The Last Episode

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.

This week, I’m looking at “Chosen.”

It’s hard to create a good TV finale. The last episode carries with it certain expectations around being epic and especially good, besides being true to the years of show to precede it. Historically, lots of shows don’t get the opportunity to do a proper sendoff. I remember, for one example, getting hooked on VR.5 when it originally aired—a virtual reality based sci-fi show, for which the final aired episode left it looking as though the bad guys may have won and the protagonist was left in a cliffhanger (note, I legitimately haven’t watched the show since 1995, so forgive me if my memory isn’t exactly on point here). I remember thinking that can’t be the end and the show would have to be back for at least a short run to wrap up this unresolved plot. It was one of my first, most stark lessons in how television works. If the ratings didn’t justify it, particularly in that era, then, no, the network absolutely did not need to see that story through.

But even for ratings successes that get years to fully realize stories and much ballyhooed series finales, the episodes don’t always work. For a very small sampling, there’s the nonsensical, full of holes wrap-up to Lost, the tonally on point but wholly unsatisfying conclusion to Seinfeld, the saccharine grasp at what had once been good about the show from Friends.

But Buffy?

True to form, this show nails it.

“Chosen” isn’t the best episode of BtVS, but I’d place it among the best of the final season, and not too far from (though probably not in) the top ten all time. It has a lot of the grand final battle stuff most Buffy season finales have, complete with the biggest cast of fighters from each side. It has one last appearance from Angel, and a signature Buffy-style romantic moment in the slayer’s bittersweet last interaction with Spike (no one can ever be totally happy for long on this show, but moments like Buffy telling Spike she loves him, and Spike acknowledging that she doesn't but he appreciates her saying it offer glimpses of beauty). There are bits of comedy, and the motif of the core Scoobies working together to all contribute to the master plan.

And there’s the substance of that master plan, which for my money marks the perfect conclusion to this specific series.

From the beginning, the premise of BtVS was that one girl was anointed as the slayer and thus had to shoulder the burden of never living a normal life, always being in peril, carrying the weight of the world, and likely as not dying at a young age. From the first episodes, the show complicated the premise by placing Buffy with not only her Watcher and not only a love interest, and core band of friends she loved and that loved her, and that contributed to her success. Indeed, as the series goes on, villains note that Buffy’s allies differentiate her from slayers before her, making her more resourceful and much more difficult to defeat. The show further plays with the concept in introducing a second, and then a third slayer, called when Buffy and then Kendra technically die, and thus defying convention.

“Chosen” fundamentally challenges the whole idea that there can only be one champion of good, just as it more subtly subverts patriarchy and traditionalism in ways the show has always done. Buffy declares that the tradition of one slayer came about because a bunch of old dudes made that rule a long time ago—but it doesn’t have to be that way. Channeling Willow’s wiccan powers to the highest good, all potential slayers are thus actualized, and the most concentrated, powerful army of good the show has seen bands together to beat back the First Evil.

More than one big battle, though, the generation of all of these slayers near and far acknowledges that the fight for good may never be over, but it also won’t be Buffy’s lone responsibility anymore. As Sunnydale crumbles in the closing shot and Buffy looks back on it she smiles, at last released from the crushing weight of having to fight non-stop.

So it is that “Chosen” is about beating back the biggest evil, women’s empowerment, and spreading the load of who can take part in the fight for what’s right. It’s, in a nutshell, what the show was always about, with the added trimmings of finale epic-ness. Buffy’s last episode resists the lure of getting weighed down in its own nostalgia in favor of an episode that celebrates the show’s spirit, and gives fans a sense of the biggest closure.