Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 13

[aadler]

 
Continuing the meme/challenge begun here and kept up to date here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 13
In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment on this post saying you did it, and include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I’m going to do three, and all three are (of course) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

First, with the mention of songs: the ending sequence of “Becoming”, Part 2 (Season 2-22) was some of the most perfect television I’ve ever seen, particularly in that it so beautifully used Sarah McLachlan’s “Full of Grace” as the musical background. The placement of elements was seamless and masterful: scene transition, lines delivered (the tentative hopefulness of the surviving Scoobies), acting (how on earth did Sarah Michelle Gellar manage to communicate such aching, numb anguish without ever moving her face?), all built around that song. I’ve never seen music used more perfectly in a television episode, and it set a standard that the rest of Buffy would regularly labor to match.

(I actually know of one other instance of such fantastic music-television match: Phil Collins’ performance of “the Brazilian” in the middle of the “Unfinished Business” episode — Season 8-08 — of Magnum, P.I. Awful, jangling, unsettling, and utterly suited to the mood it worked so well to convey. You don’t often see things done so well.)

Second was the Buffy episode immediately following, the Season 3 opener, “Anne”. Watching Buffy recover from a trauma so enormous that she could only respond by symbolically killing herself — abandoning her home, her name, her calling — and rediscover herself; watching the running fight in the demon foundry (especially the part where she simply stood on the raised platform, a hammer and sickle in either hand, waiting with eyes of doom to take down whoever came at her next); watching ‘Lily’ interrupt the ranting speech of Ken the demon overlord by pushing him off the edge of the second-floor stage where he stood, and then the wide-eyed Did I actually do that? look on her face; watching Buffy’s wordless homecoming to and welcome by her mother … I enjoyed it all. (Okay, not so much the middle part, particularly the clumsy reunion/reconciliation between Xander and Cordelia. But you can’t have everything.)

Third, “the Zeppo” (Season 3-13). I loved the focus on Xander, and the fact that his effectiveness resulted from determination — and a solid ration of luck — rather than from some new uncharacteristic competence. I loved the surreality of his first sexual experience, and his response to it. I loved the way the episode happily parodied the standard Buffy tropes and plot-lines (Xander’s clumsy interruption of yet another impassioned Buffy/Angel star-crossed dialogue was particularly welcome). I loved the ending stare-off with Jack O’Toole, and the little crinkle-lipped smile that said, Yep, we’re both gonna die here, and I’m fine with that. And, most of all, I loved that Xander’s satisfaction and competence at the end were so complete that he didn’t have to say anything. Wonderful, all the way through.

Okay, I’ve already broken past three, with my mention of Magnum, P.I., and now I’ll add one more. The “Bad Blood” episode of the X-Files (Season 5-12) was so much total fun, beginning to end, that I periodically look it up and watch it yet again. This was the one with the RV-park vampires, and the Rashomon-style divergent recollections, and it was a thorough delight. I understand that many X-Files aficionados hate that episode — just as many Buffy fans seem to dislike “the Zeppo” — and I suppose it’s for the same reason: people get bristly about their darlings being made fun of, even if it’s the show making fun of itself. Well, I was never a major follower of the X-Files, so maybe I can’t judge, but I never tire of this one episode.

So there you are. My personal favorites, and it turned out not to be limited to Buffy after all.