The Great Buffy Rewatch of 2015: Out of Mind, Out of Sight and Prophecy Girl
And here we are, at the end of the first season. Short but sweet, one might say.
Out of Mind, Out of Sight
In some ways this is as much the Lord of the Flies episode as The Pack. It’s about the power of groups to harm individuals, almost without noticing, the dangers of isolating people, and the sheer viciousness of high school life. Here the monsters are not figurative, they are people, and their victim is the one whose reaction is treated figuratively. Angel, too, is invisible in the glass; there seems to be a deliberate linkage of different sorts of visibility and invisibility.
Cordelia loves springtime, because it’s all about her. Buffy runs into her, giving Harmony a chance to join in the general abuse. Cut to teacher quoting Merchant of Venice on the outcast in society. Cordelia immediately gets to the point - Shylock should get over himself. Despite this, the teacher offers help. (An actual person of colour. Amazing in this show.) Cordelia’s date, however, hears laughter before a baseball bat beats him up, apparently with no-one holding it.
Theme firmly established there. Perhaps a little too firmly.
Cordelia is desperate to be May Queen. This inspires much hilarity as Willow and Xander reminisce about her many bids for popularity. Buffy is not part of this. She was May Queen back in her old school. Popularity was her thing, but no more, and she's not really a part of this conversation even.
Snyder wants the suspicious students to stay away from the crime scene. Talk of lawyers is enough to deal with him, though, for now. Buffy is thus able to enter the (male) locker room to investigate. On the lockers, in big letters, is painted “LOOK”.
Giles joins them in the school dining hall. (Like librarians routinely do?) Is it a ghost or poltergeist. Or, as Xander suggests, a vampire bat?
Cordelia worries about Mitch’s injuries - they might harm her photos. Flashback to an earlier conversation with Harmony, who is then, in present time, pushed to the ground. More disembodied laughter.
Buffy goes looking but cannot see anyone. She touched the invisible girl, which suggests she is no ghost. Xander is not creepy at all when he says he would use invisibility to “protect the girls’ locker room”. Cordelia is apparently the common factor in the attacks so far. Giles suggests Buffy may need to work on listening to people.
Cordy tries on her May Queen dress, in school, at night, with only other students present. Giles is approached by Angel in the library and sees there is no reflection. “A vampire in love with a Slayer. It’s rather poetic, in a maudlin sort of way.” They talk about the threat from the Master and the missing Pergamon Codex, which Angel offers to get.
Giles seems rather adorably star-struck, talking to Angel, who we see has no reflection.
We see the flashback girl again, as Cordy and her friends talk through her. She smiles and pretends to feel included.
Cordy is announced as May Queen and congratulates the voters on their good taste. Some strange, dark-suited men in sunglasses seem to be observing her - a private bodyguard?
Buffy finds an inhabited lair hidden in school, where she looks up an old yearbook. She thinks she has worked out who it might be. She does not notice the knife hovering above her. The teacher, however, is attacked with a plastic bag, but Buffy saves her in time.
When Willow sees the yearbook she is at once struck by the messages written in it - all are “Have a nice summer”, the bland message that signals instant forgettability. Neither Willow nor Xander remember Marcie Ross, despite the evidence that they wrote this in her book too, and each had four classes with her the previous year. She turned invisible because no-one noticed her. Giles realises quantum mechanics is involved. (Physics as inexplicable magic - makes a change.) Reality is shaped, even created, by our perceptions. As people perceived Marcie as invisible, the energy of the hellmouth meant that she became so.
Another flashback - the teacher never notices Marcie’s hand is up. Her hand begins to vanish. She is beginning to disappear.
In the library Cordelia comes to ask for help; even she has noticed Buffy has some power. She knows the recent attacks at heart are “all about me!” She fails to recognise the photo of Marcie - she’s never seen this girl before in her life. Not only did people ignore her, they have no memory at all of her. Marcie seems to be getting ranty and psychopathic and has a coil of rope stashed away. Danger music plays.
Willow and Xander help Giles attempt to research a cure, while Buffy has bodyguard duty with Cordelia. We see a lot of the action from Marcie’s POV now - high angles, following them at some distance. Cordy expatiates on her own existential angst. Buffy is not wholly convinced, but Cordy explains that she works so hard to be popular because “it beats being alone all by yourself.”
Music has drawn Giles, Willow and Xander into a trap - just as they realise it is a recording the door slams shut on them. A hissing sound presages danger. Gas. How will our heroes escape?
