Buffy Reviews

Dead Man's Party

Character - by Jenny68

     This episode was given 4.5 Eh's out of 5.
     If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. This seems to be the rule in Dead Man's Party. Buffy's home, and it's time to deal with it. All those close to Buffy have issues about her 3 month absence, it's just a matter of whether Buffy can handle the wrath of those who care for her the most.
     Xander is the first to blurt out his feelings on the subject on the doorstep of Giles' place. It's strange to have Xander shooting off his insults and sarcastic comments towards one of the gang. He goes from nice geek, to mouthy bully in the time Buffy returns. He does have one moment of his old self when he asks Buffy if she went off to Belgium. He plays around for a moment, but then goes back to being cold. At the party, Xander doesn't even make an effort to be around Buffy at all, until Joyce yells at her in front of everyone. He gangs up on Buffy with a few insults of his own to add when her mother is done. He spares nothing when he tells her exactly how stupid and selfish he thinks she is for running away. Buffy does get in a shot though when she mentions how Xander wouldn't have had any understanding about it anyway, since he has always been against Angel and herself being together.
     If there was one person who seemed the least affected by Buffy's absence/return, it is Cordelia. From the alley scene with her cheery hello to Buffy, to the party scene where she attempted to stick up for Buffy, she was the one character who acted as though nothing was different. Of course her role mostly consisted of smoochies with Xander and foiling Giles, but nonetheless, when she tried her hand at sticking up for the Slayer, it almost works but Buffy is annoyed and Xander too worked up already.
     Willow had some of the most valid reasons for having issues with Buffy. Buffy is her best friend, and she wasn't there for Willow when she needed her. Unlike Xander, Willow held out on speaking her opinion regarding Buffy's disappearance. In fact, she resorted to avoiding Buffy and not saying much at all...until she caught Buffy packing her bags in her bedroom. She finally let loose her feelings on the Slayer's absence, and again unlike Xander, she told Buffy just why she was wrong to leave and why she was so upset at her. Willow had dating, witchcraft, killing vamps, and other "scary life things" going on, and she had needed her friend's advice and support to help her through them. Buffy apologizes to Willow, and tries to make her understand why she had to leave, but Joyce interrupts them. In the end though, things are patched up between the friends, as they throw gentle barbs at one another in the coffee shop.
     Joyce tries too hard to smooth things out with Buffy. She's afraid to lose her daughter again, and doesn't want to give her any reason to run away a second time. Her efforts only cause a strain between mother and daughter, which leads to an erupting point at the end. She's cool in the meeting with principal Synder, and later looks into some other options for Buffy’s schooling. She tries to stay focused on the reason Buffy would have these school problems, but eventually informs Buffy that she did once again mess up, and may have to face consequences for her actions. Later, when Joyce walks in on Willow and a packing Buffy, she lets loose her frustration and hurt that she’s been feeling since the night Buffy ran away. She confirms what Pat had told Buffy earlier, about how Joyce had been naturally upset and very concerned for Buffy during her absence.
     It's great to see Joyce have an onscreen friend. It's even better to see her having a friend who isn't the villain of the episode. Pat is a little strange though. Of course the character is set up in such a way as to bring question to her intent of helping out Joyce, and perhaps even Buffy. She is important in this episode; she informs Buffy of the happenings of Joyce while she was gone from home, and she raises the audiences suspicions of her when she asks Buffy if she's about to go running away again. Of course, Pat is doomed in the end when she dons the enchanted zombie mask and takes a shovel in the face from Buffy, so alas, we must wait in hope that one day another brave soul will chance death and become a good friend of Joyce's.
     Giles is the only one who seems to understand Buffy's situation the best. He knows how much Buffy loved Angel, and for her to have defeated him by making sure he closed Acathla must have been a terrible strain on her being (and he doesn't even know yet that Buffy knew he had changed back). Although Giles looks a little mad when he regards Buffy standing on his doorstep, we see him breathe in his relief with a shaky sigh and a slight smile in his kitchen. Although slightly tense, Giles and Buffy are able to talk in this episode, though nothing more than shop talk, which is more than Buffy is able to get out of any of the others, the exception being her mother. Giles doesn't seem to feel the need to scold Buffy on her absence from her duty. She seeks this slight comfort at the party when she asks Xander and Cordelia where Giles is and if he's expected late. She is essentially alone at her own party, and she could at least talk to Giles without it getting too weird.
     Of course later on, Buffy doesn't need the comfort of a conversation. As it's been shown before (most openly in Ted), Buffy can deal best when she's fighting. She's used her slaying as a venting technique before, and it's used here again. This time though, she doesn't need to go looking for the source, the bad guys come to her. The fight is the way out of the confrontation; once the fight begins, everyone goes back to normal mode. Where just moments before, Xander and Buffy were at odds with one another, but now they're instant allies. Willow didn't know just how right she was when she suggested violence over talking, just not violence against each other.
