Buffy 4.15: "This Year's Girl"
Written by Douglas Petrie
Directed by Michael Gershman
In which Faith awakens from her coma as Buffy and Riley begin preparing a response to Adam and his unknown agenda, and it doesn’t take her long to generate serious havoc…
Status Report
When this two-part episode was originally aired, one of the common criticisms was that it disrupted the flow of the Initiative plot thread by bringing back issues from the third season. But it doesn’t take much to recognize that the return of Faith serves a distinct purpose. Faith was meant to be Buffy’s dark reflection: Buffy as she would have been without the support system she had managed to gain for herself. The fourth season has given Buffy plenty of reason to question her own assumptions about her world and her place in it; thus Faith’s return provides the means to point out what Buffy has lost sight of in her own life.
Being with Riley has presented Buffy with the kind of focus that was missing from her life earlier in the season. Like most of the other relationships among the Scoobies, this has resulted in the slow but steady isolation from others in her life. In many respects, Buffy has taken all of the things that made her more emotionally balanced than Faith and shoved them away. That’s fairly normal for young adults of the college age, but in Buffy’s case, the effect is somewhat more profound.
The teaser begins as a dream sequence which strongly suggests that Buffy and Faith retain some level of psychic connection. Immediately the theme is reinforced: Faith feels like Buffy forgot about her, and in a sense, abandoned her to her condition. Faith’s expectations aren’t exactly sane, but Faith is on the brink of a major breakdown. That doesn’t mean that Faith is wrong. Symbolically, “forgetting Faith” means that Buffy has forgotten the lessons about life that Faith’s example provided.
Perhaps more importantly, Joss inserts one of his many examples of foreshadowing for the fifth season. Faith and Buffy both talk about the impending arrival of “little sister”. This is, of course, a reference to Dawn and her impact on Buffy’s life. Dawn’s arrival brings about Buffy’s foretold death, which in and of itself is part of a process that results in the transformation of the Chosen One into the Chosen Army. Since Faith must metaphorically die as well for that to happen, so she can be reborn as Buffy’s ally, it makes sense that the two Slayers would be bound by a common future.
Meanwhile, Buffy is focused entirely upon facing Adam. Xander tries his hardest to contribute, but when he’s hurt, his pain is unnoticed. Giles tries to be a mentor, but Buffy follows her own counsel. Willow is still left to provide friendly support, but there’s a sense that Willow is the background noise to Buffy’s continuing dialogue of worry about Riley. Indeed, despite the obsession about Adam, Buffy’s entire world is focused on Riley.
Similarly, having found his world torn apart and tossed inside out, Riley is focused only on Buffy and the stability she represents. His friendships with Forrest and Graham are secondary, and in effect, that weakens the utility of the Initiative in the wake of so much tragedy. Riley could be focusing on the threat and helping the others see reason. Instead, blinded by his own grief and confusion, he complicates the situation and makes it easier for Adam later in the season.
Meanwhile, Faith’s internal fantasy world churns on, in which the Mayor is a charming father figure with little or no responsibility for his own diabolical choices. Buffy is a violent destroyer of dreams, dedicated to killing what little Faith has gained in her life. Perhaps even more importantly, Faith has convinced herself that she’s innocent of any moral culpability for her actions. In her mind, Buffy disrupted the proper order of things, in which Faith gets everything she wants.
Buffy discovers that Adam has been studying human and now demon biology. This was still the point at which Adam’s motivations were undefined, so the emphasis placed on this is somewhat out of proportion with the overall arc. Despite this revelation, Buffy’s main goal is rescuing Riley from the Initiative, rather than trying to get the Initiative to work with her in defeating Adam. When Riley reveals his departure from the Initiative, both he and Buffy conclude that together, they can do anything. That relationship is so strongly reinforced that it’s clear where the story is going: Riley, like Angel before him, represents the center of Buffy’s world.
The final dream sequence is supposed to symbolize the fact that Faith kills the version of Buffy hunting and hounding her inside her head, which gives Faith the ability to focus her energy on waking up. She picks up where she left off, but when it’s clear that time has passed and her “father” is dead and gone, her focus is on getting away and gaining payback.
Buffy and Riley are finally placed on something of a level playing field. Like Buffy, Riley was meant to be a soldier taking orders. Buffy came to the conclusion that the Watchers’ Council was corrupt and manipulative; Riley was forced to see that the Initiative was using him for all the wrong reasons. And like Buffy, Riley is now forced to figure out what to do with a life where all the basic rules have changed. Where Buffy decided to break from the Council and fight on her own, Riley still has that choice to make.
