Closing credits

The closing credits of the show were altered in two episodes. The first time was in The Puppet Show when the gang were seen performing a scene from Oedipus Rex. In Once More, With Feeling, the dance of the road sweepers was played instead of Nerf Herder’s usual theme. The beginning credits for the musical are completely different to the way they usually are, but if you listen, the initial tune is a take on Nerf Herder’s own Buffy theme tune.

Joss Whedon’s favourite episodes

Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon spoke to USA Today in May 2003 (after the final episode had aired) about his favourite Buffy episodes. They are as follows:

1. Innocence: “It’s a mission-statement show, and one of the ones where I first found out what we could do.”
2. Once More, With Feeling: “What am I going to say?”
3. Hush
4. The Body
5. Doppelgängland: “Because one Willow is certainly not enough.”
6. The Wish: “Very bleak, very fun. It went to a dark place, and that’s really exciting to me. That’s where I live.”
7. Becoming (Part 2): “Buffy loses everything. Also, it had a sword fight. I love sword fighting.”
8. Restless: “Most people sort of shake their heads at it. It was different, but not pointless.”
9. Conversations with Dead People: “I’m very fond of ‘Conversations with Dead People.’ I just thought structurally and tonally it was very interesting and had a lot to say. And I got to write another song.”
10. Prophecy Girl: “Because that was my first time, besides telling directors what to do, that I actually got to direct. And it was the first time I got to kill Buffy, and the first season ender, and it was the first time I realized I could take everything we did in the season and tie it in a bow.”

Making the musical shorter

Network UPN let the episode Once More, With Feeling run almost eight minutes longer than a regular episode for its first run. The Buffy musical has two versions, the longer, uncut one and another version that runs on time. The following parts of the musical were cut from the original episode for the shorter version:

• The opening scene was cut, including the important moment when Tara finds the flower which Willow used to put an amnesia spell on her.
• Some footage was cut from after Buffy finishes her song “Going Through The Motions”.
• Dawn’s pteradactyl scene was cut.
• “I’ve Got A Theory” was much shorter.
• Several lines from the Magic Shop scene between Buffy, Xander and Dawn were cut.
• Spike’s “Rest in Peace” song was slightly cut.
• Dawn’s dance with the puppets was removed entirely.
• A line from “Walk Through the Fire” was cut.

Multi-talented

The two vampires, the demon, the street cleaners and Sweet’s henchmen in Once More, With Feeling were all played by the same people.

Musical ad

During the UPN commercial break for Flooded, a twenty second trailer for Once More, With Feeling (then still being called ‘Buffy: The Musical’) was shown. It featured Alyson Hannigan miming along to ‘The Mustard Song’. In the next couple of weeks several scenes from the making of the musical were shown on UPN to promote the forthcoming episode.

Musical merchandise

The full soundtrack of Once More, With Feeling is available to buy. There is also a book with the score and notes about the creation of the episode available, and a special DVD.

Musical praise

TV Guide’s Matt Rousch said the episode Once More, With Feeling was, “Magnificently inspired. A wildly ambitious, entertaining and unexpectedly moving experiment in form by the show’s gifted creator… at times I could have sworn I’d died and gone to TV heaven.”
Time magazine named Once More, With Feeling as one of the ten TV highlights of 2001.

No singing for me

Alyson Hannigan hated her singing voice and asked not to have a song, or any major singing lines, of her own in the musical episode. In Nightmares, we saw that Willow herself is terrified of singing in public.

Sarah’s musical experience

Sarah Michelle Gellar said of making Once More, With Feeling: “I’m not a singer, and I hated every moment of it. It took something like 19 hours of singing and 17 hours of dancing in between shooting four other episodes.” Sarah originally wanted a voice double, but then realised she didn’t want someone else doing her what would be her big emotional turning point for the season. Sarah said of this, ‘’I basically started to cry and said, ‘You mean someone else is going to do my big emotional turning point for the season?”’

Singing monster

The Mutant Enemy monster joins in the singing at the end of the episode Once More, With Feeling.

Sneaky BBC

The BBC promised to show the longer version of the musical episode in the UK but in fact showed the much shorter one. Finally, in the very late night slot the following evening they showed the full length one - after lots of complaints. However it was so late and not advertised - few people realised and therefore missed it.

Writing the musical

Joss Whedon, the show’s creator, wrote the music and lyrics for Once More, With Feeling himself with help from Buffy composer Christophe Beck and Splendid’s Jesse Tobias. It took him three months to write the episode - over the summer when he was supposed to be taking a break. The episode was is the only one of season six which Joss wrote or directed.
Buffy composer Christophe Beck spoke to the Bronze posting board about Joss Whedon’s talent: “[He] came up with lyrics, melodies, the underlying chords/harmony, as well as general stylistic direction for each of 16 musical numbers. The songs started out as four-track recordings Joss made himself. I co-arranged and co-produced the songs with Jesse Tobias of the band Splendid.”
Once More with Feeling took four months in total to write, film, and produce.

