Diary of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Virgin – Cordelia and Calendar in; Master out

(Season 1, Episodes 9-12)

If the girls in my high school were allowed to wear dresses and skirts anywhere near as short as Buffy’s generally are, I think I might have flunked a few times to stick around longer.

9 – “The Puppet Show”
(Original Air Date: May 5, 1997) Damn, I should have given Whedon more credit. When Sid the ventriloquist’s dummy started talking I was all “Oh great. Another possessed dummy story. I guess it took Buffy awhile to find a unique voice. God, how many times have we seen this.” Heh. Yeah. Well–

What a great twist on the cliche. There was also some brilliant misdirection. Armin Shimmerman will always be Quark (Star Trek: DS9) to me, though I’ve seen this buttoned down side of him on Boston Legal before. Once Sid was cleared, my finger pointed at Quark.

His ears certainly looked demonic when he was skulking around backstage the talent show. The way the light came through them making ‘em all red and veiny. Creepy. But since it wasn’t him, I wonder how long he’ll be sticking around as the new principal. He’s a fun foil for the Scooby Gang simply because he despises them for no good reason.

As for who it was, having it be the terrible magician was so clever. The guy was in the whole episode, so it’s not like it was no one we’d seen before, but we just pushed him into the background automatically. Nice stuff. I don’t see why the gang still had to perform that awful dramatic piece considering the awesome avant garde performance piece they opened the show with: “Headless Demon Behold the Dummy’s Death.” It moved me.

10 – “Nightmares”
(Original Air Date: May 12, 1997) I’m not sure if I missed it before, or if this was the first one to showcase it but I had no idea that T-Pain was a little white boy when he was younger, much less that he was The Anointed One. I was waiting for him to break into song. I still don’t know the point of this kid.

The rest of the episode was a great exploration of dreams come to life. Buffy’s nightmare about her father not loving her or wanting here was heartbreaking to watch; the dialogue was so cruel it was uncomfortable. Poor Buffy thought it was all real.

The whole episode must have cost quite a bit in special effects, but it was non-stop tension and excitement, just the kind of thing you’d want out of a good horror film. And it was genuinely scary. And Cordelia was nice to Buffy; maybe that was one of her nightmares.

I remember having the “in class in your underwear” dream that Xander lived through, as well as Giles’ nightmare of not being able to read. It’s a shame they couldn’t delve a little deeper into some of these nightmares, as they speak a lot about the character’s motives and fears. Particularly Giles’ fear that Buffy would die on his watch and Buffy’s fear of being turned. Maybe we’ll explore them more later.

11 – “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”
(Original Air Date: May 19, 1997) You know, it’s gotta take a lot of work to make a girl as cute as Buffy, who wears clothes like that, still be so incredibly unpopular. It does help when she spills medieval weaponry from her bookbag in the halls.

Maybe I was mislead by that shot of Buffy as a cheerleader in the intro; which she did for like a day; but I always thought she was one of those “in crowd” girls. And apparently she was at her old school, which fits the character better. You can see the yearning to be accepted at every turn.

Thank god this episode came along to make Cordelia a more rounded person. She was a little quick to accept an invisible girl out to get her, but at least she showed some signs of humility and humanity under her veneer of awfulness.

It was great barely seeing Clea DuVall as the amazing invisible girl. Seeing her in a weird supernatural show makes me miss Carnivale even more. Buffy is so good at taking ordinary teenage things, like kids being “invisible” socially, and creating a supernatural tale around it.

The ending came completely out of left field for me. Now there’s government agencies harvesting people with strange abilities. I think invisibility would be great for covert ops, I just didn’t think this show was going to go in that direction. Now I have to wonder if any of this will come back.

12 – “When She Was Bad” [SEASON FINALE]
(Original Air Date: June 2, 1997) Buffy really needs to invest in a superhero costume. It certainly wasn’t practical to follow the Anointed One into the depths of the city to face the Master in her fancy gown. Especially considering how much her mother clearly payed for it.

I was glad to see the return of Miss Calendar to the gang, and we knew Angel would be back for the finale. Cordelia’s timely arrival, however, seemed a bit more forced. Granted, she’d just been exposed to an invisible girl, and she has been a supposed series regular since the first episode, but it was still a “convenient” appearance; there to save the girls in the nick of time.

So that’s it, then. The Hellmouth is closed? Really? Sure, the Master’s dead, which made all the vampires die? Run away? Suddenly realize they’d left the stovetop on? Who knows. Now the show’s wide open, and I guess Cordelia will at least be more involved in some way. Will she be less of a bitch? Will I actually start to like her?

If I’d been watching this show when it was on, I think I would have been well hooked by now. I absolutely love the writing on this show, which I expected considering how sharply written Firefly was. But I love the characters equally, and really am intrigued to see where six more years will take them in their lives.

That and you all are telling me that season two is when it gets really good. I’m liking it already, so I’m definitely looking forward to that, starting next week.

Previously on Diary of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Virgin
Season 1, Episodes 1-4
Season 1, Episodes 5-8

Clacked by Jason Hughes
on Jun 09, 2009 @ 11:00 EST5EDT