Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Triangle" Review (5x11)

Brief Synopsis: “While trying to create a new spell to help Buffy with her slaying, Willow is distracted by an argument with Anya and accidentally releases a troll from a mystical prison. With Buffy in mourning over Riley leaving town, Willow and Anya may need to defeat the troll themselves before it eats all the babies in Sunnydale...oh, and Anya used to date the troll. Eww.”


"Into The Woods" (5x10) quick link here                                                                                                                          "Checkpoint" (5x12) quick link here

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



“Triangle” is a very polarising episode of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. While it does serve a purpose in bringing Willow and Anya together, establishing Anya as a legitimate part of the Scoobies, and giving us some much needed humour after the drama of the past few episodes, I can’t help but leave the episode with one word etched into my brain – “meh”. My feelings on this episode are “meh”. “Meh” isn’t a bad thing exactly, it just means that I’m left feeling entirely unmoved. The problem is that it’s stuck in an awkward place. It’s right after the emotional “Into The Woods”, which contains some of the finest speeches that the show ever produces, and following “Triangle” is “Checkpoint” and “Blood Ties”, which are excellent in their own right and help setup the rest of the season. Between all that goodness, “Triangle” just seems a little mediocre. However, there’s no denying that this episode has some truly hilarious moments. I’d like to point out that when I criticise a Buffy episode, it’s because I expect so much! An average Buffy episode would be a good episode of pretty much any other TV show. I hold “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” to a different standard than other television shows.

The episode title “Triangle” revolves around the non-love triangle that encompasses the heart of this story: Anya, Xander, and Willow. Willow is jealous that Xander has someone serious in his life now and he isn’t as reliant upon her, whereas Anya is jealous that Xander has a female best friend that has known Xander for a lot longer than she has and knows him a lot better. This triangle is something that most people have to face at some point in their lives. If you’re dating someone with a best friend who’s the opposite sex (assuming everyone is straight, of course), it can be tricky. You wonder if they have romantic feelings for your partner, you wonder if they have a hidden agenda, and it can be hard to trust that person until some time has passed. Similarly, if your best friend has recently entered into a serious relationship, that can be tough as well. They’re available less, they’re distracted, and you have that moment at some point when you realise that you’re not the most important person in their life anymore. It can be a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s something that most people deal with at some point...unless you can hypnotise your best friend into becoming A-sexual. If you can do that, do that. That’ll work. While I can empathise with both Anya and Willow in this episode, I find myself feeling more sympathetic towards Anya. Why, you ask? Willow and Xander have a humongous history together. They’ve know each other their entire lives. They dated when they were five, they had an affair when they were eighteen (which Anya is aware of), and they’ve been the very best of friends forever. It’s intimidating for Anya! Not necessarily because she’s afraid Willow still has feelings for Xander, but more because she feels like if Willow asked him to, Xander would breakup with her in an instant. Is this the case? Not at all! However, it’s not about the truth, it’s about how Anya feels. In addition to all of this, Anya and Willow are two very different personalities! Even if Anya wasn’t dating Xander, Willow wouldn’t be naturally inclined to like Anya. Anya is very literal, very sarcastic, and very self-centred (at this point). She’s not the type of personality that we’ve seen Willow gravitate towards historically. However, “Triangle” is crucial for Anya’s placement within the Scooby Gang. In this episode, she accepts Willow as Xander’s best friend, and Willow accepts her. Up until now, whenever Anya’s name has been mentioned, Willow has rolled her eyes and judged her. Willow and Anya have a little bonding time here and it really helps Anya find her place in Xander’s friendship circle. Plus, ya know, Xander refusing to choose which one he would rather save when the insane troll, Olaf, tries to make him choose doesn’t hurt in massaging both their egos too.

