Buffy Review: "Lessons" Season 7 Episode 1

The seventh season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer begins with an episode called "Lessons". At the end of the sixth season Willow almost destroyed the world in a mad witch rage. Xander talked her out of it by an appeal that melted thru her hatred. Just as the final episode ended Buffy finally pulled out of her post-resurrection funk and decided that life was worth living. In the final scenes Buffy developed a deeper bond with Dawn. It was clear that the relationship between the sisters was going to grow closer in the seventh season.

I'd like to step back a moment and briefly reiterate my view that in the last couple of seasons Buffy The Vampire Slayer developed progressively greater weaknesses in the structure of the show. Buffy was no longer even in college, had been dead in heaven for a few months, had come back from the dead severely disappointed to be alive again, engaged in a pointless relationship with a vampire, worked in a fast food joint which provided little material for interesting story lines, and lived a depressing life. The seventh season needed a big change in direction if the show was to regain its vitality.

There's one opening sequence of a girl running thru the streets of Istanbul being chased by hooded guys. The girl ends up getting killed (probably) by some hooded guys. This of course must be presaging some future event. Does she come back as a monster? Are the hooded guys coming to Sunnydale?

Then we cut to a bonding experience of Buffy training Dawn in a cemetery. How to train your kid sister? Hang out next to a brand new grave site and wait for a new vampire who is just clawing his way out of the grave. The attitude that Buffy projects definitely gives the impression that Buffy is feeling more upbeat, confident and purposeful than she has been for quite a while. This scene signals that Buffy is going to be treating Dawn as an apprentice and that Buffy's over her despondency about being alive once again. It is a great opening scene.

Buffy: Its about power. Who's got it. Who knows how to use it.

Buffy: So who's go the power Dawn?

Dawn: Well, I have the stake.

Buffy: "The stake is not the power"

Buffy: "Who's got the power?"

Dawn: "He does."

Then after the fight:

Buffy: Its real. Its the only lesson Dawn. Its always real.

Giles in Westbury England and on horseback even. With Willow even.

Next Willow is in a meditative pose. Did Willow make the flower bloom? Yes, looks like Willow has permanently absorbed a large amount of magical power. She caused a Uruguayan flower to bloom. She's channeling the forces of Mother Earth in a big way.

Willow: "I've killed people Giles"

Giles: "I've not forgotten"

Miss Harkness (possibly a member of a coven of witches) is teaching Willow.

Dawn is starting first day of classes at the rebuilt Sunnydale High School. Xander is in charge of the construction project on its grounds for the part that is not yet finished. Buffy is going along on the first day of classes to check out the place to see if there are any signs of supernatural activity.

Dawn goes to class. Mr Lonegrin is Dawn's first teacher.

After the students all go to their first classes. Buffy is wandering the halls.

Portent Warning: Lots of ghosts in the high school come out and start haunting Buffy. Ghosts of students and demons past.

Buffy rushes into Dawn's class to rescue Dawn but she's in no immediate danger. After Buffy leaves a ghost tries to attack Dawn in class. Of course only Dawn sees it. So Dawn is seeing the ghosts too. Dawn goes to the lavatory and finds a girl in a toilet stall. This girl is named Kit and is also seeing ghosts. Plus. the floors can open up and swallow people (okay, they just get dropped down into the high school basement). Down go Dawn and Kit into the basement.

There are 3 ghosts in the basement who are after Dawn and Kit. They try to get away and run into a high school boy named Carlos who was already down there trying to get out.

Anya is having coffee with her fellow vengeance demon friend Halfred. Halfred tells Anya she's not making the grade. The vengeance demons are doing an intervention on Anya since she has fallen from being the hardest core vengeance demon to being the softest one. When requested to turn a husband into a frog she turned him into a frenchman. This episode has some witty moments.

Portent Warning: The Anya-Halfred conversation turns to the subject that something bad is coming up from below.

The new principal is surprised to find that Buffy is still at the school. He knows some stuff about Buffy but isn't being real forthcoming about what he knows.

How can he not know that there are supernatural events at the school or that Buffy was at the center of those events when she was in high school? Was her file always kept sanitized by the old principal of all the supernatural stuff?

Portent Warning: Meanwhile Willow back in Ye Olde Englande is deeply in touch with the whole planet. She feels the Hellmouth and thinks it is going to open. Portents of bad things coming show up on three threads of this episode.

Buffy, having talked to Dawn and Xander via cell phone, goes thru the hole in the floor of the lavatory and gets into a tussle with the 3 ghosts. Finally she gets thru to a door and she's hoping Dawn is behind it. But instead there's Spikey boy, back from his trials in Africa.

My reaction so far: Buffy's the most interesting character. Talk of having a TV show centered around Dawn seems premature. Also, it is interesting that Dawn is a freshman. Wasn't she older than that in some previous episode? There is a big advantage of making Dawn a freshman though: it gives the writers 4 whole years of Dawn being in high school. High school is the natural milieu for the Buffy world.

