Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Blood Ties" Review (5x13)

Brief Synopsis: “Buffy finally reveals to her friends that Dawn is the mystical Key that Glory is searching for. After they know Dawn is The Key, the Scoobies start acting strangely around her and Dawn knows that something is wrong. She’s noticed the crazy people talking to her, she’s noticed the big snake that recognised her, and now she’s heading to the mental ward of Sunnydale hospital for answers.”


"Checkpoint" (5x12) quick link here                                                                                                                                         "Crush" (5x14) quick link here

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



After the reveal at the conclusion of “Buffy vs. Dracula” that Buffy had a sister, I was sceptical. The comedy value of Buffy having to learn to share was an entertaining prospect, but outside of the amusing sibling dynamic, how could Joss possibly make this ludicrous story work? Simply, by doing what Joss does better than anyone in the television genre: emotions. Joss took this confusing revelation and made us care about  Dawn very quickly. Let’s be honest here, Dawn can be a bratty teenager at time (as we all were!). However, Buffy Summers is the heroine of the show and the person above all others that we’ve shared our journey with. We’ve all invested in Buffy as a character by this point and we’ve become emotionally attached to her. When Buffy is hurt, we’re hurt. When Buffy is laughing, we’re laughing. When Buffy is angry, we’re angry. Therefore, when Buffy is deeply loving towards her sister like she is at the conclusion of this episode, we’re deeply loving towards Dawn. “Blood Ties” and “The Body” are arguably the two episodes of the season that allow us to feel attached to Dawn above the others. When Dawn is on the rickety ledge in “The Gift” and could potentially die, we care because we’ve seen how much Buffy loves her. Dawn’s loss would devastate Buffy beyond anything we’ve seen before and we don’t want to watch Buffy go through that. Outside of a few scenes regarding Joyce’s illness, we haven’t seen too much tenderness between the Summers sisters at this point. Therefore, “Blood Ties” is an essential part of the journey of this season. I think season five is a journey more so than any other season of the show. Every single episode has something to contribute towards death being Buffy’s gift and Buffy sacrificing herself at the end of the season.

Furthermore, “Blood Ties” is the single most important episode for Dawn’s character. After Buffy discovered that Dawn was The Key and not really her sister in “No Place Like Home”, I knew it was only a matter of time before Dawn herself discovered this horrific information. Joss isn’t the type of man to dump this startling revelation on our doorstep and then not allow the person in question to find out. Joss never allows his characters to take the easy way out. Pain and emotional complexity are like oxygen for Joss, he needs our misery to survive. As I’ve mentioned before, I firmly believe that Joss is secretly a Dementor. In this episode, Joss decides to not only reveal Dawn’s origin to the rest of the Scoobies, but also to Dawn herself...in the same episode. 

“Blood Ties” opens with Buffy most certainly being proven right in not telling the Scoobies about Dawn’s origin earlier. They all start acting highly irregular and shifty around Dawn, which leads to Dawn sneaking into The Magic Box to read Giles’ secret diary. Wait, Giles keeps a secret diary, which he locks away from prying eyes? Is he a twelve-year-old girl? Does it have “I <3 Olivia” scribbled across a few pages from before they broke up? Want to see just how stupid the Scoobies were acting around Dawn?...

Anya (in a fake-cheery tone): “You make a very pretty girl.”
Xander (in an equally fake-cheery tone): “Anya, you wanna help me with that thing?”
Anya (in the same fake-cheery tone): “Xander needs help with his thing!”
*They both walk away briskly and shiftily*

CAN BUFFY EVER HAVE A BIRTHDAY WITHOUT IT BEING FILLED WITH HEARTACHE AND GUT-WRENCHING MISERY?! SERIOUSLY! Let’s have a little looksie, shall we? On Buffy’s 17th birthday, she was almost strangled to death by a Judge arm and her boyfriend lost his soul and destroyed her life for the next few months. On Buffy’s 18th birthday, the Watcher’s Council tested her and took away her slaying powers. She was almost killed and her mother was kidnapped. On her 19th birthday, Giles was turned into a demon by Ethan Rayne and she thought he was dead...perhaps she should just stop celebrating it altogether.

Willow: “We figured less killy, more frilly.”
Anya: “Oh, it’s just so lovely! Oh, I wish it was mine!...like you weren’t all thinking the same thing.”
Giles: “I’m fairly certain I wasn’t...I’ve got one just like it.”

