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Buffy 4x5 [EARLY ACCESS]
Added 2025-06-03 13:44:59 +0000 UTC
Comments
So many people hate this episode, but I love! I'm so glad you liked it! The episode was shoehorned into the season. The network wanted them to do a "very special episode" about alcohol and they would get extra funding for it. This is what they came up with. They didn't get their funding lol
Jennifer McIntyre
2025-06-09 00:10:43 +0000 UTCYour enjoyment of this episode just goes to show that even one of the worst ranked episodes of the series has some interesting layers and redeemable moments. I personally quite enjoy this episode on rewatches. I generally always enjoy watching different versions of the characters as kind of a character study. Which there is a bit if that in this episode. I always found it interesting that in cave man state she obviously retained her slayer instincts. As well as her instincts to protect others. Showing us they are a core part of her basic human instincts. Also that I cave slayer state she could acknowledge what a douche Parker was. This is because she has an overactive superego due to her abandonment issues. A deeply psychological reading of her behaviours. However it helps us understand her behaviours and actions. It is also interesting commentary on human nature and that we are essentially all the same at the core. That circumstances and privileges affect where our life takes us. Even intelligence is ultimately a privilege that people forget to remember they have. And ultimately it is important that if we have the privilege of being intelligent and more educated that we remember that we are to use that for good. Parker is being driven by his ego, at an attempt to satiate his internal desires and instead of using his superego to assess his actions from a moral standpoint, he is using it to try and construct a rationalisation for his egotistical behaviour. Buffy is being driven by her superego, overanalysing everything that she and others do from her moral centre and internalising it. She cannot accept that Parker’s behaviour is about him because her abandonment trauma is governing her superego. You kind of see the same thing happening with Xander at the bar. His own insecurities about not being good enough or smart enough etc are making him internalise that abuse. You can actually go and analyse all the characters in this ep as a lot of meat is there. But you’d also be there all day. But what is interesting is you can see each of the characters ego and superego working well when they are helping another person with their conflict but fail them when they are addressing a conflict of their own that is being governed by their own insecurities or their own trauma. This whole season is a massive and really complex character study in my opinion. I mean the fact that the only class you really see any of is a psychology class is so telling. (Oh am the number 1 rule on Buffy is the class topic ALWAYS holds the key to the episodes theme.) But yeah my favourite thing about the show is that these characters are EXTREMELY well written. Their behaviour is so consistent with their own psychology and unresolved personal conflict or trauma. And because of this we see these deeply complex and what you could say is ‘flawed’ humans being faced with decisions and conflict tehy have to navigate with enormous responsibility. It’s so compelling and it’s such good television. A lot of issues with media is characters are there purely as plot devices and they do things purely to service the plot. While we do sometimes use side characters on Buffy for this, they also often build in motivations for those side characters that make sense. Their main characters are always going to be the important part of the plot though. Their emotional journey is almost always the goal of the episode. The writers are tasked with getting characters from a to b at an emotional level, the plot is almost always secondary to that.
Sarah_J_Salerno
2025-06-07 06:34:49 +0000 UTC
