Oh Spike, You're the Big Bad!

Buffy Season 5 Part 2

I was a little lukewarm on part 1, but the show definitely picked up the pace a lot for the second half. There are three things that I really liked about the shows in this set. First, the funny. The two robot episodes are some of the funniest Buffy episodes ever, especially the second ('Intervention'), where Spike builds a robot Buffy to be his sex slave, and wackiness ensues when her friends confuse the robot for the real thing. The first ('I Was Made to Love You'), is not quite as funny, but they do something quite clever, as it is one of the more light-hearted whimsical episodes but it ends with Buffy coming home to find her mum dead on the couch, which brings us to...

Second, the impressive. 'The Body' focuses on Buffy and everyone else dealing with her mum's death. It follows their process of grief in grim and unrelenting detail. There's no incidental music, and minimal supernatural or fantastic elements to break the believability. It's a very grim and affecting hour of television. Not very pleasant but I've never let that stop me from appreciating an artistic achievement.

Third, the big finale. The last episode, 'The Gift' was at one stage expected to be the last episode ever, so naturally they killed Buffy off. In a series that's known for it's exciting and dramatic season finales, this one is only middling, but it's still very very good. The final fight scene is pretty awesome, and the manner in which Glory, the big bad, meets her demise is both memorable and unexpected. And it ends with Buffy's big sacrifice (and obligatory speech to her little sister), I'm not normally a fan of drama but I found it to be one of the most emotional things I've ever seen on TV. Even though I knew she's getting resurrected.

The DVD extras were sparse, but good. I haven't listened to any of the commentaries yet, but the featurettes are quite enlightening. I was surprised to learn that they really had planned to add Dawn's character (and placed hints about her arrival in the show) right back at the end of season 3. And I thought I was just reading too much into things.

I have a few minor criticisms though, my main one being that they could have explored the similarity between Glory and Buffy a bit more. They're both hot blondes with superpowers, and I get the impression that she was supposed to represent how Buffy would have turned out if she wasn't the Slayer (i.e. the shallow Buffy we see back in the original movie).

In the end this season ended up holding up a lot better than I remembered from when it was on TV. It starts out a little shaky and without much direction, but builds up to a climax that combines the physical and emotional story arcs superbly. It's a lot more cohesive than season 4, and while I think the writing dips a little in quality, it's just because they'd been doing it for five years and the style is starting to get a little worn out. They revive it a bit in the next season by changing things a bit, but that's a post for another day.