The Body
- Episode aired Feb 27, 2001
- TV-PG
- 1h
Buffy, Dawn, and their friends deal with the aftermath of Joyce's death.Buffy, Dawn, and their friends deal with the aftermath of Joyce's death.Buffy, Dawn, and their friends deal with the aftermath of Joyce's death.
- Anya
- (as Emma Caulfield)
- Spike
- (credit only)
- Rupert Giles
- (as Anthony Stewart Head)
- 911 Operator
- (voice)
- Lisa
- (as Rae'Ven Larrymore Kelly)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaJoss Whedon wanted the scenes to be long which is why there are four scenes (other than the Christmas scene). Whedon has stated that he wanted to capture how time feels stuck when grief strikes. There is no music, either, because Whedon said that music is a comfort to the audience.
- GoofsParamedics 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.
- Quotes
Anya: Are they gonna cut the body open?
Willow Rosenberg: Oh my God! Would you just stop talking? Just... shut your mouth, please!
Anya: What am I doing?
Willow Rosenberg: How can you act like that?
Anya: Am I supposed to be changing my clothes a lot? I mean, is that the helpful thing to do?
Xander Harris: Guys...
Willow Rosenberg: The way you behave...
Anya: Nobody will tell me.
Willow Rosenberg: Because it's not okay for you to be asking these things!
Anya: But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens,
[starts crying]
Anya: 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 just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid. And-And Xander's crying and not talking. And-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.
- Crazy creditsInstead of the regular opening credits, a flashback scene was created that consisted of the whole cast having Christmas dinner at the Summers' house. It was created so as not to have written credits appearing over the dramatic opening scenes.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Gift (2001)
What Whedon taps into in his style here (what he calls the "physicality" of people in the first few hours after a loved one has passed) is the inability to cope with mortality. Every character has his or her own way of "dealing"- in quotes since it's a dealing that is about as heavy as one can not hope to imagine- and most significant is seeing Buffy's initial reaction at the start of the episode, of the same disillusionment that sends one into a state of shock (and, frankly, us too), and Anya, who up until now has been mildly or quite annoying as a 'comic-relief' only to provide as the once-demon persona on the show the most profound statement on death heard in a while. Only monologues spoken in Ingmar Bergman films dealing with the matter of life and death (and the incredible, impossible void left for us in the presence of nothingness) top this one for a cinematic depth of this situation.
It's great storytelling, superb and intimate acting, and with a final moment in a morgue that has a poetic flavor. Dare I say it, it's even better than Hush at conveying a breakdown of the human spirit.
- Quinoa1984
- Oct 25, 2009