Show: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (Season 3, episode 10)
Airdate: Dec. 15, 1998
Overview: This episode is the structural midpoint of the franchise; it’s sort of a backdoor pilot for “Angel” and it introduces the First Evil. It’s also a great Christmas episode, as an inexplicable higher power intervenes in Buffy’s and Angel’s little lives, allowing them to take stock, walk through the snowfall, and realize the beauty of being alive.
Memorable moments:
- That final hilltop scene where Angel tries to commit suicide by sunlight and Buffy tries to talk him out of it has great lines and great performances by David Boreanaz and especially Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Angel: “The world wants me gone.” Buffy: “What about me? I love you so much. I tried to make you go away, I killed you and it didn’t help. And I hate it, I hate that it’s so hard and that you can hurt me so much. I know everything you did, because you did it to me. I wish that I wished you dead, but I don’t, I can’t. …”
Buffy: “Strong is fighting. It’s hard and it’s painful and it’s every day, but it’s what we have to do, and we can do it together. … If I can’t convince you that you belong in this world then I don’t know what can. …”
- It’s an extremely minor subplot, but I love the Faith arc in this episode. Buffy invites her over for Christmas Eve, and Faith says (clearly lying), “Thanks, but there’s this party I’ve been invited to.” We see that her dingy hotel room is strung with Christmas lights, and of course, she later comes over to the Summers house. Thanks to Faith, whenever someone says “‘Tis the season,” I always follow it with “Whatever that means.”
- I always liked the part where Buffy interrupts the First Evil’s long spiel with “All right, I get it, you’re evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?”
Trivia:
- The First Evil would return as the Season 7 Big Bad. I always thought that was weird, since Buffy pretty much chases it off with a quippy line of dialogue here.
- “Amends” riffs on the Ghost of Christmas Past from “A Christmas Carol.” Just one episode earlier, “The Wish” riffs on “It’s a Wonderful Life” as Cordelia is shown what a world without Buffy would be like.
Schmaltz factor: Medium, ranging to high at the end. The matter-of-fact way the weather guy explains that a cold front moved in over Sunnydale and they won’t see the sun at all today is meteorologically absurd on so many levels. Still, that final scene — wow. Buffy and Angel argue, it snows, and then not another line of dialogue is spoken. Christophe Beck’s music comes in, we get a montage of all the characters, and I’m balling like a baby every time.
Verdict: It’s a strong episode throughout, but the ending pushes it to the level of masterpiece.