Joyce Is Dead

For the month of October, I’ve opted to shift some key elements of this blog. I’ll be paying homage to my favorite television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer by dedicating each post to reflections on specific episodes of the show. Moreover, to cram in more BtVS ramblings, I’m foregoing my typical every-other-week posting schedule in favor of posting every weekend.

If you’re a fan of the show, I hope you’ll enjoy these looks back, and if you’re not, maybe I’ll incentivize you to give it a shot. If you find yourself someplace in between—e.g., you’re currently watching the show, please note that these posts will include spoilers about the episode(s) they discuss.

And, if you’re just not interested in Buffy, apologies, but this just isn’t your month. I will be back for a more typical blog post around Halloween, and resume the routine going into November.

In a show full of memorable, well-acted characters, Joyce Summers is a deceptively unique figure. It would be easy enough to dismiss her as a generic TV mom, and the first two seasons all but invite this read as she is kind and caring, but also painfully oblivious to miss that her daughter is, you know, a vampire slayer. Little better, the end of season two sees her bitterly disavow her daughter, exiling her from the house in the heat of argument after learning the truth about her daughter and the supernatural forces of evil she’s so constantly at odds with.

The seasons to follow, however, see Joyce grow. One of BtVS’s strongest qualities is its capacity to use its other-worldly underpinnings to remarkable metaphorical effect, whether we’re talking about a high school on a Hellmouth as the embodiment of one’s teenage years feeling like an overwhelming war zone or the way in which the Slayer role embodies the weight of expectations and responsibility the world imposes upon many young people before they ever agree to such terms.

That Joyce is the mother to a Slayer isn’t, in and of itself, all that relatable to most any real life mother-daughter situation. The single parent doing the best she can while her daughter or son engages with a life she can hardly begin to understand? Well, that sounds much more relatable.

And Joyce is, against the odds a likable character, and ostensibly a good mom straight into season five when her health suffers in what may or may not be a result of a new daughter being woven into her life, her brain magically adjusted accordingly.

The addition of Dawn Summers in season five could be--and too often is--dismissed as a mid-run stunt for the show to re-establish its footing in a high school-aged character and mix up the cast dynamics. Dawn is a better character than some fans give her credit for, though, besides introducing a number of interesting plot dynamics that help carry the show through its final three seasons.

This is all a round-about way of getting to focus of this blog post, season five’s ”The Body.”

“The Body” is noteworthy for how minimal the supernatural really is, with only one fairly ordinary vampire offering any sort of threat over the course of the episode. No, this one is much more centered on the real, which is kind of perfect for Joyce’s character--probably the best established character from the cast to have never set more than one foot into the world of magic and demons. Her death related to brain issues, while debatably linked to Dawn’s arrival and to Glory’s presence in Sunnydale, could just as well have happened in the complete absence of magic (and, indeed, creator Joss Whedon has generally maintained that we are to understand her death as a result of natural causes).

From the surreal nature of the opening scene in which Buffy discovers the body, to the hauntingly quiet short fight with a vampire in the morgue, this episode is all about dealing with real and profound grief in a world in which louder, more violent, and more anonymous deaths are the norm. It’s because we, as an audience, also mostly like Joyce that her loss is especially devastating. We see through Buffy (and to a lesser extent Dawn’s) eyes, and our heart breaks for these young women who will have to carry on on their own.

“The Body” may be the hardest episode of Buffy to re-watch for the emotional punch that it packs. It’s also on the short list for best episodes the series ever aired.