R E V I E W S
"Restless"
(Season 4, Episode 22)
Written by: Eric Teall
I am a relative newbie to Buffy; I began watching just before the beginning of Season Four. I rented the original Season One VHS Set from the local Blockbuster and then jumped into "Graduation Day." Over the last six months I have seen every episode of Buffy (pretty much) in order. I write this only three hours after I watched "The Gift", which is a great episode.
"Restless" is still my favorite Buffy episode. Period.
Joss gives us something interesting to work with at the end of Season Four. The big "fighting finale", which usually hits in the final episode, happens in "Primeval" (the penultimate episode of Season Four), but as Joss later points out in an interview, the big four characters-Buffy, Giles, Willow, and Xander-have very little emotional investment in the end of Adam and the Initiative. "Restless" makes up for that.
The scattered, dissociated feeling of the characters' dreams is captured perfectly here; these are some of the finest dream sequences I have ever seen. Willow's and Xander's relatively immature personal developments in the "will" department are demonstrated by the skittish, random elements in their dreams. These are two characters who have rarely been required to make the big decisions and focus on a goal-even Willow's use of the Spell of Restoration in "Becoming" is something of a last-ditch effort. Buffy and Giles, on the other hand, have been forced again and again to make earth-shaking choices. Their dreams are less random in terms of events and locales, but they feature several small side comments that seem almost random but that pay off in the end. In particular, when Giles watches Buffy "stake" the amusement park vampire, he calls her "the sacrificial lamb", which is a loaded statement, considering "The Gift". Buffy also gets in a few foreshadowing discussions, like the one with Adam's human component where she insists that "We aren't demons" and he counters with, "Is that a fact?" Compare this exchange with Dracula's comments about the origin of Buffy's powers in Season Five, and many of the seemingly random statements in "Restless" begin to resonate with the future of the series.
As an English Lit major, I am consistently fascinated by the symbolism of this episode. Some of it is obvious: the heart-spirit-mind aspects of Xander, Willow, and Giles and the way that each one is "killed"; Giles' watch; Willow's struggles with the curtains that hide her and entangle her; Xander's struggle to find a place for himself and the glaring discontinuity of his frantic wanderings in his dream. I cannot explain all of it, but some of it reveals aspects of the characters that are almost overlooked completely. Giles' "training" of Spike as a Watcher ("Spike is like a son to me") and Xander's almost jealous statement, "I was into that for awhile" brings to the fore the fact that Giles is the father figure to the entire group while enhancing the depth of his relationship with Xander.
The most striking symbol, though, appears at the very beginning of Willow's dream, and it not only sets the stage for Buffy's development in Season Five but foreshadows the might of the challenges the Scoobies will face in the future. I speak, of course, of Miss Kitty, Willow and Tara's cat. She doesn't have a name (like the First Slayer), she is black and white (like the First Slayer's appearance and moral development), and, like all kittens, she practices her skill on the rather unimportant ball of yarn. Even a kitten's play is deadly; by running these seemingly innocent scenes in slow motion, Joss allows us to see that the kitten really does want to kill the ball of yarn. It is a killer. Obviously Buffy is like the kitten in that she has the seeds of her future, mature self already within her. Miss Kitty will grow stronger; she must grow stronger. So will Buffy. If Buffy has been a kitten in Seasons One through Four, imagine the menaces she will face in future seasons as a cat. Glory is only the first one.
By the way, the First Slayer's stalking and the suspense that it creates scares the Glory's Realm out of me literally every time. Very few things can scare me like that, but this does.
I gush more about this episode than I really should, but I can't help it. Every time I watch it (and I'll bet I've seen it ten times now) I learn something new. I notice something different. This episode transcends the idea of episodic television through its richness. This is one of the few Buffys-one of the few films in the world, actually-that I feel I could watch hundreds of times and still not tire of it.
"Restless" crystallizes Joss' vision of these characters at one stage of their lives, and the depth of the episode is the depth of Buffy itself.
Rating: 6+/6 Stakes
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