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ettadunham · 5 years

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A Buffy rewatch 3x05 Homecoming

aka nobody wins

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and rant about it in 10-3k words. What you can expect: long run-on sentences and disjointed observations, often focused on one tiny detail about the episode. What you shouldn’t be expecting: actual reviews that make sense.

And in today’s episode, Faith asked Buffy out to be her date at the dance, and she said yes! But then Buffy ended up going with Cordelia, because everybody’s doing this dating thing wrong anyway.

I mean, let’s take a tally here. Buffy’s going out with Scott, but she sneaks out to meet Angel. To whom she’s talking about Scott. And then Scott dumps her.

But that’s okay because Faith asks her to be her date. (She’s being so faux-casual about it too… Oh, Faith.) Except the gang interferes for Buffy and Cordelia to go together and work out their differences. A suddenly dateless Faith then masterfully sabotages Scott and his new date to get back at him for hurting her girl.

Oh yeah. And the Willow/Xander disaster ride has left the station. Which I guess will be my main subject for today, because I love a good trainwreck.

Homecoming is one of those episodes though that has a lot of good stuff going for it, so one should at the very least acknowledge that before attempting some very specific character deep dive.

Buffy has one of her greatest speeches here for instance.

Buffy: I just thought... Homecoming Queen. I could pick up a yearbook someday and say, I was there. I went to high school, I had friends, and... for one moment, I got to live in the world. And there'd be proof. Proof that I was chosen for something other than this. Besides... I look cute in a tiara.

It’s a great storyline for Buffy, about her trying to reclaim her place in the world as a young high school teenage girl, rather than someone burdened with all these adult conflicts and responsibilities.

But what I also like in this scene is Cordelia. You would normally expect her to cut the tension with a snide candid remark, but she remains silent during Buffy’s speech. She even seems understanding and empathetic listening to her! That’s growth.

Before that though, there’s also this weird thing happening earlier as they’re competing with each other for the title. Cordy remarks that a Homecoming queen should be someone who’s part of the school and has friends. And I was like…

Cordelia, your friends are Buffy’s friends. And in season 1 you complained about how none of your pals from before were actual friends you could connect with. That’s sort of why you started hanging around the Scooby gang in the first place.

I guess maybe Cordelia meant having general connections at the school as well, which she probably still has, despite falling out with her clique earlier… But then again, she lost the vote, so who knows.

The weird thing though is that as it turns out she was right about her having the friends, as the gang ends up helping her instead of Buffy with her campaign. But that’s entirely on Xander and Willow, and Buffy needs about 2 seconds to break Willow to help her out too.

And yes, finally, it’s time to talk Willow and Xander.

I’ll admit, I’m obviously coming into this episode with thoughts and feelings on these characters that reach far beyond the current point in the show. I also sat down already thinking about what I was about to see, so I somewhat predetermined what my read was going to be on it.

I will say though, that the whole HORMONES take does seem a lot more valid after rewatching the episode now. There’s definitely this pattern of them trying to fight the ~~~attraction~~~, and then feeling super guilty about it whenever they ~~~give in~~~.

But saying that it’s just “hormones” and them doing “young stupid shit” is also a boring take. What them being teenagers in this situation essentially means is that they don’t really have the ability yet to self-reflect and try and figure out what they’re acting on. They’re too busy feeling guilty, and guilt and introspection are definitely not interchangeable.

So I’ll do the analyzing for them. You’re welcome.

I used to think of cheating as the ultimate show of a lack of respect for one’s partner. Which it is. But it‘s often also a reflection of how the person doing the cheating currently feels about themselves and the relationship they’re in.

And yes, there’s also the question of who they’re cheating with and how they feel about them. Which I will get into.

I feel like it is noteworthy to point out too that once Willow and Xander get caught, they’ll never again pursue any sort of romantic relationship with each other. We also won’t see them cheat on any of their future partners… but they will manage to self-sabotage their relationships in other ways, proving that they still have plenty of issues to work through.

And some of their baggage can actually be followed back to the same root: wanting to be loved. But how that manifests for each of them is significantly different.

For Willow, being loved means being special to someone. Being the first choice, the person who they’d never abandon. She clings to that feeling and to the people she experiences that with. And we’ll see just how bad that can get, especially once you put power into that mix… but safe to say, that that’s why she held that torch for Xander for so long.

Xander and Willow grew up together, and they’ve been essentially the most important people in each others life since childhood. It’s possible to read then Willow’s crush on Xander as a desire to make sure that that bond would never break, and that she wouldn’t end up being Xander’s second choice. Or worse, someone he would leave behind.

Anyone who knows me even a tiny bit should already be aware of this, but for the record, I’m not saying with this that romantic love is more important than friendship. But I definitely feel like in Willow’s mind and subconscious these things might get conflated.

I imagine then that for Willow, the feeling of Xander finally reciprocating all these confusing emotions is pretty intoxicating. She knows that there’s something wrong with this picture, that Xander’s still in a relationship, and that she’s with someone else who sees her as special and wonderful… But she’s also not putting any effort into figuring out those emotions beyond her guilt. As a result, she has trouble putting a stop to what’s happening, because she doesn’t have a full understanding of herself and what she’s feeling.

And that’s very much Xander’s issue as well. But he’s approaching it from a different perspective.

Xander’s coming from a pretty bad home situation. It’s largely only hinted at during the show, so we can mostly guess at the nature of abuse he grew up with, but it’s pretty obvious that he didn’t receive a lot of love from his family. He learned to cope through sarcasm and desperately trying to be noticed by someone.

The problem is that while Xander wants to be loved, he also hasn’t really experienced what that feels like growing up. So he doesn’t really know what he’s looking for, and instead ends up constantly chasing after something new and unattainable.

The tragedy of course is that he’ll never actually be able to find that missing piece of himself. He’ll never feel the security that comes from growing up being surrounded by unconditional love. He can only learn to accept the people he surrounds himself with as his new family, and share the kind of love he wishes to have always had with them.

In this moment however, much like Willow, he falls into the trap of conflating the nature of his feelings. He’s always loved Willow, she was one of the few positive influences in his early life. But the idea of her as a romantic interest just wasn’t alluring to him, because she was already there. All he had to do was reach out - which is why he never did.

But as soon as Willow became unavailable, Xander’s interest became more and more apparent. He was visibly jealous of Oz, and in the end of s2, he seems to come to a realization of just how important Willow is to him. (A moment which will then be reflected back seasons later where Xander’s “I love you” will bring Willow back from the brink once again, this time completely free from any romantic connotations.)

For me, the fact though that neither of these characters will make any effort to try and figure out if they could be in a relationship together past this little affair they got going on, is what confirms that they’re not really acting on a romantic interest. They love each other, deeply, but mostly, they’re just conflicted about their lives, and about where they and the relationships they’re in are going.

There are definitely reasons one can list on why they’d be self-sabotaging their relationships too. For Xander, I already detailed his chasing the unattainable to find what’s missing from his life mentality, which means that he might be trying to get out of this relationship on a subconscious level. And with Willow, we can easily retrofit her sexuality into this discussion. Especially since it appears that she and Oz were approaching a level of physical intimacy that could’ve given her a lot of anxiety she wasn’t ready to deal with.

Out of the two, Xander will also be the one who won’t make much of an effort to win Cordy back. And sure, Oz might hold less of a grudge too, but there’s still a very clear distinction in how Willow and Xander will be handling the fallout. But as discussed earlier, it’s also very much in character for Willow to cling to these relationships, so this should come as no surprise.

But I might just be forgetting some details about this storyline. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.

Like I said, I love a good trainwreck.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

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