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If any episode of any TV series could be described as “too real,” Joss Whedon’s fifth season entry of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 - 2003) called “The Body” would certainly fit the bill. This episode is heartbreaking and sad, and all too real.
The episode came about because of Whedon’s own experience with sudden death in his family, as a young adult. The author used the truths he learned during that tragedy to craft an unforgettable episode that, in some ways, completes Buffy’s journey to adulthood.
“The Body” involves the unexpected and not-supernatural death of a beloved character: Buffy’s mother Joyce, who had been played for four-and-a-half seasons by Kristine Sutherland. As the episode begins, Buffy returns to her home, thinking all is well. She enters her house and shouts out “Hey Mom!” For her, everything is normal and happy But behind her, in the background of the shot, Joyce s dead on the sofa, having passed away because of a brain aneurysm. From here, the episode adheres closely to the stages of grief as diagrammed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Those stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Denial is Buffy’s immediate impulse. Buffy calls 911 for help, and as they work on her bother, we slip into Buffy’s thoughts, and a dream world. Joyce wakes up, and it’s a “beautiful miracle.” Then, she and Dawn are with an awake and happy Joyce in the hospital, noting she is “good as new,” and that Buffy saved her life by coming home when she did. It’s a dream fantasy that ends back in the real world, with Joyce still unresponsive, and cold, on the living room floor as the EMTs fail to bring her back.
The opening scene in “The Body” is extraordinary not only for capturing Buffy’s immediate reaction, denial of death, but the feeling that life is somehow now unreal, as she faces her mother’s death. For instance, there is a brief close-up of Buffy’s telephone, as if the keys which she should dial (to call Giles) are indecipherable. At one point, Buffy stands outside and there is no music on the soundtrack, only the distant sounders of wind-chimes and children playing.
It feels like an extended moment of unreal time. Even the EMT, when he first approaches Buffy to tell her that there is nothing he can do to save Buffy, is blurry, out-of-focus. These strange moments capture how strange and unreal life feels when something terrible has occurred. Buffy’s off-kilter responses (like her almost mindless comment to the EMTs, “good luck”) visually and aurally capture the notion that Buffy has slipped into another dimension, one that is catastrophically real and irreversible.
The stage of anger comes into the episode with Xander’s presence. Xander comes from a very unhappy family life, and Joyce is, in some ways, the mother he wished he had. When Joyce dies, Xander goes off the rails, blaming the doctors who took care of Joyce for not preventing her death. He is so angry that he punches through a wall in Willow’s dorm room. His fist literally goes through the wall, and he can’t pull it out. When he does retract his hand, it is bloodied, and he has hurt nobody but himself. As in life, the reaction to tragedy here is to look for someone responsible, someone to blame. Anger is easy, acceptance is hard.
Bargaining is not a stage of the Kubler Ross model focused on in detail here. Buffy doesn’t attempt to seek a supernatural remedy, for instance, for her mother’s death. She does not promise to be a “better daughter” before the eyes of God, either, if only her mother can be returned to her.
However, it might fairly be stated that Willow and Anya go through aspects of the bargaining process. Anya will be a better human being, she hopes, if only someone can explain to her what “death” is. As a vengeance demon, she did not know mortality, or death. It is something new to her, and therefore something terrifying. She keeps awkwardly seeking answers about Joyce’s death, apologizing for her lack of text and knowledge, as if to “know” will make it easier.
And Willow considers that she can’t “even be a grown-up” because she can’t choose the right wardrobe for the family visit to the morgue. It’s as if dressing correctly will somehow make Willow grown-up, and appropriate, and able to help Buffy. And, of course, that isn’t the case.
The fourth stage in the model is depression, and this might best be expressed in the latter half of the episode, in moments that involve both Dawn and Buffy. At school, Dawn is seen crying over a slight from a class-mate, and then attending an art class in which the subject of the day is “negative space,” and the use of negative space in painting. Buffy takes Dawn out of class to tell her what has happened, and director Whedon makes an interesting visual choice. Instead of following the grieving sisters out into the hallway, where Buffy reveals the truth to Dawn, the camera stays planted in the classroom. The Buffy-Dawn scene is observed only from a distance, through a window, and the audience cannot hear what is said. It can only witness the impact of the news, as Dawn collapses into tears. Perhaps this is Whedon’s way of acknowledging that no one can truly “feel” the death of another’s loved one until it happens to their own loved ones.
At the hospital, Buffy is quiet and withdrawn, both qualities of depression. It is hear that Tara attempts to explain to Buffy about her own experience with the death of her mother. She tells Buffy not to feel bad about “thoughts and responses” that she might not understand. In other words, there is no wrong way to grieve, no guidebook for dealing with such a tragedy. The sad thing here is that Buffy may not be able to hear Tara’s words, because of her own depression and grief.
The final stage of grief, acceptance, comes in the episode’s final composition. Buffy has just had to slay a vampire in the morgue to save Dawn. Dawn has fallen backwards, near Joyce’s body. She pulls the white sheet off Joyce’s face, and we see, without question, that her mother is dead and gone, just as Buffy said moments earlier ago. The episode cuts to black on that recognition. There is no arguing with death. Acceptance of it isn’t a matter of degrees. On seeing the corpse, Buffy and Dawn have no choice but to accept Joyce’s death.
“The Body” is a harrowing episode of the classic series, in part for how it deals with the swirl of emotions (and stages of grieving) brought on by a sudden, and senseless death of a loved one. The episode features almost no background music whatsoever, and this absence of a soundtrack makes the story feel all the more real. In real life, our loved ones don’t have loved ones, and music doesn’t reveal or illuminate our emotional states. Instead, silence is real, awkward, and ever-present in grief. The silence represents, perhaps, the absence of the deceased’s voice. No other sound will possibly do, and yet it will never be heard again.
Another brilliant aspect of “The Body” involves the return to a frequent series theme: Buffy’s duty and obligation to be the slayer. Here, she cannot even grieve her mother in peace. She can’t stop being the Slayer long enough to feel what she must to continue. Instead, she still must kill a vampire; must still be “on the job.”
And this predicament is oddly truthful too.
Loved ones die, and yet the world does not stop spinning to account for grieving. Bills still must be paid. One must still go to work, or raise children (or siblings), and or even go to school. Although a death in the family feels like the end of the world, the world just keeps spinning.
For how it handles the grieving process, for how it treads into real pain, and does not use supernatural tropes to alleviate it, “The Body” remains a one-of-a-kind episode of this series, and one of the finest episodes in the canon to boot.
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