The Body

"The Body" is the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is the ninety-forth episode altogether. It was directed and written by series creator Joss Whedon. It originally broadcasted on February 27th, 2001, and attracted almost 6.0 million viewers, which is typically high for season five. During its initial airing, it landed in second place out of the 17 WB shows that were on that night. Buffy is shocked to find her mother dead after returning home, and has to learn how to cope with her loved one's death.

Summary
The episode opens with a rollback to the end of I Was Made to Love You. Buffy returns home after a talk with Xander, and finds her mother sprawled across the couch, paled-skin, with opened eyes, and not breathing. Buffy calls out for her and flashes back to Christmas 2000, where Buffy, Xander, Willow, Anya, Tara, Dawn, Giles and Joyce are having Christmas dinner in the Summers' home. Joyce and Buffy finds the pie had burnt, and just as Joyce curses the oven, we return to present day time.

Buffy quickly calls for the ambulance. The 911 operator asks her to perform CPR, while awaiting the arrival of the medical team. Buffy tries to do so, to no success, and tearfully claims, "she's cold". Buffy then hangs up and calmly calls Giles, asking him to come to her home. The paramedics soon arrive and attempts to resuscitate Joyce, but fails to do so. Joyce is then officially pronounced dead. Giles soon arrives and finds the deceased Joyce on the floor. Just as he approaches her, Buffy cries out, "We're not supposed to move the body!", and breaks down in horror after realizing what she had just said.

As Joyce's body is placed in a body bag, the story moves to Dawn in her high school, where she is sobbing in the toilet because a student named Kevin Berman had called a freak, an outcome of the "misconceptions" spread by a girl named Kirstie. Her friend, Lisa, consoles her, rather poorly so, before they leave the toilet, headed for art class. Dawn awkwardly takes a seat next to Kevin. They talk, as her art teacher instructs them to draw the negative space around a statue.

Just then, Buffy arrives and leads Dawn outside her class, to tell her about Joyce's demise. Although the conversation remains muted, as we see the event from her friends' point of views, it is clear that Dawn incredulously breaks down crying, in front of Buffy, in front of Kirstie, in front of Kevin.

The story now relocates to the Sunnydale campus, where Willow and Tara stayed sorrowfully in their dorm room, while awaiting for Xander. Willow can't decide which clothes to wear to the hospital, while Tara tries staying calm and steady. Xander and Anya soon arrives, and Willow subsequently asks Tara to look for her blue shirt, which Joyce had really liked. When Tara leaves, a confused Anya asks the room if they're "going to cut the body open". Willow angrily tells her that it is not okay to ask such things, which prompts Anya to go to pieces, telling them that she doesn't understand the whole mortal coil.

The room goes silent, and Xander punches his fist through a hole frustratingly. He is soon freed, and Tara arrives, failing to find the blue shirt (which was found earlier by Anya under the cushions of a chair and placed in the drawers). After tending to Xander's wounds, the group leaves for the hospital.

The Scooby gang meets up at the hospital, where Joyce's autopsy has just concluded. While waiting for Giles to sign the release forms, Xander, Anya and Willow go on a panicked food shopping spree. Dawn heads off to the lavatories, leaving Buffy and Tara to sit in awkward silence in the waiting room. Tara then reveals that her own mother had died when she was seventeen, and shares some helpful words for Buffy. In the meantime, Dawn finishes with the toilet, and decides to see her mother for the last time.

She heads into the morgue, and locks the door behind her. As she approaches Joyce's covered body, a vampire rises behind her, staring menacingly. Buffy finds something amiss and set out for the morgue, where she meets Dawn struggling with the eager vampire. A fight ensues, and Buffy manages to decapitate him with a surgical saw. Yet, the cloth concealing Joyce's soulless body was pulled down in the violent mix-up, and the two remaining Summers women stares woefully at the body which once houses their mother. Just as Dawn reaches toward the body's cheek, the screen smashes to black, and the episode concludes.