I’m getting cross-dressing mental images of Giles and it’s highly disturbing. Tony Head actually did dress as a transvestite in the early 90s for “The Rocky Horror Show”.

(are you as turned on as I am right now?!)

Dawn continues to notice that the Scoobies start acting weird the second she enters the room, so she sneaks away into the night to read Giles’ diary. Also, why would Xander and Anya sexually role-play about one of them being a shepherd? WHY?! I need therapy. Conveniently, and in no way a cheap ploy to bring him into the episode, Dawn bumps into Spike, who was stalking Buffy from just outside her house (yet again, a winning technique for capturing a girl’s romantic interest), holding a bent box of chocolates for her birthday. Points for effort, I suppose. Dawn tells Spike that she’s heading to The Magic Box to break in and Spike decides to accompany her on her journey. If the stalking wasn’t winning Buffy’s heart, the helping her sister become a criminal will certainly do it. After breaking into The Magic Box, Spike tries to lift Olaf’s God Hammer from “Triangle”, but he fails miserably. Hilariously, Buffy lifts it up with relative ease later in the season (“The Gift”).

Spike: “‘The monks possessed the ability to transform energy, bend reality’...blah, blah, blah. Good Lord, Giles writes as dull as he talks, doesn’t he? ‘They started work, but the Council has suggested to us that they were interrupted, presumably by Glory. They obviously did manage to accomplish the taste...accomplish the task. They had to be certain the Slayer would protect it with her life, so they sent The Key to her in human form...in the form of a sister’. Huh, I guess that’s you, niblet.”

Dawn’s reaction is everything you’d expect for it to be...anger, rage, depression, confusion, self-harm, resenting her ‘family’...most teenagers at one point or another feel like they’re different to their family and feel like they don’t belong. Dawn discovers that she really doesn’t belong in her family or in a human body. A lot of people give Dawn stick for her attitude in this season (and the next), but people have to remember that Dawn has just discovered that her mother isn’t really her mother, her sister isn’t really her sister, and that up until 6 months ago she was a ball of green energy. It’s enough to mess with anyone’s head! Where did she come from? Why was she created? Why was she turned human? Which memories are real and which ones were implanted before she was turned human? We’ve seen Xander and Willow struggle deeply with their identities over the past five years. We’ve seen them desperately trying to discover who they are and what they want out of life. Now, try taking those same complex feelings and adding in the fact that Dawn wasn’t real until six months ago and her family aren’t really her family. Everything that Dawn has ever felt or believed has been a lie. Every childhood memory she has, growing up with Buffy, cuddling up to her mother when she was sick...it’s all fake. How can you possibly be okay after this revelation?

The first thing Dawn does after discovering this news is to cut her arms with a kitchen knife. Michelle Trachtenberg’s emotionless “is this blood?”, followed by her highly emotional “this is blood, isn’t it? It can’t be me. I’m not a Key. I’m not a thing! What am I? Am I real? Am I anything?” is nothing short of her best acting thus far on the show. You heart just breaks for her in that scene. Not only is Dawn trying to process mind-melting news, but as Spike makes reference of, she’s also a teenager bursting with emotions. When Dawn discovers that everything she’s ever known has been a lie, she naturally rebels against her implanted life. She lashes out at Buffy and her mother because Buffy and Joyce aren’t really her family. I’ve always felt that family isn’t your blood necessarily, it’s the people that care about you, support you, and help you to grow. However, Dawn only discovered that she’s not real a couple of hours ago, she’s not ready for such wise advice. She yells for her mother and sister to leave her room (“GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUUUUUUUUT!”),  burns all of her diaries (memories of her fake life and her ties to it), and runs away from home. As far as she’s concerned, Buffy and Joyce can’t really love her or want her around. They were forced to love her due to the monks planting falsehoods in their minds.

Anya discovers cigarette ash in an urn at The Magic Box and Buffy realises that Spike helped Dawn break in and read Giles’ diary. This leads to a very interesting conversation between Buffy and Spike...

Buffy: “You could have stopped her!”
Spike: “Oh, yeah, here it comes. Something goes wrong in your life, blame Spike. Newsflash, blondie! If kid sis wants to grab a midnight stroll, she’ll find a way sooner or later. I just thought she’d be safer with Big Bad looking over her shoulder.”
Buffy: “She shouldn’t have found out like that!”
Spike: “You didn’t think you could keep the truth from her forever, did you? Maybe if you had been more honest with her in the first place, you wouldn’t be trying to make yourself feel better with a round of ‘Kick The Spike’!”

