Life Serial

Buffy Episode Review

In which Buffy is persecuted by life.

What Happened

Three would-be Lords of Sunnydale begin sabotaging Buffy's life, wanting to know how much time they'll have to spare from their busy Stars Wars-obsessing, basement dwelling lives to keep the Slayer out of their plans to take over the town. They use magic and science to keep her out of school, get her fired from her new job at Xander's construction site after a demon attack, and complicate her next attempt to find work at the Magic Box by trapping her in a time loop.

What Did I Think?

Buffy is often at it's best when it's using magical happenings to stand in for the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

Buffy proves her smarts in figuring out Warren's time-stopping device, literally left behind as all her peers rush off to college. She bests the demons in physical battle, giving her all in an environment where it is customary to do just enough to get you through the day, only to find her efforts unappreciated. Finally, she has to control her ego and admit there is something that she can't do, battling her lack of fulfillment by the repetitive day-after-day grind. In the end, she remains unaware of the test or that her foes even exist.

The episode sort of guts this cliche and stuffs its own ideas into the framework. Buffy is tested, but not to prove her heroism in big, flashy ways. Rather, she wins everyday sort of successes, reaffirming one of the other central conceits of the series: that Buffy's strength as a Slayer comes more from her humanity and connections to the real world than from her mystical abilities.