Regular Stars

 * Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Anne Summers
 * Nicholas Brendon as Alexander LaVelle Harris
 * Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
 * Emma Caulfield as Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins
 * Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers
 * James Marsters as Spike
 * and Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

Guest Stars

 * Amber Benson as Tara McClay
 * Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
 * Randy Thompson as Doctor Kriegel

Co-Stars

 * J. Evan Bonifant as Kevin Berman
 * Rae'ven Larrymore Kelly as Lisa
 * Kelli Garner as Kirstie
 * Tia Matza as Art Teacher
 * Loanne Bishop as 911 Operator
 * Kevin Cristaldi as Paramedic #1
 * Stefan Umstead as Paramedic #2
 * John Michael Herndon as Vampire

Main Theme


The Body is a study of death at its starkest, of the in-between moments of shock, silence and complete incomprehension. What's most notable about this episode is its lack of any kind of conclusion. There's no trace of any moral here, and it's one of the few Buffy episodes in which the main characters singularly fail to turn the crisis into a life-affirming experience.

It's only climax is Buffy's fight with the vampire in the morgue, but ultimately we don't even get to see Dawn touch her mother's body, deliberately denying her - and us - any sort of resolution. It's only worth mentioning the way Acts One and Two rely on tight close-ups of meaningless, trivial objects, pushing home the point that the rest of the world's still there no matter what Buffy does.

That said, see Forever.

Style
Like any other episode, The Body comprises of four acts, and a teaser. Each act focuses on a different aspect of the story, and the final act brings all the elements and aspects together, culminating in the story's conclusion. The acts are often filled with long, slow shots. Each act either begins or concludes with a shot of Joyce's corpse, intending to drive home the fact that Joyce is really dead.

The teaser is a rollback from the previous episode, I Was Made to Love You. The first act focuses on the story's primary setting. In the first act, Buffy (the main persona of the act) panics after finding Joyce unconscious, and proceeds to call Giles. The story shifts to Dawn's high school for the second act, where we witness her swooning over a boy, and breaking down after hearing the tragic news. Again, the setting relocates to the Sunnydale campus, where the focus is now on the rest of The Scoobies (Xander, Willow, Anya and Tara). The fourth act brings all of the characters together at the hospital, where the episode concludes.

The episode is noted primarily for the absence of incidental music in the background. Therefore, the only sources of sound in the episode is the characters' dialogues, children playing joyfully, trivial objects such as footsteps, windchimes, phone ringing, etc. These sounds are further emphasized to make up for the lack of background scores. In an interview, Joss Whedon explains that the episode is shot so because, "music comforts the audience". He wanted this episode to be touching and horrifying at the same time. Joss further quips, "It was all supposed to be relentless, almost a kind of boredom to create what I want to capture".

General

 * There was no "Previously on Buffy" recap at the beginning of this episode.
 * Kristine Sutherland has said in interviews that Joss Whedon told her at the end of season three that her character will die in season five.
 * Willow's dorm room is number 213. She shared a dorm with Buffy last year which was number 214, so this is probably next door.
 * The 911 Operator asks Buffy if she is “alone in the house”. Sarah Michelle Gellar appeared in [Scream 2] where she was asked the exact same question by the killer on the phone.
 * This episode is the most vampire/monster-light episode of the series, being completely free of any vampires or supernatural beings until the vampire that appears in the last few minutes.
 * It is said that if you have a dream of an open grave, while it is raining, someone you know will die within a year. Faith awoke from a dream such as this almost exactly last season in This Year's Girl.
 * Although Alyson Hannigan and Amber Benson are heterosexual, they apparently filmed Willow and Tara's first on-screen kiss a few more takes than was strictly necessary. Benson recalls, "We must have kissed a hundred times. It was very nice."
 * Alyson Hannigan was allergic to the plaster dust from the scene when Xander punches his hand through the wall. Her right eye and face swelled up during the filming of that scene and she had to be taken to hospital. As a result, only her left eye was seen in the episode.
 * During the scene where Dawn finds out about her mother's demise, this is the unheard dialogue that takes place:


 * Buffy: Mom died this morning. While we were both at school, she--
 * Dawn: No...
 * Buffy: I don't know exactly what happened, but, she's dead...
 * Dawn: No. NO, NO! No, you're lying. She's fine. She's FINE and you're lying. Oh no, no. Please, please, no, you're lying, she's fine! She's fine...
 * Buffy: Dawnie...
 * Dawn: It's not true! It's not real, it's not real... Ohhhhh nooooo... no...