If there’s one aspect of this episode that doesn’t quite come together as it should, it’s the logic behind calling in the Watchers. The idea is that Faith must be dealt with, and now that she’s awake, a team must be sent in. But why wait until Faith wakes up to take action, when it just gives her a chance to fight back? Why not kill her, allowing a new Slayer to be called? One explanation is that the Watchers blame Buffy and her allies for Faith, and as such, they don’t want a new Slayer to be called until Buffy’s influence is out of the picture. From their point of view, Buffy is unlikely to be around for much longer, so why not keep Faith alive but out of commission until a new Slayer is needed, since Buffy will do the dirty work for them?
While Buffy and the others discuss strategy, Faith stands outside, gaining knowledge of the new reality. It’s clear to Faith that Buffy has moved on from Angel to Riley, and that only makes Buffy’s “betrayal” that much worse. It’s a bit confusing that Buffy receives the news about Faith at Giles’ home; exactly who knew to call her there? But the point is that Faith gets to see Buffy’s reaction to her sudden revival, at least the part where everyone immediately wants to take her down. It doesn’t exactly give Faith a reason to consider the sane.
It’s not a good sign that Buffy told Riley the sanitized version of the story with Faith, because it gives Faith an opening. But Faith has plenty of ammunition as it is. Faith immediately hits Buffy where it hurts, pointing out that Buffy hasn’t learned a thing about herself since beating Faith at her own game. Instead of coming to terms with the part of her that resonates with Faith, Buffy has rejected that side of her personality. Faith may have perspective issues, but she’s not entirely wrong.
Along the way, there’s more Willow/Tara bonding, which seems to be designed to highlight the woes of the wardrobe department. Way too often in this episode, the wardrobe seems to be cobbled together from the rejects of the local thrift store. Sure, some college students live on thrift store clothes, but not all of them! Especially someone like Buffy, who always wanted to walk a little on the wild side. Aside from the occasional pair of leathers, Buffy and her friends seem stuck in some bohemian fashion hell. It doesn’t help that the producers intentionally made sure Tara looked frumpy, right down to the badly applied lipstick. It makes Faith look all the more hotness in her skintight vinyl!
The scene also shows how far Willow has come. Once upon a time, Willow was Tara, the one with the sense of awe at the thought of combating evil and hanging out with the Slayer. Now she’s the wise and experienced fighter and magic user. How often did Willow look like she was “swimming”? It also gives them another reason to get close, which is another step on the fairly obvious road to the sex.
Giles and Xander continue with their odd partnership, borne earlier in the season when they were the odd men out, and demonstrate an unfortunate level of stupidity in the process. Giles has been rather foolish all season when it comes to thinking of Spike as a vampire in reform; he, of all the Scoobies, should be the least inclined to harbor such false hopes. Spike’s response to Giles and Xander is absolutely hilarious, if only because they should have seen it coming. (One could claim that this reveals some of the aimless bad writing of the fourth season, based on the poor logic involved, but it’s a minor quibble of the episode.)
It’s fascinating to watch how completely the Mayor manipulates Faith so long after the fact. Sure, for her, it’s been a matter of hours or days since they were both looking at a bright future. But he’s damned good at making her believe that her options were tied to his fortunes, and that without him, she’s looking at a very short life span. Giving her the device, it seems, was a failsafe; was the whole speech meant to convince her that escaping into another life might be the only way to escape her past? Having her actually seek redemption, after all, would require them to believe that what she had done was wrong.
Faith does the somewhat predictable thing and takes the one step necessary to draw Buffy out: she takes her mother hostage and waits for Buffy to work it out. That gives Faith a chance to really display her lack of self-awareness. Joyce, long since dismissed out of Buffy’s complicated life, does a good job of hiding the fact that Faith hits on some uncomfortable truths. The most compelling madness is rooted within some consistently twisted perception of reality, after all.
The fight through the Summers home is one of the more brutal fight scenes of the season, punctuated by the deeply rooted hatred driving both Buffy and Faith to beat down the other. The “Freaky Friday” effect of the Mayor’s device is a bit cliché, but considering the theme for the season, it actually brings Buffy’s tribulations to something of a logical head: she is now literally not herself.
This is also the beginning of the end for Faith. In a flash, she has everything she ever wanted from Buffy; she has the life that she always thought Buffy had squandered. While Buffy struggles to regain her identity (partially satisfying the metaphorical side of the season arc), Faith begins to recognize that she cannot escape herself. That brings her own character’s arc to a low point, as she seeks self-destruction on “Angel”.
