Buffy: Graduation Day Part 1 (3.21)

I loved that Buffy had to, in some ways, become Faith in order to fight her. She got dressed up in tight leather pants, applied some heavier make-up, appropriated that ruthless, take-no-prisoners attitude. She even had Faith's kicky new knife. For her last real episode in this arc, Faith gained back some of her vulnerability right at the end. Sure, she was still gloating, but there was a resignation to the fact that she was beaten which had to hurt. One of the most successful elements of the Faith story was that, in the end, she's just somebody who's in a lot of pain. She has awful preconceptions about men, horrible ideas about how men see her, and has major attention-craving issues. She's a basket case, but was never written as a one-note crazy-train Slayer. She had levels, and while those layers are explored deeper as the series goes on, season three did a great job at reflecting the basic 'layers' of her persona.

Joss Whedon does a crazily effective job of setting up a truly apocalyptic tone. It does genuinely feel like something terrible is right around the corner, especially with Angel's poisoning, the Mayor's casual gloating in the library, and Buffy's abandoning of the Council. It's that last element that has the most effect, Buffy not only graduating from high school but also graduating from control. She's truly her own person now. With Giles officially a friend, adviser and father figure and nothing more, she has no need for the Watcher's Council anymore. Not that they did a whole lot, anyway.

Away from the major arcs, I loved the little character moments. Willow losing her virginity happened at just the right moment. Not only because of where she and Oz are at (after a couple of temporary setbacks), but also because of the coming prophecies of doom. She doesn't want to die a virgin, and she and Oz finally have that moment together. Elsewhere, Cordelia and Xander's chummy banter was really sweet; Anya's insistence that Xander flee Sunnydale with her was ridiculously endearing; and I loved the briefly depicted idea that graduation suddenly makes you view school-related things with ridiculous levels of fondness: see Willow's exaggerated goodbye to Harmony. Heh.

This is a pretty remarkable first part. I love that the Scoobies are all on the same page again, working together; I loved the sense of dread that hung over the whole episode; I love the character work Joss delivers. And that was the finest chick-fight television did for a long while, at least until Sydney Bristow fought the Francie clone on Alias. But, until that, Buffy and Faith's smackdown reigned supreme. A+

Credits
Guest stars Kristine Sutherland (Joyce Summers); Harry Groener (Mayor Richard Wilkins III); Alexis Denisof (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce); Mercedes McNab (Harmony Kendall); Ethan Erickson (Percy West); Emma Caulfield (Anya); Eliza Dushku (Faith); Armin Shimerman (Principal Snyder)
Writer Joss Whedon Director Joss Whedon