I can absolutely understand Buffy’s desire to keep information from Dawn that will destroy her world, but, with that being said, I LOVE EVERYTHING THAT SPIKE SAYS HERE! Throughout seasons five and six of the show, Buffy treats Spike like crap for the most part...especially season six. Whenever she feels bad about herself or her life, Spike takes the brunt of that misery. Here, Spike is blameless!..except breaking and entering, I suppose, but that’s a minor technicality. If Buffy had been honest with Dawn or confided Dawn’s identity to Spike, this situation could have been avoided. Again, I can understand and empathise with Buffy’s actions and predicament, but blaming Spike is unfair and certainly not helping Dawn. Good for Spike for standing up for himself! Even after this argument, Spike still goes out looking for Dawn with Buffy. Meanwhile, Xander is getting egotistical over the fact that Dawn, a mystical ball of energy, has a crush on him. Giles rolls his eyes.

Dawn heads to Sunnydale hospital to try to get information on her origin out of the crazy people in the mental ward. Not the most intelligent of ideas, but she’s going through emotional turmoil so I’ll give her a break. While at the hospital, she bumps into her mother’s former nurse, Ben. They have a pleasant conversation about family and everything is going swimmingly until...BEN TURNED INTO GLORY. When I first saw this episode, it was safe to say I shit a brick...metaphorically speaking. Can you imagine actually shitting a brick?! That’d be painful! Talk about a shocking, startling, ‘oh my God!’ moment for the season! Everything suddenly makes sense! Hold on a minute, does this mean that there’s some kind of connection between Ben and Glory? I WILL DIE DURING THAT CONVERSATION IN “THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD”. Dawn tries to weed information out of Glory about The Key by asking questions about its origin and playing dumb with Glory. Oh, how the tables have turned! Glory has spent the better part of half a season trying to get information about The Key. Glory suspects that Dawn is playing her and is just about to kill Dawn when the Scoobies burst into the room and a big fight ensues. The fight scene itself is well handled, but the most interesting part is witnessing just how easily Glory could defeat all of the Scoobies and Spike combined. If it wasn’t for Willow and Tara’s well-timed teleportation spell, the Scoobies could all have been killed. Well, except Buffy herself, whom Glory is keeping alive to try to retrieve information about The Key from. The teleportation spell greatly weakens Willow and I believe in this moment Willow is thirsty for more magical power and skill so that she doesn’t get weakened by powerful magical spells again. This moment only furthers Willow’s search for magical power. Also, Glory materialising into the middle of the sky in Sunnydale is ridiculously funny. It’s a good job she’s basically impervious to pain and damn near indestructible.

Above all else in this episode, what Dawn learns is that Buffy and Joyce love her because they want to love her. Who cares how she became a part of the family? The moral of the story is that she is a part of the family and everyone around her loves her unconditionally. Buffy has known for months that Dawn isn’t really her sister, but has that changed the way she treats Dawn? Has Buffy pushed Dawn away or resented her? HELL NO! The love that Buffy has for Dawn can’t be manufactured or faked. Remember when Joyce realised for herself that Dawn wasn’t her daughter? What was Joyce’s reaction? To love and protect Dawn anyway because Dawn feels like her daughter. Family isn’t blood, it’s love. Dawn, along with everyone else in the Scoobies, now knows who and what she is. She can move forwards with her life now. She can move forwards with her family. Regardless of how she got there, she is a part of the Summers family and that’s not some fabrication or false memories implanted by some monks, it’s because Buffy, Joyce, and Dawn all share a mutual love for each other anyway, regardless of Dawn’s origin. It’s the perfect embodiment of a metaphor for adoption.

Dawn: “You think she’d raise my allowance?”
Buffy :”Don’t push it.”

Typical “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. Undercutting deeply emotional stuff with humour.


Quote Of The Episode

It has to be this conversation because it’s the definitive statement behind the episode :-


Buffy: “Are you okay Did she hurt you?”

Dawn: “Why do you care?”

Buffy: “Because I love you. You’re my sister.”

Dawn: “No, I’m not.”

Buffy: “Yes, you are. Look, it’s blood. It’s Summers’ blood. It’s just like mine. It doesn’t matter where you came from or how you got here, you’re my sister...there’s no way you could annoy me so much if you weren’t.”

FINAL SCORE: 7.5/10

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

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