Saturday 1 March 2014

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Fear Itself" Review (4x04)

Brief Synopsis: “To help Buffy get over the pain of having been used by Parker, the Scoobies head to a fraternity Halloween party, expecting a few cheap scares and a bit of harmless fun. Unfortunately, some accidental magic turns the party into a house of horrors where everyone's fears come to life.


"The Harsh Light Of Day" (4x03) quick link here                                                                                                              "Beer Bad" (4x05) quick link here



Three quick notes before we get started...

1) This review will almost definitely contain spoilers for episodes after this one.
2) If you enjoy my reviews, please subscribe to the blog! Over on the right-hand side there's a little box that says "Follow Shangel's Reviews by Email!". If you put your Email address in there and click "Submit", then confirm your subscription, you will get each review sent straight to your inbox! I can promise you that I won't send you junk mail or any of that rubbish! It will literally just be my reviews as they're uploaded here. You'll never miss a single one! Also, please bookmark the blog and check back every couple of days! I update every 1-3 days without fail!
3) If you're going to be using Amazon (UK/USA) or eBay (pretty much anywhere) soon, please do so through my blog. It'll take you just a couple of extra mouse clicks, but they will pay me a small percentage of the money you spend, helping me find more time to write these reviews. Most importantly, it costs you nothing at all extra. Details of how to do this are located here (it'll take less than a minute to read!). Thank you very, very much!

With that being said, let’s get started, shall we?


“I’ve got a fear of being alone.
Will you nurse it? I can’t sew the wounds myself.
Silent screaming, as if I have lost my breath.
Somewhat damaged, and I want you to notice.”

- The Exies, “Fear Of Being Alone”.

If there was one word to sum up the theme for season four of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”, it would be ‘identity’. Each and every one of the Scoobies is trying to discover who they are or what they want out of life in this season. Xander is trying to figure out where he fits in after deciding to not go to college, Oz is struggling to control the werewolf inside of him, Giles is unemployed and wondering what is next for him, and Willow and Buffy are trying to find their paths in college. “Fear Itself” takes the insecurities and doubts that the Scoobies are having and exposes them with terrific results. Oh, also, Giles has a chainsaw. This will never not be perfection.

I will admit, I’m a sucker for Halloween. I love it. It’s my favourite holiday of the year that doesn’t involve a fat guy with a beard sneaking down your chimney...that sounds entirely sinister when you take it out of context, doesn’t it? I love Halloween and I love Halloween episodes of television shows. “Fear Itself” is no exception. While  I don’t think this episode is as good as season two’s “Halloween”, it is probably the 2nd greatest Buffyverse episode with a Halloween theme. It’s also one of only eight “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” episodes without an actual vampire in. The parallels between season one’s “Nightmares” and “Fear Itself” are apparent. While “Nightmares” made the Scoobies’ nightmares become real, “Fear Itself” makes their fears and insecurities become real. I love how the haunted house uses the Scoobies’ fears to physically separate them. Gachnar is able to physically isolate the Scoobies because of the emotional isolation that is already in place. Oooh, parallels!

The great thing about this episode is that it’s a slow build. David Fury does a fantastic job of setting the scene before the fears and insecurities are brought out by Gachnar. Before the Scoobies arrive at the haunted house, we get to watch their struggles. As this episode explores the insecurities of six people, I will look at each of them in turn later on in this review.

Before dissecting the Scoobies (not literally), I’ve got to scold Oz and Xander...Oz and Xander, you’ve been fighting the supernatural forces for years now. If you see a weird mystical symbol painted on the floor, you destroy it! IT NEVER ENDS WELL! KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE! Under no circumstances do you BLEED on the mystical symbol, you morons!


Buffy

Our resident Slayer is not having the best of times in this episode. She’s still suffering from post-Parker depression after Parker’s shag-and-run in the last episode, “The Harsh Light Of Day”.

Xander: “Does anyone else want to smack that guy?”
*raises hand*

I would love to smack that guy. While I appreciate his character being introduced and the story being told (as Buffy learned a valuable lesson that a lot of people experience in the real world), I despise him. A lot. I cannot wait to rewatch Riley punching him in three episodes time. It’s so sad to watch Buffy be depressed over Parker because we all know that he’s not worth it. Simply, Parker is just a manipulative, self-obsessed, sycophantic asshole. The problem is that Buffy can’t see that yet. It’s so true to real life that when someone breaks up with you, you place all the blame on yourself for a while. You think that there’s something wrong with you or that if you’d done something differently they wouldn’t have left. A lot of times that isn’t the case though. Sometimes people just aren’t right for each other or the chemistry is wrong. It’s actually why Riley and Buffy break up in the next season. Riley getting bitten by vampires for funsies certainly didn’t help matters, but the relationship was dead before then. In Buffy’s eyes, Parker was her chance at having something normal with a ‘nice’ guy. It backfired on her. She’s lost her faith in ever having a happy, stable relationship. Maggie Walsh certainly doesn’t help Buffy’s depression by telling her that she doesn’t care about her problems and that if she misses another class she’s out. Don’t you love empathetic, caring, understanding teachers? At least Riley helped lift Buffy’s spirits.