The episode opens with Xander and Anya curled up in bed, with Xander pouty over Riley’s departure. Xander is the only Scooby outside of Buffy that seemed to really bond with Riley, so it’s understandable that he’s feeling upset over Riley’s disappearance. Xander hasn’t had a good male friend since Jesse died way back in season one’s “The Harvest”. Giles is more like a father to him, he was never close to Oz, and he’s always found Angel and Spike to be more of an annoyance. More so than his own feelings, Xander is worried about how Buffy is dealing with Riley’s departure. He mentions that Buffy has had two serious boyfriends now and both relationships have ended with the male in question leaving town. Not exactly an inspiring statistic for Buffy, is it? Buffy is dealing with Riley’s departure by enquiring on becoming a nun. Erm, Buffy, it’s not that bad. You don’t need to abstain from men forever...although, it’s probably not a bad idea. Let’s look through your dating history...1) Angel. Your first love and the love of your life. You lose your virginity to him, his little fanged friends exit his body, and he loses his soul. He spends the next few months terrorising you, stalking you, killing your friends, and ruining your life. You send him to Hell, he eventually comes back, you make up, and he dumps you in a sewer. 2) Scott Hope. You dated him for a few months and it was enough to turn him gay. ‘Nuff said. 3) Parker. Although you never ‘officially’ dated, you did bang him, so I’m gonna accept it. You slept with him, he used you, you clubbed him over the head. 4) Riley. He let vampires bite him because he was too insecure about your relationship and then he left Sunnydale forever...on second thought, Buffy, become a nun already! You’re single-handedly removing the population of Sunnydale by dating them!

Anya: “If you ever decide to go, I want a warning. You know, big flashing red lights and one of those clocks that counts down like a bomb in a movie? And there’s a whole bunch of coloured wires and I’m not sure which is the right one to cut, but I guess the green one, and then at the last second, ‘No! The red one!’ and then *click*, it stops with three-tenths of a second left, but then you don’t leave...like that, okay?”

I ship it, guys. I ship it hard. Anya and Xander’s relationship has developed into something genuine, real, and heart-warming. This all started because Anya was left powerless and needed a date to the prom! It wasn’t supposed to become something real! Even after they had sex for the first time it wasn’t anything serious or something that you thought might last! I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but somewhere along the way they fell in love. It wasn’t until Xander’s speech at the conclusion of the last episode, “Into The Woods”, that I truly realised how far their relationship had evolved.

Buffy’s mental state since Riley’s shocking exit from Sunnydale is a tough one to decipher because she seems to go through all five stages of grief in this one episode. She has a few hilarious breakdowns, but other than that she seems relatively nonchalant about the whole ordeal. It just enforces the fact that she was never in love with Riley. She was miserable for months after Angel left her. MONTHS. She was depressed right up until she met Parker...which really helped her depression levels, I’m sure. Here, she seems hurt, but it’s not like it’s the end of her world like when Angel left. Buffy being dumped does lead us into a wonderful bonding scene between Buffy and Giles, which is always welcome, especially in the later seasons of the show...

Buffy: “These things happen. People break up and they move on. For a while it feels like the end of the world, you know? But, big picture...”
Giles: “Not so huge.”
Buffy: “Not so huge?! I just said it feels like the end of the world! Don’t you listen?”

Ha! Poor Giles! At least he gets to runaway to England until this whole charade blows over. Giles is fairly absent from this episode due to the fact he’s going to visit the Watcher’s Council to see what information they have on Glory. In his absence, he’s leaving Anya in charge of The Magic Box. Have you guys noticed a theme regarding Giles? He disappears for three days here and everything falls apart. There’s a disappearing cash register, a troll loose in Sunnydale, and Xander gets his wrist broken! When Giles disappears for the majority of the next season, everyone’s life falls apart! More so than they ever have before! Even though the Scoobies are young adults now, they’re still more reliant on Giles’ advice and leadership than they’d dare to admit.

How often have Buffy and Dawn had bonding scenes over hair-stroking during this season? It’s a minor miracle that Dawn isn’t bald by this point. Traction alopecia can be a ‘bitca’! In this episode, the hair stroking allows a wonderful scene where Buffy confides her feelings about Riley’s departure to her little sister. It’s these tender moments that makes you appreciate the fact that Dawn was brought into the show. Buffy has someone outside of her mother that she loves unconditionally. Dawn is her blood, her family, her innocent little sister. While Buffy does treat Dawn like a child most of the time – especially since finding out that Dawn is a mystical ball of energy – there are these rare glimpses of adult conversations that peek through every now and then. When given the opportunity to act like an adult, Dawn usually delivers. See most of season seven as an example. Buffy blames herself for Riley leaving. Now that she’s had a little distance from the situation, she’s realised that Riley was right in what he said. She did keep him at a distance. She didn’t treat him like a boyfriend in the months leading up to his departure. It doesn’t excuse his behaviour at all and a large portion of the blame certainly lands on his shoulders, but it’s nice to see that Buffy is taking responsibility for her side of the relationship problems.

