Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "The Body" Review (5x16)

Brief Synopsis: “Buffy is devastated when she arrives home and finds her mother dead. The rest of the Scoobies try to pull themselves together and deal with their own grief as best they can in order to be there for Buffy and Dawn during the worst day of their lives.”


"I Was Made To Love You" (5x15) quick link here                                                                                                         "Forever" (5x17) quick link here

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Note: I will be in Salzburg, Austria from Friday the 29th of August to Tuesday the 2nd of September, so there will be a slight delay in the 2-3 day average I’m currently running for reviews. The next review will be up either on the 2nd or 3rd of September and then it will resume as normal.


This is the most uncomfortable, raw, real, powerful episode of television that I’ve ever encountered, bar none. The odd thing about “The Body” is that I really appreciate how realistic it is. Every single tiny detail is perfectly representing what the human body and mind go through after suffering a shocking emotional upheaval. Buffy’s daydream that she saved her mother, the overwhelming bouts of silence, Dawn’s refusal to accept what Buffy is telling her, Willow’s irrational outburst over what top to wear, Xander putting his fist through a wall because feeling anything, even pain, is better than the void that Joyce’s death has created, the awkward, uncomfortable conversations between the Scoobies, Anya’s inappropriate questions because she doesn’t understand death...it’s all so accurate to real life that it makes “The Body” incredibly difficult to watch for anyone that has lost someone they love.

As I mentioned in my review of “I Was Made To Love You”, I don’t want to review this episode. I don’t want to relive some of the worst moments of my life in such vivid detail again. Ordinarily, when I’m faced with a particularly praised episode of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”, I like to think that I thrive. The reviews I’m proudest of thus far are the ones which I found the most challenging to do justice...“Restless”, “Becoming”, “The Wish”, “Graduation Day”, “Hush”, and “Amends”. However, this isn’t one of those situations where I’m excited by the challenge, I simply don’t want to do it. This is how much I’m dedicated to you all. A lot of you are aware by now that I’ve suffered a lot of personal tragedies. My best friend was killed in a hit-and-run car accident just before I turned eighteen years old, and five months after that another close friend died of heart failure. This started a four-and-a-half-year battle with severe depression that ultimately ended in attempted suicide. I survived due to dumb luck and nothing more. As you can imagine, witnessing the realism of this episode is painful. It’s painful to almost everyone in the world. I firmly believe that “The Body” is the most realistic reaction to death that I’ve ever seen before and will ever see. I can never get through it without bursting into tears, even before some of the people closest to me passed away. The funny thing is, I’m okay with Buffy and Dawn’s reactions in this episode (‘okay’ meaning I don’t cry), I’m okay with Xander punching the wall and Willow’s fretting and crying over what top to wear. What gets me every single time is Anya’s reaction to Joyce’s death, which is surprising to me as Anya isn’t usually a character that carries a great deal of empathy. More often than not she’s comedic relief. When Anya breaks down and airs her grievances about how stupid and mortal death is, I lose it. More than anything else, in that moment I have to accept that Joyce is gone and the show is a darker, more depressing place because of it. Buffy never truly recovers from this, Dawn never truly recovers from this, and Joyce’s death is a big catalyst for the depression-fest that is the next season.

I’m thoroughly impressed with Joss Whedon for being able to write such a masterpiece, but at the same time I don’t have to like it! The cast all raise their game in monumental fashion and when you combine this with Joss’ words and the lack of music, the end result is a brutally honest look at death and how the surviving people try to cope with that death. It’s gut-wrenching, it’s shocking, it’s devastating, but it’s real. Death is a natural part of life and it’s something that each and every one of us will experience throughout our lives time and time again (have I cheered you up?). Joss takes this relatable topic and explores it in a way which has never been done before. While most shows would go with sad music and endless tears from everyone, Joss goes with numbing his characters and silence. He captures the post-death numbness and inability to think straight perfectly. The lack of music through this episode is eerie. Dawn’s teacher explains it best in art class before Buffy tells Dawn about her mother’s death. This episode doesn’t focus on Joyce’s death, she’s already gone, it focuses on the negative space around Joyce’s death, which is Buffy, Dawn, and the Scoobies’ reactions to it. Joss has taken Buffy’s one last tie to the innocence of her youth. While this happens a lot in the fantasy/sci-fi genre so that the hero can become an adult, it’s rarely done in such a normal way. Joyce wasn’t killed by vampires or demons, she died a completely natural death. One that Buffy was powerless to stop. How Sarah didn’t win an Emmy for this performance is beyond me and it’s a travesty. I’ve never been more tempted to try to dive into my television and comfort a fictional character and tell her that everything’s going to be okay. But, as attempting that would be painful, I unwillingly refrained. Sarah is usually so consistently brilliant that I sometimes take for granted just how good she is. When you look at episodes like “Becoming Part Two” and “Who Are You?”, you realise just how exceptionally talented that she is.