It was really nice to see Joyce again in this episode. I really appreciate that Joyce knew something was wrong with Buffy, talked to her, supported her, and made her feel better. It’s moments like these that really reiterate the bond that  these two share. During the first couple of seasons it’s sometimes hard to appreciate Buffy and Joyce’s relationship because Joyce doesn’t know Buffy is the Slayer so they’re usually at loggerheads over something. I mentioned before that there are parallels between this episode and “Nightmares”. In “Nightmares”, one of Buffy’s biggest fears was that her parents’ divorce was her fault. Joyce makes a point of telling Buffy in this episode that their divorce wasn’t her fault and that not all relationships are doomed just because they’ve both had some bad luck. We usually see things from Buffy’s perspective so it’s not often that we get to appreciate how lonely Joyce must be. She’s been single for five years now, with the notable exception of dating a homicidal robot for a few months in season two. She doesn’t seem to have many friends either. They should make Joyce an honourary Scooby and take her patrolling! Or allow her to have that fling with Giles that I’ve been desperately craving for years!

It’s also another wonderful moment to hear a little bit more about Buffy’s life before her parents’ divorce and before she was chosen as the Slayer. Rarely do we get these glimpses into Buffy’s past – especially memories that are happy! What do we know about Buffy’s life before she was 15 and called by Merrick? She watched her cousin Celia die, she had a birthday tradition with her father, and she used to love ice skating and Dorothy Hamill...that’s pretty much it. Buffy’s life is nothing but slaying and education. It’s refreshing to know that Hank, Joyce, and Buffy were a happy family at one point. Buffy’s choice of Halloween costume (Little Red Riding Hood) is also interesting. We all know that Buffy has been craving a normal life since arriving in Sunnydale. I think that she chose Little Red Riding Hood because she is innocent. She is normal and innocent and doesn’t have the weight of the world on her shoulders. Little Red Riding Hood is the type of person that Buffy wants to be.

After arriving at the haunted house and being separated from the rest of the Scoobies, we discover that Buffy’s biggest fear is the fear of being alone. It’s the most interesting and complex fear for me, as it’s something that Buffy will battle for her entire life. As the Slayer, Buffy will always be a loner to a certain extent. She has to make the hard decisions and be the authoritative voice of humanity in a lot of ways. Walking that fine line between Buffy the person and Buffy the Slayer isn’t easy. It’s a constant internal battle for Buffy. She can’t fully be one or the other, but it’s impossible for her to be both. She’s trapped between two worlds. It reminds me of what Angel said to her about himself...he can walk and talk like a man, but he’s not one. This very question is one of the biggest themes for season five of the show. It’s all about Buffy finding out about the mythology of Vampire Slayers and what their power really is. According to the First Slayer, all Slayers are supposed to fight and die alone. Buffy has always been the anomaly to that statement, having a loving mother, a father-figure Watcher, and an army of Scoobies around her, which has helped her out a great deal thus far, but does it mean that she’s not alone ultimately? In some ways, this episode works as a prelude to her conversation with the First Slayer in the season finale, “Restless”.


Xander

Like Buffy’s fear, Xander’s isn’t one that can be quickly resolved. Xander is feeling alone and invisible to his friends after they all went to college without him. Buffy, Willow, and Oz are moving on with their lives, but Xander has only made it so far as his parents’ basement. He’s struggling to find a job, he’s directionless, and he’s lonely. Once again, Anya shows her brutal honesty through a lack of tact and understanding when she asks Xander why he’s still associating with people who he has nothing in common with. It’s a good job that most of Anya’s lack of tact is played for humour because otherwise it could make her character rather dislikeable. If you just changed the tone of her voice and her sentence structure, she’d go from ‘hilarious’ to ‘bitch’.

Xander’s fear physically manifests at the haunted house after he literally becomes invisible to his friends. I can’t help but feel sorry for Xander during this episode. Ever since day one he’s felt insecure about his place within the Scoobies and how much usefulness he actually has to them (“The Zeppo”). Buffy and Willow moving on without him has not only re-awoken those insecurities, but it’s made them worse. Now he feels inadequate to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and to Buffy the friend. This is a recurring theme throughout this season for Xander and it’s something that isn’t resolved until the very last episode, when Xander becomes the ‘heart’ part of a super-Buffy that takes down Adam.


