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ravenya003 · 4 months

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Witch, S01E03

Sorry, this one's a bit late as I had to work Sunday.

The second episode of any long-running series is always interesting to watch, as well as a tricky thing to achieve. The writers are still setting up the character beats, the story-arcs, the rules of the world – basically, the general FEEL of the show. It’s easy to get things wrong, as you can’t take any big swings this early on, but you also don’t want to get so bogged down in set-up that you neglect to tell a story.

Even more so than the pilot, the second episode should clue the viewer in on what exactly they'll be tuning in for very week. If the pilot is the hook, then the sophomore episode has to reel you in; has to be a textbook example of what the show actually is.

(Also, a lot of the money shots will have already been spent on the first episode in order to get everyone’s attention, so you’re probably going to be working with a smaller budget as well).

And yes, I realize this is technically the show’s third episode, but Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest originally aired on the same night and are two halves of a single story. For all intents and purposes, Witch is the show’s sophomore episode.

For what it’s worth, I think Witch nails it. The episode introduces the Monster of the Week format, letting the audience know that Buffy won’t just be fighting vampires. It shows us what exactly Giles’s role as Buffy’s Watcher encompasses, and demonstrates that Willow and Xander are committing themselves to Buffy’s fight against evil – partly because they’re good people who know it’s the right thing to do, and partly because they’re invested in Buffy herself.

It even introduces a fairly important recurring character: Amy Madison, who will appear in almost every season of the show henceforth (season five is the only one she sits out).

Obviously, witches will soon become a huge part of the show’s lore – second only to demons and vampires – and the episode establishes a few key traits about them, from the use of potions and spell books to the fact that the really evil witches get a case of Black Eyes of Evil when they're mad.

(We will see this identical eye-colour on another witch further down the track, and if you can’t guess who it is, just follow the link to the TV Tropes page...)

Most importantly, it cements the central theme of “high school is hell,” with various supernatural threats being elaborate metaphors for the trials and tribulations that teenagers have to go through – in this case, overbearing parents trying to live vicariously through their children. In the real world, Catherine would be a stage mum. In Sunnydale, she’s a witch that can magically switch bodies with her daughter. Such is life on the Hellmouth.

It kicks off with Buffy wanting to join the cheerleading squad and Giles being singularly unimpressed. But Buffy’s reasoning kind of breaks my heart – she used to do it before her calling to vampire-slaying, and she wants to start up again because she just wants something normal and safe in her life. She looks so young and perky! Sarah Michelle Gellar still has baby fat in her cheeks!

Of course, that’s the cue to cut to a witch’s lair filled with bubbling cauldron and Barbie voodoo dolls.

During try-outs, Buffy is introduced to Amy Madison, and it’s established that she and Willow have been friends for a long time. I like that the two of them have this history together, and Willow shares some pertinent details about their friendship – most importantly that the two of them used to sneak brownies when Amy’s calorie-counting mother wasn’t looking.

(This is something that Buffy will use to clock what’s really going on towards the end of the episode, and even though I’ve probably watched Witch a dozen times, I’ve only just realized this detail is deliberately planted early on).

Amy comes across as pretty nice in this scene, so it’s odd to recall that she’s already Catherine.

There’s an amusing moment when Willow states that a cheerleader called “Amber” trained with someone called “Benson.” Later an actual Amber Benson will join the cast. But that’s not nearly as funny as Xander being given the line: “no need to drive it into my head like a railroad spike”. Just... wow.

During try-outs, the star performer Amber spontaneously combusts, and the best part is that Buffy tackles her to the (very hard gym) floor before dousing the flames. Seriously Buffy, was the full-body tackle necessary?

Two good character beats: Giles is extremely chipper about all the fascinating (and deadly) supernatural threats they’re likely to face thanks to living on a Hellmouth, while Willow and Xander eagerly volunteer to help in the investigation. They dub themselves the Slayerettes, a term that I don’t think ever comes up again across the entire course of the show. Perhaps it’s just as well.

Buffy is cautious about their enthusiasm and delivers a basic warning, but then pretty much gives them the green light to get involved. I like that Buffy’s defining attribute as a Slayer (that she has a network of friends that contribute their own skills) is introduced in such a low-key way. Hey civilians, you want to help me fight witches and vampires? Sure, why not!

In hindsight, Amy talking up her mother, trash-talking her dad, and complaining that “I can’t get my body to move like [my mother’s]” are hints as to what’s actually going on here.