I’ve also got to mention how impressive it is that Joss plans his stories out years in advance. We all know about the hints of Dawn’s arrival and Buffy’s death in “Graduation Day Part Two”, but Joss also informed Kristine in season three that Joyce was going to die in season five. It allows him to tell long, coherent stories with slow character development that’s realistic, rather than rushing things and having the audience not buy into it. UGH, everybody ready to start the episode?

The episode opens exactly where “I Was Made To Love You” left off, with Buffy discovering her mother’s lifeless body on the couch, staring vacantly up at the ceiling...that hurt to type. While Buffy is staring at her mother’s corpse, her brain flashes to a much happier time and we get to see the Scoobies together at the most recent Christmas. Under normal circumstances, I would absolutely adore this scene. I still do to a certain extent, but it’s shrouded in darkness due to Joyce’s death. As I’ve said roughly a billion times before, I love it when the Scoobies get the opportunity to just be a family and relax together. No impending disaster, no apocalypse, no ‘Big Bad’ on the horizon, just fun times and bonding. This scene is the embodiment of that. Case in point...

Joyce: “I think we’re just about ready for pie.”
Xander: “Then I’ll be pretty much ready for barf.”
Buffy: “Xander!”
Xander: “No, no! Barf from the eating! ‘Cause all was good, and too much goodness...”
Joyce: “I’m taking it as a compliment.”
Anya: “Yes, I’m going to barf too.”
Joyce: “...Everyone’s so sweet.”

HOW IS JOSS ABLE TO MAKE ME LAUGH WHEN SECONDS AGO MY HORRIFIC SUSPICIONS WERE CONFIRMED AND JOYCE SUMMERS IS DEAD?! WHAT KIND OF WIZARDRY IS THIS?!

Tara: “There’s a Santa Claus?”
Anya: “Mmm-hmm. Been around since, like, the 1500s. He wasn’t always called ‘Santa’, but, you know, Christmas night, flying reindeer, coming down the chimney...all true.”
Dawn: “All true?”
Anya: “Well, he doesn’t traditionally bring presents so much as, you know, disembowel children, but otherwise...”
Tara: “...The reindeer part was nice.”

Nevermind. What this scene allows Joss to do is to display the opening credits without having them distract from Sarah’s incredibly distressing scene where she’s trying to revive her mother.

The next scene is probably Sarah’s greatest acting of the episode. Oh, man, when Buffy cracks her mother’s rib while giving her CPR, just look at Sarah’s face. She conveys a thousand thoughts with one look. What this represents to me is that even with Buffy’s super-human strength and power, she’s still powerless to save her mother from the clutches of death. Buffy can punch through walls, tear houses down with shagathons, and carry the protection of the world on her shoulders, but as Ryan told her in “Killed By Death”, she can’t fight death. Death and disease are perhaps the only things in the world that Buffy can’t defeat. It’s an unbeatable enemy. While waiting for the ambulance, Buffy vomits on the floor. Something as simple as vomit soaking through a paper towel is so powerful in this episode because of the way it’s shot. There’s no music, no background noise, just a simple camera shot of watching the vomit slowly come through. Buffy is fixated on this little detail. She can’t think straight, her world has been torn apart, so all her mind wants to do is watch this vomit. When Buffy opens the backdoor, she hears the distant sound of children playing and enjoying their day in the sunshine. While this may seem out of place for an episode about death, it’s very purposefully chosen here. Throughout this episode, we see little glimpses of everyday life at work to remind us that while this is the worst day of Buffy’s life, the rest of the world is oblivious and moves on regardless. Xander getting a parking ticket and the vampire rising at the conclusion of the episode are other examples of this. The world keeps on spinning without Joyce, even though Buffy’s world has grinded to a screeching halt. Buffy looks completely drained in this scene. She’s pale, sweaty, and her eyes are unfocused...