Buffy’s attempt at a heartfelt talk with Cordelia fails at the first jumps. At Hemery she may well have been Cordy-lite, but there can be no actual meeting of minds. Cordy, however, vanishes mid-chat anyway. By the time Buffy punches her way through the door into the janitor’s closet where Cordy has been changing, the latter has almost entirely been hoisted into the ceiling. When she follows, Buffy is attacked by the invisible girl and knocked out.
When she comes to, both Cordelia and Buffy are tied up in the Bronze. Moreover, Cordelia’s face is numb. (but she can still talk. Go figure.) Marcie explains that she plans to spoil Cordelia’s beautiful face, so no-one will ever forget it. A tray of surgical implements is revealed.
Giles and the others are at the point of passing out, as Marcie starts detailed plans and makes the first cut. Buffy manages to untie herself. Angel miraculously opens the door to release Giles and Co. He is able to go back in to switch off the gas - it’s not like he needs the oxygen. Buffy is fighting the invisible girl, using her Slayer sense to work out where she must be. A drape falls on her, so Buffy is able to knock her out.
And suddenly a pair of agents enter, to remove Marcie and make her a useful member of society. Buffy points out how creepy they are, a remark which wholly fails to affect them.
Cordelia approaches the group to say thank you - but the change of heart is very much temporary.
Marcie is ushered into a class of empty, occupied seats. The class is studying assassination and infiltration. It seems the government has a use for supernaturally-affected oddities.
*****
Prophecy Girl
A “Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer” - the first of many. We are reminded of the Master.
Xander is practising asking Buffy out. With Willow. Sensitivity, so not his strongest point. Willow is happy to let him practise on her some more.
Buffy’s fighting vampires - three kills in one night. Cordelia is in car, making out. Giles is reading Latin; he has found a prophecy foretelling something terrible. There is an earthquake to emphasise this. The Master is somewhat excited, but Colin stays calm.
Buffy is miffed that Giles is uninterested when she actually broke a nail. Giles doesn’t rise to the bait or banter.
After boring Biology Xander tries to make advances on Buffy. He chatters inanely about Spring Fling and asks her on a date - but she friendzones him, kindly but firmly. He is bitter - he doesn’t handle rejection well.
Giles is fraught; Jenny knows something is going on and lists a set of recent portents - apocalypse stuff. A monk from Cortona has been sending her warnings about an Anointed One. (Cortona must have a hellmouth too - it’s where Moloch was trapped in a book three episodes or so ago.)
Xander finally asks Willow out. She says no. Too little, too late.
Buffy is in the washroom. The tap flows blood. She goes to tell Giles and walks in to hear him explaining to Angel that she will face the Master and die. They realise too late that she has heard, and she confronts them. Were they going to tell her she was doomed? If so, when? Angel, who has acquired another leather coat (Buffy is wearing one too) tries to soothe her, but no way is this happening. She quits, but it’s not that simple. “Giles, I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.”
Xander really is listening to the music of pain when the phone goes. Buffy, at home, is mournfully looking through photos. She asks Joyce to go away with her, but the gallery is open at weekends - however, Joyce has a dress to give her - a pure, white, evening dress. She encourages Buffy to go to the dance alone, even if the right person has not asked her. Sometimes you should do something alone, even if that's not what you prefer.
Cordelia and Willow see her boyfriend and others apparently watching cartoons, but in reality the first victims on this occasion of the infamous Sunnydale neck trauma.
Buffy tries on the dress before rushing to Willow, who is generally distressed by the deaths of young men she knew. The most shocking thing to her is that the vampires clearly had fun. She likes Buffy’s dress, though.
In his lair the Master is preparing to rise. We intercut between scenes of him looking ominous and Jenny with Giles in the library. He plans to face the Master instead of Buffy - but she has arrived to decide for him. She knocks him out, as she knows it is the only way to stop him rushing into things.
In flowing white skirt and structured leather jacket Buffy goes outside and meets Colin. She knows who he is and goes with him - that bit of the prophecy isn’t quite right it seems. Down in the darkness she goes, entering the sewers. Xander goes to get Angel - despite severe testosterone poisoning on both parts, he agrees to help.
Jenny is practical - where is the Hellmouth, exactly? (You’d have thought someone would have asked before. Ah well.) Giles and Willow are in preparation and research mode.
