the differences in their physical strength (and the fact that Buffy has a calling that he does not) tends to prohibit this from actually happening.
Riley makes a mistake here, though. He misses his opportunity to talk about it. Instead, we get this:
Riley: I really am okay. So I'm not quite super-guy anymore. That was borrowed power anyway, I had to give it back sometime.
Buffy is juggling so many duties right now, she's not very in tune with picking up on things. Especially not when her mother's in trouble. Riley can't rely on her to just know that he's not really okay. Instead of lying to try to make things okay, he needs to be up front with his concerns. Otherwise, Buffy has no way of knowing.
Subtlety does not work on Buffy, Riley. Don't do it.
Anya has just now run out of money. What was she living on in S3-S4? Did she have savings or something?
Well, however that worked, it's apt timing as Giles needs some help in the shop and Anya is bluntly business-oriented. She gets the job.
There is a problem with Dawn in this episode.
They attempt a mislead near the end to make the audience think that Dawn is the Big Bad. This involves having Dawn act all creepy around Joyce so we think she's the one causing the illness.
However, misleads only work if they make sense on rewatch when we have all the information. Dawn's odd behavior and phrasing makes no sense in actual context when you know she's not the enemy. It's a very poorly executed mislead, in that sense.
In other news, Buffy learns that Dawn is the Key. What this means, she's not exactly sure. But it marks the beginning of the S5 arc.
Glory is looking for a Key. Buffy finds out that the Key is Dawn.
This is Glory's first episode. Though we don't learn her name yet (though we get a bit of a hint with Anya mentioning the "Hand of Glory" while Buffy's fighting her), we do get to see her insanity, power, and her mind-suck abilities.
The first overt arc episode of the season. The Big Bad is finally introduced, and we're given the set up of the plot.
A strong episode to kick off the storyline for the season. It does a good job of portraying Buffy's many responsibilities and sets up the plot to come. The only big miss is the poorly executed Dawn mislead at the end.
Special performance award goes to Anthony Stewart Head for the hat scene. Cause it's funny.
7 out of 10.
The final scene between Buffy and Dawn. It begins the start of the more affectionate sister relationship between the two and establishes the point at which Buffy takes Dawn under her protection.
Episode 5.04: Out of My Mind | Episode 5.06: Family
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