MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*
College is a time for reassessing priorities, and while a Slayer can't change a lot about her life, her show can. Angel is gone from the regular cast (though he makes two appearances this season to hype his new show), and Seth Green's Oz will also depart soon, as old character Spike and new character Riley Finn assume greater importance. I'd generalize that there aren't as many high-mythicity episodes this season as in Three.
THE FRESHMAN (P)-- Buffy, Willow and Oz commence classes at Sunnydale U while Xander joins the workforce, and Giles spends the rest of the season unemployed but not hurting for money. Recurring characters Riley Finn and Maggie Walsh are introduced, as is a new clutch of young vampires led by a sardonic blonde, Sunday. Buffy's trouncing of the vamps is probably the only thing in her comfort zone. For most of the season Mama Joyce is usually out of the picture.
LIVING CONDITIONS (P)-- Buffy's first experience with a dorm-mate is something less than positive, as she and fellow college roomie Kathy Newman get on each others' nerves. Conveniently, Kathy proves to be a demon. Once she's out of the way, Willow moves in with Buffy.
THE HARSH LIGHT OF DAY (F)-- Buffy, on the rebound from Angel, becomes invested in a new guy, Parker, but he turns out to be a "love-and-leave-'em" type. Anya returns and has immediate success in seducing Xander, as well as adding to the show an acidulous attitude even more penetrating than that of Cordelia. Willow encounters former Cordette Harmoney, and learns what viewers observed at the end of Season 3; that Harmony's become a vampire, albeit an incompetent one dependent on the help of her new boyfriend, Spike. He's back in town looking for the Gem of Amara, a talisman that can immunize vampires from their usual weaknesses. Once he has it, he engages Buffy in a big daytime brawl on the campus, which goes totally unnoticed by students and faculty. Buffy relieves Spike of the ring and he flees. The ring later turns up on an episode of ANGEL in its first season.
FEAR ITSELF (P)-- The Scoobies get trapped in a Halloween party whose terrors are real, thanks to a fear-demon named Gachnar. Yes, it's just another make-work menace, but at least there's further development of Willow's witchy ways.
WILD AT HEART (F)-- Earlier episodes hinted at the underground militia known as The Initiative, but they finally take center stage when they find and abduct Spike. A scientist with this monster-capturing operation fits Spike with a brain-chip that causes him pain any time he attacks humans, and though Spike will escape the installation, he'll remain largely "neutered" for the remainder of the season, allowing for much entertainment value. This subplot is better than the main one, in which Oz feels a soul-connection to Veruca, singer in another youth band, causing Willow considerable pain before any of them learn that Veruca too is a werewolf. Veruca dies and Oz almost kills Willow, so Oz leaves the college, determined not to return until he finds a way to cancel his curse.
THE INITIATIVE (F)-- The other shoe drops, revealing that Professor Walsh is one of the heads of the government's secret installation beneath Sunnydale, while Riley and some of his college-buds are soldiers serving the cause. Spike escapes captivity and when he goes looking for Buffy, he finds and tries to fang Willow. He then finds he can't attack her, which Willow initially interprets as disinterest, resulting in the two enemies having a weird conversation about the vampiric version of erectile dysfunction.
PANGS (G)-- The Buffy Gang celebrates its first Thanksgiving gathering (still with Joyce off somewhere), though Willow, channeling her collegian mother, complains that the holiday falsifies the truth about Native American genocide by Euro-colonists. Buffy however wants a proper holiday observance to give her a sense of continuity with her new family. Angel comes to town, having been told by an oracle that Buffy may be in danger-- a prophecy confirmed by the manifestation of the ghosts of several Chumash Indians, massacred by the Sunnydale colonists of the period. (One of the ghosts' signal habits is to cut off the ears of victims; I'll bet that the script originally meant to reference "scalps" but backed off the image due to political sensitivities.) Spike invites himself to the Thanksgiving dinner in order to avoid Initiative pursuit and the Scoobies force themselves to tolerate him to learn more about his former captors. Spike is also vital to counteracting Willow's sentimentalization of the savage ghosts, and she soon learns that good intentions don't mean much in a struggle for life. Angel almost succeeds in concealing his presence from Buffy.
SOMETHING BLUE (G)-- Willow's as fragile from Oz's leavetaking as Buffy was from having slept with Parker, but the young witch shows greater propensity for letting her emotions go haywire. The Scoobies contemplate performing a truth spell to get more information out of Spike, who makes the most of his being an unwelcome houseguest. Willow instead performs a spell which she thinks will make her pain go away, but instead it causes reality to change in line with any random thing she asserts. The outstanding effect is that one of Willow's unserious remarks results in Buffy and Spike believing that they've fallen deeply in love with one another, with all the attendant wild humor of that situation. Later the false relationship between the enemies will take on real ramifications.
HUSH (G)-- The usual concerns continue-- Riley and Buffy becoming more intimate, Spike being a rotten guest to both Giles and Xander-- while for her part Willow befriends a fellow collegian interested in Wicca: Tara McClay. This sets up Willow's swing toward the Isle of Lesbos for the rest of the season, but the predominant menace is that of demons who look like skull-faced morticians, the Gentlemen. These creatures enforce a spell of silence over Sunnydale because the only thing that can dispel them is a female scream. After much use of mimed gestures and visual aids, the Gentlemen are defeated, and Buffy and Riley find out about their respective demon-hunting agendas.
