It Could Be Witches, Some Evil Witches (Witch)

With the opening two-parter laying the groundwork for much of this season, introducing the characters, the setting, the basic premise, the Big Bad(s), this episode takes the effort to introduce us to the final main element of the show as it was originally conceived – the Monster as metaphor for a Relatable Teenage Experience. The final scene of The Harvest promises a cornucopia of villains (“Not just vampires.”) from the show, but this is the first time we see it in action, with our Witchcraft-powered villain. In a way, this episode can be seen as the third part of a three-part premiere, for how much it solidifies the character dynamics and main interests of the show.

Looking at the show across all seasons, it’s interesting how often it spreads its season premieres over several episodes. In later seasons, this is usually done in the form of having one or two episodes dealing with the fallout from the previous season’s finale (e.g: When She Was Bad in S2, Anne and Dead Man’s Party in S3), and then another that introduces the main villains and plotlines of the series (e.g. School Hard in S2, Faith Hope and Trick in S3). With no previous seasons here though, and plenty to set up, all three of these episodes are devoted to setting out the basic mission of the show.

Let’s start with the character dynamics. “The Slayerettes” never caught on as a fan nickname, despite being named as such in this episode, but the Scooby Gang is solidified as a group here, with Xander, Willow and Giles all getting plenty to do as active investigators, rather than just reacting to the sudden news of vampires existing. Buffy is actually incapacitated for most of the climax, so that we can see the others taking the reins. Most importantly, we see Buffy push back against their involvement. Buffy is a character who is supremely aware of her own importance, which itself is a cause of some of her greatest strength and greatest flaws. She takes on responsibility for everybody and everything around her, whether she can actually control it or not, which can appear as a disregard of other people’s abilities. Willow and Xander push back against that in The Harvest, and again here. Right from the formation of the Scooby Gang is the tension that will often cause it to break down, in episodes like Revelations, The Yoko Factor, and of course, Empty Places.

“How do you kill them?”
“You don’t, I do.”
“Well, Jesse’s my…”
“Jesse is my responsibility. I let him get taken.”

Xander Harris and Buffy Summers, 1×02 The Harvest

“You guys don’t have to get involved.”
“What d’ya mean? We’re a team! Aren’t we a team?”

Buffy Summers and Xander Harris, 1×03 The Witch

“It’s a hard truth, but there has to be a single voice. You need someone to issue orders and be reckless sometimes and not take your feelings into account. You need someone to lead you.”
“And it’s automatically you. You really do think you’re better than we are.”

Buffy Summers and Anya Jenkins, 7×19 Empty Places

We can look at this through the Heart/Spirit/Mind/Hand metaphor, and suggest that by rejecting the contributions of these people, Buffy is rejecting parts of herself. She can only really become a complete person when she accepts the help of other people. Which, of course, is one of the hardest things for Buffy Summers to do. 

Also set into place here are the romantic dynamics that run through most of the first two seasons. We see more of Xander’s doomed crush on Buffy, and of Willow’s doomed crush on Xander. The two are directly paralleled, as both Xander and Buffy devastate their crushers by describing them as “one of the guys” and “one of the girls” respectively. Xander’s feelings are demonstrated with his cringingly overfamiliar bracelet gift, which itself sets up a subtle reference to Angel. In her magic-drunk ramblings, Buffy says “any other guy who’d give me a bracelet would wanna date me”, and who else do we know that has gifted Buffy jewellery lately? In fact, the gifting of jewellery continues to be a motif of the Buffy/Angel relationship, so it’s interesting that Xander attempts and fails at that same courting technique early on.

I would be remiss if, in an episode called Witch, I didn’t take a second to talk about the introduction of magic, in the sense of actively casting spells, into the Buffyverse. It’s a concept that gets used in many different metaphors going forward, for better and for worse. That messiness is obvious early on, from magical incantations being half calling on divine forces and half Rowlingesque faux latin, to the mention that cutting off a witch’s head reverses all their spells, something which would be very useful but is never mentioned again. Part of this is Early Installment Weirdness, and part is just the show’s lack of interest in developing any kind of precise magic system. Which I should specify is for the best.

