BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER "Lessons"

By: John Ringer
Date: Thursday, September 26, 2002

Should you somehow have missed six years of great TV, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER concerns Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), an outwardly normal (if slightly neurotic) young woman mystically chosen to protect the world from supernatural evil, a fact she learned to her astonishment when she was a 15-year-old high school student. We met Buffy in Season One at age 16, when she'd just transferred to Sunnydale High from L.A. Sunnydale turns out to be built on a Hellmouth, which on the upside puts Buffy right where the action is, and on the downside means there's no rest for her, ever. The series has been rightly famed for its quick wit, ace acting, charm and character interaction, as well as the butt-kicking heroism of its female protagonist and the practical (rather than hysterical) view of how to dispatch monsters.

However, the 2001-2002 season, Season Six, got dark in ways that most of the audience hadn't anticipated, even though the foundations had been laid legitimately for all that occurred. Buffy, who sacrificed herself to save the world and younger sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) at the end of Season Five, spent most of Season Six in a funk about being magically brought back to life and consequently dragged out of Heaven. Dawn was depressed and irritable that Buffy wasn't happier to be home. Father figure/mentor Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) decided his presence was preventing Buffy from maturing and left for England. Shortly thereafter Buffy embarked on one of the kinkiest sexual relationships on broadcast TV with vampire Spike (James Marsters), who tried to rape Buffy when she broke off the affair. Male best friend Xander (Nicholas Brendon), terrified that he was doomed to become a drunken lout like his father, left bride-to-be Anya (Emma Caulfield) at the altar, which facilitated Anya's return to being a vengeance demon. Female best friend Willow (Alyson Hannigan) got caught up in the heady power of abusing witchcraft she managed to clean up her act and regained her lover Tara (Amber Benson), only to return to magic with a literal vengeance when Tara was killed by a baddie gunning for Buffy (Willow caused the culprit's skin to zip off in a move worthy of HELLRAISER).

Secure in the knowledge that a seventh season was pretty much guaranteed, the writers had the luxury of playing riffs with their leads that most series won't or can't. Season Six had some fantastic plot twists, along with a musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling," that probably ranks as one of the finest hours of series television ever. Even so, having so many regular characters in such turmoil for so long love it or hate it wasn't what BUFFY viewers had come to expect as the norm. The season ended on an up note, with Buffy finding the will to live, Dawn accepting her sister's love, Xander saving the world by defusing Willow's rage and Spike trying to atone (and get some self-control) by winning back his soul.

Season Seven's

opener "Lessons" seems a return to the rather brighter tone of earlier years. After an enigmatic prologue set in Istanbul (look for a glimpse of Spike in a doorway) and a very funny scene of Buffy coaching Dawn in the fine art of battling monsters, we revisit the site of the first three seasons, Sunnydale High. We haven't been here in intervening years partly because it blew up when Buffy and Co. graduated. The new school is built on the bones (figurative and literal) of the old, which means it's once again sitting squarely over the Hellmouth. Dawn is enrolled as a freshman and Buffy is torn between wanting her little sister to fit in and being understandably (if you're a Slayer in Sunnydale) worried that the school will be up to its old tricks. Sure enough, the Summers sisters wind up grappling with violent "manifest spirits" who are too substantial to be ghosts and too able to appear at will to be zombies. In an episode that at times resembles an homage to THE SHINING (follow the rolling ball), the corpses try to play on Buffy's guilt about failing to save them when they were alive, but our girl has her equilibrium back and she's a lot more resilient these days.

This isn't to say that "Lessons" is a nonstop laugh and scream fest. Willow is with Giles in England, grappling with guilt over nearly incinerating the planet and struggling to control her own power while receiving premonitions of doom. Anya is failing at the vengeance game so badly that she's endangering herself, while Spike cowers in the school basement, apparently being driven round the bend both by that pesky new soul and something lurking down there with him that looks like it may (un)live up to its own Big Bad hype.

Written by series creator Joss Whedon, the dialogue zips and soars, while director David Solomon gets in some good scares. The cast is as perfect as ever, with Gellar taking Buffy's maturity level up a notch without pushing it too far and Trachtenberg giving Dawn warmth and humor.

The episode is something of a departure for BUFFY, as this is the first time since the introduction of the Master (Mark Metcalf) in Season One that a new year has begun with a strong indication of the plot arc and the villain. This doesn't detract from the mystery, as the malevolent force is (for the moment) largely unexplained, even though it's clearly got the ability to be as captivating as any and all previous BUFFY menaces.

"Lessons" does everything it should it's thoroughly entertaining on its own terms, whets our appetite for what's to come and reminds us why we keep watching.

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