Stew’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Retrospective: Season 5 Episodes 1 – 2

Dawn Of A New Day: A BTVS Retrospective, S5 E1-2

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Episode 1

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

We kick things off with Buffy in bed. Then we cut to her fighting a vampire. Then we cut to her going back to bed with Riley. So there is that! We’re off and running in season five with a pointlessly confusing introduction.

We see two guys moving a crate into a building, but one of them drops it and dirt comes out. A vampire bursts forth from inside the crate and attacks!

At Giles’ pad, he and Willow are scanning all of his ancient texts to computer (didn’t they do this before? And don’t bother telling me: the answer is YES. I remember their doing this, and Willow woke up a demon sealed into a book). Giles tells Willow he is leaving to go back to England, as Buffy did not need him last year and likely won’t going forward.

He is moving to England to get his singing career back on track, I bet. surprised he hasn’t started crooning yet here.

After a nothing scene of Buffy and mom eating dinner—this episode has a LOT of nothing scenes, including an earlier beach day moment I left out because it did not impact the story whatsoever—we cut to Buffy killing a vampire after hitting it with a Huracurana. After doing so, a Lestat looking MFer rolls up on her and says he is Dracula.

She tries to stake Drac, but he turns into mist. After Xander and Willow show up, he shifts into a bat and flies away.

At the post-confrontation Scoobies meeting, Buffy is wowed that Drac has heard of her. Anya notes she used to hang out with him, and her schoolgirl crush starts to annoy Xander. Willow uses the debut of Count Dracula as a reason to get Giles to stay.

Dracula finds Xander on his way home and Renfields him.

Riley comes upon Spike while looking for Dracula inn his quest to help Buffy. Spike notes he used to know Drac, and he blames Dracula’s lust for fame for being the reason people know how to kill vampires. Riley threatens Spike and heads out.

Buffy is lying in bed, and Dracula mists his way into her room. They have a scene simmering with just-beneath-the-surface sexuality, and for a show that SO OFTEN just crosses over into being horny as hell, it’s nice to see they know how to do subtle and sexy, too. She lets him feed off of her.

The next day, Buffy tries to hide her new bite mark, but Riley quickly discovers it after the Scoobies meeting. Xander is eating bugs and acting squirrelly, but no one calls him out on it. They actually decide to leave Buffy in his care so Dracula can’t find her.

And Xander, of course, immediately takes Buffy off to see his master.

Meanwhile, Riley and Giles are looking for Dracula to save Buffy, so they go to YE OLDE GOTHIC CASTLE IN SUNNYDALE that apparently just got purchased off the market recently.

I just… I need so much help from this show sometimes, and I feel like I get nothing in return. Just… meet me a tenth of the way, please. But it never does.

When they get inside, they split up. Riley finds and KOs Xander; Giles finds a corridor and falls into a pit with Dracula’s three brides. They start crawling on him and overcoming him.

Dracula commands Buffy to feed off of him when he reveals she is incapable of attacking him, though he notes it is not going to be enough to turn her because he did not drain enough of her own blood yet. She submits to him and drinks, but then gets, like, flashes of the First Slayer from last year’s finale? She breaks his control and attacks him!

Elsewhere in the castle, Riley saves Giles. But back at the main plot, Buffy turns Drac’s mist trick against him and stakes him. After our heroes seem to leave, Dracula starts to reform, but Buffy pops back up and stakes him again, saying “I’ve seen your movies; I know you come back”.

Dracula starts to reform again, and Buffy calls out “I’m standing right here!”, so he dissipates away.

FUUUUUUUUCK

YOOOOOOOU.

We get a ONE-EPISODE Dracula arc which ends with Buffy scaring him into what? Dying for good somehow? We just showed that she literally can not defeat him once and for all, and this is how it resolves?

Watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer is like suffering from severe cranial injuries sometimes.

Our penultimate moment is between Buffy and Giles, where she mentions that, since the First Slayer incident—which Buffy ALSO won by way of taunting, I’ll remind you—she has been obsessed with hunting vampires down. She notes that Dracula saw this as a darkness in her, and she wants to fight it back. She wants him to go back to training her and helping her understand her powers. He agrees. The singing career is delayed for now.

