Stew’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Retrospective: Season 5, Episodes 19-20

Something Tara-ble Happens: A BTVS Retrospective, S5 E19-20

FOR PREVIOUS BUFFY REVIEWS, CLICK HERE!

Episode 19

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

We open episode 19 with Buffy going to one of her college classes, but don’t get too excited… she is just there to drop the class. She is dropping all of her classes, you see, because she has too much responsibility to stay home and care for Dawn now. Her poetry professor is sympathetic to Buffy’s plight, and Buffy reports she regrets dropping the class, as she really enjoyed it.

Hey, we might have enjoyed it, too, BTVS writers. But we’ll never know, will we? But at least the show is done even pretending to use college as a backdrop for Buffy’s adventures.

We move on to Nurse Ben heading to his job at the hospital only to findout he doesn’t have one anymore! He was fired for not showing up for TWO WEEKS! Wow! Ben tries to explain this away as not his fault, and that goes as well as you can imagine. While packing up his belongings, he feels the change coming over him. He tries to fight it, but he transforms into Glory anyway.

So he was Glory for the past two weeks, gets just enough time back in his life to get fired, then goes back to being Glory. Man, that’s a shitty deal.

At her penthouse, Glory is in the bath, surrounded by minions in blindfolds so they don’t see her naked, I guess. She berates and scolds them for the whole Spike thing, and she still wants the real Key.

At Dawn’s school, Buffy and her sister are meeting with the principal, and we find out through passive dialogue that it’s apparently been months since mom died. Where does the time go? Dawn has been skipping school in these past few months, and the principal kicks her out of the office to talk one-on-one with Buffy.

At the magic shop, we see over Xander’s shoulder that he is reading a comic book, but despite my vain squinting at the screen, I can not tell what it is! Curses! I have to ensure I don’t have the same tastes as Xander! Anya has decided she is not only human, but American; she loves capitalism and having customers give her money for goods.

Buffy comes into the shop looking like she has seen a ghost. Except she has seen ghosts (right? Buffy has definitely fought ghosts before, right?), so that analogy falters. Whatever! She talks with Giles about Dawn, and asks him to be the father figure that Dawn needs.

Except Dawn has a father.

Anyway, in some classic “ha ha ha” Buffy dialogue, she asks Giles to be “the foot-put-er-downer”. That’s some great stuff, as always. Giles refers to Buffy as Dawn’s only real family now.

Except DAWN HAS A FATHER.

Buffy sees Dawn acting out a math problem with the rest of the Scoobies and gets exceptionally upset by this. She orders them to stop and for Dawn to go do her homework correctly. She’s suddenly a major .grumpster about everything.

We cut back to Glory who has decided she knows who the Key is. It was so obvious all along; the Key is the one pretending to be a human. She sends her legion out to watch over Buffy’s friends so they don’t intervene.

Willow and Tara sit in their dorm talking about Buffy’s sudden brusque attitude regarding Dawn. Willow feels like Buffy and Tara are discounting her opinions because her own mother has not died. Tara mentioned off-handedly that she is frightened by how powerful of a witch Willow has become because this conversation just goes all over the map.

They start arguing about Tara’s feelings, and literally so quickly I barely realized it, the conversation segues into Willow feeling like Tara believes Willow is just dabbling in lesbianism.

Whoa, that went zero to a hundred real quick!

A frustrated and angry Willow storms out of the dorm.

We see some of Glory’s underlings spying outside of Buffy’s house. Inside, Buffy has set up a childish chore sheet for Dawn, who rebels at the idea of it. She argues that she isn’t even real, so why do chores or schoolwork matter?

Buffy reveals her discussion with the principal from earlier: if she can’t prove to be a fit and responsible guardian to Dawn, Dawn will be taken away from her. A gobsmacked Dawn asks “Where will I go?”, and Buffy responds, “Maybe with dad. Maybe with social services”.

Maybe with…?

Look, I’ll accept–I’LL ACCEPT–that with Glory out there, Buffy doesn’t want Dawn out of her sight. So maybe that’s why she hasn’t had Dawn move in with Dad yet.

I’ll buy that, okay? I’m meeting BTVS more than halfway (as always), but I’ll buy it.

But why is the show acting like he doesn’t exist? Why isn’t he fighting for his daughter to begin with? This character exists; we’ve seen him in at least one episode! Buffy (and presumably Dawn since her retroactive creation) used to visit him every few weekends. He’s not a deadbeat!

Why would Dawn “maybe” end up with him? What sense does that make?!

Whatever! Back to the episode:

Tara finds herself alone at the UC Sunnydale culture festival. She feels another woman grab her hand, but when she turns, it is Glory!

Sad Willow is at the magic shop talking to Giles when the latter stumbles his way into finding one of the minions spying on them. The toadie quickly spills the beans that Glory thinks Tara is the Key since she is the newest member of Team Buffy!

