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 a different name)
- 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)
Not a song or sound to be heard. There were no paid for emotions powered by a moving soundtrack. Silence throughout. Nothing hidden, nothing pre-heated. This is Buffy at her darkest, most real. She suddenly realises she is the eldest in her family and that there is no-one to care for her.
This is a masterpiece of emotional writing and the camerawork and editing do it justice.
What an episode. This is where so-called teen-tv shows the adults a thing or two about growing up.
-- And sorry to jut in, but 18 years later it's hard to overstate just how groundbreaking the Tara and Willow kiss scene was. This was the first time in TV mainstream drama history where a kiss between two ladies wasn't used as a controversy spiking TV talking point, a ratings boost, male titillation or a main plot device to push an agenda or force drama. Without wanting to sound derogatory, this was an adjunct, an addendum, almost a throwaway scene... It could have been cut and nothing, not a single storyline would have wandered amiss... But no. Here where we see two people, in love and distraught in their shock try to comfort one another in the most natural way possible. The sheer understatedness (that's not a real word) of the whole thing was what made that scene so seminal in the fight for acceptance and recognition.