As the first part of a two-part story, much of what happens in this episode is setting up the character conflicts and the probable consequences. Buffy doesn’t ask for Faith to switch bodies with her or come gunning for her loved ones, but her lack of attention to anyone but Riley and her dishonesty towards him open the door for what Faith does in the second half. While the writers are forced to walk a fine line between having the characters work together to solve problems while also growing apart, this episode focuses so much on Faith, Buffy, and Riley that these issues are more obvious.
But at this point in the season, the writers were openly admitting that the conflicting demands of the season’s theme, in concert with a Big Bad that was developed in a haphazard fashion. So it’s not a question of whether or not there are issues. By now, it was a question of making the best out of a flawed situation. Bringing back Faith for a couple episodes was a good move, based on her popularity, and it helps to explore the season’s theme. In this particular case, the episode’s strengths outweigh the underlying weaknesses.
Memorable Quotes
FORREST: “The shish kabob that walks like a man!”
XANDER: “Will hiding in a cavern with stockpiled chocolate goods be any part of this plan?”
BUFFY: “No.”
XANDER: “Told you…”
XANDER: “I’d hate to see the pursuit of a homicidal maniac get in the way of pursuing a homicidal maniac…”
WILLOW: “Ooo…I have an idea! Beat the crap out of her!”
BUFFY: “I’m telling ya, if I were her, I’d get outta Dodge post-hasty.”
FAITH: “But you’re not me…”
TARA: “I’m not so good with the…”
WILLOW: “Swimming?”
TARA: “Five by five? Five what by five what?”
WILLOW: “See, that’s the thing…no one knows!”
SPIKE: “Can’t any one of your damn little Scooby club at least try to remember I hate you all?”
XANDER: “We’re dumb.”
FAITH: “How do I look?”
JOYCE: “Psychotic.”
FAITH: “Hmm…I was shooting for sultry, but hey…”
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode took the season’s theme of self-identity and built on them by using the previous season’s themes as a strong foundation. Bringing back Faith was a good idea, if only to help make up for some of the uncertainty in the rest of the season arc. The writers do a convincing job of giving Buffy reasons for making the mistakes that cost her in this episode, and that provides a good lead into the second half of the story.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
Directed by Michael Gershman
In which Faith awakens from her coma as Buffy and Riley begin preparing a response to Adam and his unknown agenda, and it doesn’t take her long to generate serious havoc…
Status Report
When this two-part episode was originally aired, one of the common criticisms was that it disrupted the flow of the Initiative plot thread by bringing back issues from the third season. But it doesn’t take much to recognize that the return of Faith serves a distinct purpose. Faith was meant to be Buffy’s dark reflection: Buffy as she would have been without the support system she had managed to gain for herself. The fourth season has given Buffy plenty of reason to question her own assumptions about her world and her place in it; thus Faith’s return provides the means to point out what Buffy has lost sight of in her own life.
Being with Riley has presented Buffy with the kind of focus that was missing from her life earlier in the season. Like most of the other relationships among the Scoobies, this has resulted in the slow but steady isolation from others in her life. In many respects, Buffy has taken all of the things that made her more emotionally balanced than Faith and shoved them away. That’s fairly normal for young adults of the college age, but in Buffy’s case, the effect is somewhat more profound.
The teaser begins as a dream sequence which strongly suggests that Buffy and Faith retain some level of psychic connection. Immediately the theme is reinforced: Faith feels like Buffy forgot about her, and in a sense, abandoned her to her condition. Faith’s expectations aren’t exactly sane, but Faith is on the brink of a major breakdown. That doesn’t mean that Faith is wrong. Symbolically, “forgetting Faith” means that Buffy has forgotten the lessons about life that Faith’s example provided.
Perhaps more importantly, Joss inserts one of his many examples of foreshadowing for the fifth season. Faith and Buffy both talk about the impending arrival of “little sister”. This is, of course, a reference to Dawn and her impact on Buffy’s life. Dawn’s arrival brings about Buffy’s foretold death, which in and of itself is part of a process that results in the transformation of the Chosen One into the Chosen Army. Since Faith must metaphorically die as well for that to happen, so she can be reborn as Buffy’s ally, it makes sense that the two Slayers would be bound by a common future.
