BUFFY 5.16 THE BODY

The first 12 minutes of the episode

WRITER: Joss Whedon

DIRECTOR: Joss Whedon

WHAT’S THE SITCH?

Buffy comes home to find her mom apparently lifeless on the couch. Shocked she calls 911 who tell her to do CPR while they send the paramendics. Buffy does, desperately trying to revive Joyce. But she gets no reaction. Buffy also calls Giles, telling him he needs to come right away. Soon the paramedics arrive. They do their best...but to no avail. The lead paramedic gives Buffy the terrible news – her mom has died. He offers his condolences and says that someone will be there soon to take the body away for a proper investigation in to the cause of death. The paramedics go, leaving Buffy all alone in the house, all alone with the Body. She wanders the house in silence, in shock. She is sick on the floor. She opens the back door and listens to the sounds of everyday life outside. Giles quickly arrives, fearful that Glory has launched another attack. He sees Joyce’s prone body. Buffy manages to tell him what happened and Giles comforts his young slayer. We go on to see the rest of the Scoobies dealing with the news. They are all clearly shocked, grieving, angry, with poor Anya not seeming to understand any of it. She doesn’t understand how this can be the absolute end of someone. But the worst comes as Buffy goes to the school to tell Dawn. Buffy pulls her little sister out of art class, the teenager’s friends watching silently through a window as the news is broken, watching as poor Dawn collapses in grief. Later, at the hospital, the doctor confirms to Buffy that Joyce died from an aneurysm – a complication from her surgery. He says it would have been quick and painless. While Buffy and the doctor have been talking, Dawn has snuck off to find her mother’s body. She is confused and curious about death, about what happens next. In the morgue she sees Joyce’s body lying on the table…but another body suddenly gets up from a neighbouring table: a vampire. The newly risen vamp goes to attack Dawn. Luckily Buffy arrives just in time and saves her sister, quickly finishing off the monster. The episode ends with Dawn and Buffy, sat together on the cold mortuary floor, looking at Joyce’s body. Buffy tells her sister that their mom is not there, that she has gone. But Dawn wants to know where Joyce has gone, her hand slowly moving forward, looking to touch her mother one last time.

WHAT’S THE SITCH BENEATH THE SITCH?

For once there isn’t one. It is all up there on the screen. It’s about how we deal when death comes a calling. It’s about the banality, the weirdness of those first few minutes and hours, about how shock and disbelief plays with our minds, with our perceptions of place and time. There are no life lessons learned in The Body, no big truths uncovered. Simply, it is all about "the black ashes in your mouth numbness of death" as Joss described it.

WHO’S GIVING US THE WIGGINS THIS WEEK?

Real life. Real death.

WHY IT ROCKS

If you’ve seen it then you will know why.

Quite simply The Body is one of the greatest pieces of television ever produced. It is a stripped down and painfully honest piece of drama that shows us the reality (or un-reality) of a traumatic and terrible event the likes of which we will all unfortunately experience at some point or another. I have experienced it in a very similar circumstance to Buffy.

The power of Joss’s episode is that it is absolutely accurate, devastatingly so, drawing on his own personal experience. That is why it resonates, why it works, why it hurts. Everything shown is honest and true in the worst of ways such as how in the immediate aftermath the world becomes a strange otherworldly place where flashes of wish fulfilment fantasy try to push back the tide of awful reality. How the tiniest details suddenly become huge. How we question, how we struggle to understand, to comprehend, to make sense of things.

There is no music in The Body. No score. There is only dialogue and ambient sounds often cranked up in places – wind chimmes, children playing, birdsong, traffic etc. The worst being the loud snap when Buffy accidentally breaks her mother’s rib while doing CPR. But most of all there is silence. Long stretches of deafening silence. People standing or sitting around, not knowing what to say or do, struggling for words, to know what to say, how to behave. An odd situation for a show famed for its continual witty wordsmithery.

And then there are the performances.

