Reviewed By: Adam Bardwell
Rating: 10/10
I going to make no excuses this is my favourite episode of the season and so this review may come off as seeming biased. I'll try and be balanced but see this as advanced warning. This has to be one of if not the darkest ever Buffy episode. It has a bit of humour at the beginning and end but for the bulk of episode there are very few laughs just powerful drama which however dark it is, it is kind of fun for we get to see the regular actors playing variants of their characters. Yes this is an alternate universe episode, a Sci-Fi staple, but it is done so well that the fact that things are fairly status quo after it doesn't matter at all.
The shows continuity is used at the start of the episode with the fall out from "Lover's Walk" as a result of Willow and Xander's affair. It seems clear that they have blown their chances with there respective other halves at least for a while. Of course this isn't the case with Willow and Oz starting out back together in the preceding episode to this "Amends". It seems that this story line was designed to get Xander and Cordelia to split up - perhaps with the new series in mind.
Cordelia is clearing in a great deal of pain over the break up proving that her feelings for him were genuine in case anyone doubted them. She attempts to deal by reverting to the old Cordelia but her old friends snub her. A new girl, Anya, takes a interest in her and when Cordy wishes Buffy had never come to Sunnydale she reveals herself as a demon and grants the wish bring about the alternate universe in which most of the episode. In some ways it seems a bit of a stretch to believe Cordy would blame Buffy for what happened when both Willow and Xander were in the thick of it but it is also true that she got with Xander though Buffy but only indirectly.
There are loads of great elements in this episode but one of the best has to be vamp. Willow and Xander. Both actors are superb as the evil versions of there characters. The writers were obviously impressed bring evil Willow back in "Doppelgangland".Her torturing of Angel (the puppy) here is so perverse its kind of reminiscent of Dru's treatment of Angel in "What's My Line" only more so if you get what I mean.
This episode had some very, very powerful scenes. The ones that springs to mind are Cordelia's death along with the whole gangs deaths in slow motion at the end. For some reason seeing two vampires drinking off the same person is far more distressing than just one. Perhaps its the fact that it is a regular character dying that adds to the power of the scene. The way it was shot certainly helped with the camera circling around them and pushing up on a powerless Giles who's pain adds buck loads of dram to the scene. The deaths of pretty much everyone else at the end really make the show. Buffy's death at the hands of the Master has to be the best with Giles saying the other universe has to be better than this and smashing Anya(nka)'s power centre. There is great editing here between the two settings.
This leads on nicely to a minor point that I don't quite understand. It concerns Anya's power centre. She first tries to get Cordy to make a wish while she was wearing it. This doesn't work so she gives the necklace which it is on to Cordelia and sure enough she makes a wish. Giles then takes it off Cordelia when she dies but he doesn't know that it is the power centre. Yet when Anyanka turns up she is wearing it and he takes it off her. Did I miss something but he already had it! I'm sure it's something I didn't pick up if anyone could explain this to me I'd be grateful.
It was good to see the return of The Master. With only 12 episode's commission in the first season his time as the series big bad was far shorter than it deserved to be. What he was trying to do in this episode, mass produce blood by dreading it out of live humans, was truly a demonic concept as he said and very disturbing (as I've already said this episode mostly wasn't a bundle of laughs). I did feel that The Master as a character didn't quite feel the same as season 1 but perhaps that is just because of different circumstances (having risen etc). I do have to ask why he chose Willow and Xander has his Decibel but it really doesn't matter.
As I have previously said this episode had some humour but it was left to the normal Buffy universe i.e. at the beginning and the end. I loved Xander's attempts to blame Oz and Cordelia for not knocking when they found Willow and himself kissing:
Xander: "They burst in, rescuing us, without even knocking! I mean, this is really all their fault." Buffy: "Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic." Xander: "Mine is much more advanced"
The ending is also very funny with Cordelia making increasingly nasty wishes and Anya desperately trying to grant them. The fact that she cannot really sets up the character. She was originally only conceived for the episode but if you think about it this is a very good basis for a character - an ex-demon having to lean to be a human. On top of this Anya has shown time and again how fun she is with no tact, like Cordelia, but with more of a comic edge. I'm glad the producers saw her potential from this episode.
It was interesting that Angel said that helping Buffy was his destiny. If this is true it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Now he has his own show you could argue that he has already helped Buffy so has completed that part of his destiny. It could also be seen to mean that he will ultimately ending up helping Buffy again and shanshu with her. It could also mean that the writers didn't know that his destiny would be in LA yet with the spin off still in the developmental stages.
Great Buffy Moment: Buffy's death but Cordelia's is a close second.
In a Nutshell: One of the best Buffy's ever with a very distinctive (dark) tone - its no surprise that the director went on to co-create Angel!