Adam Shankman

The choreographer of the dancing in Once More, With Feeling was Adam Shankman. He has also choreographed movies such as Boogie Nights, The Flintstones, Scream 2, She’s All That, Inspector Gadget and The Wedding Planner (which he directed). He appears in the musical episode, dancing in the street when Anya, Giles and Xander walk past.

Daniel Weaver

Daniel Weaver played the guy Buffy saved in Once More, With Feeling who wanted to repay her. Daniel played Vanilla Ice in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, which starred Seth Green (Oz).

Guest stars in the musical

Writers/producers Marti Noxon and David Fury both had cameos in the musical episode Once More, With Feeling. Marti played the woman arguing over a parking ticket and Fury was the man singing about his dry cleaning - “They got the mustard out!”. David Fury actually started his career in musical comedy and has previously appeared in the Angel episode ‘Reprise‘. In Marti Noxon’s parking ticket song, the last line she sings, which can barely be heard, is “Hey, I’m not wearing underwear.” The two appeared again off-screen in season seven’s Selfless, when we saw a flashback to the musical from Anya’s point of view. In that episode, they sang about how to get a stain out of a shirt.
Marti said of her experience:

Hinton Battle

Hinton played the all-singing, all-dancing demon Sweet in Once More, With Feeling. Battle is a Broadway star and has won Tony awards for his stage work. Hinton also played Cat in the U.S. version of Red Dwarf.

Zachary Woodlee

Zachary Woodlee, who played one of Sweet’s henchmen in Once More, With Feeling, has also danced in Bring It On Again, Stuck On You, From Justin to Kelly, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, The Sweetest Thing, Not Another Teen Movie, Rock Star, These Old Broads, Beautiful and Boys and Girls.

Sweet

Sweet was a red-skinned demon who was a talented singer and dancer. By invoking Sweet’s power, life becomes a musical, with everyone bursting into song and sharing their intimate feelings… though ultimately spontaneously combusting by dancing themselves to death. Xander secretly summoned Sweet in Once More, With Feeling to ensure he had a happy ending to his relationship with Anya, not realising the consequences. Sweet attempted to take Dawn as his bride but when he realised he would actually have to marry Xander, he decided to leave Sunnydale.

Beady eyes

In Once More, With Feeling, Anya sings about Xander, “His eyes are beady!” to which Xander later replies, “…and my eyes are not beady!” Even later in the episode, Anya sings, “Beady Eyes is right! We’re needed.” In the episode Entropy, Anya is trying to wish revenge on Xander, and she says, “I wish you had tentacles where your beady eyes should be!”

Been through Hell

Tara references the time when Glory brainsucked her mind in Tough Love when sings “you know I’ve been through Hell”, in the Under Your Spell/Standing Reprise in the musical.

Breaking out the red

In Once More with Feeling, Spike wears a red shirt over his black t-shirt (and under his trademark black coat.) This was the look that he had from his very first episode (season two’s School Hard) until after Something Blue in season four. For some reason, after Something Blue he only wore a red shirt again one time (in this episode.)

Breaking the fourth wall

The fourth wall is the imaginary invisible wall at the front of a stage or camera, through which the audience sees the action playing out. The fourth wall is “broken” in Buffy and Angel - in the musical Once More. With Feeling, Buffy, Xander and Anya sing whilst looking at the camera. Anya also says to Giles in that episode, after her duet with Xander that, “It was weird. It was like there was a wall missing from our apartment. Like there was only three walls and not a fourth one…”
In Angel’s Spin the Bottle, in which Lorne acts as a host, explaining the story to the audience. There is also a great moment in Spin the Bottle, in which Lorne says after a commercial break: “Well, those were some exciting products. Am I right? Mmm. Let’s all think about buying some of those.”
Andrew also breaks the fourth wall in Storyteller - whilst talking to his camera about what’s going on in the Summer’s house.

Bunnies

Anya has a fear of bunnies, first referenced in Fear, Itself when she wore a bunny costume to a Halloween party, with the simple explanation: “bunnies frighten me”. This fear is shown in Shadow, The Gift, Once More, With Feeling, Tabula Rasa, Smashed, Selfless and in Chosen. In Bargaining (Part 2), Razor asks Willow what she’s going to do, “pull a rabbit out of a hat?” Anya turns to Tara to be reassured that she won’t. Anya’s final words on the show are about bunnies. She thinks of them whilst preparing for the huge battle - “Bunnies. Floppy, hoppy, bunnies.” Anya’s bunny suit in Fear, Itself became so popular that modelmakers Clayburn Moore created a figure of the character.