Well, you all know by now that I think highly of SMG. She is the powerful centre of the show. And in this episode, she is quite brilliant. She has to display such deep and believable levels of shock, grief, anger, comfort. And she does it achingly well. This is the most stripped down, vulnerable, and utterly human the character of Buffy Summers has ever been, or will ever be. Seeing her paled face and big haunted eyes in extreme close up as she stands on the doorstep, in the sun, listening to passing sounds of life, is deeply unsettling. Following behind her small, fragile looking figure as she staggers through the silent house then collapses and vomits on the floor is distressing. I mean, she’s the hero. Strong, Clever. Witty. Ready to handle anything… except this. All of the performances are great but deserving of extra praise is Emma Caulfield. Anya’s genuinely confused and upset reaction to realising Joyce will never again get to enjoy all the simple little things in life that people enjoy is heartbreaking. In that one short monologue she captures the episode perfectly. If you aren’t fighting to hold back tears by that point then you have a heart of stone.

If there were any justice in the world The Body would have won a whole heap of Emmy awards, including for writing, direction and performance by SMG. As it turned out it wasn’t nominated for a single one, much to the amazement of television critics right across the US who’d been openly calling for awards recognition for the episode. But Joss always said he never made this show to get awards. He made it so that he could play around with genre conventions and explore themes and ideas that interested him as well as to create characters that people could identify with and possibly gain something from. And he certainly succeeded.

The Body is my personal favourite episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is possibly my favourite piece of television ever, possibly even my favourite piece of drama from any medium. But I find it hard to watch. The first time I saw it I’d already had a similar experience to Buffy. Now I’ve had two. The second one being almost identical to what happens in the episode. Now it is very hard to watch. Almost too hard. But I continue to watch it from time to time because it is a great piece of drama that transcends its medium, its genre. It deserves to be watched. The Body was made by someone working from their own personal experience, someone showing us that the weird reactions, the strange things that we think and do in those first few hours are perfectly normal. And that despite how isolated we feel in that darkest time, we are not alone.

Thank you Joss.

WHY IT SUCKS

It doesn’t

IT’S BUFFTASTIC

Anya’s monologue

DIALOGUE TO DIE FOR

Buffy: Mom? Whadya doin'? Mom? ... Mom? ... Mommy?

Buffy (shouts to Giles): We're not supposed to move the body! (She puts her hand over her mouth, in shock.)

Tara: We can be strong.
Willow: Strong like an Amazon?

Anya: But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why. (She puts her hand over her face, crying.)

Xander: We'll go, we'll deal, we'll help. That's what we do. We help Buffy.

Anya (loudly): I wish that Joyce didn't die...
Everyone looks at her.
Anya (more softly):...because she was nice. And now we all hurt.
Xander: Anya, ever the wordsmith.
Buffy (to Anya, meaning it): Thank you.

Buffy: Everybody wants to help. I don't even know if I'm... here. I don't know what's going on. Never done this. (pauses) That's just an amazingly dumb thing to say. Obviously I've never done this before.
Tara (softly): I have. My mother died when I was seventeen.

Dawn (looking at Joyce's body): Is she cold?
Buffy: It's not her... it's not her... she's gone.
Dawn (softly): Where'd she go?

AND ANOTHER THING

There is no "Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer" at the beginning of this episode. And there is no music of any kind.

The episode starts with a flashback scene feat. Joyce, Buffy and the gang having Christmas dinner as Joss didn’t want the credits playing over the story proper.

This episode features Willow and Tara’s first on-screen kiss. It is a throwaway moment of quick comfort and not played as a big deal. Originally the WB balked at having them kiss but Joss insisted, saying it was the natural thing for them to do in the scene. It was the one and only time he threatened the network that he’d leave the show if he didn’t get his way. Thankfully they quickly relented.

Joss lost his own mother in a similar way to Buffy. The episode stems primarily from his personal experience.