     Buffy is not given the time to figure her problems and emotions out in this episode. She feels the strain of her mother and her friends, but is unable to fix it. She is still not ready to spill her story of her fight with Angel to everyone yet, but she is pressured into coming up with a good enough excuse for why she felt the need to run away from her problems. Her attempt to sort all of this out backfires when she makes the mistake of packing up once again, only to be caught by Willow. Perhaps she saw running away again as the only option she had for solving her problems short-term, but her mistake was in wanting to go so far. She would have been better off just stepping outside, or going for a walk, but then again, the confrontation was well-needed, and ended up resolving the tension for the most part anyway.

Story - by Darcy

     Well, Joss is batting 0 for 2, I'm afraid. Two episodes into Season 3 and we still haven't seen a good one. Dead Man's Party is better than Anne, but it's still not exactly premium Buffy. DMP was frustrating to me because it had the potential to be so much better. In bits it was absolutely wonderful, but somehow all the hilarious bits and poignant bits didn't come together to make an overall wonderful episode. In this case, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
     DMP was handicapped by the fact that it was effectively a season premiere. Anne didn't fulfill the usual function of a season premiere, so DMP had to do it. Resolving old issues and restoring the status quo in the main characters' relationships (for instance the Buffy/Willow dynamic) is the whole point of a premiere. Unfortunately it has to compete for season premiere laurels with last season's When She Was Bad. Everything WSWB did right, DMP attempts to do, but somehow it doesn't quite come off. The difficulty of a premiere, especially following a cliffhanger, is that the episode has to look back, rather than forward. Old threads which were deliberately left dangling (in order to keep the audience in suspense over the summer) have to be tied up, so the ep is forced to focus on the past. Rather than driving the plot, the episode has to play catch-up to it.
     Maybe the comparison with WSWB is unfair. Admittedly Prophecy Girl was a far less messy and challenging season finale than Becoming II, so WSWB didn't have such a huge job to do. But WSWB did one thing absolutely right that is overlooked here: it related the story-of-the-week to the ongoing issues. Buffy's return, Angel's dream appearances, the Slayerettes' anger at being abandoned, all this stuff is mythology plotting, which is dealt with in multi-episode story arcs. But the mythology parts didn't tie in AT ALL with the story-of-the-week about the zombies. In fact it felt like the zombie plot was tacked on as an afterthought just so Buffy et al would have an enemy to fight.
     In WSWB the story about raising the Master's skeleton tied in DIRECTLY with Buffy's angst over having been killed by the Master and brought back to life. The "Buffy acts like a bitch" stuff integrated beautifully into the raising of the Master, so even though it was two separate plotlines, it felt like one. In DMP the zombies have nothing to do with anything, and it's like there are two parallel plots happening: Buffy's homecoming and the zombie thing. And since the zombies aren't particularly compelling bad guys, their story felt like a disjointed subplot that didn't quite gell with the rest of the ep.
     Joss paid homage to several movies and books in order to make this one. Didn't he learn from Bad Eggs that direct rip-offs don't work too well? I counted homages to two specific sources plus an entire genre. The dead and buried cat being the first creature to be reanimated is a homage to Stephen King's Pet Cematary, while the scene where Pat puts on the mask gave me flashbacks of Jim Carrey in The Mask. Furthermore, this entire episode relies heavily on the cheesy zombie movie genre. It's very cute and all, but tongue-in-cheek references to movies can't carry a whole episode.
     Just to put in a few more grumbles about the zombie plot, it had so many holes it leaked like a colander! As I said earlier, it feels as though it was added at the last minute without anyone in charge actually reading the additions before filming. There were some major sloppies, I'm sorry to say. First off, we never got a real explanation of how the mask came into Joyce's hands, or how it got activated. Perhaps putting a mask in a cardboard box and sticking it in storage takes away its power? Sure, I'll buy that the demonic energy from the Hellmouth awoke the sleeping demon, but it would be nice if the show would actually say that, and not leave the viewers to make up semi-plausible explanations on their own. Usually at some point in the ep Knowledge Man (that would be Giles) clears up any lingering confusion the Slayerettes (and the audience) have with a detailed explanation of what bad mojo is happening this week and why. That part seems to have been left out in this ep.
     Finally (I swear this is my last complaint), where were the consequences of the party that went wrong? Are all Buffy's neighbours members of the Helen Keller society of deaf and blind people? In my neighbourhood they call the cops if the party spills out onto the deck; here the house was being destroyed, people were screaming and diving from the windows, and an army of the undead was invading. Then the daughter of the house stuck a shovel through someone's face in the backyard. They didn't notice?????????? What kind of insurance claim is Joyce supposed to make (and from the state of the place she'll need to make one), and how do they explain the dead people? Sure Pat and the other zombies vanished into thin air, but isn't someone going to notice that several people were last seen alive at the Summers' residence before they mysteriously disappeared? Especially when Buffy Summers was previously a murder suspect in a stilll-unsolved killing?