There’s a red herring scene with Amy hearing spooky noises in the locker room and then getting threatened by Cordelia, nicely setting her up as a victim and not a culprit.

Neither Buffy or Amy made the squad and the former is genuinely empathetic towards the latter. That’s Buffy’s other great strength – she makes friends easily because she truly cares about people.

Ah, Sunnydale faculty members! I always love seeing glimpses of the high school staff on this show, whether it’s Mr Pole (driving instructor) or Dr Gregory (the biology teacher who gets decapitated in the very next episode). Just imagine having a fulltime job that gives you a front-row seat to all the weird shit the Hellmouth can spit out – and that’s on top of having to teach a bunch of teenagers high school curriculum. It can’t be a coincidence that all of these actors chose to play their characters as So Very Weary.

In this episode alone Mr Pole is nearly killed by Cordelia during driver’s ed, and Dr Gregory is witness to a student having her mouth magically sealed shut. How did Sunnydale Syndrome account for that?

The gang are attempting to concoct a potion in a beaker that will reveal whether or not Amy is a witch, and not doing a particularly subtle job of it as they gather ingredients from biology class – though it is interesting to note that Willow is the one doing most of the brewing. We’re looking at her first brush with witchcraft.

Buffy “accidentally” spills the potion on Amy’s arm and it turns blue, indicating that she is a witch – right at the same time another cheerleader starts panicking because her mouth has disappeared. It's a horrifying thing to witness, but Buffy notices that Amy looks just as freaked out as everyone else.

This is a bit of an odd red herring, as the gang are now working with the hypothesis that Amy is the witch, but unaware of what she’s actually doing – even though the very next scene demonstrates (to the audience at least) that she’s completely in control of events, going home and ordering her cowed “mother” to do her homework for her. I suppose we have to chalk her reaction in biology class down to Catherine’s acting skills.

In any case, she also knows that Buffy is onto her, and reveals that she’s nabbed her bracelet. So Buffy is next on Catherine’s hitlist.

Buffy’s response to the spell is to go hyperactive, then collapse. Giles identifies the “bloodstone vengeance” spell pretty quickly and accurately (which feels like it could be a hint as to the darker proclivities of his past BUT belies his statement later on that he’s never cast a spell before. Hey – it's the second episode. They’re still figuring things out).

While Xander and Willow watch Amy cheer at the basketball game, Buffy and Giles just leave the school grounds for Amy’s house. It’s kind of funny that this happens all the time, and Giles never got in trouble for it. Nobody ever noticed that the school librarian was spending an inordinate amount of time with a student?

As Giles confronts who he thinks is Catherine, Buffy notices a plate of cookies on the floor and realizes that she’s Amy. In doing this, she’s clearly recalling Willow’s story about how they used to eat brownies together, but this is the first time I’ve noticed that link. Until now, I always just assumed that a grown woman curling up with a plate of brownies struck Buffy as more of a teenage girl thing to do.

At the same time, Catherine is stuttering: “dad... her dad left...” and I love her hysterical little laugh when she says: “you know, kids these days!” All this is a tip-off that Catherine has switched bodies with her daughter, and poor Amy soon crumbles. About a month ago she woke up in her mother’s bed and realized her body had been stolen, which is a genuinely terrifying scenario. I’ve always been creeped out by Body Snatching stories.

Giles investigates the attic and finds that it’s a witch’s lair filled with clichés: a cauldron, magical tomes, and the inevitable Cat Scare. I’m pretty sure that last one was included just so they could have a cool clip to use in the opening credits.

While all this is happening, Willow and Xander are keeping eyes on Amy during the basketball game, and there’s a pretty neat pan from the action of the cheerleaders and crowd to the stillness of the Slayerettes. (Okay, I’ll stop calling them that. But they are taking their new role seriously).

Giles, Buffy and Amy-in-Catherine head back to the school and the biology lab, where Giles begins the spell to reverse all of Catherine’s magic (stupidly, they do not tie up Amy despite knowing that the plan is to put Catherine back in this body). Over in the gym, Catherine-in-Amy can feel the spell start to work, and after toppling off the pyramid, she gives the rest of the cheerleaders a pretty lethal death glare and makes a feral run for the door.

Willow and Xander attempt to stall her, and are taken out immediately. Still, I wonder if Willow was a little impressed by Catherine disabling Xander with only a hand gesture. That’s real power right there.