Continued singing

After the demon disappears in Once More, With Feeling, everyone keeps on singing, which a few people have felt is a goof. Thanks to Missi who sent the following explanation: Just before the demon leaves, he sings “Say you’re happy now, once more with feeling.” He’s cursing them to do one more song.

Family or friends?

In Once More, With Feeling, when Buffy sings ‘family’ she points at Tara and Anya, and when she sings ‘friends’, she points at Dawn. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?!

Klepto Dawn

After her mother died, Dawn started stealing things to try and get attention. She took some of Anya’s earrings in Intervention, a necklace in All the Way and an amulet in Once More, With Feeling. She told Justin in All the Way that “I haven’t paid for lipstick since forever” and in Older and Far Away she stole a leather jacket for Buffy’s birthday. Dawn’s kleptomania was discovered in Older and Far Away when Anya found stolen jewellry in Dawn’s room. In Normal Again, Buffy tells Dawn she has to try harder and stop stealing things.

Musical comedy version

In Nightmares, Giles says when he finds out what’s happening, “there should be a musical comedy version of this”. In Once More, With Feeling Willow sings, “I’ve got a theory; some kid is dreaming and we’re all stuck inside his whacky Broadway nightmare”. That indeed would be a musical comedy version of Nightmares.

Must be Tuesday

In Revelations, Buffy says, “another Tuesday night in Sunnydale”, which is a reference to the fact that Buffy aired on Tuesdays in the U.S. In Once More, With Feeling, Buffy says, “So Dawn’s in trouble. Must be Tuesday”

Once more, with less feeling

In the Angel episode ‘Guise Will Be Guise‘, Lorne asks Angel if he’s happy. Angel answers ‘yes’, to which Lorne replies, ‘Now once more, with less feeling?’.

Once more, with tension

In the episode Lie to Me, Angel gets jealous when he sees Ford and Buffy at the Bronze. Buffy says that the Bronze is too crowded and leaves with Ford. Xander then says in a sarcastic way: “Once more, with tension.” The musical episode in season 6 was called Once More, With Feeling.

Sunnydale Press

Sunnydale’s local newspaper was called the Sunnydale Press. It can be seen in the episodes Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, Reptile Boy, Becoming (Part 1), Bad Girls, Consequences, Graduation Day (Part 1), Hush and Once More, With Feeling.

Syphilis

Xander’s bout of syphilis in Pangs is mentioned again in Once More, With Feeling when Anya sings, “His penis got diseases from a Chumash tribe” in the song ‘I’ll Never Tell’. In Buffy vs Dracula, Xander says that he’s is tired of being “the guy who gets the funny syphilis.”

The day the songs started

In Selfless, we see a flashback to a night that obviously is intended to have taken place during the musical Once More, With Feeling, on the first night that everyone began singing. Anya asks Xander if the coconut thing was weird. In the musical she told the gang, “We were arguing and, and then everything rhymed and there were harmonies and the dance with coconuts.” Outside Xander and Anya’s apartment we hear the neighbours singing: a man sings that he has mustard on his favourite shirt, and a woman suggests that he have it dry cleaned. The next morning in the musical, David Fury sang a brief song that he was pleased that the dry cleaners had got the mustard out. Marti Noxon and David Fury reprise their roles in Selfless. In the scene where Anya sings ‘Mrs’, Xander is holding the amulet that was used to summon Sweet in Once More, With Feeling.

Splendid

Splendid play their track “Charge” in the Bronze in I Only Have Eyes For You. In The Freshman Splendid perform “You and Me” in the Bronze. Their unreleased song “Tomorrow We’ll Awake” plays during Xander and Anya’s bedroom scene in Forever.
Angie Hart, the lead singer of Splendid, co-wrote the song “Blue” with Joss Whedon. This song played at the beginning of the episode Conversations with Dead People.
Angie’s ex-husband Jesse Tobias, who was also in Splendid, helped Joss and Christophe Beck to arrange Joss’s songs for the musical episode Once More, With Feeling.

The Lyrics

Click on the links below for the lyrics of each song in the musical:

Lethe’s Bramble

In All the Way, Willow uses Lethe’s Bramble to perform a forgetting spell on Tara (and herself and her friends, by accident, in Tabula Rasa). Tara discovered what Willow had done in Once More, With Feeling when she researched Lethe’s Bramble in a book at the Magic Box. It said: “Lethe’s Bramble: Used for augmenting spells of forgetting and mind control”.

Magnolia

In Once More, With Feeling, Xander says, “Respect the cruller and tame the doughnut!” This is a reference to the movie Magnolia, in which Tom Cruise plays a sleezy sex expert, who says, “Respect the pussy and respect the cock!”