Spike is going thru some sort of ordeal in his mind. At the end of the last season it seemed from a line the monster dude said as he put his hand on Spike's chest that he gave Spike his soul back. So Spike is probably going thru major guilt trips ala Angel.

Buffy fights the ghost people. They appear to be people who died in the high school while Buffy was a student there. She gave a good ground upward kick that sent a guy flying. That was well staged. So why do they resent her? It seems unfair to expect her to be able to protect everyone.

Buffy comes across Spike in a basement room. He's talking to voices in his head. He has scratches on his chest. One is supposed to guess that he tried to claw his heart out either because his emotional pain over loving her, guilt at trying to rape her, guilt at what he did to others, or something else drove him to try. Its not clear, It may become clear in some later episode.

Important clue from Spike: Manifest spirits raised by a talisman to seek vengeance.

Buffy goes looking for Dawn. More fighting ensues.

Dawn, Kit, and Carlos are in desperate straits. Dawn shows that she's learned something from being the Slayer's sister when she improvises a weapon. This buys some time for Buffy to arrive.

Aside: I'm waiting for Dawn to demonstrate some superhuman powers as a result of her being The Key. But my guess is that Dawn is going to go thru many other kinds of growth before getting any superpowers of her own.

Things are looking pretty grim as Buffy battles the manifest spirits in the basement of the high school. Finally Xander makes it into the girl's lavatory and destroys the talisman in the nick of time. The manifest spirits go poof.

The Principal watches Buffy talking to Dawn, Kit, and Carlos and sees them hug her. He's suddenly inspired to offer her a part time job as a counselor for troubled kids. So now Buffy will always be around in the high school ready to grab new story premises as they arise right there on the Hellmouth. I'm also guessing that Xander's construction project at the school will take months to finish so that he can be around too.

A person is talking to Spike in the basement. That person morphs: Warren, Glory, Adam, the Mayor, Drusilla, the super force vampire guy (the Master?).

Did they all morph into Buffy where she said "Its about power"? Were all those people there? Surely Buffy couldn't have been there. She was the one non-evil person in the morphing sequence. Was Spike just hallucinating? Was he seeing real figures that are going to come back and are the writers, by inserting Buffy in the sequence, just being inconsistent?

We can expect that Spike will hear the voices of his previous victims. But also he appears to be channeling messages from the dark forces that are coming up to the high school. Are these evil figures all going to make a comeback?

Aside: I gotta say that I never was impressed by Warren as an evil guy. But perhaps that was the point. Some humans can seem perfectly normal but underneath they can be cruel self-absorbed narcissists who gradually work their way up to being willing to commit thoroughly heinous acts. Still, Warren is a dull and uninteresting character.

Buffy returns to high school. I'm sure that this will make it a lot easier for the writers to come up with new plots. Plus, it provides a way to give Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) a bigger role. We see all sorts of hints in this episode that Dawn's character is going to grow. Dawn already has made two friends who may become members of her own Junior Scooby Gang. The high school also provides a way to have lots of fairly young people around. This is great for attracting a young viewing audience.

Still, putting Buffy in high school is not by itself going to make Buffy The Vampire Slayer once again into a great show. Buffy has grown a lot over the years and high school storylines by themselves will be too confining. The show needs some outside factor that will make it more interesting. It needs a character that is as interesting as Angel was. It looks like Spike might become Buffy's love interest again. I think that would be a mistake. There's room here to bring in some other male role that is unrelated to the high school. He should be an unusual supernatural being that is not evil and who has some heroic characteristics. How about a Greek God's son? Or how about some being that comes from a parallel universe and gets trapped in this one? He could have a mix of abilities that are quite unlike anything else we've seen so far.

I have a similar concern about Spike's experience watching the morphing series of beings: the writers might draw too much on old characters. If all these characters come back then its like no battle is ever won. I understand that the war against evil is supposed to be portrayed as never really being won. But at least the individual battles that make up that war ought to be portrayed as getting resolved one way or another.

The other reason I find a problem with relying so much on old dead characters is that its a sign of a failure of imagination. Surely new and interesting characters can be created. Let us tune in and watch new manifestations of evil and more generally other manifestations of the supernatural. Human mythology is full of figures that could be brought to life in Sunnydale using any number of pretexts. I'd bring out some Greek mythological figures if I was writing a Buffy episode.

On the bright side, there was plenty of snappy funny dialog. Some example lines that were good:

Willow: Is there anything you don’t know everything about?
Giles: Synchronized swimming. Complete mystery to me.

Dawn on the phone to Buffy while she's in danger in the basement:
Dawn: And, Buffy? Isn’t this reception amazing? I’m in the frickin’ basement!

Buffy to Xander explaining the events of the day:
Buffy: I think I may have destroyed Dawn’s social life in all of about thirty seconds but apart from that, no.

At the official Buffy The Vampire Slayer UPN web site go can go here to read their description of the first episode of the 7th season entitled "Lessons".

Posted by Randall Parker at October 22, 2002 01:20 AM