Some tension builds once Amy and Catherine are transported back into their own bodies, but Buffy is also back to full-health and uses the old “use a giant mirror to bounce a witch’s spell back upon her” trick. Why is there a giant mirror hanging from the ceiling of the Sunnydale biology lab? It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that Catherine has disappeared and Giles informs Buffy that this was “his first casting.” LIAR. Okay, so we can head-canon that he’s just trying to keep his past as Ripper from her for as long as possible, but the truth is the writers just hadn’t conceived of that backstory for him yet. And that’s okay. A few little continuity flaws give a show flavour and the fans something to argue about.

In the wrap-up scene we see that Amy is happy living with her father (I would have liked to see him on-screen, especially in later seasons when Amy takes a downward spiral) and she and Buffy gaze for a moment at Catherine’s cheerleader trophy displayed in the hallway cabinet... both missing the fact that its eyes are moving. Yes, Catherine is the cheerleader trophy, now doomed to relive her glory years in perpetuity. Great ending!

Miscellaneous Observations:

Joyce and Buffy are clearly set up as a foil to Catherine and Amy, and it occurs to me that this is a rare show that spotlights a mother/daughter relationship. More than that, a good mother/daughter relationship, especially for this genre. I’m wracking my brains and I can’t think of another one. Adults have to be useless, absent or antagonistic in these types of shows (if they’re targeted towards a slightly younger target audience, you can bet they’ll just make the protagonist an orphan).

In any case, Joyce and Buffy aren’t exactly on the same page, but clearly their rapport involves nothing like the outright abuse inflicted on Amy.

An early scene shows Joyce in the capacity of an art gallery curator, opening crates in the kitchen. It made me realize that we never, ever see Joyce’s place of work. Not once! And it’s a bit strange in a way, as that setting had a lot of potential to be filled with cursed artefacts and paintings, like how Charmed used the Auction House in season one for a similar purpose.

The plotting of the episode interests me, as it comes up with three possible scenarios the writers could have gone with: that Amy is trying to please her mother by making the cheerleading squad and not realizing she’s picking off the other girls with magic, that Amy is deliberately using witchcraft to take out the competition and is terrorizing her mother on top of it, or (the one they went with) that a body-swap between mother and daughter has occurred. It’s such a rich premise that any of these three scenarios could have made for a good story.

That said, they kind of lose the original premise of a child being so pressured to live up to a parent’s exacting standards that she’s driven to desperation, replacing it to one of a parent being envious of a child’s youth and vicariously attempting to relive their glory years through them.

I’ve always wondered a little about Catherine’s backstory. Was she a hereditary witch, or self-taught like Willow? Because we know that Amy will manifest magical abilities as well, and even ends up with a streak of jealousy like her mother (though it’s directed at Willow).

Also, Giles removes Catherine’s spellbook from her house in order to reverse all her witchcraft. What happened to it afterwards? Come to think of it, we never see that Vampyr book from the first episode again either.

This episode establishes that the Sunnydale basketball team is called the Razorbacks and their mascot is a pig. We’ll be seeing more of this later down the track...

Great casting on Elizabeth Anne Allen and Robin Riker as mother/daughter. They looked very similar, and channelled each other’s inflection and body language while they were playing each other’s character.

Also, I love this demon on the gate that leads to Amy's house:

To sum up, I really love this episode, and is possibly my favourite season one episode after The Puppet Show. Maybe a bit too much time was spent on the cheerleaders falling prey to Catherine’s magic (the stuff with the driver’s ed lesson was clearly just to give Charisma Carpenter enough screentime to justify her placement in the opening credits) and it’s a Clueless Mystery in the sense that the audience is given no chance to figure out what’s going on before Buffy does (who gets the clues she needs in the same scene that she realizes what’s actually happening), but I still love it as a concentrated case study of what the show is offering us.

Best Scene: When Buffy drunkenly tells Xander that he’s “one of the girls” and we get this expression on Willow’s face:

Best Line: Freed from the bloodstone vengeance spell, Buffy leaps to her feet behind Catherine and says: “Guess what? I feel better.” It’s more in the delivery than in the words as-written, but is just the perfect blend of menace and perk. Buffy doesn’t doubt that she’s a threat, and subsequently tosses Catherine across the room.

Best Subversion: Amy wasn’t the witch after all, it was her mother using her body all along! What a tweest!

Death Toll: No one died in this episode! I suppose that makes sense, as otherwise Buffy and Amy would have been permanent members of the cheerleading team. Which means...

Grand Total: Four civilians, five villains.

#rav's watching log #buffy the vampire slayer #rav's buffy rewatch #buffy season one

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