We also have our most iconic Witch, Willow Rosenberg. At this point, she is still, in terms of plot function, the Hacker and the Damsel, while Giles fills the role of Good Wizard (with what he says is his “first casting” – another example of EIW since we know about The Dark Age). We won’t see her move into the magical role until season two, and we won’t see the full ramifications of that until season six. For now though, I do appreciate the small moment of her plucking out a newt eye without flinching as Xander balks – a little taster of her callous streak.

But let’s talk about the meat of this set-up – the Monster as Metaphor. One of the most essential parts of analysing Buffy as a text is recognising that there is always a metaphor in play. It’s one of the core concepts of the show, particularly in its early years – the idea that High School is Hell, and the demons that Buffy fights represent an issue that Buffy is facing. Sunnydale High School is the most important setting we have, to provide us with this conveyer belt of Teen Issues and the Monsters that embody them. This episode is absolutely dripping in the aesthetics of high school, perhaps more than any other episode, with sequences dedicated to pep rallies and basketball games. 

The villain that we see, Catherine Madison, is representative of the main issue facing Buffy in this season – the refusal to grow up. Catherine actually matches the main villains of the vampires in this way, as they are creatures who literally cannot grow up. Both are representative of arrested development in this way. While vampires are biologically prevented from aging, Catherine is a human who is biologically ensured to age. That’s the horror she is fighting against, and we see that both through her magical efforts – literally transporting herself into her daughter’s body with the argument that she is “wasting her youth” – and with more mundane efforts. Willow references her insane dietary regiment, where she eats naught but broth and bans Amy from eating brownies, lest she succumb to the terrifying ordeal of gaining a couple of pounds. She denies herself and her daughter the basic pleasures of being alive – to eat and to taste and to enjoy it. At least vampires let themselves enjoy their food.

It’s clear that Catherine goes beyond your standard controlling parent to being actively abusive. Her treatment of Amy is vile, and I am pretty glad that she ends up And-I-Must-Scream-ing in a trophy for three years before being blown up.She represents the most heinous of the three failing parents in this episode – Catherine, Joyce, and Giles.

Joyce is a character that I sometimes have a hard time sympathising with, and this episode demonstrates why. My brain knows that she must be cut a lot of slack for having no knowledge of her daughter’s magical destiny that is causing so much of her “trouble”, but I can’t help but feel righteously indignant at her attitude towards Buffy. She forgets what Buffy is trying out for (which is doubly-sad since Buffy goes looking for approval from both her parent-figures in this episode and gets it from neither), she admonishes her for not helping before she asks, she assumes that Buffy will get in trouble before it happens (“I’m not in trouble.” / “No, not yet.”). There is a constant aura of pre-emptive disappointment from Joyce. It’s no wonder Buffy closes off.

Despite her flaws though, Joyce does care about Buffy, unlike Catherine. By the end of the episode, the two reach a comfortable lack of understanding. Joyce frames this as a “biological imperative”, an inevitable conflict between the older and younger generations. Adulthood and childhood as oil and water. 

Giles is positioned as Buffy’s father figure in this episode, as he, like Catherine, demands a specific future for his “daughter”. He insists that she follow her duties as a Slayer, and no more. Extracurricular activities like cheerleading are frivolous, childish, a distraction from sensible adulthood and so forbidden. Buffy herself puts Giles in this framework when she tells him “I think you’re underestimating the amount of pressure a parent can lay on you. If you’re not a picture perfect carbon copy they tend to wig.”. Giles is the parent, putting unfair pressure on Buffy to be only a Slayer, and not a Person. 

