Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Nightmares (1x10)

[fajrdrako]

I loved this episode. Loved it very much.

1. First, we have Buffy's nightmare. My first thought was "Oh, no, not the Master again." But then it clearly was... different. Buffy wasn't herself. Buffy was scared. "I bet it's a dream," I thought. And so it was. It was fun to see Buffy in braids. Good candles.

2. So Buffy has a father. I am surprised. Loved Willow's comment on the divorce: "harsh".

3. Love Willow's line: "My parents don't even bicker. Sometimes they glare."

4. Xander makes fun of Cordelia: "Wendell, what is wrong with you? Don't you know that she is the
center of the universe, and the rest of us merely revolve around her?" I sometimes have trouble figuring out Xander's actual attitude to Cordelia. Lust? Contempt? Admiration? Irritation?

5. Wendell has a spider problem. I thought he's be the redshirt of the episode, but of course he wasn't - I must learn to stop thinking about Buffy in terms of the cliches we see in all other shows. It's misleading. Confusing because we sometimes do get regular cliches, but we also get twists in the cliches, and innovation.

6. So it's the Master who makes a speech about fear. I like 'fear' as a theme; I always think fear is the root of most evil.

7. I like Xander's "famous last words': "I'm not worried. If there's something bad out there we'll find, you'll slay, we'll party!" Bravado probably, but it looks good on him.

8. Another passage:

Wendell: They're not insects. They're arachnids.
Xander: They're from the Middle East?

Is that a joke? I don't get it. Is it just that Xander thinks 'arachnid' is a nationality?

9. Buffy: "There's a history test? Nobody told me there was a history test! I haven't... I... Okay, I will catch up with you guys later." I can relate - that's one of my recurring nightmares - writing an exam for a course I haven't studied for. In some dreams, it's a course I've never even taken, but I have to pass the exam anyway. (Shudder.)

10. I like the way the nightmares escalate, getting more threatening and more widespread as the episode continues.

11. I liked the nightmare kid. It's obvious for us that he's the epicentre of the nightmares, but I can see it wouldn't be obvious to the characters - especially as their thinking becomes more and more irraitonal.

12. Love the nightmare of the tough guy whose mother comes and makes a fuss over him in front of his friends.

13. So Xander dreams he's standing in front of the other students in his underwear. When I had that dream, I usually wasn't wearing underwear, and I was usually trying to find something to hide behind.

14. Giles' nightmare: that he can't read. Oooh. Scary.

15. Love the way each person's nightmare is tailored to their character. Does Xander's fear of clowns have anything to do with his tendency to make jokes most of the time? Loved Cordelia's nightmare of bad hair and unfashionable clothes! And Willow's fear of being on stage, being looked at by a crowd of people, being asked to sing.

16. I wonder what Giles' five languages are.

17. I like Buffy's phrase: "asteroid body".

18. Buffy's nightmare (besides being helpless with vampires): that her father doesn't love or like her, that he is disappointed in her and embarrassed by her, and that she was responsbible for her parent's divorce. Makes sense. Of course it plays on all her fears - of being different, of being immature, of being outcast.

19. Our characters split up - shouldn't they know that in any TV show or horror show, that's a really bad idea?

20. Xander following the bait of chocolate bars... That seemed oddly nonsensical. Like a dream, of course. But also rather too comic. Likewise a fear of being buried seemed sort of anticlimactic for Buffy - but her fear of being a vampire? Perfect. Loved her line: "Well, we better hurry... 'cause I'm getting hungry."

21. Xander stands up to the clown. Wonderful.

22. Giles' nightmare: failing to protect Buffy. I loved that, too.

23. So they go to the hospital, fight the Ugly Man, persuade Billy out of his coma, and restore reality. I wasn't sure what gave Billy his powers... Not that it matters. Though Billy was fine as the basis of the plot, I thought his story was weak compared to that of the others - particularly Buffy. All the emotional power was with her and her situation. Billy's problem never did acquire much oomph or sense of threat. The threat, in fact, was never the Ugly Man's power over Billy, but Billy's power over everyone else in Sunnydale.

21. I'd be curious to know what Joyce Summer's nightmare was or would be.

22. I liked the moral of the story - face your fears. That's an important thing to learn, and most of us don't learn it, ever.

