OTH: Buffy the Vampire Slayer- "Same Time, Same Place" / "Help"
Willow's back! Yay?
Season 7, Episode 3
Aired October 8, 2002
Directed by James A. Contner
Written by Jane Espenson
Synopsis: Today’s the day that Willow is supposed to return from England, and her loved ones- Buffy, Xander and Dawn, since who knows what’s up with her parents?- are apprehensively waiting for her to return. Buffy informs them that according to Giles, Willow didn’t quite finish her rehabilitation, but he insists that this is fine, she should return early. Dawn and Xander aren’t as receptive to this, but they become more aggravated that she hasn’t come out of the plane with the rest of her flight. Instead, we return to a minute ago, complete with a frustrated dad trying to keep his kids in line. Here, we see Willow exit the plane, but she doesn’t see her friends waiting in the lobby. Willow returns to the Summers house and finds it empty. Rather than returning to her old room, she crashes on the couch. Shortly after, Buffy, Xander and Dawn return to the house and talk about Willow potentially bailing on the flight to Sunnydale. We hear the same noises Willow does when she comes inside the house, but there’s no evidence of her anywhere inside. The next day, Willow heads to the Magic Box hoping to find some of her friends, but all she finds in Anya, who’s understandably still spooked by her and lashes out. She does tell Willow that the Scoobies spend most of their time at the new school, though, including Spike, who’s gone insane and lives in the basement. She heads over to the construction side of the school, where she finds a person who was skinned alive. This spooks Willow, who worries that Buffy will blame her, and sure enough, Xander has her come over to see what happened. Willow goes into the basement to find Spike, whose gibberish startles her, but there’s truth in some of the things he says. Buffy and Xander arrive at the same time, where he gives the same spiel, which has one notable element to it- that “they’ll blame it on the red”. Willow arrives at Anya’s, asking for her help to discover who skinned this man, and the two form an incantation to find the demon responsible. Willow finds it in a cave and asks Anya to take her, but her teleportation ability has been revoked, as she’s only able to use it for vengeance-related matters. Willow has to go by herself, but Anya asks why doesn’t she cast a spell where she’ll find Buffy and Xander, when Willow confesses that she did, and it only caused the reverse. She’ll head over there around the same time as the Scoobies do (heh), when Dawn successfully finds their guy online, a Gnarl demon, who has a knack for skinning humans alive and sucking up their blood. She knows this is it, as they only left behind splatches of blood instead of a pool. They enlist Spike to sniff down the trail of blood as he finds the cave right as Willow does. They all enter around the same time, but the Gnarl has no interest in the Scoobies, merely cutting Dawn and paralyzing her, and while Buffy and Xander carry her away, it then focuses on Willow, slicing and pining her to the ground. The demon taunts her, bringing up her palatable fear of being left behind by her friends as it prepares to suck her open wounds and cut bits of her skin up. When the Scoobies return to the Summers house, Buffy insists that they call Anya to watch after Dawn while they set up a plan to take on the Gnarl once and for all. However, when Anya arrives, she lets them know about Willow’s return and her anxiety about her friends embracing her, and between this and her knowledge of Gnarls, Buffy has Anya join them to face it. When they arrive, Anya can see Willow trapped by the demon, even though Buffy and Xander can’t. As the other two fight it, Anya comes to try to help Willow, who’s looking badly wounded, and informs her that her friends are here to save her, even if they can’t see each other. Buffy pokes the Gnarl’s eyes with her thumbs, which kills it and regains both Willow and Dawn’s strength, as well as reversing the spell that made Willow invisible to her friends. We then end the episode with Willow meditating in her bed, with Buffy joining her as they make confessions to each other, Willow that she was responsible for the invisibility spell, even if unintentionally, and Buffy that she did suspect Willow of being responsible for skinning the person. Willow admits that even she accused herself at one point, but she appreciates Buffy’s honesty. As Willow struggles to regain her posture in meditating, Buffy offers her some of her energy.
If you were friends with someone who uncovered unspeakable powers and used them to flay a man and nearly call upon the end of the world, would you be willing to trust them again?
Okay, the correct answer is “no, how would you even be able to do such a thing?”, keep in mind what show we’re talking about and try to at least think about something comparable. Your loved ones will disappoint you inevitably, sometimes very often. No one is perfect and even the best people can do bad things. But is there a limit to the kind of bad behavior you can shrug off before you have to cut ties?
The reason that I stick to this series is that television, at its best, can make you feel like you’re checking up on your friends, week after week (or for a few hours a year- curse Netflix), which makes when a character suffers a loss or does something wrong all the more disheartening. We (or at least I do, but hopefully you’ve grown to feel the same about her) love Willow, and seeing her turn into unfiltered power should be a rough run, albeit an unforgettable one. Her hurt was palpable, especially as Tara became just as beloved over her course in the series.