Production

 * No official stills of this episode has been released by the WB.
 * There is no incidental music (better known as background score) in this episode.
 * Although listed in the opening credits, James Marsters does not appear in this episode.
 * Joss Whedon has said that in this episode, Kristine Sutherland blinked a couple of times when in the body bag. Those blinks were taken out using CGI.
 * According to Joss's DVD commentarry he wishes that he had included Joyce in the scene at the table, and not have her seperated from the Scoobies in the kitchen.
 * Willow is portrayed as obsessing over what to wear to meet Buffy in the hospital; according to Whedon, this was based on his friend's funeral, where he was frantically obsessed with finding a proper tie.
 * According to Joss Whedon's DVD commentary, the episode begins with the flashback of the gang's Christmas dinner because Joss didn't want the cast and crew credits to appear over the main scene of Buffy finding her mom.
 * Joss wanted Willow and Tara's kiss to be natural, and not to be the main focus of the episode so he included it in this episode. This said kiss also brings an end to the WB's apparent policy about contact between same-sex partners.
 * Emma Caulfield was asked what emotions she was feeling when she filmed her monologue on why she doesn't understand death in Willow's dorm room, and admitted that they had been filming all day without a break and the only thing she was thinking was that she really had to pee.
 * This episode is the opposite to the season four episode Hush in which there are few spoken words and more music. In this episode, there is the absence of music through out the episode, and most is spoken word. Joss Whedon explained that music comforts the audience, and he wanted this episode to be touching and horrifying at the same time.

Bloopers

 * At Willow's dorm when Xander is pacing, a shadow moves against the back wall across the hallway, but no one is walking in front of it.
 * Dawn goes into the classroom and takes off her bag. The camera cuts away for a second and when it returns, Dawn still has her bag on.
 * The image we see on Dawn's canvas when she leaves the room is completely different than the image we see when the camera does the close up of it at the end of the scene.
 * When Buffy grabs the paper-towel, she holds it close to her chest. We also see that it's wrinkled. Later, when she puts it onto her vomit, the paper-towel is neatly folded into a square.
 * When Buffy first enters the kitchen to dial 911, the roll of paper towels are visible across the room near the sink. After Buffy vomits and leaves the back door to re-enter the kitchen, the paper towels are now in the middle of the room on the counter.
 * Paramedics in the state of California are not allowed to pronounce death. Joyce would have been taken to the hospital where it is likely she would have been pronounced DOA. Also, once paramedics begin CPR, it is usually not allowed to be stopped until someone with a higher degree of medical training takes over.
 * When Dawn enters the morgue to look at Joyce's body, she is wearing canvas tennis shoes, yet the sound effect of footsteps is dubbed in, making it sound like she's wearing hard-soled shoes. Her tennis shoes wouldn't make any noise except maybe a squeak. It is possible that Joss included the sound of footsteps to further emphasize the episode's silence.
 * There seems to be a slight flaw in timing. When Buffy returns home, she calls for Joyce asking if she wants her to pick Dawn up from school, which would set this in late afternoon (after fighting the Aprilbot from the previous episode) but after the tragic opening scene is played out, Dawn is preparing to go to class, as well as the entire lighting of the house scene seems to be in the morning time at some point.
 * When the doctor comes to speak with the family, the camera follows Buffy, Dawn and Giles as they go to meet him, and there is a moment at 32:13 as they pass out of frame when you can see a pair of "marks" on the carpet at the bottom left of the picture, one made of white tape and the other of red. Later, when the doctor and Giles leave and the rest of the Scoobies come over to join Buffy and Dawn, Xander hits the white mark and Willow the red one.

Title

 * French: "Orphelines" ("Orphans")
 * Italian: "Un Corpo Freddo" ("A Cold Body")
 * German: "Tod einer Mutter" ("Death of a Mother")
 * Spanish: "El cuerpo" ("The Body")


 * The script refers to Joyce as "The Body" for a total of five times.

