Graduation Day: Part 2

Just started watching Buffy the vampire slayer. Ive just finished series three. Great show love the acting the banter the action. But why oh why introduce such a bloody annoying character like Wesley. I'm English and he gets on my nerves, the accent etc is just to much and too over done. Hope he is gone because he began to spoil it for me. Stereotype or not it was over done and acted out wrong. I'm looking forward to series four though.

Following on directly from the previous episode Buffy has defeated Faith but can't use her to help save Angel; instead she does something radical that puts her in real danger... and ultimately in hospital. While she is being treated we see that the mayor has found Faith; she too is in the hospital, seriously injured and in a coma. Once Buffy recovers she formulates a plan to take on the mayor during the school graduation ceremony... it may not be much of a plan but it is the only one they've got.

This season finale was a lot of fun. We see just how far Buffy is prepared to go to save Angel and that the mayor genuinely cares for Faith; it wasn't just an act to keep her on his side. I liked the fact that Buffy's plan was kept from the viewer right up until it was put into action; that way one could keep speculating on what would happen right up till the end. The finale may have been a little cheesy but I couldn't help enjoying it; the only real flaw was the moment of the mayor's transformation as the special effects looked rather dated. Once transformed he was suitably menacing though. Anybody hoping that Angel would stay with Buffy may be disappointed but anybody wanting to know what happens to him next can watch 'Angel', his own spin-off series. As well as the demon/vampire slaying action there are some amusing scenes; notably when Cordelia and Wesley finally kiss and sparks don't fly. Overall this episode was an enjoyable conclusion to the High School era of the series; look forward to seeing how they cope at college.

The third season is one of the best ones of the entire show, everything just weaved together so perfectly. All of it ending with an amazing 2 parter that I don't thing was ever toped.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer acquired two trademarks in its seven-season long television run. The first is the ability to portray its characters to the audience, for the scene to travel deep within the viewer's soul, then stinging the cords on the inside that makes us identify with a character, a feeling, or a situation without it being exactly the same as our own. It's second trademark is the show-stopping season finales it brings. The season finale is usually unanimously the favorite episode of the season. So what happens when you sit all seven of the finales next to each other in a line to compare? The ones that don't have the same gutting material to work with don't always stand out. That's how I've always felt about Graduation Day.

This episode is a showcase for Joss Whedon's radical directing skills. Whedon is the type of writer who was born to write. When his pen meets paper sparks fly into the air because it's that revolutionary. With the toned-down writing this time, Graduation Day allows the Buffy fan to really be captured by Whedon's vision for the adieu to childhood. There isn't much here to write about. Anything he would've thrown us would come off as unappealing to the adrenaline ready Buffy fans waiting to be shaken off our seat by the finale, but all things considered, the writing is good. It has a few laugh-out-loud moments as well as great dialogue.

The scope of this episode, the meaning, and the emotion for Graduation Day, however has never been fully realized by myself until this point and time. I've seen it numerous times before, but never really understood what Whedon really intended to with it. He goes back to Trademark 1. We get to experience graduation. As the characters depart from high school, the audience members who have traveled through high school and successfully graduated will understand every nuance here. I watched this on the night of my graduation, it's the perfect time to revisit it. The feeling of extreme love and warmth to everyone around you, wanting to be united with everyone around you, and realizing you are finally in the position to step away from what has taught you right from wrong all your life (such as Buffy does in the first-rate scene where she quits the Watcher's Counsel). All the characters get a moment to show their maturity and the person they've grown into from high school. We can feel our high school memories haunting back into our mind as Buffy gets to live her experience.

One of my biggest objections with this episode has been the Buffy/Angel subplot that links part 1 and part 2. That is all that used to be to me, a chain linking the two halves together, but this section is undeniable and their relationship comes to a close with poetry. Buffy and Angel were clearly meant to not be together. This season gets to explore the devastating news that destiny has not intended for two people in love to stay together. Once High School is over, there are many things that have to be abandoned. Often high school romances are one of them.

