The Body

My father passed away not too long ago. I started watching Buffy to pass the time when I visited my mother during a difficult time (it was streaming on Netflix, and I had really enjoyed Firefly). For those that have experienced the loss of a love one, especially a parent, this episode will be a shockingly realistic portrayal of it.

If art is the attempt to perfectly capture an emotion or an idea through a medium (whether it's music, prose, visual, etc.), then it would not be an exaggeration to say that this episode is a masterpiece. If art, and not entertainment, is the measure of quality television then I could, with certainty, say that this is the best hour of television ever produced. It may be the best thing ever filmed.

As a rather critical person, I realize how silly the praise above sounds. I think many people who haven't experienced the loss of a parent won't "get it." But those that have should come away with similar praise.

I just finished watching the episode "The Body". I had never seen it since it originally aired. How long it has been since then I have come to realize when I look at what has happened since then... In 2002, my brother committed suicide at the age of 26. I sometime feel that it is ages away, sometimes not quite that long.

When I watched the episode, I felt that it wasn't that long ago at all. In fact, I was actively reliving the incident as if it was happening right in front of my eyes. The paramedics... The police... The coroner... I do not recall a single name or face, just the face of my brother, lying, innocently smiling as if in a pleasant dream... My hand touching his forehead - bitter cold as it was. I recall having to hug my parents all the time, comforting them as much as I could possibly do.

I broke into tears only after getting back to my apartment late at night, crying my eyes out, my sweater all wet of snot and tears - just sitting in the dark crying for god knows how long.

It often comes back to me in the best and therefore worst of moments - Christmas, birthdays, my wedding, but never in recent time as strong as while I was watching "The Body".

Thank you, Joss Whedon, for writing this episode, and let me say I am sorry for whatever loss has inspired it - otherwise it would be impossible to write something this profound.

Thomas

This is the moment Buffy becomes an Adult. Sure, there was Angel. And we know what she went through. But nothing prepares you for the loss of a parent.

Not a song or sound to be heard. There were no paid for emotions powered by a moving soundtrack. Silence throughout. Nothing hidden, nothing pre-heated. This is Buffy at her darkest, most real. She suddenly realises she is the eldest in her family and that there is no-one to care for her.

This is a masterpiece of emotional writing and the camerawork and editing do it justice.

What an episode. This is where so-called teen-tv shows the adults a thing or two about growing up.

-- And sorry to jut in, but 18 years later it's hard to overstate just how groundbreaking the Tara and Willow kiss scene was. This was the first time in TV mainstream drama history where a kiss between two ladies wasn't used as a controversy spiking TV talking point, a ratings boost, male titillation or a main plot device to push an agenda or force drama. Without wanting to sound derogatory, this was an adjunct, an addendum, almost a throwaway scene... It could have been cut and nothing, not a single storyline would have wandered amiss... But no. Here where we see two people, in love and distraught in their shock try to comfort one another in the most natural way possible. The sheer understatedness (that's not a real word) of the whole thing was what made that scene so seminal in the fight for acceptance and recognition.

There are arguably better episodes in other shows (Ozymandius from breaking bad comes to mind). Those episodes are in keeping with modern high quality TV production. The best episodes of the likes of GOT and Breaking Bad run very similar in terms of visual tone and overall flow. There's nothing wrong with that, they are incredible shows. But this episode is something more. A visceral display of grief and it's various manifestations on those who have lost someone meaningful. I have never had an episode tear my heart out and describe it to me like this episode did. I will most likely never see anything like it again. Breathtaking.

If anyone ever asks if a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer is capable of transcending not just its targeted demographic but just the possibilities of the medium of TV, you don't need to look too much further than the episode The Body. While there were a plethora of fantastic episodes in the first three seasons, four and five were a little more spotty and hit or miss. But when it hit- most often thanks to Joss Whedon's direct involvement in episodes Hush, Restless and this one- it really connected. In this case it's a true heartbreaker of an episode, and one that you shouldn't watch out of context of the season. The build-up leading in season five to what happens with this 'body' brings on an enormous gulf of pain and horror. But it's not of the supernatural. It's something so relatable it stings- a good sting, I suppose, but one that comes out of real art.

What Whedon taps into in his style here (what he calls the "physicality" of people in the first few hours after a loved one has passed) is the inability to cope with mortality. Every character has his or her own way of "dealing"- in quotes since it's a dealing that is about as heavy as one can not hope to imagine- and most significant is seeing Buffy's initial reaction at the start of the episode, of the same disillusionment that sends one into a state of shock (and, frankly, us too), and Anya, who up until now has been mildly or quite annoying as a 'comic-relief' only to provide as the once-demon persona on the show the most profound statement on death heard in a while. Only monologues spoken in Ingmar Bergman films dealing with the matter of life and death (and the incredible, impossible void left for us in the presence of nothingness) top this one for a cinematic depth of this situation.

It's great storytelling, superb and intimate acting, and with a final moment in a morgue that has a poetic flavor. Dare I say it, it's even better than Hush at conveying a breakdown of the human spirit.