The paramedics arrive and declare Joyce dead. Before this, while they’re trying to resuscitate Joyce, Buffy has a mental flash that it works and that Joyce wakes up and survives. AAAAAAAH! For a brief second, a very brief second, I thought it was real. I thought Joyce was back in the Buffyverse again and all was right in the world. Then, before the episode had time to show me that it wasn’t true, I realised for myself that it couldn’t be true. Joss wouldn’t invest this much time in Joyce’s death for her to suddenly wake up and be okay. As much as I wanted it to be true, it couldn’t be. I want Joyce to be okay. I want Joyce to give Spike advice on love and offer him little marshmallows. I want her to talk about “Passions” plots with Spike, I want her to comfort Buffy on her 17th birthday after Buffy’s lost everything and her boyfriend has lost his soul, I want Joyce to eat band candy and have sex with Giles on the hood of a police car (“twice!”), I want Joyce to snuggle up to Dawn and call her “little pumpkin belly”, I want Joyce to look after Buffy, Willow, and Xander when they’re happily lazing about in Buffy’s bedroom...but I know that it can’t happen again. Joyce’s journey through the show was interesting in that I didn’t like her much for the first couple of seasons. In the beginning, she was supposed to be the foil for Buffy’s juggling act. Joyce didn’t know that Buffy was the Slayer and she was supposed to show how difficult it was for Buffy to balance both lives. That’s why Joyce grounded Buffy for ludicrous reasons (ludicrous to us because we knew) and why she was often distracted by her art gallery in the beginning. She did the best that she could, but we were seeing the show through Buffy’s eyes, who often found Joyce to be unfair in the beginning. However, after Joyce discovered that her daughter was a Vampire Slayer and adjusted to that news, Joyce became one of the greatest television mothers in history. A big part of that was down to Kristine Sutherland’s superb acting. Kristine has this genuine warm, caring, motherly quality to her that makes you instantly want to be loved and accepted by her. Joyce loves everyone. When a soulless vampire enters her house (one who she previously saw trying to bite her daughter, so she hit him with an axe), instead of trying to run or attack him, what does Joyce do? She makes him a hot drink and gives him relationship advice! Joyce brought warmth and comfort to all the Scoobies and that’s why Joss eliminated her from the show. Joss is a Dementor. He lives off of the misery of his audience.

The paramedic informs Buffy that her mother is gone. In another great little moment, his words are drowned out and his face is blurred. Buffy can’t hear him anymore, she’s in too much shock. She’s wrapped up in her own thoughts and feelings of numb disbelief. These little moments of realism really help the episode go from “great” to something truly unique and special.

Giles: “Joyce?”
Buffy: “They’re, they’re coming for her, no, no, we’re...”
Giles: “Joyce!”
Buffy: “We’re not supposed to move the body!”

Is there a more heartbreaking moment than this one? The look of utter shock on Buffy’s face as she realises that she called her mom a ‘body’ is tear-inducing. I’ve never been happier (what an odd word to use in this episode...) to be reminded of just how much of a father Giles is to Buffy. When Buffy labels her mother a ‘body’, Giles instantly rushes to her side and wraps her in a fatherly embrace.