Meanwhile, Buffy is focused entirely upon facing Adam. Xander tries his hardest to contribute, but when he’s hurt, his pain is unnoticed. Giles tries to be a mentor, but Buffy follows her own counsel. Willow is still left to provide friendly support, but there’s a sense that Willow is the background noise to Buffy’s continuing dialogue of worry about Riley. Indeed, despite the obsession about Adam, Buffy’s entire world is focused on Riley.
Similarly, having found his world torn apart and tossed inside out, Riley is focused only on Buffy and the stability she represents. His friendships with Forrest and Graham are secondary, and in effect, that weakens the utility of the Initiative in the wake of so much tragedy. Riley could be focusing on the threat and helping the others see reason. Instead, blinded by his own grief and confusion, he complicates the situation and makes it easier for Adam later in the season.
Meanwhile, Faith’s internal fantasy world churns on, in which the Mayor is a charming father figure with little or no responsibility for his own diabolical choices. Buffy is a violent destroyer of dreams, dedicated to killing what little Faith has gained in her life. Perhaps even more importantly, Faith has convinced herself that she’s innocent of any moral culpability for her actions. In her mind, Buffy disrupted the proper order of things, in which Faith gets everything she wants.
Buffy discovers that Adam has been studying human and now demon biology. This was still the point at which Adam’s motivations were undefined, so the emphasis placed on this is somewhat out of proportion with the overall arc. Despite this revelation, Buffy’s main goal is rescuing Riley from the Initiative, rather than trying to get the Initiative to work with her in defeating Adam. When Riley reveals his departure from the Initiative, both he and Buffy conclude that together, they can do anything. That relationship is so strongly reinforced that it’s clear where the story is going: Riley, like Angel before him, represents the center of Buffy’s world.
The final dream sequence is supposed to symbolize the fact that Faith kills the version of Buffy hunting and hounding her inside her head, which gives Faith the ability to focus her energy on waking up. She picks up where she left off, but when it’s clear that time has passed and her “father” is dead and gone, her focus is on getting away and gaining payback.
Buffy and Riley are finally placed on something of a level playing field. Like Buffy, Riley was meant to be a soldier taking orders. Buffy came to the conclusion that the Watchers’ Council was corrupt and manipulative; Riley was forced to see that the Initiative was using him for all the wrong reasons. And like Buffy, Riley is now forced to figure out what to do with a life where all the basic rules have changed. Where Buffy decided to break from the Council and fight on her own, Riley still has that choice to make.
If there’s one aspect of this episode that doesn’t quite come together as it should, it’s the logic behind calling in the Watchers. The idea is that Faith must be dealt with, and now that she’s awake, a team must be sent in. But why wait until Faith wakes up to take action, when it just gives her a chance to fight back? Why not kill her, allowing a new Slayer to be called? One explanation is that the Watchers blame Buffy and her allies for Faith, and as such, they don’t want a new Slayer to be called until Buffy’s influence is out of the picture. From their point of view, Buffy is unlikely to be around for much longer, so why not keep Faith alive but out of commission until a new Slayer is needed, since Buffy will do the dirty work for them?
While Buffy and the others discuss strategy, Faith stands outside, gaining knowledge of the new reality. It’s clear to Faith that Buffy has moved on from Angel to Riley, and that only makes Buffy’s “betrayal” that much worse. It’s a bit confusing that Buffy receives the news about Faith at Giles’ home; exactly who knew to call her there? But the point is that Faith gets to see Buffy’s reaction to her sudden revival, at least the part where everyone immediately wants to take her down. It doesn’t exactly give Faith a reason to consider the sane.
It’s not a good sign that Buffy told Riley the sanitized version of the story with Faith, because it gives Faith an opening. But Faith has plenty of ammunition as it is. Faith immediately hits Buffy where it hurts, pointing out that Buffy hasn’t learned a thing about herself since beating Faith at her own game. Instead of coming to terms with the part of her that resonates with Faith, Buffy has rejected that side of her personality. Faith may have perspective issues, but she’s not entirely wrong.
Along the way, there’s more Willow/Tara bonding, which seems to be designed to highlight the woes of the wardrobe department. Way too often in this episode, the wardrobe seems to be cobbled together from the rejects of the local thrift store. Sure, some college students live on thrift store clothes, but not all of them! Especially someone like Buffy, who always wanted to walk a little on the wild side. Aside from the occasional pair of leathers, Buffy and her friends seem stuck in some bohemian fashion hell. It doesn’t help that the producers intentionally made sure Tara looked frumpy, right down to the badly applied lipstick. It makes Faith look all the more hotness in her skintight vinyl!