Buffy descends to the lair and starts quipping with the Master. Xander and Angel are on the way, but one is afraid the other might snack on him.
Giles and Willow work out that the prom might be a vampire target. It’s at the Bronze, so they rush to warn partygoers. However, the vampires (looking a lot like zombies) are coming to them.
The Master has Buffy, who is unable to fight him. He starts to feed on her - Slayer blood gives him power. He likes her dress, too, but still flings her into a puddle.
Angel and Xander find Buffy - too late, it seems. Angel holds her dead body in his arms, but Xander will not accept it. Angel has no breath, but Xander knows CPR and brings her back.
And Cordy to the rescue in her car saves Jenny and Willow from the approaching evil undead. There is screaming, then Cordy drives through the school into the library. More screaming and vampire growling, but at least the good guys seem safe. But tentacles are coming up through cracks in the floor…
Buffy feels strong, ready to chase after the Master. There is a power walk, to Nerf Herder. She is invincible - Angel puts on his game face and they go in to confront the enemy.
Back in the library, more tentacles, more screaming. But Buffy flunked the written and faces the Master. There are tentacles, monster faces, screaming and the Master, whose attempt at hypnosis now fails. He has fruit-punch mouth. Fighting everywhere, then Buffy throws her opponent down through the skylights onto jagged wood. He dies, and the tentacles (and other vampires) go away.
They all decide to go to the dance. After all, Buffy got all pretty in her dress. It’s a big hit with everyone.
So - do you sympathise with Marcie Ross? It certainly brings back uncomfortable memories to me. Is it the Initiative that recruits her at the end? The theme is loneliness in a crowd, but also the casual viciousness of group behaviour, and the devastating impact it can have on those outside. Angel and Buffy, and even Cordelia, have moments of feeling very much outside - and Giles takes it for granted that he's centuries out of touch.
And Prophecy Girl - this, it would seem, is where the season’s effects budget was spent. But why doesn’t the Master die like other vamps? What is it with the whole Angel having no breath thing? Does he actually let Xander do the CPR to ease tension between them, or does the talking vamp really have no breath? Where did the tentacles come from and why - did they really add anything worthwhile? Lots of wonderful lines, though - are any of your favourites here?
Thoughts, on either episode or the season as a whole? And how excited are you on a scale of one to ten, to go on to S2?
Out of Mind, Out of Sight
In some ways this is as much the Lord of the Flies episode as The Pack. It’s about the power of groups to harm individuals, almost without noticing, the dangers of isolating people, and the sheer viciousness of high school life. Here the monsters are not figurative, they are people, and their victim is the one whose reaction is treated figuratively. Angel, too, is invisible in the glass; there seems to be a deliberate linkage of different sorts of visibility and invisibility.
Cordelia loves springtime, because it’s all about her. Buffy runs into her, giving Harmony a chance to join in the general abuse. Cut to teacher quoting Merchant of Venice on the outcast in society. Cordelia immediately gets to the point - Shylock should get over himself. Despite this, the teacher offers help. (An actual person of colour. Amazing in this show.) Cordelia’s date, however, hears laughter before a baseball bat beats him up, apparently with no-one holding it.
Theme firmly established there. Perhaps a little too firmly.
Cordelia is desperate to be May Queen. This inspires much hilarity as Willow and Xander reminisce about her many bids for popularity. Buffy is not part of this. She was May Queen back in her old school. Popularity was her thing, but no more, and she's not really a part of this conversation even.
Snyder wants the suspicious students to stay away from the crime scene. Talk of lawyers is enough to deal with him, though, for now. Buffy is thus able to enter the (male) locker room to investigate. On the lockers, in big letters, is painted “LOOK”.
Giles joins them in the school dining hall. (Like librarians routinely do?) Is it a ghost or poltergeist. Or, as Xander suggests, a vampire bat?
Cordelia worries about Mitch’s injuries - they might harm her photos. Flashback to an earlier conversation with Harmony, who is then, in present time, pushed to the ground. More disembodied laughter.
Buffy goes looking but cannot see anyone. She touched the invisible girl, which suggests she is no ghost. Xander is not creepy at all when he says he would use invisibility to “protect the girls’ locker room”. Cordelia is apparently the common factor in the attacks so far. Giles suggests Buffy may need to work on listening to people.
