Buffy rewatch: 3.09. The Wish

[boot_the_grime]

I love alternate universe stories, and this is one of the best AU episodes I’ve seen. A great AU story is not just fun but reveals something important about the characters, and about how much circumstances shape who we are and what our lives can be. The Wish is a very revealing episode, to a greater extent than I was aware the first time I

Comments

[local_max]

I should really comment on these more. Anyway, I think it's really interesting to compare the Master here to the Mayor -- in a way, the Master is rewritten as a slightly different kind of vampire in order to comment on the Mayor, no? But it does still kind of make a twisted kind of sense. Agree on most of this; it really is a wonderful episode. I think I prefer Doppelgangland of the two wishverse episodes, but this one has more raw emotional power.

[itsnotmymind]

we don’t see Oz subjected to any humiliating comments about his girlfriend cheating on him

Maybe that's because Oz didn't choose Willow over his friends, the way Cordy did?

[boot_the_grime]

Oz's friends never tried to make the decision who Oz is allowed to date - not that he would care if they did. And I don't believe Oz would be friends with bitchy people who would turn their backs on him and try to mock him.

I was referring more to students in general. But even if they were saying something negative about him, they would probably know he wouldn't care what they said.

[itsnotmymind]

Oh, yeah, I think Cordy's friends were being very obnoxious about the whole Xander thing and she was absolutely right to choose Xander over them, even though he turned out to be unfaithful, but it meant that her relationship with Xander was under greater scrutiny than Oz's with Willow, because it was always controversial.

[anonymous]

I very much like the teens' 'come-bite-me outfit' belief---people in bad situations come up with all sorts of reasons bad things won't happen to them in order to avoid feeling powerless, and many, many, of them are nonsensical, everything from 'I won't get AIDS because I'm not "gay", I just have sex with gay guys every now and then.' to 'There is an all-powerful, invisible, being who controls the Universe and who will protect me if I do everything its public-relations guys [or gals] have told me I ought to do.'.