This episode also holds some equally disturbing and amusing character development for Spike. Spike first appears in the episode having just made a Buffy mannequin, holding a box of chocolates, explaining to the Buffy mannequin that Riley leaving and her being heartbroken isn’t his fault, even though he was the one who showed her Riley getting sucked by vampires (I stand by my phrasing)...WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO THIS FORMER ‘BIG BAD’?! REMEMBER WHEN HE USED TO BE EVIL?!...no, me either. It’s a testament to James Marsters’ acting that you can just see the conflict that’s boiling away inside of Spike. The soulless vampire side of him wants to kill Buffy. To eliminate these romantic feelings of his by eliminating the cause of them. Imagine how much easier his life would be if he did! On the other hand, the human side of him, the William side of him, the ‘fool for love’ side of him, wants to date Buffy and win her affections. Watching these completely conflicting views inside of the same person is downright hilarious and oddly fascinating. However, I will say that his stalker-like tendencies are not a desirable trait to have in a boyfriend, yet Buffy ends up sleeping with two stalkers: Angel and Spike. I think we’ve landed back on that nun solution.

While I understand both Anya and Willow’s insecurities and wants to see them act like friends, part of me loves them bickering because it’s so damn entertaining! Some of my very favourite scenes of the season revolve around Willow and Anya getting grouchy with each other. For example, Anya’s reaction to Willow accidentally disappearing the cash register is gut-wrenchingly funny, and Anya listing the prices of everything that Willow is using for her spell makes me cry with laughter. I also love that Xander and Tara run away to leave Willow and Anya to talk. “Our partners are arguing, what do you think the best solution is?”, “leave them to it and go down the pub?”, “sold!”. Good work, team! Willow tries to do a spell to allow Buffy to go patrolling with a pocket full of sunshine (“I’ve got a love and I know that it’s all mine, ohh!”), but Anya’s constant interruptions causes the spell to go awry, releasing a gigantic troll named “Olaf”. Oops.

Buffy’s breakdown over Xander and Anya arguing is a wonderful thing to behold, but it feels a little forced. Much like her dramatic beating of Olaf after he mentions that Xander and Anya’s love will never last (to be fair, he was right). These reactions just feel so out of character and don’t match the actions and feelings that she divulges to Giles and Dawn earlier in this episode. However, I’m willing to excuse this behaviour as it gives us some extremely rare one-on-one time between Buffy and Tara. It’s wonderful to see Tara getting some screen time with someone other than Willow in a one-on-one setting because Tara has always felt like an outside to the Scoobies. She said as much to Willow earlier in this season. In the next season, Tara becomes something of a confidant to Buffy after Buffy sleeps with Spike because Tara is a little more outside of the situation than Dawn, Xander, or Willow would be. Tara is understanding and empathetic. She doesn’t judge people. I swear, I’m gonna die when I review “Seeing Red”!

I need to take a moment to say that Anya’s driving skills are the only ones I’ve seen in the Buffyverse that could match Buffy’s driving skills. Please, please never let either of them behind the wheel of a vehicle for the remainder of the show. There’s enough death in Sunnydale already with all the Hellmouth drama, without adding in loss-of-limb due to erratic driving. As my boy Wesley once said, “a good Slayer is a cautious Slayer” and I think the same can be said for former-Vengeance Demons as well.

Olaf is far, far too camp and cheesy for my liking. I know that this episode is primarily played for humour so he needs to be somewhat goofy, but he’s a massive troll with a God hammer! THOR WOULDN’T PULL THIS SHIT! Make him funny, make him fit the episode, but make him legitimately scary when the time comes! The Mayor was goofy and acted like your favourite uncle, but when the time called for it, he could be fucking terrifying! Remember him in the library in “Graduation Day Part One”?! Remember him after he saw Faith in a coma?! That is what Olaf needed when he was trying to make Xander choose between Anya and Willow. A legitimate moment or two of terror would have helped me take him seriously. I never feared for Xander and I never feared for Anya and Willow’s well-being, which doesn’t make for the greatest monster-of-the-week.

However, while this episode lacks an intimidating villain, it does contain the humourous first mention of Spike’s obsession with the flowering onion blossoms. He later bonds with Andrew over this in season seven. Why, why does Spike love them so much?! I’ve never tried one, are they really that good? I’M ACTUALLY ASKING HERE! Also, do my eyes detect a little Spike-Xander bonding?! Xander is explaining his Anya-Willow drama to Spike and Spike is turning everything he says into an excuse to ask about whether or not Buffy is blaming him for Riley’s departure. Who’d have thought that in two years these guys would be living together? How sweet. Bromance: upgrade.

