The Weight of the World
Buffy Episode Review
In which everyone runs around and then Buffy snaps out of it.
What Did I Think?
Set-up, mid-show crisis, climax. It's basic story structure. What at first seems like a fairly tame episode, oddly placed between the crazy road trip of "Spiral" and the season ending "The Gift," is really the second part of a three-parter. It is the emotional crisis that has to be resolved before the butt kicking can begin.
The common theme here is giving up. Buffy feels suffocated beneath the dual pressures of her duty as the Slayer and her desperate desire to keep her family together. We've heard her complain before about how being the Slayer interferes with her life, but for all that, she's never completely turned her back on it. The triple whammy of Riley leaving, Joyce dying and Dawn being kidnapped is enough to prompt anyone to shut down.
Ben, meanwhile, is facing a similar problem. Buffy trapped inside her own head; Ben's caught inside the mind of a crazy hell goddess. His choice is the same, however. He can either huddle up in a ball and let the world go on without him or he can stand up and take action.
The eerie normality of Buffy's mindscape is contrasted nicely with the frenzy of Glory/Ben's. Buffy moves around in a neatly plotted circle, one place to another, then back to the start. Her home is neat and clean, even to the neatly piled dirt on Ms. Summers' grave. Everything is well-lit; there are no shadows anywhere. It's far too quiet, as if any loud noises would shatter it to pieces.
Glory and Ben have their debate in a dirty ally, pacing back and forth, random movements catching Dawn by surprise. It would have been nice to see the editing used to reflect their combined mental state. When Glory first showed up in "No Place Like Home," there was a great scene that visually articulated her madness. The dialogue was out of synch with her movements, quick cuts from one line of disjointed conversation to another. A similar effect here would have made Ben and Glory's argument more effective by infusing it with an energy it was sadly lacking.
As Buffy and Ben make their choices, there is sense that they're going through the motions. After all, if Buffy stays looped, there won't be anyone to save Dawn, and if Ben turns on Glory, Dawn gets away and there's no reason for the big fight. The beauty of Buffy, however, is that season finales are always the culmination of everything that's come before. It's all been leading to Buffy's breakdown, and that being the case, it's appropriate that she didn't get over it in a space of a few minutes, but over the course of a whole episode. And seeing Ben's weakness (and the character was always meant to be morally weak) is a powerful contrast to Buffy's strength.