     It really gets to me how the cops are only brought in occasionally as a convenient plot device to complicate things. In Ted and Becoming, they appear, arrest the wrong person, and generally hinder things, but all the rest of the time, they are nowhere to be found. If Joss doesn't want to show realistic consequences of behaviour the police would definitely take an interest in, he shouldn't film plots where common sense tells us there would have to be some kind of explanation made to the authorities. Chances are by next episode Buffy's trashed house will be perfect again, and the whole mess will never be mentioned again.
     I'm having a hard time buying Oz as a full-fledged, full-time Slayerette. I think it's because he was made a Slayerette quite abruptly. Intellectually I know that probably Oz has been getting more and more involved as the summer went on, but I didn't see it gradually happening. In Becoming, Oz is on the fringes, helping out occasionally but not really part of the social group, whereas by third season, he's suddenly around all the time. I'm not used to seeing Oz at the research parties, or teasing Giles. I think there was insufficient build-up in Season Two, and that's why his new status seems like an abrupt change. In Season Two, Oz was often not seen or even mentioned for several eps at a time, so I got used to him being a peripheral character. Also, his primary interaction has been with Willow rather than Buffy, so it seems strange for him to be joining Buffy's team of Slayerettes.
     Don't get me wrong; I adore Oz and I'm thrilled Seth Green is a regular cast member. I just think he could have been integrated better. For instance, the integration of Cordelia was beautifully planned. In Season One she's irrelevant comic relief right up until Invisible Girl and Prophecy Girl. Then in Season Two her transition from vapid cheerleader to vapid butt-kicker happens so gradually it seems absolutely natural. It feels here like the writers decided they wanted Oz as a Slayerette, and decided to skip the boring part where they show how he's slowly drawn into the group. I'm probably being too critical, but I haven't had enough time to get used to having Oz around full-time. I'm sure by halfway through this season I won't be able to imagine the Scooby Gang without him, but right now it feels a little forced.
     On a positive note, we're starting to see some of the messy emotional fallout from Becoming II, and we're not being stinted on drama there. I was afraid the show would gloss over the serious rifts Buffy's actions caused, but they haven't. The series of scenes where Willow, Joyce and Xander all ream her out are superbly written. It's impossible to take a side because everyone has a point, and everyone has been genuinely suffering. All the actors are wonderful in these scenes, from Joyce's anger to Xander's self-righteousness; from Cordelia's clumsy attempt at empathy to Willow's feelings of abandonment.
     Ironically enough, Giles, the one person with more reason than anyone else to rip her apart for her irresponsibility, is the one person who doesn't go off on her. Perhaps he's so relieved to have his girl back he can't get mad. Or perhaps Giles, as the only other person to have someone he loves killed, is in a better position than the rest to understand Buffy's emotional pain. After all, even if he didn't physically run away, he detached from reality for a while after Jenny's death. Or possibly, since Giles and Buffy haven't actually had a one-on-one scene yet, him going off on her is yet to come.
     OK, so Giles and the Slayerettes haven't talked to Buffy about Kendra's death, the Akathla situation, or Spike, Dru and Angel's sudden disappearances. Meanwhile, Buffy's still too traumatized to fill in any of the blanks voluntarily. The lack of communication here is astounding! I smell some deliberately dangling threads which will be explored later. Actually I really like what Joss is doing with all this. He's setting us up for some really big stuff, giving us just enough to whet our appetites. At some point Buffy is going to open up enough to compare notes with her friends, and all hell is going to break loose. In the meantime, the anticipation is killing me!
     I refer, of course, to Xander's deception in Becoming II, for which he is showing not a trace of guilt. It can be argued that him not telling Buffy the truth may have saved her life. If she'd known that Angelus could morph back into Angel at any moment, odds are she wouldn't have been able to fight Angelus with such intensity, and he could have killed her. But don't expect Buffy to see it that way, given her reaction here in DMP. Buffy will feel she could have played it out differently (concentrating on keeping Angelus away from Akathla), and Willow and Giles will feel betrayed by the lie. Meanwhile, Xander's outraged denunciations of Buffy's selfishness are just dripping with dramatic irony. Since Joss is giving us hints here of the old tensions (Xander/Angel, Buffy/Angel etc), it means that when the explosion comes, it will probably be fabulous.