DOOMED (F)-- Buffy and Riley come clean with each other, but Buffy's reluctant to continue a doomed relationship. Earthquakes strike Sunnydale, a foretaste of yet another demon-inspired apocalypse. While the Scoobies seek to learn the threat's nature, Spike is so despondent at his impotence that he tries to kill himself. Drawn into a fight, Spike exults to learn that his brain-chip doesn't keep him from beating down demons. Though he'll later betray the Scoobies in this season, he shows indications of becoming somewhat bonded to them as he never was to his fellow vamps.
A NEW MAN (F)-- Ethan Rayne makes another of his peripatetic visits, and this time he enchants Giles into changing into a huge horned demon, apparently hoping that the Slayer will kill Giles. In this form Giles can only speak a demon-language, and no one can understand him but Spike. The Spike-Giles scenes are the highlight of this so-so episode.
THE I IN TEAM/GOODBYE IOWA (G)-- These two episodes offer a very delayed introduction to the season's "Big Bad," the cyborg-demon amalgam Adam, created in the Initiative's laboratories by the obsessed Maggie Walsh. Buffy is invited to visit the Initiative and to coordinate her demon-hunting with the government's, though Walsh has her own agenda. Walsh sets up Buffy to be killed but fails, after which Walsh's creation slays her out of hand. When Buffy and Xander infiltrate the Initiative, they and Riley are confronted by Adam who wounds Riley and escapes. Adam's precise motives for creating death and chaos seem to be an extension of the scientific outlook that created him: he does it just because he can.
THIS YEAR'S GIRL/WHO ARE YOU? (G)-- Faith wakes up from her coma and learns how the Scoobies killed the Mayor. She seeks out Buffy and fights her, but Faith is forced to break off when police arrive. It's not clear why the police have a file on Faith, though the Council may have been involved after their own failure to imprison the rogue slayer. To Faith's good fortune, the Mayor left her a mystic trinket that enables Faith to "hide in plain sight" by switching bodies with Buffy. Thus Buffy/Faith is taken prisoner, first by the police, and then by the Watchers' Council, while Faith/Buffy has a good time assuming Buffy's role. However, Faith isn't able to restrain her ruder tendencies, and witchy Tara immediately senses something wrong. While Buffy/Faith escapes the Council and seeks to convince Giles of the truth, Faith/Buffy cons Riley into sleeping with her. Contrary to expectations, Faith doesn't enjoy the deception, and she plans to leave Sunnydale. Providentially Adam unleashes a gang of vampires upon a local church, probably as another experiment. Real Buffy responds by seeking to save the innocents, but so does Real Faith, having become seduced by the allure of being a hero. Once the vampires are finished off, the two Slayers fight again, and with the help of a witch-doohickey Real Buffy recovers her own body and Real Faith is consigned to her own, as well as to the gnawing discontent with her own corrupted soul.
SUPERSTAR (P)-- Once again, a lightweight episode follows several heavy-drama stories. Jonathan, the aggrieved nerd from "Earshot," gets hold of a magic spell that alters reality, so that he is everyone's hero and all the Scoobies defer to him, believing that he's always been the best of them. Eventually Buffy's iron will exposes the truth. I suppose the scenario might be a satire of "Mary Sue" fanfiction, in which an author inserts an idealized version of him/herself into some commercial property. It's still a slog.
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (P)-- What, another haunted-house party, in the same season? Granted, this time the make-work menace creates chaos by taking advantage of the sexual fireworks between Buffy and Riley once they reconcile. But it's still just a parade of disparate horrors, just like "Fear Itself."
NEW MOON RISING/ YOKO FACTOR (F)-- Though the gay relationship between Willow and Tara has largely been implicit, it takes center stage here as Oz returns to college, claiming that he's conquered his werewolf transformations with meditative spells. However, Willow finds herself tugged between an old love and a new one, and Oz soon finds that emotional turmoil brings out the beast in him. Meanwhile, Spike wants the removal of his chip so badly that he offers his services to Adam, which might be deemed the show's first "super-villain team-up." In "Yoko" Spike tries to undermine the Scoobies by telling each of them that others talked trash about him/her, which does elicit a major falling-out. Angel also comes back to Sunnydale, trying to make amends for a quarrel he had with Buffy in an ANGEL episode. He and Riley have hate at first sight and duke it out.
PRIMEVAL (G)-- Buffy exposes Spike's chicanery and decides that she and the Scoobies must make a frontal assault on the Initiative, where Adam has once more inserted himself. Buffy's only chance to take down Adam is if Willow and the others invoke an "enjoining spell" which taps into the powers that first created the Slayers. After the Scoobies enter the base, soldiers capture them and take them before their commander. Buffy takes aim against the mechanistic outlook of the government, telling the commander "you're all messing with primeval forces you can't begin to understand." In due time Buffy squares off against Adam and her magical power-boost allows her to destroy him. Spike then renders some minor aid to the Scoobies to ingratiate himself, but his status is left up in the air in the season finale.
RESTLESS (P)-- Buffy goes Dada! I realize that the writers were probably all tired from juggling so many balls, but a series of loony dreams did not suffice for a big finish. Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles are besieged by chaotic dreams due to their having tampered with the mystic forces behind the First Slayer. The content of the dreams is generally superficial, except Buffy's, since this seems to be her first encounter with the archaic but still vague mythos Whedon created for her. This and one previous episode allude to the introduction of a new character in Season Five: Buffy's kid sister Dawn, who is inserted into their continuity much as Jonathan rewrote their history in "Superstar."
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