Some have criticised the inclusion of the vampire in the final sequence at the morgue. I also always felt it was kind of an odd and jarring inclusion. But Joss has explained that it is there to signify that despite this awful tragedy, life goes on. And for Buffy, life in Sunnydale means vampires and demons. There is no escape from it. I also think that the vampire is another expression of death, of a dead body. And that when Buffy slays it she is slaying death itself in a way she couldn’t for her mom.

HOW MANY STAKES?

5+ (out of 5)

Swedish Zombies Go For The Heart

I recently finished Handling the Undead, Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist’s acclaimed follow up to Let The Right One In. Handling the Undead is actually several years old now and has only recently been published in the UK (on the back of the LTROI movie success.) It first saw light in Sweden back in 2005 but it took four years for the English translation to appear. Never mind. Better late than never I guess.

The story goes something like this:

For some inexplicable reason the recently deceased of Stockholm (those dead for up to six months) have come back to life. This includes all those who have been buried as well as those previously undiscovered bodies including, in one memorable incident, a man who had drowned in a lake and whose body had been hidden beneath the water for weeks. Needless to say he is not in a good state when he wakes up. But these ‘reliving’ are not quite the people they once were. There are aspects that are familiar but they seem to be more robotic and instinctual. And they also appear to have a strange psychic effect on regular living people whenever they come together in any number. The book focuses equally on several main characters and how they each deal with the reappearance of their recently departed. There is David, a stand up comic, whose wife was killed in a car crash the same night as the mass resurrection and who has been left to care for his young son. Meanwhile, teenage metaller, Flora, and her Catholic grandmother, Elvy, are horrified when the reanimated corpse of Flora’s granddad, Elvy’s husband, arrives at their front door. And then there’s middle-aged journalist Mahler who, upon discovering what has happened, goes to the local cemetery and digs up the reliving body of his young grandson Elias who recently died in a tragic accident.

Now, a lot of this is pretty grim stuff, especially everything to do with little Elias. The little boy is a dried up corpse, yet he is also reliving. Mahler and his grief-struck daughter’s continual and rather hopeless attempts to help Elias appear and to act more human by bathing him, moistening his desiccated skin with lotion and training him to react to simple things, is difficult stuff to read. Lindqvist’s prose is simple but very descriptive and highly emotional. He doesn’t shy away from intense imagery that will make you feel rather queasy. But even so, Handling the Undead is not really a horror story. Rather it is a grim, sad fable about life and the meaning of death. It is about how people deal with death, how they rationalise it, live with it, make it in to something else through the use of religion or even make it in to entertainment using more modern cultural outlets like movies and video games. The novel’s reliving are quite similar to the classic Romero zombie in that they shuffle around and many are in a very bad way, but they don’t eat people as their Hollywood cousins do. Lindqvist uses zombie films and video games such as Resident Evil (which shows up a lot in the story) as the touchstone for how people, mostly younger people, relate to the reliving, how they dehumanise them even though there is still a spark of their humanity remaining. The book follows several groups of characters and the emotional, psychological and actual physical journeys they go on in dealing with the return of their loved ones and of the wider event. This is not a story about plot twists and turns. It is a story about people, their emotions and how they deal. Or don’t deal. It is a journey of grief, faith and eventual acceptance. There is no big climax, no big revelations. The ending is like the rest of the book: quiet, sad and emotional.

There is no doubt that Handling the Undead is a good book. It is well written, atmospheric and quite disturbing in places. However, as with Lindqvist’s Let The Right One In, I found that the story, though compelling, meandered a little too much for my taste. There are many scenes where nothing much really happens, scenes that seem to just go off to places I wasn't really that interested in them going, wishing Lindqvist would just cut back to the central idea and perhaps focus more on some fewer characters. The wonderful thing about the film of Let The Right One In is how Lindqvist (who also wrote its screenplay) pared down his book to the core story and theme. He jettisoned the subplots and the excess fat from the book with the result being that the film was a superior telling of the story than the book it was based on. Don’t get me wrong, Handling the Undead is certainly a good book with an interesting and thought provoking approach to the zombie genre. I did like it. But if only it had been rather more focussed then it could have been a classic.