The episode comes back in to Dawn crying in her high school bathroom. Dawn is crying because someone called her a “freak” in front of the boy she likes. What’s great about this is that Dawn is still acting like a normal teenage girl! It was only a few weeks ago that Dawn was cutting herself after she discovered that she was a 6-month-old ball of mystical green energy called ‘The Key’ that was moulded into human form by some particularly quirky monks. She’s clearly adjusted to this Earth-shattering news rather quickly, as she’s crushing on guys and crying over name calling, which is great to see...not the crying part! YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Much like I mentioned earlier, Dawn’s art teacher talking about the negative space around the object isn’t a coincidence, as that’s what this episode is all about: the negative space surrounding Joyce’s death. Buffy takes Dawn out of class and tells her about Joyce’s passing. Again, I think it was a smart choice for us to not hear the whole conversation between Buffy and Dawn. Buffy’s words aren’t what’s important, Dawn’s reaction is. Dawn flat-out refuses to believe Buffy at first. She just yells at Buffy and tells her that she’s a liar before realising that it’s true and sinking to the floor. When my best friend passed away in 2007, I had the unfortunate task of informing his sister. Her reaction to the news was so eerily similar to Dawn’s here that whenever I watch this episode, a flood of powerful emotions rushes back to me. Sometimes our brains simply can’t handle news of this magnitude so our defence mechanism is to shut down and refuse to accept it. Tat refused to believe me for a few minutes and even threw a punch at my face before realising that I wouldn’t be saying these things if they weren’t true. It was one of the most difficult, heartbreaking moments of my life. You just feel completely helpless to aid the person through their pain. The camera pans to Dawn’s half-finished sketch and then quickly transitions to Joyce lying on a metal table, with her clothes being removed for an autopsy. UGH. In another moment that mirrors my own life far too much, I went with my best friend’s brother, Julian, to I.D. my best friend’s body. When Luke was hit by the car, he had no form of identification on him, so he needed to be formally I.D.’ed for the record. When Julian and myself travelled to London to do this, I entered a room and laying there in front of me was Luke, on a metal table just like this one. For a long time afterwards, whenever I closed my eyes, that image was burned into the back of my eyelids. This began to eat away at me slowly for years afterwards. Seeing Joyce positioned in this way is almost an exact parallel to that experience. Curse you, Whedon!

I think people often forget how close Willow and Xander had grown to Joyce. Remember, Xander’s mother and father are both abusive alcoholics and he sleeps outside over Christmas to avoid their drunken Christmas fights. The one and only time we saw Willow’s mother, she barely noticed that her daughter existed. It took her four or five months to notice that her daughter had cut off half of her hair! Joyce became a surrogate mother for both Willow and Xander. She gave both of them the love and attention that they didn’t receive from their own mothers. When I think about their relationship with Joyce, my mind instantly flashes to two distinct moments. The first is Joyce embracing and supporting Willow as she discovers that Jenny is dead in “Passion”. The second is Joyce acting as a waitress for Buffy, Willow, and Xander in “Killed By Death”. Willow’s reaction to Joyce’s death is to act irrationally and to obsess over things she does have control over, like the top she wears. To comfort Willow, Tara kisses her. It’s the first time they’ve ever kissed on screen. Originally, the WB tried to remove this kiss from the script, but Joss threatened to leave the show if they did. It was the one and only time he threatened to leave “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. Eventually, the network gave in and allowed for it to stay in. What I love about this kiss is that it’s not played as a publicity stunt or a shock tactic, it’s simply one person supporting the person that she loves. Remember, this was early 2001 so it was groundbreaking television at the time. It was a beautiful moment between Willow and Tara and it would have been a travesty to not include it because some people might have been offended by watching two people of the same gender in love.

Xander’s reaction to Joyce’s death is one of frustration. He punches Willow and Tara’s dorm room wall because he’s desperate to feel something, anything except this gaping hole inside his chest. Throughout my teenage years and young adult life, my coping mechanism for the most part was punching my bedroom wall. When I eventually moved out of home at 20 years old, one wall of my bedroom was nothing but knuckle marks in the brickwork (sorry mum!). I swear, this episode is like the “greatest hits” of my life.

Xander’s next reaction is to blame the doctors who treated Joyce because he needs someone to blame. He can’t blame a brain tumour, he needs a tangible person to place his frustration upon. The doctors and Glory give Xander someone to be mad at, which he desperately needs right now. I’ve often thought that Xander and Willow’s friendship is the best one on “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. They have the most history together and I feel that they’re the most genuine and loving friendship. Case in point: When Xander and Anya arrive at Willow and Tara’s dorm, the first thing Xander does is wrap Willow in a hug and kiss her on the forehead. Naaw! I’ve also read that after Xander punched the wall, we only see the left-hand side of Alyson’s face because she had an allergic reaction to the dust from the plaster on the wall and her right eye swelled up badly. Ouch. 