Buffy, of course, pushes back on this, and Giles learns his lesson by the end of the episode. She is never shown to be wrong or foolish for following this dream. Right at the start, Giles admonishes Buffy for “ignoring everything [he] says”, and she quips right back that “that’s [his] role”. And while she eventually does walk away from cheerleading, it is through her own agency. Sadly though, it is because of her slayer destiny that she does give it up. 

Cheerleading is the symbol of Normal Life, the life of a regular teenage girl – specifically, the life of a regular teen show protagonist, the ‘Buffy’ of the show’s title. This is oppositional to fighting demons – the ‘Vampire Slayer’ of the show’s title. Buffy embodies this supposed (but not actual) contradiction. Joyce tells us that she stopped cheerleading when “the trouble started”, the ‘trouble’ being Buffy’s Slayer powers, suggesting that there’s an inherent antagonism between these two parts of Buffy. Another inevitable conflict. Buffy too sees them as separate, stating that she wants to both fight the forces, but also do “something normal”. 

With this line though, we get what I believe is the first of Buffy’s many Gilligan Cuts – an immediate cut from “something safe”, to our titular witch, huddling over a cauldron whispering Evil Magicks, with a voodoo barbie doll dressed as a cheerleader. Immediately, we understand that cheerleading is not safe. In Sunnydale, the abnormal always creeps into the normal. It is as inescapable as time, as the aging of our bodies, as adulthood rapidly encroaching on our childhood. Time’s arrow neither stays still nor reverses, it simply marches on. It is an impossibility for Buffy to have “something normal”, because normal does not exist in this world. You might as well try to stop time.

We’ve already established that Slayerhood-as-Adulthood is a major theme of this season, but this episode complicates that lens. Joyce coflates Buffy’s “troubles” with her existence as a 16 year old girl. Buffy’s life as a teenager, and her life as a slayer, they are the same in that they are something that Joyce, the adult/nonmagical human, simply cannot relate to. So Slayerhood is fundamentally tied to both Teenhood and Adulthood. It exists as both metaphors simultaneously. As Buffy moves towards accepting her destiny, it is accepting both growing up, and owning the fact that she is not yet grown.

I also believe that this episode marks the first instance of  the Slayerhood as Queerness metaphor creeping in, as Buffy says:

“Mom, you just don’t get it. And, believe me, you don’t want it. Y’know, there are just some things about being a Vampire Slayer that the older generation…”

Buffy Summers, 1×03 The Witch

Buffy cites her lived experience as a Vampire Slayer, which makes no sense to contrast to an “older generation”, as nobody non-magical can understand a Slayer’s life regardless of their generation. It makes perfect sense if you read “Vampire Slayer” as “gay” however – Joyce being part of a generation generally far less open to queer people than Buffy’s. The “generation” joke is used again to refer to queerness later in the series:

“They do spells and stuff, which is so much cooler than slaying. I told Mom one time I wished they’d teach me some of the things they do together. A-and then she got really quiet and made me go upstairs. Huh. I guess her generation isn’t cool with witchcraft.”

Dawn, talking about Willow and Tara, 5×02 Real Me

It’s not a biological imperative separating Joyce and Buffy. As an adult, as a muggle, and as a straight person, Joyce lacks the lived experience to fully understand Buffy – the teenager, the Magical Hero, and the metaphorical queer person.

Of course, any queer reading of this scene in the kitchen is totally undermined when Buffy leaves the room singing the notoriously heterosexual anthem, ‘Macho Man’ by Village People.

The episode leaves us with another parent/child pairing content in their antagonism. Amy complains about her Dad’s bog-standard fussiness and over-parenting with sweet fondness, the two obviously having formed a comfortable lack of understanding. Sometimes, that’s the best you can hope for between a teenager and a parent. Joyce cannot understand Buffy, and while Giles is learning to do better, he can’t completely be perfect either. Amy’s Dad is a “total pain”, but she is still loving it, because she knows the love and care is there from him that was never there from her mother. She gets to have brownies now – and frankly, what more could you ask for?

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