"THE BODY." DVD Commentary.

Series | Season | Disc

BtVS | 5 | 5

Commentary By: Joss Whedon

"The Body", the sixteenth episode of Season Five, focuses on the death of Joyce Summers and the aftermath after her body’s discovery by her daughter, Buffy. The episode was the sixteenth that Joss Whedon had written and directed during the seven-year run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The original airdate for the episode was February 27, 2001.

The first scene of "The Body" is a repeat of the final scene of episode fifteen, the relatively light-hearted "I was Made to Love You", which marked the first time in the Buffy universe where a teaser was the conclusion of a previous run episode. Whedon states that he felt it was a scene "worth repeating twice." He comments that Buffy’s line of "Mom…mommy?" represents her descent into girlhood as it dawns on her just what she has discovered.

During the title credits, Whedon reveals his central vision for the episode: "I wanted to show not the meaning or catharsis or the beauty of life or any of the things that are often associated with loss. Or, even the extreme grief some of which we do get in the episode, but what I really wanted to capture was the extreme...uh... physicality. The almost boredom of the very first few hours, I wanted to be very specific about what it felt like the moment you discover something... that… you've lost someone."

Act I

General Observations

The dinner table scene was filmed for artistic and practicality’s sake. While it depicted a happier time and captured the enduring theme of "family" that runs throughout the series, it was written so that the credits for the episode could run and not disrupt the flow of Buffy’s discovery of her mother’s dead body. Artistically, the scene is the first during "The Body" that represents the juxtaposition of life and death.

Whedon suggests that while the episode at first glance appears as a "formal exercise" with its lack of musical soundtrack and long running scenes, his goal was to create the sensation of "dumfounded shock…the airlessness of losing somebody." The general feel of the dinner table scene reflects the absolute mundane nature of the action and conversation, evidence of life going on, although this scene is rooted in the past.

The dinner scene concludes with Whedon admitting that he perhaps made a mistake in his positioning of Joyce. After the episode aired, he realized that she would have been more effective to have her at the top of the scene, entering the room to clear the dishes so that she could metaphorically represent her character as a constant in each of their lives.

When the audience returns to the close personal space of Buffy and her horrifying realization of her mother’s death, it is through a long shot that Joss communicates the fear, shock, and extremity of Buffy’s discovery. The long shot spans a little less than three minutes and truly captures the sense of hopelessness and urgency that Buffy feels.

Whedon instructed Camera Man Alan Houston to use a hand held camera balanced on his shoulder to convey the urgency of the scene, stating that the work Houston did was "extraordinary". The long shot breaks for a close-up of the telephone receiver when Buffy calls 9-1-1, a shot that Whedon claims represented the moment that Buffy understood that her mother was dead. It is a scene centered on the fixation of something meaningless, the telephone, which gives larger meaning to the situation at hand.

The conventions of death appear in this act in several scenes. When Buffy imagines a "happy ending" where her mother returns to life, Whedon says that he wrote this interlude "because I don't know anybody who has suffered the panic of a great loss without having imagined it going a different way a thousand times or more." It was representative of a "very real moment within the experience of losing somebody… the "no, they're fine; it's going to be fine, look, it was fine" and then you have to actually come out of the fantasy and the silence is ten times worse because of it."

Whedon then laughs and interjects "this is fun, isn’t it? Aren’t we having fun?" His trademark sarcastic humor, which reoccurs throughout the commentary, offers a brief respite from the emotional weight of the episode.

Death and Physicality Themes

Whedon’s focus on the physicality of death is one that resurfaces throughout the course of the episode. When Buffy has to move her mother’s body to administer CPR, followed by the cracking of her mother’s ribs by the force of her efforts, Whedon wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable. The scene illustrates "obscene physicality...a little more physicality than we necessarily want and/or are used to."

Throughout this act Whedon emphasizes the concept that the body is in itself representative of physicality in the purest sense, "apart from the sense of loss that you inevitably feel, there is the fact of the body, and dealing with that is an experience that really does kind of stop time."

Buffy’s straightening of her mother’s skirt, according to Joss, is "unlovely physicality" resurfacing. "The idea of mother' s underwear showing is gross and upsetting." More evidence of physicality in this act includes the scene where Buffy vomits following the departure of the paramedics.

Whedon also focuses on concept that the immediate response to death is often irrational. He illustrates this in each act on several different occasions, focusing on how death provokes strange emotions and actions that seem perfectly natural. When Buffy watches the EMS workers leave, she mutters "good luck", a statement that Whedon comments upon as reflective of how, "your priorities become so strange" and that her being polite to the EMS workers was unimportant, yet she feels compelled to say the words anyway.

