What a confident, energetic, bold show Buffy the Vampire Slayer became. Its combination of metaphorical monsters and character arcs and season-long sagas leave me in awe. Individual episodes work wonderfully. Seasons thread together with stunning grace. Special "concept" shows work like pillars, holding up the more traditional stories around them, while, this season especially, Sarah Michelle Gellar displays genuine maturity and wisdom. Episodes like "Fool For Love" and "The Body" and "I Was Made to Love You" show off the creative team's mastery of wit and pathos. It's unfair anymore to simply call this superior genre fare. Buffy's a lot more than that.
The show's so damned good that the creators have no problem introducing the mystery of Buffy's sister, Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), in the beginning of the season. Wait a second. Buffy's never had a sister up to now, and suddenly Buffy's acting like she and Dawn have been siblings forever. Is this one of those television cheats, like the disappearing sister from Boy Meets World or the inexplicable every-other-episode regular Tori from Saved By the Bell? If not, then just what the hell is going on? To understand fully (and to appreciate the density of this show), you had to pay attention during two key episodes from Season Four: "Superstar" and "Restless." In the former, the nerdy Jonathan built a wall of illusion around Sunnydale so everyone would think he was a superhero. The latter offered a subtler hint to Buffy (and viewers): "be back before dawn."
In a parallel season-long plot, the Scoobies must fend off loathsome mooks who work for Glory (Clare Kramer), a demonic woman with curly hair and killer legs. She wants a talisman called the Key so she can travel between dimensions, but, like crossing the streams, there may be some Armageddony side-effects. This may sound too familiar, given how frequently villains on Buffy need a magical thingy for some doom-laden plot (bonus points if there's a never-before-mentioned prophecy). What makes the arc work is the laser-focus of Glory: she dominates every scene with her desire for the Key. After the previous season's unformed Adam, who spent more time pontificating about his goals than pursuing them, this villain is welcome.
She also functions as a perverse mirror-image of Buffy. The show offered previous "mirrors" of who Buffy might want to be, first with Cordelia the beauty queen, then with Faith the renegade, but Glory lacks the human weakness of those two characters. They hid deeper emotions under their cultivated exteriors. Glory is Glory: a blonde-haired, divinely-powered asskicker. Which also describes Buffy, and there's an element of knowing power to Buffy this season, most memorably examined in "Checkpoint." In this episode, Buffy rejects the patriarchal Watcher Council by pointing out that all they can truly do is watch. As she puts it:
I've had a lot of people talking at me the last few days. Everyone just lining up to tell me how unimportant I am. And I've finally figured out why. Power. I have it. They don't.
RATING: A
Note: This season, like Season Four, crossed over with Angel often. I may address this when I review Angel's second season. I may not. I'm less interested in comic book hyperlinking than in figuring out what makes these two shows distinct and valuable on their own.
Buffy, Season Four: B / Angel, Season One: B-
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