Season 3′s biggest fault in my eyes is feeling to convoluted and too manipulated into it's own little universe instead of stemming off in the real world, which the others do. Although, most of this took place in the earlier episodes in the season, the backwash is still felt here. That being said, Season 3′s arc, which is captured in Graduation Day, is prodigious. It questions our morality, explores our psyches, tests our emotions. Wait, our? I meant the character's morality, psyches, and emotions but if the shoe fits

Graduation Day gets to depict a war film as well as being a compelling drama developing its strong characters. The metaphor of the students teaming up together to defeat the Mayor is one of the strongest metaphors of the season. Great acting from Eliza Dushku, Harry Groener, and the always dependable Sarah Michelle Gellar, as well as the entire ensemble. This episode also stirs up a wonderful dramatic score. The visual effects of the Mayor's transformation, though, are something to be desired. Decent for the '90s, but come on Joss Whedon! The iconic moment of the episode is the showdown between Buffy and Faith. The two slayers, evolved from friends to enemies finally get to face off in Graduation Day and trust me the fight was worth the wait.

Epic and worthy as a finale, the episode itself doesn't shimmer like the past finales do, but it's still one of the top episodes of the series. The development of the characters is something all shows strive for, few ever succeed in finding, but what Buffy has copyrighted. The best scene is Buffy's coma-dream sequence. It's a beautiful scene that does what this show does that makes it the best: puts two characters in a room that speak to the audience and move their soul. The final fight is a tad underwhelming, that of Buffy and the Mayor, but it still creates a successful conclusion to the season. Directing his way to victory, Joss Whedon takes a stride with this finale!

NOTE: watch Part One and Part Two, back to back, you'll leave more fulfilled.

Rating: 9.5/10

Grade: A

*This is a review of season 3 as a whole. The rating above is for the season finale as opposed to the season as a whole.

If season 2 saw this series building on its first season's few strengths and evolving into a smart, effective, and genuinely intelligent piece of genre programming, then season 3 is Buffy on overdrive, as nearly every episode delights the viewer in its unpretentious and expert handling of the characters, their relationships, and the plot.

Honestly, the story lines on this series are, superficially speaking, fantasy soap-opera story lines. The romances on the series, the good-turns-bad twists etc. are pretty standard material, but the way the writers write out the story is completely unpretentious, smart, witty, and different. The acting is top-notch and really brings the writing to life. I mean, The Mayor could've turned out horribly, and though not exactly menacing (little is on this series), The Mayor is a wonderfully rich, funny, creepy, and well-drawn villain who serves as the base for most of this season's ridiculously entertaining episodes.

In Season 3 Buffy finally got rid of the moronic monster of the week episodes which plagued its first two seasons. These formulaic episodes, in which some ugly monster was fought off by the core cast and eventually killed, really dragged down the quality of the otherwise fantastic second season. Luckily, in season 3, these 'independent' episodes take after series classics like "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" in the place of garbage like "Bad Eggs" and "Inca Mummy Girl", in that they are linked to the psychological or physical state of the characters, and in the case of "Band Candy", another fantastic episode, is loosely connected to the season story-arc. So while Season 3 has its fair share of episodes not exactly crucial to the story-arc, they are done in a far more evolved and intelligent form than the simple 'gang fights monster' format (the mediocre "Gingerbread" being the exception). These episodes take fascinating concepts and execute them with real style.

Buffy Season 3 sees natural development of the characters leading up to the only reasonable end points for them as we reach the end of the season. New characters, Faith and Wesley being the ones that survive beyond this season, are terrific and are more than convenient plot devices.

I thought the best episodes this season were:

"Band Candy"- clever and hilarious pretty much describe this one.

"Lovers Walk"- an ingeniously written episode which sees the return of a lovesick Spike. Character interaction at its finest. A potentially moronic and soapy scene where two characters suffer betrayal is executed brilliantly and works as fine drama.

"The Zeppo"- The series at the peak of its comedic prowess. Xander is an irresistible character.

"Doppelgangland"- I'm actually not too crazy about Joss Whedon in general. Even some of his episodes for Buffy (usually his most praised work) have struck me as seriously flawed bits of writing. Every so often though, he'll come through with one hell of a script. He did it in season 2 with Innocence and Becoming Part 2, and he's done it here.

"Graduation Day: Part 2"- The big season finale works precisely because it doesn't feel like one. Brilliant stuff.

Season 3 is one of the most thoroughly enjoyable seasons of genre television I have ever seen. It is exceptionally well-written stuff, there's just no denying that.

Season 3 Avg. Rating from all episodes: 8.23/10, a much more consistent season than its immediate predecessor and a truly outstanding bit of television in general.