     That entire part of the ep dealing with Buffy's return was terrific. The dialogue, the impact on relationships, the emotion displayed by the actors, the way the consequences of Buffy's decision are being revealed....all wonderful. Also, there were some very, VERY funny lines related to the zombie plot. Xander and Joyce were great, as was the cat scene in the library. But Giles' soliloquy in his car was the funniest part of the episode. His line "Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead. Americans!" belongs in the Buffy ROTFLOL Moments Hall of Fame (if such a Hall exists). The words, the delivery, the high pitched voice: they all turned it into a classic scene. I have no complaints about the dialogue in this ep. Both the hilarious and the poignant moments were beautifully written and played.
     Basically, DMP is an episode that is terrific in parts, but deeply flawed by a derivative, poorly-explained plot-of-the-week that doesn't mesh with Buffy's emotional problems. I'll give it 3 and 3/4 eh!'s out of five, and I'm being generous here (there's a part of me that wants to give it 2 1/2). If I were only reviewing the parts of the episode that deal with the ramifications of Buffy's return, I'd be giving it a 4 1/2, and if I were only reviewing the zombie bits, I'd give it a 2. The dialogue is first-rate, the emotional ground covered is very important, and the foreshadowing is beautifully done, but this is one script that should definitely have been sent back for further editing befor it was filmed. Somehow an episode that could have been a classic is much more frustrating than one which is simply mediocre. DMP is watchable, but it could have been SO much better!
Continuity and Miscellaneous Observations:
1. Giles and Joyce share an interest in old artifacts. Please GOD don't let Joss be heading where I think he's heading! I mean, Joyce is nice and all, but she's not Jenny. 'Nuff said.
2. Angel's still appearing in dream form, if not in the flesh. Buffy seems to be coping with the whole "I sent my boyfriend to hell" riff on the surface, but she's suffering underneath, as the recurring Angel dreams show.
3. Willow is getting more and more involved in witchcraft. Awww, what a cute little technopagan she is. Maybe Amy, the other apprentice witch, can make an appearance sometime.
4. Xander and Cordy are in deep lust mode, and seem to be back to their second-season bicker/kiss, bicker/grope form. In a totally irrelevant side note that just shows how dirty my mind is, I'd say the chances of Xander soon not needing to worry about any future virgin-eating Praying Mantises are pretty good!
5. Joyce has a friend. Well, had a friend. First her boyfriend turns out to be an android, then her girlfriend turns into a zombie demon. She really has to stop socializing. On the Hellmouth, it's probably safest to be a loner.
6. Giles knows how to hot-wire a car. And once upon a time he was quite good at it. I detect shades of the Ripper here, especially when he manhandles Snyder in that cold, ruthless, scary way we haven't seen him use on any human since The Dark Age. I hope these two hints are a sign that Giles' misspent youth will be brought up again.

Villian - by Kaboo

     Dead Man's Party gives Buffy the opportunity to confront yet another of the horror genre's classic monsters: the zombie. These villains, as most villains in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, allow her to confront emotional issues that lead to her personal development. Although these villians are not the most challenging that Buffy has met, battling the zombies gives the Scooby Gang a chance to adjust to Buffy's return.
     It's important to note that this particular Hellmouth party happens at Joyce's instigation: 1) she holds the party to bond with Buffy and 2) it's her displaying of the mask of Ovu Mobani, or Evil Eye that calls the zombies to her house. It's interesting that the first "bonding activity" that Joyce and Buffy have is the burial of the dead stray cat Buffy finds in the basement. When the resurrected cat returns to the house, Joyce is able to share Buffy's experience with the supernatural for the first time.
     The party also sets the stage for the confrontation between Buffy and her mother and friends. Almost everyone involved in Buffy's situation is guilty of burying pain associated with Buffy's running away, particularly Buffy. As Xander so aptly notes: "You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back to get you." The parallel between the zombies and the emotional relationships are obvious: only when the gang starts to get their buried feelings out in the open are they able to confront the real zombies as a team.
     Joyce again proves herself, by participating in fighting off the zombies, and recognizing Buffy's leadership role in the situation. Also, Joyce's drinking buddy Pat is correctly place in the zombie camp, since in life she seems to have contributed to Joyce's growing habit of drinking to escape problems rather than facing them.
     Pat's donning of the mask made her the demon incarnate, but the demon's powers seemed to work on only one person at a time. With teamwork, the gang is able to distract her enought to allow Buffy to destroy her. In battling the "evil eye" the gang sees what is truly important: that they care about each other, and work well as a team to stop the dangers of the Hellmouth.
     As Buffy says to her mother, the Ovu Mobani experience is nothing compared to past confrontations with other undead creatures. The zombies lack the cunning of the vampires, and the emotions of Daryl in Some Assembly Required; they are simply mindless creatures blindly following directives from the demonic mask. However the conflict with Ovu Mobani and it's zombie followers was necessary to restore the camraderie of the scooby gang, and initiate Joyce into the Slayer's secret world.