Anya’s speech about death is in the “Quote Of The Episode” section of this review and it’s the single most upsetting moment of the episode, in my opinion. Out of all the Scoobies, Anya is the newest to being human (except Dawn, but she has a lifetime of memories). She’s lived for 1,122 years and she still doesn’t understand death or humanity at all. It’s why her speech to Andrew in “End Of Days” holds so much weight. She grows to understand and appreciate humanity and what it means to be human. Death never makes sense. It’s a natural part of life, sure, but trying to get your head around the fact that someone is there one minute and gone forever the next is a difficult thing to do. Anya is expressing what most of the world wishes they could express after someone they love dies...“I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead anymore. It’s stupid. It’s mortal and stupid”. It’s such a rarity to see Anya emotional or crying that it’s particularly distressing.

Xander: “The Avengers gotta get with the assembling.”

HOW DID JOSS KNOW?! THIS WAS AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS BEFORE HE STARTED WRITING “THE AVENGERS”. PLUS, XANDER MENTIONED THE AVENGERS IN “THE FRESHMAN” TOO!...I’m back to my ‘wizardry’ theory.

The Scoobies all meet up at the hospital to exchange hugs and support one another. Isn’t it weird how death brings people together? I guess it’s one of those instances of not appreciating what you have until it’s gone. The doctor confirms what we all suspected, Joyce died of natural complications with her brain tumour surgery. There’s nothing Buffy, nor anyone else, could have done to save her. Yet, Buffy experiences survivor’s guilt and blames herself for not going home earlier. It makes perfect sense for Buffy to do this. Not only is this natural for regular humans to do, but Buffy is a Vampire Slayer. Protecting people is her job and birth right. The Scoobies wandering away to buy snacks (oh my God, them returning with armfuls of food because they panicked is perfection) leads to some real character development for Tara. Tara talks to Buffy about how her own mother died when she was seventeen years old. That means that her mother died roughly a year before she joined the show. It explains why Tara is so cripplingly shy and broken when we first meet her in “Hush”. It’s only after her friendship and relationship with Willow blossoms that Tara starts to become confident. Very rarely do we get moments of bonding between Buffy and Tara before season six, so this support from Tara was a particularly surprising and touching moment.

Dawn does what Dawn does best, which is to get herself into trouble. She goes looking for Joyce’s body and ends up finding it...alongside a newly rising vampire. Dawn needs to see her mother’s body to confirm to herself that her mother is really gone. Remember, when Buffy first told her, she refused to believe it. She needs to see with her own eyes that Joyce is no longer a part of the world to accept that it’s true. Buffy saves Dawn from the vampire in one of the most odd, eerie battles on the show due to the lack of music. Buffy kills the vampire by chopping his head off with a small medical saw...charming. It reminds me of Buffy telling Xander a story way back in season one’s “The Harvest” about killing a vampire who used to play varsity when he was alive, and having to chop through his massive neck with a little x-acto knife. During the vampire-Slayer scuffle, the cover that was shrouding Joyce’s face slips down to reveal Joyce’s head...

Dawn: “Is she cold?”
Buffy: “It’s not her...it’s not her...she’s gone.”
Dawn: “Where’d she go?”

It’s such an innocent question for Dawn to ask her sister, and it completely shatters my heart into a thousand pieces that can never be put back together. It reminds me so much of Buffy asking Giles whether he thinks death will hurt in season one’s “Prophecy Girl”. It really enforces how much Buffy has been forced to mature over the past four years due to her responsibilities as the Slayer. Sadly, Buffy isn’t capable of answering this for Dawn, nobody is. Dawn reaches for her mother’s face, trying to grasp one last moment of comfort and support from her, and the episode fades to black just before she reaches her, signifying that Joyce is now out of reach.

Goodbye, Joyce. You will be sorely missed.


Quote Of The Episode

This episode is filled with dialogue that’s worthy of this honour, but Anya’s speech stands out head and shoulders above the rest...

Anya: “But I don’t understand! I don’t understand how this all happens, how we go through this. I mean, I knew her and then she’s...there’s just a body, and I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead anymore. It’s stupid. It’s mortal and stupid. And Xander’s crying and not talking, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she’ll never have eggs, or yawn, or brush her hair, not ever, and no-one will explain to me why!”

FINAL SCORE: 10/10

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

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