Willow

Willow: “Then again, what is College for if not experimenting?”

Outside of the constricting environment of Sunnydale High, Willow is blossoming. She has the opportunity to finally be herself for the first time in an education environment. As part of this, Willow is furthering her skills as a witch. We’ve seen her obsession with witchcraft steadily develop over the past year or so, but season four is where she starts to really take off. It’s the first season where Willow uses magic to try to mask or remove emotional pain (“Something Blue”) and it’s the first time that Willow contemplates using magic as a form of revenge (almost cursing Oz and Veruca in “Wild At Heart”). This is interesting behaviour when you think about Willow’s journey in season six. She uses magic to eliminate a problem between herself and Tara (she makes Tara forget the argument) and she flays Warren alive. Willow is slowly developing her skills as a witch, but she’s still feeling insecure about how good she is. Her biggest fear right now is failing as a witch (this is backed up by her choice of Halloween costume, Joan of Arc). It makes perfect sense for Willow to have this as her biggest fear. In school, Willow was borderline obsessive with her school work. She would work and work and work in order to succeed because she was so scared of failing (after you meet her mother in “Gingerbread”, you can see why she’s that way). This same behaviour is being repeated with witchcraft.

Once in the haunted house, Willow tries to use magic in order to figure out what is going on and to help them. Buffy ends up enhancing Willow’s worst fear...

Buffy: “Your basic spells are usually only about 50/50.”
Willow: “Oh yeah, well so is your face!”



Good comeback, Will. Genius, really. On top of her magical insecurities, Willow wants to step out from the shadow of Buffy. She wants to become powerful and useful in her own right. This leads to Willow raising an interesting point with Buffy...does being the Slayer automatically make Buffy the boss? Is she always the leader of every situation? Does her opinion count more than the regular humans (and Oz)? Willow is tired of being Buffy’s sidekick (“I’m not your sidekick!”) and I think that she sees witchcraft as a way to step out from under Buffy’s shadow. Of course, in the haunted house the spells that Willow use don’t work because of her fear of failing. They go awry, which only acts as an enhancement of this fear.

Willow’s other big fear is losing Oz. She screams for him not to leave her after he runs away because he’s wolfing-out. When you think about the fact that he breaks up with her and leaves Sunnydale in just two episodes time, it’s all the more heartbreaking. It would appear that Willow, like Buffy, has a fear of being alone romantically.


Oz

Oz’s fear is the most complex because it’s something that he’s been battling for a couple of years now and it’s something that he will continue to battle with for a long time. Oz is terrified that the wolf is inside of him all the time instead of just three nights a month. He’s terrified of the beast inside of him and he’s terrified that he’s eventually going to hurt someone because of it. It’s an interesting parallel to Angel. Angelus mentions to Faith in “Orpheus” that he’s inside of Angel all of the time just below the surface. Oz is facing the same thing. Is Oz in control of the wolf inside of him? We find out in “Wild At Heart” that Oz isn’t as in control as he thinks after he kills Veruca. It would seem that Oz’s fears in this episode are not only understandable, but they’re entirely justified.

Before all of that, this is the last truly happy episode for Oz. In the next episode, Veruca starts to become an annoying distraction for him (I hate her...). I love that Oz chose to be God for Halloween! It’s so funny! It’s great to see that the usual stoic, reserved, calm Oz was so outlandish with his choice of costume.


Giles

Even though Giles and Anya aren’t subjected to the haunted house separating them and playing on their fears, we do get glimpses into what their insecurities are. Giles’ are easy to pin down. Giles, like Xander, is feeling directionless and useless. He puts so much effort into decorating his house (and himself) for Halloween because he has nothing better to do! While the other Scoobies are subjected to their fears in this episode, Giles is living his. He’s unemployed, lonely, and bored. The glee is written all over his face when he realises that there is supernatural activity afoot that he can partake in. It’s something to break up the monotony. He suddenly feels needed again for a moment. Sadly, this is a recurring theme with Giles over the course of this season.

On the flipside of this sadness, Giles is wearing a poncho and sombrero. This is the best episode ever. I have no objections to Giles feeling insecure and directionless if it leads to actions such as him yelling “It’s aliiiiiive!” at a Halloween decoration. It’s out of character and hilarious to see Giles so over the top and enthusiastic about Halloween. He’s ridiculous in this episode and I love him for it.


Anya

“Fear Itself” is the first time we witness Anya’s fear of bunnies. She is mortified of them! So much so that she dresses like a giant bunny for Halloween. Anya’s idea of a scary costume is a giant cuddly bunny rabbit. She must hate Easter. It’s one of my favourite moments of the episode because it’s so unexpected! It’s mind-blowing that a former Vengeance Demon that is over 1,000 years old is scared of something so cute and fluffy as bunnies. Perhaps there is more to bunnies than meets the eye. Oz does tell Willow that bunnies can really take care of themselves, after all. Hmmm...I do enjoy the realisation in season seven’s “Selfless” as to why Anya is terrified of bunnies.