Throughout the course of The Body, the main characters repeatedly look off screen, out windows, and through doorways, but the audience never sees what they are seeing, conveying a sense of unreality. The zoom-in shot of the phone receiver, where Whedon jokes "…is for people who don’t know what a phone is," is a tool that acts as a catalyst for Buffy’s realization of her mother’s death. A special frame lens captured the "real" look of the receiver.

The use of sound in the first act, where the audience hears Buffy’s audible point of view, was a device that Whedon used to put the viewers in Buffy’s personal space. The audible point of view contrasts with the lack of visual POV that further creates a suspended sense of reality.

As Buffy awaits the arrival of the paramedics from the doorframe, a wide-arc camera shot from Buffy to her mother on the couch suggests visually, that for a moment, she has forgotten that the body was there in the first place.

When Buffy encounters the EMS worker who delivers the verdict of her mother’s passing, the camera is out of focus and the EMS worker is out of frame. There are a number of quick cuts in this scene. The blurry angles reflect that she is not able to "relate to these people" and "Filmically, the idea was obviously that… they are a blur to her." Whedon wanted Buffy to appear "trapped" in her situation and the audience to feel confined with her.

The scene with the EMS workers was framed at 40 Frames per Second instead of 24, and during filming was intended for the scene to be slow motion, which didn’t translate completely on the final version. "It didn't really read like slow motion and was an attempt that failed...I've learned that if you want slo-mo you've got to go a bit slower."

The shot where the paramedic delivers the news that Joyce is officially dead is one of Whedon's favorites. He describes the shot as simple, an "over" where he continued to squeeze Buffy in the frame so that she could not move. The view of EMS worker’s mouth suggests to the audience that visually they are still in Buffy’s space; they are seeing things from her perspective and deep within her reality. Whedon modestly says that it was "something not particularly clever but useful."

This "trapped" theme reappears when Buffy looks out the doorway, her face consuming the screen, her skin waxy and unhealthy in appearance. The sounds of life go on around her as she struggles to breathe. Whedon says of this scene, "Buffy [is] looking out but it's about her face and the trapped-ness, hearing life going on but clearly not seeing it, needing the air but getting none."

Another consistent element throughout the act is the lack of cutting on shots. There is a great deal of movement in each scene, with the camera following each stride or action of the actors. This constant movement represented the concept that the audience is being forced to live through every moment and that there’s no escape from the action. According to Whedon, this constant movement was difficult to shoot.

Sarah Michelle Geller did the scene (from the teaser opening, to calling 9-1-1) a total of seven times, and each take was "extraordinary" according to Whedon. The episode was shot in sequential fashion, which Whedon feels might have been a mistake, due to the emotional highs and lows he put Sarah Michelle Geller through in Act One. Before Buffy refers to her mother as "a body", Whedon explains that "This…[was] very difficult for Sarah because she had given everything in every piece and we shot this sequentially. For her to get back to that level of intensity, to say that line, "the body", and realise what it means that she just called her mother a body was very difficult. …That was my fault because after the first shot we just went on sequentially; we should have gone straight to that because she was at that fever pitch."

Whedon focused on having each scene unfold in a step-by-step fashion. He avoided time cuts, and even when the timeframe seems rushed (in example, Giles arrives very quickly to Buffy’s home) which is justified because the audience is never allowed to leave the moment.

Act II.

General Observations

Whedon admits that at the top of this scene, where the audience sees Joyce’s body, that Kristine Sutherland blinked once, a blink removed in editing.

Dawn’s scene in the bathroom at school is what Whedon terms a "misdirect". Dawn’s tears over an insignificant thing, a boy calling her a "freak", contrasts with the true tragedy of her mother’s death. Whedon shot this scene as another "oner" and the scene attempts to build up Dawn’s life before "shooting it down". The "intense teen thing" counteracts what will happen according to Whedon. The incorporation of the teenage romance, Dawn’s flirtation in art class and her interaction with her friend helps to create for the viewer a sense of the physical and emotional world that Dawn inhabits outside of her life at home.

Whedon wanted to capture the absolute ridiculousness of Dawn’s dilemma and life while highlighting the fact that what she is experiencing at school is significant, because it is her life. It was the first time that someone had to be physically told of Joyce’s death, and so his goal was "…to spend an entire act building up her life so I could tear it down."

The romantic exchange between Dawn and her crush is an interlude for the audience. Whedon states that their exchange might have been viewed as boring, but that no one was "particularly anxious" to return to the story at hand. "I liked telling the story... intense about the pain [Dawn’s] been through, they've got that whole teen thing, the "I'm 14 and I'm too hip for the room. I've been through so much..." which nicely counteracts what's going to happen."

During this section of the commentary, Whedon makes a very loud sip from his tea and comments, "you the audience have now experienced my tea! Isn't that beautiful? Isn't DVD amazing?"

Returning to the commentary, Whedon says that Buffy appears with her bad news right at the pinnacle of Dawn’s happiness, which "would be my signature" as a director.

