"Is she cold?" 




This has been hyped up to me ever since I've started watching. I knew this season was going to be depressing, but Jesus. 




The discovery and the absolute terror: the episode starts with the ending of the previous one. Buffy discovers the cold, dead body of her mother. We see the realization in her face as she shakes the body, hoping that it truly isn't what she thinks it is. The first ten minutes of this episode terrified me like no horror movie has in years. The silence and the way the house is shot like there is something lurking. Something just waiting to come out and attack Buffy. 




I was absolutely on edge, almost unable to watch the screen. I lower the volume as those shots of Buffy walking into the kitchen fully expecting something to happen—a monster, glory, or whatever—but nothing happens. The paramedics arrive, and you come to the realization. No one or anything killed Joyce. She just died naturally. The consequences of the brain tumor finally showing. Joyce is dead. Joyce is dead, and nothing killed her. Joyce is dead because of her own human body. It was a bright sunny day; the birds were chirping, the children were playing, yet something horrible happened, but the world keeps going. 




Loss and how it affects everyone: This episode has an absolutely perfect portrayal of loss and the grief it causes in a person. Every single character grives in a different way. Buffy being almost in denial as she discovers the body, she watches the paramedics doing chest compression, providing her oxygen in hopes of her mother coming back to life. And in one second, she really thinks she does. She imagines her happily recovering, dawn by her side as they happily watch their mother get better. But it doesn't happen. She is pronounced dead. 




The next character we see is Giles coming into the house. He wasn't expecting to see this; he sees the corpse of a former friend, a former lover, even just laying dead. One can imagine that in that moment something in Giles that was healing now is broken again. First it was Jenny; now it was Joyce. 




Then it was Dawn. We experience a fake out with Dawn crying about what we think is Joyce, but it's just typical teenage stuff. Then comes buffy. We don't hear her directly say that Joyce is dead; we just watch from afar. Like the spectators we are, we do not own that scene. I'll elaborate on Dawn later. Willow and Tara. 




Willow is processing the death in a weird way. It's almost like she's trying to distract herself. Picking what to wear to the hospital, unable to decide. "But Joyce liked this one," she can't decide. She can't choose what to wear in the same way she can't choose to accept that Joyce is dead. Tara is doing her best to comfort Willow, and while being the newest addition to the gang, she too is extremely impacted by Joyce's sudden passing. We later find out it is because she too has experienced what Buffy has. She lost her mother too; out of everyone in the group, she is the only one who could possibly know what Buffy is going through. I love Tara; she's genuinely such an amazing person; her comforting buffy just made me cry even harder. 




Xander. Oh Xander, despite how much I hate your character, your reaction still broke me. Xander is the one's whose grief I most found myself understanding. Sadness was followed by anger, followed by humor. Xander punches the wall, getting his hand stuck in. It hurts. But when Willow asks him if it made him feel better, he answers, "Just for a second," and that one second of being distracted by pain is truly worth it. 




Anya. This one really hurt. Anya just doesn't understand the situation. She just can't understand why this happens. Why isn't Joyce coming back to live? Why can't Joyce just wake up, and why can't everything be fine? Her little speech where she finally bursts out and starts crying was such a beautiful performance. "Joyce will never have any drink fruit punch ever." In this moment, I choose to believe she finally understands. 




Death is real: This episode destroyed me. Every time we see Joyce's body for some unexplainable reasons, I just want her to pop back up to live. To scare us. Even if it was her as a monster to distract us from the reality of death, it never happens. Joyce was a great mother to Buffy and Dawn, and just seeing her lay there all cold and emotionless just felt wrong. It just felt fake. With the lively cast of Buffy where everyone is goofy cracking jokes, seeing them just completely destroyed in their own ways pained me. Seeing something happen to Joyce—someone who I grew really attached to just laying there dying. Not killed a vampire or a big evil. She just died by something that could happen to anyone. 




The final scene really hit me hard. Dawn asking questions about the corpse, Buffy telling her it's not mom. That she is gone. "Is she cold? "Where did she go?" The final shot is Dawn reaching out to her mom; her hand is going to touch her cold, dead face. Maybe she hopes something will happen, but as it cuts to black, we realize nothing did happened. It was just a hand touching a corpse

Specials

Season 1

Season 2