Back to our Season Five Big Bad and her intended victim: Glory squeezes Tara’s hand so hard that blood starts rushing out. Glory licks the blood and the taste of it proves that Tara is not the key. Glory threatens Tara with the ol’ mind-finger trick, launching into a tirade of how that creates a mental feeling of loss and despair.

Willow rushes to the fair and sees Tara and Glory from a distance. She starts trying to do a spell, but is too panicked to get it right. Glory does the magic fingers! By the time Willow makes it to her girlfriend, Glory is gone!

The team takes Tara to a local medical facility, where she is rambling and clearly made as mad as the others we have seen Glory fingerblast. The doctors want to keep Tara for observation overnight despite Willow’s protests.

Dawn, meanwhile, has once again been placed in Spike’s care during all of these goings-on, despite the fact that Spike has been shown to be no match for Glory. We are even reminded of this because he is still beat TF up. They are not in the crypt, but instead are in some kind of cave system where are the rocks look like potatoes because visual effects are hard, guys. Dawn is upset that both Spike and Tara are hurt because of her; Spike reinforces to her that she is not inherently evil.

Willow is quite sad as Tara is wheeled into the psych ward, but her sadness turns to anger as she vows vengeance on Glory, insisting there is something she can do! Buffy is all “LOL she is a god, no”. This leads to a fight where Willow argues that Buffy wouldn’t let Glory get away with hurting one of her own loved ones. Eventually, Buffy brings Willow down and the latter acquiesces to waiting until the time is right to strike.

Ha! Nope! Willow instead rushes off to the magic shop’s restricted area and starts supplying up. She grabs a big book called “Darkest Magic”, which again Giles. Why do you carry that in your stock? Buffy was tricked!

We cut to Glory in her lair when an earthquake hits! Willow shows up, all black eyes and levitating! She attacks Glory with lightning!

Elsewhere in the tater cave, Buffy is checking in on Spike and Dawn and letting them know it’s okay, Willow isn’t off doing anything stupid! Spike and Dawn essentially go “Wanna bet?”, and Buffy realizes Willow only told her what Buffy wanted to hear.

Back at this episode’s main event, Glory shrugs off everything Willow throws at her and beats her ass. Buffy shows up and actually has a competent battle with Glory, which were have been told to this point is impossible. But they fight evenly until Willow erects a forcefield, allowing the heroines to escape.

The next day, Willow has discharged Tara from the hospital, but the latter is still rambling incoherently as Willow feeds her applesauce. Willow notes the doctors gave her medicine and restraints for Tara, and Willow is determined to care for her. “She is my person,” she says.

Then Glory shows up and RIPS THE WALL OFF THE BUILDING, holy frijoles! Before Glory can strike, Tara looks at Dawn and rambles that she is the Key.

Uh-oh!

Episode 20

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

Episode 20 picks up where Episode 19 left off, with Glory attacking our heroines. Buffy and Dawn start escaping across the college campus as fast as their feets can carry them. Glory gets hit by a truck in the chase, and that’s enough, I guess, to trigger her transformation back into Ben. Maybe he can go lose his apartment from not paying rent this time!

We ever going to be told how Glory knows where everyone lives? I only ask because of that episode where she was mad she did not know where Buffy lived, then later that same one, she just appeared at Buffy’s house. Look, I’m only asking because the show brought it up! If they hadn’t had that moment, I’d just assume Glory looked them up in her phone book. We know she has that technology. But since the show made a deal out of it, I WANT ANSWERS.

Later on, Dawn relays the story of their escape to the Scoobies, though she makes Buffy sound more heroic, and she leaves out how a convenient truck attack saved their day. Buffy, meanwhile, is panicked AF; she knows they can’t fight Glory and that they are in the endgame now. Her plan is to pack up and flee SunnyDale. I start singing the “Brave Sir Robin” song from Monty Python & The Holy Grail in my head.

We cut to Nurse Ben in Glory’s lair with the minions, so maybe he DID lose his own residence! He is frustrated that Glory has upset his plans of becoming a doctor and helping people! He thinks maybe he can medicate Glory to sleep inside of him, but either way, he is determined to find a way to keep control of his body.

Back at Buffy Friends HQ, Xander makes a Sergeant Rock reference, so that might answer my question as to what comic he was reading earlier. Or they are just suddenly going all-in on Xander being a comics fan, when this was barely alluded to ever before? But now they can’t stop doing it. Season 5 is weird, guys.

Buffy and Spike show up with a big RV, big enough to fit the whole team so they can get the hell out of Dodge. Giles and Xander want Spike out of the van; they can handle this without him! But Buffy comes to Spike’s defense as one of the only ones who can physically match Glory.

I mean… he can’t. We’ve already seen what happens when Spike goes up against her. But I guess he is a better meat shield than, say, Xander or catatonic Tara. So that’s something.