And then, we get the introduction of Dawn in Buffy’s home, setting up the next episode…

Episode 2

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

We start off this aforementioned next episode with Buffy training with Giles. She is doing upside-down yoga while on a log, and her shirt is given special Network TV protection to defy gravity and stay at her pants-level instead of falling downward. Dawn ends up distracting her, and she falls off the log.

From there, we get Dawn Explains It All, with Buffy’s new/old little sister narrating the episode as she writes in her journal. I will confess that while I know OF Dawn, Buffy’s mysteriously appearing little sister played by Joss Whedon victim Michelle Trachtenberg, I don’t know her story or origins, so that much at least WILL be a mystery to me.

I initially thought they’d play this off as “she lived with dad until now when she transferred to Murder High, USA”, but no… this episode specifically calls out that she grew up in this household. So they remove any possibility right off that this is an innocuous new character. So it’s immediately: who is this new villain?

ANYWAY: Dawn in her diary, right. She is jealous of Buffy.

Riley shows up and is nice to Mom, then tells Buffy that he didn’t want to say he wanted to violate her daughter, and that has a VERY SPECIFIC CONNOTATION, show. Careful there!

Giles, Buffy, and Dawn are cruising in Giles’ new convertible when they meet up with Willow and Tara. Dawn, as narrated into her diary: “I told mom I wanted [Willow and Tara]to teach me what they do when they are together, and she quiet and sent me to me room. I guess old people are not cool with witches”. Oh jokes about casual homophobia, you scamp.

The group head into the magic shop, and the owner is dead inside. I mean! He is not dead inside like he is crushed by his retail industry job and its capitalistic moorings! I mean inside the shop, he is dead; deceased. Buffy tosses Dawn outside where a strange derelict old man approaches her and says she doesn’t belong here.

Tara ends up joining Dawn outside, and the creepy guy is nowhere to be seen. They thumb wrestle while the A-list Scoobies inside investigate.

Willow checks the magic shop inventory and realizes what are missing are books on vampire slaying and The Slayer. Giles seems interested in taking ownership of this store whose owners and employees all die, and to the show’s credt, Willow and Buffy bring that up to him. They also notice a cheap ceramic unicorn was stolen from a case.

Which leads us to the villain of this episode, a SMOKING hot Harmony admiring her new unicorn. She has taken over the vampire gang in SunnyDale and intends to kill The Slayer tonight.

Buffy at home wants to go patrol and see if she can find out who raided the shop and killed the owner, but mom is back to being a weirdo* now that Dawn is in the picture. But Buffy has a plan: call Xander over to babysit! More Dawn narration shows she has a crush on Xander (Jesus, Joss) and doesn’t care for Anya since she is dating him.

*After a mostly and delightfully mom-free season four, we are going to get a TON of this lame-o now that we are doing the Dawn story, right? Oh my god; why must this be happening? Can’t we get Dawn without mom?

After a few nothing, time-filling scenes that don’t impact the plot (Tara relating to Dawn feeling like a Scooby outsider and Riley defending Dawn to Buffy), we move on to Dawn playing LIFE with Xander and Anya. A rock comes flying through the window for Buffy to come out, and it’s Harmony and her gang. They can’t come in the house, so Xander stands just inside the door and mocks her… until Dawn moronically says “Why don’t you come in here and try that?” or something, thereby inviting Harmony in. They mange to throw her back out, though!

Xander and Anya tell Buffy and Riley about the night’s going-on, and Dawn’s actions infuriate Buffy. She alleges that Dawn should know better at this point since she grew up in this home (see?). Dawn overhears her older sister putting her on blast and runs away into the night.

Oh, this kid is already in the Xander/Mom class of characters, eh?

Spike wanders across Harmony and her new gang. They bicker and he heckles her, but he accidentally gives her an idea: kidnap someone close to Buffy and use them as bait.

Anya catches Dawn outside and tries to bring her back in, but Harmony’s minions show up, knock Anya out—but back through the door into the house—and abscond with Dawn.

After Buffy attacks Spike to find out where Harmony might be, we see Harmony venting to Dawn that her gang does not respect her since she won’t let them feed off off Dawn while Buffy is still alive. The minions come in with a verdict: they are going to overthrow Harmony’s rule and eat the girl.

But of course Buffy shows up and saves the day. She kills Harmony’s horde while Harmony herself flees into the night.

We finish the episode up with Dawn writing in her journal while we see that Giles has indeed taken over the magic shop. She writes that Buffy doesn’t really know who she is, and she is in for a surprise.