I could understand if Buffy, Xander and Dawn don’t want to take her back, and while there are doubts (most of all from Dawn, who nearly got turned back into light by her), they’re here and ready for her return. So when Will “flakes”, it’s a sad feeling, one that doubles when we see that she doesn’t, in fact, flake.
“Same Time, Same Place” does a good job of bringing the fear of rejection to screen, as Willow imagines the worst from her friends, while showing how the full extent of her power is still alive and well. It’s a really cool episode from a technical standpoint, as it’s clever in repeating information for the audience while not feeling repetitive.
The thing is, we need Willow back state if Buffy is going to face what’s coming for her, and this works well enough to reacquaint herself with the crew.
Season 7, Episode 4
Aired October 15, 2002
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Written by Rebecca Rand Kushner
Synopsis: Buffy has started her job as counselor at Sunnydale High, and it’s already a lot, with cases ranging from bullied students who fight back with a vengeance, lovelorn boys who try to shoot their shot with the new counselor, and a familiar face venting about her big sister (hi, Dawn!), but one person in particular stands out, a girl named Cassie who’s convinced that she will die this Friday. Buffy takes this as a suicide confession, which Cassie rejects right away, stating that she has the ability to see things and knows that Friday will be her last day. Not on the Slayer’s watch. She meets with Principal Wood, who appreciates the concern but confesses that his hands are tied- the school can’t do much without concrete evidence besides check lockers. This clearly isn’t good enough, and things become even more unsettling when Buffy spills her coffee on her shirt, something Cassie alluded to during their meeting. Buffy asks Dawn to meet with Cassie while she starts investigating after work, having Willow and Xander help search for Cassie online to find anything that can help. They find Cassie’s published poetry online, which like many girls her age is lyrical and depressed. Willow, who can relate, insists that this isn’t necessarily a red flag, but they find one when her dad’s arrest record shows up. Cassie’s father, Philip, has a history of drunk and disorderly behavior, and that’s what she leaps to, although Dawn has another theory- Cassie’s friend, Mike, keeps asking her to go to the dance on Friday and she keeps turning him down, so she thinks he may retaliate due to the constant rejection. Buffy puts a pin on that as she and Xander head to Mr. Newton’s to… ask about his drinking issues on a school night, unprovoked. Not a great plan, guys. What’s more, not only is his defense sincere, but he won’t be seeing Cassie this Friday, so he’s off the suspect list. As the two leave the house, Cassie meets them outside and tells the two that not only is her father innocent, but their sleuthing is to no avail. She doesn’t know how she’ll die, just that it will happen on Friday, and that despite her sad poetry, she doesn’t want this. Cassie wants to live a long, happy life, but she knows her time is nigh. On Friday, Buffy takes up Dawn’s clue on Mike, but he proves to be a dead end, if a bit of a two-timer, while Principal Wood finds a locker full of scattered coins, another vision Cassie saw. Buffy meets with the student whose locker this is and asks him what he knows, which takes some time for him to answer, but he does reveal that a group of students do plan to kidnap and hurt Cassie. Dawn, who is now friends with Cassie, offers to walk her home, but Cassie knows what’s going on and doesn’t want her involved, even if her friendship is reciprocated. As they talk, this asshole jock, Peter, trolls Dawn so she can be distracted while Cassie escapes, so she thinks. What’s really happening is that he has a couple of lackies in red coats pick her up and bring her into the gym to begin their ritual, where she will be sacrificed to a demon in exchange for infinite riches. However it turns out that one of the red coats in attendance is Buffy, who promptly kicks Peter’s ass for deserved reasons. She’s seen this many times, the pathetic incels who fail to raise their demon from below, although this time Peter and his crew succeeded. As Buffy starts fighting the demon, Spike arrives at the nick of time to help out, and she asks him to rescue Cassie. After knocking Peter down a few pegs, complete with headache, Spike grabs his cleaver and uses it to untie Cassie, who tells him that she’ll eventually tell him. Who she is and what she’s telling Spike exactly is up to interpretation, but he gets the hint. When Buffy burns the demon through its chest, she and Cassie walk out, even ignoring when the demon slices Peter up. So Buffy saves the day, and even prevents Cassie from a crossbow trap lodged into the gym’s entrance. Buffy uses the opportunity to let Cassie know that one person can make a difference, which she agrees with, noting that she will, soon. These are her last words, though, as Cassie faints to the ground and never wakes up. As we learn thanks to a bit of exposition at the end, Cassie suffered from a congenital heart defect on her mother’s side, which she wasn’t aware of, and an artery closed up. It wasn’t her fault that Cassie died, but Buffy still blames herself. A tear-stricken Dawn tells her not to though, as thanks to Buffy, Cassie knew she had someone who wanted to save her, and she had a friend like Dawn. Buffy returns to work the next day, sad but confined to the fact that even though she can help with the outcome, no one can change your fate.