Cordy tries on her May Queen dress, in school, at night, with only other students present. Giles is approached by Angel in the library and sees there is no reflection. “A vampire in love with a Slayer. It’s rather poetic, in a maudlin sort of way.” They talk about the threat from the Master and the missing Pergamon Codex, which Angel offers to get.
Giles seems rather adorably star-struck, talking to Angel, who we see has no reflection.
We see the flashback girl again, as Cordy and her friends talk through her. She smiles and pretends to feel included.
Cordy is announced as May Queen and congratulates the voters on their good taste. Some strange, dark-suited men in sunglasses seem to be observing her - a private bodyguard?
Buffy finds an inhabited lair hidden in school, where she looks up an old yearbook. She thinks she has worked out who it might be. She does not notice the knife hovering above her. The teacher, however, is attacked with a plastic bag, but Buffy saves her in time.
When Willow sees the yearbook she is at once struck by the messages written in it - all are “Have a nice summer”, the bland message that signals instant forgettability. Neither Willow nor Xander remember Marcie Ross, despite the evidence that they wrote this in her book too, and each had four classes with her the previous year. She turned invisible because no-one noticed her. Giles realises quantum mechanics is involved. (Physics as inexplicable magic - makes a change.) Reality is shaped, even created, by our perceptions. As people perceived Marcie as invisible, the energy of the hellmouth meant that she became so.
Another flashback - the teacher never notices Marcie’s hand is up. Her hand begins to vanish. She is beginning to disappear.
In the library Cordelia comes to ask for help; even she has noticed Buffy has some power. She knows the recent attacks at heart are “all about me!” She fails to recognise the photo of Marcie - she’s never seen this girl before in her life. Not only did people ignore her, they have no memory at all of her. Marcie seems to be getting ranty and psychopathic and has a coil of rope stashed away. Danger music plays.
Willow and Xander help Giles attempt to research a cure, while Buffy has bodyguard duty with Cordelia. We see a lot of the action from Marcie’s POV now - high angles, following them at some distance. Cordy expatiates on her own existential angst. Buffy is not wholly convinced, but Cordy explains that she works so hard to be popular because “it beats being alone all by yourself.”
Music has drawn Giles, Willow and Xander into a trap - just as they realise it is a recording the door slams shut on them. A hissing sound presages danger. Gas. How will our heroes escape?
Buffy’s attempt at a heartfelt talk with Cordelia fails at the first jumps. At Hemery she may well have been Cordy-lite, but there can be no actual meeting of minds. Cordy, however, vanishes mid-chat anyway. By the time Buffy punches her way through the door into the janitor’s closet where Cordy has been changing, the latter has almost entirely been hoisted into the ceiling. When she follows, Buffy is attacked by the invisible girl and knocked out.
When she comes to, both Cordelia and Buffy are tied up in the Bronze. Moreover, Cordelia’s face is numb. (but she can still talk. Go figure.) Marcie explains that she plans to spoil Cordelia’s beautiful face, so no-one will ever forget it. A tray of surgical implements is revealed.
Giles and the others are at the point of passing out, as Marcie starts detailed plans and makes the first cut. Buffy manages to untie herself. Angel miraculously opens the door to release Giles and Co. He is able to go back in to switch off the gas - it’s not like he needs the oxygen. Buffy is fighting the invisible girl, using her Slayer sense to work out where she must be. A drape falls on her, so Buffy is able to knock her out.
And suddenly a pair of agents enter, to remove Marcie and make her a useful member of society. Buffy points out how creepy they are, a remark which wholly fails to affect them.
Cordelia approaches the group to say thank you - but the change of heart is very much temporary.
Marcie is ushered into a class of empty, occupied seats. The class is studying assassination and infiltration. It seems the government has a use for supernaturally-affected oddities.
*****
Prophecy Girl
A “Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer” - the first of many. We are reminded of the Master.
Xander is practising asking Buffy out. With Willow. Sensitivity, so not his strongest point. Willow is happy to let him practise on her some more.
Buffy’s fighting vampires - three kills in one night. Cordelia is in car, making out. Giles is reading Latin; he has found a prophecy foretelling something terrible. There is an earthquake to emphasise this. The Master is somewhat excited, but Colin stays calm.
Buffy is miffed that Giles is uninterested when she actually broke a nail. Giles doesn’t rise to the bait or banter.
After boring Biology Xander tries to make advances on Buffy. He chatters inanely about Spring Fling and asks her on a date - but she friendzones him, kindly but firmly. He is bitter - he doesn’t handle rejection well.