     I give this episode a 3.5 out of 5 Ehs

Character - by Jenny68
This episode was given 4.5 Eh's out of 5. If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. This seems to be the rule in Dead Man's Party. Buffy's home, and it's time to deal with it. All those close to Buffy have issues about her 3 month absence, it's just a matter of whether Buffy can handle the wrath of those who care for her the most. Xander is the first to blurt out his feelings on the subject on the doorstep of Giles' place. It's strange to have Xander shooting off his insults and sarcastic comments towards one of the gang. He goes from nice geek, to mouthy bully in the time Buffy returns. He does have one moment of his old self when he asks Buffy if she went off to Belgium. He plays around for a moment, but then goes back to being cold. At the party, Xander doesn't even make an effort to be around Buffy at all, until Joyce yells at her in front of everyone. He gangs up on Buffy with a few insults of his own to add when her mother is done. He spares nothing when he tells her exactly how stupid and selfish he thinks she is for running away. Buffy does get in a shot though when she mentions how Xander wouldn't have had any understanding about it anyway, since he has always been against Angel and herself being together. If there was one person who seemed the least affected by Buffy's absence/return, it is Cordelia. From the alley scene with her cheery hello to Buffy, to the party scene where she attempted to stick up for Buffy, she was the one character who acted as though nothing was different. Of course her role mostly consisted of smoochies with Xander and foiling Giles, but nonetheless, when she tried her hand at sticking up for the Slayer, it almost works but Buffy is annoyed and Xander too worked up already. Willow had some of the most valid reasons for having issues with Buffy. Buffy is her best friend, and she wasn't there for Willow when she needed her. Unlike Xander, Willow held out on speaking her opinion regarding Buffy's disappearance. In fact, she resorted to avoiding Buffy and not saying much at all...until she caught Buffy packing her bags in her bedroom. She finally let loose her feelings on the Slayer's absence, and again unlike Xander, she told Buffy just why she was wrong to leave and why she was so upset at her. Willow had dating, witchcraft, killing vamps, and other "scary life things" going on, and she had needed her friend's advice and support to help her through them. Buffy apologizes to Willow, and tries to make her understand why she had to leave, but Joyce interrupts them. In the end though, things are patched up between the friends, as they throw gentle barbs at one another in the coffee shop. Joyce tries too hard to smooth things out with Buffy. She's afraid to lose her daughter again, and doesn't want to give her any reason to run away a second time. Her efforts only cause a strain between mother and daughter, which leads to an erupting point at the end. She's cool in the meeting with principal Synder, and later looks into some other options for Buffy’s schooling. She tries to stay focused on the reason Buffy would have these school problems, but eventually informs Buffy that she did once again mess up, and may have to face consequences for her actions. Later, when Joyce walks in on Willow and a packing Buffy, she lets loose her frustration and hurt that she’s been feeling since the night Buffy ran away. She confirms what Pat had told Buffy earlier, about how Joyce had been naturally upset and very concerned for Buffy during her absence. It's great to see Joyce have an onscreen friend. It's even better to see her having a friend who isn't the villain of the episode. Pat is a little strange though. Of course the character is set up in such a way as to bring question to her intent of helping out Joyce, and perhaps even Buffy. She is important in this episode; she informs Buffy of the happenings of Joyce while she was gone from home, and she raises the audiences suspicions of her when she asks Buffy if she's about to go running away again. Of course, Pat is doomed in the end when she dons the enchanted zombie mask and takes a shovel in the face from Buffy, so alas, we must wait in hope that one day another brave soul will chance death and become a good friend of Joyce's. Giles is the only one who seems to understand Buffy's situation the best. He knows how much Buffy loved Angel, and for her to have defeated him by making sure he closed Acathla must have been a terrible strain on her being (and he doesn't even know yet that Buffy knew he had changed back). Although Giles looks a little mad when he regards Buffy standing on his doorstep, we see him breathe in his relief with a shaky sigh and a slight smile in his kitchen. Although slightly tense, Giles and Buffy are able to talk in this episode, though nothing more than shop talk, which is more than Buffy is able to get out of any of the others, the exception being her mother. Giles doesn't seem to feel the need to scold Buffy on her absence from her duty. She seeks this slight comfort at the party when she asks Xander and Cordelia where Giles is and if he's expected late. She is essentially alone at her own party, and she could at least talk to Giles without it getting too weird. Of course later on, Buffy doesn't need the comfort of a conversation. As it's been shown before (most openly in Ted), Buffy can deal best when she's fighting. She's used her slaying as a venting technique before, and it's used here again. This time though, she doesn't need to go looking for the source, the bad guys come to her. The fight is the way out of the confrontation; once the fight begins, everyone goes back to normal mode. Where just moments before, Xander and Buffy were at odds with one another, but now they're instant allies. Willow didn't know just how right she was when she suggested violence over talking, just not violence against each other. Buffy is not given the time to figure her problems and emotions out in this episode. She feels the strain of her mother and her friends, but is unable to fix it. She is still not ready to spill her story of her fight with Angel to everyone yet, but she is pressured into coming up with a good enough excuse for why she felt the need to run away from her problems. Her attempt to sort all of this out backfires when she makes the mistake of packing up once again, only to be caught by Willow. Perhaps she saw running away again as the only option she had for solving her problems short-term, but her mistake was in wanting to go so far. She would have been better off just stepping outside, or going for a walk, but then again, the confrontation was well-needed, and ended up resolving the tension for the most part anyway.