The statue of the female body is symbolic, the teacher’s instructions of drawing the negative space around the body conveys physicality. The cut-aways of charcoal on paper represents physicality.

The cut away scenes following Buffy’s arrival to the classroom represent how these ordinary, everyday things in Dawn’s world have suddenly taken on a greater significance.

The scene with Dawn in the bathroom and traveling down the hallway to art class is a "oner" that brings the audience into the moment.

Buffy’s arrival to the classroom takes the audience out of Dawn’s point of view. Whedon discusses how where as soon as Buffy says her name, Dawn’s face changes. "She knows. She doesn’t know what she knows, she just knows something…in that moment, she gets older."

When filming the scene where Dawn learns of her mother’s death, Whedon originally shot the scene several ways. He started filming on a Friday afternoon, utilizing an outside angle from the classroom while Buffy delivered the news. He did this because he did not want the actors to have to wrap with such an emotional scene. The following Monday, Whedon shot the "telling" scene from several different angles, using every technique he knew, but ended up using the shots taken on Friday, because "they didn't need to be directly in the moment. What I wanted to show was the environment that it takes place in and not the actual moment."

Whedon comments that Michelle Trachtenburg’s performance as Dawn was extraordinary, as well as Sarah Michelle Geller’s as Buffy.

Act III

General Observations

Each act begins with a shot of Joyce, which Whedon used to convey that repeating sensation of confinement without release for the audience. "Some people accused me of being morbid because we’d shot so much footage of Kristine being dead…but the body, that’s what it’s all about."

Whedon comments during this act that "Everybody that I spoke to when I was writing this has lost someone, has a story about it, has an attitude towards it, and it all fed into this…But a lot of this came from my own experiences of losing my mother, and of losing other people…Not just of my own grief, but of watching with others."

During the commentary, Whedon references his wife Kai and his mutual admiration for the Japanese cartoon character, "Little Burnt Boy" which appears in stuffed animal form in Willow’s dorm room.

Whedon also discuses how Alyson Hannigan had an allergic reaction to presumably the plaster in the room and that her right eye swelled up and she had to go to the emergency room.

Willow’s search for the perfect outfit and the associated jokes that appear in this scene are for Whedon representative of the "ridiculousness of perspective" that accompanies death. He cites his own experience with searching through nine stores for a black tie to wear to a friend’s funeral.

The kiss between Willow and Tara, the first on-screen lesbian kiss of the series, was evidence of physicality and necessary for the episode’s emotional level. Whedon did not want to have an episode billed as the "lesbian kiss" episode, so he sandwiched it into "The Body". "What’s real, what’s physical is what I’m tuned to here."

Whedon discusses the physical nature of Dawn’s "I need to pee" line and how, again, the wording was very specific on this line. As opposed to "bathroom" he wrote "pee" to convey the physical necessity on a basic level.

A goal was set to preserve the validity of each character’s experience. Tara is presented as the person that was the most together, since she had experienced death before. Xander acts out in anger and Willow needs the physical distraction of clothing choice.

Whedon states he used Anya’s emotional dialogue as a type of plot twist. He thought Emma Caufield’s performance was "lovely" here and her scene is one that provoked fan response with her ability to "express the real heart of the experience."

Xander’s angry reaction and punching of the wall is heard, not seen. The ensuing experience of pain and blood is metaphoric to life going on, that physicality is not just about death, it is about life at the same time.

The dorm room scene concludes with Willow’s need to change clothes once again, as the audience sees Xander getting a parking ticket. Whedon reveals that this scene reflects the connection of the physical space and the statement that life goes on.

The arrival of Xander and Anya in the car was another of the simultaneous shots that illustrated the methodological step-by-step process of death. The window, according to Whedon, was faked on set and the above view of the car being double-parked translated the contrast between outside life, the world going on around those who are grieving, and the isolated process of grief.

The initial shots of Willow were filmed with a handheld camera to reflect her jumpiness and uncertainty, while Tara’s frames were done with steadier angles and a steadier held camera.

Xander and Anya’s procession to Willow’s dorm room was shot with the camera capturing the walk down the hallway, to physically reflect every action of those first few hours following death.

Xander, Anya, Tara and Willow’s first group scene is in "Hitchcockian fashion", according to Whedon. A high and wide angle makes the actors look small against the world around them. The following scene was one with very little blocking. The camera angles were hard to shoot, according to Joss, and reflected a scene about the character’s helplessness.

Observations on directing and the actors

The emotional exchange between Willow and Tara and Willow’s overwrought emotions was significant for Whedon, seeing as how it followed the Buffy/Dawn "telling" scene. He did not want to "follow a banjo act with a banjo", meaning that he didn’t want two scenes of emotional crying and dialogue, so he was satisfied with the way he came at the "telling" scene with visual and audible distance.