The scene also shows how far Willow has come. Once upon a time, Willow was Tara, the one with the sense of awe at the thought of combating evil and hanging out with the Slayer. Now she’s the wise and experienced fighter and magic user. How often did Willow look like she was “swimming”? It also gives them another reason to get close, which is another step on the fairly obvious road to the sex.
Giles and Xander continue with their odd partnership, borne earlier in the season when they were the odd men out, and demonstrate an unfortunate level of stupidity in the process. Giles has been rather foolish all season when it comes to thinking of Spike as a vampire in reform; he, of all the Scoobies, should be the least inclined to harbor such false hopes. Spike’s response to Giles and Xander is absolutely hilarious, if only because they should have seen it coming. (One could claim that this reveals some of the aimless bad writing of the fourth season, based on the poor logic involved, but it’s a minor quibble of the episode.)
It’s fascinating to watch how completely the Mayor manipulates Faith so long after the fact. Sure, for her, it’s been a matter of hours or days since they were both looking at a bright future. But he’s damned good at making her believe that her options were tied to his fortunes, and that without him, she’s looking at a very short life span. Giving her the device, it seems, was a failsafe; was the whole speech meant to convince her that escaping into another life might be the only way to escape her past? Having her actually seek redemption, after all, would require them to believe that what she had done was wrong.
Faith does the somewhat predictable thing and takes the one step necessary to draw Buffy out: she takes her mother hostage and waits for Buffy to work it out. That gives Faith a chance to really display her lack of self-awareness. Joyce, long since dismissed out of Buffy’s complicated life, does a good job of hiding the fact that Faith hits on some uncomfortable truths. The most compelling madness is rooted within some consistently twisted perception of reality, after all.
The fight through the Summers home is one of the more brutal fight scenes of the season, punctuated by the deeply rooted hatred driving both Buffy and Faith to beat down the other. The “Freaky Friday” effect of the Mayor’s device is a bit cliché, but considering the theme for the season, it actually brings Buffy’s tribulations to something of a logical head: she is now literally not herself.
This is also the beginning of the end for Faith. In a flash, she has everything she ever wanted from Buffy; she has the life that she always thought Buffy had squandered. While Buffy struggles to regain her identity (partially satisfying the metaphorical side of the season arc), Faith begins to recognize that she cannot escape herself. That brings her own character’s arc to a low point, as she seeks self-destruction on “Angel”.
As the first part of a two-part story, much of what happens in this episode is setting up the character conflicts and the probable consequences. Buffy doesn’t ask for Faith to switch bodies with her or come gunning for her loved ones, but her lack of attention to anyone but Riley and her dishonesty towards him open the door for what Faith does in the second half. While the writers are forced to walk a fine line between having the characters work together to solve problems while also growing apart, this episode focuses so much on Faith, Buffy, and Riley that these issues are more obvious.
But at this point in the season, the writers were openly admitting that the conflicting demands of the season’s theme, in concert with a Big Bad that was developed in a haphazard fashion. So it’s not a question of whether or not there are issues. By now, it was a question of making the best out of a flawed situation. Bringing back Faith for a couple episodes was a good move, based on her popularity, and it helps to explore the season’s theme. In this particular case, the episode’s strengths outweigh the underlying weaknesses.
Memorable Quotes
FORREST: “The shish kabob that walks like a man!”
XANDER: “Will hiding in a cavern with stockpiled chocolate goods be any part of this plan?”
BUFFY: “No.”
XANDER: “Told you…”
XANDER: “I’d hate to see the pursuit of a homicidal maniac get in the way of pursuing a homicidal maniac…”
WILLOW: “Ooo…I have an idea! Beat the crap out of her!”
BUFFY: “I’m telling ya, if I were her, I’d get outta Dodge post-hasty.”
FAITH: “But you’re not me…”
TARA: “I’m not so good with the…”
WILLOW: “Swimming?”
TARA: “Five by five? Five what by five what?”
WILLOW: “See, that’s the thing…no one knows!”
SPIKE: “Can’t any one of your damn little Scooby club at least try to remember I hate you all?”
XANDER: “We’re dumb.”
FAITH: “How do I look?”
JOYCE: “Psychotic.”
FAITH: “Hmm…I was shooting for sultry, but hey…”
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode took the season’s theme of self-identity and built on them by using the previous season’s themes as a strong foundation. Bringing back Faith was a good idea, if only to help make up for some of the uncertainty in the rest of the season arc. The writers do a convincing job of giving Buffy reasons for making the mistakes that cost her in this episode, and that provides a good lead into the second half of the story.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
posted by John Keegan | 18:43
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