Everything Dies: RIP Peter Steele

Peter Steele, singer, songwriter and bassist for Type O Negative, has passed away at the age of 48. As a long-time Type O fan, this is a very sad day for me and for their many fans worldwide.

It’s no secret that for a long time Peter (born 1962 as Petrus Ratajczyk in Brooklyn, New York) had been fighting depression and various substance abuse issues for a long time. Rumours started circulating on the web earlier this morning that Peter had died but I didn’t really buy it. Back in 2005 the big guy pulled a hoax by posting his picture and the years “1962-2005″ on the group’s website leading the world to think he had died suddenly. So, this morning, I hoped this was yet another twisted gag by the dark and brooding but humorous Goliath (he was 6ft 7 tall you know.) Sadly, it was not to be. In an e-mail to CBS News, the band’s manager Mike Renault later confirmed Peter’s death. He wrote, “Peter passed away last night. As of now it appears to have been heart failure. That’s all the details we have right now.”

I’ve adored Type O Negative’s dark, heavy-yet-melodic and blackly humorous music since the early 90’s when I first heard their classic epic song Black Number 1 taken from their 1993 breakthrough album Bloody Kisses, an album which also spawned the classic track Christian Woman. Bloody Kisses became the first album released by Roadrunner Records to go platinum. At that time there was simply nothing else quite like Type O Negative around. And there never has been since. They rocked out hard, their music usually doused in overblown goth/horror-style atmosphere mixing romance, sex, death, religion, doom and depression but always accompanied by a massive dose of irony that couldn’t help make you giggle. Type O Negative were one of the most unlikely bands ever to break in to mainstream music. And yet they did. Although mostly dark and heavy and doomy (leading to their nickname of 'The Drab Four') Type O’s tunes could also be infectiously melodic, catchy and most chucklesome. They made some immensly cool and unforgettable songs on their seven produced albums.

Slow, Deep and Hard (1991)
The Origin of the Faeces (1992)
Bloody Kisses (1993)
October Rust (1996)
World Coming Down (1999)
Life Is Killing Me (2003)
Dead Again (2007)

It is an understatement to say that Peter Steele was central to Type O Negative’s success and enduring popularity. His unmistakably deep, scary, brooding voice, his song writing talent as well as his imposing physical presence were utterly integral in making Type O what they were. His was a (literally) towering presence in the world of rock and metal music, an icon of the scene for the past two decades. And he will be greatly missed.

Sleep well, big guy. :(

Black No. 1 (Bloody Kisses, 1993)


Christian Woman (Bloody Kisses, 1993)


Everything Dies (World Coming Down, 1996)


My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend (October Rust, 1996)

Brittany Murphy 1977 to 2009

Actress Brittany Murphy died Sunday morning from a cardiac arrest.

I can't believe this. She was one of my favourite actresses and just 32 years old - seven years younger than me. Awful, awful news.