Emma Caulfield’s performance when delivering her dialogue about the nature and human reaction to death was one Whedon paused for during his commentary. He states that he instructed her to go up, vocally, on "why" to convey a child-like innocence. These lines help Willow to identify with Anya despite the differences in character that they have, which Whedon felt was significant for the movement of the episode.

Xander’s outburst and punching of the wall reunites the Scoobies in a cause again. Xander’s injury forces them to focus on something other than their despair and to re-form as a cohesive group, according to Whedon.

Again, this scene opens with a shot of Joyce’s body, post autopsy.

Whedon jokes, "Are you depressed yet, because it’s not getting any better! There will be a vampire later…" and "not every episode is this depressing…Sometimes we have jokes and all other kinds of things on the show, it’s quite exciting."

Whedon discusses God, referring to him as the "sky bully", and that many people turn to the idea of God and religion as a comfort in death. Whedon admitted that he personally does not believe in God.

During the final credits, Whedon comments on how some fans supposed that Dawn was going to cure her mother with her key powers, a theory he scoffed at. He concludes the commentary with, "well, hope you had a good time!"

The final act represents the conflict experienced between Dawn and Buffy. Dawn feels alienated and that the situation is unreal; juxtaposed to the horrifying reality that Buffy has experienced. Dawn has not experienced the same physicality as Buffy.

Another "happy ending" scene appears as it did in Act One, where Buffy imagines that things had somehow gone radically differently.

Whedon says of death and funerals, "My experience with death is that apart from a lot of hugging at funerals, it seldom brings people together, it actually tears them apart. I’d always learned from TV that death made everybody stronger, and better, and learn about themselves, and my experience was that an important piece had been taken out of the puzzle amongst my family or friends or whomever it was, and that piece would never be replaced and that people would never be the same, and that there is no glorious payoff."

Anya, Willow and Xander’s offer to get food is another convention of death and funerals that Whedon feels is "classic". He refers to their return with arms laden with food as "cute."

Buffy and Tara’s scene represented to Whedon the inevitable occasion where someone is in intense grief and the awkwardness of being with someone that they don’t know very well. Tara’s admission of her mother’s death at 17 was a plot twist according to Whedon, and he was surprised by the fan reaction that stated that they gained a great deal of catharsis during that moment.

Dawn’s reaching out to her mother in the final scene, where she does not actually touch the body, is the final representation of pure physicality. "We want to touch it, but there’s nothing there…There is no resolve, no resolution, there’s no ending, there’s no lesson, there’s just death," Whedon says of this final, harrowing scene.

Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson heavily influenced the opening scene of this act, according to Whedon. "What can I say, I’m a hack," Whedon jokes about the long tracking shot that follows the doctor as he walks down the hallway to deliver the news to Buffy and her friends about Joyce’s cause of death. Whedon applauds the set designers for helping to make this interconnected hallway shot work.

The dissolves as Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Tara, Willow and Anya hug reflect visibly the "formal process" of death.

The filming of Dawn was with a steady cam while the rest of the cast was on a dolly. Whedon wanted Dawn’s frames to be more unreal and unsteady to reflect her inner turmoil.

The camera shot following the delivery by the doctor is one that reminded Whedon of a Stanley Kubrick frame, "where everything is a bit too big, wide, and harsh."

Dawn’s walk down the hallway to the morgue appears very differently from the earlier scene with the doctor. The doctor’s scene conveyed his comfort with his surroundings, whereas Dawn’s are uncomfortable and uncertain. "It is a horror, literally, we’re dealing now with death, with the reality of her dead mother," Whedon explains.

The lighting in this episode is consistently brighter than a usual episode, and the scene with Dawn in the morgue appears significantly darker. The enhanced blue light helped to create an eerie, creepy feel.

The sheet covering Joyce’s body clearly illustrated to the viewer the outline of a face there. This was a specific desire of Whedon’s, to create the reality of the situation.

The final shot, where Joyce, Dawn and Buffy are all in frame, was difficult to shot. Space prohibited a dolly track, so a steady cam mimicked a dolly shot with the cameraman walking up a ramp in order to capture the shot.

Anya’s full-body hug of Giles was a humorous element during the hospital waiting room scene. Whedon stated that Emma Caufield was always willing to insert a little humor relief when needed in a scene.

The lighting of this scene matched the coldness and unreality of the episode.

The vampire in the episode was, according to Whedon, a necessity. He wanted the vampire specifically to resemble a corpse and to affect Dawn emotionally. Dawn confrontation by a naked man is "intrusive, offensive, and completely physical." The greater symbolism is that the vampire represents that life goes on, however horrible it is.

The fight scene between Buffy and the Vampire was much more physical than the usual fight scenes in the show. Whedon wanted there to be struggling and for the vampire to die in the most horrific of ways, so that the reality of the situation translated to the audience.

--Hillary Robson