More importantly than bunnies, Anya’s biggest fear at the present moment is losing Xander. She storms into Giles’ house demanding help. She shows zero concern that Buffy, Willow, and Oz could be in danger or dead. All she cares about is Xander. In my mind, I flash forward to Xander leaving Anya at the altar and my heart breaks into a million pieces.


All of this drama and fear culminates in Buffy breaking the mark of Gachnar and bringing forth the fear demon accidentally. It’s one of those moments that makes me love Buffy more. She’s flawed and acts on instinct, rather than thinking things through first. Gachnar rises...about three inches off of the ground. Gachnar being tiny is so beyond funny. When I first saw this episode, I laughed for 10 minutes straight. After 20 minutes of building up this demon and witnessing the power that he possesses, it turns out that he’s the size of a Smurf. What this represents is that fear itself (genius episode title!) is much greater than what the reality actually is.

Then, back at Giles’ house, dramatic music plays and Giles looks flustered! Was there more to Gachnar than we previously thought? Did Buffy stomping on his tiny head not kill him? Will it make him more powerful than we can possibly imagine?! Is it another apocalypse?! Nope. The translation to the text under the picture of Gachnar in Giles’ book is “actual size”. Send help, I’m dead. It’s one of the funniest endings to a Buffy episode ever. Especially with that dramatic music!


Some other thoughts on “Fear Itself”...

Xander: “Prepare to have your spines tingled and your gooses bumped by the terrifying….Fantasia. Fantasia?!
Oz: “Maybe it’s because of all the horrific things we’ve seen, but hippos wearing tutus just don’t unnerve me the way they used to.”

I’m going to miss Oz’s humour very soon.

Why is the black Power Ranger in Sunnydale? I swear, when the party got all weird and dramatic, I was half expecting him to shout “It’s morphin’ time!” and start kicking ass (Microsoft Word tried to correct this to “It’s morphine time!”, which I suppose could also make for an interesting night). I actually met Walter Jones in 2013 at London Film and Comic Con (Winter). He was absolutely fantastic!...



The actor playing Josh (Marc Rose), the frat house guy who dies, also plays Mellish in the “Angel” season one episode, “The Ring”. He’s a great actor.
It does irk me slightly that during this episode (or any of them) that Oz doesn’t tell Buffy or Willow about what happened to Angel in L.A. He probably doesn’t know that Angel destroyed the ring, but it would have been nice to have a scene where Oz talked about the events of Angel’s “In The Dark”. Of course, Oz could have told them about everything that transpired in Los Angeles off-camera, but we’ll never know.


Quote Of The Episode

Xander: “Who’s a little fear demon, c’mon, who’s a little fear demon?”

Giles: “Don’t taunt the fear demon!”

Xander: “Why, can he hurt me?”

Giles: “No, it’s just tacky.”


I love that Giles gets shirty with Xander over taunting the fear demon because it’s tacky. Annoyed Giles is the best. Giles expects certain standards when it comes to his demons. Remember when he was furious last season over a demon living in an apartment and not a pity of filth? I love him.



FINAL SCORE: 7/10


What are your thoughts on "Fear Itself"? Did you enjoy this episode? Dislike it? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments section below!

If you've enjoyed this review, please use the conveniently placed buttons just below to share it on Blogger, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, or email it to a friend! It is greatly appreciated!

5 comments:

  1. "Or allow her to have that fling with Giles that I’ve been desperately craving for years!" OH YES I would have loved that!

    "I do enjoy the realisation in season seven’s “Selfless” as to why Anya is terrified of bunnies." So why is she scared of bunnies? I know she used to have many bunnies as pets and she loved them, and I guess she doesn't like them anymore because she dislikes that period of her life, but that's no reason to be terrified of them...

    Super review Shangel!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True, I never understood WHY Anya was terrified of bunnies. Selfless doesn't explain it properly since she had a bunch as pets.

      Delete
  2. I'm glad you find Santa Claus as wrong and as creepy as I do. I used to cry when I heard "Santa Claus is coming to town" when I was little.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The first season 4 episode I loved. Everything in this episode is great but my favorite is Giles with the chainsaw, BAMF moment..Sorry I'm sucker for Giles!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I adore Giles, and I'm unhappy that circumstances have made him not as big a part of their lives (and hence not as big a part of the episodes) as he was in Season 3. Giles is like Spock for me -- yes, someone else is the star, and I DO like that person, but MORE GILES! :-)

    ReplyDelete