Story - by Darcy
Well, Joss is batting 0 for 2, I'm afraid. Two episodes into Season 3 and we still haven't seen a good one. Dead Man's Party is better than Anne, but it's still not exactly premium Buffy. DMP was frustrating to me because it had the potential to be so much better. In bits it was absolutely wonderful, but somehow all the hilarious bits and poignant bits didn't come together to make an overall wonderful episode. In this case, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. DMP was handicapped by the fact that it was effectively a season premiere. Anne didn't fulfill the usual function of a season premiere, so DMP had to do it. Resolving old issues and restoring the status quo in the main characters' relationships (for instance the Buffy/Willow dynamic) is the whole point of a premiere. Unfortunately it has to compete for season premiere laurels with last season's When She Was Bad. Everything WSWB did right, DMP attempts to do, but somehow it doesn't quite come off. The difficulty of a premiere, especially following a cliffhanger, is that the episode has to look back, rather than forward. Old threads which were deliberately left dangling (in order to keep the audience in suspense over the summer) have to be tied up, so the ep is forced to focus on the past. Rather than driving the plot, the episode has to play catch-up to it. Maybe the comparison with WSWB is unfair. Admittedly Prophecy Girl was a far less messy and challenging season finale than Becoming II, so WSWB didn't have such a huge job to do. But WSWB did one thing absolutely right that is overlooked here: it related the story-of-the-week to the ongoing issues. Buffy's return, Angel's dream appearances, the Slayerettes' anger at being abandoned, all this stuff is mythology plotting, which is dealt with in multi-episode story arcs. But the mythology parts didn't tie in AT ALL with the story-of-the-week about the zombies. In fact it felt like the zombie plot was tacked on as an afterthought just so Buffy et al would have an enemy to fight. In WSWB the story about raising the Master's skeleton tied in DIRECTLY with Buffy's angst over having been killed by the Master and brought back to life. The "Buffy acts like a bitch" stuff integrated beautifully into the raising of the Master, so even though it was two separate plotlines, it felt like one. In DMP the zombies have nothing to do with anything, and it's like there are two parallel plots happening: Buffy's homecoming and the zombie thing. And since the zombies aren't particularly compelling bad guys, their story felt like a disjointed subplot that didn't quite gell with the rest of the ep. Joss paid homage to several movies and books in order to make this one. Didn't he learn from Bad Eggs that direct rip-offs don't work too well? I counted homages to two specific sources plus an entire genre. The dead and buried cat being the first creature to be reanimated is a homage to Stephen King's Pet Cematary, while the scene where Pat puts on the mask gave me flashbacks of Jim Carrey in The Mask. Furthermore, this entire episode relies heavily on the cheesy zombie movie genre. It's very cute and all, but tongue-in-cheek references to movies can't carry a whole episode. Just to put in a few more grumbles about the zombie plot, it had so many holes it leaked like a colander! As I said earlier, it feels as though it was added at the last minute without anyone in charge actually reading the additions before filming. There were some major sloppies, I'm sorry to say. First off, we never got a real explanation of how the mask came into Joyce's hands, or how it got activated. Perhaps putting a mask in a cardboard box and sticking it in storage takes away its power? Sure, I'll buy that the demonic energy from the Hellmouth awoke the sleeping demon, but it would be nice if the show would actually say that, and not leave the viewers to make up semi-plausible explanations on their own. Usually at some point in the ep Knowledge Man (that would be Giles) clears up any lingering confusion the Slayerettes (and the audience) have with a detailed explanation of what bad mojo is happening this week and why. That part seems to have been left out in this ep. Finally (I swear this is my last complaint), where were the consequences of the party that went wrong? Are all Buffy's neighbours members of the Helen Keller society of deaf and blind people? In my neighbourhood they call the cops if the party spills out onto the deck; here the house was being destroyed, people were screaming and diving from the windows, and an army of the undead was invading. Then the daughter of the house stuck a shovel through someone's face in the backyard. They didn't notice?????????? What kind of insurance claim is Joyce supposed to make (and from the state of the place she'll need to make one), and how do they explain the dead people? Sure Pat and the other zombies vanished into thin air, but isn't someone going to notice that several people were last seen alive at the Summers' residence before they mysteriously disappeared? Especially when Buffy Summers was previously a murder suspect in a stilll-unsolved killing? It really gets to me how the cops are only brought in occasionally as a convenient plot device to complicate things. In Ted and Becoming, they appear, arrest the wrong person, and generally hinder things, but all the rest of the