One of the themes of this last season is that you can’t always make it on your own, and sometimes, despite your best intentions, you don’t always come out on top. I believe Captain Picard said it best- “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
Buffy’s track record for saving the people of Sunnydale is impressive but not quite 100%, as we saw some of the unlucky ones in “Lessons” return to remind her. Still, it always hurts when you get to know the person who’s going to die, as it does with Cassie, who not-so-subtly gets her name from the Greek fable of Cassandra. Like her name reference, Cassie can see the future but not necessarily how or why it happens. She knows that Buffy will get a stain on her cute shirt, but not how, just like she knows when she’ll die, even if the method eludes her.
Buffy’s duty makes her feel obligated to save Cassie, which doubles when she gets to know the girl and she also becomes a friend of Dawn’s, and despite her best intentions, Cassie still has to die. Buffy may have incredible strength and the ability to save the world from its greatest threats, but she’s not able to save everyone.
“Help” is shrouded in what feels like classic Buffy fashion, right down to the loser teenage boys calling upon a demon they have no control over for stupid, selfish reasons. Considering the direction the show has turned to in the last few seconds, this feels almost nostalgic, but it still maintains the character’s increasing growth. A particular highlight is when Xander takes Willow to Tara’s grave, which allows for a restrained moment of mourning for the lovers, as well as a nice talk between the best friends. It’s a welcome return for Willow, who’s still reassembling herself into the gang, and probably my favorite moment in the episode after Dawn’s speech at the end.
If we’re going to return to the show’s past before its conclusion, I’m just fine with that. At this point, the crew is well-rounded and able to pull off stronger examples of the first few season’s monster-of-the-week format… but I look forward to seeing if they can top Angelus or the Mayor.
Watcher’s Guidebook:
First thing’s first, let’s get Sarah Michelle Gellar(err… Prinze? TIL that she legally changed her name in 2007, even though she professionally still uses Gellar)’s recent interview out of the way. This is more about her recent return to acting, but it does touch up on the legacy of Buffy, because of course it’s going to come up, and while you-know-who isn’t namedropped by her, he is alluded to. Still, Mrs. Prinze is proud of her work on the show and doesn’t think that it should be diminished due to certain bad actors, which I can agree with.
Something else that I thought was interesting with this interview is that Sarah talks about watching the show with her kids for the first time during lockdown, but she glossed over a lot of season 6. Partly due to it not being age-appropriate for them, but it’s also a rough season for her in terms of content and she doesn’t like looking back on it. While James Marsters has been very candid over his reaction to the rape scene in “Seeing Red”, Mrs. Prinze has never formally discussed it, so I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a particularly difficult episode for her.
“This isn’t going to get all sexy, is it?” “I’d be shocked.”
I love how Dawn has her spiel about creating a demon database and ends it about letting her wear high heels more often.
Does Anya get snacks from every place she visits?
Dawn’s right, she is taller than Buffy, why is she in the kid’s coffin?
Hey, it’s Millie from Freaks and Geeks! I hope we see her again soon (hint, hint).
“Talk like that is taken very seriously where I’m from.” “The hood?” “Beverly Hills… which is a hood.” Wow, Buffy did a racist. I forgot this bit, but it makes me uncomfortable.
Fun fact- “Help” has the first reference to Google on a broadcast TV show, and of course it’s a sex joke. I’m a little more comfortable with this, actually.
And we learn a little about teenage Willow’s internet habits, when she would write love poems about Xander and Doogie Howser, MD fanfic.
lmao, Blue Clam Cult. I love their song, “(Don’t Fear) The Keeper”.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles: Errr, Vegas, since Angel takes Gunn and Fred to Lorne’s new home in “The House Always Wins”, where it turns out that our favorite Pylean uses his show to sell particular destinies from the crowd to the black market for his investors. And guess whose destiny plays a pivotal role in the apocalypse? While she can’t come help, Cordelia can sense this and tries to help Angel however she can in what makes for a fun episode, and she returns in “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” but with a twist- her memory is gone. Angel talks the gang into easing her back into the fold slowly and not reveal what they are just yet, as he struggles to keep her afloat while Connor becomes her caretaker and the two become smitten. Not a fan of that, but this is an important episode, especially as Lorne can see Cordy’s future and sees an apocalypse brewing.
Next Week: Anya’s vengeance crosses a line, and all the women in town are in love with the star quarterback. Hmmm.