Bored Now does the complete Buffy 1997-2003

Episode 1.03 Witch



Buffy attempts to relive some of her pre-Sunnydale glory years by signing up for cheer leading practice much to the chagrin of Giles. At the tryout favourite Amber is taken out of the running when her hands get mysteriously set on fire.  The gang suspect that Amber's rage might have caused this.  At the next tryout Amy Madison (Elizabeth Anne Allen) almost cripples Cordelia by accident? Placing her hopes of making the cut at risk, something which Cordelia later warns Amy about the consequences of in icy fashion.  When Buffy learns more about Amy's background she suspects that her mother, a former cheer leading Sunnydale great is applying extreme pressure on her daughter.  When Amy fails to make the final cut her state of mind becomes even more unstable, this along with a weird driving school incident involving Cordelia casts suspensions heavily on Amy.

Witch is a mid-range season one episode, with a good set up, a hit and miss middle section, and a bit of a sloppy ending.  In a later season of the show it would look weaker maybe, but at this stage it perfectly sums up many of its strengths and weaknesses.  Much of the good stuff comes from the character growth and interactions.  It makes sense that Buffy at this stage is still trying to cling on to as much of a normal teenage life as possible, and the opening scene when Giles is talking about her surrendering herself to an "cult" only for the shot to cut to Buffy in cheer leading attire is again sharp visual comedy, and the oddball father-daughter interactions between Gellar and Head are once again excellently played by both.  Xander's ever growing crush on Buffy is another welcome development because it gives his character a greater purpose, and plays nicely with Willow's true feelings for him, which of course Xander misreads.  Its this kind of social comment on the pains of High School life that the show is so good at during its early seasons.

Cordelia comes to life in this episode too, while there is a far greater purpose for the character than we see during this debut run, the fact is that Charisma Carpenter is very watchable and entertaining when playing a stuck up bitch, not only that but there are certain scenes such as the locker room scene with Amy where she injects the air with pure venom.  Even while on the fringes of the story Cordelia still gets many of the best lines, and Carpenter deliveries them with cool, comic timing and ease.  The character of Amy also makes a promising debut with Elizabeth Anne Allen putting in a solid, and nicely understated turn, and I was fairly well invested in the character and her plight.  Other small things I enjoyed included Buffy joyfully singing "Macho Man" while under a spell this never fails to tickle me. I love this piece of dialogue too:

Giles: "Why would anyone want to hurt Cordelia?"
Willow: "Maybe because they met her"

Now for the bad stuff, while there are many entertaining moments or interesting character interactions, they do exist as moments, and the narrative as a whole does not quite gel.  One unconvincing element is the suggestion of Cordelia as a red herring considering that to the best of our knowledge she processes no super natural powers.  While, there is a nice twist late on, overall the suspense just didn't involve me enough. The other main flaw is that the big set pieces are just too cheap and unconvincing.  This is largely down to the low budget which the show had to work with at this stage, however in an episode which relies even more on these visually set pieces to tie loose plot ends together, the problem becomes even more telegraphed.  The final big one is over blown, cheesy, although I will admit kinda fun too. I did find the conclusion to the episode a bit rushed though.  So hit and miss, but with mostly promising stuff at least through the character growth.

Episode 1.04 Teacher's Pet



As Xander's obsession with Buffy crosses into his daydreams, the object of his affections meanwhile forms a bond with her biology teacher Dr. Gregory (William Monaghan), which makes his sudden disappearance, and reappearance minus a head, all the more harder for her to accept.  Around the same time a highly sexual  substitute teacher Miss Natalie French (Musetta Vander) arrives driving Xander's already highly charged hormones into over drive.  The control this newly arrived member of the Sunnydale faculty has over Xander is enough course for alarm, before her odd liking for bugs, and strange demon like actions.

On a positive note, what makes Buffy such a watchable show is that even the weaker episodes have enjoyable moments, or something of value.  Teacher's Pet is just about as lame, ill thought out, and badly written as a Buffy episode can get, and yet it does stick to the rule at least.  So lets deal with the small moments of mercy before giving the episode the kicking it so richly deserves.  Firstly, the engagement between Buffy and Dr. Gregory is touching and also relateable, as even the most hardened school hater has at least one teacher whom he or she forms a bond with. This at least adds to Buffy's motivation to get to the bottom of his untimely death.  There are also some nice moments of Scoobies banter.  I personally enjoy Willow and Buffy's humour and reactions to Xander's failed attempts at competing with High School hierarchies.  After that I'm kind of struggling with this one.

First lets look at Xander's opening fantasy of him as a cool rock star sweeping Buffy off her feet.  Its fair to say that this is a some what realistic visual metaphor for the sexual immaturity of the high school boy.  However, as a sequence it is way too on the nose, and hammers the point to death.  It also has the effect of distancing the audience from Xander and making him seem a bit too creepy, plus it rather negates the feminist message which Buffy as a whole projects.  The second issue with the episode is how it defines logic, and by that I mean the logic of the Buffyverse.  While it is hard to apply real life logic consistently to such a show, one of the most appealing things about Buffy as a show is that when a character acts against their nature, we are given a logical explanation.  When Xander heads for what he believes is going to be a night of romance with Miss French, and Buffy warns him off it, logic suggests than Xander would listen to Buffy's warning because of her being the slayer and all, or at the very least that he would entertain the notion of not going ahead.  Some read this as Xander being under some sort of spell from Miss French, but since we are not given any strong indication of this, I can only assume that it is purely hormones driving him.  What makes the scene even weaker is when Xander cuts Buffy down and claims that she is just jealous of the thought that another woman could find him attractive. This makes even less sense considering that Buffy has done nothing to this point to indicate that she sees Xander as anything more than a friend.  And shouldn't Buffy have made a bit more effort to stop her friend from entering the dragon's den, given that she knew enough about Miss French's demon activities to know that she had bad intentions for Xander?Just horrible writing all round.

The payoff to Miss French's identity is just beyond bad b-movie dross.  Yes, to some the creature of week aspect to Buffy is appealing, but this was neither campy entertaining, scary or menacing enough for me.  It was just bland and very cheap.  The concluding set piece makes any in Witch look like the height of invention, and worse I neither believed in or cared about Xander's life being placed in danger.  Vander as Miss French is one of the weaker casting choices throughout the series, add to this than a whole host of central characters such as Willow and Giles are reduced mostly to connect the dots roles, and that Cordelia is wasted, Angel's random appearances seem mostly pointless, and that for the second episode in a row the Master is absent.  Like any Buffy episode this should be viewed at least once, but it really is pretty grim stuff.