time, they are nowhere to be found. If Joss doesn't want to show realistic consequences of behaviour the police would definitely take an interest in, he shouldn't film plots where common sense tells us there would have to be some kind of explanation made to the authorities. Chances are by next episode Buffy's trashed house will be perfect again, and the whole mess will never be mentioned again. I'm having a hard time buying Oz as a full-fledged, full-time Slayerette. I think it's because he was made a Slayerette quite abruptly. Intellectually I know that probably Oz has been getting more and more involved as the summer went on, but I didn't see it gradually happening. In Becoming, Oz is on the fringes, helping out occasionally but not really part of the social group, whereas by third season, he's suddenly around all the time. I'm not used to seeing Oz at the research parties, or teasing Giles. I think there was insufficient build-up in Season Two, and that's why his new status seems like an abrupt change. In Season Two, Oz was often not seen or even mentioned for several eps at a time, so I got used to him being a peripheral character. Also, his primary interaction has been with Willow rather than Buffy, so it seems strange for him to be joining Buffy's team of Slayerettes. Don't get me wrong; I adore Oz and I'm thrilled Seth Green is a regular cast member. I just think he could have been integrated better. For instance, the integration of Cordelia was beautifully planned. In Season One she's irrelevant comic relief right up until Invisible Girl and Prophecy Girl. Then in Season Two her transition from vapid cheerleader to vapid butt-kicker happens so gradually it seems absolutely natural. It feels here like the writers decided they wanted Oz as a Slayerette, and decided to skip the boring part where they show how he's slowly drawn into the group. I'm probably being too critical, but I haven't had enough time to get used to having Oz around full-time. I'm sure by halfway through this season I won't be able to imagine the Scooby Gang without him, but right now it feels a little forced. On a positive note, we're starting to see some of the messy emotional fallout from Becoming II, and we're not being stinted on drama there. I was afraid the show would gloss over the serious rifts Buffy's actions caused, but they haven't. The series of scenes where Willow, Joyce and Xander all ream her out are superbly written. It's impossible to take a side because everyone has a point, and everyone has been genuinely suffering. All the actors are wonderful in these scenes, from Joyce's anger to Xander's self-righteousness; from Cordelia's clumsy attempt at empathy to Willow's feelings of abandonment. Ironically enough, Giles, the one person with more reason than anyone else to rip her apart for her irresponsibility, is the one person who doesn't go off on her. Perhaps he's so relieved to have his girl back he can't get mad. Or perhaps Giles, as the only other person to have someone he loves killed, is in a better position than the rest to understand Buffy's emotional pain. After all, even if he didn't physically run away, he detached from reality for a while after Jenny's death. Or possibly, since Giles and Buffy haven't actually had a one-on-one scene yet, him going off on her is yet to come. OK, so Giles and the Slayerettes haven't talked to Buffy about Kendra's death, the Akathla situation, or Spike, Dru and Angel's sudden disappearances. Meanwhile, Buffy's still too traumatized to fill in any of the blanks voluntarily. The lack of communication here is astounding! I smell some deliberately dangling threads which will be explored later. Actually I really like what Joss is doing with all this. He's setting us up for some really big stuff, giving us just enough to whet our appetites. At some point Buffy is going to open up enough to compare notes with her friends, and all hell is going to break loose. In the meantime, the anticipation is killing me! I refer, of course, to Xander's deception in Becoming II, for which he is showing not a trace of guilt. It can be argued that him not telling Buffy the truth may have saved her life. If she'd known that Angelus could morph back into Angel at any moment, odds are she wouldn't have been able to fight Angelus with such intensity, and he could have killed her. But don't expect Buffy to see it that way, given her reaction here in DMP. Buffy will feel she could have played it out differently (concentrating on keeping Angelus away from Akathla), and Willow and Giles will feel betrayed by the lie. Meanwhile, Xander's outraged denunciations of Buffy's selfishness are just dripping with dramatic irony. Since Joss is giving us hints here of the old tensions (Xander/Angel, Buffy/Angel etc), it means that when the explosion comes, it will probably be fabulous. That entire part of the ep dealing with Buffy's return was terrific. The dialogue, the impact on relationships, the emotion displayed by the actors, the way the consequences of Buffy's decision are being revealed....all wonderful. Also, there were some very, VERY funny lines related to the zombie plot. Xander and Joyce were great, as was the cat scene in the library. But Giles' soliloquy in his car was the funniest part of the episode. His line "Do you like my mask? Isn't it pretty? It raises the dead. Americans!" belongs in the Buffy ROTFLOL Moments