I loved her natural charisma, charm and the quirky style she brought to many of her roles with Clueless being the first thing I saw her in back in ’95 playing new girl Tai. I was an immediate fan. I remember her popping up around the same time in an episode of SeaQuest where the ship goes back in time to the Cuban Missile Crisis. She played the teenage love interest for the shows teen star Jonathan Brandis, also sadly no longer with us. She was great. It is one of the very few episodes of SeaQuest I own. Brittany then starred in possibly my favourite role of hers as Deliverance Bodine in the fab direct to video action movie Drive. Deliverance is a rather odd girl. She's kinda crazy, rather risqué but also very cute and funny. Every second she is on screen you can’t help but smile. Brittany then starred opposite Christopher Walken in Prophesy 2. She made a splendid double act with Walken in what was an otherwise forgettable film. Girl, Interrupted was next. An excellent film filled with many wonderful young actresses. Brittany played Daisy Randone, a sexually abused girl who comes to a very sad end. And Brittany did the role proud. Angelina got the Oscar (and she was brilliant) but it was Daisy’s story that did it for me. Watch the great scene between Angelina and Brittany embedded below. After that came a total change of pace with Cherry Falls, a quirky teen slasher flick that suited Brittany’s style down to the ground. A fun flick and she was most entertaining in it. There followed the Michael Douglas thriller Don’t Say a Word, Summer Catch and, of course, 8 Mile. Then came Just Married, an above the title starring role opposite Ashton Kutcher. However it wasn’t until she took the role of Shellie in Robert Rodriguez’s amazing Sin City that I got to see her again in something I really liked. Post Sin City she was constantly busy in a variety of roles in film and TV including her voice work in King of the Hill and Happy Feet. She had only recently completed a role in the upcoming Sylvester Stallone/Jason Statham/Jet Li all action extravaganza The Expendables. I’d been holding out hope that she would also get to be in the still gestating Sin City 2. Sadly, that will now never happen.

Brittany Murphy was certainly a beautiful girl. She was also a very talented actress with a unique style and a gift for comedy. She always brought a smile to my face or in the case of Girl, Interrupted a tear to my eye.

My thoughts are with her husband and family at this awful time.

Girl, Interrupted - Lisa antagonises Daisy


Drive - a great action sequence made all the better by Brittany being bonkers and cute. At 2:38 "Are you outta your mind?" "Okay." LOL

The Lovely Bones (book)

I’d been meaning to read The Lovely Bones for a long time now – even before the Peter Jackson film was announced. And with the film adaptation's release imminent, I finally got around to it.

For those who don’t know, The Lovely Bones is a novel by Alice Sebold published in 2002 that tells the story of a girl called “Salmon. Like the fish. First name Susie.” On 6 December 1973 fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered by a neighbour. Susie tells us her story in first person narration while watching over her family and friends from her own personalised heaven, ‘the in-between’, watching as they struggle to come to terms with her most awful of deaths. While watching her family in pain, Susie is struggling to let go of her mortal bonds and the terrible sense of loss she feels for the life she will never now have – especially the budding first love with a boy at school that started and ended with just one fleeting kiss.

I liked The Lovely Bones a great deal but it sure was hard going. It’s one of the most emotionally affecting things I've ever read. There were several places in Alice Sebold’s text where I was unable to keep the old eyes from leaking. Several places where I just had to stop and say to myself ‘Okay. That’s enough for now.’ Why? I guess the subject matter and the original way in which it's presented. The way the book presents the characters and how they relate to each other in the wake of tragedy. I’d defy the hardest of hearts not to be moved by young Susie Salmon, and then for that heart not to break as her tale goes on, before becoming healed at story’s end. For a parent reading this book I’d imagine it would be a gruelling experience. I’m not a parent and it was pretty tough for me at times. But despite the horror of Susie’s murder there is also an inherent warmth and hopefulness around the whole tale. It is sad and tragic, yes, but also rather life affirming in a strange way.

The Lovely Bones does a great job showing the different dynamics of a family shattered by the worst possible tragedy, of showing how that family tries and fails and tries again to put itself back together. As a novel it didn’t quite go where I thought it would. It’s not a murder mystery or solve the crime and catch the killer type of story. There are elements of that in there but that’s not what the story is about. This is primarily a story about discovery, of growing up and of moving on. It’s a unique coming of age tale about someone who will never come of age - at least not as she should. It’s a love story about life and family told from the perspective of someone who can now see every tiny aspect of life and family but cannot participate in it anymore.

The Lovely Bones is not the best written book ever. The prose can be a little dry at times. However it is always intriguing and tells a sad but also hopeful tale in a tough and often emotionally challenging way.

I hope that Peter Jackson’s movie captures the spirit and feel of the book, the horrific tragedy that can move you to tears but also the warmth and humanity that can make you smile.