Season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was juggling quite a few ongoing plots yet still had room for great standalone episodes like "Hush" and "Superstar". Season four had Buffy's new boyfriend, Riley, the U.S. military demon hunting unit called The Initiative, former demon Anya's development as a human and Xander's love interest, a neutered Spike's evolving position among the Scooby Gang, the end of Willow's relationship with Oz and the beginning of her relationship with Tara, and the return of Faith. Plus a few bits about Giles' midlife crisis. It all flows together remarkably well, everything feels organic. And the first season of Angel was running at the same time and the plots of both shows were seamlessly interwoven, particularly when it comes to Faith.
Actually, I felt the conclusion of Faith's story, which season four Buffy and season one Angel essentially present, would have been better dragged out a bit longer. Her character was by far the most interesting thing about season three but when she wakes up from her coma more than halfway through season four there are a lot more irons in the fire. But "Who Are You?", written and directed by Joss Whedon, turns out to be one of the all time great body-swapping episodes for how perfectly it advanced Faith's story. It forces Faith to realise that if she could hit the reset button on all her bad deeds, and be seen as a good Slayer again, she'd actually like her life a whole lot better. Eliza Dushku shows she's better at playing Buffy than Sarah Michelle Gellar is at playing Faith but Gellar still manages to show some subtlety as she digests the fact that someone like Riley (Marc Blucas) is capable of having true affection for someone else, something Faith had lost, well, faith in.
Except she'd seemed to have a genuine, mutually affectionate relationship with the deceased mayor. That's a story that could have been fleshed out further, and maybe it was in the comics. It would be interesting to see her, after her reformation, face the one loving relationship she had during the period when she felt the mission of the Scooby Gang was a lie predicated on what she considered to be the false idea that the lives of strangers were worth saving. Her point of view on this isn't reversed until she goes to rescue the hostages in "What Are You?" It's so credible. I've known people who compulsively purge things and people out of their lives and I wonder sometimes if something could make them see that they tend to throw a few babies out with the bathwater. It might also be a good story for people to-day who are routinely taught by an electronic world that they don't need a long attention span. So often people don't understand their own hearts.
Faith's story really ends in the season one episode of Angel called "Sanctuary" when Angel (David Boreanaz) decides to take her in to rehabilitate her. But the episode becomes much more about the relationship between Angel and Buffy as they pull different aspects of their own experience to argue about why Faith is or isn't worth saving. We get some good stuff about Faith struggling with the weight of her crimes, the seeming impossibility of atoning for what she's done. It's a story that could have been drawn out much longer.
In the middle of all the Faith drama, Buffy also gives us "New Moon Rising", a tour de force episode written by Marti Noxon. Oz (Seth Green) returns to town, apparently having cured his lycanthropy, and his arrival simultaneously makes Riley confront his and the Initiative's bigotry regarding demons and also makes Willow (Alyson Hannigan) realise the nature of her affection for Tara (Amber Benson).
My friend Brian thinks Willow was in fact bisexual and this episode works much better if you assume she is. We as an audience at this point genuinely like both Oz and Tara and Willow in a relationship with either one is an appealing prospect. Sometimes I find Willow/Tara a little too gooey, there's something a little too sweet about all their stuttering and chagrin. I really don't like how the recaps constantly repeat Tara's "I am, you know--yours" line. But Amber Benson's vulnerability in this episode is great as she politely extricates herself from the Scooby meeting when Oz shows up. You can see she clearly thinks she's succeeded in being discreet when in reality it's practically like she's told everyone, "I can't be here if Willow is into someone else."
It kind of makes most of the other characters' slowness to perceive the Willow/Tara relationship a bit implausible, particularly Buffy's. But on the whole, I find the plotline more interesting than I did the last time I watched through the show.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are available on Amazon Prime.
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