Giles is fraught; Jenny knows something is going on and lists a set of recent portents - apocalypse stuff. A monk from Cortona has been sending her warnings about an Anointed One. (Cortona must have a hellmouth too - it’s where Moloch was trapped in a book three episodes or so ago.)
Xander finally asks Willow out. She says no. Too little, too late.
Buffy is in the washroom. The tap flows blood. She goes to tell Giles and walks in to hear him explaining to Angel that she will face the Master and die. They realise too late that she has heard, and she confronts them. Were they going to tell her she was doomed? If so, when? Angel, who has acquired another leather coat (Buffy is wearing one too) tries to soothe her, but no way is this happening. She quits, but it’s not that simple. “Giles, I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.”
Xander really is listening to the music of pain when the phone goes. Buffy, at home, is mournfully looking through photos. She asks Joyce to go away with her, but the gallery is open at weekends - however, Joyce has a dress to give her - a pure, white, evening dress. She encourages Buffy to go to the dance alone, even if the right person has not asked her. Sometimes you should do something alone, even if that's not what you prefer.
Cordelia and Willow see her boyfriend and others apparently watching cartoons, but in reality the first victims on this occasion of the infamous Sunnydale neck trauma.
Buffy tries on the dress before rushing to Willow, who is generally distressed by the deaths of young men she knew. The most shocking thing to her is that the vampires clearly had fun. She likes Buffy’s dress, though.
In his lair the Master is preparing to rise. We intercut between scenes of him looking ominous and Jenny with Giles in the library. He plans to face the Master instead of Buffy - but she has arrived to decide for him. She knocks him out, as she knows it is the only way to stop him rushing into things.
In flowing white skirt and structured leather jacket Buffy goes outside and meets Colin. She knows who he is and goes with him - that bit of the prophecy isn’t quite right it seems. Down in the darkness she goes, entering the sewers. Xander goes to get Angel - despite severe testosterone poisoning on both parts, he agrees to help.
Jenny is practical - where is the Hellmouth, exactly? (You’d have thought someone would have asked before. Ah well.) Giles and Willow are in preparation and research mode.
Buffy descends to the lair and starts quipping with the Master. Xander and Angel are on the way, but one is afraid the other might snack on him.
Giles and Willow work out that the prom might be a vampire target. It’s at the Bronze, so they rush to warn partygoers. However, the vampires (looking a lot like zombies) are coming to them.
The Master has Buffy, who is unable to fight him. He starts to feed on her - Slayer blood gives him power. He likes her dress, too, but still flings her into a puddle.
Angel and Xander find Buffy - too late, it seems. Angel holds her dead body in his arms, but Xander will not accept it. Angel has no breath, but Xander knows CPR and brings her back.
And Cordy to the rescue in her car saves Jenny and Willow from the approaching evil undead. There is screaming, then Cordy drives through the school into the library. More screaming and vampire growling, but at least the good guys seem safe. But tentacles are coming up through cracks in the floor…
Buffy feels strong, ready to chase after the Master. There is a power walk, to Nerf Herder. She is invincible - Angel puts on his game face and they go in to confront the enemy.
Back in the library, more tentacles, more screaming. But Buffy flunked the written and faces the Master. There are tentacles, monster faces, screaming and the Master, whose attempt at hypnosis now fails. He has fruit-punch mouth. Fighting everywhere, then Buffy throws her opponent down through the skylights onto jagged wood. He dies, and the tentacles (and other vampires) go away.
They all decide to go to the dance. After all, Buffy got all pretty in her dress. It’s a big hit with everyone.
So - do you sympathise with Marcie Ross? It certainly brings back uncomfortable memories to me. Is it the Initiative that recruits her at the end? The theme is loneliness in a crowd, but also the casual viciousness of group behaviour, and the devastating impact it can have on those outside. Angel and Buffy, and even Cordelia, have moments of feeling very much outside - and Giles takes it for granted that he's centuries out of touch.
And Prophecy Girl - this, it would seem, is where the season’s effects budget was spent. But why doesn’t the Master die like other vamps? What is it with the whole Angel having no breath thing? Does he actually let Xander do the CPR to ease tension between them, or does the talking vamp really have no breath? Where did the tentacles come from and why - did they really add anything worthwhile? Lots of wonderful lines, though - are any of your favourites here?
Thoughts, on either episode or the season as a whole? And how excited are you on a scale of one to ten, to go on to S2?