Body Count

 * Joyce Summers. Joyce dies of complications from the brain surgery which was supposed to remove her tumor. Joyce's death, along with Cassie Newton's in Help are the only two deaths in the series' high body-count which are caused naturally.
 * Vampire. Buffy decapitates a fresh vampire in the morgue in the final act.

The series has shown that Buffy has killed 101 vampires and 44 demons. She uses a surgical saw to decapitate a vampire in the final act - the only action sequence in the episode.

Music

 * Boston Pops Orchestra - "The First Noel". The song plays faintly in the background of a scene immediately succeeding the opening credits, where The Scoobies and Joyce have Christmas dinner.

Literary Techniques

 * Illusions. Buffy imagines that her mother responds to the CPR, and wakes up.
 * Flashback. Buffy flashes back to Christmas 2000, where The Scoobies and Joyce are having dinner in the Summers' home.
 * Juxtaposition. When she realizes her mother is dead, Buffy keeps her emotions bottled, letting only a few tears roll by. When Dawn hears about Joyce's death, she completely breaks down.
 * Foreshadowing. In the multi-layered Restless, Buffy dreams that her mother is living in a wall in Sunnydale High. In hindsight, it seems very much like she is entombed.
 * Foreshadowing. In season three's This Year's Girl, we enter Faith's subconscious mind, where she dreams of an open grave in the rain. It is a common old wives' tale that when you have a similar dream, someone you know will die. True enough, Joyce dies almost exactly a year later.
 * Unseen Character. The 911 Operator is heard, but not seen, in the scene where Buffy calls 911 after finding her mother unconscious.
 * Regularly Spoken Phrases. When Buffy finds her mother dead on the couch, she cries out, "Mom? Mom? Mommy". In season seven's Conversations With Dead People, Dawn says the exact same thing when she believes Joyce's apparition is haunting her.

Memorable Quotes

 * Anya tries to understand death:
 * "I don't understand. I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she can't just get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid, and, and Xander crying and not talking, and I was having fruit punch and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever. And she'll never have eggs, or yawn, or brush her hair, not ever and no one will explain to me why."


 * When Giles approaches Joyce's body, Buffy shouts out...
 * "We're not supposed to move the body!"

She subsequently puts her hand over her mouth, flinching in horror at her own words.


 * During the Christmas dinner, Anya reveals that Santa actually exists.
 * Anya: "He wasn't always called Santa... but you know, Christmas night, flying, coming down the chimney, all true."
 * Dawn: "All true?"
 * Anya: "Well he doesn't traditionally bring presents so much as you know, disembowel children, but otherwise..."
 * Tara: "The reindeer part was nice.

Original Teleplay

 * From the original teleplay written by Joss Whedon, the following extended conversation takes place before Art class.


 *  Dawn: How do I look? Can I show my face? 
 *  Lisa: You're good to go. We're gonna be late anyway. 
 * Dawn: Oh great. It's Art. I'm not gonna be able to look Kevin in the eye.
 * Lisa: You've never looked Kevin in the eye. At least now he knows your name.
 * Dawn: Yeah. Freaky psycho gal.
 * Lisa: Come on. Let's represent.
 * (They exit.)


 * From the original teleplay written by Joss Whedon, the unheard dialogue between Dawn and Buffy in the high school was:


 * Buffy: Mom died this morning. While we were both at school, she--
 * Dawn: No...
 * Buffy: I don't know exactly what happened, but, she's dead...
 * Dawn: No. NO, NO! No, you're lying. She's fine. She's FINE and you're lying. Oh no, no. Please, please, no, you're lying, she's fine! She's fine...
 * Buffy: Dawnie...
 * Dawn: It's not true! It's not real, it's not real... Ohhhhh nooooo... no...


 * From the original teleplay written by Joss Whedon, the actual words from Dr. Kriegel when he is talking to Buffy was:


 * Dr. Kriegel: Absolutely. I think we can be almost positive about that.

And what we hear is:


 *  Dr. Kriegel: Absolutely. I have to lie to make you feel better. 