Mary Poppins

In Revelations, Faith calls Gwendolyn Mary Poppins, after the eccentric British nanny from the book and the 1964 musical of the same name. In Once More, With Feeling, the men seen sweeping streets and dancing is an homage to the chimney sweeps’ dance from Mary Poppins. In Tabula Rasa, Spike says of Giles, “Oh listen to Mary Poppins. He’s got his crust all stiff and upper with that nancy-boy accent.”

Michael Flatley

In Once More, With Feeling, Tara mentions the “Lord of the Dance, though not the scary one” - she’s referring to the greased up Michael Flatley of Riverdance fame.

Once More, With Hobbits

Once More, With Hobbits is a rewrite of the lyrics of the songs from the Buffy musical episode Once More, With Feeling, to suit the characters and storylines from Lord Of The Rings. Songs include ‘I’ve Got a Theory’ sung at the council of Elrond and ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’ sung at the final parting of the fellowship at the Grey Havens.

Pinocchio

In Once More, With Feeling, Spike says, “Strong. Someday, he’ll be a real boy”, when he notices the strength of one of Sweet’s henchmen. This is a reference to Italian author Carlo Collodi’s children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio which features an animated marionette whose dream is to become human. The story was made famous by Walt Disney’s film Pinocchio.

In To Shanshu in L.A, Wesley realises that the Shanshu prophecy means that Angel will become human after fulfilling his destiny. The gang have the following conversation:

Wesley: “Well, it’s saying that it won’t happen tomorrow or the next day. He has to survive the coming darkness, the apocalyptic battles, a few plagues, and some - uh, several, - not that many - fiends that will be unleashed.”
Angel: “So don’t break out the champagne just yet.”
Cordy: “Yeah, break out the champagne, Pinocchio. This is a big deal!”

In Hellbound, Spike says,”To making me a real boy again?” - an echo of the comment he made in the Buffy musical. It’s also a Pinoccio reference. In Soul Purpose, Freds says that Spike, “Deserves to become a real boy.”
In Smile Time, Lorne says of the injured puppet-Angel, “Medic! Doctor! Is there a Gepetto in the house?” Gepetto was Pinocchio’s wood-carver father.

Seventy-six trombones

In Once More, With Feeling, Spike tells Buffy, “The day you suss out what you do want, there’ll probably be a parade. Seventy-six bloody trombones.” This is a reference to the song “Seventy-Six Trombones” from the Broadway musical The Music Man, written by Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey. The term is also used in Bingo, when the number 76 is called out.

Singin’ in the Rain

Xander and Anya fall down on the sofa laughing at the end of their song in Once More, With Feeling. This is an homage to the song ‘Good Morning’ from Singin’ in the Rain where Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor do the same thing.

The Rolling Stones

In Wild at Heart, Buffy says, “if the Stones are still rolling, why can’t Giles?”, referring to aging rock band The Rolling Stones, who are still touring. In Once More, With Feeling, Spike says “Get your kumbya-yas out”, referring to both the popular hymn ‘Kumbya’ and the Rolling Stone’s ‘Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out’.

Seen at 02.46 minutes:

When Buffy falls during “Going Through the Motions”, the sword is by her head but when she jumps up it is by her side.

Seen at 10.43 minutes:

When Tara sings “Under Your Spell”, she and Willow are suddenly dancing inside. The parting in her hair changes between the two scenes.

Seen at 15.00 minutes:

In Once More, With Feeling, some chairs are moved during Xander and Anya’s song, ‘I’ll Never Tell’. In the first half of the song, there are 4 chairs at the dining table, one at each side facing towards the table. At the end of the crazy dancing routine (after the pair have danced around the table) two of the seats have suddenly been conveniently moved out at an angle to allow they two actors to sit down.

Seen at 15.52 minutes:

When Xander and Anya are singing “I’ll Never Tell”, just before Anya sings, “he’s swell”, you can see both Anya and Xander just finishing sitting down. However as Anya is singing the line, they show her starting to sit again, without getting back up.

Seen at 27.29 minutes:

When Sweet is singing and Dawn’s dress changes, you can see that the dress is different before the camera pans out.

Seen at 31.39 minutes:

When Tara holds the flower beside the book, the flower is laid the same way as the book. When the camera cuts back to the flower, it is flipped in the other direction.

Seen at 40.33 minutes:

During the song “Something to Sing About”, Anya and Tara join Buffy to dance. In one of the spins of the dance you can see that Tara hits the pole behind her and tries not to laugh.

Seen at 40.54 minutes:

As Buffy sings “Something to Sing About”, we see Anya and Tara standing behind her, with Tara moving closer towards Anya. Then when Buffy sings the line, “family and friends”, the shot shows that Tara and Anya are nowhere near each other.

Seen at 42.20 minutes:

When Buffy is dancing at the end of “Something to Sing About”, the dead/unconscious body of the puppet demon behind her keeps moving. When she starts dancing, it’s to the left of the stage and we then see it’s moved to the right.