Hall of Fame (if such a Hall exists). The words, the delivery, the high pitched voice: they all turned it into a classic scene. I have no complaints about the dialogue in this ep. Both the hilarious and the poignant moments were beautifully written and played. Basically, DMP is an episode that is terrific in parts, but deeply flawed by a derivative, poorly-explained plot-of-the-week that doesn't mesh with Buffy's emotional problems. I'll give it 3 and 3/4 eh!'s out of five, and I'm being generous here (there's a part of me that wants to give it 2 1/2). If I were only reviewing the parts of the episode that deal with the ramifications of Buffy's return, I'd be giving it a 4 1/2, and if I were only reviewing the zombie bits, I'd give it a 2. The dialogue is first-rate, the emotional ground covered is very important, and the foreshadowing is beautifully done, but this is one script that should definitely have been sent back for further editing befor it was filmed. Somehow an episode that could have been a classic is much more frustrating than one which is simply mediocre. DMP is watchable, but it could have been SO much better! Continuity and Miscellaneous Observations: 1. Giles and Joyce share an interest in old artifacts. Please GOD don't let Joss be heading where I think he's heading! I mean, Joyce is nice and all, but she's not Jenny. 'Nuff said. 2. Angel's still appearing in dream form, if not in the flesh. Buffy seems to be coping with the whole "I sent my boyfriend to hell" riff on the surface, but she's suffering underneath, as the recurring Angel dreams show. 3. Willow is getting more and more involved in witchcraft. Awww, what a cute little technopagan she is. Maybe Amy, the other apprentice witch, can make an appearance sometime. 4. Xander and Cordy are in deep lust mode, and seem to be back to their second-season bicker/kiss, bicker/grope form. In a totally irrelevant side note that just shows how dirty my mind is, I'd say the chances of Xander soon not needing to worry about any future virgin-eating Praying Mantises are pretty good! 5. Joyce has a friend. Well, had a friend. First her boyfriend turns out to be an android, then her girlfriend turns into a zombie demon. She really has to stop socializing. On the Hellmouth, it's probably safest to be a loner. 6. Giles knows how to hot-wire a car. And once upon a time he was quite good at it. I detect shades of the Ripper here, especially when he manhandles Snyder in that cold, ruthless, scary way we haven't seen him use on any human since The Dark Age. I hope these two hints are a sign that Giles' misspent youth will be brought up again.

Villian - by Kaboo
Dead Man's Party gives Buffy the opportunity to confront yet another of the horror genre's classic monsters: the zombie. These villains, as most villains in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, allow her to confront emotional issues that lead to her personal development. Although these villians are not the most challenging that Buffy has met, battling the zombies gives the Scooby Gang a chance to adjust to Buffy's return. It's important to note that this particular Hellmouth party happens at Joyce's instigation: 1) she holds the party to bond with Buffy and 2) it's her displaying of the mask of Ovu Mobani, or Evil Eye that calls the zombies to her house. It's interesting that the first "bonding activity" that Joyce and Buffy have is the burial of the dead stray cat Buffy finds in the basement. When the resurrected cat returns to the house, Joyce is able to share Buffy's experience with the supernatural for the first time. The party also sets the stage for the confrontation between Buffy and her mother and friends. Almost everyone involved in Buffy's situation is guilty of burying pain associated with Buffy's running away, particularly Buffy. As Xander so aptly notes: "You can't just bury stuff, Buffy. It'll come right back to get you." The parallel between the zombies and the emotional relationships are obvious: only when the gang starts to get their buried feelings out in the open are they able to confront the real zombies as a team. Joyce again proves herself, by participating in fighting off the zombies, and recognizing Buffy's leadership role in the situation. Also, Joyce's drinking buddy Pat is correctly place in the zombie camp, since in life she seems to have contributed to Joyce's growing habit of drinking to escape problems rather than facing them. Pat's donning of the mask made her the demon incarnate, but the demon's powers seemed to work on only one person at a time. With teamwork, the gang is able to distract her enought to allow Buffy to destroy her. In battling the "evil eye" the gang sees what is truly important: that they care about each other, and work well as a team to stop the dangers of the Hellmouth. As Buffy says to her mother, the Ovu Mobani experience is nothing compared to past confrontations with other undead creatures. The zombies lack the cunning of the vampires, and the emotions of Daryl in Some Assembly Required; they are simply mindless creatures blindly following directives from the demonic mask. However the conflict with Ovu Mobani and it's zombie followers was necessary to restore the camraderie of the scooby gang, and initiate Joyce into the Slayer's secret world. I give this episode a 3.5 out of 5 Ehs

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