Elsewhere, two new dudes show up to Nurse Ben’s former place of employment. They check out the Knight Of Byzantium that Glory drove crazy earlier this season. He spills the beans that The Key is a little girl after they take him to some type of leader or general or king or whatever these weirdos take orders from. After receiving this news, the Knights march off to find The Key.

In the RV on the road to safety, Xander is carsick, Willow is studying spells, and Tara almost kills Spike by flicking open the blinds because she is upset about not getting to see the light. After that whacky moment–which sees Spike be surprisingly sympathetic and not freaking out–Tara starts crying out “All dark!”. We cut to the ward at the hospital and see this is something the other victims of Glory’s are doing, too!

Back at the RV, our heroes are set upon by the Knights of Byzantium, and did I black out and miss several important scenes where the Knights find out A) That Dawn is the little girl who is the key, and B) Where the hell Buffy and Dawn are and that they are in a new RV leaving town? I refuse to believe this writing got past several layers of editing, made it to filming, got filmed, got edited again, and got put on TV and NO ONE thought of this little bit that came to me immediately. It’s inconceivable.

They might as well have Buffy defeat Glory off-screen. Just walk on, dust her hands off, and say “Whew, glad that is over with.”

Anyway: Siege on the RV! Buffy fights off most of the Knights from atop the RV. However, just when they think the coast is clear, another Knight shows up in front of the RV and tosses a spear which goes through Giles’ gut! The RV crashes as he loses control at the wheel!

The team escapes on foot in broad daylight, much to Spike’s chagrin, and Giles is in bad shape for obvious reasons. They hole up in a nearby gas station, and more Knights show up to prepare to move their siege to the station. The leader/general/king guy gets inside and fights with Buffy but is defeated. Willow erects a forcefield to keep the corn KoBs out.

Night comes, making Spike less useless in the event that the Knights’ mages get through Willow’s forcefield. The tied up and subdued Knight leader debates with Buffy on the merits of destroying the Key, but she obviously isn’t having it. Tara starts flipping out and chanting “Time”. A quick flash to the psych ward shows the patients doing this, too, and they break free of their restraints and start walking out of the ward. Outside, one of the Knights kills his crazy friend who is going through what the rest of Glory’s mind victims are.

Some uneventful stuff happens, most of it being that Xander refers to Sgt. Rock again and says that’s where he learned his military tactics from. Except the time he was an Army guy for Halloween, RIGHT? And was clearly shown multiple times afterwards to have retained some memories of his experience as that, RIGHT?

Anyway, Buffy makes a phone call, and shortly thereafter, Nurse Ben shows up to help Giles out. OH MAN! They invited the viper right in! Great stuff. Ben eyes up Dawn since he knows she is the key, but he still works on and stabilizes Giles. He really thinks they should try to get Giles to a hospital, though. Buffy insists no one will die on her watch.

Buffy smacks around the KoB leader guy a bit, causing him to bore us with some extended Glory back story. Here is the abridged version: She is from a realm with three gods, and she was the worst. The other two got together and cast her out of their realm. They bound Glory to a male vessel, and if the vessel dies, Glory will die. Dawn asks about her backstory as the Key; the guy just says it is shrouded in mystery. OoooooOOOOOoooooOOOooooo.

Apparently Dawn is Glory’s ticket back to her original realm and to vengeance against the other two gods. But if she is used to unlock the door, all realities and dimensions will spill into each other, causing mass chaos and destruction.

The leader guy eventually has some alone time with Ben, and he tries to persuade Ben to kill Dawn, and I just LOVE this stuff because it’s so layered. He’s telling the vessel to kill the key, not knowing the vessel also wants to destroy Glory within him. So Ben already has a reason to want to kill Dawn, and now the General is reinforcing that urge!

We move on to Ben and Dawn working on Giles. There is a fake-out where Ben pulls out a syringe, but it’s for Giles, not Buffy’s sister. Ben starts feeling the transformation coming and cries that he wants out of the gas station, but he doesn’t make it and transforms, BLOWING EVERYONE’S MIND! Glory kills the KoB leader, grabs Dawn, and runs off right through Willow’s forcefield.

By the time Willow brings the field down, the team sees the Knights outside have been decimated by Glory and are left lying in her wake. An emotionally defeated Buffy falls to her knees, unresponsive to her friends!

*******

Man, THAT’S how you do an episode nearing the end of a season. I gave the bad writing about it its knocks, but seriously… that was another great episode with an excellent fight scene in and around the RV, real peril with Giles sustaining a possibly fatal injury, and all the stuff with Ben getting invited in to the last place they would want Glory to be.

I DO feel like this season is kind of rushing through the stuff it needs to do now that the writers seem to have realized the finale is coming, but if they want to rush like this, I’m all for it.

Oh, and episode 19 was… fine, I guess. They aren’t all winners.