Buffy’s best chapter is a preview of its worst season

By Chris Snellgrove
| Announce 22 seconds ago

When the majority Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fans re -watch the show, they are scared of reaching season 6 because it is so much discount. Not only does Tara die, but this is the season where we watch Buffy have a complete toxic relationship with the vampire spike and engage in other behavior outside the character to deal with the stress of being brought back from the dead. Interestingly, though, this terrible season is effectively preceded by one of the show’s best and earliest episodes. We’re talking about the Puff Season 2 episode “When she was bad” which also included the slayer acting out of character due to tremendous stress.

Puff Supporters had no way of knowing him when he performed the episode for the first time, of course, but “when she was bad” was a sixth -term forecast of the show by making everyone (fans and characters alike) angry at the character of the title. For the context, Buffy died literally in the hands of the master in the end of season 1; However, Xander brought her back to life through CPR and the vampiric villain disappeared. But in the season 2 premiere, she is out of character notable: she snaps in Willow, she is cruel to Cordelia, and she is cool to an angel, going as far as flirting with him to annoy her undead love.

If you are a Puff Fan watching “When she was bad” for the first time, you probably spend a lot of the episode shouting at TV and asking why suddenly the slayer became so indifferent and edited over the summer. However, it all seems to be a manifestation of Buffy’s trauma of her battle with the master, and returns to her old self after breaking the bones of the vampire, destroying any chance of him being resurrected through dark magic in effect. Overall, this is a highly regarded chapter, which is ironic because she predicts the core attitude of season 6 that so many hated.

It is easy to isolate individual elements from season 6 which countless fans hated, including Buffy’s terrible relationship with Spike (one that leads to rape attempts). However, that relationship and therefore other poor decisions are driven by the fact that Buffy’s friends have been resurrected after her season 5 death; They reasoned that he could be stuck in the dimension of hell, but Buffy later revealed that they were accidentally yanked her out of heaven. This ensured that, along with Buffy’s mother trauma dying in the previous season, the slayer had spent the season in a state of depression as she tackled common things like bills as well as undead monsters.

Given what we know about Buffy in season 6, it’s fair to say that “when she was bad” precedes that later season by showing how she responds to trauma by making bad decisions, especially romantic ones. In the earlier episode, this may be the preferred angel of rebellion and even leading Xander forward with sexual dance to make her vampire boys toy jealous. We do not want to reduce Buffy’s previous trauma to reduce, but if we were killed and then resurrected immediately caused all this romantic drama, it is absolutely credible that being motivated from heaven after month It would lead to a toxic relationship with a spike.

Unfortunately what is the Puff Writers and producers failed to see that “when it was bad” was specifically effective because it portrayed a one -chapter arc where the killer defeated her trauma by the time the credits rolled. It is okay to have a single episode or arc where our hero is on the back foot, but as season 6 shows, nobody wants season From our title character is stolen low by her depression trauma.

For better or worse, though, this brought fans closer to Buffy because the sixth season was trauma that we shared together, although it was only the slayer that had to deal with her stress by having sex that breaks a house that breaks a house with a hot vampire. In this way you might say that all trauma is created equally … some are more equal (a way more freaky) than others.