Cultural References & Allusions

 * The Avengers: Xander says "The Avengers gotta get with the assembling". The Avengers are a Marvel Comics group of superheroes, whose catch-phrase is "Avengers Assemble!"
 * Burnt Bunboy: The name of the odd-looking toy that Anya holds as she sits down at Willow's dorm room is Kogepan, a Japanese character of whom Joss Whedon and his wife, Kai Cole, are big fans.
 * Purple: "Purple means royatly", says Tara. The color purple has been a royal symbol since ancient Rome, when the color was reserved exclusively by emperors. This is probably due to the fact that purple dye was very expensive.
 * Band-Aids: Band-aid is a particular brand of adhesive bandage with a gauze pad in the center, used to protect minor cuts and wounds. The term Band-Aid has become the common way of referring to any of these types of bandages, even those that aren't actually Band-Aid brand (much like "Kleenex" is simply used to mean "tissue").
 * CPR: CPR stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation which can be used to restart the circulation and breathing of people who are critically injured or technically dead, usually by pushing repeatedly on the chest to mimic the heart beating and blowing into the lungs to mimic breathing. When CPR is performed by the inexperienced breaking the breastbone or a rib is fairly common; no Slayer strength required.
 * Phranc: Willow's line "Strong like an Amazon?" refers to the song "Amazons" by Phranc, the "all-American Jewish lesbian folksinger" and record-holding Tupperware Lady. Willow is quoting the line of the chorus. Whedon reveals this in the DVD commentary, but insists he didn't choose this song because of Willow's, Tara's and Phranc's sexual orientation. This is odd, since Phranc's success has mostly been with her gay audience. It makes sense that Willow and Tara would know this song, but it would make sense mostly because they're lesbians.

Episode References & Continuity

 * "As long as you two stay away from the band candy." Buffy is obviously referring to events in the episode Band Candy, in which enchanted candies cause Sunnydale adults to act like teenagers.
 * Tara mentions her mother's death. We first found out that her mother was dead in Family.
 * The side-effects of the brain surgery which removed Joyce's tumor in Shadow, Listening to Fear and Into the Woods are seen here.
 * The Christmas flashback scene shown right after the opening credits would logically take place sometime between Into the Woods and Checkpoint.
 * When Xander blindly accuses Glory for Joyce's death, he mentions the threat Glory had made about killing Buffy's family and friends in Checkpoint.
 * Dawn has a hard time at school, after her supposedly attempted suicide in Blood Ties has ignited a fuel of rumors that spread across the school.
 * This episode picks up a few moments before I Was Made to Love You left off.
 * When Buffy finds her mother dead, she says, "Mom? Mom? Mommy?" Dawn repeats this phrase in Conversations with Dead People when she thinks Joyce is trying to communicate with her. In the same episode, when Cassie's ghost appears to Willow at the library, she mentions that Willow is strong like an Amazon, referring to Tara and Willow's exchange in this episode.

Critical Reception
The Body is received extremely well with fans of the series. It gains a 9.6 rating on TV.com, based on 617 votes, and is also selected as the 5th top episode of the series.

TelevisionWithoutPity.com lists this episode as an A. The user community decides to award it A+ based on 16 users. The Body stands with a 9.4 rating on IMDb, which is one of the best ratings a Buffy episode has ever gotten, tallied over 588 votes. The BBC UK site shows that 89.2% of its readers vote it as "good".

Furthermore, actors Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan and Tom Lenk quotes this episode as their favourite, or at least one of their favourites. Series creator Joss Whedon claims that "The Body" is his fourth favourite Buffy episode ever. The three reviewers of BuffyGuide.com awards the episode a perfect score - 10 out of 10. "Perfection, thy name is Joss," quotes staff member Jamie Marie. Renowned Buffy reviewer, Billie Doux grants this episode 4 out of 4 stakes.

Performances by all of the cast member, guest stars and even co-stars are persistently praised. The Buffy guide book, Dusted, lists The Body "as edgy, as raw and as far from melodrama the series could possibly get". The review concludes with the statement, "...an excellent piece of television in itself".