23. Happy ending, when Buffy's father came to get her and things were all right. So... was it not him, before? Was he just Buffy's delusion? Or was he somehow controlled by Billy's dreaming, and overcame and forgot it afterwards? ...Doesn't matter: irrelevant plot details.

24. Final conversation:

Willow: When Buffy was a vampire, you weren't still, like, attracted to her, were you?
Xander: Willow, how can you... I mean, that's really bent! She was... grotesque!
Willow: Still dug her, huh?
Xander: I'm sick, I need help.

Shouldn't somebody be pointing out that Buffy is Buffy, whatever she looks like?

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

it could also apply to Buffy's dreams - I think the ones with the Master are mainly about fearing death, but could also be about failing to stop him

I'd say the focus of her dream was of being overpowered - of being not strong enough to do what she has to do. Which makes it a little bit of both, but as in the scene with her father, she fears not being good enough for her job.

Like Giles.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

being overpowered - of being not strong enough to do what she has to do

Yes. Though I think there is personal fear of the Master as well.

as in the scene with her father, she fears not being good enough for her job.

Like Giles.

I love that - the connections between them and the similarities they have in their positions in some ways.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

there is personal fear of the Master as well.

Really? He doesn't seem very scary to me. He just has a lot of acolytes.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but what Buffy knows about him is that all the other vampires are scared of him (scary things being scared is a bad sign), he's trying to break free and when he does it will open the Hellmouth and be all apocalyptic, and she's eventually probably going to have to take him on.

Also, if we take the events of the film as vaguely canon - though actually according to Joss what we can take as canon from the film is now a comic called Origin - she has come up against an old and powerful vampire with minions before and because of that lost her first Watcher. So knowing there is another vamp leader out there wanting to rise and kill everyone would likely wig her out even more.

(Just had a thought as well - isn't the Master in the first nightmare she has in episode 1? And in these dreams she still hasn't ever seen him in reality, so she knows what he looks like already without ever having met him. Not really important, it just occurred to me.)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I can understand Buffy being scared of the Master, if only by reputation. But since I don't find him scary myself, it's difficult to take that seriously.

I must look for Origin.

[ceruleancat.livejournal.com]

Good points. We do tend to forget she lost her first watcher on the job, in what must be less than a year earlier in the timeline.

And I think that her nightmares of him here are indeed a tie back to previous nightmares. Though I don't remember what we're supposed to know about the prophecy at this point.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Poor Merrick. Donald Sutherland cocked him up in the film, and he's hardly remembered at all by the series viewers. Apparently he gets better treatment in the comic.

I don't remember what we're supposed to know about the prophecy at this point

At this point, it's "prophecy, what prophecy?"

Unless you count the Master reading about the Annoying One:

"And the Slayer will not know him and will not stop him and he will lead her into Hell"

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've come across a prophecy yet - not an interesting one. There was a prophecy about the Anointed One who turns out to be a really boring kid who hangs out with the Master.

I wouldn't mind seeing Donald Sutherland in with this crowd.

[ceruleancat.livejournal.com]

a. Only one more before the season finale.

b. Something tells me you'll like what happens to the kid later...

c. Sutherland didn't do a good job (like the rest of the movie) and Joss has a thing against him.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Only one more before the season finale.

Then it's on to season 2.

Something tells me you'll like what happens to the kid later...

I hope it will be dire. And final.

Sutherland didn't do a good job (like the rest of the movie) and Joss has a thing against him.

Sounds like a doomed project. Miscasting? An incompetent director or producer?

[ceruleancat.livejournal.com]

S2 has a lot of juicy ones that we're all waiting for.

I hope it will be dire. And final.

LOL

Sounds like a doomed project. Miscasting? An incompetent director or producer?
All of the above, I suspect. Joss was less experienced and with less control, I suspect, and the production made it into just another horror movie with vamps.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Just another bad movie - as if we didn't already have enough of them. Especially in the horror genre.

[ceruleancat.livejournal.com]

The movie was botched up in a lot of ways.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It's hard to even remember the movie exists: everyone says it's bad, and it doesn't seem to have a lot to do with the continuity of the TV show. So I just ignore its existence.