Season 1, Episode 12

Two exciting pieces of new: First, we are done with Season One of Buffy! Hooray! Second, tomorrow we will be posting about Season One as a whole IN VIDEO BLOG FORM! In other news, Sarah and Kali are much better at typing words than speaking them, which you will learn tomorrow.

“Prophecy Girl”

The episode starts with the love triangle and I am just so over it. I’m glad that our main characters finally get the courage to do something about it. Xander, after practicing his speech to Buffy on Willow (which is such a douchy thing) FINALLY asks Buffy out. She of course turns him down very politely and Xander gets all whiny. This is where Willow stands up for herself too. When Xander says that Willow can go with him, she tells him how she’s not gonna be his consolation prize. Does this remind anyone else of Goblet of Fire? In fact, this whole episode reminds me of different parts of Harry Potter. That’s honestly not saying much because dryer lint reminds me of Harry Potter.

Moving on to the main part of the episode- Buffy is going to die. There is a prophecy that says that The Master will kill the Slayer, so obviously that is true and you can’t do anything to stop it. I absolutely love Buffy’s reaction here because it’s so… real. She doesn’t just cry, or get angry, or deny it- she does them all. She reacts like a 16-year-old girl would. She asks if it’ll hurt, she asks about who the next Slayer will be, and the whole time our hearts are shattering into tiny little pieces. We see her try to convince her mom to leave town with her, but since she can’t explain the real reason why, her mom assumes it’s a silly teenage problem.

Favorite Line: "Giles, I'm 16 years old. I don't wanna die."

We cut to a scene where Willow and Cordelia find the bodies of several classmates. I absolutely love what Willow says to Buffy when she is telling her the story. “It wasn't our world anymore. They made it theirs.” It’s a really powerful message about how evil takes everything good and happy and twists it into their evil-version of it. I think it is right here when Buffy changes her mind about “quitting”. Like Harry Potter, Buffy makes the decision to face her death and knows that she can’t tell her friends because they will try to stop her.

She does go to talk to Giles however. This is another reason why I love Giles and wish he could be my boyfriend. He actually plans on fighting the Master himself. Even after Buffy tells him that she made up her mind not to “quit” but to go down there, he tells her that he “made up his mind first” and that HE DOESN’T CARE WHAT A BOOK SAYS. Never thought I’d hear Giles say those words. But it’s really endearing how Giles is a Watcher, minimally trained in fighting, but he’s willing to pretty much die for Buffy. Buffy finds it sweet, but also knows it must be her, so she knocks him out cold. Harsh.

I still love you, you sexy librarian.

 The Scooby Gang finds out what all is going on. Giles again has some great lines. “As the soon-to-be-purple area on my jaw will indicate, I did not let her go.” Touché. Xander does the heroic thing her and goes to Angel for help. Xander pretty much hates Angel, he has no fighting abilities of his own, but he knows that Buffy will die and he has to do something to stop it. I also have to say that Angel is kind of an ass here. I expect him to be an ass to Xander, but not when it comes to saving Buffy. It just seems out of character for him not to be immediately jumping into action to save Buffy. I also have to say, that I’m shipping Xander/Angel a little bit right now. They bicker like a married couple.

ANGEL: What.

XANDER: You were looking at my neck.

ANGEL: What?

XANDER: You were checking out my neck! I saw that.

ANGEL: No I wasn't.

XANDER: You just keep your distance, pal.

ANGEL: I wasn't looking at your neck!

XANDER: I told you to eat before we left.

This is the part that I really dislike. Why the hell doesn’t Buffy fight? The Master knocks her weapon away and grabs her from behind, so her super-Slayer reaction is to freeze in terror? Fight, kick, scream, DO SOMETHING. The Master reveals that because she came down there, he will be able to go free. Oh… Guess you feel kinda dumb now Buffy.

Angel and Xander find her. Xander gets to revive her. Everybody cheers because Buffy is alive. Cue the WORST WALKING MONTAGE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Seriously, it’s beyond awful. Speaking of awful, could the thing that comes out of the Hellmouth be any less scary? Everyone is freaking, but I would just go grab a bottle of Weed-Be-Gone, problem solved. Then Buffy says stupid little quips to The Master, they have a short, dumb fight, and then continuity errors piss me off. I would be fine with the Master’s body leaving behind bones if it was explained WHY. Since he is the only vampire we ever see this happen to, I feel like it really needs to be explained.

Everybody leaves to go to the prom, and I’m left feeling unsatisfied with the ending. I liked when the beginning of this episode was going, but I just feel let down about this non-epic battle at the end, especially for a season finale episode. I will say that I enjoyed all of our supporting characters heroism. Even Cordelia got to be a bad ass. That’s because:

"Everyone's a hero in their own way!"

Sarah's Notes!

Basically, Kali said everything I would want to about the episode but I do have two things to add.

1) "Three in one night; Giles would be proud." Buffy sounds like a whore with Giles as her pimp. This line is hysterical and caused Kali and I to laugh a lot.

2) I think it's incredibly interesting how much Buffy's dress was brought up. As we all know now, I am a huge gender and sexuality nerd (that's a strange sentence.) What interests me about the use of Buffy's dress in this episode are all the times in which people mention it and how central it seemed to be. First, Buffy tells her mom they need to leave and her mom responds by showing her that she bought her a nice dress. Buffy is pretty much speechless and it's sort of adorable watching her act like a normal teenager instead of the Slayer who is destined to die.

Next, Buffy is wearing the dress when she visits Willow to comfort her. As Buffy's leaving, Willow tells Buffy she likes her dress, again showing us how Buffy is still a teenage girl with friends. Again, it's sort of heartbreaking to watch this because Buffy thinks that this is the last time she'll see Willow and the last thoughts spoken by her best friend are of how pretty her outfit looks.

The next occurrence is the most interesting. When Buffy goes down to the Master, he taunts her and ultimately kills her. Before leaving to go reek havoc on the world, he tells her that he likes her dress. This is a strange comment for him to make so I have to assume Joss meant something significant by him saying this to her. My belief is that, by the Master saying this, he is belittling her and showing us that Buffy is a weak little girl. We've seen her all season fight different evils as the all powerful Slayer and now this episode we're constantly being told that she is a teenage girl.

Now, because Joss is amazing, he brings Buffy back and has her acknowledge what has been shoved down our throats the whole episode. When seeing the Master again she says that she's "still pretty, which is more than he can say." Buffy takes complete ownership over the fact that she is a teenage girl but also recognizes that she is also the Slayer and she can balance being a powerful badass along with caring about having *enter whatever teenage girls are interested in here.*

After she beats the bad guy, one last time Buffy is told that she looks pretty confirming that her friends also recognize her as being unique. She's Buffy Summers: Chosen One and normal high school student all rolled into one.