Xander: “So, uh, think I should run and get Buffy?”
Olaf: “Barmaid, bring me stronger ale and some plump, succulent babies to eat.”
Xander: “I'm gonna run and get Buffy...or maybe you could fight him?”
Spike: “Yeah, I could do that, but I'm paralyzed with not caring very much.”

Anya used to date a troll. I will never get over this hilarious trivia fact. I know he wasn’t a troll when she dated him, but in my mind he was. It’s head-canon. Plus, we discover how Anya became a Vengeance Demon in the first place! Hello, character development! Aud (her human name) discovered Olaf cheating on her, so she performed a spell to turn him into a troll. This brought her to the attention of D’Hoffryn and he offered her the opportunity to become a Vengeance Demon for wronged women. It’s a beautifully twisted parallel that Anya became a Vengeance Demon for wronged women because she was wronged by a man.

Buffy: “What are you doing?”
Spike: “Making this woman more comfortable. I’m not sampling, I’ll have you know. Just look at these lovely, blood-covered people. I could, but not a taste for Spike, not a lick. Know you wouldn’t like it.”
Buffy: “You want credit for not feeding on bleeding disaster victims?”
Spike: “Well, yeah.”
Buffy: “You’re disgusting *she walks away*”
Spike: “What’s it take?!”

A little more than not drinking the blood of disaster victims, it would appear. Who’da thunk it, eh Spike? With master wooing tactics like that, I can see why it takes a majorly depressed, just-returned-from-the-dead Buffy in order for him to finally succeed.

Anya’s way to distract Olaf enough for Buffy to defeat him is by insulting him. Want to know some of these verbal bitch-slaps?...“you’re hairy and unattractive!” (ouch!), “even women trolls are put off by your various odours!” (buuuurn!), “you’re as inadequate a troll as you ever were a boyfriend!” (low-blow!), “your menacing stare is merely alarming!” (getting personal now!), and my personal favourite, “your roar is less than full-throated!” (you do not insult a troll’s ability to roar! Not cool!). Willow manages to re-banish him back to the Land of the Trolls (it sounds like a magical place) after Buffy works through some Riley related aggression on Olaf’s face...the Slayer solving her problems with violence? Colour me stunned. Olaf’s hammer will serve a much bigger purpose later in the season, so keep an eye out for it.

I love that Xander didn’t choose between Anya and Willow. These are the two people in his life that he’s closest to. He loves them both dearly and would rather die himself that watch either of them suffer. Not only does this show us just how wonderful Xander has become and how much his relationship with Anya has blossomed (like an onion!), but it also helps Anya and Willow settle their differences. Willow now knows that Xander is serious about Anya and that Anya isn’t going anywhere. Similarly, Anya now knows that Xander isn’t going to just discard her if Willow asks him to. She has more belief and stability in her relationship. Both Willow and Anya explain to each other that neither of them is going to hurt Xander or try to steal him away from the other one. Everyone goes home happy and everything is wonderful in Sunnydale again...

The episode closes on Buffy and her parents (one of which isn’t biological), Joyce and Giles, discussing what Dawn is and the fact that the Watcher’s Council know nothing about Glory. The camera pans to the bottom of the stairs and it reveals that Dawn has been listening into the conversation. She looks puzzled. Uh-oh.


Quote Of The Episode

It’s all Willow and Anya bickering in this episode! :-


Willow: “I’m not stealing. I’m just taking things without paying for them. In what twisted dictionary is that stealing?”
...........................
Anya: “Hey, don’t float the merchandise! Stop that!”
..........................
Xander: “Hey, Judge Xander requesting a recess here.”

Tara: “You really shouldn’t pull him into this.”

Xander: “Yeah, see! Tara’s with me *he moves to stand behind Tara*. Protect me, Tara.”

Willow: “Xander, what I’m doing, it’s a good thing. And if it doesn’t work, Giles never even needs to know about it...oops.”

Anya: “The cash register! What did you do with the cash register?! DEAR GOD!”

Willow: “There, all back. Good as new.”

Anya: “Money! Did you hurt the money?! Money good? She endangered the money!”

FINAL SCORE: 6/10

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

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